The party's over...

"For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class." -- Pres. Obama

“One day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you’re raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, “Where do We Go from Here?” (1967)

After all the heavenly words about "we the people" this and "the pursuit-of-happiness" that, and after the magic moment, the dance, and the gazing at Mrs. Obama's stunning Jason Wu gown and bangs haircut is over, we still come back down to earth, to a city where Obama's boys are killing us.

No need to look any further than Ben Joravsky's latest Reader piece, "Mayor Rahm channels his inner Herbert Hoover" where Ben refers to a picture the Tribune ran of the River Point ground-breaking scene, Mayor Rahm and a developer are laughing as if they're sharing a private joke.

The punch line of which is: Can you believe we get away with this shit? The caption under the photo reads: "Mayor Rahm Emanuel, seen here shaking hands with Daniel Fournier, CEO of property development firm Ivanhoe Cambridge, has been tapping into a network of venture capitalists, law firms and leaders of his economic-development team to build up his re-election war chest."

******

The word, education cannot be found even once in the president's speech and there is only one vague reference to "school reform." So I guess that means four more years without a re-authorization of ESEA, and by default, more years of Arne Duncan's devastating Race To The Top -- leveraging billions in federal ed dollars to push school closings, privately-run charter schools, mass teacher firings, and more testing madness.

On the positive side, there was a least a mention of poverty in the president's speech, and the fact that poor people even exist in this country and that we are all not middle class.

We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.

Then there was this, spoken at the very moment when a Democratic Illinois governor and the state's machine political bosses are leading the raid on the pensions and medical care of the elderly and inform.

And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice –- not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice.

Yes, fine words, Mr. President.  

*****

The confluence of Obama's second inauguration with Dr. King's birthday, led to another round of What would King do? debates. My old '60s SDS friend, Tom Hayden believes that MLK would have supported Obama [of course] and then privately and quietly counseled him on drones and Afghanistan. He might be right. Of course we can never know for sure. But I'd like to think that Dr. King would be out in the streets on Inauguration Day and not in tux and tails at Obama's side while school re-segregation is on the rise and U.S. drones and torture cells are central to administration foreign policy. As a product of the times, it's impossible for me to envision Dr. King as a supporter of any Race To The Top or union-busting charter schools.

Father Phleger

Chicago activist priest, Father Michael Pfleger tried to act in the King tradition. Instead of bearing witness to  Obama’s second inauguration in prime seats in Washington, D.C., he went to an Aurora High School Monday night with a Martin Luther King Day warning: The slain civil rights leader’s message must not be watered down, and he should not be treated like a history lesson.

 “Let me make it clear. If you’ve studied Dr. King, his message was prophetic, and his message was radical,”said Pfleger.

 Another man born and reared in the same tradition as King, Dr. Cornell West went ballistic over Obama's symbolic use of Dr. King's bible as his inaugural prop, which West called, "an affront to human rights."

Finally, I was overjoyed to see true King disciple (or was it the other way around?) and living legend, 94-year-old Prof. Timuel Black, receive his overdue Champions of Freedom Award and a Chicago street sign bearing his name. Among his other lifetime achievements, he led the organizing that went on around the historic March on Washington in 1963. Congrats again to my dear friend Tim.

If the goal is 100% "failure" then we're almost there

After nearly a dozen years of No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top

Remember, back in the day, when all the talk was about leaving no child behind? Remember the NCLB mandate that ALL children will be proficient by 2014?

Now as the new year approaches, comes the news that 82% of Illinois school districts have failed to make the grade, up from 80% the year before. Even worse, 98% of Illinois high schools are now considered failing. That means only 11 out of Illinois’ 671 eligible high schools achieving the standard known as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

Scores on state achievement tests barely budged in 2012 and graduation rates also dipped across the state, and the majority of schools failed federal academic standards in math and reading — similar to results last year's. The same pattern is holding true nationwide as well. In other words, the longer we persist in these top-down, corporate reform policies, the worse things get,  even according to their own standards.

It should be obvious however, that all those schools and districts aren't really "failing." The failure here is with the way the system measures and defines success and failure and the way it considers or fails to consider the effects of poverty and external downward pressures on all these measurable learning outcomes.

Maybe the next round of testing madness connected with Pearson-driven and Duncan-led Common Core Standards, can push us over the top, to the 100%-failure mark, truly leaving no school behind.

LEAD

The view from Miles Davis Magnet Academy in Englewood on Chicago's south side. In the 90s, Englewood had the highest lead-poisoning rates in the country.

There's no better example of these negative external poverty-driven forces than the fact that Chicago has the distinction of being home to more cases of lead toxicity than any large city in the U.S. One in 12 of the city's children is lead poisoned. Megan Cottrell makes the link between lead poisoning and under-performing students in the Nov. 1 issue of The Reader.

A recent study out of the University of Illinois at Chicago examined the blood lead levels of third graders between 2003 and 2006—students now likely to be roaming the halls at CPS high schools. It turns out that at three-quarters of Chicago's 464 elementary schools, the students' average blood lead level was high enough to be considered poisoned, according to standards set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And although lead poisoning is rarely mentioned in the debate on how to improve schools, the UIC research shows just how much it may be damaging kids' ability to succeed. According to the study, lead-poisoned students in Chicago Public Schools are more likely to fail the third grade and score notably lower on their yearly standardized tests.

So without making "excuses," it should be obvious that if you really want to improve outcomes for inner-city children, stop evaluating/punishing schools and teachers for student test scores. Instead, get the lead out.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

On Sunday afternoon, nearly 1,000 people, practically all of them African American, answered Ed Gardner’s call to rally at 95th and Western to protest the continued lack of black workers on construction sites in Chicago.|

Mary Mitchell

They were young and old, teachers and parents, churchgoers and hell-raisers, politicians and their bashers marching alongside the well-to-do and those not doing so well. Protesters converged from both directions on Western — at times spilling out into the street and stopping traffic between 95th and 91st and Western, chanting: “If we don’t work. No one works.”  -- Sun-Times  

Carl Hiaasen 

Next time you reach for Angel Soft toilet paper, think of the Koch brothers. -- Miami Herald

Michelle Rhee

 Although his stance made perfect sense to me, it surprised many political observers. After all, Emanuel is a favorite within the Democratic Party, and teachers unions have long been allied with the party. --  Charleston Daily Mail, "Democrats need to stand up to teachers"

Kathryn Strom

The “no excuses” rhetoric (i.e, “poverty is not an excuse for failure”) is one that is dearly beloved by the corporate education reformers  because it allows them to perpetuate (what many recognize to be) the American myth of meritocracy and continue the privatization movement under the guise of “improving schools” while avoiding addressing deeply entrenched inequities that exist in our society and are perpetuated by school structures. -- Washington Post, "The bottom line on ‘no excuses’ and poverty in school reform"

Jay Mathews

The best charters don’t use the assessment systems reformers want regular schools to use.  -- Washington Post, Class Struggle

Duncan's new tests may be worse than the old ones

Arne Duncan's been telling us for years now, that the only problem with current standardized testing mania is the quality of the tests. So he's put together a consortium of testing experts, using $330 million in stimulus money through the federal Race to the Top competition, to design new "next-generation assessments" intended to measure critical thinking, particularly the critical skills emphasized by the Common Core State Standards.

Problem is, some of these new tests are in many ways even worse than the old ones. This according to a survey of  "education insiders" due to be published this week. 

Joy Resmovits at Huffington reports: 

Beyond the tests, the insiders believe that the Common Core itself faces a rocky path. School districts "are very unprepared" for the new standards, according to 80 percent of respondents, and only one-quarter believe teachers have "very strong" support for the Common Core. On the other hand, commercial vendors, three-quarters of "insiders" say, have strong or very strong support for the Common Core.

Race To the Top. Guess who won?

Thanks 10 years and $1 Trillion worth of  NCLB! Thanks Race To The Top! Thanks Arne Duncan!

GOP salutes Obama's ed policies

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.

Misstate of the Union

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"

Shame of a nation

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

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

Obama's Osawatomie speech

"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.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

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

Looking back on Obama's pick

In December, 2008 President-elect Obama named Arne Duncan to be his new secretary of education.  Obama's choice of Duncan over the much more highly qualified Linda Darling-Hammond should have been a tip-off as to what would transpire the next two-and-a-half years.

At the time, many of us were still optimistic in the wake of Obama's historic election victory. Based on his campaign promises, educators were anticipating an end to Bush-ism and to nearly a decade of testing madness under NCLB. Those looking at the glass as half-full (myself included) were cautiously hopeful. After all, Obama had also rejected hard-core anti-teachert extremists Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee for the job. Having worked with and battled against Duncan's regime in Chicago, I expressed hope that, once out from under the thumb of Mayor Daley and the Chicago machine, Duncan might be able to represent a more progressive and humane ed politics than the previous regime. But this was not to be.

This morning, while reading a Huffington piece by Joy Resmovitz, "Will Arne Duncan's Education Reforms Get Left Behind?" I linked to a Dec. 2008 assessment of the Duncan appointment in the Economist,: "B+ for the new boy: Barack Obama’s education secretary is a diplomatic reformer."

Chester Finn of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute calls Mr Duncan “a terrific pick”, and Margaret Spellings, George Bush’s education secretary, calls him “a kindred spirit”. But Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, declared herself “pleased” by the choice. The worry is that the effort to reach consensus may hinder bold change. But at least Mr Duncan may restore the spirit of co-operation that helped pass NCLB in 2001. Mr Obama, in his announcement, criticised advocates who fail to realise that “both sides have good ideas and good intentions”. The president-elect is a master at charting the middle road. Time will tell whether that path leads to meaningful reform or to messy drift.

Well, time certainly has told. There were no "good intentions." There was no "spirit of cooperation" and NCLB was dead in the water (thank goodness). Duncan's attempt to coalesce with Newt Gingrich and the  neocons fell flat on its face. Conciliation soon turned into outright adoption of the corporate reform agenda and the plight of teachers and their collective bargaining rights have have gotten worse than ever.

Now NCLB has essentially been re-branded as Race To The Top and the Dept. of Education has lost whatever juice it had in trying to re-authorize a national education law. Duncan's attempt to grab power with his waiver initiative is bound to fall on its face.

With elections on the horizon, Obama would do well to clean house at the DOE and hope for a fresh start.

No Child Left Behind "Waivers": A View from the Classroom

Good piece at Gapers Block by SOSer Adam Heenan, a public school teacher in Chicago. 

When Duncan announced that he will allow states to "waive" their No Child Left Behind requirements, I held my breath for the ball to drop. Could it be? The end of high-stakes testing? The end of labeling our children and public schools as "failures?" -- Read the rest here

Adam blogs at Classroom Sooth and tweets from @classroomsooth.

More on Duncan's Law

"But to maintain a law [NCLB] that is so fundamentally broken that teachers and principals and students reject and are rebelling against because it doesn't make sense, to just sit here passively in Washington and do nothing, to me, would be the height of arrogance or the height of tone-deafness." -- Interview with John Hockenberry

Arne's right of course. The problem is, he wants to replace the "fundamentally broken" NCLB with something even worse -- a Race To The Top that maintains the worse features of No Child's reliance on standardized testing, basing teacher evaluation on student test scores, and using scores to punish (close)  neighborhood schools in order to replace them with privatized charter schools.

But in the current political climate, the administration has no chance getting their new version of the federal education bill through congress, since Republicans are committed to nothing less than the elimination of education as a public enterprise. So rather than fight to defend and reform public education with a supportive base at it's back, including most of the nation's 6 million teachers, Duncan is trying to rule the schools by fiat, personally issuing wavers from NCLB sanctions providing that states accept his prescribed RTTT reforms.

There's nothing new or illegal about issuing waivers. The D.O.E.'s authority to do so was written into the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 and, as recently as 2009, the department granted 351 waivers to states seeking leniency on federal requirements, many of them related to NCLB. But what is probably illegal and certainly a violation of democratic reform is the forced implementation of  Duncan's Law in return for those waivers. It amounts to a back-door coup d'etat as opposed to leading a popular revolt.

In his interview with Duncan, Hockenberry asks the ed secretary to respond to this comment from Diane Ravitch:

"Does the secretary have the right to nullify the law? And, personally, I don't think he does. I don't think a secretary, a cabinet member, can say, 'I don't like this law.' He's saying, 'If you don't like the law, I will give you a waiver, but you have to do what I say, and what I say is you must evaluate teachers by their student test scores,' and virtually every testing expert in the country has said you cannot do that with individual teachers. It doesn't work." 

Duncan blows off the question and acts as if Ravitch doesn't exist. This, even though we now hear that he has a team that meets to plan anti-Ravitch media strategies.

Debt deal sucks: A killer for education



A start of something big? (M. Klonsky pic)

 Save our schools

The Obama/Boehner debt-ceiling deal is disaster capitalism at its worst. Republicans, with help from the White House, and using the manufactured default crisis as their rationale, dealt bunker-busting shock-and-awe to schools, teachers and the nation's children.

While a default would have made life miserable for public schools, few knowledgeable observers really believed that Wall Street would allow it to happen. The Deal deals nothing but more devastation for public education on top of already crippling budget cuts, swelling class sizes, elimination of reading, arts, and technology programs, as well as job losses for many of the nation's teachers (including the best ones). If ending job loss is the key to rebuilding the economy, this deal is a job-killer and an economy buster.

Naturally, the White House, Tim Geithner and even some teacher union leaders are touting the deal as a great example of "compromise" and "bipartisanship." (The NEA's Van Roekel called the Deal "flawed, yet bi-partisan", whatever the hell that means). But the deal represents neither a genuine compromise nor bipartisanship -- unless you call death-by-a-thousand-cuts instead of one a compromise. It was done exclusively on the backs of the poor, middle class and working people, and will further widen the gap in standard of living between blacks, Latinos and whites. As for the corporations and the wealthy, they were protected by their anti-tax T-Party faithful.

The deal may prove to be a 2012 election-saver for Obama  (many of the cuts are backloaded until after the election) and a political life-saver for  discredited Majority Leader Boehner. But congressional Democrats, who were left out of the deal-making process, are furious. They will have to go back to their districts and defend the indefensible to an angry base.

Some of my fellow school activists and progressive educators will take solace in the fact that the new debt bill all but kills any chance for an imminent reauthorization of No Child Left Behind and will likely deliver a death blow to Arne Duncan's Race To The Top. Duncan's only power over schools and resistant states was his ability to inflict punishment by means of the selective doling out of federal funds to bankrupt states and starving school districts. He was able to do this in the first round of RTTT because he had millions of stimulus dollars in his pocket. Now that money is gone. The T-Party was able to do, through forced budget cuts to Title I and IDEA, what conservatives have long dreamed of but couldn't accomplish politically:  to neuter or liquidate the Department of Education (especially with Democrats running it and in control of the federal trough).

But the problem is, the possible demise of Duncan power means even more power for corporate reformers funded by giant philanthropists like Gates, Broad and Walton, who are accountable to no public, who don't have to run for office or engage in legislative debates and still have Duncan around to run interference for them. A weakened DOE with fewer hammers in its toolbox won't mean less test-madness or more power for local schools or classroom teachers -- quite the opposite.

When you get right down to it, the Republicans won this important battle in their war on working people, because they were willing and able to mobilize their base in the face of a showdown. Obama and the Democrats, on the other hand, act as if they are more afraid of their own base than they are of the Republicans. They see the left as their main enemy and Boehner's GOP as their main partners.

Because they are afraid to organize and mobilize the very base that elected Obama in 2008, that organization will have to come from elsewhere. That's why the Save Our Schools march and movement, though still small, and currently without structure or stable leadership, is so important. At least it's a start.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Teacher Anthony Cody

Teachers and parents feel abandoned - even betrayed - by this administration. We were there for you in 2008, President Obama. Where are you now when we need you? -- The Answer Sheet

Montgomery County Supt. Jerry Weast

Unfortunately, federal dollars from the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program are not going where Dr. Weast and the PAR program need to go. Montgomery County schools were entitled to $12 million from Race to the Top, but Dr. Weast said he would not take the money because the grant required districts to include students’ state test results as a measure of teacher quality.

“We don’t believe the tests are reliable,” he said. “You don’t want to turn your system into a test factory.”-- New York Times

Does class size matter?

"If education is to matter in substantive ways, then great conditions, including a reasonable class size, need to be in place to make school a place where great teachers and students want to be". -- Peter Smagorinsky, University of Georgia @AJC.com

How Rahm sizes up the CTU

"The Emanuel camp’s calculation is that various realities make a walkout unlikely. Those include deficits, the system’s sub-par image, the bargaining ramifications of a new state education law, and how a majority of teachers will get increases, distinct from the 4 percent now in jeopardy, based on years of service or added educational attainment... The competence of the moribund union’s past leadership rivaled Italy’s, and the new union chief, Karen Lewis, must somehow galvanize members over an issue, perhaps preserving their pensions." -- James Warren, CNC

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Obama's commencement speech in Memphis

"We need to encourage this kind of change [small academies] all across America. We need to reward the reforms that are driven not by Washington, but by principals and teachers and parents. That's how we'll make progress in education - not from the top down, but from the bottom up." -- Seattle Times

One-sided class warfare

This week, Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican of Wisconsin, suggested to the Economic Club of Chicago that the president’s attempt to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans amounted to “class warfare” and promoted “class envy.”  -- Charles Blow, NYT

 Gates paid millions for teachers to advocate against unions, for "merit-pay" 

 “We’ve learned that school-level investments aren’t enough to drive systemic changes, The importance of advocacy has gotten clearer and clearer.” -- Gates Foundation spokesman Allan C. Golston

Boring double-talk on testing

Speaking at a townhall event in Washington, D.C. President Obama said that too much testing makes education boring, and that performance should be measured in more ways than test scores:

"Too often what we have been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools," the president told students and parents at a town hall hosted by the Univision Spanish-language television network at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C.

"All you’re learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test and that’s not going to make education interesting." --  Forbes

Following the speech, Obama pushed his ed secretary Arne Duncan to plan the next wave of Race To the Top grants which force school districts to fire teachers and close schools based on standardized test scores.

Classic administration double-talk. It's getting boring.

After a decade of No Child Left Behind

We're approaching 100% "failure"

Arne Duncan said Wednesday, that 82% of all schools could now be labeled as "failing" under NCLB rules. The DOE estimates the number of schools not meeting targets will skyrocket from 37 to 82 percent in 2011 since states have "raised standards" to meet the requirements of the law. Yes, we're truly racing towards the top.

The latest news has forced Duncan to re-triangulate. He has been pushing, so far unsuccessfully, for NCLB re-authorization for the past two years. He still praises NCLB for supposedly "shining a light on achievement gaps among minority and low-income students," but now admits, ""No Child Left Behind is broken" and needs to be fixed.

"This law has created a thousand ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed."  

That's all  true. The law is all about test-and-punish. "Fixing" it, could only mean easing the standards or allowing waivers for charter school or other Duncan favorites. But when we first made this point, he labeled us a "proponents of the status quo." Remember?

Finally, says Duncan,

"We should get out of the business of labeling schools as failures and create a new law that is fair and flexible, and focused on the schools and students most at risk."

Yes, yes. What a great idea! But isn't that exactly what NCLB is all about--"shining the light" on failing schools?

By the way, who are these people who've "been in the business" of labeling schools as failures, anyway? They should definitely get out of the business.

See: 

• "Obama wants to see 5,000 failing schools closed."--MSNBC 

• "Eventually, he [Duncan] said, he hopes to see 1,000 failing schools turned around each year.--NYT

• "In the first round [of Race To The Top] there will be “a lot more losers than winners,” Duncan said, "and the department plans to offer two subsequent rounds of funding for improving failing schools."-- Harvard Magazine  
• Arne Duncan's $3.5 Billion Lever for Turning Around Failing Schools--Edweek

I could go on. But you get the point.

NCLB's stated goal is to reach 100% proficiency in reading and math by 2014.  But the way things are going, if we stay the course, we should reach 100% failure rate some time within the next three years.

Congratulations are in order, I suppose.

Fallout from Rhee's bogus contract with the union

Hundreds more D.C. teachers could be "excessed"

Broom Lady Michelle Rhee is gone from D.C. but the school district and its teachers are now left to face the fallout from her destructive policies. It appears that Rhee pal, Arne Duncan has pulled the plug on federal funding, punishing this predominantly African-American district for giving her the boot.

Now, DCPS faces the loss of EduJobs funds from the Obama administration, along with reductions in other federal monies. It also faces other pending massive general cuts in the 2012 education budget, as well as  a pull-back of millions of dollars in foundation money that was promised on the condition that Rhee remain as chancellor.

Then there's that contract Rhee pushed on the teachers union; the one that the corporate school reformers were raving about; the one that gave Rhee and her successor a free hand in firing hundreds of teachers in exchange for supposed "merit pay" raises. But those pay increases were dependent on the good will of the Gates and Broad foundations and on Rhee's willingness to make massive cuts in other badly needed district programs.

The union leadership should have never signed on to the raise-for-tenure deal, as many of us warned back in 2009.  Now the district, teetering once again on the verge of bankruptcy, is prepping principals on another planned mass teacher tiring, why crying poor about the pay raises.

Writes WaPo's Bill Turque:

Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson denied speculation Monday that the District can't afford the increased teacher salaries provided for in the 2010 collective bargaining agreement. Sources have identified the loss of millions in one-time 2010 "Edujob" funds from the Obama administration, along with reductions in certain special education monies, as part of the hole school officials are trying to fill. But Henderson didn't have much to say about either.

According to Turque, the district is giving school principals a "refresher course" on how to eliminate teacher jobs as they assemble their 2012 spending plans. "Excessing" can occur when there's been a decline in enrollment, a cut in local school budgets, closings, changes in programs or restructuring under No Child Left Behind. Until last year, excessing was done almost exclusively by seniority. But Rhee's contract now requires the use of a "performance-based" formula in which last year's IMPACT scores count for 50 percent.

Yes, Rhee is gone. But she's left DCPS as a basket case and the district's teachers, parents and students will have to bear the costs--a lesson to Sacramento and Florida districts where Rhee has landed.