Solving the Cheating Problem | Taking Note

Solving the Cheating Problem | Taking Note:

Solving the Cheating Problem

Because America is committed to testing every child in every subject in order to make sure teachers are doing a good job, the number of high-stakes tests is increasing, and that means that we have to act boldly to eliminate cheating, which, coincidentally, also has been increasing.

Some background is in order: We have a cheating problem in our schools[1]. While a handful of students cheat because they are competing to get into top colleges, many more principals, teachers, and administrators either cheat or encourage cheating. After all, their jobs are on the line because we now judge, reward and fire them based on student test scores..

The situation has gotten out of hand. In Atlanta, Washington, DC, Austin, Texas, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Dayton, Ohio and many other places, adults have worked together, even holding ‘erasure parties,’ to change student answers from wrong to right.

So what can we do to punish cheaters? Unfortunately, we cannot just fire the cheating teachers and administrators. After all, who would replace [2] them? Education is fast becoming an undesirable occupation, largely because of the pressure to demonstrate academic achievement (I.E., high test scores), and that is making it extremely difficult to recruit new people into education.

No, we have to work with what we’ve got, just as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had to fight the war with the army he had. There are two obvious steps: 1) increase surveillance to catch the cheaters and 2) make the punishments more obvious to the outside world.

Increased surveillance will cost more, of course, but we can trim other expenditures, perhaps in the subjects that aren’t being tested and therefore not occasions for cheating. I’m thinking of art, music and physical education, but, if schools have already cut those, then electives like journalism, minor sports, and theatre are places to look for savings.

Publicly shaming the cheaters is essential. Making the punishments more public should curtail cheating. For younger students, the shaming should be temporary. Perhaps cheaters should have to wear bright yellow shirts Solving the Cheating Problem | Taking Note:

Ohio Regulator Favors Politically Connected Charter School Sponsors, Resigns When Exposed | janresseger

Ohio Regulator Favors Politically Connected Charter School Sponsors, Resigns When Exposed | janresseger:

Ohio Regulator Favors Politically Connected Charter School Sponsors, Resigns When Exposed

Things unraveled pretty quickly last week for David Hansen, the director of school choice at the Ohio Department of Education.  On Tuesday, the State Board of Education, dominated by appointees of Republican Governor John Kasich, met and discussed why, as Ohio began to evaluate the sponsor-authorizers of Ohio’s charter schools, the test scores of students at on-line charters were quietly omitted—a violation of state law as Republican chair of the state senate’s education committee, Peggy Lehner, and Republican state auditor, Dave Yost, have both confirmed.  When underlings of Hansen could not adequately answer the questions of Senator Peggy Lehner, who had come to the meeting of the State Board to ask questions, she demanded their boss come downstairs to the meeting room to address her concerns.

On Saturday, David Hansen resigned from his post overseeing charter schools for the Ohio Department of Education.

This is all a huge embarrassment for Governor John Kasich.  David Hansen’s wife, Beth, has been Kasich’s chief of staff for some time, but she recently resigned that position to chair his campaign staff, as he plans to announce soon as a Republican candidate for President.

Before he came to the Ohio Department of Education in 2013, David Hansen led the extremely conservative Buckeye Policy Institute, which is part of the far-right State Policy Network.  (You can learn about the State Policy Network that coordinates the work of far-right think tanks across the states here.)

The Plain Dealer noted in its editorial yesterday: “A 2012 state law on evaluating charter schools clearly mandated ODE (Ohio Department of Education) to include the grades of all online charter schools when grading their sponsors—agencies with oversight over the charter schools.  Lawmakers hoped the pressure on sponsors would force them to provide better oversight of their schools… However, Plain Dealer education reporter Patrick O’Donnell recently revealed that ODE quietly ignored that law, a revelation that shocked the state Board of Education among others.”  Because Hansen excluded the performance of online schools from his rating of sponsors, one sponsor, “the Ohio Council of Community Schools… earned the highest grade—exemplary—even though its online schools including OHDELA, which is run by the politically connected White Hat Management, earned the lowest–Fs.”

In his story yesterday, O’Donnell reported: “The evaluations of charter school sponsors, also called authorizers—the agencies that help create and oversee charter schools—are the cornerstone of Gov. John Kasich and the state’s roundabout plan to improve Ohio’s charter schools… The key beneficiary of the exclusion—so far—was the Ohio Council of Community Schools, a non-profit agency which collects about $1.5 million in sponsor fees a year Ohio Regulator Favors Politically Connected Charter School Sponsors, Resigns When Exposed | janresseger:

CURMUDGUCATION: The Terrible Choice

CURMUDGUCATION: The Terrible Choice:

The Terrible Choice

For much of our history, Americans have operated under a simple premise-- we will educate other people's children.

Educating your own offspring is an old idea; human beings have done it for most of history. This has had many implications. You can't teach your own children things you don't know. If you're not wealthy (or even wealthy-ish), you can't hire people smarter than yourself to teach your offspring; if you are well-to-do, you can hire those smarter people-- and since they're your personal employees, you can tell them what sorts of things you want your children to be taught.

But from the beginning, some American communities provided schools for all their children. The system was not remotely perfect from Day One (for one thing, it was only for children with white penises). But the idea was established-- as members of the community, we join to educate all children. We join to educate other people's children.

This commitment was part of a long, slow-motion argument. Only educated folks should be full citizens. No, every person should be a full citizen. Therefor all folks should be educated. It's a simple progression, but it took us a couple of centuries to work our way through it. 

It is a point of American pride that we have set that task for ourselves. It is a point of American shame that we have tried to weasel out of it.

Our commitment to educating other people's children has collided with the class divide and the racial divide, like an Evel Education Knevel who can't quite clear the row of school buses, stacked too high and wrapped in a big sign that says, "I've got mine, Jack."

If I've got to spend money educating other people's children, can't I just buy them the absolute minimum? I don't really want to spend the money to educate Those Peoples' Children. What-- you want to take my tax dollars to educate Black Peoples' Children?!

Over the past several decades, our unwillingness to educate other peoples' children has stretched and trained the system. Well, parts of the system. Just as the rich have made sure they have good security and fine infrastructure in their isolated communities, they have also made sure that their own children are well-educated. But as the public system  (you know-- the one for educating other CURMUDGUCATION: The Terrible Choice:

What Barbic Learned

Last week brought the announcement that Chris Barbic, head of Tennessee's Achievement School District, is headed out the door at the end of the year. The announcement came complete with a letter that ran on the ASD website. There are certainly many lessons to be learned from the ASD in TN. Did Barbic learn any of them? Let's see...

Sustaining Effort

Barbic opens with the one-two punch of why he's leaving. First, because ASD is all launched and "sustainable," now is a good time to pass the baton. Second, because the job was killing him.


The pace and stress of a superintendent role...does not lend itself to decades of work.

That is perhaps a rough way to recruit a successor. But it also underlines one of those things that reformsters don't get-- education is a marathon, not a sprint. Maybe the job doesn't lend itself to decades of work, but a school district does, in fact, have to keep working for decades.

Reformsters often look at teachers and other professional educators as if they're just not trying hard enough. But the most read piece I have ever written is this one; on Huffington Post it has pulled 560K facebook likes. That's not because I wrote it so darn good, but because I touched a nerve, and the nerve I touched is the one that says that there is never enough-- never enough time, energy, you, to do everything, and so everybody who works a full career in education makes compromises. Otherwise you have to leave after four years because you drove yourself to a heart attack and your family misses you.

Schools require sustainable efforts. Otherwise it's constant chaos as teachers and administrators have to be constantly replaced. So Barbic has learned a True Thing here, maybe.

Pretty words

Barbic follows with some very pretty words about how ASD has changed stuff and made things better. Nothing about how Barbic's promise to move the bottom 5% of schools into the top 25% hasn't 

What Barbic Learned  

CURMUDGUCATION: What Barbic Learned http://bit.ly/1GwmZnM

With A Brooklyn Accent: Color Blind = Tone Deaf. A Message to Bernie Sanders from Jane DeNeefe

With A Brooklyn Accent: Color Blind = Tone Deaf. A Message to Bernie Sanders from Jane DeNeefe:

Color Blind = Tone Deaf. A Message to Bernie Sanders from Jane DeNeefe

I am on the ground in Alabama, an author of two books about the civil rights movement and co-director of an African American history project--  and I can attest, Bernie is losing black support that was already flimsy--I'd give him a C for Netroots Nation, which is generous, and better than O'Malley's F but still not good enough--he sounds like an old white man  who was current on race fifty years ago but who is now "colorblind" which equals tone deaf on the state of race relations  in this historical moment. This letter is a follow-up to one I wrote the campaign in early June about Bernie’s approach to race relations.

There are things he can do to improve his thinking about race that will also improve his responses.  If no one is stepping up to educate him on this, I can do it, but I would need his attention--I've had enough of pissing in the wind.  I want to know the message will land before I go to the trouble to craft it. I could publish about this but I would rather educate Bernie directly than call him out in public.

I can't believe he isn't getting better advice about race.  The answer to "say her name" this week is “Sandra Bland." http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/07/18/sandra-bland-die-police-custody/30342377/

Bernie needs to catch up and stay current, because he is sounding too much like the *recipients* of MLK's letter from the Birmingham Jail--out of touch with the fact that black people in this country are in a With A Brooklyn Accent: Color Blind = Tone Deaf. A Message to Bernie Sanders from Jane DeNeefe:

Some Unsolicited Advice to Sen Sanders Regarding Black Lives Matter Protests

When you have been a justice fighter all your life, it is sometimes very hard to be confronted and challenged by people much younger than you are as if your experience and history means little. This has happened to me on numerous occasions when commenting on race issues. And the temptation is to respond in anger. But I have learned, through experience, that sometimes these critics are right, that I have said or written something which is insensitive or arrogant or takes the discussion to a place which smothers voices which need to be heard. And so I force myself to listen to the attacks, try not to take them personally, and change my approach to the issues when such a change is called for.

Do I always do this smoothly and tactfully? Hell no! Sometimes I have administered a smack down to the people calling me out, only to then do, over time, exactly what they suggest.

But insofar as I have remained relevant in discussions of race 

Some Unsolicited Advice to Sen Sanders Regarding Black Lives Matter Protests

Welcome new PAA Board member Khem Irby! | Parents Across America

Welcome new PAA Board member Khem Irby! | Parents Across America:

Welcome new PAA Board member Khem Irby! 

The results are in and Khem Irby, Pamela Grundy and Julie Woestehoff have been elected to the PAA Board for 2-year terms.

Pam and Julie are returning Board members but Khem is new to the Board, though not to parent advocacy.

Khem Irby is a leading parent activist/advocate in her NYC hometown, and current residence of Greensboro, NC. Khem was a legal secretary working in NYC for many international corporate law firms. She is married with six children ranging in academic levels from elementary school through recent college graduation. Deeply committed to education, she has given decades of work as a parent advocate and community liaison with Brooklyn Perinatal in partnership with the Administration of Children’s Services. She was the President of the NYC Community Education Council, School District 13, serving over 35 schools covering several neighborhoods in Brooklyn with one of the largest Black communities in the U.S. Khem is a former member of the Independent Commission On Public Education (iCOPE), the Coalition for Public Education (CPE), the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM), a Community Liaison for the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) and a Class Size Matters board member.Khem is co-founder & President Emerita of The Mothers’ Agenda NY (The MANY) and an early supporter and member of Parents Across America.

 Khem appeared in the film, “The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman,” a documentary produced by the Grassroots Education Movement. She is presently assistant teaching in the Greensboro Public School System while still organizing and keeping up with NYC. Khem also conducts parent and teacher support workshops. She is presently pursuing her Bachelor’s degree in Christian Ministry Leadership with Barclay College.

Welcome, Khem, and congratulations to you, Pam and Julie!

- See more at: http://parentsacrossamerica.org/paa-board-member-khem-irby/#sthash.yzM9wa3d.dpuf

Cerf about to throw school workers into the streets | Bob Braun's Ledger

Cerf about to throw school workers into the streets | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Cerf about to throw school workers into the streets

This is a nation that doesn’t simply tolerate felonious behavior by its wealthiest entrepreneurs–it rewards it.  If you are rich enough and powerful enough, you can get away with nearly sinking the American economy and be forgiven–and even given a raise. However, if you are poor, if you are just holding on to a low wage job, you can be thrown into the streets–and the powerful among us will call it accountability.  Consider the 91 Newark school employees who will be among those laid off this year to help the state reduce the $60 million deficit its mismanagement created.

The Newark Teachers Union (NTU) published a list of these men and women who were rewarded for their service by dismissal for economic reasons. This site will not add to their anguish and embarrassment by publishing their names. But attention must be paid to their suffering–and  it should be noted that they will be let go by the latest state overseer imposed on the people of Newark–millionaire Christopher Cerf from Montclair, himself a rich person often forgiven for his many mistakes.

Some of these employees worked for the district for decades–the most senior, a security officer, was hired in 1976. Many others were hired in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s.  Many of them are city residents, parents and grandparents of Newark school children.

They are not simply numbers on a spread sheet–they are people.

Here is what the NTU said in its statement:

“BREAKING–NPS Lay Off List for SY 15/16…more blood on the hands of Cami & her Chief P.I.C. Vanessa Rodriguez. Following up on their original “general notification” letter sent to all Civil Service positions in June. Like a ticking time bomb, next will come the official confirmation letter. SAS Cerf can stop this by demanding that the state reverse its decision to reward Newark’s Charter Schools with a “hold harmless” extra $25M and lobbying for restorative aid. Lets see what he does. Meantime, the NTU will be filing an immediate bad faith appeal with the Civil Service Commission. Download & SHARE”

Anderson and Rodriguez should not, of course, be exculpated. But the list of those  responsible for the mismanagement that prompted these dismissals is a lot longer. How many $175,000-plus assistant superintendents does the city need? How Cerf about to throw school workers into the streets | Bob Braun's Ledger:

The Science Of Grading Teachers Gets High Marks | FiveThirtyEight

The Science Of Grading Teachers Gets High Marks | FiveThirtyEight:

The Science Of Grading Teachers Gets High Marks

Is evaluating teachers an exact science? Many people — including many teachers and their unions — believe current methods are often too subjective and open to abuse and misinterpretation. But new tools for measuring teacher effectiveness have become more sophisticated in recent years, and several large-scale studies in New York, Los Angeles and North Carolina have given those tools more credibility. A new study released on Monday furthers their legitimacy; and as the science of grading teachers advances, it could push for further adoption of these tools.

This evolving science of teacher evaluation was recently thrust into public controversy when, in 2012, nine students sued the state of California, claiming its refusal to fire bad teachers was harming disadvantaged students. To claim that certain teachers were unambiguously bad, and that the state was responsible, the plaintiffs relied on relatively new measures of teacher effectiveness. In that case, Vergara v. California, several top-notch economists testified for each side as expert witnesses, arguing the merits of these complex statistics. In June 2014, the judge ruled that California’s teacher-tenure protections were unconstitutional, a victory for the plaintiffs. Gov. Jerry Brown is appealing, and a similar case has begun in New York state.

But the economists on both sides of the Vergara case are still engaged in cordial debate. On one side is Raj Chetty of Harvard University, John Friedman of Brown University and Jonah Rockoff of Columbia University — hereafter referred to as “CFR” — who authored two influential paperspublished last year in the American Economic Review; Chetty testified for the plaintiffs in the case. On the other side is Jesse Rothstein, of the University of California at Berkeley, who published a critique of CFR’s methods and supported the state in the Vergara case.

On Monday, to come full circle, the CFR researchers published a reply to Rothstein’s criticisms.

At the center of this debate are evaluation models that try to isolate the educational value added by individual teachers, as measured by their students’ standardized-test scores relative to what one would expect given those students’ prior scores. The hard part, as Friedman says, is to “make sure that when you rate a teacher, that you actually rate what the teacher has done, and not whether they had a bunch of very poor or very rich students.”

The CFR researchers — like the plaintiffs in the Vergara case — claim that these so-called “value added” models accurately isolate a teacher’s impact on students, but Rothstein and critics say that value-added models, although improved, are still biased by factors outside the teacher’s control.

In their pioneering papers published last year, the CFR researchers used massive data sets, covering millions of students over decades, to test whether teacher VA scores could accurately predict students’ test scores. They argue they do, when done right, and thus can be used to winnow the good teachers from the bad. In CFR’s method, teachers are judged from a baseline of the students’ prior-year test scores, and by linking student scores The Science Of Grading Teachers Gets High Marks | FiveThirtyEight:

Data Collection on 49 Million Students Going To Drive “Equity” » Missouri Education Watchdog

Data Collection on 49 Million Students Going To Drive “Equity” » Missouri Education Watchdog:

Data Collection on 49 Million Students Going To Drive “Equity”

The mainstream press is FINALLY starting to pick up on the disconcerting uptick in federal  data collection. TheNew York Post published an article on 7-19-15 documenting the various ways the federal government plans to socially engineer our lives through the collection and use of data to back policy mandates. Using the strictest definition of equity, where everything is exactly even, they want to make sure: we all live in discreet neighborhoods which exactly match the racial distribution of the entire country, have access to financial instruments equally based on race not economic markers, and are treated exactly the same in school regardless of innate ability or effort. This worked so well in the whole sub-prime mortgage market, why wouldn’t we try to do it on a larger scale? And with foreign tech workers so easily able to hack any sensitive data the feds collect, what could we possibly worry about?  The Post summed it up this way.

“Such databases have never before existed. Obama is presiding over the largest consolidation of personal data in US history. He is creating a diversity police state where government race cops and civil-rights lawyers will micromanage demographic outcomes in virtually every aspect of society.”

When it comes to the education data bases the Post is not exactly correct. The article cites the mandatory Civil Rights Data Collection survey which has actually been in existence since 1968. The purpose of the data collection was to collect data on “key education and civil rights issues in our nation’s public schools for use by OCR in its enforcement and monitoring efforts regarding equal educational opportunity.”

The CRDC was a biennial sample survey of schools up until 2011. That year it was expanded to cover every school every year. Now they boast it covers “approximately 16,500 school districts, 97,000 schools, and 49 million students” covering the following topics:

• Data for every public school disaggregated by race/ethnicity, English learner status, sex, and disability Data for all schools now disaggregated by seven race and ethnicity categories, including Native-Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and multiracial students
• Measures student access to college- and career-preparatory science and math courses, AP courses and tests, SAT/ACT tests, gifted and talented programs, IB programs, preschool programs, and interscholastic athletics
• Tracks teacher and resource equity, including teacher experience and salary levels, other personnel and non-personnel expenditures, and access to school counselors
• Reveals school climate disparities related to student discipline, restraint and seclusion, retention, and Data Collection on 49 Million Students Going To Drive “Equity” » Missouri Education Watchdog:

GOP candidates join testing opt-out movement - Maggie Severns - POLITICO

GOP candidates join testing opt-out movement - Maggie Severns - POLITICO:

GOP candidates join testing opt-out movement

Conservative presidential hopefuls in the Senate are trying to keep their talking points on education trendy.

Republican presidential hopefuls in the Senate have joined the fast-growing movement encouraging students to opt out of the standardized tests that have become a part of everyday life in American schools.

The emphasis on testing has only been been ratcheted up in the era of Common Core, the education standards backed by Jeb Bush but vilified by most other Republicans. The new national political interest in testing could give even more momentum to the calls from thousands of parents and state lawmakers for students to skip the tests, despite threats from the federal government to cut off federal dollars if too few kids show up on exam day.

Story Continued Below

In a twist, the issue is putting conservatives on the same side of the issue as teachers unions and parents and even some Democrats, all of whom have called for cutting back on testing and the consequences that can result from the scores.

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) concentrated on opt-out issues last week during their chamber’s debate on No Child Left Behind, rejecting the standardized tests mandated by the George W. Bush-era law. Cruz, Paul and others offered amendments designed to ensure the government keeps its hands off of students’ opt-out rights.

In April and May, thousands of students skipped testing in states including New York and Pennsylvania. In Washington state, preliminary results showed fewer than half of high school juniors took new Common Core-aligned tests this spring.

State legislatures are responding. The Oregon state legislature passed a bill in late June, for example, to ensure parents can easily choose to keep students from being tested over objections from the Obama administration. Democratic Gov. Kate Brown signed the bill, while pledging to protect federal dollars. In Delaware and New Hampshire, opt out bills have cleared the state legislature but were vetoed by Democratic governors.

ALSO ON POLITICO

Insiders: Ted Cruz hurt most by Trump candidacy

KATIE GLUECK

Opponents say opting out of standardized tests destroys the ability to get an accurate read on how students are performing in school and where achievement gaps between disadvantaged students and their peers lie.

Last week, the Senate passed a version of the No Child Left Behind education bill that includes a compromise on the opt-out issue. But for the presidential contenders in the Senate, the compromise, compounded with other provisions in the bill, wasn’t good enough.

The Senate bill “retains some of No Child Left Behind’s biggest flaws,” Paul said in a statement, which are “a lack of adequate parental choice, a federal testing

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/gop-candidates-join-testing-opt-out-movement-120318.html#ixzz3gRoOslnq

Florida Board of Education prepares to set teacher evaluation standards | Tampa Bay Times

Florida Board of Education prepares to set teacher evaluation standards | Tampa Bay Times:

Florida Board of Education prepares to set teacher evaluation standards

Since adopting the much challenged value-added model for rating teacher performance, Florida has allowed local school districts to assign evaluation performance levels to teachers based in part on local definitions.

That's about to change. When it meets next Thursday in Tampa, the Florida Board of Education is set to adopt a new rule setting standard definitions for the ratings in courses associated with statewide tests, such as Algebra I and English/Language Arts.

The proposed rule would set the levels as follows:

a. Highly Effective. A highly effective rating on Performance of Students criteria is demonstrated by a value-added score of greater than zero (0), where all of the scores contained within the associated 95-percent confidence interval also lie above zero (0). 
b. Effective. An effective rating on Performance of Students criteria is demonstrated by the following:
I. A value-added score of zero (0);
II. A value-added score of greater than zero (0), where some portion of the range of scores associated with a 95-percent confidence interval lies at or below zero (0); or
III. A value-added score of less than zero (0), where some portion of the range of scores associated with both the 68-percent and the 95-percent confidence interval lies at or above zero (0).
c. Needs Improvement, or Developing if the teacher has been teaching for fewer than three (3) years. A needs improvement or developing rating on Performance of Students criteria is demonstrated by a value-added score that is less than zero (0), where the entire 68-percent confidence interval falls below zero (0), but where a portion of the 95-percent confidence interval lies above zero (0).
d. Unsatisfactory. An unsatisfactory rating on Performance of Students criteria is demonstrated by a value-added score of less than zero (0), where all of the scores contained within the 95-percent confidence interval also lie below zero (0).

The proposed rule also would set the VAM formulas for districts to use. Incomprehensible to many, the DOE recently offered an explanation of how it sees the model working. For all the nitty gritty, check out the attachments that follow the actual rule language.

This move comes on the heels of lawmakers' decision to let districts reduce the amount that student test scores count on evaluations, from 50 percent to 33.3 percent -- a change that districts are approaching with varied views. Pinellas schools, for one, decided to let teachers count their VAM at whichever level benefits them most. Pasco schools, by contrast, proposed to cut the rate to 35 percent, but the teachers union so far has balked.

Pasco officials have suggested that the changing state rule might have an effect on the teachers' point of view, and have recommended taking advantage of the new flexibility, noting such legislative offers come rarely.

And the concept of VAM, though reviled by many educators as unfair and unproven (among other negatives) looks here to stay. A federal court recently ruled that the Legislature was "not irrational" in adopting the model, leaving opponents with a shrinking opportunities to dislodge it. The Florida Education Association is contemplating whether to further appeal its case. Stay tuned.Florida Board of Education prepares to set teacher evaluation standards | Tampa Bay Times:

Backpacks Full of Cash | EduShyster

Backpacks Full of Cash | EduShyster:

Backpacks Full of Cash

I talk to Nevada Succeeds’ Seth Rau about the Silver State’s new Education Savings Account experiment…

EduShyster: Thanks to Nevada’s bold new*universal choice* program, I’ve got exactly $5700 in my backpack. Now I need you to help me choose what choice to choose. Should I go traditional, private, high-performing charter school seat, virtual? What do you think?

Seth Rau: In Nevada, the miracle of the high-performing seats that you’re so familiar with in Massachusetts never happened. For the most part our district charter schools are strongly underperforming. There’s also been a heavy reliance on virtual charter schools. More than a quarter of the students who attend charters attend virtual schools, which have been a disaster for many kids. For example, Nevada Virtual Academy was the largest charter school in the state and had a 32.5% graduation rate in 2011-2012. 

EduShyster: Before I cross *charter schools* off my choice list, I want to unpack something that you just said. By *strongly underperforming,* you don’t just mean *bad night at the craps table bad,* you mean *students falling behind by six-to-seven months a year bad.*

Rau: These numbers were from a 2012 CREDO report that only looked at data through 2010. The charter sector has improved considerably in the past five years. However, if we start looking at the reasons why the sector is improving, it’s even more worrisome. Our district schools now essentially serve students in poverty, Latino students and African American students. Then you look at charters, and Las Vegas is now the fastest growing charter market in the country. Las Vegas continues to have explosive growth, but all the growth is up in the suburbs of the city, not in the inner city. The suburb of Henderson has opened up11 new schools in the past five years and not a single one was a district school. They were all either charter or private schools. There are pockets of poverty in Henderson but it’s basically a middle class community. The new schools opening there are 10% free and reduced lunch or 15%. So because of all of these new schools opening up in the past five years, the charter sector is getting to be higher performing, but they’re not serving students who are actually in poverty.

EduShyster: OK—so sounds like charter schools are out for me because they’re either terrible or they’re in a zip code I can’t access. (Pausing here for a brief irony break…) I think I’ll take my $5700 and go to a private school. I bet there are a whole bunch of choices for me to choose from.

Rau: Nevada is below the national average in students who attend private schools (6% of the population). The people who can afford to send their kids to private school do, it’s just that there aren’t that many people in that category. We have a very large wealth gap between our top earners and the rest of the population. You have a strong concentration of the one percent, because you have a number of large corporations that are based here, then you have 60% of the population that qualifies for free or reduced lunch. So the people who can afford to send their kids to private school do, it’s just that there aren’t that Backpacks Full of Cash | EduShyster:

L.A. district continues to persecute one of the nation’s best teachers - The Washington Post

L.A. district continues to persecute one of the nation’s best teachers - The Washington Post:

L.A. district continues to persecute one of the nation’s best teachers

Fifth-grade teacher Rafe Esquith’s worst nightmare began March 19, during a puzzling meeting in his principal’s office. Hobart Boulevard Elementary School’s principal indicated something had happened, but Esquith says that he was told he had nothing to worry about.

That was wrong. I consider Esquith to be America’s best classroom teacher. The Los Angeles educator’s annual Shakespeare productions, real-life economics lessons, advanced readings and imaginative field trips are phenomenal. Yet he has been removed from his classroom since April and told by his school district to say nothing about what is going on.

Fortunately, his attorneys have prepared a detailed account of the administrative incompetence and wrong-headedness that created this situation as Los Angeles Unified School District investigators continue to search for anything they can use against their most-celebrated teacher.

At that March meeting, according to their account, the principal told Esquith: “You have nothing to worry about. This is a bump in the road. I need to counsel you that you need to be careful what you say in front of students.” Esquith said fine, still not knowing was they were talking about. He went back to teaching and preparing for “The Winter’s Tale,” as acted, danced and musically accompanied by his students, mostly from ­low-income Hispanic and Korean families.

Three weeks later, Esquith learned that the district had forwarded a complaint to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, but the teacher still didn’t have details. Esquith said the principal told him he had nothing to worry about and that “this is about nothing.”

The next day, Esquith learned the truth: A school staffer had reported to administrators that Esquith made a joke about nudity that she thought might offend students and their parents. Esquith had read to his students a passage from “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” in which a character called the king comes “prancing out on all fours, naked.” Esquith reminded the students that the district did not fund the annual Shakespeare play, and if he could not raise enough money “we will all have to play the role of the king in Huckleberry Finn.”

Esquith was told that the district was pressuring him for an apology. Esquith wrote and signed one: “I am deeply and sincerely sorry that any comment someone heard, or thought they heard, has anyone uncomfortable.” Nonetheless, two days later, April 10, the district removed him from his L.A. district continues to persecute one of the nation’s best teachers - The Washington Post: