Bill Daley is Running for Chicago’s Next Mayor. School-Closure Supporter Peter Cunningham is Managing the Campaign. | deutsch29

Bill Daley is Running for Chicago’s Next Mayor. School-Closure Supporter Peter Cunningham is Managing the Campaign. | deutsch29

Bill Daley is Running for Chicago’s Next Mayor. School-Closure Supporter Peter Cunningham is Managing the Campaign.

Another Daley is running for political office in Chicago:

Bill Daley for Mayor.

Bill Daley

Both Daley’s father and brother took turns as Chicago’s mayor, and not without taint to the legacy, as the September 16, 2018, Chicago Tribune reports:

Whoever runs, Daley will have the most recognizable name. His father, Richard J. Daley, served as mayor for 21 years before dying in office in 1976 and is considered Chicago’s most powerful political boss. Richard M. Daley presided over City Hall for 22 years, declining to seek re-election in 2011.

Richard M. Daley’s era was punctuated by financial woes and included corruption scandals that took down top aides and allies. But his tenure also is remembered as a stabilizing time when racial chasms in the city’s politics were narrowed. The downtown boomed with development at a time when other Rust Belt cities struggled, and Chicago was beautified in many ways, most notably with the construction of Millennium Park.

Richard M. Daley was the first mayor to exercise mayoral control over Chicago Public Schools (CPS), appointing Chicago native Paul Vallas (also in the 2019 mayoral race) as CPS CEO in 1996, the same year that the state legislature passed the Illinois Charter School Law. Vallas also “balanced the budget” by underfunding Chicago teacher pensions.

In was under Daley-Vallas that charter schools appeared on the CPS scene, the Continue reading: Bill Daley is Running for Chicago’s Next Mayor. School-Closure Supporter Peter Cunningham is Managing the Campaign. | deutsch29

Bob Shepherd: The Six Hundred, a Riff on Tennyson | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bob Shepherd: The Six Hundred, a Riff on Tennyson | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bob Shepherd: The Six Hundred, a Riff on Tennyson

Our reader Bob Shepherd has his own blog. As you may have deduced, I’m just wild about Bob.

Here is a wonderful parody of Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” who was writing about the British troops who blindly followed orders in the Battle of Balaclava in 1854 in the Crimean War and perished.

Bob calls it “The Coring of the Six Hundred.”

My generation memorized the Tennyson poem. Thanks to the Common Core, this generation will be lucky to encounter any poetry.

Here is the beginning. Open the link and read it all.

Row on row, row on row,

Row on row stationed

Sick at their monitors

Sat the six hundred.

“You may now type your Username”

Said the test proctor.

Set up for failure

Sat the six hundred.

“Enter your password key!

“Mercy upon you!

“During the testing

“No one can help you.”

Someone had blundered.

The unspoken truth. But

Theirs was not to make reply,

Theirs was not to reason why,

Theirs was but to do or die,

Theirs was but to try and cry.

Set up for failure

Sat the six hundred.

Text to the right of them

Complex, out of context,

Bubbles in front of them,

Plausible answers,

Tricky and tortured,

Boldly they bubbled and well

Though smack in the mouth of hell

Sat the six hundred.

This is what reading means,

Now that Gates/Pearson

Has reified testing

Far beyond reason.

Pearson not persons.

Plutocrats plundering

Taxpayer dollars

Spent to abuse.

The children are used.

They bubble and squirm

To reveal their stack ranking

And never again

Will know joy in learning

Never again

Humane joy in reading

And writing, no never again,

Not the six hundred.

The Coring of the Six Hundred (with apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

Bob Shepherd: The Six Hundred, a Riff on Tennyson | Diane Ravitch's blog

Standardized Teaching? (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Standardized Teaching? (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Standardized Teaching? (Part 2)

In Part 1, I made the point that the structure of the age-graded school, introduced in the U.S. in mid-19th century, has become the taken-for-granted way for organizing schools ever since. One-room schoolhouses, the heretofore dominant way of structuring schools, went the way of the dodo bird. A century ago there were nearly 200,000 one-room schoolhouses, now less than 200 existin the U.S. today.

Originally, the age-graded school building contained classrooms for grades 1 through 8. Over the decades, 1-8 expanded to pre-K through grade 12. To accommodate larger number of schools and students, architects designed one- and two-story elementary school buildings spread out over nearly an acre and secondary school buildings with multiple floors and corridors on each floor off which classrooms and offices were located. This model became standard. And within the building resided the standardized classroom.

Each classroom contained an American flag, a wall clock, paintings or photos of U.S. Presidents, desks and seats–initially bolted to the floor but now movable–arranged in rows facing the teacher’s desk or, in elementary schools, round tables sitting pairs and trios of students. Going into current elementary and secondary school classrooms in Bangor (ME) Butte (MT) or Bakersfield (CA) becomes a deja vu experience for many who do not know of the many changes that have occurred in the design, furniture, and arrangements that teachers have  Continue reading: Standardized Teaching? (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

We hope you’ll “join” us this weekend on Facebook live!

Watch NPE Conference Live from Indianapolis! #NPE18INDY | Diane Ravitch's blog

NPE Action - Political Endorsements - https://npeaction.org/ on @NPEaction

Ravitch pushes against charter schools in Louisville rally - Insider Louisville

Ravitch pushes against charter schools in Louisville rally - Insider Louisville

Ravitch pushes against charter schools in Louisville rally

The former assistant secretary of education, Diane Ravitch, doesn’t like traveling, Gay Adelmann, a local education advocate, learned while trying to persuade Ravitch to speak in Louisville.

This time, she got lucky: The organization Ravitch co-founded, the Network for Public Education, is hosting its conference in Indianapolis this weekend. And as long as someone promised to drive Ravitch from Louisville to the conference, “she was more than gracious enough to add this to her busy schedule,” Adelmann said.

Local organizations that support public education teamed up to invite Ravitch and other speakers to Central High School Thursday night to push against what they deem to be threats to public education, including charter schools.

“Diane is arguably the foremost national expert on what’s really driving the push to privatize our public schools,” Adelmann, the event organizer, said.

Ravitch studied the underlying problems impacting public schools and wrote “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education,” which won the Grawemeyer Education Award in 2014.

The event came after Jefferson County Public Schools, the state’s largest district, dodged a state takeover. Many of the hosting groups, including Save Our Schools Kentucky and the Jefferson County Teachers Association, fought against the proposed takeover in favor of maintaining local control.

In brief opening remarks, JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio acknowledged this, thanking the crowd for Continue reading: Ravitch pushes against charter schools in Louisville rally - Insider Louisville

We hope you’ll “join” us this weekend on Facebook live!

Watch NPE Conference Live from Indianapolis! #NPE18INDY | Diane Ravitch's blog

NPE Action - Political Endorsements - https://npeaction.org/ on @NPEaction

The Network for Public Education is live-streaming events from Indianapolis. Watch here. #NPE18INDY | Diane Ravitch's blog

Watch NPE Conference Live from Indianapolis! #NPE18INDY | Diane Ravitch's blog

Watch NPE Conference Live from Indianapolis! #NPE18INDY

The Network for Public Education is live-streaming events from Indianapolis. Watch here.

If you weren’t able to make it to Indianapolis to join us this year, don’t fret – we’ve got you covered! Just hop on to the NPE Action Facebook page to catch all of the keynote speeches and select workshops both Saturday and Sunday.

Here’s a schedule of everything that will be live-streamed. Click the “read more” links below for more information about workshops and speakers.

And make sure to use the hashtag #NPE18INDY on social media to interact with conference attendees all weekend!

Saturday:

8:00-9:20 – Diane Ravitch & Pasi Sahlberg (read more)

9:30-10:40 – The People of Arizona vs. The Koch Brothers: Fighting Privatization and Dark Money with Beth Lewis and Sharon Kirsch (read more)

10:50-12:00 – Outsourcing the Classroom to Ed Tech & Machine-learning: Why Parents & Teachers Should Resist with Peter Greene, Leonie Haimson and Audrey Watters (read more)

12:30-1:20 – Teachers in Action: A Conversation with Teacher Leaders with Michelle Gunderson, Petia Edison, Rebecca Garelli and Alex Orozco (read more)

2:40-3:50 – Fighting Privatization in Puerto Rico with Edwin Morales Laboy, Mercedes Martinez, Aixa Rodriguez and Kaliris Salas (read <a href="https://events.bizzabo.com/NPE18INDY/agenda/session/273315?link_id=5&can_id=012f354d90b87664b362dda6a4b2980d&source=email-npe18indy-livestream-starts-tomorrow-morning&email_referrer=email_439078&email_subject=npe18indy-livestream-starts-tomorrow-morning”>more)

4:00-5:10 – Grading the States: The NPE/Schott School Privatization Report Card with Derek Black, Carol Burris and Tanya Clay House (read more)

5:20-6:00 – Helen Gym: Victories for Public Education in Philadelphia (read more)

Sunday:

8:15-9:25 – #WeChoose Campaign; Building a Multi-Racial Visionary National Campaign Rooted in Racial Justice and Local Realities with Jitu Brown, Elzora Cleveland, Ronsha Dickerson, Angel Gober, Kamua Kepheru and Maulana Tolbert (read more)

10:00-10:45 – Jesse Hagopian: Black Lives Matter at School (read more)

10:55-12:05 – The Racist Origins of Standardized Testing and the Racist Idea of Black/Brown Inferiority with Erika Strauss Chavarria, Denisha Jones and Marla Kilfoyle (read more)

12:15-12:35 – Call to Action

12:45-2:00 – NAACP President, Derrick Johnson (read more)

We hope you’ll “join” us this weekend on Facebook live!

Watch NPE Conference Live from Indianapolis! #NPE18INDY | Diane Ravitch's blog

NPE Action - Political Endorsements - https://npeaction.org/ on @NPEaction

Big Spending on Privatizing Public Schools in San Antonio | tultican

Big Spending on Privatizing Public Schools in San Antonio | tultican

Big Spending on Privatizing Public Schools in San Antonio

Federal dollars are supplementing deep pocketed Destroy Public Education (DPE) forces in an effort to privatize schools in San Antonio, Texas. The total monetary support for the preferred charter school systems exceeds $200,000,000. One “DPE” publication, The 74, published a lengthy piece glorifying the attack on San Antonio’s democratically run schools and praised local elites including the school superintendent trained by Arne Duncan and Eli Broad for leading the decimation of public schools in San Antonio’s poorest neighborhoods.

The article cited above ends with this disclosure:

“The George W. Brackenridge Foundation provided financial support for this project to The 74 [local San Antonio money]. The Walton Family Foundation [Walmart money with long history for working to privatize schools] , Bloomberg Philanthropies [Former NY Mayor spends heavily on charter school promotion], Carnegie Corporation of New York [Supports charter schools like Summit], the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [Paid for Common Core and lavishes money on charter schools], The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation [Literally wrote a guide to closing public schools], the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund [Biggest and earliest funder of KIPP], the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation [Tulsa Foundation that supports privatization friendly school board candidates across the nation], the Karsh Family Foundation [Oaktree Capital Management money from LA – supporters of KIPP], and Jon Sackler [Purdue Pharmaceutical money from oxycontin – supports school privatization school board candidates]  provide financial support to both KIPP and The 74.”

In other words, this article was a paid advertisement selling the privatization agenda. The George W. Brackenridge Foundation from San Antonio made a first Continue reading: Big Spending on Privatizing Public Schools in San Antonio | tultican

NPE Action - Political Endorsements - https://npeaction.org/ on @NPEaction

Chicken-Little Politics and the Curse of Testing (and Standards) in South Carolina | radical eyes for equity

Chicken-Little Politics and the Curse of Testing (and Standards) in South Carolina | radical eyes for equity

Chicken-Little Politics and the Curse of Testing (and Standards) in South Carolina

I entered education as a high school teacher in South Carolina in the 1984-1985 academic year, the first year of a significant teacher pay raise and a pivotal ground zero in the state’s accountability era established in late 1970s legislation.

Over about four decades, SC has revised or changed educational standards six or seven times and implemented about the same number of differentstate and national tests.

And what hath this curse of testing and standards wrought for SC?

South Carolina students bomb the ACT, falling behind Mississippi, announces an article by Paul Bowers explaining:

South Carolina’s graduating class of 2018 came close to dead-last in the nation on the ACT college readiness test, painting a grim picture of a state that has languished near the bottom of education rankings for decades.

This year’s graduates placed 50th among the states and Washington, D.C., on the ACT, according to composite scores based on the test’s English, Reading, Math and Science sections.

Only Nevada’s students did worse.

The chicken-little politics of accountability has been fulfilled in ways that assure politicians, the public, and the media will declare schools, teachers, and students a failure. Yet again, and again, ad nauseam.

Let’s try something different here, ways to interpret better this data from the ACT.

The first key point about these scores is that SC is experiencing  Continue reading: Chicken-Little Politics and the Curse of Testing (and Standards) in South Carolina | radical eyes for equity

NPE Action - Political Endorsements - https://npeaction.org/ on @NPEaction

Jeff Bryant: The Backlash to Betsy DeVos' Disastrous Education Legacy May Drive a Massive Blue Wave on Her Home Turf | Alternet

The Backlash to Betsy DeVos' Disastrous Education Legacy May Drive a Massive Blue Wave on Her Home Turf | Alternet

The Backlash to Betsy DeVos' Disastrous Education Legacy May Drive a Massive Blue Wave on Her Home Turf
Should Democrats retake the Rust Belt, it may not only snuff out the DeVos legacy but also change the course of education policy in the nation.
 Jeff Bryant 

It’s increasingly clear that if the November midterm elections are to produce a “Blue Wave” for the Democratic Party, then many of the wins will need to come in Midwestern states that Trump carried in the 2016 presidential election. But what’s less well understood is that an issue helping Democratic candidates compete in the region is education. In the stomping ground of U.S. Secretary Betsy DeVos—including her home state of Michigan as well as the surrounding states of Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois and nearby Minnesota—Democratic candidates are getting an edge by sharply opposing the DeVos agenda of privatizing public schools.

Up and down the ballots in state contests in the Midwest, Democratic candidates call for an end to school voucher programs that use public taxpayer funds to pay for tuitions at private schools, they propose tougher regulations of privately managed charter schools funded by the public, and they pledge to direct public money for education to public schools. Should Democrats retake the Rust Belt, it may not only snuff out the DeVos legacy but also change the course of education policy in the nation.

Why the Midwest Matters

The need for Democrats to prevail in the Midwest is acute. Trump won Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin in 2016 and came close in Minnesota. But a perhaps more important trend in these states is the Republican dominance down ballot where Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature and governors and most of the U.S. House seats in Michigan, The Backlash to Betsy DeVos' Disastrous Education Legacy May Drive a Massive Blue Wave on Her Home Turf | Alternet

NPE Action - Political Endorsements - https://npeaction.org/ on @NPEaction