School shootings have fueled a $2.7 billion school safety industry. What makes kids safer? - Washington Post

School shootings have fueled a $2.7 billion school safety industry. What makes kids safer? - Washington Post

Armored school doors, bulletproof whiteboards and secret snipers

Billions are being spent to protect children from school shootings.

Does any of it work?

he expo had finally begun, and now hundreds of school administrators streamed into a sprawling, chandeliered ballroom where entrepreneurs awaited, each eager to explain why their product, above all others, was the one worth buying.

Waiters in white button-downs poured glasses of chardonnay and served meatballs wrapped with bacon. In one corner, guests posed with colorful boas and silly hats at a photo booth as a band played Jimmy Buffett covers to the rhythm of a steel drum. For a moment, the festive summer scene, in a hotel 10 miles from Walt Disney World, masked what had brought them all there.

This was the thriving business of campus safety, an industry fueled by an overwhelmingly American form of violence: school shootings.

At one booth, two gray-haired men were selling a 300-pound ballistic whiteboard — adorned with adorable animal illustrations and pocked with five bullet holes — that cost more than $2,900.

“What we want to do is just to give the kids, the teachers, a chance,” one of them said.

“So they can buy a few minutes,” the other added.

Elsewhere at the July conference, vendors peddled tourniquets and pepper-ball guns, facial-recognition software and a security proposal that would turn former Special Operations officers into undercover teachers. Threaded into every pitch, just five months after a Parkland, Fla., massacre, was the implication that their product or service would make students safer — that, if purchased, it might save a life.

What few of the salespeople could offer, however, was proof.

Although school security has grown into a $2.7 billion market — an estimate that does not account for the billions more spent on armed campus police officers — little research has been done on which safety measures do and do not protect students from gun violence. Earlier this fall, The Washington Post sent surveys to every school in its database that had endured a shooting of some kind since the 2012 killings of 20 first-graders in Newtown, Conn., which prompted a surge of security spending by districts across the country. Continue reading: School shootings have fueled a $2.7 billion school safety industry. What makes kids safer? - Washington Post

Is America’s Romance with Charter Schools Fading Despite Gobs of Political Money from Its Promoters? | janresseger

Is America’s Romance with Charter Schools Fading Despite Gobs of Political Money from Its Promoters? | janresseger

Is America’s Romance with Charter Schools Fading Despite Gobs of Political Money from Its Promoters?

Last week’s election produced a couple of significant indicators that the public may be growing weary of charter schools.  At the same time the public seems increasingly aware that adequately funded public schools may be a better way to help the children our society has left behind.  This is despite an enormous political investment by wealthy investors in the future of the charter school movement.

Consider the race for California Superintendent of Public Instruction. Last month for The Intercept, Rachel M. Cohen explained what this highly contentious, non-partisan race between charter proponent Marshall Tuck and his opponent Tony Thurmond has really been all about: “The California charter school lobby is testing its influence in the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction, turning an election for a somewhat obscure statewide position into a notably expensive battle.  More than $50 million has flown into the contest between two Democrats for a nonpartisan office with little statutory power.  For perspective, this is more money raised than in any U.S. House race this cycle and most Senate races, not to mention every other race in California, save for the governor’s. The race, largely understood as a proxy war for the future of California charter schools, is the second attempt by the state’s charter school lobby to demonstrate its influence…. The candidates, Marshall Tuck and Tony Thurmond, both insist that the race is about far more than charters, which currently enroll 10 percent of the state’s 6.2 million public school students, though they admit they hold different visions for the publicly funded, privately managed schools. That’s something their funders also acutely recognize.”

On election night, Marshall Tuck, the former president of Green Dot Charters and an advocate for expanding California’s already huge charter sector, was ahead by 86,000 votes. But as mail-in and absentee ballot have been counted, Thurmond has progressively caught up. By Saturday night, EdSource reported, Marshall Tuck was still ahead by 38,251 out of 6,934,591 votes counted by that time. However, by yesterday morning, the California Secretary of State was reporting Tony Thurmond had pulled ahead with a 3,500 vote lead. By last evening, each candidate had cornered roughly 50 percent of the vote, with a tiny 1,808 vote margin for Continue reading: Is America’s Romance with Charter Schools Fading Despite Gobs of Political Money from Its Promoters? | janresseger

Ignore the charter school think-tank crowd - CommonWealth Magazine

Ignore the charter school think-tank crowd - CommonWealth Magazine

Ignore the charter school think-tank crowd

We don’t need and can't afford charter school expansion in New Bedford

YOU ARE AN EDUCATION RESEARCHER sent to discover best practices in urban schools so that you can replicate them to create results for more kids—kids who you believe are trapped in mediocre schools. You look at three exemplar schools to scale up:

School A has 336 students and rates in the state’s 85^th accountability percentile, a measure now used to aggregate a school’s performance on MCAS relative to other schools in the state. This school made 95 percent improvement toward its own goals, such as increasing the percentage of students who score advanced or proficient on statewide exams, or improving attendance rates. Remarkably, 46 percent of this school’s students have a first language other than English, and 75 percent are considered economically disadvantaged. The school has been named a School of Recognition by the state, among only 50 others.

School B has 730 students and rates in the state’s 59^th accountability percentile and made 83 percent improvement toward its targets. The school is home to specialized classrooms designed to serve students with severe behavioral and developmental delays, and 27 percent of the school’s students have disabilities, 44 percent are economically disadvantaged, and 21 percent have a first language other than English.

School C has 413 students and rates in the state’s 38^th accountability percentile and made 47 percent improvement toward its targets. At the school, 23 percent of the students have a first language other than English, and 58 percent come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

If you had to make the call on which school to expand by 300 percent – to double- or triple-down on – I suspect you would favor schools A and B, New Bedford district public schools Congdon and Pulaski, respectively, over School C, Alma del Mar Charter School, the school actually proposing such an extraordinary expansion.

The New Bedford district public schools have a plethora of higher performing schools. Not just Pulaski and Congdon, but 10 of New Bedford’s elementary schools finished higher in accountability ranking than Alma del Mar, more than half of the city’s primary schools. On improvement toward targets, 18 of the district’s 23 schools exceed Alma’s 47 percent improvement rate. And among those performing worse than Alma? The city’s other two charters: Global Learning and City on a Hill. The district educates a higher percentage of English language learners, students with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged students and has schools soaring past Alma nonetheless.

Why siphon from the most successful of New Bedford’s schools, which outperform charters with Continue reading: Ignore the charter school think-tank crowd - CommonWealth Magazine

More on the Public Purpose of Our Public Schools and the Role of Public Governance | janresseger

More on the Public Purpose of Our Public Schools and the Role of Public Governance | janresseger

More on the Public Purpose of Our Public Schools and the Role of Public Governance

There has recently been a debate among guest writers in Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet” column in the Washington Post. The Network for Public Education’s  Carol Burris and Diane Ravitch published a defense of public governance of public schools, a column which critiqued a new report from the Learning Policy Institute.  The Learning Policy Institute’s Linda Darling-Hammond responded with a defense of the Learning Policy Institute’s report, which defends school choice including privately governed and operated charter schools. Finally Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris responded to Darling-Hammond’s response. This blog weighed in here last week.

As it happens, Stanford University emeritus professor of education, David Labaree enhances this conversation with a new column on the public purpose of public education at Phi Delta Kappan: “We Americans tend to talk about public schooling as though we know what that term means.  But in the complex educational landscape of the 21st century… it’s becoming less and less obvious….”

A spoiler: There is no equivocation in Labaree’s analysis.  He is a strong supporter of public education, and he worries that by prizing the personal and individualistic benefit of education, our society may have lost sight of our schools’ public purpose: “A public good is one that benefits all members of the community, whether or not they contribute to its upkeep or make use of it personally.  In contrast, private goods benefit individuals, serving only those people who take advantage of them. Thus, schooling is a public good to the extent that it helps everyone (including people who don’t have children in school). And schooling is a private good to the extent that it provides individuals with knowledge, skills, and credentials they can use to distinguish themselves from other people and get ahead in life.”

Labaree traces the history of public education through the 19th and early 20th centuries, but More on the Public Purpose of Our Public Schools and the Role of Public Governance | janresseger

Big Education Ape: Linda Darling-Hammond vs. Linda-Darling Hammond – How a Once Great Educator Got Lost Among the Corporate Stooges | gadflyonthewallblog - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/11/linda-darling-hammond-vs-linda-darling.html

janresseger  - https://wp.me/3JgEc

Linda Darling-Hammond vs. Linda-Darling Hammond – How a Once Great Educator Got Lost Among the Corporate Stooges | gadflyonthewallblog

Linda Darling-Hammond vs. Linda-Darling Hammond – How a Once Great Educator Got Lost Among the Corporate Stooges | gadflyonthewallblog

Linda Darling-Hammond vs. Linda-Darling Hammond – How a Once Great Educator Got Lost Among the Corporate Stooges

Linda Darling-Hammond is one of my education heroes.

Perhaps that’s why her recent article in the Washington Post hurts so much.

In it, she and her think tank buddies slam education advocates Diane Ravitch and Carrol Burris for worrying about who governs schools – as if governance had nothing to do with quality education for children.

I’d expect something like that from Bill Gates.

Or Campbell Brown.

Or Peter Cunningham.

But not Hammond!

She’s not a know-nothing privatization flunky. She’s not a billionaire who thinks hording a bunch of money makes him an authority on every kind of human endeavor.

She’s a bona fide expert on teacher preparation and equity.

She founded the Center for Opportunity Policy in Education at Stanford University, where she is professor emeritus.

And she was the head of Barrack Obama’s education policy working group in 2008 when he was running for President.

In fact, she was the reasons many educators thought Obama was going to be a breath of fresh air for our schools and students. Everyone thought she was a lock for Education Secretary should Hope and Change win the day. But when he won, he Continue reading: Linda Darling-Hammond vs. Linda-Darling Hammond – How a Once Great Educator Got Lost Among the Corporate Stooges | gadflyonthewallblog

Billionaires, Not Voters, Are Deciding Elections | PopularResistance.Org

Billionaires, Not Voters, Are Deciding Elections | PopularResistance.Org

BILLIONAIRES, NOT VOTERS, ARE DECIDING ELECTIONS

The recent midterm elections offered an opportunity for America’s moneyed elites to spend their ridiculous wealth on a catalog of their favorite causes and candidates. We are locked in a vicious cycle, where billionaires continue to amass wealth due to policies their influence has bought, which in turn enrich them with even more resources with which to shift the American polity in their favor.

Part of the problem is that billionaires’ control over our democracy is largely invisible. As a recent study by The Guardian showed, high-profile wealthy elites like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates are anomalies. To that point, “[M]ost of the wealthiest US billionaires have made substantial financial contributions—amounting to hundreds of thousands of reported dollars annually, in addition to any undisclosed ‘dark money’ contributions—to conservative Republican candidates and officials who favor the very unpopular step of cutting rather than expanding social security benefits,” write the report’s authors. “Yet, over the 10-year period we have studied, 97% of the wealthiest billionaires have said nothing at all about social security policy.”

The midterm races in California saw several examples of the insidious ways in which the billionaire class made its mark on democracy, most notably in the defeat of Proposition 10, the state ordinance that would have expanded local governments’ jurisdiction over rent control. Several years ago, Wall Street hedge fund managers began scooping up rental properties and foreclosed homes in Los Angeles. According to journalist David Dayen, “Hedge funds, private equity firms and the biggest banks have raised massive amounts of capital to buy distressed or foreclosed single-family homes, often in bulk, at bargain prices.” He added, “It’s the next Wall Street gold rush, with all the warning signs of a renewed speculative bubble.”

So it should have come as no surprise that those same firms spent millions to protect their investments from returning lower profits in their fight against Prop 10. Sadly, Californians bought the corporate propaganda hook, line and sinker, and voted it down by a whopping 61.7 percent, saying “no” to rent control. (Incidentally, the opposition to rent control was also bizarrely funded in part by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association.)

Also in California, billionaires bankrolled the campaign of Marshall Tuck, a corporate candidate for school superintendent who strongly supports the privatization of schools. The race between Tuck and his union-backed rival, Tony Thurmond, broke records for the millions of dollars that the candidates raised and the tens of millions that flowed in from outside groups—a shocking Continue reading: Billionaires, Not Voters, Are Deciding Elections | PopularResistance.Org

New Governors Pritzker and Newsom Set Up For Their ReadyNation Gold Rush – Wrench in the Gears

New Governors Pritzker and Newsom Set Up For Their ReadyNation Gold Rush – Wrench in the Gears
New Governors Pritzker and Newsom Set Up For Their ReadyNation Gold Rush

This past week will go down as an auspicious one for social impact investors and a foreboding one for the targets of their interventions: toddlers, job seekers, the unhoused, and those with mental illness. On November 1, 2018 corporate executives, military officers, athletes, and faith leaders converged on New York City to discuss the impending transformation of early childhood into a global investment market. Five days later JB Pritzker became the Democratic governor of Illinois, and former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom became the Democratic governor of California.

JB Pritzker: Impact Investor As Governor

JB Pritkzer, a billionaire heir to the Hyatt family fortune and backer of the first two early childhood social impact bonds in the US, was not on the recent ReadyNation conference program in New York City as he was in the final push of his campaign to oust Republican Bruce Rauner from the Governorship of Illinois. For over a decade, Pritzker’s Children’s Initiative has financed the work of ReadyNation’s Robert Dugger and University of Chicago Economist James Heckman.

Pritzker money paid for the creation of the Heckman Equation, a tool kit promising a 7-10% annual rate of return to investors in early childhood education, up to 13% if health factors were built into the intervention. The tool kit targets very young children ages 0 to 3, identifying “success” metrics for character training, which were felt to have more potential for “growth” than cognitive achievement or IQ. Heckman and a cadre of researchers have since plowed considerable resources into devising tools, many digital, that supposedly measure social-emotional competencies, particularly Big Five “OCEAN” character traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

Pritzker and Heckman made the rounds, promoting outcomes-based pre-k impact investing to community foundations and institutional investors for quite a few years. In October the complicit NEA (National Education Association) spoke positively of Pritzker’s 5-point, two-generation early childhood education plan, which would allocate $95 million for pre-k expansion in the first year alone. The Annie E. Casey Foundation of Baltimore has been advancing this “two-generation” approach, which hinges on the adoption of vastly expanded integrated data systems.

Interoperable data is a priority for impact investors, because they expect to track impact metrics across multiple interventions to claim “credit” for ALL possible outcomes so they can extract as much profit as possible. It is fitting that the Casey Foundation would be a prominent voice advancing data-interoperability given their funding and organizational leadership are tied Continue reading: New Governors Pritzker and Newsom Set Up For Their ReadyNation Gold Rush – Wrench in the Gears

Impossible to Regulate Deregulated Charter Schools | Dissident Voice

Impossible to Regulate Deregulated Charter Schools | Dissident Voice

Impossible to Regulate Deregulated Charter Schools

Regulations have to do with what is allowed and what is not allowed. They establish what an individual, organization, or business can or cannot do. Regulations shape behaviors, actions, conduct, aims, and outcomes.

Regulations are often used in self-serving ways by different factions of the rich to benefit themselves while disadvantaging other wealthy competitors. Those with the most political-economic power hold sway and fashion regulations as they alone see fit. As in other spheres of capitalist life, “might makes right.” Power, not reason or principles, dominates affairs. The main point is that regulations, like laws and policies, are always political. They have a class character to them. Regulations are not neutral or above class interests because we do not live in a classless society.

The main question is who is creating or eliminating regulations and for what aims? The key issue is not whether regulations are “good” or “bad”, per se, or how many or how few there are, but which one of the two major classes in society do they serve? Regulations are a tool of class warfare. There is a big difference, for example, between capital-centered regulations verses human-centered regulations. The former serve the wealthy few who dominate society while the latter serve the common good.

Regulations and regulators have, of course, frequently failed to block many “bad behaviors” and problems. Regulation does not always work. Regulation does not automatically guarantee quality or progress. A major example of the failure of regulations and regulators is the Wall Street engineered economic crash of 2008 that has left most economies in awful shape for the last 10 years—with no real and sustainable improvement in sight. Indeed, it appears that there is no returning to even substandard pre-2008 economic levels. Multiple regulatory agencies that have been around for decades did not prevent this still-unfolding economic catastrophe that the mainstream media keeps trying to downplay.

In today’s context, having no regulations (deregulation) guarantees chaos, anarchy, and violence—key features of the “free market.” A rules-free environment ensures that only the “strongest” and “fittest” “survive” within the “free market” while the majority keeps losing. Deregulation has little to do with “accountability,” “innovation,” or prosperity and security for all.

Since the late 1970s deregulation has been a major feature of the neoliberal antisocial offensive of the rich to counter the inevitable falling rate of profit under capitalism. Governments at home and abroad have been wreaking havoc in their societies as a result of phony austerity agendas launched to save the rich. Deregulation goes hand in hand with privatization, a major form of which is contracting. Deregulating public agencies and enterprises (e.g., education) allows for greater privatization, often through contracting and public-private “partnerships.” This capital-centered arrangement always increases the wealth of private interests and diminishes the wealth of the public. It is not a “win-win” situation.

Neoliberal ideology insists that the rich not be constrained or regulated in any Continue reading: Impossible to Regulate Deregulated Charter Schools | Dissident Voice

Inside Philanthropy: Billionaires Buying Political Support for Charter Schools, or, Democracy for Sale | Diane Ravitch's blog

Inside Philanthropy: Billionaires Buying Political Support for Charter Schools, or, Democracy for Sale | Diane Ravitch's blog

Inside Philanthropy: Billionaires Buying Political Support for Charter Schools, or, Democracy for Sale

The veil is beginning to fall away from the billionaire-funded charter activity. There are no grassroots in this billionaire-driven “movement.” It is all about money. Without the billionaires’ money, the demand and the supply would dry up.

Inside Philanthropy looks at the funding behind Marshall Tuck, and the article assumes he has won. But millions of votes remain uncounted in California and the contest is not yet decided. At last count, the candidates were less than one percentage point apart. We will have to wait to see who wins the contest between Big Money and teachers.

On the eve of the election, spending for this election had risen to $50 million. The total is likely to be even higher when final reporting is in.

The apparent winner of the contest, Marshall Tuck, is the former president of Green Dot, a charter school network. He wants to expand charters in a state that already leads the nation in the number of such schools. The other candidate, Tony Thurmond, argued for putting the brakes on charters to address issues of transparency and accountability.

Tuck ran unsuccessfully for the same office in 2014 in a race that cost $30 million. In both cases, Tuck outspent his opponent. This year, his campaign had raised $28.5 million by election day.

The money has come from a who’s who of charter school backers and K-12 philanthropists, including Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, Lynn Schusterman, Julian Robertson, Laurene Powell Jobs, Laura and John Arnold, Dan Loeb, Michael Bloomberg and his daughter Emma, and three Waltons: Carrie Walton Penner, Alice Walton, and Jim Walton. 

Among Tuck’s biggest backers was Helen Schwab, wife of the finance billionaire Charles Schwab, who gave $2 million to EdVoice for the Kids PAC, which managed independent campaign committees for Tuck; Arthur Rock, the venture capitalist, gave $3 million to EdVoice, while Doris Fisher gave over $3 million. Along with the Schwabs, Fisher has been a huge Continue reading: Inside Philanthropy: Billionaires Buying Political Support for Charter Schools, or, Democracy for Sale | Diane Ravitch's blog

Supporting Parents and Students – Carl J. Petersen – Medium

Supporting Parents and Students – Carl J. Petersen – Medium
Supporting Parents and Students

The Northridge East Neighborhood Council (NENC) is one of 99 Neighborhood Councils in the City of Los Angeles. These Councils “are advisory bodies who advocate for their communities” and are comprised of “City officials who are elected by the members of their local communities”. They are designed to be “the closest form of government to the people.”

On October 17, 2018, the NENC considered two resolutions proposed by the Education Committee. Both were passed with overwhelming support and have been forwarded to Los Angeles City Councilman David Ryu, Chair of the Health, Education, and Neighborhood Councils Committee.

The first resolution was a result of a presentation to the Education Committee by Rudy Gonzalves, the Director of Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE). As part of the Reclaim Our Schools LA coalition, LAANE helped develop the education platform “Reclaim Our Schools LA’s Give Kids A Chance that promotes the need for investing in teachers, community schools, parents, and most importantly our students within the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).” This platform includes the following demands:

• Fund Our Schools: California is the richest state in the nation yet ranks 43 out of 50 among the states in per-pupil funding. LAUSD must fight at the local, state, and national level to increase funding to $20,000 per student by the year 2020.
• Reduce Class Size: Students have a better chance to succeed with smaller classes. LAUSD must stop ignoring the rules that protect students from huge classes sizes.
• Charter School Oversight: LAUSD must regulate charter school growth and charter school co-locations on neighborhood school campuses. An unchecked expansion of charter schools drains millions away from our neighborhood schools.
• Less Testing and More Teaching: LAUSD must increase educator discretion in testing. Let’s limit unnecessary standardized testing that reduces critical instructional time.

With this vote, the NENC stands in support of this platform.

The second motion passed by the Council calls on the Los Angeles City Council “to urge the LAUSD School Board to pass the ‘Board Meeting Accessibility to the Public’ resolution that has been submitted to them for Continue reading: 

The Graphic Truth About Our Education System | The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People

The Graphic Truth About Our Education System | The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People

The Graphic Truth About Our Education System

Please, take a good look at the graphic truth about public education in America.

National leaders and much of the media repeatedly call the system “failed.” That is their version of the graphic truth. They point to test scores as “evidence.” President Trump described the institution as an …

“education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge.”

That’s disturbing. Also disturbing is this reporters response to Trump’s “facts” in Trump’s vision of education begins and ends with schools being bad.

“… it’s true that the United States spends quite a bit, relatively speaking, on education, and test results are fairly disappointing.”

But let’s dig deeper into the Trump/DeVos “facts.”

Look closer at the Graphic Truth About Spending and OutcomesTotal costs DID rise dramatically. So did employees. But why?Blame the teacher’s union? Not so fast. Continue reading: The Graphic Truth About Our Education System | The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People

Lessons from the Continuing Attack on Kansas City’s Schools | tultican

Lessons from the Continuing Attack on Kansas City’s Schools | tultican

Lessons from the Continuing Attack on Kansas City’s Schools

For three decades relentless harm has been visited upon public schools in Kansas City, Missouri. This city provides stark evidence for the fallacy of school choice and the folly of employing standardized testing results to gauge school quality.

Leaders from the Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) presented at the recent Network for Public Education (NPE) conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. This article is in part based on that presentation.

The Major Cause of Racial and Economic Segregation

Richard Rothstein, Senior Fellow of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law, wrote about segregation as a function of government housing policy. He noted,

“With Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and then, after World War II, Veterans Administration (VA) guarantees, white middle-class families could buy suburban homes with little or no down payments and extended 30-year amortization schedules. Monthly charges were often less than rents the families had previously paid to housing authorities or private landlords.

“The government had an explicit policy of not insuring suburban mortgages for African Americans.”

Population Shift Graphic Presented by Kansas City Public School Leaders at #NPE18Indy

As Rothstein reported, the dramatic population shifts in Kansas City began with the establishment of the FHA in the mid 1930’s and accelerated with the VA guarantees after WWII. The graphic above shows that trend continuing.

In 2007, a popular Democratic state senator from Independence, Victor Callahan, led an effort to remove seven schools from Kansas City by transferring them to the Independence School District. He also claimed that the Kansas City school district should disappear. Gwendolyn Grant, leader of the Greater Kansas City Urban League, supported the move contending that a more racially homogeneous school board would be less contentious. The move was ratified by large majorities in both Kansas City and Independence. It seems that Kansas Continue reading: Lessons from the Continuing Attack on Kansas City’s Schools | tultican