Billionaire Bloomberg says he's running. But why?

The prototype for the Rahm Emanuel mayoralty was Michael Bloomberg's New York. -- Crain's

The oddsmakers in Vegas put the odds on Michael Bloomberg winning the presidency at 14/1. That puts him even in their minds with Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg and trailing only Donald Trump 7/5, Elizabeth Warren 3/1, and Joe Biden 8/1 in the eyes of bookies.

I follow this stuff only because the bookies usually have a better handle on things than do the pollsters. That's why the house always wins.

Why is this billionaire Republicrat media tycoon and former New York mayor even considering jumping into a crowded Democratic primary as a 14-to-1 longshot? He knows the odds as well as anyone. One, because he can afford to, and two, he wants to be a hedge against the progressive insurgents like Warren and Sanders.

If either of them won the primary, I could even imagine Bloomberg running as an independent or third-party candidate in key battleground or swing states to draw away votes. Bloomberg is worried much more about the progressive ascendency than about his off-and-on frenemy Trump (who calls Bloomberg "Little Michael").

Known as the stop-and-frisk mayor in New York, Bloomberg once claimed that the biggest problem was his cops "over-stopping whites", and that he was just evening the score.

During his time in office, Bloomberg wielded his personal power against New York's communities of color and their public schools. He imposed a tidal wave of privatization on the city, including a big swing towards privately-run charter schools. What pissed me off most was how he used our "small schools" rhetoric to promote charters.

He was an advocate of using standardized testing results as the main vehicle for evaluating school and teacher performance.

He thought poor and especially immigrant parents were too ignorant to have much to say about their children's education.

Bloomberg once claimed:

“Unfortunately there are some parents who just come from — they never had a formal education, and they don’t understand the value of education...The old Norman Rockwell family is gone.”

That last part is true, and good riddance.

All this reminded me of this great quote from NYT's Michael Powell back in 2011:

"There is an 'autumn of the patriarch' feel to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg these days."

He's an outspoken enemy of organized labor and even compared the teacher unions to the NRA and used the big-lie technique to charge the unions with protecting child molesters.

Bloomberg's charter school cronies, Eva Moskowitz and Joel Klein. 

He hired corporate-style reformers like of Joel Klein and the totally incompetent (thank goodness) Cathie Black to replace public schools with charters and erode public space and public decision-making. Among his partners in crime was the city's supreme charter hustler, Eva Moskowitz, who enriched herself running the so-called Success Academies.

Bloomberg is a horrible politician who was only elected because of his bottomless war chest. You need only go back to his paper-thin 2009 victory in the NY mayor's race over relative political unknown Bill Thompson. Bloomberg poured $90 million of his own fortune into the race, a sum unequaled in the history of municipal politics, that gave him a 14-to-1 advantage in campaign spending. Yet he won by only 5%.

So, is Bloomberg's announced candidacy a bluff, a real threat to anti-Trump forces, or neither? One thing is for sure: Michael Bloomberg offers no positive alternative to Trump or to the current field of candidates in the Democratic primary.

Vouchers for private schools: This is what passes for 'school reform' in D.C.

D.O.E.-- The Education Pentagon in D.C.

Posting from D.C. --Remember back in 2010 when Michelle Rhee was ruling the roost in D.C.? Rhee, with plenty of back-up from Arne Duncan and the Gates Foundation, became one of the superstars of the Waiting For Superman set, and D.C. was touted as the model for corporate-style, urban school reform. Duncan even used his position as Secretary of Education to stump for Rhee's patron, then-Mayor Adrian Fenty.

How the mighty have fallen. Rhee has left the world of corporate reform to go to work for a fertilizer company. After she was booted out of Washington came the revelations about her role in a major test-cheating scandal.

Spending this past week in the D.C. area has given me a closer look at Rhee's school reform legacy which goes hand-in-hand with the whitenizing of the District. In 2011, Washington’s black population slipped below 50% for the first time in over 50 years.

Not only is the city’s African American population shrinking — almost half of the District’s 650,000 residents are white — but it’s getting harder to be black in the nation’s capital. -- Washington Post

Petworth

Neighborhoods like Petworth are losing their public schools, as gentrifiers increasingly choose other options, like privately-run, publicly-financed charter schools. MacFarland, the only public middle school in Petworth, was one of 15 Washington public schools closed in 2013.

Vouchers...Congress seems to have a weird obsession with D.C. school vouchers, writes Valerie Strauss at WaPo.

Congress created what is formally known as the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program in 2004 as the only federally funded program that uses public money to pay for private school tuition, though the public has no say in how the schools are run or what is taught.

The D.C. voucher program has become the pet project of House Speaker John Boehner, who recently announced he is soon leaving Congress. Boehner this month introduced legislation to reauthorize the voucher program for an additional five years, and a bipartisan group of senators filed a companion bill to extend the program through 2025. (Pro-voucher Democrats also include two former mayors of D.C. Tony Williams and Fenty.)

In 2008, Rhee declared herself neutral on school vouchers But in 2011, she endorsed vouchers, saying that she supported "giving poor families access to publicly funded scholarships to attend private schools." Then again in a February 2011 speech before Georgia's legislature, she openly supported the D.C. voucher program as a supplement to the expansion of privately-run charter schools. She said that if a parent did not win the lottery to get a child into a charter school, then "who am I to deny them a $7,500 voucher to send their child to a great Catholic school."

This, even though a Washington Post review in 2012 found that hundreds of students use their voucher dollars to attend schools that are unaccredited. A previous report in 2007 found that some students in the program were attending private schools that had unsuitable learning environments and teachers without bachelor’s degrees.

The D.O.E.'s own evaluation of the voucher program found that it did nothing to raise measurable student learning outcomes.

The GAO reported that the local agency that administers the program lacks the “financial systems, controls, policies, and procedures” to ensure that federal funds are being spent legally. It also says the U.S. Education Department has not exercised its oversight responsibilities well enough.

Such is the state of what passes for D.C. school reform.

More on Fariña pick: You can't go wrong expecting the worst from Duncan.

In yesterday's post on de Blasio's appointment of Carmen Fariña as schools chancellor, I implied that pressure from Arne Duncan and his assistant, Jim Shelton (a Gates Foundation insert at the DOE), was being exerted on the new mayor to appoint a corporate reformer type. As it turns out, I was right on the money. I've learned long ago, that you're almost always on safe ground when anticipating unethical behavior from the Duncan gang.

Yesterday's Washington Post reports:

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and at least one other Education Department official urged New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and his team not to choose Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Joshua P. Starr as the city’s next schools chancellor, according to several people knowledgable about the selection process. It was an unusual move by the nation’s top education official and came in the wake of Starr’s vocal criticism of some of the Obama administration’s school reform policies.

Starr was reportedly on BdB's short list that included Rhee disciple, Maya Henderson and Chicago's school-closing CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett. Credit both Starr and de Blasio for not giving in to Duncan's bullying. BdB reportedly offered Starr the number 2 job on the assumption that he would soon take over for the 70-year-old Fariña. Starr declined, opting instead to continue his work in Montgomery County, where he earned the wrath of Shelton by criticizing Duncan's Race To The Top.

Duncan used his position to stump for Rhee and Fenty in D.C.. 

Duncan and Shelton were both big fans of Michelle Rhee in D.C. and Duncan even tried to provide cover for her in the D.C. test-cheating scandal.

According to the Post,

In January 2011, while D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) deliberated on who would succeed Michelle A. Rhee as D.C. schools chancellor, Duncan said publicly that he hoped Kaya Henderson, Rhee’s deputy, would get the job. She did.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Rupert Murdoch (left) with his boy, Joel Klein.

Joel Klein's email dump

For me, the other interesting point is that they are so afraid of any criticism. They are especially afraid of Deborah Meier, me and Jonathan Kozol. They refer to columns by Deborah Meier and myself–she an educator with decades of experience, I a historian with a long view–as “moronic” and “idiotic.” They refer to Jonathan Kozol and me as “deranged crackpots.” How can anyone take these mean-spirited, ignorant, arrogant people seriously? -- Diane Ravitch, "Something scary happened last night."

More Klein dump

“Who’s the heavy breather on the call?” wrote a participant, whose name was redacted. “Normally, I’d ask them to mute their phone but I don’t want to alienate any donors.” “Some overweight billionaire,” Mr. Klein replied. -- New York Times

Explore Charter student, Amiyah Young

“It’s a bit weird,” Amiyah said of the school’s racial composition. “All my friends are predominantly black, and all the teachers are predominantly white. I think white kids go to different schools. I don’t know. I haven’t seen many white people in a big space before.” -- NY Times, "Why Don't We Have Any White Kids?"

A decade of disaster

UFT Prez Mike Mulgrew told more than 1,000 union members attending the United Federation of Teachers' spring conference that Mayor Bloomberg has presided over "a decade of disaster." "It's almost as if we're running a shadow government to make up for the failures of the management that is not there for our school system," Mulgrew said. -- NECN.com

44 years after Dr. King's death attacks on unions continue

Dr. King in Memphis, 1968

"That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, AFL-CIO Convention, December 1961

Yesterday was the anniversary of the 1968 assassination of  Dr. King, who was killed while defending the rights of black public workers in Memphis, to unionize. How ironic then, 44 years later, to hear school reformer Geoffrey Canada's declaration of war on the teachers union.

Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children's Zone and co-star, along with Michelle Rhee, in the anti-teacher, propaganda film, Waiting For Superman, was quoted in Tuesday's New York Times:

Ms. Rhee and Mr. (Joel) Klein have a confrontational history with teachers’ unions. But some charter school leaders and other advocates have spoken of the need to lower the temperature of the debate and have turned their focus inward on improving their own schools.

“Folks are genuinely looking for opportunities to make peace and not war,” Mr. Canada said. “And I think that’s terrific. But someone has to make war.”

In making his declaration, Canada, who is fond of quoting Dr. King in his speeches, joined hands with the worst of the worst education privatizers and profiteers whose hatred of unions is understandable. They include, Rhee and Klein (front man for international criminal Rupert Murdoch), Micah Lasher, who runs Mayor Bloomberg's legislative affairs, and charter profiteer Eva Moskowitz. Together, they announced the formation of StudentsFirstNY, a heavily-funded group that intends to pour money behind anti-teacher union candidates in upcoming election campaigns.

******

Thanks to Richard Kahlenberg for sending me a copy of his and Moshe Marvit's new book, Why Labor Organizing should be a civil right. The book begins with the recounting of Dr. King's role in the supporting organized labor, which he considered part and parcel of the civil rights movement. King was also highly critical of those union leaders who had allowed racially segregated local unions into the AFL-CIO.

King declared in his famous Chaos or Community speech in 1967:

The displaced are flowing into proliferating service occupations. These enterprises are traditionally unorganized and provide low wage scales with longer hours. The Negroes pressed into these services need union protection, and the union movement needs their membership to maintain its relative strength in the whole society.

N.Y. stops ranking teachers based on student test scores

NYT reports:  New York City education officials announced Thursday that they would end their effort to rank teachers based on their students’ standardized test scores, adding a surprise twist to one of the most contentious issues facing the city’s teaching force.

Joel Klein, the former schools chancellor who now fronts for Rupert Murdoch, championed the rankings, and the city has been supporting their release to the public against a teachers’ union lawsuit for the past year.

But now it appears that the state board will pick up where the city left off making it appear that Mayor Bloomberg and the city are simply trying to avoid the suit.

A victory of sorts, I suppose.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Bill Gates

Our big investment in school reform. "hasn't led to significant improvements." -- Wall Street Journal. 

Joel Klein then...

"I've long admired News Corporation's entrepreneurial spirit and Rupert Murdoch's fearless commitment to innovation." -- NPR

Joel Klein now...

“I am trying to get as far away from this as I can,” he lamented to a friend. -- NYT

Aaron Pallas

"In any organization in which members are pressed to reach goals that cannot be attained through legitimate means, cheating and other forms of misconduct are likely to occur. That’s the real threat of high-stakes testing." -- Letter to NYT editor

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

Remember, it's all about the kids

Rhee's $1 billion comeback

Just days after announcing that she was going to work for Florida's T-Party Gov. Rick Scott, Michelle Rhee and her patrons used Oprah's show and a Newsweek cover story to announce the formation of her own shiny new school reform group. Remember how, in 2008 she kicked off her disastrous term as D.C.'s school boss with a Time cover story and the infamous broom picture?

She's named her new group, Students First, but a look at her website will tell you that it should have been called Rhee First. The kick-off is largely the work of her clout-heavy, tres expensive PR firm headed by former Obama white house staffer Anita Dunn working with former N.Y. Chancellor Joel Klein and Rhee's fiancé, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.

The teacher-bashing star of Waiting for Superman ought to make a killing in the new open-market money pit of corporate school reform. Money-magnet Rhee claims the group will raise $1 billion from patrons Gates, Broad and other private corporate sources. That perked up the ears of ever-willing AFT prez Randi Weingarten who invited Rhee to "work with us."  It also led USA Today ed writer Greg Topo to Tweet, "So much for money not mattering." 

“If there’s anyone who can raise a billion for this, it’s going to be Michelle,” said Joe Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, recalling that Ms. Rhee was greeted like a rock star at a political event his group hosted a couple of years ago in Denver.  (NYT)

But her main cheerleaders are the usual gaggle of union haters starting with American Enterprise Institute's Rick Hess--“She very explicitly is setting out to be a political answer to the unions”-- and Bellweather's (they know which way the wind's blowing) Andy Rotherham--"She’s a charismatic, high-profile national leader, and she’s unafraid to break a lot of china.”

Break china indeed. But remember, it's all about the kids.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

It's war

Mr. President. There's A War Going On In This Country... A War Being Waged By Some Of The Wealthiest And Most Powerful People against the working families of the United States of America.  (Sen. Bernie Sanders)

From the 'barricades'

First, it is wrong to assert that students' poverty and family circumstances severely limit their educational potential... Public education is a service-delivery challenge, and it must be operated as such. (Joel Klein--"What I learned at the Education Barricades")

You don't know me

“Give me a chance,” New York's new chancellor, Cathie Black said in the interview, on WABC-TV. “Don’t judge someone that you haven’t even met.”

I hope Black will follow her own advice when it comes to teacher and school evaluation. Look beyond test scores as the sole criteria please, Ms. Black.

Ownership Society News

Before he left his post as NYC chancellor, Joel Klein made sure his nest was feathered. He helped put together a mega-deal for his new boss, Rupert Murdoch, a deal that would give the media mogul a no-bid entry point into the highly profitable New York public education market. The deal has Murdoch's News Corp acquiring 90 percent of Wireless Generation, a Brooklyn-based education technology company for teachers, for approximately $360 million.

Education in the U.S. is a $500 billion sector “waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching,” said Murdoch in a statement, and Wireless Generation is at the “forefront” of individualized, tech-based learning. (Business Insider)

Wireless is is a key partner to New York City’s Department of Education on its Achievement Reporting and Innovation System (ARIS) as well as on the City’s School of One initiative.

More reasons to dump mayoral control

Need a couple of good reasons to get rid of mayoral control of urban schools? How about Bloomberg and Daley? Narrow, self-serving political agendas have left both of their autocratically-run school systems in chaos.

With a week to go before Chicago schools chief Ron Huberman flees the coop, there is still no official word on his replacement. It's been 5 months since the system had a chief education officer. And even machine guy and front-running mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel has to preface his education platform with a slam on the current Daley-run system. 

"Chicago's public schools are on a precipice. Testing indicates that 86% of our elementary-school graduates won't be ready for college. Nearly half of high-school entrants will not graduate. Teachers and students aren't learning the skills they need, and too many parents are on the sidelines." (Crain's)

Ouch!

The problem for Rahm is that all this comes after 15 years of mayoral control, including 7 years with Rahm's guy, Arne Duncan at the helm, implementing the very failed policies that Emanuel vows to continue. Says Rahm:

"I believe we should establish Chicago's Race to the Top. If we can raise private capital from our businesses and philanthropic community for the Olympics, we can do so for our children's future."

Whoops. Bad example, Rahm. I mean--the Olympics? Didn't anyone tell you not to say the O-word back here in Chicago? This plus privatization of garbage collection don't sound like political winners to me. But what do I know?

In NYC, Bloomberg's autocratic style has created a new firestorm of protest and opposition. His pick of the eminently unqualified Cathie Black as Joel Klein's replacement was made secretly, so as to "avoid a public spectacle." It left observers (like me) wondering, who's advising this guy?

All this, following on the heels of the Fenty/Rhee debacle in D.C., has once again put mayoral control of the schools back into the limelight and hopefully, at the risk of mixing my metaphors, back onto the chopping block.

Line from the N.Y. Times: Two tenets of Bloomberg era...

Mayor Bloomberg has dumped Chancellor Klein in N.Y.

Klein goes off to work on Rupert Murdoch's right-wing plantation, "to explore possibilities in education." I wonder what possibilities those might be? 

Recently, two famous Wall Street short sellers, James Chanos and Steve Eisman, announced that they see a crash coming in the for-profit education sector, which is heavily dependent on online degrees paid for through federally guaranteed student loans. (New Yorker)

The news is better for Cathie Black who leaves Hearst's own struggling right-wing media plantation for Bloomberg and his potential third-party, beat- Obama, presidential run in 2012. Black is no more qualified to run NYC's public schools than I am to run Cosmo. But none of this is really the public's business, says Bloomberg. The selection process around Black's hiring as well as the Klein dump were both highly secretive. This piece in the Times says it all for me:

Two tenets of the Bloomberg era: the mayor’s faith in the ability of business leaders to fix the ills of government, and his keen dislike of drawn-out public debates that might derail his agenda.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Olbermann from exile

Greetings From Exile! A quick, overwhelmed, stunned THANK YOU for support that feels like a global hug & obviously left me tweetless XO. (Twitter)

Status Quo

If you don't fully support Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Bill Gates, and other "reformers" then you support the "Status Quo." -- This is a sound bite that media has happily and uncritically repeated, uh, repeatedly. It's used just like, "If you are not for the war, you are against the troops," was during the Bush administration. (Brian Crosby at Huffington)

Kozol--No half steps

Charter schools, favored by the White House, are even more profoundly segregated than most other public schools. Magnet schools, with a few exceptions, have failed for more than 40 years to achieve more than a pittance of diversity. Principals especially should rise above the token gestures of the past and speak out on this issue with the nobility and the transcendent passion that dignify the crucial role they fill in our society. (Jonathan Kozol, Ed Leadership)

Van Jones: We Must Prepare for Battle

We went from "We Are One" to "We Are Done," Jones tells a D.C. audience. It's time to stop waiting for cues from Washington, he says. (AlterNet)

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Cornell Economist Robert Frank

There is no persuasive evidence that greater inequality bolsters economic growth or enhances anyone’s well-being. Yes, the rich can now buy bigger mansions and host more expensive parties. But this appears to have made them no happier. And in our winner-take-all economy, one effect of the growing inequality has been to lure our most talented graduates to the largely unproductive chase for financial bonanzas on Wall Street. (NY Times)

This guy is actually ahead in the Colorado senate race

DAVID GREGORY: Do you believe that being gay is a choice?
KEN BUCK: I do.
GREGORY: Based on what?
BUCK: Based on what? I guess you can choose who your partner is.
GREGORY: You don't think it's something that's determined at birth?
BUCK: I think that birth has an influence over it, like alcoholism and some other things, but I think that basically, you have a choice. (Huffington)

Richard Rothstein on the Klein/Rhee "Manifesto"

There is a world of difference between claiming, as the Klein-Rhee statement does, that the single biggest factor in student success is teacher quality and claiming, as Barack Obama does in his more careful moments, that the single biggest school factor is teacher quality. Decades of social science research have demonstrated that differences in the quality of schools can explain about one-third of the variation in student achievement. But the other two-thirds is attributable to non-school factors.(Answer Sheet)

 Fran Spielman's Q & A with Rahm Emanuel

Q. After leaving the Clinton administration, you made a fortune in investment banking in a relatively short time. What will you say to those who characterize you as cashing in on your political connections?
A. I went to the private sector with the purpose to make money, so I could provide for my family. ... I didn't become a lobbyist. I didn't stay in Washington. I didn't write a book about my time with President Clinton and I'm not gonna write a book about my time with President Obama. I serve at their pleasure and it was an honor to serve the country. I chose to do something else ... so I could one day go back to public service. Other people will characterize it as they want. I made a set of choices. (Sun-Times)

My translation: Yes, I cashed in on my political connections.

An alternative to the "Manifesto"

Okay, so I lied

I said I wouldn't post anything that had the word "Superman" in it. It was a rant and perhaps I was just having a super-bad day. But this letter, posted at the Answer Sheet, by Sacramento Supt. Jonathan P. Raymond is worth a read. It's introduced this way by Valerie Strauss:

Dated Oct. 7, the message portrays a vision of how to improve schools that is far different from the one presented in the “reform manifesto” signed by 16 school superintendents and chancellors -- including Washington D.C.'s Michelle Rhee and New York City's Joel Klein -- and published in The Washington Post. That document is large on rhetoric and empty of substance. Raymond’s vision is a whole lot clearer.

I agree.

Klein cut secret deal to misuse state $$$

OOPS! He thought the gov said "INCREASE"  class sizes. 

The state cut $500 million in funding from the city schools this year, Zarin-Rosenfeld noted, and the system is facing a "a similarly bleak financial picture next year. But parent advocates note that even when times were good in 2007 and 2008, the department failed to reduce class size. (Juan Gonzalez)

The arrogance of power

Klein--"I'm above the law. I know Ravenel Boykin Curry IV"

Mayor Bloomberg's hand-picked schools Chancellor Joel Klein, is bigger than the law. He laughs at law. Giggles at union contracts. Guffaws at the very idea of community input. On Wednesday, Klein announced he would use his little-known "emergency powers," to do an end run around state law and take space away from a program for autistic children in order to expand his patron's favorite Girls Preparatory Charter School. 


State law forbids such a move without consultation with parents. According to the N.Y. Times:

Parents of students affected by the move brought the case to the state commissioner, complaining that the city had given them no information about where the autistic children would go. In his ruling on Monday, Mr. Steiner agreed, saying that the city had to hold new public hearings before moving students, a process that would effectively put off any change for at least a year. 

When State Commissioner Steiner ruled that Klein's charter expansion was illegal, Klein responded by invoking the little know emergency clause which permits the DOE to act unilaterally when it is, “immediately necessary for the preservation of student health, safety or general welfare.”   

Silver's response:

“The school governance law is crystal clear that the Department of Education must consult with parents in a meaningful way when they are considering co-locating a school in an existing school building.  This is really a breathtaking end run around both the law’s requirements and the right of parents to have a voice in a decision that will impact the lives of their children. Unfortunately it’s the kind of arrogance that too many parents have come to expect from Chancellor Klein when it comes to having a voice in their children’s education. This is blatant abuse of the Chancellor’s emergency powers.” (The Lo-Down)

It's worth mentioning that Girls Prep is the darling of billionaire hedge-fund operator and DFER patron, Ravenel Boykin Curry IV of Eagle Capital Management. The school's curriculum appears to be little more than test-prep with hefty contracts going to Open Court Reading Program, and Saxon Math.


Check out this piece of satire, "Klein Declares Martial Law" on NYC Public School Parents blog.

Fire D.C. Rhee and her entire staff--or at least cut their pay

Her scores went down

The fun part is watching Rhee loyalists twisting themselves into pretzels to rationalize a 4% drop in D.C. elementary school test scores. Suddenly, the entire test-and-punish crowd is explaining to us how test scores don't mean anything and how test scores are tied much more to out-of-school conditions.

The problem is that she has made rising standardized test scores a central measure for achievement -- hers, students and teachers, writes WaPo's Valerie Strauss. 

So, feel free to judge Rhee on her insistence on placing so much importance on test scores (as have today’s other titans of education reform, such as Joel Klein in New York City). She believes they are so important, in fact, that she recently announced that she wants to expand their use in city schools, so that, in time, every D.C. student from kindergarten through high school is regularly assessed to measure academic progress and teacher effectiveness. But judging her reforms on the actual test scores, well, as my kids say, “Not so much.”

NYT editorial got it wrong on small schools

The Times lauds the reported success of NY small schools as shown in a recent MDRC study. The benefits of small schools and smaller learning communities are well known and have been documented in study after study (including my own) for many years. But the editorial, puts its own spin on the research and credits that success to Bloomberg's school closing policies and top-down reform strategy.

The study validates the small school policies of the Bloomberg administration, which has shut down 20 large, failing high schools and replaced them with more than 200 small schools, about half of which were the focus of this study. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Times confuses authentic small schools with Bloomberg/Klein's chains of privately-managed charter schools which were imposed on protesting communities and implanted in neighborhood school facilities. Several recent studies has found those charters to be no better and often worse than the closed neighborhood schools they replaced.

Of course there is some overlap between charter schools and small schools, a point not taken into account in the recent study, paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (isn't everything these days?) hardly a disinterested party when it comes to proving the efficacy of its own investments. Most charters are small and they have benefited from the positives that small size brings, including stronger relationships be tween teachers and students and opt-in by parents and students. But those benefits, when gained Bloomberg-style, often come at the expense of the majority of neighborhood schools, students, parents and teachers. They have become part of the mayor's reconfigured two-tier school system.

The city's authentic small schools, teacher-led charters, and Smaller Learning Communities (SLC) where teachers have lots of autonomy and collective-bargaining rights, largely preceded Bloomberg's administration and have managed to survive the privatization assaults and still shine as models of socially-just, community-based alternatives. Many were created through a genuine reform process taken on by teachers themselves. These schools were largely abandoned by Gates and other mega-foundations on the grounds that their test scores weren't high enough, fast enough.

What's interesting about the MDRC study is that it doesn't focus on standardized test scores, but rather on graduation rates and course-passing rates. Bloomberg would never allow this kind of evaluation for neighborhood schools.

Small schools' success has come despite Bloomberg/Klein's policies, not because of them.

The Times got it wrong again.