Latest News and Comment from Education

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Have We Stolen A Generation's Independent Thought?

Have We Stolen A Generation's Independent Thought?

Have We Stolen A Generation's Independent Thought?


“Kids these days,” the complaint begins. “They cannot think for themselves.” The complaint has come across my desk three times this week, voiced by someone in the higher education world complaining about the quality of student arriving in their ivy-covered halls.

It’s worth noting that the observation itself has no particular objective, evidence-based support. There’s no college student independent thought index we can consult to check for a dip. Just the subjective judgment of some people who work at the college level. So the whole business could simply be the time-honored dismay of an older generation contemplating the younger one.
If we do accept the observation as valid, there are a variety of possible explanations. A study showing that people just stick with their team and don’t think about the ideas involved. A political climate in which truth-telling and truth-searching are not currently highly valued. The power of YouTube conspiracy videos. Helicopter parents armed with bazooka-mounted lawnmowers.
But there’s another factor to consider, a firmly school-embedded factor that has promoted CONTINUE READING: Have We Stolen A Generation's Independent Thought?

AnthonyCody: If you want to understand education "reform" read this book

If you want to understand education "reform" read this book

AnthonyCody:  If you want to understand education "reform" read this book

Diane Ravitch is a historian working in the now. She has an understanding of the history of our nation and education system that enables her to place current events in a schema that makes sense.

Part of her relevance is that Diane Ravitch is more than a historian. She is an active participant in public discourse, and the essays captured in this book are among her most important contributions over the past decade. When she joined me in launching the Network for Public Education back in 2013, she stepped even further into the arena. In January she was seen speaking in support of the Los Angeles teachers strike.

Her latest book, The Wisdom and Wit of Diane Ravitch, published by Garn Press, is an invaluable guide to the past decade of education “reform.” It is a contemporaneous history of a host of fatally flawed projects, including the Common Core standards, charter schools, vouchers, Race to the Top, and paying and/or evaluating teachers based on their students’ test scores.

Some of these issues remain hotly contested. We do not hear a lot about the Common Core these days, but the standards struggle on, often under aliases. The history of these standards is a subject where there has been an active effort to hide the machinations at work behind the scenes. How many articles have appeared in education publications and web sites purporting to “bust myths” about the Common Core– often denying basic facts about how these standards came into being. The most valuable history lessons in this book are in the middle section, where we see Ravitch systematically come to terms with what the Common Core is all about.

Ravitch does not treat her subjects lightly. When she takes on something like teacher evaluation, she goes into depth on why using test scores will damage our students. She explains the track record for the practice, and how conditions in schools make this counterproductive. Her analysis of charter schools does not simply look at test scores and graduation rates, but at deeper questions such as how these schools affect the public schools they are competing with. How do we maintain a vigorous democracy when schools CONTINUE READING: 
If you want to understand education "reform" read this book



To learn more about the book, open any of these links:

Mitchell Robinson: Trump is Running the US Government Like a Charter School | Eclectablog

Trump is Running the US Government Like a Charter School | Eclectablog

Trump is Running the US Government Like a Charter School


For those of us following the news, each new day brings a bevy of unbelievable and shocking stories…
  • Reports of Russian election meddling!
  • A national emergency (that’s not a national emergency)!
  • Cabinet secretaries wreaking havoc on the environment, education, and human rights!
  • Kids in cages at the border!
  • The Mueller Report!
And in the middle of each of these stories? A deeply flawed, un-Democratic, and racist president* who doesn’t value our public institutions, and is only interested in his own personal and financial well-being.
After listening to more of these stories than I care to admit, it occurs to me that Donald Trump’s behavior as president* reminds me an awful lot of how charter schools and charter management corporations function.
What do I mean?
  • Lack of regulation
One of Trump’s major goals as president* has been to eliminate or weaken regulations in eight major categories: agriculture, education, environment, finances, health care, housing, labor, telecommunications, and transportation. And on this one issue, even his detractors have to admit he’s exceeded their expectations. As of 2018, the Trump administration was eliminating 22 regulations for every 1 new regulation approved, surpassing their stated goal of “2 out for every 1 CONTINUE READING: Trump is Running the US Government Like a Charter School | Eclectablog

PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Education - Public Policy Institute of California

PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Education - Public Policy Institute of California

PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Education

Summary

Key findings from the current survey:
  • Most Californians say charter schools are an important option for parents in low-income areas—but many express concern that charters divert funding from traditional public schools.
  • More than half of residents across regions say teacher salaries in their community are too low.
  • Majorities support Governor Newsom’s spending plans to expand preschool and full-day kindergarten.
The PPIC Statewide Survey delivers objective, advocacy-free information on the perceptions, opinions, and public policy preferences of California residents. PPIC invites input, comments, and suggestions from policy and public opinion experts and from its own advisory committee, but survey methods, questions, and content are determined solely by the PPIC survey team. The PPIC Statewide Survey relies on a rigorous survey methodology and is a charter member of the American Association for Public Opinion Research Transparency Initiative. The survey is conducted regularly throughout the year in the key areas of government, the environment, K–12 education, and higher education.






Making Schools Business-Like: The Longest School Reform in U.S. History? (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Making Schools Business-Like: The Longest School Reform in U.S. History? (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Making Schools Business-Like: The Longest School Reform in U.S. History? (Part 1)


If A Nation at Risk is one book-end of the longest school reform. the other book end has yet to be put in place. Business-influenced school reform continues into the second decade of the 21st century stretching nearly four decades. Rivaling this long run of school reform is the Progressive era beginning in the early 1900s and lasting until the mid-1950s.
For the past four decades a cascade of school reforms borrowing heavily from the corporate sector have spilled over public schools in an effort to turnaround a “failing” system unable to keep pace with European and Asian schools as measured by international tests and strengthen a slacking economy.
Restructuring schools to become more efficient, introducing competition through giving parents more choices for their sons and daughters to attend school, raising graduation standards, installing rigorous curriculum, establishing high stakes tests and holding students, teachers, and schools responsible for higher academic performance cover just a handful of the state and federal reforms launched by both Democrat and Republican regimes eager to copy the policies followed by successful businesses since the mid-1980s.
I wrote about this business-inspired reform movement in a book called The Blackboard and the Bottom Line: Why Schools Can’t be Businesses (2004). At the recent American Educational Research Association annual meeting in Toronto (Canada), there was a symposium on business influence since B & BL was published. New York University Professor Gary Anderson organized the symposium and asked me to comment on four papers written by young and mid-career scholars (Janelle Scott and Tina Trujillo from the University of California, Berkeley; Patricia Burch, University of Southern California; and Michael Cohen,  CONTINUE READING: Making Schools Business-Like: The Longest School Reform in U.S. History? (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice



Los Angeles: The LA Times Prefers a School Board Member with Neither Experience Nor Knowledge | Diane Ravitch's blog

Los Angeles: The LA Times Prefers a School Board Member with Neither Experience Nor Knowledge | Diane Ravitch's blog

Los Angeles: The LA Times Prefers a School Board Member with Neither Experience Nor Knowledge


The Los Angeles Times wrote an editorial endorsing Heather Repenning over Jackie Goldberg for the LAUSD seat in a special election. The editorial admitted that Jackie Goldberg has the experience and knowledge that her opponent lacks but the Times preferred a blank slate.
Repenning admittedly knows little about education issues but she previously worked as an aide to Mayor Eric Garcetti. In the primary, and she said she would not take charter money. Now that she is in a runoff with the far better qualified Jackie Goldberg, Repenning has decided that it is okay to take money from the charter billionaires. 
The Times lauded her as independent. The fact that she is now the favorite of people like billionaire Republican Bill Bloomfield is evidence that she is not independent. She will cast her vote, if elected, to support the Eli Broad privatization and Disruption agenda.
The Times posted some of the letters to the editor that it received objecting to its endorsement of an unqualified candidate, including one from me.
One letter came from a retired principal, who wrote, “The Times is repeating the mistake it made when it endorsed Ref Rodriguez in 2015 and other candidates bought and paid for by billionaire privatizers.” Rodriguez operated a charter chain at the time of his election, but was removed from the board after he was convicted on felony counts for campaign finance violations. He did not step down until the board had selected the unqualified, inexperienced Austin Beutner as superintendent of the nation’s second largest school district.
This is the Times’ description of Jackie Goldberg:

“She’s brimming with experience, smarts and humor — and connections. She’s been a teacher and served as a member of the school board, the City Council and the state Assembly, and she knows everyone involved in the world of education in California. To say that her chances of winning the May 14 runoff are high would be an understatement.
”Nor would it be a terrible thing if that happened. Goldberg’s institutional memory and her talent for digging to the heart of an issue would be of value to the board.”
So why didn’t the Times endorse her? Because the teachers already endorsed her.
Educators know and trust Jackie.

The charter billionaires know and trust her opponent.
I say to the voters of District 5: Vote for the candidate with experience and knowledge.
Don’t let the billionaires buy another seat on the school board.
Vote for Jackie Goldberg on May 14.
She will represent you, your children, and your schools, not Eli Broad and the other billionaires.
Los Angeles: The LA Times Prefers a School Board Member with Neither Experience Nor Knowledge | Diane Ravitch's blog


20 Years’ Education Reform: School Performance Improvements Fall Short | National Review

20 Years’ Education Reform: School Performance Improvements Fall Short | National Review

After 20 Years of Reform, Are America’s Schools Better Off?


On the surface, statistics show significant improvement. But if you dig a bit deeper, the status quo begins to look a lot less desirable.

Twenty years ago this spring, George W. Bush announced that he was forming an exploratory committee as a precursor to his first run for the presidency. In the announcement, he pledged to improve America’s schools, “set high standards, and insist on results” so as to “make sure that not one single child gets left behind.” An era of ambitious education reform had begun.
Two decades later, after sweeping efforts that included No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Common Core, are our schools better off? The answer is less reassuring than one would hope. On the whole, it’s certainly possible to find some evidence of improvement — but progress is easiest to find in the metrics most amenable to manipulation.
State tests in reading and math do appear to demonstrate that schools have significantly improved over the last 20 years. Between 2005 and 2009, as No Child Left Behind took full effect, the share of students who proved to be proficient in state tests rose by 1 to 2 percent per year. Over the next six years, state assessments were too varied to allow for meaningful comparison. But the same trend — with the share of proficient students increasing by 1 to 2 percent each year — did reemerge after 2015, when standardized Common Core tests became widely used. And high-school-graduation rates also skyrocketed, from 71 percent in 1997 to 85 percent in 2017.
Good news, right? Not exactly. The politicos and state education officials claiming credit for these gains are the same ones who choose state tests, define what qualifies as “proficient,” and monitor graduation rates to guard against funny business. The results are tied into state accountability systems, where lousy results can produce practical and political headaches. Thus, policymakers have both the means and the incentive to inflate the numbers any way they can.
Fortunately, the U.S. also regularly administers the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to a random, nationally representative set of schools. Because the NAEP isn’t linked to state accountability systems, it’s a good way to check the seemingly positive results of state tests. From 2000 to 2017 (the most recent year for which data is available), NAEP scores showed that fourth-grade math results increased 14 points, which reflects a bit more than one year of extra learning. Eighth-grade math results also demonstrated significant improvement, increasing ten points in the same period. Fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores, meanwhile, barely budged. And almost all of the math gains were made in the decade from 2000 to 2010; performance has pretty much flatlined since then. CONTINUE READING: 20 Years’ Education Reform: School Performance Improvements Fall Short | National Review

Breaking: Charter moratorium voted out Senate Education Committee | Cloaking Inequity

Breaking: Charter moratorium voted out Senate Education Committee | Cloaking Inequity

BREAKING: CHARTER MORATORIUM VOTED OUT SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE


In 2016, I first broke the news about the NAACP calling for a moratorium on charter schools in the post @NAACP calls for national moratorium on charters. The California legislature is begining to heed the civil rights organization’s call as the Senate Education Committee passed SB 756 on a 4-3 vote (I first discussed this bill in the post Charter Moratorium on Tap: Update on Legislative Effort in California). This bill would make the NAACP charter moratorium resolution the law in California. The California NAACP is co-sponsoring the bill. Here is a draft of our NAACP support letter:
The Honorable Maria Elena Durazo
 
Member, Senate Education Committee
 
The State Capitol, Room 5066
 
Sacramento, CA 95814
 
SUBJECT:          SB 756 (Durazo)
 
POSITION:         Support
 
Dear Senator Durazo,
 
The California NAACP is pleased to co-sponsor and strongly supports SB 756 (Durazo), which establishes a five-year moratorium on new charter schools. Establishment of a moratorium on charter proliferation would provide time to reconsider and make effective policy decisions regarding the mostly unregulated environment in which charter schools currently operate.
The bill is in alignment with the NAACP’s national resolution from 2016, which calls for a moratorium on charter expansions until transparency and accountability can be achieved for all schools.
The proliferation of privately managed charter schools, fueled by money and power from outside of school communities, has caused economic and educational instability for hundreds of existing neighborhood schools, especially in communities of color. Charter schools were intended to be hubs of innovation to benefit all students not silos that further segregate and isolate students based on race and income. In larger urban school districts, research shows that unregulated growth of charter schools means neighborhood public schools become more racially segregated and carry a higher proportion of cost for educating high needs special education and English Language learner students, exacerbating fiscal and academic pressures on teachers, administrators, and support personnel.  Such inequities are unethical and unsustainable.
The California NAACP places high value on public education for all students. We advocate for a system of publicly governed schools that is accountable to communities through local elections and direct democratic control. For these reasons, the California NAACP is pleased to co-sponsor and support SB 756 (Durazo), and look forward to working with you to ensure passage of this important measure.
The bill still has a long road— it heads to the appropriations committee next and will probably absorb some amendments there. But you should know that the charter school lobbyist and their billionaire supporters have been spending heavily against the bill on busing, matching t-shirts and Subway box lunch for hundreds of protestors as the various charter accountability and transparency bills have come up for debate in Assembly and Senate education committees. However, the Network for Public Education Action and other grassroots groups have been countering with phone calls, emails and other activities.
Will charter face a moratorium in California? It remains to be seen. So goes California, so goes the nation. Get ready Betsy DeVos.
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p.s. Shout out to Dr. Roxanna Marachi! First author of the NAACP national charter moratorium resolution. Photo is of her representing the California NAACP and testifying yesterday in support of 756 at the Senate Education Committee.
Breaking: Charter moratorium voted out Senate Education Committee | Cloaking Inequity

Eva Moskowitz Accused of Violating Student Rights, Wins $10 Million from DeVos, Will Receive an Honorary Degree from Tufts | Diane Ravitch's blog

Eva Moskowitz Accused of Violating Student Rights, Wins $10 Million from DeVos, Will Receive an Honorary Degree from Tufts | Diane Ravitch's blog

Eva Moskowitz Accused of Violating Student Rights, Wins $10 Million from DeVos, Will Receive an Honorary Degree from Tufts


As Leonie Haimson explains in this post, it has been a busy few weeks for Eva Moskowitz, founder and CEO of NYC’s controversial Success Academy charter chain.
Once again, her chain has been accused of violating the rights of students; Betsy DeVos awarded $9.8 million to her schools, added to the $43.4 million  Eva previously received from the federal Charter Schools Program; she will receive an honorary degree from Tufts University; and the President of Harvard University is giving the commencement speech to her graduating class.
How does it happen that the president of the nation’s most prestigious university is speaking to what may be a graduating class of a few dozen students at a charter school? .
“The former president of Tufts, Lawrence Bacow, who is the current president of Harvard is scheduled to speak at the Success high school’s graduation, which last year only graduated 16 out of the 73 students who entered the school in Kindergarten  or first grade.  No doubt both occurrences were influenced by the fact that the head of the Success board, hedge funder Steve Galbreath, is also on the Tufts board of trustees and heads its investment committee.”
Follow the money.
Don’t be surprised if next year Moskowitz land DeVos herself, America’s leading charter school champion.