CURMUDGUCATION: Campbell Brown's Friends

CURMUDGUCATION: Campbell Brown's Friends:

Campbell Brown's Friends 

Weekly Standard writer Mark Hemingway is in the December issue sticking up for Campbell Brown with the kind of PR fluff that usually costs big bucks. It's clear that Campbell Brown doesn't need friends. But it appears she's looking for something else.

In "Who's Afraid of Campbell Brown? (Teachers' unions, and for good reason)" Hemingway provides a dispatch from an alternate universe where teacher unions rule and Brown is a unjustly victimized humanitarian. It's not nearly as interesting as it could have been had Hemingway also checked out some of the recordings from the corruption trial of disgraced NY Senate Leader Dean Skelos, because those recordings give us a bit more information about Brown's friends. But we'll get back to that-- first, a look at Hemingway's piece.

He opens with a look at Brown's modest office arrangements, and as will be the case throughout the piece, uses a bit of misdirection to avoid including some details. For instance, after describing Brown's low-rent office, he writes "But don't let this modest arrangement fool you" but the next part of that sentence is not "Brown has been given a $4 million budget to run her website." Nor (spoiler alert) is he ever going to mention that Brown's site requires a reportorial commitment to never run anti-charter stories. Instead, he wants us to know that Brown is parked on the moral high road.

Brown has promised that the site won’t shy away from advocacy and opinion—which it labels “opinion”—but at the same time she insists that her mission is not political. “My whole point about school reform is it’s not partisan. It’s not,” she says. “It’s a moral issue.”

And who is standing in the way of her righteous crusade? Three guesses

The trouble is, the last thing America’s teachers’ unions want is real reform, and they certainly CURMUDGUCATION: Campbell Brown's Friends:


Naughty Union Spending

Campbell Brown's pet PR project went after some union blood this weekend with revelations about AFT, NEA and UFT spending. 

The lead is that between 2011 and 2014, the unions spent $5.7 on travel and hotel expenses. That's a lot of money.

Now, when we start breaking it down, there are some line items that seem a bit of a stretch in the outrage department. For instance, the AFT spent $6,700 at Walt Disney World, which is one day's admission for about 65 adults (who don't plan to eat during that day).

But the list also includes cruise tickets, international air travel, and fancy shmancy hotels. The 74 admits that the spending amounts to a small sliver of the total disbursements by the union, and that some of the travel and expense is an outgrowth of international union connections and even some humanitarian work.

The narrative here is a predictable one for the74-- those dollars are dues dollars and union members don't want their money spent on all this foolishness. Writer Naomi Nix has a nifty quote from Jade Thompson, an anti-"mandatory"-dues activist about how much the $800 of dues would mean to a Naughty Union Spending

Jersey Jazzman: Return To Teachers Village: Part I

Jersey Jazzman: Return To Teachers Village: Part I:

Return To Teachers Village: Part I

Earlier this month, Rachel Cohen of The American Prospect wrote an article about Teachers Village, a development project in Newark, NJ that houses three charter schools in addition to retail stores. Teachers Village is unusual in that it also has dozens of housing units that are specifically marketed to teachers. Developments like this are actually starting to pop up across the country, fueled by a series of tax breaks, including the New Markets Tax Credit.

Cohen quotes yours truly several times in the piece on the basis of a series of posts I've written -- see here, here and here -- where I question the wisdom of using public monies to build facilities that are rented to both publicly-funded charter schools and the people who work in them. I especially wonder why Ron Beit, the developer of Teachers Village, and his investors should get all sorts of public largess when the project seems like it's designed to cater to renters who are likely not going to be career-long educators:

Beit's got himself one sweet deal, doesn't he? He uses $100 million in tax credits to finance a project in Newark, then lines up a group of charter schools as his business occupants, who will pay their rents with taxpayer funds.

Then, as if that isn't enough, he sets himself up to direct a steady flow of college-educated renters right into his residential units - through TFA [Teach For America]! In fact, TFA has a page where prospective "teachers" can figure out their expenses when they move to

- See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/12/return-to-teachers-village-part-i.html#sthash.98EMDzY7.dpuf

ALERT: Malloy’s Budget Cuts lead to another 23% Tuition Increase at UConn - Wait What?

ALERT:  Malloy’s Budget Cuts lead to another 23% Tuition Increase at UConn - Wait What?:

ALERT:  Malloy’s Budget Cuts lead to another 23% Tuition Increase at UConn

As a result of Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy’s unrelenting attack on Connecticut’s public institutions of higher education, the University of Connecticut Board Of Trustees will be voting at their next meeting to raise tuition by as much as 23 percent for Connecticut students.

Despite what will be another massive “tax” increase on Connecticut middle class families who are trying to ensure that their children get a college education, the additional tuition funds will not be enough to prevent equally appalling program cuts at UConn.

The new tuition increase comes in addition to the 25 percent jump in tuition and fees that UConn adopted four years ago.  The earlier tuition increase was required to balance UConn’s budget  in response to the record cuts Malloy proposed during his first year in office.

Connecticut’s failure to properly fund its public colleges and universities means that the cost of tuition at the University of Connecticut will have increased by more than $6,000 during Malloy’s tenure, an increase of nearly 50 percent.

As the Hartford Courant is reporting, faced with a $40 million deficit due to the decline in state support, UConn officials are submitting a proposal that would implement a series of tuition increases beginning with a 6.6 percent increase in 2016, and averaging about 7 percent for each of the next three years.

As the Courant explains;

“A key issue for the university has been the state’s shrinking share of the university’s costs. The state’s block grants have grown in recent years, but 

ALERT:  Malloy’s Budget Cuts lead to another 23% Tuition Increase at UConn - Wait What?:

*Guinea Pigs in an Urban Laboratory* | EduShyster

*Guinea Pigs in an Urban Laboratory* | EduShyster:

*Guinea Pigs in an Urban Laboratory*

In her new book, Unequal City, Carla Shedd looks at race, schools and perceptions of injustice through the eyes of young people…

EduShyster: I want to start by giving everyone a moment to order your amazing new book, Unequal City. Waiting…Waiting… OK. Here we go. You did something highly unusual in your book: you looked at how major policy changes in education and housing over the past two decades in Chicago have impacted kids. And you did that by actually interviewing kids. Where did you get such a crazy idea? 

Carla Shedd: That was a big goal of mine, to really place kids at the center and think about how they understand these larger transformations in their lives. So often we have the numbers or we have snapshots of particular parts of the process and how kids are faring. But we really don’t listen to young people, and we never put their voices at the center of the conversation. How often are the people who are most impacted by these policies able to truly have a voice? In the book I argue that these young people are the city’s guinea pigs. They’re a walking experiment in an urban laboratory.

EduShyster: Talk a little about that experiment. Everyone knows about the school closings in Chicago, but as you show, the education reform experiment in the city starts much earlier and overlaps in really significant ways with the transformation of public housing.

Shedd: You have the demolition of public housing and the issuance of housing vouchers, so that you have people moving to the south suburbs or the western suburbs. All of that’s happening as Renaissance 2010 was being implemented, starting in 2004 under Arne Duncan. So you have schools closing and being consolidated at the same time that populations across the city are being resettled. It’s amazing the way that these two policies collide and dovetail with one another, and yet no one is really putting the multiplicative effect together. It’s the way these policies interact that truly shapes and reshapes the lives of the most vulnerable people. 

EduShyster: Can I just acknowledge that this is the first time the word *multiplicative* has appeared on this page? Reading your book, one gets the strong sense that Arne Duncan et al probably didn’t think about the policies they were implementing from the point of view of kids navigating neighborhoods.

Shedd: That was probably the most enlightening part of my research: seeing the *Guinea Pigs in an Urban Laboratory* | EduShyster:

With vote planned on No Child Left Behind replacement bill, revolt brewing on right and left - The Washington Post

With vote planned on No Child Left Behind replacement bill, revolt brewing on right and left - The Washington Post:

With vote planned on No Child Left Behind replacement bill, revolt brewing on right and left

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan answers questions during a news conference at the Capitol on Dec. 1 on a bill to replace No Child Left Behind. (Win Mcnamee/Getty Images)

With Congress poised to vote on a long-overdue bill to replace No Child Left Behind, the country’s main K-12 education law, opponents on the far right and left are trying to scuttle the bipartisan measure.

Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, urged lawmakers Tuesday to vote against the measure, calling it “a step backwards for conservative education policy” because it maintains too much federal control over local schools and extends it with the creation of a new preschool initiative.

The group said it will include the vote in its legislative score card.

Meanwhile, a coalition of 100 civil rights groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the New York chapter of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, also voiced opposition, saying the legislation goes too far to weaken federal oversight of the country’s 100,000 public schools. The coalition said it was particularly concerned that the bill does not address disparities in the ways public schools discipline disabled and minority students.

At the Capitol, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan confirmed plans to bring the compromise education bill for a final vote this week. A vote in the Senate is expected to follow the House vote, most likely next week.

“We expect to have very good majority support,” Ryan said. “These are great conservative education reforms. I think it was quoted in the paper yesterday that this is the greatest devolution of power back to the states in education in 25 years. That’s impressive, and that’s why I think a majority of Republicans will be supporting it.”

A raft of national groups, from the National Governors Association to School Superintendents Association to the two major teachers unions, have lined up in support of the bill.

No Child Left Behind was due for a rewrite eight years ago and is widely seen as broken, but Congress has struggled to find agreement on the proper role of the federal government in local schools.

[Alexander and Murray go old school to get the deal done]

House Republicans passed a measure in July that would dramatically weaken the federal role; the Senate passed a bipartisan measure that shifted a chunk With vote planned on No Child Left Behind replacement bill, revolt brewing on right and left - The Washington Post:

ESEA Reauthorization – Ramming Through a Bad Deal for America’s Children | Truth in American Education

ESEA Reauthorization – Ramming Through a Bad Deal for America’s Children | Truth in American Education:

ESEA Reauthorization – Ramming Through a Bad Deal for America’s Children

The following is an open letter to members of Congress:

Dear Member:

A secretive, “smoke-filled room” process that excluded parents of millions of public schoolchildren and the vast majority of their elected representatives has resulted in revisions to the Senate and House ESEA reauthorization bills. The final version of the compromise bill (dubbed the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA), released at 9:30 AM on November 30, is 1,061 pages long and confirms that ESSA must be defeated.

More than 200 grassroots groups and experts across the nation have expressed their adamant opposition to any ESEA reauthorization based on the House and Senate bills. Nothing in the final bill lessens that opposition. Attached are comments about what the draft ESSA says on certain key issues: standards (including so-called restrictions on the Secretary’s power), assessments and, from Dr. Karen Effrem, preschool. These are only a few of the many deficiencies that make this bill absolutely unacceptable to millions of American parents.

A  House vote is tentatively scheduled to take place in the next two or three days.This is absolutely unacceptable. Congressional leadership appears to be replicating the Obamacare debacle in the realm of education. No bill that is over 1,000 pages long should be passed without, at a minimum, sufficient time to analyze and understand it.

Congressional leadership should allow the American people at least one week per every hundred pages to examine ESSA and make their views known to their senators and representatives. Anything less would show that leadership wants to ram this bill through quickly, before the people have time to read and understand it. We are confident that Speaker Ryan, having already expressed his intent to improve transparency in the House, will allow sufficient time for review of this reauthorization.

We are also confident that once you understand these provisions and realize ESSA ensnares even more children in a web of highly progressive, federally dictated education policy, you will oppose this bill.

This bill MUST be voted down.  While much of the Common Core system with its associated tentacles was implemented via regulatory fiat without congressional vote or oversight, a vote for this bill will be seen as your affirmation of all that is wrong with federal interference in education.  This system is harming students, teachers, school boards, local districts, and states.

Thank you for your concern for the children of America and for your consideration of this letter.

Sincerely,

Emmett McGroarty

Director, APP Education

Problems with ESEA Reauthorization Conference Report:

Editor’s note: The information in the next two sections was complied by McGroarty, Jane Robbins and Erin Tuttle.

Regardless of Supposed Limitations on the Secretary’s Power to Impose Standards, the Bill Requires the Federal Government to Evaluate and Approve Standards that Must Meet Alignment Requirements

Although the reauthorization appears to prohibit the Secretary from dictating state standards, that ESEA Reauthorization – Ramming Through a Bad Deal for America’s Children | Truth in American Education:

Where’s Recess in the ESEA Reauthorization?

Where’s Recess in the ESEA Reauthorization?:

Where’s Recess in the ESEA Reauthorization?

We are losing a lot in terms of kids’ innovativeness and creativity. Frankly, I am worried about the next generation. Olga Jarrett, professor and recess advocate, Georgia State University

While there has been some good news on the recess front, every single public school needs to offer several recess breaks each day to children. How many children are still denied recess?

I know of schools that removed playground equipment. The school near where I used to live was built without a playground. Have those schools suddenly added swing sets and slides? Does every public elementary school now include recess breaks during the school day? Middle schools should have recess too.

Isn’t this an issue that should be addressed in the Elementary and Secondary Achievement Act (ESEA) reauthorization?

Here is a state rundown. See where your state stands on recess. If it isn’t seen as important at the state level, the local school districts won’t be inclined to touch it. They will be too busy focusing on repetitive testing and practice testing and concerned they won’t measure up on the test.

Recess should be addressed in the ESEA reauthorization!

If you think testing and test prep and all the things tied to getting students to raise test Where’s Recess in the ESEA Reauthorization?:

Bill Gates and the erosion of student privacy | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

Bill Gates and the erosion of student privacy | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy:
BILL GATES AND THE EROSION OF STUDENT PRIVACY

Bill Gates has had an enduring fixation on the need to expand the collection and sharing of personal student data. In 2005, the Gates Foundation organized a “data summit” among its grantees, at which launched the Data Quality Campaign, “to Improve the collection, availability and use of high-quality education data, and Implement state longitudinal data systems to improve student achievement.”

The Data Quality Campaign has received more than $13 millionsince 2013 from the Foundation, which they have used to advocate for the US Department of Education to weaken student privacy protections and to allow for the sharing of personal student information among state agencies, between states, and with researchers, test companies, and technology vendors.

In 2008 and 2011, The Data Quality Campaign, along with its “partners” among other Gates grantees, successfully lobbied the US Ed Dept. to relax FERPA, to allow for the creation of state longitudinal databases to link student data from preK through the workforce and beyond, and the disclosure and redisclosure of personal student data with a wide variety of third parties without parental knowledge or consent.

According to a participant in a webinar hosted by the Data Quality Campaign on April 14, 2011, Steve Winnick, a prominent DC attorney working for DQC emphasized the need to deny parents the right to consent or opt out of their children’s data being disclosed, saying, “we don’t want parents to get in the way.” You can see the 2011 fact sheet released by Steve Winnick and the Data Quality Campaign about the many ways the US Department of Education weakened this “outdated” privacy law in response to their advocacyhere.

Earlier in 2009, the Foundation granted $22 million to schools, districts, and states for them to expand their data collection and disclosure efforts, and in 2011, spent $87 million to form the Shared Learning Collaborative, which in 2014 would morph into a separate corporation called inBloom Inc.

inBloom Inc. which would receive more than $100M in Gates funds Bill Gates and the erosion of student privacy | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy:

Schools follow transgender law with few bumps

Schools follow transgender law with few bumps:

Schools follow transgender law with few bumps

KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR Julian Foley, 18, poses for his portrait last week at Century Academy in Thousand Oaks where he completes his high school studies. Foley attends the independent study school where he says it is not as hard for him to be a transgender student as it was in a traditional public high school.

Schools have made a relatively smooth transition to a law that says transgender students can use restrooms and locker rooms designated for the sex they identify with, educators say.

In other words, if a student was born physically male but identifies as female, she can use the girls' restrooms and locker room at her school. Transgender students also can play on teams made up of the sex they identify with.

The law, which went into effect almost two years ago, reflects changes in society, said Michael Babb, superintendent of the Ventura Unified School District.

"It's the law catching up with the people," Babb said.

Still, the law was "absolutely" needed, said Julian Foley, 18, a transgender student at Century Academy, an independent study school in the Conejo Valley Unified School District.

"Transgender students are going to use the bathroom they identify with no matter what," Foley said. "To have the law behind us, to support us, is so important because we have protection, and we have the rights we need."

But the transition locally hasn't been entirely smooth. Two members of the Conejo board, John Andersen and Mike Dunn, recently opposed a change in board policy that put the district in compliance with the law.

Andersen said he believes that most parents oppose the law, which he said potentially makes an already difficult time of life even more stressful.

"If I had a chance to rework this law, I would have facilities that would allow privacy for whoever wanted it," Andersen said. "But there will always be the student who wants to make a statement by using a facility that does not fit his or her anatomy. I truly believe that the public believes that boys and girls should not be showering together or sharing group restrooms."

Dunn said he believes that the government is interfering with parents' ability to instill their values in their children. And, like Dunn, he sees it as a violation of privacy rights.

But Foley said that private facilities are not a solution.

"They just do not get it," Foley said. "They don't understand that when you walk Schools follow transgender law with few bumps:

Uncomfortable convos for OKCPS: race, class, parenting - NonDoc - Linkis.com

Uncomfortable convos for OKCPS: race, class, parenting - NonDoc - Linkis.com:

Uncomfortable convos for OKCPS: race, class, parenting

The most difficult and most emotional dispute in education is over the assessment of disciplinary consequences for student misconduct. The issue requires conversations about topics that our mothers used to tell us to avoid: race, class and other people’s parenting. Discussions are further complicated because they are rooted in the deep moral beliefs held by opposing stakeholders. All sides are sincere, and that can make it harder for people to disagree without becoming disagreeable.

Recent Oklahoma City Board of Education meetings on the district’s new Code of Conduct have become extremely angry. All sides agree that the OKCPS district has grown too reliant on suspensions. Punitive school policies feed the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Few would deny that the district needs a well-funded, aligned and coordinated set of socio-emotional student supports. How we get there from here is complicated; however, if the community could pull together to seek the resources necessary to create safe and orderly schools, it could be a major turning point for the OKCPS district and Oklahoma City as a whole.

Stresses undermine instruction

We can all agree that improved instruction and better professional development will reduce the number of disciplinary infractions. Also, as Superintendent Rob Neu says, high-stakes testing has undermined teaching and learning. The stress of the “test, sort, reward and punish” policies that have been imposed in the name of “reform,” combined with the stresses that are inevitable in a 90 percent low-income school system, have undermined teaching. Educators have been forced to focus on remediating students’ weaknesses, often to the point of blinding adults to those children’s strengths.

Neu added an especially profound footnote to the standard diagnosis of how testing has undercut engaging instruction: For over a decade, the misuse of “curriculum alignment” has forced teachers and students to rush skin-deep through the tested curriculum, making it difficult to explore the concepts that challenge students. The key to learning is loving, trusting relationships. Fill-in-the-bubble accountability has driven much of the greatest joy of learning from our schools.

‘Wraparound services’ are required

As is explained in my new book A Teacher’s Tale, Oklahoma City only has 13 census tracts meeting the definition of “extreme poverty,” but the most challenged schools in the Uncomfortable convos for OKCPS: race, class, parenting - NonDoc - Linkis.com:

Notorious Ohio Online Charters Try to Evade Oversight, Tarnish Reputation of Charter Sector | janresseger

Notorious Ohio Online Charters Try to Evade Oversight, Tarnish Reputation of Charter Sector | janresseger:
Notorious Ohio Online Charters Try to Evade Oversight, Tarnish Reputation of Charter Sector

Patrick O’Donnell, of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, reports that, “Poor test results at online schools are creating divisions in the charter school community in Ohio and nationally, leading some national leaders to question whether e-schools should even be part of the charter school movement.”

He adds that, “In Ohio three statewide e-schools, each run by for-profit companies, dominate the market with 30,000 students between them.  Combined, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), Ohio Connections Academy and Ohio Virtual Academy account for 76 percent of all online students in the state.”  The Ohio Virtual Academy is operated by K12 Inc., and Ohio Connections Academy is reported by O’Donnell to be owned by Pearson. ECOT, the largest, is operated by Columbus entrepreneur, William Lager.

Last month a group of think tanks released a three-part report on the problems in the massive online charter schools. Mathematica Policy Research described how the nation’s 200 online charter schools operate; the Center on Reinventing Public Education explored the policy concerns around regulation, accountability, and funding provisions; and Stanford CREDO examined academic results of the e-schools and compared them to the academic records of traditional public and charter schools in which children come to a school and are taught by live, on-site teachers.  O’Donnell describes the conclusions of CREDO’s study: “Researchers found that students in online schools learn far less than students in other schools.  Nationally, students learned the equivalent of 72 days of school less in reading and 180 days less in math, each school year…. For Ohio, online students learned 79 days less material in reading than peers in traditional schools and 144 less days in math.”  This blog covered the series of reports Notorious Ohio Online Charters Try to Evade Oversight, Tarnish Reputation of Charter Sector | janresseger:

Brookings’ Critique of AERA Statement on VAMs, and Henry Braun’s Rebuttal | VAMboozled!

Brookings’ Critique of AERA Statement on VAMs, and Henry Braun’s Rebuttal | VAMboozled!:

Brookings’ Critique of AERA Statement on VAMs, and Henry Braun’s Rebuttal

Two weeks ago I published a post about the newly released “American Educational Research Association (AERA) Statement on Use of Value-Added Models (VAM) for the Evaluation of Educators and Educator Preparation Programs.”

In this post I also included a summary of the AERA Council’s eight key, and very important points abut VAMs and VAM use. I also noted that I contributed to this piece in one of its earliest forms. More importantly, however, the person who managed the statement’s external review and also assisted the AERA Council in producing the final statement before it was officially released was Boston College’s Dr. Henry Braun, Boisi Professor of Education and Public Policy and Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation.

Just this last week, the Brookings Institution published a critique of the AERA statement for, in my opinion, no other apparent reason than just being critical. The critique was written by Brookings affiliate Michael Hansen and University of Washington Bothell’s Dan Goldhaber, titled a “Response to AERA statement on Value-Added Measures: Where are the Cautionary Statements on Alternative Measures?”

Accordingly, I invited Dr. Henry Braun to respond, and he graciously agreed:

In a recent posting, Michael Hansen and Dan Goldhaber complain that the AERA statement on the use of VAMs does not take a similarly critical stance with respect to “alternative measures”. True enough! The purpose of the statement is to provide a considered, research-based discussion of the issues related to the use of value-added scores for high-stakes evaluation. It culminates in a set of eight requirements to be met before such use should be made.

The AERA statement does not stake out an extreme position. First, it is grounded in the broad research literature on drawing causal inferences from observational data subject to strong selection (i.e., the pairings of teachers and students is highly non-random), as well as empirical studies of VAMs in different contexts. Second, the requirements are consistent with the AERA, American Psychological Association (APA), and National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. Finally, its cautions are in line with those expressed in similar statements released by the Board on Testing and Assessment of the National Research Council and by the American Statistical Association.

Hansen and Goldhaber are certainly correct when they assert that, in devising an accountability system for educators, a comparative perspective is essential. One should consider the advantages and disadvantages of different indicators, which ones to employ, how to combine them and, most importantly, consider both the consequences for Brookings’ Critique of AERA Statement on VAMs, and Henry Braun’s Rebuttal | VAMboozled!:

ESEA Federal Education Alert by a NGO and a Parent’s Organization. Whose Primary Concern is for the Students? » Missouri Education Watchdog

ESEA Federal Education Alert by a NGO and a Parent’s Organization. Whose Primary Concern is for the Students? » Missouri Education Watchdog:

ESEA Federal Education Alert by a NGO and a Parent’s Organization. Whose Primary Concern is for the Students?

The privately funded NGO Whiteboard Advisors sent out an email alert regarding the pending ESEA reauthorization.  It is a group that describes itself as a consulting firm and has extensive public/private partnership relationships:

Education is a big business with marketing needed to fit public policy. Whiteboard Advisors provides a service for businesses so they can determine how best to implement these policies. Even if you aren’t an “insider” in the education reform circles, it’s an invaluable site to read so you can figure out what the elites are planning for your student, state legislature, local school district, and state educational agencies.

While any ESEA reauthorization will affect the business community, it also affects the students.  Who is writing about the effect on students?  It’s not Whiteboard Advisors or other private NGOs.  Organizations/parents with no outside or special interest funding are filling in the rest of the narrative on why this reauthorization is not good for students, public education, and states’ rights to direct/develop education.  From Truth in American Education and The ESEA Reauthorization Conference Report Is Now Public:

The conference report for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now called the Every Student Succeeds Act, has been made public.  It is 1,059 pages long and Congress is somehow supposed to throughly vet this bill and vote in two days.  This is simply not acceptable.

The House Education and the Workforce Committee puts a positive spin on the bill.  They claim:

• Prohibits any agent of the federal government — including the secretary of education — from incentivizing, forcing, or coercing states into adopting Common Core, or interfering with a state’s standards or assessments.

• Rejects policies and programs the secretary has used to coerce states to adopt Common Core, including waivers of K-12 education law and Race to the Top.

• Prevents the secretary from imposing additional burdens on states and school districts through the regulatory process in areas of standards, assessments, and state accountability plans.

First, as it relates to Common Core, this bill is like slamming the barn door shut after the horses have already run out. The damage has been done.

Second, the bill still requires state plans and gives the Secretary of Education enormous authority to approve or disapprove them which in reality negates the claims that this bill do anything to help states get rid of Common Core.

Third, this bill expands early childhood funding and thus federal strings into pre-school.  The bill’s language still reflects a change in No Child Left Behind’s application to “all public elementary school and secondary school students” with “all public school students.”

Fourth, this bill still contains a testing mandate and the opt-out amendment that was added to the original House bill has been stripped out.

Let your voice be heard, contact your member of Congress today!

You can read the bill for yourself below or download here.

Activist Cheri Kiesecker in Colorado points out the data required under this act is expanded and states must align to the USDOEd Secretary’s mandates:

ESSA Pg 616-617- Please read. strings attached- an MOU contract that promises a pipeline of data -mental 

ESEA Federal Education Alert by a NGO and a Parent’s Organization. Whose Primary Concern is for the Students? » Missouri Education Watchdog:

Revamp of No Child Left Behind | Al Jazeera America

Revamp of No Child Left Behind | Al Jazeera America:

Revamp of No Child Left Behind fails to satisfy some critics

Congress may soon pass major overhaul of controversial federal education law, but some say changes don't go far enough

Congress is expected within weeks to approve a rewrite of No Child Left Behind, the federal education law that has roiled public school districts across the country since it was passed nearly 14 years ago.

The new bill, a bipartisan compromise between the House and Senate that was released to the public on Monday, fails to allay the concerns of some of the law’s staunchest critics. They say the changes fall short of undoing what many call the law’s “test-and-punish” regime, in which student test scores are used to judge teachers and schools, with possible severe consequences that can include the closing of a school. 

“Our schools can’t afford new mandates for high-stakes testing and opportunities for the private sector to profit off kids,” the Network for Public Education, a group of progressive education activists, said in a message to its supporters.

The new bill, renamed the Every Student Succeeds Act, would seem to answer some of the chief concerns of parents and educators across the political spectrum, mainly by rolling back the federal government’s power to dictate education policy to states — a practice that grew under the Obama administration. That’s why both the American Federation of Teachers, a major teachers’ union, and the education policy director for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, have endorsed it.

The rewrite also has the support of the Center for American Progress, an organization associated with President Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The bill is also backed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers — both key players behind the Common Core academic standards that have been criticized as developmentally inappropriate for children and overly prescriptive for teachers.

The Every Student Succeeds Act would prohibit the federal education secretary from pushing a particular set of academic standards such as the Common Core. It would also end any requirement for states to use student test scores in evaluating teachers, and it would maintain federal funding for poor schools.

The rewrite additionally prevents the federal government from ordering states to take drastic action against schools with low test scores, such as closing the schools, firing the staff or turning the schools over to privately run charter school operators.

With these changes, many of the biggest battles over education policy would shift from Washington, D.C., to the Revamp of No Child Left Behind | Al Jazeera America:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: A Sinking ship

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: A Sinking ship:

A Sinking ship

I watched an old film, "The Shipping News" the other night. I liked it, mainly because it's set on the wild, stormym Newfoundland coast and starsKevin Spacey, one of my favorites. One scene that grabbed me, had newsman Quoyle, played by Spacey, an inexperienced sailor out in an unworthy boat in rough waters, bailing furiously while the sea overtakes and sinks his sorry craft... (I'll stop here, in case you haven't see it).

That image stays with me as I'm following (and telling) the story of the equally unworthy craft, the leaky Rahm Emanuel regime in the midst of another stormy scandal. Only Rahm (a terrible actor) is in the sinking boat with a crew of thieves and scalawags. Among them, his indicted schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett, police Supt. Garry McCarthy and State's Atty. Anita Alvarez. As the story unfolds, Rahm is faced with the choice of throwing some of the dead weight overboard or going down with the ship.

But no matter how hard he bails, it's the rotting, fabric of the regime that's sinking him. And each of his hand-picked crew that gets tossed, only reveals the depths of Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: A Sinking ship: