by Ira Shor Opt-Out: The REAL Parent RevolutionWe parents can stop the destruction of our public schools. We can stop the looting of school budgets by private charters and testing vendors. We can stop the abuse of our children by the relentless hours of testing. We can stop the closings, the co-locations, the mass firings, the replacement of veteran teachers with short-term Teach for America newbi
To the editor: Antonio Villaraigosa asks"Why are teachers unions so opposed to change?"(July 21). I would like to know why Mr. Villaraigosa is so opposed to learning the facts about American schools and the Common Core. Villaraigosa claims that American students do poorly compared to students in other countries on international tests and that the Common Core will help us do better. Is h
Schools Matter: TURNcoats Meet in Rosemont, IL to Promote Common Coreby Jim Horn / 2h 7-20-14 Schools Matter All WeekSchools Matter: NEA, SEIU, and Eli BroadAt the recent AFT and NEA coronations, there was news about new linkages with SEIU, whose former president, Andy Stern, had close ties with Broad, Gates, and Obama (Stern had a choice seat in the Obama box at the Inauguration Parade). Below i
1. It is a celebration of the creativity of public school teachers, parents and students as well as a protest with songs, plays, flash mobs, banners, poems and chants. What it is NOT, is a litany of boring speeches.2. It is a multiracial event which show cases our movement's growing strength in the inner city, with speakers highlighting protests against corporate school reform in Chicago, Newark,
With A Brooklyn Accent: New York Now Leads the Way in the Movement Against Common Core- At The Polls Something truly extraordinary has happened in the New York State Gubernatorial race-something with broad national implications. A big money Democratic Governor, Andrew Cuomo, who thought he was going to make himself a front runner in the 2016 Presidential Race by ramming through legislation requi
Sienna College Research Institute conducted a poll of 774 likely registered NY voters regarding the upcoming elections. Most of the results are predictably unremarkable. Actually, all of them are unremarkable if you've been paying attention. But if, like David Weigel at Slate, you'd bought the storyline of Common Core opposition as a "fringe" position, then there is news for you in this
My esteemed colleague at Edushyster has scored an awesome little handbook straight from the world of charter school marketing-- the Charter School Messaging Notebook. Prepared by the Glover Group for the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, this handy guide tells you everything you need to know about launching your successful foray into the lucrative world of pretending to run schools. So
Many news outlets reported on a study from the Alliance for Excellent Education, which as you might guess from the buzzy name, is a DC based advocacy group that thinks CCSS is swell and aspires to have all students graduate with 21st century skills. Also, rigor.What does the study say? The study focuses on the attrition rate for teachers, and didn't provide much new information about those figures
CURMUDGUCATION: CCSS and EsperantoWhy don't we speak Esperanto?You know Esperanto. It's a constructed language created in the late 19th century by a young man who was very interested in languages and who thought he might come up with a neutral language that transcended all the biases and baggage of previous languages. Ludwik Lazarus Zamenhof became an opthamologist, so he wasn't technically a lang
Talk about ironic - the corrupt governors of New York and New Jersey getting defense from a corrupt former senator of New York:Republican former Sen. Al D’Amato — a key GOP ally for Gov. Andrew Cuomo — called on GOP candidate for governor Rob Astorino to apologize to both the incumbent Democrat and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie after remarks made this morning on the radio. “I strongly urge Rob A
Rob Astorino today outside Tweed courthouse, reacting to statements made by Chris Christie that he, as head of the Republican National Governors Association, won't help Astorino in his race against Cuomo:At a press conference in Manhattan Tuesday, Astorino said, “If Gov. Christie is unable to help a Republican candidate for governor, then maybe he should consider stepping down as chairman of the R
Nick Reisman at State of Politics:Astorino, meanwhile, due to make a joint appearance with Zephyr Teachout this morning at the Tweed Courthouse — an eyebrow raising event that could garner both campaigns more attention during a relatively slow summer.Teachout, a Fordham law professor, is challenging Cuomo on the Democratic primary ballot (Her petitions are being challenged by the governor’s re-ele
From Politics on the Hudson:New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie offered a harsh assessment of Rob Astorino’s candidacy for New York governor, saying tonight that the Republican Governors Association won’t “invest in lost causes.”Christie heads the association and met with Astorino, a fellow Republican, last November in Arizona, when Astorino was first starting to seriously consider a run for governor.“
Perdido Street School: Daily News Continues To Shill For The Common CoreA Siena poll released today found the following:BY a 49-39 percent margin, voters want to see implementation of the Common Core stopped rather than continued.Despite these numbers, Common Core-supporting newspaper the Daily News reports voters are "split" on the Core here in New York.Here's their headline:Voters back
GUEST: Ripoff “colleges”: Crushing debt and subprime education
Politicians rain our money on ripoff schools
BY LINDA STAMATO
We have been using public money to prop up private, for-profit colleges, while their students acquire crushing debt and questionable credentials. And, more than half of the students default on their loans.So, why, why are we doing this?Our Congress, the one that doesn’t want to spend money (well, on certain things anyway), has no hesitation in letting the dollars flow to these outfits. After all, Congress does care a lot about creating wealth for shareholders of corporations, and these “education corporations” receive 80 percent of their revenues from us, yes, the nation’s taxpayers.
Wonder why privatization — of education — is so dependent upon public funds?Something about the profit potential, I guess. All those folks who rail against the use of government funds for private purposes, where are they? Where is the reduce-the-deficit crowd when we need them?
The for-profit sector has grown–tripling its enrollment—in less than a decade. At the same time, students enrolled in for-profit colleges have taken on high levels of debt in pursuit of credentials that have little chance of leading to careers that pay well; in fact, to the respected Education Trust, http://www.edtrust.org these students are on “a path into the sub-basement of the American economy.”
Nice.
All the while, lobbyists for these institutions run interference, and members of Congress, doing their bidding, continually press the U.S.Department of Education to keep the gravy train running—to the tune of some $30 billion a year.
Data and thoughts on public and private school funding in the U.S.
UARK Study Shamelessly (& Knowingly) Uses Bogus Measures to Make Charter Productivity Claims
Posted on July 22, 2014
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Any good study of the relative productivity and efficiency of charter schools compared to other schools (if such comparisons were worthwhile to begin with) would require precise estimates of comparable financial inputs and outcomes as well as the conditions under which those inputs are expected to yield outcomes.
The University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform has just produced a follow up to theirprevious analysis in which they proclaimed boldly that charter schools are desperately uniformly everywhere and anywhere deprived of thousands of dollars per pupil when compared with their bloated overfunded public district counterparts (yes… that’s a bit of a mis-characterization of their claims… but closer than their bizarre characterization of my critique).
I wrote a critique of that report pointing out how they had made numerous bogus assumptions and ill-conceived, technically inept comparisons which in most cases dramatically overstated their predetermined, handsomely paid for, but shamelessly wrong claims.
The previous report proclaiming dreadful underfunding of charter schools leads to the low hanging fruit opportunity to point out that even if charter schools have close to the same test scores as district schools – and do so for so00000 much less money – they are therefore far more efficient. And thus, the nifty new follow up report on charter school productivity – or on how it’s plainly obvious that policymakers get far more for the buck from charters than from those bloated, UARK Study Shamelessly (& Knowingly) Uses Bogus Measures to Make Charter Productivity Claims | School Finance 101:
A new guide to charter messaging urges advocates to steer clear of corporate speak
Once every four minutes, a passionate charter advocate accidentally lapses into the kind of clinical corporate speak that can leave listeners cold—not to mention kids out of the equation. Would that there were a way to remedy this problem once and for all… Great news, reader. Problem solved! A handy new guide to charter school messaging ensures that never again will you accidentally say *market share* when you mean *student share* or *businesses* when what you really meant to mean all along was *schools.*
Say this, not this The Charter School Messaging Notebook was prepared for theNational Alliance for Public Charter Schools by the Glover Park Group, which specializes in *creative, disruptive thinking, deep insights and senior counsel* (Shout out to my secret reformy pal for sharing…) And the results are crystal clear, reader. *When we use words that work, people like what they hear—and that means more support for charter schools.* In other words, say this, not this…
Know when to change the subject Well that was easy. But just to be safe, you’ll want to print and laminate this essential *Say This/Not This* chart with you as a constant reminder never to say *experiments* when what your really meant, of course, was *responsive to student needs.* Which means thaOn Charter Schools, Say This, Not That | EduShyster:
Antonio Villaraigosa asks"Why are teachers unions so opposed to change?"(July 21). I would like to know why Mr. Villaraigosa is so opposed to learning the facts about American schools and the Common Core.
Villaraigosa claims that American students do poorly compared to students in other countries on international tests and that the Common Core will help us do better. Is he aware that when researchers control for the effect of poverty, American scores on international tests are at the top of the world?
Is he aware that our overall scores are unspectacular because of our high rate of child poverty: The US has the second highest level of child poverty among all 34 economically advanced countries (now over 23%, compared to high-scoring Finland’s 5.4%). In some big city public school districts, the poverty rate is over 80%. Poverty means poor nutrition, inadequate health care, and lack of access to books, among other things. All of these profoundly impact school performance.
Does Mr. Villaraigosa know that the Common Core does nothing to address these problems, and that there is no evidence that the standards and the astonishing amount of testing required will help children? The billions we are ready to spend on the Common Core would be much better spent protecting children from the effects of poverty.
Stephen Krashen
Sources:
Levels of poverty: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre 2012, ‘Measuring Child Poverty: New league tables of child poverty in the world’s rich countries’, Innocenti Report Card 10, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence.
Over 80%: http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/notebook/2011/02/17/more-illinois-children-living-in-poverty-risk-school-failure; http://home.lausd.net/apps/news/show_news.jsp?REC_ID=344072&id=0
Control for poverty: Payne, K. and Biddle, B. 1999. Poor school funding, child poverty, and mathematics achievement. Educational Researcher 28 (6): 4-13; Bracey, G. 2009. The Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/Bracey-Report. Berliner, D. 2011. The Context for Interpreting PISA Results in the USA: Negativism, Chauvinism, Misunderstanding, and the Potential to Distort the Educational Systems of Nations. In Pereyra, M., Kottoff, H-G., & Cowan, R. (Eds.). PISA under examination: Changing knowledge, changing tests, and changing schools. Amsterdam: Sense Publishers. Tienken, C. 2010. Common core state standards: I wonder? Kappa Delta Phi Record 47 (1): 14-17. Carnoy, M and Rothstein, R. 2013, What Do International Tests Really Show Us about U.S. Student Performance.
Impact of poverty: Berliner, D. 2009. Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential; Krashen, S. 1997. Bridging inequity with books. Educational Leadership 55(4): 18-22.
The Hechinger Report and WBEZ Chicago just published a welcome expose by reporter Linda Lutton that confirms the obvious. When you have school choice and when some high schools are competitive based on standardized test scores, you’ll end up with a system that sorts students by their ability as measured by test scores.
Paul Hill, founder of the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington—and the father of the school-choice-driven theory of Portfolio School Reform—is quoted in Lutton’s new report as being shocked. He says segregation by ability is an unintended consequence of his theory: “It certainly wasn’t a goal.”
And Barbara Byrd-Bennet, Chicago’s school superintendent who leads the school district whose top students are actively sorting into elite high schools, says she doesn’t believe in sorting by ability: “There’s no research to support sorting.” Lutton explains that Byrd-Bennett, “says she, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the school board ‘come from a very different belief system,’ one that opposes sorting students by achievement level. ‘What we believe is that you’ve got to elevate, raise the level and the quality of instruction at all of our schools, including our neighborhood schools,’ said Byrd-Bennett.” But at Marshall Metropolitan High School, whose attendance zone includes much of Chicago’s West Side, 86 percent of the students score below the district average.
According to Lutton’s report, 104 students had perfect scores on the district’s standardized EXPLORE exam, and 96 percent of these students attend Northside, Whitney Young, Payton, Lane, Lincoln Park and Jones high schools—all competitive-entry schools that accept students based on their academic records. “Among the city’s top 2 percent of test takers (those scoring a 23, 24, or 25 on their exam) 87 percent are at those same six schools.” By contrast, “Fifteen percent of the city’s high schools are populated with vastly disproportionate numbers of low-When Districts Create Selective High Schools, Students Segregate by Ability. Duh? | janresseger:
In a Year, Child Protective Services Checked Up On 3.2 Million Children
2.5 million of those kids were declared 'non-victims.' Another 686,000 were 'abused' or 'neglected.' And an estimated 1,640 kids died as a result.
The stories of Debra Harrell, the working mother who wasarrestedfor letting her 9-year-old spend summer days alone at a park crowded with families; the widow wholeft four kids home alone for a few hours, only to have them taken by the state; and Kim Brooks, whose nightmare began when she left her kid in the car while running a quick errand, have allsparkedsympathetic,insightfulcommentaryat anumberofnationalpublications, along with lots of reader email. A number of correspondents granted that the families in these anecdotes were subject to overzealous responses, but guessed that their experiences are anomalous. Others felt that the larger problem is the state failing to remove children from legitimately dangerous situations that lead to grave injuries or even death.
Every year, the Department of Health and Human Services published statistics on the work of child protective service agencies in all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. The most up to date report available is Child Maltreatment 2012. It includes lots of useful context for the conversation that's now unfolding, including the baseline federal definition of child abuse or neglect:
Any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation; or an act or failure to act, which presents an imminent risk of serious harm.
States can build on that definition.
One statistic that stood out in the report: since 2008, the number of referrals to child protective service agencies (hereafter CPS) has increased by 8.3 percent, even as overall rates of actual child victimization declined by 3.3 percent during the same period. There is no system that can totally avoid putting parents who don't deserve it through investigations, despite the fact that even the best moms and dads would regard the ordeal as nightmarish. Over time, however, the number of undeserving parents so burdened seems to be increasing–and the number is large (note that "screened out" referrals are the ones deemed not even worth investigating):
Child Maltreatment 2012
Some of the families among the 2,498,000 referrals found to be non-victims were presumably guilty of abuse that CPS missed; others perhaps benefitted from CPS contact. (812,000 received "post-response services," some of which were presumably salutary.) Even excluding them, a lot of families went through a traumatic, frightening, intrusive experience before being cleared of unlawful abuse or neglect. And, of course, many of the 686,000 "unique victims" of abuse were in dire need of intervention, and thanks to good work by CPS, they're In a Year, Child Protective Services Checked Up On 3.2 Million Children - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic:
The recurrent U.S. story—dominant, habitual, profoundly functional—is a tale of democracy and freedom, uplift and forward motion, perpetual improvement and never-ending progress. It echoes in our consciousness until it achieves the exalted status of a truth beyond doubt, a plain American fact: “America is the greatest country on earth”; “Land of the free, home of the brave”; “God bless America.” To wonder about or interrogate any of this is like questioning whether down might be up, or white black. No sensible person dare ask.
But every crack we encounter in that domineering story becomes a little earthquake in our heads: Scottsboro, crack, Don Pedro Albizu Campos, crack, Greensboro, crack, Birmingham, crack, Selma, crack, Fred Hampton, crack, Trayvon Martin, crack, mass incarceration and felony disenfranchisement and school closings—crack, crack, crack.
Start at the beginning, when the Puritans provided one of the most durable symbols of the “American experiment,” a symbol that is as resilient and resonant today as it ever was: America was to be a city on the hill—our exalted place, chosen by God—whose inhabitants, the chosen people, would engage in an errand into the wilderness, their task to shine their countenance upon the darkened world and thereby to enlighten it. There were some twenty million indigenous peoples already here, according to the most recent scholarship; 90 percent would be exterminated. The project of a blessed people bearing civilization and progress and truth offers a ready justification for anything—conquest, theft, and mayhem, ultimately mass murder: We come in peace, we are messengers of God, we embody the greater good. Opposition is nothing but the Devil’s handiwork.
Q&A: UC Berkeley prof on teacher collaboration and the future of LA schools
Teachers in charter and pilot Los Angeles public schools collaborate with and trust each other significantly more than teachers in L.A. Unified's traditional large public high schools, according to a new report from University of California researchers.
"There was so much trust and acceptance that teachers eagerly observed each other and gave coaching hints and came up with new ideas and units for kids," said Berkeley professor Bruce Fuller, who leads the L.A. Teacher Ties Project, a joint venture between scholars at Berkeley and UCLA to study teacher stability and motivation in Los Angeles schools. "That’s kind of interesting because there’s lots of controversy over teacher evaluation."
Released last month, the report notes significantly higher feelings of collective responsibility toward students and their school among teachers in charter and pilot schools than teachers in traditional Los Anglees Unified public schools. Charter schools and pilot schools are both managed on site, operating with more independence from central administration.
The project, funded by the Spencer Foundation and theUniversity of California Educational Evaluation Center at UCLA, issued web-based surveys to teachers and administrators in 25 L.A. Unified schools. The roster included 10 charter schools, 10 pilot schools, 2 traditional schools, and 3 so-called Reed schools, where teachers were granted legal protection from layoffs in order to slow turnover in the wake of the settlement of Reed, et. al vs. the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2011. Teachers answered questions about collaboration, motivation, their perception of their school’s cohesion, and named the colleagues they went to for guidance.
Across school types, teachers sought each other out more for advice on how to address students with problems rather than on the practice of teaching itself.
To my mind, the worst thing about the 2005 UFT Contract was giving up seniority transfers and the UFT transfer plan so that veteran teachers could become ATR teachers. Rendering them week to week wandering subs a few years back made that even worse. And the cherry on that cake was giving them second-tier due process rights, the very worst thing about the 2014 UFT Contract.
The second worst thing about the new UFT Contract is kind of a toss-up for me. But right up there in the running was screwing the members who resigned rather than retired. After all, they did the work. Maybe if we'd gotten a timely contract some of them would still be doing the work. Who knows? But now some of them have a lawsuit demanding back pay, and there is no reason on God's green earth they don't deserve it. Cops, firefighters, DC37 members, and just about everyone else got it already.
Lily Eskelsen Garcรญa joined Jennifer Napier-Pearce to talk about high-stakes testing, class sizes, immigration and other lessons she learned in Utah classrooms.
