Bunkum Awards 2014 | National Education Policy Center

Bunkum Awards 2014 | National Education Policy Center:

Bunkum Awards 2014

The National Education Policy Center is pleased to announce the deserving winners of the 2014 BUNKUM AWARDS, recognizing the lowlights in education research over the past year. This marks our ninth year of handing out the Bunkums, and—judging by the bunk we’ve been reviewing—we’ll admit to feeling a little uneasy about the possibility that we may actually be enticing think tanks to produce awful reports. So, just to be clear to any think tank folks who may be reading this: receipt of these awards isn’t something to be proud of. Please stop competing to out-bunk one another.

Watch the 2014 Bunkum Awards Ceremony:

2014 Bunkum Honorees:

The ‘Class Size Reductio ad Absurdum' Award

To GEMS Education Solutions for The Efficiency Index

Read Review →

Comparing international test scores and drawing ominous conclusions is quite the rage. Also, as GEMS Educational Solutions found, it is a great way to garner credulous coverage from The Economist and the BBC. All that’s needed is a pile of data and a mathematical model, and one can do creative things like rank countries’ educational systems based on their “efficiency.” It apparently matters not how much sense it all makes, as long as it can be puffed up with something that sounds sufficiently intimidating, such as a stochastic frontier analysis, to lend an air of gravitas to an inherently silly idea. So armed, GEMS set out in The Efficiency Index to rank 30 countries. When the data emerged from the GEMS statistical grinder, researchers concluded from the resulting mince meat that to get a 5% increase in PISA scores, teacher wages would (on average) have to go up by 14% or class sizes would (on average) have to go down by 13 students per class.

The most entertaining part of this report is the efficiency index itself, which purports to list optimal wage levels and class sizes for each country. For four countries, the optimal class size is estimated at fewer than two students per teacher. The teacher salary part of the report is almost as risible. The Swiss, we discover, should cut teachers’ wages nearly in half to achieve that nation’s “optimal” teacher salary. Indonesian teachers meanwhile would see their wages triple. As explained by our reviewer, City University of New York economist Clive Belfield, such anomalies expose the weaknesses in each of the study’s three key elements: “the output measure is questionable, the input measures are unclear, and the econometric method by which they are correlated does not have a straightforward economic interpretation.”

Meanwhile, even those of us in the research community who have long pointed to the benefits of (smart) class-size reduction can savor the irony of an “efficiency” report suggesting that two students is an optimal class size.

The ‘What the World Needs Now is Choice Sweet Choice' Awards

To Fordham Institute for Expanding the Education Universe

Read Review →

To Reason Foundation for Federal School Finance Reform

Read Review →

The past decades have seen school choice expand through charter schools, vouchers, tax credits (neo-vouchers), and various other mechanisms dreamed up after feverish evenings of reading Milton Friedman. While it’s true that all this choice has increased systemic inequities even as it has failed to improve educational outcomes, that’s no reason to stop or slow down—at least not according to two Bunkum-winning reports: Expanding the Education Universe: A Fifty-State Strategy for Course Choice from the Fordham Institute, and Federal School Finance Reform: Moving Toward Title I Funding Following the Child from the Reason Foundation.

The Fordham report urges policymakers to bring the blessings of market competition to the selection of classes, envisioning a future when students design their own selection of online and off-line classes, offered by a variety of public and private providers. Unfortunately, the report makes no effort to actually evaluate the merits of the idea. It “assumes, without solid evidence, that course choice, electronic educational provisions, and the like are viable, Bunkum Awards 2014 | National Education Policy Center:

The Network For Public Education | NPE Supports Those Who Opt Out

The Network For Public Education | NPE Supports Those Who Opt Out:

NPE Supports Those Who Opt Out

March 5, 2015 NPE, Testing / Opting Out, Uncategorized

The Network for Public Education stands in full support of parents, students and educators who choose to teach and learn about the reality of high stakes tests, opt out of high stakes tests, speak out against high stakes tests and who refuse to give those tests to students.

We take this stand because:

• Right now, in communities from the highest need to the most affluent, students, parents and educators are being punished for the courageous act of informing others about available options to opt out of high stakes tests and acting upon those options.  These reprisals, often for merely learning and teaching about students’ rights, violate basic human rights and common decency.
• There is no evidence that these tests contribute to the quality of education, or help close the “achievement gap.” Since NCLB, these tests have hindered, not helped, school improvement efforts. The scores of US students in the international PISA tests have remained flat for the dozen years of high stakes testing.
• These tests, particularly those associated with the Common Core, have become intrusive in our schools, consuming excessive time and resources. These are not the kind of tests that we took when we were children. Students in grades three to eight must spend ten or more hours on testing, and enter their answers on computer keyboards. Since teachers will not see their scores for months they have no diagnostic value. They have resulted in narrow instruction and curriculum that focuses on test preparation.
• The Common Core tests, such as PARCC, SBAC and others Pearson has developed to measure the Common Core standards, have been designed to yield widespread failure for students, and thus are an inaccurate reflection of what our students are capable of doing.
• Inequities in education are a real and devastating reality in our education system. High stakes tests exacerbate this inequity with their negative, disparate impact on students of color, students in poverty, English language learners, and students with disabilities.

NPE Board member Carol Burris wrote recently,

“…there comes a time when rules must be broken — when adults, after exhausting all remedies, must be willing to break ranks and not comply. That time is now. The promise of a public school system, however imperfectly realized, is at risk of being destroyed. The future of our children is hanging from testing’s high stakes. The time to Opt Out is now.”

NPE recognizes that not everyone is in a position where opting out of the tests is a viable option. However, we strongly support those who make that decision, and we encourage administrators, school board members and elected officials to honor this choice. We encourage teacher unions to support and defend teachers taking this stand and to support members’ rights to freedom of speech when they speak out on such issues of importance.

Most of all, we encourage all involved to circulate information and educate ourselves, each other and especially students to make decisions about their own education including around the issue of high stakes testing.

We do not take this position lightly, but we do so in response to a testing system that has moved far beyond what is useful, and has become a force of fear and failure in our schools; a system that is now directly attacking parents, students and educators who courageously stand to defend students.

In order to defend our students, high-stakes testing must be halted. We stand in full support of those who opt out and encourage others to do so.The Network For Public Education | NPE Supports Those Who Opt Out:

Parents Can Opt Out - United Opt Out National

Click Here to go to United Opt Out National: 

Click Here to go to the Website- United Opt Out Team

National History Day: Here comes the judge, here comes the judge... - It is Alive in the Lab

National History Day: Here comes the judge, here comes the judge... - It is Alive in the Lab:

National History Day: Here comes the judge, here comes the judge...

NHD Judges Photo courtesy of Joni Reynolds, Bay Farm 6^th Grade Teacher

National History Day (NHD) makes history come alive for students by engaging them in the discovery of the historical, cultural, and social experiences of the past. NHD is an outstanding example of project-based and inquiry-based learning that can be integrated into any social studies, history, or humanities classroom. ^{source: nationalhistoryday.org}

Many years ago, our children attended Bay Farm Elementary School in Alameda, California. We were one of the first 250 families to open this new school that featured year-round education instead of a traditional calendar. The school has since reverted to a traditional schedule due to issues with trying to coordinate two different schedules in the same school district. Since my wife still substitute teaches at the school, I was asked to be one of the judges for NHD.

This is Bay Farm's first year participating in NHD. A teacher, Nancy Ely, who championed NHD at another school transferred to Bay Farm this year. She brought it with her! At her former school, she had only a few entrants. Though it was Bay Farm's inaugural year. there were 80 projects — the most of any elementary school in Alameda county. That speaks volumes about the students, parents, and staff at Bay Farm Elementary. (Forget the fact that they know a good judge when they see one.)

As part of NHD, students could do one of the following:

• research paper
• dramatic re-enactment of a historic event
• documentary film
• website

Bay Farm is participating in the junior division which means that projects submitted by 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th-grade students are judged together rather than by grade level. Our teacher who provided the judging instruction noted "Just because the 6^thgraders are small and cute doesn't get them any more points on their projects." Based on the judging, Bay Farm will select 12 projects that will advance to the county level. From there, county winners can advance to the state level, and state winners will be judged nationally in Washington, D.C. NHD is a BFD.

This year's NHD theme is leadership and the legacy of history that these leaders created. I was among some judges who looked at 4 websites.

• Alexander the Great
  
• Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
  
• Johann Sebastian Bach
  
• Tutankhamun
  

Our process was to look at each website, interview the students about their site (to get them to talk, think on their feet, and answer ad hoc questions), and then complete a rubric where we scored the site against pre-defined criteria specific to NHD. Our scale was:

• 0 = missing
• 1 = needs improvement
• 3 = good
• 5 = excellent
• 7 = superior

Each site had something unique to offer.

The teachers then collected all of the judges' rubrics, tabulated the results, and announced the winners that will move on. All of the projects wereNational History Day: Here comes the judge, here comes the judge... - It is Alive in the Lab:

What Lyndon B. Johnson Really Said About Selma, Bloody Sunday, and Martin Luther King Jr. - The Atlantic

What Lyndon B. Johnson Really Said About Selma, Bloody Sunday, and Martin Luther King Jr. - The Atlantic:

What LBJ Really Said About Selma

Mar 05, 2015 | 165-part series 

Video by Scott Calonico

Fifty years ago, a civil rights march began in Selma, Alabama. Nearly 600 people intended to walk to the state capitol in Montgomery, led by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, where they would demand to speak with then-Gov. George Wallace about the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old who was shot by police the previous month. 

The march barely made it out of Selma. When protestors crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, they were ambushed by state troopers. Mounted police charged the protestors on horseback; troopers beat people unconscious; 17 were hospitalized. News of the "Bloody Sunday" attack immediately spread across the country.

The next morning, as filmmaker Scott Calonico recounts in this short documentary, President Lyndon B. Johnson faced a crisis. While he publicly condemned the attack, Johnson was also calling allies and advisors, searching for a political salve to the situation. "They're going to have another march tomorrow, and, as we see it, it's going to go from bad to worse," he warned.

Calonico's film is a fascinating peek at the politics behind a historic moment in American history. In a conversation with Bill Moyers, a White House special assistant, Johnson expresses a shocking disdain for Martin Luther King Jr.'s actions: "I really think we ought to be firm on him myself," he says. "I just think it's outrageous what's on TV. I've been watching it here and it looks like that man is in charge of the country."

This film collects archival material from the LBJ Library, the Miller Center, the Tennessee State Archives, the Internet Archive, and the Library of Congress.

Author: Chris Heller

What Lyndon B. Johnson Really Said About Selma, Bloody Sunday, and Martin Luther King Jr. - The Atlantic:

When School Reform and Democracy Meet - The Atlantic

When School Reform and Democracy Meet - The Atlantic:

When School Reform and Democracy Meet

 Three years ago Facebook's CEO pledged $100 million to improve Newark's schools. In this week's New Yorker, Dale Russakoff offers an enlightening and depressing portrait of how that money was spent and what it achieved. The story is a welcome corrective to the bromide that "government should be run like a business"—as though business is some unassailable fortress of morality. 

School reformers promised to clean up a bloated and corrupt school administration. But what emerges in its place is a system in which various "consultants" are paid millions to deliver minimal results. And those results are meant to be delivered on a fast-food schedule:

On a Saturday morning later that month, Booker and Cerf met privately on the Rutgers-Newark campus with twenty civic leaders who had hoped that the Zuckerberg gift would unite the city in the goal of improving the schools. Now they had serious doubts. “It’s as if you guys are going out of your way to foment the most opposition possible,” Richard Cammarieri, a former school-board member who worked for a community-development organization, told them.

Booker acknowledged the missteps, but said that he had to move quickly. He and Christie could be out of office within three years. If a Democrat defeated Christie in 2013, he or she would have the backing of the teachers’ unions and might return the district to local control. “We want to do as much as possible right away,” Booker said. “Entrenched forces are very invested in resisting choices we’re making around a one-billion-dollar budget.” Participants in the meeting, who had worked for decades in Newark, were doubtful that reforms imposed over three years would be sustainable.

The "going out of your way to foment opposition" critique sounds really familiar. As does the anti-democratic streak which seems to haunt "reformers" and classical progressives of every age. One strategy Booker might have embraced was committing to making the case for school reform to Newark voters, and voters in New Jersey at large—be that as mayor or governor—over the long term. (Newark's schools are under the control of the state.) Instead, Booker chose another strategy—one that assumes an inability to convince the people whom Booker was charged with serving. 

In any political fight worth having, one will likely tangle with "entrenched forces." The beauty of democracy is the right (and I'd say obligation) to convince a critical mass of voters that those forces are acting counter to the public When School Reform and Democracy Meet - The Atlantic:

CURMUDGUCATION: David Brooks Gets Everything Wrong

CURMUDGUCATION: David Brooks Gets Everything Wrong:

David Brooks Gets Everything Wrong

In an attempt to add some nuance to the positioning of Hillary Clinton, David Brooks took to the New York Times to say a series of not-very-wise things, including some deeply confused observations about education.

He sets up the idea of a main camp of Democrats who have believed for some unspecified period of time that by making American workers smarter and more productive, the country can rebuild its middle class.

He creates that notion so that he can explain its opposition--"populist progressives" who argue that education levels is not the root of all inequality. These are the folks who, Brooks observes, say that the game is rigged by the oligarchy, the workers' share is stagnant, and that corporate power has stifled worker gains.

People in this camp point out that inflation-adjusted wages for college grads has been flat for the past 14 years. Education apparently hasn't lifted wages. The implication? Don't focus on education for the bottom 99 percent. Focus on spreading wealth from the top. Don't put human capital first. Put redistribution first.

This is a leap that Evel Knevel would be impressed by. I am not sure who exactly finds that the implication of stagnant wages is that education should be a low priority.

Brooks then leaps to the idea that redistribution will appeal to Clinton because it allows her to hit Wall Street and CEO's, which is kind of like suggesting that Scott Walker is looking for a policy that allows him to strike out against hard right conservatives or Paul Ryan is looking for a good argument to use against Ayn Rand.

But mostly Brooks wants to argue for education as the miracle engine of economic justice. And to make his argument, he trots out the work of Raj Chetty, a piece of research that proves conclusively that even researchers at Harvard can become confused about the difference between correlation and causation. (Chetty, for those of you unfamiliar with the "research," asserts that a good teacher will result in greater lifetime earnings for students. What he actually proves is that people who tend to do well on standardized tests tend to grow up to be wealthier, an unexciting demonstration of correlation best explained by things we already know-- people who score well on standardized tests tend to be from a higher-income background, and people who grow up to be high-income tend to come from a high-income background.)

Brooks also cites magical researcher David Autor of MIT, who believes that if everyone graduated from college with a degree, everyone would make more money because, reasons. Because if everyone had a college degree, flipping burgers would pay more? Because if everyone had a college degree, corporations would suddenly want to hire more people? The continued belief in the astonishing notion that a more educated workforce causes higher-paying jobs to appear from somewhere is big news to a huge number of twenty-somethings who are busy trying to scrape together a living in areas other than the ones they prepared for these days.

Brooks isn't done spouting nonsense:

Focusing on human capital is not whistling past the graveyard...No redistributionist measure will have the same effect as good early-childhood education and better community colleges, or increasing the share of men capable of joining the labor force.

Because the vast number of high-paying jobs currently going unfilled is..... what?

Brooks says that redistributionists don't get it, that they believe that modern capitalism is CURMUDGUCATION: David Brooks Gets Everything Wrong:

Emanuel Denies Yelling At Activists After Community Forum: Chicagoist ‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬

Emanuel Denies Yelling At Activists After Community Forum: Chicagoist:

Emanuel Denies Yelling At Activists After Community Forum

For much of Rahm Emanuel’s mayoralty the public has not seen signs of the Beltway vulgarianwho would send a pollster dead fish wrapped in newsprint or threatening to emasculate political enemies in blunt terms. The mayor’s media team control his schedule so he doesn’t have those moments. News conferences are often tightly controlled affairs with a rosy view of the city as Emanuel trumpets Chicago’s “world-class city” status, often with no media availability following.

Here’s an example of why Emanuel’s appearances are kept on a short leash.

Check out the frustrated look on Emanuel’s face as the woman in the video, Debbie Delgado, demands answers for why the mayor decided to close half of the city’s mental health clinics three years ago. Look at the rush of Emanuel’s handlers to shut down Delgado and Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle, who filmed the video, as they tell Delgado and Ginsberg-Jaeckle “this is not an open forum.”

To read Delgado and Ginsberg-Jaeckle’s account of what happened off camera, some may argue the lack of an open forum to discuss these matters is one of the major problems with the Emanuel administration.

After trying to keep his cool, he told us that he would speak to us after the event in a separate room. There, we saw the Real Rahm. Now off camera, Rahm's voice raised, his demeanor changed, in no time he was shouting in Matt's face, nose-to-nose "YOU'RE GONNA RESPECT ME!"

An Emanuel campaign spokesman denied the mayor yelled at Ginsberg-Jaeckle and told Huffington Post Chicago Emanuel had a “very cordial” 15-minute discussion with Delgado and Ginsberg-Jaeckle.

One of Debbie Delgado’s sons was shot to death in 2006. She and her family sought treatment for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder at their neighborhood public mental health clinic until Emanuel’s decision to shut it down. Some may watch that video and say Delgado and Ginsberg-Jaeckle were disrespectful to the mayor. Knowing how carefully cultivated his public images is presented, it’s also easy to argue this may be the only way to get Emanuel’s attention and force his hand into addressing the concerns of a city with more than canned, rehearsed sound bites.

Delgado, for one, recognizes this is larger than the loss of her son.

"This isn’t just about me," Delgado said. "I’m not going to accept his offer. This is about the whole city. We need [mental health services] everywhere -- not just the six that he closed."Emanuel Denies Yelling At Activists After Community Forum: Chicagoist:

 Click here to go to Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Mayor of Chicago Website

‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬

Kline says House will still vote on ESEA rewrite | Education Dive

Kline says House will still vote on ESEA rewrite | Education Dive:

Kline says House will still vote on ESEA rewrite

By Roger Riddell | March 5, 2015 

Dive Brief:

• Despite a setback late in February, U.S. Rep. John Kline (R-MN) still expects a vote on the House rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
• The House education committee chairman says conservative opposition to the rewrite of the law, also known by the name of its Bush-era reauthorization, No Child Left Behind, caught him off-guard, attributing it not just to groups like Heritage Action for America and Club for Growth, but also a blog post that it would reinforce Common Core and give the government authority in private schools.
• What the bill would actually do, if passed, is maintain the annual testing status quo, allow more authority on the state level regarding how federal funds are spent and failing schools are addressed, bar the U.S. education secretary from imposing standards or conditions in exchange for waivers, and allow public ed dollars to follow low-income students to other schools, among other things.

Dive Insight:

Kline now expects a vote on the bill to come around the week of March 16. Still, even if that does happen, it's still all but guaranteed to get a veto as it exists right now — and that's if it even makes it through the Senate. As we've noted before, and as U.S. News notes in its coverage, Sen. Lamar Alexander(R-TN), who heads that chamber's education committee, is seeking a bipartisan rewrite of the bill. 

Ultimately, the House would be better served to make adjustments the Senate and White House would be more likely to accept rather than pushing the current version of the bill and further delaying an actual reauthorization.

Recommended Reading

U.S. News & World Report: GOP House education chair hopeful he can get bill passed to update No Child Left Behind

Kline says House will still vote on ESEA rewrite | Education Dive:

Where Would Hillary Clinton Stand on the No Child Left Behind Act? - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Where Would Hillary Clinton Stand on the No Child Left Behind Act? - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Where Would Hillary Clinton Stand on the No Child Left Behind Act?

By Alyson Klein on March 6, 2015 8:21 AM

Nearly a year before the New Hampshire primary, Hillary Clinton is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

So, if she indeed ends up running and prevailing in the general election, what would happen when it comes to the No Child Left Behind Act? (Assuming, of course, that Congress hasn't managed to pass legislation to rewrite the law by then, a move education insiders are considering to be less and less likely these days, according to this great flash poll from Whiteboard Advisors.)

Short answer: It's far, far too early to speculate. But that's never stopped a blogger.  So here goes...

Clinton voted for the NCLB law in 2001, along with pretty much everyone else in Congress. But, even back then, she expressed some qualms about the legislation behind the scenes. In particular, she was worried about the impact of the law on suburban districts where most kids are already proficient, a Democratic aide to a member of the NCLB conference committee told me. And, in fact, suburbia ended up being the seat of much of the political dissatisfaction with the law.

As a senator in 2007, she pushed for adding a prekindergarten component to NCLB—something the Obama administration and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the education committee, among other Democrats in Congress, are championing now. 

By the time she ran for president in 2008, she was critical of what she saw the punitive nature of the law. Check out some of her past comments on the law in this story, which takes a deep dive into Clinton's education record, from her early work with the Children's Defense Fund on. 

The last time Clinton ran for president the question of whether to maintain the NCLB law's annual standardized tests wasn't really on the table. So it's impossible to say where she would be on it now. But late last year, former President Bill Clinton advocated for testing only in certain grade spans (the approach his own administration took).

And earlier this year, the American Federation of Teachers, which endorsed Clinton in her 2008 race, and the Center for American Progress, a think tank closely aligned with the Obama administration that also includes some former Clinton aides among its top ranks, came out with a proposal to test students every year, but only use the results for school accountability in certain grade spans. 

Could that be Clinton's eventual tack, either when it comes to a new law ... or maybe more immediately, new waivers? Again, too early to say. But if an NCLB rewrite doesn't start moving again soon, we may have months and months to play the guessing game. 

It could be better for Clinton if a bill is able to get over the finish line before the presidential Where Would Hillary Clinton Stand on the No Child Left Behind Act? - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Buying Public Policy in CT – Corporate Education Reform Industry’s spends $6.8+ million and counting - Jonathan Kantrowitz

Buying Public Policy in CT – Corporate Education Reform Industry’s spends $6.8+ million and counting - Jonathan Kantrowitz:

Buying Public Policy in CT – Corporate Education Reform Industry’s spends $6.8+ million and counting

Posted on March 6, 2015 | By Jonathan Kantrowitz

by Jonathan Pelto from Wait, What

The uncomfortable truth is that Governor Dannel Malloy and key members of the Connecticut General Assembly continue to side with the Corporate Education Reform Industry rather than with Connecticut’s students, parents, teachers, public schools and taxpayers.

The most recent indicator of the warped approach being taken by Connecticut’s “political leaders” was the outrageously inappropriate and misleading memo that was sent out this week by Governor Malloy’s Interim Commissioner of Education.

The Education Commissioner’s directive sought to further harass and scare Connecticut parents into falsely believing that they do not have the right to opt their children out of the unfair, inappropriate and discriminatory Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) Testing Program.

See: Malloy’s Education Commissioner seeks to stamp out parental rights on Common Core SBAC Testing opt out

The question that arises over and over again is why Connecticut’s elected and appointed public officials are engaged in their ongoing effort to undermine and privatize public education in Connecticut, denigrate teachers and turn our public schools into little more than taxpayer funded testing factories.

The answer, sadly, is rather simple…

The Corporate Education Reform Industry has spent a record-breaking $6,767,957 plus in support of Governor Malloy’s “education reform” agenda – – – An Agenda that includes forcing the Common Core and the Common Core Testing Scheme on Connecticut’s public schools while cutting taxpayer support for public education and increasing public funding for privately owned and operated charter schools.

Since Malloy introduced his “Education Reform” agenda, the charter school industry and the corporate funded “education reform” advocacy groups have hired dozens of lobbyists and spent nearly $7 million, or more, to “persuade” Connecticut officials to adopt policies that are diametrically opposed to what is in the best interests of Connecticut students, parents, teachers and public school system.

Corporate funded and affiliated groups like Achievement First, Inc.; A Better Connecticut; Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now Inc. (ConnCAN); Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Advocacy; StudentsFirst/GENEPSA (Michelle Rhee); Families for Excellent Schools Inc.; Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy Inc.; Connecticut Council for Education Reform Inc. (CCER); North East Charter Schools Network ; Bronx Charter School of Excellence; Students for Education Reform; Educators 4 Excellence; Excel Bridgeport, Inc.; Achieve Hartford, Inc. and their newest front group, the Coalition for Every Child, are pumping more and more money into lobbying and advertising programs.

This year, more than two dozen paid lobbyists are running around the State Capitol and Legislative Office Building working to divert more money to charter schools, while supporting the Common Core SBAC Testing Scam and other “education reform” agenda items.

According to the latest filings with State Ethics Commission, Corporate Education Reform Industry front Buying Public Policy in CT – Corporate Education Reform Industry’s spends $6.8+ million and counting - Jonathan Kantrowitz:

VIDEO: Star CPS principal issues stinging assessment of the Mayor’s education agenda ‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬

Star CPS principal issues stinging assessment of the Mayor’s education agenda - Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Mayor of Chicago:

Star CPS principal issues stinging assessment of the Mayor’s education agenda

A leading CPS principal issued a stinging assessment of the education agenda announced   yesterday by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Troy LaRaviere, a well-respected district principal who gets results, presented a "Point by point" video response to the Mayor, and explained how his policies have hurt our children. LaRaviere is an education policy advisor to the Garcia campaign. 

LaRaviere is a rising star among CPS principals, one of only 7 to be awarded one of the top two Chicago Principal Merit Award Bonuses in both the first and second years of the award. In addition to nearly a dozen years as a public educator, LaRaviere is a US Navy veteran.

The "Point by Point" video was produced by the campaign to elect Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Mayor of Chicago.

Contact Vanessa Figueroa, press@chicagoforchuy.com

On-Site Contact Monica Trevino, press@chicagoforchuy.com

Click here to go to Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Mayor of Chicago Website

‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬