Stop the Corporate Closure of 11 Boston Public Schools: We Can Do This

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Be at English High 5 pm Wednesday December 14, 144 McBride Street.  Let your voices be heard to stop this stealth takeover by the corporate foundations.  Let's do this!

Founding Leaders of the Status Quo Call for No Labels, Just Dollar $igns

Originally inspired by Lee Atwater's brain-rotting politics of personal destruction, the corporate swindlers of the Business Roundtable in the late 80s created a bipartisan network of political prostitutes, leeches, think tankers, and yes men who would use their influence to advance the bare-knuckled and relentless attack by the BR and the Chamber on public institutions, an ongoing attack that is fueled by a divisive and corrosive rhetoric that labels, slanders, intimidates, and destroys. Pols of both parties have been bought in this effort over the past 15 years, and for long time it seemed that the corporate socialists would prevail with ease.  They still might.

What these greed merchants and social antiquarians couldn't count on, however, is the overreaching and overarching greed that resulted in the Heist of the Century by the Wall Street banksters who just couldn't get enough of a good thing.  The fallout has hurt the Billionaire Boys Club, those arrogant pricksters of white privilege who thought they could privatize the nation in a cakewalk.  In what may turn out to be the Chernobyl for the education corporatists, however, occurred in D. C. when the arrogant, gentrifying mayor and his vicious anti-democratic Chancellor of Schools went down in defeat. Big time.  This could have a cascading effect for the whole privatization house of cards.

Those of us who still believe in a democratic republic have noted the crack the Oligarchs' armor, and activists are coming of the woodwork to challenge what seemed until recently like slam dunk policies by the disaster capitalists whose scams and schemes become more transparently self-serving and guided by laughable rationales that expose their militant ignorance on education issues. The whole RTTT agenda could fold overnight, and they know it.

So now as the democratic republicans among us start to make headway against the hammering 24-7 propaganda machine of the corporate socialists, suddenly there is interest among purple-tied oligarchs like Bloomberg to tone it down.  His recent nail-biter and public humiliation that resulted from an attempt to appoint his drinking buddy, Kathie Black, to run a school system with over a million kids, has Bloomberg calling for more measured argument, more listening to others, more respect in our discourse.

I say bullshit, Prince Bloomberg: if your steamroller was not out of gas, you would not be interested in a more civil discourse.  You would be continuing to crush the bodies who try to block you.  Indeed, if the voters in NYC and DC and Detroit and Chicago were not fed up with the corporate crony fascism that you represent, you and your covey of thin-lipped Brit advisors would not be sending the whining David Brooks to the microphone to call for a new movement of No Labels politics.

Here's the deal I'll make with you, Prince Bloomberg.  The moment you invite Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Bill Moyers, and Samantha Power to even out your neoliberal and neocon committee for the protectors of the status quo, then we can begin to talk about lowing the volume and cooling our jets.  Until then, let me say, no disrespect intended, Go Cheney Yourself!

From the No Labels website:

The individuals involved in No Labels are a highly patriotic and passionate group from both sides of the aisle [of the corporate jet] who care deeply about the future of this country.  They, like you, understand the urgent need to create a new voice for the majority of Americans who go unheard in our current political system. They are citizen leaders who bring their expertise and time as volunteers to this movement.

Dave Morin

Dave Morin is an Internet entrepreneur and angel investor from San Francisco. Currently, he is the Co-Founder and CEO of Path. Previously, he was co-inventor of Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect.

Dave Walker

Dave Walker has over 30-years of public, private and not-for-profit sector leadership experience. He has received three Presidential appointments with unanimous Senate confirmation from President's of both major parties, including his most recent as Comptroller General of the United States (1998-2008).

David Frum

David Frum is editor of the conservative political website, FrumForum.com. In 2001-2002, Frum was a special assistant and economic speechwriter to President George W. Bush. He served as a senior adviser to the Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign in 2008. Frum is a regular commentator on American Public Media's "Marketplace," and writes columns for CNN.com, THE WEEK, and Canada's National Post. He is the author of six books, including most recently "COMEBACK: Conservatism That Can Win Again."

Holly Page

Holly Page is a third party and strategic development expert with extensive experience and proven successes in helping organizations and individuals advance their goals through innovative and effective ideas and alliances. Ms. Page brings to her clients direct experience in working with the nation's leading third party organizations and centrist Democrats, having spent 13 years at the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the last 5 of which she was the Executive Vice President.

John Avlon

John Avlon is a CNN contributor and the senior political columnist for The Daily Beast. He is the author of "Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics" and "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America."

John Veroneau

John Veroneau practices international trade law at Covington & Burling LLC. His bipartisan credentials include serving as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative under President Bush and as an Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Clinton.

Jonathan Cowan

Jonathan Cowan is President and co-founder of Third Way, a leading moderate think-tank. With over 15 years experience at senior levels of politics and government, Mr. Cowan served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as well as Senior Advisor to the HUD Secretary; he was the co-founder and President of Americans for Gun Safety and in 1992, co-founded Lead…or Leave, which became the nation’s leading Generation X advocacy group.

Kiki McLean

Kiki McLean is a Partner and Managing Director of Porter Novelli‘s Washington DC office, as well as head of the agency’s global public affairs efforts. Throughout her career, Kiki has focused on communications and politics of public policy in such positions as Senior Advisor to the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign, national press secretary and spokesperson to Vice President Al Gore’s presidential campaign, and Communications Director of the Democratic National Committee.

Lisa Borders

Lisa Borders is President of the Grady Health Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Grady Health System, the only Level I Trauma Center within 100 miles of metro-Atlanta. She is leading the Greater Grady capital campaign – a 5 year, $325M effort - and guiding the system’s fund-raising efforts during the most important period of Grady’s history. Formerly, Lisa Borders served as President of the Atlanta City Council – elected citywide in a special election - from August 2004 – January, 2010. She also served as Co-Chair of the Transition Team for Atlanta Mayor M. Kasim Reed.

Mark McKinnon

Mark McKinnon has been helping solve complex strategic challenges for causes, companies and candidates, including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain, Governor Ann Richards, Congressman “Good Time” Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong and Bono. McKinnon has helped engineer five winning presidential primary and general elections.

Nancy Jacobson

Nancy Jacobson has worked in as a strategic advisor, fundraiser and relationship/network cultivator for Gary Hart, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Evan Bayh. She ran the finance operation for President Clinton’s Inaugural Committee and was appointed the Finance Director of the Democratic National Committee in 1993. For the past 15 years, she was a senior advisor to the Democratic Leadership Council, Finance Chair for Senator Evan Bayh, and helped to found Third Way, a centrist think tank committed to providing the best ideas to policy makers.

Nate Garvis

Nate Garvis is President of Naked Civics, LLC, an innovative public affairs consultancy focusing on Interaction and Influence Design. In a networked world that cannot be controlled, Naked Civics produces reputation capital for clients by connecting them to the most important ideas, people and institutions in their communities of interest.

William A. Galston

William A. Galston is Ezra Zilkha Chair and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. The author of numerous books and articles on political philosophy, public policy, and American politics, Galston also served as Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy, 1993-1995.

On the Growing Use of Corporate Test Scoring Sweatshops

In April 2006 I posted on the use of Kelly Girls in Florida to score FCAT.  Since then the scoring industry has worked to perfect the cheap, production-line model for scoring the hundreds of millions of tests that are making Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Kaplan, and other bottom feeders deliriously wealthy corporate bodies.  Here is a recent piece that appeared in the Monthly Review, a must read called "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Test Scorer," with apologies to Alan Sillitoe:

by Dan Dimaggio

Standardized testing has become central to education policy in the United States. After dramatically expanding in the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act, testing has been further enshrined by the Obama administration’s $3.4 billion “Race to the Top” grants. Given the ongoing debate over these policies, it might be useful to hear about the experiences of a hidden sector of the education workforce: those of us who make our living scoring these tests. Our viewpoint is instructive, as it reveals the many contradictions and absurdities built into a test-scoring system run by for-profit companies and beholden to school administrators and government officials with a stake in producing inflated numbers. Our experiences also provide insight into how the testing mania is stunting the development of millions of young minds.

I recently spent four months working for two test-scoring companies, scoring tens of thousands of papers, while routinely clocking up to seventy hours a week. This was my third straight year doing this job. While the reality of life as a test scorer has recently been chronicled by Todd Farley in his book Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry, a scathing insider’s account of his fourteen years in the industry, I want to tell my story to affirm that Farley’s indictment is rooted in experiences common throughout the test-scoring world.1

“Wait, someone scores standardized tests? I thought those were all done by machines.” This is usually the first response I get when I tell people I’ve been eking out a living as a test-scoring temp. The companies responsible for scoring standardized tests have not yet figured out a way to electronically process the varied handwriting and creative flourishes of millions of third to twelfth graders. Nor, to my knowledge, have they begun to outsource this work to India. Instead, every year, the written-response portions of innumerable standardized tests given across the country are scored by human beings—tens of thousands of us, a veritable army of temporary workers.

I often wonder who students (or teachers and parents, for that matter) picture scoring their papers. When I was a student, I envisioned my tests being graded by qualified teachers in another part of the country, who taught the grade level and subject corresponding to the tests. This idea, it turns out, is as much a fantasy as imagining all the tests are being scored by machines.

Test scoring is a huge business, dominated by a few multinational corporations, which arrange the work in order to extract maximum profit. I was shocked when I found out that Pearson, the first company I worked for, also owned the Financial Times, The Economist, Penguin Books, and leading textbook publisher Prentice Hall. The CEO of Pearson, Marjorie Scardino, ranked seventeenth on theForbes list of the one hundred most powerful women in the world in 2007.

Test-scoring companies make their money by hiring a temporary workforce each spring, people willing to work for low wages (generally $11 to $13 an hour), no benefits, and no hope of long-term employment—not exactly the most attractive conditions for trained and licensed educators. So all it takes to become a test scorer is a bachelor’s degree, a lack of a steady job, and a willingness to throw independent thinking out the window and follow the absurd and ever-changing guidelines set by the test-scoring companies. Some of us scorers are retired teachers, but most are former office workers, former security guards, or former holders of any of the diverse array of jobs previously done by the currently unemployed. When I began working in test scoring three years ago, my first “team leader” was qualified to supervise, not because of his credentials in the field of education, but because he had been a low-level manager at a local Target.

In the test-scoring centers in which I have worked, located in downtown St. Paul and a Minneapolis suburb, the workforce has been overwhelmingly white—upwards of 90 percent. Meanwhile, in many of the school districts for which these scores matter the most—where officials will determine whether schools will be shut down, or kids will be held back, or teachers fired—the vast majority are students of color. As of 2005, 80 percent of students in the nation’s twenty largest school districts were youth of color. The idea that these cultural barriers do not matter, since we are supposed to be grading all students by the same standard, seems far-fetched, to say the least. Perhaps it would be better to outsource the jobs to India, where the cultural gap might, in some ways, be smaller.

Many test scorers have been doing this job for years—sometimes a decade or more. Yet these are the ultimate in temporary, seasonal jobs. The Human Resources people who interview and hire you are temps, as are most of the supervisors. In one test-scoring center, even the office space and computers were leased temporarily. Whenever I complained about these things, some coworker would inevitably say, “Hey, it beats working at Subway or McDonald’s.”

True, but does it inspire confidence to know that, for the people scoring the tests at the center of this nation’s education policy, the alternative is working in fast food? Or to know that, because of our low wages and lack of benefits, many test scorers have to work two jobs—delivering newspapers in the morning, hustling off to cashier or waitress at night, or, if you’re me (and plenty of others like me) heading home to start a second shift of test scoring for another company?

Company communications with test-scoring employees often feel like they have been lifted from a Kafka novel. Scorers working from home almost never talk to an actual human being. Pearson sends all its communications to home scorers via e-mail, now supplemented by automated phone calls telling you to check your inbox. After the start of a project, even these e-mails cease, and scorers are forced to check the project homepage on their own initiative to find out any important changes. Remarkably, for a company entrusted with assessing students’ educational performance, messages from Pearson contain a disturbing number of misspellings, incorrect dates, typos, and missing information. Pearson’s online video orientation, for example, warns scorers that they may face “civil lawshits” from sexual harassment. Error-free communications are rare. I was considering whether this was a fair assessment, when I received a message from Pearson with the subject “Pearson Fall 2010.” The link in the e-mail took me to a survey to find out my availability—for the spring of 2011.

Communications at scoring centers are hardly better. For example, test-scoring jobs never have a guaranteed end date. If you ask a supervisor when a job is going to be completed, you will get a puzzling response that “we don’t know how many papers are in the system, so we can’t say when we’ll be done.” This response persists, even though it’s pretty easy to calculate how many fifth-graders there are in Pennsylvania and how long it will take to grade their papers, given our scoring rate. If we are lucky, we get twenty-four-hours notice before being told that a project is about to end and we should seek other work. Two hours notice is more common. In general, scorers are given no information beyond what is absolutely necessary to do the job.

What is the work itself like? In test-scoring centers, dozens of scorers sit in rows, staring at computer screens where students’ papers appear (after the papers have undergone some mysterious scanning process). I imagine that most students think their papers are being graded as if they are the most important thing in the world. Yet every day, each scorer is expected to read hundreds of papers. So for all the months of preparation and the dozens of hours of class time spent writing practice essays, a student’s writing probably will be processed and scored in about a minute.

Scoring is particularly rushed when scorers are paid by piece-rate, as is the case when you are scoring from home, where a growing part of the industry’s work is done. At 30 to 70 cents per paper, depending on the test, the incentive, especially for a home worker, is to score as quickly as possible in order to earn any money: at 30 cents per paper, you have to score forty papers an hour to make $12 an hour, and test scoring requires a lot of mental breaks. Presumably, the score-from-home model is more profitable for testing companies than setting up an office, especially since it avoids the prospect of overtime pay, the bane of existence for companies operating on tight deadlines. But overtime pay is a gift from heaven for impoverished test scorers; on one project, I worked in an office for twenty-three days straight, including numerous nine-hour days operating on four to five hours sleep—such was my excitement about overtime.

Yet scoring from home also brings with it an entirely new level of alienation. You may work on a month-long project without ever speaking to another human being, never mind seeing the children who actually wrote the papers. If you do speak to another person, it’s at your own expense, since calling the supervisors at the test-scoring center takes time, and might cut into the precious moments you spend scoring (especially when you have to wait fifteen minutes for someone to answer, as happens routinely on some projects).

The piece-rate system also leads to some sinister math; I have often wondered how much money I lose for every trip to the bathroom, and debated taking my laptop there with me. And since you are only guaranteed employment until the papers run out, you are in a race against all your phantom coworkers to score as many papers as you can, as fast as possible. This cannot be good for quality, but as long as the statistics match up and the project finishes on time, the companies are happy. I did receive some automated warnings from Pearson that I was scoring too fast, while simultaneously receiving messages on the Pearson website to the effect that, “We’re way behind! Log in as many hours as you can and score as much as possible!”

No matter at what pace scorers work, however, tests are not always scored with the utmost attentiveness. The work is mind numbing, so scorers have to invent ways to entertain themselves. The most common method seems to be staring blankly at the wall or into space for minutes at a time. But at work this year, I discovered that no one would notice if I just read news articles while scoring tests. So every night, while scoring from home, I would surf the Internet and cut and paste loads of articles—reports on Indian Maoists, scientific speculation on whether animals can be gay, critiques of standardized testing—into what typically came to be an eighty-page, single-spaced Word document. Then I would print it out and read it the next day while I was working at the scoring center. This was the only way to avoid going insane. I still managed to score at the average rate for the room and perform according to “quality” standards. While scoring from home, I routinely carry on three or four intense conversations on Gchat. This is the reality of test scoring.

There is a common fantasy that test scorers have some control over the grades they are giving. I laugh whenever someone tells me, “Make sure you go easy and give the kids good grades!” We are entirely beholden to and constrained by the standards set by the states and (supposedly) enforced by the test-scoring companies. To ensure that test scorers are administering the “correct” score, we receive several hours of training per test, and are monitored through varying quality control measures, such as random “validity” papers that are pre-scored and that we must score correctly. This all seems logical and necessary to ensure impartiality—these are, after all, “standardized” tests. Unfortunately, after scoring tests for at least five states over the past three years, the only truly standardized elements I have found are a mystifying training process, supervisors who are often more confused than the scorers themselves, and a pervasive inability of these tests to foster creativity and competent writing.

Scorers often emerge from training more confused than when they started. Usually, within a day or two, when the scores we are giving are inevitably too low (as we attempt to follow the standards laid out in training), we are told to start giving higher scores, or, in the enigmatic language of scoring directors, to “learn to see more papers as a 4.” For some mysterious reason, unbeknownst to test scorers, the scores we are giving are supposed to closely match those given in previous years. So if 40 percent of papers received 3s the previous year (on a scale of 1 to 6), then a similar percentage should receive 3s this year. Lest you think this is an isolated experience, Farley cites similar stories from his fourteen-year test-scoring career in his book, reporting instances where project managers announced that scoring would have to be changed because “our numbers don’t match up with what the psychometricians [the stats people] predicted.” Farley reports the disbelief of one employee that the stats people “know what the scores will be without reading the essays.”2

I also question how these scores can possibly measure whether students or schools are improving. Are we just trying to match the scores from last year, or are we part of an elaborate game of “juking the stats,” as it’s called on HBO’s The Wire, when agents alter statistics to please superiors? For these companies, the ultimate goal is to present acceptable numbers to the state education departments as quickly as possible, beating their deadlines (there are, we are told, $1 million fines if they miss a deadline). Proving their reliability so they will continue to get more contracts.

As Farley writes, “Too often in my career the test results we returned had to be viewed not as exemplars of educational progress, but rather as numbers produced in a mad rush to get things done, statistics best viewed solely through the prism of profit.”3 It seems to me that what the companies would tell us, if they were honest, would be something like, “Hey guys, your scoring doesn’t really matter. We just want to give the same scores as last year, so that there’s no controversy with the state and we get more contracts and make more profits—so no matter what you learned in training, just try to forget it.” States and local governments, meanwhile, play their own version of this game, because it looks good for them when politicians can claim that test scores are going up. Witness the recent controversy in New York City, where the percentage of students passing the math exam rose from 57 percent in 2006 to 82 percent in 2009, before plummeting back down to 54 percent in 2010 (along with a 43 percent passing rate in English) after the standards were reviewed.4

As test scorers, we never know what the numbers we are assigning to papers mean, or where we fit in this elaborate game. We are only responsible for assigning one score, on one small part of a test, and we do not even know whether the score we assign is passing or failing—that information is never divulged in training. We never hear how the students fared. Whether Marissa will be prevented from going to seventh grade with her friends because one of us, before our first cup of coffee kicked in, decided that her paper was “a little more like a 3 than a 4,” we will never know. Whether Marissa’s school will be closed or her teachers fired (to be reborn as test scorers next spring?) remain mysteries to the test scorers. And yet these scores can be of life-and-death importance, as seen in the recent suicide of beloved Los Angeles middle school teacher Rigoberto Ruelas, Jr. Upon learning that he ranked as “less effective” on the LA Times teacher performance rating scale—based solely on test scores—Ruelas took his own life.5

Even if the scoring were a more exact science, this would in no way make up for the atrocious effect on creativity wrought by the mania for standardized testing. This impact has now been documented. According to one study, creativity among U.S. children has been in decline since 1990, with a particularly severe drop among those currently between kindergarten and sixth grade.6

While test scorers and students might be separated by age, geography, race, and culture, we share one bond: standardized testing puts us to sleep. In the face of the crushing monotony of the hundreds of rote responses fostered by these tests, scorers are left to fight their own individual battles to stay awake. In any test-scoring center, by far the most essential job is done by the person whose sole responsibility consists of making coffee for hundreds of workers, many of whom will consume four to six cups a day to survive. In my mind, I see a hideous symmetry between test scorers’ desperate attempts to avoid dozing off, and the sleepy, zombie-like faces of the students as they prepare for and take these tests.

Of course, these students only exist in my imagination. Just as test scorers are never allowed to know the effects of our scores on students, we never get a chance to meet them, to see how they have developed as writers, thinkers, or human beings, or to know what life in their communities or families is like. All we see is a paper on a screen. And after reading hundreds of monotonous papers each day, it’s not uncommon to start to feel a bitter distaste for the undoubtedly beautiful youth of America and the seeming poverty of their creative thought.

I remember reading, for twenty-three straight days, the responses of thousands of middle-schoolers to the question, “What is a goal of yours in life?” A plurality devoted several paragraphs to explain that their life’s goal was to talk less in class, listen to their teacher, and stop fooling around so much. It’s asking too much to hope for great literature on a standardized test. But, given that this is the process through which so many students are learning to write and to think, one would hope for more. These rote responses, in themselves, are a testament to the failure of our education system, its failure to actually connect with kids’ lives, to help them develop their humanity and their critical thinking skills, to do more than discipline them and prepare them to be obedient workers—or troops.

While we test scorers might be prone to blame these children for the monotony of their thoughts, it’s not their fault that their imaginations and inspirations are being sucked out of them. No points are given for creativity on these tests, although some scorers have told me that, until recently, a number of states did factor creativity into their scores. Ironically, scorers are often delighted to see papers that show individuality and speak in their own voice, and often reward them with higher scores, though, judging by the papers I’ve read, it appears as if students often explicitly are told not to be creative. Yet even if creativity were considered, it would not likely do much to change the overall character of the writing—and education—engendered by an emphasis on standardized testing. As Einstein put it, “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

An entire education policy that thrives on repetition, monotony, and discipline is being enacted, stunting creativity and curiosity under the guise of the false idol of accountability. What is more, this policy has a differential impact, depending on students’ race and class. As Jonathan Kozol explains,

In most suburban schools, teachers know their kids are going to pass the required tests anyway—so No Child Left Behind is an irritant in a good school system, but it doesn’t distort the curriculum. It doesn’t transform the nature of the school day. But in inner-city schools, testing anxiety not only consumes about a third of the year, but it also requires every minute of the school day in many of these inner-city schools to be directed to a specifically stated test-related skill. Very little art is allowed into these classrooms. Little social studies, really none of the humanities.7

Seeing the results of this process is demoralizing to test scorers, and you can feel it in the scoring centers. Even though you can move about freely, use the bathroom when you need, and talk to one another, the room I was in this spring was almost always completely silent. On every project, as the weeks go by, the health of many scorers deteriorates, making me curious as to whether the relentless, soul-crushing monotony of the papers has an actual physical impact on those forced to read them.

To be fair, these papers aren’t a total wash. There is often wisdom in them, even on standardized tests. The chasm between rich and poor is at times felt in the writing itself, as some students come from unimaginable privilege, while many more endure heartbreaking experiences in foster homes. The papers are also a testament to the persistence of racism, describing teenagers kicked out of stores or denied service or jobs because of the color of their skin. And it would be wrong to think of test scorers as a down-and-out bunch—many of us do this job in order to avoid having to get other ones that would keep us from our creative endeavors, or from traveling or pursuing other life-enriching possibilities. A number of test scorers I’ve met over the past three years are authors, artists, photographers, or independent scholars, and it’s common to see postings for book releases and other events featuring the work of test scorers on bulletin boards in the break room.

In the error-filled Pearson training video, Marjorie Scardino says, “Most of the people who work at Pearson work with a passion and an intensity, because they think know are doing something important.” But I’ve never gotten the sense from my coworkers that they “think know” what they’re doing is helping kids or the education process. If the Obama administration asked test scorers whether the solution to this country’s education system would be more standardized testing, I think most of them would laugh. I’ve never gotten the sense from my coworkers that they feel that what they’re doing is helping kids or the education process. Unfortunately, the joke is on us, as the Obama administration pushes for even more high-stakes standardized testing. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry back in April, when all workers at my test-scoring center were asked to fill out a form allowing the company we were working for to get a tax break for hiring us. This tax break came via the Obama administration’s HIRE Act, which was supposed to provide subsidies for companies “creating jobs.” Never mind that we were all going to be hired anyway, because this is seasonal employment. Or that this money was subsidizing temporary jobs with no health care and no hope for transitioning into long-term employment—jobs which, in a better world, would not exist.

While these companies brazenly collect what can only be described as corporate welfare checks, hundreds of thousands of teachers are being laid off, as governments cut funding to education. Maybe next year, some of them will get paid $12 an hour (or $10, if they flood the market) to score tests taken by students stuffed into even bigger classes, and help “impartially” decide which schools will be shut down, and which of their colleagues will be laid off. Equally bad, the fanaticism surrounding accountability via testing, which claims it will result in higher-quality teachers, is doing nothing of the sort. Referring to the test-intensive No Child Left Behind Act, Kozol says, “By measuring the success of teachers almost exclusively by the test scores of their pupils, it has rewarded the most robotic teachers, and it’s driving out precisely those contagiously exciting teachers who are capable of critical thinking who urban districts have tried so hard to recruit.”8

As a friend of mine was saying his goodbyes to the coworkers in his room at the end of this year’s scoring season, his seventy-year-old supervisor, a veteran test-scoring warrior, uttered the words I imagine many test scorers hope to hear: “I hope I never see you here again.” This is a measure of the cynicism with which many test scorers approach the industry, recognizing that it is fundamentally a game, which too many people are forced to play—but “hey, it beats working at McDonald’s or Subway!” Yet amid all the hopes of escaping the industry, these test-scoring companies are successfully expanding and are now hoping to get their hands on billions in “school turnaround” money handed out by the Obama administration and state governments. Pearson, for example, has “formed the K-12 Solutions Group, and…is seeking school-turnaround contracts in at least eight states…[claiming it] could draw on its testing, technology and other products to carry out a coherent school-improvement effort.”9

The big test-scoring companies will undoubtedly be called on to furnish their supposed “expertise” in developing and scoring the new generation of more complex tests envisioned by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The Obama administration just gave two groups of states $330 million in grants to develop these new national tests, with the stated aim of assessing more critical thinking skills and providing better feedback to students and teachers. But rather than addressing the problems outlined above, it seems more likely that this move will only transfer the absurdities in current state tests to a national level, with the danger that they will take on an even greater legitimacy. In fact, given that Duncan’s proposal involves even more tests, it is likely to make matters worse.

If scoring is any indication, everyone should be worried about the logic of putting more of our education system in the hands of these for-profit companies, which would love to grow even deeper roots for the commodification of students’ minds. Why would people in their right minds want to leave educational assessment in the hands of poorly trained, overworked, low-paid temps, working for companies interested only in cranking out acceptable numbers and improving their bottom line? Though the odds might seem slim, our collective goal, as students, teachers, parents—and even test scorers—should be to liberate education from this farcical numbers game.

Notes

1. ↩ Todd Farley, Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry (San Francisco: Polipoint, 2009).

2. ↩ Todd Farley, “A Test Scorer’s Lament,” Rethinking Schools(Winter 2008/2009).

3. ↩ Todd Farley, “Standardized Tests Are Not the Answer: I Know, I Graded Them,” Christian Science Monitor, October 28, 2009.

4. ↩ Sharon Otterman, “Confusion on Where City Students Stand,” New York Times, August 28, 2010.

5. ↩ Alexandra Zavis and Tony Barboza, “Teacher’s suicide shocks school,” Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2010, http://articles.latimes.com.

6. ↩ Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, “The Creativity Crisis,”Newsweek, August 10, 2010.

7. ↩ Matthew Fishbane, “Teachers: Be subversive (Interview with Jonathan Kozol),” Salon.com, August 30, 2007.

8. ↩ Ibid.

9. ↩ Sam Dillon, “Inexperienced Companies Chase School Reform Funds,” New York Times, August 9, 2010.

Call Your Senators and Representatives: No on Bush Tax Cuts

The New York Times has a piece of propaganda on its front page making the ridiculous case that Bush tax cuts will bring great political rewards to the Dems.  Let me put as clearly as I will this morning when I call up Senator Brown and Kerry:

Your vote on Obama's giveaway deal to the rich will determine my vote should you decide to run for reelection.  This is the line in the sand for which there are no more lines behind it. 

The same message will be delivered by phone to House members.  

Call info here and here.

Will the British Royals and American Billionaires Hire Blackwater for Their Entourages?

Mr. Obama, America's Nick Clegg, should take note:



A clip from the Guardian:

. . . . Shiv Malik, co-author of the book Jilted Generation: How Britain Has Bankrupted Its Youth, says the under-thirties feel betrayed – sold out in favour of their parents and grandparents. Fees, he argue, are just one part of the jigsaw. The 29-year-old took to the streets himself on Thursday, and was injured after being hit by a police baton. He argues that most of the protesters were not anarchists or socialists but young people whose instinct to revolt had been awakened for the first time.

"George Osborne kept his promises to the older generation – to keep their free eye tests, their winter fuel allowance, their free prescriptions, their free bus passes," says Malik. "Eighty per cent of winter fuel recipients are not winter-fuel poor. If you means-tested [them], you would make £2bn to spend on higher education."

He argues that what has particularly angered the young is David Cameron and Nick Clegg's insistence that the cuts are necessary to prevent heaping debt on to the next generation. "They have cut our futures and are lumbering us with debts anyway," he declares.

The shift in mood is perhaps most obvious inside the National Union of Students. Until recently, its president, Aaron Porter, had been attacked for being unwilling to fight, facing howls of protest from the left for giving up the battle for free higher education and instead accepting the principle of a "graduate contribution".

But he wanted a graduate tax – not annual fees of £9,000 a year. While the NUS marched against fees in 1998 and 2004, this year's revolt has been on a different scale. "There has been a build-up of issues – not just tuition fees but the EMA, youth unemployment, struggling to get onto the housing ladder and bleak prospects for the future – all coming together to spark a wave of protest," says Porter. "The NUS considers this level of youth activism to be unprecedented, perhaps since the 1960s."

Other organisations are involved too: UK Uncut, which has targeted high street chains in its campaign against tax avoidance; the Education Activist Network for lecturers and students; the National Campaign against Fees and Cuts, which grew from a meeting with 170 students.

The photographers who ran alongside the protesters on Thursday captured the defining moments of an extraordinary day: young people using metal poles to try to break into the Treasury; the Duchess of York open-mouthed as protesters attacked the car she and Prince Charles were travelling in; Charlie Gilmour, son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, swinging by the union flag off the side of the Cenotaph.

It had started peacefully, but as evening slipped into night the scenes turned violent. The bright yellow jackets of the police disappeared, replaced by black riot gear, batons and shields.Some described it as reminiscent of the poll tax protests of 1990. Fifty people were injured, 33 were arrested, one police officer sustained a serious neck injury and one student, Alfie Meadows, suffered a stroke and required brain surgery after allegedly being struck by a police baton.

The protests opened a passionate debate about whether the violence had harmed the cause or helped by putting the story on the front page. Cameron reacted angrily to the "feral" behaviour, saying it was not just a "small minority". "There were quite a lot of people who were hell-bent on violence and destroying property," he said.

Questions also swirled about whether the police had gone too far. Protest leaders accused them of a heavy-handed and disproportionate response; students who had travelled to London with Meadows, for example, insisted he had been there to protest peacefully.

So, it seemed, had many others. "By the time the cuts are put into place, my uni will be hanging by a shoestring and the government want to charge people three times the amount," said Lucinda Hodge, 22, from Goldsmiths, University of London. "Politicians don't care about young people as we don't vote as much. We are just collateral damage."
Others had come from school and college. "There is a slim chance of going to university now," said Roze Brooks, 17. "Quite frankly I won't be able to pay," said Jack Jordan, 16.

There was even some sympathy in the right-wing press. While condemning the violence, the Daily Mail also commented: "We… worry that graduates will have to start paying this money back at about the time they are buying their first house and starting a family, crippling them financially just as they try to become fully fledged members of society."

Young people are discussing fears about their financial futures. "Debt for ever?" asked Holly Carlile, 22, from the University of Birmingham. "Will we ever be out of rented accommodation? How are we expected to put a single foot on the property ladder?" Jacob Burns, who studies at Goldsmiths, said he was increasingly pessimistic about ever being "debt free".Back in Hove, Lucas switched off the television. She felt the police and some protesters had gone too far and described the action as a "lost cause".

The demonstration may not have stopped the vote on fees, but it certainly has political implications, not least for the Liberal Democrats, who have seen their support among students collapse.

Other young people are angry too. Lucas said she would be unlikely to vote for them again, and she doubted that any of her friends would either. "They say it is a long time till the next election, but I don't think people will forget. They don't seem to have stood by anything I voted for apart from the pupil premium," Lucas said.

"I feel let down, like I was naive. It is a bit like a boyfriend has cheated on you. I will not be able to trust them again – and trust is an important thing when you are deciding who should run the country."

It is not just the Lib Dems that are suffering. Many students believe that all three parties failed to come clean about their ideas on higher education in their manifestos. On Thursday, one Tory MP was seen being harangued by three angry female students, decked out in coats and woolly hats for the protest.

"So what you are telling us is that we are not worth paying for," said one, raising her voice. Labour can challenge now, but many remember that it was Labour which set up the Browne review that led to the change in policy.

Nevertheless, the Lib Dems' problems are the most visible, not least because the party reached out to young people before the election. At the end of the debate on Thursday, the tension was clear as some of the party's MPs stayed rooted to their seats, abstaining, while others headed to different lobbies to vote for and against the policy. . . .

Poem by Former KIPP Teacher

by "Jennifer Liden"


marooned in a sea of
KIPPsters
monotonous morning meetings
punctuated by an unenthusiastic
We. Are. Proud. Of. You.
I say
weareproudof
you.

clap clap clap

SLANTing against a wall
to keep from fainting
from exhaustion.
quiet coyotes are bullshit
gang signs.

David Duke would be proud of these
hare krishnas.
my cell
I mean
classroom:
20 by
25 by
8

and filled past capacity with
33 kids at a time, six times
a day.

where are the windows for
my seasonal depression
sunlight therapy
reason for moving here?

now that I am gone,
this room is
unenthusiastically referred to
as the
cloud room

and is used
for 5 to 7 pm
daily
abu ghraib
public shame
detentions.

Arne Duncan Has His Sputnik and Rosa Parks Moments Mixed Up

Historians now tell us that Sputnik was much more a propaganda and public relations gimmick than it was an indication of Soviet technological and educational superiority.  The American Vanguard 1, in fact, could have launched first, and our former Nazi rocket brain trust in Huntsville was furious that Eisenhower didn't launch first. 

But if you don't believe the historians, look at what happened 13 years after Sputnik: I believe that was the Stars and Stripes planted in the Sea of Tranquility, rather than the Hammer & Sickle.  The facts, however, didn't stop conservatives like Arthur Bestor and Admiral Hyman Rickover and Milton Friedman from using the incident to bludgeon schools into another of the recurring back to basics movements that keep American kids through the generations needlessly stupider than they should have been or should be. 

Most of what we know that could produce learning that might save us from the gathering certainty of extinction due to environmental degradation remains gathering dust in the libraries, while we are held hostage by econocrats and social engineers who are intent on creating a caste system of robots and robot makers.

So when Arne Duncan glances at PISA's test score tournament standings and has a Sputnik moment, he needs to look a little deeper.  His Sputnik moment, in fact, would have been entirely appropriate for when he put on his tux to see Waiting for Superman with the Billionaire Boys' Club (plus Oprah) at the exclusive screening in DC a couple of months ago.  Now that was a real Sputnik moment, for it offered the finely-honed Hollywood illusion that the corporate socialist charter schools with their steroidal, Stalinistic apartheid version of back-to-basic-in-uniform have rocketed past the lazy, uncaring public schools with their cushie teacher salaries and brick building with libraries.  Great propaganda entirely worthy of a Sputnik moment.

Bill Mathis has looked deeper, and as he notes here in a post from Valerie Strauss's blog, Arne could have and should have had his Rosa Parks moment, not from absorbing the "militant ignorance" of Michelle Rhee in WfS but, rather, if he were to look below the surface of the PISA report, to see and understand the real human rights and civil rights issues staring at him from the back of the bus--if he were to look that way:

This was written by William J. Mathis of Goshen, Vermont. He is the managing director of the National Education Policy Center.. and a former Vermont superintendent. The views expressed are his own.

By William J. Mathis
For the 27th [time], government officials have yet again been surprised, shocked and dismayed over the latest international test score rankings. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, “We have to see this as a very serious wake-up call.” Former Reagan education official Chester E. Finn Jr. reported that he was “kind of stunned” by the results of the Program for International Student Achievement (PISA) results. In hyperbolic overdrive, he compared the results to Pearl Harbor and Sputnik.

The PISA tests were given to 15-year-old students by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 65 nations and educational systems. Nine had higher average scores in reading, 17 in math, and 12 in science.

While ranking nations on test scores is a pretty sorry way to evaluate education systems, there is simply no reason to expect the results to have been any better than they were the last time we heard from this same chorus of surprised, shocked and dismayed pundits and politicians.

The reason is simple. Federal and state policymakers continue to embrace reforms that have little positive effect (if not downright negative effects) while ignoring reforms that make a difference. Buried within the PISA report is an analysis of educational systems that registered high test scores. Here are some of the less-reported findings:·
*The best performing school systems manage to provide high-quality education to all children.

· *Students from low socio-economic backgrounds score a year behind their more affluent classmates. However, poorer students who are integrated with their more affluent classmates score strikingly higher. The difference is worth more than a year’s education.

· *In schools where students are required to repeat grades (such as with promotion requirements), the test scores are lower and the achievement gap is larger.

· *Tracking students (“ability grouping”) results in the gap becoming wider. The earlier the practice begins, the greater the gap. Poor children are more frequently shunted into the lower tracks.

· *Systems that transfer weak or disruptive students score lower on tests and on equity. One-third of the differences in national performance can be ascribed to this one factor.

· *Schools that have autonomy over curriculum, finances and assessment score higher.

· *Schools that compete for students (vouchers, charters, etc.) show no achievement score advantage.

· *Private schools do no better once family wealth factors are considered.

· *Students that attended pre-school score higher, even after more than 10 years.

As OECD Paris-based official Michael Davidson said in National Public Radio comments, “One of the striking things is the impact of social background on (U.S.) success.”

Twenty percent of U.S. performance was attributed to social background, which is far higher than in other nations. Davidson went on to point out that the United States just does not distribute financial resources or quality teachers equally. In a related finding, students from single-parent homes score much lower in the United States than they do in other countries. The 23-point difference is almost a year’s lack of growth.

Our Educational Policies
Unfortunately, federal and state policies do little to adopt these factors that other nations have found so successful. Countless finance studies show that funding across our schools is inequitable and inadequate. Federal and state governments vaguely note this concern but actions do not match the rhetoric. Our treatment of economically deprived students is to house them in segregated schools and shunt them into tracked programs.

A number of “get tough” social promotion policies have been adopted in states even though we know they are harmful. Despite a clear research consensus, early education is still politically disputed. Tracking students still remains the national norm even as we know it increases the achievement gap.

As the federal government (under both Republican and Democratic administrations) has become even more top-down and prescriptive, local schools become less autonomous and less like our successful international counterparts.

Finally, the push for privatizing public education through charters, tuition tax credits, vouchers and the like does not result in better test scores and has the effect of increasing segregation, and the inequalities that lead to low test scores.

The American Dream
The American dream is that all children have an opportunity to be successful no matter how humble their roots. Thus, the most troubling finding in the PISA results is the lack of “resilience” among our children.

OECD measured resilience by looking at the scores of the least wealthy 25% of students and seeing what proportion of these students have academic scores in the top 25% of countries with similar socio-economic levels. In the highest scoring nations, 70 percent of the students are rated resilient.

The U. S. figure is less than 30%. In a nation which sees the top 1% controlling more than 50% of the nation’s wealth and the collapse of middle class jobs, we face the specter of building a country of social, economic and educational apartheid.

Secretary Duncan calls the PISA scores a serious wake-up call for our economy and “international competitiveness.” But that is merely to misunderstand economics and global competitiveness. Due to our pursuit of ineffective and ill-focused educational and economic reforms , the rude disturbance of our slumbers is the slamming of the door on the American dream. . . .

Compton Parents Charge Barr and Austin's "Parent Revolution" with Deception, Manipulation, and Lies

In what will likely go down in corporate ed reform history as the Compton Caper, the otherwise disgusting LATimes is reporting that Compton parents are coming forward with allegations of strong-arming and deception by Parent Revolution to get enough signatures to charterize a public school that has recently demonstrated strong improvement on state test scores. 

Sensing an all-out repudiation by the school community of the oligarch-funded front group, Parent Revolution, Austin and Barr called up the Governator and L.A.'s plutocratic mayor to try to get ahead of the story.  The spin from the oligarchs?  The parents who have been lied to and manipulated are the real culprits, as they represent anti-charter forces who are trying to undercut the will of the oligarchs people.  This clearly shows the depth of the corruption, and it clearly goes all the way down to the Governor's Office. 

Tempers flared Friday over the fate of a low-performing Compton elementary school that has become the first target of a new law allowing parents to mandate school shutdowns or charter-school conversions through a petition drive.

Some parents are rescinding their signatures to convert McKinley Elementary into a charter school that would operate outside the direct control of the Compton Unified School District. Under the state's new "parent-trigger" law, which is being scrutinized nationwide, the signatures of at least half the parents at a campus are required in order to launch the changes.

But that 50% threshold could be at risk at McKinley. Opponents say that 50 to 60 parents already have withdrawn their support, which could push the total close to the minimum level required.

---

---

"They told me the petition was to beautify the school," said Karla Garcia, whose two children attend McKinley. "They are misinforming the parents, so I revoked my signature."

Garcia is part of a growing countermovement that began with the delivery on Tuesday of the parent-trigger petition at Compton Unified headquarters.

Parent Revolution, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit group that organized the petition drive, denied any wrongdoing. Organizers said they had collected signatures representing 62% of McKinley's 438 students. Initially, media coverage focused almost exclusively on dissatisfied parents relating grievances against McKinley, where test scores rank in the state's lowest 10% of schools, even when compared with schools that serve students from similar backgrounds.

The school's Parent Teacher Assn. held two meetings Thursday in which parents said they had been harassed or deceived into signing.

On Friday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a supporter of the parent-trigger effort, took the other side, condemning alleged "intimidation tactics" by charter opponents at McKinley.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa weighed in with similar views. The mayor was flanked by parents and petition organizers Friday as he visited the home of a Compton petition signer to praise the effort and condemn what he described as harassment by opponents.

"It's particularly alarming to see these parents resort to the kind of intimidation, the kind of smear campaigning, the kind of rumor-mongering that is all too reminiscent of the way bad employers try to intimidate working people," Villaraigosa said.

Parent Revolution, which is led by state Board of Education member Ben Austin, had arranged for Villaraigosa's appearance. But the visit sparked angry reactions from about two dozen parents and Compton leaders. Some demonstrators chanted "No charter school!" and carried signs reading, "Our Kids Are Not for Sale" outside the home where the mayor spoke.

Parent Revolution had targeted Compton and McKinley for its first organizing effort. The group also decided that the petition would stipulate a charter conversion and it selected the charter operator, Celerity Educational Group.

"I am highly offended by an outsider coming in telling people here how to handle my children or handle my school," said Lee Finnie, a pastor and parent of three McKinley students.

Finnie and other petition opponents cited McKinley's recent progress, noting its rising test scores and new principal. The school's 77-point two-year rise on the state Academic Performance Index puts it among the most rapidly improving schools in the state.

"Why blow up something that's improving?" Finnie said. "Rome wasn't built in a day."

The school has made "excellent progress," said Olivia Fuentes, a specialist in the division for school improvement with the Los Angeles County Office of Education. . . .

By the way, what Legislature would vote to allow the democratic process to be hijacked by the parents of any public school?  The public school is supported by all taxpayers in the community, not just the ones with kids enrolled.  What about parents with children about to start school?  Or taxpayers without children, for that matter. Obviously, the customer service model of democracy has taken over entirely in California.

RIMA to Management Org: Goodbye

One less charter school for Seth Andrew/Democracy Prep/Democracy Builders.  From the Providence Journal:

[O]n Thursday, the school’s board of directors severed its relationship with Andrew and his management organization, Democracy Builders, in a dispute over money.

The school will continue, and Andrew has applied to open another, in Providence. What the split means for either side is only beginning to unfold.

Andrew’s spokeswoman said Friday that Andrew was caught off guard by news that the mayoral academies board had voted his organization out. Spokeswoman Kerri Lyon said that Andrew had planned to come to Rhode Island Friday “in good faith” for a mediation session at the state Department of Education between the groups, but canceled the trip when he learned of the split.

The Cumberland school, which opened in 2009, serves about 250 elementary and middle school students from Central Falls, Cumberland, Lincoln and Pawtucket. It has been hailed by supporters, including Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, as a promising model for the expansion of charter schools focused on boosting achievement for low-income students.

Charters are public schools paid for by taxpayers. However, they are free from much of the bureaucracy of traditional public schools.

In a news release issued Friday morning, Cumberland Mayor Daniel McKee, who chairs the Mayoral Academies board, said the school would operate under the leadership of Jeremy Chiappetta, who has served as the elementary school’s principal.

In an interview, Mayoral Academies spokesman Bill Fischer said the sides were unable to agree to terms after Andrew requested more money to manage the school. Under the terms of the first agreement, Andrew’s organization received 10 percent of the school’s operational budget. For the school’s second year, he was seeking a higher percentage, Fischer said.

“The [school] board did not think the request was reasonable or justifiable,” Fischer said.

Andrew and his management team earned about $120,000 last year to run the school. Andrew’s payment would have increased to at least $200,000 for the current school year — at the 10-percent rate — because of enrollment growth.

In case you're curious, Andrew made $90,000 in 2006, $111,843 in 2007, and $168,883 in 2008 - all from one of his charter schools, Democracy Prep in NY (figures from the 990 tax forms of Democracy Prep in NYC, via guidestar.com).

Corporate Media (and Clinton) Lock Arms in Hopes of Saving Obama

Whether you're watching Microsoft-NBC, Fox, or CNN this afternoon, it's an echo chamber love fest for the Oligarchs' economic deal that will define "bipartisanship" or post-partisanship in Washington during the next two years. The Coalition of the Corporate has coalesced to say, Enough.

After calling up the corrupt dinosaur, Larry Summers, to make his economic mushroom cloud statement threat yesterday, which got hooted off the Hill by everyone except Fox News,  today it is the great Triangulator's turn: Obama brings in Clinton to tag team against Bernie Sanders and who else? no one. 

Bernie Sanders, singular patriot, who Chris Mathews has marginalized again today with his loud-mouth whining Far Left label--why not just say communist--as everyone else is labeled who does not bow before the corporate dealmakers who own Obama's skinny ass, Clinton's fat ass, and the majority of the made men and ladies of Washington, who, no doubt, will close out this bit of theater with a yes vote to support one termer, Barack Obama. Long live the Oligarchs.

Obama was so desperate for positive PR today that might appeal to sane people that he invited in the back door of the White House a handful of school kids whose victimization by his education policies were highlighted in the documentary, Race to Nowhere. Where was Arne for the photo op?  That's right, nowhere to be seen.