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'.

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

A New Narrative About The Secretary of Education, Too [Medium] | The Jose Vilson

A New Narrative About The Secretary of Education, Too [Medium] | The Jose Vilson

A NEW NARRATIVE ABOUT THE SECRETARY OF EDUCATION, TOO [MEDIUM]

For EduColor’s Medium blog, I wrote a bit more about the Secretary of Education using some inspiration from Vanessa Siddle Walker’s The Lost Education of Horace Tate, a must read:

“I’ve witnessed how the narrative of public schooling and education writ large has forced parents to run towards alternatives, even when those alternatives are often used for exploitative and racist means. Some people would have never cared for the collective well-being of public schools without the breadth of reforms put in place by No Child Left Behind/Race To The Top, leaving Black and brown kids with no options while other parents send their children to the one public school in their district that they’ve funneled their tax dollars toward. I’ve witnessed how many folks on “both” sides of the education reform camp have gone out of their way to subvert racial justice even when they ostensibly say that Black lives matter. I’ve made note of when even the most well-intentioned of us who want to bridge the divide inevitably get perceived as mascots even by those who appear supportive.

Years ago, I feared the debate would make religions out of complicated human beings to the detriment of our poorest and ignored students and communities. There are no “both sides” to this situation. There are many.”

To read more, please do follow through and click here. Share and share alike.

A New Narrative About The Secretary of Education, Too [Medium] | The Jose Vilson

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: Betsy DeVos Has, In Fact, Become Arne Duncan 2.0

CURMUDGUCATION: Betsy DeVos Has, In Fact, Become Arne Duncan 2.0

Betsy DeVos Has, In Fact, Become Arne Duncan 2.0

When this originally ran at Forbes.com, there was still some qujestion about the premise. Since then I've updated it with new info from DeVos herself.

For many conservatives, one of the greatest sins perpetrated by Obama’s secretary of education was using the powers of his office to bypass the legislature. Arne Duncan oversaw Race to the Top, which was instrumental in pushing Common Core and other preferred policies into schools across the country. Now Betsy DeVos is using nearly identical tactics to push for her own favorite educational ideas.

Race to the Top was a $4.5 billion program that was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a stimulus package meant to help reverse some of the effects of the Great Recession. States would have the opportunity to get education grants, but they would have to compete for the money by showing how closely they could adhere to the administration’s goals of college- and career-ready standards, high stakes testing, teacher evaluation, and data collection. The administration had tried and failed to get these goals passed into law through Congress. The financial pressure of the Great Recession and the looming penalties for the unachievable goals of No Child Left Behind (100% of students scoring above average on the Big Standardized Test) gave Duncan leverage to bypass Congress entirely. And rather than providing funding for all schools in all states, the program picked winners and losers.

Many conservative critics argued that RTTT and the waivers that followed were illegal. The backlash CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Betsy DeVos Has, In Fact, Become Arne Duncan 2.0

2010 Education Reform Bowl