Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog

Idea: Pick up your "training money"

2012-01-27T15:49:00.000-06:00

Just thinking... Why not ask all the many parents and Dyett community folks on their way down to protest the mayor's school closings today (5:30 at 125 S. Clark St.) to stop off first at Rev. Watkins' Hope Organization and ask for $50 in "training money." Then with money in pocket, they could ride the Hope school bus downtown and save train fare or parking.

The Econometrics of Rwandan Pear Blossoms at Duke University

2012-01-27T05:06:00.000-06:00

I rarely post anything of this length. But this piece by my friend and Duke Univ. prof Tim Tyson, was much too compelling and beautifully written to pass up. Had to post it in full. Enjoy.

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The Econometrics of Rwandan Pear Blossoms at Duke University
Timothy B. Tyson
Senior Research Scholar
Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
Visiting Professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture

Genius glinted off every sentence she wrote. A sophomore in my first class at Duke University in the spring of 1991, she sat in my office three hours each week, both wrists wrapped in bandages; we rarely spoke of that. She read to me from her stories; I read to her from Zora Neale Hurston. A natural-born English major, she majored in Econ, for which she cared not a fig. Her tyrannical father refused to pay tuition for any major but Econ. Hospital gauze hid the wounds of her war with him.

I thought about her as I read the study by Peter Arcidiacono and Kenneth Spenner, who insist that African American students at Duke remain less well-prepared than their white counterparts. Evidence that black students catch up quickly is mistaken, they say; the mirage of their progress reflects that African Americans select “less demanding” majors at far higher rates than whites.

African American undergrads here are fodder for this attack on affirmative action and liberal arts. “What Happens After Enrollment” is a political tract disguised as scholarly inquiry. Arcidiacono speculates disingenuously that all the attention might be “because others are using the study in a lawsuit against racial preferences in admissions.” How can “others” use his unpublished work without him? How can a Duke prof be “very surprised” that the newspapers follow a racially-loaded U.S. Supreme Court? History, anyone? Who appointed him to weigh the merits of black folks being allowed into the room?

No one disputes the academic freedom of these professors to engage in politics around their own points of view; Duke’s treasure, the late Dr. John Hope Franklin, whose legacy Arcidiacono treads upon, provided research for Thurgood Marshall in Brown. But there is no constitutional right to r-e-s-p-e-c-t, as Aretha might put it. BSA members who question “the research’s intent, methodology, analysis and conclusion, in addition to its validity,” display a generosity and deliberation far exceeding those of this study.

Arcidiacono and Spenner dress their Little Lord Frankenstein in academic robes, an unconvincing costume. In their bizarre econometrics, our African American students, failing to choose the “more challenging” majors, bear the blame for the lack of minority “representation” in economics, engineering and the natural sciences. Other explanations abound; possibly the company. But the authors’ pretense of caring is undercut by their crusade to reduce the numbers of black students at the elite institutions where research careers begin. Stingy polemics, yes; good scholarship, not so much.

Their pamphlet expounds on "racial difference” without contemplating what “race” might be. Nor do the authors consider the very nature of these decisions. Their inquiry into the deeply personal choices of black students fails to ask even one black student, not that we should take anyone’s words at face value. Apparently white males at Duke once devoted to Econ and Engineering in high school mostly cling to their calculators, despite this claim that “the average student finds Engineering the most challenging field, followed by Economics.” Less-average students might diagnose lack of curiosity or fear of the unfamiliar. But to explain would require individual inquiry; we would have to check our assumptions, not just boxes on a questionnaire. Neither God in Her Divine Wisdom nor our destiny as a species would make us all engineers or economists; to major in econ when poetry holds your heart defines failure, not success. Is it possible that African American students, each one unique, on the whole come from cultural and intellectual traditions different than—not less than--most white students at Duke?

Econ majors in my seminars complain of the staggering amounts of reading. And the paucity of “right answers” in history, literature and theology intimidates many, though they catch up quickly. Once they stop inhaling the economist’s elixir--the hokum that crazy humanity is a profit-maximizing choice-machine--people often blossom in sunlight.

I have watched fire seize the minds of erstwhile econ majors, causing bad grades—in economics. They just can’t “value-maximize” anymore, not drunk on James Baldwin and James Brown. If you want a “more challenging” major, get entangled in Ellison’s “blues impulse” and trace the dust tracks from Bethlehem to Rwanda; “finger the jagged grain” of humanity, sharp with our “myriad subtleties.” Sit on the steps of Atlanta University with Du Bois, shotgun cradled on his lap, and wait for the mob; let Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi” behold Armstrong’s genius of jazz; wander with Hughes among “the people of the night,” who “will give even a snake / a break.” How then to stumble home to mute econometric formulas? Sometimes these renegades light out for territory unseen. If only we built higher walls around Duke, we might bar such fools that learn and lose their way; resolute youth could scale the heights of Economics without leaving their own intellectual cul-de-sac, unimpaired by poetics—or by education.

Not long ago, I saw her walking her dog near East Campus. No more bandages; her little family and her part-time teaching job leave a light on her face never seen on that sophomore. Inspired by Hurston’s heroine, Janie, she told her father to go to hell. He groused about it, but she’d finally majored in English—double-majored in Econ to shut him up. She couldn’t remember much Econ, she said, but she still reads Their Eyes Were Watching God every spring when the pear trees blossom.

GOP salutes Obama's ed policies

2012-01-26T11:38:00.000-06:00

A GOP salute

At least there's someone who likes Obama/Duncan ed policies.

"Republicans tonight salute our President, for instance, for his aggressive pursuit of the murderers of 9/11, and for bravely backing long overdue changes in public education." -- Indiana's T-Party Gov. Mitch Daniels' in his response to SOTU.

Daniels was only returning the favor. It was Arne Ducan's "salute" to Daniels last April, that boosted Daniels' stock as an education governor and potential GOP V.P. candidate.

"Now, few states have done a better job of coping with the recession than Indiana and I want to salute you -- Governor Daniels -- for your leadership and management skills. I also salute you for your leadership on education issues. You are among the 42 states that have voluntarily adopted college and career ready standards. You knew the bar here was too low and needed to be raised, even if that was hard to do. You are among the 46 states that developed bold reform plans to compete for Race to the Top." -- Arne Duncan, April 15, 2011.

Rahm's hired army of protesters under investigation

2012-01-26T06:40:00.002-06:00

Pharaoh's army got drownded
O Mary don't you weep

The Sun-Times reports:

The Chicago Public Schools inspector general said Wednesday he is investigating reports that bused protesters were paid to carry signs or read scripts at school closing hearings. News of the probe came as Mayor Rahm Emanuel sloughed off questions about whether the practice was appropriate.

Strange media coverage on this. You won't find the IG investigation story in today's Tribune online. Instead there's a headline and lead-in under the Trib's Breaking News banner with only a link to the Sun-Times story. Unusual to pump competitor's story? Why, I wonder?

Tucson students walk out over banning of ethnic cultural studies

2012-01-26T06:12:00.004-06:00

Pres. Obama wrestled verbally over immigration policy with racist Ariz. Gov. Jan Brewer, after hundreds of Tucson students walked out of their schools in a coordinated protest against the banishment of the district’s acclaimed Mexican American Studies program.

Cholla High School student Ahtziri Iñiguez noted that she was following the march in the footsteps of her brother, a graduate of the Mexican American Studies Program.

“I think it’s very unfair that people here don’t let us learn about our own culture,” she said. “My brother took (Mexican American Studies) classes his junior year and he would go home and discuss with my Mom and interested me in education, so I knew I wanted to take these classes.” -- Common Dreams

Without federal intervention, the program appears doomed.

Misstate of the Union

2012-01-25T10:48:00.000-06:00

What Obama said:

"For less than 1 percent of what our nation spends on education each year, we've convinced nearly every state in the country to raise their standards for teaching and learning—the first time that's happened in a generation."

But he could have put it this way:

By adding just one-third of one percent to state coffers, the feds get to implement their version of education reform. That includes rating teachers and principals by their students’ scores on state tests; using those ratings to dismiss teachers with low scores and to pay bonuses to high scorers; and reducing local control of education. -- Mike Winerip, NYT: "In Race to the Top, the Dirty Work Is Left to Those on the Bottom"

Rahm's Army

2012-01-25T06:23:00.000-06:00

A busload of paid counter- protesters headed to school closings hearings from St. Stephen's church in Englewood.

It's tough times in the Windy City. Unemployment's high, especially for black youth. The church-run social-service agencies are jumping. Conditions are ripe for recruitment to the mayor's new army of rent-a-protesters to counter the growing mass resistance to neighborhood school closings. Chicago political machine hustlers like Englewood's Rev. Roosevelt Watkins III, do the mayor's dirty work in exchange for control of poverty funds and side money from the mayor's wealthy pals and charter school patrons.

Watkins' job is to fill buses with hungry men like Thaddeus Scott, 35 who come to his HOPE Organization looking for financial help with their energy bills only to be promised $50 if they will attend school-related “rallies” at the board of education. The slick Watkins, pastor of Bethlehem Star M.B. Church and founder of Pastors United for Change denies they were paid to protest, saying money paid was "for training".

Scott and other recruits say they didn’t realize until the last minute that they were supposed to support school closings. One said he was promised $50 to speak at a rally “for schools,” but was stiffed $25 after Watkins complained he had publicly revealed at the hearing he was “compensated” for speaking. Many of the recruits end up switching sides and join the community protests in speaking out against the closings. Others earn their money by trying to start a brawl and disrupt the legitimate protests.

“I don’t want the $25 he owes me,” Scott, 35, told the Sun-Times. “He can keep his dirty money. You can quote that. “Why am I speaking out? Because I am in support of Crane [the high school whose closure he says he was supposed to support]. . . .“They thought for a few dollars they could get us to say whatever they want. . . . We were preyed upon.”

Stipends for training, indeed.

Shame of a nation

2012-01-24T05:20:00.003-06:00

After a decade of No Child Left Behind and three more years of Race To The Top, Black and Latino teenagers in U.S. schools are performing at academic levels equal to or lower than those of 30 years ago. According to a study by the Education Trust (one of the main supporters of NCLB), reasons for the low performance include:

Lowered expectations for students of color
Growing income inequality and lack of resources in low-income school districts
Unequal access to experienced teachers
An increased number of "out of field" teachers instructing minority students in subjects outside their area of expertise
Unconscious bias" by teachers and administrators.

"Young people of color are overrepresented in the poorest schools and the poorest neighborhoods," says Dominique Apollon, research director of the Applied Research Center. "There is a cumulative and compounding effect of structural deficiencies in many schools."

The study points out that low-income minority students are also more likely to have newly minted teachers, many of whom aren't equipped to help under-performing students get on track.

*****

Florida SOS tweeter, Rita Solnet @ritacolleen makes similar points in response to latest Florida school district rankings. Tweets Rita: "FL's top ranked Sch District [St. Johns County] has lowest % of poor children. We need a study to tell us that?" She adds, "FL's worst ranked District [Madison County] had highest % of poor children (at 78%). Again, we needed a study for this?

You're right Rita. We certainly don't need another look at FCAT scores to tell us that poverty and racial segregation and isolation continue to have a major impact on measurable student learning outcomes in Florida and elsewhere, despite the denials by many corporate school reformers who continue to brush off these factors as "excuses." These latest studies should sound the alarm that current administration policies are not working. The continued use of student standardized test scores as the main basis for teacher evaluation, "merit" pay and closing and punishing schools in poor communities, will only continue to reinforce this shameful trend.

*****

If you need more evidence that these issues transcend the classroom, take a look a how Florida's 67 counties stack up on the deliverance of health care. Once again we find wealthy, white St. Johns County near the top (3) and largely poor and black Madison County near the bottom (65).

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

2012-01-23T06:19:00.001-06:00

Duncan's Race to the Top bus

Michael Winerip

In August 2010, Mr. Duncan visited the state union’s headquarters in his Race to the Top bus (he really has one) and told union and department officials that New York had won a grant “because of your collective leadership, your act of courage.” -- NYT, "In Race to the Top, the Dirty Work Is Left to Those on the Bottom."

New York Gov. Cuomo

"If we don't do this, we lose the Race to the Top money, so the equation is simple at the end of the day," Mr. Cuomo told a packed auditorium near the state Capitol here. "No evaluation, no money, period." -- Wall St. Journal

Calif. Gov. Brown

"Second-graders take five days of tests. That's longer than I spent on the bar exam." -- L.A. Times

Valerie Strauss

Really, Ms. Rhee, how can a formula ever accurately factor in the impact of a sleepless night in a homeless shelter on a hungry student’s performance on a high-stakes test? Did you know that 22 percent of American children live in poverty and that low test scores are always correlated with family income? -- WaPo, "Dear Michelle Rhee: About that teacher evaluation study"

Charles Blow

But many Republicans are willing to forgive his [Gingrich's] flaws and his past because he connects with a silent slice of their core convictions — their deep-seated, long-simmering issues with an “elite” media bias, minority “privilege” and Obama’s “otherness.” -- NYT, "Newt's Southern Strategy"

Ericka Hoffman, 26, a junior at Cal State-Bakersfield

“People in positions of power, I think they believe nothing is going to happen,” she said. “We’re just going to yell and scream and hold up signs and nothing’s going to change. But you’ve got an entire generation of people that realize something is wrong and something has to change because the system is wrong. There’s more of us than there are of them.” -- The New Student Activism, NYT

Sound the alarm! The "activists" are coming

2012-01-20T08:02:00.002-06:00

The “democratic engagement” faction within civics education has recently re-energized and is pressing hard on schools to push kids into activism. -- Chester Finn

Finn (right) and his Fordham crew

The Occupy Movement, the Wisconsin recall initiative, and other signs of increased youth and student activism have education conservatives jittery. Chief among them is think-tanker Chester Finn, head of the right-wing Fordham Institue. His latest screed, "Should schools turn children into activists? And should Uncle Sam help?" is aimed at, what he imagines as the activist wing of civics education.

Onthe other side, we find much greater emphasis on civic participation andactivism, on voluntarism and “service learning,” and on what is often termed“collective decision making” (or problem solving) and “democratic engagement,”which often boils down into the communitarian view that issues facing societyare best dealt with through group action, by people joining hands and workingtogether rather than through the political process.

Worse yet, moans Finn, is the role of the Dept. of Education and Arne Duncan in promoting this "democratic engagement" faction and Duncan's use of the words, "action civics". I must have somehow missed all that. The last thing I remember about Duncan was his mad attempt to head off Matt Damon at the airport in D.C. last summer, to keep him from speaking at the national Save Our Schools March & Rally. That must have been before he joined the "democratic engagement" faction.

But what really has Finn's toga all in a knot, is "A Crucible Moment," a publication, written by D.O.E. higher-ups Martha Kantor and Eduardo Ochoa.While I admit, I only scanned the tract, it looks pretty good to me. Obviously, Finn is not me.

He is pissed that the D.O.E. awarded a contract to the Global Perspective Institute, Inc. (GPI) and a subcontract to the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) to lead a national dialogue that would result in recommendations about strengthening students’ civic learning and democratic engagement as a core component of college study. The result was the formation of a National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement headed by Larry Braskamp, who I remember as a progressive educator and decent guy from his days as dean at UIC's College of Education back in the early 90's.

Civics without action is an empty shell. Finn's attack on people for "joining hands and working together," shows how much disdain the ed-cons have for participatory democracy.

Prof. Timuel Black's Papers

2012-01-19T09:21:00.002-06:00

Black (second from left) next to Mayor Harold Washington in 1984. |Courtesy Chicago Public Library

Library officials on Wednesday unveiled the Timuel D. Black, Jr. Papers, the massive collection from the 93-year-old professor emeritus at City Colleges of Chicago who also wears the titles of author, civil rights, labor and political activist and oral historian. The papers can be viewed at the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at Woodson Regional Library, 9525 S. Halsted St.

Michael Flug, the retired senior archivist of the Harsh collection, brought in Black’s papers to the library between 2003 and 2010. Flug told the Sun-Times:

“I think it’s arguably the single best collection of material on Chicago African-American history that anybody has ever opened,” Flug said. “It’s not only large, it’s incredibly varied. Tim was involved in hundreds of different organizations in labor rights, civil rights, women’s rights, education initiatives, and he’s a jazz enthusiast so there is a fabulous jazz collection.”

Rahm's retreat was phony

2012-01-19T08:46:00.001-06:00

Protesting the mayor's latest assault on free speech.

With protesters chanting “We vote no” outside, a compliant city council approved Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to deny First Amendment rights to the thousands of protesters who are expected to come Chicago for the NATO and G-8 summits. The cost to taxpayers for the summits will likely exceed a billion dollars, if past summits are any indication.

Emanuel's threat to face-down protesters with an unprecedented show of military force was met with nationwide outrage and embarrassment, even on the part of many Emanuel supporters who fear a repeat of the 1968 "police riots" at the Democratic Convention. The mayor was forced to retreat. But his retreat turned out to be a sham. He backed off only a minor threat to levy excessive fines against protesters but kept the rest of his assault on constitutional rights intact.

According to the Sun-Times:

Surviving measures include: more surveillance cameras; parks and beaches closed until 6 a.m.; sweeping parade restrictions and higher fees for those events and empowering Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy to “deputize” out-of-state law enforcement personnel in the event that demonstrators overwhelm Chicago Police. The mayor would also be granted sweeping authority to purchase goods and services for the summits — without City Council approval or competitive bidding — provided those items cannot be purchased under existing contracts.

Ald. Hairston

The council passed the anti-protest plan by a 41-5 vote with only one dissenting voice, that of Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th), being raised. “We have to be careful of how we regulate content. I still have concerns about freedom of expression and civil liberties,” Hairston said.

Shame on self-proclaimed progressives who voted for the plan, like Ald. Joe Moore (49th) who applied his lips tightly on the mayor's behind.

“I congratulate Mayor Emanuel ... and other members of the mayor’s team for their open-mindedness and lack of defensiveness about their proposals. It is truly a refreshing change in City Hall,” Moore said.

Rahm's retreat

2012-01-18T05:44:00.000-06:00

Eric Ruder from the Coalition Against NATO/G8 Agenda of War and Poverty (CANGATE) speaks on Mayor Emanuel's new ordinances concerning protests in the City of Chicago. Tuesday, January 17, 2012 | Brian Jackson~Sun-Times

Classic Rahm. He pushes the envelope on First Amendment rights and then pulls back in the face of protest.

The Sun-Times reports, he canceled plans to dramatically increase fines for resisting arrest to appease aldermen and protesters concerned he was trampling First Amendment rights in the name of securing the NATO and G-8 summits. But I suspect there were some phone calls made from White House. This is an election year and the last thing Dems need is a repeat of '68 Chicago police riot which marked the beginning of the end for the old Daley machine as well as for Hubert Humphrey's presidential candidacy.

Funniest quote of the day came from top cop Garry McCarthy who claimed that the concessions shows that City Hall is “listening to the voice of the people.”

"SAVE OUR SCHOOLS!"

Meanwhile, neighborhood protests against Rahm's school closings continued on MLK Day. SOS Chicago's Bob George reports from the Marquette Park neighborhood where a little more than 45 years ago Dr Martin Luther King marched through the Same Park for fair and open housing. Dr King said of this march that he encountered the most hostile crowds he had in his entire career.

Bob writes:

I attended the March and Rally at Marquette Elementary school on Chicago's South Side on Martin Luther King Day, [organized by the Chicago Teachers Union and community groups]. Chicago Public Schools have targeted Marquette for Turnaround Parents Students , Teachers and the community are fighting this privatization move to have AUSL a non-profit turnaround take over in 2013. Today CPS turns a blind eye on the needs of this same community.

Approximately 250 Parents Students , Teachers and the community members rallied at Marquette Elementary School and then marched in Dr King's steps then rallied at Marquette Park to hear speeches from parents, youth leaders, ministers and union leader Karen Lewis. The last leg of the march was to a home of an 8-year-old boy who had recently been murdered where we joined in prayer for Peace and Justice. We chanted Whose Schools Our Schools , Save Our Schools and sang We shall Overcome with added lyrics of We shall Save Our Schools someday.

Rangel takes U.N.O. into the lucrative charter business

2012-01-17T05:28:00.000-06:00

Juan Rangel

Sunday's NYT has a Chicago News Coop story, "A Lifetime of Close Ties and Growing Influence," about U.N.O. which has become the mayor's front group in the Mexican community. The machine boss is Juan Rangel, who successfully took U.N.O. into the charter school operating business.

While the city's neighborhood schools are being strangled by budget cuts, Rangel's ties with the mayor and his political clout in Springfield has charter operator U.N.O. sitting pretty. According to the Times:

The group, which ran a single charter school until 2005, now has 11 and expects to open another six within two years. In 2012, U.N.O. will have a total budget of about $95 million, the organization’s executives said. The vast majority of that financing will come from government sources, including $52 million to run existing schools and $33 million to build the new ones.

My favorite Rangel quote comes at the very end:

"I guess I’ve never understood the concept of being too powerful.”

\WEEKEND QUOTABLES

2012-01-16T06:55:00.002-06:00

Dr. King

“...The richest nation on Earth has never allocated enough resources to build sufficient schools, to compensate adequately its teachers, and to surround them with the prestige our work justifies." -- Valerie Strauss, "MLK's prescient thinking on education reform."

Bill Moyers

In an era of gross inequality there’s both irony and relevance in Woody Guthrie’s song. That “ribbon of highway” he made famous? It’s faded and fraying in disrepair, the nation’s infrastructure of roads and bridges, once one of our glories, now a shambles because fixing them would require spending money, raising taxes and pulling together. -- Moyers & Winship, "Woody Guthrie, more relevant than ever."

Marv Davidov

'60s Freedom Rider

"I want people to remember and tell funny stories about me and the struggle, and try to create a deeper, more profound movement and build the numbers." -- Star-Tribune, "Peace Activist Marv Davidov dies"

Stand for Children back in town to 'educate us' about turnarounds

2012-01-13T11:12:00.000-06:00

Like Freddy Kreuger, he's baaack!

It could be time for a mic check as Jonah Edelman and his well-funded, out-of-town gang of professional union busters at Stand For Children, return to Chicago. On Wednesday, the group announced that it is launching a radio campaign to “educate Chicagoans about the value of public turnaround schools.” Thank goodness we have people from Portland here to educate us about how great these turnarounds are.

According to Catalyst,

[SFC director] Gonzalez is aware that the organization carries with it a negative weight, especially among unionized teachers and grassroots organizations. Stand for Children was a staunch supporter of Senate Bill 7, which limited teacher tenure and made it more difficult for teachers to strike. Senate Bill 7 also gave Chicago school leaders the power to unilaterally lengthen the school day, which had previously been a subject in collective bargaining. After the bill was passed last year, in a speech in front of the Aspen Institute, Executive Director Josh Jonah Edelman described how his group outfoxed the CTU in getting the bill passed and bragged that the bill would effectively prevent the teachers from ever striking.

I don't think Jonah will be assigned to do any follow-up panels up in Aspen after this one. Do you?

Hoping 2012 will see a rebirth of parents movement

2012-01-13T05:46:00.001-06:00

Thinking back to Chicago's dynamic school reform movement of the late '80s and early '90s (before mayoral control) and wondering if it's possible to capture that democratic spirit for change we all felt back then. That movement was sparked by parents who desperately wanted greater opportunities and equity for their children within the public schools system.

The last decade of conservative No Child Left Behind policies accompanied by the growing influence of corporate reformers and power philanthropists, has also produced a movement of conservative parent groups focused on banning books, school re-segregation, and attacking the teaching of evolution and multiculturalism. The coercive and divisive Parent Trigger laws enforced policies allowing a group of parents to hand over public schools to private management companies.

In New Hampshire, the Tea Party dominated Legislature on Wednesday overrode the governor's veto to enact a new law allowing parents to object to any part of the school curriculum.

But after 10 years, NCLB and the conservative accountability wave has proven to be a disaster for public education by any credible measure. Privately-run charter schools, which offered false hope for many parents, have been shown to under-perform even traditional public schools. Parent opposition also appears to be growing in reaction to school closings in under-served communities and further instability and loss of opportunity for their children.

Hopefully, the conservative wave will be reversed as we head towards the 2012 elections. The birth of the Occupy Movement, Save Our Schools, and the emergence of progressive parent groups like Parents Across America offer a good opportunity to rebuild.

"Results for money..." Bush defends NCLB

2012-01-12T06:44:00.000-06:00

Desperately seeking a politician who, in this election year, will still openly defend NCLB on it's 10th anniversary? Look no further than Andrew Rotherham's (who else?) Time Magazine interview with Pres. G.W. Bush --the man who turned the Ownership Society into a catch phrase. Bush responds to Rotherham's softball question this way:

First of all, I am extremely proud of the effects of No Child Left Behind. For the first time, the federal government basically demanded results in return for money. It started by saying, We expect you to measure [student performance]. As a result, there has been a noticeable change in achievement, particularly among minority groups. And I’m proud of that accomplishment and proud of the fact we were able to work with people from both parties to get it done.

Bush saves his greatest praise for, "people like [former school superintendents] Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, people who are willing to challenge the status quo, tell you that one thing that made it effective was the accountability."

Tom Toch on Voucher Redux

2012-01-11T08:19:00.002-06:00

Tom Toch, senior fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, writes in this month's Kappan, on the resurgence of school vouchers. Toch says that the 2010 elections led to a flurry of new voucher initiatives, but that there’s little to recommend vouchers as a large-scale reform strategy.

When House Republicans cut a trillion-dollar budget deal with Senate Democrats and the White House last spring, Speaker of the House John Boehner demanded a couple of pot sweeteners. One was relaunching the D.C. Opportunity Scolarship Program that gave low-income District of Columbia residents federal vouchers to pay tuition at the city’s private and parochial schools. Established by Congress in 2004 under Republican
leadership, the program was defunded five years later, with Democrats in control of Capitol Hill and teacher unions pushing the Obama Administration to shutter the program.

Boehner got the money he wanted for D.C. — nearly $120 million over six years — and his victory has helped fuel a resurgence of the school voucher movement following last year’s elections, which brought pro-voucher Republicans to power in the House and many states.

You can read the entire commentary here.

Why is this N.J. charter app being approved?

2012-01-10T06:34:00.000-06:00

The New Jersey suburb of Highland Park needs a new charter school like a fish needs a bicycle. But after her bogus applications had been rejected three times, and despite community protests, real-estate agent Sharon Akman, may finally get her Tikun Olam Hebrew charter school along with a $600,000 grant, courtesy of Arne Duncan and the D.O.E.

Writes Michael Winerip in Sunday's Times:

For each child who leaves a district to attend a charter, the charter receives 90 percent of the district’s per-pupil spending allotment. In modest-size communities like Highland Park, with a district of 1,500 students, that can take a substantial bite out of a school budget. What has been so frustrating to opponents is that despite repeated distortions in the Tikun Olam applications, the charter still may open in September.

How could federal oversight be so lax?

The answer, says Winerip, charters are the darlings of "an education establishment that includes Democrats (President Obama) and Republicans (Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey) with strong financial backing (the Gates, Broad and Walton foundations)."

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

2012-01-09T06:29:00.000-06:00

Ben Joravsky

Not really sure what it is about Mayor Emanuel and public libraries, but the dude never looks so happy as when he's cutting their hours or firing their staff. In this case, he's vowing to close the branch libraries on Mondays. Or as he might put it—let those fuckers get their books on Amazon! -- The Reader

Charles Blow

Racial politics play well for Republicans. Santorum and Paul finished second and third in Iowa. Time will tell if Gingrich rebounds. Playing to racial anxiety and fear isn’t a fluke; it’s a strategy that energizes the Republican base. -- "The G.O.P's 'Black People's Platform"

Nicholas Kristof

One of the biggest long-term challenges we face, I think, is the way an underclass is becoming stratified in the United States, replicating poverty from generation to generation. -- "Investing in Early Childhood"

Marilyn Katz

[Police Supt.] McCarthy's statement that his police force is gearing up for mass arrests and [Mayor]Emanuel's proposed legislation send a message that is more chilling than welcoming, despite official assurances that the city respects free speech. -- Chicago Tribune: "Reining in Those Pesky Protesters"

Report from last night's hearing on the closing of Crane High School

2012-01-07T18:16:00.004-06:00

Hearing on Chicago school closing. (M. Ritter)

I couldn't make it to the hearing at Malcolm X College last night. So I asked Martin Ritter to send Small Talk a report. Here it is. -- M.K.

Unreal event tonight.

Donald Fraynd was the MC and Jesse Ruiz of the Board was present. Around 200 rental protesters were bused in [by the mayor's people]. They didn't know why they were there but all said they got paid. Around 200 Crane supporters: community allies, students, alums, staff, etc.

Crane Coalition prepared a Power Point presentation -- but were told we could not present it... so after the initial Board presentation 10-15 Crane presenters engaged in civil disobedience and stood at the mike, made a statement about presenting the power point and stood silent. This was extremely effective as our crew and even the rental protesters began to shout together: Show the power point!!! This went speaker after speaker for 20-30 minutes. Jesse Ruiz and CPS didn't know what to do. Finally they relented and let us show our stuff that refuted tons of CPS data. The place erupted as we began to win the hearts and minds of the bused in folks. CPS looked confused and worried.

It gets better: At that point the public officials walk in together. Sen. Annazette Collins, Alderman Burnett, Congressman Davis, Fmr Alderman Ed Smith, and Alderman Fioretti (wearing a Crane Varsity Letterman's
Jacket - the place goes nuts for this). They speak one by one stating their position supporting Crane staying open and opposed to phase out!

They tell CPS - listen to the people. Congressman Davis was more on the neutral side but he said his job was to listen to the people and he said the people were demanding Crane to stay open. The bussed in people are either silent or on our side. A good number of current and former students, parents and community reps speak.

After that person after person tell CPS - "Dont phase out Crane." 8 p.m.comes and CPS high tails it outta there. Round 1 victory.

Martin (Marty) L. Ritter

Gabe Lyon, 2011 Chicagoan of the Year

2012-01-06T11:53:00.003-06:00

Congratulations and best wishes to Gabe and Project Exploration.

Is Vallas angling for Duncan's job? Just asking.

2012-01-06T09:36:00.001-06:00

Reading Paul Vallas' strange EdWeek assessment of decade-old NCLB I had a funny thought. This guy is angling for a job in Obama's administration. First read his comment and tell me if I'm nuts.

In summation, I think NCLB's legacy is that it has been the next powerful phase in the federal government’s efforts to improve schools by demanding greater accountability and providing more resources, as begun by the Clinton administration, and it provided a solid base for the current administration to build upon with its ambitious Race to the Top initiative.

The thought struck me that Vallas, who is as they say, between jobs now that his consulting gigs in Haiti and Chile are over, could be a logical replacement for the inept Arne Duncan. Talk about irony. It was Duncan who replaced Vallas as Chicago schools CEO under Mayor Daley. Vallas went on to run the Philadelphia school system into the ground financially and then moved on to create the two-tier school system in post-Katrina New Orleans. In both cities, Vallas led the way in replacing public schools with privately-managed charters.

Duncan on the other hand, has failed to get his K-12 re-authorization bill through congress. He has totally alienated the administration from it's base among teachers and their unions (despite the premature NEA endorsement of Obama) and he crashed and burned with his comment that Hurricane Katrina "was the best thing" that happened to schools in New Orleans. Duncan has staked his reputation upon mayoral control of the schools. Vallas -- not so much.

So I'm thinking, with elections coming up and change in the air, Vallas may be sniffing around Duncan's door.

CPS parents, community groups protest school closings, privatization

2012-01-05T05:48:00.000-06:00

Chicago mayor stars in right-wing, anti-public school video

2012-01-05T05:14:00.003-06:00

Thanks to brother Fred I came upon this right-wing propaganda video targeting public school and teachers unions staring none other than Rahm Emanuel.

"A Tale of Two Missions," co-stars the head of the anti-union Michigan-based Education Action Group, Kyle Olson, and Juan Williams, who was fired from National Public Radio for making anti-Muslim comments on air.

The video is part of National School Choice Week, the continuation of a campaign promoting vouchers and privately-run charter schools and attacking public education and collective-bargaining rights for teachers. The campaign began with the film, Waiting for Superman in 2010 and is backed by EAG and the far-right Heritage Foundation whose own video "What is School Choice," is featured on the NSCW website.

Backers of NSCW include usual suspects, Michelle Rhee, John McCain, John Boehner, Joe Lieberman, Jeb Bush, and FOX News regular, Dick Morris. Others offering NSCW testimonials include Liz Dreckman of the Arizona School Choice Trust, Andrew Broy of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, and Patrick Kaiser of the The Center for an Educated Georgia.

Surprised to see Chicago's Democratic mayor in the center of this right-wing campaign? I'm not.

Teaching and learning in a strange land

2012-01-04T09:16:00.002-06:00

One of the by-products of the accountability movement and high-tech data management tools--like on-line grade-books--is the elevation of filling in boxes over actual learning. -- Teacher in a Strange Land

I really liked this reflective piece by Nancy Flanagan, "Who's responsible for this, anyway?" I think I'll use it in my Phil. of Ed. course this quarter. Nancy is a retired veteran teacher who blogs regularly for EdWeek. She was also one of the main organizers of the SOS March in D.C. last summer and was recently elected to the new SOS National Steering Committee.

Nancy stands poles apart from the test-crazy, corporate types who now dominate the field of school reform. Michael Wiuerip shines a spotlight on these creeps in this NYT piece, about Pearson, the London-based publishing conglomerate that has become a giant in the multi-billion-dollar testing industry. Pearson uses its tax-exempt foundation to buy-off willing district administrators in exchange for contracts and a buy-in to the testing madness.

Strange land indeed.

NAACP resolution on charter schools

2012-01-02T11:38:00.002-06:00

In a process established by the NAACP Constitution, this resolution was adopted by the delegates to the 101st Annual Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, during the legislative session in July, 2010. It was subsequently ratified by the NAACP National Board of Directors at its meeting on October 15, 2010. This resolution is now the policy of the Association, and is “binding on the Board of Directors, the Executive Committee, the Officers, and all units.”

WHEREAS, charter schools are public schools which were originally designed to explore new approaches to educate students; and

WHEREAS, in some cases, charter schools have become a school model that is used to segregate students; and

WHEREAS, charter schools have too seldom informed the education community regarding innovative instructional strategies that accelerate academic achievement in the general population of students; and

WHEREAS, the Center for Research in Educational Outcomes (CREDO) which examined charter school data in fifteen (15) states and the District of Columbia confirmed that only 17% of the charter school students in the study outperformed their peers, while 46% performed no better and 37% performed worse; and

WHEREAS, charter schools operate more autonomously than traditional public schools in the use of funds, adherence to state laws and school policies, selection and removal of students, and the selection and removal of staff, thus creating separate and unequal conditions for success; and

WHEREAS, charter schools draw funding away from already underfunded traditional public schools; and

WHEREAS, the NAACP recognizes that at best, quality charter schools serve only a small percentage of children of color and disadvantaged students for whom the NAACP advocates relative to said population left behind in failing schools; and

WHEREAS, the NAACP recognizes the urgent need to provide quality education for all children, not only those fortunate enough to win lotteries to attend existing quality charter schools; and

WHEREAS, the NAACP is committed to finding broad based, effective solutions for immediate implementation to improve the quality of public education for all children.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the NAACP will strongly advocate for immediate, overarching improvements to the existing public education system; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the NAACP rejects the emphasis on charter schools as the vanguard approach for the education of children, instead of focusing attention, funding, and policy advocacy on improving existing, low performing public schools and will work through local, state and federal legislative processes to ensure that all public schools are provided the necessary funding, support and autonomy necessary to educate all students; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that the NAACP will urge all of its Units to work to support public schools throughout the nation to educate all children to their highest potential.

Roslyn M. Brock Leon Russell Benjamin Todd Jealous
Chairman Chairman President & CEO
National Board of Directors Committee on Resolutions

NEW YEAR QUOTABLES

2012-01-01T22:25:00.043-06:00

Barack Obama

"I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists." -- CNN

Lu Young, supt. Jessamine County, Ky.

“I never had any conversation or discussion with anyone from Pearson about the awarding of the testing contract during this trip or later.” -- Michael Winerip, NYT

Jason Kamras, D.C.chief of human capital.

“We want to make great teachers rich.” -- NY Times

Phil Kadner

"He held an elected post that was unnecessary, that actually had been abolished but was resurrected so someone could fleece the taxpayers once more. Eighteen months on probation somehow seems inadequate." -- Corrupt IL schools boss gets 18 months’ probation

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/31/2567321/miami-dade-schools-ride-wave-of.html#storylink=cpy

Summing up 2011: David Sirota did it for me

2011-12-30T11:33:00.002-06:00

SOS March & Rally, July 30, 2011

I was going to write one of those end-of-the-year blog posts. But lucky for me, Salon.com's David Sirota ("In education, it’s all about dollars and cents") did it for me. Now I can concentrate on getting ready for classes next week. Thanks David for getting it right.

As the revelations of 2011 prove, students aren’t helped by billionaire-executives-turned-education-dilettantes who leverage their riches to force their faith-based theories into schools. Likewise, they aren’t aided by millionaire pundits sententiously claiming that we just “need better parents.” And kids most certainly don’t benefit from politicians pretending that incessant union-busting, teacher-bashing and standardized testing represent successful school “reforms.”

Read David Sirota's entire commentary here.

A biblical school reform metaphor

2011-12-29T09:15:00.003-06:00

But who's David and who's Goliath?

There's a strange dynamic going on inside the online education reform debate in which the well-funded reformers play the role of wimpy David and the scrappy traditional educators are Goliath. -- Alexander Russo

I've got to hand it to provocateur metaphor-mixing Russo. He got some of my fellow SOSers and current reform critics to take the bait by referring to them as mighty Goliaths overpowering the wimpy Davids of corporate school reform in internet combat.

Russo, a paid blogger for Scholastic, got what he was after -- someone to take notice, stir some controversy and a hoped-for circulation boost. I have no problem with that. I've worked as a paid writer (beats the hell out of working for free) for several publications myself. But there should be a special place in hell for Russo's patron, Scholastic Inc., if only for their publishing and distribution of coal industry propaganda to the nation's fourth graders.

Speaking of heaven and hell, let me put on my old-testament scholar's cap for a minute (watch closely, you probably won't see this happen again), to take on Russo's misuse and abuse of good- book mythology. Remember, the biblical David's victory in the battle against the Philistines had less to do with size and and shot accuracy than it did with social justice. David stood on just ground, sling-shot in hand against the enemies of God's helpless people. That's hardly a metaphor for Bill Gates' minions.

How does that metaphor play out here? Let's just say it's a stretch (no sling-shot pun intended). Any comparisons between God's king and corporate school reformers like Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, and Wendy Kopp come purely from the pipe dreams of a Philistine. In other words -- what is Russo smoking? Neither are today's teachers, parents and community activists helpless wanderers, waiting for a Superman messiah to lead them.

My fellow SOS activist and EdWeek blogger Nancy Flanagan (Teacher in a Strange Land) thanks Russo for "acknowledging a handful of the swelling cadre of articulate educators and parents who are mad as hell about what's happening to their public schools and just not going to take it anymore. We like it when our efforts are noticed and shared."

But Nancy isn't buying Russo's David/Goliath metaphor either.

One at a time, the big-boy funders are picking off nonprofits (not to mention the federal government) and re-shaping their work toward a reformy mindset. A little anti-LIFO here, a bit of merit pay there, a heavily subsidized "innovation charter," the repeated concept that grant funding and privatization are the only routes to genuinely raising the bar. If you want the pay, you have to play. They may have even lured the NEA over for a quick drink with their youngest and hottest teacher recruits.

Anthony Cody (Living in Dialogue), one of the "Goliaths" named in Russo's post, has a different theory. He thinks that the corporate heavies have a disdain for public debate and carefully choose their arenas so that they can always win.

They are choosing as their forums places where they know they can win. Video surfaced of Stand For Children CEO Jonah Edelman speaking frankly to fellow "reformers" at the Aspen Institute, disclosing exactly how his organization had muscled its way into Illinois, supporting legislation that eroded the ability of teacher unions to negotiate over basic things like the length of the working day, and undermined seniority.

Just to be safe, I consulted with some other of my fellow hermeneutic scholars, some of whom interpret this dust-up as Russo's attempt to egg on his favorite corporate funders to become more active (if you know what I mean) in the internet battle against us reform infidels.

Others interpret Russo as a misunderstood prophet who is actually praising us progressives for our feistyness (yes indeed) and our organization (if only it were true) and telling us that in the in the long run, we have the power to overcome and save our schools.

I'll go with that.

What the 1%ers have to say for themselves

2011-12-28T08:54:00.002-06:00

Quotes from New York Magazine piece, by Noreen Malone, ‘I Stand Guilty of Being a Fat Cat.’

Yuck!
Billionaire Tom Golisano:

“If I hear a politician use the term ‘paying your fair share’ one more time, I’m going to vomit.”

Right-wing loony
Home Depot Ken Langone reclaimed certain terms that have been used to oppress his people:

"I am a fat cat, I’m not ashamed. If you mean by fat cat that I’ve succeeded, yeah, then I’m a fat cat. I stand guilty of being a fat cat."

Shop at Home Depot? Are you kidding me?
Another Home Depot co-founder, 82-year-old Bernard Marcus said, regarding possible targeting from Occupy Wall Street protestors, the only thing to do was approach the whole thing with Zenlike calm.

"Who gives a crap about some imbecile? Are you kidding me?”

There's more: white men with money, white men with money talking to reporters, the wail of the 1%

While public schools go begging...

2011-12-27T06:02:00.003-06:00

Cities spend billions on militarization

Thousands of local police departments nationwide have been amassing stockpiles of military-style equipment in the name of homeland security, aided by more than $34 billion in federal grants since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a Daily Beast investigation conducted by the Center for Investigative Reporting has found. Obvious question for Occupiers is, who are these WMDs really pointing at?

Answers could come from Chuck Wexler who runs the govt.-funded Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). Despite implausible denials here and in this obviously embedded NPR story, it was Wexler who coordinated those conference calls with city police chiefs to discuss their response to the Occupy Wall Street movement last fall. He basically admits PERF'S involvement in this Tweet from Nov. 1

Those conference calls were the prelude to the Oakland attacks on occupiers which led to the wounding of Iraq war vet, Scott Olsen and to the pepper spraying of passive protesters at UC-Davis. Now the cost to those cities is likely to skyrocket as they face lawsuits over free speech, use of force.

******

ABC News reports that anti-govt. anti-taxer Rick Perry's security costs Texas taxpayers up to $400,000 a Month. And he's not even a Chicago alderman.

Ben Falik (really) at Huffington, claims there are some really great deals in Detroit if you want to buy a school.

"What's stopping me from opening my own charter school?" Not much, in all likelihood... You'll want to choose a name for your school that exudes credibility and markets the particular mission of the school. Assuming it's still available, I recommend Academy for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.

CHRISTMAS QUOTABLES

2011-12-26T10:28:00.001-06:00

Community activist Martha Sanchez, right, shares an emotional moment with her children, Gonzalo Romero, 17, and Catherine Romero, 12, celebrating victory in an eight-year battle to shut down a metal-finishing plant across the street from 28th Street Elementary School in Los Angeles. (Luis Sinco, Los Angeles Times)

Danny Schechter

I did my Christmas penance back in a very cold and all too empty Zuccotti Park on Christmas day. There had been a 24 hour prayer event and vigil. I had only stopped in for a two hour stint—call it my Holiday witness—in time to hear the writer Jay Janson and others read from the still moving statement by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr on the need to get out of Vietnam and other countries Washington was then occupying/invading in the false name of freedom. -- The News Dissector

P.L. Thomas

Choruses of “no excuses” and “poverty is not destiny” punctuate almost all of the discourse and even reform plans coming from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, and Michelle Rhee, and the implications of these bromides are where the problems rest. In short, the real debate is not whether or not one side believes poverty matters and the other does not (this is genuinely a false dichotomy that likely does not exist). The real debate is where the source of what matters lies and how to address the impact of poverty on the lives and learning of children. -- Poverty Matters!: A Christmas Miracle

Ross Caputi

What we did to Fallujah cannot be undone, and I see no point in attacking the people in my former unit. What I want to attack are the lies and false beliefs. I want to destroy the prejudices that prevented us from putting ourselves in the other's shoes and asking ourselves what we would have done if a foreign army invaded our country and laid siege to our city. -- I am sorry for the role I played in Fallujah (Guardian)

Andrew Hartman

TFA is, at best, another chimerical attempt in a long history of chimerical attempts to sell educational reform as a solution to class inequality. At worst, it’s a Trojan horse for all that is unseemly about the contemporary education reform movement. -- Teach for America: Liberal mission helps conservative agenda (WaPo)

Katharine Mieszkowski

At Cesar Chavez Elementary School, physical education lessons, taught by classroom teachers, are held on a fenced-in blacktop lot below a huge, colorful mural of the school’s namesake. In the mural, Mr. Chavez, the late civil rights leader, is surrounded by a crowd of children as he carries a banner that reads “Help me take responsibility for my own life so I can be free at last.”--The Haves’ Children Are Healthier Than the Have-Nots’ (NYT)

End of Iraq War? Let's not celebrate quite yet

2011-12-25T04:37:00.010-06:00

Brecht
When the leaders speak of peace
The common folk know
That war is coming.
When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out. -- Bertolt Brecht

A letter from a friend tells me the war is over, that Obama has pulled all combat troops out of Iraq. She suggests that we who protested Bush's invasion from the beginning should hold a press conference and claim credit even though the anti-war movement in the U.S. has long been dormant, anesthetized since Obama's election in 2008.

Liberal peace activist, Tom Hayden writes in the L.A. Times that, "the war is as over as a war can be, and the peace movement should celebrate." The president himself has declared the war effort, "a success" and the New York Times goes so far as to tells us that "War Really Is Going Out of Style." Remember, it was the Times that banged the war drums the loudest in the months leading up to the invasion with article after article offering "proof" of weapons of mass destruction.

Hayden also sends around an interview with Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, who claims that "The tide of war is receding around the world."

Like my friend, I'm happy to recognize any and all accomplishments by the peace movement but only with my favorite caveat attached, Tell no lies. Claim no easy victories.

Like Hayden, I'm happy about the pull-out and detest war industry lobbyists and opportunist Republicans like John McCain, who are trying to score points by calling the withdrawal "premature" and arguing for a large residual force to remain in Iraq. McCain knows full well that Obama had no choice but to pull out after negotiations with the Al-Maliki regime broke down. I'd also be elated if we could get out from under the great financial burden a decade of war has placed on our backs. The war cost, amounting to $2 trillion by most estimates, has been a key factor in the current economic collapse and has helped devastate public education and erode civil liberties.

In the pit of my stomach I know that any anti-war celebrations are premature and just plain wrong, considering the death and devastation our retreating troops are leaving behind. I mean --thousands of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed; the cradle of civilization bombed, battered and bleeding with little left of infrastructure, torn by sectarian violence which was inflamed by the U.S. 10-year occupation. A corrupt, anti-democratic, U.S.--installed but pro-Iranian regime, in Baghdad sitting next door to the world's largest embassy, guarded by mercenaries from the murderous group of thugs and assassins formerly known as Blackwater. Their main job, it seems, will be to protect the western oil profiteers from tripping over each other for a shot at Iraqi oil.

Then there's the accompanying erasure of memory about the torture cells at Abu-Ghraib and the 2005 Haditha massacre.

We broke it, but we sure as hell have no intention of fixing it. Tom, celebrate? Really?

******

Largest embassy in the world

Now comes the news, leaking out in dribs and drabs, that the war in Iraq may not be as "over as over can be." A NYT article by Helene Cooper and Thom Shanker appears on Christmas eve, describing a new, secret phase of U.S. military action in Iraq. According to this and other reports, "the responsibility for security assistance" has now moved to the C.I.A., "which operates in Iraq under a separate authority, independent of the military." The agency historically has operated its own strike teams, and it also has the authority to hire indigenous operatives to participate in its counterterrorism missions.

“As the U.S. military has drawn down to zero in terms of combat troops, the U.S. intelligence community has not done the same,” a senior administration official said.

The U.S. also has about 40,000 combat troops remaining throughout the region, including a ground combat unit that was one of the last out of Iraq — and remains, at least temporarily, just across the border in Kuwait. Significant numbers of long-range strike aircraft also are on call aboard aircraft carriers and at bases in the region.

Rhodes tries to counter the NYT story in the plausible-denial language only a Defense Dept. bureaucrat could love.

"I don't think we're looking to reallocate our military footprint in any significant way from Iraq. They won't be reallocated to other countries in the region in any substantial numbers."

Eli Lake, writing for the Daily Beast, has more on the "CIA's covert Iraq Mission."

The programs involve everything from the deployment of remote sensors that scan the wireless spectrum of terrorist safe havens to stealth U.S.-Iraqi counterterrorism commando teams, and their status is uncertain as a U.S. diplomatic team negotiates with Iraqi leaders, according to officials, who made clear the CIA intends to keep a footprint inside the country even as troops leave by Dec. 31.

The causes of war still remain -- now more than ever. Big power contention for markets and for old sources of energy, strategic footholds, ports, etc... power and influence of the military-industrial complex and Wall St. on our elected politicians. The next phase may focus on Iran. A Libya-type attack on Syria is also possible.

The face of war is changing. Less and less emphasis on large-scale troop surges -- or what people like Rhodes call, "a large footprint." More on hi-tech warfare, drone wars and use of mercs. The New National Defense Act budget is larger than ever, replete with new assaults of civil liberties for Americans and foreigners living here.

No celebrations yet. Keep the pressure on! Use the 2012 elections to rebuild the movement against war. Bring all the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan! Demobilize Blackwater! Jobs and justice for our returning troops! Obama keep your promises! Close Guantanamo! End the torture!

That's where I'm at this Christmas Day.

Jose Rico named to lead White House initiative

2011-12-23T09:19:00.002-06:00

José Rico has been appointed as the new director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. The Initiative is in charge of expanding academic excellence and improving educational opportunities for Hispanics.

Hispanics are the largest minority group in the public education system, comprising more than 1 in 5 students in the nation's elementary, middle and high schools, according to a report by the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. The report shows that Hispanics will drive the growth of the labor force over the next several decades, accounting for 60 percent of the nation's growth between 2005 and 2050.

“Hispanic students have graduated at lower rates than others for a long time, making it impossible for America to advance if they continue to fall behind,” Rico said. “Improving Hispanic educational excellence isn't just a Latino problem. It's a challenge for all Americans.” -- Ed.Gov

Prior to his work with the Administration, Rico served from 2005-2009 as principal of Chicago's Multicultural Arts High School, named by then Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan as founding principal in 2005. He previously worked for the University of Illinois-Chicago's Small Schools Workshop to help develop small, innovative learning communities in public schools. He also worked during this time as a school improvement coach and on charter school projects with the Knowledge Works Foundation and the National Council of La Raza.

Parents beat back Rahm's re-segregation at LaSalle Academy

2011-12-23T08:59:00.001-06:00

LaSalle Language Academy

When Arne Duncan was Chicago schools CEO, one of his first goals was to eliminate the city's court ordered desegregation plan. The fight was carried on under Mayor Daley's regime by Duncan's successor, Ron Huberman, who finally got a federal judge to liquidate the consent decree. Rahm Emanuel's attempt to carry on Duncan's tradition and re-segregate one of the city's few remaining integrated magnet schools has been beaten back by protesting parents.

Emanuel tried to phase out LaSalle Language Academy Magnet School, where 1,500 kids apply for about 70 open seats every year. According to a WBEZ report, " it also would have turned one of the city’s few integrated schools into a majority white school by closing the door on students from other neighborhoods. And parents feared their school’s unique language programs—run with desegregation funds—would be lost."

Late Tuesday, schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard sent letters to parents saying the proposal is off the table.

Chicago communities rally to save their schools

2011-12-23T00:54:00.002-06:00

Board pushes longer school day on the high schools

Marquette Elementary School supporter Florence John
son, center, with Southwest Youth Collaborative, rallies Thursday with parents, teachers, community activists and students who oppose a “turnaround” project at the Southwest Side school. (Heather Charles, Chicago Tribune / December 22, 2011)

On a day when teachers, parents and students rallied to protest closings or turnaround projects at eight public schools, school district officials responded by announcing they would extend the high school day by 36 minutes beginning next fall. At Marquette, which has been on academic probation for seven of the last eight years and where less than 20 percent of students between the third and eighth grades are reading at grade level, teachers say the district has failed the school.

"We have been sabotaged over the last three years," said Jacqulyn Ward, an eighth-grade math teacher. "We've had three principals in that time; we've had new (area officers) who've come in and tried to change everything and who are now gone. It's been total instability."-- Chicago Tribune

Vallas, the master of disaster, takes interim job in Bridgeport

2011-12-21T11:45:00.001-06:00

"I am used to taking on great challenges and going into crisis situations," he said. "Our plan is to move fast." --Paul Vallas

I guess his consulting business in Haiti and Chile must have bottomed out. In any event, Vallas has taken a job, offered by his buddy Stefan Pryor in Bridgeport, as the interim superintendent. Look for him to make the best use of him limited time there to decimate collective bargaining, fire teachers in mass, eliminate as many neighborhood schools as possible and replace them with privately-managed charter schools. That's been his MO since leaving Chicago, Philly, post-Katrina New Orleans and post-quake Haiti. He's definitely the master of disaster.

Bridgeport is the state's largest city, whose district has some of the state's deepest poverty and not surprisingly its lowest test scores. Also look for Vallas to give a big no-bid contract to his old Chicago pals at Synesi.

Turnaround cronyism at Collins High

2011-12-20T16:56:00.001-06:00

Be sure and read Matt Farmer's excellent Huffington post on Chicago turnarounds. He lays bare the crony relationship between venture capitalist Mike Koldyke's Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL) and the mayor. It ends up with AUSL being handed Collins High for their very own.

That's when the money started to roll in. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation quickly ponied up $1 million to the heavy-hitters at AUSL for the Collins turnaround effort. That same foundation kicked in an additional $10.3 million for AUSL in 2008, and a chunk of that cash was used for teacher training at Collins...

The results can hardly be called a success.

...No one with press credentials thought to say: "Mr. Mayor, if one-third of that September 2007 freshman class failed to walk across the Collins stage with a diploma in June 2011, can you really say Collins is a successful turnaround?"

Chicago parents and community leaders take anti-closings fight to City Hall

2011-12-20T06:00:00.002-06:00

From left, Jeanette Taylor-Smith, Pastor Joshua Ivery and Jitu Brown yell protest chants in front of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office. (Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune)

South-side parents and community leaders were back at Chicago's City Hall yesterday asking to meet with the mayor and demanding an end to Emanuel's arbitrary school closings, turnarounds and privately-run charter schools. The say that if they don't get word within seven days of an appointment with the mayor, they will stage a sit-in until they secure one.

"We are requesting a moratorium on all school actions in Chicago based on what the research of our experiences tell us. Chicago Public Schools cannot continue to push policy that is harmful to the children," said Steven Guy, s the grandparent of a student from Fuller Elementary School. -- WBEZ

The protest comes five days after hundreds of parents, teachers and community activists occupied the Board of Education Meeting, leading to board members shutting down the mics and fleeing the room.

In These Times writer Joel Handley, quotes community activist Jitu Brown:

To longtime education organizers like Jitu Brown of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), the program is just another in a long line of failures. “Reconstitution, reorganization, charter schools–all these initiatives have failed miserably,” Brown says. “They’re window dressings. You have to address poverty before the problems of education.” -- The Poverty of School Reform

Writes Handley:

Brown and KOCO created a model for sustainable success with their Bronzeville Global Achievement Village. They asked parents to forget about budget constraints and imagine the type of education they want for their children. Months of cooperative labor birthed a program that would partner with Dyett High School and its neighborhood feeder schools to streamline curricula between grades and bring much-needed focus to laboratory sciences and leadership. But CPS has other plans. On November 30, it announced that Dyett, along with three other schools, would be closing next year.

Also see Chicago Tribune's coverage: "Up roar continues over plans for South Side schools" by Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah

Stumbling towards exactitude

2011-12-19T11:18:00.002-06:00

Michael Winerip, writing in Sunday's NYT ("10 Years of Assessing Students With Scientific Exactitude") reveals the discrepancy between testing and reality in Bloomberg Town.

Winerip tells the testing story year-by-year, listing every pile of disinformation, scandal, and resistance left in the wake of No Child Left Behind and current state testing madness.

Nearly a quarter of the state’s principals — 1,046 — have signed an online letter protesting the plan to evaluate teachers and principals by test scores. Among the reasons cited is New York’s long tradition of creating tests that have little to do with reality.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

2011-12-19T05:19:00.004-06:00

Now that factories are gone, it's tee-time in Benton Harbor, Michigan

Now that the factories are gone

But at this point, it seems more likely that Harbor Shores will simply bring a new population to Benton Harbor and hasten the town’s fracturing into two distinct communities: the second-home owners and Whirlpool executives who live inside Harbor Shores and frequent the Arts District — and everyone else. -- Jonathan Mahler, NYT Magazine

A success?

"It's harder to end a war than begin one. Everything that American troops have done in Iraq - all the fighting, all the dying, the bleeding and the building and the training and the partnering, all of it has landed to this moment of success." -- Barack Obama

David Vitale

"Mr. Vitale is a banker who was picked by Rahm Emanuel to be president of the Chicago Board of Education. And as the Missile confidently presided over a cowed City Council on Wednesday, his schools emissary co-starred in melancholy political theater that gave insight into the mayor’s ultimate challenges." -- "Marie Antoinette, I'd like you to meet David Vitale" by James Warren, CNC

Ron Paul

“She [Michele Bachmann] doesn’t like Muslims, she hates Muslims, she wants to go get them.” -- Jay Leno Show

A great charter school hustle

2011-12-16T14:22:00.002-06:00

Richmond

I've got to hand it to charter school authorizer and former lobbyist, Greg Richmond for coming up with this great hustle. A law recently pass by the Illinois state legislature created his new charter school agency called the Illinois State Charter School Commission which has the power to create new charter schools even when local school districts oppose them. The commission also has the power to monitor the same charters it authorizes. Richmond is the commission's chairman.

Okay, that's a little shady. But here's where the great hustle comes in (some cynics might call this a conflict of interest). The way the commission raises money for itself (aside from private dollars from pro-charter billionaires) is by handing out more and more charters. You see, starting next July, Richmond's commission can begin collecting a fee from every new charter it creates. The more charters, the more money in its budget to authorize more charters. And so it goes. Bada-bing. Bada-boom.

The nine commission members — recommended by Gov. Pat Quinn and appointed by ISBE — are already holding official meetings and overseeing a staff member, attorney Jeanne Nowaczewski. The money for the commission’s staffing and other expenses so far comes from the Walton foundation. Other recipients of Walton grants include the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, a statewide umbrella. The foundation reports that it gave the network more than $1 million in 2010. Andrew Broy, the network’s president, said the amount for 2011 is about $950,000.

The network also serves as an intermediary — a “fiscal agent” in nonprofit parlance — for Walton’s funding of the state commission. Richmond said Nowaczewski receives her paychecks from the network, not the commission. Exactly how big is that paycheck, I wonder?

Rail against the machine

2011-12-15T09:02:00.002-06:00

Jose More pic

Community protesters drowned out the voice of CPS schools boss Jean-Claude Brizard yesterday, as he was about to announce the closing of more schools, turning them over to private charter school management companies. “You have failed…You have produced chaos…You should be fired” they chanted. When they paused, billionaire board president David Vitale said he hoped they had “gotten it out of their system.”

They hadn't.

According to CNC reporter, Rebecca Vivea, the protest marked the first time Occupy Chicago has been directly involved in a demonstration against CPS, though the group has been closely aligned with the CTU for other protests. Ashley Bohrer, an Occupy Chicago activist and graduate student at DePaul University, spoke against charter schools at the meeting and what she called the privatization of public services.

“The goal of this action was not to shut down the Board of Education meeting,” Bohrer said. “When they walked out of the meeting, they made it very clear that they are not interested in an open democratic discussion about the future of social services in this city.” -- Chicago News Co-op

The board unanimously approved 12 new charter schools at the end of the meeting.

An "astonishing number..."

2011-12-15T06:57:00.000-06:00

Remember last spring when Arne Duncan was pushing for reauthorization of NCLB, he claimed that 82 percent of public schools were "failing"? Three days later, President Obama repeated Duncan's foolish claim in a speech at Kenmore Middle School in Arlington, Va. “Four out of five schools will be labeled as failing,” Obama said , in March. “That’s an astonishing number.”

Astonishing indeed. The only thing "failing" was NCLB itself.

As Duncan himself admitted yesterday while brushing aside his horrible, demoralizing misstatements,

“Whether it’s 50 percent, 80 percent or 100 percent of schools being incorrectly labeled as failing, one thing is clear: No Child Left Behind is broken,”

President Obama, get rid of this guy.

In Chicago: 'A fight for the soul of public education'

2011-12-14T09:06:00.010-06:00

Carrying signs and bullhorns, several hundred parents and teachers gathered outside Chicago Public Schools headquarters Tuesday night to rally against the proposed closures, consolidations, and phase outs of 17 schools in low-income, African-American and Latino communities. About 40 people spent the night in the wind and rain to be first in line for a board meeting that will decide the schools' fate. Though rain reduced their numbers, their message in support of the schools did not waver.

"This is a huge fight for the soul of public education," said CTU president Karen Lewis.

Unprecedented victory in Colorado school funding case

2011-12-13T05:47:00.005-06:00

In a 183-page ruling in favor of the plaintiffs Friday, Denver District Judge Sheila Rappaport ruled in the 6-year-old Lobato v. Colorado case that the state's education funding is "irrational and inadequate" and violates the state constitution's pledge to provide a "thorough and uniform" education system. She specifically pointed to the lack of funding to serve the need of the state's poor, minority and disabled students. (Read the full report) "There is not one school district that is sufficiently funded," Rappaport writes in the report. "This is an obvious hallmark of an irrational system."

The ruling was a slap in the face to conservative, anti-public school forces, including the Hoover Institute's Eric Hanushek, who testified that more school funding wouldn't lead to better schools. The judge said that Hanushek's claim was 'contradicted by testimony and documentary evidence from dozens of well-respected educators in the State, defies logic, and is statistically flawed.”

Conservatives, led by right-wing Attorney General John Suthers, and some corporate "reformers" are already working to have Rappaport's decision overturned.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

2011-12-12T11:36:00.001-06:00

Parents of children in Newark schools sign a petition to wrest control from the state and give the school board a more active role. -- New York Times

Resisting charter takeover of Newark school

“You could see the new furniture coming in,” said Shellian Peters, 38, a mother of three. “Whereas on the district side, it was the same as when the school was built. That’s how blatantly obvious it was.” -- "Growing Push in Newark to Retake School Reins" by Winnie Hu, New York Times

Diane Ravitch

"The entire current reform movement rests on a fanatical belief in standardized testing. Yet testing experts warn us that the tests should be used for diagnostic purposes, not to fire teachers and close schools. The basic rule of testing is that a test should be used only for the purpose for which it was designed." -- Speech to National Opportunity to Learn Summit December 9, 2011.

Author Judith Warner

"The chief promise of their brand of reform — the results of which have been mixed, at best — seems to be that they can remake America’s students in their own high-achieving image." -- "Why Are the Rich So Interested in Public-School Reform?

On New York's Testing Madness

“I think the last thing we want is a test of stamina,” said Richard Organisciak, superintendent of the 11,000-student New Rochelle district in Westchester County. “The thought of a third grader sitting there for three hours — it boggles my mind that he would stay as focused or perform as well on a high-stakes test.” -- New York Times

The real Chicago "miracle" -- Arne Duncan still has a job

2011-12-09T12:05:00.008-06:00

The only miracle emerging from the past decade of Chicago's corporate-style school reform is that former CEO and current Sec. of Education Arne Duncan hasn't resigned from either posts out of sheer embarrassment.

The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) once again put Chicago near the bottom compared to other large urban districts with similar demographics and concentrations of poverty (85% of CPS students live in poverty). Significantly, the biggest drops in reading scores came during Arne Duncan's time as CEO when the media was spinning the myth of a Chicago "turnaround miracle."

A new report on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress taken by 21 big-city districts was the second analysis in less than a month to indicate that, despite more than a decade of massive investments in corporate-style reform, and despite a heavy administrative emphasis on test-prep and big push on reading skills, Chicago’s elementary-grade reading performance has barely budged for years. The Sun-Times reports that the so-called "achievement gap" between white students and black and Latino students— showed no real shrinkage since at least 2003 in fourth- and eighth-grade math and reading. In fourth-grade reading,

Most interesting -- Chicago’s NAEP reading doldrums occurred during a huge reading push ordered by former Mayor Daley and carried out by then-Chicago Schools CEO Arne Duncan, now the nation’s Education Secretary.

The Sun-Times reports however, that "real progress didn’t show up until 2011 — after Ron Huberman took over the Chicago Schools CEO helm in 2009 and shifted the district from Duncan’s emphasis on reading coaches to a new emphasis on data analysis."

I suppose the lesson here is that the real key to progress in school reform is manipulating and spinning data reports (Huberman's specialty) rather than the imposition of programmatic reform. Duncan's success came after he and his media team fabricated the myth of a Chicago turnaround "miracle" which later formed the basis for federal education policy, including Race To The Top.

Peter Cunningham, Duncan's media guy, tells the S-T:

“The information we had [from state achievement tests] showed [CPS] was showing great success... We weren’t gaming the numbers."

My experience tells me that whenever the spinners claim that they aren't gaming the numbers -- they're gaming the numbers." If Cunningham has some previously unrevealed evidence of great progress, perhaps he wouldn't mind sharing it with us. Until then, we'll go with the NAEP results.

Before we start feeling all warm and fuzzy about Teddy Roosevelt...

2011-12-08T06:53:00.000-06:00

Let's remember that Teddy Roosevelt, eulogized in Pres. Obama's Osawatomie speech on "New Nationalism," Tuesday, was at his best a tame economic reformer and at his worst, a racist, imperialist war monger. Publicly, Roosevelt spoke out against racism and discrimination at times, but also believed in social-Darwinism, the philosophical rock bed of white supremacy.

Here are a few of TR's thoughts on race and politics the Obama failed to mention:

In 1894, wrote an article entitled ‘National Life and Character’ in which he wrote that, "negroid peoples, the so-called "hamitic," and bastard semitic, races of eastern middle Africa were ‘not fit’ to compete with whites and it would take ‘many thousands years” before the Black became even “as intellectual as the [ancient] Athenian.’

According to linguist and historian Noam Chomsky, "Theodore Roosevelt was a shocking racist. I don't use the analogy lightly, but it's a fact that you have to go to the Nazi archive to find anything similar."

Roosevelt wrote:

The expansion of the peoples of white, or European, blood during the past four centuries which should never be lost sight of, especially by those who denounce such expansion on moral grounds. On the whole, the movement has been fraught with lasting benefit to most of the peoples already dwelling in the lands over which the expansion took place.

With regard to the conquest of a half of Mexico, Roosevelt explained:

"...it was inevitable, and in the highest degree desirable for the good of humanity at large, that the American people should ultimately crowd out the Mexicans from their sparsely populated northern provinces."

And then, in a line that would do Texas' Gov. Perry and most of the Republican candidates proud, TR wrote:

"It was out of the question to expect Texans to submit to the mastery of the weaker race."

So I'm sorry, Pres. Obama. But I'm just not ready to embrace Roosevelt's "New Nationalism" quite yet. I hope you aren't either.

Obama's Osawatomie speech

2011-12-07T10:48:00.005-06:00

"Here, finally, is the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008." -- Robert Reich

If you had any doubts that the Occupy Movement was impacting the presidential elections, check out President Obama's Osawatomie (Kansas) speech made yesterday as protesters occupied the National Mall. Obama channeled trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt in a rousing bit of populism aimed directly at Wall Street greed and the growing wealth gap that remains the biggest threat to democracy.

Inequality...distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them - that our elected representatives aren’t looking out for the interests of most Americans.

The speech was hailed by liberal economist Robert Reich as "the most important economic speech of his presidency." Reich's in-depth analysis of the speech ends with a most telling statement:

"Here, finally, is the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008."

Obama tipped his hat to the occupiers. But in a strange attempt to be balanced, he lumps them together with the T-Party that was the spawn of the very forces the president seems to be criticizing.

Throughout the country, it has sparked protests and political movements - from the Tea Party to the people who have been occupying the streets of New York and other cities.

Okay, I admit that there's not much there there. That's typical of a timid Obama who has always carefully distanced himself from his activist base and from black and Latino communities (except when foot soldiers are needed to turn out the vote). But at least he's recognizing Occupy as a force in other ways besides Justice Dept. phone calls to 18 city mayors, advising them how to disburse the 99-ers from city parks. Hopefully, by next November, any Democratic politicians who hope to get elected will have to at least give positive recognition to OWS and its leadership in the fight against the Wall Street profiteers.

While I'll leave it to the progressive economists like Reich and Krugman to analyze the entire speech, there are many parts of it that are troubling and confusing. One is the "New Nationalism" theme which smacks of saber-rattling (TR's imperialistic specialty). Obama even invokes the Race To The Top theme --not about test-driven school reform this time-- but about global competition with China. The speech offers little hope to those of us who see the Afghan war not only as the main threat to world peace and stability, but as one of the prime sources of the current economic crisis.

Observations

2011-12-06T09:22:00.004-06:00

Here's a few of my favorite observations from this morning's media scan.

There is an “autumn of the patriarch” feel to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg these days. -- Michael Powell, New York Times.

Diane Ravitch

I have said it before, and I'll say it again: There are no silver bullets in education. There are no magic feathers that enable elephants like Dumbo to fly. It's hard work to improve schools. It takes dedication, resources, and time. And the work is never done, the magic number of 100 percent is always out of reach. Just when you think that you've achieved success with this year's students, another new group arrives, each student with his or her issues. Or students leave and arrive mid-year. Or the state changes the testing program or releases new regulations requiring more paperwork. Claims of overnight or one-year transformations should be suspect on their face. -- Diane Ravitch, Bridging Differences

U.S. among world leaders in growing income inequality.

According to a new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, income inequality — which has sparked the Occupy Wall Street movement in the U.S. — is increasing all across the developed world, led by bankers and executives reaping bigger and bigger income gains.

“The social contract is starting to unravel in many countries,” OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria said in a statement. “This study dispels the assumptions that the benefits of economic growth will automatically trickle down to the disadvantaged and that the greater inequality fosters greater social mobility.” -- TPM

CTU Teach-in on school closings

2011-12-05T21:28:00.000-06:00

More than 400 parents, community organizers and union members packed a "teach-in" at King College Prep High School in Kenwood Saturday to build grassroots opposition to plans for shutting down or overhauling 14 Chicago public schools.

"We need to be here. If it's not my school on the list (to be closed) today, it could be tomorrow," said Jeanette Taylor-Smith, vice chairwoman of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, who has two children attending local public schools. -- Chicago Tribune

Next battle front: Dec. 13th for a vigil and possible occupation at CPS Headquarters, 125 S. Clark St., 6 PM and then, the following morning, sign up to speak at the Dec. 14th board meeting and make your opposition known.

Chicago's new top charter school bureaucrat

2011-12-05T09:30:00.000-06:00

She's in a "relationship."

Her name is Carly Bolger. She's never taught, as far as I can tell. She's two years out of college. Hired by Chris Cerf to run his bloated and troubled charter schools bureaucracy in New Jersey but quit after just 10 months on the job. Emanuel then hires her to head his Office of New Schools. That position has been empty since Josh Edelman left town to work for Michelle Rhee in D.C.

T-Party Gov. Chris Christie has pushed for the rapid expansion of the state's charter schools despite strong evidence that they are under-performing traditional schools. A report by the Washington-based Center for Education Reform has slammed the application process for what it called its lack of transparency and objectivity. His hand-picked schools chief, Cerf doubled the size of the charter office to 11 people, including Bolger.

But the controversy over charters has been fiery, especially from suburban districts that haven't welcomed the schools into their communities and have argued that state oversight is inadequate. Several legislative bills remain pending that would significantly tighten restrictions on charters... The department over the past year has been criticized for using outside reviewers, whom it has refused to identify but turned out to be largely charter school leaders and advocates. -- N.J. Spotlight

Why is she coming to Chicago? She says her decision was "100 percent personal," since she is moving because of a "relationship" in Chicago.

Perfect!

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

2011-12-05T05:59:00.002-06:00

Visiting a wealthy suburban school

"This is a school? I thought it was a museum." -- Terence Lewis, 17, a senior at Furness High in South Philadelphia

Chicago Rep. Cynthia Soto

“We need explanations, specific explanations” for the decisions to close or restructure the schools. -- Chicago News Co-Op

GOP candidate Buddy Roemer

"I believe that Mitt Romney represents the one percent and I believe that Newt Gingrich is the lobbyist for the one percent." -- ThinkProgress

Operation 'Urban Shield'

The use of anti-terror techniques to suppress a civilian protest complemented harsh police measures demonstrated across the country against the nationwide “Occupy” movement, from firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets into unarmed crowds to blasting demonstrators with the LRAD sound cannon. -- Max Blumenthal, MondoWeiss

Transparent moments

2011-12-02T06:38:00.006-06:00

Every once in a while, a bit of truth comes seeping through the pores of the corporate media. Corporate moguls, media tycoons or politicians become a little remorseful or a little drunk and let us know what they really think.

N.Y. Mayor Bloomberg let the cat out of the bag in a recent speech at MIT, admitting that if he were king (isn't he?) he'd fire half the teachers and double class size.

He looked like he was from another planet when he dressed as a hippie for a political show, but the mayor’s blueprint for fixing city schools have some asking “what was he smoking?” -- CBS News

"Big money owns everything ..."

On November 22, Dan Rather upon receiving the prestigious Burton Benjamin Memorial Award at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, shared his thoughts on media and the Occupy Movement.

But now, we see our fellow citizens taking to the streets. And, that my friends, is our cue to get back to work. As the People of our nation begin rising up, they expect the business of news to be about inquiry and accountability. And, luckily for us, we can still do that ... but it may not be within the confines of big corporate media. As you know, we are living in an age when big money owns everything ... including the news. -- RSN

Then there's former Chase Bank V.P. James Theckston whose Florida team wrote more than $2 billion in mostly bad mortgages, who in a remorseful moment told NYT's Nicholas Kristof:

“The bigwigs of the corporations knew this, but they figured we’re going to make billions out of it, so who cares? The government is going to bail us out. And the problem loans will be out of here, maybe even overseas.”

Kristof adds:

All this came into sharper focus this week as Bloomberg Markets magazine published a terrific exposé based on lending records it pried out of the Federal Reserve in a lawsuit. It turns out that the Fed provided an astonishing sum to keep banks afloat — $7.8 trillion, equivalent to more than $25,000 per American.

Yes, it's out there. You just have to dig for it and try and make sense out of it.

Michigan's union-busters caught sending secret emails to pols

2011-12-01T03:25:00.004-06:00

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan, calls itself a "nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to improving the quality of life." But recently this far-right, free-market think tank has been exposed for its shady, very partisan, and possibly illegal lobbying of state politicians, aimed at nothing less than breaking the back of the state's teachers union and outlawing collective-bargaining in the state of Michigan.

According to Dave Murray, writing in the Grand Rapids Free Press, the Mackinac Center's true purposes were revealed in secret email communications with state lawmakers, including one from Mackinac's Jack McHugh to state Rep. Thomas McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, the newly appointed head of the House Education Committee. In his June 1 email, letting McMillin know exactly what was expected of him, McHugh wrote:

“Our goal is (to) outlaw government collective bargaining in Michigan, which in practical terms means no more MEA.”

McMillin, described as a "vocal school choice and reform advocate," was named head of the Education Committee after former chairman, Rep. Paul Scott, R-Grand Blanc, was recalled by angry voters earlier this month. Before being recalled Scott had become the darling of Michelle Rhee and Michigan's T-Party Gov. Rick Snyder, after leading the charge against teachers' collective bargaining rights and raids on their pension fund. Rhee's front group, Students First donated heavily to help Scott avoid a recall effort.

Doug Pratt, the MEA’s public affairs director, said the comment reveals the Mackinac Center’s conservative, anti-union leanings that he believes are often cloaked behind glossy publications.

“It’s right there in black and white, exposing the group for what it really is,” Pratt said. “That proves that the Mackinac Center is nothing but a front for corporate special interests intent on destroying the middle class.”

When Murray's story broke, McMillin, obviously trying to avoid Scott's fate, immediately tried to distance himself from Mackinac, claiming that McHugh's emails “don’t represent my views.”

For more on the Mackinac Center see Fred Klonsky's blog and the MEA's website.
Cross-posted on my Schooling in the Ownership Society blog.

Uncapping and de-regulating charter schools

2011-11-30T07:01:00.001-06:00

Spurred on by Race To The Top

While public education budgets are being slashed, federal support for privately-managed charter schools has increased to new heights including a $52 million increase in charter school funding last year. Since 2009, with $100 billion in stimulus funding for education, including $4.35 billion in the competitive Race to the Top fund behind him, Arne Duncan has offered a stern warning to states: "Embrace charters or risk losing stimulus dollars."

But while Duncan claims it's all about "quality, not quantity" when it comes to charter school expansion and while he tells us that "charters are not inherently anti-union," the administration's Race To The Top policies have opened the door wide for anything-goes charter schools. The current trend is increasingly towards unlimited charter school expansion with fewer regulations, less transparency, more racial re-segregation, and definitely no unions allowed. This despite growing evidence that charter schools on average, fail to outperform traditional public schools despite discriminatory enrollment and expulsion practices.

States currently dominated by right-wing politicians and T-Party governors, like Michigan, are moving quickly to take advantage of the current political environment to uncap and deregulate charter expansion.

Case in point: Fulton County, Ga. which has applied to the state to become a "charter district" and where charters like the Fulton Science Academy are asking legislators for blanket waivers of state and local provisions and 10 year contracts limiting the community's oversight over the charter schools finances, procurement practices and overall governance.

Questions for Jean-Claude Brizard

2011-11-29T13:40:00.003-06:00

“We have to take immediate action this year. . . . Too many of our students are in what I call an educational emergency room.’’ -- J.C. Brizard

With today's announcement by Brizard, that 10 more Chicago schools were being "turned around," complete with mass firings of faculty and staff and the contracting of new management groups to take them over, a few questions come to mind.

1. In your telephone interview with reporters you say: “We can no longer defend a Chicago Public School system that fails our students year after year.’’ If that's true, exactly how many years-after-years has the system been failing its students? Is that an assessment of the Daley/Duncan years? Does it include Arne Duncan's "Chicago Miracle" tenure? Mayor Daley's Renaissance 2010 reform years? The more recent Huberman period marked by previous turn-arounds, teacher firings and mass school closings? The entire Daley era of mayoral control and top-down reform? Has it all been a bust?

2. Why do you think that more of the same, more turn-arounds, more teacher firings and more school closings will produce different results? Any evidence in the research or from your previous experience in Rochester that firing entire school faculties improves student learning outcomes? Where can we find it?

3. Why are you and the mayor going it alone again on top-down reform? Doing it to teachers and communities rather than with them? Any evidence in the research or from your previous experience with your bungled longer-school-day initiative that the war on teachers and their union is an effective reform strategy?

4. Where are all these great replacement teachers going to come from? Do you have a thousand of them stashed away someplace we don't know about? Or is this just a ploy to get rid of veteran teachers and bring in TFA 5-week wonders who will be more compliant and take home smaller pay checks?

You have my number. I await your answers.

Principals revolt against the testing madness

2011-11-28T05:31:00.000-06:00

NYT's Mike Winerip gives credit to Obama along with John B. King Jr., the New York State commissioner of education, for spurring what is believed to be the first principals’ revolt in history.

As of last night, 658 principals around the state had signed a letter — 488 of them from Long Island, where the insurrection began — protesting the use of students’ test scores to evaluate teachers’ and principals’ performance.

It is hard to overstate how angry the principals who signed are. Mario Fernandez, principal of Stillwater High School near Saratoga, called the evaluation process a product of “ludicrous, shallow thinking.”

Katie Zahedi, principal of Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook in Dutchess County. said the training session she attended was “two days of total nonsense.”

“I have a Ph.D., I’m in a school every day, and some consultant is supposed to be teaching me to do evaluations,” she said. “It takes your breath away it’s so awful.”

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

2011-11-28T05:10:00.001-06:00

Students from Cleveland High visit the Occupy L.A. site at City Hall to ask questions for their civics class.

Occupy L.A.

"It fits in with everything we're doing," said Rebecca Williams, an English literature teacher at the Reseda school. "It's a real-life movement — history in the making." --L.A. Times

Education lagging for Mexican students in N.Y.

“We are stanching an educational hemorrhage, but only partially,” said Robert C. Smith, a sociology professor at the City University of New York who studies the local Mexican population. “The worst outcomes are still possible." -- New York Times

Call him 'Grover'

"...has Bill Gates become the liberals' Grover Norquist? Just as Norquist, elected by and accountable to no one, tied the hands of the "supercommittee" with his no-new-taxes pledge, Gates undermines the authority of school boards with his pro-charter, pro-privatization contract." Philly.com

Condi Rice on Racism

"It is a birth defect with which this country was born out of slavery; we're never really going to be race blind.." -- Face the Nation

Emma Sullivan (quoting Gandhi)

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Student, refuses to apologize to Kan. Gov. after tweet

Resistance building to Rahm's school closings.

2011-11-25T11:16:00.001-06:00

"CPS policies have destabilized schools in our community," said Jeanette Taylor, a parent leader with the Kenwood group whose children attend Mollison and Robinson schools, both of which have been on academic probation for several years. "We're all fighting together. They aren't closing any more schools until they do right by us." -- Chicago Tribune

Resistance is building to Rahm Emanuel's latest school-closing plan. The plan -- which in effect is a school privatization plan -- calls for the closing of neighborhood schools and replacing many of them with privately-managed, non-union, charter schools. Many of Chicago's community-based organizations are organizing and rallying their supporters, in a united front with the Chicago Teachers Union, to stop the closures. Nine community groups from Albany Park to Roseland Tuesday presented a “Neighborhoods Agenda for Schools,” a wide-ranging plan that calls for significant investment in struggling neighborhood schools rather than school closures. Last Tuesday, about 40 people jammed into the lobby of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association’s headquarters and held a press conference to announce their opposition.

Closing down under-performing public schools in Chicago "has historically been a traumatic process, with battle lines drawn between affected communities and district leaders," writes Chicago News Cooperative's Rebecca Vevea.

"Last week at a community hearing on school closings, audience members questioned Sicat’s decision-making power and demanded that the district invest in existing schools rather than replace them."

CTU Teach-In on School Closings Sat, Dec 03, 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM

King College Prep H.S. 4445 s. Drexel Blvd.

Jitu Brown of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, which has developed its own blueprint to improve failing schools in Bronzeville, is quoted in the Tribune saying the he and members of other local organizations met with schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard and other officials this week. They tried to get him to agree to a one-year moratorium on closing schools in Bronzeville, Brown said.

Catalyst's Sara Karp writes:

The organizations representing groups from the far North Side of the city to the far South Side issued what they called “A Neighborhood Agenda for Schools.” They want CPS to work more closely with organizations to make all neighborhood schools community schools, an effort supported by former CEO Arne Duncan to bring services from after school programs to GED classes onto campuses. They also want CPS to officially embrace Grow Your Own Teachers, which encourages people from low-income communities to go into teaching, and VOYCE, an initiative that empowers teenagers to come up with solutions to problems in schools.

"On the positive side, they are reaching out to us. But it's more about them telling us what to do as opposed to listening and exchanging ideas," Brown said. "What they want is a buy into what they want to do."

Sicat is Rahm's fall guy on school closings

The mayor has put the school closing/privatization crusade in the hands of Oliver Sicat, a 32-year-old rising star bureaucrat and former charter school principal. Emanuel actually created the new position of chief portfolio officer specifically for Sicat.

The Chicago Teachers Union will kick things off tomorrow from 10 a.m.- 2 p.m. with a teach-in on preventing school closings. The teach-in is co-sponsored by Teachers For Social Justice, Action Now, Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, Grassroots Collaborative and Albany Park Neighborhood Council and supported by SOS Chicago and other groups of education activists.

Will test-cheating students become America's new prison population?

2011-11-23T11:10:00.001-06:00

Schooling in the Ownership Society

If they are going to start jailing students for cheating on standardized tests, our prison system will soon swell well beyond its world-leading 2-million inmate population. Since they've made the standardized test score the single most important gateway to college and hoped for financial success, a.k.a the American dream, cheating scandals and become pandemic across the country.

Previous scandals have been reported primarily in urban districts like New York, Atlanta and D.C. The school leaders who have been found at least largely responsible for systemic cheating in their schools have certainly not been arrested. Atlanta former superintendent, Beverly Hall was fired and I have no idea what happened to the 58 principals implicated in the scandal, but none that I know off are in prison. The same could be said about N.Y. Mayor Bloomberg and his crony former chancellor Joel Klein (now working for perhaps the world's greatest cheater, Rupert Murdoch) or of former D.C. school boss, Michelle "Erasurehead" Rhee.

But yesterday it was reported that at least 20 students and former students in upscale Great Neck, N.Y. have been arrested in a SAT/ACT test-taking for hire scandal. Forty students are also being investigated. Makes you wonder how many rich kids have been taking college spots away from students who couldn't afford to hire proxy test takers? And how about those wealthy suburban schools that have no trouble making AYP?

The Sun-Times reports another suburban cheating arrest in Antioch, IL where a special-ed teacher and wife of the high school’s head football coach, charged with computer tampering for allegedly changing the grades of several students, most of whom where athletes.

And on and on it goes. So far the response has been to tighten security around the tests. This sounds like a job for the marines returning from Iraq. They could be put to work either as security guards at test-taking centers or hired as prison guards for hundreds of new student prisoners.

Or we could consider getting rid of the testing madness that turns schools into sorting and tracking machines and precipitates cheating, and start moving towards more authentic ways of assessing how kids are learning.

The White Party

2011-11-22T14:08:00.002-06:00

Columbia prof, Thomas Edsall writing in today's NY Times, points out that the GOP has become the "white party," armed strategically with a racist, anti-Latino, anti-immigrant election strategy. It's a strategy that worked successfully in the mid-term elections. In the current Republican primary, says Edsall, any Republican candidate that, even momentarily stumbles on this, will pay for it in the polls. Case in point was Rick Perry.

The once-ascendant Perry torpedoed his own bid during a Sept. 22 debate in Orlando, Fla., when he endorsed using taxpayer dollars to educate the children of illegal immigrants. A single sentence started him on a downward slide:

If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they’ve been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart.

Edsall thinks that the major threat to the Republican “white” strategy is a revival of the high turnout among minorities that carried Democrats to victory in 2008. Republicans, however, are taking advantage of their newly won control of state governments across the country to enact laws designed to suppress minority turnout .

I would add an even greater threat is the reticence of Democrats to mobilize their own base and forcefully push for immigration reform. Now that Rahm Emanuel is no longer chief of staff, maybe there's a shot.

******

Birmingham Mayor William Bell told Democratic members of Congress at a hearing on Alabama's new immigration law that the legislation smacks of apartheid and Jim Crow laws. Bell told the lawmakers at an ad hoc hearing on Monday that the law passed this year by Alabama's Republican-controlled legislature places financial burdens on cities and could force police officers to employ racial profiling.

******

In an attempt to invoke the memory and passion of the civil rights movement, a group of Democratic lawmakers will stand today in a historic church in Birmingham to help rally opposition to the state's new law that seeks to get tough on illegal immigrants.

Are there really too many 'mediocre' charter schools?

2011-11-21T18:22:00.004-06:00

Incubator

Right-wing think-tankers at the Fordham Institute are looking for answers and I'm sure they'll find them. You see, it's all in how you pose the question.

Their latest quest has to do with charter schools. Fordham, which doubles as a charter school lobbying and support group in Ohio, and their business-minded partners, Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust), are getting together to ponder whether or not so-called charter incubators can "can solve the problem of too many mediocre charter schools."

Right away, just by the way the question is asked, you can assume that the answer is yes. Otherwise why would they go to all the trouble to dredge up that old incubator thing from back in the early '90s? I mean, isn't this what the old charter authorizers were all about? I figure that there must be some Walton or Gates money coming on line to fund charter incubators; thus a convening of the clan is definitely in order, including a panel of the usual entrepreneurial types lining up at the trough.

But what got me most interested was the other part of the question. I mean, are there really too many "mediocre" charter schools? Let me ask this another way: Can there be too many mediocre schools, students, or teachers? Not, I would argue, if you're speaking the language of corporate school reform or Race To The Top, which has schools, teachers and even nations, competing with each other to see who's better, worse or somewhere in between. Within that paradigm, a large dose of mediocrity is required. If the middle became the top, re-norming would certainly be in order.

Many companies are built on a model which rewards a small percentage of top performers, encourages a large majority in the middle to improve, and lays off the bottom performers. If you're at all interested in the theoretical side of this business model, see "Punishing by Rewards: When the Performance Bell-curve Stops Working For You", by a group of MIT researchers who argue that this model often actually decreases performance.

On a standard curve, most schools, whether charter or public, group around the middle or mean. No matter what miracles the corporate reformers work, no matter how many schools they turn around or close, there will always be "too many" in the middle, with fewer at the top and bottom (or ends of the curve). This applies to teachers, schools and test-takers as well.

When Arne Duncan and Pres. Obama announced, more than two years ago, that they would solve the problem of high school "dropout factories" by closing 5,000 of the schools at the bottom, they failed to take into account that now there would still be 5,000 more schools at the bottom. What they did instead was demoralize lots of struggling schools and their dedicated, hard working teaching staffs. Even if every charter school was run by top-feeders like KIPP or even by Fordham themselves, there would still be "too many" mediocre charters--especially if they would be pitted against one another in a Race To The Top for a shrinking pool of resources, teachers, and high-scoring students (no special-ed or ELLs, please).

We already know that, when compared with traditional schools, only about one-third of the nation's charter schools score higher. On most lists of top-performing schools, you will rarely find a charter school. So since the reformers already knew that mediocrity is a necessity in this market-driven game they are playing, and since they already knew before they posed the question, that incubators are the answer-- why then are they continuing this charade?

The early charter schools were largely experimental attempts by teachers and community-based organizations to re-think schooling and to provide a critical force for systemic change. Once the charter movement was taken over by school-reform entrepreneurs called CMOs, market forces went into full play. Starbucks-style replications, going to scale, leveraging real-estate, and vertical integration became the new lingo of charter reform. Huge charter school chains sprung up with lots of backing from powerful philanthropists, squeezing out the smaller innovative, teacher-run (mediocre?) charters. The consolidation continues. Thus, too many "mediocre" schools. The think-tankers obviously have an interest in how this question is answered.

Rahm funnels millions more away from public schools to charter operators

2011-11-21T13:42:00.002-06:00

Autocrat Rahm is determined to teach Chicago teachers and their union a lesson. Dropping the F-bomb on CTU president Karen Lewis obviously wasn't satisfying enough for Emanuel. So now he's figured out a way to funnel $2.7 million in badly needed school funds to the operators of 36 privately managed charter schools in exchange for them jumping on his politically-driven longer-school-day band wagon. As for the public schools -- let them eat cake.

Charter operators can each spend the $75,000 bribe from Rahm as they wish. The only string is -- you guessed it -- it can’t be used to give raises to existing teachers.

Time to Occupy the Board of Education?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

2011-11-21T13:04:00.004-06:00

University of California, Davis Police Lt. John Pike uses pepper spray to move Occupy UC Davis protesters while blocking their exit from the school's quad Friday

Charles J. Kelly

A former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department's use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a "compliance tool" that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters "When you start picking up human bodies you risk hurting them... What I'm looking at is fairly standard police procedure..." -- Daily Kos

Newt Gingrich tells jobless at OWS

'Go get a job right after you take a bath,'" continued Gingrich, to loud applause from the audience. -- At Family Forum in Iowa

Best Practices aren't...

"There is no such thing as best practices... One of the most common reasons for pursuing best practices in a given area is to avoid having to 'reinvent the wheel.' Think about it like this – if nobody ever reinvented the wheel, we’d still be riding around on wooden rims." -- Mike Myatt at Forbes

UFW co-founder, Delores Huerta

“Yes we have got to occupy Wall Street. We’ve go to do that, but we’ve also got to occupy the school board, right? And we’ve got to occupy the city council, right? And we’ve got occupy the Congress, right? Because this is where the decisions are made; where our money is going to go... Sí se puede — we can do it.” -- Democracy Now!

Believing the reformers

2011-11-18T17:13:00.006-06:00

140 Chicago schools targeted

Columnist Gene Lyons, posting at Salon.com, warns us: "Don’t believe the education “reformers.” Public schools, he says, are better than we think and efforts to quantify teacher performance are typically destructive. Writes Lyons:

All educational Miracle Cures and panaceas are wrong, and many who push them are charlatans—starting with the ubiquitous Michelle Rhee. Schools get better when communities get richer, rarely the other way around. Remember when charter schools and vouchers were going to save the world? There’s no evidence they’ve out-performed public schools. For all the attacks on public school teachers as indolent dolts who are also somehow cunning and effective political operatives, in my experience most work harder and take their responsibilities more seriously than their presumed betters in the editorial suites and CNN talk shows.

Oh, brave new world that has such noble reformers in it.

Case in Point

Last month world renown cellist Yo-Yo Ma performed for the school community at Telpochcalli Elementary School in Chicago's Little Village Neighborhood. Ma, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's creative consultant, and Damian Woetzel, a ballet star/director/producer who serves with the virtuoso cellist on Pres. Obama's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, gathered a diverse collection of performing artists at the Telpochcalli Elementary School in the predominantly Mexican-American Little Village neighborhood to illustrate the benefits of arts-based education programs.

After the performance, Ma raved about Telpochcalli.

"The school is spreading a fabulous message," he said, noting that teaching two languages helps students see the world from multiple perspectives. "Plus you add the senses, whether it's music, it's dance, collaboration — all these things are the ingredients that stimulate the imagination. Imagination and empathy are the key ingredients to creating an innovative workforce, a student population that is absolutely curious and passionate about learning, and this school is doing it the right way."

"This is the type of thing that could really make a difference in people's lives," he said, "not just enriching but giving the fundamental values of what builds a great society."

But while Ma was looking at a wonderful, small neighborhood school, J.C. Brizard (who attended Ma's performance) and the mayor were gazing over a list of confusing and unreliable standardized test scores. The result -- Telpochcalli has now been added to the board's list of 140 schools supposedly meeting the criteria for closing.

What a tragic loss to the community that would be.

What? Attacks on Occupiers were coordinated by Obama's people?

2011-11-16T08:45:00.003-06:00

Mayor Quan with peace dove in hand.

Yes they were. The simultaneous and unprovoked, often violent attacks on the anti-Wall St. protesters these past three weeks, were the product of a well-coordinated plan, originating inside the Obama administration. I had suspected as much when I learned that Mayor Jean Quan was at the White House the morning of the violent police assault on peaceful protesters in Oakland which resulted in the wounding of an Iraq Marine veteran.

Rick Ellis, at the Minneapolis Top News Examiner, quotes a Justice Dept. official:

According to this official, in several recent conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules. Agencies were also advised to demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear. In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be present.

Quan admitted in a BBC interview, that her raid on the Oakland Occupy encampment, came after a conference call with leaders in 18 cities. Quan, who at first was apologetic about the violent raids, now claims she ordered them because "anarchists" had taken over leadership of the movement.

Quan's actions have now been repudiated by long-time adviser and friend Dan Siegel, who has resigned in protest.

One interesting sidebar: It appears that Justice Dept. and White House PR team waited until Obama was out of D.C. and traveling abroad before moving against the 99 percenters. Was this to shield him from the fallout once the story broke?

Asking Arne

2011-11-15T05:54:00.001-06:00

Arne Duncan kicks off American Education Week today with a live #AskArne Q&A session on Twitter. I'm anticipating Arne's usual repetitive speed-rapping (speed tweeting?) evasive answers to any difficult questions. I'm sure his com guys will have him fully prepped with the party line and have plenty of their own crew tweeting in with puffy questions, ie. "Don't you think your Race To The Top reforms and your NCLB waivers ares the civil rights issues of our era?"

Instead, I hope someone will ask him about the recent report from the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago, showing "no real progress in reading scores" for the city's public school students during his tenure as schools CEO.

A good Arne question might focus on another piece of Consortium report which found that racial gaps in achievement steadily increased, and Latino students, and African American students fell further behind all other groups while Duncan was in charge. Civil rights issue, indeed. (For more on this, see Julie Woestehoff's latest piece in the Chicago K-12 Examiner, "Arne Duncan "reforms" increased black-white achievement gap.")

Here's a possible #AskArne question:

You rode "Chicago Miracle" myth all the way to Washington. What do you have to say about your "reform" plan now, in light of CCSR report?

It fits perfectly. Only 137 characters.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

2011-11-14T06:36:00.000-06:00

Fred Shavies

"That’s our Birmingham. So, twenty years from now this movement could be the turning point, the tipping point, right. It’s about time your generation stood up for something. It’s about time young people are in the streets. [...] Ya’ll don’t need to throw gas canisters into a group of people occupying an intersection." -- Undercover Cop At Occupy Oakland Condemns Police Brutality

Mitt Romney

“Sometimes you wonder, would there be someway to introduce some private sector competition, somebody else that could come in and say, you know, each soldier gets X thousand dollars attributed to them and then they can choose whether they want to go on the government system or the private system and then it follows them, like what happens with schools in Florida where they have a voucher that follows them.” -- TPM

How He made his millions

“Millions for me, a pink slip for thee,” is the playbook of many private equity firms, and Romney was one of their savviest players. -- Columnist Robyn Blumner

Rick Perry

“I will defend waterboarding until I die.” -- At Republican debate

Michelle Bachmann

"America Should Be Less Socialist… Like China." -- TPM

Chicago principals say no to Rahm's "merit pay" scheme

2011-11-11T06:26:00.002-06:00

The mayor and his Broad Academy-trained CEO, J.C. Brizard, are trying to take a page from the Broad play book -- merit pay for principals.

But Rahm's divide-and-conquer strategies seem to be backfiring. I give him credit for one thing. He appears to have succeeded in doing what I thought couldn't be done -- uniting the city's teachers and principals against him and his top-down, corporate-style reform model.

First his attempted bribery of the city's elementary school teachers to g et them to abandon their union and surrender their own collective bargaining rights, was a dismal failure. Only 13 out of some 470 schools took the longer-school-day bait and that was before the threat of legal action forced the mayor to back down.

Now, his attempt to pay principals one-time bonuses on the basis of student test scores and their willingness to fire teachers, has been rejected, loudly and clearly by the Chicago Principals Assoc. Apart from the basic unfairness of such a plan, the sources of its funding are problematic. Like many of Rahm's reform schemes, this one is to be funded by private donations from a group of the mayor's wealthy pals, for whom the few million in pay bonuses is like tip-money that can be withdrawn or denied on a whim.

Another problem with test-based merit-pay is its tendency to widen racial-pay gaps. A recent report from the U.S. Dept. of Education's Office for Civil Rights has already shown a growing racial salary-gap between educators teaching in so-called "higher-minority" schools. Bonus-pay schemes like this one can only widen the gap.

“Many principals are uncomfortable with a bonus structure only given to them, when raising student achievement is a team effort,” says Principals Assoc. prez Clarice Berry,

She says, there's no research to support merit pay, and she's absolutely right. Previous attempts in Chicago, under Arne Duncan, failed miserably and were scrapped by his successor, Ron Huberman. New York's $75 million merit pay experiment not only failed to boost student scores, student achievement actually declined.

With Emanuel and Brizard in charge of the schools, all pretense of research-based reform has been dropped in favor of the mayor's budget-slashing, union-busting, political agenda.

Ohio leads the way: Pay attention Obama

2011-11-09T06:44:00.004-06:00

"Ohio voters just gave public school teachers something they haven’t received in a while — respect," writes Valerie Strauss at the Answer Sheet.

Across the country, several other Republican-backed measures were also dealt setbacks, including a crackdown on voting rights in Maine. In Wake County, N.C., voters dealt a blow to the racist Republican clique that had taken over the school board by electing a progressive Democrat and educator, Kevin Hill. In Mississippi, voters rejected an amendment to the State Constitution that would have banned virtually all abortions and some forms of birth control by declaring a fertilized human egg to be a legal person. Michigan voters recalled Rep. Paul Scott who was a front man for T-Party gov, Rick Snyder and a pal of Michelle Rhee. The new law repealed in Ohio would have severely limited the bargaining rights of more than 350,000 teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees.

Lots of credit for its defeat goes to the Occupy Movement and the unions for re-framing the current national political debate and turning out the troops. Big losers were the Koch Bros. and other corporate interests who spent millions to pass the union-busting bill.

While the movement is non-partisan and crosses party lines, especially in Ohio, the trend is becoming clearer. The victory in Ohio, like those in Wisconsin, is energizing the labor movement and should help Democrats in 2012. But today's Democratic Party, especially its big-city mayors, appears to be as nervous about the movement as are Republicans. In Chicago, for example, Mayor Emanuel has a similar approach towards unions, teachers and other public employees as Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and New Jersey. Until last night, Obama was silent on the events in Ohio. His achilles heel is his failed education policies which amount to little more than a Bush re-hash of austerity, privatization and mass teacher firings, while using the rhetoric of reform. There needs to be a shake up in the Dept. of Education and a rethinking of anti-teacher and anti-union Race To The Top.

This morning, in what one AP journalist called, "a signal of the issue's national resonance", White House spokesman Jay Carney issued a statement saying President Barack Obama "congratulates the people of Ohio for standing up for workers and defeating efforts to strip away collective bargaining rights, and commends the teachers, firefighters, nurses, police officers and other workers who took a stand to defend those rights."

Remember Mitt Romney visited Ohio recently and said he was not sure where he stood on the issue. A day later, he said he stood against the labor unions and collective bargaining rights for teachers and other public employees. After yesterday's shellacking, Ohio's T-Party Gov. Kasich was contrite and is now claims he will throw his support the state's workers. Here's hoping Pres. Obama is watching all this closely and drawing the appropriate lessons. His road to victory in 2012 should be apparent by now.

Occupy Movement: Reframing the school reform debate

2011-11-08T08:36:00.001-06:00

Taking it to the DOE

The Occupy Movement in NY has refocused the whole school reform narrative and has transformed power relationships. Where only a few months ago Mayor Bloomberg and his hand-picked administrators were able to exercise control over "public" meetings, silencing opposition from teachers, parents and community members, and dominating the mainstream media, the new movement has changed things.

Yesterday, Occupy the DOE forces made their voices heard. NY1 reports [Video]:

A couple hundred activists belonging to a group called "Occupy the DOE," including many teachers, spent Monday night on the steps of the Department of Education headquarters in Lower Manhattan to shout demands for improving the schools. Other DOE employees, public school students and their parents also took part in the protest.

This morning's N.Y.Times quotes Occupy organizer Leia Petty who says the grass-roots group started as a grade-in last month in Zuccotti Park to address a growing list of issues with the Education Department that included overcrowded classrooms, teacher layoffs and school closings. Yet after the Oct. 25 meeting, it was clear that Occupy the DOE struck a chord with the public, and a nerve with the city’s top education officials.

"We want to create an agenda for the 99 percent, to strategize actions,” said Ms. Petty, 30, a high school guidance counselor from Bushwick, Brooklyn. “We came together today to realize that agenda.”

The Washington Post Business Section and Bloomberg News are also keeping a close watch on the Occupy Movement.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

2011-11-07T06:31:00.008-06:00

Rep. Maddox and Tenn. Gov. Bredesen celebrated their $500 million Race To The Top grant in March, 2010. But now...

Race To The Top a flop in Tenn.

"I’ve never known so little about what’s going on in my own building.” -- Will Shelton, principal of Blackman Middle School

New York, New York...

"In another age, revelations that school reforms are little more than a series of phony claims that cost an extra $100 billion in taxpayer money would have resulted in some sort of political retribution. There would be cries for repealing the mayor’s dictatorial control of the schools, or cries for an investigation. Today, this is a one-horse political town." -- Marc Epstein taught history in Queens, N.Y

New white flight fears in Memphis

“I hope people can see that this is an opportunity to reflect on our history and not make the same mistakes. If people are leaving for reasons that they don’t want their children to be around children of color or children who are poor, then I say to them, ‘I bid you farewell.’ ” -- Kenya Bradshaw, advocate for educational equity

Clinton on Obama

“I’m really trying to help him,” the white-haired former president said, shaking his head, “but he seems to have lost his narrative.” -- NY Times

Paul Krugman

"That is, the protesters who portray themselves as representing the interests of the 99 percent have it basically right, and the pundits solemnly assuring them that s really about education, not the gains of a small elite, have it completely wrong." -- NY Times

Gov. Walker got one thing right in Chicago speech -- "Rahm is echoing me..."

2011-11-04T00:31:00.000-05:00

Protesters disguised as Republicans lay in wait for Walker inside Union League Club

Wisconsin's union-busting governor tried to slip quietly into Chicago yesterday, to talk with supporters at the stodgy, tie-only Union League Club. So protesters donned business attire and sneaked inside and greeted Walker with chants of, "Union busting -- it's disgusting!" before they were finally escorted out by security.

According to Stand Up! Chicago, the 70 protesters who attended the breakfast comprised almost half the total number of attendees. Outside hundreds more marched in protest of Walker's appearance.

"It is an outrage and a shame that we sit at this fancy breakfast to listen to someone who has wreaked havoc on the lives of working families," the group said, according to a statement from Stand Up! Chicago. "Governor Walker has vilified unions and insulted the 99% who depend on living wages and adequate benefits to support their families, while on the payroll of the right wing billionaire Koch brothers.” -- Huffington

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker heckled at Chicago's Union League Club from WBEZ on Vimeo.

After making a 1950's Dixiecrat-style case against the power of the federal gommn't and for "states' rights," the besieged Republican governor had the nerve to actually claim that he was supported and liked by Wisconsin's unions. He obviously hadn't bothered to look out his window where hundreds of thousands of union members have been rallying all year against his policies and calling for a speedy end to his and his colleagues' political careers. The massive anti-Walker protests have spread nationwide and were in many ways, a catalyst for the current dynamic Occupy Wall Street movement.

In the end, Gov. Walker may have gotten one thing right. He came out and said what we in Chicago have been thinking for months:

“I found it amusing to be referenced in the same vein as Rahm Emanuel, the mayor, but, really, some of the reforms he’s trying to do here echo the things we try to do in the state of Wisconsin and I give him credit for that despite the fact I’m a Republican and he’s a Democrat." -- Sun-Times

Cuts have been a disaster for public ed

2011-11-03T12:00:00.002-05:00

Conservatives hail cuts as "an opportunity"

Huffington's Joy Resmovitz reports that a UFT survey of 900 New York City schools finds that three quarters of elementary schools, 61 percent of middle schools and 59 percent of high schools had increased class sizes.

"What we know is what we feared was happening," [UFT Pres. Mike] Mulgrew says. "Now, all 1 million of our students are ... having their education negatively affected by what has happened between the federal, state and city budgets." In addition to budget cuts, all city agencies were recently warned that they would have to make a total of $2 billion cuts in aggregate for the next year. -- Huffington Post

The problem is that our political leaders, particularly our secretary of education, don't believe that exploding class sizes are a problem. Get rid of him, President Obama.

Even worse, Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey and Florida for example, are pushing for even deeper cuts and the privatization of public schools. Chester Finn and his cabal of right-wing think-tankers over at the Fordham Institute are celebrating the massive cuts.

“If states look at this as a way to really look at how education is structured, it can be seen as an opportunity,” said Chris Tessone, director of finance at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank in Washington, D.C. “It’s a chance to be innovative, to rethink their staffing model. We see this new normal as an opportunity.” -- Fiscal Times

The Daily News reports that almost half of the city's middle schools bought fewer textbooks. Over a third of high schools cut advanced placement classes, electives and gym.

“We’re suffering from these budget cuts,” said Christine Wong, a special education teacher at Public School 1 in Chinatown. She said her classes have on average jumped from 17 to 25 students this year. If these cuts continue, it will be devastating,” she said. Wong said her classes suffer from a lack of basic supplies, including copy paper, workbooks and pens.

Over at Bridging Differences, Diane Ravitch describes a district (San Diego) which has been recovering from years of top-down control by corporate reformers.

The district is now led by a dynamic school board chairman, Richard Barrera, and a low-key superintendent, Bill Kowba. Barrera has a background as a community organizer in the labor movement, and Kowba is a retired rear admiral with 30 years in the Navy and administrative experience in the San Diego public schools. Together, they are passionate and effective advocates for the San Diego public schools.

But whatever progress district schools are making is now threatened by budget cuts.

The state legislature has slashed $15 billion in funding from California's public schools in the past four years. San Diego alone has lost $450 million since 2007-2008 and has had to lay off teachers and other staff, increase class size, and eliminate programs for children. San Diego may be forced to declare bankruptcy, along with many other districts.

The latest NAEP scores are but one indicator that the combination of corporate-style reform and massive budget cuts are failing to improve things and are instead continuing to widen the so-called "achievement gap." WaPo's Valerie Strauss suggests a new T-shirt which would read: “My nation spent billions on testing and all I got was a 1-point gain.”

Without mentioning the Occupy Wall Street movement, Merrill Goozner, writing at Fiscal Times, believes that a political backlash is building against education spending cuts which could have an impact in 2012.

Nearly all the top ten toss-up states in next year’s presidential election have sharply curtailed their education budgets since the recession began in 2008, a survey by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities shows. And with federal stimulus money evaporating, a new round of cuts to state and local budgets are in the offing. That could turn education into a major campaign issue next year, or at least one that roils the local waters where presidential politics will play out.

It's again worth mentioning one more time that after 10 years, we are continuing to spend upwards of $2 billion a week fighting a murderous, senseless, and unwinnable Afghan war. Can we do this and still maintain a public education system in this country? Uh uh.

Oakland's general strike -- Today's teachable moment

2011-11-02T09:35:00.000-05:00

"We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%." -- Occupy Oakland General Assembly votes to shut it down.

Teachers and students are playing a central role in today's general strike. Teachers are participating in teach-ins across the city and thousands of students are planning to take part in school walkouts. Lots of schools should be closed with lots of learning going on. No standardized tests but authentic, performance-based assessments. Curriculum includes values clarification, community leadership, economics, political science (this is what democracy looks like), mathematics (percentages -- the power of 99).

Students in Philly are walking out for 99 minutes at noon in solidarity with Occupy Oakland. In New York, the New York City All Student Assembly has called for students to gather in Washington Square to express their solidarity before joining other Occupy Wall Street activists in a larger solidarity demonstration.

I don't know why I'm surprised at the total black out of the general strike on morning news show. Of course, Democracy Now covered it extensively. But not a word on NBC's Today show -- I did learn a lot about Kim Kardashian's impending divorce from Kris whatshisname.

Oakland cops are asking Mayor Quan, "are we part of the 99% or not." The fact that they are even asking doesn't bode well for Wall Streeters.

Why do wealthy suburban schools really score higher on tests?

2011-11-01T12:11:00.002-05:00

The longer school day propaganda continues

Stupid ed journalism doesn't get any stupider than this. The Chicago Sun-Times annual story about wealthy suburban elementary schools outscoring inner city schools carried this headline: "Top schools have longer days."

I mean kissing the mayor's butt is one thing, but you're not going to sell his 90-minutes of extra seat time plan by claiming that kids at Highland Park’s Braeside School, the highest-scoring neighborhood elementary school in the state, score higher than kids on the west side of Chicago because of a few minutes more seat time?

“The more education time, the better,” said [Beth] Bernat, mother of a Braeside fourth- and first-grader. “At this age, they are all sponges.

Sponges indeed!

What the Sun-Times failed to report was that Highland Park actually has 5 fewer schools days each year (175) than does Chicago. Students do stay in school some 45 minutes longer in HP but much of that time is spent in recess or lunch (not a bad idea). Not one high-scoring suburban district uses Rahm's 90-minute longer school day model.

Most importantly, the Sun-Times doesn't tell us that Braeside School is a small school with only 270 students, with not one of them eligible for free lunch or Title I funding. Dist. 112 spends about $13,000 per elementary school student and has 13 students for every full-time teacher, well below the state average. The median income in this exclusively white, north shore community is $115,000 with many earning ten times more than that annually.

Ironically, even the Sun-Times own editorial board had some problems swallowing Rahm's longer-school-day crap.

While the instructional day in Chicago (which excludes recess and lunch) is undoubtedly shorter than in other cities, we aren’t convinced Chicago is as far behind as CPS contends. No independent analysis exists... There’s broad support for a longer day. But if it’s too long, CPS could easily find itself with a lot of unproductive or even counter-productive time on its hands.

Finally, all of the suburban districts mentioned in the S-T story have the length of their school day and school year negotiated as part of the collective bargaining agreement between the board and the teachers union. Rahm would do well to follow that approach rather than acting out his autocratic fantasies.

So how about it, Sun-Times. How about ALL the news that's fit to print?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

2011-10-31T06:15:00.001-05:00

John Adams' 276th birthday

“The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.” -- The New Civil Rights Movement

Anthony Cody

"Bill Gates can produce the most elaborate teacher evaluation system in the world, but any system built upon the two dimensional data provided by test scores will be trumped by the smell and taste of poverty in our classrooms, and the cold hard data that shows we are failing to provide the most basic level of support for our children to live healthy lives and learn well in school." -- Washington Post

Charles Blow

"We sold ourselves a pipe dream that everyone could get rich and no one would get hurt — a pipe dream that exploded like a pipe bomb when the already-rich grabbed for all the gold; when they used their fortunes to influence government and gain favors and protection; when everyone else was left to scrounge around their ankles in hopes that a few coins would fall." -- New York Times

Daley vs. Rahm

I’m not reflecting on Rahm, but I’m not angling for something else, you know? Rahm is a lot younger [only 51 years old], and he knew he was going to be doing something else in two years or four years or eight years, and I’m in a different stage. I'm not going to become the leaker in chief. -- Bill Daley

Vets join OWS

"He joined the military to fight for people's rights, and that's not what he found himself doing in Iraq. And so he came home and started fighting for people's rights here and for his brothers and sisters who were still deployed," said Iraq veteran Aaron Hughes, the central and team leader of Iraq Veterans Against the War. -- ABC News

Embedded Jonathan Alter equates unions with T-Party

2011-10-28T09:42:00.002-05:00

After reading Jonathan Alter's latest diatribe against teacher unions ("Tea Party and Teachers Union Make Strange Brew"), I can only wonder who at Duncan's D.O.E. is feeding Alter his lines. Writing for Bloomberg News, Alter somehow equates the NEA's opposition to NCLB test-and-punish accountability standards with the T-Party's defense of states rights and its call to do away with the Dept. of Education. Of course, neither position is held by the NEA. Alter writes:

Talk about bizarre bedfellows. The National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, and the Tea Party are both arguing against federal accountability standards in education.

Alter then goes on to praise Duncan's anti-union pal, Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who he claims, "understood the importance of accountability when he was secretary of education 20 years ago." Ironically, it's Alexander who has been the most critical of the D.O.E.'s centralized authority under Duncan. He claims that the latest version of NCLB's rewrite gives "too much authority" to the federal government, and would “transform the U.S. secretary of education into chairman of a national school board.”

Not wanting to upset Duncan's apple cart, Alter makes no mention of Alexander's own T-Party rhetoric.

You might recall that it was educational know-nothing Alter who responded to a critical NYT editorial by leading a charge against administration critic Diane Ravitch, in which he parroted all of the talking points assembled in the D.O.E.'s communications department.

The question remains -- is Jonathan Alter Arne Duncan's Armstrong Williams?

Longer school day or smaller class size?

2011-10-27T15:00:00.004-05:00

Research you can use

"Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has voiced a preference for expanding school days and years to increase instructional time over reducing class sizes." -- Edweek

Why do Arne Duncan, Rahm Emanuel and corporate school reformers all favor longer school days and school year while opposing smaller class size initiatives? The answer is simple. The longer school day and year require fewer teachers, with each teacher teaching more kids in larger classes at no extra cost. This is the business model of school reform. Yes, it's cheaper in the short run. It is also a "reform" that is meant to override collective bargaining agreements.

However, there is no evidence that more instructional time alone, especially in larger classes, has any positive effect on measurable learning outcomes or on closing the so-called "achievement gap." In fact, many studies show a drop-off in student engagement that accompanies longer instructional time and that the addition of instructional time alone is insufficient to maximize learning outcomes (See: "Time and learning in the special education classroom." by Libby Goodman). There's plenty of other research showing little benefit expected from a further increase in the amount of math and reading instruction offered per day. For example: The merits of a longer school day, Charles R. Link, James G. Mulligan and Theory and practice of early reading, Lauren B. Resnick, Phyllis A. Weaver.

Ironically, some of the best research summaries on the benefits of smaller class size can be found right on the D.O.E.'s own website. Other resources include:

I heart New York

2011-10-27T08:50:00.000-05:00

Oakland fallout

2011-10-27T07:46:00.001-05:00

Call for a general strike

Give lots of credit to Oakland protesters for having the courage and discipline to regroup peacefully last night in the amphitheater in front of City Hall. Thankfully they haven't let the outrageous assault by Mayor Quan's cops terrorize them or divert them from their mission. It would be too easy to make police brutality THE issue now. Instead the 99ers spent several hours planning for a meeting today to discuss the mechanics for a general strike next week.

The Oakland Tribune reports:

After Tuesday night's violence, hundreds of Oakland residents appeared to have come out to help transform Occupy Oakland from a relatively disorganized, loose-knit movement to a broad-based community drive to implement a general strike. What the protesters are hoping for is the support of unions, teachers, students and workers to shut down the city next Wednesday.

"I think the police brutality drew a lot of people out of the hills and into the streets," said Josh Chavanne, 29, a freelance Web designer from Oakland. "There is nothing like a little inhumanity to turn on people's humanity."

Who's advising Quan?

I can't help wondering who advised Mayor Quan -- "I've got it. Let's attack protest with rubber bullets, gas, and flash grenades. That'll work." -- Quan who is now facing a growing recall movement, denies she was in on the planning for, what Morning Joe's Mike Barnicle called, "a police riot." It turns out that Tuesday morning, while plans were being made for the attack on the protests, Quan was actually at the White House on "city business."

Vet survived Iraq. Now critically wounded, shot in the face by Oakland cops in assault on protest.

2011-10-26T15:38:00.002-05:00

After vet was wounded, others came to his aid. A cop then tosses flash grenade at them.

Targeting mayoral control of the schools

2011-10-26T08:35:00.004-05:00

Photo: Anna Philips

Brother Fred reports from OWS that mayoral control of the schools has become a prime target of the protests. Although I don't think I'll ever be at ease with that human microphone thing (reminds me too much of the Monty Python movie, Life of Brian), it does sound like a great way to get your point across in one of Chancellor Wolcott's carefully controlled policy panel meetings.

There's a pretty good debate about standardized testing going on at National Journal online. The main protagonists are FairTest's Monty Neill and former Bush adviser and die-hard NCLB defender (he may be the only one left) Sandy Kress. On today's Bridging Differences blog post "End it, don't mend it", Diane Ravitch warns that, "Instead of ditching this disastrous law, senators are trying to apply patches."

School's CEO J.C. Brizard calls Chicago's widening racial achievement gap "unacceptable." Good! But then he offers up the 90-minute longer school day as the solution. Not so good.
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NYT reports that the top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades.

The most affluent fifth of the population received 53 percent of after-tax household income in 2007, up from 43 percent in 1979. In other words, the after-tax income of the most affluent fifth exceeded the income of the other four-fifths of the population.

Noguera: School reform is community reform

2011-10-25T09:42:00.002-05:00

BBA's project in Newark

In the new issue of Kappan, Pedro Noguera describes the theory and practice behind a Broader, Bolder Approach (BBA) initiative in Newark which links community-based reform with the anti-poverty struggle. BBA has been working in seven schools in Newark's Central Ward (six kindergarten through 8th-grade schools and one large comprehensive high school).

According to Noguera, they have introduced school-based interventions in response to the issues and challenges presented in this high-poverty area. Through these interventions, social services, and a concerted effort to increase civic engagement, BBA is working to ensure that environmental hardships related to poverty don't undermine efforts to transform schools. With funding from the Ford, Victoria, and Prudential foundations, the BBA effort commenced two years before the $100-million donation from Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg came to Newark.

BBA's approach has critics and opponents, writes Noguera including an unusual combination of prominent public figures like former chancellor of New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, former House Republican leader Newt Gingrich, and civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton. They argue in support of the principles of NCLB, such as standards-based reform and accountability through high-stakes testing. The also charge that shift the focus of school reform toward reducing poverty or improving the health and welfare of children is using poverty as "an excuse." Despite its critics, writes Noguera, the BBA strategy is moving forward and gaining momentum as an array of stakeholders across the country agree to support it.

While expecting a single school to counter the effects of poverty on its own is unrealistic, a small but growing number of American schools are finding ways to reduce some of the effects. Mitigation is not the same as solving a problem, but it’s nonetheless an important strategy for schools to employ.

Read Noguera's entire Kappan article here: http://www.kappanmagazine.org/content/93/3/8.full.pdf+html

Dems living abroad in France get it right

2011-10-24T11:57:00.002-05:00

I wonder why the Democrats, living abroad in France, seem to have it much more together than the ones in the White House, Congress and the DOE? Here's the education platform they want the Democratic Party to adopt:

DRAFT RESOLUTION ON STRENGTHENING QUALITY PUBLIC EDUCATION FOR ALL AMERICAN YOUNG PEOPLE

Proposed by Chair Democrats Abroad France, Constance Borde assisted by the Democrats Abroad France Education Policy Group Chair: Dr. Leslie J. Limage

(Originally submitted to DA Resolutions Committee on September 14, 2011, Approved for transmission to the DA Platform Committee by the DCPA on October 17, 2011, Washington, D.C.)

WHEREAS education is a human right and public responsibility to provide all children and young people with the opportunity to realize their full potential (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26).

WHEREAS ongoing policies inherited from the previous U.S. Administration and carried forward by current leadership are undermining the quality of education as well as our longstanding commitment to equal opportunity, the alleviation of poverty, civil rights and respect for linguistic, social and cultural diversity in a misplaced reliance on business practices and privatization of public education.

WHEREAS what we need to improve education is a strong, highly respected education profession; a rich curriculum in the arts and sciences, available in every school for every child; assessments that gauge what students know and can do, and a government that is prepared to change the economic and social conditions that interfere with children’s readiness to learn.

WHEREAS we cannot improve education by quick fixes, by handing over our public schools to entrepreneurs, by driving out experienced professionals replacing them with enthusiastic amateurs, or by closing them and firing teachers and entire staff. No country in the world follows such strategies.

WHEREAS disadvantage in our country is exacerbated by unsafe and crumbling schools. Over the past three years, investments in school improvements have benefited the wealthier districts disproportionately. The President’s new job’s creation legislation announced in his September 9, 2011 speech to Congress on an “American Jobs Act” is intended to remedy this situation and we need to ensure that it does in fact do so.

BE IT RESOLVED that Democrats Abroad adopt the following education policy foundations for our platform in 2012 many of which already figured in our 2008 Platform and that these principles figure in our 2012 Party Platform:

The Purpose of education: is to enable all children and young people to reach their full potential as individuals and become socially responsible citizens of our country and the world.

Equality of opportunity and non-discrimination are the foundations of our democratic society and must be reflected in all aspects of educational governance, management, finance, school facilities, teaching and support professions.

Formative Evaluation and Assessment should encourage learning. The evaluation of students should be diagnostic. The results of student evaluation should not be used to evaluate teachers and schools as institutions. The evaluation of schools should celebrate the strengths of community ownership of and improvement by school communities.

The teaching and school leadership professions. Teachers and their organizations should be viewed by governments as equal partners, independent but committed to the common endeavor of achieving successful education systems. School leadership, governance and management also require professional knowledge and the specificity of public service and education. Outsourcing any aspect of educational leadership de-professionalizes key foundations of our education systems and decision-making based on knowledge, experience, trust and democratic principles. Education professionals’ collective bargaining rights acquired over many years should be respected rather than threatened.

Educational facilities: quality, safe and environmentally friendly schools. Public schools are an important element of our nation’s infrastructure. Repairing strengthening, upgrading and constructing schools are essential. A nationwide effort needs to be initiated to anticipate and improve the adaptability of the nations’ existing and yet to be built school infrastructure, including regular rehabilitation and upgrades.

Promoting Equality through Inclusive Education. It is the responsibility of public authorities to ensure that all citizens have access to high quality education services appropriate to their needs. All barriers to education must be removed in order to make school accessible for all persons. Any school receiving public funding should not be permitted to select its students based on their likelihood of meeting testing standards, much less because of race, ethnic origin, sex, or religion.

Early Childhood Care and Education: Free, High Quality Public Preschool Programs

Early childhood care and education is intended to meet the needs of the whole child. The Federal government should provide assistance to states for the creation of free, universal, voluntary pre-kindergarten programs. They should encourage linkage of universal preschool with the resources, infrastructure and talent of the public school system. The Federal government should also ensure that states require the licensing and certification of all preschool instructors.

Primary and Secondary Education. Quality primary and secondary education are the basis on which all further learning takes place and young adults are equipped with the critical thinking skills and knowledge to make further educational and professional choice throughout their lives. These levels of education are public responsibility. The Federal government’s first responsibility is to set the bar higher than it has ever been in terms of equality of access and service, rather than lowering it to enable “market” forces to play.

Higher Education: Access, Academic Freedom and Quality. Action must be taken to improve equal access to all forms of tertiary education and reduce the cost of higher education. A key characteristic of successful individuals and societies is the quality of higher education. It is not a matter of “competition” worldwide or for scarce “jobs” within our country. It is an absolutely necessary building block for realizing human potential and constructing democratic, open and globally responsible world citizens.

Protection of education as a public good in a period of economic austerity. All concerned citizens should work to re-take and then re-build quality public education. The trends towards privatization and outsourcing of our children’s future are undermining democratic institutions at home and internationally. We need informed citizenry to begin to re-establish democratic values and institutions that respect them.

Thank to Diane Ravitch for forwarding this.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

2011-10-24T06:19:00.001-05:00

Duncan's biggest fan

“I’m a fan,” said Margaret Spellings, Duncan’s immediate predecessor, who was education secretary during President George W. Bush’s second term and an architect of Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind policy. “He’s a good man who I think is doing the best job he can.” -- Politico

Petrilli agrees

He has “used his power responsibly for the most part,” said Michael J. Petrilli, executive vice president at the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a former Bush-era Education Department official. “The priorities he’s been pushing on are the right ones.” -- Politico

Ravitch not so much
“If you like federal control of education, he’s your man.” -- Diane Ravitch

Gates knows best

"It may surprise you—it was certainly surprising to us—but the field of education doesn't know very much at all about effective teaching." -- Bill & Melinda Gates

Measurement and its discontents

One way is to ask ourselves what is missing from our measurements. Are the tests administered by schools making students smarter and more educated, or just making us think we know how to evaluate education? -- Robert Crease, New York Times

Rahm declares war on the unions

2011-10-21T10:33:00.003-05:00

Move over Gov. Walker, Chris Christie and Rick Perry. A new king of the union busters has emerged in Chicago, of all places. He's a big-city mayor, not a T-Party governor and his plan starts with tax breaks for the corporations and big tax increases on the poor followed up by a legal rip-off of public employee pensions. His only barrier is the unions and Mayor Rahm has already declared war on them, starting with the teachers union.

But even autocrats run into resistance once in a while (Isn't that so, Bloomberg, Duncan, Mubarak?) and Rahm ran into some yesterday when the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board ruled that his arbitrary longer-school-day scheme being imposed on resistant schools violated teachers collective bargaining rights. The Board ruling pushes the state attorney general’s office to seek an injunction against Rahm's assault on teachers who were being made to work longer hours for what amounts to less than minimum wage. The ruling puts a temporary hold on Rahm's waiver strategy of bribing individual schools and teachers to break ranks with their unions. The strategy was already a failed proposition as only 13 schools out of some 470 voted in favor of the contract waiver.

In another disgusting display of journalistic toadyism, two Sun-Times editorials exhort politicians to go after the pension funds as a way to pay for corporate tax breaks ( "To fix state pension mess, cut benefits for employees") and to attack the transit workers union ("For sake of riders, CTA must take on unions").

It’s time for Illinois to get a grip on its monstrous pension problem. And the only viable solution requires public workers and the state to swallow bitter pills: reduced pensions for current employees and mandatory payments by the state to cover the roughly $85 billion it owes for pension benefits already promised.

This solution, in concept, has been pushed for years by the Civic Committee, a Chicago business group, and was embraced by House Minority Leader Tom Cross and House Speaker Michael Madigan in legislation introduced last spring. It could come up in the veto session that begins next week.

Yes, there's no doubt that the mayor has pulled out all stops and mobilized all his troops in his war on the city's workers. Occupy Chicago!

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog

Idea: Pick up your "training money"

The Econometrics of Rwandan Pear Blossoms at Duke University

GOP salutes Obama's ed policies

Rahm's hired army of protesters under investigation

Tucson students walk out over banning of ethnic cultural studies

Misstate of the Union

Rahm's Army

Shame of a nation

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Sound the alarm! The "activists" are coming

Prof. Timuel Black's Papers

Rahm's retreat was phony

Rahm's retreat

Rangel takes U.N.O. into the lucrative charter business

\WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Stand for Children back in town to 'educate us' about turnarounds

Hoping 2012 will see a rebirth of parents movement

"Results for money..." Bush defends NCLB

Tom Toch on Voucher Redux

Why is this N.J. charter app being approved?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Report from last night's hearing on the closing of Crane High School

Gabe Lyon, 2011 Chicagoan of the Year

Is Vallas angling for Duncan's job? Just asking.

CPS parents, community groups protest school closings, privatization

Chicago mayor stars in right-wing, anti-public school video

Teaching and learning in a strange land

NAACP resolution on charter schools

NEW YEAR QUOTABLES

Summing up 2011: David Sirota did it for me

A biblical school reform metaphor

What the 1%ers have to say for themselves

While public schools go begging...

CHRISTMAS QUOTABLES

End of Iraq War? Let's not celebrate quite yet

Jose Rico named to lead White House initiative

Parents beat back Rahm's re-segregation at LaSalle Academy

Chicago communities rally to save their schools

Vallas, the master of disaster, takes interim job in Bridgeport

Turnaround cronyism at Collins High

Chicago parents and community leaders take anti-closings fight to City Hall

Stumbling towards exactitude

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

A great charter school hustle

Rail against the machine

An "astonishing number..."

More video of today's battle in Chicago to save our schools

In Chicago: 'A fight for the soul of public education'

Unprecedented victory in Colorado school funding case

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

The real Chicago "miracle" -- Arne Duncan still has a job

Before we start feeling all warm and fuzzy about Teddy Roosevelt...

Obama's Osawatomie speech

Observations

CTU Teach-in on school closings

Chicago's new top charter school bureaucrat

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Transparent moments

Michigan's union-busters caught sending secret emails to pols

More questions for J.C. Brizard

Uncapping and de-regulating charter schools

Questions for Jean-Claude Brizard

Principals revolt against the testing madness

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Resistance building to Rahm's school closings.

Will test-cheating students become America's new prison population?

The White Party

Are there really too many 'mediocre' charter schools?

Rahm funnels millions more away from public schools to charter operators

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Believing the reformers

What? Attacks on Occupiers were coordinated by Obama's people?

Asking Arne

WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

Chicago principals say no to Rahm's "merit pay" scheme

Ohio leads the way: Pay attention Obama

Occupy Movement: Reframing the school reform debate

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Gov. Walker got one thing right in Chicago speech -- "Rahm is echoing me..."