Children are more than test scores: This 10 miles is for our young giants the Newark Students Union

Children are more than test scores: This 10 miles is for our young giants the Newark Students Union:

This 10 miles is for our young giants the Newark Students Union

Catching up to my dedications and thanks you today from Delaware for my Walking to DC blog.

Day 15 on July 1, 2015 I dedicated 10 miles to my heroes the Newark Students Union > http://newarkstudentsunion.tumblr.com/about <

I first met members of the Newark Student Union last July at the the BAT March on Washington in DC. They were amazing back then, and they told me you haven’t seen anything yet walking Man. Far too often the Newark Students Union is mistakenly considered by Governor Christie, education policy makers, and many other political leaders as kids acting out.
But those of us who have taken the time to know them, see them for what they really are. The Newark Students Union is a remarkable on the ground organization, in your face, got the research, defenders of Newark's communities, children, parents, teachers and their public schools. They have earned the respect of activists all across the nation.  Earning that respect by gathering the facts, demanding justice and equity in our public schools, followed by intense dramatic on the ground based actions.  Such as speaking up at every board of education meeting, chaining themselves to the Newark Superintendent offices, occupying the superintendents office, by organizing 2000 of their fellow students to walk out of their schools to protest State control of the Newark Public schools.

I had the pleasure of meeting them once again personally at New Jersey TV news Community room meeting with save all schools in New Jersey, Communities United, Dr. Monica Taylor Montclair State University, Workers Caucus, and East Side high school teachers on to 30^th. I found myself amazed, inspired, empowered, and lifted up my their words and presents at that meeting.  Everyone present in that room felt the deepest respect for these incredible activists fighting for justice in the Newark public schools.          

My thinking is that these young activists are not just role models for young activists in Newark, but for activists of all ages all across the nation. They have tempered their actions with in in-depth  research on the issues, and have time and time again reached out to leadership of the north Public schools, the governor’s office, and every of the stakeholder involved in the Newark Public schools Children are more than test scores: This 10 miles is for our young giants the Newark Students Union:

Superintendents and Legislators - Beware the SBAC Tsunami that is coming! - Wait What?

Superintendents and Legislators - Beware the SBAC Tsunami that is coming! - Wait What?:

Superintendents and Legislators – Beware the SBAC Tsunami that is coming!

An open letter to Superintendents and Legislators 7/10/2015;

For more than a year and a half public education advocates in Connecticut have been delivering the message that the Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) test is unfair, inappropriate, discriminatory and fundamentally flawed.  The Common Core SBAC test is DESIGNED to fail the vast majority of public school students.  It is a product of the education reform industry who are dead-set on convincing policy makers and the public that our nation’s public education system is broken, that our public school teachers are bad and that the answer is more standardized testing and diverting scarce public funds to charter schools and other privatization efforts.

Rather then fight back, far to many politicians and school administrators climbed on board the education reform initiatives that undermining public education today.

In Connecticut, the SBAC disaster was slowed by a handful of  dedicated and committed public school superintendents who recognized that parents had the fundamental and inalienable right to opt their children out of the destructive SBAC test, but the majority of local education leaders (and elected officials) kowtowed to the Malloy administration and engaged in an immoral and unethical effort to mislead parents into believing that schools had “do degrees of freedom” on the SBAC testing issue.

We all know that defense was nothing short of an outright lie.

Now the results of the 2015 SBAC tests are coming in and students, parents, teachers and the public will finally see for themselves just how unfair and discriminatory the SBAC testing scam really is.

The Common Core testing is unfair to all public schools students, but it is particularly damaging to students who come from poorer families, those that have English language challenges and those who require special education services.

As the following Wait, What? blog post reports, Washington State, another SBAC testing ground, has already released their early results and 7 in 10 high school juniors have been deemed failures according to the SBAC math test.

Although the Connecticut State Department of Education continues to claim that the SBAC results are not yet available, the news from other SBAC states is that preliminary information has been handed over to the states and, as the corporate education reform industry always intended, the vast majority of public school students have been deemed failures.

So a warning to Connecticut’s superintendents and other school administrators.  Whether you have been given the results or are still waiting for them to be handed over, beware of the Tsunami that is coming…

We all know that while the state has a significant achievement gap due to poverty, language barriers and unmet special education needs, our public schools are not broken and our children and teachers are not failures.

Strategies exist to close the achievement gap, but the State of Connecticut and its leaders have simply refused to address the core issues that would improve academic achievement in any meaningful way.

And Connecticut’s parents will not forget that Superintendents and Legislators - Beware the SBAC Tsunami that is coming! - Wait What?:

Jersey Jazzman: Newark: Chris Cerf's Victory Lap

Jersey Jazzman: Newark: Chris Cerf's Victory Lap:

Newark: Chris Cerf's Victory Lap

And so Chris Cerf, the architect of the transformation of Newark into a "portfolio" school district, is now officially in charge. I have to say I was a little surprised Cerf's confirmation was only one vote away from deadlock; then again, given his close ties to embattled former State Superintendent Cami Anderson, only the most ardent supporters of Cerf wouldn't have their doubts about his appointment.

I'll say it again: Chris Cerf is not qualified to run a school district. He holds no standard certifications in school administration nor in teaching; if he applied for a suburban superintendent job, he wouldn't get past the first round.

I never thought he was a good choice to be the Education Commissioner, given his lack of experience as an educator. But that job has a quasi-judicial component, and Cerf is a lawyer (who, impressively, clerked at the Supreme Court), so his appointment to the NJDOE was at least somewhat defensible.

But not here. Newark, like all school districts, needs an experienced, well-trained school leader with a track record of success. Frankly, Cerf's record is one of mediocrity at best and failure at worst. His tenure at Edison Learning was an unmitigated disaster. His stint at the NYCDOE under Mike Bloomberg and Joel Klein is regarded by parent advocates as a train wreck. I judge his record as NJ Education Commissioner to be one full of poor decisions, leading to the alienation of teachers, parents, students, and other stakeholders.

And Amplify? Well...

But let's focus on the future. Chris Cerf is, in the words of current Education Commissioner David Hespe, the man whose charge is to be the last State Superintendent of Newark. His mission, handed down from both Governor Christie and Mayor Baraka, is clear: bring the district back to local control. Will he?

My best guess now is that he will -- because this is Chris Cerf's last stand. Let's be brutally honest: if he doesn't get this right, he really doesn't have anything left. His resume lacks substantive accomplishments, in either the public or private sectors. He's going to have to have something to point to if he ever wants to work again in this field. Getting Newark to - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/07/newark-chris-cerfs-victory-lap.html#sthash.W5LESH9K.dpuf

The New GED: Making A Second Chance So Much Harder | janresseger

The New GED: Making A Second Chance So Much Harder | janresseger:

The New GED: Making A Second Chance So Much Harder

In a book on expanding opportunity in higher education, Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education, Mike Rose describes the GED exam and the students in adult education programs who have come back to school to try to improve their education and their credentials: “I am struck by the diversity of backgrounds and skills in this single room. People with postsecondary degrees from another country and a man who has barely been inside a schoolhouse.  People in their early twenties, a lifetime in front of them, and a woman with grandchildren, who comes to school to keep her mind alert.  People navigating cultures and languages.  People starting over.” (p. 39)

Rose published Back to School in 2012, right after for-profit Pearson, the mega-publisher of textbooks, standardized tests, and test-related curricula, joined with the American Council on Education to take over the GED program but before January of 2014, when a new GED test—much harder, much more expensive, and administered on-line—was launched.  The GED has for decades been the way so many people without a high school diploma have been able to climb back on the path to employment or further education.

Pearson’s partner in the new GED Testing Service, the American Council on Education (ACE) is an organization of college presidents, and it is presumably with ACE’s encouragement that the new, revised GED exam emphasizes college readiness despite that many who aspire to pass the GED seek job placement or technical education.  The new GED is based on the new Common Core standards, which emphasize analysis, higher-order thinking, and more advanced math.  This blog described the new GED and even a sample of one of the impossible-seeming questions in a post last January.  That post linked to an in-depth report about a collapse across the United States in the rate of passage of the GED, a sudden drop in scores that accompanied the re-design of the test.  Passage in 2014 dropped by 90 percent:  “The numbers are shocking: In the United States, according to the GED Testing Service, 401,388 people earned a GED in 2012, and about 540,000 in 2013. This year… only about 55,000 have passed nationally. That is a 90-percent drop off from last year.”

The problems have continued.  Here is a July 2015 report from the Columbus Dispatch: “GED Testing Service, a for-profit partnership that has the monopoly on the high-school equivalency degree in Ohio, is on pace to award about 3,700 GED certificates this year, according to the Ohio Department of Education.  That is less than a quarter of the 16,500 Ohioans on average who got GEDs each year between 2000 and 2013.  As bad as that 2015 number is, it’s up substantially from 2014, when only 2,164 Ohioans passed the test, down from more than 15,000 the previous year.  That drop coincided with GED Testing Service’s tripling the price of the test to $120, charging for practice tests for the first time, and selling practice materials on its website.”

Last month, Kentucky Public Radio reported a similar drop in the passage rate: “The number of Kentuckians passing the General Educational Development test, or GED, has dropped by 85 percent in the last two years, according to the state’s adult education program.  During the The New GED: Making A Second Chance So Much Harder | janresseger:

Louisiana Educator: Your Guide to BESE Elections

Louisiana Educator: Your Guide to BESE Elections:

Your Guide to BESE Elections

Why the John White Controlled BESE is Wrong for Louisiana

All elected seats for BESE will be up for election in the October 24, 2015 primary election. There are 8 elected members on BESE that run in districts similar to the old Louisiana Congressional Districts. Five of the present elected members have been closely aligned with State Superintendent John White and have consistently voted for policies that have done great damage to our public education system and to the status and wellbeing of our professional educators. It is my hope that these individuals will be defeated and replaced by persons who believe in public education governed by local voters and our elected local school boards. We need candidates who respect professional educators and who value their professional opinion on education matters. 

There are three elected members of BESE that have stood for local control, and that have opposed policies that are harmful to public education who should be reelected. These very positive, pro-public education members of BESE are Dr Lottie Beeberepresenting the 3^rd BESE district,  Mary Harris representing the 4^th BESE district, and Carolyn Hill representing the 8^th BESE district. I am asking my readers who live and vote in these three districts to please vote for and assist these good BESE members in getting reelected.

The flawed policies of the John White majority on BESE

·      Privatization of public schools: The John White controlled faction of BESE has consistently supported the approval of privately managed charters schools that use MFP funding over the objection of our local school boards. These charter managers are not responsible to the voters in each local district and can pocket a large percentage of our tax dollars without voter approval and at the same time deliver a substandard education to Louisiana children. Some takeover school managers have been allowed to choose their own governing agency and are not being returned to the local school boards as the original law intended.  This is an abuse of public trust.

·      Substandard accountability for Charter and Voucher schools:The John White controlled faction of BESE allows some voucher and charter schools to operate without proper professional staff and facilities. This shortchanges the students attending these schools financed by our tax dollars. Some of these privately managed schools use mandatory entrance interviews to cull out hard to educate students and serve fewer handicapped students, (This fact has been documented by a lawsuit against the Recovery District and the LDOE) Many charter schools dump discipline problems and low performers back to the real public schools, and counsel out students that would lower their school performance scores.

·      Unfair VAM Evaluations of Teachers: The John White controlled faction on BESE has approved BESE polices that require 10% of all VAM rated teachers must be found to be ineffective each year even if overall student performance on state standards improves. This inherently unfair and error plagued process for teacher evaluation that is driving away good teachers will not be changed as long as White controls the majority on BESE.

·       Damage to the Teacher Retirement System: Present BESE policy allows charter schools and voucher schools to opt out of the teacher retirement system while still retaining the full MFP Louisiana Educator: Your Guide to BESE Elections:

FLIP THE 
LOUISIANA BOARD OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION 
( BESE)

Click Here to Follow Flip BESE on Facebook 

Big Education Ape: FLIP THE LOUISIANA BOARD OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ( BESE) http://bit.ly/1JKBCtL #flipbese

As federal ed rewrite gains traction in Congress, here are some key changes schools may see - The Hechinger Report

As federal ed rewrite gains traction in Congress, here are some key changes schools may see - The Hechinger Report:

As federal ed rewrite gains traction in Congress, here are some key changes schools may see

As Congress considers bills to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the most heated debate has been over how to hold schools accountable for student performance, and who should decide.

But while these subjects are dominating the debate, a less-heralded provision in the 50-year-old law that has provided federal education support could also have a significant effect on schooling.

It’s no surprise that the flash point in this year’s rewrite of ESEA should be on accountability. The previous version of the law, the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, for the first time set national rules for accountability. States were required to test every student in grades 3 through 8, and once in high school, in reading and mathematics each year. Schools that failed to show “adequate yearly progress” in test scores — for all students and for each subgroup of students — were subject to an escalating set of sanctions.

The bills Congress is now considering would roll back that system substantially. Both the bill passed by the House on Wednesday and the bill the Senate is considering would continue the requirement for testing in each grade, but they would leave to states the responsibility for determining how to hold schools accountable for the results. This approach matches the Republican desire to reduce the federal role in education.

Related: The graduation rates for every school district, in one map

But to Democrats and their allies in the civil rights community (including my organization, the Alliance for Excellent Education), the bills go too far. They are arguing for amendments to require states to intervene in schools with low graduation rates and those that fail to bring up the performance of subgroups. These amendments would ensure that low-performing students and schools receive the support they need.

The outcome of the debate will have a profound effect on schooling — after all, No Child Left Behind left a major imprint on education. And it will set the terms for the federal role in education for years to come.

But another provision in the Senate bill, one that has received almost no attention, could also have a significant effect on schools. That provision would create a pilot program to allow up to seven states to develop and implement innovative assessment systems. If it becomes law, this provision could open the door to dramatic new ways of measuring student learning. And because of the strong effect of assessment on instruction, this provision could have a substantial impact on teaching and learning.

Specifically, the provision would allow states to use “competency-based assessments, instructionally embedded assessments, interim assessments, cumulative year-end assessments, or performance-As federal ed rewrite gains traction in Congress, here are some key changes schools may see - The Hechinger Report:

Education and the Export of Jobs: Will All that is Public Become Private? - Living in Dialogue

Education and the Export of Jobs: Will All that is Public Become Private? - Living in Dialogue:

Education and the Export of Jobs: Will All that is Public Become Private?

by Stephen Stollmack, Ph.D.

My life now seems to be on Fast-Track – so much more to learn about what’s going on in the world each day and more and more suspicion that the government has been hiding important things from us for years. Now that I am back to living alone, no longer having the responsibility of supporting a family, I am shocked at what I see. My sense of shame — for failing to follow and speak out against this trend towards less transparency and rampant secrecy – is what has motivated me to write this article.

President Obama’s 2008 primary fight against Hillary coincided with my coming out of the fog of married life and 2-3 years of drug abuse that dulled the pain and disappointment of separation and divorce. I began to recover my sense of responsibility to myself and the world by reading President Obama’s books and trying to figure out who this man was, while I struggled to understand his oppressive and inhuman education ‘reform’ policies with their emphasis on accountability, standardization and privatization. I read about and watched him in public appearances with his family and concluded that, while he seemed exceptionally smart and competent, he was also a well-meaning person.

I continued to support him, in the face of accusations that he was continuing his predecessor’s policies and wars. I have been profoundly disappointed about that and I am also disturbed at his failure to keep his promise to maintain a ‘transparent’ administration (among other things). I can see how he could have underestimated how difficult this would be given the fact that the functionality of all bureaucracies rests on the efficiency with which they withhold information from the public as well as from lower levels of management. Having worked for and contractually consulted to a number of federal agencies for 30-years, I knew first hand that information — what each bureaucrat knows about the ‘higher-up’s marching orders — determines his/her ability to survive and grow in his/her job.

I watched the President sign the TPA — a law that will assure passage of TPP, a trade agreement that will have profound and irreversible impacts on today’s and future generations with barely a squeak from the “free press.”

So, does TPA becoming law essentially mean TPP is a done deal? This internet article suggests not. It makes the point that Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) does not prevent Congress from debating TPP provisions but it limits such debates and public comments to within 90-days of seeing it for the first time. At or before the 90-day limit, Congress MUST give the bill a straight up-or-down vote.

TPA was first codified into law by the Trade Act of 1974 (P.L. 93-618) to give the president more leeway to conduct negotiations, while assuring other participants that their negotiations could be to no avail if the US Congress decides to not ratify the agreement.

The main objections to TPA (and fears about TPP) have stemmed from the fact that past trade Education and the Export of Jobs: Will All that is Public Become Private? - Living in Dialogue:

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Wall St. public school strategy: Loot, pillage, burn...

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Wall St. public school strategy: Loot, pillage, burn...:

Wall St. public school strategy: Loot, pillage, burn...

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va). - Reuters

The Senate has passed an amendment to new proposed federal legislation, which would steer hundreds of millions of dollars intended for impoverished school districts and classrooms, into the pockets of Wall Street consultants. The legislation, authored by Sen. Mark Warner(D-VA) was tucked into the Senate version of a massive K-12 education funding bill currently up for congressional reauthorization.

Among the chief proponents of the congressional bill was the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington, D.C., think tank that is closely associated with Bill and Hillary Clinton. 

Bank of America, which made fees off of school district swap deals made in Chicago and Denver, has donated at least $50,000 to the Center for American Progress. Other major donors to the Center for American Progress include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has given at least $500,000, and the Walton Family Foundation (of the Walmart fortune), which has also given at least $500,000 to the think tank. Both the Walton and Gates foundations have partnered with the Boston Consulting Group.

David Sirota at IBT is hot on the trail. He writes;

As budget-strapped Chicago follows a mass school closure with a new plan to layoff more than 1,400 teachers, one set of transactions sticks out: the city’s moves to refinance $1 billion in debt through complex financial instruments called swaps. The deals were spearheaded over the last few years by financial advisory firms brought in by the city to help find money saving efficiencies. Instead of saving money, though, the Windy City took a big hit: The school system has lost more than Schooling in the Ownership Society: Wall St. public school strategy: Loot, pillage, burn...:

‘Good Intentions Gone Bad’ — excerpt from new book about Teach For America - The Washington Post

‘Good Intentions Gone Bad’ — excerpt from new book about Teach For America - The Washington Post:

‘Good Intentions Gone Bad’ — excerpt from new book about Teach For America

Teach for American founder Wendy Kopp (The Washington Post)

A new book about  the 25-year-old Teach For America tells the story of the controversial organization through the eyes of alumni who share their experiences and insight about working in TFA.

TFA was founded by Wendy Kopp based on her 1989 Princeton Universityexperience — and it has become a powerful force in the corporate school reform movement, winning tens of millions of dollars from the U.S. Education Department and millions more from private philanthropists to continue its work.

It became famous for its program of recruiting thousands of new college graduates and giving them five weeks of training in the summer before sending them into high-poverty schools to work as teachers (not interns), leading to criticism that their corps members were not properly prepared for teaching high-needs students and that they were being recruited by school districts at the expense of veteran teachers. As growing criticism and a polarized education reform debate has harmed TFA recruiting, the organization has been experimenting with new training programs.

The book — “Teach For America Counter-Narratives: Alumni Speak Up and Speak Out” — is edited by T. Jameson Brewer, a former TFA corps member and and a doctoral student in Educational Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Kathleen deMarrais, professor and head of the Department of Lifelong Education, Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia’s School of Education.

The editors of the book say they view it as a counter-narrative to that given by the organization, and it reveals some of the problems within the structure of TFA that they believe hurt teachers and students. Following is an excerpt from Chapter 14 of the book by Wendy Chovnick, a former corps member in Washington, D.C. schools,  who also served as chief of staff to the executive director in the Phoenix TFA office. You can read more about her experiences here, in this interview I did with her in 2013.

And here’s the book excerpt by Chovnick:

Teach For America (TFA) has a compelling mission and thousands of well-intentioned, hardworking, and intelligent corps members and staff members working towards its ambitious goals. Yet, how the organization functions and the questionable impact it is having, given its vast resources, are disturbing on many levels.

I was a 2001 Washington, D.C. corps member, served as the chief of staff to the executive director in the Phoenix TFA office from 

‘Good Intentions Gone Bad’ — excerpt from new book about Teach For America - The Washington Post:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Duncan's legacy

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Duncan's legacy:

Duncan's legacy

"It will take years to recover from the damage that Arne Duncan’s policies have inflicted on public education." -- Diane Ravitch

Arne Duncan says he will remain at the D.O.E. "until the final bell". At this point, no one really cares. The damage is already done and with billions of Race To The Top money no longer in his back pocket, he has no more juice with states, school districts, or with Congress. His version of school reform has been badly discredited (I hope I helped a little) and he will likely go down as the worst ed secretary ever. 

Diane Ravitch documents the destruction left in his wake:

*He used his control of billions of dollars to promote a dual school system of privately managed charter schools operating alongside public schools; 

*He has done nothing to call attention to the fraud and corruption in the charter sector or to curb charters run by non-educators for profit or to insist on charter school accountability or to require charters to enroll the neediest children;

*He pushed to require states to evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students, which has caused massive demoralization among teachers, raised the stakes attached to testing, and produced no positive results;

*He used federal funds and waivers from NCLB to push the adoption of Common Core standards and to create two testing consortia, which many states have abandoned;

*The Common Core tests are so absurdly “rigorous” that most students have failed them, even in schools that send high percentages of students to four-year colleges, the failure rates have been highest among students who are English language learners, students with disabilities, and students of color;

*He has bemoaned rising resegregation of the schools but done nothing to reduce it; [Here, I would add that Duncan openly opposed, what he referred to as "forced integration" and abandoned fellow cabinet member, AG Eric Holder on his deseg suit in Louisiana--mk].

*He has been silent as state after state has attacked collective bargaining and due process for teachers;

*He has done nothing in response to the explosion of voucher programs that transfer public funds to religious schools;

*Because of his policies, enrollments in teacher education programs,

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Duncan's legacy:

Sen. Sherrod Brown seeks to stop waste, mismanagement of charter schools | cleveland.com

Sen. Sherrod Brown seeks to stop waste, mismanagement of charter schools | cleveland.com:

Sen. Sherrod Brown seeks to stop waste, mismanagement of charter schools

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown blasted Ohio's charter school system for having rampant waste and fraud Thursday as he spelled out the main goals of a national charter school accountability bill he proposed this week.

"We want to make sure these charter schools effectively educate children," Brown said. "Right now they're not."

Among his major proposals: Making charter school management and finances more open to the public, tracking how charter schools fit into each area's education plans and making sure that making profits isn't more important than educating kids.

Brown, an Ohio Democrat, pointed at his home state's for-profit charter school operators - private companies that often receive 90 percent or more of a school's tax dollars - as damaging kids' educations. And he blamed the Ohio - and other - legislatures for bowing to the for-profit "political operators" and their campaign donations instead of making sure they perform better.

"There's no sector that misspends tax dollars more than these for-profit charter schools," Brown said.

He added, aiming directly at Republican legislators:"I'm curious that the people that complain about waste, fraud and abuse in government are now standing up to defend these for-profit charters."

Brown's bill is a 72-page amendment to the Every Child Achieves Act, a Senate bill to re-cast and extend the controversial No Child Left Behind law passed under George W. Bush. The House passed its own rewrite of No Child Left Behind on Wednesday.

It also comes, Brown noted, as Ohio fights its way through its own version of charter school reform this year - a push that stalled in the Ohio House for the summer. Though the Ohio House had passed a charter reform bill in the spring, it declined to vote on it again late last month after the Ohio Senate added more controls to it.

Brown said Thursday that his bill is aimed at solving problems in Ohio, where $1 billion of state tax dollars is spent each year on charter schools - public schools that are funded by the state, but which often have academic results far below that of traditional schools. But he said the bill is aimed at all states as well.

To highlight Ohio's charter school troubles, Brown pointed to a Stanford University study released late last year showing that charter school students learn less across Ohio than students in traditional schools.

Brown's bill is a mix of mandates of very specific things states must do to oversee, regulate and report on charter schools if they are to receive federal funding under the Sen. Sherrod Brown seeks to stop waste, mismanagement of charter schools | cleveland.com:

Some states would lose big money with proposed education funding changes - The Washington Post

Some states would lose big money with proposed education funding changes - The Washington Post:

Some states would lose big money with proposed education funding changes

Congress’s debate about rewriting the nation’s main education law has featured high-profile disagreements over testing, vouchers andschool accountability, but there is another issue that has just as much potential to derail the legislation: Money.

A forthcoming amendment from Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) would change the formula used to allocate Title I funds, a move that would create big winners and losers among the states.

Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia would gain Title I dollars, which are meant to educate poor children. But that leaves 14 states that would see cuts, including big losers New York (whose districts would lose $310 million), Illinois ($188 million) and Pennsylvania ($120 million).

“Every county in my state will lose money,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), whose state stands to lose about $40 million per year, a 20 percent cut. Mikulski, speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, said she plans to vote in favor of rewriting the No Child Left Behind law — unless it includes the Burr amendment.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), whose state stands to lose $22 million, called the Burr amendment a “poison pill” that could pose a real threat to the underlying legislation, which he supports. “An amendment like that, if it passed, it could knock the whole thing sideways,” Kaine said in an interview. “Other than that, I feel really good about this bill getting out of the Senate.”

[Even as Congress moves to strip his power, Arne Duncan holds his ground]

The federal government sends about $14 billion in Title I funds to the nation’s schools, doled out via a complicated set of formulas that favors states with large populations and wealthy states that spend a lot on education. Rural states, and states with smaller populations, tend to receive less on a per-pupil basis.

Burr’s amendment would attempt to correct for that bias and would streamline the current set of four Title I formulas into one simpler formula. It essentially would dole out money based on the number of poor children multiplied by the national average of the cost to educate that child.

Many states in the South and West would see an infusion of federal dollars: Texas would get an additional $192 million; California $118 million; and Florida $106 million. North Carolina, Burr’s home state, would get an Some states would lose big money with proposed education funding changes - The Washington Post:

Why America Demonizes its Teachers -- Part 4: The Role of the Home in Student Learning | Frank Breslin

Why America Demonizes its Teachers -- Part 4: The Role of the Home in Student Learning | Frank Breslin:

Why America Demonizes its Teachers -- Part 4: The Role of the Home in Student Learning

One powerful influence on student learning, which federal and state governments refuse to acknowledge, is a student's home life, over which teachers have no control. Students who come from homes conducive to learning usually do well in school, while those who don't come from such homes, generally do poorly.

There are many parents today who do a wonderful job in raising their children in ideal home environments, with the result that their children flourish in school. Would that there were more of these parents!

There are also parents who don't provide such homes, often resulting in problems for their children in school. It is hard to teach children from homes where the life of the mind is disdained or neglected; where there are no books; where parents don't read, or read to their children, or encourage them to read on their own; where a child's curiosity is never piqued by a parent's questions, or by parents discussing ideas within their child's hearing to suggest a larger world outside the home.

It is hard to teach children of helicopter and snowplow parents who infantilize their children by making it impossible for them to grow up, become their own persons, and live their own lives; parents who instill in their children a gargantuan sense of entitlement; parents who refuse to set limits on their children's behavior, wanting to be their friends instead of their parents; parents in denial about their children's behavior, eternally making excuses for them, enabling them to become more uncontrollable year after year, and thereby disabling them to function later in life as mature human beings.

It is hard to teach a fatherless or a motherless child who feels cheated by a parent's absence or loss; a lonely child who feels uprooted by a parent's frequent job relocations and no longer bothers to make friends at school; a child shattered by a parent's drinking or drug problem; a spoiled child bribed by parental guilt-offerings for time and affection rarely bestowed; a defeated child who knows only rejection and has nothing to live for; a frustrated child who can never measure up to a parent's impossibly high expectations; an angry child who lashes out to prove he exists and will make the world pay for his pain.

It is hard to teach children from dysfunctional homes and emotional wastelands; where parents endlessly preach to their children, instead of being role-models after whom children want to pattern their lives; where parents are too busy to do what parents always found time to do in the past, like being parents who explained the Why America Demonizes its Teachers -- Part 4: The Role of the Home in Student Learning | Frank Breslin:

About the Warner Amendment to the Senate ESEA Bill | deutsch29

About the Warner Amendment to the Senate ESEA Bill | deutsch29:

About the Warner Amendment to the Senate ESEA Bill

On July 08, 2015, the Senate approved by voice vote an amendment to the Senate version of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, the Every Child Achieves Act of 2015. The amendment in question,Senate Amendment 2086, sponsored by Senator Mark Warner (D- VA), allows states to spend the administrative portion of ESEA funding grants on “fiscal support teams.” Though not explicitly stated in the amendment language, such support teams could include education businesses and consulting firms.

Senator Mark Warner

In response to the above news, on July 09, 2015, investigative journalists David Sirota and Matthew Cunningham-Cook wrote an article in the International Business Times entitled, “Senate Passes Bill Letting Schools Give Education Money to Financial Consulting Firms.” The article implies that the Warner amendment has the potential to funnel ESEA grant funding to consultant bank accounts and away from needy children.

Not exactly.

Yes, the amendment grants consultants direct access to ESEA funds– but not to at least 95 percent of it.

For each of the grants in the ESEA document, limits are set regarding how much of the funding can be spent on administrative costs. These limits usually range from 1 to 5 percent. In the case of Warner’s SA 2086, the amendment refers to two sections from No Child Left Behind (NCLB), sections 9201 and 9203, both of which concern consolidation of administrative funds. According to these sections, states (and, under the supervision of states, the local education agencies) are allowed to consolidate the administrative allotments from various ESEA grants “if the State educational agency can demonstrate that the majority of its resources are derived from non-Federal sources.” (NCLB, pg 542).

So, yes, according to NCLB language to be retained as part of the Senate ESEA About the Warner Amendment to the Senate ESEA Bill | deutsch29:

Congress Considers Expanding Charter Program Despite Millions Wasted on Closed Schools

Congress Considers Expanding Charter Program Despite Millions Wasted on Closed Schools:

Congress Considers Expanding Charter Program Despite Millions Wasted on Closed Schools

As both the House and the Senate consider separate bills that would reauthorize and expand the quarter-billion-dollar-a-year Charter Schools Program (CSP), the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has examined more than a decade of data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) as well as documentation from open records requests. The results are troubling.

Between 2001 and 2013, nearly 2,500 charter schools have been forced to shutter, affecting 288,000 American children enrolled in primary and secondary schools.

Furthermore, untold millions out of the $3.3 billion expended by the federal government under CSP have been awarded as planning and implementation grants to schools that never opened to students.

Charters Much More Likely to Close

The failure rate for charter schools is much higher than for traditional public schools. In the 2011-2012 school year, for example, charter school students ran two and half times the risk of having their education disrupted by a school closing and suffering academic setbacks as a result. Dislocated students are less likely to graduate and suffer other harms.

In a 2014 study, Matthew F. Larsen with the Department of Economics at Tulane University looked at high school closures in Milwaukee, almost all of which were charter schools. He concluded that closures decreased "high school graduation rates by nearly 10%" The effects persist "even if the students attends a better quality school after closure."

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

A Map of Failure

Using federal data, CMD has compiled an interactive map of every charter school that has been forced to shutter between 2001 and 2013.

Because the U.S. Department of Education does not provide the public with any accounting for the amount of taxpayer money—whether state or federal—that has been spent on these failed charter schools, there is no way to estimate the total amount of money missing in action. However, the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) recently estimated that "according to standard forensic auditing methodologies, the deficiencies in charter oversight throughout the country suggest that federal, state and local government stand to lose more than $1.4 billion in 2015."

Major Probes into Closed Charters Underway

According to a PowerPoint presentation CMD has uncovered, the watchdogs at the U.S. Department of Education's Office of the Inspector General are currently conducting major nationwide probes into the lack of accountability and oversight within the Charter School Program. One of these audits focuses on where federal grants end up when charter schools are forced to close. A spokesperson for OIG Congress Considers Expanding Charter Program Despite Millions Wasted on Closed Schools: