Global Warming Matters Most

If we do not address the climate emergency in ways that halt global warming, our grandchildren will inherit a world unfit for living. We have about a decade to choose a different course. If human civilization is to continue, there is no other choice. October 24, then, will be a very important day to commit, or recommit, to become knowledgeable about what can be done to save humanity. From Bill McKibben:

Dear friends,

For 20 years the world has managed to do very little about the greatest problem it's ever faced. In three days time, you can help change that--and if you step up you're going to have a lot of company!

It looks like the International Day of Climate Action this Saturday October 24th will be the single most widespread day of political action the planet has ever seen--we're closing in on 170 nations, and more than 4,000 rallies and events. There's something happening near you--if you're not sure what, this link will let you find out quickly and easily: wwww.350.org/map

People in all those cities and towns all around the world will be saying the same thing: science tells us that we can't have more than 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere if we want a planet like the one we were born onto. That sounds complicated, but it isn't--350 is the bottom line for the earth.

And since we can use our email tools to separate out our lists geographically, here's a message just for those of you in the U.S. It looks like this weekend is going to be even more important here: President Obama is scheduled to give a major climate speech on Friday, and the Senate is set to hold hearings on its global warming bill on Tuesday1. This will be one of the last best chances to make the support for much stronger efforts unmistakably loud and clear. Your efforts this weekend will be doing double duty--helping with the fight in Copenhagen and also on Capitol Hill.

Please take a moment to forward this along to everyone you know in your community and around the world, and ask them to find an event near them to take part in this important day: www.350.org/map.

Thanks for everything you do,

Bill McKibben for the 350.org Crew

1 Samuelsohn, Darren, "Obama to Give Senate Climate Bill Push with MIT Speech" http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/10/21/21climatewire-obama-to-give-senate-climate-bill-a-push-wit-53858.html

Gerald Bracey Will Be Missed

In an email yesterday, Stan Karp called him a national treasure. I agree.

Bracey, who apparently died in his sleep night before last, leaves an invaluable legacy of writing, consulting, and speaking on behalf of the educational truth and the value of public education. He could smell an education scam a mile away, and his informed exposure and comic lambasting of the propagandizers, hucksters, and snake oil salesmen of the education industry earned him the ire of public schools enemies, from Bush I in the early 90s to Eli Broad and Bill Gates today. His outpouring of books, articles, and blog posts over the years represents a body of work aimed at ferreting out education disinformation wherever it showed up, which, of course, was and is everywhere. Bracey applied his experience, training, and psychometric savvy with a combination of pungent wit and withering sarcasm to bring to heel the uninformed, the misinformed, and the outright liars within the education industry and the pandering corporate media.

Bracey's most recent book, Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality, represents the culmination of a 42-year career in education. A fitting tribute to Jerry Bracey would be for everyone concerned with schools today to buy and read the book--and then send it to your Congressman. I plan to use it in a class I am teaching in the Spring.

No individual is irreplaceable to a just cause--it will just take many individuals to make up for the loss of Gerald Bracey.

Below is the biographical sketch from Huffington Post, where Jerry posted some of his most recent finely-honed barbs:

Gerald W. Bracey is currently an associate of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, a fellow at the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University and a fellow at the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He maintains a website, the Education Disinformation Detection and Reporting Agency, dedicated to using the real-time power of the Net to debunk dis- and mis-information about public schools.

Bracey is a native of Williamsburg, Virginia and attended the College of William and Mary there before going on to obtain a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University. After serving as a Research Psychologist in the Early Childhood Education Research Group at Educational Testing Service, Bracey became the Associate Director of the Institute for Child Study at Indiana University in Bloomington.

In 1965 and 1966, Bracey lived for a year in Hong Kong and traveled widely in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe, then returned to finish his doctorate. After this experience of living abroad and traveling, he held a strong desire to travel without itinerary until the money ran out. In 1973, he resigned his post at Indiana University and traveled the world for four years. Returning to Virginia, he became the Director of Research, Evaluation and Testing for the Virginia Department of Education and, nine years later, moved on to a similar position with the Cherry Creek, Colorado, School District near Denver.

Since 1984, Bracey has authored monthly “Research” columns for Phi Delta Kappan, reporting educational and psychological research studies that are of interest and use to practitioners. This column garnered him the Interpretive Scholarship Award from the American Educational Research Association in 2003. In September, 2005, Bracey began a new “myth busting” column for Principal Leadership, a publication of the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

In 1991, a policy-oriented article, “Why Can’t They Be Like We Were?” drew the attention of the New York Times, Washington Post, Education Week, and USA Today, along with the wrath of the first Bush Administration. When Bracey submitted a follow-up in 1992, the editors renamed it “The Second Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education” and asked that it be an annual event. The Sixteenth Bracey Report appeared in the October, 2006 Phi Delta Kappan.

In 1994-95 Bracey was the first Distinguished Fellow for the Agency for Instructional Technology. His researches that year produced a 1995 book, Final Exam: A Study of the Perpetual Scrutiny of American Education. The book provides a century-long history of educational reform as well as histories of educational assessment, educational standards, and educational outcomes.

Bracey summarized most of his findings in a 1997 book, Setting the Record Straight: Responses to Misconceptions About Public Education in America. Published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the book debunks 20 common myths about American schools. Designed for practitioners, each chapter begins “What do I say when people say________?”, filling in the blank with a myth. Each chapter then provides the data needed to refute the myth. In 2004, Bracey revised and updated the book, now published by Heinemann. Heinemann also published his 2003 collection of essays, On the Death of Childhood and the Destruction of Public Schools: The Folly of Today’s Education Policies.

A booklet, “Understanding Education Statistics: It's Easier (And More Important) Than You Think” was published in early 1997 by Educational Research Service and a revised edition appeared in 2003. Phi Delta Kappa published a companion book Put to the Test: An Educator’s and Consumer’s Guide to Standardized Testing 1998 with a revised edition in 2002. Another book, Bail Me Out! Handling Difficult Data and Tough Questions About Public Schools was published in April 2000. He has expanded materials in these three publications and addition more material in a book to make people smarter consumers of statistics. His latest book is Reading Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered. The book was published February, 2006 by Heinemann.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey

Headline: Memphis City Schools line up merit-pay PR worth $1.4 million

This is the kind of headline that you read twice, and then check to make sure it's not April Fools Day. The Memphis superintendent lined up philanthropic funding (not all of it accounted for - only one donor is named, and Mr. Gates has shown his willingness to dip into his own pocket to push his preferred reforms) to push merit-pay. Memphis, of course, is one of the districts Billionaire Bill is targeting with $500 million in funding for merit-pay, only one part of the philanthrocapitalists attempt to radically alter the teaching profession along the lines of market-based logic and anti-union policies. The bigger the PR budget, the bigger the mound of bulls**t - and, in this case, Mr. Gates is shoveling up an elephant-sized pie. Superintendent Cash (oh, such an appropriate name!) is hoping the PR blitz will make the teachers - and the general public - believe the dung they're being served is decadent chocolate. Disgusting.

From the Commercial Appeal:

Memphis City Schools line up merit-pay PR worth $1.4 million

Donors kick in as MCS eyes Gates

By Jane Roberts

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Memphis City Schools has signed short-term contracts worth $1.4 million with several consultants, including a local public relations agency, as the district moves toward merit pay for teachers and getting rid of those who miss the mark.

Supt. Kriner Cash quickly raised the capital from donors, including the Hyde Family Foundations, so work could begin Oct. 1.

The PR firm CS, on Union Avenue, got a $152,000 contract through June 30. The agency's main job will be communicating with teachers, making sure the district's message is clear and consistent, potentially warding off union strife.

The contracts are a prelude to a seven-year teacher improvement plan the district hopes to accomplish with nearly $100 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates will announce the winners of its national grants in early November. Memphis is one of five finalists.

Cash does not want to wait, saying Tuesday that "a lull in work like this can become the devil's playground.

"We have said we are going to go forward on this whether we receive the funding from the Gates Foundation or not."

The "bridge agreements" the board approved Monday also include $542,000 to The New Teacher Project to start recruiting teachers this fall, and a $720,000, 90-day contract with The Parthenon Group, a Gates-sanctioned consultant the district chose to help it flesh out strategy for winning the Gates prize.

Parthenon, in Boston, will now help Cash with administration details, including meeting early "milestone" goals, such as turning teacher recruitment over to The New Teacher Project and instituting performance-based bonuses for high-quality new teachers who pledge to stay four years.

"The exciting thing is this is not about the Gates money. The district has committed to raising student achievement," said Victoria Van Cleef, executive director of The New Teacher Project in Memphis.

"As their partner in raising student achievement, we're really going to help them ratchet up on the candidates principals get to look at," Van Cleef said.

"They will have much better data on new hires, equipping them to be selective, They will know they don't have to take whoever walks in the door because they will have five to seven candidates for every opening."

The most important piece is the communications contract, said Cato Johnson, senior vice president at Methodist Healthcare and an expert in local education issues.

"Your teachers are your frontline. This is a very important step for the board to hire a consultant and go forward. I would commend them and the staff for their foresight in hiring outside talent."

If Memphis receives the Gates money, the district will eventually outsource all teacher recruiting and staffing to TNTP, paying it $2.8 million a year, according to its 60-page Gates proposal.

By increasing the pool of applicants for every opening, Cash hopes to make better hires, reducing the 40 percent of new teachers who leave the district within three years.

"We lose so many new teachers," he said, "and we're really not clear why. We don't do exit interviews."

Overall, the seven-year improvement strategy will cost $155.9 million, including $99.6 million the district hopes to get from Gates.

The rest, including these donations, are part of $56.3 million the district will contribute itself and raise in the community.

Anna Eastman, Charter Schools and Age Discrimination

From Houston teacher Jesse Alred:

When a candidate runnning for office receives financial and tactical support from an interest group, it is certainly fair to ask them how they feel about standard practices of that group.

The same people who fund expansion of the KIPP and YES PREP charter schools are backing the school board candidacy of Anna Eastman in Houston's northside district 1 .

The evidence suggests charter schools favor hiring young, inexperience teachers, rather than career teachers. The average Texas charter-school teacher has less than five years of experience. The average teacher in these schools remain there for less than three years. KIPP's Mike Feinberg reportedly prefers hiring twenty-one year olds from an organization called Teach for America (TFA).

I tried an experiment two years ago. I applied for several KIPP jobs to see how I would be recieved. I was 46 years old then, had 13 years of experience, and had earned a Master's degree in History.

Moreover, I had 28 students in a working-class, Hispanic neighborhood pass Advanced Placement exams. Another year, I had 24 students pass, and in another, 16. Since KIPP and Yes pride themselves on serving mainly Hispanic working-class youth, I thought I would be a prime candidate at least to get an interview.

I did not get an interview, a call back or an e-mail. By contrast, two of the twenty-one year old Teach for America trainees I taught with during this past summer already had jobs with either the KIPP or Yes Prep schools.

As a liberal Democrat who participated in the Obama campaign, Ms. Eastman should speak up on the issue of ageism and discrimination which may be practiced overtly or covertly by these charter schools.

Alliance for College Ready Public Schools to Expand in LAUSD

Check out today's LAUSD board agenda, which includes (from what I can tell) the potential authorization of eight charter schools run by the Alliance for College Ready Public Schools, a Broad/Walton/NSVF-backed group (Broad gave at least $6.5M). The Alliance is one of the lesser-known charter schools backing the Parent Revolution. Be sure to check out the list of donors, particularly the "individual" donors, which includes:

Dan Katzir - managing director of the Broad Foundation

Ted Mitchell - NSVF CEO (with a $500,000 salary) and president of the California State Board of Education

Caprice Young - former LAUSD board member, worked for California Charter School Association, now works for KC Distance Learning (owned by Mike Milkens' Knowledge Universe). She was also listed as a DfER board member until I alerted Mr. Joe Williams of her position in the for-profit realm. Her name no longer appears on their website.

Kenneth Starr - the ex investigator and homophobic defender of Proposition 8

Why Anna Eastman should not receive your vote in the Houston School Board election

The following commentary comes from Jesse Alred, a Houston teacher and reporter:

The Houston Chronicle on Monday endorsed Anna Eastman's candidacy for the HISD school board in district 1. The editorial board, which includes some individuals who live in the same affluent corner of that district where Eastman resides, endorsed one of their own, but not the best most experienced and represenative candidate--Alma Lara.

Here are some reasons this was a frivolous and biased endorsement.

Anna Eastman's policy proposals are not concrete and don't get us from where we are to where we need to go.

Her website lists three goals—these are goals we all share: make schools better, reduce the drop out rate and increase college readiness. But she does not list one way to advance HISD toward that goal. “All our kids,” she writes, “should be exiting fifth grade at commendable levels.” Who could disagree? Why didn't we think of that?

On the drop out issue, she suggests, by working together, “we can create real communities that identify social and emotional needs, foster healthy relationships and support the whole child.” That is a whole lot of social engineering for a school district that cannot ensure all its students can read at a sixth-grade level. When she says this, Ms. Eastman is saying nothing.

Ms. Eastman correctly identifies the low quality and nutritional value of HISD cafeteria food as a problem, but does not make a specific commitment to any program or additional local spending on school lunches to provide better food for kids. Ideals are one thing--getting there is harder because every good proposal will cost something and elicit opposition.

Anna Eastman says the sorts of things all politicians say, which indicates what sort of board member she will make.

“HISD has made great strides in achieving minimum standards," her website says, "a 50% increase in academically recognized and exemplary schools over the past three years.”

If I know, then she certainly knows, that many of these schools increased their rankings only because the Texas Education Agency changed the ratings system, last year counting many students as passing TAKS who did not actually pass.

It is just easier to say these positive things than deal with underlying realities when you are running for office, but it is misleading also. This perhaps indicates what sort of board member Ms. Eastman would become.

Anna Eastman's candidacy obstructs a better candidate.

Before Natasha Kamrani announced she would not seek reelection, Ms. Alma Lara declared her candidacy. Ms. Lara grew up in her district, attended its schools, was a teacher there, and then ran schools for a decade. Ms. Lara grew up in humble circumstances like our students. She understands their situation in a holistic way. She is Hispanic like over eighty percent of the students in the district.

Ms. Lara has concrete proposals to meet the needs of students our schools are failing: quality vocational programs in conjunction with HCC, apprenticeship programs in the trades, restoring reading classes in the middle schools and establishing a strategy to fight drop outs that can be monitored on a monthly basis.

By contrast, Ms. Eastman expresses ideals and goals, not specific ways to improve schools in a district that loses about one-half its kids and where only a small portion of the other one-half graduate either college or career ready.

Since Ms. Eastman and Ms. Lara are both Democrats, and Ms. Lara entered this race first, and has thirty years experience, why does Ms. Eastman think she is the better candidate?

What special qualities does Ms. Eastman have making it worth the risk of splitting the Democratic vote so Republican Linda Toyota could win in this progressive school-board district?

The only way Ms. Eastman should defeat Ms. Lara is if there is some sort of affirmative action program for young affluent parents who cannot stop congratulating themselves on sending their kids to public schools.

Anna Eastman represents not the parents and schools in her district, but a small clique who are sponsoring charter school expansion.

Natasha Kamarani, wife of YES Prep charter school founder, Chris Barbic, is Ms. Eastman's leading supporter—that is fairly well known.

The largest donor to her campaign is William Perkins. Mr. Perkins is a consultant for John Arnold, a billionaire energy trader and prominent funder of KIPP and Yes charter school expansion. Mr. Arnold originally built his fortune as a trader for Enron.

Its one thing to support charter schools; its another thing doing that from a leadership position in the district that is competing with the charters; and its another thing not to be upfront about your true agenda.

Ms. Eastman claims to be a free-thinker, an outsider not linked to any special interest group, but her campaign is largely beholden to people who sponsor private charter schools.

Ms. Perkins is also the largest contributor to the west-side school board campaign of Mike Lunceford. Another major Lunceford donor is Tony Annunziato, a KIPP expansion funder to the tune of $2 million. Winning both seats would give a small, unrepresentative and private group a lot of influence on the school board. KIPP's former treasurer Harvin Moore IV already holds one HISD board seat.

HISD needs leaders who will seek genuinely to improve neighborhood and magnet schools, not a Trojan Horse for charter schools. The charter schools can take care of themselves without this public sector version of insider trading.

Green Dot

Notice Green Dot's Chief Academic Officer says: "In no way have we cracked the code," which runs contrary to what Secretary Duncan allegedly told Steve Barr at an earlier meeting.

$1.2 million on security - which must be considered part of the 94% of tax dollars allegedly making it's way to the classroom (err, security compound?), or at least so claims their CAO (check the 2:33 mark).

Gates Funds Attitude Adjustment for Young Teachers

The Gates Foundation will be funding teacher development in Pittsburgh, a $6.5 million investment in an attitude adjustment for rookies expecting miracles and smooth sailing in their first year. First year teachers certainly deserve support, but to suggest that changing the "mindset" is a major part of the educational solution for minority children stuck in America's urban ghettoes is not only fallacious, but it's bound to lead to the burnout and dissatisfaction revealed in a study released today (also funded by Gates). But this change in mindset is the kind of stuff gobbled up by edu-idiots like Tom Vander Ark (yet another former Gates official), so-called educators believing "no excuses" pedagogical approaches, positive psychology, and higher standards are all our children need to succeed; forget poverty, forget the violence permeating and celebrated in American culture (and tacitly supported by the likes of Rev. Al Sharpton, who appeared on WWE to push his EEP agenda, just days after the brutal killing of Derrion Albert), forget about the lack of funding in public education, forget about the testing industry's stranglehold on curricula; those are problems Washington is unwilling to address, even with a black man in office. Those young teachers don't need small class sizes, high-intensity teacher preparation programs (instead of 5 week crash courses in educational maltreatment), nor cooperative learning environments: it's merit-pay, a mindset adjustment, and plenty of test prep. From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Pittsburgh Public Schools to train 1st-year teachers in new 'academy'

By Daveen Rae Kurutz
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, October 19, 2009

Even after an internship at Pittsburgh Fulton Academy, Merri Luna was nervous when she first stepped into a kindergarten classroom 12 years ago.

As a just-graduated teacher, Luna said she could have used more guidance during her first year on the job.

"I was definitely nervous and afraid," said Luna, who teaches third grade at Pittsburgh Lincoln. "I ended up really enjoying it. But walking in the door, it was a whole different experience."

Next fall, Pittsburgh Public Schools officials plan to open a program tentatively named The Academy for first-year teachers, akin to a residency program for doctors. A grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will pay the $6.5 million yearly cost for at least the first several years.

The program, part of an effort to increase teacher effectiveness, is expected to train about 100 teachers each year for the district, said John Tarka, president of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers.

"It is peculiar that you would take students right out of education school and plant them down in a classroom — 'Here's a classroom, here's your students, go at it,'" said Superintendent Mark Roosevelt. "They'll spend a period of time learning their craft in our district."

The district tried a similar initiative in the 1980s. New teachers could work with experienced teachers at three centers, learning classroom skills and about child development, but it folded because of lack of money.

Teachers at The Academy will learn classroom management, content and mindset, Tarka said. They will be assigned to an instructor who will oversee their classroom work and offer advice.

"A lot of teachers realize that it's not what they thought it would be, once they get into the classroom," Tarka said. "We want them to recognize how very important preparation is and that we're teaching a student body that is very diverse."

Students in urban settings often have needs different from those in suburban and rural schools, Roosevelt said.

"We need to do a far better job identifying what the belief system and mindsets of our teachers should be," Roosevelt said. "It's about looking at your classroom and believing ... that every one of these children can reach the standards."

Positive Psychology, Green Dot, and Barbara Ehrenreich

Last week, Barbara Ehrenreich appear on Democracy Now! to discuss her new book, Bright Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.  The positive psychology movement, spearheaded by Martin Seligman and massive funding from the Templeton Foundation, is also favored by "no excuses" education reformers and fast-track teacher preparation programs claiming "all children will succeed" (with both camps fully supported by corporate hucksters and hedge fund managers).  Here is a ten minute segment of Barbara's interview:

The inspirational speakers Barbara refers to are not limited to the corporate world; they're also interested in the (potentially) lucrative field of education.  The NED Show, which supposedly teaches kids to be champions, is a prime example of the positive psychology profit machine in action.  Check out their video here, and their pricing section here (even the free show requires the school to sell NED yo-yos for five days).
Students in California - including those at Green Dot (he's on their Preferred Vendors list - might be lucky enough to see Jerome Carter at their school.  Jerome is the creator of Inspiration 52.  Mr. Carter offers "the pledge," which reads as follows:

I will recognize and live like I know and believe

That I am gifted, talented, and unique beyond anything I can imagine

As a result, I must be accountable to those in authority

And take full responsibility for my actions

I will always work hard, because this is how my dreams will come true

I understand that my choices will determine my ultimate destiny in life

I understand that I can persevere through pain and tough situations

I will make a sincere effort to get along with others because I recognize no one succeeds alone

I will learn from my mistakes and participate in events that will move me forward in life

I am a leader

I am Inspiration 52

And a full video of "the pledge:"

Of course, the very same children that are "gifted, talented, and unique" are provided a standards-based education with a rigid focus on standardized testing, which, of course, negates the whole uniqueness idea (not to mention nullifying talent, unless we're talking about the ability to use a #2 pencil to fill in a bubble).
You can see another video of the program in action.  You can see the lives of these young people "changed right before your eyes":

[The program deserves a half ounce of credit for actually encouraging students to write about their own lives, but that can be done by any teacher willing to break away from the prepackaged curricula and top-down reforms favored by education reformers.]

Maine State Rep. Challenges Merit-Pay

As President Obama, Secretary Duncan, and the philanthro-capitalists continue pushing education reforms based on standardized test scores, segregated charters, and the "no excuses" rhetoric capable of bring Newt Gingrich and the bought-off Rev. Sharpton together, teachers are left with a Democratic party that has moved - nay, sprinted - to the Right (or "center" if you buy into the right-leaning rhetoric of the corporatized media) while embracing all of the aforementioned reform proposals, which, incidentally, look an awful lot like Bush-era policies. The Democrats have failed us in multiple areas - healthcare, regulating Wall Street, tax cuts for the wealthy, the lack of environmental action, Afghanistan and Iraq, and, of course, education - but there are still a few level-headed apples amongst them.

Take Maine Representative Brian Bolduc (too bad he's not working at the federal level). Back in April, Mr. Bolduc - a certified high school social studies teacher - proposed a bill that would ban merit-pay based on test scores. The bill, sadly, was declared dead after a bit of debate, but Mr. Bolduc deserves credit for presenting a level-headed critique of why merit-pay is entirely inappropriate for the teaching profession. We need more Democrats like this guy; unfortunately, he's exactly the kind vilified by NY Times journalist Nicholas Kristof in today's paper for not adopting the market-based policies preferred by Duncan, Gates, and Broad.

Eli, in case you missed it, funded six pro-merit-pay policy papers in 2008, all conducted by the State Policy Network, a free-market think tank full of rabid anti-public school nutjobs and privatizers. Mr. Bolduc ran up against these Broad-funded market fundamentalists, the Maine Heritage Policy Center, which lobbied strongly against the level-headed proposal against merit-pay.

Send Mr. Bolduc an e-mail (address available here), offer him your support, and congratulate him on presenting one of the few good pieces of education legislation.