Civil Rights and Community Groups Demand End to High Stakes Testing and Moratorium on Charter Schools | Seattle Education

Civil Rights and Community Groups Demand End to High Stakes Testing and Moratorium on Charter Schools | Seattle Education:

Civil Rights and Community Groups Demand End to High Stakes Testing and Moratorium on Charter Schools

This letter was issued on July 7, 2015.

“We respectfully disagree that the proliferation of high stakes assessments and top-down interventions are needed in order to improve our schools.  We live in the communities where these schools exist.  What, from our vantage point, happens because of these tests is not improvement.  It’s destruction.”

Nearly 200 Civil Rights, Community Groups Send Letter to Senate Demanding Fair & Equitable Reforms to ESEA Reauthorization

This week, the Journey for Justice Alliance—a coalition of parents, students, teachers, and community and civil rights organizations—along with 175 other national and local grassroots, youth, and civil rights organizations, sent a letter to Senators Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid demanding that high stakes tested be removed from the civil rights provisions within the Elementary & Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization bill currently being debated in Congress. Instead, the groups are calling for an end to school closures and privatization and investment in sustainable community schools with well-balanced assessments and challenging and varied curriculum.

In the letter, the groups state: “We respectfully disagree that the proliferation of high stakes assessments and top-down interventions are needed in order to improve our schools.  We live in the communities where these schools exist.  What, from our vantage point, happens because of these tests is not improvement.  It’s destruction.”

The letter continues: “High stakes standardized tests have been proven to harm Black and Brown children, adults, schools and communities. Curriculum is narrowed. Their results purport to show that our children are failures. They also claim to show that our schools are failures, leading to closures or wholesale dismissal of staff.  Children in low-income communities lose important relationships with caring adults when this happens. Other good schools are destabilized as they receive hundreds of children from closed schools. Large proportions of Black teachers lose their jobs in this process, because it is Black teachers who are often drawn to commit their skills and energies to Black Civil Rights and Community Groups Demand End to High Stakes Testing and Moratorium on Charter Schools | Seattle Education:

50 Years Later: Jonathan Kozol’s "Death at an Early Age" - Living in Dialogue

50 Years Later: Jonathan Kozol’s "Death at an Early Age" - Living in Dialogue:

50 Years Later: Jonathan Kozol’s "Death at an Early Age" 

The 50th anniversary of Jonathan Kozol’s Death at an Early Age comes as we confront the horror of the Charleston, S.C. massacre and the epidemic of police killings of unarmed blacks. At a time like this, it is best to read Kozol’s masterpiece on its own, without using it as evidence for any side of our current edu-political conflicts. After a decent interval for letting the tragedies sink in, we can then draw upon it as we debate contemporary school policy.

The subtitle of Death at an Early Age is The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools. It is an unrelenting indictment of the segregated Boston Public School System in 1965. Back then, I was twelve years old and I didn’t know a single black person, and George Washington Carver was the only black person in our textbooks. It was easy for an Oklahoman like me, however, to grasp the overt racism of “the Redneck.”  As Kozol knew, it would be far harder to comprehend the covert racism of “the Reading Teacher.” As he guides us through his quest to understand the Reading Teacher, however, Kozol reveals the disgusting soul of Boston’s curriculum, its governance, and its segregation.

The Redneck seemed to be the most honest teacher in this predominantly poor and black elementary school. He’d been treated rough while growing up and so were the black children who he was supposed to teach. The Redneck exemplified the mentality of “we did it, and we never had any fancy schools either.” He said he was just as “culturally deprived” as Negroes, and:

I don’t need anyone to tell me. I haven’t learned a thing, read a thing that I wished I’d read or learned since the day I entered high school, and I’ve known it for years and I tried to hide it from myself and now I wish I could do something about it but I’m afraid it’s just too late.

In perhaps the most straightforward conclusion in Kozol’s nuanced analysis of prejudice and segregation, he observed, “Former Irish boys beaten by Yankee schoolmasters may frequently make ungenerous 50 Years Later: Jonathan Kozol’s "Death at an Early Age" - Living in Dialogue:

What should — and should not — be written into a new U.S. education law - The Washington Post

What should — and should not — be written into a new U.S. education law - The Washington Post:

What should — and should not — be written into a new U.S. education law

Both the U.S. House and Senate are now — eight years late — debating this week how to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known in its current form as No Child Left Behind. Signed into law in 2002, NCLB was supposed to have been rewritten by Congress in 2007, but sheer negligence and an inability among lawmakers to agree meant that America’s public schools were forced to live under a law that was fatally flawed.

Here is a letter that was sent to every senator about what the signatories believe should  — and should not — be in any new education law. Addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, the letter was sent by the Journey for Justice Alliance, a coalition of nearly 40 organizations of parents and students of color in 23 states, as well as from 175 other national and local civil rights, youth and community organizations.

Dear Senators McConnell and Reid,

The Journey for Justice Alliance, an alliance of 38 organizations of Black and Brown parents and students in 23 states, joins with the 175 other national and local grassroots community, youth and civil rights organizations signed on below, to call on the U.S. Congress to pass an ESEA reauthorization without requiring the regime of oppressive, high stakes, standardized testing and sanctions that have recently been promoted as civil rights provisions within ESEA.

We respectfully disagree that the proliferation of high stakes assessments and top-down interventions are needed in order to improve our schools. We live in the communities where these schools exist. What, from our vantage point, happens because of these tests is not improvement. It’s destruction.

Black and Latino families want world class public schools for our children, just as white and affluent families do. We want quality and stability. We want a varied and rich curriculum in our schools. We don’t want them closed or privatized. We want to spend our days learning, creating and debating, not preparing for test after test.

In the Chicago Public Schools, for example, children in kindergarten through 8th grade are administered anywhere between 8 and 25 standardized tests per year. By the time they graduate from 8th grade, they have taken an average of 180 standardized tests!   We are not opposed to state mandated testing as a component of a well-rounded system of evaluating student needs. But enough is enough.

We want balanced assessments, such as oral exams, portfolios, daily check-ins and teacher created assessment tools—all of which are used at the University of Chicago Lab School, where President Barack Obama and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have sent their children to be educated. For us, civil rights are about access to schools all our children deserve. Are our children less worthy?

High stakes standardized tests have been proven to harm Black and Brown children, adults, schools and communities. Curriculum is narrowed. Their results purport to show that our children are failures. They also claim to show that our schools are failures, leading to closures or wholesale dismissal of staff. Children in low income communities lose important relationships with caring adults when this happens. Other good schools are destabilized as they receive hundreds of children from closed schools. Large proportions of Black teachers lose their jobs in this process, because it is Black teachers who are often drawn to commit their skills and energies to Black children. Standardized testing, whether intentionally or not, has negatively impacted the Black middle class, because they are the teachers, lunchroom workers, teacher aides, counselors, security staff and custodians who are fired when schools close.

Standardized tests are used as the reason why voting rights are removed from Black and Brown voters—a civil right every bit as important as education. Our schools and school districts are regularly judged to be failures—and then stripped of local control through the appointment of state takeover authorities that eliminate democratic process and our local voice—and have yet so far largely failed to actually improve the quality of education our children receive.

Throughout the course of the debate on the reauthorization of ESEA, way too much attention has focused on testing and sanctions, and not on the much more critical solutions to educational inequality.

In March, the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools issued a letter to the House and Senate leadership, with four recommendations for ESEA Reauthorization.:

1. First, there are 5000 community schools in America today, providing an array of wrap around services and after school programs to children and their families. These community schools serve over 5 million children, and we want to double that number and intensify the effort. We are calling for a significant investment in creating thousands moresustainable community schools. They provide a curriculum that is engaging, relevant and challenging, supports for quality teaching and not standardized testing, wrap-around supports for every child, a student centered culture and finally, transformative parent and community engagement.We call on the federal government to provide $1 billion toward that goal, and we are asking our local governments to decrease the high stakes standardized testing with its expensive test prep programs and divert those funds into resourcing more sustainable community schools.
2. Second, we want to include restorative justice and positive approaches to discipline in all of our sustainable community schools, so we are calling on the federal government to provide $500 million for restorative justice coordinators and training in all of our sustainable community schools.
3. Third, to finally move toward fully resourcing Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, we call on the federal government to provide $20 billion this year for the schools that serve the most low income students, and more in future years until we finally reach the 40% increase in funding for poor schools that the Act originally envisioned.
4. Finally, we ask for a moratorium on the federal Charter Schools Program, which has pumped over $3 billion into new charter schools, many of which have already closed, or have failed the students drawn to them by the illusive promise of quality. We want the resources that all our schools deserve – we don’t need more schools. We need better ones.

So now we are prepared to say, clearly, that we will take nothing less than the schools our children deserve.   It will cost some money to support them, but that’s okay, because we have billionaires and hedge funders in this country who have neverpaid the tax rates that the rest of us pay. We are a rich country, and we can afford some world class community schools.

As we continue to organize for educational justice, it is that tradition of struggle that will guide J4J, AROS and the scores of organizations who have signed on to this letter.  We are the people directly impacted and will continue to organize in the memory of the great institution builder Ella Baker who said, “Oppressed people, whatever their level of formal education, have the ability to understand and interpret the world around them, to see the world for what it is, and move to transform it.”  Our voices matter.

In Anticipation,
Jitu Brown
Journey for Justice Alliance

Along with…What should — and should not — be written into a new U.S. education law - The Washington Post: 

The case against school vouchers: Sen. Patty Murray takes a stand on Senate floor - The Washington Post

The case against school vouchers: Sen. Patty Murray takes a stand on Senate floor - The Washington Post:

The case against school vouchers: Sen. Patty Murray takes a stand on Senate floor

The main focus of the current conversation on rewriting No Child Left Behind has been on whether or not annual standardized testing of students will be retained in a new bill. But there are other important issues that have gotten less attention — school vouchers, for instance.

The House and Senate are now debating their respective bills to revamp the federal government’s education law. The House bill includes vouchers — which essentially allow the use of public funds for private school tuition — while the Senate version does not, though some Republican senators want to put them in.

On Wednesday, Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate education committee, made a speech on the Senate floor opposing efforts to amend the Senate’s “Every Child Achieves Act” to include vouchers. Murray has been working closely with Senate education committee chair Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

Here is Murray’s speech, as prepared for delivery, in which she makes a case against vouchers:

M. President, since our nation’s founding, the idea of a strong public education for every child has been a part of the fabric of America. In the late 1770s, Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill in Virginia that outlined his plan for public schooling.

At the time he wrote, “By far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people.” Jefferson knew that educating children would strengthen our country.  And that is still true today.

Today, a good education can provide a ticket to the middle class. And when all students have the chance to learn, we strengthen our future workforce and economy.

But M. President, nearly everyone agrees that our nation’s current education law – No Child Left Behind – is badly broken.  The bipartisan bill – the Every Child Achieves Act – that we’re debating on the floor is a strong step in the right direction to finally fixing that law. And it will help continue our nation’s tradition of making sure all students have access to a quality public education.

But, M. President, some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are interested in voucherizing the public school system.  Instead of investing in our public school system, they want to send federal resources to private schools.  That would be a major step backward.

Vouchers undermine the basic goals of public education by allowing funding that is designated for our most at-risk students to be re-routed to private schools. I urge my colleagues to oppose any attempt to use federal education funds for private school vouchers.

M. President, I strongly oppose vouchers for several reasons. For one, vouchers divert much-needed resources away from public 

The case against school vouchers: Sen. Patty Murray takes a stand on Senate floor - The Washington Post:

Dialogue With the Gates Foundation: How Do We Build the Teaching Profession? by Anthony Cody - Garn Press

Dialogue With the Gates Foundation: How Do We Build the Teaching Profession? by Anthony Cody - Garn Press:

Dialogue With the Gates Foundation: How Do We Build the Teaching Profession? by Anthony Cody

This article originally appeared on Living In Dialogue | Anthony Cody | 2015

(This essay is also included in Anthony Cody’s book, The Educator and the Oligarch.)

By Anthony Cody.

In the summer of 2012  I traveled to Seattle and spent most of the day meeting with leaders of the Gates Foundation, discussing their work around education reform. I have been critical of the impact their agenda has had, but they expressed an interest in opening up a dialogue. This blog post was the first in a series of exchanges that  explored some of the key issues in education. I am re-posting, as these issues remain central to the ongoing debate over how to improve our schools.

In the weeks that followed we got into some nitty gritty issues, such as what it means to “measure” teacher effectiveness? What is the role of poverty in relationship to education reform? What is the purpose of a k-12 education? And what role should the drive for profit play in our schools? But as our starting point, we are took a narrower focus, and tackled something a bit more concrete. This first exchange will focus on these questions: How can educators create a strong professional culture in our schools? How do we build the teaching profession?

The Gates Foundation has presented effective teaching as the focus of its education work for the past few years. Unfortunately much of the reform work of the past few years has focused on the negative side of the teacher-effectiveness equation. Reports like “The Widget Effect” have built up the idea that American schools are places where nobody is ever fired. Films like “Waiting for Superman” have reinforced the concept that due process for teachers means we have “jobs for life.” The Gates Foundation, I believe, has actively promoted these ideas, and in 2010, Bill Gates stated on Oprah that if we could get rid of bad teachers, “our schools would shoot from the bottom of these (international) rankings to the top.”

But there seems to be a growing awareness that real growth will not come from this strategy of rooting out the bottom 5 percent of performers. We will need to do some heavy lifting to reverse some of the counterproductive work that has been done to advance that agenda—but we will save that for another post. For this discussion, I want to explore what a healthy collaborative culture looks like, and how it relates to teacher evaluation.

Let’s take a look at the best model of collaboration I have seen in recent years, the teachers at New Highland Academy in East Oakland. This team of teachers worked with the support of a team at Mills College to engage in thoughtful inquiry into their practice. They met regularly to look at student work and talk about where their students were struggling. When they looked at their students’ work, they saw that while the curriculum they were using was helping the students learn to decode, their comprehension was lagging. They chose a set of strategies to help their students to find meaning in what they read, and worked across the school to try this out.

Here is how teacher leader Aija Simmons explained it:

“The Answers” are what we all problematize. Because what “the answer” is for me in this moment might not be the 

Dialogue With the Gates Foundation: How Do We Build the Teaching Profession? by Anthony Cody - Garn Press:

4LAKids NTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT TO STOP THE PEARSON OCTOPUS

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT TO STOP THE PEARSON OCTOPUS:

INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT TO STOP THE PEARSON OCTOPUS

7/8/2015 2:57 pm EDT   ::  I am posting from Madrid, Spain where I am presenting a paper, Hacking Away at the Pearson Octopus, at the International Conference on Learning. The movement to stop the Pearson octopus' stranglehold on education is global.

In April, protesters from teacher unions and global justice groups stormed the gates at Pearson's annual general meeting held in London. Protesters accused Pearson of turning education into a commodity and profiting from low-fee private schools in poverty-stricken regions of Africa and India. They claimed is making millions by privatizing education in the global south. Pearson's Chief Executive Officer John Fallon, forced to respond to dissidents, declared his enthusiastic "support free public education for every child around the world." However he did not offer to provide Pearson's educational services for free. In 2014, Pearson reported an adjusted operating profit of £720 million (approximately $1.1 Billion) on sales of £4,874 million.

A joint letter from Great Britain's National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) and the organization Global Justice Now, declared "From fuelling the obsessive testing regimes that are the backbone of the 'test and punish' efforts in the global north, to supporting the predatory, 'low-fee' for-profit private schools in the global south, Pearson's brand has become synonymous with profiteering and the destruction of public education."

ATL general secretary Mary Bousted said: "School curricula should not be patented and charged for. Tests should not distort what is taught and how it is assessed. Unfortunately, as the profit motive embeds itself in education systems around the world, these fundamental principles come under ever greater threat leading to greater inequality and exclusion for the most disadvantaged children and young people." Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, added the voice of American teachers to the protest movement. "We fight this kind of profit making to get kids a good education and fight for governments which gives students a high quality education."

A major player in the anti-Pearson campaign is a British organization Global Justice Now (GJN). GJN is committed to "a world where resources are controlled by the many, not the few." The group champions social movements that "propose democratic alternatives to corporate power." GJN accuses the British government's Department for International Development (DfID) of having a too cozy relationship with Pearson and using government aid money "to set up private healthcare and education in Africa and Asia which has benefited British and American companies." The DFID is heavily promoting private schooling in Pakistan where its Chief Education Representative is Sir Michael Barber, who is also Chief Education Advisor at Pearson. Barber is also chair of the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund. Under pressure because of this conflict of interest, Pearson claimed it had granted Barber a 30 day unpaid leave while he was advising the DFID in Pakistan.

According to the Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden, "aid is being used as a tool to convince, cajole and compel the majority of the world to undertake policies which help big corporations like Pearson, but which detract from the real need to promote publicly funded services that are universally accessible."

Dearden also argued "Aid should be used to support human needs by building up public services in countries that don't have the same levels of economic privilege as the UK. So it's shocking that DfID is dogmatically promoting private health and education when it's been shown that this approach actually entrenches inequality and endangers access."

GJN presented research by ActionAid on Pearson's use of tax havens to avoid tax laws and enhance corporate profits. Although it is a British company, in 2013 Pearson had at least 4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT TO STOP THE PEARSON OCTOPUS:

Journey 4 Justice Alliance Demands that ESEA Stop Test-and-Punish and Improve Urban Schools | janresseger

Journey 4 Justice Alliance Demands that ESEA Stop Test-and-Punish and Improve Urban Schools | janresseger:

Journey 4 Justice Alliance Demands that ESEA Stop Test-and-Punish and Improve Urban Schools

On Monday, in the week when the Senate is taking up the reauthorization of the federal education law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the Journey for Justice Alliance sent a powerful letter to leaders in the Senate to demand that Congress shift the federal approach to public education: “The Journey for Alliance, an alliance of 38 organizations of Black and Brown parents and students in 23 states, joins with the 175 other national and local grassroots community, youth and civil rights organizations signed on below, to call on the U.S. Congress to pass an ESEA reauthorization without requiring the regime of oppressive, high states, standardized testing and sanctions that have recently been promoted as civil rights provisions within ESEA.”

The letter continues: “We respectfully disagree that the proliferation of high stakes assessments and top-down interventions are needed in order to improve our schools.  We live in the communities where these schools exist… High stakes standardized tests have been proven to harm Black and Brown children, adults, schools and communities. Curriculum is narrowed.  The results purport to show that our children are failures.  They also claim to show that our schools are failures, leading to closures or wholesale dismissal of staff.  Children in low income communities lose important relationships with caring adults when this happens.  Other good schools are destabilized as they receive hundreds of children from closed schools.  Large proportions of Black teachers lose their jobs in this process, because it is Black teachers who are often drawn to commit their skills and energies to Black children.  Standardized testing, whether intentionally or not, has negatively impacted the Black middle class, because they are the teachers, lunchroom workers, teacher aides, counselors, security staff and custodians who are fired when schools closed.”

The Journey for Justice Alliance’s letter was penned by Jitu Brown, the leader of Journey for Justice  and a Chicago community organizer.  A number of national organizations that signed on to the letter are also members of the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, including American Federation of Teachers,  Alliance for Educational Justice, Center for Popular Democracy, Gamaliel, and the Journey for Justice Alliance.

The new letter from Journey for Justice endorses four concrete recommendations for the ESEA reauthorization that were presented in a letter sent to Congress in March by the Alliance for Educational Justice: provide $1 billion in new federal investment in Community Schools that wrap medical and family social service agencies into the school building and around the families served by the school; invest $500 million in restorative justice coordinators to reduce Journey 4 Justice Alliance Demands that ESEA Stop Test-and-Punish and Improve Urban Schools | janresseger:

THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION AS A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN ISSUE by Joseph A. Ricciotti - Wait What?

THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION AS A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN ISSUE by Joseph A. Ricciotti - Wait What?:

THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION AS A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN ISSUE by Joseph A. Ricciotti

Education advocate and retired educator Joseph Ricciotti recently published this commentary piece on the BAT Blog website.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is to be applauded for his recently announced presidential platform and for his courage as a presidential candidate to address the issues that are crucial to the future of the United States as well as emphasizing the importance of fighting for the middle class. However, what should also be included in his campaign platform as well as in the campaign platforms of other presidential candidates that is also highly significant is the future of public education in the country. Including the role of public education in the upcoming presidential is critical in order for the United States to maintain its prosperity as well as its global leadership in the decades to come. Hence, the United States needs a president with a 21st century outlook who will elevate the importance of public education as a presidential campaign issue.

Public school teachers, parents and administrators need to elevate the issue of how public education in this country is under siege and currently undergoing its greatest challenge for survival from the threat of privatization and high-stakes standardized testing. Just as Bernie Sanders believes that the middle class in our country is in jeopardy from the oligarchs, likewise oligarchs such as Bill Gates, Bill Walton, Michael Bloomberg, to name a few of the corporate education oligarch reformers, are threatening to change and destroy public education in the nation by replacing public schools with charter schools.

Sadly, in the tri-sate areas of Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, we also have governors who are in the privatization camp as all three governors have implemented policies that are considered by many teachers and parents to be anti-public education and who also advocate the replacing of public schools with charter schools. Their anti-public education stance and their erroneous philosophical beliefs are evident as Governors Malloy, Cuomo and Christie have all appointed commissioners of education in their states who support and promote privatization practices. These include their support of education programs such as Common Core State Standards (CCSS) with its stifling high-stakes standardized testing which is meeting severe parent resistance throughout the nation as the “opt-out” movement spreads like wildfire.

Unfortunately, two of the tri-state governors are Democrats who supposedly belong to the political party that has always supported public education. Needless to say, support of public education is not part of the playbook of either Governor Malloy or Governor Cuomo who have earned the dubious title of “education assassins.” Their anti-education policies are meeting with fierce resistance from organizations such as BATs, United Opt Out, Save Our Schools as well as the Network for Public Education which places the political futures of these Democratic governors in jeopardy as parents and teachers in these states are working together and have formed political movements that are in opposition to the anti-education policies espoused by Malloy and Cuomo. It appears to be a political movement as these groups of parent and teacher activists are in the process of developing clearly articulated positions that are highly critical of the tri-state governors. Likewise, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel of Chicago faces similar political opposition in his political future. This also raises the fascinating question regarding whether Hillary Clinton in her campaigning for the presidency can choose to ignore this political movement.

As most public school teachers, parents and administrators are aware, our present Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has been a champion of the wealthy privatization corporate reformers such as Bill Gates. Moreover, 

THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION AS A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN ISSUE by Joseph A. Ricciotti - Wait What?:

Jersey Jazzman: More Obnoxious Charter School Propaganda

Jersey Jazzman: More Obnoxious Charter School Propaganda:

More Obnoxious Charter School Propaganda

Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!

State Sen. Shirley Turner recently introduced legislation seeking a moratorium on expanding enrollment for New Jersey’s charter public schools. This legislation will rob educational opportunity from thousands of New Jersey’s children already in charter schools, and deny more than 20,000 children on waiting lists the opportunity to attend a charter public school. Turner’s bill (S-2887/A-4351) intends to incarcerate thousands of students in the generationally failing local public schools that they are trying to escape. We cannot allow this bill to become law -- and I will tell you why. [emphasis mine]

So now we're equating public school students with prisoners. Just lovely.

How many times do I have to point out the "Sixty bazillion children on the NJ charter waiting list!" talking point is a complete crock? How many times do I have to challenge the New Jersey Charter Schools Association to show us, once and for all, their source for this absurd claim?

I have no doubt that Dale Caldwell's charter school has terrific teachers and amazing students and committed families, and that he should be be very proud of all of them and their work. But what he writes here is both toxic and idiotic:

Why would Turner, vice chair of the Senate Education Committee, introduce such legislation? The bill is nothing more than an attempt to limit parent choice in communities of need and stunt the educational achievement of our state’s charter public school students. Achievement that is very real and measurable. Charter school students’ success is a direct threat to the lucrative franchise the NJEA holds on a public education system that has failed generations of New Jersey children, especially in some of our state’s most challenged communities, including Trenton, Newark, and Camden. And this is where we need to address the miseducation of our lawmakers.

Oh, I see: the problem isn't poverty, or chronic school underfunding (nearly $30 this year for Trenton alone), or the extra money districts have to pay charters under the new "hold harmless" provision (nearly $1 million for Trenton alone). No, the problem -- in some evil, magical way that Caldwell doesn't care to explain -- is unionized teachers!

(By the way -- the NJEA does not represent Newark's teachers. But, hey, why let facts destroy a good sliming?)

Why would someone like Caldwell make such an obnoxious argument? Because he doesn't want you to think too carefully about this:

Wrong, senator. The five charter schools in the Trenton area (Sen. Turner’s home district) outperformed the district schools as measured by both the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA) and New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJASK) standardized tests. HSPA math scores were 30 percent higher, and

- See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/07/more-obnoxious-charter-school-propaganda.html#sthash.UCatqfB9.dpuf

No Child Left Behind Is Heading Out, but Standardized Tests Are Here to Stay - The Atlantic

No Child Left Behind Is Heading Out, but Standardized Tests Are Here to Stay - The Atlantic:

No Child Left Behind Is Heading Out, but Standardized Tests Are Here to Stay

No Child Left Behind is really, really unpopular. Roughly three in 10 Americans think the George W. Bush-era federal education law has actually worsened the quality of education, according to a 2012 Gallup poll. The original law on which No Child Left Behind is based—the half-century-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act—was supposed to be renewed nearly a decade ago. Politics just kept getting in the way.

Congress appears poised to finally reauthorize the act and get rid of No Child Left Behind for good. They’re shooting for a compromise that avoids giving the feds too much clout while ensuring already disadvantaged children don’t get put at an even greater disadvantage. But politicians on Capitol Hill have a lot of work ahead of them.

The most promising proposal is a bipartisan bill—the Every Child Achieves Act—that the Senate began debating Tuesday after getting unanimous approval from rather unlikely allies in the education committee, including Rand Paul and Elizabeth Warren. Meanwhile, the House will be taking up a separate proposal to rewrite the law: the GOP-drafted Student Success Act, which was pulled off the floor earlier this year after it failed to garner enough support but could return for a vote as soon as Wednesday.

Both proposals could easily flounder, and senators were already clashing Tuesday over how accountable states should be to the federal government. “It’s far from a slam dunk,” wrote Education Week’s Alyson Klein. The Obama administration said it “can’t support” either of the bills as they stand because they “lack the strong accountability provisions that it is seeking,” according toThe New York Times.

Why has No Child Left Behind left such a sour taste in people’s mouths? And how, if at all, would the proposed rewrites make amends?

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, was designed to earmark extra funding for poor students—a program that would give the federal government a much greater role in classrooms. Giving disadvantaged schools an extra boost was certainly a worthy goal; it still is. Unfortunately, “the widespread challenges faced by children from low-income families in America remain extraordinarily difficult to tackle as they continue to struggle with vastly inadequate educational opportunities,” wrote Julian Zelizer, a Princeton history professor, for The Atlantic. The gap in test scores between students from lower- and higher-income families has grown by 40 percent since the 1960s.

Despite its bipartisan roots, No Child Left Behind, Zelizer argued, has done little to reverse those trends. Testing became the centerpiece of education reform, and schools faced harsh sanctions if they didn’t fulfill expectations. Teachers invested more time in test prep and less time in valuable instruction. Schools were shut down were in poor communities. Achievement levels are still greatly uneven.

Here’s a rundown comparing how the current law and proposed legislation (as of Tuesday) address some of the key challenges in American education today:

---

Testing

No Child Left Behind: The law mandates annual testing in math and reading for kids in grades three through eight as well as high school. Schools are expected to show progress in student test scores and face penalties if they don’t.

Every Child Achieves: The law would have the same testing requirements as No Child Left Behind. States would have to make test scores public, including data on how scores break down by race and income.

Student Success: Under this measure, states would be allowed to opt out of federal accountability requirements if they develop their own plans. (Education Week reports that the proposal now includes an amendment that would allow parents to opt their kids out of testing without those zeros counting against schools’ performance rankings.)

---

Standards

No Child Left Behind: The federal government uses test-score benchmarks as the standards against which schools are assessed.

Every Child Achieves: The law would explicitly prohibit the federal government from requiring states use a specific set of standards—i.e., Common Core. However, it would mandate that all states adopt “challenging” math, science, and reading standards that ensure kids are prepared for college or vocational pursuits.

Student Success: Similar to Every Child Achieves, the law would strictly prohibit the federal government from prescribing (or incentivizing states to adopt) standards such as the Common Core.

---

Teacher Evaluations

No Child Left Behind: The law originally required states to factor test scores into teacher evaluations.

Every Child Achieves: Under this proposal, states wouldn’t be required to evaluate teachers nor use test scores as a metric for assessing them.

Student Success: The law’s stipulations would be similar to those outlined in the Every Child Achieves Act.

---

Economic Segregation of Schools

No Child Left Behind: Under No Child Left Behind, schools with the highest concentrations of low-income students receive extra funding. The theory is that targeting money at high-poverty schools helps lift them—and their students—out of poverty. But research suggests that the extra funding doesn’t always compensate for the various social disadvantages associated with attending high-poverty schools, such as student and parent engagement and higher teacher expectations.

Every Child Achieves: The Senate proposal would largely retain No Child Left Behind’s funding formula, though the Department of Education is expected to promote provisions that would encourage economic diversity.

Student Success: The bill includes a school-choice provision that would make public money “portable,” allowing it to follow low-income children to different public schools. Democrats tend to oppose this tactic, arguing it would shift money from poor schools to rich ones.

---

Local Control

No Child Left Behind: The federal government plays a large role in determining what defines a struggling school and prescribes the sanctions applied to such schools.

Every Child Achieves: The law would shift to the states decisions about how test scores are used to assess school and teacher performance. It’d be up to states to determine how to improve struggling schools. This is a major reason civil-rights groups say they don’t support the existing legislation.

Student Success: The law would give states significant control over accountability.No Child Left Behind Is Heading Out, but Standardized Tests Are Here to Stay - The Atlantic:

Cuomo says de Blasio must earn mayoral control | Capital New York

Cuomo says de Blasio must earn mayoral control | Capital New York:

Cuomo says de Blasio must earn mayoral control

Governor Andrew Cuomo is not finished antagonizing Mayor Bill de Blasio on mayoral control of New York City's schools. 

Speaking Tuesday about de Blasio's recent criticism of the governor, Cuomo said the mayor will have to earn further extensions of mayoral control.

"Next year we can come back, and if he does a good job, then we can say he should have more control," Cuomo said after an unrelated press conference.

That's the opposite argument from the one de Blasio put forth—that supporting mayoral control should be about the broad system of governance, not one mayor's education policies.

MORE ON CAPITAL

• De Blasio to expand bail reform
• Doubt over Brookdale’s ability to continue as a going concern
• City Hall Pro: Jersey bids for J.P. Morgan; Housing lottery suit against city

De Blasio got a one-year extension during this year's legislative session after advocating for permanent control of the New York City schools and then saying he would accept a three-year extension.

In the last weeks of the session, de Blasio, his senior officials and a large coalition of allies he's assembled on the topic repeatedly argued that lawmakers in Albany could disagree with his education agenda and still support mayoral control.

In a series of speeches, press conferences and emailed statements during the session, they warned of the dangers of returning to the old Board of Education system.

"This is not about your support of a particular mayor or a particular agenda," deputy mayor Richard Buery told a coalition of independent charter school leaders last month, a group that eventually threw its support behind an extension of mayoral control.

"Whether or not you agree with the policies is not the same as whether or not you agree with the principles," Dave Levin, the C.E.O. of the KIPP charter network, said last month. First lady Chirlane McCray, a large group of local business leaders and even education secretary Arne Duncan made similar arguments. 

Cuomo turned that reasoning on its head on Tuesday, saying, "A lot of people say, well, mayoral control, it depends on who the mayor is."

Few city-based legislators or educators have made that claim publicly, with one notable exception: Success Academy C.E.O. Eva Moskowitz, who is a new ally of Cuomo's and perhaps de Blasio's most stalwart critic. 

Moskowitz has called de Blasio undeserving of mayoral control in an attempt to further undermine him and in so doing, played directly into the hands of State Senate Republicans who were eager to embarrass de Blasio this session after he campaigned against them last fall. 

The idea de Blasio will have to earn further extensions by substantially improving the public school system by next year, when it will be up for another renewal, presents a serious predicament for the mayor. 

De Blasio has said the city's 94 struggling "Renewal Schools" will have at least two more years to show significant improvement. And many of his other key education initiatives, including new community schools, pre-kindergarten and expanded afterschool, are all designed to make gradual progress. It will be years before some of those programs can Cuomo says de Blasio must earn mayoral control | Capital New York:

The Great Common Core Textbook Swindle - The Daily Beast

The Great Common Core Textbook Swindle - The Daily Beast:

The Great Common Core Textbook Swindle

Only one in eight Common Core-aligned textbooks actually meet Common Core standards—and none by textbook giants Pearson or Houghton Mifflin Harcourt—but they were repackaged and sold to public schools anyway, at taxpayers’ expense.

Cheryl Schafer was a veteran math teacher by the time Common Core arrived in New York back in 2010. It was apparent to her almost immediately that teachers didn’t have the materials they needed to teach to the new national standards.

Take a middle school staple like the Pythagorean Theorem: “One text series had it as a sixth grade unit, one had it at eighth grade, and the Common Core wanted us to teach it in seventh grade,” Schafer recalled. “So it didn't matter what you were using: there was disagreement all over the place.”

In response to the new standards, textbook publishers touted new editions they said were aligned to the Common Core. But nearly all of them were just repackaged versions of earlier books.

And even five years later, the vast majority of textbooks say they’re aligned with the Common Core when they actually aren’t, creating a huge burden for teachers whose performance is often tied to their students’ test scores based on those standards.

“If you don't have the material that you need, it makes your job incredibly more difficult,” Schafer said. Teachers were left scrambling, doing their best to make due with materials that often didn’t line up with what they were supposed to be teaching.

Schafer retired last year, pushed out of the classroom by stage four breast cancer. But she hasn’t stopped working in education. Today she’s a reviewer for a nonprofit called EdReports, whose executive director says the group wants to become a Consumer Reports for education. The group is funded by the Gates Foundation, the massive organization that led development and adoption of Common Core and hires teachers to conduct intensive reviews of textbooks.

Its ultimate goal is to exert a meaningful positive force on the multi-billion dollar textbook industry, which gets nearly all its income from taxpayer.

This spring, EdReports conducted its first round of reviews, looking at the best-selling math textbooks for elementary and middle schoolers. Of the more than 80 textbooks it reviewed, just 11 met expectations for alignment with the Common Core. Nine of those books were from a single series, “Eureka Math” by publisher Great Minds, whose materials aligned with Common Core from kindergarten through eighth grade.

EdReports released publisher responses alongside its own reviews. In a multi-page statement, publishing giant Pearson—which had zero textbooks evaluated as being aligned with the Common Core—said EdReports’ evaluations “reflect a very narrow interpretation” of Common Core “and fall short of the true intent of the standards."

And even five years later, the vast majority of textbooks say they’re aligned with the Common Core when they actually aren’t, creating a huge burden for teachers whose performance is often tied to their students’ test scores based on those standards.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt—which had over 30 texts evaluated, none of which fully met standards—said it was “fully committed to working with our customers” and would continue to work toward improving its products.

As political fights over Common Core continue to rage on, the new standards have largely become a fact of life for most American teachers. They’re expected to teach to a test for those new standards. How each child performs on those tests is playing an increasing role in evaluations of the teachers, themselves—and, increasingly, it even affects their pay.

That's why teachers need materials that actually align with the Common Core: their paycheck could depend on it.

So if a teacher is saddled with a textbook that doesn’t align with the Common Core, they need to spend time patching together materials that will. That might The Great Common Core Textbook Swindle - The Daily Beast: