It is 'her business,' Gov. Christie

Watch Gov. Christie snort at public school mom who asks why he's cutting public school funding, "It's none of your business." He pretends she asked him where he sends his kid to school. She didn't. Christie is a bully and a demagogue.

'Make my school a prison' pleads Michigan superintendent

The school-to-prison pipeline

Nathan Bootz, Superintendent of Ithaca Public Schools asks Michigan's Tea Party Gov. Snyder to make his school a prison so it can be adequately funded.

The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?! -- Gratiot County Herald

Bootz' letter to the editor was also picked up by Campaign for America's Future  blogger Jeff Bryant, who posts a scathing attack on current education budget cuts and misplaced priorities that favor incarceration over education.  

Accountability mandates from the so-called reform movement have also done much to feed the School to Prison Pipeline. As this recent report from a collaborative effort involving research, education, civil rights and juvenile justice organizations concluded, academic "get tough" policies such as the current emphasis on high-stakes standardized tests that originated with No Child Left Behind "have led to more students being left even further behind." 

 "By focusing accountability almost exclusively on test scores and attaching high stakes to them," explains George Wood of the Forum for Education and Democracy, "NCLB has given schools a perverse incentive to allow or even encourage students to leave.” Adds FairTest's, Monty Neil, "NCLB has led to the dramatic narrowing and weakening of curriculum. Because so much of the school day is focused on test preparation instead of well-rounded instruction, more students become alienated, making the jobs of teachers even harder.” -- School Cuts And 'Reforms' Feed The Prison Pipeline

Obama signs bill that could save 300,000 jobs

But 40 million Americans on food stamps may pay the price

Congrats to Pres. Obama, Pelosi and the Dems for passing the Edujobs Bill despite near total opposition of the Limbaugh Party. Doesn't it feel good to stand up for a change? The vote, as expected, was basically along party lines with Boehner and his boys calling the jobs bill, nothing but a "a payoff to union bosses and liberal special interests."

As the Wonk Room explained, this bill is deficit neutral, so there is no “tax hike” necessary. But more importantly, does Boehner really consider teachers, firefighters, and police officers “special interests”? Overall, the funding will save the jobs of about 300,000 workers, including about 140,000 school employees, and according to the Department of Education, 5,000 teaching jobs in Boehner’s home state of Ohio will be preserved. (Think Progress)

But the problem is that nearly half of the "deficit neutral" $26 billion temporary patch on the bleeding public school artery came largely at the expense of poor families who still put dinner on the table only with the aid of  food stamps. Currently, some 40 million people, or 1 in 8 Americans, receive food stamps. Nearly half (49.2%) of this country's children depend on food stamps, including 26.1% under the age of 5.

"The cutbacks in food stamps in the bill are plain wrong,'' said House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, (D-WI).

Having won the edujobs battle, it's now up to the Dems to "find their spine," as my brother puts it, and come back with a bill to restore the food stamp cuts.

We also need to recognize that the bill remains a limited and temporary fix until some of the more fundamental and systemic issues are dealt with.

Despite those expenditures, the economy continues to struggle. The prospect of layoffs or tax increases by state officials who are almost uniformly required to balance their budgets remains a major worry. The package approved Tuesday represents less than a quarter of the $116 billion shortfall that states face over the next two years, according to the National Governors Association. "This isn't plugging the hole. This is helping to transition," said David Quam, NGA director of federal relations. (WaPo)

Where's the money going to come from? How about $2 billion/week going to the eternal war in Afghanistan, for starters.

Oh good, they found the $39 million in D.C.

"We had to open things up and move some things around."-- Mayor Fenty

WaPo's Bill Turque reports that D.C. district crats have "found" the $39 million they needed to pay for Rhee's bogus contract. Was it in a drawer somewhere? Stuck to somebody's shoe? No, it will come from cuts to after-school programs, and stim $$$ that should have gone to pay salaries of hundreds of laid-off teachers.

Private foundations have promised to pick up $21 million of the tab. Of course, they promise lots of things. D.C. teachers are being asked to abandon all remaining job protections in the contract in exchange for a one-time salary increase. They have to hope that the foundations keep their promise and sustain their funding (which they've made contingent on Rhee staying in D.C.). And if Rhee decides to fire a few hundred more? Well, I guess they don't get the promised raise.

Union prez George Parker calls that "good news" for teachers. Hey George, that condo in Florida is still on the market.

Stimulus 'saved' teaching jobs that never were

Well, I was looking for some way to give Arne Duncan credit for something good. You know me. I always try to be balanced in my criticism of ed bureaucrats and deal makers. So when I read the DOE stats saying that the ed stimulus had "saved 325,000 jobs in education," I believed it and posted the NYT article with only its small disclaimer, that "counting jobs that were saved can be a squishier proposition than counting jobs that were created." Of course, it should have occurred to me that the whole story was pure B.S.

This from today's Trib:

More than $4.7 million in federal stimulus aid so far has been funneled to schools in North Chicago, and state and federal officials say that money has saved the jobs of 473 teachers. Problem is, the district employs only 290 teachers.
(h/t Brother Fred)

Obama wants longer school year

His lips say 'yes,' but...

Obama's version of school reform includes more time on task--longer school days & school year. But like most of his reforms, ie. "performance pay" for outstanding teachers, this one bumps into the realities of massive teacher layoffs, state budget shortfalls, and bankrupt local school districts.

From Edweek:

Hawaii educators are bracing for the instructional damage expected from the state’s budget-driven decision to effectively cut school days from the calendar over the next two years and put thousands of teachers on unpaid furlough for those days.

Good news for "innovative" non-profits

Here's the latest from the DOE. Non-profit school reform groups will be eligible for federal grants as large as $50 million each. Arne Duncan announced the Innovation Grants yesterday at a meeting of school superintendents as part of a $650 million initiative.

The good news is that the grants will open up other possibilities for districts besides closing schools and firing entire teaching staffs. But many worry that the bulk of the funding could go to already flush business-model reformers like Teach for America and charter schools operators.

But hope springs eternal:

"I was just trying to highlight that innovation comes from different places," Duncan said. "I was trying to set a tone that we're not going to look at the usual players, the usual suspects."

We'll see.

Finn wants Duncan to "defund slacker schools"

Obama's ed team, led by Arne Duncan, is being pushed and pulled by the different factions inside the Democratic Party and out.

So far, he seems to be mainly under the sway of the conservative Democrats like the DFER hedge-fund school reformers as well as the Klein, Sharpton, Gingrich EEP group. Left mainly out of the mix so far, are the right-wing thin-tankers who ruled the roost at the Bush DOE. Chester Finn of the Fordham Institute is chief among those badly disappointed that Duncan hasn't gone far enough when it comes to busting teacher unions, closing inner-city schools or starving them into submission.

His latest diatribe,"Declaring Educational Bankruptcy" is in the latest National Review (surprise!), Finn wants Congress to remove all federal funding from "slacker schools"--read, those with lots of kids who score below the mean on their standardized tests.

But for Finn, even closing the low-scoring schools isn't nearly enough.

If a school is actually closed, even temporarily, they must be accommodated in another one, which brings to bear all manner of rules, court orders, transportation challenges, crowding issues, etc.

Maybe Finn is thinking we could de-fund the slacker courts and get rid all manner of rules while we're at it.

Weekend Reads

More bad news for Klein's Leadership Academy

...An analysis by The New York Times of the city’s signature report-card system shows that schools run by graduates of the celebrated New York City Leadership Academy — which the mayor created and helped raise more than $80 million for — have not done as well as those led by experienced principals or new principals who came through traditional routes.

But...

Mr. Turay, who is 57 and has worked in city schools for 24 years, prefers the new system, or at least the small-school environment. “I didn’t know kids, I didn’t know parents,” he said of his days at Evander Childs. “I couldn’t tell if I helped anyone, really.”

Transparency is "too seductive"

Rotherham wants the education stimulus money to be used to push more top-down "reform"on districts by threatening to withhold funding. Transparency, he claims, "offers the seductive promise of an easy way out for policymakers." (U.S. News & World Report)

Grants for new school designs

KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the American Architectural Foundation seek submissions for the Richard Riley Award, which recognizes design and educational excellence in "schools as centers of community" -- schools that provide an array of social, civic, recreational, and artistic opportunities to the broader community and to students, often clustering educational and municipal buildings together. Maximum award: $10,000. Eligibility: all existing elementary and secondary public schools. Deadline: July 1, 2009. http://www.nationalschoolsearch.org/en/Index.html

The ripple effect

On Sept. 3, 2008, I was posting from the back of a school bus headed from the south side of Chicago to the wealthy suburbs of the North Shore. I was on one of dozens of buses organized by Rev. Meeks, loaded with kids, parents and teachers who were boycotting the first day of school.

We were traveling north to try and register hundreds of inner-city kids at New Trier High School in symbolic protest of the vast funding gap between rich suburban schools and resource-starved schools in the city. If you recall, Mayor Daley and then CPS schools chief Arne Duncan, attacked us and Rev. Meeks for "keeping kids out of school".

As we arrived at New Trier, dozens of white suburban parents greeted us with WELCOME signs and a group of NT students came out and gave a solidarity speech at our rally.

This morning's Trib carries a story, "Students look to fix schools," showing the ripple effects from that important struggle eight months ago.

The student campaign, like the forum itself, is an improbable outcome of a civic action that most thought would end when nearly 1,000 Chicago students climbed back onto yellow school buses and drove home. That it didn't astounds Schechter. "We absolutely would not have done this without [the boycott]," Schechter said. "I don't think people would imagine this coming out of the North Shore."

Battle heating up over NCLB

Sam Dillon in Tuesday's NYT, "Education Standards Likely to See Toughening" gives us some clues about the coming battle over NCLB re-authorization. It's clear that the new law will look a lot different from that of the past eight years, belying Diane Ravitch's repeated, but empty claim that Obama=Bush on education.

For one thing, the education stimulus will end years of conscious under-funded, so-called "reform" policies under NCLB, and could help save thousands of teachers jobs and keep many inner-city schools open in the midst of this financial crisis, provided that the money is actually used locally to support schools by cash-strapped states. For another, Obama has been a critic of the past single-minded focus on standardized testing.

The focus on improved teacher quality sounds good, but the devil is in the details. It can't just mean so-called "data-driven merit pay." Standardized testing will still be with us. But how will it be enforced and will the punitive measures such as starving low-scoring schools, punishing schools for teaching low-income kids, transfer policies, etc... be tempered?

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said that her union also had concerns about the president’s enthusiasm for data systems, which she said could be misused, but that she would give the new administration the benefit of the doubt.“They have been consistent,” Ms. Weingarten said. “They’re trying to do reform with teachers, not to them.”

All these and more are questions that are going to heat up the emerging war within the Democratic Party as conservative, pro-voucher, privatization, and union-busting factions like DFER, make their move.

Ivy Leaguers run it

This headline in the current issue of Forbes says a lot about the current state of American democracy: "Ivy Leaders: Members of America's ruling class get their start at eight elite schools."

'More than just performance pay...'

The current issue of Edweek has another planted "research" piece, this time promoting billionaire businessman Lowell Milken's latest performance-pay model being pawned off on schools and teachers. According to Forbes, Lowell avoided fraud charges when his brother Michael Milken, the "junk-bond king," pled guilty to securities fraud in 1990.

This one is called TAP or Teacher Advancement Program, and if you read Stephen Sawchuck's, "TAP: More Than Performance Pay," you will learn that TAP is the new panacea. It's kind of the Democrats' version of Reading First.

According to Sawchuck, TAP does everything from aligning systems for managing schools’ "human capital" (that what they call teachers nowadays) to shaping "new approaches to on-the-job training, career advancement, and evaluation in ways that yield insights about how such features can be arranged so teachers embrace them."

Trying to keep from laughing out loud halfway down the article, since I've been in schools using TAP, I already knew what I would find at the bottom of the page-- a note saying that this article was sponsored by the Joyce Foundation. As you might have guessed, TAP is also one of the Joyce Foundation's funded projects.

Of course Edweek is only underming its own credibility by running sponsored program evaluation pieces underwritten by the very agency sponsoring the program.

'Reform' through pain

A Conservative flip-flop?

Right-wing think-tankers Petrilli, Finn and Hess, had hoped to starve the public schools into accepting their draconian version of death-by-reform ("bailing out school districts will delay painful but necessary choices and reforms").

So they fought Obama's stimulus package until it was clear that it would pass the House and Senate (even without the Limbaugh Party's support). Then they did a flip-flop and decided to be for the package after all. Petrilli claims to have seen the light after hearing Obama's speech in Elkhart.

Gee, that was easy.

But the bill's passage didn't come without casualties. Unless something happens in negotiations during the next couple of days, schools will take big hit from the original version of the bill, a hit which according to Sec. of Ed. Arne Duncan, could cost 600,000 education jobs.

Ah, reform!

Brother Fred nails Hess here.

Republicans: 'Education = Pork'

Schools to lose billions in exchange for 3 Republican votes?

To most of us, Rush Limbaugh is just another laughable, far-right, racist, drug-snorting buffoon with a radio show. But, according this L.A. Times story, Limbaugh is now the ideological leader of the Republican Party and its ever shrinking base. President Obama has tried (maybe too hard) to help congressional Republicans save themselves from themselves. Instead, the party of Limbaugh has taken advantage of Obama's efforts at bi-partisanship and is holding education hostage in the stimulus funding debate. They are calling public education "pork" and are chopping billions of dollars from the education part of the bill.

Here's the pork they're talking about:

• $98 million for school nutrition
• $1 billion for Head Start/Early Start
• $600 million for Title I (No Child Left Behind)
• $16 billion for school construction

Durbin: 'It's painful..."

“It’s a painful area for all of us, as Democrats, to make these cuts in education assistance,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who is assistant majority leader in the Senate.

Pelosi: "Very damaging..."

Asked about reported cuts in education spending and other matters like technology that may emerge from the Senate stimulus package... Ms. Pelosi said that those types of cuts were “very damaging” and that she was “very much opposed to them.” She pointed to the views of the governors who appeared before about 200 House Democrats gathered here, who had advocated such spending to maintain teaching levels and to build schools.

I thought we won the election

Now I hear that John McCain and the Limbaugh Party are holding education funding hostage in the stimulus package debate. Better contact your senators and remind them the reason that we threw these guys out in November.

Kristof at NYT:

So this is what the Senate seems to be coming down to: keeping bridges and throwing students out the window. The effort to prune the stimulus package to make it more palatable to Republicans is focused on slashing money for education.

Thousands of teachers protest L.A. budget cuts

"I just love teaching kids, and I came to fight for our jobs and our students," said Francis, a second-year teacher who, at the moment, has no Plan B if she loses her job. "I just hope I can continue doing what I love to do."

(L.A. Times)

Ed package spells gloom & doom for the Limbaugh Party

Republican congressmen and conservative think tanks have rallied behind Rush Limbaugh and have mounted a media campaign to oppose Barack Obama's education stimulus package. Limbaugh's move up the Republic food chain from radio kook to erstwhile congressional caucus leader shows how far right the party has moved and how isolated it's become since Obama's election victory.

The stimulus would more than double the current federal commitment to public education, in this time of desperate need, and offer an alternative to the past unfunded mandates of Bush's No Child Left Behind era.

Arne Duncan in USA Today:

Educators have long said two programs — Title I aid to poor children and funding for the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) — are vastly underfunded. Duncan, the former Chicago Public Schools CEO, agreed, saying he's been "on the other side of this fence" for years. "This is righting a historical injustice, a historical wrong," he said. "These have been desperately underfunded, in some cases for decades."

The new Obama school stimulus package has lots going for early childhood programs, teacher preparation and new school construction. It is estimated that it could save thousands of teachers’ jobs, thereby keeping class sizes from shooting out the roof.

But for the Limbaugh Party it’s all gloom and doom, since like Rush, many members in Congress and in the conservative think tanks, hope for and predict failure for an Obama-led reform.

Just listen to Fordham think-tankers Finn & Petrilli writing in the latest Forbes (“Will the recession kill school reform?”). They equate money for early childhood programs as crack for a junkie.

Even $100 billion of federal largesse won't be enough to plug the holes in school budgets over the next several years. The sick patient isn't cured. Rather, this whopping cash injection is more like an anesthetic that delays the pain for another day--when, no doubt, education lobbies will call for still more cash from Uncle Sam.

They cite their pal Rick Hess from the American Enterprise Institute who, in the same vein (no pun intended) equates educators with bar boozers:

“It’s like an alcoholic at the end of the night when the bars close, and the solution is to open the bar for another hour,” Mr. Hess said.

Finally, they are still bummed out that one of their Michelle Rhee/Joel Klein types, didn’t get tapped for the Sec. of Ed job.

Problem is—they lost. Pass them the hanky.