The complicated correlation between poverty and lower test scores

The complicated correlation between poverty and lower test scores:

The complicated correlation between poverty and lower test scores

The many factors that contribute to a student being successful in the classroom interweave into a complicated tapestry, and one that has grown even more intricate in the last decade.

Pull a single thread and the tapestry falls apart.

For students who grow up in an impoverished household, stresses and other distractions make success all the more challenging. Transience, lack of resources at home, lack of parent engagement — all diminish a student’s chances for success, and in many cases are a direct impact of poverty on a household.

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, in Virginia over 975,000 families with 1.8 million children live in poverty.

Over the last 10 years, the percentage of area students qualifying for free and reduced lunch has increased, and in some areas, significantly. The program serves households meeting federal poverty guidelines.

While a causation between high free and reduced lunch populations and lower scores on standardized tests can not definitively be drawn, there is an evident correlation.

Poverty numbers tell the story

It’s hard to say definitively that schools with higher rates of poverty will have lower test scores as well, but there is correlation for many area schools, particularly in the cities.

In both Staunton and Waynesboro the school with the highest free and reduced lunch populations had the lowest Standards of Learning pass rates in 2013-2014, the year with the most recent SOL data released by the state.

In Staunton, Bessie Weller Elementary had 69.5 percent of students qualify for free and reduced lunch, and had the lowest English and math pass rates at 64 percent and 48 percent respectively during the 2013-2014 school year.

In Waynesboro, Wenonah Elementary had 88.2 percent qualifying for free and reduced lunch, and had English and math pass scores of 48 percent and 57 percent, the lowest in the school division for 2013-2014.

Staunton and Waynesboro have higher rates of students qualifying for free and reduced The complicated correlation between poverty and lower test scores:

Thompson: School Closings in Chicago, Newark & Oklahoma City - This Week In Education:

This Week In Education: Thompson: School Closings in Chicago, Newark & Oklahoma City:

Thompson: School Closings in Chicago, Newark & Oklahoma City

Like so many reformers in Newark and elsewhere, Cory Booker was a true believer in "disruptive innovation" to produce "transformative" change. Dale Russakoff, in The Prize, explains that Newark reformers, funded by Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million grant, were slow in developing a plan for creating a "hybrid" district through school closures and expanding the charter sector.  Booker had said that the biggest challenge would be "breaking this iceberg of immovable, decades-long failing schools." After this is done, "They'll melt into many different school models. They're going to flower, just like the cherry blossoms in Branch Park."

Booker didn't seem to have read about the [then] decade-long history of Chicago school closuresstarted by Arne Duncan. And, he seemed to have forgotten about the murder of Derrion Albert as he walked home from his turnaround school, Fenger H.S. Or, perhaps he believed that Newark gang-bangers would be so inspired by One Newark that they would transform gang turf into cherry orchards for all. 

In 1998, when I had my first experience with a school closure and reopening, Oklahoma City had some schools as violent and low-performing as those of Newark and Chicago. My John Marshall wasn't one of them. It was somewhere between 2/3rds and 3/4ths low-income, very similar to the neighboring Northeast H.S., which was turned into a magnet school. Marshall had the best faculty that I had ever seen, and Northeast was known for producing state and local teachers of the year and teacher-leaders. After the crack and gang violence peaked in the early 1990s, and after the "jobless recovery" finally started to put some patrons back to work, both schools had been seeing incremental gains.

Then came the 1998-1999 "Year from Hell," as our long-suffering principal dubbed it. Combining students from the two neighborhoods who could not be admitted to selective schools was not the sole cause of our collapse. Neither am I aware of a connection between the change in school boundaries and the deaths that year of five Marshall students and recent alumni. But, the meltdown of our school showed the risks involved with tampering with the delicate ecosystems of schooling.  It was a major step in our blood-drenched path to becoming the lowest-performing secondary school in the state.

Even before our first funeral, during my daily, dazed walk to the gym for lunchtime basketball with the This Week In Education: Thompson: School Closings in Chicago, Newark & Oklahoma City:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Pushing Chicago's poor out of the city. Who will stand up to Rahm Emanuel's death budget?

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Pushing Chicago's poor out of the city. Who will stand up to Rahm Emanuel's death budget?:

Pushing Chicago's poor out of the city. Who will stand up to Rahm Emanuel's death budget?

At last night's Progressive Caucus community forum in Logan Square, Caucus members and community groups spoke out against Rahm's austerity budget and massive property tax increase. 

Will enough typically spineless Chicago Alders finally find their way out of Rahm's pocket to push back on his draconian budget proposal? Doubtful.

There are 11 members of the City Council progressive caucus who generally don’t side with the mayor on fiscal policy (including Arena); an 18-member aldermanic black caucus that plays nice with Emanuel but doesn’t back the garbage-fee proposal; and a handful of Hispanic aldermen, including Ald. Roberto Maldonado, who think the mayor’s budget proposal, as it stands, well, stinks. -- Mark Konkol, DNAInfo

Rahm's strategy, like his predecessor Daley's, includes selling off or privatizing everything that's not nailed down. Closing schools and getting rid of public space also weakens unions and public decision making.

His idea of privatizing the 311 call center came in his 2016 budget address, saying it would save the city "about a million dollars a year" to replace union workers with outside contractors. It was one of the few pieces of actual news Tuesday, after the mayor's administration had spent the past week dribbling out many of their financial proposals for the coming year. -- John Byrne, Tribune  

His budget proposal includes an unprecedented increase in property taxes and fees Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Pushing Chicago's poor out of the city. Who will stand up to Rahm Emanuel's death budget?:

CURMUDGUCATION: The Feds Don't Get Testing Consequences

CURMUDGUCATION: The Feds Don't Get Testing Consequences:

The Feds Don't Get Testing Consequences

Valerie Strauss asked a fairly simple question of the White House and the Education Department:Are you aware that one consequence of the policy requiring test results in teacher evaluation is that many teachers' evaluations are based on subjects or students they don't teach.

For example, in New York City middle schools, it’s been estimated that over 60 percent of New York City teacher evaluations are out-of-subject. An art teacher would be evaluated in part on student math scores.  Are you aware of this state-level consequence of federal policy and do you think it is fair to teachers?

The White House response was, "Go ask the Education Department."

Strauss presents the entire USED answer without comment. I would like to go ahead and present some comment.

Their Answer 

The feds open with the right general sorts of noises. Parents have a right to know how their kids are doing, and student performance should be assessed because otherwise some groups will be swept CURMUDGUCATION: The Feds Don't Get Testing Consequences:

Chicago’s brand of teacher organizing goes viral | Catalyst Chicago

Chicago’s brand of teacher organizing goes viral | Catalyst Chicago:

Chicago’s brand of teacher organizing goes viral

In June, thousands of CPS teachers and their supporters turned out for a march to support teachers' calls for a new, fair contract.

Then

After legendary Chicago Teachers Union president Jacqueline Vaughn died in 1994, her successor, Tom Reece, adopted a low profile and built a less challenging relationship with the school district, then led by CEO Paul Vallas.

A year later, Springfield slashed the union’s bargaining powers as part of the 1995 law that returned unfettered control of the school system to the mayor, then Richard M. Daley. (Specifically, the law eliminated a grassroots School Board nominating committee, which had been giving Daley candidates he didn't want.)

The lost bargaining powers included class size, layoffs, charter schools, privatization of services, the academic calendar and hours of instruction.

Years later, Reece’s cooperative relationship with CPS would come back to haunt him. In 2001 he was defeated for re-election by Deborah Lynch, a leader in the push to expand teacher union concerns beyond bread-and-butter issues to questions of policy and instructional practice.

Through their efforts to widen the union's scope, Lynch and the Proactive Teachers Caucus, or PACT, planted the seeds for the CTU of today. In a collection of essays published by the left-wing magazine Jacobin, current CTU President Karen Lewis recalls that she joined PACT in time to support Lynch’s win.

See ”The new law,” Catalyst September 1995 and “Deborah Lynch and the making of an upset,” Catalyst September 2001

Now

---

Though Lynch’s tenure proved short and divisive, a new cadre of union leaders regrouped with a mission to connect CTU organizing to broader issues of social justice and build alliances with like-minded unions and community groups.

They created the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE). Initially, CORE was a small study group trying to fight school turnarounds, privatization and closings, Lewis and CORE co-founder Jackson Potter told Rethinking Schools.

The larger goal was to shift the CTU from a traditional, staff-driven union focused on teachers pay Chicago’s brand of teacher organizing goes viral | Catalyst Chicago:

TEACH FREEDOM | Bill Ayers

TEACH FREEDOM | Bill Ayers:

TEACH FREEDOM

Schools are an obvious venue for the creation of a public space, a site of freedom. People are coming together, searching for something better, deciding what we value, what we hope to pass on, who we want to be. But schools are seldom constructed as sites of freedom nor places for the practice of freedom.

An urgent challenge to teachers is to see each student as a three-dimensional creature — a person much like themselves — with hopes, dreams, aspirations, skills, and capacities; with a body and a mind and a heart and a spirit; with experience, history, a past, a pathway, a future. This knotty, complicated challenge requires patience, curiosity, wonder, awe, humility. It demands sustained focus, intelligent judgment, inquiry and investigation. It requires wide-awakeness since every judgment is contingent, every view partial, every conclusion tentative. The student is dynamic, alive, in-motion. Nothing is settled, once and for all. No view is all views and no perspective every perspective. The student grows and changes — yesterday’s need is forgotten, today’s claim is all-encompassing and brand new. This, then, is an intellectual task of serious and huge proportion.

As difficult as this challenge is, it is made tougher and more intense because teachers typically work in institutions of hierarchy and power, command and control, where the toxic habit of labeling kids by their deficits has become the common-sense and a common-place. The language of schools is too often a language of labeling, a language of reduction, a language lacking spark, dynamism, imagination, or the possibility of freedom. Whatever the labels point to—even when glimpsing a chunk of reality—are reductive and over-determined in schools. In this way they represent un-freedom—repression, coercion, entanglement. The thinking teacher needs to look beneath and beyond the labels, to reach toward freedom.

Another basic challenge to teachers is to stay wide-awake to the world, to the concentric circles of context in which we live and work. Teachers must know and care about some aspect of our shared life — our calling after all, is to shepherd and enable the callings of others. Teachers, then, invite students to become somehow more capable, more thoughtful and powerful in their choices, more engaged in a culture and a civilization. More free. How do we warrant that invitation? How do we understand this culture and civilization?

Teachers choose — they choose how to see the world, what to embrace and what to reject, whether to support or resist this or that directive. As teachers choose, the ethical emerges. James Baldwin says:

The paradox of education is precisely this–that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no TEACH FREEDOM | Bill Ayers:

Jersey Jazzman: Don't Believe the Data In "The Prize"

Jersey Jazzman: Don't Believe the Data In "The Prize":

Don't Believe the Data In "The Prize"

I have a new policy brief out this week at the NJ Education Forum about the (mis-)use of data in Dale Russakoff's The Prize. Let me add a few words here: The Prize, as I described in my initial review, is the story of how then-Mayor Cory Booker and Governor Chris Christie worked to cajole a $100 million donation from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to support the "reform" of the Newark school system, Understand, I actually liked much of The Prize. I think Russakoff does a good job of describing the struggles an urban pubic district school faces when educating students whose home lives are far from ideal. I think she tells the story of the behind-the-scenes machinations of the power players well, and I think it's important to tell that story. But... The Prize is turning out to be an influential book, and Russakoff is making many media appearances where she gets to present her ideas about urban school "reform." She was quoted in the NY Times by Joe Nocera, who used her figures to make the case that the Newark Public Schools (and, by extension, other urban districts) has a bloated bureaucracy compared to its neighboring charters. Connor Williams cites her figures at - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/09/dont-believe-data-in-prize.html#sthash.EGInWgBb.dpuf

Common Core: ‘the gift that Pearson counts on to keep giving’ - The Washington Post

Common Core: ‘the gift that Pearson counts on to keep giving’ - The Washington Post:

Common Core: ‘the gift that Pearson counts on to keep giving’

Mercedes Schneider is a veteran teacher in Louisiana who has been educating students for more than two decades, as well as an education researcher who has been highly critical of corporate school reform. She is also the author of two books, “A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education,” and the newly published “Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?”

The following is an excerpt from her book about the Core. It is about the education company Pearson and it is revelatory in showing the connections between some education reformers and corporate leaders.

Here’s the excerpt, with footnotes removed.  (Reprinted by permission of the publisher. From Mercedes Schneider, Common Core Dilemma—Who Owns Our Schools, New York: Teachers College Press. Copyright (c) 2015 by Teachers College, Columbia University. All rights reserved.)

Those “Powerful Market Forces”

In March 2014, billionaire Bill Gates participated in an interview with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), one of the many organizations he financially supports in his effort to promote the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) (see Chapter 9). In a 6-minute video clip from the AEI  interview, Gates purports to explain various aspects of CCSS, including the reason for the “common” component. His explanation has nothing to do with educational quality:

 If [states] have two [sets of standards] they’re comparing, they ought to probably pick something in common because, to some degree, this is an area where, if you do have commonality, it’s like an electrical plug, You get more free market competition. Scale is good for free market competition. Individual state regulatory capture is not good for competition. [Emphasis added]

His mechanical analogy of education as an object to “plug in” aside, Gates says that the “commonality” of CCSS “is good for free market competition”; however, he immediately notes that he prefers market competition on a level beyond that of the state. In other words, education companies that are smaller—and are more 

Common Core: ‘the gift that Pearson counts on to keep giving’ - The Washington Post:

Society’s elite don’t want to pay too much for equality, study suggests | The Verge

Society’s elite don’t want to pay too much for equality, study suggests | The Verge:

Society’s elite don’t want to pay too much for equality, study suggests

The well-educated and wealthy prefer giving to others when it is cheap and benefits everyone

America's well-educated and wealthy elite don’t like giving their money to others — unless sacrificing a small amount creates a big payoff for someone else, a study published inScience suggests. Otherwise, they’re opposed to giving up a lot of their own money to make everyone's earnings as equal as possible. In other words, the elite don’t want to part with too much of their own income.

This type of re-allocation favored by elites is what the study authors call a more efficient form of wealth redistribution (as opposed to an equitable one); it ensures that everyone benefits in some way, and that no one sacrifices too much of their own money. Since graduates of elite universities and professional schools tend to be policy makers, the study may explain why the divide between the rich and the poor continues to grow. "If they have this efficiency focus, it might make them averse to policies that would call for a greater demand for equity," study author Raymond Fisman, a behavioral economics professor at Boston University, tells The Verge. For instance, certain tax policies like the Bush tax cuts, which reduced top marginal tax rates, are thought to have contributed to this income inequality.

IT MAY EXPLAIN WHY THE DIVIDE BETWEEN THE RICH AND THE POOR CONTINUES TO GROW

To measure America's preferences for income redistribution, Fisman and his team analyzed two different groups: 208 Yale Law students and 309 participants of a national survey known as the American Life Panel. The Yale Law students were representatives of the ultra elite — those with a graduate degree from an Ivy League school. The American Life Panel group served as a diverse representation of the general public.

The groups were given a series of hypothetical scenarios in which they were asked to redistribute money. Participants could give up part of their income so that money could be given to someone else; for instance, a person could forfeit a dollar so someone else would get an extra buck. In some cases, giving to someone else was cheap: a participant could sacrifice 10 cents and someone else would receive a dollar. Other times, giving was expensive: sacrificing a dollar would only result in someone else getting 10 cents. All the choices had varying degrees of trade-off.Society’s elite don’t want to pay too much for equality, study suggests | The Verge:

Reform bill would indirectly help schools keep equipment | The Columbus Dispatch

Reform bill would indirectly help schools keep equipment | The Columbus Dispatch:

Reform bill would indirectly help schools keep equipment

The big charter-school reform bill pending in the Ohio House would take steps toward curbing for-profit charter operators from keeping furniture and equipment bought with taxpayer money.

But it doesn’t directly address the issue.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled last week that White Hat Management Co., run by Akron industrialist and major GOP donor David Brennan, owns the classroom equipment bought under terms of its contract. Ten of White Hat’s former schools had sued, arguing that the company violated its financial duty to the schools.

“The legislature has enacted statutes that take a laissez-faire attitude toward operators of community schools,” Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger wrote in her majority opinion.

State legislators hope to change that with House Bill 2, a package of wide-ranging reforms of Ohio’s heavily criticized charter-school laws. Although the bill does not specifically address for-profit operators owning taxpayer-funded equipment, supporters say some provisions will make such agreements far less likely.

The bill would require operators and boards to specify property ownership in all new and renewed contracts. The bill also would ensure that fiscal officers are independent of operators, and it would require more transparency from those serving on charter boards.

“If you’re an independent board, and you’re putting everything you own and don’t own down in writing ahead of time, you’re much more likely to make a decision that is not going to result in a bad outcome,” said Chad Aldis of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which supports school choice and sponsors 11 charter schools in Ohio.

House Republicans also note that House Bill 2 would repeal a law that allows management companies to overrule the governing board; the change would strengthen the board’s control when it crafts operator contracts.

Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering and chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, agrees that the bill “goes a long way” toward addressing future ownership of furniture and equipment. “But I am open to explore whether that goes far enough.”

The House returns to session next week and is expected to send House Bill 2 to a conference committee, where the House and Senate work out final changes.

“The court very appropriately decided that there wasn’t enough protection in the Ohio law to prevent the sort of mischief that has gone on,” Lehner said. “That has been the premise of House Bill 2 all along,”

Lehner said she is exploring more-direct language that would no longer allow an operator to take possession of furniture and Reform bill would indirectly help schools keep equipment | The Columbus Dispatch:

GOP education reform gets trampled by Trumpmania | TheHill

GOP education reform gets trampled by Trumpmania | TheHill:

GOP education reform gets trampled by Trumpmania

Six months ago, it looked like conservative education thought would enjoy a renaissance in the race for the GOP presidential nod. Education was the signature issue of early front-runner Jeb Bush, former Florida governor, who always returned to his gubernatorial school reform record when making the case for brand of can-do, conservative leadership. Govs. Scott Walker (Wis.) and Chris Christie (N.J.) pointed to their fights with the teacher unions as evidence of their willingness to do the hard stuff. Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) talked about school choice in urban centers as a way to explain the relevance of conservative solutions for low-income and minority communities. Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) made reforming higher education an emblem of his focus on middle-class concerns. Contestants seeking to be the face of a sunnier conservatism viewed education reform as the perfect way to talk about their ideas for expanding opportunity and promoting inclusive growth.

Last winter, the race was shaping up to be an upbeat contest to see which conservative reformer could put forward the most compelling approach to expand opportunity. Education has always been the essential foundation for any vision of opportunity-expanding conservatism. Rubio and Bush have called for taking on the higher education cartel, while the Republican field features governors who have championed a slew of interesting school choice proposals. This is all accompanied by important questions about how much of this a conservative president should take on from Washington and what to do about the cost of college and the Common Core.

All of this has been drowned out by the ascendance of Donald Trump. Two major GOP debates have now passed, and education has barely made an appearance. More tellingly, the very tenor of the GOP race has shifted in a way that has made such appeals seem quaint. Amidst Trump's bombast and the "hell-with-'em-all" frustration that has propelled outsiders, measured talk about education improvement can seem out of touch, like the candidate is missing the big picture.

Six months ago, it looked like the GOP campaign was going to highlight and sharpen policy thinking, while giving conservative proposals an opportunity to coalesce. It offered a chance to illuminate some of the sharp conservative thinking that's been quietly unfolding on Capitol Hill — as with the sensible rewrite of No Child Left Behind that is currently in process — and to show that Republicans could offer practical alternatives to bureaucratic, budget-busting Democratic proposals on issues like college affordability and early childhood.

But that all gave way to a summer of ad hominem attacks and talk of Mexican rapists. Now, don't GOP education reform gets trampled by Trumpmania | TheHill:

Sacramento mayor continues to resist public record requests for emails | Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Sacramento mayor continues to resist public record requests for emails | Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press:

Sacramento mayor continues to resist public record requests for emails

Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, and the Sacramento City Attorney are now resisting efforts by two separate news organizations to gain access to public records, according to a recent filing in a California court.

The development is the latest twist in an unusual public records dispute in which Johnson has sued his own cityand the Sacramento News & Review in an effort to prevent the release of email requested by the newspaper under the California Public Records Act. Now both the mayor and the city’s attorney are trying to keep Deadspin, which also requested the email, out of the case.

Johnson, like many other officials around the country, has been criticized for using non-governmental email accounts to conduct public business. But a government official’s use of a private email account does not shield public records from disclosure under the Public Records Act.

Under California law, a public record includes “any writing containing information relating to the conduct of the public's business prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency regardless of physical form or characteristics.”

Earlier this year, the Sacramento News and Review filed a California Public Records Request to better understand how Johnson uses his various email accounts. The Sacramento Bee also filed a similar public records request. And Deadspin, a sports news website owned by GawkerMedia, also submitted a similar public records request over the summer.

After the News & Review filed its records request the Sacramento City Attorney indicated that, absent a court order, the email would be released. Before that could happen, however, Johnson sued the city and the newspaper, seeking an injunction that would prevent the city from making the emails public.

At least some of the requested email messages reportedly relate to Johnson’s involvement with the National Conference of Black Mayors, a group he briefly led before it filed for bankruptcy.

As mayor of Sacramento, Johnson reportedly tasked members of his office to work on NCBM matters.

In his petition to prevent the release of the records, Johnson claims that he is acting solely “in his official capacity as the former President elect of the NCBM and not as the Mayor . . . .” The trustee for NCBM, Edwin Palmer, is also listed as a petitioner in the case, along with NCMB and Johnson.

However, according to Deadspin, the board of NCBM passed a resolution in early July that “refutes any Sacramento mayor continues to resist public record requests for emails | Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press:

Arne Duncan's Wars

Arne Duncan's Wars:

Arne Duncan's Wars

With drive, ingenuity and a willingness to throw elbows, Obama’s closest friend in the Cabinet has tried to reshape American schools. Now will the backlash erase his legacy?

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is a mild-mannered, even-tempered, introverted kind of guy, but he’s spent much of his six and a half years in Washington in combat. He’s fought with school choice activists, student debt activists, gun activists, for-profit colleges, black colleges, traditional colleges, private lenders, loan collectors, the Tea Party, the Republican Party, and the teachers unions at the heart of the Democratic Party, among other interest groups. He’s in a multi-front war to fix America’s schools, and I recently sat down to delve into some of the wonkier details with Ted Mitchell, a former college president and education venture fund CEO who is now Duncan’s undersecretary. Mitchell spent a half hour patiently explaining to me the philosophy behind the Education Department’s fights—basically, making sure that all kids get a chance to succeed; that schools are accessible, accountable, and effective; and that adults who don’t do their part face consequences—until someone knocked on his door to say our time was up.

Then he started crying.

We had never met before, but Mitchell clearly had something personal he wanted to share, and my dull policy questions hadn’t given him much of an opening. His voice quivered as it finally spilled out: “I can’t let you leave without telling you what a privilege it has been to work with Arne.” He started to add something about fighting for students, but choked up mid-sentence. His press aide started crying, too. It sounds hokey, but I’ve never had an interview take such an abruptly emotional turn.

Education policy clearly inspires a lot of passion. It’s not just about cleverly named initiatives like Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind, or arcane regulations defining “gainful employment” and “adequate yearly progress.” It’s about kids and their futures. You can see the intensity in the comments on Duncan’s Facebook page, spewing rage over the Common Core math and reading standards or the national epidemic of standardized testing. Duncan’s loyalists are just as intense, inevitably gushing about Duncan’s constant mantra in policy meetings: What’s the right thing for kids? “Everyone says that,” said Justin Hamilton, a former communications aide to Duncan. “Arne f---ing means it!”

In a cynical town of posturing and spin, Duncan has earned a reputation for saying what he means and doing what he says. At the same time, he has faced growing dissatisfaction with what he has said and what he has done. Duncan has driven far more change than any previous education secretary, but as he heads into the home stretch of the Obama administration, much of that legacy is at risk.

Duncan has used his perch at the smallest Cabinet agency—and his tight relationship with President Barack Obama, his pickup basketball pal from Chicago—to put an unprecedented national stamp on a policy area with a long and strong tradition of local control. He’s helped make major inroads on K-12 reforms that unions despise, like using student test scores to evaluate teachers. He’s helped push big changes in higher education as well: a government takeover of student loans, a harsh crackdown on for-profit schools, a huge expansion of student aid. A department with only 4,200 employees, traditionally considered a kind of Washington backwater, has transformed the policy landscape for 100,000 schools and 5,000 colleges.

But Duncan has also helped unleash a huge backlash—against the Common Core standards, against over testing, against federal overreach in general. This fall, Congress plans to rewrite the main law overseeing public education, and activists on the left and the right have joined forces to try to roll back Washington’s power; the House and the Senate have both passed versions that would defang Duncan’s department, and the Senate vote was broadly bipartisan. Republican presidential candidates like Marco Rubio and Rand Paul have vowed to eliminate the department entirely, while Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie, governors who Arne Duncan's Wars:

On New Philanthropy, Education Reform, and Eli Broad's Big Plan for L.A. Schools

On New Philanthropy, Education Reform, and Eli Broad's Big Plan for L.A. Schools:

On New Philanthropy, Education Reform, and Eli Broad's Big Plan for L.A. Schools

The Los Angeles Times published a confidential document yesterday, which seems to confirm earlier reports that the Broad Foundation wants at least 50 percent of L.A. public school students educated in charter schools over the next eight years. Currently, 16 percent of students in L.A. Unified attend charters, and according to the report, getting to 50 percent would require creating 260 new schools, for 130,000 students, at a cost of $490 million.

“Los Angeles is uniquely positioned to create the largest, highest-performing charter sector in the nation,” the report stated. “Such an exemplar would serve as a model for all large cities to follow.”

Hmmm. That sounds familiar.

Earlier this month, veteran Washington Post journalist Dale Russakoff published a new book, The Prize, which explores education reform efforts in Newark from 2010-2015. Her book details the goals, mistakes, and challenges reformers encountered as they tried to “transform” Newark’s struggling school system—largely through expanding charters, closing “failing” schools, and implementing new teacher pay scales. The political drama and backroom dealings led by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg offers humbling lessons to all those working to improve public education, no matter where one comes down on the policy specifics.

Like Eli Broad’s vision for Los Angeles, a key goal for Newark education reformers was to make the city a model for the rest of urban America. Booker wanted Newark to be transformed into “a hemisphere of hope” and repeatedly told Zuckerberg that their goal was not just to fix local education, but to develop the “high impact programs and best practices” that could fix education in all major cities. Booker believed that if he could succeed within a difficult district like Newark, then he could succeed anywhere. He emphasized that Zuckerberg’s investment could help lead to the “blueprint for national replication across America’s urban centers to transform its youth.”

This month, HistPhil, a blog that explores the history of the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, has been running an excellent series on philanthropic On New Philanthropy, Education Reform, and Eli Broad's Big Plan for L.A. Schools:

The Global Search for Education: The New UN Agenda - What is the Role of Education? | C. M. Rubin

The Global Search for Education: The New UN Agenda - What is the Role of Education? | C. M. Rubin:

The Global Search for Education: The New UN Agenda - What is the Role of Education?

"Educators have an opportunity to engage students in shared problem solving towards the goals, and the responsibility to instill in the next generation a deep understanding of the power of informed action and the perils of inaction. The students of today will be the emerging leaders in 2030." -- Karen Cator

"Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" has set a plan of action in 5 areas: People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) and 169 targets represent a bold and ambitious universal agenda that aims to build on the Millennium Development Goals; to complete what these did not achieve and then go much further. The Agenda's key goal and "the greatest global challenge" of the SDG's is to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030, with the pledge that "no one will be left behind."

What role can education and learning play in achieving the critical goals for the new UN Agenda?

24 debaters from 11 countries will explore answers to the question in the Education Fast Forward live global debate on September 24. EFF Trustee and Education World Forum Director, Gavin Dykes, will chair the debate.

EFF guest speaker, Karen Cator, is President and CEO of Digital Promise and is a leading voice for transforming American education through technology, innovation and research. From 2009-2013, Karen was Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education, where she led the development of the 2010 National Education Technology Plan. Prior to joining the department, Cator directed Apple's leadership and advocacy efforts in education. It is our pleasure to welcome Karen to The Global Search for Education.

Karen, what do you see as the key roles for education and educators building on the agenda of the "Transforming our World" summit at the UN?

Few would disagree that education is an urgent global priority for the health and prosperity of individuals, families, communities and nations. And, an enlightened and engaged education system will certainly support the attainment of the 17 new goals. To that end, students can be challenged to design solutions to problems associated with the goals. Problems are best solved through diplomacy, collaboration and the sharing of agendas, ideas, resources and solutions; and schools can and should help students develop the complex set of skills required for doing so. Educators have an opportunity to engage students in shared problem solving towards the goals, and the responsibility to instill in the next generation a deep understanding of the power of informed action and the perils of inaction. The students of today will be the emerginThe Global Search for Education: The New UN Agenda - What is the Role of Education? | C. M. Rubin:

Educating for Democracy: Connecting the Dots | Joel Shatzky

Educating for Democracy: Connecting the Dots | Joel Shatzky:

Educating for Democracy: Connecting the Dots

The recent debates of the Republican Presidential candidates sadly suggested to me as an educator how unlikely it would be for the viewers and voters to separate fact from fiction. History, to many American students, has always been "a thing of the past." It's all a matter of connecting the dots which most all of the presidential candidates would like to disconnect. Knowing a certain amount of history, or, more to the point, remembering some significant dates, names and events can be, I believe, very important for American citizens to remember in order to be well-informed voters; those who know how to "connect the dots." What makes it easier for politicians to "disconnect the dots"is Americans' woeful ignorance of history and civics. In a report several years ago, from "The Wire," it was observed:

Many Americans know U.S. students' test scores on subjects like math and reading are low. In civics, however, they're appalling. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a respected, voluntary nationwide test, 22 percent of students test proficient in civics, and only 18 percent rate proficient in U.S. history. American citizenship depends on its citizens sharing some body of knowledge together about the political structure that governs their daily lives. -- report coauthor Sandra Stotsky, who led Massachusetts in developing some ofthe country's best education standards in the 1990s.

Moreover, in today's obsession with facts both trivial and significant, it's hard to keep up with what is really fact from what is "disconnecting the dots."

The presidential debates I witnessed were so full of misstatements, exaggerations and some plain lies that it should have been expected for some of the commentators to point them out, although it would be more assuring if the viewers could do so themselves. But it seems that the core constituents don't seem to be concerned about the facts but about the "delivery" skills of the candidates. There was little fact checking that I could tell from the networks; and those few errors cited had little of substance to be really informative.

An example of disconnecting the dots was demonstrated by former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas: one of the Presidential candidates. Pandering to the Jewish voters as Evengelicals often do in order to hasten "The Second Coming,"he claims that the nuclear agreement with Iran will put the U.S. and the rest of the world in danger of being overwhelmed by Jihadists. It's alarming, certainly, but unless you connect the dots it would seem from Huckabee's tirade that no other Middle Eastern countries such as Pakistan and Israel have had the bomb for decades. Given that those countries as well as India have the ultimate weapon and for some good reasons the crazies don't seem to be able to get hold of one for their "Second Coming," all Huckabee's hysteria will do is make some of the electorate advocate scrapping the agreement with Iran and be willing to put American "boots on the ground" which has already been shown to be a futile and costly gesture..

But even one of the "moderate" candidates at the debate, Governor John Kasich of Ohio, demonstrated his disconnect of the dots when he casually mentioned that Educating for Democracy: Connecting the Dots | Joel Shatzky:

Common Core not so core | PCC Courier

Common Core not so core | PCC Courier:

Common Core not so core

Common Core is an answer that will not translate well from Chinese, Korean and Japanese to American English.

With 20 percent of eligible third through eighth graders passing on the standardized exams last spring, the recently adopted Common Core standards have come under fire.

Common Core, a programs adopted by 45 of the 50 states sets national standards across the entire country as opposed to having 50 different standards controlled by each state, was originally passed to improve the overall test scores of students across the country.

However, with this recent rebellion and the numerous dissenting opinions emphasizing the lost of creativity due to the uniformity of common core, the question to be asked is “does it really work?”

Common Core was America’s answer to our mediocre test results nationally. According to a report by The Learning Curve, published by Pearson and written by The Economist, America ranked 20th in educational attainment in 2014.

Countries like Korea, Japan, and China ranked highly across the board in the education department. What these countries have in common, besides being in Asia, is that they have a set a more united national standard as individual countries that their students strive towards day and night.

Thus, the logic to Common Core was to reach a similar educational level by following these countries in standardizing a set goal across all 50 states. As previously, it was increasingly difficult to compare the educational levels of states due to the differences in curriculum nationally. As such, by gathering the states under one educational banner, they can begin to work towards a higher level together.

At first glance, this theory seems sound as the best way to learn anything is by copying.

However, copying doesn’t work when the test we have is a different form.

Although, the United States and these Asian countries had students taking the same test, the fundamental issues with the education system and culture are an entirely different monster to wrestle than those in Asia.

Common Core is an answer that will not translate well from Chinese, Korean and Japanese to American English.

“While there are reasons to doubt that claim [that a national education would improve America] — it’s hard to see how Utah, which spends less than one-third as much per student as New York, can offer a comparable education,”David L. Kirp of The New York Times writes.

A hole that Kirp pokes into the theory of Common Core is the contrasting levels of money and effort states place in their students. It is a foregone conclusion that New York, one of the most iconic states in the United States, would invest more into education than Utah, a more remote state, simply due to the massive gross income about 16 more million people would pay in taxes.

Yet, children in Utah are expected to hold their own to the same standards that students in New York are judged on. While ideally kids in Utah will rise to the challenge inspired by their teacher, this is reality, not a B-movie.

Furthermore, the teachers themselves will become handicapped. With Common Core, teachers must adhere to a rigid curriculum that stymies the teacher’s creative freedom while eating away precious hours in class.

With how radically different the standards are, teachers are forced to adapt and reallocate their time into time devoted into Common Core instead of their individual lessons.

The driving force of Common Core itself is the idea that the United States has dropped off from being one of the leading influences in education. But the idea that America was once the very epitome of the educational system is false.

“When the first international test was given in 1964, our students ranked 11th out of 12 nations,” Diane Ravitch, a research professor, wrote on CNN. Yet our nation went on to become the most powerful economy in the world.”

It would be foolish to call the American education system stellar, but it does have its strengths that these Asian countries do not possess.

“Models of best practice exist all over the world, but are most noticeably increasing in Asia. And, it’s not a one-way street,” Vishakha N. Desai, president of the Asia Society, wrote on a special on CNN. “Asian nations struggle with outmoded instructional practices and an over-reliance on high-pressure examinations — and they continue to look to America for clues in cultivating innovation in teaching and creativity in their students.”

What the rigorous curriculums of China, Korea and Japan promote is the memorization of scientific facts, mathematical equations and even aspects of literature.

Most notably in Korea, private institutions, sometimes referred to as cram schools, are a common fixture in a student’s life as they must attend them during the night to remain competitive in school.

Both Japanese and Chinese students share noticeably similar Eastern culture and philosophy that weighs Common Core not so core | PCC Courier: