School uniforms? | Parents Across America

School uniforms? | Parents Across America:

School uniforms? 

Kimberly Brooks, leader of PAA chapter PAA-Atlanta Public Schools, wrote the following article challenging the district’s school uniform policy.

Atlanta Public Schools Uniform Policies: What Can We Infer From Them?

A few weeks ago I spent over a hundred dollars in attire for my two children to attend school – a public school.

The school has a mandatory uniform policy for all students. This is a good policy, correct? As a parent uniformity looks more eloquent and prestigious, right? Well, I support the ideology of that concept –until one day where there was an emergency and my daughter wasn’t in uniform. The principal was more concerned with her attire than her education.

To go a step further, though I agreed I would ensure that she wears the uniform, she refused to accommodate her and put into ISS (detention). This is common. After questioning several parents, they too understood this to be the policy. That’s okay. However, I realized I never received the policy. I then questioned it and received no response.

To make a long story longer (lol) I decided to dig a little deeper. Students in public schools should not be required unless the district agrees, and the parents would have to agree. I was unable to locate such an agreement. Furthermore, students are penalized and taken out of general instruction for their attire. At some schools, students miss class because they are sent to ISS and in some cases suspended. Is attire that important? Why do schools require uniforms?

In private and charter schools, uniforms make students distinguishable from other schools. In addition to that it’s a given requirement upon entry to the school and the uniforms are identical. This isn’t the case in Atlanta Public Schools. School districts choose their uniforms. But hey, it’s cheaper correct? The answer is no. Students are still economically identifiable by the quality and uniform type. Furthermore, students who are economically challenged are forced to wear the same clothing more, considering the cheap quality. It is visibly different.

As a frugal parent, jeans and a t-shirt or a sweater are easier to locate than khaki or black pants and oxford shirts. But once again, why should I complain right? Well, here is why. After research I found that most

- See more at: http://parentsacrossamerica.org/school-uniforms/#sthash.J7PBC7aF.dpuf

L.A. Unified highlights magnet school performance compared with charters - LA Times

L.A. Unified highlights magnet school performance compared with charters - LA Times:

L.A. Unified highlights magnet school performance compared with charters

The Los Angeles Unified School District this week released an analysis of test scores showing that its magnet schools are outperforming charter schools. This comes as private foundations are proposing a huge expansion of charters in the city.

“While overall results indicate that independent charter schools scored higher on these tests than traditional LAUSD schools, it also highlights the stellar performance of our magnet schools, which outperformed charter schools at all grade levels,” said L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines in a statement.

On the English language arts portion of the test, 55% of LAUSD magnet students met or exceeded the state’s new learning standards, compared with 39% of students in local charters, the district report showed. In math, 44% of magnet students met those targets, compared with 28% of students in charters.

Overall, district students scored lower than those enrolled in charters, with 33% of L.A. Unified students meeting or surpassing learning goals in English; 25% in math.

The state charter association immediately pointed out these differences when test results became public.

Magnet schools, which offer specialized programs for students throughout the system, are voluntary and designed to promote integration.

The release of the district data has become the latest answer by the school system's defenders to supporters of independently operated charters.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has circulated a plan to enroll half of L.A. Unified students in charters over the next eight years. Details of the $490-million project were laid out this week in a memo obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

According to the memo, increasing the number of charters would benefit Los Angeles students because those schools offer a better education.

Charters are publicly funded, but not subject to some rules that govern traditional schools. Most are non-union.

Twitter: @howardblumeL.A. Unified highlights magnet school performance compared with charters - LA Times:

Purging U. S. Education History: Ignoring Past Mistakes and Successes

Purging U. S. Education History: Ignoring Past Mistakes and Successes:

Purging U. S. Education History: Ignoring Past Mistakes and Successes

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

Maya Angelou

They are doing strange things to Colleges of Education in this country, and one of the weirdest is dropping education history courses from required teacher preparation.  According to Education Week there is a decline in these classes for teachers.

Why is this troubling? I am not conspiratorial, but wiping out coursework about education’s past frightens me.

P.L. Thomas who is Professor of Education at Furman University, has a post titled“Dismantling an Unstable Discipline: Education without Foundation” which Purging U. S. Education History: Ignoring Past Mistakes and Successes:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Washington State Charter Law Updates

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Washington State Charter Law Updates:

Washington State Charter Law Updates

From my previous thread and now with some answers to questions arising from the reconsideration extension granted to the Washington State Charter School Association by the Washington State Supreme Court.

To review, here's what I wrote in my first thread about the ruling: 

The Court just recently granted this extension and the due date is October 23rd.  To note, Attorney General Bob Ferguson is also asking for a reconsideration.  (Want to e-mail him to let him know there are better issues before his office? 

This would seem to mean that the Court would allow state funding for all charter schools thru much of October until that reconsideration motion is heard.  However, the Court had sent the ruling down to King County Superior County to explain the outcomes and nothing has come from that court yet.

However, from the Yakima Herald:

The attorney representing the plaintiffs, Paul Lawrence, said Tuesday afternoon that they are still considering options, which could include asking a judge to halt the payments. At minimum, he said, they would want assurances that the state has a plan to get the money back.

“It certainly seems appropriate that the state needs to take steps to make sure that it gets repaid assuming the decision stays in place and becomes final,” Lawrence said.

Here is a Q&A between this blog and OSPI:
 SSCF:  If neither Court - Supreme or King County Superior - send OSPI direction on funding charters, will OSPI go ahead and fund the charter schools?

OSPI:  Yes

SSCF: If the money is sent, that will likely be enough to see most charters thru Seattle Schools Community Forum: Washington State Charter Law Updates:

CMD Publishes Full List of 2,500 Closed Charter Schools (with Interactive Map) | PR Watch

CMD Publishes Full List of 2,500 Closed Charter Schools (with Interactive Map) | PR Watch:

CMD Publishes Full List of 2,500 Closed Charter Schools (with Interactive Map)

Today, the Center for Media and Democracy is releasing a complete state-by-state list of the failed charter schools since 2000. Among other things, this data reveals that millions and millions of federal tax dollars went to “ghost” schools that never even opened to students. The exact amount is unknown because the U.S. Department of Education is not required to report its failures, where money went to groups to help them start new charters that never even opened.

This data set also provides reporters and citizens of each state an opportunity to take a closer look at how much taxpayer money has been squandered on the failed charter school experiment in their states. The data set and the interactive map below are based on more than a decade’s worth of official but raw data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

This release comes as the U.S. Department of Education and industry insiders currently deciding which states to award half a billion dollar in grants designed to bolster the school privatization industry under the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP).

As CMD has calculated, nearly 2,500 charter schools have shuttered between 2001 and 2013, affecting 288,000 American children enrolled in primary and secondary schools, and the failure rate for charter schools is much higher than for traditional public schools.

For example, in the 2011-2012 school year, charter school students ran two and half times the risk of having their education disrupted by a school closing and suffering academic setbacks as a result of closure. Dislocated students are less likely to graduate. In 2014 study, Matthew F. Larsen with the Department of Economics at Tulane University looked at high school closures in Milwaukee, almost all of which were charter schools, and he concluded that closures decreased “high school graduation rates by nearly 10%." He found that the effects persist "even if the students attends a better quality school after closure.”

Hidden behind the statistics are the social consequences. According to 2013 paper by Robert Scott and Miguel Saucedo at the University of Illinois, school closures “have exacerbated inter-neighborhood tensions among Chicago youth in recent years” and have been a contributing factor to the high rate of youth incarceration.

Then there are the charter schools that never opened despite tax money from a federal program to help more entities apply to create even more charters. Drilling down into the data of just one state in just one school year, 25 charter

- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/node/12936#sthash.BEcAEgwE.dpuf

Parents of PAA Boston affiliate QUEST challenge Mayor’s school plans | Parents Across America

Parents of PAA Boston affiliate QUEST challenge Mayor’s school plans | Parents Across America:

BOSTON PARENT GROUP QUESTIONS RENEWING BOSTON COMPACT AND PURSUING A UNIFIED LOTTERY

Quality Education for Every Student (QUEST), a grassroots organization of Boston Public School parents with children who have attended over 30 Boston Public Schools, voiced concern about the Mayor’s plan to expand the Boston Compact agreement between charter, parochial, and Boston Public schools. QUEST has particular concerns with a proposal to drastically alter enrollment policies.

QUEST parents say the plan’s expansion of enrollment to include non-district charter schools will have a negative impact on Boston’s students. “Unlike charters, BPS educates English Language Learners of all levels and children with a wide range of special needs, and takes students mid-year and in any grade. Where is the partnership here?” said Karen Oil, BPS parent and QUEST member. QUEST also pointed out that BPS has lost tens of millions of dollars to charter schools who receive 49% of Chapter 70 funds, though serving only 12% of Boston students, and criticized the lack of charter school accountability to the communities and families they serve, especially in regards to high suspension rates and low graduation rates of boys of color.

QUEST urges Mayor Walsh and other city leaders to take action in the following areas before expanding an agreement with non-district schools:

(1) Racial and economic impact assessment of recently adopted school assignment plan, which was arrived at through two years of community process, before any changes are made.

(2) Adequate and equitable funding for Boston Public Schools, including reimbursement for funds lost to charter schools.

(3) Transparent data collection from charter schools that go beyond test scores in order to evaluate the quality of schools.

(4) Compliance with progressive discipline strategies, as mandated by the State; diversity in hiring practices, and parental participation in governance of schools.

(5) Policy change that would require charters to fill empty seats at all times of year and for all grades like public districts are required to do.

QUEST points out that the Compact, adopted in 2011, has shown little benefit for the vast majority of Boston’s students and believes that expanding a multi-district education system with little transparency or accountability will increase inequitable options for the city’s students, especially those with the greatest needs.

- See more at: http://parentsacrossamerica.org/parents-paa-boston-affiliate-quest-challenge-mayors-school-plans/#sthash.NPLWO5rL.dpuf

More than 1 in 5 U.S. children are (still) living in poverty - The Washington Post

More than 1 in 5 U.S. children are (still) living in poverty - The Washington Post:

More than 1 in 5 U.S. children are (still) living in poverty

The proportion of American children who live in poverty began rising during the recession, and it continued rising after the recession officially ended. In 2013, the child poverty rate finally fell for the first time since 2006 — a dip that advocates hoped was the beginning of an enduring trend.

But the child poverty rate did not fall again. Twenty-two percent of U.S. children — or more than one in five — were still living in poverty in 2014, unchanged from 2013, according to new data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

That’s 15.7 million children living under the poverty line, which in 2014 was $24,008 for a family of four.

Child poverty rate over time

New census data show that the nation's child poverty rate flat didn't change between 2013 and 2014, and is still far higher than before the recession. In 2014, the federal poverty line was $24,008 for a family of four.

0

10

20

2005

2012

2013

2014

19

23

22

22

Source: National KIDS Count/Annie E. Casey Foundation

THE WASHINGTON POST

Minority children were even more likely to be living in poverty, the Annie E. Casey Foundation pointed out. Nearly four in 10 black children and nearly one-third of Latino children live in poverty, compared with 13 percent of white and Asian children.More than 1 in 5 U.S. children are (still) living in poverty - The Washington Post:

Choosing Democracy: Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis

Choosing Democracy: Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis:

Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis

Our Kids: The American Dream In Crisis.

Robert D. Putnam.

Review by Duane Campbell

This new book is an insightful and well researched analysis  of on the achievement gap, which Robert Putnam  correctly calls an opportunity gap for the current generation of young people.  I was drawn to the book by respect for his prior writing,  Bowling Alone . This new work  is of equal value in synthesizing social science research.  Perhaps it is of more value since we have major institutions-schools- in positions , that could contribute to the rebirth of equal, democratic opportunity.

In Our Kids, Putnam   describes major developments in our schools and our communities - the growing inequality of opportunity for the working class and the poor.

Educational writers have long chronicled several of the key concepts, the role of tracking, of concentrations of poverty and of race. This work excels because it is a very well informed outsiders sociological viewpoint of these issues.  Putnam and research associate Jen Sliva bring together extensive social science data and research to support the  many interpretive suggestions.

This is not the over simplification of many general and popular books, nor the ideological tracts of education’s many critics and neoliberal "reform" advocates. Putnam provides vivid and useful examples combined with a well informed data bases  of social science research  of the most important issues. He builds his arguments upon both individual interviews and the synthesis of an enormous amount of social science research thus combining big and important  ideas with the research to support them.  

In my own career, and in my writing, I have long sought to describe several of these  issues in a manner that would guide school improvement.  We begin by educating both the public and teachers on these vital issues of building a democratic school system that can contribute to improved equality of opportunity necessary for the survival and rebirth of our democracy. Building a democracy requires this active interaction between the public, teachers, and the school systems.

Robert Putnam  extensively documents that  we are traveling toward a more divided, more unequal system- the precise opposite of the goals of democratic reform .  This serious and valuable work  is not the cant of the neocons, nor of the neo liberals of higher standards and higher expectations, although both of these have their place in overall school improvement.  But as Putnam meticulously records, it is the complex interactions of race, class, communities and the educational systems that creates the growing inequality.

Our Kids, describes the problems and issues with integrity and care. It does not offer many solutions for teachers  working in schools. The task of developing daily, practical solutions can mostly come from people working in Choosing Democracy: Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Gen. Tata led the efforts to re-segregate Wake County schools. But now...

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Gen. Tata led the efforts to re-segregate Wake County schools. But now...:

Gen. Tata led the efforts to re-segregate Wake County schools. But now...

Gen. Tata with his pal Palin. 

Remember Brigadier Gen.Tony Tata?

He was fast friends with Sarah Palin and Michelle Rhee's second in command in D.C. who then became the superintendent who led the school re-segregation initiative in Wake County, North Carolina.

For some reason, it became trendy a few years ago, to appoint former generals and colonels as school leaders. We did it here in Chicago when Rahm Emanuelappointed Marine Col. Tim Tyrrell and paid him $180,000/year to run his mass school-closing operation. Tyrrell also was charged with selling or finding new uses for closed school buildings, a project that so far has failed miserably.

BUT BACK TO TATA...After mass protests by the NAACP and court actions, the school board finally was forced to fire Tata. But he was then appointed by Tea Party fave, Gov. Pat McCrory to head of the State Dept. of Transportation.

Col. Tyrrell resigned in January.

It was Tata’s credentials as military man that helped him land the superintendent's job and Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Gen. Tata led the efforts to re-segregate Wake County schools. But now...:

Philanthropy in Education: The Gifts that Keep Taking - Living in Dialogue

Philanthropy in Education: The Gifts that Keep Taking - Living in Dialogue:

Philanthropy in Education: The Gifts that Keep Taking

By Anthony Cody.

This weekend a select group of philanthropists will gather at Stanford University for an “Innovation Summit,” where they will hear from Melinda Gates and Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, and other experts in giving money away. The event is hosted by the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, but no civilians will be present — it is by invitation only. Only those wealthy enough to give away millions may attend.

Over the past decade, philanthropic organizations have played an increasing role in public schools. Now is a good time to take stock on the impact philanthropies are having. Will this weekend include time for some sober reflection? If so, I would offer some food for thought, with a focus on the Gates Foundation. (For an in-depth look at the Gates Foundation’s work in education, please see my book, The Educator and the Oligarch, a Teacher Challenges the Gates Foundation.)

Our public schools cannot take much more billionaire-sponsored “innovation.”

Just this week we learned that the Gates Foundation is cutting short its funding of the Hillsborough schools, where they pledged an investment of $100 million to support an aggressive program that rewarded teachers for higher test scores. After providing the district with $80 million for the project over the past six years, the Gates Foundation has announced the end to their funding, suspending the last $20 million of their grant. They have discovered what many educators and researchers knew all along. Pay for raising test scores Philanthropy in Education: The Gifts that Keep Taking - Living in Dialogue:

Pope Gives Shout-Out to Dorothy Day, Founder of Catholic Worker Movement

Pope Gives Shout-Out to Dorothy Day, Founder of Catholic Worker Movement :

Pope Gives Shout-Out to Dorothy Day, Founder of Catholic Worker Movement 

In his address to Congress Thursday, the Pope reminded them of all the people and things they’re busily trying to forget about or have spent their careers legislating against (the poor, the oppressed, people in prison, the environment). He also gave several surprising and touching tributes to one of the heroes of the Catholic social justice movement, Dorothy Day.

“In these times when social concerns are so important, I cannot fail to mention the Servant of God Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement,” Pope Francis told them. “Her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel, her faith and the example of the saints.”

Day founded the Catholic Worker movement with Peter Maurin; both were social justice advocates, although Day has been delightfully and more colorfully described as a “pacifist, anarchist, and holy person.” She’s said to have prayed and recited the rosary every morning, before going out to edit the Catholic Worker newspaper and advocate for spreading the means of production. (Although she was anti-abortion, she had one early in life, which she described as a terrible experience with a “dirty, furtive” illegal doctor.)

The Catholic Worker movement focused on both helping the poor and homeless and advocating against war, first by criticizing post Cold War hysteria and later organizing against the war in Vietnam. There are still soup kitchens and homeless shelters all over the country bearing Day’s name. The Catholic Church began considering whether to canonize her in 2000, although there’s been little progress there. She is currently referred to as a “Servant of God,” a sort of pre-saint position.

Pope Francis praised Day’s “tireless work, the fruit of her faith, which becomes dialogue.” Maybe he’ll jumpstart her sainthood too.Pope Gives Shout-Out to Dorothy Day, Founder of Catholic Worker Movement :

Why Pope Francis Cited Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton

The two Americans just got name-checked by the Pope

In speaking to Congress on Thursday, Pope Francis demonstrated that he’d brushed up on his American history in advance of his historic visit to the U.S. In mentioning a few famous Americans whose lives could serve as inspirations as the world navigates current crises, he turned to two obvious choices—Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King—and two whose names might be unfamiliar to those less versed in the history of American religion: Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton.

So who were they?

Dorothy Day was the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, who used her faith to work for social justice. In 1940, TIME noted that, “Among U. S. Christians who care for the poor, none are more blessed with selfless zeal than those Roman Catholics who labor in the Catholic Worker movement.”

When she died in 1980, TIME explained that her take on Catholic activism was anything but uncontroversial:

To admirers like Historian David J. O’Brien, writing inCommonweal, she was “the most significant, interesting and influential person in the history of American Catholicism.” If so, it is because her Catholic Worker movement blended zeal for reforming the whole social system with practical concern for helping the individual poor. She was arrested a dozen times, the first as a suffragette in 1917, the last during a workers’ demonstration in California in 1973, and took part in scores of labor and antimilitary protests.

Though she was raised Episcopalian and became an agnostic in her youth, as she “took a Marxist lover, joined the young labor movement and wrote for far-left newspapers like the Masses,” a relationship and the birth of her daughter led to the church. In the 1930s, in the depths of the Depression, she launched the periodical The Catholic Worker and a philosophy to go along with it: pro-union, anti-poverty, pacifist, anti-government. She even went so far as to refer to it as anarchism, believing that individuals could be empowered to Why Pope Francis Cited Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton

Educational Redlining | janresseger

Educational Redlining | janresseger:

Educational Redlining

Heights Community Congress (HCC), founded in 1972, is Greater Cleveland, Ohio’s oldest fair housing enforcement organization.  For over four decades HCC has been conducting audits of the real estate industry to expose and discourage racial steering and disparate treatment of African American and white home seekers.  Each September, HCC organizes a home and garden tour as its annual fund raiser.  Inside this year’s guide to the 38th Annual Heights Heritage Tour is a page that braids together issues of justice through fair housing and diverse public schools.

HCC explains: “Real estate websites like Zillow.com are popular places to check out homes for sale.  Zillow.com even provides a color-coded rating of nearby schools with every home it lists… Heights Community Congress took a deeper look at this practice and found that the ratings are provided to Zillow by a website called GreatSchools.com.  HCC is concerned that the GreatSchools/Zillow partnership unfairly discourages home buying in moderate income communities like Cleveland Heights and University Heights.”

The piece in HCC’s tour book continues: “The ratings are based on test scores which research consistently shows correlate highly with students’ socioeconomic status rather than reliably measuring school ‘quality.’  They give a quick comparison of schools with a single simple metric, labeling schools with an emotionally laden color—red, green, or yellow.  Zillow.comfails to disclose how the ratings are derived or warn of their limitations.  The ratings virtually guarantee that schools in moderate income communities will rank below those in more affluent communities.”

According to HCC’s report, GreatSchools was launched with funding from the NewSchools Venture Fund, “a California venture capital firm that invests in charter and online schools and markets educational technology.”  “GreatSchools licenses its ratings to Zillow and earns revenue each time a viewer links to Zillow.com…  HCC contacted the president and the director of data of GreatSchools by registered, certified letter, asking about their metrics and Educational Redlining | janresseger:

How to Promote Democracy in Schools - Bridging Differences - Education Week

How to Promote Democracy in Schools - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

How to Promote Democracy in Schools

Dear friends and Harry,

I'm a product of private progressive education.  I learned a lot there, including about democracy.  But...

We had an annual "founder's day" ceremony where each year someone told about our glorious history as a school to help working men's children grow up to build a cooperative society.   But there wasn't one workingman's child in the assembly, even among those with scholarships. 

Still, the idea stuck with me.  The aspiration had been good, even if over time it became a school for well-intentioned wealthy, largely secular, second generation Jewish children.

I wanted schools like mine for all children, paid for by public monies, designed to create a generation of democratic, sophisticated, and powerful citizens.  Then I had my own three children and determined that they would go to neighborhood public schools.  Imagine my surprise upon coming to NYC in 1966 to discover that on the West Side of Manhattan, a district of well-intentioned liberals, public schools had been largely abandoned by the local white kids.  My children's schools put white kids into segregated  classes under one disguise or another.  What were we teaching the young about society? 

I began to explore the ways in which we educate different kids differently sometimes even within the same classroom.  I joined with others to put into practice the education I had received, for all children, ideally together. 

I was told--by both black and white colleagues--that what I was describing wouldn't work with all children.  For poor and black children it was even disrespectful to teach progressive educational ideas.  That was okay for privileged children. 

Why?  Because the other children didn't come to school with all the know-how that such schooling required, they were used to "no excuses" discipline, etc.  

This was the common-sense wisdom of educators and many parents, of different backgrounds. And while I agreed that one shouldn't mandate a change of mind, I also believed the view of children is just plain wrong, and seriously damages their intellectual and social potential.

I have serious evidence that it's wrong, including my own experience. I'd like all publicly funded schools to be like mine, and yet.... 

Still, I think some of its strengths can be mandated.  For example, why shouldn't we mandate that public schools in a democracy further democratic habits of mind and heart -- that we're accountable for demonstrating that our work furthers democracy?  We can't ask schools by themselves to undo the impact of poverty and racism. But we should not be allowed to add to that impact.  With that as our premise, what might we seek to mandate in return for taxpayer dollars?  That's my question, Harry. 

Dear Deb and colleagues,

Deb, I agree with your elements of a democratic education and also your view that democratic education should be the norm. We need democracy How to Promote Democracy in Schools - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

The real story: Why Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift to Newark schools was announced on Oprah’s show - The Washington Post

The real story: Why Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift to Newark schools was announced on Oprah’s show - The Washington Post:

The real story: Why Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift to Newark schools was announced on Oprah’s show

Dale Russakoff is a former Washington Post reporter and the author of a new book called “The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools?” It is an in-depth look at what happened when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2010 made a $100 million matching gift to reform the long-troubled school system in Newark, New Jersey. The announcement was made not to Newark residents but, rather, on an episode of Oprah Winfrey’s former talk show, with Newark’s then-mayor, Democrat Cory Booker, and Republican N.J. Gov. Chris Christie sitting along with Zuckerberg and Winfrey.

Russakoff details what happened with the money and how, in the end, students wound up the big losers in the school reform philanthropy game. The following portion of the book reveals the behind-the-scene maneuvering surrounding the announcement of Zuckerberg’s gift to Newark schools (which has long been under state control). This excerpt starts with Booker alerting Christie to the coming gift.

(Excerpted from THE PRIZE: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools? by Dale Russakoff. Copyright © 2015 by Dale Russakoff. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.)

[The ugly reform mess in Newark public schools]

Here’s the excerpt:

In late summer 2010, [Cory] Booker called [Chris] Christie with the $100 million news. “I didn’t believe it,” Christie recalled. “I said, ‘Come on, really?’ he said, ‘Governor, I believe I can close this deal. I really do. I need you, though.’”

Booker asked Christie to grant him control of the schools by fiat, but the governor demurred, offering him instead a role as unoffi­cial partner in all decisions and policies, beginning with their joint selection of a “superstar” superintendent to lead the charge. Book­er’s first choice was John King, then deputy New York State educa­tion commissioner, who had led some of the top-performing char­ter schools in New York City and Boston and who credited public school teachers with inspiring him to persevere after he was orphaned as a young boy in Brooklyn. [Mark] Zuckerberg and [his wife Priscilla] Chan flew King to Palo Alto for a weekend with them and [Facebook executive Sheryl] Sandberg; Christie hosted him at the governor’s beach retreat on the Jersey Shore; and Booker led King and his wife, Melissa, on a tour of Newark, with stops at parks and businesses that hadn’t existed before his 

The real story: Why Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift to Newark schools was announced on Oprah’s show - The Washington Post:

Panel Mapping Out Path to Local Control of Schools Draws Crowd in Newark - NJ Spotlight

Panel Mapping Out Path to Local Control of Schools Draws Crowd in Newark - NJ Spotlight:



PANEL MAPPING OUT PATH TO LOCAL CONTROL OF SCHOOLS DRAWS CROWD IN NEWARK

About 100 gathered for first public meeting warned that task ahead will be difficult – but are assured that it will get done

Jose Leonardo

Appointed amid much fanfare this summer, the nine-member panel forging a path for returning Newark public schools to local control has no legal standing. Its recommendations, due by the end of the school year, will have no binding authority.

But the group appointed by Gov. Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka – an eclectic mix of business, church and education leaders, along with a parent and a high school senior – drew a crowd when it held its first public meeting last night.

Among about 100 people gathered in the hall of the Abyssinian Baptist Church was Baraka himself, along with civic and union leaders. Members of the district’s local advisory board also attended, as well as -- interestingly – members of the school advisory board in Paterson, another school district under state control.

What they heard was a pledge by the Newark Educational Success Board to lay out a path for ending state control of the city’s schools – although panel members also warned that the task would not be easy.

Mary Bennett, a former principal of Newark’s Shabazz High School who is the group’s chair and unofficial spokesperson, outlined a methodical, piece-by-piece process via the state’s monitoring system, culminating with governance controls giving the local board the power to pick its own superintendent.

“The governance piece is the trigger,” she said. “When you get governance back – and not just hitting [targets] but demonstrating over time that you can handle it – now you have some authority.”

Like the educator she once was, she carefully explained the process to the audience, even repeating a few key points along the way. But she also warned the audience that the district they once knew, now racked by disputes and making itself over with a mix of charter schools and revamped district schools, was likely gone.

‘The district that we knew July 19, 1995, will never be again,” Bennett said, alluding to the date of the state’s takeover. “The district that we knew in 2010 will never be again.”

“We need to begin to think of what does the new Newark public schools look like,” she said. “It’s smaller and leaner, but we also want it to be more effective in providing a thorough and efficient education for every child.”

Bennett was hardly alone in making provocative comments from the dais. Baraka spoke for a few minutes, repeating his call for a return of local control and endorsing the group that he helped create – in the face of considerable political Panel Mapping Out Path to Local Control of Schools Draws Crowd in Newark - NJ Spotlight: