Schools Matter: Vouchers in FL Create Black Christian Madrassahs in Strip Malls

Schools Matter: Vouchers in FL Create Black Christian Madrassahs in Strip Malls

Vouchers in FL Create Black Christian Madrassahs in Strip Malls

Although this commentary by Billy Townsend describes a seed of hope in Florida's education desert, the bigger message points to what you get with laws that allow unregulated and unaccredited private "schools" to replace public schools that have been malignantly-neglected by segregationists who want to close them.

Orlando Sentinel, May 16 

Jones High success story illustrates inadequacy of voucher schools

Six years ago, essentially zero Jones High School students took physics. Today, more than 250 do. That means 250 Orlando-area young people per year now have a better chance of becoming engineers or scientists or doctors. We should celebrate that. Physics is crucial to many educational and professional journeys. 

Unfortunately, as a recent former Polk County school board member, I know all too well the rarity of serious growth in Florida’s education capacity. Our state is steadily dismantling education capacity everywhere through its contempt for public schools and indifference to voucher-school performance. Capacity destruction drives Florida’s chronic educator shortages. 

It’s one reason Florida has among America’s worst state test score “learning rates,” according to The CONTINUE READING: Schools Matter: Vouchers in FL Create Black Christian Madrassahs in Strip Malls

Schools Matter: Dear Sen. Bennet: The best way to help "high poverty schools" is to eliminate "high poverty schools."

Schools Matter: Dear Sen. Bennet: The best way to help "high poverty schools" is to eliminate "high poverty schools."

Dear Sen. Bennet: The best way to help "high poverty schools" is to eliminate "high poverty schools."

Call me excited about the many billions of dollars that Team Biden is planning to invest in new and renewed education initiatives, from pre-K through college.  Even more exciting is the total absence (so far) of systemic efforts to bribe and/or extort states to adopt corporate policies favored by the profiteers of the education industrial complex.  It's too early to know for sure, but it looks as if these unprecedented education investments now on the horizon actually acknowledge the massive education debt owed to public institutions that have been deprived for decades of needed funds for staffing, physical plants, transportation, and instructional resources.

As these new funding streams come closer to reality, the Biden Team has also targeted child poverty, with tax credits in the Covid relief legislation that will cut child poverty almost in half. If these cuts can be made permanent, the reductions in child poverty would constitute, in themselves, the most important education reform of the past 50 years.  For as child poverty rates decrease, we may certainly expect increases in student achievement.

But old habits of thought die slowly, it seems.  For as we stand on the cusp of dramatically cutting poverty rates and addressing other structural issues that have helped preserve segregation based on race and class, some politicians remain focused on treating the symptom, rather than the disease.  

Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) offers a good example of politicians who believe that the performance, CONTINUE READING: Schools Matter: Dear Sen. Bennet: The best way to help "high poverty schools" is to eliminate "high poverty schools."

Schools Matter: Scandal-Ridden TN DOE Lies to Parents about Opting Out of Tests

Schools Matter: Scandal-Ridden TN DOE Lies to Parents about Opting Out of Tests

Scandal-Ridden TN DOE Lies to Parents about Opting Out of Tests

Andy Spears recently shared a memo from the TN Department of Education denying denying parents the right to opt out of annual state testing.  Even though the invalid, unreliable, and racist tests have never been morally defensible, they are particularly indefensible during the present pandemic. 

Tennessee's corrupt Education Commissioner and former charter school CEO, Penny Schwinn, continues to circulate a one-page lie that tells parents that opting out of state testing is prohibited by state and federal laws. Any parent receiving this ridiculous memo should ignore it and keep their children safe from these irrelevant, racist, and mideducative tests that only companies that use public education as another vast revenue stream. 

Speaking of revenue streams, Broad Center alum Penny Schwinn has an established reputation for using her office to arrange lucrative no-bid contracts for her cronies in the ed industry. Before coming to Tennessee, she was caught up in a Texas-sized scandal based on playing favorites and passing out no-bid contracts.  

Since coming to Tennessee, Schwinn has continued her corrupt practices in awarding a no-bid management contract for a school voucher program and, more recently, another multimillion dollar no-bid contract for a  company to screen results on third grade reading tests.

As Bill Lee's mentor always said, only the best people. 

Schools Matter: Scandal-Ridden TN DOE Lies to Parents about Opting Out of Tests

Schools Matter: Biden's Blockheaded Approach to Teachers and Covid

Schools Matter: Biden's Blockheaded Approach to Teachers and Covid

Biden's Blockheaded Approach to Teachers and Covid

Everyone wants schools open, particularly teachers engaged online with disengaged children online. But teachers, being the selfish sort they are, would like live out their lives, rather than dying alone while a machine pumps air into their Covid-melted lungs.  

The Biden Administration messaging on reopening schools that would be safe for teachers and staff has been the biggest mess I have seen from what, otherwise, appears to be a well-oiled machine on top of most of the chaos left by T---p.  Yesterday's appearance by Jen Psaki did not help:

“The CDC is saying in order to be safe, there are a number of steps that can be taken. Vaccinating teachers is one of them,” Psaki said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” before listing an array of other measures, including smaller class sizes, separating children on  CONTINUE READING: Schools Matter: Biden's Blockheaded Approach to Teachers and Covid

Schools Matter: Part 2: Red State Governors Pick Up Where DeVos Left Off

Schools Matter: Part 2: Red State Governors Pick Up Where DeVos Left Off

Part 2: Red State Governors Pick Up Where DeVos Left Off

More than 15 years before the Trumpers arrived in DC to initiate the latest "back to basic stupidity" era in all things social, cultural, economic, and intellectual, there was another Republican, George W. Bush, who had his own particular backwards fixation, which found its way into education policy in general and K-3 reading instruction in particular. 

Following his appointment to the Presidency by the Supreme Court in December 2000, Bush's first big initiative was No Child Left Behind, and reading instruction was the centerpiece of that legislation. 

In shaping NCLB reading policy, Bush leaned heavily on NIH neuropsychologist and self-declared reading guru, Reid Lyon, who viewed learning to read "the right way" as important for neural wiring as it was for academic success.  In a 2002 speech, Lyon told a group of Maryland teachers that "[w]e have to realize that education has to take on the same importance as medicine. . . . Teachers are the best brain surgeons around, the best at developing the nervous system." 

Lyon's enthusiasm for regimented phonics instruction as the best way to hard-wire receptive, convergent learners was matched by his animosity toward professional teacher preparation and research-based methods for teaching reading that go beyond . Just two months after Lyon spoke to Maryland teachers about the importance of their craft, he said this at a national policy forum:  "If there was any piece of legislation that I could pass it would be to blow up colleges of education."

Five years later, however, Lyon was helping to launch a for-profit college of education focused on preparing reading teachers the way God and Reid Lyon intended (my bolds): 

What I learned at NIH and what guides our course development at American College of CONTINUE READING: Schools Matter: Part 2: Red State Governors Pick Up Where DeVos Left Off

Schools Matter: Gov. Bill Lee to Sacrifice Third Graders to Help Him in 2024

Schools Matter: Gov. Bill Lee to Sacrifice Third Graders to Help Him in 2024

Gov. Bill Lee to Sacrifice Third Graders to Help Him in 2024

Prior to this week, the last time a Tennessee governor brought the General Assembly into Special Session to pass education legislation was January 2010, and it was all about getting more federal money to pay for the schools that state politicians are unwilling to support.  

Responding to call by Gov. Phil Bredesen (D), the TN legislature quickly met in January 2010 and passed into state law the necessary policies that would make the state a shoo-in for a half-billion dollar federal grant to be provided by Obama's Race to to the Top (RttT).  A core component of Tennessee's half-baked program was to use the money for a test score based teacher evaluation scheme, which added to Tennessee's reputation as an educational laughingstock.

Just this week, Governor Bill Lee (R), has ridden herd over another special session on education, this one ostensibly to address 1) what educational snake oil salesmen call the Covid-related "learning loss," and 2) the reading proficiency emergency at Tennessee's elementary schools.

Since "learning loss" scam is covered in this recent post, let me focus for a moment on Bill Lee's other manufactured crisis, reading literacy. 

Less than two years ago, Lee's Commissioner of Education, Penny Schwinn was providing this spin on recent NAEP CONTINUE READING: Schools Matter: Gov. Bill Lee to Sacrifice Third Graders to Help Him in 2024

Schools Matter: Curriculum Associates, "Learning Loss," and Corporate Gain

Schools Matter: Curriculum Associates, "Learning Loss," and Corporate Gain

Curriculum Associates, "Learning Loss," and Corporate Gain

Curriculum Associates (CA) started in a garage in 1969 with four employees, and for twenty years the company marketed supplementary basic curriculum materials to K-12 school systems.  In 1989, the original head of the company, Frank Ferguson, saw the testing accountability writing on the wall, and he expanded the focus of the company into the assessment market with the creation of TEST READY®  Mathematics.  

In 2008, Ferguson stepped down as CEO and hired Rob Waldron, who had previously run Kaplan's after-school tutoring division, which was funded in the early 2000s by billions of NCLB federal education dollars that ended up in corporate coffers.  This is a clip from a 2008 Harper's article by a former Kaplan employee:

In New York City, Kaplan provides NCLB- mandated tutoring for the high school Regents exams and the subject exams administered to students in the third through eighth grades.) Many educators argue that the gains from prep courses are negligible and the programs themselves ultimately harmful, since they drain precious funds and class time. A recent Chicago Public Schools study examining student performance on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills found “little difference between tutored students and those who were eligible but did not receive tutoring.” The price tag for supplemental tutoring in Chicago, which 60,000 students received in the 2004–2005 school year: $50 million.

In Waldron's first year as CEO at Curriculum Associates, CA did $26 million in business. By 2020, CA was doing $260 million a year and was in the top 10 education publishers in the world. 

You see, CA was one of the first companies to see the gargantuan profit potential in Common Core.  In 2008, the company aggressively created and marketed print materials aligned with Common Core. 

Then in 2011, CA entered the computer based assessment and personalized learning market with i-Ready, a CONTINUE READING: Schools Matter: Curriculum Associates, "Learning Loss," and Corporate Gain

Schools Matter: The Good News and the Bad News on Miguel Cardona

Schools Matter: The Good News and the Bad News on Miguel Cardona

The Good News and the Bad News on Miguel Cardona

First the good news.  Cardona's has deep experience as a teacher, school administrator, and state education commissioner. He understands public school culture, and he understands the challenges of growing up short on privilege.  

Cardona will be the first Secretary of Education to understand the kinds of school environments and programs that allow English learners to thrive while becoming proficient in English and keeping up academically.  As such, he is an advocate for bilingual and dual language programs, which have been shown by an established body of research to be the most effective and efficient strategies for educating English learners.

Cardona believes that all children and teens should have a voice in shaping their own schooling and not be forced in the college-for-all-regardless mold.  Cardona will likely be an advocate for the kind of K-12 magnet schools where students attend based on interests.

Cardona will likely be a strong civil rights advocate and a supporter of integrated schools.  We don't know, however, if he will be the first Secretary since the federal department was created to take seriously the research on the importance of racial and class integration, social capital, and diversity among faculty.

In addition, we don't know how how much Cardona is willing to focus on the importance of the education debt owed to the CONTINUE READING: Schools Matter: The Good News and the Bad News on Miguel Cardona

Schools Matter: New Secretary of Education Sweepstakes

Schools Matter: New Secretary of Education Sweepstakes

New Secretary of Education Sweepstakes

Joe Biden's team (Dr. Jill and who else) will be choosing a new Secretary of Education. Of those listed, who's your pick?  If you say Randi (Rhonda) or Lily, your comment will not be posted. 

From WaPo:

Under Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Education Department has rolled back some civil rights protections as well as Obama-era efforts to hold for-profit colleges accountable for poor outcomes. She’s promoted alternatives to public schools and tried to slash federal funding for education. Biden is expected to reverse all of that, with more money for K-12 and higher education, new and revived civil rights protections and a focus on racial equity.

Biden has said he will name a public school educator as secretary of Education, a stab at DeVos, who had no experience with public schools. Many expect that to be someone from the K-12 world. Among those talked about for the job include a handful of big-city school superintendents, such as Sonja Santelises from Baltimore, Janice Jackson from Chicago or Seattle’s Denise Juneau.

Potential picks: CONTINUE READING: 

Schools Matter: New Secretary of Education Sweepstakes