KIPP is the way the white and powerful want the poor of color to be educated — A Question for Obama: Why Does KIPP Not Look Like Sidwell?

The achievement gap has left the stadium, ladies and gentlemen, while growth models have taken the stage.  Now that the urban school systems have been blown up, thus clearing the way for the corporate charterites,  the canyon between test scores of the rich and poor is no longer of interest.  Indeed, the achievement gap has become a "mindless measure," to use the words of Jay Mathews.
....Jim Horn 

KIPP is the way the white and powerful want the poor of color to be educated... Ira Socol

This stuff is so good, I've delayed leaving for the beach to get it out there. Jim Horn put up a scathing piece the other day, including videos, at Schools Matter and followed up today. He delves into the shifting vocabulary from closing the achievement gap to the current quality teaching/value added craze and explains it this way:

this new value-added universe is not even interested in those troublesome group comparisons any longer that are based on the poverty chasm. Unless, of course, the reformers need to shut down your neighborhood school and turn it into a corporate-styled testing madrasah, i. e., charter school. Then your percentile ranking becomes a crucial tool in deciding who is in that bottom five percent that just keeps replenishing itself as the last group is scraped off to become charterized.

Jim nails exactly what the Tweed yokels are trying to pull off with their road show explaining the test score gap. Oh my God. This stuff is getting me hot. Screw the beach. Here is a section from Jim's Sept. 1 post:

Below is an open online letter from Ira Socol to the President.  I have ventured to add a few comments and a couple of video clips.

Dear President Obama,

I wanted to discuss the things you believe are "innovative in education," just so I might assure you that in this field - in the field of America's future - your administration is doing irreparable harm.

 "Students at both KIPP and Achievement First schools follow a system for classroom behavior invented by Levin and Feinberg called Slant, which instructs them to sit up, listen, ask questions, nod and track the speaker with their eyes." Yes, the first thing KIPP teaches is Calvinist church behaviour. "They all called out at once, “Nodding!"' Yes. Stare at your master. Sit still. Nod to demonstrate your compliance. Speak in unison according to the script.

Mr. President, this is not innovation. We know this formula. It drove the colonialist education systems of Wales and Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was the hallmark of British Colonial Schools from Lagos to Cape Town to Delhi. It was the path followed by the U.S. government's Indian Schools.

Read the entire piece at Schools Matter: Why Does KIPP Not Look Like Sidwell?

In today's excellent follow-up responding to Jay Mathews, including this:

Jay and the the new generation of reformers doing the same thing as the last generation (when will they become the status quo?) would rather look at test score growth over time, especially when big achievement gap closing claims by your favorite politicians do not materialize. Focusing on individual gains makes the disparity between the haves and the have-nots much easier to ignore, since this new value-added universe is not even interested in those troublesome group comparisons any longer that are based on the poverty chasm. Unless, of course, the reformers need to shut down your neighborhood school and turn it into a corporate-styled testing madrasah, i. e., charter school. Then your percentile ranking becomes a crucial tool in deciding who is in that bottom five percent that just keeps replenishing itself as the last group is scraped off to become charterized.

The New Status Quo
I love the "when will they become the status quo" line? We have been having fun with this idea here in NY by referring to BloomKlein in just that way. As a matter of fact, we have been forming a group to do street theater called "The Status Quo Players." Even thinking of tee-shirts. How's this? STATUS and QUO shirts with an arrow pointing to the left saying "I'm with QUO"? Here is the intro to Jim's piece today:

"Irrepressible" Bloggers vs. the Borg

Jay Mathews is the insider's insider on corporate education reform issues, serving as the media mouthpiece for the psychological sterilization movement of KIPP and the KIPP knock-offs.  The Elder himself, Bill Gates, carries a supply of Jay's KIPP book to hand out to anyone interested in the Oligarchs' choice of a final solution to educating the poor and the brown of urban America.

At the same time KIPP is becoming the urban model for corporate ed reform, the movement is in the process of pivoting from the the phony campaign under Bush ostensibly to close the black-white achievement gap, with the same high expectations for all, thus avoiding "the soft bigotry of low expectations," blah-blah, to a new phony campaign of assuring that poor children have the same access to high quality teachers and schools because education is now the "civil rights issue of our generation."  Blah, blah, blah.  While the pivot leaves in place the high-stakes standardized testing that declared 30-40 percent of public schools failures and charter targets under the last 9 years of NCLB,  the pivot demands a shift in what is measured by the tests and how it is measured.  The achievement gap has left the stadium, ladies and gentlemen, while growth models have taken the stage.  Now that the urban school systems have been blown up, thus clearing the way for the corporate charterites

The focus now is on "a year's worth of individual student growth" for a year's worth of teaching (much more on this later, with a feature on the Wizard of Oz, Bill Sanders).  In short, the new target of corporate ed reform is to blow up, or disrupt, the teaching profession by measuring effective teaching on how much test score growth a teacher can oversee.  And as the new CEO-led KIPP chain gangs are to replace urban public schools, so then an endless stream of non-union white missionary temps are being prepared to replace the professionals who now staff the urban schools.  Test score gains, or lack thereof, will be used to justify the firing of professionals and the use of temps from TFA and the TFA knock-offs that Arne fondly calls alternative teacher certification programs.

So Jay defends KIPP - of course. Discipline is exaggerated. Ira Socol left comments on Mathews' blog, to which Mathews responded. Here are a few excerpts but head over to the piece when you are through here to read it all.

So yes Jay, I have been in KIPP schools...I have been in KIPP schools (3) and - personally - I have found them terrifying.

But more than that Jay, I have some really extensive experience in the types of communities KIPP seeks to serve. I know these kids, and I know what they could do if they were offered the kind of educational opportunities available at Sidwell (or Cranbrook, or St. Ann's or etc).

And I know one more thing. Barack and Michelle would never send their daughters to a KIPP school, nor tolerate KIPP-style education in any school their daughters attended. As I've said, KIPP is the way the white and powerful want the poor of color to be educated. But they aren't suggesting it because that's a path to equality. They are suggesting it for just the opposite reason - they don't want the competition for their own children. 

What concerned me? An absolute lack of tolerance for mental, learning, and behavioural diversity, in classroom after classroom, corridor after corridor. Of course I come from a Special Education background, so this was far more disturbing than it might be to others. I also found the brutality of teacher-student, and especially in Indianapolis, administrator-student communication fairly shocking. If you would send your grandchildren there, you're a different kind of parent than I am.

In Chicago I saw a young teacher working one-on-one with a series of students who needed reading help. A few things stood out. The students who came to him were all, quite obviously, struggling with different aspects of the reading process. One had essentially no phonological awareness, one was really struggling with the symbols (he could not, as an example, associate the lower case letters with the equivalent upper case letters), a third read fluently but with almost zero comprehension.

The teacher, very clearly untrained in any of this, repeated the same efforts with all the kids. He was clearly operating from a script. And as his efforts inevitably failed, he became angry with the students, repeatedly blaming them for "not trying hard enough." The child with no phonological awareness was called "lazy" repeatedly. KIPP only phenomenon? Of course not, but I saw similar scenes throughout all the buildings.

in KIPP classrooms I have seen teachers encourage children to humiliate others. And this is done with the "pack" using the same words, as if scripted. You may see that as positive, I see it as hazing, and perhaps a significant reason for KIPP's rather stunning attrition rate. http://epicpolicy.org/newsletter/2010/06/new-kipp-study-underestimates-attrition-effects-0 A rate the KIPP Foundation seems to go to great lengths to obscure. 

I could go on but I'm getting giddy. Read more here:

"Irrepressible" Bloggers vs. the Borg

Do I Really Care About the Results in Massachusettes? HELL NO!!!

Call it tunnel vision, but I am so livid at the beyond-Bush education policies of Obama, that it taints everything else he does. His pro-corporate (which dovetails perfectly with the ed policy) and pro-banking policies don't make it any better. So when they - I mean the Democrats - try to scare me with the prospect of Sarah Palin beating Obama in 2012 and ask me to get up at dawn to schelp over to Allentown Pa. to volunteer for Obama, I ain't a marchin' anymore. Practice saying it now: President Palin. At this point, I don't give a crap.

Obama Supports Demise of Public Option in Education

One of the fascinating aspects of the health care debate has been over the offering of a public option to reduce costs while at the same time the Obama administration has been promoting policies (charters, etc) that will ultimately lead to the destruction of the public option in education. Here, in a series of posts over the last few days at the Schools Matter blog, we see the plan to undermine public education (and of course to destroy teacher unions) laid out by a former Bushie in early 2008. Now ask yourself: exactly what is the AFT/UFT doing in response? Think: who needs public education, let's get our share. Thanks to Michael Fiorillo for finding this gem (and don't forget, GEM in NYC right now is the only organized opposition to THE PLAN.)

Kenneth Libby in Friday's post laid out the plan to eliminate the public option in education in this post:

From the Vault

This is part of an essay written in early 2008 by AEI/Fordham's Andy Smarick, a former Bush II Domestic Policy Council member tasked with K-12 and higher education issues:

Here, in short, is one roadmap for chartering's way forward: First, commit to drastically increasing the charter market share in a few select communities until it is the dominant system and the district is reduced to a secondary provider. The target should be 75 percent. Second, choose the target communities wisely. Each should begin with a solid charter base (at least 5 percent market share), a policy environment that will enable growth (fair funding, nondistrict authorizers, and no legislated caps), and a favorable political environment (friendly elected officials and editorial boards, a positive experience with charters to date, and unorganized opposition). For example, in New York a concerted effort could be made to site in Albany or Buffalo a large percentage of the 100 new charters allowed under the raised cap. Other potentially fertile districts include Denver,Detroit,Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Oakland, and Washington, D.C.

Third, secure proven operators to open new schools. To the greatest extent possible, growth should be driven by replicating successful local charters and recruiting high-performing operators from other areas. Fourth, engage key allies like Teach For America, New Leaders for New Schools, and national and local foundations to ensure the effort has the human and financial capital needed. Last, commit to rigorously assessing charter performance in each community and working with authorizers to close the charters that fail to significantly improve student achievement.

In total, these strategies should lead to rapid, high-quality charter growth and the development of a public school marketplace marked by parental choice, the regular startup of new schools, the improvement of middling schools, the replication of high-performing schools, and the shuttering of low-performing schools.

As chartering increases its market share in a city, the district will come under growing financial pressure. The district, despite educating fewer and fewer students, will still require a large administrative staff to process payroll and benefits, administer federal programs, and oversee special education. With a lopsided adult-to-student ratio, the district's per-pupil costs will skyrocket.

At some point along the district's path from monopoly provider to financially unsustainable marginal player, the city's investors and stakeholders--taxpayers, foundations, business leaders, elected officials, and editorial boards--are likely to demand fundamental change. That is, eventually the financial crisis will become a political crisis. If the district has progressive leadership, one of two best-case scenarios may result. The district could voluntarily begin the shift to an authorizer, developing a new relationship with its schools and reworking its administrative structure to meet the new conditions. Or, believing the organization is unable to make this change, the district could gradually transfer its schools to an established authorizer.

You can practically check off each of Smarick's suggestions for a pro-charter policy environment, particularly in places like Los Angeles. The general silence of Right-wing education "reformers" (hell-bent, in reality, on destroying and privatizing public education) is not a coincidence - they're largely happy with Obama/Duncan's education agenda.
Welcome to "third way" centrism.


More Schools Matter articles on charters:

After Years of "Innovation," NJ Charters Perform No Better Than Poorest Public Schools

The Real Effects of Corporate Charter Schools on Public Schools

CEO Pay in Charter School Chains

Gloucester Parents Stage Protest Against Crooked Charter School Approval

Town Hall Meetings Urge NY State Legislature to Pull the Plug

August, 2015

NYC

Raucous town hall meetings have been springing up in all boroughs of New York City urging NY State legislators who supported the extension of mayoral control six years ago in 2009 to finally pull the plug.

Angry citizens have gathered to attack local politicians, most of whom have abandoned the sham and have openly been on the payroll of 4th term mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has announced he intends to serve as mayor for life after cancelling all future elections. The mayor has designated his daughter Georgina as the next mayor to succeed him.

Copy cat town halls have also followed President Obama and his 5th education secretary, Sarah Palin, to also pull the plug on their support for mayoral control, charter schools, merit pay and all the other market based education deform gimmicks that have proven to be such a failure.

Obama's was constantly reminded how his now long forgotten first education secretary, Arne Duncan, (currently commissioner of a minor league basketball association formerly run by disgraced NY Knicks general manager Isiah Thomas) forced states to adopt the deform agenda or have the education stimulus package withheld.

With all states succumbing, the result was that every child in the nation has become proficient in all skills based on the results of 10 True False questions, where either answer was correct. The entire system came crashing down when it was discovered that 92% of the children in America were found to be pulling doors when in fact the sign said "push."

Duncan, in a candid interview, admitted all that was accomplished was that his package was stimulated by Palin.

Related:
Arne Duncan has become a national embarrassment, Part II

Race to the Bottom

Diane Ravitch (Obama's Heavy-handed Education Plan) at Politico nails the Obama/Duncan plan to use stimulus money to extort states into pushing the ed deform program down our throats. You know the drill: mayoral control, teacher bashing, merit pay, charters galore.

Diane's summary of ed deform is more elegant than mine:

...lots more charter schools; lots more privatization; evaluate teachers based on the test scores of their students; open more alternate routes into teaching to break the grip of professionalism.

It's worked so well in Duncan's Chicago, which has ruined a generation over the last 14 years of mayoral control. Diane's point here is one that should be blasted all over the nation to counter the deformers.

If Duncan knows so much about how to reform American education, why didn't he reform Chicago 's schools? A report came out a couple of weeks ago from the Civic Committee of Chicago ("Still Left Behind") saying that Chicago's much-touted score gains in the past several years were phony, that they were generated after the state lowered the passing mark on the state tests, that the purported gains did not show up on the federal tests, and that Chicago 's high schools are still failing. On the respected federal tests (NAEP), Chicago is one of the lowest performing cities in the nation.

Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Foundation (not a foe of ed deform, by the way) calls it "Washington Knows Best at its worst." Diane asks,

"What if Washington doesn't know best?" What if the "reform" ideas are wrong? Just a few weeks ago, a respected Stanford University study reported that 80% or more of charter schools are no better than or worse than their neighborhood public school. Why replace struggling public schools with worse charter schools? There is a ton of evidence that evaluating teachers based on student test scores is a lousy idea (see the work of Jesse Rothstein at Princeton , for example).

Why is Washington pushing "reform" ideas that have so little evidence behind them, as well as ideas that will positively harm public education in America ?

Related
Robert Pondiscio at Core Knowledge:
http://www.coreknowledge.org/blog/2009/07/24/nineteen-points-and-one-very-bad-idea/

See a compilation of raw posts from the NYC Ed News listserve, including Diane's full piece, posted at our storage facility Norms Notes: Several Posts re: Obama/Duncan's Race to the Top

Obama Health and Education Policies at Odds

No matter how many tests or procedures are performed, they [doctors] take home the same amount of money.

This was a striking quote in Saturday's NY Times article on the Obama plan on health care.

How ironic that Obama and Arne Duncan are using threats of withholding stimulus money for education systems if they aren't willing to use differential pay to teachers based on test score results.

Where in the health care proposal do we a similar plan to pay doctors based on making their patients well - let's call it closing the health gap between wealthy and the poor?

A few more quotes for your reading pleasure:

“Our proposals would change incentives so that doctors and nurses finally are free to give patients the best care, not just the most expensive care,” the president said

Doctors in the United States are usually paid fees for each service they provide. The more procedures and tests they order, the more money they pocket. There is widespread agreement among health policy analysts that many of these procedures are unnecessary, raising costs in ways that often do nothing to improve patient health.

By contrast, Bassett — like the Cleveland Clinic and a small number of other health systems in this country — pays salaries to all of its doctors. No matter how many tests or procedures are performed, they take home the same amount of money. Medical costs at Bassett are lower than those at 90 percent of the hospitals in New York, while the quality of care ranks among the top 10 percent in the nation, surveys show.

Related:
Paul Moore: Business Roundtable Hands Off To ObamaAdministration

Why Black and Latino Parents Need To Be Leery of Charter Schools

Charter Schools Can’t Save The Black and Latino Communities

by Pam Garrison
Special to Ed Notes

The black community and the Latino community both have to be very careful when it comes to charter schools: Charter schools, instead of bringing positive change to a community, eventually divide and conquer that very same community (See the article I wrote on P.S. 160 in Co-op City and The Equality Charter School).

Moreover, charter schools exploit the house slave/field slave, crabs in a barrel, Post Traumatic Slavery Syndrome issues (see the work of Dr. Joy Degruy Leary) within the black community. In other words, charter schools tend to create a dynamic in which a black family or a Latino family will only focus upon the education and educational needs of their own child(ren) at the complete and total expense of the education and educational needs of the rest of the children in their respective communities.

Now I know that some may say that concerned, committed, and active parents shouldn’t have to be concerned with “other people’s children”. However, this just isn’t the case because no one’s child grows up in a vacuum, completely and totally isolated from other children. Therefore, since your child(ren) can’t grow up in this world without being around other children, those of you who are parents have to have a healthy concern and care for all of the “other people’s children” because what happens to “other people’s children” has a direct bearing upon your child(ren).

More importantly, neither the black community nor the Latino community has arrived at a time when they can afford to simply not care about the other members of their respective communities. After all, President Obama even said in his July 16th speech to the NAACP, at their 100th Anniversary Convention, that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to help black and Latino children to achieve academically. Moreover, Obama talked about how the U.S.A. would not be able to maintain its status as a world power and as a top producer of college graduates if the black and Latino communities, as well as America as a nation, didn’t do something to help black and Latino youth achieve academic success.

In conclusion, charter schools with their lottery admission systems and creaming/skimming off the top of the local public schools’ population tactics can’t be a panacea or an all-encompassing cure for either the black community or the Latino community.

And yes, it still takes a village to raise a child. So that means that all black and Latino parents have to, while they are advocating educationally for their own children, advocate and support Cookie’s children, Luz’s children, Nadine’s children, and Julissa’s children as well.

The black community and the Latino community can’t afford to do anything less.

Pam Garrison teaches in NYC and is a member of the Grassroots Education Movement

Obama Admin Hits New Low on Ed Deform as it Seeks to Gut NY State Tenure

UPDATE: Obama addresses NAACP in NYC at Hilton Thurs. at 7PM. There's some buzz about a protest outside over his education policies.

A must read article at Gotham.

"The Obama administration official in charge of an educational innovation fund yesterday issued a warning to a New York audience: Unless the state legislature revises a law now on the books about teacher tenure, the state could lose out on the $4.35 billion fund she controls."

The official is Joanne Weiss, "who worked at the New Schools Venture Fund before heading to Washington..." Think she has a dog in the race? Talk about rating teachers based on value added assessment when there is no system proved to work is like saying we should start mining the moon with a shovel. Gee, has anyone been working on systems rating doctors, lawyers and even politicians on value added systems?

"Weiss was in town to discuss The New Teacher Project’s report “The Widget Effect,” which was released last month and urged districts to overhaul their teacher performance evaluations."

Ho-ho-ho. The unbiased NTP being taken seriously by an Obama official. This country is in real trouble.

The Gotham article is linked here:

Obama official to New York: Change your tenure law or else

And make sure to read Pissed Off Teacher's and Ceolaf comments. But John Thompson's bears repeating:

Call her bluff.

If moderate reformers in the AFT don’t have the guts to stand firm on this, the backlash will be awful.

If a state as powerful as NY doesn’t have the guts to stand firm on this, others will crumble. OK, a “reformer” has had her say. Obama has bigger fish to fry, but there is a natural compromise that should be a no-brainer to him. The firewall on teacher indicators will be dropped when a firewall is created to keep test data from being used in evaluations. We could still move ahead with the Denver Plan and the Toledo Plan and similar approaches.

After all, it makes sense to use test scores when appropriate as in performance incentives. But it doesn’t make sense where it is not appropriate, as in evaluations where it could destroy the career of good and effective teachers.

I want the AFT to support Obama, regardless. But I’d like my union to be willing to announce the formation of a major litigation fund to destroy any schemes for using test scores for evaluation. I want districts to know that they will lose more in legal fees than they will gain in Race to the Top Funds if they go down that path.

Then when we drive a stake through the hearts of that mentality, I want my union to go back to being as moderate and willing to compromise as possible. If we want sustainable progress for kids, we can’t get punked on this.

If we lose this one, what self-respecting person would make a career teaching in high-poverty schools? We owe this to our profession.

Sorry, John. Don't expect the AFT to do much more than cheer lead. The attack on tenure by the Obama administration is just the cover the UFT and NYSUT need to duck out of the way as tenure law in NYS is gutted.

As a matter of fact, the dysfunctional state leg doesn't even have to be involved. Watch the upcoming UFT contract, which takes precedence over tenure law, as the UFT will trade money for what will appear to be minor modifications but over time turn out to be disaster.

The Nation Exposes Obama's Cynical Education Gambit

Jim Horn at School Matters is so right on in this piece that I couldn't pick and choose some excerpts. So here it is intact. [Give Jim a spin on a regular basis.] Note the mention of former Daily News ed reporter Joe Williams, who has found a way to profit on the backs of poor children and may now officially join Eva Moskowitz as an official poverty pimp.

The Nation Exposes Obama's Cynical Education Gambit

Broad Inauguration Party in Washington D.C., Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009. (Photo/Stuart Ramson)
While many of us were out busting our humps to gather up a few dollars and votes for the change we thought we could believe in, the Harvard boys were cutting backroom deals with the multi-billionaire oligarchs to fully engage their plan to corporatize American public education, beginning with the urban schools.

There is no wonder that Spellings and Paige were running around breathless and wild-eyed, even as it became clear that McCain was going down. The insiders knew the Bush charter plan would not only go forward under Obama, but it would be slammed into overdrive by the clan of vulture capitalists and tax credit leeches who paid plenty to play the high stakes game for control of American schooling.

From The Nation's Dana Goldstein, where the story picks up on Obama's decision to invite the three stooges to the White House recently to proclaim the new post-partisan victory for philanthro-capitalism, disguised neatly under the banner of civil rights--with one particularly well-paid civil rights advocate getting a half-million for his time:

. . . the single-mindedness--some would say obsessiveness--of the reformers' focus on these specific policy levers ["free market competition"] puts off more traditional Democratic education experts and unionists. As they see it, with the vast majority of poor children educated in traditional public schools, education reform must focus on improving the management of the public system and the quality of its services--not just on supporting charter schools. What's more, social science has long been clear on the fact that poverty and segregation influence students' academic outcomes at least as much as do teachers and schools.

Obama's decision to invite representatives of only one side of this divide to the Oval Office confirmed what many suspected: the new administration--despite internal sympathy for the "broader, bolder approach"--is eager to affiliate itself with the bipartisan flash and pizazz around the new education reformers. The risk is that in doing so the administration will alienate supporters with a more nuanced view of education policy. What's more, critics contend that free-market education reform is a top-down movement that is struggling to build relationships with parents and community activists, the folks who typically support local schools and mobilize neighbors on their behalf.

So keenly aware of this deficit are education reformers that a number of influential players were involved in the payment of $500,000 to Sharpton's nearly broke nonprofit, the National Action Network, in order to procure Sharpton as a national spokesman for the EEP. And Sharpton's presence has unquestionably benefited the EEP coalition, ensuring media attention and grassroots African-American crowds at events like the one held during Obama's inauguration festivities, at Cardozo High School in Washington.

"Sharpton was a pretty big draw," says Washington schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, recalling the boisterous crowd at Cardozo. Rhee is known for shutting down schools and aggressively pursuing a private sector-financed merit pay program. Some of the locals who came out to hear Sharpton booed Rhee's speech at the same event, despite the fact that her policies embody the movement for which Sharpton speaks.

The $500,000 donation to Sharpton's organization was revealed by New York Daily News columnist Juan González on April 1, as the EEP and National Action Network were co-hosting a two-day summit in Harlem, attended by luminaries including Chicago schools CEO Arne Duncan. The money originated in the coffers of Plainfield Asset Management, a Connecticut-based hedge fund whose managing director is former New York City schools chancellor Harold Levy, an ally of the current chancellor, Joel Klein. Plainfield has invested in Playboy, horse racetracks and biofuels. But the company did not donate the money directly to Sharpton. Rather, in what appears to have been an attempt to cover tracks, the $500,000 was given to a nonprofit entity called Education Reform Now, which has no employees. (According to IRS filings, Education Reform Now had never before accepted a donation of more than $92,500.) That group, in turn, funneled the $500,000 to Sharpton's nonprofit.

If one person is at the center of this close-knit nexus of Wall Street and education reform interests, it is Joe Williams, who serves as president and treasurer of the EEP's board and is also the executive director of Education Reform Now. But it is through his day job that Williams, a former education reporter for the Daily News, exerts the most influence. He is executive director of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), a four-year-old PAC that has gained considerable influence, raising $2 million in 2008 and demonstrating remarkable public relations savvy.

The group's six-person team works out of an East Forty-fifth Street office donated--rent-free--by the hedge fund Khronos LLC. In recent months, DFER has had a number of high-profile successes, chief among them a highly coordinated media campaign to call into question the work of Obama education adviser Linda Darling-Hammond, once considered a top contender for the job of education secretary. During the same week in early December, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe published editorials or op-eds based on DFER's anti-Darling-Hammond talking points, which focused on the Stanford professor's criticisms of Teach for America and other alternative-certification programs for teachers. Less than two weeks later, Obama appointed DFER's choice to the Education Department post, Chicago schools CEO Duncan.

During campaign season, DFER donated to House majority whip James Clyburn, Senator Mark Warner and Virginia swing district winner Representative Tom Periello, among others. The organization regularly hosts events introducing education reformers like Rhee and Fenty to New York City "edupreneurs," finance industry players for whom education reform is a sideline. DFER is focused on opening a second office, in Colorado, a state viewed as being in the forefront of standards- and testing-based education reform. The group successfully promoted Denver schools superintendent Michael Bennett to fill the Senate seat vacated when Obama named Ken Salazar as interior secretary. Bennett led the school system with the highest-profile merit pay system in the nation.

During the Democratic Party's national convention in Denver this past August, DFER hosted a well-attended event at the Denver Museum of Art, during which Fenty, Booker, Klein, Sharpton and other well-known Democrats openly denigrated teachers unions, whose members accounted for 10 percent of DNCC delegates. With Clyburn and other veteran members of Congress in attendance, many longtime observers of Democratic politics believed the event represented a sea change in the party's education platform, the arrival of a new generation. While progressive groups such as Education Sector, Education Trust and the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights have long attempted to push free-market education reforms to the Democratic Party, it is only with the arrival of DFER that the movement has had a lobbying arm with an explicit focus on influencing the political process through fundraising and media outreach.

"For a lot of groups that are dependent upon both private money and government money, there's a tendency not to want to get involved in the nitty-gritty of politics," Williams said in a March 31 phone interview from Denver, where he was meeting with Colorado politicians, setting the stage for DFER's expansion there. "Our group--what we do is politics. We make it clear: we're not an education reform group. We're a political reform group that focuses on education reform. That distinction matters because all of our partners are the actual education reform groups. We're trying to give them a climate where it's easier for them to do their work."

The education reformers who came to prominence in the 1990s, including the founders of Teach for America and the Knowledge Is Power Program, the national charter school network that fought unionization in one of its Brooklyn schools, often went to great lengths to portray themselves as explicitly apolitical. Nevertheless, "a lot of those people are, politically, Democrats," says Sara Mead, a DFER board member and director of early childhood programs at the Washington-based New America Foundation. "One of those things that DFER does that's really important is to help give those people a way to assert their identity as Democrats. It's important for those groups' long-term success, but also for Democrats, to the extent that some of these organizations are doing really good things for the kids whose parents are Democratic constituents. It's important that those organizations are identified with us rather than being co-opted by Republicans, as they were in the past." . . . .

So let's see, if I am working for a an outfit like KIPP or TFA, and I don't want to proclaim my political allegiance, I can funnel money through DFER to pay off the politicians who will make the decisions that favor the benefactors and oligarchs who are funding my programs. Is this what you might call non-identity politics??

I think this must signal the end of the two party system, since it no longer matters which party you belong to--in the end, the oligarchs will buy either.

Has Howard Dean announced for 2012 yet?? As an Independent?? He's a shoo-in.

A Clueless David Brooks

I actually like some of the things moderate conservative David Brooks says – at times. But when he can be so clueless about education, can you believe in anything he writes? In his March 13 column, "No Picnic for Me Either," Brooks' confusion is evident in his opening words:

In his education speech this week, Barack Obama retold a by-now familiar story. When he was a boy, his mother would wake him up at 4:30 to tutor him for a few hours before he went off to school. When young Barry complained about getting up so early, his mother responded: “This is no picnic for me either, Buster.”

That experience was the perfect preparation for reforming American education because it underlines the two traits necessary for academic success: relationships and rigor. The young Obama had a loving relationship with an adult passionate about his future. He also had at least one teacher, his mom, disinclined to put up with any crap.

Wait a minute. His mother was also his teacher? Brooks confuses the elemental point right here. It was his parent, not his teachers who made the difference. The so-called ed reformers talk about great teachers out of one side of their mouths while disrespecting the mass of teachers out of the other side. People who talk about total solutions to the problems in education and say they must include attacking the social problems in the lives of kids (which include parental and home life issues) are always accused of making excuses. Sadly, Obama has joined the chorus.

The phony ed reformers are finding that as they take over more of the public school system, they discover it will take more than merit pay or charter schools. They themselves start making excuses. (Just wait 'till KIPP takes over entire swaths of schools and can't hide the warts.) Like, why does Joel Klein have to close so many schools that have been under his control for 7 years? He and Arne Duncan talk about the need for charters to promote innovation. Klein and Duncan have run entire school systems for 7 years. What stopped them from innovating in the public schools?

Brooks' next paragraph takes us from confusion to total bewilderment.

We’ve spent years working on ways to restructure schools, but what matters most is the relationship between one student and one teacher. You ask a kid who has graduated from high school to list the teachers who mattered in his life, and he will reel off names. You ask a kid who dropped out, and he will not even understand the question. Relationships like that are beyond his experience.

Okay, so let's get this straight. The most important factor in graduating from high school depends on a relationship with a teacher? Did Brooks actually read Obama's book? Can he cite even one teacher Obama credits with having a transforming influence on him?

I went to school in East NY section of Brooklyn where many of our parents didn't graduate from high school - my mom didn't even go to elementary school and could barely read or write and most of us couldn't name a teacher who made such a great difference. In fact, we had quite a few lousy teachers - more than great teachers. Yet my mom nudged me as much a Obama's mom.

But let's look at Brooks' other clueless point – that kids who drop out had no relationships with teachers. He should check the letters and phone calls I received over the years from my former dropouts, some from state penitentiaries. My fault, I guess. Or maybe Brooks should have joined me at some of the funerals I attended for former students who were slaughtered in drug wars.

In fact, I found the future dropouts in my 4-6 grade classes were the most needy of a parent surrogate, and they were the ones I often grew closest too.

The kids with stable families looked at their teachers as, well, teachers. Some were inspired. One teacher in my school took a few favorite 3rd graders to Alvin Ailey and one of the kids swore that day she would become an Alvin Ailey dancer - and she did. I had that same child in the 6th grade and believe me, she would have been successful no matter what. Her mom was a nurse, one of the few students in my schools whose parents had middle class jobs.

Related:
Brooks entire column is here.

This week from the Daily Howler: David Brooks doesn’t know several things. He does say some things which are useful. http://www.dailyhowler.com/

FAIR dissects David Brooks

http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8459

David Brooks Loves Data--When It Gives the Right Results

This comes from FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting). Showing the failure of our media to do its job, they deserve our support.

by Jim Naureckas

In a typically half-empty David Brooks piece (3/13/09), the columnist praises Barack Obama for embracing "rigor" in education policy, for endorsing "testing and accountability," for "mak[ing] sure results have consequences." He complains about the "education establishment’s ability to evade the consequences of data" and that watered-down proficiency standards mean that "parents think their own schools are much better than they are." He commends Obama's commitment to "use data to make decisions," and Education Secretary opposition to "ignoring failure."

But Brooks says many doubt whether Obama "has the courage to follow through" on these principles, and point to "the way the president has already caved in on the D.C. vouchers case":

Democrats in Congress just killed an experiment that gives 1,700 poor Washington kids school vouchers. They even refused to grandfather in the kids already in the program, so those children will be ripped away from their mentors and friends. The idea was to cause maximum suffering, and 58 Senators voted for it.

Obama has, in fact, been shamefully quiet about this. But in the next weeks he’ll at least try to protect the kids now in the program.

The odd thing is that the D.C. voucher program is a very poor poster child for the importance of rigorous, data-driven education policy that rewards success and punishes failure. The students participating in the voucher program have been watched closely, and according to two Department of Education studies they aren't doing significantly better in reading or math than the peers they left behind in public school. The one bright spot that the studies found is that parents of kids in voucher schools report being more satisfied--in other words, "parents think their own schools are much better than they are."

"Rigorous" is not a word one would apply to Brooks' argument here.

FAIR blog
2009-03-13

Mississippi Burning After Obama Speech

The Daily Howler has some wonderful stuff on the Obama speech.
On Thursday, he focused on Obama's comparison of Wyoming and Mississippi.
One thing he didn't mention is that Mississippi teacher unions - you know, the cause of all ed problems – probably have little impact. They can pretty much get rid of any teacher they want and load up on quality teachers. Maybe even send the entire Teach for America corps in there to save them.

Here is a excerpt, but make sure to read the entire thing:

Percentage of public school students eligible for free/reduced lunch:
Wyoming: 29.7 percent
Mississippi: 67.5 percent

Gee. Could the human stories behind those data help explain that the gap in reading achievement—the “seventy-point” gap Obama’s staff didn’t even bother to source? Beyond that, let’s look at some other data about these two groups of kids. Because of the weight of American history, these data are relevant too:

Racial composition of public school populations:
Wyoming: 84.5 percent white/1.5 percent black
Mississippi: 46.5 percent white/50.8 percent black

Given what we know of American history—the history which extends right up to this day—could those data help explain the gap between those states’ reading scores? Or must the gap be “explained” by the measure your bloodless elites have picked out?

Might we spend a few brief moments lingering here, out in the real world? In one of these states, forced illiteracy was official state policy, for several centuries, for what is now its largest student racial group. In states like Mississippi—in states like Maryland, the state where we type—it was against the law, for several centuries, to teach black children how to read. After that, Jim Crow came to visit—and he spread his blight all around, perhaps for another century. (No, the effects don’t go away just because we’ve decided we hate them.) And yet we are told, by our first black president, that it must be the difference between these states’ current “standards” that explains the gap in their reading scores! Good God! It’s hard to find words for the sheer stupidity—for the cosmic heartlessness—contained in such pure, scripted nonsense.

(By the way: There’s also a substantial difference in per pupil spending. In the 2005-2006 school year, Wyoming spent $11,392 per pupil—almost sixty percent more than Mississippi’s $7166. No, that really isn’t the difference. Then too, it doesn’t help.)

Does anyone think that this reading-score gap would flip if these two states swapped “standards?” Does anyone think the difference in these states’ reading scores is really determined by those “standards?” And by the way, might we make a thoroughly predictable observation?

As noted, Wyoming’s fourth-graders scored 17 points higher on the NAEP reading test in 2007. (Speaking very roughly, people sometimes say that ten points on this scale corresponds to one academic year. That’s a very rough rule of thumb. For all NAEP reading data, start here.) But guess what? Quite predictably, that seventeen points starts melting away if you control for income and race. Among non-poverty students, Wyoming’s fourth-graders led Mississippi’s by only six points; ditto if we compare white students only. (Wyoming has so few black kids that the NAEP can’t provide meaningful data.) And the gaps are even smaller in eighth-grade reading, where Wyoming’s non-poverty kids outscored Mississippi’s by four points.

We can’t recall if NAEP’s published data let us compare non-poverty white kids (middle-class whites) in the two states. (Again, Wyoming has too few blacks.) We’ll keep hunting on NAEP’s site. But we’ll take a wild guess here, based on what we’ve already seen: If we compare middle-class white kids in these states, that reading gap will be quite small—or it won’t exist. In other words, when we start comparing apples to apples, the troubling effects of those divergent “state standards” start to wither away. And duh. That’s because Mississippi’s problems aren’t caused by its current state educational standards. Her problems are caused by American history—and by the heartless, know-nothing conduct of our bloodless elites.

Here is a comment from Andrew on our post
More Fallout From Obama Ed Speech

How reactionary and retrograde was President Obama's education address? Well, it got an "A" from the poster boy for neoliberalism Jeb Bush. The former privatizer-in-chief of the state of Florida gave it his stamp of approval saying, "It is great that the president supported accountability, charter schools and pay for teacher performance. . . The president has the potential of leading the country to meaningful education reform."

Jeb Bush rose to power and the NCLB appeared on the scene because and when the "global economy" was riding herd on this planet. Globalization is at the very foundation of business model for schools, charters, vouchers, data driven instruction, merit pay, standardized testing, and most perversely of all, paying students to consume their version of education. It was the reason the Business Roundtable and Bill Gates were interested in public education at all. The CEO's wanted a profit making private school system and Gates wanted visas for Indians and Taiwanese who will do Microsoft's high tech work for less than MIT grads. There is a data collection frenzy over public schools nowadays simply to serve the interests of Bill Gates computer software company and Michael Dell's computer hardware company. America's children are irrelevant to these people.

But something happened on the way to a global economy and a privatized education system to serve it. The whole thing fell apart. Opps, AIG needs its fourth taxpayer bailout. Opps, Freddie Mac needs another $30 billion from the government. Opps, the FDIC needs another $500 billion to cover impending bank failures. Opps, GE's credit worthiness is downgraded by S&P. Opps, the governments of Iceland and Latvia have fallen and they can't get up.

When a massive systemic planetary force like globalization dies its like a Hummer that has run out of gas. It will continue rolling down the road awhile longer. And that accounts for the absurdities that are coming out of the President's mouth now. His tune will soon change though.

Because soon it will be every private school and charter school investor for himself. Bill Gates, the primary funder of the KIPP charters, lost $18 billion of his personal fortune this past year. Private school students are being moved to the public schools by their debt ridden parents in significant numbers already. The President's own inability to yet grasp that the world he used to live in is about to evaporate is dangerous. He himself will soon be fighting off the coup makers in the midst of the greatest economic dislocation the American people have ever experienced.

More Fallout From Obama Ed Speech

Reality Based Educator lays it on President Merit Pay over at NYC Educator. And it's about a lot more than education. President Merit Pay Or How I Have Come To Despise Barack Obama

Below are comments from Leonie Haimson (Obama ed advisors are nudniks), San Francisco Examiner Caroline Grannan (Obama gets a lot of it wrong about public education) and Bob Somerby's Daily Howler on Obama's misguided education speech. But it's always fun to see the Chicago so-called reformer crowd making excuses – the Obama was just throwing a bone to the Republicat Democrats on charters theory of pulling the wool over your own eyes.

Leonie:

A lot of this tripe is repeated over and over by the Bill Gates crowd as well as the Inside the beltway think-tanks (or non-think-tanks), many of whom are now leading the charge inside the Obama administration.

My biggest problem w/ Obama’s speech is not his description of how bad things are -- because I do think they are pretty bad in our large urban school systems where most poor kids get educated, as opposed to the nation as a whole – but his so-called solutions: Higher standards, more testing, merit pay, charter schools, and getting rid of bad teachers.

This is the Bloom/Klein agenda writ large and is both foolish and counterproductive. Unfortunately, it is also the agenda of the Center for American Progress –the home of our friend Robert Gordon, who is now one of Obama’s top education advisers.

Too bad the Dept. of Treasury is not making education policy. Not only would they be more skeptical of the line that unregulated competition will lift all boats –and cognizant of the huge risks involved in relying on simplistic statistical measures to gauge success and bonuses – as they have seen the disastrous results of these assumptions in our financial markets.

But also, two actual experts on the benefits of smaller classes and skeptics of the benefits of allowing the proliferation of charter schools have been appointed to top positions in the Treasury Dept.: Alan Krueger, as Treasury’s chief economist and Cecelia Rouse, one of three people appointed to the Council of Economic Advisers. Both of them are currently at Princeton and have done excellent research showing the economic benefits of class size reduction.

It is very unfortunate that in comparison, Obama’s education advisers seem to be free-market nudniks.

Caroline:

Yes, we can check our facts next time.

Boy, is President Obama confused. That was my reaction to his recent speech on education to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

And what’s with the praise of charter schools, President Obama? Charter schools have been around for 16 years now. Some are great, some are disasters and the rest are all along the range in between – just like traditional public schools. As has been amply documented, charter schools overall do not outperform traditional public schools, despite having numerous advantages over them (including massive financial bounty from billionaire private philanthropists and the avid support of a series of public-school-disparaging presidents).

More and more voices are talking about the way the charter school movement started as a “progressive” and “grassroots” way to allow parents a full voice in how their children are educated – and has now been largely hijacked by the pro-privatization, anti-public-education free-market right. You’d think those folks would be hiding in a corner right now, with their philosophy so obviously discredited -- I'm one of the millions of Americans suffering direct economic harm from their gleeful experiment with unregulated free markets – but they’re still out there waving the flag for charter schools. (A growing legion of resisters among real-life urban parents around the nation is rising up to decry the “stranglehold of the billionaire eduphilanthropreneurs,” as Oakland’s Perimeter Primate blog puts it.)

Caroline's entire piece is here.


Somerby:

Why do politicians paint this Gloomy Portrait of American schools? In some cases, they may not know what they’re talking about; everyone has heard these Standard Claims, and people tend to believe them. But yes, there can be political uses for such gloomy misstatements. As Bracey has noted, gloomy claims have long been used by educational “conservatives” to undermine faith in the public schools; vouchers and charters are more appealing if you believe that the public schools are a wreck. On the other hand, a president can set himself up to be a star if he overstates the mess which predates him.

The Daily Howler will be writing more about Obama's speech today.

All of the above refer to the Gerald Bracey refutation of most of Obama's "facts." We posted on Bracey yesterday. Bracey: On Education, Obama Blows It

Jim Horn at School Matters lays it on Arne: Oh yes, Arne, the Great Incenter

Oh, and we must include the UFT Pathetic Response to Obama Speech

Bracey: On Education, Obama Blows It

I have not the expertise to address the merits of President Obama's speech to Congress on the issues of the economy. I do claim some expertise on education. He blew it. He accepted the same garbage that the propagandists, fear mongers such as Lou Gerstner, Bill Gates, Roy Romer, Bob Wise, Craig Barrett and many others--God help us, Arne Duncan?--have been spewing for years. - Gerald Bracey in the Huffington Post (abridged).

As we reported in yesterday's posts here and here, if Obama can get this so wrong (as Bracey says, it is the one area where I actually know something) what else is he getting wrong? I mean, look at the state if education in Chicago after 13 years of this crap. Obama was in that belly of the beast all that time.

Obama talked about education as related to jobs. Bracey takes apart the Obama jobs claims.

Similar to his inaugural address he said, "Of the 30 fastest growing occupations in America, half require a bachelor's degree or more." But, as in his inaugural, he neglected to say these occupations account for few jobs. Wal-Mart, McDonald's, etc., are the great job machines in this country. Today he added, "By 2016, four out of every 10 new jobs will require at least some advanced education or training." There's that weasel phrase again, "advanced education or training." It's meaningless except as propaganda.

I voted for Obama. I canvassed for him. I registered voters for him. But on education, he has yet to hit the basket. Diane Ravitch, never once called a bleeding-hear liberal and assistant secretary of education for George H. W. Bush, recently said that, from what she's seen, Obama is a third term for George W. Bush and Arne Duncan is Margaret Spellings in drag. She was not doling out compliments to either man.

Obama's endorsement of the testing regime, merit pay and charter schools will further exacerbate all the gaps. Many people have made the point that the focus of the kind of non-thinking, testing all the time education is really a form of training for jobs at McDonalds and Walmart.

Of course, unsurprisingly, our friend Randi went right along with the plan instead of making a rigorous defense of teachers. The NY Times:

"Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.4-million-member American Federation of Teachers, said her union embraced “the goals and aspirations” outlined by Mr. Obama. “As with any public policy,” Ms. Weingarten said, “the devil is in the details, and it is important that teachers’ voices are heard as we implement the president’s vision.”

I'm beyond gagging. The only "teacher" voice she cares about is her own and since she was a full-time teacher for only 6 months, we know what that means.

Susan Ohanian has the complete response as Gerald Bracey takes apart Obama's education plan.

Ohanian Comment: Among other things that President Obama failed to acknowledge is that 70% of new jobs don't pay a living wage.

To accept his claim that America's future depends on its teachers means that teachers should accept the sorry mess this country is in.

I'd rather not.

When will teachers rise up in protest?

Destroying the Public School System in Harlem

The DOE is sending out information to our parents telling them that "as PS 241 Family Academy phases-out over the next few years, the DOE is expanding the school options to students currently attending 241 as well as students zoned to 241."

There are several options offered based on grade level- but essentially all students are being given the option to attend PS 149, PS 76, PS 165, PS 180, PS 185, or try their hand at the Harlem Success Academy 4 which will displace 241 in the building. (Please be aware that the Harlem Success Academy is not a new school- it is simply moving from another site and already has a current student body.)
-From a teacher at PS 241

Harlem is fast becoming a major battleground over the fate of the public school system. With gentrification moving at a quick pace, charter schools have moved in to pick off the cream of the crop. A massive public relations campaign has also reached into the traditional community, using the language of the civil rights movement and framing school choice as the key to a decent education. This appeals to the parents of children who were basically succeeding anyway, albeit in public schools that have been shortchanged of many services (deliberately) that are being offered in charter schools.

Here is one such ad on a hearing today to replace (read: steal) PS 194.

Do you know where your child will go to school in August?
The kids in Harlem deserve a neighborhood school where they can flourish!
Join concerned parents and staff for a Public Hearing about replacing PS 194.

PS 194
244 West 144th Street
New York, NY 10030
Tuesday, March 10th, 5:30pm
Let your voices be HEARD... when your options are taken you are left powerless

Expect a large influx of people organized charter school promoters screaming for more charters. "See," Joel Klein and Eva Moskowitz will chirp, "parents want charters."

Ahh, but there is a rub. There is not room in the charters for ALL the children. Only for the ones that get in. Guess which ones they will be, leaving the kids with the most difficulties to the public schools. (Ms. Moskowitz made her expectations clear by saying, “If you know you cannot commit to all that we ask of you this year, this is not the place for you.)*

As one contact recently noted, "They are creating two school systems. Public schools are being turned into the equivalent of the old "600" schools (where the most extremely difficult students used to be sent).

While no one denies the fact that education in the schools in Harlem has been shortchanged forever, the question has been raised as to whether creating separate but unequal schools systems, which we thought was outlawed in 1954, is the answer. Back to the separate but equal - wink, wink - days of Plessy vs Ferguson. Where are you Brown vs. Board of Education? Some will argue these analogies are false since most parents on both sides are Black. Maybe it's time to redefine the issues into classes of poor, poorer, and poorest. (See Elijah Anderson's Code of the Street.)


We interrupt this story to bring you this Ed Notes sponsored ad from Chicago, where the same process has been playing out for 13 years:

Today's AOL story listed the worst 100 schools based on NCLB and other factors. Four of the Chicago schools are in the top 25 and a total of 21 in the the top 100. A little over 20% of the schools from Duncanland.

Poor Arne Duncan. And Joel Klein. Their policies are doomed to fail. Read our earlier post on Chicago, where resistance is growing and even reversed the announced closings of 6 schools.
Chicago: Ed Forecast for the Nation,

This excerpt from press release on a current David Berliner report points out the roots of the failure:

Last week, Education Secretary Duncan told the Washington Post that those who would use the social ills of poor children as an excuse for not educating them "are part of the problem." Welner agrees. "But," he says, "those who point to schools as an excuse for failure to address social ills are equally at fault."

Berliner explains that NCLB "focuses almost exclusively on school outputs, particularly reading and mathematics achievement test scores." He says, "The law was purposely designed to pay little attention to school inputs in order to ensure that teachers and school administrators had 'no excuses' when it came to better educating impoverished youth."

Yet, as explained in the new report, that position is not merely unrealistic, but certain to fail.

This brief details six out-of-school factors (OSFs) common among the poor that significantly affect the health and learning opportunities of children, and accordingly limit what schools can accomplish on their own: (1) low birth-weight and non-genetic prenatal influences on children; (2) inadequate medical, dental, and vision care, often a result of inadequate or no medical insurance; (3) food insecurity; (4) environmental pollutants; (5) family relations and family stress; and (6) neighborhood characteristics. These OSFs are related to a host of poverty-induced physical, sociological, and psychological problems that children often bring to school, ranging from neurological damage and attention disorders to excessive absenteeism, linguistic underdevelopment, and oppositional behavior. Also discussed is a seventh OSF, extended learning opportunities, such as preschool, after school, and summer school programs that can help to mitigate some of the harm caused by the first six factors.
http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential

One thing we know: children with many of these factors are not welcome at charter schools like Harlem Success.

However, there is something of a revolt brewing amongs the parents who are not getting in to charters along with the educators and parents at the schools surrounding the schools being handed over to charters. Thus, the parents at PS 241 will have to send their kids to PS 149, PS 76, PS 165, PS 180, PS 185. Parents and teachers at those schools see what's coming: overcrowded and shortchanged to create more failing schools. And don't forget that gem of a Leadership Academy principal that might be sent in to destabilize and create hostility.

What is missing is an organizing body to help put people in touch with each other and create resistance, something that has been going on in Chicago. With the UFT playing the most minimal role by telling schools like PS 241 they will help (too little too late from the fait accompli UFT leadership), the job is open. In Chicago, an opposition caucus called CORE has been so effective in this organizing effort, leading a march of 1000 teachers and parents on Board of Ed and even a local bank backing the Chicago reform effort, that the union leadership has been dragged along. In the long run, this demo will have a greater impact than the dog and pony show the UFT put on last week. (Oh, my, we completed step one, now all you have to do is write a letter to a politician.)

What is needed is a sustained education and organizing effort that can lead to a real mobilization of people, not a one shot deal. ICE and NYCORE have been working together to jump start the process by holding a conference on March 28 (we are having an organizing meeting this afternoon at 4:30 at CUNY in rm 5414, so come join us.)


Related:
For more on Chicago see George Schmidt's Substance.
CORE (The Caucus of Rank and File Educators.)

Eva Moskowitz Exposes Fault Lines of Charter Schools
*All kids and parents are welcome

She demands a lot from Harlem Success parents: They must read their children six books a week, year round, and attend multiple school events, from soccer tournaments to Family Reading Nights. If children are repeatedly late, the parents must join them to do penance at Saturday Academy.

Nefertiti Washington, 28, whose son is a kindergartner, said some parents walked out of a springtime information session when Ms. Moskowitz made her expectations clear by saying, “If you know you cannot commit to all that we ask of you this year, this is not the place for you.”

What it's all about Eva
Eva Moskowitz Succeeds at "Harlem Success"

And the unkindest cut of all:
Obama education plan to call for performance-based pay

Don't forget, Obama lived in the belly of the beast where the educational plan is coming down around their ears. But just watch the Obama ed apologists ignore this one and focus on all the "good" things. But what this shows is the basic faulty market-based thinking. How did that performance pay thing work out for the American financial system?

How do you watch Arne Duncan...

....operate as the leader of the Chicago school system - read this post as an example - People need to know what is happening in Chicago--forecast for the US and write this:

Obama’s education budget strikes some themes beyond Ed. Sec. Duncan’s refrains so far of KIPP, TFA, and value-added data-tracking systems as the “proven strategies” to push. The new themes in the budget overview on education strike me as more promising - maybe more of Obama, less of Duncan? - and hint at reforms progressives have been calling for. Clay Burell

It looks like a bunch of interested parties are starting to judge the Obama administration based on its appointments and early policy direction. And that’s just fine. But when there’s Fordham’s Reform-a-meter, and Diane Ravitch proclaims Duncan’s USDOE to be Bush’s third term, I’ll chime in with Fred Klonsky: judge people for what they do, but remember the context. Sherman Dorn

Isn't the appointment of Duncan the context? I mean, why choose Duncan and then go counter to his core beliefs? There seem to be a lot of pro-Obama ed people on their knees praying Duncan will not be Duncan. And who are these "interested" parties?

One NYC parent commented:

Obama's "key White Advisor is Bob Gordon, a former advisor to Klein, and, the author of the New York City Weighted Student Funding plan." Talk about the frying pan and the fire!

Exactly how much "context" do these people need?

Rise and Fall Back Down: Charter School Comments Galore

Diane Ravitch at Politico.com on Obama and charter schools
President Obama's enthusiasm for charter schools is baffling. Doesn't he realize that they are a deregulation strategy much beloved by Republicans? Deregulation works brilliantly for some schools as it does for some firms. But it produces many losers too. If he thinks that deregulation is the cure for American education, I have some AIG stock I'd like to sell him.
http://www.politico.com/arena/

The Klonsky Brothers are all in a twit over Diane's critique of Obama's ed policy.
Mike writes: What a joke! Obama has done more to save public education in one month than the entire Bush regime did in 12 years.

Ravitch, who high stakes test resisters used to despise, has been one of the strongest voices in NYC on the impact of BloomKlein. We have also seen her in her debates with Debbie Meier seem to move beyond the narrow local issue to the wider view of the impact testing regimens have and how the scores can be misused. Some people on ICE mail who are, and continue to be, critical of Ravitch, have also wondered exactly where the Klonskys stood during all the years of the Chicago school reform model. But we'll leave some of those comments for another time.


Comment on Lorri Giovinco-Harte Examiner post on Charter Schools
I am a public school teacher who is now interviewing with charter schools. I am not impressed.


Susan Ohanian, arm in sling, goes slingin'
Read about the start- of-school hazing procedures enforced by this KIPP leader. And much child abuse. Fresno charter school in furor: Unusual punishments, testing violations alleged as principal resigns from the Fresno Bee posted by Susan:
http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8427

More on charter schools at ed notes.


Randi Weingarten said she considers Michelle Rhee’s recent kind words “an apology.” (Washington Post)
Randi watchers know she is looking for a reason to make nice with Michelle. My view is this dance was all worked out in advance. Randi: Michelle, I can't sell out the DC teachers until you tone down the rhetoric.
Thanks to Gotham Schools for the lead.


On Obama's speech
Pissed off has words for Obama
I'm sitting here listening to Obama talking about education and I am thinking how totally clueless he is when it comes to this topic.

Miss Eyre had a cogent comment on our post on the speech
Did Obama Fail His Ed Test?
Obama did say that "post-high-school education" includes community college, vocational training, and the military...I see nothing wrong with encouraging students to complete education beyond high school, as long as the "beyond high school" option is right for the student.

Bracey: On Education, Obama Blows It


Chapey finishes 3rd for City Council Seat in Queens (including Rockaway).
Too bad. We wanted her to get ZERO votes. I voted for my fellow Wave columnist Lew Simon, who at least would have brought an air of comedy (unintentional) to the Council. Still glad to see Lew more than doubled Chapey's vote. Read my WAVE column on how she pulled a Rudy B by trading her vote for a seat on the NYS Board of Regents for her mom. Ulrich, the winner, is about 12 years old, so they better have some video games at Council meetings. Who does he know?

32nd CD (Queens, with 82.73 percent of eds reporting):
1. Eric Ulrich: 2,820 2. Lew Simon: 1,368 3. Geraldine Chapey: 607 4. Mike Ricatto: 541
Thanks to David Quintana for the numbers.


Follow-up: Great meeting last night with the Justice Not Just Tests NYCORE group. Two soph college students studying to be teachers were sent by their instructor. With old retirees Angel G and myself and 2 teachers late in their first decade of teaching, it made for a great mix. Yesterday's ed notes post on the abuse of teacher data reports dovetailed with our petition campaign, which we will gear up. Focus on the March 25 Delegate Assembly. We need an army of people out there to get signatures. Join us. We're also working on an ICE/JNJT conference. Save the date: Saturday, March 28. We follow up tonight at the ASC-ICE meeting.

Trying to be a reporter and an organizer can interfere with the easy life style of a retiree.


More: reading great book by Iain Pears: The Dream of Scipio
There is a lot of discussion on the fall of civilization in 3 eras. And lots of Vichy stuff. I'm more convinced than ever that the actions of New Action vis a vis Unity and the actions of Unity/UFT vis a vis the ed reform movement are analagous to the rationales of Vichyites - we're just saving civilization from the Nazi barbarians by collaborating. This concept deserves a separate post.

Did Obama Fail His Ed Test?

So what exactly did Obama say in his speech tonight about reforming education? You see, it's not just about getting resources for schools but about, you know, reform. Like incentives for teachers - you know - merit pay. And charters. And early childhood ed. Well. 1 out of 3 ain't zero.

But as you drill down it gets worse. Shame on you if you don't graduate from not only high school, but college. Does he know that an overwhelming number of jobs over the next decade - if there are any – will not require a college education? I mean, he is telling us his stimulus plan will stimulate infrastructure jobs - mostly vocational-like skills that do not come from a college education. Then in the next breath he makes it look like you are a failure and unpatriotic if you don't go to college. If anything, he should have talked about NOT going to college and learning how to do the kinds of work with your hands that is so missing in this society.

Other than the education aspect, I like the speech. But then again, all I really have any understanding about is education. If I knew economics, I might be screaming bloody murder.

Obama's Education Policy is Third Term for President George W. Bush

In education, the new administration is as ruinous as the old

by Diane Ravitch, Historian of education, NYU, Hoover and Brookings

At Politico

Schmidt on Duncan/ Media Failure on Fair Reporting

Crony Capitalism in Education

Take another look at that slimy AFT letter by Randi Weingarten to the New York Times in the context of Substance editor George Schmidt's analysis.

by George Schmidt

Arne Duncan's career has been in crony capitalism, Chicago style. Since he was appointed "CEO" of Chicago's public schools by Mayor Richard M. Daley in July 2001, he has been responsible for the greatest expansion of patronage hiring (generally, but not exclusively, at the central and "area" offices, but often as well in the schools) on the CPS payroll since the Great Depression (when the school system was controlled by politicians, leading to its near-demise in 1945).

Duncan has also presided over more "no bid" contracts from contractors (for everything from buildings and computer hardward and software to charter schools) in the history of the City of Chicago abd its public schools. Finally, and equally important, Arne Duncan has closed "failing schools" (dubiously defined by low test scores for one or two years, often because of special circumstances at the schools) in Chicago's African American community.

Since Duncan became CEO, he has eliminated 2,000 black teachers from Chicago's teaching force, undoing decades of desegregation and affirmative action in the name of "school reform." Last year (2007-2008) Duncan began a program he called "Turnaround" (based on the corporate models) that was actually reconstitution.

He fired most of the teachers and principals in six public schools (four elementary schools; two high schools). At each of those six schools, the majority of the teachers and principals were black.

Were Arne Duncan living and working in Mississippi in 1952, it would be easy for the USA to see what he is and has been up to in the service of corporate Chicago. Because he plays ball not only with Barack Obama but with Richard M. Daley and corporate Chicago, Chicago's white blindspot has ignored the fact that Duncan has gotten rid of more African American educators than most Mississippi and other southern governments during those dark days just before Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

The reason why the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) can promote Duncan's candidacy is that seven years of turmoil within Chicago's union has left the union badly split (and weakened).

Arne Duncan does not have the support of Chicago's teachers. He has the support of the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Marilyn Stewart, who is in the midst of a purge of her own staff and elected administration. Stewart, a lame duck officer with no more chance of re-election than George W. Bush, is viewed by the majority of Chicago Teachers Union members as a traitor to her union and the teaching profession.

— George N. SchmidtSubstance2008-12-14http://www.substancenews.net

FAIR Media Report:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3663

Media's Failing Grade on Education 'Debate'
12/16/08
President-elect Barack Obama chose Chicago schools superintendent Arne Duncan as his nominee for Education secretary after an almost entirely one-sided media discussion that portrayed the most progressive candidate in the running for the post--Stanford educational researcher Linda Darling-Hammond--as an unacceptable pick.

Corporate media accounts presented the selection as a choice between "reformers who demand more accountable schools" and "defenders of the complacent status quo," as a Chicago Tribune editorial put it (12/9/08), claiming that the selection would determine whether Obama "wants to revolutionize the public education industry or merely wants to throw more money at it."

The Washington Post's December 5 editorial was headlined, "A Job for a Reformer: Will Barack Obama Opt for Boldness or t he Status Quo in Choosing an Education Secretary?" The Post warned readers about "warring camps within the Democratic Party," which they characterized as "those pushing for radical restructuring and those more wedded to the status quo."
Such loaded language was not confined to editorials. The Associated Press' Libby Quaid (12/15/08 ) summarized the debate this way:

Teachers' unions, an influential segment of the party base, want an advocate for their members, someone like Obama adviser Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University professor, or Inez Tenenbaum, the former S.C. schools chief.
Reform advocates want someone like New York schools chancellor Joel Klein, who wants teachers and schools held accountable for the performance of students.

These were almost the same terms adopted by conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks (12/5/08):

On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers' unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.

Brooks' exemplar of the "establishment view" was Darling-Hammond, who seems to have attracted the same kind of fury from the actual establishment that was visited on Lani Guinier during the early days of the Clinton administration (Extra!, 7-8/93). As the Tribune editorialized:

If Obama awards the post to Darling-Hammond or someone else reluctant to smash skulls, he'll be telegraphing that the education industry has succeeded in outlasting the Bush push for increasingly tough performance standards in schools. That would, though, be a message of gratitude to the teachers unions that contributed money and shoe leather to his election campaign.Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter (12/15/08) echoed the same theme: "Obama also knows that if he chooses a union-backed candidate such as Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford professor active in the transition, he'll have a revolt on his hands from the swelling ranks of reformers."

Strangely, in corporate media's view, the selection of someone who would continue the education policies of the Bush administration would to signal that Obama favored serious change, even "radical reform" (in Brooks' words). The Tribune again:

The Bush administration exploited this post not only to help promote crucial No Child Left Behind legislation, but to follow up by making schools more accountable for how well their students do--or don't--learn.

Will that emphasis on accountability now intensify? Or will it wither as opponents of dramatic change reclaim lost clout? We trust that Obama instead will make a statement for real improvement.

Voices in support of Darling-Hammond were hard to find in corporate media: There was an op-ed backing her in her local paper, the San Francisco Chronicle (12/12/08), and a couple of prominent letters to the editor--one by Darling-Hammond herself (New York Times, 12/12/08) responding to the Brooks column, and another in the Washington Post (12/11/08):

The claim that Ms. Darling-Hammond represents the "status quo" is ludicrous.... She was the founding executive director of the National Commission for Teaching and America's Future, a panel whose work catalyzed major policy changes to improve the quality of teacher education.

She has been a powerful voice for the fundamental principle that all children deserve a well-prepared and properly supported teacher. She has advocated for strong accountability and has offered thoughtful alternatives--a balanced system of measures to evaluate higher-order thinking skills. And she has urged federal policies that would stop the micromanagement of schools and start ensuring educational equity--an issue only the federal government can tackle. Corporate media have thus far been mostly pleased with Obama's nominations--in large part because the president-elect's moves have been seen as staying close to the media-approved "centrism." (FAIR Media Advisory, 11/26/08).

The media unease with the possibility of a progressive pick for education secretary was dealt with by Alfie Kohn in the Nation (12/29/08):
Progressives are in short supply on the president-elect's list of cabinet nominees. When he turns his attention to the Education Department, what are the chances he'll choose someone who is educationally progressive?

In fact, just such a person is said to be in the running and, perhaps for that very reason, has been singled out for scorn in Washington Post and Chicago Tribune editorials, a New York Times column by David Brooks and a New Republic article, all published almost simultaneously this month. The thrust of the articles, using eerily similar language, is that we must reject the "forces of the status quo" which are "allied with the teachers' unions" and choose someone who represents "serious education reform."

One prominent exception to the corporate media's one-sided presentation of the Education nominee search was Sam Dillon's news article in the New York Times (12/14/08). Not only did it avoid caricaturing Darling-Hammond by citing views of both her critics and supporters, the article included some accurate media criticism:

Editorials and opinion articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have described the debate as pitting education reformers against those representing the educational establishment or the status quo. But who the reformers are depends on who is talking.

Unfortunately, in most establishment media accounts, only one side has been allowed to do the talking.

Feel free to respond to FAIR ( fair@fair.org ). We can't reply to everything, but we will look at each message. We especially appreciate documented examples of media bias or censorship. And please send copies of your correspondence with media outlets, including any responses, to fair@fair.org.