The Beginning of the End for the Last Bastion of Free Thought

It is interesting to see how higher education has quickly knee-jerked into voluntarily accepting the test-label-punish agenda of the K-16 advocates on the Spellings-Miller Commission that sputtered out before any of its grand scheme of mandated "accountability" for colleges could even come close to approved policy.

With show-me-the-way-over-the-cliff leaders in charge at public universities and ready leap into the testing void, who needs a bare-knuckled bully hired by ED to impose the extension of an educational caste system that is now in full operation in K-12, where the poor waste their time in test-prep drudgery to avoid school closure or individual retention, where the middling suburban school students focus on test prep drudgery (called AP) for college credit, and where the well-off, who don't know what all the fuss is about, continue to make their quilts for the poor, put on their stage plays, and "construct their meaning" in the best private schools.

Of course, the best private colleges and universities will tell these Kool-Aid drinkers to go to hell, which plays nicely into the democracy-by-a-few model that became so popular at about the same point in the previous century, when eugenics was offered for college credit and when social darwinists argued against public assistance to the poor for fear of upsetting the natural law sanctioned by God to eliminate the weak.

So in the end, the 10 percent or so of our best and richest will purchase their permanent Visas and their legacy Master cards in the colleges and universities with endowments big enough to continue the luxury of free and liberal thought. The rest of us will urge our children to walk up one another's backs to attain one of the few slots remaining for those of lesser worth who have shown that they can work harder and be nicer than the rest the "rubbish," as Jefferson would have it, in their KIPP chain gang schools.

Where this leaves the middling private universities is yet to be seen. Will they side with the preservation and expansion of our humanistic civilization, or will they trade in the question of the purpose of living and education for the all-encompassing answer of the GLOBAL ECONOMY, with its purse strings attached to the corporations that can guarantee access to the government grants. I wonder.

From the Baltimore Sun today:

November 11, 2007

College students in Maryland and across the country might soon be taking standardized tests to determine how much they've learned on campus - part of a national effort to hold universities accountable for student achievement.

An association representing more than 200 large public universities is expected to vote today to recommend that its member colleges adopt standardized tests and within four years begin to publish the results. A group representing another 400 colleges will take a similar vote this month.

The tests would measure students' critical thinking, reasoning and written communication. They would likely be given to representative samples of freshmen and seniors, allowing schools - and the public- to measure the improvement in scores.

The assessments are part of a broader initiative called the Voluntary Accountability System, which was developed in part to reassure Washington that publicly funded higher education does not need a No Child Left Behind law with uniform exit exams given to art history and engineering majors alike.

"There was concern that they would start trying to do these grade-by-grade assessments, which I think all of us feel would be inappropriate in higher education," said University System of Maryland Chancellor William E. Kirwan, who chaired development of the project with input from more than 80 public college administrators nationally. "So it's time for us to come together as a community and develop a system of accountability."

But other educators have profound misgivings about the notion that any generic tests can capture the learning produced by a college education.

"How do you measure citizenship?" said Goucher College President Sanford J. Ungar, who called the initiative "a very unfortunate" development. "How do you measure values? How do you measure inspiring a spirit of lifelong learning?"

The proposed system is a joint effort of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. The governing board of the first group is scheduled to take up the initiative at a meeting this morning in New York City.

Kirwan said he expects "most, if not all" of Maryland's public colleges to sign up.

Essentially, the Voluntary System of Accountability is a publishing project. Participating campuses would start by posting on the Internet a wide array of institutional data - such as graduation rates, student demographics and cost calculators - in a common format so students and parents could compare institutions.

Within two years, the schools also would publish the results of standardized surveys that measure student perceptions of their college experience.

The third phase of the project would require all campuses within four years to publish the results of one of three commercially available tests designed to measure student learning. . . .

Public School Advocates Organize to Face Byrne and the Theocrats

When the school voucher plan was crushed by Utah voters last week, South Carolina was named the next target in the battle against public education. It appears the reception committee might not be entirely friendly to the internet junkman:

After voters in Utah Wednesday rejected a school voucher plan there, the main financial backer of the plan, Patrick Byrne, says he'll focus his efforts on African-American churches in South Carolina. Byrne is founder and CEO of Overstock.com.

He'll find plenty of organized supporters and opposition in South Carolina.

Thursday morning, former governor and U.S. secretary of education Dick Riley and former state Supreme Court chief justice Ernest Finney announced that they're leading a new coalition opposed to school vouchers. It's called "Voices for Public Education", and it's made up of African-American educational, business and service organizations.

When Riley was governor, from 1979 to 1987, he pushed through the Education Improvement Act, which raised the state sales tax by one penny with the money going to improve schools.

"Vouchers, tuition tax credits, only distract us from our ability to work on real solutions," he said at a news conference at the African-American History Monument at the Statehouse.

Finney added, "The state of Utah on yesterday voted down vouchers. And, interestingly enough, one of the leaders of that movement that got beat in Utah indicated that that movement was going to now spearhead and pinpoint South Carolina and the black leadership in South Carolina as an entity which they could move into and do what they want to do here, which is undercut our public education system."

Columbia attorney Steven Benjamin said the purpose of Voices for Public Education would be to dispel and counter any pro-voucher efforts.

"We've been formed in response to recent tactics by pro-voucher out-of-state interest groups to mislead African-American communities into believing that vouchers are the solution to reform in our public schools," he said. . . .

Teacher Loses Battle to Take Glock to School

Despite support from the NRA and the other crazies who are lobbying to allow teachers AND students to bring guns to school (best way to combat terrorists and and other shooters), the Oregon courts say no. From Reuters:

PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) - An Oregon high school English teacher will not be allowed to carry her gun to school, a state circuit court ruled on Friday in a decision closely watched by both sides of the gun debate.

Shirley Katz, who has a legal permit to carry a concealed handgun, argued she needed the Glock semi-automatic pistol to protect herself from her ex-husband. She sued the school district when it told her carrying a gun was against a district policy prohibiting guns.

Circuit Judge G. Philip Arnold agreed with the district, saying "The District has a right to enforce this policy." he noted that employees "accept their jobs subject to, and knowing, the policy."

"We are pleased," said Dr. Phil Long, superintendent of the Medford School District. "This case was a distraction from our real mission, which is educating children."

The teacher had support from pro-gun rights groups. In light of multiple school shootings, some gun advocates have argued that teachers, and maybe even students, should be armed to prevent such tragedies in the future.

In April, a student shot dead 32 people at Virginia Tech University and earlier this week a gun-wielding student killed eight people at a high school in Finland.

"I was not particularly surprised," said Kevin Starrett, executive director of the Oregon Firearms Federation, whose group paid the teacher's legal bills and is discussing an appeal.

Green Dot, Inc. and Weingarten Ready for the Bloomberg to Fire the Starting Gun

Weingarten has the troops mobilized and ready to give away their job security and autonomy. Wonder if she is angling for some of the Broad-Gates cash to fund her campaign for AFT president? Then Broad would own management (Green Dot, Inc.) and labor (AFT)--and, of course, the souls of the children. From New York Teacher:

Buffalo, NYC charter school teachers join union

New York Teacher - November 9, 2007

Hector Ruiz Jr., community organizer at the UFT Bronx office, stands behind parents who come out in force to support the UFT-Green Dot charter school in New York City. Photo provided by UFT.

The Economist: The Bloomberg-Klein "grand plan to charterise the entire city school system"

Whoops! The cat is officially out of the bag, with the account of how Bloomberg & Klein plan to privatize the New York City Schools.

It will not be simple sell, however, to convince the public to turn over the Schools to the corporate curriculum writers bought by Eli Broad, Bill Gates, and the Walton family, in schools where tenure is abolished and teachers do test score piece work, where the civic responsibility of providing for our children's educations has been relinquished to those who have have reduced the value of life to the formulae provided by consumer capitalists and their mantra of global competitiveness, where a child becomes a "scholar" in the bogus data factory that has replaced the idea of school, where she works overtime toward a future that poverty and racism will most likely disallow.

To get this charterising done, Bloomberg and Klein must hold up an example to show a skeptical public how they can tame poor black children while choking high test scores out of them. This is the miracle of KIPP, where children and parents must sign a contract that assures compliance and no complaining if a child is to be allowed to be brainwashed into believing that his future simply depends upon how hard he works, how nice he is. Otherwise, complainers or behavior problems or slackers are booted out, and in comes the next eager face from the waiting list of children whose parents are desperate for something other than the standard fare that Bloomberg and Klein provide to the poor of NYC. And if the child remains compliant, by the time he comes to see through the illusion, he will have learned that he, himself, must have not worked quite hard enough or that he was somehow less than nice to deserve the fate that he, indeed, could not have created.

A clip from The Economist:

THE 220 children are called scholars, not students, at the Excellence charter school in Brooklyn's impoverished Bedford-Stuyvesant district. To promote the highest expectations, the scholars—who are all boys, mostly black and more than half of whom get free or subsidised school lunches—are encouraged to think beyond school, to university. Outside each classroom is a plaque, with the name of a teacher's alma mater, and then the year (2024 in the case of the kindergarten), in which the boys will graduate from college.

Like the other charter schools that are fast multiplying across America, Excellence is an independently run public school that has been allowed greater flexibility in its operations in return for greater accountability, though it cannot select its pupils, instead choosing them by lottery. If it fails, the principal (head teacher) will be held accountable, and the school could be closed. Three years old, Excellence is living up to its name: 92% of its third-grade scholars (eight-year-olds, the oldest boys it has, so far) scored “advanced” or “proficient” in New York state English language exams this year, compared to an average (for fourth-graders) across the state of 68% and only 62% in the Big Apple. They did even better in mathematics.

This is the sort of performance that the mayor, Michael Bloomberg, now wants to extend from New York's 60 charter schools to all of the city's schools. On November 5th, the mayor and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, announced what is in effect the final piece in their grand plan to charterise the entire city school system. As charter schools remain politically contentious, though, they have been careful not to use that phrase in public.

When Mr Klein took the job in 2002, having led the Clinton administration's efforts to break up Microsoft, The Economist joked that he should try to do the same thing to New York's schools monopoly. He more or less has. Under the new scheme, every school run by the city will receive a public report card, with a grade that reflects both academic performance and surveys of students, parents and teachers. The first grades were given out this week. . . .

California's Ah-Hah Moment on High School Exit Exams

Could it be that the state of California has had a major epiphany on the road to world-class testing standards for all? Could it be that the effects of their "world class" high school exit exam could be earning their high schools the new well-deserved label of "dropout factory?"

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The number of California high school dropouts spiked in 2006, the first year seniors were required to pass an exit exam to graduate, according to a report presented Wednesday to the state Board of Education.

The analysis found that 24,000 high school seniors dropped out in 2006, about 10,000 more than just four years earlier.

The information could give ammunition to lawmakers and others who have criticized the exam, as well as those who have lobbied for alternative assessments.

The firm that prepared the report, Human Resources Research Organization of Alexandria, Va., made several recommendations to the board, including a suggestion that California explore other ways for high school seniors to demonstrate proficiency. In Massachusetts and Washington state, for example, students can be judged on a portfolio of their high school work.

This is where the ideology of testing comes up against the reality of testing: the ones who can see beyond the ideology have an ah-hah moment--and those who cannot just have their eyes glaze over as they change the subject.

Remember these numbers?

• Of the 10 states with the highest percentage of African-Americans, 9 have high school exit exams.

• Of the state with the highest percentage of Hispanics or Latinos, 8 have high school exit exams.

• Of the 10 states with the highest percentage of whites, 1 has exit exams.

• Of the 10 states with the lowest graduation rates, all 10 have high school exit exams.

Charter School Crackdown in Ohio

Speaking of report cards, Ohio has finally decided to act on corrupt charter school scam that has drained hundreds of millions of dollars from Ohio taxpayers. From the NY Times:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio became a test tube for the nation’s charter school movement during a decade of Republican rule here, when a wide-open authorization system and plenty of government seed money led to the schools’ explosive proliferation.

But their record has been spotty. This year, the state’s school report card gave more than half of Ohio’s 328 charter schools a D or an F.

Now its Democratic governor and attorney general, elected when Democrats won five of Ohio’s six top posts last November, are cracking down on the schools, which receive public money but are run by independent operators. And across the country, charter school advocates are watching nervously, fearful the backlash could spread.

Attorney General Marc Dann is suing to close three failing charter schools and says he is investigating dozens of others. It is the first effort by any attorney general to close low-performing charter schools.

Gov. Ted Strickland said he wanted to carry out his own crackdown.

“Perhaps somewhere, charter schools have been implemented in a defensible manner, where they have provided quality,” he said. “But the way they’ve been implemented in Ohio has been shameful. I think charter schools have been harmful, very harmful, to Ohio students.”

Some 4,000 charter schools now operate across the nation, most advertising themselves as a smaller, safer alternative to the neighborhood school. Nationwide, the movement has gained traction among Democrats, partly because of the successes of a few quality nonprofit operators.

But some charters are mediocre, and Ohio has a far higher failure rate than most states. Fifty-seven percent of its charter schools, most of which are in cities, are in academic watch or emergency, compared with 43 percent of traditional public schools in Ohio’s big cities.

Behind the Ohio charter failures are systemic weaknesses that include loopholes in oversight, a law allowing 70 government and private agencies to authorize new charters, and financial incentives that encourage sponsors to let schools stay open. . . .

Bloomberg Exempts NYC Charter Schools from Report Card

Bloomberg's not-so-stealthy school privatization charter plan just got a bit more visible on the radar: the 60 NYC charter schools will be preserved from any negative press or public castigation by his "linchpin" assessment system. How? Simple--they will not be issued report cards to show that they are are performing no better (and often worse) than the public schools they are intended to replace--at a 20% savings, of course.

From the NY Post:

November 7, 2007 -- While the city graded 1,224 public schools from A to F for the first time this week, report cards for its 60 charter schools were stamped with a different mark: incomplete.

That's because charter schools don't measure student, teacher and parent satisfaction using the same Department of Education surveys, officials say.

"We have to figure out a way to use their measure of parent satisfaction in a way to calculate a grade comparable to the grade of district schools," said Department of Education spokeswoman Melody Meyer.

Education officials said that there are legal obstacles to imposing the measures on all charters, but that steps were being taken to grade those schools whose charters were authorized by the city.

That explanation left even some charter-school operators scratching their heads.

"There's no reason we couldn't fill [the survey] out. We'd be happy to do that," said Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Charter Network, which operates a school in Harlem. "If you were a charter-school operator and the chancellor asked you to fill out a survey, would you do it? I would."

Those who questioned the immunity of charter schools from the grading scheme said it might wrongly suggest to parents that the schools have something to hide.

"I think it's a mistake not to assess them the same way public schools are assessed," said Merryl Tisch, vice chancellor of the state Board of Regents - one of the three charter-granting organizations in the state.

"There have been charter schools that have really struggled along the way," she said. "What's wrong with letting people know that?"

Advocates and others who work with charter schools argued that the high level of accountability built into charter school contracts should serve as enough of a public record.

Each charter school must establish strict goals for its students over a five-year period in order to have its charter renewed, and the annual assessments of those goals are publicly available, they said.

"I just don't know that it's necessary to have a grading system since you have this level of accountability that's built into the system," said Jeff Maclin, vice president of communications for the New York Center for Charter Schools Excellence.

But some parents said that having different accountability standards did not prevent the city from figuring out some way to assign grades to charter schools.

"By all means they should be graded," said David Bloomfield, a member of the Citywide Council on High Schools.

Wonder how NYC public schools can get some of that "built in" accountability magic that allows them to avoid oversight and public scrutiny? I think we know the answer to that question. If you don't, ask Steve Barr or Randi Weingarten.

More on Green Dot, Inc.

NYC Educator has a telling piece on the union-busting scam of Green Dot, Inc. No wonder that Green Dot's CEO, Steve Barr, has been guest blogging over at Rotherham's Eduwank, the central office blog site for the corporate takeover of public education.

The Grand Old Party of David Duke

Republicans to the rescue to save those damaged by school integration and affirmative action. From Raw Story:

Using a questionable, unprecedented maneuver President Bush has installed a solid Republican majority on a supposedly bipartisan civil rights panel, leading it to abandon racial justice and civil rights cases in favor of arguing against school integration and affirmative action.

The eight-member US Commission on Civil Rights has served for half a century as the nation's watchdog against racism and discrimination. Neither party is meant to have more than four members, but Bush effectively "installed a fifth and sixth Republican on the panel in December 2004, after two commissioners, both Republicans when appointed, reregistered as independents," Charlie Savage reported in the Boston Globe Tuesday.

"I don't believe that [the law] was meant to be evaded by conveniently switching your voter registration," Commissioner Michael Yaki, one of the two remaining Democrats, told the paper.

The administration's argument? Because the Republicans all-of-a-sudden decided to 'abandon' their party, Bush's appointment of two more Republicans to the panel didn't violate the letter of the law, which only required no more than half the panel be affiliated with one party. Alberto Gonzales, then White House counsel, received Justice Department approval of the maneuver.

Few noticed the unusual circumstances at the time, and presidents previously have been able to create majorities of like-minded commissioners, Savage reports, but Bush's commission has essentially made an about-face in its view of what civil rights cases to pursue.

Savage reports:

Before the changes, the agency had planned to evaluate a White House budget request for civil rights enforcement, the adequacy of college financial aid for minorities, and whether the US Census Bureau undercounts minorities, keeping nonwhite areas from their fair share of political apportionment and spending. After the appointments, the commission canceled the projects.

Instead, the commission has put out a series of reports concluding that there is little educational benefit to integrating elementary and secondary schools, calling for closer scrutiny of programs that help minorities gain admission to top law schools, and urging the government to look for ways to replace policies that help minority-owned businesses win contracts with race-neutral alternatives.

The conservative bloc has also pushed through retroactive term limits for several of its state advisory committees. As a result, some longtime traditional civil rights activists have had to leave the advisory panels, and the commission replaced several of them with conservative activists.