NPE News Briefs ← from The Network for Public Education:
NPE News Briefs
from The Network for Public Education
Koch Brothers Plan School Choice Forum in Nashville | Diane Ravitch’s blog
A group funded by the notorious conservative Koch brothers will host a school choice forum in Nashville on July 22. Here are their panelists: “Moderating the talk will be Shaka Mitchell, who works for Rocketship Education, a California-based charter school organization with an East Nashville location set to open this summer. A second Rocketship school ...read more
Mom: My kindergartner was ‘work-sheeted to death’ | The Washington Post
By Valerie Strauss July 19 at 10:16 AM This year I have posted a number of pieces (here, here, here and here, for example) about the travesty that is now kindergarten in many public schools. Today, under this school reform in which standardized-test scores are the chief metric for “accountability” of students, schools, teachers, etc., ...read more
Zephyr Teachout blasts New York’s and Cuomo’s support of Common Core | lohud.com
Zephyr Teachout The Fordham law professor who is challenging Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the Democratic ticket outlines her concerns about Common Core, and education plan for New York. In 2008 Microsoft founder Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest men, decided that he should take charge of education policy. He promoted a single set of ...read more
Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst Targets Alabama | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Michelle Rhee is determined to see that every legislature is taken over by hard-right Republicans who support her campaign against teachers and public schools. One of her current targets is Alabama. Here is where she is sending money. All but one of those listed below are Republicans, except Patrick Sellers, who challenge a Democratic incumbent ...read more
Why Poor Schools Can’t Succeed on Standardized Tests | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Meredith Broussard, a professor of data journalism at Temple University, was helping her son with his homework, and she made a discovery: he could not find “the right answer” to homework questions unless they were in the textbook. But on further investigation, she learned that the public schools of Philadelphia don’t have a textbook budget. ...read more
EduShyster: The Inside Scoop on Why Massachusetts Did Not Lift the Charter Cap | Diane Ravitch’s blog
As we all know, the State Senate in Massachusetts voted against lifting the cap on charter schools. This was a shocker. Here is the inside story, told by Edushyster. You won’t see this anywhere else. via EduShyster: The Inside Scoop on Why Massachusetts Did Not Lift the Charter Cap | Diane Ravitch’s blog.
Terrence P. Carter, the Incoming School Chief in New London, Called Himself A Ph.D. For Years Without An Accredited Doctorate | Courant.com
Terrence P. Carter, the highly touted Chicago education administrator hired to start Aug. 1 as the superintendent of New London’s troubled school system, recently completed requirements for a doctorate that he’s scheduled to receive next month. “Soon I will be able to be called ‘Doctor,’” he said he recalls telling job interviewers. But a Courant ...read more
Jeff Bryant: The Media Doesn’t Understand Why Teachers and Parents Are Angry | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Jeff Bryant notes that many in the national media were stunned when the NEA called for Secretary Duncan’s resignation. For years, they believed the Secretary’s press releases instead of investigating the festering discontent against his ill-informed policies. Many journalists are oblivious to the protests by teachers–like the one at Garfield High school in Seattle– against ...read more
New Research: Vouchers Increase Segregation and Offer Benefits to the Few | Cloaking Inequity
We already know that vouchers increase segregation and offer benefits to the few. We don’t need to implement decades of vouchers to just turn back later. Findings from a newly released peer-reviewed study entitled Understanding How Universal Vouchers Have Impacted Urban School Districts’ Enrollment in Chile published in Education Policy Analysis Archives show that educational ...read more
Great Hearts Charter Schools Coming to Texas in Controversy | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Texas State Commissioner Michael Williams overrode the veto of the state board of education to bring Arizona-based Great Hearts Academy to Texas. The state board thought they could veto the commissioner’s choices. But, well, it didn’t work that way, especially after Great Hearts hired Governor Rick Perry’s former chief of staff as its lobbyist. Williams ...read more
David Coleman To Fix Inequality in America | CURMUDGUCATION
David Coleman is here (well, not here here– he’s actually in Aspen) to explain how the College Board is going to recapture market share by synergistically monetizing its products break down the walls of inequality in education. David Coleman (Common Core writer and current president of the College Board) is deeply concerned with fairness. Huffington ...read more
Waking Up To Our Broken Education Policies | Jeff Bryant
Who could ever forget comedian Jon Stewart’s commentary in early 2009 on how financial reporters totally botched reporting of the Great Recession. Stewart mocked journalists at CNBC for missing all the warning signs of the over-valued housing market and their failure to question wild speculation on sub-prime mortgage debt. In one famous clip, Stewart said ...read more
North Carolina Plans to Give Out Vouchers Before Court Hearing on Legality | Diane Ravitch’s blog
North Carolina won’t wait for a court to rule on vouchers. It will start giving them out next month before the court hearing. “RALEIGH, N.C. — Taxpayer money for private or religious school tuition may start flowing to North Carolina families before a judge rules whether the program is legal. “The state agency in charge ...read more
Vergara Copycat Lawsuit in NY Attacks Teachers Instead of Injustice, Say Experts | janresseger
In June of this year, California Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu struck down tenure and seniority protections for California’s K-12 school teachers in the case of Vergara v. California. According to Treu’s decision, tenure protects bad teachers, bad teachers are more often assigned to the schools serving California’s most disadvantaged students, and the assignment of ...read more
JUL 17
Capital Prep’s Steve Perry to headline Koch Brothers’ event | Wait What?
This coming week, the Charles Koch Institute is sponsoring a forum, “featuring a panel talk with representatives of charter schools and conservative think tanks” at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel. The panel includes none-other-than then Steve Perry, the principal of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut….which is ironically identified as a charter school in the ...read more
CPS officials grilled over local school cuts at budget hearing | Chicago Sun Times
The specter of 50 closed schools haunted a budget hearing Wednesday night on the West Side as dozens of people asked Chicago Public Schools officials over and over and over: How could CPS continue to cut budgets at neighborhood schools while opening new charter and contract schools — even after shutting down a record number ...read more
How “Reformers” Lie About Graduation Rates | Diane Ravitch’s blog
I did not write the following post. It was written by a high-level official at the New York City Department of Education who–for obvious reasons–requires anonymity. The story he tells is instructive. It is about how “reformers” claim victory by manipulating statistics. This is not an accusation directed at the de Blasio administration, but at ...read more
Bruce Baker: Why Vergara Precedent Makes No Sense in New York | Diane Ravitch’s blog
At the heart of the Vergara decision lies a logical fallacy: eliminate due process and seniority from teachers, and schools with low-performing students will magically have a great teacher in every classroom. To say this makes no sense is an understatement. In this post, Bruce Baker demonstrates that it makes no sense empirically either. As ...read more
JUL 16
John Thompson: Time to Kill the Testing Vampire | Living in Dialogue
By Anthony Cody Guest post by John Thompson. My three decades of experiences dealing with the crack and gangs era of the 1980s, and then teaching in inner city schools, taught me to have an even keel. I’ll never forget, however, the Friday night in 1993 driving home from our football game. Stunned, I wondered ...read more
Detroit Emergency Manager: Increase Class Sizes to 43 to Save $$ | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Just remember: It’s all about the kids. Just remember: The children are our future. In Detroit, where they enroll thousands of children who need a great education, the state-appointed emergency manager has decided to save money by increasing class size to 43. Students will not get individual attention. Students will not get the support they ...read more
Arne Duncan’s Reaction to Recent VAM Research |VAMboozled
Valerie Strauss wrote a recent piece for the Washington Post about an email she recently sent to Arne Duncan — the current U.S. Secretary of Education who is (still) advancing VAMs for the nation. She wrote him directly to get his take on the “growing mountain of evidence [that] has shown that the method now ...read more
Tenure haters’ big delusion: Why Campbell Brown and co. are wrong about teaching | Salon.com
Talk to some educational “reformers,” and fixing the problems with our educational system sounds a lot like it does in “Freedom Writers.” It’s your classic nice-white-lady-meets-inner-city-school flick. Plopped into a classroom of “untouchables” from poor, minority backgrounds, our hero Hilary Swank is shocked to discover that the administration has given up on the kids to ...read more
Students React To The Closure Of A Giant For-Profit College | NPR
by JOHN O’ CONNOR and KIRK CARAPEZZA After a long reign as the fastest-growing and most problematic sector in higher education, for-profit colleges are on the ropes. This week the U.S. Department of Education announced that it will review how federal student aid is administered at one of the country’s largest for-profit colleges, the University ...read more
Judge Blasts Alabama School Board, Justice Department for Failure to Desegregate Schools | Alternet
By Nikole Hannah-Jones A federal judge in Alabama says local school officials have yet to meet the legal mandate to integrate. July 16, 2014 | A federal judge in Alabama has taken the rare step of ruling against a local school board in a desegregation case, rejecting the board’s claims that it had done all ...read more
Peter Greene: Take More AP, Build Revenue $Tream for the College Board | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Peter Greene takes a hard look at AP (Advanced Placement) courses and wonders how the U.S. Department of Education got involved in pushing a for-profit product as a mark of distinction. He notes that: “AP tests are a product of the College Board, the same people who bring you the SAT, and although the name ...read more
It was Duncan who launched Chicago schools on the trail of tiers | Mike Klonsky’s SmallTalk Blog
Rahm’s closing of 50 schools, a stab in the heart for the city’s black community, may be the very act that brings him down in 2015. Latest polls show that it’s the mayor’s (and Byrd-Bennett’s) mishandled school closings, along with (related) pandemic gun violence, largely in those same communities, which account for his single-digit ratings ...read more
Did Obama and Duncan really hear what four teachers told them? | The Washington Post
Here is the third in a series of pieces I have been publishing about a lunch meeting that President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan had recently with four teachers from high-poverty schools that focused on education, the teaching profession and school reform. The first was a post by teacher Justin Minkel — the 2007 ...read more
JUL 15
Connecticut’s Gubernatorial Race Will Be Influenced by Education, Teachers | Connecticut Magazine
BY JENNIFER SWIFT & J. BRIAN CHARLES Teachers may be happy with some of his changes—the American Federation of Teachers overlooked his tenure comments and endorsed him for governor in June—but it doesn’t mean they aren’t still concerned. During a speech before AFL-CIO in June, AFT President Randi Weingarten offered praise for Pelto’s opposition to ...read more
19 charter schools to be investigated for years of misconduct | The Columbus Dispatch
By Catherine Candisky The Ohio Board of Education ordered an immediate investigation of a chain of 19 charter schools in the state today after hearing allegations of test cheating, attendance tampering, sexual misconduct and other misdeeds. Former teachers from the Horizon Science Academy Dayton High School in Dayton testified at the board’s monthly meeting in ...read more
Charters need closer watching | Philadelphia Tribune
The School District of Philadelphia has made progress in its oversight of charter schools but room for improvement remains, according to a new report released by the city controller’s office. The city’s watchdog agency provides an independent review of the Charter Schools Office which is charged with monitoring nearly 70 of the privately run schools ...read more
@GovChristie’s Executive Order Lays Bare the Fundamental Problems with AchieveNJ | Jersey Jazzman
Yesterday, Chris Christie tried to play the “reasonable” reformer with his executive order on testing: First, he announced an executive order creating a new state task force — entirely appointed by Christie – to study the effectiveness of state testing as a whole, including the upcoming PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and ...read more
Fiscal mismanagement cited in closing 2 Magnolia charters | LA School Report
LA School Report has learned that ‘fiscal mismanagement’ and a host of other irregularities are the reasons behind the sudden closure last month of two LA Unified charter schools, Magnolia Science Academy 6 and Magnolia Science Academy 7, according to a letter sent from LAUSD’s Charter Division. Both are considered high-performing schools; MSA-6 is a ...read more
Lecker: Why students leave high school | StamfordAdvocate
Graduation rates, one barometer of a state’s or nation’s success in educating its children, are great fodder for political recriminations and grandiose claims. Pundits and politicians manipulate numbers to disparage public schools or claim victory in some reform they champion. However, serious conversations about the humans behind the numbers are rarely the subject of media attention. ...read more
Why Poor Schools Can’t Win at Standardized Testing | The Atlantic
The companies that create the most important state and national exams also publish textbooks that contain many of the answers. Unfortunately, low-income school districts can’t afford to buy them. Meredith Broussard JULY 15, 2014 You hear a lot nowadays about the magic of big data. Getting hold of the right numbers can increase revenue, improve ...read more
The Evolution of Denial in Atlanta Test-Score Cheating Scandal | janresseger
Rachel Aviv’s extraordinary New Yorker magazine essay, Wrong Answer, traces the evolution of the Atlanta Public Schools standardized test cheating scandal. Aviv describes how school administrators, driven by the Adequate Yearly Progress requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, wielded pressure and shame over several years to recalibrate the moral compass of one middle ...read more
Maryland Test Scores Tumble as Common Core Tests Are Adopted | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Every state that has adopted Common Core tests has seen a sgpharp decline in test scores. Maryland is the latest to discover that its scores fell thanks to Common Core tests. “Reading and math scores on state tests for Maryland elementary and middle school students have dropped to their lowest levels in seven years, according ...read more
Clay Pell: A Fresh Face for Rhode Island Governor | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Clay Pell, a grandson of Rhode Island’s legendary Senator Claiborne Pell, announced that he is running for governor. Since the other two candidates are allied with corporate reformers, Pell offers hope that he might take a different tack and actually help public education (despite his own elite schooling). Clay has two distinctions. First, he is ...read more
Exclusive poll: Karen Lewis could give Rahm run for his money | Chicago Sun Times
For the past couple of weeks, Karen Lewis has been saying she is “seriously” considering running for mayor. It turns out voters are taking the fiery Chicago Teachers Union president’s potential candidacy seriously as well. And Mayor Rahm Emanuel probably should, too. At least that’s what a surprising new Early & Often Poll suggests. If ...read more
Arizona charter school history book says whites envied “freedom” of slaves | Salon.com
The nonprofit Americans United for Separation of Church and State is calling out one of the oldest public charter schools in Arizona for using two books from crank and Glenn Beck favorite Cleon Skousen that promote racism and a Christian nationalist interpretation of American history, reports the Arizona Republic. The school, Heritage Academy, is apparently ...read more
Michelle Rhee’s minions meet their match: New anti-charter group declares war | Salon.com
The internal war among Democrats over education policy escalated another notch this weekend at the annual convention of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union in Los Angeles. Delegates savaged the “education reform” agenda as a corporate-led threat to “everything we hold dear.” And three high-profile party stalwarts announced the formation of Democrats for Public ...read more
Karen Lewis inches closer to run — crafting exploratory committee | Chicago Sun Times
NATASHA KORECKI Karen Lewis’ potential bid for Chicago Mayor has moved beyond just a thought — it’s an “organic,” growing movement, the fiery Chicago Teachers Union president said. Lewis revealed on Monday she already has an unofficial exploratory committee in the works, a chairperson has been named and her camp is working to have a ...read more
Jeanne Kaplan: Why Teachers Are Sick of Duncan | Diane Ravitchs blog
Jeanne Kaplan served on the Denver school board for years and watched with a heavy heart as fake “reformers” took over Denver and Colorado. Now Colorado has the most punitive teacher evaluation law in the nation, thanks to Arne Duncan and Colorado’s State Senator Michael Johnston. When the NEA voted a resolution calling on Duncan ...read more
JUL 14
Jill Lepore: What the Theory of Disruptive Innovation Gets Wrong | Diane Ravitch’s blog
If your school has been closed, if the staff was fired in a “turnaround,” you have experienced the theory of disruptive innovation, which is associated with Harvard Business Professor Clayton Chistensen. Or perhaps your neighborhood school fell victim to Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of “creative destruction.” Just so you can see these ideologies from a critical ...read more
Pearson Errors: Would You Trust Your Child to This Corporation? | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Pearson, the British megacorporation, appears to have won the PARCC Common Core contract, which is worth about $1 billion. Its tests will be administered to 6-10 million children in 14 states. The third grade tests will take eight hours. The high school tests will take 10 hours. PARCC is also developing tests for kindergarten, first ...read more
AFT: Yes to Common Core, Remediation Needed by Duncan | Diane Ravitch’s blog
In a day of debates, the American Federation of Teachers voted to continue its support for the controversial Common Core standards while complaining about its faulty implementation. The delegates also voted for a resolution to put Secretary Duncan on a remediation plan that would be monitored by President Obama (ha-ha, when he is not busy ...read more
AFT calls for Education Secretary Duncan to submit to ‘improvement’ plan or resign | The Washington Post
By Valerie Strauss July 13 at 8:01 PM Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s relations with the country’s largest teachers unions — which collectively have more than 4 million members — keep getting worse. Earlier this month, the nation’s largest teachers union called for him to resign. On Sunday, the second-largest teachers union passed a resolution that ...read more
JUL 13
New Group Called “Democrats for Public Education” Will Fight Privatization | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Leading Democrats have announced the creation of a new organization called Democrats for Public Education. It will be led by Ted Strickland, former governor of Ohio, and Donna Brazile, political consultant. Its name is a swipe at Democrats for Education Reform, which is dominated by hedge fund managers, and which funds candidates who support charter ...read more
WATCH THIS! Reverend Dr. William Barber Tells AFT the Secrets of Victory | Diane Ravitch’s blog
In this spell-binding video, borrowed from Fred Klonsky’s blog, the Reverend Dr. William Barber speaks at the AFT convention and describes the powerful Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina. This movement has a broad social and economic agenda, and it may well bring down the hard-hearted, mean-spirited governor and legislature of that state. Do yourself ...read more
Registration Process a Fiasco: New Orleans Parents Struggle to Secure Places for their Children | janresseger
Here is what the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington pronounces on its website as the heart of “portfolio school reform”: “A great school for every child in every neighborhood. The portfolio strategy gives families the freedom to attend their neighborhood schools or choose one that is the best fit for ...read more
The Excellent But False Messaging of the Common Core Standards | Diane Ravitch in The Huffington Post
Have you ever wondered about the amazingly effective campaign to sell the Common Core standards to the media, the business community, and the public? How did it happen that advocates for the standards used the same language, the same talking points, the same claims, no matter where they were located? The talking points sounded poll-tested ...read more
The Problem with the AFT Offer for Teachers to “Rewrite” the Common Core | deutsch29
A very good thing will happen on Sunday, July 13, 2014, at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention in Los Angeles: The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) will be debated on the floor. No behind-closed-doors killing of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) resolution opposing CCSS. As Politico states: Weingarten, for instance, has repeatedly said she supports ...read more
Teachers union takes on Common Core | Stephanie Simon – POLITICO.com
By STEPHANIE SIMON | 7/11/14 6:52 AM EDT The American Federation of Teachers will open its annual convention Friday morning with a startling announcement: After years of strongly backing the Common Core, the union now plans to give its members grants to critique the academic standards — or to write replacement standards from scratch. It’s ...read more
Teacher: No Time For Teaching, Only Testing | Diane Ravitch’s blog
This teacher laments the explosion of testing in school, which has reduced or eliminated time for play, recess, and activities. This is the brave new world of Common Core and PARCC: H/she writes: “The Common Core and PARCC will ruin education as we know it..And, of course, it is all part of the overall plan. ...read more
CURMUDGUCATION: Poverty and the Moral Imperative of Education
We are being bombarded regularly with arguments about poverty and education that are fallaciously constructed, used to support the wrong conclusion, and, ironically, are unnecessary. The Big Scary Facts It usually begins with a list of assorted research factoids like these: * Students who fail school are three times more likely to be unemployed. * ...read more
StudentsFirst pulls up stakes in Minnesota | StarTribune.com
The controversial group fought for basic-skills exams, teacher evaluations. Article by: Kim McGuire , Star Tribune Updated: July 11, 2014 – 12:31 PM StudentsFirst, a controversial nationwide school reform group that has frequently clashed with teachers’ unions, is shutting down its Minnesota office. Kathy Saltzman, state director of StudentsFirst Minnesota, confirmed Wednesday that the group ...re
The Connection Between Jeb Bush, ALEC, K12, and Maine | Diane Ravitch’s blog
This prize-winning story by investigative reporter Colin Woodard follows the money trail in Maine, as Governor Paul LePage seeks to make a name for himself in the world of digital learning. It was originally published two years ago, but remains relevant. Woodard dug through more than 1,000 documents that he obtained through the Freedom of ...read more
Readers react to what teachers told Obama – The Washington Post
There was a lot of reaction to a post I published a few days ago about what happened when four teachers from high-poverty schools sat down with President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan for lunch at the White House to talk about education, teaching and school reform. Here are some of the reactions from ...read more