"No confidence" in mayoral control of L.A. schools

Duncan is threatening to withhold stim dollars from school districts that don't implement top-down mayoral control of the schools. But where's the research or evidence to support mayoral control everywhere? In L.A., mayoral control appears to be a big flop.

Eight out of 10 schools delivered a "no confidence" vote, and we're talking landslides (84 to 17 at Santee Education Complex, 96 to 13 at Stevenson Middle School, 70 to 13 at Gompers Middle School, 61 to 8 at Markham Middle School and 184 to 15 at Roosevelt High, which the mayor himself once attended). (L.A. Times, "Mayor getting schooled")

A taste for the exotic

Gov. Sanford (SC) attacked Obama and said he would refuse to accept stimulus dollars to keep schools open and save jobs in his state. Instead he went the er... Appalachian Trail, er.. I mean to Argentina to look for a "more exotic" stimulus package.

Historic union/charter school contract in N.Y.

Days after a trend-setting union vote in Chicago, the UFT and Green Dot Charter Schools signed "an innovative and pioneering collective bargaining agreement in New York." The contract was approved by Green Dot's Board of Trustees on Monday, and ratified by the UFT Tuesday.

UFT V.P. Leo Casey:

The 29 page agreement breaks vital new ground, and not simply because it brings together leading forces in the ranks of the charter school movement and teacher unionism. Just as importantly, the contract embodies a new model of labor relations in education, based on a disarmingly simple proposition: that a school which respects, nurtures and supports teacher professionalism in all of its work will provide the best education for students.

Related:

Green Dot visits Chicago 16 Aug 2007
I moderated the panel which included Green Dot's Steve Barr, CTU Prez Marilyn Stewart, and the IEA's Jo Anderson. It was a little strange, I mean, a pro-union charter operator and two union leaders voicing support for Al Shanker's 1988 ...

Kette on Rhee's testing triage

Jennifer Jennings, alias Eduwonkette, is no longer blogging. But she's still got plenty to say in Edweek about Michelle Rhee's test score miracle in D.C.

The Saturday Scholars program was not designed to help the lowest-performing students in the district, those in the most dire circumstances academically. Rather, it unapologetically targeted students just missing the passing mark.

More bricks

After searching dozens of sites for the correct Duncan "bricks" quote, I'm still trying to answer the question: What do you have to do to have Arne Duncan drop his ton of bricks on you? If anyone out there has the correct quote, please send it and I will happily publish it. -- M.K.

From the Bellingham (WA) Herald:

If we see a state or district doing something wrong, “we’re going to come down like a ton of bricks,” Duncan said.

Russo's 299 Blog:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has threatened to "come down like a ton of bricks" on anyone who defies the administration's plans to bring relief to states ...

PURE Online:

Duncan has said that he will “come down like a ton of bricks” on states which use this money and still make major school staff layoffs.

Stop the ACLU (Wingnut blog):

...that tough talkin’ Dunkin is going to “come down like a ton of bricks” on any state that “defies the administration’s plans to bring relief to states like California, where 26,500 teachers have gotten pink slips.”

Jay Greene's Blog (Long sentences):

Obviously, the important thing is how you challenge the status quo and provide better schools, and for decades we’ve been trying sound-bite-driven reform like Duncan offered the Post, and exhibited in his recent declaration that he will “come down like a ton of bricks” on any state that doesn’t use waste-rewarding “stimulus” money effectively.

Mike's E-News:

“Where we see a state or district operating in bad faith or doing something counter to the president’s intent, we’re going to come down like a ton of bricks,” Duncan said in a conference call with reporters.

Edutopia:

If states and districts act in bad faith and fail to spend money with an eye toward reform and restoration of essential programs and staff, they'll forfeit the second round of funds, expected mid-summer. "We're going to come down like a ton of bricks," Duncan says.

Quotables

The feng shui people...

DFER's Joe Williams brings his penetrating wisdom and deep knowledge of Eastern philosophy, combined with his sensibilities about product labeling, to the issue of NCLB re-authorization.

"It's like the new Coke. This is a rebranding effort," said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform. "The feng shui people believe you need to take the roof off buildings to allow bad chi to escape. Let's hope this helps."

What does he mean by "many"?

Education Secretary Arne Duncan made a point of talking about unions in a speech Monday in Washington to a national charter school conference."Charters are not inherently anti-union," Duncan said. "Many charters today are unionized." That is true, but unions are rare in the nation's 4,600 charter schools, which make up about 3 percent of the nation's 132,000 public schools. (AP Wire)

Randi Weingarten...

"The promise of charter schools is that they are small incubators of experimentation, both in terms of instruction and labor relations," she said. "They shouldn't be separate systems." (AP Wire)

Steve Barr...

"I think it's the only way we're going to improve public education," Barr said. "I don't think you're going to change a public education system that's 100 percent unionized with nonunion labor."(AP Wire)

Huh!...

"There clearly are conflicts between some of the things teachers' unions do and some of the things we know make charter schools effective," said Andrew Rotherham, co-founder and publisher of the Washington-based Education Sector think tank. (AP Wire)

Duncan's "ton of bricks" quote

Did Supreme Leader Sec. of Education Arne Duncan really threaten to "come down like a ton of bricks and withhold the second round of funds from anyone who defies Obama's wishes" as reported in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Huffington?

The ton of bricks quote is all over the media. But no one seems to carry the exact quote beyond the words "ton of bricks." It would be nice to know what exactly we have to do before the bricks fall on us.

Charter school lobbyist Gary Naeyaert, tweets Duncan's threat from the floor of the national charter school conferences like this:

"We will come down like a ton of bricks on states that treat charter schools unfairly."

Chicago's WGN quotes Duncan this way:

Secretary Arne Duncan has threatened to "come down like a ton of bricks" on anyone who defies the administration's plans to bring relief to states who face layoffs because of budget cuts.

ASCD Smart Brief says the bricks are just for governors (whew!) :

Secretary Arne Duncan, who threatened to "come down like a ton of bricks" on governors who attempt to divert education stimulus funds.

Big foundations cut staffs

African-Americans & women, first to go

She said 65 percent of the staff members receiving the severance offer were African-American, of whom 58 percent were women. Seven percent of the offers went to managers, Ms. Tellado said, adding that the discrepancy between that number and the figure offered by the critics could have come from different definitions of who is a manager.(NYT)

Is Duncan listening?

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke in Chicago Friday, pushing charter schools and mayoral control at a breakfast hosted by Advance Illinois. But Lane Tech High School junior Marvin Guitierrez, wants Duncan to pay attention to conditions outside, as well as inside the classroom. (Hit button above to listen to Marvin's response or go to WBEZ Chicago Public Radio).

Duncan then moved on the D.C. and spoke, along with buddies Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, to the annual meeting of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Isn't it funny how they call themselves public charter schools when they aren't trying to stop their teachers from unionizing?

Duncan is obviously nervous about the latest wave of research findings, like the Stanford study, showing so many badly performing charters and that on average, charters are doing no better and often worse than the neighborhood schools they replace. Says Duncan:

“The charter movement is putting itself at risk by allowing too many second-rate and third-rate schools to exist.”

Historic victory in Chicago

No, I'm not talking about the Cubs coming back from 7 down to beat Cleveland.

It's all about teachers at Civitas Charter Schools voting 73-49 for their union. The vote represents a major breakthrough in the nationwide struggle by charter school teachers for previously-denied collective bargaining rights.

The teachers had to overcome some slick maneuvering by the for-profit charter company. They had their initial union card signing effort stalled when Civitas, a private subsidiary of Chicago International Charter Schools, went before the NLRB and claimed they were a "private employer" and therefore charter school teachers were not public employees like all other public school teachers and that their IFT bargaining unit shouldn't couldn't be recognized. The NLRB agreed and forced a secret-ballot election. The rest, as they say, is history. Congratulations, Civitas teachers.

Chicago's school reform "miracle" not for everyone

Mary Ann Pollett, principal of Moses Montefiore Special Elementary School, testified before the City Council's Committee on Education and Child Development that officials have discouraged teachers at her school from reporting students' disabilities because it is too expensive to deal with them. (Chi-Town Daily News)

Why is a petition drive even necessary?

Duncan handed petition with 120,000 signatures for more art/music

The boxes of petitions were stacked high off the ground and towered over 7-foot-2 inch Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the former Los Angeles Lakers center who said he appreciates what music does for children because his father was a jazz musician. (AP Wire)

Unionizing in cyber-space

Teachers at the PA Learners Online Regional Cyber Charter School have voted to be represented by the Pennsylvania State Education Association.

Caution, reformers ahead...

On NAEP data, the two biggie mayoral control cities show no change, and on graduation data, NYC shows some improvement, but Chicago shows none, even if we go by the city's data. If we look at the data in the recent RAND study, it confirms many others—charter schools do no better re. test scores than their comparable neighborhood schools—some better, some worse... School reformers perhaps should be required to publish “cautions” the way drugs do—if you do this, watch out because….(In bigger print, however.) (Deb Meier at Bridging Differences Blog).

Redefining charter schools

I am struck by the way that charter schools are currently being redefined, as private operators continue to take over their management nationally and desperately try and push back against unionization.

Originally, charters were defined as public schools, freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools, in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each school's charter.

But recently, in Georgia, for example, the new definition goes something like this: "Charter schools are public institutions that are run by private organizations or individuals."

You see, if charters are defined in this way, charter school teachers are no longer seen as public employees, with the same collective bargaining rights under NLRB rules, as regular public school teachers.

Duncan at the Govs' Conference

Arne Duncan had some interesting things to say at the National Governors Conference this past weekend. Lots of his usual business-model, testing/standards madness. But also lots of ambiguity and mixed messages. It's clear to me that this isn't simply a Bush/neocon rehash. Some things better. Some may even be worse. But Duncan's speech leaves some openings. Since many (including myself) have been focusing on the negatives--and there are plenty--I picked out a few areas where there appears to be a break from the past 8 years or where there's at least some room to struggle.

Here's a few:

• I also appreciate that the primary focus of the Recovery Act is to save and create jobs and we're deeply grateful that states across America are helping save hundreds of thousands of teaching and other education-related jobs.
  

• Nothing is more important than getting great teachers into our classrooms and great principals into our schools. And there are millions of hard-working, dedicated teachers in schools all across America.
  

• I understand that teachers are concerned about the fairness of performance pay. I share those concerns – but I am confident that if we sit down with the unions – instead of forcing it on them -- we can find ways to reward excellence in the classroom.

• But many of you have charter schools in your state that, frankly, are not getting the job done. If they are failing, they should close and the children should have another option.

• I also think that we need to break through the dynamic that positions charters against unions.Albert Shanker, the legendary union leader, was an early advocate of charters. The AFT represents something like 70 charters and the NEA represents another 40. So we should stop fighting over charter caps and unite behind charter accountability.

• Teachers scramble to cover everything – a little of this – a little of that – and not enough of what’s really important. They can’t dig deeper on a challenging subject that excites their students. And students can’t master material when they are racing through it. We must limit standards to the essential knowledge and skills our kids need so teachers can focus in depth on the most important things their kids should know.

• This is a growth area for the testing industry, which may worry that assessments used across multiple states will be bad for business, even if it’s the right thing for kids. However, it’s not my job to worry about their business. My job is to worry about kids and I know that our kids not only need to be challenged but they want to be challenged.

Herb Kohl's open letter to Arne Duncan

Dear Arne Duncan,

In a recent interview with NEA Today you said of my book 36 Children, "I read [it] in high school … [and] … wrote about his book in one of my college essays, and I talked about the tremendous hope that I feel [and] the challenges that teachers in tough communities face. The book had a big impact on me..." (Read the rest in the latest issue of Rethinking Schools).

Music & Art Kaput?

Here's an example of what Herb is talking about:

Music and art instruction in American eighth-grade classrooms has remained flat over the last decade, according to a new survey by the Department of Education, and one official involved in the survey called student achievement in those subjects “mediocre.” (NYT)

Why Duncan will spend $350 million for more reading & math tests

Here's another one:

"Having real high standards is important, but behind that, I think in this country we have too many bad tests," Duncan said. (Washington Post)

Bad news once again for the charter school lobby

While Arne Duncan continues to push charters as point number-one at the top of his reform agenda, even going so far as to threaten school districts with loss of stim dollars if they fail to comply, the evidence keeps pouring in showing charters nationwide, badly lagging behind or a best breaking even when compared to regular public schools.

The latest hard-to-swallow research pill for Duncan and the private charter lobbyists comes out of Stanford's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) in a study ironically paid for largely by pro-charter conservatives like the Walton and Dell Foundations.

Looking at 2,403 charter schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia, CREDO'S researchers found that students in more than 80 percent of charter schools either performed the same as—or worse than—students in traditional public schools on mathematics tests.

“If this study shows anything, it shows that we’ve got a two-to-one margin of bad charters to good charters,” said Margaret E. Raymond, the director of the center and the study’s lead author. “That’s a red flag.” (Edweek)

Making matters worse, the study found that African-American and Hispanic students, in other words, the very students who fill nearly all the the seats in most urban school districts, were found to do worse in charter schools.

Hundreds of N.Y. teachers were fired during '50s red scare

Yesterday's Times, "When Suspicion of Teachers Ran Unchecked in New York" tells the story of McCarthy-period witch hunts in the N.Y. City public school system"

Outside the written record, Ms. Harbatkin did discover unexpected moments of humanity. The Board of Education was often reluctant to oust a husband and wife when both were teachers, and her mother, who died in 2003, confided to her that after she told Mr. Moskoff she would never sleep again if she provided or verified the names of fellow teachers, he turned off his tape recorder “and told her to keep saying she didn’t remember the names.”

She was not charged and continued teaching into the 1970s.

Summer Quotables

How Steve Barr is spending his summer

"When I first wrote about Barr three years ago, he said he had no interest in taking Green Dot outside of Los Angeles. Last fall, however, he opened a new charter school in the Bronx, in partnership with New York City's teacher's union. Now, he says he's going to 'spend the summer' thinking about whether he'd want to become the administration's go-to guy on high school turnarounds and turn Green Dot into a national organization. 'It's Obama,' Barr said after the hearing. 'He's the reason I am even considering this.'" (Lesli Maxwell, Politics K-12)

Bloomberg's campaign manager?

Education Secretary Arne Duncan offered a stern warning that placing restrictions on mayoral control could “turn back the clock and halt progress” and have “profoundly negative consequences for New York City’s students.” (Gotham Schools)

Teaching social justice

Now that 8 years of neocon power have been replaced by Obama's people and virulent anti-democratic voices at the DOE have shrunk into the background, will new space open up for social justice teaching? The latest issue of Ed Leadership has an interesting piece by Laurel Schmidt, "Stirring Up Justice" which calls on teachers to promote "active, inquisitive citizenship."

So social justice is untidy, exhausting, discouraging, even dangerous work—which may be the reason why it's not on the top ten list of social studies projects in many schools. Better to have kids build a model of a rancho (a group of huts for housing ranch workers) or recreate a potlatch (a festival ceremony practiced by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest) and be done with it.

Recalling Obama's historic speech on race

It's Sunday morning and I am out by the beach in Lakeside getting in a much needed weekend of R & R before summer session teaching begins on Monday. I find myself listening to a rebroadcast, on my favorite public radio station (WMNF, Tampa), of Barack Obama's March 18, 2008 speech on race, "A More Pefect Union"--the one he made in response to Rev. Wright's widely publicized comments earlier that month. It will be remembered as one of the greatest ever and well worth another listen. His comments on education and the so-called "achievement gap" warrants special attention:

Segregated schools were and are inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education. And the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students... ...This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late '50s and early '60s, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way, for those like me who would come after them.

Summer's here and the time is right...

As the weather turns warm on this last week of school, two thoughts cross my mind. First, why do the school reformers hate summer so much? I mean, if kids really forget everything they've been taught all year, during their summer vacation, then what's going to happen when they graduate and have a whole lifetime to forget?

Then I'm thinking about the old rhyme kids used to chant as they were racing out of the schoolyard for the freedom of summer break: "No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers..." and wondering if this hasn't become the new mantra of the education budget cutters.

“Boring” a Common Complaint Among Dropouts

Kids aren’t searched when they enter Whitney Young, and this makes a big impression on Mykelle. They don’t have to wear uniforms either—there are no gangs here. Ninety-eight percent of Whitney Young kids graduate. (City Room, WBEZ)

Last day of school

Here's my brother doing what he does best, writing and thinking about teaching and learning. (Fred Klonsky's Blog)

Good Read

Just read a good, short critique of the new, save-the-world power philanthropists like Gates and Broad, " Just Another Emperor?: The Myths and Realities of Philanthrocapitalism", by Michael Edwards (Demos). He counterposes "market metrics" with "democratic accountability" as drivers of social change. You can download it for free, here or buy it like I did, for 12 bucks.

Quotables

From Ground Zero in L.A.

"There is a whole new generation of Latino teachers who are creating connections with their students, and we are being let go. The reality is that we need more teachers." (Teacher German Garrola, camping out in frot of LAUSD headquarters)

Duncan: 'Give pols cover'

A better alternative to the state-by-state approach, he says, is to “get away from each state doing its own thing. Let’s do one thing, and let’s hold ourselves accountable.” But raising the bar, he acknowledged, means “test scores are going to drop in some places precipitously. And what we have to do is we have to give those politicians cover for doing the right thing. So there is a real tricky balance that we have to work on here.” (CSMonitor) h/t Russo

The 'business model'

Performativity is forcing curriculum deliverers to focus on desired outputs among customers in managed learning environments (TimesOnLine).

Politics 'too hard' for Vallas

Paul Vallas on why he's not coming back to Chicago to run as a Republican for Cook County Board President: "I'm not going to be able to transition out of here and run....I've got too many things pending here," he said. "Our test scores took off here, but there's more to do. Politics would create too much of a hardship." (Carol Marin, Chicago News)

Backdoor attempt to kill LSC's

A coalition of Chicago school activists is holding a protest this morning at the Thompson Center. They're asking Gov. Quinn to veto Senate Bill 362 which lifted the cap on charter schools. The reason? It seems that the day before the bill was to come up for a vote, language was added which would eliminate elected Local School Councils from so-called "Turnaround Schools."

Chances for such a veto? Hard to say. Passage of the bill would undoubtedly lead to some law suits. Also, Quinn himself is a former LSC member. He sat on the first round of elected LSCs (along with my wife, Susan) at Sayre Language Academy and should have an appreciation of their importance.

The Huberman 16

Now we know why Daley brought Ron Huberman over from the CTA. He's an efficiency guy, not an educator. And he's "loyal." That's important with all these federal investigations going on in and around City Hall.

His job--fire thousands as a way out of the budget crisis. His first big administrative "shake-up" includes the naming of the "Huberman 16," to "cut waste."

According to the Trib:

The team is heavy on business background. Many have management and consulting experience. Four of them served at the Chicago Transit Authority when Huberman led the CTA for Mayor Richard Daley.

The first 1,000 heads rolling supposedly belong to non-teaching staff and administrators. But when the dust clears, you can be sure that the empty cubicles will belong mainly to those who take the CTA down town, take the calls and are school support staff--not those who drive a Lexus and make huge salaries to manage contending departments. Of course there is lots of waste down on Clark Street and out in the district. Getting rid of the AIOs is not bad. But that happens every few years and the school oversight structure is usually just given a new name while keeping the same top-down style of work. How about ramrods for the new ones?

And shouldn't we be thrilled at Huberman's creation of the new high-paid positions -- chief performance officer and deputy for performance management technology. New performance chief Sarah Kremsner was brought over from the CTA.

Please just don't tell us that "performance management" has anything to do with improving teaching/learning.

How many thousand teachers and principals are next on the chopping block. How high can class sizes grow? Stay tuned.