A Charter Founder Defends His For-Profit Charters in the Wall Street Journal | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Charter Founder Defends His For-Profit Charters in the Wall Street Journal | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Charter Founder Defends His For-Profit Charters in the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal editorial pages has been promoting school choice—charters and vouchers—for many years. It sees public education as a government monopoly, not a public service. It has published article after article explaining away the failures of school choice and re-interpreting negative evidence.

A few days ago, the paper may have struck a new low when it published a defense of charter schools by Baker Mitchell, the founder of a for-profit chain of charters in North Carolina, a non-educator who rakes in millions of dollars every year by owning four charters.

When he saw the WSJ article by Mitchell, North Carolina Teacher Stuart Egan pointed out that Baker Mitchell was reiterating the talking points created by Rhonda Dillingham, executive director of the North Carolina Association for Public [sic] Charter Schools.

Who is Baker Mitchell? He is a retired electrical engineer and a libertarian in the Koch brothers’ mold. He moved to North Carolina in 1997 and soon became allied with Art Pope, a rightwing libertarian who funded the Tea Party takeover of the state in 2010.

ProPublica featured Baker Mitchell as an example of a businessman who was turning public education dollars into his own private profits.

Here is an excerpt:

The school’s founder, a politically active North Carolina businessman named Baker Mitchell, shares the Kochs’ free-market ideals. His model for success embraces CONTINUE READING: A Charter Founder Defends His For-Profit Charters in the Wall Street Journal | Diane Ravitch's blog

Teachers' Unions Develop Curriculum to Deal with Trauma of ICE Raids – Payday Report

Teachers' Unions Develop Curriculum to Deal with Trauma of ICE Raids – Payday Report

Teachers’ Unions Develop Curriculum to Deal with Trauma of ICE Raids

Earlier this month, a record-breaking ICE raid detained over 600 immigrant workers at several meatpacking plants in Mississippi. Quickly, images of small children stranded at school, after learning that their parents’ detention by immigration authorities, began appearing on TV.

“I need my dad,” one 11-year-old girl Magdalena cried in a viral CBS video.”I am not going to have nothing for the first day of school for me. My dad bought me everything for me to live over here. The rent. Now, I don’t know where I am going to eat.”

Increasingly, teachers are being asked to step in to help children affected by the terror and trauma of deportation. 

“While children in Mississippi were at their first day of school, their parents were being rounded up by the government,” says American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. “Those kids came home ready to talk about what they learned at school, who they met and what they saw, only to be greeted with abject fear at the hands of a cruel government policy designed to terrorize an already frightened community.”

Over 2.5 million undocumented youth attend public school in the United States, where they are faced with the constant risk of choosing whether to risk deportation by attending school. An additional  4.1 million public school children, who are U.S. citizens, live in a household, where one or both parents are immigrants.

“As educators, we know that separation from a parent causes trauma for a child that can impede learning opportunities and social and emotional health,” says Jackson Federation of Teachers President Akemi Stout, who was part of an AFT emergency response group that helped respond to the raids in Mississippi this month.  “Our members will do their part as frontline protectors of students.”

With millions of children affected by increasing ICE raids targeted undocumented workers,  many CONTINUE READING: Teachers' Unions Develop Curriculum to Deal with Trauma of ICE Raids – Payday Report

Crime is down at LA schools. But there’s a caveat – Daily Breeze

Crime is down at LA schools. But there’s a caveat – Daily Breeze

Crime is down at LA schools. But there’s a caveat

There were 2,014 crimes reported at school campuses in the city during the 2018-19 school year, a 10.1% drop from the previous year, according to Crosstown, which is based out of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

LOS ANGELES — With Los Angeles schools back in session, parents should find comfort in police statistics showing campuses are getting progressively safer, according to a report released Thursday by a nonprofit news organization.

Crosstown, which is based out of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, reported that based on Los Angeles Police Department data, there were 2,014 crimes reported at school campuses in the city during the 2018-19 school year, a 10.1% drop from the previous year.

The 2018-19 figure was down dramatically — 25.8% — from 2010-11, when LAPD statistics became publicly available, according to Crosstown.

Crosstown’s report noted that the numbers are tempered by a corresponding reduction in enrollment at city schools over the past decade, with the LAUSD projecting this year’s enrollment at 557,560, down 12.4% from 2010-11. The organization also noted that the numbers are based only on the crimes reported to the LAPD. The Los Angeles School Police Department oversees investigations of crimes at LAUSD schools, and that agency reports to the LAPD.

During the 2018-19 school year, high schools were the site of 45.6% of reported crimes, while middle schools represented 28.4% and elementary schools 26%, according to the report. The most common type of crime reported at high schools was theft, while battery/simple assaults were the most common crime at middle schools and burglary most prevalent at elementary schools.

Overall, crimes committed at schools represent a small fraction of the offenses committed citywide. Crosstown’s report found that of more than 2 million crimes reported between Jan. 1, 2010, and July 31, 2019, only 1.37% occurred at schools.

The report also noted that reported crimes are just one measure of assessing safety at campuses. The LAPD data does not, Crosstown reported, take into account other issues that could create challenges for students, such as bullying, fighting or drug use.

According to the report, the five most common types of crimes at schools during the 2018-19 school year were:

Elementary Schools: CONTINUE READING: Crime is down at LA schools. But there’s a caveat – Daily Breeze

Repairing the Damage to Science | Live Long and Prosper

Repairing the Damage to Science | Live Long and Prosper

Repairing the Damage to Science

ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM

The Growing Partisan Divide in Views of Higher Education

In 2012 53% of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents in the U.S. believed that higher education was a net positive for the nation and 35% had a negative view. Now, in 2019, those numbers have reversed. 59% of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents have a negative view of higher education while 33% have a positive view. Over the same time period, the results for Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents have been consistent — about 66% positive and about 20% negative.

Ed Brayton, who blogs at Dispatches from the Culture Wars “is not at all” surprised by this.

Most Republicans Reject Higher Education

This is not at all surprising. The right, and Trump in particular, have made rejection of expertise and knowledge almost an article of faith. They look at university faculty that leans liberal, decide they’re the enemy and demonize them in every way possible. Trump embodies this with his constant rejection of science, learning and experience. No one knows anything about anything but him, so he doesn’t need no fancy schmancy liberal eggheads telling him that global warming is real or that perhaps he should listen to our career civil servants in the diplomatic corps, who might just know something he doesn’t about the countries they’ve been deeply involved with for decades.

Not only is this not surprising, but, as the surveys have shown, it’s not new either. In 2012 more than a third of America’s Republicans thought that a post- CONTINUE READING: Repairing the Damage to Science | Live Long and Prosper

It's A Structural Thing | Blue Cereal Education

It's A Structural Thing | Blue Cereal Education

It's A Structural Thing

I'm sure it will surprise absolutely no one to learn that I'm not naturally the strict, by-the-book authoritarian type. In fact, I traditionally hate doing things that way – I really do.

That doesn’t mean I think those who manage their classrooms (or families, or companies) that way are necessarily doing anything wrong. I’ve worked with teachers who care deeply about each and every child in front of them but would nonetheless rather burst into flames than hang a motivational poster, let alone bend a rule. It’s their very consistency that works for them. (It’s hard to feel picked on or abused when the Superintendent’s kid is serving the same after-school detention you are for being the same 23 seconds late after lunch a second time.)

One of the best pieces of advice I was given as a student teacher (or as anything else, for that matter) was from a soccer coach and social studies educator who wasn’t even my assigned mentor at the time. It’s been over twenty years, but I remember his name (Coach Kinzer), his voice, and even his face as he spoke. I even remember the school library where we talked while his kids worked on a project of some sort. (The project I CONTINUE READING: It's A Structural Thing | Blue Cereal Education

A Gates-funded program meant to keep low-income students pushed them out instead - Vox

A Gates-funded program meant to keep low-income students pushed them out instead - Vox

A Gates-funded program meant to keep low-income students pushed them out instead
The failure of a college advising program shows why education reform is so hard — and how we can get it right.

Many low-income and first-generation college students don’t graduate from college. One thing that seems to change that? High-quality advising. When a school can offer advisers who work directly with students to address barriers to getting an education, students perform better and are more likely to graduate.

So how can we make advising work better? In 2013, the Gates Foundation started a new initiative called iPASS (Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success) to see if it can make the difference. iPASS funds school efforts to use technology to help advisers identify at-risk students, follow up with them regularly, connect them to tutoring, and otherwise get them what they need to succeed and graduate.

But there’s a problem.

According to a new analysis of the effects of the iPASS program by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University and social policy research group MDRC, it’s not doing anything. “The enhancements have so far had no discernible positive effects on students’ academic performance,” the report concludes. Even worse, at one school the program backfired and made students likelier to drop out.

That’s bad news.

But I come here not to bury iPass but to praise it — or rather its creators. Like the program itself, the study was funded by the Gates Foundation. That’s significant; historically, charities haven’t always been great about funding careful third-party evaluations of their new programs. When the programs fail, they don’t always notice.

By funding such a study, the Gates Foundation was able to realize that iPASS is not yet working. And now, colleges are thinking about how to make it better.

Education research is really hard. Lots of well-meaning programs backfire, do nothing, or are worse than just giving people money. The latest research is a reminder of how hard this is, but also an example of how to do it right.

Can we make advisers better able to do their jobs?

Advisers at colleges play a critical role, but their job is very challenging. They’re often CONTINUE READING: A Gates-funded program meant to keep low-income students pushed them out instead - Vox

How the Koch brothers co-opted minority groups in a push for a profit-based approach to education – Raw Story

How the Koch brothers co-opted minority groups in a push for a profit-based approach to education – Raw Story

How the Koch brothers co-opted minority groups in a push for a profit-based approach to education

Under the mantra of civil rights, billionaires such as Eli Broad, Bill Gates and the Koch Brothers and the powerful corporate-funded lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are using venture philanthropy and the political process to press for school reforms in the United States.

The ongoing Vergara law case in California in which nine students are suing the state over teacher tenure laws, is backed by Student Matters, a non-profit that has received donations from the Broad Foundation and the Walton Foundation, run by the Walton family that founded supermarket chain Wal-Mart.

The driver behind the case is a campaign to loosen labour rules in order to make it easier to fire “bad” teachers, under the argument that their presence discriminates against disadvantaged children. Opponents of the case argue that it is a blatant attempt to change the conversation from the realities of California’s divestment in education — the state is 46th in the nation in spending per student in 2010-11, and 50th in the number of students per teacher.

What these organisations and other others such as the the Koch brothers, Bradley Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Students First and Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education – all supposedly supporters of school reform – have as a common denominator is a vision of a profit-based market approach to education. CONTINUE READING: How the Koch brothers co-opted minority groups in a push for a profit-based approach to education – Raw Story

MGT Consultants: Profiting from the School Crisis in Gary, Indiana and Taking Over Three Colorado School Districts | janresseger

MGT Consultants: Profiting from the School Crisis in Gary, Indiana and Taking Over Three Colorado School Districts | janresseger

MGT Consultants: Profiting from the School Crisis in Gary, Indiana and Taking Over Three Colorado School Districts

This blog will take a late summer break.  Look for a new post on Wednesday, September 11, 2019.

In a blog post on Monday, Diane Ravitch warned: “Colorado be very afraid.”  She is commenting on a decision by the state board of education in Colorado to hire a for-profit education management company to take over three school districts which Colorado’s state board has deemed “troubled.”

Ravitch is writing about an article from Sentinel Colorado, which explains: “As Colorado school districts struggle and fail to raise student test scores in schools with entrenched problems, they’re turning to private companies to fix public schools, for millions of dollars. Some critics question whether at least one of those private companies is qualified for the job based on their track record in another state and their close ties to what some say are anti-public schools alliances.”  The three districts are to be taken over by Florida’s MGT Consulting.

Sentinel Colorado‘s Grant Singer explains: “Leaders of the Florida-based MGT say they specialize in allocating public money more effectively while improving teacher effectiveness in the classroom and school culture. Its management process includes sub-contracting areas of school work to other companies, and it boasts completing over 10,000 projects in many states and abroad over several decades… MGT’s current chief executive officer also co-founded a consulting and lobbying firm tapped into a national network of for-profit education institutions, Republican education reformers, the testing industry and charter schools. That’s part of what draws controversy as public school academia question the motives of a company headed by pro-school voucher officials working to save failing public schools—for profit.”

Colorado state school board members praised MGT’s record in the so-called turnaround of the only whole school district it has managed—for the past two years—in Gary, Indiana.  The fact that MGT Consulting, a for-profit, was praised for work in Gary caught my eye. I have been to Gary, just as I have been to Detroit, whose public schools have shared some problems with CONTINUE READING: MGT Consultants: Profiting from the School Crisis in Gary, Indiana and Taking Over Three Colorado School Districts | janresseger

Seattle Schools Community Forum: SEA Contract Update

Seattle Schools Community Forum: SEA Contract Update

SEA Contract Update

From the SEA Blog:

Aug. 21 was SEA’s initial deadline for a tentative contract agreement. There is no agreement at this point. Bargaining continues today (Thursday, Aug. 22).

Saturday afternoon is the next deadline for the district administration to agree to a tentative agreement (TA). SEA’s bylaws require a TA to be shared with SEA members 72 hours prior to voting, and our next general membership meeting is Aug. 27 at 5 pm.

What’s the problem? So far, district administrators have been unwilling to invest in competitive and professional compensation for Seattle educators or the other support our students need to be successful. Instead, they’ve claimed they don’t have the money – which isn’t true. That’s the same excuse we’ve heard for the last four years. Every year, district administrators predict we’re going to end the school year with a budget deficit. Instead, administrators have built large budget surpluses each year, mainly by spending less on student services than they budgeted.

District budget administrators have consistently made dire predictions about the district’s finances – predictions that never came true.

Based on recent history, SEA members know that we have to constantly fight to get the resources and support our students need. We can’t rely on the district administration to do it on their own. When it comes to budget priorities, we can’t trust the CONTINUE READING: Seattle Schools Community Forum: SEA Contract Update

Free Kids From 180 Days Of Stress | Real Learning CT

Free Kids From 180 Days Of Stress | Real Learning CT

Free Kids From 180 Days Of Stress

A recent article in The New York Times claims that our children and adolescents are under great stress because we, as a society, have given up on childhood. While economic, racial, and familial factors contribute to that stress, the education given to our children and adolescents every school day through the application of the Common Core Standards can be a major stress as well. That stress occurs because those standards were created without addressing the cognitive, psychological, and social development of children and adolescents.

We need to investigate how mandating standards that are not based on the needs of  children and adolescents contributes to their stress.

1. Could it be that making kindergarten “the new first grade” is part of the problem?

2. Could it be that focusing on teaching kindergarteners skills to make them “college and career ready” instead of helping them to learn through play and by using their imagination is part of the problem?

3. Could it be that mastering 90 discrete skills in kindergarten instead of learning through active exploration and hands-on play-based learning is part CONTINUE READING: Free Kids From 180 Days Of Stress | Real Learning CT

The Utility of Student Perception Surveys to Give Teachers Feedback : An Introduction to the My Teacher Questionnaire | VAMboozled!

The Utility of Student Perception Surveys to Give Teachers Feedback : An Introduction to the My Teacher Questionnaire | VAMboozled!

The Utility of Student Perception Surveys to Give Teachers Feedback : An Introduction to the My Teacher Questionnaire

This is another guest post for the followers of this blog.

In short, Rikkert van der Lans of the University of Groningen’s Department of Teacher Education, emailed me a few months ago about an article I published with one of my PhD students titled “Student perception surveys for K-12 teacher evaluation in the United States: A survey of surveys.” In this piece, he was interested in our review of the “many untested [student] questionnaires that are applied by schools [to evaluate teachers],” and “thought [I] might also be interested [in his and his colleagues’] work around the ‘My Teacher’ questionnaire.” Apparently, it has been applied globally across 15 different countries and, importantly, not only given it is research-based but also researched with psychometric characteristics actually warranting its use. Hence, I asked him to write a guest post, particularly for those of you who, post the U.S.’s passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA; see prior posts about ESSA here and here), are looking to implement a researched/validated instrument for student evaluation purposes. Below is his post.

Thank you Audrey Amrein-Beardsley for inviting me to write this blog post. I live in the Netherlands and despite living across the Atlantic, I recognize many of the issues identified by you and your coauthor with student surveys, including their increased use, their novelty, and the small knowledge base about how to use them (reliably and validly). In my writing, I mentioned our own validated survey: the “My Teacher” questionnaire (MTQ) which currently is in use in 15 countries,1 with English and Spanish2 versions also having been developed.

In many ways, the MTQ is similar to other survey instruments, which is a good thing but not much of a selling point. So, let me introduce some evidence of validity unique to the MTQ and related to the topics (1) formative feedback and (2) use of multiple measures. Unique to the MTQ is the evidence in support of an interpretation of scores in terms of teachers’ stage of development (for details see these publications 3, 4, 5). I have myself used the MTQ to give feedback (face-to-face) with over 200 teachers, and what they CONTINUE READING: The Utility of Student Perception Surveys to Give Teachers Feedback : An Introduction to the My Teacher Questionnaire | VAMboozled!

KIPP charter school co-founder sues after being fired for alleged sexual misconduct - The Washington Post

KIPP charter school co-founder sues after being fired for alleged sexual misconduct - The Washington Post

KIPP charter school co-founder sues after being fired for alleged sexual misconduct

A founder of the KIPP charter school network who was fired in 2018 after being accused of sexual misconduct is suing the organization, saying the allegations were false and that his career and reputation have been destroyed by the actions of KIPP.

KIPP executives called the lawsuit filed by Mike Feinberg “baseless and frivolous,” and said they “regret” that he is putting his accusers and the “entire KIPP community through further distress.”

Feinberg, who in 1994 co-founded a Texas school that grew into the nation’s largest charter network, filed the lawsuit Thursday and is seeking a jury trial and punitive and other damages. He has consistently denied an allegation that he sexually abused a student in the late 1990s. The allegation triggered two investigations.

A letter issued by KIPP on Feb. 22, 2018, announcing Feinberg’s firing said an independent probe had found that an allegation of sexual abuse from two decades earlier had “credibility.” It said Feinberg denied misconduct

The letter also cited an allegation of sexual harassment against Feinberg involving an adult employed by KIPP Houston; that case involved a financial settlement, the letter said. And it said there was another “credible” but uncorroborated allegation of sexual harassment of an adult employed by KIPP Houston. Both women were KIPP graduates.

Feinberg’s lawsuit says that he was never given “detailed information about the allegations” against him and that if he had, he could have “provided facts that would have disproved them.”

“KIPP’s public statements following Mike’s termination were false and inflammatory,” the lawsuit says. “KIPP knew that such a serious allegation would destroy Mike’s career in education and be personally devastating to him, his family and friends. But KIPP didn’t care. What mattered most to KIPP was that Mike be removed and CONTINUE READING: KIPP charter school co-founder sues after being fired for alleged sexual misconduct - The Washington Post

Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys Through "No Excuses" Teaching - 9781475825800 - https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475825794/Work-Hard-Be-Hard-Journeys-Through-%22No-Excuses%22-Teaching

The answers for schools aren’t just in Finland or Singapore. | Cloaking Inequity

The answers for schools aren’t just in Finland or Singapore. | Cloaking Inequity

THE ANSWERS FOR SCHOOLS AREN’T JUST IN FINLAND OR SINGAPORE.

I spent some time talking with Linda Blackford, the local column writer for the Lexington Herald Leader. She wrote a piece based on our conversation entitled The answers for Kentucky schools aren’t in Finland or Singapore. ‘You just have to go to Beaumont.’

Last year, University of Kentucky professor Wayne Lewis took an unpaid leave of absence from the College of Education to become state education commissioner, hired by Gov. Matt Bevin’s charter school-loving board to finally enact a Koch-fueled dream of publicly funded private schools throughout throughout the Commonwealth.

 

This summer, Lewis got a new boss at UK, who arrived just as he happened to publish a research paper that found segregation is more intense in charter schools than public schools in general. Julian Vasquez Heilig, 44, the new dean of the UK College of Education, said the timing was coincidental, but the research is clear and compelling.

 

“We know from the research that diversity and integration is good for all kids,” Vasquez Heilig said in an interview a few days before classes start at UK. “We have to decide for ourselves whether we prefer a Balkanized society or a diverse society. That’s a decision we’re going to have to make.”

 

Vasquez isn’t afraid of talking about provocative subjects; in the past seven years, his blog, Cloaking Inequity has taken on numerous controversial topics, such as why pro-charter school research frequently comes from organizations that already support them.

 

He’s a bold, interesting choice for UK, an institution that has traditionally preferred not to tangle with the legislative and executive branches that used to fund it. Certainly, his credentials are impressive: the University of Michigan for undergraduate and Stanford University for his masters and Ph.D., then a stint at the University of Texas before becoming a professor of educational leadership and policy studies and director of the Doctorate in Educational Leadership program at California State University, Sacramento.

 

He’s not a total stranger to Lexington; he’s been coming here since 1993 when his uncle moved here to work for IBM. He sees Kentucky as a challenge to himself and the College of Education, which he says must make itself more visible and available in important policy discussions around the state.

 

“We want to make sure we’re not the ivory tower where Rapunzel rarely lets down her hair,” he said. “We want to be community engaged and community relevant … UK as one of the lead institutions has an important CONTINUE READING:

The answers for schools aren’t just in Finland or Singapore. | Cloaking Inequity

Badass Teachers Association Blog: TFA is Bad for America by Thomas Ultican

Badass Teachers Association Blog: TFA is Bad for America by Thomas Ultican

TFA is Bad for America by Thomas Ultican

Originally posted at: TFA is Bad for America | tultican - https://wp.me/p2txw0-QE 

By T. Ultican 8/19/2019

Teach For America (TFA) has become the billionaire financed army for privatizing public education. It is the number one source of charter school teachers and its alumni are carrying a neoliberal ideology into education leadership at all levels. TFA undermines education professionalism and exacerbates teacher turnover. Its teachers are totally unqualified to run a classroom yet their political support caused the US Congress to label them as highly qualified teachers. Big money and its political power have elevated TFA to being the nation’s most effective force driving the privatization of public education.

Defining  TFA Neoliberalism

This April, Angela M. Kraemer-Holland of DePaul University submitted her doctoral thesis in which she observed:

“TFA’s primary conception of itself is not as a teacher training organization, nor a non-university-based early entry recruitment program, but rather as a “movement” against a pressing and untenable social problem. Conclusions illuminate TFA’s efforts to shape participants’ understanding of teaching and learning—framing teaching as a temporary career—in order to create and sustain a broader movement in education and beyond that is reflective of neoliberal ideas.”

Kraemer-Holland’s conclusions echoes those of two TFA alumni working on their doctorates at Boston College, Randall Lahann and Emilie Mitescu Reagan. They co-wrote “Teach for America and the Politics of Progressive Neoliberalism” published by the Teacher Education Quarterly winter 2011. The classification of TFA as a progressive neoliberal organization is based on their definitions of these combined terms:

“Neoliberalism: Political ideology which calls for state policies that better enable CONTINUE READING:Badass Teachers Association Blog: TFA is Bad for America by Thomas Ultican