Links between NJ education and Pearson are cozy indeed | Bob Braun's Ledger

Links between NJ education and Pearson are cozy indeed | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Links between NJ education and Pearson are cozy indeed

Andrew Erlichson/LINKED-IN

Bari Anhalt Erlichson, an assistant New Jersey education commissioner and chief testing officer who supervises PARCC testing throughout the state, has a personal connection of sorts to PARCC’s developer, the British publishing giant Pearson. Anhalt Erlichson is married to Andrew Erlichson, a vice president of a company named MongoDB. MongoDB (the name comes fromhumongous database) is a subcontractor to Pearson, developing its national student database that provides the larger company with access to student records in New Jersey and the nation.

Anhalt Erlichson wrote a memorandum to New Jersey educators March 17 defending the actions of her department and  Pearson in monitoring the social media of New Jersey students while they took the PARCC tests. She blamed the uproar caused by the revelation of the cyber-spying on the failure of parents and educators to understand social media.

She did not mention her personal ties to a company that profits from the business relationship to Pearson–and the state education department. Bari Anhalt Erlichson and Andrew Erlichson own a home in Princeton valued at $2.9 million, according to property records.

State education department spokesmen declined to answer inquiries about Erlichson’s connections to MongoDB.

Erlichson, third from left, with friends from the NJ School Boards Association, which supports PARCC

Erlichson is expected to appear Thursday before the Legislature’s Assembly Links between NJ education and Pearson are cozy indeed | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Another Example Why Teaching Must Become a Team Effort | John Thompson

Another Example Why Teaching Must Become a Team Effort | John Thompson:

Another Example Why Teaching Must Become a Team Effort

 The research of Robert Pianta and others indicates that as few as 25% of teachers "provide a level of instructional or emotional support consistent with the production of learning gains." I can believe it, at least in places with the challenges that my old high school faced.

I think school reformers were wrong, but I can understand why some of them (to borrow historian Larry Cuban's words) tried to "deputize" teachers as the agents to defeat poverty. If we could somehow "build a better teacher," so that 100% of us had the ability to overcome the legacies of poverty, the so-called "teacher quality" experiment would have been the ultimate quick fix - with a simple lever moving an incredibly complex world.

I wouldn't have bet the farm on the idea that better teacher quality could drive a victory over the educational legacies of extreme poverty. But, an attempt to focus on improved instruction within the four walls of the classroom in order to improve inner city schools was not necessarily irrational. The key to improving high-challenge schools might have been a heavy investment in teaching teachers how to offer more engaging instruction and, especially, to better tend to students' emotional needs. It sure would have been cheaper and easier than implementing comprehensive whole school improvements.

By now, however, it should be clear that there are no shortcuts. It takes a team effort to improve student performance in schools serving intense concentrations of children from generational poverty who have often survived extreme trauma.

The Tulsa Public schools has an excellent record of starting down the path to high-quality early education and full-service community schools. So, it might have made sense for Tulsa to accept a Gates Foundation grant to improve teacher quality, as long as it was seen as a supplement to more holistic approaches. But, even if money was no object, there are only so many hours in the day, and we must prioritize the tasks we impose on educators.

In retrospect, even the best of the high-dollar Gates efforts look like a mistake if they Another Example Why Teaching Must Become a Team Effort | John Thompson:

JUST IN: Cortines warns UTLA to abandon boycott of faculty meetings - LA School Report

JUST IN: Cortines warns UTLA to abandon boycott of faculty meetings - LA School Report:



JUST IN: Cortines warns UTLA to abandon boycott of faculty meetings

 LA Unified SuperintendentRamon Cortineswarned the teachers union,UTLA, today that urging its members to boycott three upcoming faculty meetings violates the terms of a directive from the Public Employees Employment Board.

In a harshly-worded statementCortines said attending the meetings is “a required professional duty under the LAUSD-UTLA contract agreement” and a boycott would violate a 1990 directive issued by PERB that arose out of “previous unlawful boycotts of required duties.”

That order, he asserted, “still holds today.”

“Nothing could be more detrimental to the extraordinary educational progress that this District has made in recent years,” Cortines said in the statement. “As we await the involvement of a mediator in negotiations, I urge UTLA to stop this irresponsible and unlawful effort, and instead work with the District to complete negotiations so that all employees can devote their entire focus to the District’s core mission of educating students and ensuring student safety.”

He made the same points in separates letter to UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearland to LA Unified employees.

UTLA did not respond to a request to comment, and it is unknown how Cortines received information that UTLA members had been urged to boycott meetings. There has been no public declaration by the union either on its website, social media accounts or public statements by leaders that it was encouraging members to boycott meetings.

The union and the district are currently in contentious contract negations that were recently declared to be in an impasse as the sides remain an estimated $800 million apart on key issues like teacher pay and class size. Over the last six months, the union has ramped up pressure with a series of monthly “escalating actions” that included press conferences, picketing at schools and a large rally last month attended by thousands in downtown’s Grand Park.

However, no “escalating actions” for the month of March have been announced by UTLA, and Cortines in his statement expressed hope that boycotting faculty meetings wasn’t the next step. LA School Report reached out to Caputo-Pearl earlier this JUST IN: Cortines warns UTLA to abandon boycott of faculty meetings - LA School Report:

“Peeping Pearson” and Depersonalizing A Student’s Understanding of Right from Wrong:

“Peeping Pearson” and Depersonalizing A Student’s Understanding of Right from Wrong

MARCH 18, 2015 BY NANCY BAILEY LEAVE A COMMENT

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

― Confucius

Hidden within this past weekend’s Peeping Pearson spying incident is a problem that is pervasive and increasing across the country—student cheating.

Bob Braun, former education reporter and news editor for The Star-Ledger, bloggedabout a student being monitored on social media by test publishing company Pearson. A New Jersey superintendent had been notified that a student in their district had tweeted something about the PARCC test on Twitter. This raised countless critical questions and concerns about what constitutes student privacy on social media.

Despite being appalled like most about the surveillance, I was curious about why this student put something about the test on Twitter in the first place. In fairness, the superintendent didn’t think it constituted cheating. But why did the student mention the test? Did someone set them up? Were they just goofing off? Was the student scoffing at the test? Were they trying to help someone who had not taken the test yet? If it wasn’t important, why did Pearson care enough to notify the superintendent?

What concerns me, is the impersonal nature of Pearson, a faraway testing company, playing gotcha with the student. It dismisses what is going on with the student if they are actually cheating. I am not accusing this student of cheating. I have no information to suggest such a thing.

But what happens to students when they get caught cheating this way? The“Peeping Pearson” and Depersonalizing A Student’s Understanding of Right from Wrong:

You be the Judge: Are the @DFER_News Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing? | Cloaking Inequity

You be the Judge: Are the @DFER_News Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing? | Cloaking Inequity:

You be the Judge: Are the @DFER_News Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing?

You be the judge. This post will discuss the highlights— or perhaps lowlights— of the Democrats For Education Reform (DFERs), a very powerful Wall Street funded organization who some say are seeking to profit from public education. The Seattle Education blog argued,

Democrats for Education Reform is a political action committee supported largely by hedge fund managers favoring charter schools, merit-pay tied to test scores, high-stakes testing, school choice (including vouchers and tuition tax credits in some cases), mayoral control, and alternative teacher preparation programs.

Jeff Bryant reported on the framing that the DFERs prefer,

In an interview featured on the website of a conservative D.C.-based think tank, [Marc Porter Magee] has stated his intentions of “breaking up the old ways of thinking in the Democratic Party … by asking: How could we solve conservative problems with liberal means, and liberal problems with conservative means?”

On their website the DFERs tell us that,

• We support policies which stimulate the creation of new, accountable public schools and which simultaneously close down failing schools

• We support mechanisms that allow parents to select excellent schools for their children, and where education dollars follow each child to their school.

• We support governance structures which hold leaders responsible, while giving them the tools to effectuate change. We believe in empowering mayors to lead urban school districts, so that they can be held accountable by the electorate.

• We support policies that allow school principals and their school communities to select their teams of educators, holding them accountable for student performance but allowing them flexibility to exercise sound, professional judgment.

• We support clearly-articulated national standards and expectations for core subject areas, while allowing states and local districts to determine how best to make sure that all students are reaching those standards.

Fairly innocuous— none of that sounds controversial on its face.  But are they actually wolves in sheep’s clothing?

So who are the DFERs? You be the judge.

In this post I will run through a recent timeline of events and coverage of the DFERs.

2007: The Daily Kos reported,

The loudest voices were those of a new organization calling themselves Democrats for Education reform (DFER), led by young extremely wealthy hedge fund operators from New York City. In the May 31, 2007 issue of New York Sun there was a report about one of the first victories of DFER: “A money manager recently sent an e-mail to some partners, congratulating them on an investment of $1 million that yielded an estimated $400 million. The 

You be the Judge: Are the @DFER_News Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing? | Cloaking Inequity:

Cuomo, Corporate Reformers Take Aim at Experienced Educators | The Indypendent

Cuomo, Corporate Reformers Take Aim at Experienced Educators | The Indypendent:



Cuomo, Corporate Reformers Take Aim at Experienced Educators

Brooklyn elementary school teacher Michelle Baptiste got in trouble with her principal when she used her after-school hours to meet with families of troubled children instead of entering her students’ standardized test results into an Excel spreadsheet. Photo: Alex Ellefson

 When discussing how to improve public education, Governor Andrew Cuomo likes to complain about how difficult it is to fire “bad teachers” and the need to reduce job security for classroom educators. He is not alone in this. The Partnership for Educational Justice, a well-funded nonprofit fronted by former CNN host Campbell Brown, is pursuing a lawsuit in a Staten Island court that seeks to scrap teacher tenure protections. Both New York City tabloids, meanwhile, never miss a chance to promote a lurid teacher sex scandal and then denounce the teachers union for protecting the right of the accused to a fair hearing.

But what if the real teaching crisis in New York is not the inability to get rid of bad teachers, but the failure to keep experienced and highly capable teachers and allow them to do their jobs?

Take Michelle Baptiste. A teacher at an elementary school in Flatbush, Brooklyn, with 22 years of experience, Baptiste, 47, has watched with dismay in recent years as standardized testing has taken on an increasingly central role in her classroom. Long gone are the early years of her career when she was allowed to creatively respond to her mostly Black and Latino students’ needs and interests and teach them culturally relevant lessons.

Starting in third grade, students at Baptiste’s school are deluged with a battery of federal and state tests, periodic assessment tests, practice tests to be taken in preparation for the real tests and field tests that are carried out to help test manufacturers develop questions for future tests. In addition to preparing lesson plans and grading homework and tests, teachers are expected to log their students’ various test results into Excel spreadsheets.

When Baptiste was slow to fill in a spreadsheet for a test she administered in the fall of 2012, she says her principal put a letter in her personnel file and later gave her an Unsatisfactory (or “U”) rating on an observation report.

Baptiste told The Indypendent she had been too busy meeting during after-school hours with the families of troubled children in her class — including some who did not have stable housing — to keep on schedule with entering data, which she described as “garbage.” Still, she recognizes her actions put her career in peril.

“If you get enough of these letters in your file, you can be brought up on charges of incompetence and you can lose your livelihood,” said Baptiste. She has switched to teaching second grade, where students are tested less frequently.

Principals From Hell

For Angela — a Brooklyn middle school teacher of more than 10 years who did not wish to be identified by her real name because she feared retaliation — work became hellish when her school’s inexperienced young principal took to berating both students and teachers in the school’s hallways for their allegedly poor performances.

“She would tell teachers they didn’t know what they were doing, and then turn to students letting them know they were going to get someone ‘better,’” Angela said. The constant abuse, she added, drove many of the school’s teachers to psychological collapse and even suicidal thoughts. She later transferred to another school.

Teacher anxiety and stress became widespread during the administration of business mogul-turned-mayor Michael Bloomberg. Principals were freed from traditional oversight by district superintendents and elevated to CEO-like Cuomo, Corporate Reformers Take Aim at Experienced Educators | The Indypendent:

Performing feats of ledgermain - LeftMN

Performing feats of ledgermain - LeftMN:

Performing feats of ledgermain

There’s a big difference between a teacher’s rating on a flawed and invalid evaluation system and her “performance.”  Just don’t try and tell that to local media.

Three years ago the Washington, DC based education reform lobbying outfit called 50CAN, along with its wholly-owned Minnesota subsidiary called MinnCAN, came up with an ingenious new plan to pressurize and weaken teachers’ unions: They began a movement to brand their movement’s attacks on public school teachers as the simple proposition of evaluating teachers on their “performance,” versus current practices of evaluating teachers by their seniority, educational achievement, and classroom observations.

The attack wasn’t grounded in research or logic; instead, the organizations used public polling on the subject, purporting to measure public sentiment on teacher retention decisions by pitting teacher seniority versus “performance.” It was a clever, if dishonest tactic, since polling can obscure on the ground realities. Just because the public believes something to be true doesn’t make it true.

Thus if an well-funded organization with deep political connections is actively trying to deceive the public on matters of public import a deceptive poll can be a very effective tool for changing public policy. The real trick of the matter is to convince media and opinion leaders to accept the framing of the issue, no matter how illogical and counter-intuitive the premise.

Normally one would expect those crucial audiences to see through such blatant attempts at propaganda. After all, journalists are social scientists who are supposed to be trained to recognize attempts at public opinion manipulation. Unfortunately media organizations of today have been denuded of experienced reporters, and the money thrown around by movements such as that of the education reformers have turned organizations and people who in other contexts might have been counted on to shed light on sophisticated propaganda campaigns into grifters – people whose careers are predicated on not seeing through the data-induced fog.

But today the fabulists at 50CAN must be giving themselves high-fives – and deservedly so – as media organizations, politicians Performing feats of ledgermain - LeftMN:

Beware of AstroTurf Ed Reformers 

Astroturf lobbying refers to political organizations or campaigns that appear to be made up of grassroots activists but are actually organized and run by corporate interests seeking to further their own agendas. Such groups are often typified by innocent-sounding names that have been chosen specifically to disguise the group's true backers

Study Reveals Bias in Buffalo News Education Reporting | The Public

Study Reveals Bias in Buffalo News Education Reporting | The Public:



Study Reveals Bias in Buffalo News Education Reporting

 “There are few things more dangerous than propaganda disguised as journalism,” reads one conclusion from a study by SUNY Buffalo State professor Dr. Andrea B. Nikischer, who has delved into the past year of reporting on education by the Buffalo News.

If we extrapolated her findings—and borrow the phrase quoted above—we could conclude that there are in fact few things more dangerous than the News’s education reporting.

“Propaganda and Policy: An Investigation into Alleged Anti-Teacher’s Union and Pro-Charter School Bias in the Buffalo News” is the title of Dr. Nikischer’s report, which takes a deep look into the reporting done by the News with regard to charter schools and Buffalo Public Schools. 

The study demonstrates that two distinct stories are being told: The first gives readers an uncritical look at charter schools, promoting them as the answer to the perceived failure of the city’s so-called failing public schools, while the second gives an overwhelmingly negative portrayal of Buffalo Public Schools, along with their teachers and union.

“As Buffalo has only one traditional newspaper, and virtually no other mainstream media sources in the county provide detailed coverage of the Buffalo Public Schools or school reform, the power of articles published on these issues is immense,” notes Dr. Nikischer, an assistant professor at Buff State’s Adult Education Department.

Public school supporters have been critical of the News’s coverage, which has, they believe, unfairly and loudly echoed the agenda of Governor Andrew Cuomo, the Buffalo Board of Education majority, and the nationwide school privatization and high-stake testing movements. Now, for the first time, they can point to a qualitative study to back these claims.

To undertake the study, Dr. Nikischer evaluated News articles published from October 1, 2013 to November 30, 2014. All articles—190 in total—were culled from the paper’s regularly published articles, SchoolZone blog posts, and opinion pieces. Each article was coded in three respects: 1) for content and tone (What is the article about? What is the tone—positive, negative or neutral?); 2) for general themes; and 3) whether to include the article in the study or not. The idea is to compare large sets of data and draw general conclusions based on the tone and content of the articles. Disqualified articles were those outside of the researchers’ ken and which had no relevance to the themes undertaken.Study Reveals Bias in Buffalo News Education Reporting | The Public:

Clark County Schools head raises concern about charter school racial balance | Las Vegas Review-Journal

Clark County Schools head raises concern about charter school racial balance | Las Vegas Review-Journal:

Clark County Schools head raises concern about charter school racial balance

By FRANCIS McCABE
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Clark County charter schools, where white students account for 66 percent of enrollment, don’t reflect the valley’s student demographics and are on the path to resegregation, public school superintendent Pat Skorkowsky told business leaders on Tuesday.

The superintendent of the nation’s fifth-largest school system made the statement during NewsFeed, a series of breakfast forums aimed at igniting conversations about important community issues sponsored by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce.

Skorkowsky was joined in a panel discussion at the Four Seasons by Kati Haycock, president of the nonprofit Education Trust, and Allison Serafin, vice president of the Nevada State Board of Education.

The discussion, moderated by Review-Journal senior editorial writer and columnist Glenn Cook, covered several topics in education, including Gov. Brian Sandoval’s $20 million proposal to expand charter schools in Nevada. The initiative would require $20 million in matching funds from a newly forming charter school organization.

“I want to make sure that every parent has a choice and right now that’s not always the option,” with charter schools, Skorkowsky said. “Where the charters are opening up, it’s not in the areas where disadvantaged children have that choice anymore. Sixty-six percent of the charter school population is Caucasian in this county, that’s resegregating our schools to a certain extent.”

Skorkowsky added later that he’s concerned that all schools, including charters, should reflect the community’s demographics. A commitment must be made by charters to not just build schools in the “suburban ring” but to disadvantaged kids “who need it the most,” he said.

In the Clark County School District, white students make up about 28 percent of the population — or about 87,000 students. Latino student enrollment is at 45 percent, or about 143,000 students.

At least 14 of the more than 350 schools Skorkowsky oversees reported having an enrollment that was 66 percent or more Caucasian in 2013-14, according to accountability reports. Those public schools tend to be in rural and suburban parts of the county.

Haycock, who runs a national nonprofit advocacy group that promotes high academic achievement with special emphasis on low-income and minority students, said parents assume charter schools provide higher quality education, even though objective data says the quality of education is the same as in public schools.

Just as some public schools are great and others do damage, the same is true for charter schools,Clark County Schools head raises concern about charter school racial balance | Las Vegas Review-Journal:

After Divisive Start, Use of 'Parent Trigger' Law Matures - Education Week

After Divisive Start, Use of 'Parent Trigger' Law Matures - Education Week:

After Divisive Start, Use of 'Parent Trigger' Law Matures

Strategies Aim to Broaden Influence of Contentious Statute

Los Angeles

Five years after California parents gained the power to initiate major changes at failing schools, advocates of the state's controversial parent-trigger law are expanding their strategies to broaden its influence.

Former State Sen. Gloria Romero, the law's author, founded a nonprofit last year to educate parents about the California Parent Empowerment Act. Even as Ms. Romero launched her initiative, another group of parent-trigger-campaign veterans had already started working to develop a more collaborative approach to turning around troubled schools.

The two startups point to disparate directions California's maturing parent-trigger law may take. They could include more contentious parent-led efforts, like the one currently underway with Ms. Romero's guidance at Palm Lane Elementary School in Anaheim. The law may also continue to become part of a multi-layered strategy to empower poor, minority communities in their pursuit of educational justice.

At the same time, California's experience so far has motivated only a few states to follow its lead in adopting a parent-trigger law as a model for school overhauls: Six states have adopted parent-trigger inspired laws since 2010. This year lawmakers in six more states are considering parent-trigger legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Amendments proposed to laws in California andTexas this year would increase the number eligible schools.

The California Parent Empowerment Act allows parents whose children attend chronically low-performing schools to force districts to enact sweeping education reforms that range from hiring a new principal and replacing staff to transforming the school into a charter. Parents must garner support by petition from 50 percent of students' parents, plus one, to set the law in motion.

Most of the handful of schools where parents have used the law serve predominantly Hispanic and African-American students from low-income families, explained Alfonso Flores, the chief executive officer of the Excellent Educational Solutions, a private consulting firm founded by former parent-trigger community organizers. However, he said education reformers' egos, in some cases, can muddy debates and lose sight of those critical societal pressures.

"Parents just want to feel like their child has a shot at the American Dream," Mr. Flores said. "They don't give a hoot about the politics."

Meanwhile, Parent Revolution, a nonprofit created to support parents choosing to use the parent-trigger law, is seeking new leadership after longtime executive director Ben Austin resigned late last year. Parent Revolution, which has drawn the ire of critics who see it as divisive, self-promoting, and yielding few tangible results, rebuffs detractors' assessments of the group, and remains undeterred that the parent-trigger law is a viable education reform tool.

"We've always said that we're trying to spread a movement, not an organization," Gabe Rose, Parent Revolution's chief strategy officer, said during an interview at the group's downtown Los Angeles office, where the décor is inspired by Silicon Valley technology firms. "We desperately want more parent organizations and other allies to pick up this work."

'Wild West'

But parents living outside of California haven't shown much appetite to take the parent-trigger plunge.

In fact, a spokeswoman for the National PTA, the nation's largest parent-advocacy organization, said the Alexandria, Va.-based group does not have an official position on the law.

So far, nationally, only one school, Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, Calif., has been transformed into a charter while another six schools in the state have used the parent-trigger law in some way to secure changes on their campuses.

Ms. Romero said lawmakers often overlook the importance of monitoring how a law is implemented. "If you don't know the law, you can't use the law," she added.

Ohio's parent-trigger pilot program in Columbus may have fallen victim to After Divisive Start, Use of 'Parent Trigger' Law Matures - Education Week:

Is Alexander Russo "Working the Refs" on Common Core Protest Coverage? - Living in Dialogue

Is Alexander Russo "Working the Refs" on Common Core Protest Coverage? - Living in Dialogue:



Is Alexander Russo "Working the Refs" on Common Core Protest Coverage? 

 By Anthony Cody.

Education blogger Alexander Russo has offered an analysis of recent education journalism in a piece entitled “Common problems with Common Core reporting.” Russo hosts a blog called This Week in Education, sponsored by Scholastic corporation.

Russo reached out to me for input as he was researching the piece, but my perspective does not appear there. Here is Russo’s thesis:

…so far, at least, much of the media’s coverage of this spring’s Common Core testing rollout has been guilty of over-emphasizing the extent of the conflict, speculating dire consequences based on little information, and over-relying on anecdotes and activists’ claims rather than digging for a broader sampling of verified numbers. The real story—that the rollout of these new, more challenging tests is proceeding surprisingly well—could be getting lost.

To make his case, Russo focused first on a recent report by veteran journalist John Merrow, focused on the opt out movement. Russo writes:

There are a few problems with the news segment. The opening footage showing Newark students protesting the local school board suggests that the new tests are a main concern of the protesters, when all previous reports have them rallying primarily against Christie-appointed Newark school superintendent Cami Anderson. Eleven of the 12 states that “dropped” the official Common Core tests have developed their own similar assessments, according to right-leaning think tanker Mike Petrilli. And—perhaps most problematic—the piece speculates about the future of the entire endeavor based on vague assertions about parents opting out without any hard numbers.

As I mentioned, Russo reached out to me for my thoughts, and here is what I shared with him.

I disagree in two regards. In the first place, it is the job of a journalist to look for the kinks in the system, the signs of disruption. In that regard, the reporters who are reporting on these things are doing their jobs. In the second place, this is a shift in public attitudes and behaviors that could spell real trouble for high stakes tests, 

Is Alexander Russo "Working the Refs" on Common Core Protest Coverage? - Living in Dialogue:

Alexander Russo Speaks for Scholastic Corporation?

 Alexander Russo High Priest of

Corporate Ed Reform (self appointed)