UC students calling it the "death of public education"

Quotables

What's it all about?

This is exactly what life is about. You get a paycheck every two weeks. We’re preparing children for life. —District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee (Mark Slouka in Harper's)

Look Ma, I'm a "school-based factor"

“We firmly believe that in order to have a good understanding of effective teaching we need multiple measures,” said Gates spokesman Christopher Williams, adding, “a teacher is the most important school-based factor in student achievement. We want research that helps the field better understand what makes a great teacher. What does great teaching look like and how do you measure it?” (L.A. Times)

Berkeley--It's not the drinking water

I mean, protests at Berkeley are necessary, not because the water produces radicalism or that there’s something, you know, that we just do at Berkeley; it’s the nature of the institution. In the ’60s it was necessary to protest UC Berkeley, because they were developing atomic weapons. And now it is necessary to protest at UC Berkeley because of what is being forced on us. (Michael Cohen, lecturer in American studies at UC Berkeley)

Sen. Feingold: GAO study finds...

...NCLB has hurt disadvantaged kids

A government study released earlier this week, originally requested by U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, has found that problematic educational practices are occurring more frequently in some high-poverty and high-minority schools across the country.

Says Feingold:

This report reaffirms my concern that the No Child Left Behind Law’s one-size-fits-all approach and heavy focus on high-stakes testing is causing problems in schools, particularly schools that serve our most disadvantaged students. The study found that problematic teaching practices like teaching to the test and spending more time on test preparation are happening more frequently in high-poverty and high-minority schools, many of which already have less access to high-quality teachers and resources than more affluent schools.

No it's not the Onion

It's the other McCarthy--just as funny though

Andrew McCarthy our favorite commie hunter during the Obama campaign, is back again raising that hair-raising question--did Bill Ayers really write Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father? Real conservatives must be nauseous over what's become of Buckley's old National Review.

What McCarthy doesn't realize is that Ayers actually ghost wrote War & Peace and the New Testament. Shhh!

Ravitch--a conundrum wrapped in an enigma

It must have been difficult for President Obama to lecture the Chinese about democratic freedoms and "black cells" while the world is reading daily about U.S. renditions, kidnappings, waterboarding, and Gitmo.

Now comes Diane Ravitch, a critic of undemocratic schooling practices who turns around and defends the most anti-democratic abridgment of Constitutional rights ever handed us by Bush and Cheney. Her latest tweets are little more than fear-mongering and spreading baseless alarm, while attacking the Justice Department's attempt to try accused terrorists being held without trials or hearings in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Here's some of those tweets:

The terrorist trial will be delayed for years by pre-trial motions and every shred of evidence will be challenged. They may walk.

Obama decision to give KSM and other terrorists a civilian trial is incomprehensible.

They did not commit a "crime." 9/11 was terrorism.

This may be Obama's worst decision.

KSM committed no crime? KSM may walk? Where? In Brooklyn? What happened to Ravitch the small d democrat? Thanks to Obama for (too slowly) getting rid of torture, indefinite imprisonment without trial, hearings, lawyers or habeas corpus. And what the hell is wrong with pre-trial motions and challenging every shred of evidence, anyway? Aren't those the underpinnings of our system of justice?

The best response to fear mongers like Ravitch, Beck and Limbaugh comes from 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser. Check it out and tell me what you think.

Sun-Times: Mike Scott took heat for Daley

One of mayor's "fixers"

City Hall reporter Fran Spielman, writing on death of School Board President Michael Scott, in this morning's S-T:

Daley values loyalty above all else and trusts just a precious few. Scott earned the mayor’s trust by taking enough heat for Daley over the last 30 years to earn an asbestos suit. Scott knew better than anyone that the mayor’s fixers operate best in the shadows outside public view. He also knew what former Chicago Schools CEO Paul Vallas obviously did not — that anybody who commanded more headlines than Daley would eventually be run out of town.

No excuses Newt

Gingrich hearts Mastery

On Sunday's Meet the Press, starring Duncan, Sharpton and Gingrich, I heard Newt touting a Philadelphia charter school called Mastery. Mastery is also hailed by Duncan and the DOE as one of the nation's 15 "exemplar charter schools" and a model of a turnaround school (where they keep the kids and fire all the teachers and staff).

I'm not personally familiar with Mastery but it sounds like a good school for those who choose to attend and are able to get in. Of course I like its small-by-design approach with lots of personalized support and assessment based on content mastery. I also like students being able to take 5 years to graduate, if needed.

But because Gingrich pushed it so hard as a model, and Duncan went there to kick off his tour, it made me wonder--just who gets in, stays in, and graduates from Mastery? According to Gingrich, it's a "no excuses" school. That means that school leaders, believe that they can transcend all the negative effects that poverty and racial inequity.

Then Gingrich described Mastery this way:

Three years ago the state became desperate, took over the school, turned it over to Mastery, which is a charter school system. Same building, same students. Three years later, they're in the 86th percentile.

Amazing! In just 3 years, just by taking over a school and turning it over to a private operator, these "same kids" jumped 61 percentile points. Is that all it takes--no mention by Newt of anything curricular, competency of teachers, money, small schools size, etc...

As you might expect, Gingrich wasn't telling us the whole story. While Mastery students did well in some subject areas like reading, they scored low and the school failed to make AYP in others (math). Rather Newt was using Mastery to push his own political agenda--not fair to Mastery and not fair to the neighborhood schools against which Mastery is being pitted.

It doesn't appear for example, that Mastery operates under the same rules or conditions as did its predecessor. And they don't exactly teach all the "same kids." For one thing, Mastery admits only those students whose parents are willing and able to sign a contract. Then prospective students are made to attend a pre-enrollment meeting. Mastery says the meeting isn't evaluative. But right there you eliminate all those students without active parents or those intimidated by the process or who question Mastery's program or school curriculum. Not a bad approach for matching kids with a choice program. But it gives Mastery a decided edge over the neighborhood schools.

Mastery also has a small enrollment, an 11.3:1 student-teacher ratio, and millions of dollars in extra grant support,

John Thompson at TWIE points out that at Mastery's Pickett campus,"there was a 42% attrition rate - a rate that would have killed their reforms in a neighborhood school." I'm currently looking at Philly charter school data to see if it conforms with Thompson's assessment. But it does sound familiar. It's obvious that if you recruit selectively and if you're allowed to get rid of many of your low-scoring kids, you're scores will go up. And if you push them back into the large, neighborhood schools, your scores will look even better than their scores.

******

P.S. Last week, Mastery kids couldn't get to school due to a strike of transit workers. But even before the strike, students had a difficult time using SEPTA because a dean was caught stealing $6,000 in student tokens and TransPasses. I hope Gingrich won't use that as an excuse.

Hedge fund school-reformer nearly fesses up

"There's a very fine line between what all of us do, and fraud..."

Whitney Tilson is the sugar-daddy and co-founder of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER)-- Democrats in name only. Tilson's and the hedge-fund reformers have lots of pull inside the DOE at present. Their goal is to move Duncan more towards school vouchers and privately-managed charters. Basically a current version of the Ownership Society in ed policy.

In this video, Tilson responds to the acquittal of former Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin and breathes a sigh of relief at the failure of the U.S. govt.'s first case against Wall Street bankers for wrongdoing in the run-up to the current global financial collapse.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Duncan, Gingrich & Sharpton on Meet the Press

Duncan: "I just want to say, as a country, we need more good schools." Me: Why the hell didn't we think of this?

More Duncan: "Good charter schools are a piece of the answer. Bad charter schools are a piece of the problem." Me: DOH!

Duncan on DOE INVESTMENT: "We will only invest in those states and districts where student achievement is part of the evaluation." Me: Yes, let the anti-testers starve.

Host Gregory: "I mean, in 1995, Speaker Gingrich, you were an advocate of dismantling the Department of Education." Me: That was before he discovered it was a cash cow for corporate reformers.

NYT editorial: RTTT favors "boutiques" like TFA

The language in the application reflects timidity at the White House and in Congress, where some voices wanted to delay the fight over this issue until next year when Congress will likely reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The language also reflects the sometimes excessive influence of boutique alternative certification programs, which want to keep doors open for teachers who might be shut out under traditional criteria.

Here's Checker Finn at his humanitarian best:

It's a fact that employment was an explicit purpose of stimulus funding--Congress said as much--and with today's jobless rate over ten percent only a churl would deny the humanitarian value as well as the political appeal of this.

Then Checker the churl adds:

That said, turning schools into a jobs program--while well-run public organizations and private firms use the economic crisis to purge weak performers, cherry-pick talent, and position themselves to be more productive going forward--is a dubious way to tone them up for the 21st century.

IN THE MAILBOX

Hi Mike,

Caught up with some of my reading and saw editorial in yesterday's NY Times questioning Duncan's commitment to putting the best teachers in front of the most challenged students. Everyone seems to be freaking out about the worst teachers being in front of educationally neglected children. Let me share what I have seen with these credentialed teachers we get in urban classrooms.

DPS has the highest percent of NBCT in the State of Michigan. The teachers receive their certification while working in their urban classrooms. Once they attain that certification eventually their salaries increase by somewhere between $5000 and $10,000 annually. I am all for increasing salaries. Problem is the manor in which these folks get certified. These teachers are usually the favored teachers by administrators in the building. To assist these folks in the certification process children are unequally distributed among the rest of staff so that a teacher or a number of teachers can do amazing things with their smaller groups of children. Once they pass the process of certification many resort back to their old practices of pulling out the dvd player many times during the week to let kids watch movies. Most teachers in Detroit Public Schools do not respect the many NBCT folks because they know the real deal.

Thus Duncan not addressing this Highly Qualified Issue in giving our Race to the Top funds -- well I am pleased he isn't tagging that onto the receipt of the funding. My own three kids went to school in Detroit.We had to use the Catholic School System because DPS just wasn't and still isn't cutting it. When we tried to use DPS and Cass Tech High -- Ken Burnley made it clear it wasn't about kids in 2005.

Long and short of it is the teachers my kids had were not credentialed up. In fact some were only college graduates that simply loved what they did -- teaching and working with kids. I still have a high school student in the house. We had to move from Detroit to get a proper high school education for my daughters. Son went to U of D Jesuit High. There is no school like that for females in Detroit. Cass -- like I said didn't fly.

I would much rather my children be taught by someone who loves what they do, someone who in an interview can share where they have taken their children, than to have my children taught by someone who can pull out a resume with Harvard on it. Seriously we only learn if we are meant to teach once we get into these classrooms. It is not the credentials. It is the heart.

A.C. (Detroit)

Inside Chicago's school "renaissance"

No "choice" for embattled Fenger kids

On Thursday, 10 students filed a federal lawsuit against Chicago Public Schools, alleging that their constitutional right to a public education is being denied because the district will not allow them to transfer and they fear going to Fenger in the wake of Albert's death and their own experiences with violence there.

Mayor Daley says he's for school choice. But when parents and kids at embattled Fenger High asked to opt out, the Mayor's response was, "Fenger is a very good school."

Of course, Fenger was one of those schools where the entire teaching staff was swept out of their jobs (not by choice) under the Mayor's Renaissance 2010 "turnaround" and replaced by a new, inexperienced team that was taken by surprise by the violence which occurred outside their school that resulted in the death of Derrion Albert. Violence at the school has escalated since Daley closed Carver High and turned it into a selective-enrollment military school, scattering dozens of kids to schools like Fenger that were ill-prepared to receive them.

Tywon ended up at Fenger after his mother lost her assembly-line job with an auto parts manufacturer. At the time the single mother's priority was finding a place to live. By July, she was receiving government assistance and had moved her family of four from Calumet City to the Far South Side. During the rush to relocate she didn't have time to worry about which schools her kids would attend.

One district official advised her to declare Tywon homeless, because no school can deny or delay transfers of homeless children, she said. Another administrator recommended she use someone else's address to enroll him in a new school, she said. But a student who falsifies an address is subject to being moved back to the assigned school. (Tribune)

Brit teachers call for smaller schools

Inspired by U.S. Small Schools Movement

The BBC reports:

These "front-line" opinions from young teachers in tough schools include the view that big schools should be re-designed to give them the "characteristics of smallness"... But the trend has been for a reduction in the number of small secondary schools - falling by 43% since 1995 to 156... The report also calls for more collaboration between urban schools, suggesting that three or four schools could become partners and share teaching expertise.

The idea that learning is more effective in smaller school settings has been championed in the United States with the "small schools movement".