Arne Duncan pushes for ‘parent engagement’ — and gets some angry feedback - The Washington Post

Arne Duncan pushes for ‘parent engagement’ — and gets some angry feedback - The Washington Post:

Arne Duncan pushes for ‘parent engagement’ — and gets some angry feedback

Education Secretary Arne Duncan seems to have a new favorite subject for the moment: parents and their engagement.

Seven years into his secretaryship, he recently released what the Education Department labeled “a set of rights to help parents seek high-quality education for their children.” His July Twitter chat was all about parental engagement, but it didn’t go quite the way he might have hoped; parents asked tough questions and he didn’t manage to “engage” them on those queries.

So what are the newly stated rights for parents? Duncan used the occasion of a speech in late June at the 2015 National Parent Teacher Association Convention and Expo in Charlotte to announce them. He said in part:

“I want to describe a set of educational rights that I firmly believe must belong to every family in America—and I hope you’ll demand that your leaders in elected and appointed offices deliver on them. They come together as a set of rights that students must have at three pivotal stages of their life, to prepare them for success in college and careers and as engaged, productive citizens.”
First, every child should have the right to attend a free, high-quality preschool…. Second, I believe all children have the right to high, challenging standards and engaging teaching and leadership in a safe, supportive, well-resourced school….[And]  I believe we must see an affordable, high-quality college degree as every child’s right.”

The announcement, according to the Education Department, “complements work by the Education Department to reach out to parents—from the Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships, to tools that can help families and students select the best colleges for their needs, to support of Parent Training and Information Centers and Resource Centers.”

Who would argue with those rights? (Nobody I know.) The question for Duncan is what, over seven years, he has done to ensure those rights for parents.

Were his policies geared to achieving educational equity for each student? (No.) Or was his chief policy initiative something called Race to the Top, which forced states to compete for federal funds by promising to implement specific reforms Duncan favored, such as expanding charter schools and Arne Duncan pushes for ‘parent engagement’ — and gets some angry feedback - The Washington Post:

Arne Duncan 'Thrilled' To Close Corinthian Colleges, Not So Ready To Help Its Former Students

Arne Duncan 'Thrilled' To Close Corinthian Colleges, Not So Ready To Help Its Former Students:

Arne Duncan 'Thrilled' To Close Corinthian Colleges, Not So Ready To Help Its Former Students

The Department of Education was “thrilled” to shut down the for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges Inc., Education Secretary Arne Duncan declared Wednesday -- a claim that stands in sharp contrast with his department's frantic efforts last year to save the company.

In fact, the Education Department bailed out the financially troubled operator of schools under the Heald, Everest and Wyotech brands; helped it find buyers for some of its campuses; and publicly worried about the cost of allowing Corinthian to fail.

Duncan’s statement to MSNBC also contradicts his department's continued insistence that many former Corinthian students keep paying off their federal student loans. The department estimates that students took out more than $3 billion in federal loans in recent years to attend Corinthian-owned schools.

“Why would Secretary Duncan be thrilled to shut down Corinthian if there wasn’t systemic fraud?” asked the Debt Collective, a group of volunteers working with some 200 former Corinthian students who are refusing to make those loan payments. “It tells you everything you need to know that his department continues to collect on Corinthian students' debts when he could, under current law, erase it this very moment with a stroke of the pen.”

Dorie Nolt, a spokeswoman for Duncan, declined to comment.

Corinthian filed for bankruptcy in May, following a months-long disintegration amid state and federal allegations that it had systematically deceived students, luring primarily low-income Americans to take on unmanageable debt and leaving them with credentials of questionable value.

Over several months last year, while Corinthian teetered on the brink of failure, the Education Department declined to inform current or potential future students that the company faced lawsuits or pending investigations from about half of the country’s state attorneys general, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The accusations ranged from duping students into taking out unaffordable loans by advertising false graduation and job placement rates, to employing illegal debt-collection tactics.

The department apparently hoped that Americans would continue to enroll at Corinthian’s schools to boost their value to potential buyers. Even as Corinthian's prospects grew dimmer, the department let it enroll as many students as it could --ignoring the demands of a dozen Democratic senators -- and let it encourage those students to take out loans to pay a company that Duncan now claims his department was “thrilled to be able to close down.”

“If Secretary Duncan is ‘thrilled’ Corinthian shut down, why did the department allow students to continue to enroll at the schools, and continue to provide it with federal student loan money, if they knew this school had the ethics of a payday lender?” the Debt Collective said.

Corinthian has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing. The company has blamed federal and state regulators for its abrupt closure.

The Education Department’s moves culminated with a November deal it brokered Arne Duncan 'Thrilled' To Close Corinthian Colleges, Not So Ready To Help Its Former Students:

FAILED DC School Chancellor Michelle Rhee and the D.C. Hunger Games

Jeff Mills’ whistleblower suit revealed rotting food, fraud, and millions of dollars lost. Why is DCPS renewing its contract with Chartwells? - Washington City Paper:

Hunger Games

Jeff Mills’ whistleblower suit revealed rotting food, fraud, and millions of dollars lost. Why is DCPS renewing its contract with Chartwells?

 How does D.C. ignore a multi-million dollar problem year after year? Pretty easily, it turns out.

On June 5, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine reached a $19.4 million settlement in a whistleblower lawsuit against Chartwells/Thompson Hospitality, the public school system’s food services provider. The plaintiff, former D.C. Public Schools Food Services Director Jeffrey Mills, had detailed poor food quality and outright fraud, from misrepresented costs to concealed overpayments.

The city then proceeded to move forward on a renewal of Chartwells’ contract for the next year. Mayor Muriel Bowser and DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson seem determined to stick with it.

It’s the latest in a dysfunctional relationship between D.C. and Chartwells. Chicken nuggets and crates of spoiling milk is one thing. Price-gouging and fraud is another, given that DCPS exercised a renewal option in 2014, after the D.C. Office of Inspector General cited auditor’s findings that Chartwells brought in $19 million less in revenue and incurred $6 million more in costs than promised from 2008 to 2012. Revelations from the lawsuit and a separate employment lawsuit now hover over an arrangement that raised red flags the minute DCPS outsourced food services in 2008.

And city officials appear all too willing to wave Chartwells in for another year.

With the ink barely dry last month on the settlement, Racine seemed relieved to get the matter off his plate: “Chartwells has quite reasonably acknowledged and addressed mistakes it made in administering the contract to provide food and food services to DCPS,” he said in a press release. “In light of [their] acceptance of responsibility, DCPS looks forward to continuing its contractual relationship with the company.”

Added DCPS in a written statement: “We believe any issues regarding the provision of school meals, which relate primarily to the prior contract term, have been resolved. DCPS believes it can continue its relationship with Chartwells/Thompson through the expiration of the current contract.”

Henderson appeared the least bothered by activity that took place under her nose. Quashing any notion of change, she declared, “Food service is a massive operation, my focus is on improving academic achievement.”

Bowser has Henderson’s back. On June 19, she sent a contract renewal to the D.C. Council and said she will rebid it for the 2016-2017 school year. It will be hard to stop the renewal, too; The most vocal critic on the Council doesn’t even serve on the Committee for Education, which won’t hold a hearing until the fall.

To understand just how bad the city’s attempts at privatizing school meals have been, you need to go to Mills, a former restaurateur who came to D.C. passionate about food and left with last month’s settlement and a separate $450,000 settlement following his wrongful termination from DCPS.

Former colleague Joel Metlen puts it this way: “If it weren’t for Jeff’s lawsuit, none of this would’ve been on the radar.”

Jeff Mills was raised in northern Ohio on grandma’s cooking and the free school lunch program. He tended bar to pay for college in Boston, then after graduating, took his knack for business to New York, where he became a successful restaurateur. The nation’s biggest restaurant scene—full of what he describes as unreliable employees and business partners—was ultimately not for him, though. He still wanted to do something food-related, but with more social value.

Enter the nation’s capital.

D.C. has some of the country’s worst rates of food insecurity, hunger, and child obesity. For years, DCPS failed to provide nutritious meals to more than 45,000 students. In 2008, faced with losses of up to $7 million per year, then-DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee outsourced the school food operation, based on an internal study that said it would improve student health and save taxpayer money.

School districts are fueled by federal reimbursements for every meal they serve. The more meals served, the more reimbursements. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, roughly 87 percent of large school districts nationwide run food services in-house. Mills had his staff do a district-by-district Jeff Mills’ whistleblower suit revealed rotting food, fraud, and millions of dollars lost. Why is DCPS renewing its contract with Chartwells? - Washington City Paper:

RIGHT WING ATTACKS Hmong Innovating Politics (HIP), SCUSD and Ethnic Studies Now Coalition

Sacramento School: Hey, Let's Dumb Down Education for Immigrants! - Charlotte Hays - Page 1:

Sacramento School: Hey, Let's Dumb Down Education for Immigrants!

Hmong Innovating Politics

Hmong Innovating Politics (HIP) | Facebook

Meet Jonathan Tran

A republic such as the one born 239 years ago tomorrow requires a populace capable of citizenship.

Unfortunately, a Sacramento city school district is doing everything it can to prevent children of immigrants from acquiring the skills of citizenship. The Sacramento City Unified School District's Board of Trustees has unanimously agreed to establish an ethnic studies pilot program because, as Drudge put it in a headline that is almost an oxymoron, eighty percent of the students in the school are minorities.

A news report says that the pilot program will be set up "in collaboration with community organizations, local university professors and college students." This is being done because "minority students feel culturally disconnected from the standard curriculum in high school, particularly in literature and history classes."

Of course they feel culturally disconnected: a "significant portion" are "English learners," which is a sly way of saying that they don't speak English. But that is not a reason to foist these vulnerable young people off upon a rogues gallery of professors and other liberal interest groups, who will make it more likely that they will remain “English learners” and practically ensure that they never meet Jane Austen or Nathaniel Hawthorn and learn the facts about their adopted country’s historic development.

That is a travesty. I once had the privilege of reading essays for an English as a Second Language (ESOL) essay contest. Essayists, all recent immigrants, all hard at work mastering English in a program staffed by volunteers, were asked to write about a Founder who had special significance for them. The essay I recall most vividly was by a young man from Africa. The English was halting but the essay nevertheless managed eloquence: James Madison was the essayist's particular hero because Madison stood against the kind of tyranny the young man had known. This was a recent immigrant on the path to citizenship and assimilation. Thank goodness he hadn't gotten sidelined by in a woefully politically-correct Sacramento public school!

Admittedly the Sacramento public school system faces a demanding situation--according to the news report, forty-four recognized languages are spoken by the student body. Logically, that would provide a rationale for assimilation, unifying the student body by placing a premium on English skills rather than furthering cultural fragmentation. But logic is not the strong point of Sacramento School: Hey, Let's Dumb Down Education for Immigrants! - Charlotte Hays - Page 1:

Judge postpones release of Kevin Johnson's attorney e-mails

Judge postpones release of Kevin Johnson's attorney e-mails:

Question of privilege raised at hearing over Sacramento mayor’s private e-mails

To understand the mood inside Judge Christopher Krueger’s courtroom at the Sacramento County Superior Courthouse on Wednesday, all one needed to do was bear witness to an exchange that took place during a brief recess — away from the eyes and ears of the attorneys, much of the press and the judge himself.

It was during this recess that Cosmo Garvin, a political reporter with the Sacramento News & Review newspaper, introduced himself to Benjamin Sosenko, the press secretary for Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.

In that moment, if tension was tangible, you could cut it with a knife.

“I’d like to speak with the mayor’s office about — about anything, really,” Garvin said after an awkward handshake between the two.

Sosenko paused, mustered a nervous grin and with a hesitant cadence replied “Yeah, that — that seems unlikely anytime soon.”

“So you’re not going to talk with me ever?” Garvin asked.

“Ever? I didn’t say that,” Sosenko responded. “I never said that.”

The press secretary then turned to a nearby radio reporter and asked, “Did you have a question?”

That there is a strained relationship between the mayor’s office and journalists with the News & Review is hardly a surprise — the alternative newspaper has, after all, published a number of stories accusing Johnson of repeatedly blurring the lines between official city business and his personal interests.

But just how much the mayor has mixed his personal and political lives remains definitely unknown, and that is the source of the latest tension between the mayor and one faction of the local fourth estate.

On Wednesday, private attorneys hired by Johnson to represent him on a personal matter filed a legal challenge against the News and Review over a broad public records request that was submitted to the City of Sacramento earlier this year.

Benjamin Sosenko, the press secretary for Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, speaks to reporters outside a courtroom on July 2, 2015. (Photo: Matthew Keys / The Desk)

That request, filed earlier in the year by Garvin himself, sought to obtain all e-mail records sent from the personal Google Mail accounts used by city officials — including Johnson — from the last two years.

In a sworn affidavit obtained by The Desk, Garvin says the city has produced around 300 e-mail records out of thousands that the city has identified as being potentially responsive to his request.

Also responsive are e-mail records containing communications between Johnson and a private law firm, Ballard Spahr, that purport to detail an Judge postpones release of Kevin Johnson's attorney e-mails:

A Second New York Math Teacher: Regents Exam Was “One of the Best” (??) | deutsch29

A Second New York Math Teacher: Regents Exam Was “One of the Best” (??) | deutsch29:

A Second New York Math Teacher: Regents Exam Was “One of the Best” (??)

On June 24, 2015, I posted an email that a New York State algebra teacher wrote to parents regarding the Regents algebra exam. In short, the teacher wrote that the exam “did a serious disservice to your child,” and he/she included several examples of test questions that he/she judged to be problematic.

On July 1, 2015, a reader who identified him-/herself as also being a New York State math teacher wrote a comment to the first teacher’s email on another blog where my post had been reblogged. The second teacher judged the exam to be fine and concluded that the problem was with the first teacher, not the test questions the first teacher highlighted. The second teacher concludes his/her comment with, “In summary, teachers who can’t teach should not be allowed to complain about Common Core.”

I forwarded the first teacher the comment written by the second teacher and asked the first teacher if he/she would like to respond.

The answer was yes.

In this post, I first reproduce the algebra teacher’s original email. Following that, I provide the second, dissenting teacher’s response. And, finally, I post the original teacher’s response to the second, dissenting teacher.

Also, those interested in viewing the Regents Algebra I exam are able to access the exam by clicking here.

Let’s get started.

Here is the first teacher’s original email, a communication to the parents of her/his algebra students:

Dear Algebra Parents, 

The results from this year’s Common Core Algebra exam are now available and have been posted on the high school gymnasium doors. They are listed by student ID number and have no names attached to them. The list includes all students who took the exam, whether they were middle school students or high school students.  

I’ve been teaching math for 13 years now. Every one of those years I have taught some version of Algebra, whether it was “Math A”, “Integrated Algebra”, “Common Core Algebra”, or whatever other form it has shown up in. After grading this exam, speaking to colleagues who teach math in other school districts, and reflecting upon the exam itself, I have come to the conclusion that this was the toughest Algebra exam I have ever seen.

With that in mind, please know that all 31 middle school students who took the exam received a passing score. No matter what grade your son or 

A Second New York Math Teacher: Regents Exam Was “One of the Best” (??) | deutsch29:

More On Money And Influence

Education Lessons From A Sparkly District: More On Money And Influence:

More On Money And Influence

I started with this and that led to this (yes, that said billion). Now, on to other money besides Gates'. Poking around the 990's for the Walton Family Foundation and Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation is really interesting. Fascinating list of organizations. Of course, it turned up yet more money donated to some signers of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights' press release which slammed the opt out movement and letter to Congress urging the re-authorization of ESEA with its annual testing requirements and 1% cap on alternative assessments intact.

Needless to say, I have a huge problem with these civil and disability rights groups blithely condemning entire swaths of students to failure, especially when excellent alternatives are available. Why do they do it? Well, for starters, there's the money...

First, from the May 5th press release:

	Walton	Broad
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights	----	----
The American Association of University Women (AAUW)	----	----
Association of University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD)	----	----
Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA)	----	----
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund	----	----
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)	----	----
NAACP	----	----
National Council of La Raza (NCLR)	$2,419,330	----
National Disability Rights Network (NDRN)	----	----
National Urban League	$40,000	----
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC)	----	----
TASH	----	----
Total	$2,459,330	----

And, from the April 13th letter:

	Walton	Broad
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights	----	----
Alliance for Excellent Education	----	----
American Association of University Women (AAUW)	----	----
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee	----	----
Association of University Centers on Disabilities	----	----
Children’s Defense Fund	----	$4,000
Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA)	----	----
Democrats for Education Reform	----	----
Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund	----	----
Easter Seals	----	----
Education Law Center – Pennsylvania	----	----
Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN)	----	$5,000
Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law	----	----
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)	----	----
Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund	----	----
NAACP	----	----
NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc.	----	----
National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities	----	-

read more at Education Lessons From A Sparkly District: More On Money And Influence:

Not How Smart Are You But, How Are You Smart? | WagTheDog

Not How Smart Are You But, How Are You Smart? | WagTheDog:

Not How Smart Are You But, How Are You Smart?

“Kids make their mark in life by doing what they can do, not what they can’t… School is important, but life is more important. Being happy is using your skills productively, no matter what they are.” ~ Howard Gardner 

“These great thinkers [Gardner, Armstrong ] have proposed a much healthier question regarding intellect, not how smart are you but, How are you smart?…The ways in which you are smart are a part of the seed within you and hold the key to your further growth.” ~ Jim Cathcart

Learning is about discovering your purpose and passion in life. Schools should provide diverse pathways and opportunities for students to explore and unleash their specialized skills and abilities…not standardize them.

It is far more important that students are free to learn in school and well educated, than subjecting them to continuous testing to determine if they have been educated well.

Testing and training students to sort and compare how well they meet common standards does not prepare them for the social and emotional challenges of uncommon careers.

“The second concern is justifying the Common Core on the highly dubious notion that college and career skills are the same. On its face, the idea is absurd. After all, do chefs, policemen, welders, hotel managers, professional baseball players and health technicians all require college skills for their careers? 

Do college students all require learning occupational skills in a wide array of careers? In making the “same skills” claim, proponents are really saying that college skills are Not How Smart Are You But, How Are You Smart? | WagTheDog:

Largely run by for-profit corporations, Ohio’s charter schools misspend tax dollars—and lawmakers are letting it continue | The Progressive Pulse

Largely run by for-profit corporations, Ohio’s charter schools misspend tax dollars—and lawmakers are letting it continue | The Progressive Pulse:

Largely run by for-profit corporations, Ohio’s charter schools misspend tax dollars—and lawmakers are letting it continue

Ohio’s charter schools—many of which are run by for-profit education management corporations—are notorious for misspending tax dollars and producing poor academic results. Lawmakers there had a chance to do something about it this summer by passing legislation that would strengthen charter school oversight—but that legislation ultimately failed.

From The Washington Post:

What happened? The bill — which, again, had the votes to pass — was tabled because, apparently, some lawmakers still want to make changes. The bill is supposed to come up again in September, but who really knows, given tepid efforts in the past to improve schools. Even if a bill passes later, implementation will be significantly delayed.

You’d think that the lousy state of Ohio’s charter system would have set a fire under everyone with even half a fingerprint on it. How bad is it? A June story in the Akron Beacon Journal started this way:

No sector — not local governments, school districts, court systems, public universities or hospitals — misspends tax dollars like charter schools in Ohio.

The newspaper had reviewed 4,263 audits released last year by the state and concluded that charter schools in the state appear to have misspent public money “nearly four times more often than any other type of taxpayer-funded agency.” It says that “since 2001, state auditors have uncovered $27.3 million improperly spent by charter schools, many run by for-profit companies, enrolling thousands of children and producing academic results that rival the worst in the nation.”

So what does the state of Ohio’s charter schools have to do with North Carolina?

It’s worth taking a closer look because, according to the Akron Beacon Journal, “only Michigan and Texas have a greater portion of charter schools [than Ohio] operated by private, for-profit companies, which are not compelled to disclose how they spend public money.

In North Carolina, lawmakers lifted the cap back in 2011 on the 100-charter school limit—and since then, more and more private, for-profit education management companies have been making their way into the state, some of which have sought to hide how they spend tax dollars.

This spring, the batch of 18 charter applications hoping to open up shop in 2016 faced an unusual amount of scrutiny and many of the applications were moved forward by reviewers with considerable reservations.

Notably, the majority of those charter school applications that made it to the final round of consideration this year were backed by national for-profit education management organizations (EMOs), rather than being run only by small, independent and locally-based nonprofit boards—unlike in years past when the opposite was the case.

Legislation moving through North Carolina’s General Assembly now that would make changes to how charter schools are regulated would make some improvements, such as forcing local charter boards to adopt anti-nepotism policies and be in financial compliance if they want to expand a grade level.

But the Senate bill (456) would also siphon tax dollars that are typically designated for traditional public

- See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2015/07/02/largely-run-by-for-profit-corporations-ohios-charter-schools-misspend-tax-dollars-and-lawmakers-are-letting-it-continue/#sthash.Onp7E9mo.dpuf