ESSA/COTH - Chop Off Teacher Heads

Installed in every public school under ESSA

One can only love the term “Every Student Succeeds Act” and its supplemental act –COTH - if every student doesn’t succeed: Chop Off Teacher Heads – unless the teacher happens to be a charter school teacher.

Forgot to post my Dec. 11 Wave column.

School Scope:
ESSA/ESEA - UFT Support of Revised Fed Ed Bill is Misguided
By Norm Scott

The ESEA Act (Elementary/ Secondary Educational Act) was initially part of a civil rights package passed in the 60s under Lyndon Johnson to counter southern racist schools systems that shortchanged schools with black kids.

Fordham College Professor Mark Naison writes in a blog post titled, “Why ESEA Must Be Fought by People on the Left as Well as on the Right”:

“There was a time when you needed the power of the federal government to counteract local tyrannies shaped by racist electoral practices and corporate control of local governments No more. Today, it is the federal government which is controlled lock stock and barrel by large corporations, insuring that any federal policy will contribute to their enrichment and an expansion of their power. A defense of federal power is no longer a "progressive" position. In education, it has led to disastrous consequences ranging from the mindless impositions of test driven curricula and assessments, to the destruction and privatization of public education in many of the nation's cities.”

While I oppose the new version, now called ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act), I also am wary of turning things over to “local” control which really means the states, which are mostly right-wing anti-union, anti-government and pro-privatization. Even our own so-called progressive state has a governor who supports all of the above and a corrupt state legislature where even our own local Rockaway reps will jump at any chance to funnel money out of our public schools into private schools, where they often send their own children.

Bloggers opposing ESSA were out in force with titles like: ESSA--Now Less Crappy than Before, ECAA Would set the country back more than a half century, The Good News: ESEA Will Bring an Era of Open Rebellion, ESEA Will Mean 50 Fronts in the War Against Corporate Education Reform. And one blogger renamed it: Say NO to ECAA (Escalating Charter Assistance Act). And make no mistake about it – privately managed charters will flourish under ESSA.

Mandating federal money for services into poverty schools, often termed Title 1, was an attempt to level the playing field. I always taught in a Title 1 school and we received certain support services for push-in and pull-out programs, many of which had little impact because school administrators often had so little imagination or will to attack the real problems. They often misused the Title 1 people as school and even personal servants. (I once saw our ESL teacher on her knees dusting shelves in the principal’s office.)

Well, anyway, ESEA had a lot of flaws. But things only get worse in the world of education deform. First came the No Child Left Behind under President Bush in 2004, a bi-partisan bill that Ted Kennedy was behind, as were out national and state teacher unions, who were given a little stool at the table to have “input”. So they went out and sold it. I am proud that my self-published newsletter joined others around the nation and took a stand against NCLB as being a horror story, which Education Week called “universally despised.”

Then came Obama and his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan who doubled down on NCLB with Race To The Top (RTTT) which tied student test scores to rating teachers using formulas called Value Added Method (VAM), which an April 2014 Washington Post article titled “Statisticians slam popular teacher evaluation method” exposed the sham of VAM. RTTT was a fundamental assault on public schools and favored charters and a general privatization movement and also included massive amount of testing and enormous amounts of money going to consultants and testing companies.

While teacher union leadership kept their heads in the sand, opting for any money from RTTT no matter how tainted the public reacted – or at least parents reacted with a growing opt-out of the tests movement with the epicenter being in NY State where 220,000 students opted out, 20% of the total. Long Island is the epicenter of the epicenter. In New Jersey, 120,000 student opted out.

Suddenly even slime ball politicians like Gov. Cuomo, who has been pushing so hard to attack teachers and tie student test scores to their jobs, noticed and is now backing off, a temporary retreat aimed at killing the opt-out movement because so many parents listed the tying in of scores to teacher ratings as the number one reason for opting out. Make no mistake about it. With the teacher union leadership sucking up to the alter of ed deform, the major friend teachers have are the parents leading the opt-out movement. No wonder the ed deformers and our own union leaders are so opposed to opt-out.

One can only love the term “Every Student Succeeds Act” and its supplemental act –COTH - if every student doesn’t succeed: Chop Off Teacher Heads – unless the teacher happens to be a charter school teacher.

Norm blogs at ednotesonline.com.

Jia Lee, UFT Presidential Candidate, Chastizes Mulgrew Over ESSA Support Alert

We have been reporting on ESSA:

• Massive Charter Giveaways in ESEA/ESSA Re-Write, P...
• ESEA/ESSA Pushed by UFT/AFT/NYSUT After Supporting...
• Randi/AFT/Mulgrew/UFT/E4E Join Deformers in Suppor...

Is ESSA a Hoax?

Ravitch, who supported ESSA but is posting all sides, just posted:
Nicholas Tampio, a professor of political science at Fordham University, argues that the Every Student Succeeds Act is a sham.

Jia Lee, MORE's presidential candidate is on the case:

ON ESSA:
Cross-Post from MORE

The Disturbing Action Alert from Michael Mulgrew

by Jia Lee, Chapter Leader, The Earth School
MORE/New Action 2016 Candidate for President of the UFT

Here is the disturbing email that all UFT members received on Tuesday, December 1, a day before the Federal HELP Senate Committee was to vote on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), called Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). UFT President Michael Mulgrew urges us to contact our senators to “Vote Yes” and I can only stare in shock at the screen.

In what is being touted as a fix for the many problems of No Child Left Behind, members have a right to know that the full 1,059 page reauthorization came out only a few days before the vote. While it includes removal of teacher evaluations based on test scores and leaves the decision to the states, this does not do enough to disconnect misguided “accountability” measures from schools through the use of standardized testing. Further, there are grave problems that reek of catering to private interests. By now, we know that since NCLB, education policies have been rooted in the interests of private corporations and groups, such as ALEC, the Waltons, Rupert Murdoch, Bill and Melinda Gates and others. Read on to find out more that is being uncovered as the public has a chance to read and digest the densely packed document.

The logical “Action Alert” we would hope to expect would not just include a call to contact our elected officials to “Vote No”, but we would have been given the chance for some kind of analysis, even if there is a lack of time for discussion. There is a deja vu in the feeling of being rushed to take a position on something we hardly know enough about, such as the last contract negotiation.

Here are just some of the reasons why any UFT member in NYC, if given the chance to fully understand for ourselves the implications of ESSA, would never take an action to support its passing. Linked are the numerous articles by trusted and respected education experts in the movement to save our schools, responding to the the problems within this legislation that will most likely go into law. ESSA is riddled with language that opens the way for continued benefits for edu-corporations and venture philanthropists who the UFT leadership purports to fight against:

• The bill was issued for review on November 30 and then rewritten and redistributed one day before the vote. That hardly gave time for senators to exercise protocols for democratic debate over the 1,000+ page document. That alone should raise red flags, and in a world where folks are really following the presidential election, it makes sense that the UFT and AFT would support the passage of this bill, since it removes the federal role in how states determine testing and accountability. After all, the AFT announced an early endorsement of Hillary Clinton, whose connections to the elite would benefit from taking the issue off the table altogether.
• There is still annual testing mandated for grades 3-8 and high school science, with reporting based on race, class and English Language acquisition. The federal government did not remove the 95% standardized test participation rate currently necessary for schools and districts to avoid potential penalties, and has doubled down on heavily discouraging parents from choosing to opt their children out of standardized testing. Annual testing is, above all, a cash cow for testing and ed corporations. This will now be continued at the state, rather than federal level.
• Under Title I, Part D, “Pay for Success” investors can earn money for not referring students for special education services. This is alarming since, across the city, state and nation, our most vulnerable students are not receiving the services they are legally entitled to and need as it is. Read more here, in a piece that is posted on Diane Ravitch’s blog.
• Under the rewrite, teacher preparation programs now incentivize programs organized by the very venture philanthropists who have churned out short-term teachers for placement in poor urban districts with the goal of increasing student achievement through test scores. Read the Washington Post piece by Kenneth Zeichner, member of the National Academy of Education and professor of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. and another must read piece by Mercedes Schneider here.
• Taking a step back, the entire process was political, with little to gain for our students, teachers and public schools. In fact, many of the components provide the space to increase charter caps, create an influx and incentivization of Teach for America type programs, alignment of tests to standards (Common Core or state produced), and the biggest hits are to our students who are English Language Learners and to special education mandates under IDEA. Read for yourself.

Instead of doing this analysis, the leadership credits the UFT, AFT and parents across the country for putting pressure on elected officials to remove the mandates for teacher evaluations based on value added metrics. This is incorrect. The UFT and AFT never placed any such pressure. In fact, they whole heartedly agreed to No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. 

It was the grass roots organizing of parents, teachers of conscience and supporters of public education who made the opt out movement a force of change. Mulgrew once stated at a delegate assembly in June of 2015 that 19 teachers in a Brooklyn high school were being rated “ineffective” by their administrator. According to him, their VAM score saved them. We say that there is clearly some other problem that needs to be addressed at the school when an administrator is gunning for 19 teachers. Many teachers in our city can attest to the micromanagement so prevalent in our schools. Instead of addressing this most pressing issue for his members, Mulgrew tells us it’s fine when it works in his favor politically. 

Call to Action: If you feel compelled, United Opt Out has created an online petition where you can add your name to the list of people who are calling for senators to Vote NO.

Join MORE caucus as we continue to call for a broader analysis of the ESEA reauthorization to understand how this will impact our schools, communities, students and our profession. 

Today, the Senate passed the bill and Obama is expected to sign it. Mike Antonucci at EIA lays out the next 15 years under ESSA:


 

Massive Charter Giveaways in ESEA/ESSA Re-Write, Part 1 - Jim Horn

this corporate welfare bill will send billions in federal grants to segregated “no excuses” charter school companies, venture philanthropists, and real estate developers over the next six years. ...Schools Matter, Massive Charter Giveaways in ESEA Re-Write, Part 1

Why would our union leaders support a bill that will end up costing thousands of jobs for union teachers nationwide? My guess is that they know we are in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire stage and are managing the dismantling as they lead teachers into the fire.

There was a time when some of the very same people and organizations (ahem, the UFT/AFT/NYSUT) supported NCLB. Some of the very same people are backing this ESEA rewrite which is not about local control but handing things over to increasingly rightwing, pro-privatization forces at the state level. Will these same people one day (soon?) lament their support as public education gets buried further under the charter onslaught?

federal funding favorability will go to states that do not “impose any limitation on the number or percentage of charter schools that may exist or the number or percentage of students that may attend charter schools in the State”... With a continuing federal mandate to fix the bottom five percent of schools, the ESEA rewrite will provide at least a billion dollars each year to fund charter school expansion, thus further weakening public education.  The new grant programs will be fashioned to provide minimal oversight and maximum autonomy to charter companies and their corporate support organizations, and for the first time, private non-profit corporations will be classified as “state entities,” thus eligible to apply directly for federal grant programs....grants will be funneled to states that have established infrastructure to help charter companies in facilities acquisition and/or the handing over of public properties at rock bottom prices.  Federal help in corporate real estate acquisition signals the full maturation of a charter industry that will be worth hundreds of billions

Jim Horn reports at Schools Matter:

Massive Charter Giveaways in ESEA Re-Write, Part 1

ESEA/ESSA Pushed by UFT/AFT/NYSUT After Supporting No Child Left Behind and RTTT

Wait - they want to take the power from the fed ed dept (Obama/Duncan) and hand it over to the mostly right wing state anti-union governments? And even those not right wing might as well be - ahem - see one Andrew Cuomo.

Our great union leaders want you to forget how they sold the very ed laws they are not trashing. The major reason they want you to support the  ESSA/ESEA - (the old act renamed) - is that it gets rid of aspects of NCLB and Race to the Top that our union leaders supported in the first place.

Arthur Goldstein at NYC Educator: ESSA--Now Less Crappy than Before


I'm not even sure it is less crappy than before in the hands of the states.

Jim Horn at Schools Matter:

•  ECAA "would set the country back more than a half century" 

• The Good News: ECAA Will Bring an Era of Open Rebellion.

• Say NO to ECAA (Escalating Charter Assistance Act)...
• ESEA Will Mean 50 Fronts in the War Against Corpor...
• NPE Turns "Opposition" to ESEA into Fund-Raising O...

 I love the Escalating Charter Assistance Act - which the state governments will enforce with gusto. No wonder groups like E4E support it.


Also see James Eterno at ICE:

STRONGER TOGETHER NOT CELEBRATING EVERY CHILD SUCCEEDS ACT

I would rename this as Every Child Succeeds or Off With the Heads of Teachers of those who don't succeed. And let's keep the definition of "succeed" a moving target so we can push out union teachers.

Our leaders at the time of NCLB in 2004 had their little stool at the table and urged passage of the act.


Ed Notes, (the hard copy) was on the case at that time:

Subject: No Child Left Behind- Ed Notes, March 2004
Reacting to Federal Guidelines, the state of Florida, which has been high- lighted as a role model for student testing by the Bush Administrationʼs Department of Education has released the following memo: 

In response to President Bushʼs Federal No Child Left Behind Act, stu- dents will have to pass it to be promoted to the next grade level. It will be uniformly adopted by all the states, thus illuminating Florida to a glorious front runner position in education, it will be called: the Federal Arithmetic and Reading Test (FART). 

All students who cannot pass a FART in the second grade will be retested in grades 3-5 until such a time as they are capable of achieving a FART score of 80%. If a student does not successfully FART by grade 5, that student shall be placed in a separate English program, the Special Mastery Elective for Learning language (SMELL). 

If with this increased SMELL program the student cannot pass the required FART, he or she can graduate to middle school by taking a one-semester course in Comprehensive Reading and Arithmetic Preparation (CRAP). 

If by age fourteen the student cannot FART, SMELL or CRAP, he will earn his promotion in an intensive one-week seminar This is the Preparatory Reading for Unprepared Nationally Exempted Students (PRUNES). 

It is the opinion of the Florida Department of Public Instruction that an intensive week of PRUNES will enable any student to FART, SMELL or CRAP.
This revised provision of the student-testing component of the House Bill 110 should help clear the air.

And I published this piece by Greg Palast

NO CHILDʼS BEHIND LEFT: The New
Educational Eugenics In George
Bushʼs State of the Union by Greg Palast

Education Notes March/April 2004 

Go ahead, George, and lie to me. Lie to my dog. Lie to my sister. But donʼt you ever lie to my kids. 

Deep into your State of the Siege lecture tonight, long after sensible adults had turned off the tube or kicked in the screen, you came after our children. “By passing the No Child Left Behind Act,” you said, “We are regularly testing every child ... and making sure they have better options when schools are not performing.” 

You said it ... and then that little tongue came out; that weird way you stick your tongue out between your lips like the little kid who knows heʼs fibbing. Like a snake licking a rat. I saw that snakey tongue dart out and I thought, “He knows.” 

And what you know, Mr. Bush, is this: youʼve ordered this testing to hunt down, identify and target for destruction the hopes of millions of children you find too expensive, too heavy a burden, to educate. 

Hereʼs how No Child Left Behind and your tests work in the classrooms of Houston and Chicago. Millions of 8 year olds are given lists of words and phrases. They try to read. Then they are graded, like USDA beef: some prime, some OK, many failed. 

Once the kids are stamped and sorted, the parents of the marked children ask for you to fill your tantalizing promise, to “make sure they have better options when schools are not performing.” 

But there is no “better option,” is there, Mr. Bush? Whereʼs the money for the better schools to take in the kids getting crushed in cash-poor districts? Whereʼs the open door to the suburban campuses with the big green lawns for the dark kids with the test-score mark of Cain? 

And if I bring up the race of the kids with the low score, donʼt get all snippy with me, telling me your program is color blind. We know the color of the kids left behind; and itʼs not the color of the kids you went to school with at Philips Andover Academy. 

You know and I know that the testing is a con. There is no “better option” at the other end. The cash went to end the inheritance tax, that special program to give every millionaireʼs son another million. 

But youʼll tell me, you took tests as a youth. I know you did. And you scored on the Air Guard flight 
test 25 out of 100, one point above too dumb to fly. But you zoomed past the other would-be flyboys. They were stamped, “Ready for ʻNam.”

And you took a test to get into Yale. And though your pet rock scored a wee bit higher than you, your grandpa on the Yale board provided the “better option” which got you in. 

Here in New York City, your educational Taliban, led by Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has issued an edict to test the third-graders. Winnow out the chaff - the kids stamped ʻfailedʼ - and throw them back, exactly where they started, to repeat the same failed program another year. The ugly little irony is this: the core of No Child Left Behind is that failing children will be left behind another year. And another year and another year. 

You know and I know that this is not an educational opportunity program - because you offer no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding. Rather, it is the new Republican social Darwinism, educational eugenics: identify the nationʼs loser-class early on. Trap them, then train them cheap. 

No Child Left Behind is of one piece with the tax cuts for the rich, the energy laws for the insid- ers, the oil wars for the well-off. Someone has to care for the privileged. No society can have winners without lots of losers - but drug-free, functional and cheaply maintained. 

And so we have No Child Left Behind - to provide the new worker drones that will clean the toilets at the Yale Alumni Club, punch the cash registers color-coded for illiterates, and pamper the winner- class on the higher floors of the new economic order. 

Greg Palast is author of, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,” which has returned this week to the New York Times bestseller list. View Palastʼs writings for Harperʼs, The Guardian (UK) and BBC television at www.GregPalast.com.
You can also see this article on- line: http://www.gregpalast.com/ detail.cfm?artid=310&frm=eml 

ED. NOTE: Teachers, parents and academics have come together to fight against the evil doer perpe- trators of NCLB and the 3rd grade retention policy. Join them!