New interactive game puts you in the shoes of today’s educators:

New interactive game puts you in the shoes of today’s educators

MONDAY, APRIL 20TH, 2015 AT 8:37 AM

In conjunction with the PBS film 180 Days: Hartsville, Black Public Media is sharing an interactive game in which players can become either a teacher, a parent or a principal, and assume responsibility for a class full of 5th graders (or their own child), via ten different scenarios that unfold over the course of a year.

As you’ll see — click here to play the game yourself — the purpose of the game is not to suggest that it’s possible to “win” or “lose” in the traditional sense. Rather, the goal is to help people better understand the sorts of choices educators and parents must make every day, and evaluate the extent to which our current system is putting them in the best position to meet the developmental needs of kids.

I should add that the educator scenarios were not dreamt up by me; they were provided by a select group of some of our country’s finest teachers, principals, and education advocates. So special thanks to Margaret Angell, Pierre Brown, Kim Carter, James Comer, Camille Cooper, Ben Daley, Carlita Davis, Dwight Davis, Scott Edwards, Cristina Encinas, Jamal Fields, Nancy Flanagan, Wanda Govan-Augustus, Judy Hall, Cosby Hunt, Edward Ingram, Tara King, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Rebecca Lebowitz, Chris Lehmann, Christian Long, Bobbi MacDonald, Marlene Magrino, Julie Mahn, Scott Nine, Kate Quarfordt, Cyn Savo, Rebecca Schmidt, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Joshua Starr, Laura Thomas, Marla Ucelli-Kashyap, Amy Valens, and Autumn Wilson.

And please — play the game, share your thoughts, and spread the wordNew interactive game puts you in the shoes of today’s educators:

Schools Matter: Husband of John Deasy confidant, Jamie Alter Lynton, cashed in big on Pearson PLC's LAUSD iPad Deal

Schools Matter: Husband of John Deasy confidant, Jamie Alter Lynton, cashed in big on Pearson PLC's LAUSD iPad Deal:

Husband of John Deasy confidant, Jamie Alter Lynton, cashed in big on Pearson PLC's LAUSD iPad Deal

From: "Robert D. Skeels" <***@ucla.edu>
Subject: RepairsNOTiPad's alert: Husband of Deasy confidant, Jamie Alter Lynton, cashed in big on Pearson PLC
Date: April 19, 2015 at 06:43:29 AM PDT
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Colleagues:

I was alerted to the WikiLeaks of Sony emails early yesterday. I had a seven hour mock of the State Bar of California FYLSX exam yesterday, and have a lot of studying to do today, so I don't have much time. That said, the leaks are devastating in that they prove unequivocally that the billionaires, ideologues, charter executives, and their school board candidates all work together for their common cause of eliminating public education (and profiting thereof).

We're frequently told that we dabble in guilt by association, but then you see items like this leaked:

https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/117253

and it confirms that we have been correct all along in our assertion that this is a well coordinated project by the ruling class (or 1% if you prefer), and their hangers on.

This email is of great import: https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/133248

establishing Jamie Alter Lynton's husband Michael Lynton, Sony CEO, cashed in big on the major corporate player in the disgraced John Deasy's iPad scandal, Pearson PLC.

I am putting out both a call for help, and an assertion that we all need to writing about this. Both charter profiteer Ref Rodriguez, and longtime neoliberal corporate education reformer Tamar Galatzan have insurmountable funding advantages in this upcoming election, and it is the individuals discussed in this email that are bankrolling them. Here's what I need help with, and following that, is a few items that will help others with research and writing their own articles.

NEED

• Someone to go through all of Rodriguez and Galatzan's current 460 Forms looking for contributions by Jamie Alter Lynton and Michael Lynton.
• Doing the same for the various Independent Expenditures for this election.
• A time table of Deasy's iPad fiasco, including the attacks on Stuart Magruder, and when Annie Gilbertson wrote her brilliant articles about Deasy's inappropriate relations with Pearson and Apple executives.
• If the Lyntons are trying to sell off $38,099.31 of Pearson PLC  shares in March 2014, is that tantamount to insider trading, given their relationship with Deasy?
• Someone to go through all of Rodriguez and Galatzan's current 460 Forms looking for contributions by anyone on this list https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/117253.
• Figures of how much LAUSD bond money was squandered in the Pearson deal.
• Statement from https://www.facebook.com/pages/Repairs-Not-IPads/228827333958584 Repairs not iPads representatives on their thoughts on these latest developments.

PROVIDING

Here's some helpful information for other people's articles and research.

Jamie Alter Lynton has supported the Coalition for School Reform (CSR) and its candidates—including Galatzan—in the past Schools Matter: Husband of John Deasy confidant, Jamie Alter Lynton, cashed in big on Pearson PLC's LAUSD iPad Deal:

Teach students to care about others instead of measuring how they compare to each other | WagTheDog

Teach students to care about others instead of measuring how they compare to each other | WagTheDog:

Teach students to care about others instead of measuring how they compare to each other

If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

~ Atticus Finch, ( Gregory Peck) “To Kill A Mockingbird”

Whether its hundreds of spring break bystanders watching and recording a daylight sexual assault of an unconscious woman, or middle school students using a cell phone to video the merciless verbal abuse and taunting of a 68 year old bus monitor, or even a depressed and desperate German co-pilot who decides to include a plane load of people in his suicide plans, there clearly is an empathy deficit and crisis in our world today.

Ed reformers must have experienced a serious case of buyer’s remorse after recruiting David Colemen ( the anti-Atticus Finch) to design and craft the Common Core State Standards only to hear him proclaim…

“As you grow up in this world, you realize people really don’t give a s#@% about what you feel or what you think”

We are foolishly implementing national education reforms obsessed with measuring how students compare to each other at a time when schools should be doubling their efforts to maximize our students ability and inclination to care about others.

There appears to have been a data-driven hijacking of the Common Core Standards. Theuse of standardized tests to assess student mastery devalues the most vibrant components of the standards and abandons the “promise” of constructivist learning.

Standardized  tests measure only specialized and discrete skills called for in the Commmon Core but they are not a comprehensive ruler or appropriate metric formeasuring student agency and a wide array of essential non-cognitive skills.

What if the PARCC and Smarter Balanced tests were designed and developed more for teacher accountability purposes than to reliably measure students skills?

PARCC has already acknowledged that their test is not a comprehensive or reliable measure of college and career readiness.

Using junk science VAM formulas, education leaders claim they can use student scores on these unreliable assessments to reliably measure the quality and effectiveness of their teachers.

Have education reformers even considered the possibility that a “highly effective” educator who prepares and trains students to master a standardized test may not be good teacher?

The unfortunate decision to use standardized tests to evaluate student mastery AND teacher quality means classroom instruction is focused primarily on rigorous and standardized lessons that prepare students for assessments at a time when many would be better served by vigorous and nonroutine experiences helping them learn how to properly manage their attitutes, behaviors, and emotions.

We are devoting too much class time training and testing children just so parents can be assured their 3rd graders are “on track” for college when there is no way the Common Core Standards and tests can prevent or predict which students will be “derailed” by Teach students to care about others instead of measuring how they compare to each other | WagTheDog:

Way out of touch and also out of their minds - Times Union

Way out of touch and also out of their minds - Times Union:

Way out of touch and also out of their minds 

 New York politicians beware. A revolution is in progress.

This past week angry and frustrated parents across the state kept their third- through eighth-graders in astounding numbers from taking required but despised standardized English tests. While the final count awaits a State Education Department release this summer, a group opposed to the testing, United to Counter the Core, has been keeping score. Last year, about 60,000 refused to take these tests that cause enormous anxiety among parents and their children, and that are increasingly viewed as ineffective measures of student and teacher achievement. As of late Friday afternoon with 64 percent of the school districts in the state canvassed, the group had recorded in excess of 177,000 ''opt-outs.''

There are about 1.1 million students statewide eligible to take these tests. While the state refusal rate seems conservatively on the upside of 15 percent, there were large pockets of districts where as many didn't take the tests as did. On Long Island, for example, an estimated 43 percent did not take the tests. In the Monroe County region that includes Rochester a third didn't, and the opt-out movement was particularly strong in the heavily populated and generally affluent lower Hudson Valley and the Buffalo area.

That's not just an opt-out movement anymore. It's civil disobedience, and a step away from a growing stampede. That should make elected officials squirm, and they deserve it.

But we haven't seen the half of it yet. This coming week those same children will go back to take three days of standardized math tests — or not.

How the numbers who didn't take the English tests will impact the numbers taking the math tests will be illuminating. It's hard to imagine anything but a tumbling effect. Reports have surfaced that those English tests had a number of questions that were ambiguous, poorly designed and written in language too sophisticated for the age level, yet again. One parent said that the tests seem to be about creating failure, not measuring learning. She likened the exams to child abuse. Of course, since these tests are endorsed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, self-proclaimed guardian of our young minds, this couldn't possibly be true.

Regardless how many show up for the math tests, what the parents have done so far is as strong a repudiation of national and state public policy as we have seen in a long time. These parents have given a resounding ''no'' to the president, our governor, Secretary of EducationArne Duncan and an entire ruling cabal of moronic billionaires convinced that public education can only be elevated by punitive measures and the cold imposition of numbers in a database.

Well, the public is not having it. Not just here in New York, but across the country. The reauthorization of No Child Left Behind in progress right now will reflect enormous national pressures to change course from a reliance on testing and the linking of teacher evaluations and student achievement to those tests. Federal funding will not be connected to meeting any federal standards, as it is now.

Here in New York, the governor; the recently departed Commissioner of Education, John King; Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch; and the regents themselves have pursued a course that has blatantly ignored what the public told them over and over again. They pretended to listen, but they kept at it.

The revolution is showing the power structure that it cannot keep poking the public in the eye with a sharp stick over this unwanted Prussian model of public education with no noticeable gain for all the pain. At some point, the public will grab that stick and shove it where the sun does not shine. We're at that point.

The immediate consequences of this revolution are not clear. But it is unlikely that the governor's coveted — by him — teacher evaluation system, which is about to become even more draconian, will survive. If even more students opt out of the math tests, the future of the entire Common Core agenda in New York is on the table.

The regents would be well served to hold public hearings before they act. Listen first. The Legislature in turn needs to take a hard look at what it just slavishly passed for Cuomo and amend or repeal. It's that serious.

Laughably, the U.S. Department of Education's reaction to New York's revolution was to vaguely threaten federal aid, and to dismissively label the revolution as ''an organized political campaign.''

Odd, since the same federal department will likely be singing an entirely different tune when it comes to these tests and federal aid in a few months.

And while political leaders as disparate as conservative Republican Rob Astorino and progressive Democrat Zephyr Teachout spoke in harmony about opting out, the difficult decision by parents to buck the system is made one child at a time.

To call that a political campaign is ludicrous, and it shows just how utterly out of touch these people are.

flebrun@timesunion.com • 518-454-5453 Way out of touch and also out of their minds - Times Union:

Why the iPad Is Not Working for the School Classroom

Why the iPad Is Not Working for the School Classroom:



Why the iPad Is Not Working for the School Classroom

The Los Angeles Unified School District is looking to recoup millions of dollars that it spent on iPads and the curriculum provided with them, according to Howard Blume reporting for The Los Angeles Times. The Board of Education authorized its attorneys to explore possible litigation against Apple and Pearson, the company that developed the curriculum as a subcontractor to Apple. David Holmquist, general counsel for the school district, said that millions of dollars could be at stake, and in a letter sent to Apple said that the district will not accept or compensate Apple for new deliveries of the curriculum.

The $1.3 billion iPad effort was the signature program of former superintendent John Deasy, but the program faltered almost immediately following its fall 2013 rollout. Deasy framed the program as an initiative to provide lower-income students with the same technology accessible to their more affluent peers, but resigned under pressure over problems with the program last October. Ars Technica reports that soon after the program’s launch, students were found disabling app and browser limitations. Not long after, the district reported that a third of 2,100 iPads distributed via the pilot program were missing. A year later, investigations pointed to possible malfeasance by Deasy in securing the contract with Apple and Pearson. After Deasy’s resignation, the district first slowed the effort, and then abandoned the objective of providing a device to every student.

Blume reports that the school district’s contract with Apple was approved by the Board of Education in June 2013 as part of a deal that was expected to reach at least $500 million; a further $800 million was earmarked to improve schools’ Internet access. Pearson was contracted to provide English and math curriculum, though the district selected it after seeing only samples of curriculum, as no other materials were made available. The district made the deal in spite of this because it wanted to bundle the iPads and the curriculum into a single price; a three-year license for the curriculum added about $200 to the $768 cost of each iPad. The district bought 43,261 iPads with the curriculum, and another 77,175 iPads without the curriculum to use, initially, for state standardized tests.

Pearson was only able to offer a partial curriculum during the first year of license, which was permitted by the contract, but teachers and principals never widely adopted the product. A March report by Bernadette Lucas, the director of the project, found that only two of the 69 participating schools regularly use the Pearson curriculum. “Any given class typically experiences one problem or more daily. Teachers report that the students enjoy the interactive content — when it’s available. When it’s not, teachers and students try to roll with the interruptions to teaching and learning as best they can.”

The remaining schools and their more than 35,000 students “have given up on attempting regular use of the app” thanks to their array of shortcomings. Pearson’s materials are reportedly not adaptable for students who aren’t proficient in English, and the only available assessments are on paper, not online. Pearson also provided no data or tools to analyze how often the curriculum is used or how well it functions, and Lucas wrote that making the materials usable has required “extraordinary, unsustainable, and un-scalable resources.”

But even if Pearson’s materials were working seamlessly, they likely wouldn’t have provided an easy solution for teachers, students, and administrators. The education community is far from reaching a consensus on whether introducing iPads and similar tech in every classroom is a good idea or not. Peg Tyre recently reported for Bright that not only do research (and common sense) reveal that there’s no magic device — even an iPad — that can help students learn more, but “For the most part, education software is worse than you think.”

She explains that great teaching is complex, and software has yet to match the ability of an excellent teacher.  “Technology-assisted personalized learning has come a long way, but it’s hard to get software to replicate what teachers do. And too often, it ends up being a simple lesson and an electronic worksheet buried among some zippy graphics.” Not all students benefit from tech-assisted learning, and in some cases, the 

Read more: http://www.cheatsheet.com/technology/why-the-ipad-isnt-satisfying-schools.html/?a=viewall#ixzz3XrXnisWz

Can Los Angeles Teachers Push Back the Corporate Education Reform Movement? - In These Times

Can Los Angeles Teachers Push Back the Corporate Education Reform Movement? - In These Times:

Can Los Angeles Teachers Push Back the Corporate Education Reform Movement?

LA teachers seem to be taking a page from the Chicago Teachers Union—including potentially building towards a strike.

In July 2014, two weeks after Alex Caputo-Pearl took over the presidency of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), he spoke at a conference sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) on a panel titled “Social Movement Unionism vs. Corporate Reform.”

With Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis seated to his right, Caputo-Pearl said teachers unions needed to be explicit about “fighting for racial and social justice,” fighting “against privatization,” and “taking people on who need to be taken on, including a lot of Democrats.”

His vision of effective unionism also included being “willing to strike if that’s what we need to do.”

That vision sounds remarkably similar to the CTU’s. After Lewis won her presidency in 2010 as part of the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) slate, the CTU started building strong community ties that supported a teachers’ strike two years later. The walkoff was a major rebuke to city leadership and established the union as a leading opponent of “corporate education reform.” It also proved that a strike could rally rather than alienate communities.

Like Lewis, Caputo-Pearl was active in a reform effort inside his union. His Union Power coalition argued that the union needed to take a stand against so-called “reformers” and for strong community and parent engagement. And during his campaign for the union presidency, Caputo-Pearl emphasized the need to prepare for a strike.

Now, nine months into the Union Power administration, the question is: Can Los Angeles teachers follow the lead of Chicago teachers and pull off a successful community-backed strike—and, in so doing, deal a blow to the corporate education reform movement?

Corporatized education in LA

Education reformers claim their goal is to improve public education for poor students. But education activists and teachers unions see a more insidious agenda: to render education a private good rather than a public right for all. Backed by uber-wealthy philanthropists such as Bill and Melinda Gates, Eli and Edythe Broad and the Walton family (owners of Walmart), reformers ramp up high-stakes testing, villainize teachers and unions, close public schools and open non-union charter schools.

Few urban school districts have been spared. In Los Angeles, pinching pennies in the public school system has led to crowded classrooms, underfunded counseling departments and underpaid teachers. Meanwhile, more and more tax revenue is funneled into the for-profit education sector–effectively privatizing public education.

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Superintendent John Deasy oversaw a wave of such reforms after his appointment in 2011, expanding the number of charter schools in the city from 183 to 285, linking teacher evaluations to test scores and testifying against the union in a state-level case that weakened California teacher tenure laws.

Caputo-Pearl, a white East Coast native, first gained experience in Los Angeles classrooms in 1990 as part of the inaugural corps of Teach for America (TFA). As an undergraduate at Brown University, he campaigned to raise maintenance workers’ wages; TFA’s seemingly idealistic agenda appealed to him.

After an eight-week crash course in teaching, Caputo-Pearl was given a third-grade classroom at Anderson Elementary in LA’s underserved Compton neighborhood. He found himself, like many TFA volunteers, dramatically unprepared. But when he finished his two-year commitment to TFA, he continued teaching. Today, Caputo-Pearl is a staunch TFA opponent. In a 2012 New York Times op-ed, he called TFA part of the “dangerous ‘quick fix’ model of school reform that is harming rather than helping urban schools,” noting the program’s close ties to charter schools and support for high-stakes testing.

In 2001, Caputo-Pearl began teaching history in Southern Los Angeles’s Crenshaw High, whose impoverished, mostly black student population was famously depicted in Boyz n the Hood. When the school temporarily lost its accreditation because of an administrative error, the Crenshaw Cougar Coalition, a group of neighborhood parents, led protests to reverse the decision. Caputo-Pearl was active in the fight. The day before the 2006 school year began, he learned he was being transferred to the affluent Emerson Middle School in Western Los Angeles–because of his activist stance, the Coalition claimed. The group fought successfully to bring him back.

Under Deasy, however, Crenshaw was shuttered in 2013 and “reconstituted” as three different magnet schools. Teachers were forced to reapply for their jobs, destabilizing an area already suffering from neglect. Test scores were part of the criteria used to judge allegedly ineffective veteran teachers. Ca- puto-Pearl and other teachers were not rehired, which he believes was also due to their reputations as activists.

While at Crenshaw, Caputo-Pearl had been elected to the union’s board of directors along with several other members of the dissident union caucus Progressive Educators for Action (PEAC). With member dissatisfaction with union leadership’s lack of rank-and-file organizing running high, PEAC joined with several other caucuses to form the Union Power coalition, which won union leadership in 2014 with Caputo- Pearl as president.

Union Power has stuck to its vision of social movement unionism and in so doing won converts. “People are proud to be UTLA members again,” says Scott Mandel, a PEAC member and sixth-grade teacher of 30 years. “[Union Power] started a campaign of organizing that was basically unheard of. They have done more in the last eight months than UTLA has done in the last eight years.”

Last fall, UTLA leaders visited 443 public schools in the district to tell thousands of teachers about their strategic vision, the “Schools LA Students Deserve.” The title was cribbed from a 2012 CTU report that set forth the union’s progressive vision for Chicago. During the visits, UTLA organizers handed out “commitment cards” for teachers to sign, pledging to escalate action during their contract campaign–including a strike.

What do LA students deserve?

The new leadership now has an opportunity to prove its mettle as community-allied fighters. Last Friday, UTLA, which represents over 35,000 teachers, secured a long-overdue contract (Los Angeles teachers were working under an expired 2011 deal) in line with its short-term organizing goals for better schools. The union began negotiations with LAUSD as soon as Union Power won control of the union in 2014. Negotiations continued on in 2015 but eventually broke down to the point of impasse, and the possibility of the district’s first strike in 26 years loomed in the air.

UTLA’s goals include reductions in class size–a central demand in the CTU strike, though Chicago teachers were legally barred from striking over it. (Not so in Los Angeles.) As of January 29, nearly 2,700 middle-and high-school classrooms across the district–18 percent of all classrooms–had more than 45 students. While UTLA teachers have gained their first pay increases in eight years with this new contract, the district only agreed to partial funding for class size reductions, with loose class size caps attached. The union says it will begin pushing the district for far more concessions around what they say are education justice issues like class sizes during the next rounds of negotiation for a contract in the lead-up to expiration in July 2017.

Future union-school district negotiations should see UTLA continuing the organizing program it started since Caputo-Pearl’s administration came to power. Ahead of several state-mandated mediation sessions (required before strikes are legally allowed), UTLA started building leverage against the district by boycotting faculty meetings in favor of parking-lot rallies with parents, which highlight the community-union partnership UTLA has built. The district threatened to dock pay for those in attendance.

Building a strike

The central lesson teachers union locals around the country have learned from the CTU is the power of a strike to push back against the corporate reform agenda. In recent years, strikes by teachers have been demonized, both inside and outside the labor movement, as actions that can only hurt teachers unions, and by extension the labor movement. After all, it is argued, in the public’s eyes, children miss out on learning and parents scramble for child care.

The CTU strike defied this logic. Because of the union’s longtime work in Chicago communities and its commitment to progressive reforms that benefit students, polls showed healthy majorities of parents–particularly parents of color–supporting the teachers after the first week of the strike. That public support proved essential to the union’s victory.

But the action came with an enormous risk: If Chicago teachers couldn’t carry out a strike that galvanized parents and won their support, the union would have lost the strike and likely opened the door for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s hand-picked board of education to ram through more corporate reforms. The CTU strike suggests that the UTLA could use a strike to roll back free-market education reforms, as well as win economic gains for teachers–but only if it can win over the public.

The union’s Schools LA Students Deserve initiative revolves around connecting teachers with parents. Union Power has created organizing and community outreach departments (a strategy CORE employed in Chicago), assigned teachers at 150 schools to work as parent liaisons and partnered with community organizations to hold monthly forums on inequality. The purpose, says Caputo-Pearl, is to “develop a common agenda around racial and educational justice.”

The forums helped drive attendance to a series of public actions that culminated in a February UTLA rally, in which 15,000 teachers and community members gathered in support of Schools LA Students Deserve.

Money and ballots

In the nine months of Union Power leadership, UTLA has engaged in some bruising battles against corporate-backed educational policy–and won some key victories.

Union pressure helped force the resignation of Superintendent Deasy in October 2014 after it was revealed that Deasy and his deputies had given inside information to Apple and testing software maker Pearson in advance of the bidding for a $1.3 billion contract to provide the district with iPads. After a public outcry, the district scuttled the plan and Deasy resigned. The FBI is currently investigating.

The elected school board will choose Deasy’s permanent replacement in July, following the school board election runoffs that resulted from February’s primary elections for three seats. Consequently, both the union and deep-pocketed “reformers” viewed the elections as a chance to tilt the odds of contract negotiations in their favor, with charter school expansion as a key campaign talking point. Donations, in the form of money and boots on the ground, have flown in to the candidates from both the union and education reformers, turning the election into a proxy fight between union forces and charter school advocates. In the only primary race it put money towards, the union was outspent almost 2 to 1 by the California Charter School Can Los Angeles Teachers Push Back the Corporate Education Reform Movement? - In These Times:

Mayoral control of schools worked for New York City, but other poor districts haven’t been so lucky - City & Region - The Buffalo News

Mayoral control of schools worked for New York City, but other poor districts haven’t been so lucky - City & Region - The Buffalo News:

Mayoral control of schools worked for New York City, but other poor districts haven’t been so lucky

Since New York City’s mayor took control over public schools in 2002:

On-time graduation rates have risen to the highest point in a decade.

Dropout rates have fallen.

The percentage of students considered proficient in English and math on state tests are now close to the statewide average.

And no one is calling for a return to how the school district was run prior to mayoral control.

In fact, it is just the opposite. Many people want to see that city’s mayoral control model made permanent when state legislation that permits it comes up for renewal in June.

But if you think that mayoral control is the answer for Buffalo’s struggling and failing schools, beware. Other poor districts – including Detroit and Cleveland – also have tried giving their mayors control of schools but had disappointing results.

“Mayoral control doesn’t really solve any problems,” said Diane Ravitch, a nationally known public school advocate and historian. “Where there’s poverty, there’s low test scores.”

While she considers mayoral control “rational” for a city such as New York, that doesn’t mean it will translate into progress in Buffalo, where the mayor has plenty of other things to worry about, she said.

“It’s not a simple solution,” Ravitch said.

Still, Buffalo residents would love to see academic results that mirror what occurred in New York City. And with Buffalo‘s School Board, at a minimum, fractured and with student performance lagging 20 percentage points behind the state average on English and math proficiency exams, some stakeholders here, as well as in Albany, are looking more favorably on a mayoral control model.

But if that happens, one important ingredient is necessary.

“The commitment on the part of the mayor is critical,” said Kenneth Wong, a Brown University researcher and expert on mayoral control models for public school districts. “We can think about the best design, but it is up to the mayor to make it work.”

So how does mayoral control work in New York City and what influence has the mayor brought to education in the Big Apple?

Under the New York City model, the formerly decentralized school district has become a much more centralized organization, with the School Board changed to a 13-member Panel for Educational Policy.

Change in mayors

New York City’s mayor appoints eight of the 13 members, and all serve only as long as the mayor wishes. The remaining five members are appointed by each of the five borough presidents.

The members of the Panel for Educational Policy are not subject to a formal vetting process, and they don’t get to select the chancellor, who is equivalent to a superintendent. The mayor gets that power.

From 2002 through 2013, then-Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg used his extensive education powers to make sweeping changes in the nation’s largest school system, including many controversial reforms.

He broke down large, struggling schools and reopened several smaller ones in their place. According to the New York Times, Bloomberg shut down or began phasing out 157 schools in 12 years and opened 656 smaller ones.

Bloomberg also welcomed charter schools. At least 173 opened in his tenure.

And Bloomberg poured huge sums of money into the district, aided by wealthy partners such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Under his direction, the city’s Department of Education also took a more data-driven approach to evaluating and rating schools, embracing an education reform model that stressed accountability and bottom-line results.

After Bill de Blasio became mayor last year, much of this changed. And that transition also shows how the school policies and direction depend on the strengths and goals of whoever happens to be mayor under this model.

After de Blasio’s election, many top district administrators left as the new administration embraced a more collaborative and cooperation-minded approach.

Under de Blasio, the district abandoned what some criticized as a cutthroat corporate-reform agenda in favor of a model that turned the teachers union into partner instead of an opponent. The city’s relationships with operators of charter schools have cooled considerably.

In comparing the two districts, it is important to remember that public schools in New York City and Buffalo are separated by more than distance. They are also separated by size and history.

New York City serves more than 30 times as many students as Buffalo – a million students there, compared with 32,000 here, and it has had 13 years to refine its structure and function under a powerful mayoral control model.

Prior to mayoral control, the sheer size of the New York City district seemed to create insurmountable obstacles.

Different size, history

“Elections for a school board don’t work in New York City,” said Ravitch, the public school advocate and historian. “Citywide, anyone who wants to run for school board is a total unknown.”

While Buffalo’s School Board is currently fractured and unstable, an argument can be made that a city this small still can more easily find a way to right itself without giving up the democratic principles of an elected board.

Moreover, there’s no guarantee that a mayoral control model would work in Buffalo, no matter how it’s structured, without an unwavering commitment and vision from the mayor.

In Yonkers, where for decades the mayor has had the power to appoint School Board members, graduation rates have risen, but the mayor is fighting for even greater control over the district in light of financial mistakes by the past superintendent.

In Cleveland, mayoral control has brought stability and less infighting since 1997, but student performance and graduation rates have remained lackluster.

So where does that leave Buffalo?

Ravitch – who opposes corporate reform agendas, high-stakes testing and rigid accountability measures – said Buffalo should not consider mayoral control a solution for the troubles that ail the district.

“There are no magic bullets in education,” she said. “It’s very hard work.”

If Buffalo decides to implement mayoral control, Ravitch recommended what she is recommending for New York City: Term limits for the appointed board members to preserve some measure of independence, the selection of the superintendent by the board, and a vetting system created by organizations that are known for their concern for children.

Wong, the mayoral control researcher at Brown University, holds a different opinion.

When a school district is looking at “academic bankruptcy,” evidenced by many low-performing schools, chronic leadership instability and conflict among influential parties, mayoral control can make a difference for the better, he said. But the mayoral control model should include checks and balances, which the New York City model does not, Wong said.

Buffalo seen as ready

Wong encouraged a model that includes a more fleshed-out nominating process for board Mayoral control of schools worked for New York City, but other poor districts haven’t been so lucky - City & Region - The Buffalo News:

Atlanta teachers should have been cut some slack - The Ada News: Columns

Atlanta teachers should have been cut some slack - The Ada News: Columns:

Atlanta teachers should have been cut some slack

By Loné Beasley, publisher, The Ada News

Eight teachers in Atlanta, Georgia’s school system were sentenced last week to one to seven years in prison. One got off easier with what amounts to a year of in-home detention and five years’ probation, according to National Public Radio. Still another got six months of weekend-only jail time and five years’ probation.

 Were these gun toting educators who, tired of low pay, formed a gang and started robbing convenience stores during their off time? Educators reading this are probably thinking, what off time?

No, these teachers decided the only way to preserve their careers was to cheat on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) standardized tests. NCLB required states to annually test students in reading, math and science. Results of these tests needed to demonstrate proficiency and make yearly progress – or else. The “or else” was the threat of teachers getting fired and schools being shut down due to lack of performance.

The original legal umbrella under which NCLB resides was enacted in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. As such, it was designed to improve educational equity for poor students.

The federal government can be a great source of irony and this story is awash with it. More on why in a minute.

As far as the Atlanta school system is concerned, all it did was build up an untenable amount of pressure like water against a dam too weak to hold it. After years of working feverishly to get their young charges to live up to the testing standards, cracks began to appear in the dam and it, metaphorically speaking, broke.

Do I condone cheating? Absolutely not. But there are factors here that were not taken into account by the judge or his assessment of the case being “the sickest thing that’s ever happened in this town,” would have been softened considerably.  

Diane Ravitch, one of America’s foremost education authorities and former U.S. assistant secretary of education, predicted this would happen years ago in her book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” How could it not? NCLB put teachers in an impossible situation. The reason? In a word: poverty.

In her book “Reign of Error,” Ravitch makes no bones about it. Every test, including SAT, ACT, state tests and others, all demonstrate that rich kids tend to have the highest scores, poor kids the lowest. Poor children’s IQs aren’t lower. They just don’t get the same educational opportunities outside of school of those from more privileged households.Atlanta teachers should have been cut some slack - The Ada News: Columns: