The Arne Duncan Shuffle: Some For-Profit Colleges Have "the Ethics of Payday Lending" | David Halperin

Arne Duncan Transcript: Some For-Profit Colleges Have "the Ethics of Payday Lending" | David Halperin:

 For-Profit Colleges Have "the Ethics of Payday Lending"

Arne Duncan:        Well I think we've been very clear and have a, you know, five or six year track record of - and to be very clear, we're supportive of for profits that are helping real people gain real skills that lead to better jobs. We want them to grow and to assert more students.

But where Congress has fought us every step of the way when we're just trying to bring some basic accountability to the industry, it's been a huge problem. 
( Just Like CHARTER SCHOOL INDUSTRY ACCOUNTABILITY) 
And again what we're seeing in situations like Corinthian is just - it's indefensible. ( Just Like CHARTER SCHOOL INDUSTRY)

And this is a wakeup call not just to the industry, but this has to be a wakeup call to Congress. And I'd be hard pressed to believe that folks on either side of the aisle want to stand behind guys where there is so much deception of students and waste of taxpayer dollars.

And so going back again to gainful employment, going back to bringing more resources so that we can do more investigative work here, Congress has to stop defending the status quo that's indefensible, and has to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

And candidly, far too many members of both sides of the aisle up to this point have been part of the problem. 

The question is does this - is this a watershed moment? Is this a fork in the road where they begin to understand that, you know, bad actors simply can't be tolerated?

Michael Shure:      Yes, thanks for taking the question. You know many people who are observing this situation see Corinthian as the first domino to fall. Is this something that the Department looks at as precedent setting going forward if some of these other schools fail in the same way as Corinthian has?

Arne Duncan:        It's a great question. And sadly we think this will not be the last domino to fall, and that there may be more. And we're looking at this with an eye first to doing the right thing by the Corinthian students. But we're also - I try to be explicit in what I was saying.

We are also today trying to send a very clear message to this industry. And we're also trying to send a very clear message to Congress. And I wish we could say that, you know, Corinthian is the last of these situations. But that's not reality. That's not reality.

Students everywhere deserve and need the opportunity to make their lives better through education - to climb the economic ladder. That's exactly what these students tried to do. But a lot of them ended up with huge debts and a degree that meant little to employers, if they got a degree at all. The whole idea of a career college was a farce for them. (Unintelligible) about bad actors (unintelligible) college industry.

And that's why we're all so determined to crack down on colleges that leave students with huge debt, worthless degrees and few meaningful job prospects.

Some of these schools have brought the ethics of payday lending into higher education. They prey on the most vulnerable students, and leave them with debt that they too often can't repay. We must have accountability to protect both students and taxpayers.

And that's what we're working on through a series of actions that are simply unprecedented. No previous administrations, no state and no Congress has ever done this. Simply put, we cannot tolerate the situation where all the risk of higher education is born by students and taxpayers, while the for-profit industry uses its financial support to try and block change in Congress. That means we must do business differently.

A couple of quick messages - first, to students: We firmly believe that you deserve a college education free from rip off scams. And if you've been defrauded by a school, we'll make sure that you get every penny of the debt relief you are entitled to through a streamlined process as - as streamlined a process as possible. We're going to make that as simple as we legally can, while also safeguarding the interest of taxpayers.

To members of Congress on both sides of the aisle: I want to be very clear. Students and taxpayers need action to strengthen accountability. Beef up efforts to protect students and taxpayers from waste and fraud. Don't fight them off. And that's rules that hold colleges, not taxpayers, responsible for fraudulent acts, and provide additional resources to our department that we requested to fully enforce accountability.

To taxpayers: I want to say we are committed to being responsible stewards of your investment in educational opportunity. And to college executives and the management teams and their boards of directors, I want to say very clearly - keep your promises and make sure you're delivering real value for students. If you're doing that, you'll have our full support. But if you defraud students and if you're not honest, we'll work across the administration and make sure the full weight of the law is brought to bear.

And finally to the nation, I say it's time for action, so we can see fewer students in the situation that these Corinthian students are in today. And that's why I appreciate so much the work that Ted and his team have been doing. They're extraordinarily smart, but most importantly they have a real heart. They have a real care for students. I'm grateful to have Ted and team leading this effort.

Arne Duncan:        In terms of timing we did a pretty - our team did a pretty thorough investigation of Corinthian and found from things that were extraordinarily awry - wrong, and that led to them being shut down. And we're going to continue to look at other places. And sadly this may not be the only case where this has to happen.

And at the end of the day - I just want to come back. We have to challenge Congress to stop fighting us on this. If you look at the history of what we've tried to do over the last five or six years on this, there's a lengthy track record here going back to gainful employment, where not just the industry which we expect. But Congress is part of every step of the way.

And we're going to continue to try to do the right thing for students and taxpayers. But hopefully Congress will wake up here and get members on both sides of the aisle, and figure out that they need to strengthen our hand in dealing with these guys.

Ted Mitchell:        So the - let me see if I can help clarify it. So the students who we're considering as a group today are the Heald College students who were enrolled in programs where we have findings of misrepresentation. And so that's the first in category.

Next are...

Arne Duncan:        And that are - maybe 81% of programs.

Arne Duncan:        And to be clear, this is not like we relied on them too much. We did our own independent investigation. But (unintelligible) in places like this are, you know, passing accreditation with flying colors, we have prospects losing some credibility. And accreditors need to really, really take this seriously.

Undersecretary Ted Mitchell Doing for America

What He Did To California

Undersecretary Ted Mitchell is the former CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund and served as the president of the California State Board of Education. 

I hope all of you see that the steps we are announcing today are part of the Obama Administration's comprehensive approach to protecting students, eliminating bad actors and encouraging behavior that improves student outcomes, especially in making it easier to afford and complete a degree that will lead to good outcomes.

So, we want to create a process that is based on our established legal authority that will enable us to work through claims as quickly and as efficiently as possible, requiring the least amount of effort on the part of borrowers.

f we were to look at the total amount of outstanding loans for Corinthian students over the last five years, we would be looking at about $3.5 billion. But I think for today's news it's more appropriate for us to be looking at the Heald students.

And while we are still working that out, we believe that there are about 40,000 borrowers who are impacted by today's decision, and that those borrowers have outstanding loan balances in the neighborhood of between $500 and $600 million.

Kerry Field:          My question was how will the Department determine that a state law has been violated? Will there need to be a lawsuit with findings?

Ted Mitchell:        So this is exactly one of the jobs for the special master will be to help - to advise us on how best to go forward with that. But as is the case in our Healed findings today, in that case we - the Department through its own work - established that state law had been violated.

Kerry Field:          But will the Department rely on other people's findings as well?

Ted Mitchell:        So, I think it that it's important to distinguish between investigations and formal court decisions. And so we want to look at - and the special master will guide in this - we want to look at evidence when there is relevant evidence. And we will, you know, certainly take evidence - (unintelligible) kinds of evidence into account. And certainly judgments in state court would be pretty critical to us.

READ THE COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT HERE: Arne Duncan Transcript: Some For-Profit Colleges Have "the Ethics of Payday Lending" | David Halperin:

Students Will Have $3.5 Billion of Student Loan Debt Wiped Out & They Are Not Happy About It - Yahoo Finance http://yhoo.it/1HvUjRk

Loan Forgiveness For Bad-Faith, Not Bad-Bargain Schools | FiveThirtyEight http://53eig.ht/1HvVCzO

For Asian Americans, standardized testing is its own costly, hyper-competitive culture - Quartz

For Asian Americans, standardized testing is its own costly, hyper-competitive culture - Quartz:

For Asian Americans, standardized testing is its own costly, hyper-competitive culture

Over the weekend, 16-year-old Mira Hu went missing in San Marino, California. Hu—a student at San Marino High School—had been dropped off at nearby Arcadia High School on Saturday to take the SAT college entrance exam. However, when her parents arrived to pick her up, Hu was nowhere to be found: hours later, she sent a text message to her brother that said Hu was running away due to the pressure of her SAT exam performance and the college admissions process. (Thankfully,she turned up unharmed, police reported on Tuesday.)

Hu’s distraught father told KTLA-TV that his daughter is “a perfect kid.”Yet, perhaps it is precisely this pressure to be “a perfect kid” that could be causing anxiety for students like Mira Hu.

As the debate over college admissions reaches new heights in the Asian American community—Emil Guillermo of Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund rightfully labels it the new Asian American civil war—the question of whether colleges should use a more holistic review process or base admissions decisions primarily or exclusively on high-stakes college entrance exams.

The inadequacies of the SATs in predicting college success has been well-discussed. There has been less time spent, however, on the psychological impact of such high-stakes testing: the extreme pressure it places on high school and college students,.

It is well-known among mental health researchers that teenagers and young adults are are at a high risk for anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Roughly one in three college students experience depressionsymptoms so severe they impact daily functions. Meanwhile, anxiety levels among high-school students continue to worry mental health advocates.

A major contributor to this anxiety is the college admissions process, which for many students becomes a veritable horse race of intensive testing. While societal inequity allows some students to fallcompletely through the cracks, other students are inundated with the message that every aspect of their lives should be focused on getting into a prestigious college.

For some Asian American children, the pressure to attend a selective four-year university can hit extreme heights. In an op-ed published CNN last year, Jeff Yang writes:

It’s a common running joke among second-generation Asian Americans that our parents start us on college prep before we begin potty training. The joke didn’t seem so funny to me when I was a kid, however. I remember earning minutes of TV by defining vocabulary words correctly—while I was still in fourth grade. I remember being rewarded for finishing homework early by getting extra “mommy homework,” which always involved problem sets and practice exams from a dog-eared stack of Princeton Review test prep tomes.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that even within the already high rates of anxiety among the nation’s college students, Asian Americans, especially women, experience relatively high rates ofanxiety and suicidal ideation.

Students are told that every waking minute should be dedicated to building their college application package, with an extreme priority placed on studying for standardized exams like the SATs. An entire economy exists within (middle class and wealthy) Asian American communities providing for the intense grooming of prospective applicants. Some families reportedly pay thousands of dollars for college preparatory programs that micromanage every aspect of a child’s life.

Failure is not an option. In their new book, The Asian American Achievement Paradox, sociologists Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou have documented how our community’s emphasis on high achievement—our “success frame”—can place significant stress on Asian American children. In short, our children are told that their entire self-worth is dependent upon getting into a school like Harvard, and that if they perform below expectations on a single exam, they are total failures. How can we not be concerned about the psychological toll that kind of pressure will have?For Asian Americans, standardized testing is its own costly, hyper-competitive culture - Quartz:

Unrest at Ann Arbor school board meeting over teachers union, testing policies | MLive.com

Unrest at Ann Arbor school board meeting over teachers union, testing policies | MLive.com:

Unrest at Ann Arbor school board meeting over teachers union, testing policies

A dozen audience members at Wednesday's Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education meeting stood up and turned their back to the board members sitting on on the Skyline High School stage.

The action was representative of the growing unrest in the district over the teachers union contract and a policy that would require all students to take state exams.

The administration and Ann Arbor Education Association have disagreed over when the union's contract ends, resulting in both parties filing unfair labor practice charges against the other.

The Board of Education met June 10 to discuss the budget and the testing policy, among other items. More than 300 people attended, and 16 people spoke during public comment in support of teachers and asking the board to reconsider its actions.

"The administration has ceased collaborating respectfully with teachers," said John Turner, an Allen Elementary School parent.

Teachers tap into their limited energy and pocketbooks for the benefit of their students, he said, and he wishes the wasted energy could go toward respectful collaboration.

Elizabeth Stern, an Ann Arbor teacher and parent, said the contract dispute doesn't feel like the way Ann Arbor does things.

Addressing Superintendent Jeanice Swift, Stern said many parents and teachers have been a fan, but now are reflecting on what Stern calls anti-teacher actions.

"We know you have a plan, but we need to know is your plan in line with our community's values," she said to cheers and a standing ovation.

Pathways to Success teacher Mike Smith said he'd like to believe the district administration would approach negotiations with respect, integrity, trust and honor.

"Why would I sign off on a new contract when the contract I am currently working on has not been honored?" he said.

In 2010, the teachers union conceded 2.2 percent pay cut for the district to save $4.5 million, expecting the district to pay the money back. The district has not yet repaid the funds, and officials have declined to comment on the funds.

Elizabeth Shaieb, an Ann Arbor Open student, was one of about 100 students at her school who opted out of spring tests.

The board's first draft of policy 5060 included a provision that could remove students Unrest at Ann Arbor school board meeting over teachers union, testing policies | MLive.com:

ANN ARBOR SCHOOLS

• Unrest at Ann Arbor school board meeting over teachers union, testing policies
• Ann Arbor school board moves meeting to Skyline High School
• Ann Arbor school board to vote on 2016 budget
• Read a letter from an Ann Arbor middle school principal about the dress code
• Students protest Ann Arbor middle school dress code

With Thousands Marching in the Streets, Chicago Teachers Union Declares ‘This Means War!’ - Working In These Times

With Thousands Marching in the Streets, Chicago Teachers Union Declares ‘This Means War!’ - Working In These Times:

With Thousands Marching in the Streets, Chicago Teachers Union Declares ‘This Means War!’

Teachers, Students and Community Members demonstrate in front of the Chicago Board of Trade   (Martin de Bourmont)

Cries of “this means war!” echoed throughout Chicago’s financial district this Tuesday as teachers demonstrated against the Board of Education ahead of union contract negotiations this summer.

They made for a formidable sight: led by a troupe of black-clad high school percussionists and holding their fists up high, members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and their supporters marched on Chicago’s LaSalle Street yesterday demanding adequate wages, benefits and resources for their students, insisting that the district’s financial woes are actually a case of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) being “broke on purpose.”

The rally, which began in front of Chicago’s James R. Thompson center, served as an unofficial kickoff for the CTU’s campaign to bargain a new contract with CPS’s Board of Education, which represents 400,000 students and the country’s third-largest school district. The current contract expires on June 30.

CPS currently faces a $1.1 billion budget gap for the fiscal year beginning on July 1, leaving doubt as to whether or not it will be able to pay the $634 million due to the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund on June 30. Further hampering negotiations between the CTU and CPS is the district’s contention that Chicago teachers will need to accept a 7% pay cut along with increases in health insurance premiums.

Rather than enacting budget cuts, the CTU is demanding that the city’s wealthiest corporations pay more in taxes in order to fund smaller class sizes, less standardized testing, funding for school libraries and art classes, and increased staffing of all schools with counselors and clinicians. Teachers also demanded the protection of teachers’ pensions and salaries.

Many of the demonstrators carried signs that matched the evening’s rhetoric in militancy and succinct condemnation of the Chicago city government. “Payout? No thanks!” read a popular sign. “Take the money from the banks!” “The 1% owes us,” read another. Others reminded onlookers of the sacrifices inherent in every public school teacher’s life: “ ‘I do this for the money,’ said no teacher ever.”

At the rally, teachers spoke of the increasingly harsh conditions they faced at work and their negative impact on Chicago students.

“We get [to school] at around 5 or 5:30 every single morning,” explained one teacher from Farragut Career Academy.  “On Mondays, I arrive a little bit late, around six and I usually leave around five. When I go home, I work, and I work during the weekends. And now they’re going to take away 7% of my income.”

Holly Charles, a teacher from West Englewood, explained that many schools do not even have enough funding to support a janitorial staff.  “I didn’t get into teaching for the money,” she said, noting that she had worked in the CPS system for 30 years. “I’m bringing toilet paper from home, having to mop my own floor,” she says. “There’s not enough money for janitors. But I bet if you head into any of the CPS headquarters, you’ll find toilet paper and clean floors there.”

Another teacher, from Chicago’s South Shore High School, said that his school’s needs went far beyond a janitorial staff. “We don’t even have libraries in the school,” he said. “We need to reduce our class sizes, [but] they’re increasing class sizes. If they increase class sizes teachers are going to be managing students not teaching students.”

Limiting class sizes was a priority for most of the teachers I spoke to. “You have one teacher for every thirty kids,” explained With Thousands Marching in the Streets, Chicago Teachers Union Declares ‘This Means War!’ - Working In These Times:

I Believe in Freedom of Choice | Diane Ravitch's blog

I Believe in Freedom of Choice | Diane Ravitch's blog:

I Believe in Freedom of Choice

Parents should be able to send their children to the school of their choice. And they do, but the public should not be expected to pay for their private choices.

The public has a civic obligation to support public education. Even if you don’t have children, you pay taxes to educate the children of the community. Even if your children are grown, you pay school taxes. Even if you send your children to private school, you pay school taxes. Public schools are a public responsibility.

If you don’t like the public schools, you are free to choose a private school, a charter school, a religious school, or home school. That’s your choice. But you must pay for it yourself.

We all pay for police and firefighters. If you want a private security guard, pay for it yourself. We all pay for public schools, even if we don’t patronize them. They belong to the community. We do so to invest in the future of our society. It is a civic obligation.

We all pay to support public libraries. If you never use the local library, you still have to pay the taxes to support it. If you prefer to buy books instead of using the free public library, don’t ask taxpayers to subsidize your private choice. Buy your own books. Pay for it yourself.

The taxes you pay support the common good, not your private preferences. They pay for highways you may never drive on, fire departments you may never call on, beaches open to all that you may never set foot on, public parks, and a range of services and facilities open to all without fee.

When it comes to education, there is a simple rule: public money for free, democratically controlled schools, private money for private, privately-controlled, and religious schools.I Believe in Freedom of Choice | Diane Ravitch's blog:

BustED Pencils: Fully Leaded Education Talk

BustED Pencils: Fully Leaded Education Talk:

BustED Pencils Trending News: Apologize to the students; Brian did what??; Haunting

Posted June 11, 2015 by Tim Slekar

 These tasks are not really related to your usual job.  If you don’t care, is it working??  Apologies are in order. The First Hurdle http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-greene/the-first-hurdle_b_7517602.html?utm_hp_ref=tw  Nevada governor Brian Sandoval, WHAT did you just do??!! Nevada Enacts Universal School Choice http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419438/nevada-enacts-universal-school-choice The COMMON theme. High School Students Create Haunting Artwork About Standardized Tests http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/10/standardized-test-art_n_7546756.html?1433968512    … Read more »

BustED Pencils’ Jed Hopkins: The danger of uncredentialed teachers

Posted June 9, 2015 by Tim Slekar

In case you’ve been living under a rock you might not know that my great state of Wisconsin—under the fascist like leadership of pseudo-conservatives—is subverting democracy and using the budget process to ram through oligarchic sponsored legislation.  However, the slash and burn approach to anything remotely connected to public education is particularly maddening. In the…Read more »

Is it time to start using the F Word in Wisconsin?

Posted June 4, 2015 by Tim Slekar

No not that one. This one—FASCISM. (sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism. At this point in time we don’t have a dictator. So scratch that. However, we are witnessing the “suppression of opposition… Read more »

Charter Schools' Katrina Memory Hole

Charter Schools' Katrina Memory Hole:

CHARTER SCHOOLS' KATRINA MEMORY HOLE

Pre-Katrina New Orleans graduation numbers are charter school advocates' exhibit A for reform. One problem: the U.S. and Louisiana Departments of Education say they don't exist.

We’ve heard the narrative so many times we know it by heart. "Results-based" charter schools "turned around" a "broken education system" using "accountability" and "data" to "rescue" it from the clutches of "failed school boards" and the dreaded teachers' unions. No city in America better illustrating this trope than Katrina-ravaged New Orleans; with its clear before and after division of charter and "traditional" eras, it was the A-B tested anecdote the pundit classes loved to cite. It's no surprise then that when seeking a statistic to support this axiom as part of the recently revitalized debate on charter schools, otherwise careful media outlets like the Christian Science Monitor, the Atlantic and Vox.com cited, without question, NOLA.com's 2013 claim that the graduation rate for New Orleans improved from 54.4% in 2004 to 77.8 in 2012.

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After all, it was vaguely consistent with concurrent media reports, namely the 2013 60 Minutes New Orleans "Turn Around School" infomercial by Scott Pelley.

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This stat said it all - a roughly 50% increase in high school graduations from before to after Katrina. Liberal, conservative, whatever - the data was in. Serious People™ knew charter schools got results. There’s only one problem:

PRE-KATRINA GRADUATION RATES FOR NEW ORLEANS DON'T EXIST.

The reality is that no one - including the journalist who first cited the figure - knows where the pre-Katrina graduation statistic came from. Official government figures on New Orleans graduation rates from both state and federal Department of Education sources are nonexistent, lost either in the wake of Katrina or at some point during the many incarnations of Louisiana's Department of Education. In this post I attempt to trace the origins of this trope, how it spread unquestioned, and why a dystopian vision of pre-Katrina New Orleans is so essential to the broader "school reform" value proposition.

BEFORE THE FALL

A thought experiment:

Imagine, for a moment, that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had said five years after 9/11:

"I think the best thing that happened to the defense system in New York and Washington was 9/11. That defense system was a disaster, and it took 9/11 to wake up the community to say that 'we have to do better’.”

We would rightfully find this crude and opportunistic. But in 2010 when Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said

“I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that 'we have to do better'."

the media either shrugged it off or embraced its thesis. The political and moral rot of the New Orleans education system pre-Katrina wasn't just taken for granted - our political classes saw it as so manifestly depraved and corrupt that it validated the deaths of 1,833 people. Such is the hysteria with which conventional wisdom cements itself. Like a tale out of an Ayn Rand variation of Genesis, the story of Katrina wasn't one of nature's caprice or racism's legacy, it was instead the fortunate and righteous correction of liberal excess. And though graduation rates are not the only Charter Schools' Katrina Memory Hole:

Tweetable: Friedman on Think Tanks | deutsch29

Tweetable: Friedman on Think Tanks | deutsch29:

Tweetable: Friedman on Think Tanks

I am not on Twitter. I don’t have the time for it. But if I were on Twitter, I would tweet the excerpt below from a 1995 interview with “father of school choice,” economist Milton Friedman.

I would tweet it not because I endorse Friedman’s ideas on school choice and what translates into the reckless bankrupting of American public education, but because what he says is funny.

In this excerpt, Friedman is observing to free-market publication Reason magazine senior editor Brian Doherty that the number of free market publications and organizations has grown. Friedman’s words start out as complimentary, but then Friedman keeps going:

Friedman:  But look at the situation today. You have REASON magazine, you have Liberty magazine. You’ve got all of this stuff that spouts out from the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a half dozen other think tanks. In fact, I think there are too damn many think tanks now.

Doherty: Why do you say there are too many?

Friedman: You don’t have the talent for it.

Too many think tanks; not enough talent to staff them.

Now that’s funny.

______________________________________________

Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of the ed reform whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education.

She also has her second book available on pre-order, Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?, due for publication June 12, 2015.

An Interesting Statement by Milton Friedman

It is summer, and I am working on my third book, this one on school choice (e.g., vouchers, charter schools). (For those who might be concerned that I do not know how enjoy summer, I also lounge in the pool almost daily and intentionally schedule visits with friends so that I do not become a crazy, book-writing hermit crab.)

The late economist Milton Friedman is considered to be the “father of school choice,” and so, I am including information on Friedman my school choice book.

While working on my chapter on Friedman, I came across a 1995 interview that Friedman did with An Interesting Statement by Milton Friedman

The tough tests facing New York’s new state education commissioner - The Washington Post

The tough tests facing New York’s new state education commissioner - The Washington Post:

The tough tests facing New York’s new state education commissioner

Last month,  New York tapped a new state education commissioner, MaryEllen Elia. She is the 2015 Florida Superintendent of the Year who led the public schools in Hillsborough County for a decade before she was fired by the school board this past January with more than two years left on her contract.

Her firing surprised many people because Elia, a former teacher, had a good deal of support in Florida, not only from the Republican political and business establishment but also from the Florida Education Association, a teachers union, whose president, Andy Ford, said in a statement after she was hired in New York that she worked “to bring people together” and toward a “positive, proactive agenda.” He said: “New York will be lucky to have MaryEllen.”

Yet the Hillsborough board majority, which officially fired her without cause, had been on record as criticizing her, among other things, how she dealt with the panel, constituent complaints about too much high-stakes standardized testing, and a lack of services for special-needs students.

There has also been criticism about some of the reform policies she instituted in Hillsborough, which are analyzed in this post by Carol Burris, an award-winning principal in New York. Burris suggests how Elia can close divisions in the state’s education world that have resulted from the controversial implementation of the Common Core and Core-aligned tests under former commissioner John King. He quit last December after N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo expressed unhappiness with him over botched Core implementation. Now King is managing the U.S. Education Department’s operations as a senior adviser to Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Burris, of South Side High School in the Rockville Centre School District,  was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and was tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. She has also written several books, numerous articles and posts on this blog about New York’s troubled implementation of school reform.

By Carol Burris

On May 26, the New York Board of Regents unexpectedly assembled in Albany to vote on a single item–the appointment of MaryEllen Elia as the new education commissioner of New York State. With the transparency of a papal selection, the vote was taken and then her name was announced, prompting New Yorkers to ask, “who?”

MaryEllen Elia was not an unknown for long. Internet sleuths shared newspaper articles, videos and tweets about the policies and practices of the woman who will be New York’s new education chief. She helped. She quickly The tough tests facing New York’s new state education commissioner - The Washington Post:

LAUSD RELAXES GRADUATION REQUIREMENTS- FAIRNESS OR MORE PREMEDITATED FRAUD? - Perdaily.com

LAUSD RELAXES GRADUATION REQUIREMENTS- FAIRNESS OR MORE PREMEDITATED FRAUD? - Perdaily.com:

LAUSD RELAXES GRADUATION REQUIREMENTS- FAIRNESS OR MORE PREMEDITATED FRAUD?

(Mensaje se repite en Español)



Rather than address its longstanding failure to educate students in a timely age-sensitive manner, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has now voted to further degrade the value of a high school diploma by letting students pass an A-G college requirement course with a "D". LAUSD itself has created this regrettable situation by continuing for what is now generations to socially promotion students, whether or not they have objectively met a course's standards, so that now when they take these higher skills A-G college prep courses, too many do not have the underlying basic language and math skills necessary to do passing work.

Serious remediation at an early enough age would have made habitual social promotion and predictable failure unnecessary. But now the LAUSD board has taken the counterintuitive step of further degrading the value of a high school diploma by no longer requiring at least a "C" average in the A-G requirements courses that are necessary to be considered for admission to colleges and universities in California and elsewhere. One might say that rather than once and for all fixing this longstanding and purposefully failed public education system, they have decided to "fix" the public education system by eliminating any objective standard of what is acceptable work.

If anybody had bothered to look, student predictable failure would have been easy to identify and deal with in a timely manner. With 75% of new students to junior colleges in California taking remedial and not college level classes, it should have been obvious- to anybody who bothered to look- that the high school diplomas and California High School Exit Exams (CAHSEE) these students supposedly passed were achieved were not worth the paper they were written on. But it seems that the American press has lost the ability to report the truth to hold powerful people accountable, if it ruffles the feathers of corporate interests- especially those interests seeking the privatization of public education for profit- that is if they want to keep their jobs.

LAUSD administrators are part of a culture that for generations has shown that it knows everything about LAUSD RELAXES GRADUATION REQUIREMENTS- FAIRNESS OR MORE PREMEDITATED FRAUD? - Perdaily.com:

“Sociopath” was too small a word for a Feudal Lord | Reclaim Reform

“Sociopath” was too small a word for a Feudal Lord | Reclaim Reform:

“Sociopath” was too small a word for a Feudal Lord

Posted on June 10, 2015by Ken Previti

Incredibly, some people felt that “sociopath” was a mere prejudicial term to describe the billionaire (a-few-dollars-short-of-being-a-billionare) governor who is now attempting to purchase an entire new legislature of his own, thus combining personal money and power to tax supported money and power. Power he himself would control in one part of America. That would make Bruce Rauner a Feudal Lord.

The governor of the State of Illinois would transform government to his own advantage and to the advantage of his billionaire buddies and corporate cohorts. Legally, but not morally.

This nightmare scenario is not “just another conspiracy theory.” It is a conspiracy of wealth and power to transform and control Illinois. Needless to say, since it is in process in one state, it will in all likelihood be attempted in other states.

The following are excerpts from the full superb article by Sacha Feinman in Think Progress.

“To have individuals first get elected and then govern with wealth is a new development in our system,” said Trevor Potter, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and current president and general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center.
“In the past, there were people like the Rockefellers that used their fortune for campaigns, but, as far as I know, once they were elected, they acted as other officials did and worked within the system rather than using their wealth to create a new political base.”

In Rauner and his network, the United States may have the first-of-its-kind and ultimate incarnation of a major political coalition that wields the bulk of its might from the unencumbered spending permitted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision and subsequent 

“Sociopath” was too small a word for a Feudal Lord | Reclaim Reform:

NYC Educator: UFT DA Not Ready to Vote No Confidence in Reformy MaryEllen Elia

NYC Educator: UFT DA Not Ready to Vote No Confidence in Reformy MaryEllen Elia:

UFT DA Not Ready to Vote No Confidence in Reformy MaryEllen Elia

President’s report

Mulgrew thanks DA for our work (but notably, does not offer us cake). Says we have implemented contract but not far enough. Says we had no idea Cuomo would become nemesis. Makes me wonder why he chooses to disregard those of us who recognized this eight years ago.

National

AFT has started process on presidential election next year. Pension cuts are threatened throughout country. Concerns about how US Supreme Court may rule. Says our enemies are really bad and evil, have cut revenue via tax systems. Boasts of surplus in NY because we fought back austerity measures. Speaks of other locals with huge increases to health care.  

Says it’s tough to get things done because DC is very focused on upcoming Presidential election, that many want to take, I suppose Hillary, down. 

State

NYSED—we will have a new evaluation system next November 15th, maybe. Waiver application may be available for one year only. Believes by next September there will be another system. Says when we have momentum we will make system better. 

Stresses it was important to get this out of governor’s hands and to NYSED. Says that is our strategy. Ridicules choice of November 15th to enact evaluation system. Screams about it repeatedly. 

Mentions tuition tax credit and charter cap still face us and thanks those helping us. Mentions tax credit is now tied to rent control. Says the well-being, shelter and safety of 2 million people is tied to a tax credit for billionaires. Says we have informed people about it but questions why he did it. Says it will cost teachers $300 to get promised $200 tax credit, and that only very rich will be able to take advantage of it. 

Says 13 million has been spent to raise charter cap and push tax credit. Says charter push is to destabilize public education. Says now presidential candidates will openly say charters are an attempt to privatize education. 

Local

Mayor pushing for mayoral control, but public is not receptive. Mulgrew says Bloomberg has tainted mayoral control. Says UFT supports mayoral control with checks and balances. Gets scattered applause. Speaks of our support for rent control. 

Chapter leader survey—Says we need more info to determine whether contract is being implemented. Says he may get more people to schools to help build chapters. 

Renewal schools—Says it’s tough but better than school closures. Says no member is mandated to work extra time, but it is available for pay. Says we need to make those schools work to prove we know “how to fix failing schools.” Speaks also of “out of time” schools that don’t need NYC Educator: UFT DA Not Ready to Vote No Confidence in Reformy MaryEllen Elia: