Shop at Walmart: Kill a Public School

Valerie Strauss has a breakdown on last year's generosity by America's #1 family of discount plutocrats, the Waltons.   Amidst their abundance of shoddy, poisonous products made by slave labor in foreign sweatshops, the Waltons carry on their big-hearted philanthropic priority to culturally neuter and psychologically sterilize the children of Nation's poor and working classes.

Look at any small town in America where Walmart has a super-presence, and you will see the surrounding strip malls with pawn shops, bail bondsmen, pay-day lenders, fat food shops, and broken down movie houses with an endless stream of mindless fare for children, all in 3-D.

The Walton clan has money to burn, and to prove it, last year they gave $159,000,000 in tax-sheltered dollars to the enemies of public education.  Please note that in the category where philanthropy could do the most good, in research and evaluation, the Waltons gave the least.  Why?

Research does not lend itself to the right wing ideological agenda of the Armani Arkansans.

By Valerie Strauss

The pro-charter Walton Foundation handed out more than $159 million in 2011 in 16 metropolitan areas around the country to promote school choice. It also committed to giving $49.5 million to Teach for America over five years to double its teaching corps and $25.5 million over the same period to the KIPP charter school network to double the number of students it educates.

The foundation is one of the three big family education philanthropies — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation are the other two — and the one that gives the most money to initiatives involving the school choice movement, such as vouchers and charter schools.

The overall sum for 2011 was a few million more than the foundation handed out in 2010. The largest single grant given last year was $22.9 million to the Charter School Growth Fund, a non-profit venture capital fund that invests in charters. The second single largest award went to Teach for America — $12.6 million in its first installment of the multiyear grant, and the next largest was $11 million to The Children’s Scholarship Fund, a school voucher organization.

The foundation’s strategy is clear from the grants: It is funding organizations that it thinks can help scale charter schools quickly and rapidly increase the pool of voucher students.

It concentrated on 16 regions of the country in 2011, nine more than in 2010. Los Angeles topped the list, winning $9,643,100; the next largest amount — $8,370,944 — went to Washington D.C.

The third multi-year initiative announced in 2011 was $15 million to the California Charter Schools Association, with the goal of getting 100,000 more children into charter schools over three years. Its 2011 grant was for $3.2 million; KIPP’s was $6.4 million.

Here is a breakdown on how the foundation spent money on education-related initiatives in 2011, and, after that, a list of all 2011 grantees. The breadth of grantees shows the foundation’s reach and impact.

By Initiative

Shaping Public Policy — $58,122,888

Creating Quality Schools — $73,450,647

Improving Existing Schools — $26,050,991

Research and Evaluation Grants — $1,425,339

Top Grantees

Charter School Growth Fund — $22,900,000

Teach For America (National) — $12,572,500

Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) — $6,783,114

KIPP Foundation —$6,404,020

GreatSchools Inc — $4,775,000

Total Number of 2011 Grantees — 216

Grant Totals by Investment Site Alphabetically

Albany — $3,012,425

Atlanta — $2,520,000

Boston — $2,999,415

Chicago — $3,023,393

Denver — $7,961,899

Detroit — $2,494,002

Harlem (NY) — $2,470,000

Indianapolis — $2,565,000

Los Angeles — $9,643,100

Memphis — $1,447,838

Milwaukee — $5,232,000

Minneapolis — $970,961

New Orleans — $5,274,487

Newark (NJ) — $1,697,649

Phoenix — $1,926,010

Washington, DC — $8,370,944

Here’s a full list of the grantees:

Shape Public Policy:	Amount
50CAN, Inc	$1,800,000
Agudath Israel of America, Inc.	500,000
Agudath Israel of Illinois	100,000
Alliance for School Choice, Inc.	1,202,000
American Center for School Choice	40,000
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research	160,000
Americans for Prosperity Foundation	250,000
Arizona Charter Schools Association (ACSA)	200,000
Arizona School Choice Administration Corporation	400,000
Association of Missouri Charter Schools (AMCS)	447,901
Barry Goldwater Institute for Public Policy Research	200,000
Bellwether Education Partners	90,000
Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO)	796,000
Brookings Institution	200,000
California Charter Schools Association  CCSA	3,250,000
Catholic Association of Latino Leaders Inc	150,000
Center for Education Reform	930,662
Charter School Partners	70,961
The Children's Scholarship Fund (CSF)	10,925,000
Colorado League of Charter Schools	588,826
Colorado Nonprofit Development Center (CNDC)	357,000
Colorado Succeeds	215,000
Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now Inc. (ConnCAN)	800,000
Editorial Projects in Education	150,000
Education Pioneers	1,043,119
Education Reform Now, Inc.	1,100,000
Education Trust, Inc.	300,000
EG West Institute for Effective Schooling (WIES)	20,000
Excellent Education for Everyone, Inc. (E3)	421,500
Families Empowered	400,000
Florida Charter School Alliance FCSA	159,743
Foundation for Excellence in Education  FEE	1,550,000
Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, Inc.	565,000
Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS)	717,721
Georgia Charter Schools Association Inc.	700,000
Georgia Family Education and Research Council, Inc.	350,000
GreatSchools Inc.	4,775,000
Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options (HCREO)	100,000
Illinois Network of Charter Schools   (INCS)	1,038,784
Indiana Public Charter Schools Association, Inc.	380,000
Institute for Innovation of Public School Choice	388,763
Institute For Justice (IJ)	443,885
Institute of Public Charter Schools Innovation	45,000
International Education Foundation	475,000
LA Voice	100,000
Los Angeles Parent Union	1,200,550
Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools	679,202
Lutheran Urban Mission Initiative Inc.	5,000
MAPSA - Michigan Association of Public School Academies	744,002
Massachusetts Charter Public School Association (MCPSA)	200,000
MICAH Project	100,000
Milwaukee Chapter - Black Alliance for Educational Options Inc. (MCBAEO)	75,000
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS)	1,815,810
National Right to Work Legal Defense and Education Foundation	166,667
New Jersey Charter Public Schools Association (NJCSA)	86,149
New Schools for New Orleans Inc.	542,000
New Voice Strategies	351,480
New York Charter Schools Association NYCSA	1,062,955
NewSchools Venture Fund NSVF	3,540,600
Oakland Community Organizations	200,000
Ohio Alliance of Public Charter Schools (OAPCS)	61,840
Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC)	625,000
People Acting in Community Together (PACT)	200,000
PICO National Network	200,000
Pioneer Institute, Inc.	162,800
Public Education and Business Coalition	100,000
Rhode Island Mayoral Academies (RIMA)	500,000
School Choice Indiana	200,000
School Choice Ohio	700,000
Stand for Children Leadership Center	1,136,016
Stand Up	200,000
Step Up for Students	1,233,760
StudentsFirst Institute	1,000,000
Success Charter Network	1,000,000
Tennessee Charter Schools Association	356,874
Texas Charter Schools Association	900,000
Thomas B. Fordham Institute	650,000
United Community Center, Inc.	70,000
United Negro College Fund, Inc. (UNCF)	1,100,917
Shape Public Policy Total	$60,063,487
Create Quality Schools:	Amount
4.0 Schools	$467,667
8 Points Charter School, Inc.	220,000
Academy of New Media Middle School	220,000
Amani Public Charter School	220,000
Arts in Action Community Charter School	220,000
Better Learning Communities	30,000
Blackstone Valley Prep	500,000
Bridge Boston Charter School	250,000
Brighter Choice Foundation	900,000
Broome Street Academy Charter High School	220,000
Building Excellent Schools  (BES)	2,546,400
Building Hope	1,618,000
Camino Nuevo Charter Academy	250,000
Catalyst Schools	30,000
Celerity Cardinal Charter School	250,000
Celerity Educational Group	60,000
Celerity Octavia Charter School	250,000
Celerity Palmati Charter School	250,000
Celerity Sirius Charter School	250,000
Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School	250,000
Charles School at Ohio Dominican University	30,000
Charter Fund, Inc.  (CSGF)	22,900,000
Charter School Finaincing Partnership LLC   CSFP	650,000
Christel House DORS	30,000
Christopher House	30,000
Cleveland Collegiate Preparatory School	220,000
College-Ready Academy High School #17	250,000
Colorado League of Charter Schools	28,500
Colorado Nonprofit Development Center (CNDC)	330,000
Columbus Collegiate Academy - West Campus	30,000
Community School for Creative Education	200,000
Cornerstone Health High School	220,000
Crescent City Schools Charter School	250,000
Damar Charter Academy	250,000
DC Preparatory Academy	250,000
DC Public Education Fund	108,459
Democracy Prep Harlem Charter School	250,000
Early College Academy of Leaders and Scholars	250,000
East Harlem Scholars Academy	250,000
Educational Enterprises, Inc.	450,000
Edward W. Brooke Charter School 2	250,000
Elements Academy	2,374
Empower College Prep	30,000
Erie Elementary Charter School	250,000
Exalt Education	600,000
Excel Academy Charter School - Chelsea	250,000
Excellent Education Development, Inc.  (ExED)	250,000
Experiencia Academy Project Team	30,000
Extera Public School	250,000
FirstLine College Prep High School	250,000
Fortune School of Education	250,000
Franklinton Preparatory Academy	30,000
Glazer Elementary	250,000
Global Green USA	25,000
Goodwill Education Initiatives, Inc.	500,000
Green Dot Public Schools	500,000
Heketi Community Charter School	250,000
Heritage Preparatory Academy	220,000
Heron Bay Academy	250,000
Hope Christian School	495,000
IFF	2,190,000
Jalen Rose Leadership Academy (JRLA)	250,000
Jamaa Learning Center Charter School	220,000
KIPP Foundation	6,404,020
KNOVA Reynolds Public Charter School	250,000
Lake Charles Charter Academy	250,000
Latin Academy Charter School	220,000
LAYC Career Academy Public Charter School	250,000
Legal Prep Charter Academy	220,000
Liberty Collegiate	220,000
Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)	6,783,114
Lutheran High School Association of Greater Milwaukee	59,000
MATCH Community Day Charter Public School	250,000
Milwaukee College Preparatory School of Wisconsin	367,000
Milwaukee Math and Science Academy	250,000
Milwaukee Scholars Charter School	250,000
Mind Trust	500,000
Minneapolis College Preparatory School	250,000
Minnesota School of Science	250,000
Monarch Montessori of Denver	30,000
Morris Jeff Community School	220,000
Nashville Preparatory Charter School	220,000
Neighborhood Charter School of Harlem	220,000
New York City Montessori Charter School	220,000
NewSchools Venture Fund NSVF	2,386,615
Orange School	30,000
Partners for Developing Futures	1,297,827
Preclarus Mastery Academy	220,000
Regent Park Scholars Charter Academy	250,000
ReNEW-Reinventing Education	750,000
Richard Wright Public Charter School for Journalism and Media Arts	250,000
Robertson Charter School, Inc	30,000
Rocky Mountain Preparatory Charter School	250,000
Schools That  Can Milwaukee, Inc.	175,000
Seeds of Health, Inc.	165,000
Seminole Heights Charter High School	200,000
Sims-Fayola International Academy Denver	30,000
South City Preparatory Academy Charter School	220,000
Summit Public School: Rainier	250,000
Synergy Kinetic Academy	250,000
Synergy Quantum Academy	250,000
Tennessee Charter School Incubator	300,071
The Excel Center	220,000
The GLOBE Academy	30,000
The Intown Academy	220,000
The Loving School	250,000
United Community Center, Inc.	231,000
University Charter High School	30,000
University YES East Academy	250,000
UNO Charter School Network	750,000
Veritas Preparatory Charter School	220,000
Vincent Academy	250,000
Woodmont Charter School -The Bay Area Charter Foundation Inc.	250,000
Zenith Academy East	250,000
Create Quality Schools Total	$71,510,047
Improve Existing Schools:	Amount
Achievement Network, LTD	$62,500
Arizona Charter Schools Association (ACSA)	310,000
Charter Board Partners (CBP)	68,200
Colorado League of Charter Schools	150,000
DC Public Charter School Board	601,193
DC Public Education Fund	1,967,871
Denver Center for International Studies at Ford Elementary	300,000
Denver Center for International Studies at Montbello	300,000
Denver Public Schools  (DPS)	376,182
Denver Scholarship Foundation (DSF)	219,382
Generation Schools Network	20,000
Grant Beacon Middle School	20,000
Green Dot Public Schools	500,600
Green Valley Elementary	300,000
Greenwood K-8	20,000
High Tech Early College	300,000
Hope Christian School	300,000
Illinois Network of Charter Schools   (INCS)	50,000
Indiana Department of Education	25,000
Lena Lovato Archuleta Elementary School	20,000
Lutheran Urban Mission Initiative Inc.	60,000
McGlone Elementary	300,000
National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA)	2,157,000
National Council of La Raza - NCLR	352,640
New Orleans Military/Maritime Academy  (NOMMA)	50,000
New Teacher Project	2,941,239
Noel Community Arts School	300,000
Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA)	82,500
Ohio Alliance of Public Charter Schools (OAPCS)	593,184
Teach for America (National)	12,572,500
University of Notre Dame	511,000
West Leadership Academy	20,000
Wisconsin Lutheran College	200,000
Improve Existing Schools Total	$26,050,991
Research and Evaluation	Amount
Hoover Institution, Stanford University	$374,304
Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA)	97,600
University of Arkansas Foundation, Inc.	80,283
University of Notre Dame	250,000
University of Southern California	133,562
University of Washington Foundation - Center on Reinventing Public Education	54,590
University of Wisconsin - Madison	435,000
Research and Evaluation Total	$1,425,339
K-12 Education Reform and Other Education Grants Total	159,049,864

By Valeri

CCSS, Anyone?

The Common Core State Standards movement is being allowed to propagate unchecked like the cancer that it is. But there is ample evidence of what the inevitable conclusion of this insanity will produce.

From The Telegraph (U.K.):

Bright students 'cannot write essays', say Cambridge dons

Some key excerpts:

...
"Robert Tombs, professor of history at St John's College, Cambridge, warned that students were 'drilled into writing' in a formulaic manner between the age of 11 and 18, leaving them unable to articulate their ideas on degree courses."
...
"'One of the things that one notices in student essays is how much damage has been done by the imposition of artificial structures for essay writing,' he said.

'''They've been drilled into writing a particular way, making particular kinds of arguments in a particular order and not writing their own ideas or responding to questions in a fresh and original way, and that's very damaging, and it's very visible.'"
...
"Speaking on Monday, Prof Abulafia said that writing essays involved 'making judgments' but too many pupils struggled to cope because of the emphasis on chasing decent exam grades.

"He said that pupils often 'knew the mark scheme by heart and that is how you ensure you get an A'.

"'That is not what education is about,' he said.

"'What we've got to do is educate students and also examiners in handling the sort of work which involves making judgments, trying to say something that's slightly different about familiar topics.'"
...
"'We are where we are, partly because, I have to say, of the national curriculum [emphasis added],' he said.

"'I find that teachers have become increasingly robotic, they have worked slavishly to the national curriculum [emphasis added], to the prescribed curriculum [emphasis added], they have worked slavishly to the demands of the league tables etc and a lot of the teaching is not very sort of, instrumental, and children are taught a lot of facts, completely out of context often, simply the minimum required for whatever the next test or examination will be.'"

CCSS, anyone?

Don't Sue to Keep Scores Out of the Papers: Sue to End This Sham Evaluation Scheme

This morning a Knox County teacher sent me this note and link to a discussion at the Tennessean.  Seems as if the ALEC and TFA crowd running education in the state are planning to go public with the state's outrageously-flawed teacher evaluation results:

I can't even begin to describe the morale in Knox County.  I can only imagine how it is statewide. Teachers are quitting/retiring in droves.  It's hell here, Jim!

My response: They want you to quit and retire in droves.  How else can TFA become the other option to real teachers in Tennessee?

At this point, the State's house of cards is entirely vulnerable to lawsuit.  With good lawyers, what judge would not find defamation or an abundance of arbitrary and capricious practice, all based on methodology that the highest officials were warned against using by the National Research Council.

You are not only fighting for your own good name--you are fighting for the profession, now and in the future.  And really, if the worst happens and you lose, wouldn't you rather know that you did what you could, rather than just taking it?

I know it is easy for me to say, since I am a thousand miles away, but I know what a few good Tennesseans can do when they get riled up.  Remember the Alamo!

This will have to be fought through the courts of public opinion, through the law courts, and through every creative act of civil disobedience and non-violent resistance.  You are many--they are few.  Dirty money and corrupt politicians cannot make this work without your support.  Jim




As if teachers and their lawyers need more ammo to go to court, there came this from Michael Winerip at the NYTimes this morning on terrific teachers sabotaged by a system designed to demoralize, humiliate, and drive good teachers out of the system so that technocratic drones can replace them:

For 15 years, Anna Allanbrook has been the principal of Public School 146 in Brooklyn, one of the highest-achieving elementary schools in the city. In that time, she has never had a more talented and hard-working bunch than the current team of fifth-grade teachers. The five have lunch together daily, using the time to plan. They stay until 7 p.m. on Fridays to prepare for the following week. On Thursday night, most of them helped at the science invention fair until it was past 8 p.m. 

Their credentials would be impressive for college professors. Antoinette Byam, who received a grant to spend a month in Ghana in 2006, won a Fulbright scholarship in 2008 to do research in Mexico and Peru. She then wrote fifth-grade curriculums on the Mayans. 

Before becoming a teacher, Nancy Salomon had her own theater company and ran a drama program in the schools that won an arts award from the Guggenheim Museum. 

Cora Sangree has trained teachers at Bank Street College of Education and Teachers College at Columbia University. Laurie Matthews worked as an archaeologist in Brazil and France before she started teaching. 

In 2009, 96 percent of their fifth graders were proficient in English, 89 percent in math. When the New York City Education Department released its numerical ratings recently, it seemed a sure bet that the P.S. 146 teachers would be at the very top. 

Actually, they were near the very bottom. 

Ms. Byam and Ms. Salomon each scored 7 out of 100 in math. Ms. Sangree got a 1 in math and an 11 in English. Ms. Matthews’s scores got mixed up with the results for another fifth-grade teacher, Penina Hirshman, so nobody could say for certain what her real numbers might be. 

A teacher’s rating depends on how much progress her students make on state tests in a year’s time, and is known as the value-added score. Ms. Allanbrook, the principal, has another name for what’s going on. She calls the scores the “invalid value-addeds.” 

If city officials were trying to demoralize and humiliate the workforce, they’ve done a terrific job. News organizations get an assist for publishing the scores, and former Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein deserves a special nod for enthusiastically supporting the release. 

It’s not just the low scorers who are offended. Maribeth Whitehouse, a special education teacher in the Bronx, wrote me in an e-mail: “I am a 99th percentiler. A number of us are in touch with each other, united by nothing more than our profession and professional disdain for this nonsense.” She is circulating a letter of protest for others on the 99th percentile to sign. 

In 2010, in the hope of winning a grant from the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, state officials and the teachers’ unions agreed to let students’ test scores count for 20 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. Then last spring, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, John B. King Jr., the state’s education commissioner, and Merryl H. Tisch, the state chancellor, decided 20 percent wasn’t rigorous enough, and with little public notice pushed a measure through the Board of Regents allowing student test scores to count for up to 40 percent. 

It does not take a lot of math to calculate how much damage Ms. Sangree’s 1 or Ms. Byam’s 7 could do. 

How could this possibly have happened? 

The short answer is: Numbers lie. 

And not only do they lie, but they are out of date, in this case covering student test results from 2007 to 2010. 

Though 89 percent of P.S. 146 fifth graders were rated proficient in math in 2009, the year before, as fourth graders, 97 percent were rated as proficient. This resulted in the worst thing that can happen to a teacher in America today: negative value was added. 

The difference between 89 percent and 97 percent proficiency at P.S. 146 is the result of three children scoring a 2 out of 4 instead of a 3 out of 4. 

While Ms. Allanbrook does not believe in lots of test prep, her fourth-grade teachers do more of it than the rest of the school. 

In New York City, fourth-grade test results can determine where a child will go to middle school. Fifth-grade scores have never mattered much, so teachers have been free to focus on project-based learning. While that may be good for a child’s intellectual development, it is hard on a teacher’s value-added score. 

Ms. Byam’s 7 in math is as invalid a value-added score as such things can get. She regularly takes on extra duties. Several years ago, when teachers were unhappy with the standard math curriculum they formed a committee to find a better method. Ms. Byam represented P.S. 146, and spent two days a month for a year studying new approaches. 

Using the new curriculum, children work in groups to solve real-life problems. On Friday, each group spent an hour developing a system to calculate who ate more — eight students sharing seven submarine sandwiches; five students sharing four; or four sharing three. Each child developed his own solution, and the group decided which way was best. 

Ms. Byam made notes on how well her 29 students were working. A girl who normally did well had dashed off a muddled answer, and was resting her head on the desk. 

“Why are you so sleepy?” Ms. Byam whispered. 

She had been up late taking care of her older sister’s baby. 

After observing her class, Ms. Byam knew that Minerva Macarrulla had produced the most sophisticated solution, but the group would not select her work. 

“Minerva’s shy, she won’t push it,” said Ms. Byam, “I’ll have to call on her to explain. We can’t let shyness get in the way of progress, can we now?” 

This week, students will advance from dividing sandwiches to comparing fractions with different denominators, to calculating least common denominators. 

Across the hallway, Ms. Sangree might have scored higher than 11 in English by doing more test prep. There is a standard test-prep formula for writing an essay: Topic sentence; three sentences that give examples to support the thesis, one from literature, one from current events, and one from personal experience; concluding sentence. 

Instead, her class has spent weeks working on research papers about the Mayans. Rowan Groom explained to a visitor how she was doing her paper on Mayan clothing. 

“First we collected facts from books and National Geographic and Web sites and notes when we visited the Museum of Natural History,” she said. “Next we sorted our facts into topics.” 

They were ready to write. “First you do a first draft and then you revise and edit and we talk about our thoughts with our friends, in the meeting area. Then we go into our revised draft and we edit some more, and after that we go across the hall to computer lab and type it up.” 

The state test does not require students to write a research paper. 

Children sense that something is going on. “My mom said teachers with lower grades were getting kicked out because they’re not good enough,” said Niko Amber, a fifth grader. 

The backlash has startled city officials. Some changes have already been announced for next year. Instead of the scores’ being made public, Ms. Byam will quite likely be handed her 7 and Ms. Sangree her 1 behind closed doors. 

Whether that will be better or worse is hard to know.

From the New York Times

March 3, 2012

Confessions of a ‘Bad’ Teacher

By WILLIAM JOHNSON

I AM a special education teacher. My students have learning disabilities ranging from autism and attention-deficit disorder to cerebral palsy and emotional disturbances. I love these kids, but they can be a handful. Almost without exception, they struggle on standardized tests, frustrate their teachers and find it hard to connect with their peers. What’s more, these are high school students, so their disabilities are compounded by raging hormones and social pressure.

As you might imagine, my job can be extremely difficult. Beyond the challenges posed by my students, budget cuts and changes to special-education policy have increased my workload drastically even over just the past 18 months. While my class sizes have grown, support staff members have been laid off. Students with increasingly severe disabilities are being pushed into more mainstream classrooms like mine, where they receive less individual attention and struggle to adapt to a curriculum driven by state-designed high-stakes tests.

On top of all that, I’m a bad teacher. That’s not my opinion; it’s how I’m labeled by the city’s Education Department. Last June, my principal at the time rated my teaching “unsatisfactory,” checking off a few boxes on an evaluation sheet that placed my career in limbo. That same year, my school received an “A” rating. I was a bad teacher at a good school. It was pretty humiliating.

Like most teachers, I’m good some days, bad others. The same goes for my students. Last May, my assistant principal at the time observed me teaching in our school’s “self-contained” classroom. A self-contained room is a separate classroom for students with extremely severe learning disabilities. In that room, I taught a writing class for students ages 14 to 17, whose reading levels ranged from third through seventh grades.

When the assistant principal walked in, one of these students, a freshman girl classified with an emotional disturbance, began cursing. When the assistant principal ignored her, she started cursing at me. Then she began lobbing pencils across the room. Was this because I was a bad teacher? I don’t know.

I know that after she began throwing things, I sent her to the dean’s office. I know that a few days later, I received notice that my lesson had been rated unsatisfactory because, among other things, I had sent this student to the dean instead of following our school’s “guided discipline” procedure.

I was confused. Earlier last year, this same assistant principal observed me and instructed me to prioritize improving my “assertive voice” in the classroom. But about a month later, my principal observed me and told me to focus entirely on lesson planning, since she had no concerns about my classroom management. A few weeks earlier, she had written on my behalf for a citywide award for “classroom excellence.” Was I really a bad teacher?

In my three years with the city schools, I’ve seen a teacher with 10 years of experience become convinced, after just a few observations, that he was a terrible teacher. A few months later, he quit teaching altogether. I collaborated with another teacher who sought psychiatric care for insomnia after a particularly intense round of observations. I myself transferred to a new school after being rated “unsatisfactory.”

Behind all of this is the reality that teachers care a great deal about our work. At the school where I work today, my “bad” teaching has mostly been very successful. Even so, I leave work most days replaying lessons in my mind, wishing I’d done something differently. This isn’t because my lessons are bad, but because I want to get better at my job.

In fact, I don’t just want to get better; like most teachers I know, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I have to be. Dozens and dozens of teenagers scrutinize my language, clothing and posture all day long, all week long. If I’m off my game, the students tell me. They comment on my taste in neckties, my facial hair, the quality of my lessons. All of us teachers are evaluated all day long, already. It’s one of the most exhausting aspects of our job.

Teaching was a high-pressure job long before No Child Left Behind and the current debates about teacher evaluation. These debates seem to rest on the assumption that, left to our own devices, we teachers would be happy to coast through the school year, let our skills atrophy and collect our pensions.

The truth is, teachers don’t need elected officials to motivate us. If our students are not learning, they let us know. They put their heads down or they pass notes. They raise their hands and ask for clarification. Sometimes, they just stare at us like zombies. Few things are more excruciating for a teacher than leading a class that’s not learning. Good administrators use the evaluation processes to support teachers and help them avoid those painful classroom moments — not to weed out the teachers who don’t produce good test scores or adhere to their pedagogical beliefs.

Worst of all, the more intense the pressure gets, the worse we teach. When I had administrators breathing down my neck, the students became a secondary concern. I simply did whatever my assistant principal asked me to do, even when I thought his ideas were crazy. In all honesty, my teaching probably became close to incoherent. One week, my assistant principal wanted me to focus on arranging the students’ desks to fit with class activities, so I moved the desks around every day, just to show that I was a good soldier. I was scared of losing my job, and my students suffered for it.

That said, given all the support in the world, even the best teacher can’t force his students to learn. Students aren’t simply passive vessels, waiting to absorb information from their teachers and regurgitate it through high-stakes assessments. They make choices about what they will and won’t learn. I know I did. When I was a teenager, I often stayed up way too late, talking with friends, listening to music or playing video games. Did this affect my performance on tests? Undoubtedly. Were my teachers responsible for these choices? No.

My best teachers, the ones I still think about today, exposed me to new and exciting ideas. They created classroom environments that welcomed discussion and intellectual risk-taking. Sometimes, these teachers’ lessons didn’t sink in until years after I’d left their classrooms. I’m thinking about Ms. Leonard, the English teacher who repeatedly instructed me to “write what you know,” a lesson I’ve only recently begun to understand. She wasn’t just teaching me about writing, by the way, but about being attentive to the details of my daily existence.

It wasn’t Ms. Leonard’s fault that 15-year-old me couldn’t process this lesson completely. She was planting seeds that wouldn’t bear fruit in the short term. That’s an important part of what we teachers do, and it’s the sort of thing that doesn’t show up on high-stakes tests.

How, then, should we measure students and teachers? In ninth grade, my students learn about the scientific method. They learn that in order to collect good data, scientists control for specific variables and test their impact on otherwise identical environments. If you give some students green fields, glossy textbooks and lots of attention, you can’t measure them against another group of students who lack all of these things. It’s bad science.

Until we provide equal educational resources to all students and teachers, no matter where they come from, we can’t say — with any scientific accuracy — how well or poorly they’re performing. Perhaps if we start the conversation there, things will start making a bit more sense.

William Johnson is a teacher at a public high school in Brooklyn who writes on education for the Web site Gotham Schools.

Teacher, Julie Cavanagh, on Test Scores

From the NYDaily News

According to the numbers, I am a highly effective New York City public school teacher. But you won’t see me jumping for joy over the news.

My teacher data report, along with those of 18,000 other teachers, was released last week by the Education Department after a lengthy legal battle. That report says I have a career rating that falls at or above the 95th percentile in both English and math (as measured through a complex formula that takes into account the gains my students made on standardized tests, compared with gains made by students in similar classrooms across the city).

In fact, plenty of teachers in my school also have average-to-high ratings. Every year, however, when test scores are released, we do not celebrate; instead, we exhale and then get back to the real work of teaching.

I imagine this attitude is shared by educators across the city, whether they are in the 90th percentile or the ninth.
Since the reports were released last week, the debate has been raging about whether a formula prone to as much as 53% in margin of error is the best way to judge the effectiveness of teachers. Self-proclaimed reformers say yes; those who understand teaching say otherwise.

There is no question that teachers are responsible for the learning and growth that take place inside of their classrooms. However, standardized tests are just not a reliable measure of learning. If we are truly interested in increasing the quality of education, the conversation surrounding accountability must shift.

Imagine if doctors were held accountable based on the death rate of their patients, regardless of environmental factors and whether prescribed treatment was followed.

Imagine if firefighters were held accountable based on fire injuries and deaths, even though they didn’t start the fires, their budgets had been cut and most of the homes in their district didn’t have fire alarms.

That would be unreasonable. So why do we only apply this impossible standard to teachers?


No standardized test score can quantify what we do. In fact, we succeed in spite of — not because of — the testing culture that has pervaded our classrooms since Mayor Bloomberg took office.

Students are not created the same, even though the DOE seems to believe we can compare their teachers as if the classroom were nothing more than a repository of numerical data to be finessed and analyzed.

I know countless teachers whose ratings were not as favorable as mine and my colleagues’. These teachers are no less successful with their students. In fact, many of these teachers serve children who actually outperform the children I serve. But because they didn’t show as much progress, their teacher’s “value” is lower.

In other cases, teachers serve children with more significant needs. For example, children who need English-language instruction or special education — as well as students who fall below the poverty line. All these factors impact the validity of test scores.

In a democracy, our elected leaders are supposed to be responsive to the people they serve. As a teacher, I apply this same democratic principle to my work. And so the parents I serve know I am a good teacher not because of their child’s test score, but because they come to our classroom, see their child’s work and hear my estimation of that child’s growth.

No formula can measure the value of the relationships at the heart of good teaching.

Regardless, some will continue to argue that there is a correlation between test scores and teacher effectiveness. But correlation does not equal causation.

We could be allocating the millions spent on testing on what research shows are actual causes of positively impacting student achievement: small classes and experienced educators. That’s what our children truly need.
 
Cavanagh teaches special education at PS 15 in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/test-scores-article-1.1032155#ixzz1oBXrEQNa

Scholastic’s Exaggerated Claim: “US DOE Striving Reader Study Proves READ 180 Works!”

Scholastic’s Exaggerated Claim: “US DOE Striving Reader Study Proves READ 180 Works!”

Stephen Krashen

A recent ad from Scholastic claims that READ 180 students have made “tremendous progress” in three locations: Newark, Springfield Mass, and Ohio, citing a US Department of Education report on Striving Readers programs. Scholastic notes that differences between READ 180 students and comparisons were not significantly different in another site, Memphis.

A look at the actual DOE report shows that the differences between READ 180 students and comparisons in “regular” classrooms weren’t very large anywhere.

Newark (grades 6-8): After three years, READ 180 students were only one percentile better than comparisons on tests of vocabulary (effect size = .02; 20th percentile vs. 19th) and comprehension (effect size = .09; 30th percentile compared to 29th), and were only two percentiles better on a test of language arts (effect size = .12; 20th percentile compared to 18th) (DOE Report, p. 101).

Springfield (grade 9): After one year, READ 180 students were four percentiles better than comparisons in reading comprehension (effect size = .11; 20th percentile compared to 16th). (DOE Report, p. 87).

Ohio (grade 9): After one year, READ 180 students were four percentiles better than comparisons in reading comprehension (effect size = .26, 15th percentile vs. 11th). (DOE Report, p. 84). READ 180 students, however, had 90 minutes of language arts each day. The comparisons had 45 minutes of language arts, and then had an elective (e.g. math, technology education) for 45 minutes. (DOE Report, pages 80, 231).

These are very small differences, and very disappointing considering the time, money, and effort dedicated to READ 180. Any claim that READ 180 can close the achievement gap is unjustified. After one year, READ 180 9th grade students moved from the 16th to 20th percentile (Springfield and Ohio). If they maintain this pace, they will reach only the 32nd percentile by grade 12. Sixth graders gaining two percentiles per year (Newark) will move from the 20th percentile to the 32nd by grade 12.

In contrast, Kim (2004) estimated that just reading five books over the summer results in a gain of about three percentiles, about the same as the huge investment required by Read 180.


Sources
Kim, J. 2004. Summer Reading and the Ethnic Achievement Gap. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 9(2):169-188.
DOE Report: Summary of 2006 Striving Readers Projects: Implementation and Evaluation of Targeted Interventions for Struggling Readers and Whole School Interventions for All Readers: Years 1—4. Abt Associates. Available at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/strivingreaders/performance.html
Ad: US DOE Striving Reader Study Proves READ 180 Works! Appeared on ASCD Smartbrief March 2, 2012.
Press Release, Scholastic, Nov 15, 2011. Four Years of U.S. Department of Education Research Shows "READ 180" Effective in Combating Adolescent Illiteracy. http://mediaroom.scholastic.com/node/517?EML=PI/eb/20120302/ASCD/banner/USDOEStrivingReaders/Read_the_Release/read180/728x90/

The Gates Solution to Political Deadlock: More Technocrats in Charge from ALEC

At the heart of this generation's retread argument for post-partisanship in all things political, there is another, though more dangerous, version of rule by the experts lurking there.  Society engineered by scientific managers or "experts" was tried a hundred years ago, but since Bill Gates doesn't read history, apparently we must go down that dollar-strewn road again, this time with Gates playing Andrew Carnegie and Barack Obama playing Woodrow Wilson.  We may hope that the first half of this century turns out better than that the first half of the last, when our determination to create a smooth running and perfectible industrial society got rolling with eugenics and then culminated with the Holocaust.

Today the New York Times offered Gates a 6+ minute free infomercial hosted by America's most prominent Readers Digest version of an intellectual, Tom Friedman.  It's well worth viewing, for in it we see the enabler role of the New York Times in foisting a patronizing, officious, and saccharine version of political reality, and we see clearly, too, the degree of subterfuge layered with cluelessness by the aging geek billionaire oligarch, Bill Gates.

In order to offer his solution to our every problem, Gates, in the video, must first pretend he does not know why 60 percent of Americans think their future will not be as good their past.  What is it, he wonders.  It's a paradox, he whines syrupily. After all, America is still the land of more Twitterers per acre than any place on Earth, and America remains the undisputed crowned home of the App, where 15 minutes of fame is still within everyone's reach who is connected enough to attract the fly blows of Wall Street.

So snap out of it, America.  What we need are not political partisans, who more often stand on stacks of cash than they do on principle. We don't even need principles, boys and girls.  What we need are the facts, converted to numbers, and unstained by belief or passion:  we need more technocrats running America, and we need to get the politics out of democracy.

And what we need on top of that are more 501s like the non-partisan ALEC, which garners support (with tax breaks included) from oligarchs like Gates for spreading the privatization of democracy message throughout these United States.  Let's get the politics out of politics! Oh, I got carried away--the video does not include that part.  You have to get that from real facts, not the ones manufactured by fools who believe that others are as foolish, too.

From Crooks and Liars:

. . . .Now we have this grant from the Gates Foundation to ALEC, of all things. It isn't a small grant, by any stretch. $376,635 to be paid over a period of 22 months. That's about $17,000 per month dropping into the coffers of one of the most evil organizations in the country. The grant description reads as follows:

Purpose: to educate and engage its membership on more efficient state budget approaches to drive greater student outcomes, as well as educate them on beneficial ways to recruit, retain, evaluate and compensate effective teaching based upon merit and achievement . . .

If you are wondering what ALEC is, look below.  This clip below is from the most recent issue of Phi Delta Kappan. Do take the time, please, to read it.  With this kind of article, it could be time to re-join PDK, which the last time I check had sold its soul to the Business Roundtable:

By Julie Underwood and Julie F. Mead, Phi Delta Kappan

 

A legislative contagion seemed to sweep across the Midwest during the early months of 2011. First, Wisconsin legislators wanted to strip public employees of the right to bargain. Then, Indiana legislators got into the act. Then, it was Ohio. In each case, Republican governors and Republican-controlled state legislatures had introduced substantially similar bills that sought sweeping changes to each state’s collective bargaining statutes and various school funding provisions.

What was going on? How could elected officials in multiple states suddenly introduce essentially the same legislation?

The answer: The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Its self-described legislative approach to education reads:

Across the country for the past two decades, education reform efforts have popped up in legislatures at different times in different places. As a result, teachers’ unions have been playing something akin to “whack-a-mole”—you know the game—striking down as many education reform efforts as possible. Many times, the unions successfully “whack” the “mole,” i.e., the reform legislation. Sometimes, however, they miss. If all the moles pop up at once, there is no way the person with the mallet can get them all. Introduce comprehensive reform packages. (Ladner, LeFevre, & Lips, 2010, p. 108)

ALEC’s own “whack-a-mole” strategy also reveals the group’s ultimate goal. Every gardener who has ever had to deal with a mole knows that the animals undermine and ultimately destroy a garden. ALEC’s positions on various education issues make it clear that the organization seeks to undermine public education by systematically defunding and ultimately destroying public education as we know it.

What is ALEC?

Technically, ALEC is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. It describes itself as a nonpartisan membership organization for those who share a common belief in “limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty.”

More than 2,000 state lawmakers pay ALEC $100 for a two-year membership. While listed as nonpartisan, ALEC’s members definitely skew to the conservative end of the political spectrum. For example, of the 114 listed members of the group’s Education Task Force, 108 are Republicans, and only six are Democrats.

Corporations, foundations, and “think tanks” can join ALEC, too. They pay up to $25,000 in yearly dues and can spend more to sponsor the council’s meetings. Corporate members can also donate to each state’s scholarship fund, which reimburses legislators who travel to meetings. The scholarships can exceed the amount of a legislator’s dues. Corporate members also can pay from $3,000 to $10,000 for a seat on a task force.

ALEC operates through nine task forces, each cochaired by a corporate member and a legislative member. Task forces are divided by subject and bring together conservative policy makers with corporate leaders to develop model legislation. In order for a proposal to become model legislation, both the public and private sides of the committee must agree—granting considerable power to the corporate side. Elected officials then take the model bills back to their states to introduce them as their own. Only legislators who are members may access the model legislation. It is a very efficient mechanism for corporations to exercise political power—and they have.. . . .

GUEST POST: Tenure Perches in the Soul

Tenure Perches in the Soul
by Douglas Storm

I.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

***

“I eat the air, promise crammed.”  Hamlet

II.

This piece intends to speak about tenure, finally, if you will bear with me.

Let’s set the stage a bit.

Here’s the situation we’re in, and I’m sure you’re aware of much of it: business owners like to do what they want whenever they want as they deem appropriate to their interests.  This is why they are anti-regulation and anti-tax and why they are very keen to always vote yes for more deference to property in the law.  Regulation and tax, whatever else you think of them, must be considered requirements for managing systems of organized living.  This is a direct tension with the sense that one’s property and/or business interests are extension of a “self” that wants no fetters.

It is a dream of the child to always be free of strictures of parents while always knowing the security of the parents’ love and strength.  This seems a perfect analogy to the mind of the business owner when confronting the regulatory and legal power of the State.  Business owners throw tantrums constantly.
Consequently, the idea for employees is, do what your told: if you don’t you’re fired; make X widgets in X time or, your fired, or docked pay; deny coverage in any way possible and get a bonus; lie to investors and hedge against a market, win on both gains and losses, ta da, success.

I think that folks playing economics will make many arguments with numbers to hide the rudimentary principles at play–that’s often what they’re hired to do.  One “best practice” for industrial owners is “maximize profit by minimizing costs”–this is called “efficiency.”  It is a very wide net.

You must know that the largest threat to an expanding bottom-line is expanding personnel costs.  That’s the cost of hiring, training and maintaining employees.

It is a responsibility no one wants.  I promise.  Think about it.  If you were a caring person and you owned a business and people relied on the success of that business to give them stability in their lives you would be racked with constant worry and tension about their welfare.

Now, watch the transference.  The health of the business and the health of the lives of employees is a burden that can hardly be borne by the owner.  It seems sane and advisable to try to detach from that responsibility as a personal burden.  One might imagine that since the social safety net programs of the FDR administration that burden was shared with the state.  If things went badly, there were social programs that could help a family.  But the burden remained as a going concern.

The final sloughing of human care and responsibility has come about by imagining that there is a “system” that, when left alone, will balance these concerns and create an equilibrium of cash and product flow.  We call this the Free Market.  If we only let it alone, it will make us whole and set us in our proper places.

(I can’t help pointing out the obvious religious narrative there–but I’ll leave it to you to imagine this passion play and try to stick to my task.)

In either case one wishes to relieve oneself of the burden of responsibility.  Our economic and technological models of progress have created a kind of “natural” propensity to detachment.  I can only care about me and mine.  (I’ve had a friend say he was only interested in his kids because they were “of him” and that he was “selfish” for this.  Seriously.)  We live isolated in homes or rooms and transact “life” digitally; we work in cubicles and buildings of artificial environments.

You can see my mind drifting here into social issues of community organization and I think that making the economic system, making the business “self” interest, the primary motivator of social organization has been destroying what we were, what we are, what we might be.  It is redesigning mind to fit a particular idea of a “whole species” moving into an “extra-biological” space.  It is not an idea for the whole of us.  It is one that suits a very small number of “next” beings.  I judge this as a horror and a terminal motivation.

III.

Not long ago I was privy to a Facebook comment by a lawyer in Indianapolis stating that “teacher tenure is evil.”  I cannot spend time trying to understand that other than by saying it is a sin against the Randian Objectivist idea of capitalism.  Thus, not so bright.  But, as Kurt V. would say, so it goes.
This one is easy to talk about.  Folks that don’t work in fields with tenure likely wish they did.  Workers and managers alike–not owners.  In short, all of us want job security until our dying day.
The only way to think this is wrong is to privilege a world outside the home and its sustenance.  You must abstract social ideals to make tenure an “evil.”  You must privilege a cold abstraction.
Otherwise, what can lead you to agree with a statement meaning that a life free of worry over sustenance is “evil?”

Owners don’t need “job security.”  They have a de facto tenure.  That is what ownership is.

IV.

We are in a period of great “unmooring.”  That is to say, our social managers are forcing us into greater insecurity.  That is what “terror” is.  That is what “competition” is.  That is what sub-prime lending is.  That is what corporate fraud is.  That is what Iran and Iraq are.

V.

What is “home?”  At one point this was synonymous with the common dwelling for a clan or tribe.  The geography can change, but the hearth moves with you.  Rome made “home” into architectural recognition.  Go anywhere in the empire and you would see domes, arches, columns…Rome.  Identity by design.

America is self-consciously modeled on Rome; not only the capital buildings, but its ideas of empire and government as well.

Architecturally, perhaps the McDonald’s arches are our equivalent.  It is true that this offers a continuity.  But it fails to offer a sense of permanence.  We are not a culture of monuments but one building altars to oblivion.*

VI.

What are public institutions but  expressions of the ideas of moments?  They embody a national ethos.

VII.

Public education is one such institution.  More locally, the public school supported by a public education idea.  What do we embody?

A home?  A state? An altar to oblivion?

VII.

We have been building altars at which we pray to the Unmooring.  I have a book in front of me that participates in this.  These altars might be called Interest; Detachment; Efficiency; Measurement; Objectivism.

This book, Teachers Matter by Manhattan Institute acolyte Marcus Winters, offers a preface by a current priest of Unmooring, Joel Klein in which Klein writes:

…Winters trains his sights on the twin reforms that the defenders of the current public-school system most resist: paying the good teachers more and getting rid of the bad ones.  He shows that, currently, the best economic reason for going into teaching is that, regardless of performance, it is almost impossible to get fired.  You get steady raises with seniority, which are then followed by exceptional post-employment lifetime pension and health benefits.  In short, while teachers don’t get rich, once they start teaching, typically in their early twenties, they are reasonably set for life.

Expanding on his concerns about post-employment benefits, Winters further demonstrates their unfortunate lock-in effects on employees.  After a decade or so spent teaching, employees would be irrational to leave the system until their rights to these benefits fully vest.  This incentivizes teachers to stick around, sometimes for decades, whether or not they are engaged or effective.  A better idea, Winters argues, is to pay teachers like most people are paid: fairly during the time they actually work, while letting them decide how much to set aside for their retirement.

That is the reality of the book that follows.  One does not have to read further to know what it will present and that it will offer statistics and research as evidence of its soundness.  Listen to what will be shown as “evil” listed above: the exceptional benefits of lifetime pension, steady raises (huh?), health care–being set for life.  What does this yield?  A satisfied long-term employee.  Or, if you have a mind of winter, a rising and constant cost.

How does Klein cast this zombie movie called public education?  These are wastrels, disengaged, ineffective (“sometimes for decades”) and “locked-in” (as if they would prefer the freedom of being released, one dandelion puff among billions, on the winds of free markets).  I love that Klein says Winters “trains his sights”–he is indeed out to assassinate the very idea of “public teacher.”

Now you must realize, with such a great gig, folks like Klein and Winters have to work very hard to make the rest of the employees of the world know how horrible these people are and how that evil system locks them into, at best, ineffective mediocrity.  And my favorite resentment–if you can get fired, why shouldn’t they get fired!?

Again, wouldn’t you honestly prefer we created more occupations and employments organized in the manner of this public trust?


VIII.

What is this hiding and what is this imagining as an ideal “employee” who happens to be “teacher?”
Teachers are costly and literally, their success, or lack thereof, is immeasurable.  There are so many variables to human being, and human learning, and human social development that it is indeed unrealistic to measure one’s “doctrinal” success via content exams.
This book, and these men, are not concerned with the human institutions of learning as an aspect of human development.  The goal here is to release this renewable resource into the hands of the masters of markets.  The methods of doing this are somewhat akin to fracking.  All of its effects are damaging and the profit released is realized by a tiny minority.  Its effects are an oblivion.

IX.

It has been expressed to me that parents hope their children will be their support in old age.  This seems far from a reasonable hope for so many now because we have come to define support as one of fiscal responsibility.

How do we regain the definition of support that means human care and responsibility to each other?
I read today further horrifying comments by financial traders whose bonuses were not as monumental as they’d hoped: how will we maintain our lifestyles, our private schools, our vacations, our multiple homes?

Can they not hear what they are saying?  Their lifestyles are propped up by foreclosures, starvation, bankruptcies, pollution, toxic products…and on and on.

X.

An occupation like teaching is structurally important to us.  We have devoted our economic lives to material gain and in so doing have reduced our familial obligations such that they must be supplemented if not entirely given over to our systems of education.

Tenure is stability.  Tenure is security.  Tenure is trust.

This is not just about teachers.  This is about community and about an idea of home and human care and responsibility.  Tenure creates continuity of community institutions.  That is a primary function of our schools.  Destroying publicly funded institutions by defunding them and degrading them through the disingenuous and “targeted” use of testing paradigms aimed to denigrate and fail teachers, students, and schools will erase community further and make permanent our unmooring.

Teaching is indeed a very good job if it can be maintained with tenure and stress-reducing benefits. 

We should all aspire to this model of employment.

Teaching is an extremely difficult job to do well.  It is physically and emotionally exhausting.  Without support structures it can lead to a self-protecting disengagement, of that there is no doubt.

Teaching is not about content knowledge replication–that is robotic.  It is about creating a space of trust such that the human mind can explore freely in order to discover what one might become.  One must feel secure in self-sustenance in order to share that self and that freedom with hundreds of children.

We need to create deeper structures of human caring in these public spaces.  We should not dismantle them further in order to fix a bottom-line goal and serve an objectivist-capital agenda.

You reap what you sow.  Or is that agrarian apothegm too archaic for modern ears?

photo credit: kevin dooley

*Section V borrows from the BBC program In Our Time, “Architecture and Power.”

Education: Quick Takes

I'll avoid the pitfall of quoting Polonius about brevity (hint: Polonius is a blowhard being satirized by Shakespeare and not passing on pearls of wisdom). So instead, I'll credit Stephen Krashen [1] for his dedication to brief commentary on education reform. Here are a couple quick takes on education worthy of deeper and genuine consideration:

• My home state of South Carolina has a long history of creating controversy around issues large and small. SC, I regret to acknowledge, also tends to take stands that are wrong on some or all levels. Now the current Superintendent of Education in SC, Mick Zais, has joined the Tea Party-like fight against federal education policy by challenging Secretary of Education Arne Duncan—specifically about Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which SC has regretfully already adopted and begun to create new state tests, and NCLB reauthorization policies, including Race to the Top and opting out of NCLB.

Duncan has responded with Orwellian bravado.

This exchange is the battle of who can be more wrong.

Duncan represents the political doublespeak of making claims that mask corrosive policy, and Zais represents calling for the right action for the wrong reasons (yes, SC should reject CCSS and opting out manipulations, but not so the current political regime in SC can implement its own wrong-minded education policies—VAM-style teacher accountability and pay, school choice, etc.).

Educators—administrators, teachers, scholars—need to offer a third option that focuses on educator professionalism and autonomy, the corrosive and powerful influence of poverty and inequity, and a genuine commitment to public institutions.

• In a Twitter exchange with John Kuhn [2], I posed an important element of the education debate that John has helped expose. What degree of culpability do public school administrators and teachers deserve for implementing the policies that most educators believe to be flawed?

John Kuhn challenged my calling for greater culpability by administrators and teachers by making this analogy: [from his Tweet] "but livelihood at stake is a gun to our head. We are only as culpable as someone who robs a bank bc a bomb is strapped 2 them."

Kuhn is one of the bravest and most outspoken advocates for public education on the scene today, and I find his argument compelling, but I have at least one caveat to this analogy: Even soldiers have the moral obligation to reject unethical orders.

All educators in public schools need to re-evaluate what and how we comply with federal and state mandates. This isn't an easy problem or solution, and I am both compelled by Kuhn's argument and steadfast in my own call for autonomy and action to be taken by educators (admitting these are easy calls for a tenured professor, although I taught public school for 18 years and my wife is currently a public school teacher—thus, I am not "out of touch"). Our predicament as educators is best exemplified by Margaret Atwood (In Other Worlds), provocatively:

"As for 'inevitability,' it's the rapist's argument: the thing is going to happen anyway, so why not just lie back and enjoy it? Resistance is futile." (p. 139)

The culpability of educators must not be allowed to dehumanize the educators (and that is the goal of current reformers promoting and creating VAM-style accountability), reduced to blaming the rape victim while ignoring the power and intent of the rapist.

But we must also not dehumanize educators by ignoring our autonomy, our voice, and our call for action.

[1] Follow Stephen Krashen on Twitter: @skrashen

[2] Follow John Kuhn on Twitter: @johnkuhntx

Rahm's Corporate Pals Running CPS School Closings and CPS School Openings

After years of malignant neglect by the Daley Machine in Chicago, Rahm Emanuel is now in charge of completing the school corporatization plan that has fully taken shape since 2000.  Emanuel last year appointed the former head of the corporate welfare outfit, the Academy of Urban School Leadership (AUSL), to head his covey of appointed toadies on the CPS "Board of Education."  From the Tribune:

Launched by a reform-minded venture capitalist in 2001, AUSL has always enjoyed a close relationship with CPS. But never more so than under Emanuel, who selected a former AUSL top executive to oversee CPS' finances and named AUSL's previous board chairman as president of CPS' Board of Education.

AUSL is another of the total compliance lockdown school designs created to culturally neuter urban children, and now AUSL has almost the entire feeding trough to themselves in Chicago. 

 Who will benefit?  Not the children and not even their test scores, as the Tribune story below the video clearly indicates.  But that doesn't seem to matter to Rahm the Reptile, who believes, anyway, these kids are "never going to amount to anything."  With his swindler cronies in charge of psychologically sterilizing these kids, Rahm surely knows what he's talking about.

From Democracy Now:

As students across the country stage a National Day of Action to Defend Public Education, we look at the nation’s largest school systems—Chicago and New York City—and the push to preserve quality public education amidst new efforts to privatize schools and rate teachers based on test scores. In Chicago, the city’s unelected school board voted last week to shut down seven schools and fire all of the teachers at 10 other schools. In New York City, many educators are criticizing Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration after the release of the names of 18,000 city teachers, along with a ranking system that claims to quantify each teacher’s impact on the reading and math scores of their pupils on statewide tests. "The danger is that if teachers and schools are held accountable just for these relatively narrow measures of what it is that students are doing in class, that will become what drives the education system," says Columbia University’s Aaron Pallas, who studies the efficiency of teacher evaluation systems. "The effects of these school closings in [New York City] is one of the great untold stories today," says Democracy Now! education correspondent Jaisal Noor. "The bedrock of these communities [has been] these neighborhood schools, and now they are being destroyed." Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, says, "When you have a CEO in charge of a school system, as opposed to a superintendent, a real educator, what ends up happening is that they literally have no clue as to how to run the schools." Lewis recounts a meeting where she says Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told her that "25 percent of these kids are never going to be anything. They’re never going to amount to anything." [includes rush transcript]

Joel Hood and Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Chicago Tribune reporters

Over the last decade, a nonprofit teaching academy with strong political ties has launched an education revolution inside Chicago Public Schools, tearing down and rebuilding some of the city's worst-performing schools.

Now running 19 schools and locked in a public battle this month to add six more, the Academy for Urban School Leadership has become a force inside CPS, a virtually autonomous "district within the district" supported by millions in public and private funding.

The organization's pioneering work to "turn around" struggling schools by removing most of the teachers and administrators and replacing them with AUSL-trained staff, and installing a new culture of discipline and academic rigor, has won them praise from political heavyweights such as Mayor Rahm Emanuel and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

"Schools are in crisis right now. They're failing," said Donald Feinstein, AUSL's executive director. "And so the question is, how long would it take (for CPS) to redevelop an entire workforce when there may be a better way to go in with a dramatic intervention?"

Launched by a reform-minded venture capitalist in 2001, AUSL has always enjoyed a close relationship with CPS. But never more so than under Emanuel, who selected a former AUSL top executive to oversee CPS' finances and named AUSL's previous board chairman as president of CPS' Board of Education.

AUSL, which has hopes of managing as many as 38 schools next year, has been perhaps the biggest beneficiary in Emanuel's push to overhaul the city's beleaguered public school system. Yet for all the public attention, AUSL's results have been mixed; many students have made considerable progress, but as a group they still lag well behind district averages.

Test scores increased remarkably in AUSL's 12 "turnaround" schools in the first year or two under the group's management but then leveled out, with many ending up on par or even below comparable neighborhood schools.

All of AUSL's turnarounds remain on academic probation, including the two original turnaround projects, Sherman Elementary in 2006 and Harvard Elementary in 2007. However, two of the turnarounds have earned elite Level 1 rankings from CPS, a sign they could come off probation next year. Six others were designated Level 3, placing them among the worst in the city.

While CPS has recommended closing many neighborhood schools in recent years because of poor performance or underutilization, two-thirds of AUSL's schools remain open at less than 70 percent capacity.

Most of AUSL turnarounds score below CPS averages on the percentage of students meeting or exceeding state benchmarks on standardized testing. Those schools that beat district averages have been accused of pushing out their lowest-performing students or those with discipline problems to artificially inflate their test scores.

While AUSL teachers have implemented an intense and focused training style to keep students engaged, few of those strategies have found their way into other CPS schools.

And critics — who include some parents, the teachers union and a few educators — say every time CPS hands over another school to AUSL, it is diverting money away from cash-strapped neighborhood schools that risk falling further behind.

"We just worry about the extent to which these politically connected individuals are using AUSL as a method to alter the landscape of neighborhood schools," said Chicago Teachers Union staff coordinator Jackson Potter. "Because they're not the ones that have to deal with the fallout that comes as a result of these decisions. It's the community."

AUSL's supporters see it differently. CPS Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley, tapped by Emanuel after running AUSL's finances for three years, says the organization is taking on the toughest challenges in CPS and that it takes time to change the culture at chronically underperforming schools.

Cawley called AUSL an "important partner" with CPS and said those ties will only strengthen over time. In 2008, just two years after it began the turnaround model, AUSL officials set a target of 25 schools by 2012 and a long-term plan of 38 schools by 2013-14.

"Detractors look for things to make a fuss about," Cawley said. "The results that AUSL gets are fantastic. And as long as that continues, we would be delighted to have them take on more and more of the lowest-performing schools and help make them better."

Chicago investor Martin Koldyke, founder of the Golden Apple Foundation, created AUSL with the simple goal of better preparing young teachers for the unique demands of urban education. AUSL filled its ranks with teachers wanting to provide more intense, hands-on instruction and recruited many from careers outside education.