Who Will Be America's Nick Clegg in '12

With a corporate-owned Obama running just one point ahead of Ron Paul in the polls, the time is ripe for a progressive candidate like British liberal, Nick Clegg, to sweep in and steal the show from the Republocrats and Democans in 2012. From HuffPo:

A week ago, most people in Britain considered Nick Clegg, the "little-known leader" of the Liberal Democrats, to be, by all measures, a long shot to become Britain's next prime minister. But that was before "Cleggmania" swept the country.

The origins of Cleggmania can be traced to last week's televised debate -- a first in Great Britain -- in which Clegg was widely considered to have stolen the show from the leaders of Britain's two largest political parties: current Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the Labour Party, and Conservative Party leader David Cameron. The headline the next day in the London Times read "Clegg comes of age." A poll taken after the debate led the Guardian to declare that "Clegg is now in contention as potential PM."

To top it off, the latest YouGov poll shows the Liberal Democrats to now be in the lead with 34 percent of the vote. The Conservative Party came in second with 31 percent. A week ago the Liberal Dems were hovering around 16 percent. Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish referred to the poll result as "the earthquake in Britain." John Curtice of the Independent has called the Liberal Dems' surge "the biggest shock to the electoral landscape in years." . . . .

The Obama/Duncan Ultimate Hypocrisy on Resegregation

From WaPo:

. . . .More than half a century after courts dismantled the legal framework that enforced segregation, Obama administration officials are investigating an array of practices across the country that contribute to a present-day version that they say is no less insidious.

Although minority students have the legal right to attend any school, federal officials are questioning whether in practice many receive less access than white students to the best teachers, college prep courses and other resources. Department of Education lawyers also are investigating whether minority students are being separated into special education classes without justification, whether they are being disciplined more harshly and whether districts are failing to provide adequate English language programs for students who are not fluent, among other issues.. . . .

So at the same time the Education Department is going after Mississippi for resegregating school policies, Duncan and the Oligarchs are working feverishly to clear the path for the unlimited expansion of harsh No Excuses apartheid charters to replace the neglected public schools. These bare-knuckled containment test camps are intended to be manned by white female missionaries who have been "alternatively" mis-prepared to teach by corporate teacher prep programs like TFA. Those children who resist the psychological and behavioral sterilization will be dumped back into the crumbling public schools to become fuel for the school to prison pipeline. The rest will be instruments of oppression in their own communities as low level drones of the corporate plutocrats.

Another Hatchet Job

It was roughly a year and a half ago that the conservative forces within the Democratic Party - the hedge fund/corporate-backed education reformers at EEP, DFER, Education Reform Now, TFA, and their many financial and strategic partners - launched a coordinated attack on Linda Darling-Hammond.

Well, the same edu-idiots now have their sights trained on NY State Senator Bill Perkins, a man with the gall to question the privatizers-slash-charterizers and their myriad of financial and real estate dealings, not to mention their lack of transparency and outright desire to turn a profit (often times at the expense of the very children and communities they serve). Perkins will chair a Thursday hearing about charter schools, and the forces behind charter schools in NY (and the country as a whole) are furious that anyone would DARE question their business practices, no matter how shady, corrupt, or downright insidious they are (I mean, stuff like this is totally acceptable, right?).

Take note: this is NOT a hearing on academic performance. The hearing is under the Corporations, Authorities and Commissions Committee. Funny how only one of the Perkins-bashing articles cooked up by the folks at the Post and the Times mentioned that important fact, and even then it's buried near the very end. Here's a list of the articles:

The Unions' Plan to Kill Good Schools - Thomas Carroll (President of the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability)

The Perkins Puzzle - not sure who wrote this piece, but they repeat many of the same talking points included in a Whitney Tilson e-mail that went out less than 24 hours before it appeared.

Crushing Harlem Hopes - Peter Murphy, Policy Director for the NY Charter Schools Association

Harlem Showdown - Carl Campanile, NY Post writer

Charter-bashing Pol Ripped as Teacher Pet - Carl Campanile, NY Post writer

Perkins has the guts to ask, "Is our democratic version of public education being fulfilled?" That, evidently, will earn you the scorn of the various anti-public school "reformers" looking to privatize education and completely de-regulate the charter school industry.

You can send Bill a thank you note here.

Connecticut Schlock Commerical

The above TV commercial, paid for by ConnAD (Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Advocacy, a 501c4 which I believe is the political arm of ConnCan), began airing on CT airwaves today.

The idea that Connecticut can magically turn around their public schools by simply competing for a remaining slice of Obama/Duncan's $3.4 billion is beyond absurd. However, simplistic reform messages like those propagated by DFER, ConnCan, EEP, and their many followers (and funders) are practically designed for commercial-length mode of (non)thinking that is all-too-common in the current "reform" climate.

This isn't the first advocacy piece that fails to address important education issues while portraying a very one-sided view of education policy. "Connecticut's Charter School Law and Race to the Top," an earlier piece put out by ConnCan, was evaluated by Bobert Bifulco through the Think Tank Review Project. Bifulco concluded his evaluation with, "...this brief provides a rather one-sided and incomplete analysis of the issues at stake."

"Sexy and Noble:" New York Set to Clear the Way for the New MATT (Master of Arts in Temporary Teaching)

In a prime example of Orwellian logic, Arne Duncan's corporate bosses have declared that the best way to getting test results in the poor schools that need the most highly qualified teachers is to lower the standards for teacher education by offering more "alternative certification" programs. By supporting corporate indoctrination programs that are backed by Goldman Sachs and Microsoft like Teach for America, which dumps selectively recruited white female missionaries who have had 6 weeks of teacher training into some of America's poorest schools, corporate education reformers now envision the total containment and segregation of America's poor children within the crumbling urban cores of America.

The fact that the research shows that TFA's Ivy League temps are less effective or equally ineffective in churning out higher test scores than the weakest teachers in America matters not to ideologues like David Steiner, Commissioner of Education for New York. After all, Steiner's goal is about dismantling those left-wing ed schools where balanced literacy approaches get in the way of choking down the gospel according to the phonics freaks like Reid Lyon and the direct instruction disciples of Zig Engelmann. Steiner would rid the nation of those ed schools where teacher ed candidates learn how today's penal pedagogy model is a further elaboration of school as the instrument of social and economic reproduction:

David M. Steiner, who became commissioner of the New York State Department of Education last year, insists that as much as he wants to introduce “new actors” into the realm of teacher preparation, he also wants to encourage education schools to reform themselves. Dr. Steiner, who in 2003 published a paper critical of the required reading at 16 elite education schools, says that colleges still devote too much class time to abstract notions about “the role of school in democracy” and “the view by some that schools exist to perpetuate a social hierarchy.”

And so Steiner is set to approve the creation of Masters Degrees in teaching by corporations, where teacher candidates will be properly educated in the values and psychology that have made Wall Street the lucrative sewer that it is today. Who needs to take over the university teacher ed programs when you can simply replace them, all with the blessing that come with full federal support? A clip from the NYTimes:

. . . .In New York, teachers can begin working without a master’s degree as long as they have had some education courses as undergraduates, but they must earn a professional certification within five years by receiving a master’s degree from a teaching school. New York is one of a dozen states that requires teachers to get a master’s degree. Alternative certification programs like Teach for America offer a quicker path for graduates who did not study education in college, allowing them to begin teaching from the outset while pursuing a master’s degree after hours.

Under the Regents’ proposal, which the board is expected to approve on Tuesday and does not need the approval of the State Legislature, Teach for America and similar groups could create their own master’s programs, and the Regents would award the master’s degree, two powers that are now the sole domain of academia.

The Regents are looking for academic programs that would be grounded in practical teaching skills and would require teachers to commit to working in a high-needs school for four years.

“Ten years ago, this would have been an incredibly tough sell,” Dr. Steiner said.. . . .

New research confirms that California's Prop 227 was a mistake

New Research Shows that Prop 227 was a Mistake.
Sent to the Capitol Weekly (Sacramento, CA), April 18, 2010

Two studies have just appeared that show that children in bilingual programs learn about as much English as do children in English-only programs.

One study, headed by Robert Slavin of Johns Hopkins University, compared English learners in five states over five years who had the same program of instruction, except that one group was taught entirely in Spanish in kindergarten, with more English gradually introduced until the program was entirely in English by grade three. The researchers found only very small differences between the groups on English tests given in grades three and four. The second study, done by Christopher Jepsen of the University of Kentucky, looked at children in California: Those who had bilingual education did just as well as similar children who did not on tests of English in grades four and five.

Both studies show that the children in the bilingual programs made the same progress as comparisons in English literacy despite having less exposure to English. This means that the time spent in Spanish made a real contribution to English language development.

These two studies are only the most recent showing that bilingual education works. In most of the previous research, in fact, children in bilingual education did better on tests of English reading than comparison students did.

Bilingual programs also help children develop their first language, which is beneficial to the individual as well as society: Bilinguals do better than monolinguals on several kinds of tests of intelligence, and bilingualism appears to reduce some of the negative effects of aging. Also bilingualism is an obvious asset to business as well as national security.

In light of these findings, it is clear that approving Proposition 227, which dismantled bilingual education in California 1997 was a mistake. The use of the first language in school can help English language development, and at the same time provides the advantages of bilingualism.

Stephen Krashen

Rethinking Schools Article on TFA

Be sure not to miss Barbara Miner's article, Looking Past the Spin: Teach for America, which appeared in the most recent issue of Rethinking Schools.

And - as a major added bonus - be sure to check out Kenneth Bernstein's (aka teacherken) take on the article, available here at the DailyKos.

School Turnarounds in VA, DE

It was back in January of 2009 that Pearson announced they'd enter the "turnaround" business with a new branch, Pearson K-12 Solutions. Leading the way for this new outfit would be none other than Scott Drossos, a former Executive VP and Chief Development Officer for EdisonLearning.

When Virginia announced $59.8 million in federal funding for school turnarounds, both Pearson K-12 Solutions and EdisonLearning made the list of "turnaround providers" even though one company has been around for a little over a year and the other company has a rather spotty track record, to put it politely.

Over at Kilroy's Delaware, Nancy Willing reports that Pearson K-12 Solutions will be taking over a charter school, the Moyer Academy, within the next few months. No word yet if this is official - but it sure seems plausible given Delaware's participation is the Mass Insight experiment in turnarounds.

Official: Rhee's $34 Million Imaginary, But She Has Found an Another Imaginary $29 Million to Almost Replace It

Can there possibly be any more evidence required that the fuming sourpuss, Michelle Rhee, is not up the task--and possibly out of control? From Bill Turque:

The District's chief financial officer said Thursday that a $34 million surplus in the school system's budget, cited by Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee as a major source of funding for raises promised to teachers in a proposed labor contract, does not exist.

Natwar M. Gandhi's analysis, outlined in a stinging letter to Rhee, is likely to raise new questions about the prospects for an agreement between the city and the Washington Teachers' Union. The tentative accord introduced last week, which must be approved by union members and the D.C. Council, was the product of more than two years of contentious bargaining and was hailed nationally as a progressive model of education reform.

In the letter, Gandhi, who is responsible for certifying collective bargaining agreements as fiscally sound, tells Rhee that although there is a projected $34 million in "underspending" in the school operations section of the agency's budget, it is offset by an estimated $30 million in overspending in the system's central office.

In unusually blunt language, Gandhi takes Rhee to task for what he describes as a failure to adequately consult his office before mentioning the surplus at a meeting with D.C. Council members.

"I was incredulous to learn that in your April 13, 2010, presentation to the Council on the contract you asserted that a surplus is available to fund the proposed salary increases based on preliminary information," he wrote.

Rhee disputed Gandhi's assertion that the information was preliminary but said Thursday night that she had "no choice" but to accept the findings. She also said she has identified $29 million in new sources of money to restore funds Gandhi disallowed. She did not elaborate.. . .

Broad Winner Led Texas in "School-to-Prison Pipeline"

From the Texas Tribune:

"The School-to-Prison Pipeline"

by Matt Stiles and Brian Thevenot

When it comes to discipline, the Aldine Independent School District doesn’t mess around. The large suburban district expelled more students last year — 525 — than any other district in Texas, despite being a fraction of the size of large urban districts, according to state data.

Aldine boots nearly three times as many students as neighboring Houston ISD — which expelled 181 students in 2008-09 — even though its enrollment, about 67,000, is only a third the size. The forced-out students get processed into either the Harris County Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program or one of two “very strict” special schools run by the Harris County Department of Education, an unusual agency that provides services to area districts but runs no schools for the general public, according to agency spokeswoman Carol Vaughn. An additional 1,399 students were shipped off to a district alternative program — not technically expelled but removed from traditional classes.

[Continued here]

The 2008-2009 school year was also the year the Broad Foundation gave Aldine the Broad Prize for Urban Education.

The 2008-2009 finalists for the award also included Gwinnett County (whose board member erroneously believed her district had won the prize; her statement was revised after I notified her that Aldine was the winner) and the Broward County Schools (which lost a school board member and county commissioner in an FBI sting in late 2009).