OWNERSHIP SOCIETY NEWS

I don't think so.

The education technology entrepreneur who started Blackboard Inc. and pioneered on-line (often teacherless) learning, has joined a new venture, which he claims will "revolutionize" the way academic institutions and their graduates move and use education credentials. Docufide, Inc., the company that makes a huge profit every time you have your high school or college transcripts sent, today unveiled a major leadership role and investment by Matthew L. Pittinsky, Ph.D., Blackboard's co-founder and former CEO and Executive Chairman.

“Matthew is both an educator and an entrepreneur," explained E. Rogers Novak Jr., General Partner of Novak Biddle Venture Partners. "I've seen firsthand his ability to identify a big opportunity to improve how education works." 

 Says Docufide, Inc. chairman John Reese, 

"Our passion is not just to reduce the cost and complexity they and their institutions experience along the way, but also to use data to guide their progress and ensure that each transition builds on the last and that the sum total of what they learn helps them realize their dreams."

Ah yes, using data to realize teachers' dreams. That's what it all about.

Isn't it?

Rhee's trail of destruction

Former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee left a trail of devastation in her wake when she left town. In December, the contractor she hired to run Dunbar High School, was given the boot. And yesterday, an arbitrator ruled that the first 75 teachers Rhee fired must be given about $7.5 million in back wages and offered positions with D.C. Public Schools. It's estimated that with an average annual salary of $50,000, each teacher would cash in on $100,000 -- costing the school system $7.5 million while the city faces a $545 million deficit in fiscal 2012. 

Take heed Florida. Rhee is now advising and "permanently partnering" with your T-bagger Gov. Scott on how best to fire teachers and privatize the schools. Take note also Arne Duncan who lost what little credibility his own reform initiative had when he staked it all on Rhee's success in D.C.

Where is the love?

I'm sending each of them a broken-heart cookie and a cup of coffee to help them past the pain. A Huffington Post report has AFT prez Randi Weingarten breaking up with billionaire media mogul and N.Y. mayor, Michael Bloomberg. Oh, well. I never thought it would last anyway. Guess they just weren't right for each other, coming from different sides of the barbed wire and all.  

"I'm very disappointed in the mayor. I don't know why he's gone from wanting to work with people to making teachers his enemy," says Randi.  The political atmosphere for teachers and teacher unions is "more toxic than I can ever remember."

Critical Voices

Go to the blog site of the Forum For Education and Democracy this morning, and you will find important and provocative posts by three of the nation's more thoughtful educators and social justice activists.

Pedro Noguera, "Obama has a Long Way to Go on Education Reform", offers some praise for the president for keeping education high on the nation's policy agenda for speaking up on behalf of undocumented immigrant students. But Noguera doesn't let Obama off the hook.

There is no reason to believe that simply by raising standards, academic performance among students will increase, followed by higher graduation and college attendance rates. The hundreds of schools that Education Secretary Arne Duncan has labeled "dropout factories" are unlikely to be transformed simply because the bar has been raised.

Noguera takes Obama to task for being "boastful" and overstating the impact of Race To The Top. He argues that NCLB need to be trashed rather than tweaked or renamed.

There's a lot more that Noguera could have added in his critique of Obama-style school reform, starting with the whole approach of placing the burden for global economic and military hegemony on the schools--Obama's "Sputnik moment."

But much of which Pedro leaves out is then picked up by Jan Resseger, "Sad, Sad School Reform" and Forum director, George Wood, "Putting the 'F' Word Back in Education."   Resseger unpacks the myth that private operators are a key to turning around "failing schools."

It has become the vogue in today’s school reform, a movement driven by billions of federal stimulus dollars from the U.S. Department of Education, to assume private companies can operate schools better than public school districts...Privatization does not guarantee a school’s success and reliance on contractors is not a district-wide panacea. School reform in 2011 will continue to depend on dedicated educators creating communities where students are cared for and nurtured.

Wood, a high school principal in his other life, calls on educators to recapture the part of schooling that made learning fun and engaging.

 I am not calling for a return to the “good old days,” a time when some children were consigned to less-demanding classes and other children were not even allowed through the school house door.  But I do think we have lost something in our unending quest of lofty standards, more rigor and higher test scores. That something is the joyfulness of play, and the creativeness of curiosity.  We have separated our children from the very world that sustains them.  They will be poorer intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually for it.

I'm putting all three posts on my student's reading list.

Another Sputnik Moment

"The United States never the led the world," the report says. "It was never number one and has never been close to number one on international math tests. Or on science tests, for that matter." -- EdWeek

Two myths of international assessments are debunked—the first, that the United States once led the world on international tests of achievement. It never has. The second myth is that Finland leads the world in education, with China and India coming on fast. Finland has a superb school system, but, significantly, it scores at the very top only on PISA, not on other international assessments. Finland also has a national curriculum more in sync with a “literacy” thrust, making PISA a friendly judge in comparing Finnish students with students from other countries. And what about India and China? Neither country has ever participated in an international assessment. How they would fare is unknown. -- Brown Center Report

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Cheney, Mubarak BFF

'I think President Mubarak needs to be treated as he deserved over the years, because he has been a good friend." -- Former V.P. Dick Cheney at event commemorating the Reagan centennial.

Re-segregating Wake County schools

"We used to be held up as a national model," resident Jamie Dunston said. "Now we're being held up … as objects of ridicule and disgust, and rightfully so." -- L.A. Times

Bachman finds meaning in life

"I take my first political breath every morning with one thought in mind," the Tea Party darling told her audience, the Missoulian reports. "Repeal Obamacare... That's my motivation in life."  -- Michele Bachman

Candidate for president of UTLA 

"Right now we're the big, greedy teachers.... We are not the villains in education; we are the saviors." -- Julie Washington

Good for peace?

I asked an old friend here in Cairo, a woman with Western tastes that include an occasional glass of whiskey, whether the Muslim Brotherhood might be bad for peace. She thought for a moment and said: “Yes, possibly. But, from my point of view, in America the Republican Party is bad for peace as well.”-- Nicholas Kristoff (h/t brother Fred)

Which schools are you going to close, Rahm?

Why isn't anyone asking Rahm Emanuel which 35 schools he intends to close if he is elected mayor? How about letting those school communities know in advance so they can decide how to cast their ballots?

Behind the new push against teachers' unions

FOX in full bashing mode

Paul Thomas, writing for the British Guardian, reveals some of the motives behind the current assault on teachers and their unions. He points out that the new push against teachers' unions, cloaked in discourse about the damage done by "bad" teachers, comes from the right and ironically from some Democrats, like Arne Duncan. 

But the political attacks on teachers and unions, which come from both the left and the right, would likely not resonate as much as they have done, if it were not for the celebrity tour on the back of the documentary Waiting for "Superman", whose message has been perpetuated by celebrity reformers. Two of those, Bill Gates and Geoffrey Canada, share an entrepreneur status that suggests expertise on everything simply because they are wealthy.

Ultimately, writes Thomas, this PR campaign by corporate and political leaders has been effective, even if it remains inaccurate.

That the evidence-based inequity of teacher assignment is ignored, while the myth of the bad teacher is perpetuated, is evidence of the motivation behind the new reformers – an unspoken commitment to the status quo of this social inequity that benefits the very people so keen to lay charges against teachers and unions.

John Merrow, who seems to have shifted somewhat from his earlier support for the L.A. Times' teacher-bashing scheme, follows up with a pretty good post on Huffington, "More on Teacher Bashing -- Getting Proactive.

Stopping teacher bashing is not enough. Nor is "better communication" between labor and management. What's needed is a proactive effort to make teaching a better job. 

Courage

I'm so moved, overwhelmed by the courage and spirit of the Egyptians, I can't even begin to focus on our own school politics today. Maybe later when I'm done plowing.  Best eye-witness accounts are coming on Twitter from NPR's Andy Carvin. Well worth following.

Ownership Society News

The Rise of the New Ruling Class: How the global elite is leaving you behind by Chrystia Freeland.

It's the cover story of the current special State of the Union issue of the Atlantic with some fascinating facts and quotes. It's all about how the emergence of this new global elite, whose wealth has come mainly from the information economy, is widening the gap between the super-wealthy and the rest of us.

What we were seeing...was not a single economy at all, but rather “fundamentally two separate types of economy,” increasingly distinct and divergent.

Freeland writes that a multi-billion-dollar bailout and Wall Street’s swift, subsequent reinstatement of gargantuan bonuses have inspired a narrative of parasitic bankers and other elites rigging the game for their own benefit. And this, in turn, has led to wider—and not unreasonable—fears that we are living in not merely a plutonomy, but a plutocracy, in which the rich display outsize political influence, narrowly self-interested motives, and a casual indifference to anyone outside their own rarefied economic bubble.

The new ruling class salutes no flag but the dollar sign in their quest for greater wealth and power. With modern technology and an increasingly educated global workforce ready to work for one-tenth of what a U.S. worker makes, the increased pauperization of the middle class is a certainty.

The U.S.-based CEO of one of the world’s largest hedge funds told me that his firm’s investment committee often discusses the question of who wins and who loses in today’s economy. In a recent internal debate, he said, one of his senior colleagues had argued that the hollowing-out of the American middle class didn’t really matter. “His point was that if the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile means one American drops out of the middle class, that’s not such a bad trade,” the CEO recalled. 

Freeland concludes: "The lesson of history is that, in the long run, super-elites have two ways to survive: by suppressing dissent or by sharing their wealth.' Not much sharing going on these days, I'm afraid.

Why compare Ohio mom to Rosa Parks?

After last night's Twitter discussion with some of my favorite folks, including Nancy Flanagan and David Cohen, I posted this comment in response to Nancy's post, "Equal Access: Rosa Parks, Lite" on her Teacher in a Strange Land blog at Edweek.

******

Good post Nancy.

Valerie Strauss (my favorite ed columnist) was wrong to make the comparison between Williams-Bolar and Rosa Parks. It sounded patronizing and wasn't helpful. Who among us could live up to that standard?

Of course, when white, advantaged parents seek out the "best school" for their kids (often as far away from  impoverished and isolated communities as possible) they are within the law. Why? The law, as it was 55 years ago when Mrs. Parks took her famous bus ride, reinforces, (now de facto),  segregation, or as Jon Kozol calls it, apartheid schooling.

People will resist our current segregated and increasingly 2-tier system of schooling  in whichever ways are available to them. Even the most liberal among us are often protective of the privileges we expect for our own children--privileges that occur only because we may be white or can afford a house in an affluent neighborhood. Of course we tsk, tsk at the thought of  Williams-Bolar being jailed but then somehow feel the need to compare her negatively to Mrs. Parks for lying on a form in order  to put her child with ours.

I like the way you put it: "There has to be something for everyone in building a truly equitable system, or it will never be built. When open access to quality education requires fraud, we're all in trouble."

Of course there's fraud and fraud, just like there's theft and theft. An impoverished mom stealing baby food for her hungry child is not a thief in the same sense as a Bernie Madoff. And we would see no need to make the comparison between her and Rosa Parks.

As John Dewey wrote: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children.”

******

Valerie Strauss' Answer Sheet column, "Not a Rosa Parks Moment" in the Washington Post can be found here. In fairness, I think that Valerie's commentary was aimed mainly at conservative "choice" advocates rather than at Mrs. Williams-Bolar. They were the ones who cynically raised the Rosa Parks banner, as if...

Also worth reading is a commentary by Dewayne Wickham in the Ohio NewsLeader, "Failed educational system forced Ohio mom to act desperately."

"The status quo today is not good..."

Diane Ravitch on The President's Speech

The status quo today is not good. For 10 years we have pursued the heavy-handed mandates of No Child Left Behind, with meager results. Now with Race to the Top and the Obama administration's "blueprint," we appear ready to impose failed ideas on yet another generation of children. This obsession with testing, ranking, grading, evaluating, measuring, labeling, and sorting students has nothing to recommend it. The winners continue to win, and the losers continue to lose. Testing should be used for diagnostic purposes, to help students and teachers, not for high-stakes accountability. High-stakes testing corrupts testing and corrupts education and causes us to lose sight of the purposes of education.-- Bridging Differences

More on Obama's SOTU 'Sputnik moment'

He got it all wrong on China says Yong Zhao

Is it true that “China and India started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science?” No, China has actually started to reduce study time for their children, with less emphasis on math and science

When he says that “the quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations,” President Obama ignores the fact that American students performance on international tests have been pretty bad for a long time, and believe it or not, has got better in recent years.

As for Race To The Top, it is neither "meaningful" nor "flexible" says Yong Zhao.  Even the post-Sputnik curriculum was  broader in terms of areas of studies than conceived in Race to the Top and the blueprint for reauthorization of ESEA. It included funding for math, science, foreign languages, geography, technical education, etc. Moreover, it did not impose federal mandates on local schools or states.

Guess where Huberman went? No surprise.

Wondering where former Chicago schools CEO Ron Huberman fled after CPS? An investment firm of course. Making $$$ with his City Hall, public schools connections? You bet.

Mr. Huberman said his task will be to find investment and buyout opportunities in three fields he knows well: education, transportation and security. (Crain's)

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Del Valle on "tough guy" Rahm

"This whole thing about being tough—it's about personalities and demeanor, it has nothing to do with running a city," del Valle says. "What, he's tough because he swears? I don't swear to people, so I'm not tough? I'm from Humboldt Park. He's from where—Wilmette, Winnetka? I went to Tuley High, he went to what—New Trier? And Rahm's tougher than me?"--Ben Joravsky, The Reader

Joel Klein cuts $4 million deal with News Corp. 

"Now his mission is to make money out of education for News Corp. and it’s Cathie Black’s turn to educate"--SEC Watch

Klein's view of teachers

"It's easier to prosecute a capital punishment case in the US than terminate an incompetent teacher." -- BBC News.

D.C. Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson

“People think that when you are an educator you clearly aspire to a superintendency or to be secretary of education. That’s not true for me."  -- The Answer Sheet

Black mom jailed for sending child to a white school

"I think they wanted to make an example of me." -- Kelley Williams-Bolar

On Obama's call for return of R.O.T.C. to campus

“I would be the most surprised person in the world if the military came back to Harvard or Yale."-- Diane Mazur, former Air Force officer and author of  A More Perfect Military

Rahm lays another stink bomb

Okay, now we know where Rahm lives...

What about Burge torture case?

The good news is that hopefully now, with the where-does-Rahm-really-live issue behind us, Emanuel will finally be facing some tougher questions.

In Thursday's debate for example, both Rahm and Gery Chico got ripped pretty good. Most everyone I talked with or read, who witnessed the debate, (including Huffington's Will Gizzardi) thought that Miguel del Valle came out on top and that Emanuel seemed lost and ill-prepared. 

NBC Chicago came out with a "scorecard" of the debate: Miguel pulled down an A, Chico got a B, Emanuel scored a C, and Carol Moseley Braun came in last in their estimation with a C-.

What I find most interesting and disturbing has been the lack of any mention of the Jon Burge case. The Burge trial should be a campaign issue, not only because it has divided the city along racial lines (all of Burge's torture victims were black or Latino), but because the cash-strapped city, along with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), continues to pay for Burge's defense. It is also an issue that indirectly connects to Chico, because he sought and won the FOP's endorsement.

The Burge case also connects in some ways to Mayor Daley himself. The only reason Burge had to be tried for perjury instead of for the torture of more than 100 of his prisoners is because then-states attorney Daley took no legal action against him, allowing the statute of limitations to run out.  So far, throughout the campaign, neither Chico nor Rahm has dared utter Daley's name and not one reporter has asked either of them to comment on the Burge trial. 

Now the police commander convicted of concealing torture of suspects under his watch will continue receiving over $3,000 a month in pension payouts for life after a Police Board vote Thursday morning.

G. Flint Taylor, the Chicago lawyer who has represented Burge’s alleged victims, says it’s outrageous. "Clearly he was acting as a cop; the city was defending him as a cop,” he said. (CBS)

On  Friday, del Valle became the only major candidate to speak out on the pension decision. He told Gizzardi:

"I thought it was a terrible decision, a terrible decision. Awful, awful, awful. I think it sends the wrong message. There are a lot of people who lost their pension -- you've got a governor in jail who lost his pension, a governor of the state of Illinois. For this man to keep his pension after what he did... I think the individuals who voted for that made a big mistake."

Del Valle could have also mentioned the thousands of teachers and other public employees who tortured no one, but  whose pensions are also being threatened or eliminated due to state budget cuts.

So now, with less than a month remaining until election day, it looks like Rahm Emanuel's easy path to victory may become a little more rocky--especially if reporters start asking him the tough questions.

DOZENS OF GROUPS PROTEST LOWERING OF TEACHER STANDARDS

CONTACT:  Tim Ebner, CommunicationWorks, 202-955-9450, x317

Wynn Hausser, Public Advocates, 415-431-7430 x304; 650-619-1032

Organizations Join Forces in Urging Obama Administration, Congress to Reverse Course

Washington, D.C. – In an urgent letter sent Thursday to President Obama and key Congressional leaders, more than fifty organizations from across the country -- including civil rights, disability, parent, student, community and education groups -- criticized a provision signed into law last month lowering teaching standards required under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The provision allows thousands of underprepared and inexperienced teachers to continue to be assigned disproportionately to low-income, minority, special education, and English language learner students and denies parents notification of the teachers’ underprepared status.

Intended to overturn a recent civil rights ruling won by low-income students and parents of color in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (Renee v. Duncan), the provision was quietly added by key Congressional leaders into the Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government the day before the CR was passed on December 21, 2010.

In Renee v. Duncan, the Ninth Circuit struck down a Bush-era regulation that labeled teachers who have not met the standards for full state credentials as “highly qualified” from the first moment they begin training in alternative route preparation programs. The court ruled that the regulation patently conflicted with the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress in NCLB that only teachers “who have obtained” full credentials be deemed “highly qualified.” The designation is important under NCLB as all non-highly qualified teachers must be reported to parents and the public and cannot be concentrated in low-income, high-minority schools.

Urging the President and Congress to reverse course, the letter notes that the CR provision “disproportionately impacts our most vulnerable populations: low-income students and students of color, English language learners, and students with disabilities who are most often assigned such underprepared teachers.” Further, the provision “hides this disparate reality from parents and the public by disingenuously labeling teachers-in-training as ‘highly qualified’ and hindering advocacy for better prepared teachers.”

Evidence in Renee shows that two-thirds of alternate route trainees in California teach in schools with 75 percent or greater minority students, while around half teach special education students.

 “I don’t understand why Congress and the Administration are interfering with the victory we won in court,” said Maribel Heredia, a parent plaintiff in the Renee case. “I thought they supported equal access to experienced and fully-prepared teachers for the neediest students. We deserve at least the same quality of teachers as affluent communities.”

“It’s unacceptable that parents aren’t required to be notified when their child’s teacher is not qualified to teach school,” added Mark Halpert, parent leader with The National Center for Learning Disabilities. “We know that the academic needs of children with disabilities cannot be met by someone who is working to become a qualified teacher, but not there yet. When our children are not being taught by the highly qualified teachers they deserve, parents have a right to be told exactly why this is happening and when the situation will be rectified.”

League of United Latin American Citizens National President Margaret Moran echoed that sentiment with respect to English language learners. “These people have not yet been fully trained on how best to convey the subject matter, much less on how best to teach English and academic content to students who are still becoming proficient in English. Why are we continuing the status quo of allowing districts and states to send our students underprepared teachers while calling them ‘highly qualified?’”

“The civil rights community is highly disturbed by this effort to overturn a court victory won by community groups and low-income parents of color,” said Tanya Clay House, public policy director of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in Washington, D.C.. “Moreover, the fact that a major amendment of a primary federal education law being slipped into an appropriations bill at the eleventh hour is not how critical policies impacting our communities should be made."

The groups are calling for repeal of the CR provision and development of a transparent definition of teacher quality, along with a set of policies that will allow the nation to put a well-prepared and effective teacher in every classroom.


The following are available for comment:

John Affeldt, Managing Attorney, Public Advocates Inc., lead counsel in Renee v. Duncan, 415-431-7430, x301

Iris Chavez, Education Policy Coordinator, League of United Latin American Citizens, 202-833-6130

Maribel Heredia, parent plaintiff in Renee v. Duncan, 510-342-6570

Tanya Clay House, Public Policy Director, National Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, 202-662-8330

Candice Johnson, student plaintiff in Renee v. Duncan, 323-244-1306

Laura Kaloi, Public Policy Director, National Center for Learning Disabilities, 703-476-4894



For more information see the following blog posts.

Congress approves weird definition of 'highly qualified’ teachers, Valerie Strauss, Washington Post http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teachers/congress-passes-weird-, definiti.html

Congress Lowering Standards for Teachers; Hiding Truth from Poor, Minority Parents, John Affeldt, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-affeldt/congress-lowering-standar_b_799523.html


LETTER SIGNATORIES (as of 1:30pm PST, 1/26/11)


Action United

Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment

Alliance for Multilingual Multicultural Education

American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education

American Association of State Colleges and Universities

American Federation of Teachers

ASPIRA Association

Association of University Centers on Disabilities

Autistic Self Advocacy Network

Bay Area Parent Leadership Action Network

California Association for Bilingual Education

California Latino School Boards Association

Californians for Justice

Californians Together

Campaign for Fiscal Equity

Campaign for Quality Education

Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning

Center for Teaching Quality

Citizens for Effective Schools

Coalition for Educational Justice

Council for Exceptional Children

Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates

Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund

Easter Seals

ELC, Education Law Center

FairTest, The National Center for Fair & Open Testing

Higher Education Consortium for Special Education

Justice Matters

Latino Elected and Appointed Officials National Taskforce on Education

Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

Learning Disabilities Association of America

Los Angeles Educational Partnership

Movement Strategy Center

NAACP

National Alliance of Black School Educators

National Center for Learning Disabilities

National Council for Educating Black Children

National Council of Teachers of English

National Disability Rights Network

National Down Syndrome Congress

National Down Syndrome Society

National Education Association

National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project

National League of United Latin American Citizens

Parent-U-Turn

Parents for Unity

Philadelphia Education Fund

Public Advocates Inc.

Public Education Network

Rural School and Community Trust

RYSE Center

School Social Work Association of America

Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children

Texas Association for Chicanos and Higher Education

United Church of Christ Justice & Witness Ministries

Youth Together

Charter battle at Chicago board meeting

Little Village Alderman, Rick Munoz

"If the Board of Education wants to continue on this track of privatizing our public schools, that's the wrong track," said Ald. Ricardo Munoz, 22nd, speaking during a teachers union news conference shortly before the CPS board meeting. He said his community had to stage a 19-day hunger strike to pressure the district to build a neighborhood school. --Tribune: "Charters bring drama to CPS board meeting" 

Quotable

Blaming the schools

[Obama's] references to education provided a convenient scapegoat for the failure of the economy, rather than to blame the actions of the Wall Street hustlers to whom Obama is now sucking up. Yes, it is an obvious good to have better-educated students to compete with other economies, but that is hardly the issue of the moment when all of the world’s economies are suffering grievous harm resulting from the irresponsible behavior of the best and the brightest here at home. It wasn’t the students struggling at community colleges who came up with the financial gimmicks that produced the Great Recession, but rather the super-whiz-kid graduates of the top business and law schools. -- Robert Scheer, "Hogwash, Mr. President"