John King: More of the Same (or Worse) - Network For Public Education

John King: More of the Same (or Worse) - Network For Public Education:

John King: More of the Same (or Worse)

 John King, whose nomination hearings as Secretary of Education begin on Thursday, is an unknown quantity to most Americans. The profiles being published focus on his personal biography, which is compelling. Yet his leadership during the three and a half years he served as New York’s Commissioner of Education is far more relevant to how he will lead the U.S. Department of Education. That story should not be ignored.

John King was a teacher for a total of three years–first in a private school and then in a charter. For a brief time, he served as a co-director of Roxbury Prep (he was never a principal as he claims), a Boston charter middle school that had about 200 students when King was there. He left to become Managing Director of the Uncommon Schools charter chain, which is regularly criticized for its high rates of student suspension.

While a doctoral student at Teachers College, King met classmate and Board of Regents member, Merryl Tisch. In April of 2009, Tisch became the Chancellor of the Board of Regents. In September 2009, John King was appointed deputy commissioner. Two years later he was appointed commissioner, following the abrupt resignation of David Steiner. There was never a search–just a hasty succession.

King was appointed senior adviser to Arne Duncan in 2014, and Acting Secretary of Education when Duncan left in December of 2015. President Obama now wants to permanently appoint him. Will King be able to lead the country in a new direction? Here is what this former high school principal learned about John King during the time he led the public schools of New York.

1. John King’s style is inflexible and he is quick to criticize the motives of those with whom he disagrees.

Problems began early in his tenure. During an October 2011 conference of the Long Island chapter of the Association of Curriculum and Development[1], King argued that those who opposed the Race to the Top reforms were creators of “false dichotomies.” Cognizant of the opposition of principals to his teacher evaluation system, he told the audience of administrators that they could either “lament it or use it” and characterized opposition to evaluation of teachers by test scores as “political.”

Conflicts between King and those with whom he disagreed escalated. By October of 2013, opposition to the Common Core and testing had grown so strong that King was encouraged by the State PTA to hold forums, the first of which took place in Poughkeepsie, New York. King lectured for an hour and a half. By the last half hour of the evening, the audience was both boisterous and impassioned, angered because there was limited opportunity to speak. King then cancelled the rest of the scheduled forums. In response to an inquiry about the cancellations by John King: More of the Same (or Worse) - Network For Public Education:

John White’s Two Sets of 2015 ACT Scores | deutsch29

John White’s Two Sets of 2015 ACT Scores | deutsch29:

John White’s Two Sets of 2015 ACT Scores

Louisiana has two sets of ACT scores for students who were seniors in 2014-15. The first set of scores was partially announced in July 2015; the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) issued this embargoed 2014-2015 Louisiana ACT 12th Grade Results release; these scores are only district- and state-level composite scores, not school-level.

Months passed; 2015 became 2016, and still, no release of a comprehensive file of school-level scores for Louisiana’s Class of 2015.

On February 05, 2016, I wrote to the state board (BESE) and Louisiana state superintendent John White about the issue:

When will the state release a comprehensive file of the Class of 2015 ACT composite scores?

BESE member Kathy Edmonston emailed White asking for how she might advise me on this issue, and on February 05, 2016, White sent her the following response to Edmonston and all of BESE, which Edmonston then forwarded to me:

Subject: Re: Class of 2015 ACT scores

This request regards an Excel file listing all individual school average ACT scores. Those scores have been posted publicly on individual school report cards since October. An Excel file containing all school scores in one sheet has been through the data certification process and will be posted next week. [Emphasis added.]

John

So, that brings us to the second set of Class of 2015 ACT scores– the ones posted on school report cards.

According to the email above, John White writes as though the Excel file LDOE is John White’s Two Sets of 2015 ACT Scores | deutsch29:

Tribute to the Warriors | Poetic Justice

Tribute to the Warriors | Poetic Justice:

Tribute to the Warriors

This is a tribute poem for a great warrior in the fight to save our children – Dr. James Avington Miller Jr. – and to all his radio show listeners andFacebook followers. Today is the second anniversary of his show entitledThe War Report on Public Education.

Dark, deceitful, dreadful
The war continues.

Hidden from the public
Children succumb to oblivion.

Masses are found naked
In the valley of corporate reform.

Masses of children
Stripped of their humanity.

Masses of teachers
Rendered voiceless and faceless.

Masses of parents
Left with no option but to escape the dark night
And cover their children with a blanket of compassion
That heals hearts, minds, and little bodies.

And in all the darkness
In the dreadful abandon of humane concern
In the deceit and lies that spew from media and our elected officials

There is a light

There is a voice

There is hope.

Only love can chase away the hate.
Only the light of truth can fight off the darkness.

That little voice is in each one of us
That little voice and that tiny ray of light
Can fight off the usurpers of our future hope.

So today – on the second anniversary of
The War Report on Public Education –
I encourage all of us to keep on fighting the war
To keep on telling the truth
To keep on exposing the lies that warp our understanding

Because

We will find each other one day
And we will unite together
And parents, teachers, professors, politicians, community leaders, pastors, shop owners, even the media will unite

And together we shall bring down
The evil Machiavellian Agenda
And we will win
The war against public education.

 Tribute to the Warriors | Poetic Justice

‘We’re Sorry Teachers are Unfairly Blamed’ says John King – Man Responsible for Unfairly Blaming Teachers | gadflyonthewallblog

‘We’re Sorry Teachers are Unfairly Blamed’ says John King – Man Responsible for Unfairly Blaming Teachers | gadflyonthewallblog:
‘We’re Sorry Teachers are Unfairly Blamed’ says John King – Man Responsible for Unfairly Blaming Teachers

Sometimes the messenger matters.

You wouldn’t expect Native Americans to believe an apology from Christopher Columbus.

You wouldn’t expect African Americans to believe an apology from David Duke.

So why the heck do the Democrats expect teachers to believe an apology from John King!?

The acting U.S. Secretary of Education is – himself – responsible for more attacks on public educators than almost anyone else.

In his former role as New York Chancellor of Education, he refused to fix a school system he was responsible for destroying all the while pointing his finger at teachers.

However, late last month in his new federal position, King gave a speech at a Philadelphia high school acknowledging the mistakes of the Obama administration in tying teachers’ evaluations to student test scores – a practice he was guilty of in New ‘We’re Sorry Teachers are Unfairly Blamed’ says John King – Man Responsible for Unfairly Blaming Teachers | gadflyonthewallblog:

Reject John King as Secretary of Education – Call now! | Jolyn's Education Corner

Reject John King as Secretary of Education – Call now! | Jolyn's Education Corner:

REJECT JOHN KING AS SECRETARY OF EDUCATION – CALL NOW!

Please call Senator Schumer (202) 224-6542 and Senator Gillibrand (202) 224-4451 to let them know that parents from New York do NOT want the Senators from New York to approve John B. King Jr. as the Secretary of Education.

 Parents rejected him as Commissioner of Education here in New York and he should not be the Secretary of Education for the country!

If you don’t remember the general sentiment when it was announced that John King was resigning as Commissioner of Education in New York back in December 2014, read here and here.Reject John King as Secretary of Education – Call now! | Jolyn's Education Corner:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Digging Deep: What is Public Education?

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Digging Deep: What is Public Education?:

Digging Deep: What is Public Education?

This topic weighs on my mind all the time and certainly is a valid question for all of us.

What is public education supposed to be doing?  I would love if anyone who comments would write a 2-3 sentence reply to that question. 

To aid in this discussion, I bring up two articles.  (For now, I'm leaving out the growing - and coming-to-your-child's-classroom like a freight train - issue of so-called "personalized learning" via technology.)  (All bold mine.)

One article is from the Center on Reinventing Public Education.  Along with being a charter thinktank, they also like to put forth ideas about what theythink public education should be (but they are not interested in any discussion and, of course, you can't comment on their articles.)

I Ain’t Talking to You If You Ain’t Talking About Structural Reform spins off from remarks from the Washington State Teacher of the Year, Nate Bowling, who said, "“If you ain't talking about the teacher in the classroom, I ain't listening.”  Naturally, CRPE is disappointed with his stance.

Here's what CRPE likes:

I read Nate’s post the day before we opened our annual Portfolio Network meeting, a meeting focused on all kinds of policy discussions that Nate might refuse to talk about: moving Seattle Schools Community Forum: Digging Deep: What is Public Education?:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Public Education News Round-up

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Public Education News Round-up:

Public Education News Round-up

I'm leaving out opting out and charter schools stories; they need threads of their own.

Over in Pasco, they are so desperate for teachers they have a $1,000 training program to become one for their schools.  I was not aware of this program.

The Professional Development Program that helps train people without education degrees to become teachers costs $1,000. However, candidates do not have to pay the money up front. Instead, they can have that money deducted from a series of paychecks and pay it over time.

Remember how crummy American kids are at math?  Not the elite students who are growing in power and numbers.  From The Atlantic (and you should check out the photographs of the kids in this article:

Stoner and five teammates were representing the United States in the 56th International Mathematical Olympiad. Still, it was hard to know how his team had stacked up against those from the perennial powers China, Russia, and South Korea.  For the first time in 21 years, the United States team had won first place. Speaking last fall from his dorm at Harvard, where he is now a freshman, Stoner recalled his team’s triumph with quiet satisfaction. “It was a really great moment. Really great. Especially if you love math.”

It also wasn’t an aberration. You wouldn’t see it in most classrooms, you wouldn’t know it by looking at slumping national test-score averages, but a cadre of American teenagers are reaching world-class heights in math—more of them, more regularly, than ever before.

"..gifted-and-talented programs, which are publicly funded and can start in elementary school. But the history of these programs is fraught. Admission criteria vary, but they have tended to favor affluent children.  As a result, while many such programs still Seattle Schools Community Forum: Public Education News Round-up:

FINAL SCHEDULE for #uoo16philly: Transcending Resistance, Igniting Revolution Feb. 26th - 28th, 2016 - UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Corporate Education Reform:

FINAL SCHEDULE for #uoo16philly: Transcending Resistance, Igniting Revolution Feb. 26th – 28th, 2016

United Opt Out National: Transcending Resistance, Igniting Revolution

The conference WILL BE LIVESTREAMED. 

If you are unable to be there in person, would you be willing to support our work and livestream coverage via a small donation to our gofundme account? Many thanks. We will post our livestream link on our website soon – stay tuned!  #uoo16philly

Thursday, February 25th (FREE – OPEN TO PUBLIC) Philadelphia Community Town Hall – Opting Out in the Urban Core

7:00 pm, at New Visions United Methodist Church, 3259 N Broad St, Philadelphia, PA (rsvp on Facebook here)

Friday, February 26th

4:00-8:00 p.m.                   Welcome Reception with Stephen Krashen: Testing Every Day (refreshments provided)

Saturday, February 27th

8:00 – 9:00 a.m.                  Registration/breakfast

9:00 – 10:00 a.m.               Meet and Greet with UOO Leaders

10:00 – 11:00 a.m.             Keynote – Chris Hedges:  The Wages of Rebellion 

11:00 – 12:00 p.m.             Breakout Sessions

• Ricardo Rosa and Joao J. Rosa: Capitalism’s Educational Catastrophe: And the Advancing Endgame Revolt! (Counterpoints)

Joao J. Rosa, Ricardo Rosa 

• Community Empowerment: Parents, Teachers, Students, and Citizens

Tamara Anderson, Kendra Brooks, Shakeda Gaines, Marla Kilfoyle, Alison McDowell 

• Higher Ed/Teacher Education

Jim Horn, Denisha Jones, Morna McDermott McNulty, Tim Slekar 

12:00 – 12:45 p.m.             Lunch on your own

1:00  –  2:00 p.m.               Panel #1   Global Privatization and “the Advancing Endgame Result!”

Bess Altwerger, Morna McDermott McNulty, Ricardo Rosa, Kevin Zeese 

2:00 –  3:00 p.m.                Breakout Groups

• Media & Messaging

Ruth Conniff, Dave Greene, Fran Huckabee, Jaisal Noor, Jonathan Pelto

• Opt Out 101 & CBE

Stefanie Fuhr, Ashley Jiminez, Alison McDowell, Emily Talmage          

•  Resisting Charter Takeover & School Closure

Anthony Cody, Elizabeth Lloyd Lynch, Gus Morales 

3:00 – 3:45 p.m.                 Panel #2   Civil Rights: Reclaiming the Narrative

Miriam Harris, Denisha Jones, Aixa Rodriguez, Ceresta Smith, Yohuru Williams

3:45 – 4:00 p.m.                 Break

4:00 – 5:00 p.m.                 Keynote – Antonia Darder: Paulo Freire and Our Continuing Struggle in Neoliberal Times 

Sunday, February 28th

8:00                                        Breakfast

9:00 – 10:00 a.m.               Keynote – Jill Stein: Opting Out of Corporate Control. Opting in to a World that Works for All of Us

10:00 – 10:15 a.m.             Break

10:15 – 11:15 a.m.             Breakout Groups

• Union caucus building

Francesca Bluher, Michelle Gunderson, Michael Pena 

• Special Needs/Exceptional Needs/ELL/Early Childhood

Rosemarie Jensen, Aixa Rodriguez, Ruth Rodriguez, Jean Schutt, Susan Schutt

• Our Demands: What’s Next?

UOO team (Denisha Jones, Morna McDermott McNulty,  Peg Robertson, Tim Slekar,  Ceresta

Smith) 

11:15 – 11:30 a.m.             Break

11:30 – 12:30 p.m.             Keynote – Bill Ayers: LESSON ONE: I Would Sing

12:45 – 1:15 p.m.               Closing Remarks from UOO leaders

 FINAL SCHEDULE for #uoo16philly: Transcending Resistance, Igniting Revolution Feb. 26th - 28th, 2016 - UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Corporate Education Reform:

Corporatizing Education & Teach For America’s Role In Elections | PopularResistance.Org

Corporatizing Education & Teach For America’s Role In Elections | PopularResistance.Org:

Corporatizing Education & Teach For America’s Role In Elections

Note: Popular Resistance takes no positions in electoral politics. We are publishing this article to highlight the role that the big business funded Teach For America is playing in US politics. They are a key group in the corporatizing of education and see one of their roles as developing future political leaders.

Why DeRay Mckesson’s Baltimore Campaign Looks Like It Comes Right Out of Teach for America’s Playbook

As Mckesson launches his outsider candidacy for mayor of Baltimore, many worry his roots in the education privatization movement put the city’s public schools in peril.

For those who’ve never paid much attention, Teach For America sounds like a benevolent and benign idea: recruit bright college grads, give them some teacher-training and place them in some of the nation’s neediest schools for a two-year commitment to teach kids.

The reality behind TFA’s sunny exterior is somewhat more sinister. Education policy experts today consider the nonprofit founded by Wendy Kopp in 1990 to be at the vanguard of the school privatization movement. TFA is also a media juggernaut in its own right, known for deploying a sophisticated public relations arsenal to advance an agenda focused on crushing teachers’ unions and privatizing public school systems. TFA’s funders, including the Waltons, Bill and Melinda Gates and top Fortune 500 corporations, all have plenty to gain from the commodification of public goods and the destruction of public service unions, and its 11,000 corps members provide a valuable service to that end.

Teach for America’s peculiar brand of social justice was on bold display at its 25th Anniversary Summit the weekend of February 5. The confab drew 15,000 corps members, alumni and supporters to Washington for three days of seminars on lofty issues like, “Allies, Co-Conspirators and Coalition Building: Showing Up for Justice Across Lines of Power.” But one of the biggest draws was the discussion on “The New Civil Rights Agenda and Corporatizing Education & Teach For America’s Role In Elections | PopularResistance.Org:

Connecticut Superintendents Association says children should get more instruction from computers - Wait What?

Connecticut Superintendents Association says children should get more instruction from computers - Wait What?:

Connecticut Superintendents Association says children should get more instruction from computers

No, it’s not a headline from the satirical Internet website known as “The Onion.”

It is an approach to public education that is being pushed by the Corporate Education Reform Industry and those that believe that one of the best ways to improve “educational achievement” is to have the nation’s public school children spend less time learning with teachers and more time receiving “personalized instruction” from computer programs.

Among the benefits, they claim, is that school districts could reduce the high cost of teachers.

Their proposal will also provide computer companies, software companies, testing companies and the educational consulting companies with an even greater share of the taxpayer funds being spent on public education.

Perhaps they call it a “win-win” scenario.

Rather than recognize that real teachers, with the appropriate support, have always been and will always be the best equipped to help and support each and every child in their classroom, the proponents of “personalized learning” claim that computers can complete the task of personalizing “learning” more efficiently and effectively than a teacher ever can.

Not satisfied with turning public schools into little more than Common Core testing factories, those who would profit from the so-called “personalized learning” approach, and Connecticut Superintendents Association says children should get more instruction from computers - Wait What?:

Gene V Glass: Education in Two Worlds: Whom Do Charter Schools Serve?

Gene V Glass: Education in Two Worlds: Whom Do Charter Schools Serve?:

Whom Do Charter Schools Serve?

 The great irony is that the charter school movement was launched decades ago as a solution to the "problem" that special needs students were not being adequately served by the traditional public schools. Charter schools would specialize in serving the needs of that neglected population — or so the story went. How ironic, then, that the modern charter school movement creams the top performing, largely white middle class, sector of the public school population and leaves the poor, the needy, and the minorities back in the traditional public schools. If you don't believe it, read here, and here.

An anonymous correspondent, responding to an earlier posting to this blog, relayed the following experiences:

When I worked at a charter school, the demographics and census of that charter school did not even line up with those of the surrounding Deer Valley Unified School District [a north Phoenix suburban school district].Arizona State law requires schools, district and charter, to provide transportation services. Many charter schools do not and will not provide this service. Let us see how long a charter school would survive if they were to accept all disabled students, low income students, all ELL students, and students that would require transportation to the school.

One other thing that bothers me about charter schools is their

Gene V Glass: Education in Two Worlds: Whom Do Charter Schools Serve?:

Ms. Katie's Ramblings: Shame on the Chicago School Consortium on School Research

Ms. Katie's Ramblings: Shame on the Chicago School Consortium on School Research:

Shame on the Chicago School Consortium on School Research



Shame. Shame on the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research for once again, allowing their school survey to be used to punish schools.

Every year, around this time, all CPS teachers, parents, and students are invited to take the CCSR's  "5 Essentials" survey. It's a survey that describes 5 different areas of school quality associated with positive school climates such as "effective leaders,' "collaborative teachers", "involved families", "supportive environments", and "ambitious instruction".

So what's wrong with that?

The Consortium, which already has a troubling "quid pro quo" relationship with the Chicago Public Schools in order to have access to district data, allows their survey to be used forten percent (TEN PERCENT!) of the CPS School Quality Rating Policy. This is a rating system that harms schools with low ratings, putting them at risk for school closure, turnaround, loss of autonomy and democracy, drops in enrollment, and loss of funding as bad PR siphons away students.

As any basic researcher knows, Campbell's Law shows that using this survey for high-stakes decisions when participants are aware of the stakes, invalidates the data. Yet the Consortium allows their research to be warped by CPS.

 

I'm going to tell right now....SCHOOLS ARE LYING!!! All around Chicago, you are forcing Ms. Katie's Ramblings: Shame on the Chicago School Consortium on School Research: