Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, reports on a new federal analysis comparing charter schools and public schools. She writes: A recent report on school choice commissioned by the US Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) documented what we already know– the performance of students who attend charter schools is no better than t
A great victory for real education in Milwaukee, where the business community and politicians have been obsessed with “choice” for 30 years. From the FB page of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association. This is a victory for students! This is a victory for real education! A Big Victory for Music in MPS! 70 photos · 5 hours ago Last night the School Board decided to take the first step in movi
Trump selected inexperienced, hard-right Congressman John Ratcliffe’s to be the Director of National Intelligence, but the Republicans in the Senate sent word that they would not confirm Trumps’ unqualified lapdog. This story from today’s Washington Post by James Hohmann shows what a difference this made. Had Ratcliffe been confirmed, the whistleblower complaint would never have seen the light of
Now here is good news! The new superintendent of the Boston Public Schools Brenda Casellius announced a reduction of district tests. This does not affect the state-mandated tests, but it is a welcome acknowledgement that students need more instruction, not more testing. School Superintendent Brenda Cassellius has announced a moratorium on district-mandated standardized tests, according to a Sept.
The Metro Nashville School Board took the bold, brave step of rejecting a proposed Rocketship charter school. The Nashville school board denied charter school network Rocketship Education a new school — despite receiving its first recommendation to approve an application in years. The Metro Nashville Public Schools board bucked the district’s charter school review recommendation for the resubmitt
Cheryl Gibbs was not an activist. She just wanted to teach her children in a Virginia public school and ignore politics. But step by step, she realized that there was a coordinated attack on public schools. One thing led to another. She joined the union. She became a union rep. She became a BAT. And when she retired, she became a full-fledged member of the Resistance. The Resistance fights privat
Steve Miller writes in the Texas Monitor about the special protections provided by the law for charter schools. They claim to be public, they claim to be accountable, they claim to be transparent, but only when it suits their convenience. Take the powerful IDEA chain , which has recently received over $200 million from Betsy DeVos’ personal slush fund called the federal “Charter Schools Program,”
NEWS RELEASE: For Immediate Release | ctulocal1.org CONTACT: Ronnie Reese 312-329-6235 , RonnieReese@ctulocal1.org Ninety-four percent of CTU members vote to authorize strike for schools Chicago’s students deserve Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates governing body will set strike date at Wednesday, Oct. 2 , meeting. CHICAGO, September 26, 2019 —The Chicago Teachers Union this evening releas
Peter Goodman writes about education policy in New York City and New York State. I n this post , he tries to figure out whether NYC is about to double down on a “test and punish” regime or to seek collaboration. He covers the bizarre City Council hearing about over-testing, where a top official of the NYC Department of Education announced the city’s decision to add four new off-the-shelf standard
Peter Greene fact-checked Betsy DeVos’s “back to school” speech at a religious school in Milwaukee and discovered that all of her facts were wrong. But facts, in DeVos’s worldview, are tiresome and unnecessary. https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2019/09/17/betsy-devos-polly-williams-vouchers-and-selective-facts/ Perhaps most egregious was her paean of praise to Polly Williams, an African Am
Valerie Strauss is not surprised yet disappointed that Betsy DeVos kicked off her “back to school tour” at a religious school in Milwaukee, flaunting her contempt for the vast majority of students who attend public schools. By doing so, she showed her agenda: privatization of public schools and transfer of public money to religious schools. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/09/16/wher
Cory Booker was recently interviewed by the Washington Post, and he was asked about his past support for vouchers and his friendship with Betsy DeVos. He insisted that he turned against vouchers in 2006, and he barely remembered any connection to DeVos. When someone asked if he had flown to Michigan in 2000 at the request of Dick and Betsy DeVos to support their voucher referendum, he at first de
During the Clinton presidential campaign, Bill Clinton’s staff used this phrase: “It’s the economy, stupid.” In current discussions about education, the phrase should be, “It’s poverty, stupid.” Jan Resseger demonstrates how precisely Ohio’s school grades measure poverty, not school quality. She begins: On Tuesday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer published a stunning analysis , by the newspaper’s data
Eric Blanc asks in Jacobin why Elizabeth Warren does not have a plan for K-12 schooling. She has expressed various positions on education but her overall policy about testing, charter schools, and accountability are murky at best. He questions how different they are from the Bush-Obama strategies. Blanc recently wrote a comprehensive book about the wave of teachers’ strikes of 2018-19 called Red
George Conway III and Neal Catyal are lawyers. Conway is married to Kellyanne Conway; Catyal is a former Acting Solicitor General of the United States. This article appeared in the Washington Post. Among the most delicate choices the framers made in drafting the Constitution was how to deal with a president who puts himself above the law. To address that problem, they chose the mechanism of impea
The New York City Council Committee on Education held a hearing to discuss overtesting in the schools, and the Department of Education’s chief academic officer announced a plan to increase testing to be sure students are ready for the state test. The Department will add four off-the-shelf standardized tests to replace the school-selected interim assessments. New testing requirements are in the of
Public Schools First in North Carolina posted an analysis of the grades given to schools by the state, based mostly on test scores. Not surprisingly, the school grades measured income, not school quality, since standardized tests measure income. School Performance Grades School Performance Grades Source: N&O analysis of Public Instruction data School performance grades started in 2013-14 modeled
FairTest National Center for Fair & Open Testing for further information, contact: Bob Schaeffer (239) 395-6773 mobile (239) 699-0468 for immediate release Wednesday, September 18, 2019 BEST YEAR EVER FOR TEST-OPTIONAL HIGHER ED. ADMISSIONS AS 47 ADDITIONAL INSTITUTIONS DROP ACT/SAT SCORE REQUIREMENTS; MORE THAN HALF OF “TOP 100” LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES ARE AMONG 1,050 SCHOOLS NO LONGER REQUIRING S
Remember when David Coleman, architect of Common Core and then president of the College Board, claimed that the adoption of the Common Core would increase equity and raise test scores for all, especially those farthest behind? Remember, after he took control of the College Board, when he redesigned the SAT and said the New SAT would promote equity? None of that happened. More students are taking
I have not endorsed any candidate. I like Senator Bernie Sanders’ education plan better than any other I have seen but I have not endorsed Bernie nor anyone else. I will support the nominee of the Democratic Party. If any candidate says anything that I think is important to bring to your attention, I will share it, regardless which candidate proposes it. This is what Bernie sent out today, and I
Parents, grandparents, and educators in Ohio. Contact the governor and legislators and urge them to stop HB 154. Now. State takeover has already failed in Ohio, yet the Senate Education Committee slipped it back into a bill intended to support struggling districts instead of taking away their democracy. Bill Phillis and Jeanne Melvin of Public Education Partners send this urgent message. Jeanne M
Terri Michal is an elected school board member in Birmingham. Betsy DeVos recently gave $25 million to Alabama from the federal Charter Schools Program, which she uses as her personal slush fund. Federal Grants and Surplus Property: DeVos’s Solution to Help the Students of Birmingham, AL. By Terri Michal In Alabama we have a Legislature that appears to be perfectly fine creating legislation that
Nick Hanauer, who may or may not be a billionaire, made a splash when he conspicuously dropped out of the Destroy Public Education Movement and the Billionaire Boys Club , which he had supported with donations of millions of dollars. He loudly declared that his fellow plutocrats were wrong to blame the schools for the dysfunctions of our society, which he pinned on income inequality. He has given
The blogger Wrench in the Gears worries here (in a 2018 post) about the MacArthur Foundation’s Grant of $100 Million to Sesame Street, intended to help the children of Syrian refugees. The “help” these children get will be delivered by technology, she says, not by humans. As it happens, I was one of a large number of judges in this competition, though I did not review the Sesame Street proposal.
Nancy Bailey calls out Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for talking about “education freedom” at the same time that she is doing everything within her power to snuff it out. Betsy DeVos’s Education Freedom: It’s Anything But
Sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg spoke at the UN Climate Conference today. Trump skipped the meeting to attend a discussion of religious freedom. Last Friday, Thunberg inspired millions of students around the world to demonstrate on behalf of action to address the climate crisis. She said today: “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. I should be back in school on the ot
All it took to make American education “great again” was two-and-a-half years of Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos. So saith Betsy DeVos to the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference in Michigan. DeVos vigorously defended charter schools, especially in Detroit, even though most Detroit charters underperform Detroit public schools and are run as profit-making businesses. DeVos opened Saturday’s prog
This article is a reason to subscribe to The New Republic. If you have been sick of watching the takeover of American education by entrepreneurs, professional managers, management consultants, and Wall Street, you will see parallels between the managerial culture at Boeing and the management culture that has permeated large sectors of American educators. At Boeing, crucial decisions were made by
Gary Rubenstein enjoyed reading Robert Pondiscio’s book about Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy. He recommends it. What Pondiscio reveals is that SA does not cherrypick students, as critics charge: It cherrypicks parents. One premise of the book is that the fundamental secret to Success Academy’s amazing standardized test scores, mentioned throughout the work is the filtering of the right families.
Steven Miller of the Texas Monitor reports on the perks for charter executives in Texas. Charter schools fly below the radar on spending and transparency rules If you are a charter bigwig or spouse, you can fly first class, a privilege not available to public school employees. Charter executives are exempt from the rules that apply to public schools. Yet they deign to call themselves “public scho
As I have mentioned here, I am Jewish. Be that as it may, I regularly read the publication “Commonweal,” which is edited by lay Catholics (not Jesuits, as I originally sad) and often vigorously agree with its writers. Read this one by John Chryssavgis. https://www.commonweal-magazine.org/prosperity-philanthropy At the latest G7 summit in Biarritz, U.S. President Donald Trump reassured the world t
Once again, we are reminded that charter schools are a Republican cause, and their champion is Betsy DeVos. Mike Turzai, Republican Speaker of the House in Pennsylvania, was on his way to a meeting with Betsy DeVos when he encountered some public school teachers, who were picketing with signs saying they loved their public schools. Turzai found this deeply offensive, and he proceeded to lambaste
Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy points out the obvious: State-issued school grades punish schools and districts for enrolling too many poor kids. Ohio’s school report card grades predict median household income, child poverty rate, level of education attainment of adults An “F” rating on Ohio’s school report card is guaranteed in districts with lowest median household i
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation issued an annual report called the “ Goalskeepers Report 2019, ” signed by Bill & Melinda Gates. The theme is “Examining Inequality.” It is a useful compilation of data about inequality from around the world, focused mainly on Africa. There are two things that really bother me, however. First of all, Bill Gates has never admitted or apologized for the damage he
Jennifer Berkshire presents here a podcast in which she interviews Quinn Strassel, the Ann Arbor high school teacher who wrote the musical “Betsy DeVos: The Musical.” The podcast includes both an interview and some of the songs. The DeVos-funded Mackinac Center, funded by DeVos, did not like the musical! Suffice it to say that DeVos has been a one-woman wrecking crew in Michigan who is now doing
Rev/Dr. Anika Whitfield wrote the following letter to newly re-elected Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas about the failed state takeover of the Little Rock School District, whose only purpose was to take away any democratic control of the district’s public schools by its residents. Dr. Whitfield is both a podiatrist and a minister, so she is Rev/Dr. Rev/Dr. Whitfield is included in my new book
Steven Singer has written recently about the origins of charter schools. He insists that Albert Shanker, president of the AFT, was not their father. The real fathers of this first big step towards privatization , he writes, were Ted Kolderie and Joe Nathan of Minnesota, who wrote the nation’s first charter school law and opened the door wide for entrepreneurs, grifters, and attacks on unions. Sin
William J. Gumbert has posted a series of analyses of charter school performance and demographics in Texas, based on public data compiled by the state. This is a summary of earlier posts. You may recall from an earlier post about Houston that the state commissioner of education is threatening to take control of the Houston Independent School District because of the persistently low rest scores of
Rob Levine, a Resistance-to-Privatization blogger in Minneapolis, reports here on the failure of the Bush Foundation’s bold “teacher effectiveness” initiative, which cost $45 million. All wasted. The foundation set bold goals. It did not meet any of them. Levine writes: Ten years ago the St Paul-based Bush Foundation embarked on what was at the time its most expensive and ambitious project ever:
The federal Charter Schools Program handed out $440 Million this year. Betsy DeVos uses this money as her personal slush fund to reward corporate charter chains like KIPP ($89 million), IDEA (over $200 million in two years), and
