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.

Chicago mayor stars in right-wing, anti-public school video

Thanks to brother Fred I came upon this right-wing propaganda video targeting public school and teachers unions staring none other than Rahm Emanuel.

"A Tale of Two Missions," co-stars the head of the anti-union Michigan-based Education Action Group, Kyle Olson, and Juan Williams, who was fired from National Public Radio for making anti-Muslim comments on air.

The video is part of  National School Choice Week, the continuation of a campaign promoting vouchers and privately-run charter schools and attacking public education and collective-bargaining rights for teachers. The campaign began with the film, Waiting for Superman in 2010 and is backed by EAG and the far-right Heritage Foundation whose own video "What is School Choice," is featured on the NSCW website.

Backers of NSCW include usual suspects, Michelle Rhee, John McCain, John Boehner, Joe Lieberman, Jeb Bush, and FOX News regular, Dick Morris. Others offering NSCW testimonials include Liz Dreckman of the Arizona School Choice Trust, Andrew Broy of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, and Patrick Kaiser of the The Center for an Educated Georgia.

Surprised to see Chicago's Democratic mayor in the center of this right-wing campaign? I'm not.

Behind the new push against teachers' unions

FOX in full bashing mode

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

"Superman" scene was a set-up

“It’s two different worlds,” the mother, Maria, tells the filmmaker in an interview interspersed with scenes of the tour, comparing it with her son’s Bronx public school. “I don’t care if we have to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning in order to get there at 7:45,
then that’s what we will do.”

The only problem is, this heart-wrenching scene of hope and anticipation from Davis Guggenheim's film, Waiting for Superman, never really happened. Guggenheim set it up.

NYT City Room critic Sharon Otterman, "In 'Waiting for Superman,' a Scene Isn’t What It Seems", asks other documentary filmmakers what they think the scene.

Gordon Quinn, producer of Hoop Dreams:  

“It’s like you think you are looking at someone responding to the future, and in fact, the emotion has to do with their disappointment, and that’s a very different thing.”

I asked Emmy Award-winning film maker (Navajo Boy) and Columbia College prof Jeff Spitz what he thought about the ethical side of documentary film making. He told me that it's quite common for film makers to insert re-enactments into their films. But, said Spitz, "viewers have every right to question the ethics and intent of how it's done."

If Guggenheim intentionally set out to manipulate the viewer, it raises important ethical questions and could cast doubt on the authenticity of the rest of the film as well.

Ditherers?

Googie compares critics of his Superman film to Nazi appeasers. He claims they all are "ditherers." I mean who talks like this? Only a self-righteous, arrogant late-comer to the school-reform business, a bully who uses the power and money of real far right-wing zealots like Philip Anschutz, to spread the big-lie that teachers and their unions are THE problem with public schools.

I say this guy is dogfinkil.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Goodbye to all that

I'm not including any notable quotables this week that make any reference to Superman. Fact is, I'm just sick of this daddy of all ed clichés. So if you're waiting for Superman or not waiting for Superman, or think that Michelle Rhee or Geoffrey Canada is Superman, or even Clark Kent, get the hell off my blog and start digging a little deeper for good metaphors. I mean for goodness sakes the guy wears his underwear on the outside of his leotard. Here are some possible explanations why.

58,000 teachers lost jobs despite Edujobs bill

"What the payroll numbers show is unambiguous: teachers were cut. A lot of them," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the progressive Economic Policy Institute. "States should have gotten more fiscal relief to keep this from happening. The job loss was 58,000 jobs in state and local education in September. (Arthur Delaney, HuffPost)

Schools fixated on test scores, not learning

Evidence had been mounting for some time that the state’s tests, which have formed the basis of almost every school reform effort of the past decade, had serious flaws.

“If they are not learning social studies but their reading scores are going up, they are not getting an education,” Ms. Ravitch said in 2005, as the mayor coasted to re-election.(Jennifer Medina, NYT)

A slap in the face

In a letter Thursday, Chicago schools C.E.O. Huberman agreed to the delay razing the field house at Whittier School to "give sufficient time to meet with representatives of the Whittier community and plan the future of the building.'' Parents have been occupying the field house for 25 days, demanding a library for their school.

"It's a slap in the face,'' Whittier parent Araceli Gonzalez said of Huberman's letter. "We want a letter, simple as that, to not demolish [the field house] and it will be a library.'' (Sun-Times)

Kryptonite

Rick Ayers has it. He takes on Guggeheim's film, point by point at the Answer Sheet.

The amped-up rhetoric of crisis and failure everywhere is being used to promote business-model reforms that are destabilizing even in successful schools and districts. A panel at NBC’s Education Nation Summit, taking place in New York today and tomorrow, was originally titled "Does Education Need a Katrina?" Such disgraceful rhetoric undermines reasonable debate.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

'Superman' overselling charters

“It oversells charter schools,” says Jeffrey Henig, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York. The film notes that only 1 in 5 charter schools are highly successful. But “it implies there’s some philosophy that unifies charters and we just need to replicate that,” Professor Henig says. (CS Monitor)

No big dudes at Jalen Rose charter school

"This is an open school. The kids are going to be picked by a lottery. It's not going to be Jalen Rose trying to go through the neighborhood trying to scout every 6-foot 9-inch kid to come play for the basketball team. (Detroit News) 

On the privatization of libraries

There’s this American flag, apple pie thing about libraries,” said Frank A. Pezzanite, the outsourcing company’s chief executive. He has pledged to save $1 million a year in Santa Clarita, mainly by cutting overhead and replacing unionized employees. “Somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization.” (NYT)

Moms stand up to CPS

CPS spokeswoman Monique Bond said the district still plans to demolish the building and expand the play lot. She added that Whittier is one of more than 160 district schools without a library.

Not the first time

It's not the first time Chicago moms have decided they won't take no for an answer. In 2001, a group of Little Village parents went 20 days without food to pressure the school district into building a new high school. A few months later, CPS announced it had the funds to build the school. Whittier moms say they look at the past for inspiration, and they won't give up until they win their fight.

"We can't claim victory, but the fact that we are here and we are united is a victory," Gomez said. (Chicago Tribune)

Fenty/Rhee backwash

Anschutz

NYT columnist Bob Herbert rips into Fenty and Rhee for their "ham-handed approach to governing and disregard of the sensibilities of their constituents."

Mr. Fenty was cheered by whites for bringing in the cold-blooded Michelle Rhee as schools chancellor. She attacked D.C.’s admittedly failing school system with an unseemly ferocity and seemed to take great delight in doing it. Hundreds of teachers were fired and concerns raised by parents about Ms. Rhee’s take-no-prisoners approach were ignored. It was disrespectful. 

Duncan's revenge
Headline in the Washington Examiner: "D.C. risks losing Fed school funds -- Will forfeit $75m if reforms are halted." Translation, Arne Duncan, who campaigned actively for Fenty, is threatening revenge against newly-elected Mayor Vincent Gray and the District's mainly black voters who elected him, should Gray resist any of his predecessor's divisive school policies. This guy is out of control.

Also, take note of the role played by consultant Andrew Rotherham in all this. In the Examiner article, he's the barking dog for Duncan.

Anschutz bankrolled "Superman"

Finally there's Phillip Anschutz, the owner of the Examiner, which is nothing but a filthy little right-wing tabloid, disguised as a newspaper.  But Anshutz also bankrolled the hot anti-union propaganda film, Waiting for Superman. Just in case you thought this film was made only by a group of well-intentioned, but misguided liberals.

Anschutz is a far right-wing, evangelical billionaire who inherited his fortune from his father's oil business and who has become a media mogul, publisher of the Weekly Standard, the S.F. Examiner,  and owner of  L.A.'s Staples Center. He was also the force behind California's anti-gay initiative

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Gray vs. Rhee

"Frankly, we live in a city that has been oppressed," Gray said after a 2007 list of prospective school closings appeared in The Washington Post before the council learned about it. "In this city, more than any other, how you do something is a major factor. It is a city that has been dictated to. People are very sensitive to being left out." ("D.C. school chief Rhee's next move probably toward the door"--WaPo)

Bobb vs. Rhee

He sees at least one difference between himself and the outspoken Rhee, who alienated black parents -- and ultimately black voters -- in a racially divided election in which whites tended to support Fenty and blacks mostly backed Gray.

"I can go into an African-American community and say I grew up on a sugar cane plantation where education was the only way out. . . . I think how you relate sometimes gives you a slight edge, particularly in an urban environment," (Times-Dispatch)

Learning from Rhee's Mistakes

But Fenty's defeat isn't about race or personality. It's about bad decisions, particularly on school reform. His school reform strategies, as shoved through by Rhee, alienated the voters.(Mark Simon, WaPo)

An inconvenient Superman

Waiting for Superman promotes the idea that we are in a dire war for US dominance in the world. The poster advertising the film shows a nightmarish battlefield in stark grey, then a little white girl sitting at a desk is dropped in the midst of it. The text: "The fate of our country won't be decided on a battlefield. It will be determined in a classroom." (Rick Ayers --Huffington)

Alfie Kohn vs. blaming kids

Blaming students is the next logical step after blaming teachers. In fact, the two reflect the same general perspective on education, one in which commentators look down from their aeries and inform us that the trouble lies with the people in the classrooms rather than with the policies imposed on them. ("Schools would be great if it weren't for the kids"--WaPo)