Steve Krashen wins highest honor

I just discovered that my letter, "Well Crafted," won special recognition from Southwest Airlines. It was featured prominently in the last issue of Spirit, the Southwest Airlines Magazine and won their "top letter" award. Winners of this award win a free Spirit T-shirt.

Well crafted

Published in Spirit (Southwest Airlines Magazine), July, 2010.

"Dream Job" is the right article for America at the right time. With the current emphasis on academics and high test scores, our country appears to be moving away from the time when "fixing things" and other forms of practical expertise was, as Mike Rowe says, "not only celebrated but also revered."

Former US Cabinet member John W. Gardner pointed out that we all lose when we lose respect for non-academic work: "The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."

Stephen Krashen, PhD
Professor Emeritus, University of Southern California

Original article at: http://www.spiritmag.com/features/article/dream_job/

The Spirit editor included this comment after my letter: We’re all for academics, Stephen. (Some of our best friends are emeritus professors.) But you’re right. If we’d all think more like craftsmen, our world would be—well, better crafted.

FCAT Child Abuse

From an entirely self-serving perspective, we have to wonder if this generation of the abused will be become the next generation of abusers and anti-empathy zealots.  After all, when I was a kid . . .

From the Miami Herald (ht to Monty Neill):

The FCAT test defines, among other things, whether students pass from third to fourth grade and ultimately whether they graduate from high school with either a standard or special diploma, or whether they will eventually have to take the GED elsewhere. All of this can determine their income range for the rest of their lives. Not only is it risky to place so many eggs in one basket, it is also unfair to evaluate all students with the same measure regardless of their disabilities (though there are some accommodations), income level and social circumstances. Margaret Cox, special education teacher at Henry F. West Laboratory Elementary School in Coral Gables, remembers a third-grade student with severe dyslexia. Even so, no changes were made except for extended time to accommodate his specific disability. He flunked, of course, but he did not have to repeat the grade because he had already been retained in kindergarten. ``This boy cried so much it broke my heart,'' she told me. ``He could not read the material, but if the text had been read aloud to him his strong comprehension abilities would have allowed him to pass.'' This accommodation is not allowed in the reading FCAT exam. Cox has seen students who in the days prior to the test have lost their hair, suffered emotional breakdowns, vomited or developed psychosomatic symptoms. A test to measure the learning achievements of students is important. But a one-size-fits-all exam cannot define their intelligence, especially if they are stressed. There are other alternatives to evaluate children's progress throughout the year. A student's value is much more than a grade on a test. That is why this FCAT imbroglio -- and its emotional consequences -- calls for a more human approach to public education in Florida. If we want our future leaders to be innovative and empathetic, we have to start training them early, making students aware that we value -- besides their academic knowledge -- their creativity, perseverance, responsibility and initiative.

Chartering Possibilities - First in a Series

This is the first blog posting in a three part series. Parts two and three will run Wednesday and Thursday.

I'm going to put one debate on hold during this series in order to bring up an entirely different debate. Here's what I'm going to put on the side:

Charter schools: good or bad?

Never mind that this either/or debate doesn't leave room for much gray area. Only the dimmest charter school advocates believe charters are the ultimate solution (they currently serve fewer than 5% of students - and scaling up quickly is easier said than done). Even those described as "anti-charter" often support some charters either because of their pedagogical approaches, mission, or the fact that they serve a population not served well by traditional public schools. We're going to put all of this to the side. I reassure you there's a reason for this.

Let's say you decide, "Yes, I like charter schools. I like them a lot." For a little wrinkle, let's say you happened to have a bank account with, oh, $30-some billion dollars and your rich friend (with another $30 billion or so) promised to give you the majority of his fortune. Other like-minded philanthropists are engaged in the sector already, so you join with them to create new organizations (some that exist purely to give your money away). You're interested in reforming public K-12 education (who isn't?) and you've stepped aside from your previous work to run your foundation.

You pick out the "top talent" you can find, assemble your team of experts, and begin tossing money around. Millions here, millions there - who's really counting? You have billions - with a B - and most of your ventures are supported by governmental funds (ie tax dollars supporting K-12 public education).

It doesn't take a genius to see that I'm referring largely to Bill Gates and his foundation. Aside from the figures ($30 billion, etc), I could be talking about a number of different foundations: Broad, Walton, Gates, Fisher, Dell, etc. Most of them are West Coast philanthropies and new money men, although there are some East Coast folks and even some old money philanthropies involved.

Anyways, your team of experts needs to help you dole out your cash - it's far too big of a job for one man to do, and you don't know all that much about public K-12 education anyways. Your advisors come back with two solutions: small schools and charter schools. Millions is poured into the small schools movement (which I won't discuss here - see Mike Klonsky's work for a more thorough discussion, particularly Small Schools). Millions poured into the charter school idea.

But not all charter ideas are the same, and there are some very different visions of how we'd go about setting up charter schools. Here's a quick list with some very brief descriptions:

1. Education Management Organizations: often for-profit supporters of charter chains (Edison).
2. Charter Management Organizations: the non-profit version of EMOs.
3. Stand-alone charters: set up by teachers, community groups, or school districts.

What you choose here makes a big difference: will it be a top-down approach, or a grassroots, bottom-up strategy? Will you look at for-profit models, or only non-profits? All of this will impact how charters connect to the community, how they're staffed (and the kinds of people you seek out), and the kind of policy changes you hope to see. Will you be hostile towards school districts and unions, or find (some) common ground?

Going with option #1 wasn't ever really an option. The Edison debacle smeared the for-profit name (which was already opposed by most, but not all, of those in education circles), and further attempts have been only moderately successful. The business model seems too risky politically, and there's not a lot of evidence it works.

Option #3 was very much a possibility. Long before "charter" was a fairly well-known term (and there's still confusion about it today: public, private, public/private? How public? How private?), some educators and union people saw this early idea as an opportunity to experiment with new ways of connecting with students, a way to break away from the bureaucratic school system, and a way to possibly serve students that were falling through the cracks. There were other ways to do this (magnet schools, alternative schools, etc), but charters held a lot of promise (in theory).

But option #3 would require a different kind of investment. Teachers and communities would still need supports of some kind, but something different than C/EMOs offered. Teachers and communities could run schools - but they're not always the best at back-end stuff like payroll, insurance, accounting, etc. They have more important things to worry about (like kids and teaching), and they should really be able to put their energy towards those kinds of things. This kind of strategy would require connecting with grassroots community organizations and teachers. It would require a lot of listening to local issues. It would require a lot of trust of people on the ground - including aforementioned community organizations and teachers - and certainly wouldn't be quite as sexy as the C/EMO idea. This didn't appeal to those looking to take their ideas "to scale," as they say, and hence was seen more as tinkering around the edges than really creating wholesale change.

Philanthropy went almost entirely with #2. CMOs took in about $500 million in philanthropic donations between 1999 and 2009. The tossed their money behind Achievement First, KIPP, Aspire, Uncommon Schools, Green Dot, ACRPS, YES Prep, Noble Network, HTH, etc. [Note: some of these might be considered franchises, but they also have local groups that would be classified as CMOs. The KIPP Foundation, for instance, is often considered a franchise, but KIPP Houston would be a CMO. A bit tricky, and it's not really all that important here] These are the "darlings" of the charter school movement, the kind of school that pops into our head when we think of charters. Sure - the stand-alone version exists, but they're not as seductive to media outlets, and they certainly receive far less support from major philanthropies. Both advocates and opponents use the CMO example as a way to make their argument for/against charters. The CMO model was pursued vigorously in a few states (CA, TX, DC, LA, IL) and cities (LA, NYC, New Orleans, DC).

So what does philanthropy have to show for their $500 million investment in CMOs? I'll explore that tomorrow by reviewing recent research on CMOs. On Thursday, I'll show how one very prominent CMO advocate clearly does not understand the research he comments on (and he's considered a "thought leader"!), and ask some bigger questions about where this all leaves the charter school movement.

Victory Schools Hire; Converting to Non-Profit?

The for-profit Victory Schools just hired away one of NYC's top charter guys - and the CMO might try to convert to a non-profit. Victory currently runs 15 charters, which makes them one of the mid-sized operators out there.

It will be interesting to see how quickly they receive approval from the IRS - the Imagine Schools, another for-profit converting to a non-profit, has yet to receive 501c3 status despite applying for it years ago. A quick approval for Victory might get others asking questions about what is holding up Imagine's approval.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Charter Chief Steps Down

Barbara Martinez

Victory Schools Inc., a for-profit charter-school operator, has hired away New York City's charter-schools chief and is considering converting into a nonprofit.

Michael Duffy, the director of the Department of Education's Charter School Office, will join Victory, according to representatives for both the DOE and the company. Victory helps manage 16 charter schools with 7,000 students in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago.

Mr. Duffy, whose title hasn't yet been decided, is widely credited for accelerating charter-school growth in the city. He couldn't be reached for comment.

The future of Victory has been the subject of interest since the spring, when the New York legislature passed a law that essentially prevents for-profit charter schools from growing. The law, which also doubled the number of charter schools allowed in the state, said no more than 10% of the state's charter schools can be for-profit. Victory operates nine such schools in the state.

The company is considering becoming a nonprofit charter operator, but no final decision has been made, according to a person familiar with Victory's plans.

Victory was created in 1999 by private equity manager Steven Klinsky and helped start the state's first charter school, the Sisulu-Walker Charter School in Harlem. In general, charter operators charge a school's board a per-pupil amount, somewhere between $1,000 and $3,000 to help manage charter schools. Some of Victory's schools have been touted for high academic performance, including failing schools that Victory has worked to turn around.

But the company has also hit some bumps. At times, it has provided loans, with what critics charge are outsized interest rates, to the schools it helps manage. Victory has said it only loans schools money when the schools are unable to get financing any where else and that the interest rates reflect the risk that Victory is taking.

This past spring, the trustees of the State University of New York in Albany, which approve and regulate charters, voted to shut down Victory's New Covenant Charter School in Albany. Victory had taken over management of the school in 2006, and test scores improved, but not enough to satisfy SUNY's standards. In the end, the company lost its high-profile effort to keep the school open.

Victory is a privately held company, and its profits are not disclosed. Many observers, however, think for-profit charter operators in general, and Victory, in particular, are not very profitable at all. Still, in fighting for new charter-school regulations in Albany this year, the teachers' unions were successful in convincing legislators that profitability and taxpayer financed charter schools, don't go well together.

"Michael is joining Victory because he shares our steadfast commitment to students and our vision of creating outstanding schools," James Stovall, the chief executive of Victory, said in a statement. A spokesman for the DOE said that its work on charter schools "is nationally recognized, and Michael has played an important part in that success." He said that a national search for Mr. Duffy's replacement will ensue.

The DOE's charter office has at times been criticized for not being forceful enough in holding charter schools accountable on performance. But some dismissed such gripes. "It's a huge loss for Joel Klein," said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, a Washington, D.C., a pro-charter school advocacy group. "I think Michael Duffy has done more to execute the chancellor's interest in growing public education in a variety of forms than anyone else."

Team Obama Suggested Cutting Food Stamps to Maintain Duncan's RTTT Bribes

Thank God for David Obey, quoted here from EmptyWheel:

The secretary of Education is whining about the fact he only got 85 percent of the money he wanted .… So, when we needed money, we committed the cardinal sin of treating him like any other mere mortal. We were giving them over $10 billion in money to help keep teachers on the job, plus another $5 billion for Pell, so he was getting $15 billion for the programs he says he cares about, and it was costing him $500 million [in reductions to the Race to the Top program]. Now that’s a pretty damn good deal.

So as far as I’m concerned, the secretary of Education should have been happy as hell. He should have taken that deal and smiled like a Cheshire cat. He’s got more walking around money than every other cabinet secretary put together.

It blows my mind that the White House would even notice the fight [over Race to the Top]. I would have expected the president to say to the secretary, “look, you’re getting a good deal, for God’s sake, what this really does is guarantee that the rest of the money isn’t going to be touched.”

We gave [Duncan] $4.3 billion in the stimulus package, no questions asked. He could spend it any way he wants. … I trusted the secretary, so I gave him a hell of a lot more money than I should have.

My point is that I have been working for school reform long before I ever heard of the secretary of education, and long before I ever heard of Obama. And I’m happy to welcome them on the reform road, but I’ll be damned if I think the only road to reform lies in the head of the Secretary of Education.

We were told we have to offset every damn dime of [new teacher spending]. Well, it ain’t easy to find offsets, and with all due respect to the administration their first suggestion for offsets was to cut food stamps. Now they were careful not to make an official budget request, because they didn’t want to take the political heat for it, but that was the first trial balloon they sent down here. … Their line of argument was, well, the cost of food relative to what we thought it would be has come down, so people on food stamps are getting a pretty good deal in comparison to what we thought they were going to get. Well isn’t that nice. Some poor bastard is going to get a break for a change. [emphasis original]

Do read on.  Fascinating.

If Corporations are Persons, Why Aren't They Being Tried for Treason?

Any other person would be locked up who so actively works to overthrow democracy and replace it with a fascist oligarchy.

Interesting piece at HuffPo (ht to Susan Harman, who is recovering from police exuberance in Oakland last week following the involuntary manslaughter conviction of transit cop who murdered a young black man there):

On Monday, two brothers from Minnesota, Robin and Laird Monahan, made a detour to Denver on their cross-country walk to encourage people to reclaim democracy and restore the citizen sovereignty that has been displaced by the "corporate stranglehold on all three branches of U.S. government."

The Monahans' trip was prompted by the January U.S. Supreme Court decision (Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission) reinforcing the supremacy of corporate rights of "personhood" under the Bill of Rights, as well as endorsement of unlimited corporate spending on elections.

The brothers have enlisted the aid of Move to Amend -- a consortium of over 50 organizations promoting a Constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood. Their journey from Pacific to Atlantic Oceans, begun on May 16, tracks U.S. Highway 50. Their goal is to reach the Atlantic by mid-October, after a stop at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. Their Colorado trek has taken them from Grand Junction to Pueblo, the most challenging portion over Monarch Pass (reportedly the motivation for Laird to quit smoking).

En route, the Monahans encourage local action for citizen sovereignty at every level, urging people to lobby City Councils, Boards of Supervisors, County Boards, Labor Councils and other bodies for passage of a nonbinding resolution in support of democratic principles and in opposition to corporate personhood and the notion of money as speech. Thus, they lay the groundwork to elect legislators who will support bigger change in the form of a Constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood.

Laird invokes Edward R. Murrow, "...we cannot defend freedom abroad while deserting it at home."

The brothers rallied at the Denver Capitol for "the Other 98%" of America, with a local Move to Amend group and MoveOn.org. MoveOn members in Colorado have thus far visited the offices of half of our federal legislators, urging that they take the "Other 98% Pledge for a Better Democracy," including support for the Fair Elections Now Act, a Lobbyist Reform Act, and a Constitutional Amendment to reverse the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC.

At the Capitol on Monday, U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff signed the pledge, in keeping with his expressed intent to restore the role of people as the legitimate source of power in American democracy. Green Party U.S. Senate candidate Bob Kinsey is the only other Colorado candidate/legislator who has signed the pledge to date.

Follow the Monahan brothers' progress across the country.

 

Students and Teachers Everywhere Coming to Raleigh July 20 to March Against Resegregation

From IndyWeek:

. . .the NAACP, the Great Schools in Wake coalition and a slew of other groups have come fiercely to the defense of diversity as a critical element in school excellence overall, but especially in any effort to help ED students and close the achievement gap between more- and less-affluent kids.

To Tedesco's stance that diversity didn't work because graduation rates for ED kids slipped over the past decade, diversity's supporters answered that he's got it exactly backwards: Rather, they say, as adherence to the county's diversity policy slipped over the past decade — the victim of Wake's unbridled growth — so too did the performance of ED kids. To put it another way, as the number of schools with high concentrations of ED kids grew from fewer than 10 to more than 50, the number of ED kids not graduating increased apace. High-poverty schools, usually also characterized by high-minority populations, yield terrible results for the kids forced to attend them, they believe.

Bottom line: Eight months in, the effort by the new board majority to seize the moral high ground by appearing, at least, to advocate for ED kids is fading. . . .

Inside a Total Compliance KIPP Chain Gang In Missisippi Without Air Conditioning

If this sounds like hell, it is--with or without air conditioning.  Why is KIPP held up as the urban education solution?  Because no parent in the suburbs would allow such treatment of their children:

by Janessa Jordan
For the past three days, I (and my other 26 classmates) have been an active fly on the wall at the KIPP DIAMOND Academy new student orientation. All of the KIPP students attend school for two weeks in the summer, and the new KIPPsters, ranging from grade 5-8, have two extra days of orientation before the returners start summer school. On our first day of KIPP orientation, the air conditioning was broken, so 200 students, roughly 50 adults, and all of the admin staff was sitting in a hot, sticky, auditorium for four hours.  KIPP focuses heavily on structure, community, and consistency. For the first two days, all of the new students were directed to sit on the floor, in rows, SLANTing (Sit up, Listen, Ask and Answer questions, Nod, and Track the speaker), while practicing math, reading, social studies, and science problems with the teachers. All of the KIPP students are expected to come to school with their homework completed, with the heading written perfectly. If students come to school with incomplete homework or with incorrect heading, the students’ parents are contacted by the teachers and the students sit separately at lunch to finish their work–a “working lunch.” Students are even expected to line up silently and uniformly to the bathroom, waiting for the rest of their classmates to use the restroom, all while standing quiet and still, hands at their sides, looking ahead until the other 100 or so students finish their restroom break.

One of my personal teaching goals is to deconstruct the classroom, so as to let students become the beacons of their own learning, rather than solely regurgitating information from the authority figure (the teacher). I believe that students need to be taught to be self-disciplined, creative, and assertive, which I believe isn’t being taught in urban classrooms today. Furthermore, I believe that knowledge is a fluid entity that isn’t a mere nugget given from the teacher to the student, but rather an ongoing process of construction and transformation that combines experience with information–tension is the real root of learning. Thus, all of the structure and uniformity made me uncomfortable throughout the first two days. Why was it so important that the students sit on the floor without talking? Why were the students subject to long hours of sitting and engaging, SLANTing and working, all while being still? What were the students really learning from this experience other than to do something simply because an authority figure told them to? . . .

 Because KIPP's total compliance organizational structure requires it in order to psychologically sterilize the children and behaviorally neuter the children--that's why.

Achievement Gap in Wake County Narrows on the Eve of Destroying the Reason Behind It

So the Gang of Five are left with no rationale except their racist desire to "have the country back?"  From Ed Week:

Widespread increases in Wake County's student test scores have become the latest issue in the school district's contentious school diversity fight.

Preliminary results released on Wednesday showed higher performance by Wake students in elementary, middle and high school on state exams this past school year, with the racial achievement gap narrowing. Backers of efforts to mandate diversity in the state's largest school district say the academic gains show that the Wake school board majority that swept into office last fall didn't need to discard the decades-long policy of maintaining socioeconomic balance in schools.

"Teaching and learning is evident when we look at the scores," said Calla Wright, president of the Coalition of Concerned Citizens for African American Children, which backs the diversity policy. "How can these people dispute that fact? . . . .

Bill, Joel at Aspen Gathering

The teachers that cheered Randi and booed protesters during Bill's introduction/presentation at the recent AFT conference haven't the slightest clue about how the billionaire views the future of public education. Sure, sure - he'll praise teachers and claim to want to work with them, but he'll then turn around and show up at events like Aspen Institute gatherings to push policies that are anti-student, anti-teacher, and anti-public school. Pensions for teachers? Nah. Adequate funding for education? Nope. Lots of charters, temp teachers looking to boost their resume, and layoffs of thousands of career teachers? Yep.

What, exactly, are you cheering for, AFT folks? This man? You've got to be kidding. But you're not, and that's highly concerning. You'll get what you ask for, and what your asking for is a crappy education system, poor working conditions, and no economic/job security.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Getting Schooled in Aspen

Bill Gates attacks "fraudulent" accounting that hides the cost of teacher pensions.

By JOHN FUND

Ever since its inception in 2007, the Aspen Ideas Festival has been a proving ground for thinkers who want to break with liberal orthodoxy on certain subjects. One is education. The event, sponsored by the Aspen Institute, has been a annual refuge for Democrats who would like more choice and competition in K-12.

"The education system is built on the three pillars of mediocrity: lockstep pay, lifetime tenure and seniority," was Joel Klein's assessment at this year's Festival. He ought to know -- he's the chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, the nation's largest school system.

Mr. Gates said a big part of the problem is "fraudulent" state budgeting systems, which fail accurately to account for the cost of pension promises. A legislator who "says 'yes' doesn't feel any pain at all," he said. Thus the "accounting fraud" that lets politicians treat generous teacher pensions as a free lunch rewards them for spending more on retired teachers than on current students.This year, Mr. Klein also had some backup from a friend (and former rival in the Microsoft antitrust case), Bill Gates, who has devoted much of his time to education since stepping down from full-time work with the company in 2006. Undermining public education, he said, is a system that channels too much money to pensions for retired teachers. He predicts that state and local governments will have to lay off 100,000 active teachers in the next couple of years. "I'm very much against that," said Mr. Gates who noted that many of the teachers who lose their jobs will be younger, more motivated teachers at the bottom of the seniority system.

Mr. Gates hasn't been a big fan of implementing full school choice through a voucher system. But his Gates Foundation has spent some $4 billion in the past few years promoting the creation of smaller neighborhood high schools and charter schools, which are public schools that operate outside of the straitjacket of teacher union contracts. Here's hoping he continues his plain speaking about education and perhaps comes better to appreciate how vouchers might aid his hope of cracking open the existing system.