The New Texas Miracle

Houston takes the lead and becomes the largest school district in the country to adopt a teacher merit pay program tied to guess what -- test scores. Under the new incentive plan for more cheating, dishonesty and corruption, supers would get bonuses of $25,000 and teachers would get $3,000 -- just like the corporate world. In fact, considering the fiscal problems facing most school districts why don't they just funnel the money directly to teachers from the corporate sponsors. What's next -- junkets to Europe and exotic vacations? Sounds like a job for DeLay.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Union says it's too complex

The first will award bonuses to all teachers in schools rated acceptable or higher, based on scores on the state's main standardized test. The second ties pay to student improvement on a standardized test that compares performance to nationwide norms.
In the third section, reading and math teachers whose students fare well compared with others in the district would be eligible for bonuses.
The teachers' union doesn't approve of the plan, saying it focuses too much on test scores and is too complicated. In general, teachers across the country have been paid based on their years of experience and education levels. Starting teachers in Houston make about $36,000 a year.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, here's the inside scoop on those party poopers at the teachers union who just don't seem to get it.

Privatization Efforts in California University System

It seems that Aaanold can't wait for Spellings' Commission to make a recommendation for privatization of higher ed. He is already on the march. This from SF Chronicle:

The real scandal: moves to privatize higher education
Fortunately, this is a choice that voters have not yet made and can still resist

- Robert Meister
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Revelations of secrecy and possible self-dealing in the compensation of some of the University of California's top administrators expose a problem deeper than the need for more transparent "communication" of the rationale behind them.
. . . .
With no public debate, the California Master Plan for Higher Education, which has provided the people of California with high-quality low-cost universities financed through taxes, is being subverted by decisions (large and small) that assume the trend toward privatization to be inevitable. Most Californians are unaware that in the compact with Schwarzenegger, Dynes agreed that UC would raise tuition every year at least as fast as the rate of income growth in California (8 percent a year in recent years), and will be allowed to raise tuition up to 10 percent. At current rates of increase, UC tuition would exceed $11,000 a year by the time the compact ends in 2011. . . .

Smelling the Coffee at the Century Foundation

Until very recently, the Century Foundation's impressive collection of liberal educators steadfastly maintained a dopey idealized notion of what NCLB was all about, determined it seemed to divert the neo-con blitzkreig against public education with a kind sappy rhetorical appeasement. It was as if they hoped to wish NCLB into something that it has never been and will never be under the current regime of corporate socialist crooks. Here is a sampling of their idealizations from a 2002 document, Divided We Fall . . .:

THE ACCOUNTABILITY DEBATE. The strong accountability movement in education has the potential to promote integrated schools. The recently passed No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires, for the first time that, after twelve years, states bring both poor and rich children to a level of educational proficiency. It will be virtually impossible to make the enormous strides required for low-income students unless states do something very dramatic to address school segregation. In Wake County, North Carolina, for example, an ambitious achievement goal set by the district provided the imperative for sustaining an integration plan. More immediately, new federal education legislation providing a right for children to transfer out of public schools that are deemed failing for two consecutive years may prove a boon for integration if properly implemented because it divorces residence and school assignment. As we noted earlier, poorly implemented accountability plans have the potential to increase segregation to the extent that test scores become the determining factor by which middle-class parents choose school districts; but if policymakers react appropriately, the accountability movement just as well could serve as a positive spark to promote integration.

Please! Did these guys ever really believe that there was anything at all in the Bush plan that would encourage integration? Not a whit. In fact, Wake County has achieved what they have despite of, not because of, the racist school privatization juggernaut of NCLB.

Perhaps it is not too late for the Century Foundation scholars. I am glad to see this (NCLB's Poison Pill) on their site today by Greg Anrig, vice president for programs. It is proof that the the message has finally broken through. Now will they join the national effort to inform the American public about what is going on? Or will they take the Hillary route or the Kerry route into a neutral corner, hoping to avoid any of the potential bruises or knockdowns that may be inflicted in a real fight?

Greg Anrig, Jr., The Century Foundation, 1/15/2006 This week marked the fourth anniversary of the No Child Left Behind Act, which was enacted with broad bipartisan support even though neither attentive conservatives nor liberals liked it very much at the time. Discussion this week over NCLB's impact has proceeded along predictable lines, with evidence remaining far from conclusive about the usual measures of overall student performance and so forth. It's only been four years. But nonetheless I'm going to declare one clear victor: the conservative movement. The reason is that NCLB set in place an accountability regime that, in essence, requires states to tell their citizens that much of the public school system is failing—and almost inexorably getting worse by the year. That's a gift beyond the wildest dreams of even Milton Friedman and other libertarian voucher supporters. The word "failing" does not appear in the Act itself, but journalists invariably invoke it for schools that the law deems to "need improvement." That transposition seems reasonable since NCLB encourages parents to take their kids out of such schools. The "need improvement"/"failing" judgments apply to any school in which even one subgroup of students—low income, English-language learners, the disabled, etc.—fail to meet uniform, state-determined benchmarks for proficiency and adequate-yearly progress required of NCLB. For the 2005–6 school year, according to this report from the National Education Association (trash them if you like, but they are just reporting numbers that don't make their membership look particularly good) 25.8 percent of all schools "failed." The number of schools that failed for two or more years has doubled since 2003–4. One of the main sources of the problem with NCLB is that schools aren't necessarily rewarded if their students make progress from one year to the next. Rather, they are judged by benchmarks unrelated to their own past performance. This Times story from last week demonstrates the injustice of that approach from the standpoint of a school principal, notwithstanding Eduwonk's somewhat overheated response to coverage of what is clearly a fundamental flaw in the law. NCLB requires states to ratchet up their testing benchmarks so that by 2014, they meet a 100 percent proficiency level—across all schools and for every group within each school. If that ever were to happen, almost regardless of what standards states used, the depiction of the public school system as a near uniform failure from coast to coast would be a direct outgrowth of federal law. Not because the system is, or would be, a failure. But because the accountability regime was rigged to set the schools up as having failed. Look, some state-level innovations with testing and standards seem to have born fruit, according to studies by liberal researchers like Martin Carnoy. Inducing schools, mainly with sticks, to demonstrate that their students are performing better over time on tests is a strategy that seems to have a positive impact (though by no means a panacea). But NCLB's overly rigid, ham-handed approach creates all kinds of perverse incentives for states and schools to water-down their curriculums (and tests) and shed children who struggle on exams, as Virginia law professor James Ryan has argued, while further discouraging good teachers from working in schools with low-income students. But the only unequivocal bottom line of NCLB so far is that by characterizing such a large—and inexorably growing—segment of the public school system as a failure, the support that has sustained it throughout the nation's history is in danger. Greg Anrig, Jr., is vice president for programs at The Century Foundation. This article originally appeared on TPM Cafe on January 13, 2006.

Welcome to the real world!

JH

Update on Horowitz, the "Foaming Campus Cleanser"

Bill Berkowitz at Media Transparency brings us this nice update on the crackpot crusader, David Horowitz. Seems like his cred has taken a hit. Say it ain't so.

Here is a clip:

According to Inside Higher Education, after the hearings at Temple, which "critics of the Academic Bill of Rights were saying that they had scored key points ... Horowitz ... admitted that he had no evidence to back up two of the stories he has told multiple times to back up his charges that political bias is rampant in higher education."

In a post-hearing interview "Horowitz said that his acknowledgements were inconsequential, and he complained about 'nit picking' by his critics. But while Horowitz was declaring the hearings 'a great victory' for his cause, he lost some powerful stories. For example, Horowitz has said several times that a biology professor at Pennsylvania State University used a class session just before the 2004 election to show the Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, but he acknowledged Tuesday that he didn't have any proof that this took place."

Jamie Horwitz, a spokesman for the American Federation of Teachers, pointed out that "So much of what he [Horowitz] has said previously has been exposed to be lies or distortions that it makes any of his examples questionable. It should give this committee and any committee anywhere in the country pause about considering an Academic Bill of Rights. The bottom line is that there's not a lot of there there."

Public Education Network Survey on NCLB

PEN's survey on NCLB has been moved to this site: GiveKidsGoodSchools.org

If you did not complete the survey already, go to the site and have your say. Note, too, that PEN is hosting hearings around the country to compile testimony from teachers, parents, and students on NCLB.

NCLB: From "strong reservations to seething resentment"

What is middle America saying in about the educational equivalent of the Iraq debacle in the middle American press? A noteworthy piece here from the Park Falls Herald. Happy New Year, Maggie.

Notice to Schools Matter Readers

Starting today, and for the next several days, posts to SM will be sporadic. Will return to regular daily posting on Monday, January 16, 2006.

Class Profiling in NYC

Here is Greg Palast's take on the Bloomberg madness in NYC of requiring 3rd, 5th, and 7th graders to pass the test to move to the next grade. NYC has moved ahead of Louisiana in using tests to keep minorities in subservient social slots.

NO CHILD'S BEHIND LEFT: THE TEST
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
by Greg Palast
New York -- Today and tomorrow every 8-year-old in the state of New York will take a test. It's part of George Bush's No Child Left Behind program. The losers will be left behind to repeat the third grade. Try it yourself. This is from the state's actual practice test. Ready, class? "The year 1999 was a big one for the
Williams sisters. In February, Serena won her first pro singles championship. In March, the sisters met for the first time in a tournament final. Venus won. And at doubles tennis, the Williams girls could not seem to lose that year." And here's one of the four questions: "The story says that in 1999, the sisters
could not seem to lose at doubles tennis. This probably means when they played "A two matches in one day "B against each other "C with two balls at once "D as partners" OK, class, do you know the answer? (By the way, I didn't cheat: there's nothing else about "doubles" in the text.) My kids go to a New York City
school in which more than half the students live below the poverty line. There is no tennis court. There are no tennis courts in the elementary schools of Bed-Stuy or East Harlem. But out in the Hamptons, every school has a tennis court. In Forest Hills, Westchester and Long Island's North Shore, the schools
have nearly as many tennis courts as the school kids have live-in maids. Now, you tell me, class, which kids are best prepared to answer the question about "doubles tennis"? The 8-year-olds in Harlem who've never played a set of doubles or the kids whose mommies disappear for two hours every Wednesday with Enrique the tennis pro? Is this test a measure of "reading comprehension" -- or a measure of wealth accumulation? If you have any doubts about what the test is measuring, look at the next question, based on another part of the text, which reads (and I could not make this up): "Most young tennis stars learn the game from coaches at private clubs. In this sentence, a club is probably a "F baseball bat "G tennis racquet "H tennis court "J country club" Helpfully, for the kids in our 'hood, it explains that a "country club" is a, "place where people meet." Yes, but which people? President Bush told us, "By passing the No Child Left Behind Act, we are regularly testing every child and making sure they have better options when schools are not performing." But there are no "better options." In the delicious double-speak of class war, when the tests have winnowed out the chaff and kids stamped failed, No Child Left results in that child being left behind in the same grade to repeat the failure another year. I
can't say that Mr. Bush doesn't offer better options to the kids stamped failed. Under No Child Left, if enough kids flunk the tests, their school is marked a failure and its students win the right, under the law, to transfer to any successful school in their district. You can't provide moreopportunity than that. But they don't provide it, the law promises it, without a single penny to
make it happen. In New York in 2004, a third of a million students earned the right to transfer to better schools -- in which there were only 8,000 places open. New York is typical. Nationwide, only one out of two-hundred students eligible to transfer manage to do it. Well, there's always the Army. (That
option did not go unnoticed: No Child has a special provision requiring schools to open their doors to military recruiters.) Hint: When de-coding politicians' babble, to get to the real agenda, don't read their lips, read their budgets. And in his last budget, our President couldn't spare one thin dime for education, not ten cents. Mr. Big Spender provided for a derisory 8.4 cents on the dollar of the cost of primary and secondary schools. Congress appropriated a half penny of the nation's income -- just one-half of one-percent of America's
twelve trillion dollar GDP -- for primary and secondary education. President Bush actually requested less. While Congress succeeded in prying out an itty-bitty increase in voted funding, that doesn't mean the extra cash actually gets to the students. Fifteen states have sued the federal government on the
grounds that the cost of new testing imposed on schools, $3.9 billion, eats up the entire new funding budgeted for No Child Left. There are no "better options" for failing children, but there are better uses for them. The President ordered testing and more testing to hunt down, identify and target millions of children too expensive, too heavy a burden, to educate. No Child Left offers no options for those with the test-score Mark of Cain -- no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding. Rather, it is the new social Darwinism, educational eugenics: identify the nation's loser-class early on. Trap them then train them cheap.
Someone has to care for the privileged. No society can have winners without lots and lots of losers. And so we have No Child Left Behind -- to provide the new worker drones that will clean the toilets at the Yale Alumni Club, punch the cash registers color-coded for illiterates, and pamper the winner-class on the higher floors of the new economic order. Class war dismissed. **********

The Wacky No Child World

Bitter Lesson: A Good School Gets an 'F'
By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: January 11, 2006

In the right kind of world, Public School 48 in the South Bronx would be getting all kinds of awards. Though the school serves some of the city's poorest minority children (75 per cent Hispanic, 25 per cent black and all eligible for free lunches), P.S. 48's test scores have soared in the last few years. In 2005, 86 per cent of fourth graders scored proficient in math, and 68.5 per cent in English, placing P.S. 48 near the top of the Bronx's 130 elementary schools.

The principal, John Hughes, has mixed feelings about all the testing that goes on these days, but professionally, he has put that all aside. "The profit margin in this business is test scores," he said. "That's all they measure you by now."

In the No Child world, state and federal officials plug test results from schools that few of them have ever seen into a series of complex formulas. The calculations are so technical that it took city officials many hours over several weeks to finally pinpoint why P.S. 48 was labeled failing.

At one point, the city's top testing officials were not sure whether to use something called the Annual Measurable Objective or the Effective Annual Measurable Objective to calculate P.S. 48's score, and had to confer with state officials.

"If the number-crunchers don't understand," Mr. Hughes said, "how can a principal? And parents? It's crazy. "This federal law," Mr. Hughes added, "is wacky."

--------------------------------------------------------------
The No Child Left Behind world is wacky indeed.

If you'd like to thank Mike Winerip for pointing this out:
E-mail: edmike@nytimes.com

John Stossel on Education? Give Me A Break

Millions of Americans who tune in this Friday night to ABC's 20/20 will hear how public school is a union dominated monopoly and the only way to fix that is by injecting some good old competition into the system.

In this special report:
"Stupid In America: How We Are Cheating Our Kids" Friday, January 13 10-11 p.m., millions of Americans will be treated to a prime time hour of public school bashing. According to Stossel, competition is the key to once and for all ending this monopoly. By the time viewers are subjected to the horrifying stories of how unions protect child predators and the lousy teachers who are responsible for making their children stupid, Klein and Bloomberg's plan for privatization and more charter schools should be a slam dunk.

Here's a clip:

Some say another stumbling block is that the public school system is a union-dominated monopoly. In Stossel's hometown of New York City, a teacher who sent sexual e-mails to his 16-year-old student was not fired because the union's rigid contract makes it very hard to fire any teacher, even dangerous ones. Only after six years of expensive litigation were they finally able to fire him. Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City's chools, tells Stossel, "I mean we've had sex cases, acknowledged sex cases...you can't fire him." The teacher union has so many protections written into the contract to make sure principals don't fire unfairly, or play favorites, that principals rarely even try to jump through all these hoops to try to fire a bad teacher."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How about injecting some competition into the government controlled media so the American public can get some factual information on how the No Child Left Behind Act is damaging our children and our schools.