Can You Negotiate with Corporate Reformers?
I love Twitter for many reasons. I have met many friends on Twitter, some of whom I will never encounter in person. I learn from Twitter. People from across the country and even from other countries send me news stories, opinion pieces, blogs, ideas.
I received one this morning that I thought was, well, awesome.
On many occasions, I have had discussions with friends and allies and friendly adversaries about whether there is a middle ground between corporate reformers–the people who want to rearrange education so that it is based on incentives and sanctions, who believe that test scores are the best ways to measure the quality of students and teachers and schools, who see virtue in closing down neighborhood public schools, and who applaud the transfer of public schools to private management–and those who disagree with them, myself included.
Can’t we negotiate our differences? Can’t we all just get along, as the late Rodney King once memorably asked. We all know important it is to collaborate.
Why not collaborate with the people whose ideas you disagree with? Why not find a middle ground with those
Some Turnaround Ideas
Arne Duncan has promoted the idea that the way to turnaround schools is to fire the principal and at least half the staff or to close the school altogether and replace it with a new school, or some variation thereof. It is basically a “wipe-the-slate-clean-and-start-over” approach.
Why not think about how that might be applied in other areas of our life.
If a family is dysfunctional, perhaps you could fire the parents and hire some new ones.
if children misbehave, ship them off to someone else and bring in some new ones.
Is This What They Teach at Broad Superintendents Academy?
A reader sent this comment:
According to the link, the students get no legal representation. Apparently the superintendent wants to scare
| n Huntsville, AL, the Broadie superintendent, Col. Casey Wardynski, has contracted out services for behavior problem and homebound students to a private corporation, The Pinnacle Schools. The contract includes five places in the “teepees” at Pinnacle’s Elk River Wilderness Treatment Program, one of those remote, secured boarding school/mental hospital/detention centers for students hand-selected by Wardynski. Stays there are of indefinite length: “Those who do not comport themselves according to the regulations and rules of Pinnacle Schools will find themselves living in a teepee. And they won’t be coming back until they can behave. And if they can’t behave, they won’t be coming back to our schools.”I can’t begin to imagine how this is legal, but there you are: http://abouthcs.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/theres-no-mention-of-teepees-in-the-2011-2012-hcs-handbook/ |
Take a Stand for Better Education
More than 10,000 individuals and more than 350 organizations have signed the National Resolution to Oppose High-Stakes Testing.
More than half the school districts in Texas have signed the original anti-high-stakes testing resolution, which inspired the national resolution.
Many districts in Florida have endorsed it, including Broward County.
Let’s reclaim as schools as places for learning, not just places to test, measure, assess, rate, rank, and evaluate one another.
Please sign the resolution and send it on to others.
Diane
More than half the school districts in Texas have signed the original anti-high-stakes testing resolution, which inspired the national resolution.
Many districts in Florida have endorsed it, including Broward County.
Let’s reclaim as schools as places for learning, not just places to test, measure, assess, rate, rank, and evaluate one another.
Please sign the resolution and send it on to others.
Diane
Mayor Bloomberg Is Angry
Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City and Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York state had a disagreement.
The mayor wanted the power to publish the names and evaluations of all teachers in the city, as happened earlier this year when the New York City Department of Education released the single-number ratings of 18,000 teachers, based solely on test scores. The mayor says the public has a right to know the job ratings of every teacher. The teachers’ union (among others) objected because the ratings are highly flawed and inaccurate; and it humiliates teachers to have their ratings made public. Others objected to the public release because the job evaluations of police, firefighters and corrections officers are shielded by state law; why single out teachers and open their ratings to the public? Even Bill Gates wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times opposing public release last winter, a day before the ratings went public, on the ground that they are useful only as part of a
The mayor wanted the power to publish the names and evaluations of all teachers in the city, as happened earlier this year when the New York City Department of Education released the single-number ratings of 18,000 teachers, based solely on test scores. The mayor says the public has a right to know the job ratings of every teacher. The teachers’ union (among others) objected because the ratings are highly flawed and inaccurate; and it humiliates teachers to have their ratings made public. Others objected to the public release because the job evaluations of police, firefighters and corrections officers are shielded by state law; why single out teachers and open their ratings to the public? Even Bill Gates wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times opposing public release last winter, a day before the ratings went public, on the ground that they are useful only as part of a
Which States Are Most Unfair to Poor Kids?
Which states lead the nation is fiscal unfairness to poor children and their public schools?
Bruce Baker, the invaluable social scientist from Rutgers, the one who has actually taught in schools, has figured it out by analyzing Census data.
Bruce has a terrific blog, where he asks important questions and has the data to support his answers. I wish that every corporate reformer would read him. You should too.
These are the states that are most unfair to poor children and their public schools:
Bruce Baker, the invaluable social scientist from Rutgers, the one who has actually taught in schools, has figured it out by analyzing Census data.
Bruce has a terrific blog, where he asks important questions and has the data to support his answers. I wish that every corporate reformer would read him. You should too.
These are the states that are most unfair to poor children and their public schools:
Thank a Teacher Today
I have written several blogs about how teachers today are under appreciated. I think teachers have one of the hardest and most thankless jobs in our society. Teachers do work of great social value and yet they are paid far less than people in the private sector who sell useless objects or who have desk jobs at think tanks thinking about how to reform the schools.
This comment by a teacher is a good reminder of why everyone who wants to live in a decent society should immediately find a teacher and say “thank you for what you do. Thank you for what you do every day. I can’t do what you do and I am in awe of your work for our children.”
This comment by a teacher is a good reminder of why everyone who wants to live in a decent society should immediately find a teacher and say “thank you for what you do. Thank you for what you do every day. I can’t do what you do and I am in awe of your work for our children.”
Politicians never discuss all that teachers do that goes above“Do This Or We Will Punish You”A reader writes in response to the blog about the fraud that teachers are compelled to be complicit in, by passing students who have not done the work, by meeting quotes or face punishment: Our entire school structure is a compliance-based model, where time is constant and learning is the variable. It is based on handing out penalties to students when they are out of compliance and don’t perform at the same level as their chronological peers. More than anything in the history of American education, NCLB has served to further advance a concept of “do this or we will punish you,” by not only labeling students as failures for not adhering to the compliance model and keeping up with their classmates, but doing the same to teachers and CTU Strike Humor: What About Those Greedy Teachers?Last Stand for Children First is a very funny Twitter site. The person who created it does a great job of impersonating trust-fund babies who know everything about how to fix public schools without ever setting foot into one.  Follow the outrageous, sophomoric, enjoyable humor of Last Stand for Children First on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/LS4C1 A Letter to Change.OrgDear Change.Org, You told the world that you stopped collecting the signatures of unknowing people for StudentsFirst. You didn’t tell the truth. You informed me that I was a member of StudentsFirst because I signed a petition on your website a year ago. I never knowingly signed on as a member of StudentsFirst. I was duped. Apparently StudentFirst has cynically used your website to dupe a million other people as they duped me. When will you stop facilitating this deception? The letter below says you are still running three different StudentsFirst petitions. StudentsFirst claims 1.3 million members. According to the letter sent to my blog, 1.275,700 of those members were gathered at Change.Org, using the same deception that fooled me. Michelle Rhee uses these numbers to raise millions of dollars from rightwing donors and to intimidate politicians to accept her agenda. She then spends these millions to bash teachers and promote privatization. If my math is right, StudentsFirst has 24,300 members nationwide, not 1.3 million members. No one can tell me how to resign as a member. Enough is enough. I will report you to the Federal Trade Commission and to consumer fraud agencies if you don’t sever your ties with these deceptive tactics. Please contact me as soon as possible to let me know how to get my name off the rolls of StudentsFirst. It was put there by Change.Org. Diane Ravitch
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