'We’re At War' Says Organizer Behind Education Protests Sweeping The Country | ThinkProgress

'We’re At War' Says Organizer Behind Education Protests Sweeping The Country | ThinkProgress:

‘We’re At War’ Says Organizer Behind Education Protests Sweeping The Country

Keron Blair will look you directly in the eye the whole time he’s talking to you, making sure you absorb every single word he’s saying. His personality seemed a bit reserved when he sat down with me at a Starbucks to discuss Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, the coalition he is director of, which been responsible for organizing and supporting school protests across the country. But when you listen to his speeches, you hear a minister’s voice.

“Public education…could die on our watch,” Blair said at a recent event for the Milwaukee Teachers Association. “The reality is what drew me to this fight is the shared acknowledgement that we are in fact at war, and what I’ve learned about wartime is that you cannot operate with the same kind of rules. You’ve got to make some wartime adjustments.”

AROS’ ongoing protests have conveyed exactly that level of urgency.

The coalition’s campaign began with a “day of action” where cities across the U.S. protested cuts to public education, the closure of schools in low-income neighborhoods that are predominantly black and Hispanic, the expansion of charter schools, and the proliferation of standardized testing. An estimated 40,000 parents, teachers, and students from over 830 schools in more than 30 cities participated in the February 17 walk-ins. A spokesperson for AROS said the protests were biggest in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Seattle, and Chicago.

#BuffaloStudentsDeserve #ReclaimOurSchools pic.twitter.com/sgDxBBpMPe

— Michelle Couture (@michellecoutur3) April 14, 2016

 AROS believes that schools are ultimately community institutions that help in the fight against poverty by providing support services. The coalition rejects top-down reform from “corporate executives, entrepreneurs or philanthropists,” and wants the voices of teachers, parents, and students to be prioritized in the decision-making process about important changes in education policy, whether local, state, or federal.

Drawing inspiration from other grassroots movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, Blair easily weaves together various political and economic issues to ensure that AROS is engaged in a broader fight — one focused on narrowing the gap in economic inequality and focusing on the voices of teachers, students, and parents in black and Hispanic communities. Blair says he learned what not to do from Occupy Wall Street as well. He wants to make sure the message isn’t so broad that people don’t see a focused policy agenda.

“I came to AROS because I felt that the fight for education and public schools in this country would be one of the defining fights of the decade,” Blair said.

Blair’s background as an immigrant helped informed his views about the value of public schools. Blair and his mother emigrated from Jamaica to the United States, where he attended Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School in New York. At the time, the school was struggling, but it was important 'We’re At War' Says Organizer Behind Education Protests Sweeping The Country | ThinkProgress:

What’s the Matter With Corporate Education Reform?

What’s the Matter With Corporate Education Reform?:

What’s the Matter With Corporate Education Reform?

Why Students and Teachers Won When the Vergara Decision was Overturned

Last week I reviewed Thomas Frank’s Listen Liberal: What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? in which he lambastes professional-class Democrats for thinking that there is “no social or political problem that cannot be solved with more education and job training.”  This makes perfect sense because, as a class, professionals are “defined by educational attainment, and every time they tell the country that what it needs is more schooling, they are saying: Inequality is not a failure of the system; it is a failure of you.”  

But, Frank contends, the only problem with education, for the professional crew, is that it is “not meritocratic enough.”  Thus, all that needs to be done is bust the teachers’ unions (whose sin is their outdated belief in solidarity), open charter schools, test our kids to death, and give tax breaks to “innovators.”

Nothing is more illustrative of this aspect of Frank’s critique than the way so many Democrats lined up to support the Vergara decision in 2014 even against the interests of a key Democratic constituency and key Democratic electeds.  

What was the Vergara Decision?

Nearly two years ago, a Los Angeles-area judge struck down the due process rights of California’s K-12 teachers in what many educators like myself found to be a distinctly bad ruling.  As Kelly Mayhew and I wrote at the time:

Last week’s decision in the Vergara v. the State of California lawsuit that undermined tenure and seniority rights was a profound slap in the face to teachers who have committed their careers to improving the lives of our children.  It was yet another significant victory for those who are seeking to impose corporate education reforms by pitting teachers against children in a cynical, destructive, and utterly counterproductive fashion.

As tenured professors in the community college system, union members, and parents of a child in California’s public school system, we have a unique perspective on this matter.  Although the “Vergara” decision has no effect on our jobs at San Diego City College, it does affect the professional lives of the educators who teach our son and it will do them, and him, more harm than good . . .

Pitting our child against his teachers, as the “Vergara” lawsuit seeks to do, is a fool’s errand. It destroys any sense of community in our schools and heaps scorn on the very people we all want to trust with our children’s futures.  The interests of teachers and students are not diametrically opposed, as so many in the corporate education reform industry would have us think, but rather inextricably linked.  When we disrespect teachers, we demean our education system and do nothing to help students.

San Diego is full of [good] schools . . . as is the rest of the state.  If you read much of the news media, however, you’ll believe differently given the endless drumbeat of education “reformers,” who often hide their true agenda of privatization and union busting behind a deeply dishonest rhetoric of “saving children” from “bad teachers.”

More specifically, with regard to the “Vergara” decision, David Welch, a conservative Silicon Valley millionaire and corporate education reformer who has been funding a group called “Students Matter,” won the opening salvo in a battle to deprive teachers of their constitutional due process and seniority rights.

The suit, which hid behind a group of poor and minority students, several of whom did not even attend schools where the teachers had tenure or due process rights, alleged that California’s teacher workplace rights infringe on the constitutional rights of students to an equal education–basically saying that hard-won job security, due process (i.e. that teachers cannot just be fired without a process), and seniority adversely impact low-income and minority students by keeping on “bad” teachers and too-often sticking inexperienced teachers in low-performing schools.

The problem with this argument and the “Vergara” decision (which will be appealed) is that it is based on What’s the Matter With Corporate Education Reform?:

 

CURMUDGUCATION: It's Sunday and Peter Greene Is Losing his Head

CURMUDGUCATION:

CURMUDGUCATION: It's Sunday and Peter Greene Is Losing his Head

Stand With Troy

Chicago principal Troy LaRaviere has been relieved of his job as principal of Blaine Elementary because he won't shut up and stay in place.I'm not writing about this because I think it's news; at this point, the news has spread far and wide. Lots of folks are writing about it, and I'm writing about it because everybody should be writing about it.It's alarming because it is wrong in the specific, n

1 by Peter Greene / 5min hide  //  save

Why Our Betters Like Charter Schools

You must read this post from Mercedes Schneider, if you have not already, showing the many connections between Education Post, the administration, and the usual gang of reformsters.This is not news, exactly. We've seen it before. The Center for American Progress was founded by John Podesta after he left the Clinton White House and before he left CAP to run the current Clinton campaign (catch him i

1 by Peter Greene / 50min 

ICYMI: Edu-reads from the week

Here's your assortment of reading goodies for the week:Race and the Standardized Testing Wars Kate Taylor's piece from yesterday's New York Times is a worthwhile read about tough issues. Additionally, she quotes Jennifer Berkshire's Have You Heard podcast and Jose Luis Vilson (an actual teacher). Nice to see a major mainstream article about education that doesn't just go straight to the usual refo

1 by Peter Greene / 1h 

More About MI Super

Nancy Flanagan, a top blogger who was one of my earliest inspirations in this bloggy biz, left a comment on my earlier post about Michigan's call for more testing, more often, of more students. It adds some important insights that I lacked, and I think it's important enough to get moved up here where people who don't read the comments will still see it. Hmm. I actually live in Michigan. And while

1 by Peter Greene / 1h 

One System To Rule them All

Every once in a while something turns up in the comments that is just too good not to pass on. This is from reader J. Chaffee (If I had a good elvish font, I'd use it).  Data Systems for the administrators under the sky,Systems for the teacher drones in their halls of stone,Systems for Mortal students doomed to die,One system for the Corporate Head on his dark throneIn the Land of Cyber where the

1 by Peter Greene / 1h 

YESTERDAY

No More Lone Genius

Earlier this month at the Harvard Business Review, Greg Satell wrote "It's Time To Bury the Idea of the Lone Genius Innovator." He opens his argument with the story of Alexander Fleming. You know the standard bit-- Fleming finds his experiment with bacteria has been ruined by fungus which is killing every piece of bacteria it touches. So he has a flash of insight, redirects his attention

18 by Peter Greene / 18h 

What Can You Do?

It has become an oft-repeated progression in the world of the public education debates. People become curious, then interested, then informed, then alarmed. Then they ask the question--What can I do?In some places, it's obvious. Some cities and communities are on the front lines of these battles and they need people to stand up and make noise right now, today. Parents need ton turn up at meetings.

41 by Peter Greene / 18h 

Stand Up. Stand Together: Reflections on Raleigh

I had a lot of reasons to stay away from this year's Network for Public Education conference in Raleigh, and up until the last minute I thought I wasn't going. Finances, family stuff, social anxiety, time off, general work stress, concerns about the venue-- all that and a few other things made me balk. I'm certainly not unique. Lots of folks have lots of reasons not to attend a conference, some of

8 by Peter Greene / 18h 

Getting Better

Some days I think the problems behind ed reform boil down to a basic misunderstanding of human nature.In Ed Week a few weeks back, Marc Tucker wrote about getting great teachers in every classroom (I would rather talk about helping the teacher in every classroom to do more great teaching, but okay) and in the midst of that discussion, he drops thisThere are, of course, teachers who do work really

100+ by Peter Greene / 1d 

CURMUDGUCATION:

Race and the Standardized Testing Wars - The New York Times

Race and the Standardized Testing Wars - The New York Times:
Race and the Standardized Testing Wars

WHEN the parents of more than 200,000 pupils in the third through eighth grades in New York chose to have their children sit out standardized state tests last spring, major civil rights organizations were quick to condemn their decision, along with similar movements in Colorado, Washington and New Jersey.

Reliable testing results, they argued, broken down by race, income and disability status, were critical in holding schools accountable for providing equal education for all. By refusing to have their children participate, the parents were “inadvertently making a choice to undermine efforts to improve schools for every child,” according to a statement by the groups.

Because the families opting out were disproportionately white and middle class, testing proponents dismissed them as coddled suburbanites, while insisting that urban parents, who had graver concerns about the quality of their children’s schools, were supportive of the tests. Earlier this year, proponents of testing began using the hashtag #OptOutSoWhite — a spin on the #OscarsSoWhite social-media campaign — to suggest that testing opposition was a form of white privilege.

Yet as testing season unfolds this year, the debate is becoming murkier. More minority educators, parents and students are criticizing the tests, opening a rift with civil rights groups and black and Hispanic educators who support testing, like Secretary of Education John B. King Jr.

Their complaints are wide-ranging. They argue that the focus on testing has forced struggling schools to cut back on enriching programs like field trips and arts education. Some view testing as part of a larger agenda, driven by test companies and opponents of teachers’ unions, that seeks to wring profits from education while closing public schools and replacing them with non-unionized charter schools. Others say that the tests are damaging to students’ self-esteem, because students interpret low scores as proof that they are inferior and destined to fail.

Some even suspect that part of the tests’ purpose is to identify future Race and the Standardized Testing Wars - The New York Times:

Ravitch stands up for beleaguered public schools | News & Observer

Ravitch stands up for beleaguered public schools | News & Observer:

Ravitch stands up for beleaguered public schools

 Diane Ravitch, the well-known historian of education and fierce defender of public schools, came to Raleigh last week with a mix of reluctance and dismay.

The group she co-founded in 2013, the Network for Public Education (NPE), held its national conference at the Raleigh Convention Center April 16-17. She wanted to cancel the gathering of 500 people as part of the growing protest against HB2, but doing so on such short notice would have cost the group its deposits and many participants coming from around the nation would have lost their airfares.

The dilemma gave Ravitch a direct sense of how North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature can cause headaches. She’s been hearing for years about the Republican leadership’s denigration of teachers and the legislature’s agenda for education – expanded charters, vouchers, schools graded A to F – that is exactly what she thinks shouldn’t be done to improve public schools.

“The legislature seems to be systematically pulling apart the education system,” she said. “I get email from people in North Carolina all the time telling me about egregious acts.”

NPE wanted to lend support to North Carolina teachers and other public school advocates here, but the group didn’t expect to arrive just as the legislature and governor ignited a national controversy not about how schools should run their classrooms, but about how they should police their bathrooms.

“When we picked North Carolina it was because it was in trouble,” she said. “Now things are even worse.”

A prolific writer of books on education and the keeper of the widely read Diane Ravitch’s blog, Ravitch, 77, is one of a dwindling number of prominent leaders who are unapologetic advocates for public schools. She sees the once unquestioned commitment to public schools dissolving. Conservatives are pushing to privatize public education and divert more tax dollars to private schools, she said, but that approach will narrow opportunity and increase inequality.

She helped form NPE, she said, “to support public education and students and teachers in the fight against privatization and high-stakes testing, both of which are very harmful to teachers and students.”

Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, has the fervor of a convert. She started out taking a conservative approach, stressing testing and teacher accountability. She served as an assistant secretary of education in George H.W. Bush’s administration and was an early supporter of charter schools and No Child Left Behind.

Now she said she is disillusioned about charter schools and opposed to vouchers and extensive testing. She thinks schools would improve if politicians stopped excoriating teachers and started appreciating what public schools achieve despite the increasing demands, inadequate funding and the social ills that are funneled into the classroom. InRavitch stands up for beleaguered public schools | News & Observer:

Big Education Ape: Educators at Raleigh NPE conference condemn HB2 | News & Observer #NPE16NChttp://bit.ly/1Snl9lP

Live From Raleigh, North Carolina: NPE’s 3rd Annual National Conference Complete interactive schedule http://bit.ly/20LAehc

Big Education Ape: Video: Saturday at NPE’s 3rd Annual National Conference #NPE16NC http://bit.ly/1SnHj7f

Big Education Ape: Karran Harper Royal and Jesse Hagopian at the NPE National Conference on Vimeo http://bit.ly/1YDW2JM

Big Education Ape: Anthony Cody Interviews Mary Cathryn Ricker, AFT VP and Becky Pringle, NEA VP #NPE16NC http://bit.ly/23QZRPn

Big Education Ape: Opt-Out Conscientious Objectors #NPE16NC http://bit.ly/1MGcTuK

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/ned-barnett/article73581122.html#storylink=cpy

'Fragmented' School Districts: A Complicated and Controversial Issue

'Fragmented' School Districts: A Complicated and Controversial Issue:

'Fragmented' School Districts: A Complicated and Controversial Issue

In much of the country, school districts survive even when they have few students. In an era of budget cutbacks, these districts are prime targets for consolidation.

 

RELATED

• Total School Districts, Student Enrollment by State and Metro Area
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Cook County, Ill., has nearly 150 elementary and high school districts. Students in the Pittsburgh metro area are assigned to 105 different local districts. More than 500 districts are scattered across Oklahoma, with fewer than 1,300 students enrolled in each.

Numbers such as these have long drawn the ire of policymakers, and in an era of budget cutbacks, “fragmented” school districts serve as prime targets for consolidation. At the beginning of this year, lawmakers in Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma all introduced legislation aimed at merging school districts or combining their administrative duties. But such proposals frequently are met with fierce opposition from parents and teachers.

School districts with very small enrollments are actually quite common across the country. A Governing analysis of federal data from the 2013-2014 school year found that a third of all local districts were made up of only one or two public schools. Nearly half of all districts nationally -- 46 percent -- serve fewer than 1,000 students. While many of these districts are in rural or outlying areas, 2,050 are in metro areas.

Enrollment	Districts	Share of Total
Less than 1K	5,827	46.1%
1,000 to <2,000	2,350	18.6%
2,000 to <5,000	2,559	20.2%
5,000-10,000	1,033	8.2%
More than 10,000	875	6.9%

See methodology below

Number of Schools	Districts	Share of Total
1 to 2	4,227	33.4%
3 to 4	3,669	29.0%
5 to 6	1,733	13.7%
7 to 8	841	6.7%
9 to 10	537	4.2%
More than 10	1,637	12.9%

See methodology below

The crux of the pro-consolidation argument is that merging smaller districts will allow for deploying limited resources more efficiently.

The most high-profile recent consolidation fight has played out in Oklahoma, which faces a severe budget shortfall stemming from lower oil revenues. One proposal would consolidate most of the state’s K-8 districts that have earned “D” or “F” ratings with nearby independent districts. State Rep. Lee Denney, the bill’s sponsor, says she wants to cut overhead costs and enable districts to offer a greater variety of subjects -- particularly in math, science and foreign languages -- to better prepare students for college. “In Oklahoma, our rural cities often think we’re trying to take away their community and sense of pride,” 'Fragmented' School Districts: A Complicated and Controversial Issue:

Parent Voices on the Impact of Race, Poverty and Cultural Bias on Educational Opportunity: a Call to Action #NPE16NC

Parent Voices on the Impact of Race, Poverty and Cultural Bias on Educational Opportunity: a Call to Action on Vimeo:

Parent Voices on the Impact of Race, Poverty and Cultural Bias on Educational Opportunity: a Call to Action

Parent Voices on the Impact of Race, Poverty and Cultural Bias on Educational Opportunity: a Call to Action from Schoolhouse Live on Vimeo.

Local Successes in the Face of Relentless Privatization Efforts

Local Successes in the Face of Relentless Privatization Efforts from Schoolhouse Live on Vimeo.

T-E-S-T,NOT P-L-A-Y is a Four Letter Word: Putting the Young Child and the Teacher at the Center of Education Reform

T-E-S-T,NOT P-L-A-Y is a Four Letter Word: Putting the Young Child and the Teacher at the Center of Education Reform from Schoolhouse Live on Vimeo.

Schoolhouse Live’s Videos on Vimeo http://bit.ly/23QZi8f

 Vincent Precht http://bit.ly/1GwPEPv

schoolhouselive.org

 LIVE STREAM FOOTAGE FROM THE NETWORK FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION 

Pearson’s Quest to Cover the Planet in Company-Run Schools | WIRED

Pearson’s Quest to Cover the Planet in Company-Run Schools | WIRED:
Pearson’s Quest to Cover the Planet in Company-Run Schools

 For decades, the major landmark of Balut, Tondo, a densely populated slum squeezed against Manila’s North Harbor, was a monumental pile of often-smoldering trash nicknamed Smokey Mountain. “It used to be sort of pretty, actually,” says Nellie Cruz, a lifelong resident. She points to the spot, now bulldozed, across a reeking, garbage-strewn canal from where we stand with her 13-year-old son, Aki.
The scene is humble, yes, but Nellie, a single mother, isn’t destitute or desperate. She’s a modern, upwardly mobile megacity dweller, the kind you’re equally likely to meet in Shanghai or São Paulo, except with better English skills—the legacy of the Philippines’ history as a US colony and one key to its current economic growth.
Both Nellie and Aki carry iPhones, for example, though the devices were given to them by Nellie’s sister, a nurse, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Cruzes’ immaculate, doll-size family compound has a caged rooster in the front yard, Christian inspirational wall decals, and a strong Wi-Fi signal. In contrast to the screen-time panic among US parents, Nellie is OK with her only child spending time in his attic bedroom, gaming and browsing science pages on Facebook, rather than out on the street exposed to the pounding sun, the omnipresent filth, and the drug gangs on the corner.
The same protective but ambitious impulses were at work when it came to choosing a school for Aki. He attended Catholic institutions when he was younger. Then Nellie lost her job in marketing. So for sixth grade, Aki went off to public school.
“There were 58 students in one classroom,” he tells me. “Only some of us, the Section 1s”—top performers—“got to sit in the classroom. The others studied in the corridor.” Nellie didn’t like her quiet, polite child having to mix it up with kids “from all walks of life,” as she puts it.
So for seventh grade they found a new option at the other end of the street from the public school, housed in a former umbrella factory. The sign outside reads “APEC Schools: Affordable World Class Education From Ayala and Pearson.”
APEC isn’t just new to Tondo or Manila. It’s a different kind of school altogether: one that’s part of a for-profit chain and relatively low-cost at $2 a day, what you might pay for a monthly smartphone bill here. The chain is a fast-growing joint venture between Ayala, one of the Philippines’ biggest conglomerates, and Pearson, the largest education company in the world.
In the US, Pearson is best known as a major crafter of the Common Core tests used in many states. It also markets learning software, powers online college programs, and runs computer-based exams like the GMAT and the GED. In fact, Nellie already knew the name Pearson from the tests and prep her sister took to get into nursing school.
But the company has its eye on much, much more. Investment firm GSV Advisors recently estimated the annual global outlay on education at $5.5 trillion and growing rapidly. Let that number sink in for a second—it’s a doozy. The figure is nearly on par with the global health care industry, but there is no Big Pharma yet in education. Most of that money circulates within government bureaucracies.
Pearson would like to become education’s first major conglomerate, serving as the largest private provider of standardized tests, software, materials, and now the schools themselves.
To this end, the company is testing academic, financial, and technological models for fully privatized education on the world’s poor. It’s pursuing this strategy through a venture called the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund. Pearson allocated the fund an initial $15 million in 2012 and another $50 million in January 2015. Students in developing countries vastly outnumber those in wealthy nations, constituting a larger market for the company than students in the West. Here in the US, Pearson pursues its privatization agenda through charter schools that are run for profit but funded by taxpayers. It’s hard to imagine the company won’t apply what it learns from its global experiments as it continues to expand its offerings stateside.
The low-cost schools in the Philippines are one of Pearson’s 11 equity investments in programs across Asia and Africa serving more than 360,000 students. Two of the most prominent, the Omega Schools in Ghana and Bridge International Academies based in Kenya, have hundreds of campuses charging as little as $6 a month. They locate in cheaply rented spaces, hire younger, less-experienced teachers, and train and pay them less than instructors at government-run schools. The company argues that by using a curriculum reflecting its expertise, plus digital technology—computers, tablets, software—it can deliver a more standardized, higher-quality education at a lower cost per student. All Pearson-backed schools agree to test students frequently and use software and analytics to track outcomes.
Not every Pearson-backed chain will succeed, but the Pearson’s Quest to Cover the Planet in Company-Run Schools | WIRED: