Speaking Finn-ish: 'High quality learners' code name for...

You can mock these right-wing loonies and American Taliban all you want after tonight's debate (and I will). But remember, they still control both houses of Congress, lots of state houses and legislatures,  and dominate the Supreme Court. And we have a Democratic administration, including the Dept. of Education and some big-city mayors, that have abetted, enabled and imitated them for the past 7 years and longer.

Finn

Speaking of... Former Asst. Ed Sec. under Reagan, Chester Finn is targeting Finland's education system (progressives' favorite) for not spending more on "high quality learners." You don't have to speak Finn-ish to understand Finn's coded references or to see that he's not just talking about Finland, which already has lots of high schools devoted to the "gifted".

Finn, a senior fellow at the right-wing Hoover Institute, must love Dem Mayor Rahm Emanuel who is pushing selective-enrollment schools on every other block on the north side of Chicago. The north side obviously has more high-quality children.

Finn and his think-tank protege, Michael Petrilli at the Fordham Institute, are all about reproducing the educational system's inequalities.

Amanda Klonsky, who taught students in Chicago's juvenile detention center for several years, wonders what Finn would call her students?

@amandaklonsky1 He'd call them "low-quality learners". @pasi_sahlberg https://t.co/RxWD5MXUVd

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) November 10, 2015

Come see us talk about prisons and justice at Penn State. #rapsessions https://t.co/yxB9CiijcY

— Amanda Klonsky (@amandaklonsky1) November 9, 2015

The Children Left Behind

Thanks to journalist Debbie Nathan writing for In These Times, for putting a human face on the disaster that is No Child Left Behind.

Students began to notice weird goings-on at the international bridge near campus—specifically, Bowie administrators stationed there with cameras. What the students didn’t know was that García had ordered an employee to take photos of students crossing in the morning from Juárez to identify which ones did not live in El Paso. For generations, a custom of this bi-national community was to recognize that kids tended to have complicated citizenship and living arrangements, and it was far better to educate them than to deny them over where they slept at night. But Garcia’s main concern was that bi-national students tended to have limited English skills and would likely score low on TAKS tests. They needed to go.

Read the entire piece, "The Children Left Behind", here.

Finn (R) and his Fordham boys

Michael Petrilli (top center in picture) has been appointed head of the right-wing Fordham Institute, a position he inherited from his mentor, Checker Finn. Readers will remember charter school hustler Finn from this 2009 quotable:

"In K-12 education, we submit, greed can be good, albeit ugly."

Petrilli will likely carry on Fordham's greed-is-good tradition only without Finn's smarts. He's the guy who, in a debate with Deb Meier, called for barring poor women from bearing children in the name of fighting poverty. Fordham (no relation to the university) has been a key player in the war on poverty -- only on the other side.




Here's another sign that the City Council's Black Caucus wants to distance itself from the increasingly unpopular Chicago Mayor who rapidly losing support in the black community and throughout the city.

Check out the heated exchange between between Alderman Jason Ervin and Chicago Police superintendent Garry McCarthy over whether the department is promoting minorities to high-ranking positions. Both men were admonished several times for cutting each other off, and Ervin took offense to McCarthy not looking at him while he was speaking.

But it was committee chairman Ald. Carrie Austin who refused to let McCarthy have the last word. "I'm going on to the next person. This is one day you gonna sit it down, because I'm the one running the show today," Austin told McCarthy.

As NBC5’S Political Reporter Mary Ann Ahern reports, there hasn’t been this kind of exchange before in the Emanuel administration.

Yes, another sign that Rahm can be had in the next election.

View from right field -- The 'civil rights movement' for school vouchers

Finn (right) and his Fordham team.

As thousands marched in D.C. to commemorate Dr. Kings dream speak=h, Checker Finn and his boys at the right-wing Fordham Institute began spinning their own version of the civil rights movement. Their "dream" is all about the "right" to funnel money away from public schools to private companies and religious groups in the form of vouchers.

In the latest issue of The Flypaper, they bemoan the efforts of the Justice Dept. and  the Southern Poverty Law Center to overturn Louisiana's voucher program which has been found to reinforce school segregation.

Since the Fordham crew have absolutely no civil rights credibility of their own, they defer to a civil rights movement veteran from Alabama, Rev. H.K. Matthews, who has sadly lined up with Bobby Jindal in La. and former Florida schools chief Tony Bennett, to support vouchers.

They call the Justice Dept. move "folly" since it could have major implications for other modes of choice, including charter schools.

You bet.

The view from right-field on class size

Checker Finn (right) and his Fordham Foundation crew are upset at White House report.

“So it should concern everyone that right now – all across America – tens of thousands of teachers are getting laid off....Think about what that means for our country. When there are fewer teachers in our schools, class sizes start climbing up. Our students start falling behind. And our economy takes a hit.” -- President Obama

Finn, Petrilli & Co. (pictured above) over at the right-wing Fordham Institute are freaking out over a recent White House report, Investing in Our Future: Returning Teachers to the Classroom, which they describe as"decrying lost teaching jobs that will allegedly swell classes around the country." In the latest edition of Fordham's Flypaper, TFAer (of course) Tyson Eberhardt goes off on Obama for his apparent flip on the question of class size. 

As the election heats up, the Obama camp clearly sees class size and teacher layoffs as promising lines of political attack and important ways to energize powerful labor allies less than thrilled with many of the White House’s education priorities over the last four years. Unfortunately for the Dems, however, strident infomercials and gloomy white papers can’t undo the now-awkward but still-sound remarks of Mr. Obama’s education secretary on the issue. “Class size has been a sacred cow and we need to take it on,” Arne Duncan correctly said in 2011, a year after arguing that “districts may be able to save money without hurting students, while allowing modest but smartly targeted increases in class size.”

Eberhardt has a point. Why has it taken until election time for the Dems to say the right thing on this crucial ed issue? Is this a real break from Duncan's blathering about the benefits of larger class size or just a bone being thrown to bring union voters back into the fold?

Either way, the fact remains that Obama has finally responded to Romney on an important issue of education. Will the Dems actually come up with a convention education plank?

With the loss of 300,000 teaching jobs in the past two years, resulting from budget cuts as well as from  the administration's own Race To The Top policies, class sizes in urban districts (not where Duncan or Obama send their children to school) have swelled to crisis proportions.  According to the report, "the national student-teacher ratio increased by 4.6 percent from 2008 to 2010, rolling back all the gains made since 2000." But that doesn't even begin to tell the real story.

In urban districts with high concentrations of children of color, like Detroit and Los Angeles, class sizes are now reaching 45-60 students. Duncan, along with his pals on the right -- remember, Duncan first made ridiculous bigger-is-better comments at an American Enterprise Institute conference -- continue to pose the false choice between a good teacher or a rational class size -- a choice wealthy suburban or private school parents never have to make.

Whatever his motives, Obama has taken a meaningful step forward in this report. It's no wonder he has the flies at Flypaper buzzing. I'm sure the boys at DFER aren't too happy either.

For more info and the latest research on class size, go to Class Size Matters.

Sound the alarm! The "activists" are coming

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.

 On the other side, we find much greater emphasis on civic participation and activism, 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 society are best dealt with through group action, by people joining hands and working together 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.

Cuts have been a disaster for public ed

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.

Research Corner

More bunk from Fordham 

Chester Finn's Fordham Institute keeps cranking it out. They're only doing what any good conservative think tank does -- making a case for cutting education spending and busting union contracts. Their main targets are usually early childhood education and the neediest urban districts. Problem is, their research always ends up "proving" their ideological stand. How predictable!

Thankfully the folks from the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) are around (often filling the shoes of the late Jerry Bracey) to debunk Fordham's bunk. Their latest bunk was a survey of Ohio superintendents, which Fordham used to argue for an increase in district authority instead of increased school resources.   

Yearning to Break Free: Ohio Superintendents Speak Out is a report based on a survey of 246 school superintendents, asking questions focused on reducing costs and expanding superintendents’ autonomy. On the basis of the survey, the report suggests that lack of money is not a serious problem for the state’s public schools. It also suggests that academic achievement would improve if superintendents were freed from state mandates and teachers' union contracts.

NEPC'S Catherine Horn, an education professor, and Gary Dworkin, a sociology professor, both at the University of Houston, find that the Fordham Institute report’s “conclusions are problematic because of the combined effects of non- representative sampling, leading or inappropriately worded items, and the conflating of opinion and fact.” 

Myriad factors contribute to student achievement, including home and community effects, campus resources (material and non-material), as well as teacher competence which are not examined or considered. And, despite the reported finding that superintendents prefer greater autonomy in personnel and school policies over increased funding, the majority of superintendents also contend that they would see a trade-off of more autonomy with a decrease in funding as undesirable.

You can read Horn and Dworkin's review of the Fordham report, here.

TWITTER FIGHT!

I don't think so.

Somehow Diane Ravitch and I ended up in a Twitter skirmish today with the Fordham Institute's Mike Petrilli. Petrilli is claiming that there's no privatization of public schools going on. Being a protege of conservative think-tank guru Checker Finn, he has learned the art of defining his way out of arguments, playing word games instead of getting to the heart of the matter. I already knew this going in, but bit anyway.

Petrilli fires the first shot at Ravitch:

Diane, name me one "reformer" who wants to privatize public schools.  

Ravitch quickly names not one, but 6, before she runs out of Tweet space:  George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Margaret Spellings, Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan=Corporate education reform.

 

I simply retweet Ravitch's answer, which draws Petrilli's fire towards me, narrowly nicking my Tweet finger. 

Michael Petrilli: None of those folks want to "privatize" public education.

 

I whirl and fire back:

Mike, what else would you call closing thousands of public schools & handing them over to private operators?

 

And again: 

Not to mention after-school programs, food services, security, curric. devlp., special ed, sports programs...

 

Oh, I ran out of space before I could mention tax-free real estate ownership of land including the ability of charter companies to leverage low-interest loans and pay execs huge compensation packages. Don't worry, Ravitch will bring that one up.

 

OK, so it's not a fatal blow. Petrilli ducks and fires with both barrels using the old re-definition gambit:

Michael Petrilli If the schools are open to the public, supported by public $$ and accountable to the public, they are public.

 

Uggh, I'm hit. He's got a point. But it's a weak one. It barely grazes me. Diane comes to my aid:

Diane Ravitch When charter schools pay $400,000 to CEO, when they fight public audits, when they kick kids out...not public.

 

I double-team: CMOs aren't accountable to the public, even admit they're private when it comes to NLRB and unions.

Then Petrilli goes where you knew he would:

Your definition of a public school seems to be "Staffed by members of public employee unions."

 

Now, I admit, I'm getting pissed: 

Save the union-baiting Mike. Not a question of who staffs them. It's who controls them, profits, signs pay checks

Nuts, I let him off too easy on that one. It takes a privatizer to ban unions when the public system is based on collective bargaining rights for teachers. It's precisely this union hating which puts Petrilli in league with the worst of the privatizers. Oh well, it was in the heat of battle. I'll get him next time. 

Diane Ravitch chimes in:  Privately managed deregulated charters are privatization. Decimates public sector. Nepotism ok.

 

I'm beginning to realize that this debate isn't moving anybody. It's an argument over the definition of the word privatization, and Petrilli won't move past that. He doesn't want to say he supports privatization and therefore is an enemy of public schools. It's only their union-free management he's after. Fordham is involved in the operation and authorization of privately-run charter schools in Ohio. 

 

But before signing off, I call on the old guy, Sun Tzu. Remember-- my enemy's enemy is my friend:

If u don't think they're private, Mike, your argument is with them--not me.

A Chicago charter school that has received more than $23 million in public money since opening in 2004 is arguing that it is a private institution, a move teachers say is designed to block them from forming a union. In papers filed with the National Labor Relations Board, attorneys for the Chicago Math and Science Academy on the city's North Side say the school should be exempt from an Illinois law that grants employees of all public schools the right to form unions for contract negotiations.-- Chicago Tribune, "Charter school says it's private"

Take that, Petrilli.  So far no response.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

L.A. schools, thousands of students on "lock-down" 

"No food was given. My son and daughter said classmates were peeing into trash cans," said Odette Fulliam, whose children attend Hale and El Camino. In fact, a 5-gallon pail is part of a "lockdown kit" that is supposed to be accessible to every classroom. The pail with a removable lid is "solely for the purpose of this kind of situation," said district spokesman Robert Alaniz. --L.A. Times)

Alabama leads assault on teacher unions

"I don't think there's any doubt that what they want to do is silence us, and I think that's what you see going on around the country," said David Stout, a spokesman for the Alabama Education Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association. "There's an organized movement to hamper the voice of what unions do in public education." --Sacramento Bee

Momma, don't let your babies visit China

"The Chinese regime is advancing its own interests in the West—including Walter Payton College Prep—by, in effect, bribing school systems, educators, and students to see the world through Chinese eyes and, of course, to turn blind eyes and deaf ears toward anyone who might raise concerns about the innumerable threats that Beijing poses to America’s future." -- Fordham Foundation's Checker Finn

Success for whom?

"Consider: A corporate leader who increases profits by slashing his work force is thought to be successful. Well, that’s more or less what has happened in America recently: employment is way down, but profits are hitting new records. Who, exactly, considers this economic success?" -- Paul Krugman, N.Y. Times

China's test-crazy schools

The Chinese, who have a 10th of our wealth, are running a great education system.-- Bill Gates

In a recent Newsweek interview , Gates lauded China's school system for producing high math/science scores on an international standardized test. Arne Duncan, as one would expect, followed suit, calling the test results a "wake up call." Conservative think-tanker Chester Finn then chimed in with some cold-war rhetoric, likening the Chinese teenagers' test results to the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik.

It never ceases to amaze me how  intensely our so-called free-market leaders seem to despise China and its political system, while at the same time envying their centralized, bureaucratized and standardized educational system. It seems like Gates, Duncan and Co. love China's system more than the Chinese themselves do.

A story in Tuesday's New York Times, "Shanghai Schools’ Approach Pushes Students to Top of Tests,"
seems to bear me out on this. Educators in China are growing increasingly critical of their school system which they say is too test-oriented, stifles creativity and often deprives children of the joys of childhood.

“These are two sides of the same coin: Chinese schools are very good at preparing their students for standardized tests,” Jiang Xueqin, a deputy principal at Peking University High School in Beijing, wrote in an opinion article published in The Wall Street Journal shortly after the test results were announced. “For that reason, they fail to prepare them for higher education and the knowledge economy.” In an interview, Mr. Jiang said Chinese schools emphasized testing too much, and produced students who lacked curiosity and the ability to think critically or independently.“It creates very narrow-minded students,” he said. “But what China needs now is entrepreneurs and innovators.” 

China's school system is also marked by vast inequities. Schools in prosperous Shanghai are well-equipped while those in the rural areas suffer from lack of resources. As you might expect, this produces an "achievement gap" eerily familiar to educators here in the U.S.

While Shanghai schools are renowned for their test preparation skills, administrators here are trying to broaden the curriculums and extend more freedom to local districts. The Jing’An school, one of about 150 schools in Shanghai that took part in the international test, was created 12 years ago to raise standards in an area known for failing schools.The principal, Zhang Renli, created an experimental school that put less emphasis on math and allows children more free time to play and experiment. The school holds a weekly talent show, for example.

 So while Chinese educators push for more freedom and autonomy in schools and less testing and standardization, we in the U.S. are racing in the opposite direction.

The question is--what exactly is it that Mr. Gates, who calls himself an innovator, admires so much? Perhaps it's the idea that Chinese graduates will have acquired the basic skills needed to work for a company like Microsoft, be more compliant on the job, while working for less money. Perfect!

Also see "A True Wake-up Call for Arne Duncan: The Real Reason Behind Chinese Students Top PISA Performance" by Yong Zhao.

Bits & Pieces

Out of the closet: Michelle Rhee dropped her Dem cover. The Waiting for Superman hero and Broad Academy grad has joined Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott's T-Party team.

Scott was elected last month to succeed Gov. Charlie Crist (I), who had quit the Republican Party to make an unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate. Florida, with one of the nation's most closely watched school systems, won a $700 million Race to the Top grant from the Obama administration to improve education. Crist vetoed a bill this year that would have expanded teacher merit pay. (WaPo)

^^^^^^^

FairTest's Monty Neil posts an interesting response to the the Ravitch/Finn debate over at NDSG group.

For quite some time Checker Finn of Fordham Foundation has been one of if not the most important ideologue and strategist for neoliberal ed 'reform' (deform). In a reply to Diane Ravitch's Wall St Journal op ed of a few days ago, Finn redefines 'local control' as form of the market, a commercial exchange: parents purchase (with government $) a slot in a 'local' school. Read the rest here.

^^^^^^

I'm not sure why Alexander Russo became so exasperated after watching the terrific PBS report [video] on Chicago's fledgling Austin Polytech High School.

According to PBS "Austin Polytech is the only CPS high school dedicated to teaching students manufacturing skills. Along with social studies and English, students here take three to four years of pre-engineering courses." OK, but what about the school's success rate -- are the kids staying in class, staying in school, and passing those NIMSs tests?  About that we aren't told very much, and that makes me a little bit crazy.

So I say to Russo, don't go crazy--even a little bit. Get off your duff and find out how this small, themed school is doing. I asked school founder Dan Swinney who reports: "We have 25 kids with NIMS credentials. Now with an instructor we expect 80 kids will get one credential, and 60 kids will get the NIMS CNC credential." 

Swinney also sent along a 12-page progress report, "Austin Polytech; Building the Road as We Travel." 

which is available upon request from Dan at dswinney@clcr.org>. Go get 'em Russo.

Support Obey's Amendment

I hate the whole idea of school funding being attached to a war spending bill. It's obscene and degrading to educators. But here we are.

Wisconsin Rep. David Obey, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, is pushing an amendment to the bill that would cut Race To The Top and related programs like "merit pay" by a modest $800 which will be used instead to prevent more layoffs and keep class size increases within reason.

Obey is a long-time school reformer (in the real sense). He is also a critic of the massive troop build-up in Afghanistan. He was the force behind the Small Learning Communities initiative in Congress and helped save that program year after year in the face of Republican assaults during the Bush years. Ironically, it looks like it will be tougher to rescue SLCs and most other progressive funding under under Obama/Duncan and the Democrats.

Obey's amendment has plenty of support from educators, but is coming under fierce attack by some House Republicans as well as from Duncan. Corporate reformers like former Gates honcho Tom VanderArk, right-wing think tankers like Checker Finn and Fordham Institute as well as the National Alliance for Public [lol] Charter Schools are joining in the attack.

Race To The Top funds are the only lever they have to force resource-starved states to go along with their top-down, test-and-punish reform agenda, which includes mass teacher firings, merit pay, and single-minded support for privately-run charter schools.

******

FairTest's Monty Neill writes on the Rethink Learning Now Partners blog:

It is important for you to weigh in with Mr. Obey: You can call the committee office at begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (202) 225-2771end_of_the_skype_highlighting. As usual, no email is provided for the committee  - phoning is better anyway and takes about the same amount of time. At least as important is to tell your own Rep. Go to www.house.gov, search for your Rep, call her/him (or email - they ususally have a form on the site). If your rep is on the Committee, it is very important to call her/him. And I am told by a knowledgeable lobbyist that Republicans and conservative Democrats esp. need to be called. (202) 225-2771.

I am told by several sources that Obey dislikes the Dept's preference for competitive grants (he told Ed Week some time back that the time for such grants is when funding overall is solid, not in a crisis - the opposite of those such as Fordham's Checker Finn who want to use the crisis to attack unions, cut the number of teachers, lower wages of
educators, etc.). Gary Orfield is one of those weighing in, in favor of Obey's approach, noting the great devastation the recession/depression has wrought in CA, where he lives. Educators generally favor this approach.

Let your voice be heard.

******

More irony. Yesterday Obama traveled to Obey's home state, which has higher-than-average unemployment, to give speech blasting Republicans for opposition the extension of unemployment benefits and his job creation programs. NPR calls it, "a preview of what is likely to be his 2010 campaign speech." But he didn't explain how putting 300,000 teachers on the unemployment rolls would be good for the economic recovery.

The power of power philanthropy

Power philanthropy is co-piloting for a bumbling Michelle Rhee in D.C., writes Mark Schmitt at Politico. A consortium of private foundations and billionaire hedge-funders is likely the only thing keeping her in power.

"...a group of private foundations that had pledged $64.5 million to the District of Columbia Public Schools to provide the funds necessary for Chancellor Michelle Rhee's controversial teacher merit-pay proposal were conditioning their grants on a right to reconsider if there were a change in leadership in the D.C. Schools -- that is, if Rhee goes, so does the money. "

This is the same game being played by muscle foundations like Gates, Broad & Walton (the "Billionaire Boys Club," as Diane Ravitch calls them) around the country, as they move to take the public out of public education and make a mockery of democratic decision making.

Writes Schmitt:

"Shouldn't Rhee's tenure be our decision to make or that of the mayor? (We have a mayoral election this fall, which is likely to be in large part a referendum on Rhee and the mayor who appointed her, Adrian Fenty.) Sixty-four million dollars from foundations based outside of D.C. puts a high price on that decision, especially for a poor city." 

Even the flies are buzzin'

There's no better friend of the ownership society than right-wing think-tanker Checker Finn. But even Finn agrees that the private foundations are snuggling up a little too closely with public education. He points to  a dozen major foundations that have committed some $506 million to “match” federal funding from the i3 “innovation” program.

The problem with Finn is, he claims that it's government and the public that is corrupting the benevolent billionaire philanthropists,  instead of the other way around. 

There’s an affinity here that transcends anything I’ve observed in earlier years—and of course it is heightened by the number of people with foundation (and, generally, nonprofit) backgrounds who occupy key policy roles in the Education Department and other agencies.

Well put, Checker.

But what about the $325 million JP Morgan Chase is "investing" in public charter schools. That doesn't seem to bother Finn or his young acolyte, Andy Smarick who points out that the bank and partners will make use of the federal New Markets Tax Credit program to extend the initiatives reach.

Latest from the Ownership Society

The greed mongers

"In K-12 education, we submit, greed can be good, albeit ugly." --Fordham's Finn & Hess

Conservative think-tankers like Rick Hess are critical of Arne Duncan's i3 reform plan because, they complain, there's not enough room for for-profit companies to feed their bottom lines in the ed reform biz.

According to Hess:

 Their selfish pursuit of profit gives them cause to be more aggressive about expansion, more nimble about abandoning failed efforts and seeking new niches, and more energetic about rooting out inefficiency.

Hess frets that giant text book and test publishers will be at a disadvantage when up against non-profits like ETS, as they try to out-wiggle each other to the DOE's feeding troth. Don't worry Rick. I'm sure Pearson will find their way in.

I'm not making this up

When the right-wing Fordham Institute's Mike Petrilli (left) heard Arne Duncan mention the words, "civil rights," he freaked.

Holy Toledo! The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is going to use “all the tools” at its disposal to fix one of education’s most intractable problems: the achievement gap.

But, not to worry. He heard back immediately from Russlynn Ali, the Department of Education’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, calling to "soothe" his concerns.

Holy Toledo!

View from right field

Conservatives Finn, Petrilli and the boys at the Fordham Institute think-tank are rightfully impressed by union-supported teachers in L.A. applying to run new schools being outsourced under LAUSD's reform plan. In the latest Gadfly, they claim that this move towards teacher empowerment is merely a response to the threat of competition from charter schools.

Competition, the universal motivator They're working 24/7 to write management proposals for the LAUSD competition. "For the first time we're trying to show that we can, as teacher-educators, build a school that will benefit our children because we know our children best," says Josephine Miller, a first-grade teacher at Hillcrest Drive Elementary, a school deemed "failing." It seems that teachers are both energized by the competition--and determined to prevent their schools from turning charter and being run by independent organizations. Too bad it took the threat of actually being held accountable for teachers to sit up and take notice of their schools' shortcomings and what they might to do rectify these. Better late than never, however.

There's a kernel of truth is their assertion that L.A. teachers are responding to threats of privatization, school closings, and mass teacher firings, although this is certainly not "the first time." But crediting ownership society assaults with energizing resistant teachers is a bit like crediting southern segregationists for the Civil Rights Movement.

In fact, teachers were creating and running new small schools, including charters, long before the current wave of takeovers, turnarounds and privatization. If anything, the latter was a reactive move on the part of conservative, anti-teacher/anti-union groups and think tanks like Fordham. They were (are) the ones acting in fear of the democratic reform movement of the late '80s and early '90s. Hopefully, now teachers are once again pushing back.

Yes, better late than never.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Chasing Ayn Rand

"In K-12 education, we submit, greed can be good, albeit ugly." (Fordham's Finn and Hess)

9 good arguments against "merit" pay, including:

The best teachers are already working incredibly long hours, and there’s no evidence that extra pay will make them work harder or smarter—or that it will motivate mediocre teachers to improve. Quite the contrary: Merit pay will steer all too many teachers toward low-level test preparation. (Kim Marshall at Edweek)

Closing small Jersey schools

"I commute 1 1/2 hours one way every day, just to live in Fieldon where our son will one day be able to attend a small school," Braundmeier said.

"Not once have we said we were closing the schools," board member Angie Cory said. "It's very difficult for us to see you in tears or hear your children have come home crying because they heard their school was going to be closed. Looking at closing the schools was just one of the options under consideration." (Jerseyville Telegraph)

Rifts in the Ownership Society

"Greed is good" at Fordham, but...

Why are Checker Finn, Rick Hess and the right-wing "greedheads" over at Fordham Institute suddenly railing against "self-promoters" and "snake-oil salesmen" out to make a buck off of Duncan's Race To The Top?

After all, admit the duo:

We're veteran champions of entrepreneurs, for-hyphen profits, out-sourcing, competition, deregulation, and kindred efforts to open public education to providers other than government and operators other than bureaucrats.We've served on boards on some of these organizations, advised them and generally supported them.

In short, according to the pair, "in K-12 education, we submit, greed can be good, albeit ugly."

But now, say the two Fordham think-tankers,

...the whole "Race To The Top" enterprise has become a red light district for lusty charlatans and randy peddlers. Big firms full of wealthy MBA types--people who earn in a quarter what teachers make in a year--have gobbled up the $250,000 per state that the Gates Foundation offered as part of its own generous consultant stimulus act," along with additional dollars that states have tossed into the kitty. In return, they're readying cool power points, nifty white papers, and jargon-littered plans, all geared to helping states persuade Secretary Duncan that yes, they are ready and eager to do his bidding.

Could it be that the conservative ed hustlers who made a killing at Bush's Reading First feeding trough are now being frozen out by this new group of politically aligned "greedheads?"

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Duncan, Gingrich & Sharpton on Meet the Press

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

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

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

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

NYT editorial: RTTT favors "boutiques" like TFA

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

Here's Checker Finn at his humanitarian best:

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

Then Checker the churl adds:

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

Think-tanks & class size

For more than a decade now, I've been hearing from right-wing think-tankers, like Fordham's Checker Finn, Mike Petrilli, and the Hoover Institute's Eric Hanushek, that class size doesn't matter. The research, they claim, shows little benefit to student achievement scores by reducing the number of students in a class. With class sizes in L.A. high schools soaring to 50 per class and Brooklyn kids being squeezed into classrooms with a shoehorn, Finn and his crew have suddenly grown quiet on the topic.

This from today's Daily News:

Intermediate School 227 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, had no classes with more than 30 students in it last year. Now it has 15, including one for English language learners. Teachers scramble to move desks between classes to accommodate all the children. In some classes, students must share books. "There's a lot of graffiti in the books; pages are stuck together with gum," said Joshua Fernandez, 13, who is in the eighth grade at IS 227 and is in a class with 32 students - who also share desks.

At IS 230 in Jackson Heights, Queens, budget cuts forced the principal to eliminate an entire eighth-grade class, pushing the size of seven classes to more than 30 students. "The principal tried to avoid hurting the kids as much as she could," said Peter Bloch, the school's dean. "They're not getting as much individualized attention now." The school also lost the teachers who used to pull struggling students out of class for extra help. The building is supposed to hold 750 students but now has about 965.

Perhaps if the think-tankers had to teach for a day in Bensenhurst or Jackson Heights, they would have to rethink what the research shows.