Bad tests by any other name are bad tests. Enough is enough. | Reclaim Reform

Bad tests by any other name are bad tests. Enough is enough. | Reclaim Reform:

Bad tests by any other name are bad tests. Enough is enough.

Posted on May 28, 2015by Ken Previti

Several governors now find it to their political advantage to oppose Common Core State Standards, but they want to continue awarding the contracts for hundreds of millions of education tax dollars to their campaign donors who can manufacture new brand versionsof the same state mandated testing swindle. Bad tests by any other name are bad tests.

Chris Christie in New Jersey, Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, and Scott Walker of Wisconsin are busy peeling the old labels off of the extremely lucrative and totally unnecessary high stakes tests and materials (online programs, texts, teacher training, etc.) that were never Bad tests by any other name are bad tests. Enough is enough. | Reclaim Reform:

South Korea, Its High PISA Scores, and Its Suicide App | deutsch29

South Korea, Its High PISA Scores, and Its Suicide App | deutsch29:

South Korea, Its High PISA Scores, and Its Suicide App

Here is irony:

In January 2014, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) noted that students from South Korea were tops at “creative problem solving” on the first such Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test:

01/04/2014 – Students from Singapore and Korea have performed best in the OECD PISA first assessment of creative problem-solving. Students in these countries are quick learners, highly inquisitive and able to solve unstructured problems in unfamiliar contexts.

85,000 students from 44 countries and economies took the computer-based test, involving real-life scenarios to measure the skills young people will use when faced with everyday problems, such as setting a thermostat or finding the quickest route to a destination. …

“Today’s 15-year-olds with poor problem-solving skills will become tomorrow’s adults struggling to find or keep a good job,” said Andreas Schleicher, acting Director of Education and Skills at the OECD. “Policy makers and educators should reshape their school systems and curricula to help students develop their problem-solving skills which are increasingly needed in today’s economies.”

The test is supposed to demonstrate the ability to solve everyday problems. South Korea students fared well on the test. Then comes OECD director Andreas Schleicher suggesting the “reshaping” of “school systems and curricula to help students develop their problem solving skills.” The implication is that educational systems like South Korea are to be emulated.

Not hardly.

Schleicher fails to note that one of South Korea’s greatest problems involves the rate at which its teens are committing suicide– and it is connected with the pressures of school.

As NPR reporter Elise Hu notes in her April 15, 2015, article entitled, The All-Work, South Korea, Its High PISA Scores, and Its Suicide App | deutsch29:

Time to Reform Mayoral Control

Time to Reform Mayoral Control:

Time to Reform Mayoral Control

On May 12, a Quinnipiac poll was released showing that two to one, New York City voters believe that the mayor should share control over our public schools with other elected officials. On Tuesday, Public Advocate Letitia James issued a report, calling for improvements to ensure sufficient checks and balances and more parent input in school governance. We agree.

We belong to NYC Kids PAC, an organization of experienced parent leaders and advocates that recently released an education report card for Mayor Bill de Blasio. Despite numerous pledges made during his campaign to be more transparent , more accountable, and to empower parents, we found that the mayor has not fulfilled many of his promises in these areas. Our findings provide convincing evidence that the current system of mayoral control needs to be reformed.

The grades the Mayor received were decidedly mixed, ranging from “A” and “A-“ on cell phones, school closings, and arts education; to a “B” on testing; and a “D” on co-locations, parent engagement and special education. He received an “F” on class size, transparency and accountability, and diversity.

Mayoral control has also led to little actual progress in student learning. Class Size Matters analyzed the change in student test scores on the NAEPs, the most reliable of all standardized exams, given by the federal government to a random sample of students in the ten largest school districts. When gains in student test scores since mayoral control are disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and economic status, it is apparent that New York City schools come out second to last in improved performance.

While it is often argued that under the previous system there was waste and corruption, in February the Department of Education proposed a $650 million contract be given to Computer Consultant Services, a company that had been involved in a kick-back scheme just a few years ago. A special investigator had found that the company defrauded the DOE of millions of dollars by inflating its billing. Only after the Panel for Educational Policy approved this new contract and the media raised a ruckus did City Hall cancel it.  

The city’s education budget is no more transparent than under Bloomberg, according to the Independent Budget Office. Freedom of Information requests are responded to no more quickly, and the DOE still refuses to provide accurate figures on how many kids are housed in trailers, including thousands of high school students and hundreds of students with disabilities who attend classes in these substandard structures. A task force appointed by the DOE made recommendations in December to improve the accuracy of the school utilization formula used to assess overcrowding, but these proposals have still not been released.

In January, the DOE claimed in court that School Leadership Teams, composed of half Time to Reform Mayoral Control:

How Kevin Johnson Destroyed A Black Mayors Group To Promote His Brand

How Kevin Johnson Destroyed A Black Mayors Group To Promote His Brand:

How Kevin Johnson Destroyed A Black Mayors Group To Promote His Brand

The African American Mayors Association, led by Kevin Johnson, opens its annual meeting today in Washington, D.C. The former NBA star and current mayor of Sacramento has been the president of the association since its founding in 2013—when, as president of the Atlanta-based National Conference of Black Mayors, he declared the older group bankrupt and resigned from it.

The NCBM was a historically significant but poorly-managed organization. By the time Johnson walked away from it to start the competing AAMA, it was crippled. This produced litigation now sitting in county and federal courthouses in the state of Georgia, in which remaining members of the NCBM accuse Johnson of first scheming to seize control of the group, then destroying it.

The filings allege that Johnson covertly organized a public/private consortium to launch what he called a “coup” against the NCBM. It was a study in overkill. His army included three public-sector PR firms plus his own mayoral communications staff, a law firm that boasts about its prominent role in the charter school industry, and his wife, the charter-school activist Michelle Rhee.

For all his side’s might, Johnson’s mission was a disaster. As soon as the old group’s old guard fought back, Johnson changed his goal from taking over NCBM to abolishing it. Then he started a clone organization. His first act upon founding AAMA was to install himself as president. His new group’s mission statement claims “AAMA was founded on the principals of transparency and accountability.” Johnson probably meant “principles,” but either way, there’s lots of evidence that Johnson viewed “transparency” as the enemy of his campaign. The story of his NCBM debacle features so much Machiavellian scheming, in fact, that even seasoned Johnson watchers are awed.

Kevin Johnson and Michelle Rhee at the Kentucky Derby, 2013. Photo via Getty

---

“It’s raw ambition,” says John See of the American Federation of Teachers, a longtime opponent of pretty much everything Johnson and Rhee stand for. “If you want to be a big shot someday, this is the kind of planning you have to do. But you don’t want to put it on paper and have it get out.”

Unluckily for Johnson, the litigation means the details of his failed mission, and allegations of fraud, forgery, and fondling, are getting out. Those cases are pending. But NCBM veterans, How Kevin Johnson Destroyed A Black Mayors Group To Promote His Brand:

Sacramento BEE M-I-A? Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson’s election as president of NCBM affirmed by judge. http://bit.ly/1J63nho

Jeb Bush Emailed With Education Secretary About Rick Scott's Common Core Concerns - BuzzFeed News

Jeb Bush Emailed With Education Secretary About Rick Scott's Common Core Concerns - BuzzFeed News:

Jeb Bush Emailed With Education Secretary About Rick Scott’s Common Core Concerns

When Florida Gov. Rick Scott called Arne Duncan to discuss Common Core, Duncan turned to an unlikely adviser: Jeb Bush.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sought — and received — advice from Jeb Bush about how to deal with Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s concerns about Common Core, emails obtained by BuzzFeed News show.

Bush advised Duncan that Scott, “fearful of the rebellion” brewing around the program, “[w]ants to stop using the term common core but keep the standards,” but couldn’t name “specifics [sic] things that the federal government is doing or perceived to be doing” that he found objectionable.

The exchange, which took place in the morning of Sept. 23, 2013, begins with an email (“Subject: Gov Scott”) to Bush from Duncan’s private account. It reads simply: “Is calling me. Any advice?”

Just over an hour later, Bush replies from the air:

I am on a plane.

He is fearful of the rebellion. Wants to stop using the term common core but keep the standards. Wants to get out of PARCC. I asked him if he had specifics things that the federal government is doing or perceived to be doing. He didn’t have them when I spoke to him last thursday evening.

Duncan replies: “Thanks.”

The very same day, Scott issued a press release detailing his plan “[t]o protect Florida from the federal government’s overreach in education policy.”

Scott’s release included an announcement that he was withdrawing Florida from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) — a group of states building tests based on the Common Core standards — just as Bush had warned.

“Since leaving office, Gov. Bush has focused on reforming education, state by state, through the education foundation he established that is committed to improving education for every American child,” a spokesperson for Bush told Jeb Bush Emailed With Education Secretary About Rick Scott's Common Core Concerns - BuzzFeed News:

Big Education Ape: Christie: Dump Common Core education standards | NJ.com http://bit.ly/1QdxFgS

Big Education Ape: Why are so many states replacing Common Core with carbon copies? - The Hechinger Report http://bit.ly/1QdBSRD

This Week In Education: Thompson: How Houston's Test and Punish Policies Fail

This Week In Education: Thompson: How Houston's Test and Punish Policies Fail:

Thompson: How Houston's Test and Punish Policies Fail

As the normative test, sort, and punish approach to reform continues to fail, I often recall Houston'sApollo 20 experiment, designed to bring "No Excuses" charter school methods to neighborhood schools. Its output-driven, reward and punish policies failed.  It was incredibly expensive, costing $52 million and it didn't increase reading scores. Intensive math tutoring produced test score gains in that subject. The only real success was due to the old-fashioned, win-win, input-driven method of hiring more counselors.

The Texas Observer's Patrick Michels, in Politico's Houston's Learning Curve, surveys the failures and successes of Superintendent Terry Grier and Houston schools, and he reveals a pattern that is even more bifurcated than I'd anticipated.  Michels finds no evidence that Grier's test-driven accountability has benefitted students, but he describes the great success of constructive programs that build on kids' strengths and provide them more opportunities.

Michels describes Grier as "a data-driven risk-taker who’s part task-master, part cheerleader [who] said he’s not about to give up, even after six long years at HISD’s helm." Under Grier, 900 teachers have been exited using an evaluation system that holds teachers accountable for test score growth. Moreover, his value-added pay for performance plan has cost Houston $136 million in bonuses in the last three years.

If Grier is correct and test score growth is valid for holding individuals accountable, then surely he also should be fired. NAEP reading scores have barely increased since 2002, and remain below the average of major urban areas.  In the all-important metric of 8th grade reading, Houston has been flat since 2007, even as other major urban districts increased those scores. Plus, Education Week'sStephen Sawchuk reports that Grier now seeks to cut "the $14 million bonus-pay program to just $2 million, a far cry away from the $40 million a year it once gave out."

With the help of local philanthropies, however, Houston has introduced a wide range of humane, holistic, and effective programs. Michels starts with Las Americas Newcomer School, which is "on This Week In Education: Thompson: How Houston's Test and Punish Policies Fail:

Interview With Terry Grier

A plainspoken leader takes Houston ISD in innovative directions—and holds all parties accountable. 

By Alexander Russo

Christie: Dump Common Core education standards | NJ.com

Christie: Dump Common Core education standards | NJ.com:

Christie: Dump Common Core education standards

PEMBERTON — Navigating New Jersey interests and a likely presidential campaign, Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday proposed dropping national Common Core education standards he once supported but have since become a lighting rod issue for Republican voters.

The governor, speaking at Burlington County College in Pemberton, declared Common Core is "simply not working." Christie wants to assemble a team to develop a state-based group to develop "new standards right here in New Jersey, not 200 miles away on the banks of the Potomac River."

The speech is Christie's first policy speech delivered in New Jersey and his fourth such speech since taking concrete steps toward a presidential campaign. The first three speeches – which included topics such as national security and economic growth – were given in the early presidential voting state of New Hampshire.

"It's now been five years since Common Core was adopted and the truth is that it's simply not working," Christie said.

"It has brought only confusion and frustration to our parents and has brought distance between our teachers and the communities where they work," he said. "Instead of solving problems in our classrooms, it is creating new ones."

The statement comes five years after New Jersey became one of the first states to adopt Common Core, which are national standards that outline skills every child should learn at each grade level. Christie voiced his support for the standards early in his first term.

"We are doing Common Core in New Jersey and we're going to continue. And this is one of those areas where I have agreed more with the President than not," Christie said in August of 2013 at an education conference of the KIPP Public Charter Schools. "I think part of the Republican opposition you see in some corners in Congress is a reaction, that knee-jerk reaction that is happening in Washington right now, that if the president likes something the Republicans in Congress don't. If the Republicans in Congress like something, the president doesn't."

But as public concern over the standards grew, Christie's stance changed. He issued an executive order last year to create a commission to study Common Core and in February he said he had "grave concerns" about the standards.

Currently, Christie declared it's time "to do something different" in New Jersey and accused Washington D.C. and President Obama of pulling "education away from our neighborhoods."

Christie called for his "point-by-point review" of state standards to be completed by the end of the year. It will measure state standards and provide recommendations for instructional practices, he said.

"It is time to have standards that are even higher and come directly from our communities," Christie said.

However, Christie stopped short of calling for an end to Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, testing in New Jersey.

"This will in no way affect our efforts to continue effective testing and measurement of our students through the PARCC test," Christie said.

"We must continue to review and improve that test based on results, not fear or speculation. I will not permit New Jersey to risk losing vital federal education funds because some would prefer to let the perfect get in the way of the good," he said. "We Christie: Dump Common Core education standards | NJ.com:

The Unintended (and Mostly Ignored) Lesson of Common Core: Race Inequity | the becoming radical

The Unintended (and Mostly Ignored) Lesson of Common Core: Race Inequity | the becoming radical:

THE UNINTENDED (AND MOSTLY IGNORED) LESSON OF COMMON CORE: RACE INEQUITY

You would be well advised to read Andre Perry’s examination of Common Core and race, carefully and possibly more than once: How Common Core serves white folks a sliver of the black experience.

I would also like to draw your attention to two key points that may get lost in the provocative and powerful crux of Perry’s piece:

I simply can’t manufacture the passion for or against curricula reboots or changes that eventually must happen. I’m sure there’s someone still lobbying for Home Economics as a required course, but gladly most have progressed. The researcher in me can’t argue against wanting a better means to measure educational performance nationwide. However, having the ability to compare performances among groups hasn’t brought educational justice to black and brown students[emphasis added]. Still, I know that kids overcome….

As Sen. Lamar Alexander-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. rewrite No Child Left Behind, they must consider giving teachers the freedom to teach while providing consequences to those districts and schools that don’t provide the education all students deserve [emphasis added].

Finally, I want to make two responses to Perry’s piece—with the caveat that I am not suggesting my perspective is better but that I have held nuanced differences with some of the important issues Perry is raising.

First, unlike Perry, I do not support Common Core because I do not support any standards changes as well as the inevitable high-stakes testing standards-based reform produce because—as Perry himself notes above—standards and high-stakes testing have not (and will/can not) create the equity in education all children deserve.

And finally, I am an advocate for the inverse of what Perry has scathingly recognized about the backlash against The Unintended (and Mostly Ignored) Lesson of Common Core: Race Inequity | the becoming radical:

Developing Workplaces Where Teachers Stay, Improve, And Succeed | Shanker Institute

Developing Workplaces Where Teachers Stay, Improve, And Succeed | Shanker Institute:

Developing Workplaces Where Teachers Stay, Improve, And Succeed

by Matthew A. Kraft   John P. Papay -- May 28, 2015

Our guest authors today are Matthew A. Kraft and John P. Papay. Kraft is an Assistant Professor of Education at Brown University. Papay is an Assistant Professor of Education and Economics at Brown University. In 2015, they received the American Educational Research Association Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award for the research discussed in this essay. 

When you study education policy, the inevitable question about what you do for a living always gets the conversation going. Controversies over teachers unions, charter schools, and standardized testing provide plenty of fodder for lively debates. People often are eager to share their own experiences about individual teachers who profoundly shaped their lives or were less than inspiring.

A large body of research confirms this common experience – teachers have large effects on students’ learning, and some teachers are far more effective than others. What is largely absent in these conversations, and in the scholarly literature, is a recognition of how these teachers are also supported or constrained by the organizational contexts in which they teach.

The absence of an organizational perspective on teacher effectiveness leads to narrow dinner conversations and misinformed policy. We tend to ascribe teachers’ career decisions to the students they teach rather than the conditions in which they work. We treat teachers as if their effectiveness is mostly fixed, always portable, and independent of school context. As a result, we rarely complement personnel reforms with organizational reforms that could benefit both teachers and students.

An emerging body of research now shows that the contexts in which teachers work profoundly shape teachers’ job decisions and their effectiveness. Put simply, teachers who work in supportive contexts stay in the classroom longer, and improve at faster rates, than their peers in less-supportive environments. And, what appear to matter most about the school context are not the traditional working conditions we often think of, such as modern facilities and well-equipped classrooms. Instead, aspects that are difficult to observe and measure seem to be most influential, including the quality of relationships and collaboration among staff, the responsiveness of school administrators, and the academic and behavioral expectations for students.

School Context and Teacher Turnover

Schools are complex organizations. Classic studies by Dan Lortie and Susan Moore Johnson, based on intensive observations and interviews, bring to life the “constellation” of organizational features that shape teachers’ and students’ daily experiences.

In recent years, large scale teacher surveys have provided researchers with new data to quantify these organizational features. These data have revealed that the high rates of teacher turnover we observe in schools that serve large populations of low-income and minority students are largely explained by the poor working conditions in these schools – not the students they serve. Figure 1 demonstrates how, in Massachusetts, teachers are over three times more likely to report intentions to transfer away from a school with poor working conditions (bottom percentiles) than one with strong working conditions (top percentiles). The finding that teachers’ views of their working conditions are strong predictors of whether or not they stay in a school has been replicated in a wide range districts and states, including Massachusetts, as we show in the figure below, as well as California, North Carolina, New York City, and Chicago.

School Context and Teacher Development

In supportive schools, teachers not only tend to stay, but they also improve at much greater rates over Developing Workplaces Where Teachers Stay, Improve, And Succeed | Shanker Institute:

Meet the Latest Secret Free-Market Group That Wants to Take Over Your Public School - In These Times

Meet the Latest Secret Free-Market Group That Wants to Take Over Your Public School - In These Times:

Meet the Latest Secret Free-Market Group That Wants to Take Over Your Public School

The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) has been an invisible player in the free-market education reform movement.

This story originally appeared at The Progressive.

Don’t look now, but there’s something creepy coming toward you, and it wants to take over your public school system. Sure, it’s connected—through all-important grants—to many of the big names in today’s education reform movement (Gates, Walton, Broad), but most people have probably never heard of it.

This “education reform powerhouse” is the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which goes by the acronym CRPE—or “creepy.” How fitting. While there are many individuals and organizations on the front lines of the free-market education reform movement—from Teach for America, to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, to the Recovery School District in New Orleans—CRPE has not been publicly outed. Instead, it has steadily carved out an influential role for itself behind the scenes. In fact, CRPE operates in a manner that is strikingly similar to ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), the secretive, powerful group funded by the Koch brothers and a large roster of corporations. Here’s a look at how the two organizations work:

1. Member networks: Both CRPE and ALEC have a “secret club” component, through their member networks. With ALEC, the members are state legislators. With CRPE, they are school districts from across the United States (there are currently thirty-nine of them).

2. Network meetings: Both CRPE and ALEC host member network meetings or conferences, where a common philosophy (based on a distinct rightwing ideology) is honed, articulated, and shared.

3. Model legislation: Both CRPE and ALEC create sample, model policies (CRPE) or “cookie-cutter bills” (ALEC) for the districts or legislators who are part of their member networks.

4. Free-market funders: Like ALEC, CRPE is funded by very wealthy, free-market-focused special interests, including the Walton Foundation.

One difference is that ALEC has been around since the early 1970s while CRPE is a more recent concoction. University of Washington political science professor Paul T. Hill founded the group in 1993, just as the “accountability” movement in public education was taking off, and it is housed at the University of Washington-Bothell. CRPE is affiliated with the university, but Hill explains, “Our work is funded through private philanthropic dollars, federal grants, and contracts.” And, although CRPE describes itself as engaging in “independent research and policy analysis,” in 2011 the Center for Media and Democracy’s Source Watch website tagged the group as an “industry-funded research center that … receives funding from corporate and billionaire philanthropists as well as the U.S. Department of Education.”

While Hill may not be well known nationally, he is no shrinking violet when it comes to agenda-driven policy work. Beyond CRPE, he has been affiliated with the right-leaning Hoover Institute and its Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, which focuses on vouchers and other market-based, privatization-centered reforms for public schools.

And that right-leaning stamp is all over CRPE, which has built a network of “portfolio school districts” from New York City to New Orleans and beyond. It promises to run these districts like a stock portfolio. Under this model, schools are to become more “autonomous,” and districts will be decentralized for a more “hands-off” approach. In an eighteen-month portfolio implementation guide that CRPE provides school districts, a suggested strategy for the first two months is to “announce the district will replace five schools with charter schools.” Schools will be closed for such failures as “negative labor-management relations.”

Many people in progressive-minded Minneapolis would be shocked to know that the Minneapolis public school system has been part of the CRPE network since 2010 (thanks to a makeover, led, for free, by consultants from the global consulting firm McKinsey and Company). Today, this shadowy organization is on the verge of completely overhauling the public school district’s entire operation.

Anyone needing proof should look no further than the 2013 CRPE meeting for Portfolio Network members that was held in Seattle. A video from that meeting lays bare the competitive, resource-scarce mindset behind CRPE, and it even uses the Minneapolis public schools—albeit superficially—as a test case for the presentation.

The video—available on YouTube as “Dollars and Sense Accountability”—offers attendees lots of suggestions for how schools can expand their limited pots of money. The assumption always seems to be that schools just need to do more with less, so the suggestions are pragmatic. They include encouraging schools to grow their enrollment (the presenter, Marguerite Roza, who now works for CRPE, recommends pushing schools on this, because they’ll always say they’re too full). CRPE also suggests paying teachers extra to teach more kids, and pitting schools against one another in a battle for resources. All of this is based around a central question: What does it look like when a district starts to view schools like businesses?

To begin, Roza praises Minneapolis for its “enormous cooperation,” because the district has offered its data for use as an example of how to view schools “in terms of cost and outcomes.” Roza then shows participants a graph, where Minneapolis school sites (unnamed) are splayed out according to how much money they spend in comparison to how “high performing” they are. Before she delves in too deeply, however, Roza makes one point very clear: “I hope when you leave this session, you realize that the money part of the equation has to be part of the accountability bit, so you have to start connecting the spending and the outcomes together,” she says.

Throughout the video, it becomes clear that what Roza means is that the ideal school is one which spends less money but gets high test scores. It also becomes clear that, to Roza, and by extension CRPE, kids and schools are mere widgets in the Hunger Games-like landscape of school finance that CRPE promotes.

At one point, Roza points to the graph full of Minneapolis examples and says, “Look at the relationship between spending and Meet the Latest Secret Free-Market Group That Wants to Take Over Your Public School - In These Times:

We would like to thank our current funders:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Carnegie Corporation of New York

Fund for Educational Excellence

The Joyce Foundation

Laura and John Arnold Foundation

Michael and Susan Dell Foundation

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

Nellie Mae Education Foundation

US Department of Education

Walton Family Foundation

Anonymous

Pay to Prey: Governors Facilitate the Predatory Outsourcing of America's Public Services | PR Watch

Pay to Prey: Governors Facilitate the Predatory Outsourcing of America's Public Services | PR Watch:

Pay to Prey: Governors Facilitate the Predatory Outsourcing of America's Public Services

Maggots, drug smuggling, sex with inmates. As if the news were not already bad enough, shocking new allegations of a murder-for-hire plot are emerging from Michigan as the media digs deeper into that state's failed outsourcing of prison services.

In 2013, Governor Rick Snyder invited the Philadelphia-based for-profit company Aramark to take over food services in the state's prisons. The action was a 180-degree change in course, as the administration previously rejected all such bids on the grounds that none of the proposals would save the state money. The $570,000 Aramark spent on lobbying surely helped the company persuade the administration to change its mind.

Since Aramark took over Michigan's $145 million food service contract -- eviscerating the stable middle class jobs of some 370 public workers -- one stomach churning scandal followed another. The state fined Aramark $98,000 in March for food shortages, "unauthorized menu substitutions" and sexual relations between kitchen workers and inmates, and another $200,000 in August after problems persisted.

All the while, the Snyder administration has stood behind the company and the state prison director secretly waived the $98,000 fine soon after it was imposed. Perhaps Snyder will reconsider this position given new allegations that an Aramark worker has asked a prisoner to assist him with the murder of another inmate.

While Aramark's failed outsourcing of prison food services is a dramatic example of the harms that can arise from the America's public services and assets, this report, Pay to Prey: Governors Facilitate the Predatory Outsourcing of America's Public Services, contains many other cases of outsourcing run amok generating worse outcomes for the public, often higher costs, lawsuits and scorching headlines.

While large corporations are the winners in this scenario, all too often taxpayers are the losers when transparency, accountability and the public interest are sold out to for-profit firms.

Outsourcing of public services is a big business. Some experts estimate that $1 trillion out of the $6 trillion the federal government, together with state and local governments, spend annually are

- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/node/12620#sthash.E6XRsCK1.lkvOhUH9.dpuf

What the heck is going on with Wisconsin public education? - The Washington Post

What the heck is going on with Wisconsin public education? - The Washington Post:

What the heck is going on with Wisconsin public education?

What is the Wisconsin Legislature trying to do to public education in Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s state?

State Superintendent Tony Evers has gone on record accusing lawmakers of moving toward new legislation “that erodes the basic foundation of Wisconsin’s public school system.”  How? By legislature efforts that include refusing to spend more money on public education for the first time in more than 20 years while while giving millions of dollars more to expand a private voucher program, slashing higher education funding, and  weakening licensing rules for teachers.

Evers said in a statement:

“Wisconsin is nationally renowned for its quality public schools. We are a leader among the states in graduation rates, Advanced Placement participation, and ACT scores because of our highly trained educators and the support of families and local communities. The citizens of Wisconsin — measured by budget hearings, local advocacy, and recent polls — voiced their overwhelming support for our public schools and increasing funding in this budget.

“I am troubled that the Joint Finance Committee spent its time and effort designing a plan that erodes the basic foundation of Wisconsin’s public school system. If we want all students to achieve, we cannot continue to ask our public schools to do more with less. The eventual outcome of that exercise will be two systems of public schools: those in local communities that can afford to provide a quality education through referendum and those that cannot.”

Education proposals by the Joint Committee on Finance largely reflect the broad agenda set by Walker,  who is considered a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.  Lawmakers have expanded on some of the more general language in his budget proposal (such as by spelling out how teacher licensure should be changed) and added a few things of their What the heck is going on with Wisconsin public education? - The Washington Post:

Report: US Kids Are Poorer Than They Were Decades Ago | PopularResistance.Org

Report: US Kids Are Poorer Than They Were Decades Ago | PopularResistance.Org:

Report: US Kids Are Poorer Than They Were Decades Ago

Note: Childhood poverty has risen for every major racial group since 2008, according to a National Center for Education Statistics report released Thursday.  Do not expect major candidates for the presidency to mention this, as their campaign donors expand their wealth by expanding poverty.

- Jack Balkwill

Poverty, which affects a growing number of American students, begins its negative impact on learning as early as the beginning of kindergarten, according to a National Center for Education Statistics report released Thursday.

Teachers reported that kindergarten students from affluent households in the 2010-2011 school year were more likely to have positive approaches to learning than those whose families live below the poverty line, according to the center’s annual report, called The Condition of Education 2015. A positive approach to learning includes paying attention in class, keeping belongings organized and enthusiasm for learning.

Female students, students who were older at the start of the school year, students who came from two-parent households, and students whose family income was more than twice the poverty threshold were more likely to have positive approaches to learning, according to teachers. Black students, male students and students whose parents did not graduate high school tended to have poorer approaches to learning. Students who demonstrated positive approaches to learning in kindergarten were more likely to have top scores in first grade.

“Research suggests that living in poverty during early childhood is associated with lower than average academic performance that begins in kindergarten and extends through elementary and high school,” the report says. “Living in poverty during early childhood is also associated with lower than average rates of school completion.”

The annual report aims to give members of Congress an overview of the U.S. public educational system, using a mix of hard data like enrollment and test scores, and surveys reflecting the views of educators.

In 2013, nearly 21 percent of children — 10.9 million kids — were from families who lived in poverty — a jump of 6 percentage points from 2000 and a reversal of a previous trend toward lower poverty. Poverty often has been associated with low academic achievement.

Childhood poverty has risen for every major racial group since 2008, according to the Report: US Kids Are Poorer Than They Were Decades Ago | PopularResistance.Org:

As Mississippi delivers bad news to 5,600 third graders, stressed-out parents say there must be a better way - The Hechinger Report

As Mississippi delivers bad news to 5,600 third graders, stressed-out parents say there must be a better way - The Hechinger Report:

As Mississippi delivers bad news to 5,600 third graders, stressed-out parents say there must be a better way

Will holding back thousands of third-graders boost student performance in Mississippi?

ROLLTON, Miss. — In the weeks leading up to Mississippi’s new third-grade literacy test this past April, Zanysha Amos, age 9, was a bundle of anxiety. She couldn’t eat; she couldn’t sleep. Ever-present worry furrowed her little brow.

Zanysha knew when she sat down in front of the computer screen to answer the 50 questions on the statewide test that she could be held back in third grade if her score wasn’t deemed adequate. The thought was too painful to bear: Another year in the same grade, a year older than everybody else, going over the same stuff for ten agonizing months?

Her mother said Zanysha also had a nagging question she needed answered: What was the point of the A’s and B’s she pushed herself to get on her third-grade report cards, of coming home every day after school and unfailingly diving into her homework, if a year’s worth of effort could be wiped away by an uninspired performance on a two-hour test?

“She told me, if she was studying and doing good work during the school year, then she shouldn’t have to pass a test to go to the next grade,” said her mother, Ztearreyo Amos, an assistant teacher at Zanysha’s school in this north central town just off U.S. Highway 82. Amos had a hard time arguing with her daughter’s logic.

Zanysha’s questions illustrate the worries expressed by many parents and educators in Mississippi since Gov. Phil Bryant signed legislation two years ago that declared third-graders could not be promoted without passing a test to prove they were adequate readers. Is such a high stakes trial appropriate for eight and nine-year-olds, so tenderly lacking in emotional maturity? Aren’t they too young to confront two make-or-break hours on a single test that could keep them from moving up a grade with their classmates?

Bryant believes he is doing the children of Mississippi a favor. He reasons students have little chance of academic success if they can’t read by fourth As Mississippi delivers bad news to 5,600 third graders, stressed-out parents say there must be a better way - The Hechinger Report:

Award-Winning Teacher Fired for Reading an Allen Ginsberg Poem - The Daily Beast

Award-Winning Teacher Fired for Reading an Allen Ginsberg Poem - The Daily Beast:

Award-Winning Teacher Fired for Reading an Allen Ginsberg Poem

Defenders of Connecticut teacher David Olio say one mistake shouldn’t have cost him his job. But why is the work of a towering figure of 20th-century American poetry out of bounds?

It was the kind of moment teachers covet. An advanced AP English class focusing on poetry, and a student brings in a poem that caught his eye, hoping to discuss in the waning moments of the period how the poet uses language in his work.

The teacher, David Olio, a 19-year veteran of the South Windsor School District and winner of Connecticut’s highest award for teaching excellence, didn’t know the poem in question, but he took a look and walked the students through it in the remaining time.

The poem the student discovered and brought in was “Please Master,” an extremely graphic account of a homosexual encounter published by Allen Ginsberg in 1968 that begins: “Please master can I touch your cheek / please master can I kneel at your feet / please master can I loosen your blue pants.”

Clearly, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” this wasn’t. But the students were 17- and 18-year-olds, some of whom were taking the course in conjunction with the University of Connecticut and receiving college credit.

One day after the class, Olio was placed on indefinite, unpaid leave by the district. Seventy-two hours later, the district began termination proceedings against him. Three weeks after that, he agreed to resign.

Reading the poem in class, the district found, showed “egregiously poor professional judgment,” Olio’s termination letter stated. “By so doing, you violated the trust placed by the Board of Education in you as a teacher, you brought discredit upon the South Windsor Public Schools, you undermined public confidence and parent trust in you as a teacher, and you put the emotional health of some students at risk.”

The unceremonious dismissal of a beloved teacher has thrown the town of South Windsor, population 25,000, halfway between Hartford, Conn., and Springfield, Mass., into tumult. The local newspaper denounced him in editorials. Alumni, town residents, and Olio’s current students crammed into Board of Education hearings to testify on his behalf.

One alumna said she was embarrassed to say she was a graduate of the high school. Olio’s church minister testified that “every time David talks about teaching you can see his face brighten, his hands start to move, and the energy emerge…This is my preacher talk now, but I believe this is what God has created David Olio to be and to do.” The student who brought in the poem testified how Olio inspired him to become an English educator. Parents lamented that a single, tragic mistake could end an otherwise sterling career.

But was it a mistake? That has been the line of many of the parents, students, and teachers who have rushed to defend Olio—that he made a single error in judgment, one he should not be forced to pay for for the rest of his life. To many, Olio’s case points to a changing culture around education, one in which teachers are on a hair trigger vulnerable to losing their livelihoods due to declining union protections and the rise of high-stakes testing. According to some members of the school community, the controversy began when one student in the class begged off a test in a different class the next day, claiming he (or she) couldn’t concentrate due the reading of the poem. The story quickly blew up on social media in the town before the local press picked up on it and disciplinary proceedings began.

“I also feel sorry for the remaining teachers who will undoubtedly feel like they need to censor themselves, even at the collegiate class level, in light of the one strike and you’re out policy we appear to have adopted,” wrote one parent of a Award-Winning Teacher Fired for Reading an Allen Ginsberg Poem - The Daily Beast: