Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION

CURMUDGUCATION:

Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION

What Choice Won't Do

41by Peter Greene / 22h

When it comes to the advocates of school choice, there are many points with which I disagree. I disagree with many of their assessments of the public school situation ("a dead end for which we spend more money than God and get results lower than dirt"). I disagree with many of their policy goals (why exactly should parents-- and no other taxpayers-- have a say about how tax dollars are spent). The

JUN 22

NY: Competition, Shmompetition

15by Peter Greene / 1d

Eva Moscowitz has some kind of magical power. Maybe it's money or pheremones or some sort of magical aura, but her record in getting New York leaders to roll over and play fetch for her is impressive. At the beginning of the month, NY court declared that her Success Academy is not accountable to the taxpayers when it comes to her Pre-K program; the city can not hold her to any sort of performance

Rural Life vs. Free Market

36by Peter Greene / 2d

I live in a small town and rural county in northwest Pennsylvania. Our population is a little over 50,000. The median value of a home is a little over $80K. Per capita income is a little over $23K, and our official poverty rate is 13.5%. As of 2010, we had about 81 persons per square mile. Our biggest city contains maybe 7,000 people, though our towns are surrounded by stretches of villages, farml

JUN 21

How To Sell Personalized Learning

100+by Peter Greene / 2d

Competency based education, one of the major flavors of personalized learning, has a great number of problems . It's beloved by our Silicon Valley tech overlords, but it has a lousy history (if you a4e of a certain age, you may recall Outcome Based Education , CBE's older failed sibling). CBE reduces education to a series of simple standardized tasks, the complexity and depth of rigorous intellect

JUN 20

Finn Backs Accountability-- Hard

15by Peter Greene / 3d

The Great Divide in the reform world continues to be right along the lines of accountability, with DeVos and her DeVotees being pretty much against it in any meaningful sense. Just let the marketplace sort it out, they say, and Jeanne Allen, of the Center for Education Reform (a hard core charter-backing group), put together a whole book to help argue the point. It can happen Several folks have ta

Digital Native Naivete

16by Peter Greene / 3d

The cliché is a fifty-year-old asking some ten year old student for help in making the computer work. Having trouble making working with your device or your software? Just grab one of those digital natives to handle it for you! Well, not so fast. Here's Jenny Abamu at Edsurge saying what I've been arguing for over a decade -- our digital natives are hugely naïve about technology. With the adoption

JUN 19

PA: Islamophobes, Real Estate, and Scam Artists

27by Peter Greene / 5d

I'll tell you right up front that this story raises more questions than it answers, but many of them are questions about just what comes through the door when you invite privatization in, and others are questions about how people react when they discover what an open door actually means. The New Castle Youth Development Center was set up in about 1967 as a facility for dealing with "felonious yout

JUN 18

ICYMI:Father's Day Edition (6/18)

5by Peter Greene / 6d

It's a day for Dads, a holiday that somehow doesn't clog restaurants and bolster the greeting card industry. But in the meantime, here are some readings from the week. Remember to share! The acquittal in Philando Castile’s killing makes clear that black lives still do not matter Not strictly about education, but important none the less, particularly for its pointed observations about the second am

JUN 17

PA: Testing Non-Reform

16by Peter Greene / 6d

In Pennsylvania, our Big Standardized Test for high school students is the Keystone Exam. Its history is a sad study in BS Testing. Its future is cloudy. Unfortunately, while the Keystones may be on the way out, there's no reason to believe they won't be replaced with something worse. Back in the (pre-Common Core) day, PA used the PSSA tests to measure student achievement of some sort for reasons

JUN 16

FL: Death To Public Education

500+by Peter Greene / 7d

Florida has long struggled to take the lead in the State Most Hostile To Public Education contest, with North Carolina, Wisconsin and Nevada giving some real competition. But this week, Florida's legislature and governor took a decisive 

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Sacramento City Unified sends out letter that riles teachers | The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento City Unified sends out letter that riles teachers | The Sacramento Bee:

In labor dispute with teachers, school district goes directly to parents

Big Education Ape: Struggling to make Sac City a destination school district | The Sacramento Bee - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/04/struggling-to-make-sac-city-destination.html

Big Education Ape: Sacramento City school district, teachers union reach impasse in contract negotiations | ABC10.com - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/06/sacramento-city-school-district.html

Big Education Ape: Hundreds of Sacramento city teachers rally to protest lack of progress over contract talks with Sacramento City Unified | The Sacramento Bee - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/03/hundreds-of-sacramento-city-teachers.html

Big Education Ape: SCTA Bargaining for the Common Good - Sacramento City Teachers Association - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/03/scta-bargaining-for-common-good.html

Big Education Ape: Hundreds converge on city school board meeting to fight for higher teacher salaries - Sacramento News & Review - - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.ca/2016/02/hundreds-converge-on-city-school-board.html

Big Education Ape: SCUSD and SCTA reach tentative agreement � SCUSD Observer - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.sg/2010/06/scusd-and-scta-reach-tentative.html

Parents at Sacramento City Unified School District opened up a seemingly urgent email from district leadership last week.

“Important update regarding next school year,” read the message in big bold letters.

A school closure? No, it was an email blaming the Sacramento City Teachers Association for the lack of a labor contract between the teachers and the district after nine months of negotiations.

The lengthy and unusual letter bluntly accused the teachers union of holding up contract negotiations.

“This adult disagreement needs to be resolved during the summer break so that it does not impact our ability to provide services to students in the next school year,” the letter reads, adding that “as parents and members of the community, you have a right to know about issues in our district.”

The letter was sent via the district’s “eConnection” email newsletter that is distributed to parents. It was also posted to the district’s Facebook page.

The union, which represents 2,400 teachers, was caught off guard. Union leaders took issue with the ominous tone and called the letter misleading.

“This is insulting to the teachers,” said Nikki Milevsky, president of the teachers association. “How dare they use Facebook and eConnection to attack teachers.”

Sacramento City Unified spokesman Alex Barrios defended the action, explaining that it was part of the district’s new push in being transparent. Before, such news would be posted on the district website, but not directly pushed out to parents, Barrios said.

“We have to do more to communicate to parents what’s happening and how it affects their kids,” he said. “Keeping the community in the dark ... is not very transparent.”

The tone of the district’s letter drew the scorn of several parents and teachers, who took to Facebook to criticize the district. Some said it was an attempt to smear and undermine the credibility of teachers. The post on Facebook was removed as the discussion grew increasingly uncivil, Barrios said.

Doug Elmets, a Sacramento crisis communications expert, wasn’t surprised by the backlash. “Trying to ensnare innocent kids” into the dispute would certainly backfire, he said.

“They are in for a world of hurt if they believe this is transparency,” Elmets added. “They are leveraging students who are only trying to get an education. (The district) clearly did not think through this.”

The union has put forward a series of proposals in the hopes of making Sacramento City a “destination district.” Among them: The teachers association said it seeks to ensure that all classrooms have a credentialed teacher; that class sizes are further lowered; that the number of school nurses and psychologists is increased; and that all students are able to take classes in arts, music and physical education.

The district, however, has balked at funding some of the initiatives at the same time that it Sacramento City Unified sends out letter that riles teachers | The Sacramento Bee:

Schools Matter: PROTEST: Mind Trust’s IPS and the Almighty Dollar

Schools Matter: PROTEST: Mind Trust’s IPS and the Almighty Dollar:

PROTEST: Mind Trust’s IPS and the Almighty Dollar

by Doug Martin

Please see the poster above for details on Tuesday’s public demonstration protesting the closing of 3 IPS schools.  

The $200,00 the Silicon Valley based-NewSchools Venture Fund (see my recent article here) gave to Phalen Leadership Academy in October 2015 helped with the takeover of IPS Francis Scott Key 103, now known as PLA@103, a blended learning school.  The Mind Trust and Bellwether Education Partners had worked behind the scenes to plan the takeover, according to documents released to the Indiana Department of Education (see page 28).  

Bellwether is led by former Mind Trust board member and former Clinton Administration official Andrew Rotherham, who appears in Hoosier School Heist.  Co-partner Andy Smarick, who was an official at the U.S. Department of Education under George W. Bush, is now the president of the Maryland State Board of Education.  He still is a partner at Bellwether, according to the Maryland State Board of Education. 

Funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and numerous consulting gigs (clients include the Friedman Foundation, among many others), Bellwether is smothered in money, too, from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. 

Besides the gift of $11,075,000 to the Mind Trust and the $1,256,250 to the Indianapolis Public Schools Education Foundation, Inc., the Arnold Foundation has recently given the Mind Trust-spinoff Education Cities, Inc. $1,900,000 and has promised Bellwether Education Partners over $1.5 million for sustainable public finance grants from 2013-2018.

  

In 2015, when the Mind Trust handed Christel House International $250,000 in grant money, Education Cities $500,000, KIPP Indianapolis $300,000, and Phalen Leadership Academy $200,000 (page 20), Mind Trust CEO David Harris pulled in just over $238, 000 in just base compensation (page 31).

Bellwether did very good during this period, too.

From September 1, 2014 to August 31, 2015, Andrew Rotherham made almost $264,000 at Bellwether and Andy Smarick close to $216,000 (page 7).

Bellwether lately has been pumping out propaganda on how to spread blended/personalized learning into schools. The Schools Matter: PROTEST: Mind Trust’s IPS and the Almighty Dollar:

 

Hoosier School Heist TV is Doug Martin's channel featuring videos of his book tour across Indiana speaking on the corporate takeover of public education. Order Hoosier School Heist at http://hoosierschoolheist.com/.

Follow Hoosier School Heist on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HoosierSchoolHeist

Tweet with Doug Martin at: https://twitter.com/DougMartinED

Stop wating money on school vouchers | Charlotte Observer

Stop wating money on school vouchers | Charlotte Observer:

The evidence is clear, vouchers don’t work

Students who accept vouchers to attend private schools lose ground academically and perform worse on standardized tests than students who remain in public schools.

That’s the takeaway from studies involving state vouchers in Louisiana, Ohio, and Indiana, as well as the only federally funded vouchers in Washington, DC.

In April, the Institute of Education Sciences, the independent, non-partisan research wing of the Department of Education, published the performance measures of students who used Opportunity Scholarship Program vouchers in Washington, DC to attend private schools. On the whole, students posted a 7 percentile-point decline in mathematics and a 5 percentile-point decline in reading compared to students who applied for the vouchers but attended public schools instead.

McSpadden

DON WILLIAMSON

Studies of state-supported voucher programs show similar negative impacts on learning. In Louisiana, voucher students fell from 50th to 34th percentile in math scores. In Ohio, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute said that the voucher program was “unambiguously negative across a variety of model specifications, for both reading and mathematics.” The largest voucher program in the US is in Indiana, and it, too, posted negative impacts on learning.

Researchers Christopher Lubienski, education policy professor at Indiana University, and Sarah Lubienski, a mathematics education professor at the University of Illinois, published a lengthy analysis of these recent voucher studies and concluded that “any apparent advantages for students in private schools are actually a reflection of the fact that private schools do a better job of attracting – not producing – high-scoring students.”

Voucher supporters argue that vouchers help children by giving them an opportunity to attend superior religious or private schools. Those schools, however, only appear superior because they already enroll high-performing advantaged children. The IES study shows that voucher children coming from “underperforming” public schools show no improvement at all on achievement, while students coming from higher-performing public schools lose considerable academic ground in private schools.

The Lubienskis point out that early voucher programs might have seemed more effective Stop wating money on school vouchers | Charlotte Observer: