Chicago Eliminates Another Arne Duncan Initiative | Diane Ravitch's blog

Chicago Eliminates Another Arne Duncan Initiative | Diane Ravitch's blog

Chicago Eliminates Another Arne Duncan Initiative

While Arne Duncan was superintendent of schools in Chicago, he received over $10 million from the Gates Foundation to begin “turning around” low-performing schools. He supported the creation of The Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL), which subsequently took over 31 schools, some of which raised test scores but were criticized for pushing out low-scoring students. One of AUSL’s goals was to train teachers for urban schools.

The leadership of Chicago Public Schools decided to absorb the 31 schools back into the school district, according to Chalkbeat. AUSL will continue training teachers.

Tapped in 2006 to steer improvements at some of the city’s lowest-performing schools, the nonprofit Academy for Urban School Leadership manages 31 schools that together enrolled 14,745 students this school year, mostly on the city’s South and West sides. The contractor CONTINUE READING: Chicago Eliminates Another Arne Duncan Initiative | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jan Resseger: Will the Biden Administration Revive the Failed Policies of NCLB and Obama? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jan Resseger: Will the Biden Administration Revive the Failed Policies of NCLB and Obama? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jan Resseger: Will the Biden Administration Revive the Failed Policies of NCLB and Obama?

A few years ago, someone coined the term “zombie policies” to describe policies that fail again and again, yet never go away. One such zombie is “merit pay,” which has never succeeded yet never dies an ignominious death or loss of reputation.

I mention this because our current education system is hampered by at least 20 years of zombie policies, beginning with No Child Left Behind, then Race to the Top, then Trump’s fervent support for privatization.

In 2010, when my book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing abd Choice are Undermining Education” was published, I participated in a debate with Carmel Martin, one of the key strategists of the Obama Department of Education. She defended every aspect of the Bush-Obama approach: high-stakes testing, closing low-performing schools, charter schools, evaluating teachers by student test scores, and so on.

A year or so later, I was invited to the White House Executive Offices to meet Obama’s top education team: Melody Barnes, chief of the White House domestic policy CONTINUE READING: Jan Resseger: Will the Biden Administration Revive the Failed Policies of NCLB and Obama? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Mike Klonsky's Blog: 15 years later, CPS reclaims Duncan's AUSL 'turnaround schools'.

Mike Klonsky's Blog: 15 years later, CPS reclaims Duncan's AUSL 'turnaround schools'.

15 years later, CPS reclaims Duncan's AUSL 'turnaround schools'

"Yet for all the public attention, AUSL's results have been mixed; many students have made considerable progress, but as a group they still lag well behind district averages ... with many ending up on par or even below comparable neighborhood schools." -- Chicago Tribune, 2/6/2012

Yesterday, CPS announced that it was reclaiming the so-called "turnaround schools" which were handed over to the private management and teacher training company, the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL) in 2006. 

All I can say about this break from Arne Duncan's privatization "reforms" carried out under the banner of Renaissance 2010 and then rebranded as Race to the Top during his term as Sec. of Education, is -- it's about time. 

Lacking any research base and built on the false premise that private companies, hedge funders, and power philanthropists could best operate public institutions, AUSL's school takeover turned out to be an expensive and dismal flop.

AUSL was founded and run by Chicago venture capitalist Martin Koldyke, who used his connections and big campaign donations to become a powerhouse in the school turnaround business. Koldyke, a golf buddy of then-Mayor Daley, decided he could save the public school system by running it like a business. Koldyke's company, Frontenac, had been a big investor in for-profit colleges like DeVry and Rasmussen College.

Despite AUSL schools ranking at or near the bottom of the system, the company benefited from CONTINUE READING: Mike Klonsky's Blog: 15 years later, CPS reclaims Duncan's AUSL 'turnaround schools'.

Will Staff Returning from Obama/Duncan Years Compromise Biden’s Public Education Promises? | janresseger

Will Staff Returning from Obama/Duncan Years Compromise Biden’s Public Education Promises? | janresseger

Will Staff Returning from Obama/Duncan Years Compromise Biden’s Public Education Promises?

At the end of his first hundred days, President Joe Biden deserves credit for taking important steps to help public schools serving children living in communities where family poverty is concentrated.

First, the President promised during the campaign to triple funding for Title I schools, and the federal budget he has proposed for FY22 would accomplish two-thirds of that promise by doubling the federal investment in Title I, whose funding has lagged for decades behind what is needed for equity.

Second, in the American Rescue Plan federal stimulus passed in March, the President expanded and made fully refundable the Child Tax Credit. In his new American Family Plan he has proposed to extend these urgently needed changes in the Child Tax Credit until 2025.  The expansion of the Child Tax Credit will make it possible for America’s poorest families with children to qualify for this program for the first time. We know that poverty is an overwhelming impediment for children, and ameliorating child poverty is an important step toward helping America’s poorest children thrive at school.

During the campaign, Biden also promised to move public school policy away from two decades of standardized testing.  That is a promise he has, at least until now, entirely broken.

In a letter, dated February 22, 2021, Acting Assistant Secretary of Education, Ian Rosenblum informed states they must test students this year on the mandated annual high-stakes CONTINUE READING: Will Staff Returning from Obama/Duncan Years Compromise Biden’s Public Education Promises? | janresseger

Biden Chooses Ex-Obama Official for Key Position in Department of Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

Biden Chooses Ex-Obama Official for Key Position in Department of Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

Biden Chooses Ex-Obama Official for Key Position in Department of Education

During the Obama administration, Roberto Rodriguez was the White House advisor on education. He vigorously supported the Race to the Top program, the Common Core standards, and high-stakes testing. All of these initiatives failed to improve student test scores and wasted billions of dollars.

Andrew Ujifusa wrote in Education Week (April 28) about the return of Rodriguez. He joins former Obama official Carmel Martin, another zealous advocate of those failed policies. Basically, they are switching places, with Rodriguez taking the job that Martin held, and Martin moving into the slot previously occupied by Martin. There is no indication that either has modified their support for the Bush-Obama bipartisan agenda.

President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he plans to nominate Roberto Rodriguez, one of former President Barack Obama’s top education advisers, to lead one of the most important divisions of the U.S. Department of Education.

Biden wants Rodriguez to lead the Education Department’s office of planning, evaluation and policy CONTINUE READING: Biden Chooses Ex-Obama Official for Key Position in Department of Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

Will President Biden Support Public School Teachers and Abandon Awful Obama-Duncan and Trump-DeVos Education Agendas? | janresseger

Will President Biden Support Public School Teachers and Abandon Awful Obama-Duncan and Trump-DeVos Education Agendas? | janresseger

Will President Biden Support Public School Teachers and Abandon Awful Obama-Duncan and Trump-DeVos Education Agendas?

There is widespread anxiety about President Elect Joseph Biden’s choice of a Secretary of Education and his public school policy priorities. Yes, we are bidding farewell to Betsy DeVos, which certainly must be celebrated, but something much more consequential may be happening. Two excellent articles this week explore where education policy has been lodged for two decades and what kind of change seems possible with a new administration.

In a interview for The Progressive, Jeff Bryant poses an important question to Derek Black, the constitutional scholar and author of the new book, Schoolhouse Burning: “You write in the book’s introduction that the nation is in the middle of a battle for the long-term viability of public education. How might this battle continue under a Biden presidency?”

Black responds: “It’s going to be great to be rid of Betsy DeVos, at least psychologically, if nothing else. In some respects, she was more of a cheerleader than an executioner (of public schooling) but she cheered on the executioners, especially on the state level. It’s going to be nice that those folks don’t have a friend in Washington, so when they attack public education, they have to do it on their own political capital not hers or the president’s. The other layer to this is that it’s not as though the Obama administration was good. Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, had problematic charter school policies and policies that were part of the war on teachers. Biden hasn’t sounded like he plans on resuming Obama policies, but we CONTINUE READING: Will President Biden Support Public School Teachers and Abandon Awful Obama-Duncan and Trump-DeVos Education Agendas? | janresseger

The telling things Barack Obama wrote -- and didn’t mention -- about his education policies in new memoir - The Washington Post

The telling things Barack Obama wrote -- and didn’t mention -- about his education policies in new memoir - The Washington Post

The telling things Barack Obama wrote — and didn’t mention — about his education policies in new memoir

In his best-selling new book, “A Promised Land,” Barack Obama writes compellingly about his road to the White House and key moments and policies of his first term as president. There’s the Affordable Care Act. The crisis he inherited in the U.S. financial system and his successful efforts to save it. The Afghan War. The Arab-Israeli conflict and the Arab Spring. China and Iran. Climate change. The raid he ordered to kill Osama bin Laden.

But on one important issue that proved to be a flash point — education policy — he doesn’t have much to say. The memoir’s index shows references to education policies on only four of 701 narrative pages — and none are more than a few sentences. What he doesn’t address says at least as much as what he does.

Meanwhile, his vice president, Joe Biden, will become president of the United States on Jan. 20, and the Biden education agenda will be compared not only to that of President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos did but also to Obama’s.

Biden has so far laid out an education overhaul agenda that does not resemble Trump’s or Obama’s, and he has promised to be a friend to public educators — but many are waiting to see what he actually does after they were disappointed by Obama.

Obama’s education agenda surprised many of his supporters, who had expected him to address inequity in public schools and to de-emphasize high-stakes standardized testing, which had become the key metric to hold schools accountable under the 2001 federal No Child Left Behind law.

But Obama did not. Instead, he allowed Education Secretary Arne Duncan to push a strident education overhaul program that made standardized testing even more important than NCLB had, and that became highly controversial across the political spectrum for different reasons. Critics called it “corporate reform” because it used methods more common in business than in civic institutions, such as using big data, closing schools that underperformed, and eliminating or weakening of teacher tenure and seniority rights. CONTINUE READING: The telling things Barack Obama wrote -- and didn’t mention -- about his education policies in new memoir - The Washington Post

Waiting for the Secretary of Education. – Fred Klonsky

Waiting for the Secretary of Education. – Fred Klonsky

WAITING FOR THE SECRETARY OF EDUCATION.

Arne Duncan tweets like he never had the job.

It was disturbing to read the Arne Duncan tweet yesterday.

Although it was classic Arne, including words like “rigor” and “successful teachers,” without ever having to define what that all means.

When Arne was Obama’s Secretary of Education it was all about accountability as a race to the top, measured by test scores.

Federal funding was distributed on the basis of how students performed on standardized tests.

Test scores defined the successful teacher.

In Illinois, in order to even apply for a Race to the Top federal grant, laws were passed by the state legislature that tied teacher evaluation to individual student test scores.

Innovative teaching became the enemy of a good teacher performance review.

Then came Betsy DeVos. Her four year tenure as Secretary of Education was a full on CONTINUE READING: Waiting for the Secretary of Education. – Fred Klonsky

CURMUDGUCATION: Dear Joe Biden:

CURMUDGUCATION: Dear Joe Biden:

Dear Joe Biden:

If someone has a pipeline to the campaign, please feel to send this along.

Dear VP Biden:

I know that this evening, you have your hands full with the Great Orange Loon in Cleveland. But you've got an education flavored fundraiser tomorrow night, and we really need to talk.

Here's the event:

It might have been of interest to educators, except, of course, the price of admission is, well-- a "champion" ponies up $5,600, and on the bottom end, an "attendee" pays $100. I mean, I was sorely tempted, but as a retired teacher with two toddlers at home, I don't have $100 to spend on something that will probably horrify me anyway.

Because here's the thing.

I really cannot state strongly enough how much actual working classroom teachers don't really like or trust Arne Duncan. Truthfully, they mostly don't know John King all that well--unless they're from New York, in which case they still have a bitter taste in their mouths from his disastrous tenure there.

I'm sure your campaign has a lovely working relationship with union leaders. But the rank and file, the teachers in the trenches, the people who represent millions of actual votes-- they are not so CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Dear Joe Biden:

CURMUDGUCATION: Arne Duncan's New Corporate Edu-biz Job

CURMUDGUCATION: Arne Duncan's New Corporate Edu-biz Job

Arne Duncan's New Corporate Edu-biz Job

f there's one thing we know about folks in the education disruption biz, it's that they are remarkably adept at finding work no matter how much failure they pack into their CV.

Yes, it's freakin' hilarious.

And so it is with little surprise that we note that Arne Duncan has picked up a new job as the chairman of the board for FullBloom. This comes on top of his job as a partner of the Emerson Collective, Laurene Powell Jobs's--well, we need a new name for something that "uses philanthropy, impact investing, and promoting policy solutions to reimagine some of society's most calcified systems and create new possibilities for individuals, families, and communities."

Here's what CEO Jeffrey Cohen has to say about the momentous acquisition:

“Having a thought leader like Arne help guide our decisions through this time of unprecedented educational disruption is vital as we work to ensure both the safety and engagement of our students,” said CEO Jeffrey Cohen. “We are delighted to welcome Arne to the board. This appointment makes us better as an organization because we know he will hold us to the highest standards when it comes to producing results for the children and clients we serve.”

Yes, Duncan is apparently a thought leader now. Who'd have guessed.

So what is FullBloom? It's a sort of edu-biz conglomerate, a company that has grown through CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Arne Duncan's New Corporate Edu-biz Job