Duncan To Begin NCLB Tour

Yesterday the Washington Post, the only national newspaper kept afloat by the testing industry, offered the testing industry's new leading stooge, Margaret Spellings, (move aside Rod Paige), a chance to paste her well-worn and practiced lies about NCLB into the editorial pages of the Post. And yesterday, Aaron Pallas at Gotham Schools wasted no time in making a liar of the liar in an understated and studious post. Here's a teaser:

The first figure below shows reading scores in grades 4 and 8 on the main NAEP from 1998 to 2007. (Keep in mind that the NAEP scale goes from 0 to 500, so this figure may exaggerate the size of the trends over time.) In the fourth grade, the average score increased by six points between 2000 and 2002, then stabilized, and finally increased by two points from 2005 to 2007. The 2007 average score is significantly higher than the scores in 2005, 2003, 2002 and 2000. In the eighth grade, the average score held steady between 1998 and 2002, and really hasn’t budged much since then. The 2007 average of 263 is significantly higher than the 2005 average of 262, but is identical to the 2003 average of 263, and is actually a point lower than the 2002 average of 264. The best summary here is that the scores have been essentially flat since 1998. [click chart below for better view]

Today the Post has Libby Quaid's news piece on Call-me-Arne's announced NCLB "listening" tour, which offers the Dunc a chance to sell national testing, teacher pay-per-score plans, endless data gathering, and corporate welfare charters--all in the name of hearing the people speak. A couple of clips:

Duncan gives the law credit for shining a spotlight on kids who need the most help. No Child Left Behind pushes schools to boost the performance of low-achieving students, a group that typically includes minority kids, English-language learners and kids with disabilities.

"Forevermore in our country, we can't sweep those huge disparities with outcomes between white children and Latino children and African-American children, we can't sweep those under the rug ever again," Duncan said.

That spotlight has been shining brightly, Arne, even for white folks like me and you, since Brown v Board of Education. For a while we paid attention to them, but when St. Reagan alighted in Washington, we began to look, instead, at how Civil Rights and school integration screwed up our schools. Since then, we have been working hard to shine the spotlight elsewhere, away from the poverty and racism that created the disparities, preferring to focus the interrogation lamp, rather, on the victims and on the only American public institution remaining that was created with the vision of educating children of all classes together.

So sure, Arne, we can sweep it under the rug, just as long as the goal of ending poverty is pushed aside by efforts to blame children, teachers, and schools for the effects of poverty that your Administration continues to have plenty of empty "empathy" for. No problem.

Yet Duncan has many criticisms of No Child Left Behind, and he has plenty of company. Opponents insist the law's annual reading and math tests have squeezed subjects like music and art out of the classroom and that schools were promised billions of dollars they never received.

Critics also say the law is too punitive: More than a third of schools failed to meet yearly progress goals last year, according to the Education Week newspaper.

That means millions of children are a long way from reaching the law's ambitious goals. The law pushes schools to improve test scores each year, so that every student can read and do math on grade level by the year 2014.

"What No Child Left Behind did is, they were absolutely loose on the goals," Duncan told the Education Writers Association, meeting in Washington. "But they were very tight, very prescriptive on how you get there.

"I think that was fundamentally backwards," he said.

Duncan said the federal government should be "tight" on the goals, insisting on more rigorous academic standards that are uniform across the states. And he said it should be "much looser" in terms of how states meet the goals.

The education community is watching closely to see just what Duncan means by "tight" and "loose." So far, the administration has offered few clues.

Is there some kind of thought disorder going on here? Is the impossible goal of 100% proficiency by 2014 not impossiblie enough?? And excuse me, Arne, but this business of "looser" in terms of how states get to your "more rigorous" standards is the same philosophy W. sold in 2001. A quote from Bush's original NCLB proposal available here:

If schools are to be held to high standards, they must have the freedom to meet those standards (p. 7).

Agora Cyber Charter School Sued by State of Pennsylvania

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

by Martha Woodall
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

The Pennsylvania Department of Education yesterday filed suit against Agora Cyber Charter School in Devon, alleging fraud and breach of fiduciary responsibility by its board of trustees.

The civil complaint maintains that cyber charter's board entered into improper contracts with the Cynwyd Group LLC., a management company that was co-created by Agora's founder Dorothy June Brown "for the purpose of making money from managing and operating the school."

According to documents filed in Commonwealth Court, the state Department of Education has concluded that Agora "is operating in such a grossly unlawful and improper manner" that if the department continued making payments of taxpayer funds, it "would be "facilitating and enabling Agora in the perpetration of ongoing and pervasive unlawful and improper conduct."

Brown declined comment and Board Chairman Howard Lebofsky could not be reached.

. . . .

Based on current enrollment, Agora officials have projected that the charter's revenues will total about $41 million in taxpayer funds this school year. The management contract calls for Brown's company to be paid 7 percent of gross revenues. The fee could be as much as $2.8 million this school year.

The education department also has contacted all 500 school districts in the state directing them to send tuition payments for Agora students from their districts to the escrow fund instead of to the school, the suit said.

The suit asks the court to declare that the Agora board, which is dominated by associates of Brown, violated terms of its operating charter and state law by contracting with her management company.

Brown's Cynwyd Group not only has a management contract with Agora but owns the school's administrative offices on Chestnut Street in Devon. The school pays $25,000 per month in rent.

The suit contends that Agora's board of trustees "participated in a scheme to defraud" the department and had "defrauded Agora students by entering into a lease that was far above fair market value" and paying Cynwyd Group a management fee when "little was done by Cynwyd. . ."

The complaint, which was signed by Education Secretary Gerald D. Zahorchak, also asks the court to replace Agora's board.

"Agora's students will not be impacted by our decision in any detrimental way," Zahorchak said in a statement today. "Moving forward, these students will continue to have the same curriculum and day to day education experience to which they have become accustomed." The school's academic program is administered under contract by K-12 Pennsylvania, LLC, a for profit education company.

By state law, the education department has oversight responsibility for the 11 cyber charters that provide online instruction to students in their homes.

The suit is an outgrowth of an investigation the department launched in response to complaints from several Agora parents seeking information about the school's finances and the role that Brown and Cynwyd Group played in Agora's operations.

A state team, including the department's top lawyer and two auditors, spent a day in mid-March at the cyber school's administrative headquarters reviewing documents and interviewing staff, including Brown.

State officials followed up with a visit two weeks later to Brown's business offices in Bala Cynwyd, and continued seeking information related to Agora's operations, sources with knowledge of the investigation said.

Brown, who initially was Agora's chief executive officer, is Cynwyd Group's senior consultant to the cyber school and an ex-officio member of the charter board.

Federal criminal investigators and the Philadelphia School District's inspector general also are examining Agora's finances, the sources said.

In January, Brown and Cynwyd Group took the unusual step of suing six Agora parents, including those who complained to the state, for slander, libel and civil conspiracy. The Agora Parent Association also named in that suit, which is pending in Montgomery County. . . .

It's Not Vanilla Ice, But the Abstinence Only Crowd Finds It Cool Enough

From Raw Story:

H/T to RH Reality Check, which has more on the insanity you'll witness when you press play on the video below ...

They call him Keith Deltano, an abstinence "educator" and comedian who apparently gets paid to spread lies about prophylactics and threaten to smash kids genitals with cinder blocks. (Which is basically what happens to all those people who catch a VD, right?)

This is the cutting edge of abstinence education programs ... Many of which are funded by tax dollars. (Not sure if this guy is or not, but it isn't uncommon for school districts to pay people like Deltano for presentations your kids will mock for years to come.)

Here's the guy's Web site. Just try to keep your pants on.

-- Stephen C. Webster

Oligarchs Pouring Cash into Weingarten's AFT "Innovation" Research Fund

Weingarten is always given credit for thinking several steps ahead, and I don't doubt it. Sadly, she is willing to sacrifice her membership and the future of teachers' rights to earn herself a seat, several steps ahead, of course, as, hmm, how about Secretary of Labor, 2013. From Ed Week:

Four private foundations—the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation—will partner with the American Federation of Teachers through its Innovation Fund, representatives of the foundations and the AFT announced this afternoon.

The private-foundation contributions, in addition to the AFT's down payment of $1 million, bring the fund's total to $2.8 million. Funds are available for local affiliates to "incubate promising ideas to improve schools," AFT President Randi Weingarten said.

She gave a couple of possible examples: Districts and teachers could propose a new way of evaluating teachers that would incorporate evidence of student achievement. Or they could come up with a school-turnaround model akin to the Fresh Start project in Chicago or the now-defunct New York City chancellor's district.

Both Weingarten and the foundation folks spoke a lot about the importance of working together and collaboration. Weingarten, clearly echoing her National Press Club speech earlier this year, said the accepted applications will be "different, innovative, unique, out-of-the-box, and, yes, have a risk attached to them.". . . .

KIPP Houston's Chief Corporate Welfare Schemer

There is something at KIPP for every oligarch, whether conservative or liberal. For neo-lib oligarchs like Gates and Broad, there is the minority melting pot angle, where children of the poor are stripped of their cultural connections to take on the uniform of corporate culture, grounded in the glassy-eyed and sunnyside optimism guaranteed by the Seligman happiness treatment. And then there's plenty, too, for the right-wing oligarchs like the Waltons and "chief growth architect" of the Houston KIPP Miracle, Leo Linbeck III, who see in KIPP the chance to train children away from their families and values, which they view as petri dishes for socio-cultural pathologies, all the while indoctrinating them in behavioral codes grounded in compliance and subjugation and guaranteed by, yes, the same Seligman happiness treatment.

Caroline Grannan has a piece on growth architect and wingnut, Leo Linbeck III. Charming:

. . . .In his spare time, Linbeck is an adjunct business prof at Stanford and Rice universities, along with his activities building the KIPP empire. From his bio: "Leo is also very involved with KIPP, one of the most successful public charter school programs in the U.S. He has been the "Chief Growth Architect" at KIPP: Houston, leading the development of a plan to grow to 42 KIPP:Houston schools in the next 8 years."

Jesse Alred, a veteran Houston teacher whose questions about Teach for America I posted a few days ago, told me about some of Linbeck's interesting nuggets of political wisdom.

"Mr. Linbeck co-founded the Free Enterprise Institute," Alred told me by e-mail. "This group holds well-funded conferences trying to bringing high school teachers together with conservative scholars. I attended one my second year of teaching for the free food, and they were promoting the idea that government intervention contributed to and prolonged the Great Depression."

Alred shared some Linbeck wit and wisdom with me -- commentary Linbeck has posted on the Belmont Club, an online discussion group of Houston conservatives. It's political commentary, it's free speech and I respect that. Some of it is eye-catching, though.

"Should Obama win and enter Washington as Napoleon entered Moscow, the question is how our nation will respond. If we leave our nation to the conquering hero, it will most assuredly burn - figuratively, and perhaps literally as well. ...

Most of us still believe that America truly is a shining city on a hill, and we work hard to preserve this vision in our hearts, our families, our local communities, and our nation.

Admittedly, Obama and his Democrat allies in the Congress can encourage us to abandon our dreams. They can attempt to tax, regulate, and muzzle dissent, hoping to gain more control over us. They can loosen the bindings that tie our fates together, hoping that when left to our own devices we will be too weak to respond to their challenges. They can divide us into castes, and pit one group against another, hoping that our energies will be expended upon each other instead of true reform.

Speaking only for myself, I am preparing not for abandonment, but for a siege. It is inevitable that Democrats, once in total control, will overreach and awaken the spirit of our Founders that lives within the hearts of all true conservatives. At that point, the pushback will come.

But this time, rather than pushing for a takeover of Washington to get our share of the spoils, we must use our power to eliminate the spoils."

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2008/10/21/operation-grand-slam/

94 Percent of British Teachers Vote to Boycott Testing Next Year

It's official and not close. Thank God for the moral courage of these teachers to act on their convictions. The boycott is happening unless British officials agree to entirely new assessments.

Will the NEA and AFT suits notice, or are their swollen heads too far up their arses to have any hope of extraction? From The Telegraph:

Head teachers have voted overwhelmingly to back a boycott of national tests for seven and 11 year olds, rounding off one of Labour's worst weeks in office.

The move is a personal blow to Ed Balls, the children's secretary, whose speech to the National Association of Head Teachers annual conference just before the vote failed to placate school heads who want to see "an end to the tyranny of annual testing".

A joint boycott by heads and classroom teachers could spell the end of Sats, taken by about 1.2 million primary schoolchildren every year.

Despite warnings from the Government that the action would be "unlawful" and urging from Mr Balls to "act responsibly", 94 per cent of delegates at the conference in Brighton voted to support a ballot of members for the disruption of next year's tests.

Heads believe the papers in English, maths and science have narrowed the curriculum and damaged teaching and learning.

Sue Sayles, a past president of the Association, said: "It is our moral duty to show Ed that we have balls."

Steve Iredale, a primary head teacher from Barnsley, who proposed the motion condemned the ritual of annual testing and the use of flawed data to judge schools and heads.

"It is a mechanistic education system which reduces children's learning to numerical nonsense," he said. . . .

The Sunny Side of the Depression for Corporations: Cutting Wages and Benefits

Today's Washington Post has a story on the new strategy by corporations to use the Depression that their greed and incompetence created as reason enough to cut wages and benefits of those workers lucky enough to still have a paycheck. This follows on the heels of recent developments by banks to use some of the billions in federal bailouts to buy up foreclosed properties, rather than to loan money to citizens trying to buy homes. All of this is occurring as bank lobbyists use more bailout dough to buy up enough votes from crooked Senators of both parties to halt modifications in the bankruptcy law last week that could have saved 1.7 million homeowners from foreclosure. As Durbin admitted last week, banks "frankly own the place."

Meanwhile, kids hoping for college must contend with a minefield of crooks and gougers from the Sallie Maes of the world, ready to victimize those who can't afford to pay their own way without loans. And their younger brothers and sisters--well, they continue the cram as the Business Roundtable's cheap charter movement picks off more and more poor public schools for corporate welfare conversion, all with the blessing of the Obama Administration. Which brings us back to the subject of cut wages and benefits for workers, yes?

Finally, following a voucher link on my Google Alerts, I came across a summary in the Miami Herald of Florida legislative action during the current session that just ended. These two actions were stacked together in the list of "accomplishments" for Florida's illustrious body of corporate stooges:

- Strengthen a private school voucher program for children from low-income families by giving insurance companies dollar-for-dollar credits against premium taxes for donations to the program, now supported solely through similar corporation income tax credits.

- Require public school students who lose or damage textbooks to pay 100 percent of replacement costs instead of 50 percent to 75 percent under present law.

No write-down for students losing a book, but some pretty good action for corporations with giving programs to shut down public schools.

Preserving Play is a Serious Issue

Here is chunk from an insightful piece in tomorrow's NYTimes Magazine (ht to Monty Neill):

. . . .A survey of 254 teachers in New York and Los Angeles the group commissioned found that kindergartners spent two to three hours a day being instructed and tested in reading and math. They spent less than 30 minutes playing. “Play at age 5 is of great importance not just to intellectual but emotional, psychological social and spiritual development,” says Edward Miller, the report’s co-author. Play — especially the let’s-pretend, dramatic sort — is how kids develop higher-level thinking, hone their language and social skills, cultivate empathy. It also reduces stress, and that’s a word that should not have to be used in the same sentence as “kindergartner” in the first place.

I came late to motherhood, so I had plenty of time to ponder friends’ mania for souped-up childhood learning. How was it that the same couples who piously proclaimed that 3½-year-old Junior was not “developmentally ready” to use the potty were drilling him on flashcards? What was the rush? Did that better prepare kids to learn? How did 5 become the new 7, anyway?

There’s no single reason. The No Child Left Behind Act, with its insistence that what cannot be quantified cannot be improved, plays a role. But so do parents who want to build a better child. There is also what marketers refer to as KGOY — Kids Getting Older Younger — their explanation for why 3-year-olds now play with toys that were initially intended for middle-schoolers. (Since adults are staying younger older — 50 is the new 30! — our children may soon surpass us in age.)

Regardless of the cause, Miller says, accelerating kindergarten is unnecessary: any early advantage fades by fourth grade. “It makes a parent proud to see a child learn to read at age 4, but in terms of what’s really best for the kid, it makes no difference.” For at-risk kids, pushing too soon may backfire. The longitudinal High/Scope Preschool Curriculum Comparison Study followed 68 such children, who were divided between instruction- and play-based classrooms. While everyone’s I.Q. scores initially rose, by age 15, the former group’s academic achievement plummeted. They were more likely to exhibit emotional problems and spent more time in special education. “Drill and kill,” indeed.

Thinkers like Daniel Pink have proposed that this country’s continued viability hinges on what is known as the “imagination economy”: qualities like versatility, creativity, vision — and playfulness — that cannot be outsourced. It’s a compelling argument to apply here, though a bit disheartening too: must we append the word “economy” to everything to legitimize it? Isn’t cultivating imagination an inherent good? I would hate to see children’s creativity subject to the same parental anxiety that has stoked the sales of Baby Einstein DVDs.

Jean Piaget famously referred to “the American question,” which arose when he lectured in this country: how, his audiences wanted to know, could a child’s development be sped up? The better question may be: Why are we so hellbent on doing so?. . . .

Back to the Future of Education Reform

After reading the Dunc's remarks to the (Corporate) Education Writers Association two days ago, I was interested to look back at the ed rhetoric that was circulating a hundred days after Bush came to town. Looking back in the NY Times archive, I found this piece that could have written yesterday, even though it is reporting from 20 years ago, just after Bush I wound up the Charlottesville Conference with governors at UVA--a fateful meeting that would give the reigns of American education to the technocratic, amoral hucksters of the Business Roundtable. Since then nothing has changed in terms of federal ed policy except, of course, the generational tightening of the thumb screws on students and teachers as each subsequent version of "accountability" measures fails to produce the advertised future.

And now, the thumb screws are about to be turned down once more, as the Dunc visits Detroit, a district blown up by the last 7 years of AYP bombs. The solution: tighten the screws again:

Duncan told The Detroit News that education in Detroit will be corrected only by raising expectations the district places on students and teachers.

"What's going on there is a national disgrace, and we're not going to change it without raising the bar," he said. "Detroit is not going to get where it needs to go without raising standards."

As you read the following from September 29, 1989, think Obama for Bush and Weingarten for Shanker and Former-President Clinton for Governor Clinton. Everything else has the same eternal freshness that comes with never-ending denial by antiquarians turned to face in the opposite direction (Marquard, 1987):

President Bush and the nation's Governors agreed today on the need to overhaul the nation's education system by creating a set of goals that will focus on eliminating illiteracy, reshaping curriculums and holding teachers accountable for their performance.

''We believe that the time has come, for the first time in U.S. history, to establish clear, national performance goals, goals that will make us internationally competetive,'' said the joint statement issued here at the end of a two-day meeting called by Mr. Bush to discuss education. The statement was written by the White House staff, Administration officials and a bipartisan group of governors.

Earlier today, in a speech to the governors, Mr. Bush said: ''The American people are ready for radical reforms. We must not disappoint them. ''Education is our most enduring legacy, vital to everything we are and can become,'' Mr. Bush said. . . .

. . . .''This is a major step forward in education,'' said Mr. Bush, standing near the sun-drenched steps of the rotunda on the University of Virginia campus. ''We've reached agreement on the need for national performance goals, on the need for more flexibility and accountability, the need for restructuring and choice.''

Obviously bowing to pressure from the Democratic governors, Mr. Bush added that the Federal Government was committed to ''more Federal support'' for preschool programs like Head Start for poor children. . . .

. . . .Mr. Bush won praise from several union leaders.

Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said Mr. Bush's speech ''defined a vision of education that was not public relations.'' . . . .

. . . .Mr. Bush had called the rare meeting with the governors largely because of the consensus with the Government and the education establishment that American schools were in turmoil and that the education system was increasingly lagging behind those of other industrial democracies. More Than Three R's

In his speech at midday, Mr. Bush said his Administration envisioned ''tradition-shattering reform in five areas.''

''First, I see the day when every student is literate,'' he said. ''But literacy should mean more than the 'three R's.' We must be a reading nation. We must grapple with the hard sciences.''

Mr. Bush also said students ''must do more than identify names on a multiple-choice question. They must understand the generosity of Andrew Carnegie, the genius of Alexander Graham Bell and the heroism of Rosa Parks.'' . . . .

* Giving parents more choice in selecting the schools they want their children to attend. ''Children differ in their interests, learning styles and capabilities,'' said Mr. Bush. ''I see the day when choice among schools will be the norm rather than the exception.''

* Developing more accountability, where teachers, principals and administrators must clearly answer for poor performances. ''We must now evaluate ourselves on a tougher grading curve, one that includes that other major industrial nations,'' Mr. Bush said.

* Exploiting the potential of every student, not only those who are gifted, but also the ''average students'' and the disadvantaged.

''Some of our reforms and experiments are sure to come up short,'' said Mr. Bush. ''But for too many of our schools, experimentation is preferable to the status quo, because the status quo could scarcely be worse.''

''After two centuries of progress,'' Mr. Bush told the governors, ''we are stagnant.''

How Bloomberg's School Business Model Went Bust

We can imagine clearly now with more than a twinge of real pain what things could have been like if Grover Norquist's puppet, George Bush, had had his way and turned over all of Social Security to Wall Street to handle. Now we can see what the real meaning of social safety net is, just as we can once again see the undisguised meaning of what "free markets" mean.

Now we see, too, that the religious fervor among New York City Business Roundtablers for school charterization and the spread of more private schools was based on the same kind of wishful greed that enabled the destruction of the American economy, again. The Bloomberg-Klein braintrust believed they could continue to shrink the public school system as those market forces we used to hear so much about shoved their way in to replace the white public schools that would have been abandoned for more upscale private boutiques that could be easily afforded in the economy that only went up. What would be left of the public system would be a conglomeration of cheap charter chain gangs for the poor, all run by corporations at public expense.

Bloomberg-Klein could never imagine there could be circumstances that would have the white middle class again enrolling their children in public schools. And, of course, the current outrage among middle class NYC parents who can no longer afford private school for their kindergartners is the outcome. Unfortunately, for Bloomberg, he cannot call up the shop floor and have more public kindergartens manufactured by month's end. Oh, well--maybe New Yorkers will have had enough of lawyers and MBAs running the schools.

The story from the Times:

As a growing collection of Manhattan’s most celebrated public elementary schools notify neighborhood parents that their children have been placed on waiting lists for kindergarten slots, middle-class vitriol against the school system — and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — is mounting.

Parents are venting their frustrations in e-mail messages and phone calls to the mayor, local politicians and the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein (“You have unleashed the fury of parents throughout this city with your complete lack of preparedness,” read one father’s recent missive, which he shared with The New York Times). Some plan a rally on the steps of City Hall for next Wednesday afternoon (“Kindergartners Are Not Refugees!” proclaims a flier), and some are taking it upon themselves to scour the city for potential classroom space.

The outpouring of anger comes as state lawmakers consider whether to renew mayoral control of the city school system, which expires in two months, and Mr. Bloomberg is seeking a third term in part on his education record.

“I got a call from Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign about yadda yadda yadda was I going to vote for him,” said Beth Levison, a documentary filmmaker whose son is No. 79 of 90 on a combined waiting list for Public School 41 and Public School 3, both in Greenwich Village. “As a parent who has a child with no place to go next year, no indication of where he’s going to go next year as a result of the mayor taking control of education, I said absolutely not.

“You would think that Bloomberg, who is a businessman, knows how to manage inventory like this,” Ms. Levison continued. “My kid isn’t just a bottle of vodka, but this is about inventory.”. . . .