Achievement Gap or Opportunity Gap?

At last... researchers in Boston are talking about the "opportunity gap" rather than just the "achievement gap." An Annenberg Institute study, released in November, revealed stark opportunity gaps and a separate, lesser educational track for black and Latino males in Boston.

Black and Latino males collectively make up about 78 percent of Boston schools’ male population. At every stage of education, black and Latino males have limited access to rigorous coursework such as advanced work classes, elite exam schools and college readiness curricula. As a result, the report says, black and Latino males in Boston schools have lower attendance rates, higher suspension and dropout rates, lower proficiency rates and lower graduation rates than peers. -- Learning Lab

Another recent study authored by UC Berkeley prof, Bruce Fuller,  found that a significant percentage of Mexican-American children who matched their white counterparts in cognitive growth at 9 months of age had fallen behind by the time the children reached 2 years old.

These findings exist even though other research has found that based on other measures, such as social and emotional growth and physical health, young Mexican-American children are quite similar to white children.

"These youngsters grow up in warm and supportive families and that yields emotional and social agility," Fuller said in an interview. "But all that caring and support isn't necessarily infused with rich language and asking kids questions and asking kids to articulate words and their own feelings." 

Mexican-American children who demonstrated strong cognitive growth in the study were more likely to have had mothers who had completed some college, worked outside the home, and read to their children daily, the study found.

Fuller's conclusions reflect his own racial bias as well. They reflect a whitenized vision of what good parenting is. Omit assets Mexican-American children carry with them.

Studies like these shine a light on the process of  systemic social reproduction, meaning the structures and activities that transmit social inequality from one generation to the next.

For example, our increased reliance on standardized testing as the indicator of "student achievement" only serves to maintain social and economic inequality. Higher education, rather than being the great social equalizer, threatens to become the great gate keeper as tests are used increasingly to sort and track kids rather than diagnostic tools for educators. Poverty and racial discrimination are seen simply as a "excuses" for poor performance.

Was the Annenberg Challenge a “total failure”?

Campaign of fear impacts school research

Here’s how badly the Ownership Society types have politicized school research and evaluation. Check out Andrew J. Coulson’s, “The Wreck of the Annenberg” at National Review. Coulson is a honcho at the Cato Institute. They’re the ones who invented the term Ownership Society and sold it to Bush to use as the banner hanging over his current global economic collapse. Too bad, he can’t pin that TOTAL FAILURE on me or Bill Ayers.

But Coulson does write off the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) as a “total failure” making Ayers and Obama the main culprits. He cites no evidence, no evaluations, no experts—nothing to confirm his “total failure” summary. While it’s true that Annenberg didn’t markedly raise Chicago’s test scores—no single reform effort ever does-- the very evaluation from the highly-respected Consortium on Chicago School Research, which Coulson refers to in his hatchet job on Annenberg, shows several positive gains for the CAC. Coulson chooses to ignore this side of the report for political expediency and ideological reasons. He writes:

It failed not just in Chicago, but around the country. The first problem was that many of the “model” schools and districts lacked results worthy of replication. The final report of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, for instance, noted that, overall, students in its model schools had learned no more than students in regular public schools.

To Coulson and the neocons, reform of any public institution is always a failed proposition. Why? Because they don’t believe public anything is reform-able. Secondly, as long as you don’t have to cite any real research, take into account any real goals or standards for the reform, or document anything you say, you can call anything a total failure and no one can really argue with you.

Coulson never explains exactly how Ayers/Obama caused this global total failure of Republican Walter Annenberg’s pet project, stuck as they both were, in Chicago. But that’s another matter.

For one thing, the CAC to its credit, never even called for replicating their “model schools.” That’s not what the initiative was about. The Chicago project was originally aimed at seeing how time, size and teacher isolation factored into school improvement. There was a small group of so-called Breakthrough Schools which were given extra resources and tried more focused and intensive reform efforts. But they were hardly models—more like experiments- and only a small part of the CAC initiative. And while this small group of Breakthrough Schools (not replicable models) didn’t immediately (in the one year they were measured) boost test scores, they did, according to the Consortium study, improve the “student learning climate” and lay the foundation for “subsequent development of instruction…” in those schools.

So how could Coulson read the very same study and conclude that Annenberg was a “total failure?” Answer? He couldn’t. He’s making the shit up.

Besides, Coulson isn’t really concerned with program evaluation. His case is ideological. Bill Ayers, ‘60s radical, was somehow involved with Annenberg. So was his terrorist-pal Obama. Ergo, the program was not only destined to become a “total failure” but was an omen of things to come when socialist Obama becomes president. His entire program for K-12 education will supposedly become a replication of this old, totally-failed Annenberg Challenge where the kids won’t learn any more stuff than they do in regular schools.

Isn’t this the same kind of counterfeit program evaluation we’ve been seeing for the past eight years coming out of the DOE, whether it be of the ideologically-bound Reading First program or of NCLB’s testing madness? The whole purpose of program evaluation is to help us draw lessons from various efforts to improve teaching and public education. But if you enter the process with the mindset that there’s really nothing to be learned and when you’re only goal is to discredit a political candidate, this is what you end up with.

Finally, why the deafening silence from CAC leaders themselves and from the researchers at the Consortium in the face of this assault on their own research? Is the fear campaign working?

Vallas joins the McCain/Palin slime-fest

Grabs chance to hit back at Daley

Former Chicago schools chief Paul Vallas, has been waiting in the wings for a chance to jump in on the Ayers, Annenberg slime-fest. Vallas, who was pushed out of his Chicago post by Mayor Daley, leaving the city's 70 high schools on the brink of collapse, then left Philly's school system as a financial basket case after opening the door to Edison and a host of failed, privately-run charters. Now he's preparing his exit from his post in New Orleans to become a high-priced ed consultant (and here) and possibly run for office in Illinois as a Republican (oops, bad timing).

You can tell by the N.Y. Post's lead, that this was never intended to be serious assessment of the Annenberg grant--the largest single private grant ever made to public schools, nationwide. I think it's just Vallas' way of trying to salvage some of his rep here and hit back at the Mayor.

Chicago's former schools chief has flunked the education foundation headed by Barack Obama and founded by 1960s terrorist Bill Ayers - saying it failed to monitor projects and funded school "reform" groups that campaigned against boosting academic standards. "There was a total lack of accountability. If you went back and asked, you'd be hard-pressed to find out how the money was spent," said Paul Vallas, the city's school superintendent when Obama chaired the Chicago Annenberg Foundation from 1995 to 1999.

A couple of points here. First, the Annenberg grant wasn't "founded" by Bill Ayers, as we have pointed out here and which has been confirmed by leaders of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC's) many times over. Secondly, unlike Vallas' $4.5 billion/year financial debacle in Chicago, the CAC's grants were made public and are out there for all to see.

Not that there weren't lots of problems with the CAC's initiative. The biggest one was its board's inability or unwillingness to let one penny of its funds fall into Vallas' hands. They were repelled by Vallas' top-down approach to reform. This led to an ego-maniacal Vallas lashing back at the entire Chicago foundation community and causing a rift that would ultimately lead the Mayor to give Vallas the boot. While many positive improvements happened during the Annenberg years, the lack of a partnership between the CAC and district leadership created impossible conditions for any real reform.

The latest "evidence"

Did Ayers, Klonsky and Obama really share an office?

The New McCarthyism is running full-throttle and it’s not just about Bill Ayers. Palin is now talking to the rabid ones about “pro-America” and “anti-America” regions of AMERICA and Minnesota Republican Rep. Michelle Bachman has been equating liberalism with anti-Americanism and is calling for investigations of other members of Congress to "find out if they are pro-America or anti-America."

*****

Meanwhile the McCain/Palin wing-nuts have found hard evidence that Bill Ayers, Barack Obama and I all shared office space together back in 1997.

Wow! These anti-terrorist sleuth/bloggers are really good. How they solved the puzzle, you see, is that they went on our website and found the old address (115 S. Sangamon St.) of the Small Schools Workshop from back in the days when we were housed over at UIC (the University of Illinois at Chicago), in a mostly vacant building that was falling apart and was later condemned. So we all had to move. Then they dug even deeper into the public files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) and found, lo and behold, that their address during that year, was also—you guessed it—115 S. Sangamon St. (evidence is shown above).

Whoop, there it is. Case closed. The commie, terrorist conspiracy from hell uncovered at last.

Except for two minor points, of course. One: Bill Ayers never worked in the Sangamon St. building. His office was in the Education Building at UIC, a mile away on the other side of the campus. Oh yes, and Barack Obama also never worked nor had an office at the Sangamon St. building, and as far as I know, never even once set foot in the building. While he was a board member of CAC and even president of the board for a time, the Sangamon St. office of CAC was for staff members. Obama wasn’t one and didn’t ever have a role in directing CAC funding.

But don't despair, all you wing-nut sleuths out there. I will readily admit that if Sen. Obama WOULD have had an office at Sangamon St. I probably WOULD HAVE offered to take him to lunch tried to sell him on the small schools idea, and even hit him up for a contribution, as I was wont to do back then.

Instead, our actual office mates were a nice bunch of folks from the area headquarters of ROTC and the University of Illinois at Chicago's ROTC program. I admit we had some fun office parties together where we shared some rather subversive ideas with top officers and rank and file cadets about education and politics, as we were also wont to do.

Gee, I hope my frank admission doesn't lead to a McCarthy-type, full-blown investigation of the entire U.S. Army circa 1954.

Quotables

Gen. Colin Powell endorsing Barack Obama

I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America..

Annenberg & Ayers…

Bob McCarthy, educator, school reform leader, and former senior staff member of the Annenberg Institute at Brown University is proud of his relationship with Bill Ayers.

During the Annenberg work in Chicago, the group was aware of Ayers's past and, like Obama, found the acts of the Weathermen 40 years ago reprehensible. However, our goal was to help Chicago's teachers and children, and Ayers, who has spent his adult life pursuing the same goal, was an important resource and collaborator. We should judge a person by his entire life's work, not convenient sections. McCain should know that.

McCain’s ideologues

Mike Barnicle, referring to McCain:

That guy is MIA, missing in action, held captive by ideologues who dominate his strategy sessions and what is left of the Republican party.

McCain on ACORN

At a 2006 rally in Miami, McCain pushed an immigration reform bill supported by ACORN and other progressive groups. ACORN members waved "McCain '08" signs at the rally as McCain said,

"What makes America special is what's in this room tonight. That's what makes America special."

(Source)

CNS news called this morning.

L. Brent Bozell III

They wanted to interview me. Shades of O’Reilly.

Just what is CNS News, you may be wondering? They are the creation of L. Brent Bozell III (sure are a lot of these 3rds running around the wing-nut right). I remembered Bozell because Olbermann once named him “the second worst person in the world.” He’s been a mainstay of the fringe right since the Goldwater days, a leading swift-boater against John Kerry in ’04, and one of those who blame all the world’s troubles on the “liberal control of the media.” His favorite targets are "left-wing" TV anchors like Bob Schieffer, Andrea Mitchell, and Chris Matthews. Thus CNS. There are no liberals there.

Swift-boater Bozell, obviously afraid to call me himself, had his first-year intern, a kid named Matt, call to ask me one of those “are you now, or have you ever been a member” of any left-wing organizations questions I’ve been getting lately, since all this Bill Ayers campaign lunacy began.

I responded by asking Matt about his internship at CNS? How he felt working for Bozell? Wasn’t he embarrassed, thinking of himself as a future journalist and then having to make phone calls to people asking them about their political affiliations from 40 years ago?

He responded nervously, “No. I’ve done lots of things more embarrassing that this.” Like what, I asked. “Umm, I’d rather not say,” he said. Well, have you ever heard of Joe McCarthy? You know, the senator? “Sure,” he says. Well, are you feeling some kinship to him right now? “Uh yes, I guess I am.” But it sounds like you’re really into it. “Yes, I am.” So, you’ve probably figured out by now that I’m not giving you an interview, right? “Umm, yes. But can you just tell me something about SDS, the Small Schools Workshop, Annenberg, and your connection to Obama?”

See you, Matt. Hope you find a real job some day.

Edweek looks at Annenberg

Today Edweek’s Dakarai Aarons offers up a balanced and accurate portrayal of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

You mean it wasn’t a left-wing conspiracy, led by Barack Hussein Obama to radicalize our schools and students, as claimed by McCain’s blogger brigade? Nope, sorry Kurtz, Corsi, Hannity, Steve Diamond, Checker Finn, Sol Stern and the rest of you wing-nuts.

In fact, writes Aarons,

…the project undertaken in Chicago as part of a high-profile national initiative reflected mainstream thinking among education reformers. The Annenberg Foundation’s $49.2 million grant in the city focused on three priorities: encouraging collaboration among teachers and better professional development; reducing the isolation between schools and between schools and their communities; and reducing school size to improve learning.

Was the CAC effective? Like most reform initiatives it depends how you measure it, reports Aarons. Did Obama and Ayers conspire to funnel millions of Mr. Annenberg’s dollars to left-wing groups? No, but they did run into each other from time to time and even sat in some board meetings.

Here’s a quote from ME:

“You can’t work in school reform in this community without coming across Bill Ayers. He’s been involved in every area of Chicago reform going back 30 [should be 20] years now,” said Michael Klonsky, who has known Mr. Ayers since their days in the leftist group Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s.

The ‘60s—get it? That’s when Obama was 8 and I wasn’t much older. Was I?

Aarons’ piece makes an interesting connection. He interviews Warren Chapman, who co-chaired the Chicago School Reform Collaborative with Ayers and also served as a program officer at the Joyce Foundation. Yes, that’s the very same foundation on whose board sat Obama and Deborah Leff, who along with Pat Graham from the Spenser Foundation, recruited Obama to the Annenberg Board.

No, it wasn’t Bill Ayers. Are you listening, Gov. Palin?

As Aarons points out, Edweek also receives funding from Joyce and Spenser, thereby making them, in my humble opinion, part of the Obama/Ayers/Annenberg terrorist conspiracy from hell.

Welcome Edweek--and buckle up.