Randi and Howard Dean Report #2

Here is a follow-up to the earlier post about Randi Weingarten At Democratic Convention: Teachers' Union Leader Seeks Ways To Weather Criticism

David Atkins at Digbysblog sponsored the event and here is his commentary which is posted at: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/howard-dean-at-dnc-takes-on-assault-on.html

Here are some comments on the commentary which you can read below the break.

BrianG

I am suspicious of Governor Dean picking up this issue in an election year since his son owns andd operates charter schools.  See http://dianeravitch.net/2012/08/06/news-about-the-best-and-the-brightest/

Ohio Mom

David Aktins/thereisnospoon, let me second BrianG's suggestion that go over to Diane Ravitch's blog, but not necessarily for the secific post he mentions -- go over there and read as much as you can about everything Ravitch writes about.

There is much more to this movement against public schools than Howard Dean and Randi Weingarten let on (and by the way, lefties involved in fighting for public schools do NOT like Weingarten. She is considered a sell-out). You will learn so much with just a few hours spent at Ravitch's site, I'm begging you. We need your voice on our side but you will have to learn more to be effective. This post's you just wrote has its heart in the right place but I'm sorry to say, it is very naive.

At this point there is nothing to defend about Charters. Howard Dean is wrong. They do NOT bring any new and worthwhile ideas to education (admittedly, they have brought forth some new and perfectly awful ideas, though).  

There are on the other hand, many, many reasons to be against Charters. I can not list them all here but one that should be especially important to us progressives is that charters remove a level of local government and replace it with a private entity.

That's right. They replace the democratically-elected school board, which is accountable to the citizenry, with its open meetings and records and elections, and replace it with private concerns that answer to no one. It's a sort of low-level fascism.

At the same time, they take funding from the public schools, sending them into a death spiral. (If you think I sound um, shrill, wait til you spend sometime at Ravitch's blog. You'll think I'm prenaturally calm).

The biggest and most influential players in the School Deform Movement are in it for the money. Hedge funds are very active, seeing education as a huge revenue stream -- and they have already started to rake in the bucks. Some of them go belong to a group called Democrats for School Reform. Yeah, it's a wolf in sheep's clothing thing.

The last thing I'll say is, there isn't a corner of the United States that isn't being effected by the move to dismantle public schools. A lot of it is happening without much notice but when you read Ravitch's blog, you'll see how amazing widespread the efforts are, how much traction they have and how hard we are going to have to fight to keep this piece of our democracy alive.

Randi Weingarten At Democratic Convention: Teachers' Union Leader Seeks Ways To Weather Criticism

... and it's not criticism from the likes of the real reformers she's weathering. As one commentator who sent this in an email wrote, "first nail...." I responded, "last nail... if I were the Chicago Teachers Union I would keep Randi far, far away."

[See Part 2 follow-up: Randi and Howard Dean Report #2]

Randi and Howard Dean -- see commentary (which I'll publish as a follow-up later) by the moderator at:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/howard-dean-at-dnc-takes-on-assault-on.html

She appeared to recognize that if teachers' unions are going to weather another round of criticism, brought on by a new Hollywood film, "Won't Back Down," in which the union is the bad guy, they will have to adopt a strategy that starts with conciliation.

Conciliation? That's Randi's middle name.

throughout the hour, Weingarten did make a number of comments accepting blame for missteps. "I know we've done things wrong both as a union movement as well as a teachers' union," she said in her opening remarks

The apologetic tone was not an emotional, spur-of-the-moment outburst

Does anyone see Karen Lewis being apologetic? Here, read it for yourself.

Randi Weingarten At Democratic Convention: Teachers' Union Leader Seeks Ways To Weather Criticism

Jon Ward | Sep 06, 2012 03:39 PM EDT

Comments (82)

Join MORE at the Labor Day Parade Saturday, September 8th, 10 AM

OK. So it's not really Labor Day, but so what? Let's show some muscle. MORE tee-shirts have arrived and we will have some for sale for $20 as fund raisers for MORE. I'm bringing a bunch.

Join MORE and the Chicago Solidarity Contingent at the Labor Day parade + information about teacher evaluations and activist training! Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.

Movement of Rank & File Educators Weekly Newsletter #23 - September 5, 2012

Welcome back to a school year that promises to be full of struggles for educational justice.   Please take a second to forward this to a friend or coworker, and consider joining our discussion list or our chapter leader meetup list. Of course, if you haven't done so already, please officially join MORE. Join MORE at the Labor Day Parade Saturday, September 8th, 10 AM Be part of the Chicago Solidarity Contingent to demonstrate your support for our brothers and sisters in Chicago who may be going out on strike on September 10th. Meet-up at the NE corner of 6th Ave & 45th Street We will join the UFT Contingent at  10:45 am Our Brand New Red MORE T-Shirts will be for sale. Buy one while supplies last! ($20) And please wear RED to the parade in solidarity with Chicago Teachers Say no to test-based evaluations! Download and distribute this petition at your school to call for a vote on the new evaluation scheme.  In February, the UFT agreed to a new framework that will base 25-40% of our future evaluations on standardized test scores. The union will be negotiating the final details with the city over the fall and winter, but the membership deserves a discussion and a vote on the agreement. MORE and Labor Notes present: Secrets of a Successful Organizer A training for new chapter leaders, new delegates, and all teachers who want to organize in their schools. MORE is joining forces with Labor Notes, a publication and organizing project focused on “putting the movement back in the labor movement” for a  workshop on how to engage members and build rank-and-file power in your school.  Wednesday September 19th 5pm Murphy Institute 25 w. 43rd St., 18th floor click here for flyer Upcoming Events 9/22 MORE General Meeting 12-3pm, CUNY Grad Center 365 5th Ave. rm. 3414 childcare available - reply to this email before 9/15 9/19  MORE & Labor Notes Chapter Leader Training 5pm, Murphy Institute 25 w. 43rd St., 18th floor 9/12 Planning Committee Meeting 6pm, Killarney Rose Pub 127 Pearl St. 9/14 Election Committee Meeting 4:30pm, CUNY Grad Center 365 5th Ave. rm. 3414

follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend  Copyright © 2012 MORE Caucus, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you are excited about changing the UFT and signed up at a MORE meeting or our website, MORECaucusNYC.org. Our mailing address is: MORE Caucus New York New York, NY 10001 Add us to your address book unsubscribe from this list | update subscription preferences

Wear red on Monday in solidarity with CTU!

Brian Jones writes on his blog:

No Struggle, No Progress

A blog about politics, education, racism, and more.

Got a red shirt?

One of the unintended consequences of the attack on public education is the politicization of educators. Generally speaking, teachers like to close their classroom doors and do their own thing. There doesn’t seem to be any point in getting involved in “politics” and so they mostly don’t. But the times are changing.

Suddenly, like it or not, “politics” is interested in teachers. Suddenly, wealthy and powerful people have become obsessed with them, and with what goes on behind those classroom doors. As the billionaire investors and their political allies attempt to refashion education in their own image, they increasingly force teachers to sit up and take notice.

Does this mean we now have a national movement of teachers united in a collective struggle to defend and improve public education? Not quite. Where teachers already have large organizations — their unions — they rely on them to defend their interests. The problem is that those unions have, by and large, conceded much of the ideological terrain to the billionaire privatizers.

That’s where Chicago comes in. While other unions have jumped at the chance to trade tenure, merit pay, charter schools, and other “free market” reforms for pay increases, the Chicago Teachers Union has drawn a line in the sand. The CTU is the first union to threaten a strike against so-called “ed reform”.



Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, says he wants a longer school day, for example. The CTU has responded, effectively: “No, we want a BETTER school day!” The CTU has boldly pointed out the apartheid-like conditions in the Chicago Public Schools, and demands that funding be restored to the arts, sciences, physical education, counseling, and smaller class sizes. Their research document, The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve is a must read.
Importantly, their stance has galvanized parent support. Erica Clark, a Chicago parent, wrote:

“We formed Parents 4 Teachers because we were fed up with the abuse that teachers were taking from politicians. We saw that there wasn’t recognition of what we saw as parents—that the interests of the teachers in the schools go hand in hand with the interests of our kids… The things that teachers are fighting for in their contract—smaller classes, more nurses and counselors, a better day not just a longer day, art and music for all schools—are the things that parents want. These are the things that teachers want.”

Daring to stand up to Rahm Emanuel — Obama’s former chief of staff — during an election year, is no small feat. But CTU is blazing a new trail for educators in this country.

Check out the Network of Teacher Activist Groups website to find out how you can build solidarity (including by making a donation to the CTU Strike Fund).

If contract negotiations fail, CTU members voted to go on strike on September 10. On that day, teachers, parents and students all over the country will wear RED in solidarity with CTU.

If you’ve got a red shirt, and if you want the CTU to win, you should, too.

Chicago Update: Merit Pay off the Table, But Not Attempt to Eliminate Salary Steps

Lewis and CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said CPS still wants to stop giving teachers extra pay for extra experience. Such “step’’ increases have been a part of the CTU contract since 1967 but are facing increasing scrutiny nationwide. “Eliminating steps is a big deal,’’ Sharkey said. “Proposing to take that away essentially means a first- and a fifth-year teacher are going to be paid the same and we think that’s an unacceptable outcome. . . . Teaching is a craft in which gaining experience improves practice.’’ ---Sun-Times

UPDATE from Lois Weiner:

AFT President Randi Weingarten showed when she headed the union in  New York City that she would give away everything and anything that mattered in having quality schools in exchange for paltry salary increases. My hunch is that she'll be using all the power she has to pressure the CTU to settle for the same kind of contract she negotiated in NYC.  I don't think Obama wants a strike of Chicago teachers, so he'll be putting pressure on his guy Rahm to settle on money. Weingarten will be doing the same. [see below for Lois' complete article from New Politics].

New York teachers have to watch Chicago ed deform leaders to see what's coming here. This update has the interesting nugget that Rahm is looking to eliminate salary steps, the logical outcome of ed deform which declares a first year TFA with 5 weeks training can be as effective as a 10 year vet.

UPDATE: 3:30PM
Before you read the Sun-Times article, first see what Lois Weiner has to say about how the anti-union media reports the story:

New Politics:

The bottom line for Chicago teachers?

Lois Weiner

September 6, 2012

As the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) holds fast to its strike deadline of Sept. 10, negotiations continue.  It's always risky to trust reports in the mass media, especially the virulently anti-teachers union media that we have today, about what's happening in negotiations. They want to see the unions discredited, and one way to do that is to cast teachers as greedy and selfish.

 So we should be taking the recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times about negotiations as another salvo in the propaganda war against teachers.The article reports only on aspects of the contract dispute that take up teachers' wages and benefits. In contrast, what has made this mobilization of Chicago teachers so powerful and exciting is the CTU's commitment to locate demands about teachers' economic well-being in a package that addresses what needs to be done to give Chicago children the schools they deserve. 
The union has done this remarkably well in its report about the "apartheid" conditions in the schools.  During my recent visit to Colombia, teachers in Bogota told me that their union should be issuing a similar report. The Chicago Sun-Times article illustrates that Chicago's power elite wants to make this struggle fit the mold of a "traditional" labor dispute, one that might be settled by giving a tiny bit more money to teachers. What the bankers, corporate chiefs, and politicians that do their bidding want is complete control over what children learn. The bigger picture that is often ignored in the US is that this is a global project, one spelled out in World Bank reports, to reduce education to vocational training, accomplished through the "accountability" of standardized testing. Yet, there is world-wide resistance to this project, little news of which appears in the popular media, and this global context frames the struggle in Chicago. CTU's leaders face enormous pressures, so I was relieved to that a bargaining update on the union's website still contains the CTU's demand for "A 'Better' Day—with Art, Music, World Language, Physical Education and other services like counseling" and lower class size.   Certainly the union needs to fight for job protections and re-hiring teachers who have lost their jobs in school closings. Its struggle for the salary and economic benefits teachers deserve is essential. But it must also hold onto the demand for lower class size and restoring the subjects and services students (and their teachers) need so very much.Chicago's teachers should expect no help from the national union (American Federation of Teachers) in holding fast to what Chicago's students deserve. AFT President Randi Weingarten showed when she headed the union in  New York City that she would give away everything and anything that mattered in having quality schools in exchange for paltry salary increases. My hunch is that she'll be using all the power she has to pressure the CTU to settle for the same kind of contract she negotiated in NYC.  I don't think Obama wants a strike of Chicago teachers, so he'll be putting pressure on his guy Rahm to settle on money. Weingarten will be doing the same.  The question is whether CTU's courageous and dedicated leaders will have the confidence in their ideals to lead Chicago's teachers in a new direction, one that will show what can be won when a teachers union really stands up for public education and so wins support from parents and students who deserve better schools.

Chicago Sun-Times:

Chicago Public Schools teachers: Monday strike date still on

BY ROSALIND ROSSI  AND STEFANO ESPOSITO Staff Reporters September 5, 2012 4:34PM

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Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, talks to reporters Thursday after Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates unanimously agreed to strike starting Sept 10. August 30 2012. I Scott Stewart~Sun-Times

Updated: September 6, 2012 2:23AM

Chicago Public Schools officials freshened their economic offer to teachers Wednesday but teachers union officials immediately labeled the deal “unacceptable’’ and held firm to a Sept. 10 strike date.

CPS didn’t budge from its May offer of four years of 2 percent raises, but for the first time it formally dropped the requirement that the fourth-year raise be tied to a form of merit pay and “differentiated compensation,’’ Chicago Teachers Union officials said.

“I have some reasonable news: The board has moved off of merit pay,’’ CTU President Karen Lewis told reporters after the union’s House of Delegates held its monthly meeting. But, Lewis said, “We have some . . . problems we are very concerned about.’’

Lewis and CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said CPS still wants to stop giving teachers extra pay for extra experience. Such “step’’ increases have been a part of the CTU contract since 1967 but are facing increasing scrutiny nationwide.

“Eliminating steps is a big deal,’’ Sharkey said. “Proposing to take that away essentially means a first- and a fifth-year teacher are going to be paid the same and we think that’s an unacceptable outcome. . . . Teaching is a craft in which gaining experience improves practice.’’

Teachers leaving the union’s House of Delegates meeting Wednesday evening said a Monday strike date is still on.

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The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.

What Clinton's Speech Left Out as Dems endorse 15 years of ed failure in Chicago and call for more of the same

How can you talk about cooperation and shared responsibility in the same breath with a “race” to “the top” for our children?

How can you say “we are all in this together” while you are telling children that they have to race to see who is best at taking tests and the poor kids almost always are the losers? --- Diane Ravitch on Clinton's speech last night.

I  hate to spoil the party, but Democrats lie too. Obama lost votes of educators every time Rahm Emanuel's face came on the screen, especially if you read this Ravitch post:

Is Chicago a National Model for School Reform?

Chicago public schools have been under mayoral control since 1995....Then Mayor Daley promoted Arne Duncan to reform the schools. Duncan called his reforms “Renaissance 2010.” Before he left for DC in 2009 Duncan opened 100 new schools and closed many neighborhood schools....Then came Ron Huberman to continue the Daley reforms....And now Mayor Emanuel carries on in the Daley tradition, having recently instructed his hand-picked school board [and chose as Supt John Claude-Brizard who screwed up schools here and in Rochester] to close or privatize more schools. And what’s the upshot of nearly two decades of reform? 

- READ THAT SAD STORY

Diane Ravitch has been on the case exposing the fault lines in the Democratic Party approach to education.

If you hear that rousing speech by Dem ed deform Mass. Governor Deval Patrick, he lauded the one-year turnaround of a school named Orchard Gardens where they fired 80% of the teachers, a number to challenge the Romney/Bain Capital firings. Another ed deform "miracle" on the backs of teachers. Diane and Gary Rubinstein nail Patrick in this post by Diane:
Gary Rubinstein Fact-Checks Mass. School

We all would like to believe in miracles. There aren’t many, especially with reference to schools that miraculously “turn around” in one year.
It is comforting to believe that a school can change from the worst to the best almost overnight. It is a made-for-Hollywood scenario.
Last night at the Democratic convention, Governor Deval Patrick talked about the one-year turnaround of a school named Orchard Gardens.
Gary Rubinstein checked and learned that 80% of the teachers were fired. Then he went to the Massachusetts Department of Education website. Not exactly one of the best schools in the state. Why do so many politicians think that the best way to fix a school is to fire almost everyone (or everyone) and start over?  Wouldn’t it be more productive to help the school, add resources where needed, remove those who are truly incompetent, do whatever it takes to make the school work well for its students? Why is mass firing the preferred solution?

And then we come to Clinton's speech, which I loved, though I'm still voting Green. Clinton really did what none of the Obama people seem capable of doing – actually defending him. But let's not forget how far to the right of the Democratic Party Clinton has been. Or moderate Republican.

When it comes to education policy, Clinton touched on it when he mentioned the Bushes. Clinton's "Goals 2000" preceded Bush's No Child Left Behind which led to Obama's Race to the Top, each iteration worse than the one before. What is not well-known but well covered Kahlenberg's Shanker bio was the work both Clintons did in Arkansas in the 80's in ed deform --- retesting of teachers for instance. Shanker and Clinton were on the same page in many areas on education.

Diane posted this soon after Clinton's speech. 

What Clinton Didn’t Mention

He didn’t mention K-12.
I listened closely.
He didn’t mention Race to the Top.
Maybe it was an oversight but I doubt it.
How can you talk about cooperation and shared responsibility in the same breath with a “race” to “the top” for our children?
How can you say “we are all in this together” while you are telling children that they have to race to see who is best at taking tests and the poor kids almost always are the losers?

In 2012 Democratic Convention, Unity without Unions

Teachers are the heart and soul of the Democratic volunteering apparatus. Public education is a massive institution funded by taxes to deliver care-giving services. The transition of that revenue stream, roughly $500 billion a year, to private hands is well on its way, and it carries a bonus of destroying the power of a liberal faction in the Democratic Party and the electoral system. ---Naked Capitalism

This piece addresses the movie "Won't Back Down", claiming it was shown at the convention when in fact the showing by Michelle Rhee was a sideshow, but approved behind the scenes apparently by the DNC.

You might also check out: Rhee Touts Obama's School Policies

Naked Capitalism

Matt Stoler

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Except for the 2004 Republican National Convention, I have never seen a national political convention where there was such unity of purpose, so much excitement, and such validation from media insiders as in this Democratic Convention. The left side of the aisle has been fully stomped on, getting crushed in nearly every significant electoral contest of 2011. While Elizabeth Warren made her big appearance last night, she’s down by 5 points in the polls in Massachusetts, failing to carry the Democratic establishment of the state (including the Mayor of Boston, Tom Menino, who has not endorsed her). The hulking labor bureaucracies, after their demolition in Wisconsin, are not in Charlotte in full force, having refused to fund the convention. And the embrace of the party for the education privatizers is on full force, with the film “Won’t Back Down” pretty much endorsed by the party.

Teachers are the heart and soul of the Democratic volunteering apparatus. Public education is a massive institution funded by taxes to deliver caregiving services. The transition of that revenue stream, roughly $500 billion a year, to private hands is well on its way, and it carries a bonus of destroying the power of a liberal faction in the Democratic Party and the electoral system. A variety of mechanisms are used to justify this shift, from school choice to parent triggers to the best line, “our failing public schools”. “Don’t Back Down”, which tells the story of a poor single mother who takes on an entrenched union bureaucracy and reclaims her kid’s school with the help of a dynamic teacher, is the latest narrative to justify the shift. What makes the playing of this film at the convention interesting, though, is that the teacher’s unions are not particularly upset. In fact, the President of the National Education Association, said he enjoyed the film.

Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association (NEA), said that he has seen the film and wasn’t offended by it.
“They wrote a script. One of the villains is a union. But it didn’t offend me because that’s not my union. I have never seen any union like that. It’s a make-believe union that doesn’t care. My members care. We care. We are doing everything we can to turn around schools, to lead a profession, to make it a real profession,” Van Roekel said.
The union leader even said that he liked the movie.
“I didn’t really think I would like it but I did,” Van Roekel said. “It’s a great movie. It made me cry three times.”

Nothing illustrates the captured state of our politics better than a supposed union leader praising a film dedicated to destroying the power of working men and women. Now, of course, there are certainly problems with teachers unions, as there are with any set of large bureaucratic institutions. But eliminating the one opposition vehicle to the transfer of a half a trillion dollars of tax revenue each year to privatize educational corporations is simply about graft.

Going into the election, the Democratic Party is more unified than I’ve ever seen. Unity happened, though, not because the various factions in the party decided to put aside their differences and cooperate. It happened because there was an internal war in the party, and the neo-liberals did a clean sweep. They smashed everyone opposed to them, and cowed or coopted everyone else. The Republicans, who are the repository of a purer form of plutocracy, are just not necessary this electoral season. They aren’t really trying to win. After all, if your supposed opponents will implement your program, why not just let them?

Well, no matter who wins the election, public ed and teacher unions are in deep shit. I could make the case that Obama/Duncan have gone on their merry way with an intelligent plan* working hand in hand with the privatizers while Romney seems so incompetent he is guaranteed to mess whatever he wants to do up so bad he will alienate everyone -- and might even bring some elements of the ed deform and real reform camps together.

*I know that most of you think RTTT is a dumb plan for students, parents and kid, but servicing them is not the intention of the plan. For their purposes it is brilliant.

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The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.

Ring Around the Rahm: Chicago Teachers Encircle City Hall

Fred Klonsky reports:

Hands around City Hall.

September 5, 2012

When Jackson Potter told me on Saturday night that we were going to join hands and encircle City Hall, I didn’t really believe it.
Believe it.

Yes, I believe just about anything Jackson promises. For those of you who don't know who Jackson Potter is, he was the initial moving force behind forming CORE in 2008. I got to hang out with Jackson in the summer of 2009 in LA and then again in Chicago in July 2011. Jackson has extraordinary leadership and political skills and teaming him and Karen Lewis together is a major reason for what is working in CORE and the CTU. I was proud last summer to  introduce our own Julie Cavanagh to Jackson in Chicago (she already had met Karen), a political connection made in heaven. And to top it off, Julie is a vegetarian and Jackson is a vegan, so – kismet. They're great to hang out with, but don't bother going out to eat with them if you want to tear into a steak. Lucky they're in different cities.

The reality and the hype behind online learning and the "School of One"

One day Joel Klein will be doing a perp walk with his coat over his head .... Ed Notes, c. 2005. [And Chris Cerf too].

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UPDATE, Fri, Sept. 7, 1PM: Assailed Teacher has a great summary and commentary on School of One: Follow the Silver Lining…. and the Money

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As a followup to my earlier post, "Klein Gets F for School of One While Tweed Expands to IS 49 SI", there is so much meat in Leonie Haimson's post, The reality and the hype behind online learning and the "School of One"summarizing the outcomes of todays report on the failing "School of One" initiative that I have to repost it all.

She really hits so many aspects of the interlocking directorate of ed deform. One day I hope this piece is used as evidence in a court case.

Today’s Daily News has a story about a new negative evaluation of DOE’s much vaunted “School of One” program.  This study, which found no significant achievement gains from the program, was quietly placed on the Research Alliance website in the middle of summer with no apparent outreach to the media or the public. 

This contrasts with the huge publicity machine promoting this online program that has operated since its inception as a pilot started in the summer of 2009.  

The School of One is an online or “blended” learning math program, combining online with small group instruction. It was started by Joel Rose when he was at DOE, using an algorithm devised by Wireless Generation.  Rose, along with Chris Rush, formerly of Wireless Gen, has now taken the company private and renamed it New Classrooms.  According to its website, the company is hiring new staff to work in NYC, as well as in Washington DC, Chicago and Perth Amboy NJ schools starting this year.  I wrote about DOE’s awarding of this contract to New Classrooms last year, in apparent violation of conflict of interest rules.

By the time it started as a small scale pilot in the summer of 2010, it already earned a story in the New York Times. By September, Arthur Levine, former head of Teacher’s College, wrote that School of One “may turn out to be the single most important experiment conducted in education so far. It is the future.” By November, it had already won a place on Time magazine’s best inventions of 2009, which described it as “learning for the Xbox generation”. 

This led Mayor Bloomberg to put out a press release, boasting that “The School of One [is] creating a 21st century classroom to meet the individual needs and learning styles of every student.” 

   Edward Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard wrote an oped for the Boston Globe in 2011, saying that “This type of out-sourcing [to private providers] could be encouraged everywhere, which could support a nationwide industry dedicated to smartening our children. “

The School of One has also been recognized and encouraged by the US Department of Education, which awarded the DOE a three year $5 million I3 federal Innovation grant to expand it in NYC schools. By the time the application was written, DOE had already spent $1.5 million on the project, and now according to the Daily News, has spent $9 million over the past three years --- they say from private donations.  According to its federal grant application, the DOE had planned to spend $45 million on expanding the program through June 2013 (though the DN also reports officials expect to downsize that by an unspecified amount,  “with help from a private contractor.”)

The “personalized” learning system featured in “the School of One” has now become the focus of the new federal RTTT program for districts; encouraging the spread of virtual or “blended” instruction through computers, by offering nearly $400 million in grants, again with little or no evidence that such programs work. Nearly 900 districts have applied for these grants, including the Superintendent of Miami, who recently said that Miami’s application “will focus on personalizing education for students based on how they best learn, rely more on digital content and changing the learning environment and outcomes of middle school students who have fallen behind…."This is a creative and effective way of spurring reform from the bottom up," he said.”

Bottom up?  Not exactly. This is an initiative driven from the top down. What has been the actual record of the School of One?

In the spring of 2010, the School of One was implemented at IS 228, in Brooklyn. By Sept. 2010, it was added to two more middle schools, MS 131 in Manhattan’s Chinatown, and IS 339 in the Bronx.   I visited the program in Chinatown as was not impressed; I saw chaos and many disengaged kids, as I described here.  As Joel Rose said during my tour of the school, it is intended to substitute for smaller classes, since “no human being” can provide fully individualized instruction to a class of 25. 

As Gary Rubinstein first explained on his blog, in two of these schools it caused achievement to slip in math, according to the DOE’s Progress reports: slightly at IS 228, and drastically at IS 339. By the next year, two of the three schools had dropped the program, including at MS 131, the school I visited in Chinatown (which had already earned the school an “A” in math progress the year before) and at IS 339, whose progress grade on math fell from a “B” to a “D”.  MS 131, the school that appeared to do the best with the program but dropped it anyway, has a relatively high-achieving, mostly Asian population; the school that did the worst, IS 339, has primarily poor Black and Hispanic students.  

Now the new study from the Research Alliance  not only quietly confirms those findings, but also finds that the lowest achieving students within each school were the ones who tended to fall furthest behind in below-grade level skills, showing that this virtual instruction may actually widen rather than narrow the achievement gap, as some have feared:

Students who came to SO1 with low prior performance were exposed to approximately twice as many below-grade-level skills, compared to those who came with higher performance levels from prior grades. … However, these students mastered less than 15 percent of the skills to which they were exposed (as measured by SO1’s daily assessments), compared to approximately 85 percent mastery for students who entered with higher prior performance.

These results fly in the face of the DOE’s I3 application, which said it should be awarded extra points because it would provide special benefits for struggling students.

Next year, there will be four more NYC middle schools which will adopt this model, along with IS 228:  IS 49 and IS 2 in Staten Island, MS 88 and MS 381 in Brooklyn. There will also be a new “randomized” study, led by Jonah Rockoff of Columbia.   

Good luck to these schools. One wonders if the parents at these schools have given their consent to what is really an experiment on their kids, with no research to back it up.  As the new study points out,

….SO1 program staff hypothesized that schools might experience a variety of implementation and outcome “dips,” in which instructional quality and student achievement might initially decline, as teachers adjusted to the new organization and delivery of the math curriculum. …. in general, educational innovation is exceedingly challenging: Program impact is often incremental, rather that abrupt and dramatic; the process of development and evidence building is iterative and dynamic, rather than linear and uni-directional; and it often takes years, rather than months, to establish program efficacy and a credible track record for expansion and scale.

Meanwhile, of course, the DOE makes decisions about holding back children, and evaluates teachers and grades schools based on one year’s worth of test results – regardless of the sentiments expressed above. 

These words of caution are similar to those expressed by a recent study of the Izone, DOE’s online learning initiative, of which the School of One belongs:

 “….NYC school district leaders are taking risks with the iZone, implementing new models, committing deeply to a defined set of principles that challenge core assumptions about what a school should look like, and moving to scale very quickly. How and when they will know if they got the big bet right is a question district leaders will have to ask so that students are not subjected for too long to programs and schools that don’t work. “

 

There is a well-documented gold rush now, with many companies getting into the business of online learning, including Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, headed by Joel Klein, which acquired Wireless shortly after Klein was hired.  With the help of the right-wing organization ALEC, of which NewsCorp is a member, these companies are using their considerable resources to fund astroturf organizations and persuade politicians to encourage or even require students to take virtual courses for credit, with NO evidence that this helps them in any way. You can read exposes about how this has happened in Maine; Pennsylvania; Minnesota Wisconsin and  nationwide.  

Here in NY, the Regents and the State Education Department has encouraged the growth of online learning by eliminating seat time requirements which, along with the overriding pressure for high schools to inflate their graduation rates or risk being closed, will likely cause districts statewide to follow in NYC’s footsteps by implementing substandard credit recovery systems, what Diane Ravitch has rightly called “academic fraud.”  

More and more in this nation, we are moving towards two different school systems: one for the wealthy, who insist of proven reforms including small classes for their children.   The other highly experimental model, for disadvantaged and even middle class kids, will increasingly deliver so-called “personalized” instruction via a machine, causing struggling students to fall even further behind.  Is this the future we want for our kids?

See also Jersey Jazzman’s blog here and here on how the superintendent of Perth Amboy, a controversial former NYC administrator named Janine Caffrey, has proposed a $575,900 contract for New Classrooms.  Meanwhile, Caffrey is serving only at the pleasure of Chris Cerf, Joel Rose’s former boss who is now NJ Education Commissioner, as the Perth Amboy school board has voted to remove her. 

The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.

Klein Gets F for School of One While Tweed Expands to IS 49SI

...the best part is that they are using a 2.5 million dollar grant from the Obama administration to put the program in IS 49SI, Francesco Portelos' school... he is the main tech person and STEM teacher in the school but sits in the rubber room on trumped up charges for questioning how the principal was using tech grant money. --- ed notes

“School of One is expensive and disruptive,” said Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan representative to the Panel for Educational Policy. --NYDN

Last Update (in green): 5:15PM

And must read by Leonie exposing connections to Wireless Generation and Rupert Murdoch.

The reality and the hype behind online learning and the "School of One"

How many Joel Klein legacy failures can you find? We reported on the about to be abandoned networks yesterday (Tweed Dismantles Networks Before Crimes and Corruption Exposed).

Rachel Monahan reports on the Daily News:

Former NYC Chancellor Joel Klein's highly touted School of One math project dropped by 2 of 3 schools in pilot program

Initiative was hailed by Time magazine as one of the 50 best inventions of 2009, but NYU study shows $9 million effort failed to raise test scores more than old-school math classes 

AN EXPENSIVE city program touted as the future of middle school math education had disappointing results in its first year — and was abandoned at two of the three schools where it was implemented, the Daily News has learned.

City officials said they’ve spent $9 million over the past three years — all from private donations.

In its grant application, the city projected the total cost of the program’s expansion at $46 million, though officials say they’ve been able to get that price down with help from a private contractor.

But the best part is that they are using a 2.5 million dollar grant from the Obama administration to put the program in IS 49SI, Francesco Portelos' school (Protect Portelos: Rubber Room Journal).

 
He is/was the main tech person and STEM teacher in the school but sits in the rubber room on trumped up charges for questioning how the principal was using tech grant money.

The city is pushing forward, planning to expand the program this fall to four more schools — Intermediate Schools 2 and 49 in Staten Island as well as Middle Schools 88 and 381 in Brooklyn — with the help of a high-profile $5 million grant awarded by the Obama administration.

So in the ultimate of ironies, the Republicans can charge the Obama admin with wasting at least 2.5 million on Portelos' school.

And really, it is all about trying to use this expensive program to pump up test scores, which we have been pointing out time and again is not about real learning.

Stuyvesant High School math teacher Gary Rubinstein, who recently wrote about his visit to School of One early in the pilot program, said he wasn’t surprised. “Even if they got results, I wouldn’t be impressed because it looked like all they were learning how to do was do better on a standardized test,” he said.

Read entire article

"School of One" versus "I-Zone?"

Both certainly share lots of corporate sponsors and partners! School of One is one type of school within the Izone which encapsulates a lot of alternative online learning schools and programs.

The reality and the hype behind online learning & the "School of One" - http://goo.gl/Dql2h