CURMUDGUCATION: USED: Accountability for Public Schools Only

CURMUDGUCATION: USED: Accountability for Public Schools Only:

USED: Accountability for Public Schools Only

Arne Duncan today held a press chat to announce that USED would be throwing more money ($157 million) at charter schools. 

Throwing money at public schools is, you may recall, anathema to reformsters, who are concerned that while money has been thrown higgledy piggledy at public schools, it appears that insufficient amounts of the money have struck students in the test-taking parts of their brains.

Throwing money at public schools is bad, because we are just certain that they are wasting it and that the taxpayers are not getting a sufficient bang-to-buckage ratio.

But throwing money at charter schools is awesome, because we have no idea where the hell it's going.

The department's inspector general issued a report in 2012 that Lyndsey Layton calls "scathing." The report suggests that the feds have been throwing that money at charters with blindfolds on. TheCenter for Media and Democracy has a more recent, more scathing report on the vast piles of money that has been thrown into charter black holes. "Gosh," say the feds. "That's a state problem. It's up to them to exercise oversight. Not our problem." Although, just in case you think USED is providing no oversight at all, I am happy to report they did send states a strongly worded letter, exhorting them to be more oversighty.

With all that, you'll be unsurprised to discover that the top winner in the charter change chunking festival is the state of Ohio. Yes, that Ohio. The Ohio where hundreds of charters have failed in just about every way a charter can fail, the Ohio where the husband of the governor's campaign manager had to resign from his ed department job because he was caught cooking the books to make charters look better (including some belonging to some political money throwers, proving that throwing money at politicians can also work well). That Ohio gets another $32.5 million to throw at charters. Even the journalists listening to Duncan's news apparently felt the urge to question that decision, but USED assistant deputy secretary Nadya Dabby responded:

“Ohio has a pretty good mechanism in place to improve overall quality and oversight,” said Dabby, CURMUDGUCATION: USED: Accountability for Public Schools Only:

Education Matters: Is Florida about to start arresting parents or forcing kids to leave school over opting out?

Education Matters: Is Florida about to start arresting parents or forcing kids to leave school over opting out?:

Is Florida about to start arresting parents or forcing kids to leave school over opting out?

I ask because that seems to be where we are heading.

First look at what education chairman Marlene O'Toole said a couple weeks ago: "You're not allowed to do that (opt out) and keep your child in a public school," she said. "So if you want to have your child learn another way or do something different, you always have the option to take them (out). School boards should not be ... saying, Well, okay. There is no okay."

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/there-is-no-okay-for-opting-out-in-florida-house-education-chairwoman-says/2246132

Then throw in what Kurt Browing, superintendent of Pasco county said, As much as Browning says he wants to see the system changed, he has yet to change his stance on opting out. He sent his message to parents in February that "There is no opt-out provision," and advised all employees in a memo around the same time, "At no time may a school or its staff encourage students to abstain from participating in the statewide tests."

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/whats-a-pasco-parent-to-do-about-testing-opt-out-now/2247406

The article above went on to talk about how students would be forced to sit during the Education Matters: Is Florida about to start arresting parents or forcing kids to leave school over opting out?:

CA Smarter Balanced By Zip Code - Schoolzilla, PBC.

CA Smarter Balanced By Zip Code - Schoolzilla, PBC.:

CALIFORNIA SMARTER BALANCED RESULTS EXPLORER

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Note: California Smarter Balanced Results Explorer dashboards were built using publicly available data from www.CAASPP.org. Schoolzilla is proud to provide these dashboards as a free service to help make our Smarter Balanced results more accessible and intuitive for families and educators across the state.

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Charter love: Feds give $157 million to expand charter schools - The Washington Post

Charter love: Feds give $157 million to expand charter schools - The Washington Post:

Charter love: Feds give $157 million to expand charter schools

The U.S. Department of Education announced Monday it would give $157 million to create and expand charter schools throughout the nation, despite criticisms by its inspector general in the past that the agency has done a poor job of overseeing federal dollars sent to charter schools.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan made a passing reference to oversight problems during a media call with reporters. “Some have had to fold, some are struggling to find their way,” he said, referring to poor-performing charter schools. “We know we have to strengthen oversight… The good news is that the sector has proven it can improve.”

With the addition of Monday’s grants, the department has awarded more than $3 billion to charter schools since fiscal 1995. Federal dollars find their way to charter schools through two routes. In most cases, the federal government awards money to a state, and the state hands out grants to charter schools. In some instances, the federal government directly awards money to a public charter school.

But the federal government has not tracked how its dollars have been used by charter schools, nor has it studied their academic performance.

[Problems in the federal charter program]

Asked how taxpayers can be assured that federal dollars will be spent properly, Duncan said it was largely up to states and the public agencies that approve charter schools.

“It’s so important that from the academic side and the fiscal side that [charter school] authorizers and states hold charters accountable,” Duncan said. “At the federal level, we don’t have a whole lot of leverage. But we can really challenge states.”

The department sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to states, emphasizing the importance of financial accountability for charter schools receiving federal dollars. Duncan also said that his agency plans for the first time to publicly report some data, including the names of some schools that have received federal grants and their performance statistics.

[Read the ‘Dear Colleague’ letter]

The agency’s inspector general issued a scathing report in 2012 that found deficiencies in how the department handled federal grants to charter schools between 2008 and 2011.

The inspector general discovered dozens of charter schools received federal dollars but never opened their doors to students. The schools received millions in federal funds, but there was no record of what happened to the equipment, supplies or anything else purchased with the federal dollars for schools that never opened, the audit said.

Public charter schools are funded by tax dollars but managed privately and often are not unionized. Duncan has been a strong advocate for charter schools.

“We need more great public schools of all kinds,” he said Monday. “Too often, charter school successes are isolated and don’t have an impact beyond the Charter love: Feds give $157 million to expand charter schools - The Washington Post:

Why Inner City Schools Keep Failing

Inner City Schools:

Why Inner City Schools Keep Failing

There is an exquisitely sick irony to the fact that segregated and purposefully maintained inferior inner city public education could not be maintained at the Los Angeles Unified School District and elsewhere in this country without the administrative participation of the same minorities it keeps in their unachieving places.

Unless minority administrators were willing to turn momma’s picture to the wall and follow orders—for a six-figure salary and a place at the privatization feast at public expense—real positive change in public education could rather easily be achieved at far less expense and in a relatively short period of time.

The willingness of minority leadership to sell out the inherent intelligence of Black and Latino children to assure that they never reach their potential is both deplorable and at the same time a negation of racism.

I say ironically because the willingness of minority leadership to sell out the inherent intelligence of Black and Latino children to assure that they never reach their potential is both deplorable and at the same time a negation of racism. Why? Because irrespective of race what all human beings have shown themselves regrettably capable of is a willingness to do pretty much anything for a large enough pile of bucks and benefits.

The minority administrator’s rationale goes something like this: Better I initial play along with what I know to be a racist system of public education to get into a position of power. Then, once I have the power, I will be able to effectuate real change.

But as these minority administrators continue moving up and compromising their core values, they never seem to get to a place where they can effectuate meaningful change without jeopardizing their of careers—and that is not something that most human beings are willing to do as they continue to abdicate any individual moral imperative to change this racist system.

By cloaking themselves in being a part of some collective LAUSD leadership identity—sound familiar for all you history buffs—where no individual is ever held responsible for their individual acts as long as they continue to blindly support The District, no matter what it does, this dysfunctional system has now gone on for generations destroying the lives of inherently clever young people, who are never given the opportunity to reach their potential.

While there are people of integrity that cannot be bought, LAUSD has a system of choosing prospective administrators that filters out any “troublemakers” long before they get an administrative position, no matter what their objective qualifications might be. And for the few honest administrators who slip through this selection process, they learn to keep their mouths shut, while reciting the vacuous slogans of, “No child left behind” and “Every child is a life-long learner,” that could easily be contradicted and seen for the nonsense they are, if one bothered to actually walk into a classroom and see the chaos that continues to be allowed.

Many of the administrators of LAUSD who wind up being chosen to address the problems of this Inner City Schools:

Broad Foundation secret plan to get extremely wealthy people to invest in creating charter schools in LA - NBC Southern California

News Conference LAUSD President on the Charter Schools Controversy | NBC Southern California:

Broad Foundation secret plan to get extremely wealthy people to invest in creating charter schools in LA

( Having problem with video go here: News Conference LAUSD President on the Charter Schools Controversy | NBC Southern California  )
A big uproar was created this week when a memo was leaked to the LA Times from the Eli Broad Foundation about a secret plan to get extremely wealthy people to invest in creating charter schools in LA. NBC4's Conan Nolan talks to both sides of the issue. First up: Steve Zimmer, the president of the LAUSD.

CURMUDGUCATION: Charters Are Not Common Schools

CURMUDGUCATION: Charters Are Not Common Schools:

Charters Are Not Common Schools

Charter boosters continue trying to muster some sort of argument against the decision in Washington State that the charter laws there violate the state constitution. So far, none of the attempts really sing.

Over at Campbell Brown's PR site, the 74, Andrew Rotherham (Bellwether) and Richard Whitmire (general reformsterism) make the argument that charter opponents are "on the wrong side of history" and that charter schools are the true common schools. You will not be surprised to read that I disagree.

In truth, the ideal of the common school is one the country has never lived up to. While we romanticize the common school, people too frequently forget that those schools were at different times not open to blacks, religious minorities, or, until the 1970s, students with special needs and disabilities. 

Despite serving those groups today, the continuing trend of segregated housing  and the staggeringly uneven performance of different public schools prompts this question: What exactly is all thatcommon about the common school anyway?

First, it's important to recognize the True Parts of what they are saying-- ever since this country latched onto the idea of a common school and public education, we have struggled with living up to that ideal. This is not surprising-- as public institutions under public control, schools have reflected and expressed every twist and turn, every shameful lapse and every difficult step forward in the public life of this country. Public schools have not always delivered on their promise, and in some places, are still not delivering on it today. 

So when I oppose modern charters, I don't do so with the insistence that public schools have no CURMUDGUCATION: Charters Are Not Common Schools:

Social Justice Activism is Forming a More Perfect (And Enduring) Union - NEA Today

Social Justice Activism is Forming a More Perfect (And Enduring) Union - NEA Today:

Social Justice Activism is Forming a More Perfect (And Enduring) Union

Teachers and education support professionals are standing together in the fight for equal opportunity for all students.

Educators are driven by purpose. There’s the day-to-day purpose of helping students learn, but there’s also a higher purpose—a calling—to help improve students’lives, especially for the growing number who struggle with poverty. Educators refuse to stand by and ignore the gap between the equal opportunity America espouses and the
socioeconomic reality they see in their schools.

That’s why another generation of NEA members is fighting for equal opportunity for all students. Teachers and education support professionals are standing together to demand better for our schools and our children and for the common good of our communities.

They are NEA’s social justice activists.

“NEA members are organizing around issues that extend far beyond bread and butter concerns,” says NEA President Lily Eskelsen García. “They’re organizing and advocating for their students—from class size to adequate resources to family involvement. They are banding together to make their voices heard and demanding that the needs of all our students—including those in the most impoverished neighborhoods—be addressed.”

Social justice activism isn’t new. Rank-and-file union activists have advocated for social justice for years and it’s based on the same principles organized labor has always championed: Solidarity, equality, democracy, and justice.

But the country has entered a seminal moment, and this model of unionism could hold the key to preserving public education as a right for all Americans. As the income gap threatens to swallow the middle class, public school educators are being battered by a perfect storm of political, legal, and corporate attacks that would strip educators of their rights, ignore the needs of huge populations of students, and ultimately privatize education, further widening the income gap Social Justice Activism is Forming a More Perfect (And Enduring) Union - NEA Today:

The Education of Jesse Hagopian | I AM AN EDUCATOR

The Education of Jesse Hagopian | I AM AN EDUCATOR:

The Education of Jesse Hagopian



Erin Middlewood, writing for The Progressive magazine, flew out to Seattle just before the end of the last school year. She spent an afternoon with me in my classroom and then accompanied me that evening to our Black Student Union senior awards banquet that my students had organized to honor our graduating black leaders.

Below is the link to the essay Erin wrote, “The Education of Jesse Hagopian” about my political development and activism.  Most importantly, the essay focuses on the intersection of the opt out movement against high-stakes testing and the Black Lives Matter movement.  It is my hope that these two movements increasingly unite into a great social force that can transform public education and bring down the institutions of racism.

By Erin Middlewood

Pepper spray seared Jesse Hagopian’s face and tears streamed from his eyes. He had just given a speech at this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, on January 19 in Seattle. In keeping with tradition, the thirty-third annual event began in the gymnasium of Garfield High School, where Hagopian himself attended school and now teaches history. He presented plaques to students who were leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement. After the ceremony, 10,000 people marched toward downtown.

See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/09/188303/education-jesse-hagopian

The Education of Jesse Hagopian | I AM AN EDUCATOR:

Libraries at the Crossroads | Pew Research Center

Libraries at the Crossroads | Pew Research Center:

Libraries at the Crossroads

The public is interested in new services and thinks libraries are important to communities

American libraries are buffeted by cross currents. Citizens believe that libraries are important community institutions and profess interest in libraries offering a range of new program possibilities. Yet, even as the public expresses interest in additional library services, there are signs that the share of Americans visiting libraries has edged downward over the past three years, although it is too soon to know whether or not this is a trend.

A new survey from Pew Research Center brings this complex situation into stark relief. Many Americans say they want public libraries to:

• support local education;
• serve special constituents such as veterans, active-duty military personnel and immigrants;
• help local businesses, job seekers and those upgrading their work skills;
• embrace new technologies such as 3-D printers and provide services to help patrons learn about high-tech gadgetry.

Additionally, two-thirds of Americans (65%) ages 16 and older say that closing their local public library would have a major impact on their community. Low-income Americans, Hispanics and African Americans are more likely than others to say that a library closing would impact their lives and communities.

At the same time, the survey finds that the share of Americans who report using a library has ebbed somewhat over the past several years, though it is too early to identify a definitive national trend. Compared with Pew Research Center surveys from recent years, the current survey finds those 16 and older a bit less likely to say they have visited a library or bookmobile in-person in the past 12 months, visited a library website or used a library’s computers and internet access.

• 46% of all Americans ages 16 and over say they visited a library or a bookmobile in-person in the prior year. This is roughly comparable with the 48% who said this in 2013, but down from 53% in 2012.
• 22% of those 16 and older have used library websites in the past year, compared with 30% who said this in 2013 and 25% in 2012.
• 27% of those who have visited a public library have used its computers, internet connection or Wi-Fi signal to go online in the past 12 months. This compares with 31% who said this in 2012.

A trend in the other direction is that mobile access to library resources has taken on more prominence. Among those who have used a public library website, 50% accessed it in the Libraries at the Crossroads | Pew Research Center:

Profit Piranha Feeding Frenzy - National, local foundations with charter school ties fund APS... | www.myajc.com

National, local foundations with charter school ties fund APS... | www.myajc.com:

National, local foundations with charter school ties fund APS work

Half a dozen local and national foundations are footing the $500,000 bill for high-powered management consultants to develop a plan to improve Atlanta schools in the face of potential state takeover.

About half of Atlanta’s 80 schools are at high risk of being eligible for state takeover if voters next year approve Gov. Nathan Deal’s proposed state takeover district.

It’s unlikely that more than a few schools throughout the state would be selected for takeover initially. Still, having so many schools at risk is one more reason Atlanta district leaders say they need to move even faster to improve some of the state’s worst schools.

“We have to get it right,” school board chairman Courtney English said. “Not just because of the threat of state takeover but because we have a moral imperative to make this right for our children.”

In November 2016, voters will weigh in on a constitutional amendment that would allow control of low-performing schools to be shifted to the appointed superintendent of a new “Opportunity School District.” That would mean decisions about how students are taught and how local tax dollars are spent would no longer be solely up to locally elected officials.

This summer, the Atlanta school district announced it would work with Boston Consulting Group, an international consulting firm that counts many Fortune 500 companies among its clients, to develop a plan for improving Atlanta’s lowest-performing schools.

The plan, which will vary by school, could include replacing principals and teachers or giving teachers more training. More controversially, it could also include closing some schools and turning others over to nonprofit charter school operators.

“We’re not taking any idea off the table at this point,” Deputy Superintendent David Jernigan told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Superintendent Meria Carstarphen will present an initial review of potential strategies at a Tuesday town hall meeting and reveal more information at her State of the District event on Oct. 8, district officials said.

The idea of bringing in nonprofit charter school operators doesn’t sit well with some.

“It would give the appearance of privatization of a public school,” Raynard Johnson, a member of a committee advising the district on school improvement plans, said.

Boston Consulting Group’s fee is being paid by the Walton Family Foundation, founded by the owners of Wal-Mart, and by family foundations with ties to Atlanta business leaders: the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, Wilbur and Hilda Glenn Family Foundation, Nonami Foundation, Kendeda Fund and the Sartain Lanier Family Foundation.

The Walton Family Foundation has given millions to support the growth of charter schools. The foundation’s other Atlanta recipients include Drew Charter School, KIPP charter schools, the Kindezi charter schools, Westside Atlanta Charter School, Christo Rey Atlanta Jesuit High School and Teach for America, Walton spokeswoman Daphne Davis Moore said. Other Georgia recipients include the Georgia Charter Schools Association and the Alliance for School Choice.National, local foundations with charter school ties fund APS... | www.myajc.com:

USED Official Admits Federal Curriculum Violation in Bush-Supported Race to the Top | Truth in American Education

USED Official Admits Federal Curriculum Violation in Bush-Supported Race to the Top | Truth in American Education:

USED Official Admits Federal Curriculum Violation in Bush-Supported Race to the Top

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore (CC-By-SA 2.0)

The arguments made by establishment proponents of Race to the Top and Common Core, including some presidential candidates continue to implode.  The well-worn chant that these were “state-led,” “voluntary,” “hijacked by the federal government,” and especially that Common Core is “only standards” and “has nothing to do with curriculum” is dissolving into thin air.  That particular claim about curriculum has been absolutely shredded in the admission by former US Department of Education (USED) official, Joanne Weiss in an essaydiscussing the “lessons learned” from the whole effort to nationalize education standards via Race to the Top (RTTT).  Weiss actually brags that RTTT, a federal government program, produced curriculum:

In addition, new curriculum materials funded through Race to the Top and released in 2014 are already in use in 20 percent of classrooms nationwide.(Emphasis added).

This is a clear violation of three federal laws that prohibit federal involvement in curriculum – The Elementary and Secondary Education Act [ESEA – 20 U.S.C. § 7907(a)], The Department of Education Organization Act [20 U.S.C. § 3403(b)], and the General Education Provisions Act USED Official Admits Federal Curriculum Violation in Bush-Supported Race to the Top | Truth in American Education:

Is the Opt Out Movement Destined to Grow? | Creative by Nature

Is the Opt Out Movement Destined to Grow? | Creative by Nature:

Is the Opt Out Movement Destined to Grow?

How (and Why) the Opt Out Movement Could Grow into the Most Powerful & Important Children’s Rights Movement in History…

HOW:

By going on the offensive- holding nation-wide teach-ins, developing coordinated actions to “take out” the corrupt and destructive forces strangling our children’s education and causing them psychological harm.

By asserting children’s legal rights– demanding changes in law to protect the most vulnerable members of society from “hostile” forces that treat them like factory products on an assembly line.

By focusing attention on the strengths of our position as compared to the weaknesses of the reformers- both research evidence and the law support our position, while their house is built on sand and deceptions.

By studying past civil rights movements that were successful, such as the ending of slavery, child labor laws, women’s right to vote and the civil rights movement of the sixties.

By focusing on education, action and creative collaboration, asking our children to Is the Opt Out Movement Destined to Grow? | Creative by Nature:

Look Out Parents – Malloy’s State Department of Education is ramping up Pro-Common Core Testing Campaign - Wait What?

Look Out Parents – Malloy’s State Department of Education is ramping up Pro-Common Core Testing Campaign - Wait What?:

Look Out Parents – Malloy’s State Department of Education is ramping up Pro-Common Core Testing Campaign

If you weren’t at the “Special” Sherman Board of Education meeting last Thursday you missed the “show.”

Big Brother is Watching and Big Brother is not Happy!

As Connecticut is swamped by yet another state budget crisis and Democrat Governor Dannel Malloy unilaterally makes deep cuts to some of State Government’s most vital services, the Governor’s Education Commissioner is finding the resources to engage in a campaign to persuade parents that the Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium SBAC testing scheme is good and they should not be opting their children out of the unfair, inappropriate and discriminatory tests.

Last week began with the Connecticut State Department of Education’s Deputy Commissioner, Ellen Cohn, telling school superintendents that “correction action plans” will be implemented in towns where too many parents opted their children out the tests and that the Malloy administration would be mobilizing to “help educate” parents and communities where parents had stood up against the SBAC testing program.

Later in the week, Malloy’s Commissioner of Education, Diane Wentzell, focused the state’s bullseye on the small town of Sherman, Connecticut with its 380 or so elementary school students.

Although Malloy and the Department of Education spent nearly two years lying and misleading Connecticut parents about their fundamental right to opt their children out of the Common Core SBAC testing madness, nearly half of the students in Sherman’s school were opted out of the SBAC testing last spring, making it the elementary school with the highest opt out rates in the state and among Connecticut’s 25 top schools when it came to the percent of students being opted out.

The notion that parents understand that Common Core SBAC testing is undermining public education was just too much for the State to handle and last Thursday, after communications that the State Department of Education has yet to release a response to a Freedom of Information request, the Sherman Board of Education held a “special meeting” to “focus solely on a presentation to the Board of Education by our superintendent, Don Look Out Parents – Malloy’s State Department of Education is ramping up Pro-Common Core Testing Campaign - Wait What?:

How Understanding of Social Differences Could Actually Help Underachieving Pupils

How Understanding of Social Differences Could Actually Help Underachieving Pupils:

How Understanding of Social Differences Could Actually Help Underachieving Pupils

While there is person variation within any lifestyle, societal trying to learn behaviours kind along continua of discovering versions. In a few civilizations building problems in public areas is a huge sociable embarrassment to remain averted in the first place rate, during many others, they may be thought about largely as fodder for more studying (no matter if nobody wants making them). Using some cultures, women and men usually favor knowing collaboratively, during other folks, there’s even more of a pinpoint the particular person. Using some countries, consumers plan to build up their wall membrane of discovering brick by brick, while in some others, the bricks get sketched in as you consider the full wall surface, or sections of it. – help essay writing

Ken and once required the Cambodian paraprofessional at his high school, whom he relied on as the social informant, about why most of the Cambodian trainees appeared so timid about asking questions or giving views about school stories regardless of whether prompted to do this possibly even if they are not in front of the overall course. The para stated that in Cambodian culture, kids are just anticipated to discover the certified awareness given to them by liable adults, undoubtedly. To acquire a Cambodian individual to question the professor something will mean certainly one of a couple of things: both they hadn’t been paying attention perfectly, which has been damaging; or they hadn’t fully understood, that may be like suggesting to the mentor, “You didn’t give an explanation of it good enough, so require another stab at it,” which may be terribly rude.

From a unique classroom, we might imagine an individual whoever trying to learn individuality is indirect before person-instructed, who has a minimal tolerance for issues, who needs to understand brick by brick, and who seems to be not proactive about posing problems (frequently for the tutor or around him- or themselves). How could that scholar turn to us inside our class? Could be for a “slow learner” who may have “english-essay-writing”?

Just about every college student, then, brings your own selections, needs and wants, a societal finding out structure, foundation understanding, and sentiments about to be a university student inside their “bag” of autobiographical recollection. In diverse options, some or several of these components can be mismatched to the instructor structure. Once we see main difference in such areas, a longer-label process of conversation and mediation is important that may help pupils gain knowledge of new ways of considering, feeling, thinking, and performing from a class room preparing.

Training Guidelines: Under pressure People and also the Social Roots of Autobiographical Memory

There are a lot of important things you can easily do today to assistance bridge and minimize the “achievement gap” connection between cultural differences in autobiographical remembrance.

Conversation All-around Intention and Definition

Once we have listed in the course of this handbook, among the significant difficulties in orienting our memories programs to educational discovering is whether or not we discover this means and importance with the item of getting to know. Simply because this is true for autobiographical storage, we should not believe all of our people discuss identical orientation to methods of planning, utilising terms, or institution habits. Our enthusiasm to inquire about and answer questions, or our skills in using descriptive words-How Understanding of Social Differences Could Actually Help Underachieving Pupils:

The Broader Meaning of Chicago’s Dyett Hunger Strike | janresseger

The Broader Meaning of Chicago’s Dyett Hunger Strike | janresseger:

The Broader Meaning of Chicago’s Dyett Hunger Strike

The website of the New Yorker magazine just published a fascinating piece by Eve Ewing, written to mark the importance of the recent 34-day hunger strike in Chicago that pressured Rahm Emanuel’s administration to preserve Dyett High School in that city’s Bronzeville neighborhood.

According to a report by WBEZ Chicago, though the hunger strikers did not achieve all of their demands, they did secure a promise that the new Dyett high school will, “have a neighborhood boundary, meaning all children in the attendance-area could attend without having to first meet minimum test-score requirements or go through a lottery (nearly all Chicago high schools opened in the past decade have had citywide boundaries and require students to apply; no one is guaranteed admission).”  “(T)he roots of the fight began years ago, when CPS shook up the local schools in the Bronzeville-Kenwood-Washington Park area by turning the high school, King, into a test-in school. Dyett became the default attendance-area high school for the area…. The school board voted in 2012 to phase Dyett out; the last class graduated in June with 13 students.”

In her New Yorker piece, Ewing sets Chicago Public Schools’ closure of Dyett High School in the context of the history and impact of Chicago’s public housing—a history of public policy reinforcing neighborhood segregation in Chicago, where poverty remains concentrated decades after African Americans came north in the Great Migration to escape just such conditions.  In the 1950s, “When C.H.A. (Chicago Housing Authority) officials appeared before the city council with proposals for new housing construction, white aldermen routinely slashed at the lists of prospective locations until those projects slated for black communities were all that remained.  What resulted was the construction of five more (in addition to the original Ida B. Wells project) high-density housing projects, bringing the total in Bronzeville to eight thousand two hundred and thirty-three units…. In 1970, the families who lived in the Robert Taylor Homes… averaged six people each—a total of six thousand two hundred and fifty adults and twenty thousand four hundred and forty children.  Children outnumbered adults by more than three to one…”

“Ida B. Wells, the Robert Taylor Homes, and other Bronzeville high-rise projects have all been torn down as part of the C.H.A.’s ‘Plan for Transformation,’ which Mayor Richard M. Daley launched in 1999… The agency declared that residents would have the right to return to the newly constructed mixed-income housing that would replace the high-rises… In 2005. Venkatesh and Isil Celimli wrote that seventy-five percent of C.H.A. residents surveyed stated a preference for returning to their old neighborhoods, but less than twenty percent would be able to do so.”  The neighborhoods south of Chicago’s Loop have gentrified. Developers of The Broader Meaning of Chicago’s Dyett Hunger Strike | janresseger:

Reimagining the U.S. High School: An Open Letter to Laurene Powell Jobs | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Reimagining the U.S. High School: An Open Letter to Laurene Powell Jobs | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Reimagining the U.S. High School: An Open Letter to Laurene Powell Jobs

Dear Mrs. Laurene Powell Jobs:

I commend you for initiating a national challenge to transform the comprehensive high school into a Super School and putting $50 million on the stump for experts, parents, practitioners, and academics to compete for in creating better high schools than exist now. Reinventing the high school should generate an enormous range of suggestions for your expert panel to consider after the national round of open meetings end in November. What you are launching is worthwhile especially if it were to spark a national conversation about the goals of tax-supported public schools in a democracy where the economy has shifted from industrial-based to an information-driven one. Whether that conversation (and debate, I hope) will occur depends greatly, I believe, on you and your associates knowing about how high schools have, indeed, changed over the past century and, of equal importance, the checkered history of efforts to “transform” the U.S. high school. That historical knowledge should be one ingredient in considering different groups’ proposals inspired by your challenge.

The most recent serious effort to alter the comprehensive high school was when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation poured over $2 billion into creating small high schools 15 years ago, an effort that the Gates Foundation shut down in 2009. Yet “small high schools” persist–it is one of the changes in high schools that I refer to above–because they personalize instruction for many students heretofore ignored in conventional comprehensive high schools.

Knowing that public high schools have changed in small and big ways over the past century is essential in making wise funding decisions. The originalcomprehensive high school in the 1920s with its diversified curriculum catered to the broad range of student interests and aptitudes. It was an innovation that “transformed” the previous academically narrow high school of the 1890s. Since then, repeated efforts to reform the reform have occurred. In the 1950s, for example, former Harvard University president, James Bryce Conant, called for an overhaul of the high school; a decade later, attacks on the sterile comprehensive high school produced a flurry of alternative and “free” high schools. Ted Sizer launched the Coalition of Essential Schools in the late 1980s with its nine “common principles” and hundreds of those high schools exist across the nation. In the early 1990s, a privately funded venture called the New American Schools Development Corporation, later shortened to New American Schools, spread “whole school reform” models to elementary and secondary schools throughout the U.S. As one advocate put it: those seeking grants from Reimagining the U.S. High School: An Open Letter to Laurene Powell Jobs | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: