Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION: The Gates Plan for College + The Word Charters Leave Out

CURMUDGUCATION:

Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION

The Gates Plan for College

6by Peter Greene / 1h

Some days I feel kind of Rip Van Winklesque, as if I went to sleep and when I woke up the world had changed. Apparently while I was sleeping, the electorate rose up and elected Bill Gates the Grand Uber Head of Education. "Please," a bunch of you non-sleeping people said. "Redesign our entire education system. Redefine what it means to be an educated person, and redefine how a perso

The Word Charters Leave Out

43by Peter Greene / 4h

The sales pitch, in various versions, pops up every time charter cheerleaders are pushing charters as the Big Solution in education. "We know how to educate poor minority students." The implication, of course, is that public schools don't know how to get the job done. The use of civil rights rhetoric further pushes the idea that charters can rescue non-wealthy, non-white students from a

YESTERDAY

CA: Court Rejects Test-based Teacher Eval

62by Peter Greene / 1d

While astro-turf group Students Matter, a front for the reformster activism of Very Rich Man David Welch, is most famous for concocting and then losing the Vergara case , they have been trying to skin the reformy cat with other knife-like lawsuits as well. With Doe v. Antioch, Welch's group set out to compel thirteen California districts to include Big Standardized Test results in teacher evaluati

SEP 22

Wells Fargo and Making Your Numbers

82by Peter Greene / 2d

As you've probably heard by now, Wells Fargo got caught building its financial strength by a technique known variously as lying, fraud, or just making shit up. Low level employees created a bunch of fake accounts linked to actual humans who had no idea their financial matters were becoming messier by the minute. At the end of the day, 5,300 low-level employees were fired, and nobody who was respon

SEP 21

Grade Inflation?

18by Peter Greene / 3d

Mike Petrilli (Fordham) is concerned about grade inflation. His concern, as expressed in a recent piece at Education Next, is hung on the hook of a recent-ish survey by Learning Heroes , a new group sponsored by the same old folks (Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Helmsley) that has partnered with some other outfits funded by the same people, like Great Schools (funded by Gates, Bloombe

SEP 20

USED, Pay for Success and Stupid Pre-K Plans

61by Peter Greene / 4d

The United States Department of (Privatizing) education is touting another boneheaded idea , this time aimed at preschool and using yet one more unproven approach-- pay for success. What is that, exactly? Here's the explanation from the USED FAQ page : Pay for success (PFS) is an innovative contracting and financing model that aims to test and advance promising and proven interventions while payin

SEP 19

16 Policies for the Next President

8by Peter Greene / 5d

Bellwether Education Partners, a reliably reformy right-tilted thinky tank, recently issued a compendium of policy ideas for the next President. " 16 for 2016 " comes with sixteen writers and sixteen ideas, though it's not entirely clear which candidates it's aimed at-- presumably not Hillary, whose contacts among the right-leaning world of corporate education privatizing are probably be

SEP 18

The Lesson of Detroit

66by Peter Greene / 6d

Last week a group of children in Detroit, Michigan sued the governor , the state board of education, the superintendent of public instruction, the director of technology, management and budget, and the state school reform/redesign officer. The lawsuit runs over 100 pages, but the table of contents provides a pretty clear outline of the argument: 1) Literacy is a fundamental right 2) The state of M

ICYMI: Catching up on your reading (9/18)

4by Peter Greene / 6d

Money and race, money and race. Some weeks it feels as if that's all this is really all about. Remember to link and share and pass on the readings that speak to you. Everyone can amplify the voices they believe should be heard. Will equity without adequacy be enough to help Connecticut's neediest children Wendy Lecker looks at what is being done-- and not done-- to meet Connecticut's obligations t

SEP 17

New Report on the Teacher "Shortage"

79by Peter Greene / 6d

Back in the summer of 2015, we were all making noises about the coming teacher shortage crisis. (I even did a state-by-state rundown .) And it wasn't really new in 2015; lots of folks had called it sooner than that, looking at data 

CURMUDGUCATION:

More about the extremely disappointing CCJEF v. Rell ruling by Wendy Lecker - Wait What?

More about the extremely disappointing CCJEF v. Rell ruling by Wendy Lecker - Wait What?:

More about the extremely disappointing CCJEF v. Rell ruling by Wendy Lecker

The mass media was quick to fixate on the one “positive” element of the recent CCJEF v. Rell school funding lawsuit ruling, missing the many series problems associated with decision.

In her first piece, Problems with the CCJEF Decision – Will equity without adequacy be enough to help Connecticut’s neediest children?, education advocate and Hearst Media Group columnist Wendy Lecker looked at the school finance portion of the judge’s action.  Here, in Demanding more in elementary schools, she looks at some of the education policy elements of the ruling.

This piece first appeared in the Stamford Advocate.  You can read and comment on the original at:  http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Wendy-Lecker-Demanding-more-in-elementary-schools-9242568.php

More about the extremely disappointing CCJEF v. Rell ruling by Wendy Lecker

As noted in my previous column, CCJEF trial judge Thomas Moukawsherrefused to order the state to ensure adequate resources in schools, though determining constitutional adequacy was his responsibility. By contrast, the judge freely issued sweeping directives regarding educational policy.

The judge issued far-reaching orders involving elementary and high school education and teacher evaluations. He also aired abhorrent views toward children with disabilities, which several commentators already addressed.

This column addresses his orders regarding elementary education. I will address the others in subsequent columns.

Moukawsher observed that the educational disparities in secondary school begin in elementary school. (He actually acknowledged that they begin before elementary school, but declined to rule that preschool is essential.)

Moukawsher’s “fix” for elementary school was to order the state to define 

More about the extremely disappointing CCJEF v. Rell ruling by Wendy Lecker - Wait What?:

Cheri Kiesecker: What Parents Need to Know About Google Apps for Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

Cheri Kiesecker: What Parents Need to Know About Google Apps for Education | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Cheri Kiesecker: What Parents Need to Know About Google Apps for Education

Cheri Kiesecker is a Colorado parent who pays close attention to technology that invades student privacy.

She left the following warning as a comment:

In response to the question about GAFE. Below are a few links that may be of help.
GAFE, Google, Chromebooks… seem to suffer transparency issues on how they track and use and analyze student data. When parents have asked to see what data points Google collects, how that information is analyzed, who it is shared with, there are no transparent answers.

Many privacy organizations and advocates have concerns and questions about the algorithms used and data collection/ sharing in GAFE.
Google Chromebooks are pre-set to send student data, all user activity, back to Google.

This article explains how ChromeSync feature tracks students. Some schools purposely leave the SYNC feature on. Others, however, turn off Sync before asking students to use Chromebooks. MANY schools and parents are NOT AWARE of the Chrome Sync tracking feature.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/internet-companies-confusing-consumers-profit

This blog does a great job explaining GAFE issues in Where The Sidewalk Ends: Wading Through Google’s Terms of Service for Education:

Google defines a narrow set of applications as “core” Apps for Edu services. These services are exempt from having ads displayed alongside user content, and from having their data used for “Ads purposes”. However, apps outside the core services – like YouTube, Blogger, and Picasa – are not covered by the terms of service that restrict ads. The same is true for integrations of third party apps that can be enabled within the Google Apps admin interface, and then accessed by end users. So, when a person in a Google Apps for Edu environment watches a video on YouTube, writes or reads a post on Blogger, or accesses any third party app enabled via Google Apps, their information is no longer covered under the Google Apps for Education terms.

To put it another way: as soon as a person with a Google Apps for Education account strays outside the opaque and narrowly defined “safe zone” everything they do can be collected, stored, and mined.

So, the next time you hear someone say, “Google apps doesn’t use data for advertising” ask them to explain what happens to student data when a student starts in Google apps, and then goes to Blogger, or YouTube, or connects to any third party integration.” read more…

https://funnymonkey.com/2015/where-the-sidewalk-ends-wading-through-googles-terms-of-service

EFF COMPLAINT against GOOGLE

The privacy watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a Cheri Kiesecker: What Parents Need to Know About Google Apps for Education | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Oregon Save Our Schools: Secretary of State Releases Flawed Audit of Smarter Balanced Asssessment

Oregon Save Our Schools: Secretary of State Releases Flawed Audit of Smarter Balanced Asssessment:

Secretary of State Releases Flawed Audit of Smarter Balanced Asssessment

On September 14, the Oregon Secretary of State's office released its long awaited audit of the Smarter Balanced Assessment, as required by House Bill 2713. The audit appears to have relied heavily on information provided by the Oregon Department of Education and no serious effort at asking school districts to report their actual expenditures of time and money appears to have been made.

A member of Eugene Citizens Alliance for Public Education (CAPE)  has written a letter to the members of the Oregon House and Senate Education Committees which we share here. We urge you to write letters to these committees in the House and Senate as well as your own state representatives. Watch for more to come from CAPE, Oregon Save Our Schools, and other grassroots organizations regarding concerns with the audit. Find the audit itself here.

The results of the so-called audit of Oregon's standardized tests are bogus.  The ODE's report does not fulfill the purpose of House Bill 2713.

1.  Contrary to the report, the state spent $27,275,803 on Smarter Balanced in July 2014, according to its contract titled "State of Oregon Amendment 1 to Personal/Professional Services Contract #9573 Information Technology System Acquisition Web-Based Computer-Adaptive Testing System".  Yet the audit claims spending less than $11 million.

2. No one can find a district that was asked to record all its own expenditures, such as new or updated computers, increased bandwidth, extra substitute teachers, additional testing coordinators, etc.  Instead, the audit relied on vague generalities.  It should be easy to compare expenditures before and after Smarter Balanced testing began with regard to specifics like hiring substitute teachers, etc.

3. "Boots on the ground" experiences were not taken seriously enough.  The tables for test length are taken straight from SBAC Oregon Save Our Schools: Secretary of State Releases Flawed Audit of Smarter Balanced Asssessment:

Schools Matter: Teacher Evaluation, the Prequel

Schools Matter: Teacher Evaluation, the Prequel:

Teacher Evaluation, the Prequel

Imagine being able to evaluate a teacher before she is even hired!  Too good to be true, you say?  Read on.

Imagine the ability to hire a teacher that you know in advance will be able to produce those test scores necessary to 1) help your school system stay head and shoulders above your neighbors, 2) help your poorest schools avoid turnaround and charter takeover, or 2) help your charter company gain more contracts in the ESSA era of "no excuses" expansion.  

Imagine being able to avoid the mistake of hiring those touchy-feely humanist losers who don't have the "growth mindset" necessary to initiate total compliance neural re-channeling and brain-bathing that has made Angela Duckworth and Carol Dweck the new heroines of 21st Century eugenics.

And imagine being able to take out the messy guesswork of school administrators making subjective decisions about hiring new teachers.  None of that squishy intuition or personal connection business between principal and applicant.  

What if we had a tool to select new teachers who bring the psychological and demographic characteristics that have been shown to generate high test scores in low-performing schools. 

Welcome to TeacherMatch!

TeacherMatch CEO and co-founder Don Fraynd . . . .say[s] that more data-focused hiring practices can both help districts attract and secure top-notch candidates and more accurately predict whether a teacher will be effective in the classroom.

In Deefield, IL, the HR office says gut instinct is a thing of the past: "We're not even allowed to mention it during the Schools Matter: Teacher Evaluation, the Prequel:

The Schools All Children Deserve – Live Long and Prosper

The Schools All Children Deserve – Live Long and Prosper:

The Schools All Children Deserve

CHICAGO TRIBUNE: “REFORM” ADVOCATE

There’s a battle going on in Chicago for the future of the Chicago Public Schools. It mirrors the national education story in at least one way…it’s a battle between vocal parents and teachers against a “reform” movement led by the rich and powerful at the expense of public education.

The Chicago Tribune, owned by the same company that owns other “reformist”-leaning media outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, has been a strident voice against the teachers and for the mayor and his hand picked “school board” (which includes a member with ties to Teach for America, a charter school co-founder, a CEO of one of Chicago’s largest banks, a supporter of parochial schools, as well as a couple of former CPS principals).

Wednesday, for example, the Tribune came out against the CTU because they didn’t approve of the way in which the union was conducting their open strike vote – a second strike vote this year because the anti-union forces are working to negate the secret-ballot strike vote taken earlier this year. Of course, the Tribune, which compares what they claim is an undemocratic CTU to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Un, operates in a city which refuses to hold elections for school board members – Irony alert!

~~~

Earlier in the week the Tribune published their “Schoolchildren’s Bill of Rights,” a list that Chicago teacher and blogger Mike Klonsky said,

…has little to do with schoolchildren or their rights–except, that is, for their right to have their schools closed or privatized and their teachers debased.

Klonsky’s article described the editorial…

The Tribune’s so-called ‘Schoolchildren’s Bill of Rights’

The Trib’s Bill of Rights includes not a single right for students, but instead includes things like:

• Merit Pay for teachers, a oft-tried initiative which, according to researchers, produced no gains in measurable learning outcomes.
• Using student test scores to evaluate teachers. Already the law in IL.
• Widespread school “choice,” the Trib’s code word for school vouchers and privately-run charters. Trib editors write: “The public education industry should view ethnic, parochial or other private schools not as threats but asThe Schools All Children Deserve – Live Long and Prosper: 

Teaching in Triage - Badass Teachers Association

Badass Teachers Association:

Teaching in Triage

By:  Emily Alberty

Originally posted on Buckeye BATs Blog - https://buckeyebats.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/teaching-in-triage/

As posted in the public Facebook group Cleveland Caucus to Reclaim Our Schools/CLE                                                             UnitedRank & File Educators (CURE).

I wrote this last March, after looking outside at the school playground and seeing the Cleveland                                         police seemingly reenacting the events surrounding the death of Tamir Rice.

I feel like every day I see posts from teachers about current or former CMSD students who                                                          have gone missing, been shot, or have been killed. Our city and our babies need help. I had to get                                           this off my chest.

“Cleveland is a war zone,

and classrooms are the triage.

Teachers are the doctors,

to students who are on loan.

“Get to school. You can make it!”

But will their life be taken?

Walk past the memorial,

and let us give you a tutorial.

Another Cleveland kid who did not make it.

Schools are hospitals.

Poverty and violence are the infections.

Breathe, bandage, repeat.

Do they have food to eat?

Cleveland students are in this.

Why are test scores low?

Because Cleveland kids are taking blows.”

[The author of this blog saw this on September 21st. BUT the author of this blog finds it worthy to point   Badass Teachers Association:

Demand the Impossible! (excerpt # 4) | Bill Ayers

Demand the Impossible! (excerpt # 4) | Bill Ayers:

Demand the Impossible! (excerpt # 4)

Bill Ayers -- Demand the Impossible!: A Radical Manifesto | Haymarket Books -http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Demand-the-Impossible

A pervasive and frantically promoted proposition that runs loose in the land is that being a military powerhouse makes the United States (and people everywhere) safe, protects freedoms, and is a force for peace and democracy in a threatening, dangerous, and hostile world. It’s not true—not even close—but it has a huge and sticky hold on our imaginations.

When a random US politician tells antiwar protestors picketing a town hall meeting, “It’s because of the sacrifices our troops are making in [fill in the blank: Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, the “Middle East,” Korea, Panama, or wherever turns out to be next] that you have the freedom to stand here and speak out,” s/he is tapping into that stuttering cliché. [My brother, a veteran himself, always responds: “We don’t owe the vets our gratitude, we owe them an apology for sending them into the furnaces of war on a lie.”] When a retired general speaks confidently at a televised congressional hearing, explaining to the credulous audience that the “enemy can be defeated” if only the Pentagon would be granted more funds to purchase more weapons, and then given greater leeway in their deployment and use, he’s issuing the same unexamined and banal truism. When a talking head tells us it’s unfortunate that US economic strength rides on oil, a resource that “happens to come from a nasty neighborhood,” but it’s “a blessing” we have the power to police that part of the world, s/he’s doing the same thing. And when folks across the political spectrum express public gratitude and support for “our fighting men and women overseas,” while refusing to send their own children into those same wars or harboring serious private doubts about the wisdom, purpose, and execution of whatever US adventure is currently in play, they too are situated in that wide open field of received wisdom and diminishing options.

What if we challenged these instances of hypocrisy and defensive dogma, and insisted that there are more honest and straightforward ways to support US military men and women? What if we demanded their immediate decommission and return home, and insisted that they be provided excellent medical and psychological care, good jobs, affordable housing, and the best available educational opportunities—the things every human being deserves? What if we spoke up in the face of that woolly politician and asked him to draw a straight line between free speech and the specific invasion he’s now supporting and explicitly (or at least implicitly) defending? What if we locked arms as we built a growing wave of peace advocates, anticipating and opposing the next aggression, and the next?..

Hope and fierce collective determination are choices; confidence is a politics. We don’t want to minimize the horror, but neither do we want to be sucked into its thrall. Hope is our best collective antidote to cynicism and despair; it’s the capacity to notice or invent alternatives; it’s nourishing the precious sense that standing directly against the world as such is a world that could be, or should be. Whatever is the case stands side by side with what could be or should be the case. Without that vital sense of possibility, doors close, curtains drop, and we become stuck: we cannot adequately oppose injustice; we cannot act freely; we cannot inhabit the most vigorous moral spaces. We are never freer, all of us and each of us, than when we refuse the situations before us as settled and certain and determined—the absolute end of the matter—and break the chains that entangle us, launching ourselves toward the imaginable.Demand the Impossible! (excerpt # 4) | Bill Ayers:

 Big Education Ape: Acting On Bill Ayers’ Radical Manifesto | PopularResistance.Org - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/09/acting-on-bill-ayers-radical-manifesto.html

Teaching Algebra II: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teaching Algebra II: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Teaching Algebra II: Technology Integration

I observed an Algebra 2 class at Hacienda (pseudonym), a Northern California high school, on September 9, 2016. The high school has over 1900 students, mostly minority (Asian and Latino). About 20 percent of the students are eligible for free and reduced lunch–a measure of poverty used in U.S. public schools. Over 98 percent graduate and a very high percentage of those graduates enter college. About one-third of students take Advanced Placement exams with well over 80 percent qualifying for college credit. Less than 10 percent of students are English Language Learners and just over that percentage have been identified with disabilities. This is a high school that prides itself on academic and sports achievements and is recognized in the region, state, and nation as first-rate.

Beverly Young (pseudonym) is a veteran teacher of 22 years at Hacienda.  A slim woman of average height, wearing black slacks, white blouse with a beige sweater, she has been department head and very involved in coordinating the math curriculum at the school. Since 2008, she has embraced different technologies for the efficiency they brought to her in making out quizzes and tests and their help in connecting to students. She has been using an iPad with educational apps particularly Doceri for her math lessons since the tablet appeared.

The 50-minute lesson on Friday morning went swiftly by as the fast-paced, organized teacher taught about factoring quadratic equations. Announcements about upcoming quiz are posted on bulletin board next to whiteboard: “9/14—9/15, Quiz 4.1 to 4.2” –and upcoming test—“9/21—9/22, Test on 4.1 to 4.4.” The numbers refer to textbook sections.

There are 26 students in the room sitting at five rows of three desks next to one another, all facing the whiteboard. Young, carrying her iPad with her as she walks around, uses a remote to post slides and videos on the whiteboard during the lesson.

For the first five minutes, Young shows a video about the Rio Paralympics. As students watch the brief video, Young, holding her iPad, walks around recording who is present and then stamping homework that students had laid out on their Teaching Algebra II: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Delaware Competency-Based Education, Part 2: Reinventing Schools & Dark Omens – Exceptional Delaware

Delaware Competency-Based Education, Part 2: Reinventing Schools & Dark Omens – Exceptional Delaware:

Delaware Competency-Based Education, Part 2: Reinventing Schools & Dark Omens

At the first official meeting for the Delaware Dept. of Education/Rodel created Guiding Coalition for Competency-Based Learning, an email went out to members to research an organization called Reinventing Schools.  Theresa Bennett with the DOE sent the following email:

Bennett announces that a Kim Hanisch from the Reinventing Schools Coalition will be facilitating their meetings.  The organization changed their name because of the initials, RISC, to Reinventing Schools.  This group received their start-up funds from the Gates Foundation.  A blog called Save Maine Schools gave a very detailed description of the man that runs Reinventing Schools, Dr. Joseph Marzano.  I imagine Rodel and Reinventing Schools have a lot in common since they are both lovers of competency-based education and personalized learning in a digital classroom.  Oddly enough, Reinventing Schools does not list Delaware in their map of schools and districts they work with.  I guess non-profits don’t count as true education centers of learning!  Save Maine Schools referred to Marzano as just another corporate education reform snake-oil salesman.  His ideas, according to the article and commenters, were nothing new but repackaged to further this modern-day Delaware Competency-Based Education, Part 2: Reinventing Schools & Dark Omens – Exceptional Delaware: