Biden's Cold War mentality detracts from his progressive initiatives

We’re in a competition with China and other countries to win the 21st Century. -- Pres. Biden's address to Congress last night 

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. -- Pres. Eisenhower, 1953

That last quote is from Eisenhower's Chance For Peace speech in 1953.  It took the former 4-Star General to warn us against the country's exploding post-war military budget. But as the Cold War deepened during his administration, political pressures for increased military spending mounted. By the time he left office in 1961, he felt it necessary to warn of the military-industrial complex in his farewell address.

I was reminded of Ike's warning last night, listening to Pres. Biden couch all of his ambitious (but not adequate) $6-trillion post-pandemic infrastructure rebuilding and jobs programs in jingoist, America First,  anti-China, Cold War rhetoric. 

Biden called on Congress to invest in infrastructure, education, child care, civil rights, and science calling them programs that will allow the U.S. to win a competition with China. Like Trump, Biden is committed to a distinctly anti-China global strategy rooted in fears of American decline.

Yes, those investments are exactly what we need. But not for the sake of winning some mythical and dangerous global race to the top. Remember, that was Arne Duncan's rationale for pushing testing madness and school privatization when he was Obama's ed secretary. My 4-year-old granddaughter doesn't need to be prepared in pre-school to compete with 4-year-olds in China or Switzerland for global hegemony, thank you. 

It's this kind of thinking that has led to the global vaccine wars when international cooperation in the fight against the pandemic could have saved millions of lives and prevented the current catastrophe in India. 

It has also led Biden to push for a bloated Pentagon budget that's even larger than Trump's. The rationale behind the push has to do with illusory U.S. imperial ambitions to impose its will on other countries and engage in regime change when it can. These ambitions leave me even more skeptical about his planned withdrawal of the remaining troops in Afghanistan. Are they really being brought home or simply being redeployed for continuing conflict in the region? Does a redeployment mean a new buildup of American military power to confront China and Iran?

Yes, according to a report in today's NYT:

The Pentagon is looking to place troops near Afghanistan to track and attack militant groups if they threaten the United States. Possibilities in the region include Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, but those countries are under the sway of Russia to one degree or another, Attack planes aboard aircraft carriers and long-range bombers flying from land bases along the Persian Gulf and even in the United States could strike insurgent fighters spotted by armed surveillance drones. 

Or is the China yellow-peril ("they're closing in on us") fearmongering simply being used as a way to appeal to resistant Trump Party members in a vain attempt to build "bipartisan" support for his new initiatives? If it is, it's a pipe dream. 

Biden recounted:

I also told President Xi that we will maintain a strong military presence in the Indo—Pacific just as we do with NATO in Europe – not to start conflict – but to prevent conflict." 

He failed to explain how putting U.S. warships in the South China Sea would prevent conflict rather than inevitably provoke a new one.  

China and other countries are closing in fast," warned Biden. "We have to develop and dominate the products and technologies of the future: advanced batteries, biotechnology, computer chips, and clean energy."

 Other countries "closing in" on us? What a myopic, paranoid, us-against-them view of the world.

Winning the 21st Century? What the hell does that even mean? Is the 21st Century a game? How do you know if you've won or lost? Who won the 20th?

Biden's guns-and-butter strategy is bound to bump heads with his progressive initiatives. That's too bad. They're worthwhile initiatives. 

U of C Study, out today, shows Rahm's 2013 school closings failed CPS students

Thousands of Chicago parents and community members protested the 2013 school closings. 

CPS’ current Schools Chief Janice Jackson called what happened “unacceptable.” But said the outcome will not deter her from closing schools in the future. -- WBEZ

Rahm Emanuel's mass school closings in have proven to be a disaster for the city and have offered none of the promised academic gains for the affected 12,000 predominantly-black students.

Aside from further blighting Chicago's south and west-side neighborhoods and likely contributing to the massive black exodus from the city, the closing of 50 CPS schools in 2013 led to a significant drop in student test scores. This according to a report being released today by researchers at the University of Chicago’s Consortium on Chicago School Research.

The report comes weeks before the city’s five-year moratorium on school closings expires. It's a moratorium that Rahm has already violated time and time again, most recently with the closing of high schools in Englewood as well as the National Teachers Academy.

According to the Consortium Report:

Despite the promised improvement in academic opportunities for students from the schools that were closed, the University of Chicago researchers found that their test scores fell in the wake of the closings and subsequent school mergers. And the drop in math scores lasted for four years. 

The researchers also said their interviews with CPS staff members revealed a “chaotic” plan for moving the students to other schools and too little support for blending the new and old communities of students and families, creating “challenging us-vs.-them dynamics.

The study concludes:

“Closing schools — even poorly performing ones — does not improve the outcome of displaced children, on average. Closing under-enrolled schools may seem like a viable solution to policymakers who seek to address fiscal deficits and declining enrollment, but our findings shows that closing schools caused large disruptions without clear benefits for students.”

CTU's Jesse Sharkey, said the report “validates” that the closures "were marred by chaos, a desperate lack of resources, lost libraries and labs, grief, trauma, damaging disruption, and a profound disrespect for the needs of low-income black students and the educators who teach them.”

Important to note... It wasn't just Chicago. Mass school closings were a requirement of then Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's Race to The Top policy. Unless school districts closed schools, they were threatened with loss of millions of dollars from the D.O.E. An epidemic of closings and teacher firings, mainly in urban districts, followed in the wake of RTTT.

New legislators' report on reform is a step up from current policies

“High-performing countries have consciously decided to prioritize education over testing.” — State Senator Joyce Elliott, D-Ark.

Will a Clinton administration bring a shift in federal education policy? Will we see a break from corporate-style reform practices--racing to the top, no child left behind, testing madness, school closings and the unfettered move to privately-run charter schools that marked the Obama/Duncan era? We can only guess right now.

Recent Clinton speeches to the teacher union conventions sounded good. But we've all been there before. The new party platform plank on education reflects some positive changes pushed mainly by Sanders members of the platform committee. But platforms are soon forgotten once November is in the rear view.

The latest indicator that change may be in the wind comes from a new report from a bipartisan group of state legislators who studied and were impressed by the most successful approaches in Finland and other developed countries. "No Time to Lose: How to Build a World-Class Education System State by State’. 

The 28 legislators and staff members focused on the highest performing countries on PISA to discover commonalities across their policies and practices. They met with education leaders from these countries, along with national and international experts who study their systems. They also visited several countries to see the differences firsthand.

I read the report with a skeptical eye, especially after I saw AFT President and Clinton cheerleader-in-chief Randi Weingarten giving it a giddy endorsement, calling the report "a model" and claiming that "the committee sets aside political ideologies to work together for what’s best for students and educators."

Doubtful.

AFT is listed as a partner on the project though it appears, after scanning the list of partners and consultants, that no k-12 educators were involved in creating he report. So no, Randi -- not a "model".

Actually, the report does represent a step up from where we've been for the past three decades since A Nation at Risk" set us on our current destructive course. In some ways, both documents are similar with each taking globalism and the race for American supremacy as its starting point. The new report is filled with much of the same empty reformy rhetoric about our failing schools and the need for "world standards" and "alignment."

“In several of the countries studied, teaching is regarded as an honorable and respected profession, comparable to medicine and law, and not a burden on the local property tax.” — State Representative Mary Stuart Gile, -- D-N.H.

On the positive side, the report contains no mention of standardized testing, school choice, charter schools or privatization in its list of recommendations. Instead it calls for "a strong early education system, a re-imagined and professionalized teacher workforce [I sensed Linda Darling-Hammond's presence here], robust career and technical education programs, and a comprehensive, aligned system of education."

Most importantly, there was a strong statement on the effects of poverty as a key determinant in student academic success.

In the United States, children in poverty now account for about a quarter of all children in public schools. Large numbers of American children enter first grade with disadvantages that may overwhelm the school’s capacity to provide an adequate education. Because high-performing countries provide supports to ensure that children are ready for school, their schools typically do not face similar challenges.

Once students in top-performing countries are in school, those who struggle receive extra help to reach the same high standards other students will reach more easily. Providing additional resources to schools serving disadvantaged, struggling students is a priority.

More teachers are typically allocated to such schools, with the best teachers serving in the most challenged ones. Resources are also reallocated within schools to reach those most in need of extra support. These countries demonstrate that, with added support, struggling students can meet high expectations. Inversely, American students from the wealthiest communities are most likely to get the best teachers and the finest facilities because of the way we structure our finance systems.

A far cry from the reformers' current "no excuses" rhetoric.

The report takes notice of Finland's focus on equity:

Finland prides itself on providing equity of opportunity to learn and inclusion. Resources are directed to the most high-need students and schools. Students with special needs are often mainstreamed in regular classrooms but receive significant additional support. Ninety-eight percent of the cost of education is covered by government.

However, no mention of the effects of race, racism or segregation. The word, unions, appears only once in the report. This, despite the fact that most of the countries investigated have a strong unionized teacher force. But the one reference is positive, a recommendation that unions have a seat at the reform table. No wonder Randi is so enthusiastic.

How much influence "No Time To Lose" will have is anyone's guess. With the passage of ESSA and the weakened federal role in influencing state ed policy -- in part, a backlash against Duncan's overreach, Common Core and Race To The Top -- it's doubtful that this report will have much weight in red states.

Unless of course, the Republican crisis that is Trumpism, turns many of them blue or at least purple.

Today's knee-slappers

Funniest Quotables:

Fariley

"I plan to operate independently. That’s how I operated as a federal prosecutor. I would go off and do the investigations and report on them and take my actions. Nor do I feel any pressure from the mayor to conduct my work in any way.”-- IPRA chief, Sharon Fairley  

“Urban Prep has always respected teachers’ right to organize, and as such, would never dismiss any teacher because of his or her organizing activity.” -- Chief operations officer Evan Lewis 

Patton 

“He's [Dan Webb] not going to sully his reputation by not doing a good and thorough job, and I don't want him to." -- Rahm's top City Hall lawyer, Steve Patton 

 The bipartisan reform of No Child Left Behind was an important start, and together, we’ve increased early childhood education, lifted high school graduation rates to new highs, and boosted graduates in fields like engineering. -- Pres. Obama's SOTU speech 

Dying laughing. Oregon "militia" said people keep sending "bags of dicks" to their camp. Dildos from Amazon. 😂😂😂 https://t.co/cZAVJjmYQM

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) January 13, 2016

IPRA chief vows to cut umbilical cord to City Hall to help restore public trust broken by Laquan McDonald case https://t.co/1bNWHSOlTe

— Fran Spielman (@fspielman) January 12, 2016

Chicago Area Researchers Slam Rahm's Failed Ed Policies

For Immediate Release

From Chicagoland Researchers and Advocates for Transformative Education (CReATE)

February 20, 2015

Contacts:
Isabel Nunez, CReATE Coordinator, (312) 421-7819
Mike Klonsky, (312) 420-1335
Brian Schultz, (773) 442-5327
David Stovall, (312) 413-5014

LOCAL EDUCATION RESEARCHERS SLAM MAYOR EMANUEL’S FAILED POLICIES

On the eve of the Chicago mayoral election, Chicagoland Researchers and Advocates for Transformative Education (CReATE), a network of 150 education researchers from universities in the Chicago area, is releasing Chicago School Reform: Myths, Realities, and New Visions (2015).

In response to Mayor Emanuel's claims of major success for his education policy initiatives, CReATE calls into question major parts of Chicago school reform under Mayor Emanuel's leadership. CReATE reviews how reforms of the past four years and earlier have impacted Chicago children, families and school communities.

In response to recent policy initiatives, CReATE proposes a series of research supported alternatives to mayoral appointed school boards, school closings, the ever-expanding chartering and privatizing of public schools, as well as the curriculum and teacher evaluation designs and increased high stakes testing being imposed by Common Core State Standards and the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top policies.

The position statement also includes contact information for university-based education researchers who can provide more detailed commentary on specific areas of education policy.

CReATE’s Statement on Chicago School Reform: Myths, Realities, and New Visions is available online at http://www.createchicago.org/

Duncan's Race To Top & Dante's Circles of Hell

 

In yesterday's post about Barbara Byrd-Bennett's Level 1-5, school rate-and-punish system, I compared it metaphorically to Dante's 9 Circles of Hell. Then I kept staring at the circles in the Divine Comedy painting, trying to remember where I had seen that image before. Aha! Race To The Top.

A SmallTalk Salute goes out to AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten who was arrested in N.Y. yesterday for blocking traffic to protest a grand jury’s decision not to indict the New York police officer who choked Staten Island resident Eric Garner to death.

Last night in Chicago: CHICAGO (WLS) -- Hundreds of protestors marched in downtown Chicago for several hours on Thursday - and even briefly shut down Lake Shore Drive - in the wake of a grand jury decision to not indict a New York police officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner.

Selma, AL 1965

From CNN --  If the color were removed from the boundless images of protests on America's streets over the last two days, they might be mistaken for black-and-white photos of the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s. 

Civil Rights, not corporate-style reform, remains "the civil rights issue of our time".

A good question: Why did Mike Madigan block the state minimum wage bill? Isn't he a "Democrat"? Who benefited from his move?

Can't keep Karen down...Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis says she’s eager to campaign for mayoral challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia — but isn’t quite ready. In a rare appearance since her October diagnosis, Lewis had stepped out Wednesday night to introduce Garcia at the union’s House of Delegates meeting. She said by telephone Thursday that she’s not yet campaigning for the Cook County commissioner set to take on Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

"I will be, but not right now," Lewis said. "It won't be behind the scenes. I’ll be out front."

Public support for Obama's school policies is plunging

That's the good news.

If you combine Bush and Obama, which is easy to do when it comes to education policy, we're coming up on 15 years of No Child Left Behind/Race To The Top (with waivers).

That will make 15 straight years of corporate-style, top-down, metrics-driven, test-based reform. That includes more than 6 years of Arne Duncan's unfettered, single-handed use of federal dollars to impose a system which promotes  mayoral control of   the schools, coupled with the closing thousands of public schools and replacing them with privately-run charters. This strategy, based on the notion of a speedy "radical disruption," has steamrolled along like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with no need for a bipartisan consensus and with token opposition from Republicans.

It's likely that, in upcoming mid-term elections, it will be the Republicans who benefit from the growing public disenchantment with current education policies. (This despite the fact that mainline Republicans like Bush and Christie have been strong supporters of Duncan-ism.)

The Hill reports that Obama/Duncan school reform is faring poorly in the arena of public opinion -- meaning among the folks who use and pay for the nation's public schools and the folks who vote. Public support for President Obama’s education policies is plunging, according to the latest Gallup/PDK survey.

Only 27 percent of people give Obama an “A” or “B” for his support of public schools, down 9 percent from last year, in a new poll from PDK/Gallup that was released Wednesday. An equal amount of people — 27 percent — said Obama deserves a failing grade on education.

The survey shows a growing disenchantment with top-down reform including imposed Common Core standards. Opposition to Common Core seems evenly distributed between right and left.

Fifty-six percent of respondents said they believe their local school board should have the greatest influence in deciding the curriculum. Only 28 percent of Democrats said the federal government should have the greatest control, while 45 percent of Democrats said the local school board should be in charge.

The Gallup poll found that 81% of the public had heard of Common Core, with 60% opposing it. The most common reason cited for opposition was the belief that the standards limit the flexibility of teachers.

This administration, despite its call for "better" tests, will go down as the greatest over-testers of children in history. The attachment of Common Core to a never-ending battery of standardized tests doesn't sit well with teachers or parents, and has cost Obama a splintering of his previously formidable base among teacher unions--the largest unions in the land.

An area where a majority of Democrats and Republicans agreed is a negative view of standardized testing. A majority of all respondents in the poll — 54 percent — said they don’t think standardized testing helps schools or teachers. And parents of public school students viewed testing even more negatively, with 68 percent saying it isn’t helpful.

Among the likely political victims of Duncanism are a group of big-city mayors who capitalized on the mayoral-control fad to push local versions of corporate-style reform. In addition to control of school policy, these mayors captured control over school contracts, prime real estate, and thousands of patronage jobs.

Case in point:  Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is now heading into an election campaign with sinking ratings, mainly resulting from his faithful implementation of Obama/Duncan school policies--despite massive public opposition.

Remember, it was Duncan back in 2009, who promised that he would make mayoral control his number-one priority.

"At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed." 

Prophetic. 

Duncan's disaster, Mississippi churns

The Race To The Top is stalling out over testing and evaluation. Common Core roll-out has been an abysmal failure. High stakes testing data is invalid, unreliable and running too late to be used in mandated evaluations. Several states, including RTTT winners, are threatening to pull back or put test-base evaluations on hold. Sec. Duncan either has to respond by pulling the plug on federal funding as he's threatened or get off the pot.

Time to go, Arne. Surely you can move over to Gates, Walton, or Broad foundations or spend more time with the family.

Lyndsey Layton's recent front-page article in the Washington Post tells us “How Bill Gates Pulled Off the Common Core Revolution” implying that Gates can and did  buy the policy result he wanted—with democracy potentially at risk. But now, even Gates who has more that $200 million invested in CCSS is urging a moratorium on using student test scores to evaluate teachers, students and schools.

Not surprisingly, Gates finds a cloying defender at Forbes. Howard Husock gives us a bit of untended irony when he writes:

"The idea that money alone can buy impact is no more true  in public policy than  it is in elections." 

Hello Howard. Anybody home?

MISSISSIPPI CHURNING...The race to the bottom continues in Mississippi today where T-baggers backing Chris McDaniel have their best chance to knock off a sitting senator, Thad Cochran in the state's GOP primary runoff. Some Dems are actually hoping racist McDaniel wins, possibly opening a chance for them to win a rare seat in a Dixie election. Others are calling on black voters to cross over a pull a Republican ballot to vote for Cochran. He has been openly courting black and union (the few that exist) voters.  It's an amazing turn of events when the black vote is actually encouraged in Mississippi.

Outside groups have poured more than $8 million into the race -- an amazing sum for a small state election-- and a collection of conservative groups will be sending in poll-watchers. FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots, and the Senate Conservatives Fund will team up for the unprecedented, single-minded effort to beat the not-right-wing-enough Cochran.

McDaniel is married to a former teacher and has her make his pro-teacher, anti-Common Core and federal funding for education pitch here. 

The progressive Mississippi Parents Campaign is strictly non-partisan but is obviously worried about the loss of federal funding for education of McDaniel becomes the state's senator. 

The right-wing National Review reports: 

The executive director of the Mississippi Parents Campaign, a group that opposes vouchers and charter schools, sent an e-mail to members not-so-subtly urging them to vote for Cochran. Without mentioning either candidate by name, she said, “A number of our members have asked recently what impact the current Senate and Congressional elections could have on public schools. The truth is, a BIG one! Mississippi children benefit heavily from the federal investment in our public schools, and the folks we send to Washington determine, in large part, the resources that are available to educate our kids.” McDaniel has said that he thinks the Department of Education is unconstitutional.

Cochran's support for Common Core could be his undoing in a tight race, despite the fact that  has brought millions of federal education dollars into the state. But he also has a pro-voucher, pro-charter voting record.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Maya Angelou on Race To The Top


James Forman Jr.  

Angelou kept coming back after that first fundraiser. For 17 years, even when her health was failing and she needed an oxygen tank nearby, she would get on the bus and log the miles from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to D.C. There were no inaugural throngs at our events. No television cameras, no glamour. Just a few kids whom most of the world had abandoned. Teachers like to say, “Character is who you are when nobody is looking.” Maya Angelou was there when nobody was looking. -- AlJazeera: What Maya Angelou taught our students

 Bill Moyers

The NRA, has the nerve to call itself “America’s longest-standing civil rights organization.” -- Shots Fired. Madness in Progress.

Sean Johnson

“They don’t answer to anyone,” said Sean Johnson, the dean of students at Banneker, whose father attended the school while growing up in the Black Pearl neighborhood. “The charters have money and want to make more money. They have their own boards, make their own rules, accept who they want and put out who they want to put out.” -- Washington Post

NYC Educator

What's worse is labor itself, as represented by UFT leadership, doesn't appear to support labor either. -- Working Families Party--Maintaining the Status Cuomo

A look at who's being left behind in the 'Race for Results'

An important new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation highlights the widening gap in opportunity between white and children of color. The report, called "Race for Results," created a new index that uses 12 educational, health, and economic factors to rank how children from major racial and ethnic groups fare in every state.

The report points out that last year, for the first time, more children of color were born in the United States than white children. According to Census Bureau projections, by 2018, children of color will represent a majority of children.

"It is clear that children of color—especially African-Americans, American Indians, and Latinos—are in serious trouble in numerous issue areas and in nearly every region of the country," the report says. "Our nation cannot afford to leave this talent behind in hopes that these problems will remedy themselves."

The report points to unequal access to community resources, good schools, and safe neighborhoods as contributing factors to persistent achievement gaps and health disparities. Many of those problems are rooted in intentional policies from the past, such as Jim Crow laws, that take focused and intentional efforts to undo, the report says. 

American Indian children in South Dakota had the lowest index score of any group in any state—185 out of a possible score of 1,000, the report says.

Race for Results is heavy on good demographic data but light on these very same "focused and intentional efforts" or recommendations for action, including any explicit policy recommendations. There's not even a mention of the impact of No Child Left Behind or Race To The Top on the position of minority students. Not a word about so-called "choice" strategies such as vouchers or the rapid expansion of privately-run charter schools as possible drivers of racial re-segregation.

You can read the full report here.

The Whitenizing of Detroit

I'm heading to Detroit next week for the annual meeting of the North Dakota Study Group. I used to attend every year for at least part of the meeting. But since it was moved from near Chicago to Motown, I haven't been able to make the trip. But withdrawal has been tough. I miss hanging out with some of the best progressive educators and public intellectuals in the country who are doing some of the best democratic education and social-justice work -- people like 98-year old movement hero, Grace Lee Boggs, who will once again welcome NDSG to Detroit. So it's back on the road. Hope to see some of you there.

******

As everyone knows, Detroit has become the poster child for post-industrial urban devastation, corporate dis-investment (forced bankruptcy) and white abandonment. In Detroit and other hard-hit cities in Michigan, voters no longer have the power to elect their own local government and school systems have been privatized and handed over to corporate operators. I can still remember the chilling headline in the Detroit Free Press a couple of years back, which asked: "Is Detroit Public Schools worth saving?"

Detroit’s population loss may even leave Michigan without a black representative in Congress for the first time since 1955, a shift that would punctuate the erosion of African-American power in a region.

Michigan's Tea Part Gov. Rick Snyder

Now Michigan's Tea Party Gov. Rick Snyder is putting the finishing touches on his plan to whitenize (ethnic cleanse?) Motown by the further push-out of thousands of African-Americans and their systematic replacement, through a special visa program, with 50,000 white and Asian imported immigrants.

A New York Times editorial criticizes the localness of Snyder's plan but is generally okay with it. In one chilling scenario, the Times editors write:

One way to avoid the unwieldiness of a one-city visa program is to go big. Angelo Paparelli, a prominent immigration lawyer who grew up in Detroit, has suggested doing for immigrants what the “Race to the Top” competition has done for schools.

Race To The Top indeed. 

Mississippi, with strong Common Core and no unions, is losing Race To The Top

As long as we're racing to the top, let's take a look at how the race is going. The theory coming out of the D.O.E., the Gates Foundation and the think tanks is that implementing Common Core Standards is key to winning the race and that the main problem is "status-quo" teacher unions protecting bad teachers.

But according to the latest edition Education Week's Quality Counts report, Mississippi, with no teacher unions and strong implementation of Common Core, ranks 51st among the states and Washington, D.C., in K-12 student achievement. Only Mississippi and post-Michelle Rhee D.C. were graded "F'' in student achievement. Mississippi also ranked among the lowest 10 states in providing young people a chance for success in life, financing schools and improving teaching. Mississippi's best ranking, as has been the case for several years, was in the area of standards, where the state got an "A'' and ranked 10th.

How can that be? The answer should be obvious. As you could probably guess, Mississippi once again lags behind all other 49 states when it comes to child welfare. They're on the bottom of the scale for the 12th straight year. In fact, Mississippi’s child poverty rate is twice as high as Lithuania’s. One key indicator of the lack of school success is the State's bottom ranking when it comes to children being born with low birth weight. 

It's important to understand that Mississippi like all other states, shouldn't be looked at as a single entity when it comes to poverty and education. In Mississippi communities whose school districts have an “A” grade from the Mississippi Department of Education, the average median household income is more than $46,000 a year. In those whose district has an “F” grade, the average income is below $25,000, according to a Daily Journal analysis based on 2013 rankings.

The rest of the country has nothing to brag about when it comes to child poverty. The United States’s child poverty rate ranks second-worst among the world’s developed countries, ahead of only Romania.

Massachusetts, with  the 4th highest median family income in the country, captures the top ranking in the Chance-for-Success Index for the sixth year in a row, earning an A-minus. But even Massachusetts is really "a tale of 3 cities" when it comes to child poverty and school performance.

Side Note: Mississippi is also a state that spends a large chunk of its education and teacher training budget on imported TFA teachers. 

Racing to the top?

Arne Duncan, as usual, is sticking to his misfiring guns. But criticism is mounting over his $5 billion in Race To The Top grants showing no real measurable improvement in schools. 

No surprise there, since the whole strategy was flawed from the get-go. The money was used to drive massive school closures in minority communities, the unfettered expansion of privately managed charter schools, standardized testing mania, and the firing of hundreds of thousands of public school teachers. What could go wrong?

Silly us

Trinity Washington University president Patricia McGuire asks, "Can anyone differ with Duncan ‘without being dismissed as silly’?"  -- Washington Post

I have this dream that those of us who have worked in the trenches of institutional reform might actually be asked how we make reform work, how we achieved results that stick. I keep hoping that our leaders will not drive out the good in their quest to create some kind of perfect world according to their own vision — a vision often informed only by other elites like themselves, or major philanthropists, unenlightened by the real lived experience of us lesser lights who are mere practitioners of the educational arts. Silly me.

The color of 'disruption'

Racist underpinnings of Rahm's school closing policies become more obvious every time CPS brass tries to explain them. The latest inanities come from the lips of CAO Tim Cawley (who I predicted will soon be moving on). When considering moving students from overcrowded Lincoln School in upscale Lincoln Park over to "underutilized" Manierre, Cawley suddenly realized that it's "highly disruptive to relocate people from their existing school to another school.” This from Byrd-Bennett's main cheerleader for the disruption of the lives of some 30,000 children from the school closings in the city's black community.

How creepy is this guy?
In September, Rep. Trey Radel voted for Republican legislation that would allow states to make food stamp recipients pee in cups to prove they're not on drugs. In October, police busted the Florida Republican on a charge of cocaine possession.


Mayor 1%
Don's miss Jaisal Noor's interview with Kari Lydersen. She's the Chicago journalist who wrote Mayor 1%: Rahm Emanuel and the Rise of Chicago's 99%. Some interesting stuff on Rahm's underestimation of the CORE caucus within the CTU leading up the the teachers strike.

Racing to the Top?

Socrates: "We're all mortal", even Diane. 

AMAZING DIANE RAVITCH, still blogging from her hospital bed. But she has to cancel her Chicago talk. First Free Church would have been packed to the rafters.

This week I realized that Socrates was right: All men are mortal. So are all women. I am going to take some time off and rest: Doctor’s order. And I will take better care of my health. I’m regretful about the reminder of my age and mortality, but I will be back. And we won’t give up.

Here's wishing her a speedy and complete recovery. I'm sending her some chicken soup.

CAN IT BE? -- Common Core implementation is worse than ObamaCare launch, says Weingarten.

#RACINGTOTHETOP -- Hey, have you heard the exciting news? NAEP math scores have rising almost 1% since 2011. Reading scores, not at all. Arne Duncan says, he "encouraged." At what?

LET US TEACH -- CTU Pres. Karen Lewis is calling on teachers and parents to take a stand against the testing mania.

“Why must our public school children be subjected to this battery of pointless standardized testing throughout the year, every year?,” asks Lewis. 

 “Year after year, I have watched my child stress over testing,” said mom Nellie Cotton, who has a special education student at Grimes Elementary School. “Year after year, the stakes have only gotten higher and the intense pressure to attain the magic score continue to grow.”

RAHM'S LATEST FIASCO is called Ventra. It will get you "coming and going" says the Transit Union. Reminds me of the old joke about mixing Viagra and Exlax.

According to the Sun-Times' Fran Spielman, Chicago's finances are in worse shape than all but two major cities, Boston and bankrupt Detroit since coming out of the 2008 depression.

The reasons are simple. The mountain of debt got higher. Unfunded pension liabilities are $19 billion and rising. And taxes are not growing as fast as city spending, according to the Civic Federation.

Rahm's approach (like Daley's before him) has been to engage in wild borrowing for short-term political gain while mortgaging the city's future. All this has led Tribune columnist John Kass to apologize for comparing Chicago's political machine to the old mob bosses -- apologize to the gangsters, that is. The gangsters ripped of millions. Rahm, Daley and the Chicago boys -- billions.

That's billions with a B, almost $10 billion, and that doesn't count other mountains of debt that the same bosses have put on the taxpayers through other agencies under their control, including Chicago Public Schools, parks and pension obligations, adding billions more.

Duncan's diatribe

pun·dit
noun

1. an expert in a particular subject or field who is frequently called on to give opinions about it to the public. 2. a learned man : teacher

Ed Sec. Arne Duncan has lashed out at his critics, referring to them (us) as "armchair pundits." His attempt at silencing is particularly directed at those who point to poverty and the resulting inequality of opportunity as a primary source of supposed "school failure." This problem seems way beyond Harvard grad Duncan's grasp. Duncan sees the country divided between his critics, "inhabitants of this alternative universe," and the "many people in the real world, outside the beltway and blogosphere, have tuned out this debate."

While using his own Twitter account to try and vanquish his "alternative-world" critics, Duncan mis-characterizes them (us) as people "arguing in 140 characters or less about whether we need to fix poverty before we can fix education." Especially for those of us who've been involved for decades in efforts to accomplish both--attempting to transform education as well as trying to end poverty and inequality--that was a supreme insult.

WaPo's Valerie Strauss writes:

The speech revealed Duncan as being thin-skinned, but more striking was what else it showed: that the education secretary still doesn’t seem to understand what many of his critics are saying.

Anthony Cody responds on his Living in Dialogue blog:

The insulting way that Secretary Duncan chooses to characterize those who disagree with his policies really speaks for itself.  He divides the world into those who he sees "doing the work," who may have concerns - which he, of course, shares, and those who disagree. Once we actively disagree, we become part of some "blogosphere," or "bubble," which, by his definition, is engaging in idle carping that undermines those in the "real world."

Diane Ravitch, whose latest book has many more than 140 characters, has been among the sharpest critics of Duncan's Race To The Top policies. Duncan's people at the DOE have been "monitoring" her for years and using their power and embedded media to try and discredit her.

She responds to Duncan's diatribe here.

No Safe Passage... Guzzardi kicks off campaign... The face of poverty in Chicago

No Safe Passage for Javier

A 14-year-old boy was shot in the back outside a Chicago high school in the city's Ashburn neighborhood Thursday night after his mother said he denied having gang ties when confronted by a group of boys with a gun. Carmelita Rice told police her son, Javier Cameron, was passing by outside Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy around 7:45 p.m. Thursday to walk two girls home.  -- Huff Post Chicago

Guzzardi Campaign Kick-off

Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown calls it "the race to watch" in Chicago and he's right on.

Will Guzzardi is up against the bloated power of Chicago's Democratic Party Machine. He's taking on pension grabber, Toni Berrios, the daughter of corrupt Party boss Joe Berrios.  He's also got Boss Madigan reportedly pressuring local pols to stay away from his campaign. But Guzzardi has shown he is a fighter, having come within 150 votes of knocking off Berrios in the last election. This time around, he's gained some campaign experience, broadened his base and has an army of young activists working the neighborhoods. He also got strong support from City Council's Progressive Caucus members like Scott Waguespack and John Arena who spoke at his campaign kick-off last night in Logan Square.

If Guzzardi can knock off Berrios in the 39th legislative election, things will be looking even worse for Rahm & Co. in the next mayor's race.

The face of poverty in Chicago

This study really caught my eye as I have been doing a lot of work recently in a predominantly African-American and low-income Chicago southern suburb. Lots of transplanted kids and families from Chicago's demolished public housing. More families with out-of-work parents in the wake of deindustrialization and economic crisis.

The numbers are from a recent study by the Social IMPACT Research Center, a program of the Chicago-based social service and advocacy non-profit Heartland Alliance. The study found a 50/50 split between low-income people who live in the city and in the suburbs, compared to a 66/34 split in 1990.

New Report Rips Race To Top

President Barack Obama's signature education initiative, the Race to the Top competition, is "impossible" at best and damaging at worst, argues a new, Broader Bolder (EPI) report. The authors's critique is strong but they are also little too diplomatic for my tastes, trying to find the bright side of RTTT and appealing to Obama to think about his personal "legacy." Good luck on that one.

Quote of the day

It comes from O2COOL exec Keith Jaffee whose company donated some 33,000 hand-held fans for distribution to Chicago's overheated students, victims of 100 degree temps and Rahm's longer-school-day dogma. Instead of closing schools or dismissing kids early, the mayor had some 17,000 hand-held fans distributed to kids in schools with no A/C. Shortly after the fans were distributed at Smyser Elementary School, where only the upper grades have air conditioning, a 6-year-old’s hair got caught in her fan and her teacher had to cut it out,

The quote:

“It was done with no connection to the mayor,” Jaffee said. “We had merchandise that we wanted to donate. It was a hot couple of days. … (So) we were like, ‘What the heck, let's just give it to the schools.'

Jaffee is also on the board of the International Housewares Assoc. and was formerly CEO of Focus Products Group International, LLC

The Tribune reports that Emanuel's campaign fund has accepted $35,000 in recent years from people tied to O2COOL, which provided the fans. In January, Linda Usher, an O2COOL executive, donated $5,000 to Chicago for Rahm Emanuel.

The party's over...

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

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

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

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

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

******

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, fine words, Mr. President.  

*****

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

Father Phleger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LEAD

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

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

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

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

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

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

Mary Mitchell

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

Carl Hiaasen 

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

Michelle Rhee

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

Kathryn Strom

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

Jay Mathews

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

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

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

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

Joy Resmovits at Huffington reports: 

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