Trump election has reformers reconsidering 'groupthink'.

Credit: Creative Commons/AFGE

"Ed reformers are just waiting for their turn to talk. They only want to talk about themselves. Anything you say, they just want to tell you, 'Charter schools are great.' A parent can tell them, 'I broke my foot.' And a reformer will say, 'You know what's good for that? Charter schools!'" -- Education Post's Chris Stewart 

For most of the past three decades, school reformers have been focused on dismantling traditional, mainly urban public school systems, replacing traditional public schools with a hodgepodge of market-oriented, tech-driven, resegregated and union-free "choice" options -- mainly, privately-run charter schools and school vouchers.

The unintended, or sometimes intended, consequence of these reforms is a steady rollback of the genuine reforms won by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s (the second Reconstruction period in our history). It was those reforms, limited and fleeting as they may have been, which, from 1968-88, generated the greatest educational gains for poor children this nation has ever seen.

But what we're seeing now is an increasingly racially re-segregated, two-tiered system made up of unregulated selective, heavily-resourced, high-performing schools for the few, and a collapsing infrastructure of resource-starved public schools for the many, especially in areas of concentrated urban and rural poverty.

Market-driven reform crosses traditional party lines and is based within a handful of conservative think tanks and policy groups like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Fordham Institute, and underwritten by high-powered philanthropists like billionaires Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg,  the Walton Family, the New Schools Venture Fund, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), and others.

It's actually difficult for me to call them "reformers" since, for the past 16 years, they have captured (or been captured by) the U.S. Dept. of Education bureaucracy, which under a string of ed secretaries (Paige, Spellings, Duncan, and King),has become a bulwark of standardization, privatization and failed top-down initiatives. In other words, the status quo.

But the election of Donald Trump and his appointment of choice supporter Betsy DeVos as the next secretary of education, have ironically thrown the current corporate and choice reformers into a state of panic and confusion. Why? Because even though they and Trump/DeVos share a common view of choice, charters and vouchers (a sticking point for some), throwing in with Trump's confederacy of alt-right white nationalists and educational know-nothings would widen the chasm between themselves and their potential customer base. A no-no for anyone working in the corporate world.

That potential base is mainly the sea of dissatisfied, largely black and Latino public school parents, many of whom have looked to charters and vouchers as potential escape routes from their faltering, underfunded and shuttered neighborhood schools.

The election of Trump has also thrown a monkey wrench into their efforts to organize, co-opt, or at least engage with that base as well as with union teachers, young progressive educators and policy people (ie. Teach for America alums) and school/community activists who are repulsed by Trump and the Republicans.

This hoped-for dialogue with progressives was a task assigned to former Duncan assistant Peter Cunningham and his on-line Eli Broad-funded journal Education Post.

So far, Cunningham's "let's find common ground" approach to the progressives has been little more than a veil. A trap set to draw them in without budging on any important issues. And the real problem is that it hasn't produced the hoped-for results. That's because the reformers are self-critical about style, but so far, not about content.

Sensing this failure, Cunningham has dropped all pretenses and sharpened his attacks on teacher unions, opt-out parents, and polemicising against school integration efforts. He's really sharpened his polemical knife for any and all who want caps on charter school expansion. Since the campaign began, national civil rights groups like the NAACP and Black Lives Matter have actually hardened their stance against charters and vouchers.

So much for "common ground"...

More proof that forced integration didn't work. @mikeklonsky Lamenting segregation is just an excuse to avoid improving schools.

— Peter Cunningham (@PCunningham57) August 16, 2016

@leoniehaimson Recruiting a small percentage of POC doesn't change the fact that opt out is largely driven by middle class whites.

— Peter Cunningham (@PCunningham57) April 24, 2016

At a recent AEI conference, choice reformers appeared to taking a self-critical approach and re-evaluating their strategies. Among the hottest topics was, what they called, "race-based" reform.

AEI's Rick Hess, who hosted the conference, writes: 

There was a willingness to talk frankly but in measured tones about disagreements. Robert Pondiscio of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute pointed out that, for more than a decade, education reform has been approached as a race-based endeavor and questioned the wisdom and the desirability of this shift...

 There was a recognition that groupthink is a problem for all of us. AEI's Andy Smarick observed, "We all tend to surround ourselves with people who agree with our views. Then we wind up with an echo chamber. 

It's nice to know that some reformers are reconsidering groupthink, at least for now, in the face of Trumpism. Maybe others will follow. As for civil discourse about race and reform...I'm not holding my breath.

But the Trump/DeVos assault on public education should push choice, charter and voucher proponents to reconsider, not only their style, but substance as well.

Dems leave teacher unions hanging on DeVos

IEA graphic.

Hillary has her picture on milk cartons since she went missing after election day.  SNL even picked up on it. Seems like the entire old-guard leadership must be out in the Chappaqua woods with her, especially when it comes to resisting the Trump juggernaut.

Most notably, at least from this educator's perspective, is their deafening silence around Trump's nomination of Betsy ("Make America Christian Again") DeVos for Ed Secretary. While NEA and AFT leaders, Eskelsen-Garcia and Weingarten, have been outspoken in the opposition to DeVos, they have been left dangling in the wind by the very Clinton wing of the party they risked their reputations for with their premature endorsements of Hillary.  

As you might expect, this rift is reflective of much broader post-election inner-party conflicts over who will lead the Dems forward towards the mid-term congressional elections. Of note is Weingarten's defense of Keith Ellison who represents the Sanders/Warren progressives against the Podesta old-guard faction, for party chairman. That seems like a big shift to me. But time will tell. 

For the unions, it's not just a matter of the mid-term elections. DeVos represents an existential threat to public education itself as well as to the entire teaching profession. Her history in Detroit as an active supporter of privatization, Christianization, and vouchers has even garnered support from supposedly anti-Trump reformers and think-tankers like Fordham Institute's Michael Petrilli and former Arne Duncan aide, Peter Cunningham who calls DeVos the "champion of choice".  

Thankfully, the teacher unions aren't alone in their defense of public ed from the Trump/DeVos assault. The NAACP and other civil rights groups like Black Lives Matter and the Journey for Justice Alliance, have also been clear in their opposition to the DeVos program of vouchers and un-capped charter expansion.


Think-tankers go thumbs up on DeVos

While there are many unknowns about Betsy DeVos I'm going w/ 2 thumbs up, especially considering the alternatives @PoliticsK12 @caitlinzemma pic.twitter.com/bRtaUFWxFV

— Michael Petrilli (@MichaelPetrilli) November 23, 2016

Teach the children well...

Students protest in Austin.

Election Day headline at Huffington: "What do we tell the children?'
Ali Michael, Ph.D. answers:

Tell them bigotry is not a democratic value, and that it will not be tolerated at your school.

 Say that silence is dangerous, and teach them how to speak up when something is wrong.

 Finally, remind them ― to ease their minds ― that not everyone who voted for Donald Trump did so because they believe the bigoted things that he has said this year. Many of them voted for him because they feel frustrated with the economy, they feel socially left behind, and they are exercising the one power they have. We need to challenge Trump and his supporters to differentiate between their fears and the bigotry catalyzed by those fears.

NY Daily news reports: "Educators across the country faced classrooms full of students on Wednesday morning who feared for the future."

They're referring, of course, to the nation's millions of students (and teachers) of color, disabled, l LGBT and especially the children of immigrants now recoiling in fear from the racist, misogynist, and xenophobic threats of the newly-elected Trump regime.

“My mom said we might have to leave and go back to Ecuador,” a P.S. 110Q second-grader told his teacher.

 A Long Island art teacher told The News that her high schoolers began discussing Trump’s victory “the second they came in the door.

Educators had to become comforters. Safiyya Kathimi, who teaches in a Southern state, said she reassured her middle schoolers that she was there for them, even if it seemed like their new President might not be.

“I want you to know that if you’re feeling scared or worried, I am here for you if want to talk, or just need to be heard,” she told them, adding, “I had to hug quite a few.”

There were some glimpses of light and hope in an otherwise dark election day. While handing Trump and the Republicans a defeat, MA voters overwhelmingly voted NO on Question 2, which would have eliminated the cap on the state's privately-run charter schools.

Right-wing think-tankers at the Fordham Institute, who were wringing their hands over their party's nomination of Donald Trump, appear to have reconciled with the neo-fascist, racist regime now unconstrained by Democratic congressional opposition.

Institute Pres. Michael Petrilli writes: "The emergence of a 'unified' government means a possible end to gridlock and futility.

Of the white majority who bought into Trump's demagogic celebrity "take back our country" appeal, Petrilli continues with the big lie:

Their neighbors are dying young, with broken lives and broken spirits. And yet, until Trump, almost nobody in or near power was speaking about their concerns, their hopes and dreams, the contributions they still have to make to our great country.

Petrilli goes on to praise Trump for picking up "some education advisors we think well of."

I assume he's referring to anti-"government schools" creationist, Ben Carson. or like-minded conservatives at AEI. I'm sure Petrilli is hoping the Trumpies and Breitbardists will find a spot for him somewhere in their new Mis-education Dept. as G. W. Bush did.

This from my niece Jessica who teaches newly-arrived immigrant high schoolers in NYC:

Things that are giving me life right now: private messages from friends and family near and far, teachers at my school watching Democracy Now together at lunch, students telling me, "Don't be sad Miss, it will be okay" when I am the one who should be consoling them, an email chain on the MORE chapter leader listserv of lessons, responses and report backs from schools across the city, hearing that at some schools students walked out of classes, my own angry and optimistic children and their friends, and that people were out in the streets today.

In a classroom in Chicago pic.twitter.com/Oy9tEmmPdv

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) November 9, 2016

PARCC predicts college 'success'. So what?

Got this in my mail today from the right-wing think-tankers at the Hoover Institute: "PARCC and Massachusetts state exams predict college success equally well." 

My response: So what? So does poverty.

They're notifying us ed bloggers about a "first of it's kind" study comparing PARCC and MCAS as predictors of college success.

But unfortunately, there's still no better predictors of college success than poverty and race. That's especially true now that college tuition rates and the cost of student loans has made a college degree barely accessible to all but the children of the wealthy.

Without getting into all the methodological problems with this un-amazing new study, I will just say that it in no way measures the probability of high school students' college success -- meaning graduation with a degree in a reasonable and affordable number of years.

Instead, it looks at high school test-takers' grades in their freshman year of college. And guess what this break-through study finds? The same kids who scored high on PARCC and MCAS in high school also got high marks in their freshman year at college. Amazing discovery!

The study doesn't track students beyond that year and doesn't look at other factors, like creativity, perseverance, collaboration, vision and self-discipline, which are just a few basic qualities that correlate with college success. So the think-tankers are claiming way too much. And it made no difference which tests the students took. The results came out the same. 

College degree completion by race. 

Not to mention (but I will) the fact that MCAS was never designed as a predictor of college success. Rather it was supposed to measure students’ proficiency relative to statewide curriculum standards. That all changed with the adoption of Common Core and the PARCC exam, designed by Pearson, Inc. and underwritten largely by the Gates Foundation. 

The stated purpose of PARCC is to measure whether students are on track to succeed in college. Since standardized test scores align most closely with family income and education, school districts could have save billions by cancelling the tests and simply asking parents to send in the IRS forms. 

By pushing these tests as predictors, the think-tankers and test makers are actually turning them into gate keepers. 

The topper -- many of even the elite universities now pay little or no attention to applicants' standardized test scores. So much the better. 

What Trump thinks about education. It's golden.

“I’m a tremendous believer in education, but education has to be at a local level. We cannot have the bureaucrats in Washington telling you how to manage your child’s education. So Common Core is a total disaster. We can’t let it continue.” 

“And I have tremendous support within unions, and I have tremendous support in areas where they don’t have unions. Like in Florida, they don’t have very many unions. The workers love me.” -- Donald Trump

Right-wing think-tanker Rick Hess, writing for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), says neither he, nor anyone else knows where Donald Trump is at on education.

The “experts” are just making stuff up. You will see and hear people claim they know what Trump is going to do. After all, that’s how people get their op-eds published, keep their pundit gigs, and stay relevant. 

 One reason that Trump makes political veteran observers so nervous is that he could very well be elected President of the United States, and yet no one has any idea of what he’d attempt to do in office. So, what would a President Trump mean for education? I have no idea. And neither does anyone else.

Ah, but I do.

While it's true that Trump's an educational know-nothing and has little in the way of ideological moorings, he's said enough to give us a good indication of what schools and public ed policy might look like under a Trump administration. Actually, probably not much different than we've had under the last 15 years of No Child Left Behind, Race To the Top (Paige, Spellings, Duncan).

With a few exceptions. For one, Trump has vowed to issue an executive order to prohibit states from making schools into gun-free zones.

For another Trump pledges to get rid of Common Core and cut "way, way down" (but not eliminate, like Cruz/Rubio) the Dept. of Education. Of course, the passage of new states-rights oriented ESSA has pretty much done that. 

His views on curriculum are laughable. If elected, he promises to personally put an end to “creative spelling,” “estimating,” & “empowerment”. 

While Trump claims to have "tremendous support within unions", he (like Hess and AEI) is virulently anti-union, pro-charter and pro-voucher. 

"Education reformers call this school choice, charter schools, vouchers, even opportunity scholarships. I call it competition-the American way."

 "Our public schools have grown up in a competition-free zone, surrounded by a very high union wall."

But what Trump is really about is using government to enrich himself and expand and consolidate his own personal wealth and power. To Trump and several other members of what Diane Ravitch called the Billionaire Boys Club (Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Waltons, Bruce Rauner, Michael Bloomberg...) the education sector is a cash cow, the second largest sector of the nation's GNP, that needs to be privatized and/or milked regularly.

They view public space and public decision making (Democracy) as a slow, messy, unwieldy process that needs to be "reformed" through a radical shifting of power. Too important to be left to the public. 

In the case of Gates and Broad, it's about leveraging personal wealth through power-philanthropy, to drive corporate-style reform, using their own trained and well-placed managers (mayoral control of large urban districts) and public officials. For others, like Bloomberg, Rauner and now Trump, it's about exercising autocratic power directly, rather than through surrogates. 

But if you really want to know where Trump is at on education, look no further than TrumpU.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump suffered a legal setback on Tuesday when a New York state court allowed a multimillion-dollar fraud claim against Trump University, filed by the state's attorney general, to proceed. The claim is part of a lawsuit that accuses Trump and the now-defunct for-profit venture of misleading thousands of people, who paid up to $35,000 to learn the billionaire businessman's real estate investment strategies.

The real reason AEI, like others in the conservative establishment, are so ambivalent about Trump, has little to do with his policy positions, with which they mostly agree.

Rather, it's about a seat at the policy table and the money and consulting contracts that come with. Trump is a wildcard there and has the conservative establishment and edu-tankers worried The Donald might tell them, "you're fired".

The 'Cone of Uncertainty' and other random notes...

The Cone of Uncertainty

We were heading out for D.C. this morning and then on to the Bethany Beach. We turned around. Lucky we checked the weather. I always thought the "Cone of Uncertainty" was a research/risk-management term 'til I heard Al Roker use it yesterday. I always called it, The Black Swan after Nassim Taleb's book of the same name.

This morning, I'm CERTAIN that Jauquin has the same travel plans as we do. Note to my old high school friend, Floyd at UM. I'll take a rain check on that beer.

Jake in Wauwatosa

Poll: There's 2 guys, Reggie and Bob, in Green Bay, Agnes in Oskosh, and Crazy Jake the exterminator in Wauwatosa, who still support Walker. -- Politico

Chiraq...After 14 people were shot here yesterday in just 15 hours, including an 11-month-old boy and a 2-year-old boy, the mayor jumps out and says gun laws must "reflect the values of the people". All this had me harking back to '09 when Rahm, while serving as Obama’s chief of staff, told AG Eric Holder to “shut the f--k up” on his proposed assault weapons ban. 

Speaking of Rahm, his boy Forrest Claypool ran a board hearing on charter expansion yesterday, that was shady enough to do the mayor and his predecessors proud. Critics were barred from entry and even run out of the hallways, while the room was stacked with Noble charter supporters. Final score: 86 speakers for Noble St. 10 for anti-expansion. 

Note to Sen. Warren...If you're serious about exposing think-tankers who are on the take from Wall Street, call me. I've got names and addresses. 

“Big oil companies shouldn’t be able to peddle phony research on climate change, and the financial industry shouldn’t be able to support phony economics hiding behind a think tank. People expect think tanks to be independent in the research they produce, and the fact that more and more of their work is funded by wealthy corporate interests — often in secret — further tilts the playing field for those with money and power.” -- Lacey Rose, a Warren spokeswoman.

Right-wing think-tanker Hess lectures Newark "rabble-rousers" on civility

Community "rabble-rousers" protest Newark One in Feb. 2014.

More lectures on civility from right-wing think-tanker Rick Hess directed towards Newark parents and community activists [Hess calls them "rabble-rousers". No really, he does.] who traveled to D.C. to protest Supt. Cami Anderson's speech at AEI. Once Anderson and the think-tankers caught wind that the angry community members were planning to make their voices heard, they quickly flew the coop and re-staged Anderson's performance in a room without an audience. It seems she can't go anywhere these days without be dogged by angry Newark residents.

Anderson, appointed by Gov. Chris Christie, is the architect of  “One Newark”, a corporate-style reform plan to relocate neighborhood schools, convert others to privately-run  charter schools and re-engineer still more traditional public schools by replacing all their principals and firing hundreds of teachers in violation of the contract. It's a plan that devastates already resourced-starved Newark neighborhoods.

The Washington Post reports:

The plan for the 35,000-student school system has been the target of lawsuits, a federal complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education and student boycotts. It was a central factor in last spring’s mayoral race, which led to high school principal Ras Baraka winning office in large part because of his opposition to One Newark. Baraka wrote to President Obama last month and asked him to intervene on behalf of the community.

"I’m opposed to all of it,” Baraka said by phone Thursday. “She has forced this down people’s throats, and the people don’t want it. We need a new superintendent.”

Tensions have grown so much in Newark that Anderson no longer attends meetings of the locally elected school advisory board, where her opponents regularly railed against her, hurling invectives.

Anderson & Christie

But to the why-can't-we-all-just-get-along-minded Hess, African-American and Latino families demonstrating peacefully but loudly to save their schools is equivalent to "vitriolic and even threatening tactics." To Hess, it's all about civil debate, so long as he controls the speakers and the agenda. To show how fair minded he is, he boasts:

 Over the years, I've hosted "reformers" including the likes of Arne Duncan, Rod Paige, Joel Klein, Kaya Henderson, Michelle Rhee, John Deasy, Jim Shelton, John White, Deb Gist, Howard Fuller, and Campbell Brown. I've hosted those who come at things very differently, such as Randi Weingarten, Diane Ravitch, Dennis van Roekel, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, Debbie Meier, Carol Burris, Kevin Welner, and Larry Cuban.

He writes:

But it's the hypocrisy that bothers me the most. A group that claims it is disenfranchised and silenced, and wants only to be heard, adopts tactics that stifle debate.

"Claims it is disenfranchised and silenced"? Did Hess really say that?

Well, let's put it this way. They may still be disenfranchised, but they weren't silenced for long at AEI. Maybe he should have included some of them among his approved list of "reformers".

A real policy debate would have taken place BEFORE the schools were closed and privatized, not after the fact. Parents and community were excluded from the debate then and they were excluded (not invited) to the debate by AEI. Instead they made their voices heard the best way they could. They were heard again last May, in the city's mayoral election when they elected Mayor Baraka, a militant opponent of Anderson's and of "One Newark". And yet the program remains.

Hess should know that people still have the right to protest against oppressive government policies, while those bureaucrats enforcing those policies still have the right to run and hide from the community.

It's a free country.

The Children Left Behind

Thanks to journalist Debbie Nathan writing for In These Times, for putting a human face on the disaster that is No Child Left Behind.

Students began to notice weird goings-on at the international bridge near campus—specifically, Bowie administrators stationed there with cameras. What the students didn’t know was that García had ordered an employee to take photos of students crossing in the morning from Juárez to identify which ones did not live in El Paso. For generations, a custom of this bi-national community was to recognize that kids tended to have complicated citizenship and living arrangements, and it was far better to educate them than to deny them over where they slept at night. But Garcia’s main concern was that bi-national students tended to have limited English skills and would likely score low on TAKS tests. They needed to go.

Read the entire piece, "The Children Left Behind", here.

Finn (R) and his Fordham boys

Michael Petrilli (top center in picture) has been appointed head of the right-wing Fordham Institute, a position he inherited from his mentor, Checker Finn. Readers will remember charter school hustler Finn from this 2009 quotable:

"In K-12 education, we submit, greed can be good, albeit ugly."

Petrilli will likely carry on Fordham's greed-is-good tradition only without Finn's smarts. He's the guy who, in a debate with Deb Meier, called for barring poor women from bearing children in the name of fighting poverty. Fordham (no relation to the university) has been a key player in the war on poverty -- only on the other side.




Here's another sign that the City Council's Black Caucus wants to distance itself from the increasingly unpopular Chicago Mayor who rapidly losing support in the black community and throughout the city.

Check out the heated exchange between between Alderman Jason Ervin and Chicago Police superintendent Garry McCarthy over whether the department is promoting minorities to high-ranking positions. Both men were admonished several times for cutting each other off, and Ervin took offense to McCarthy not looking at him while he was speaking.

But it was committee chairman Ald. Carrie Austin who refused to let McCarthy have the last word. "I'm going on to the next person. This is one day you gonna sit it down, because I'm the one running the show today," Austin told McCarthy.

As NBC5’S Political Reporter Mary Ann Ahern reports, there hasn’t been this kind of exchange before in the Emanuel administration.

Yes, another sign that Rahm can be had in the next election.

View from right field -- The 'civil rights movement' for school vouchers

Finn (right) and his Fordham team.

As thousands marched in D.C. to commemorate Dr. Kings dream speak=h, Checker Finn and his boys at the right-wing Fordham Institute began spinning their own version of the civil rights movement. Their "dream" is all about the "right" to funnel money away from public schools to private companies and religious groups in the form of vouchers.

In the latest issue of The Flypaper, they bemoan the efforts of the Justice Dept. and  the Southern Poverty Law Center to overturn Louisiana's voucher program which has been found to reinforce school segregation.

Since the Fordham crew have absolutely no civil rights credibility of their own, they defer to a civil rights movement veteran from Alabama, Rev. H.K. Matthews, who has sadly lined up with Bobby Jindal in La. and former Florida schools chief Tony Bennett, to support vouchers.

They call the Justice Dept. move "folly" since it could have major implications for other modes of choice, including charter schools.

You bet.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"My best meeting with him was off stage, away from the lights at a private table in a steakhouse." -- J.C. Brizard 

CPS grandmother Irene Robinson

"This is safe passage? No, this is murder city," Robinson said, shaking her head. -- Aljazeera

 Ex-Marine  Col. Tom Tyrell

There are obvious differences between closing 50 schools and starting a new country or fighting terrorism. But there are also similarities. "Surge teams are available." -- WBEZ

 J.C. Brizard

“We severely underestimated the ability of the Chicago Teachers Union to lead a massive grassroots campaign against our administration... It takes a ton of inner strength to watch 4,000+ people in red shirts outside of your window protesting while a very heavy police presence looked on." -- Flypaper 

Dave Zirin

The people at this march are the face of resistance to what Dr. King called the “evil triplets of militarism, materialism and racism.” -- The Nation

Wilbur Millhouse 

 ...there are a ton of ideas pouring in about what to do with the 50 shuttered school buildings and the possibilities are somewhat unlimited.  I can’t say that if that community says they want to make it a charter school that we would say no. That hasn’t been given to me as a parameter to stop any community from turning it into a charter school. -- CBS News, Emanuel Names Panel To Decide Fate Of Shuttered School Buildings

View from right field: Smarick wants an end to urban school systems

I don't agree.

Is there any real difference between calling for an end to "urban school systems" and calling for an end to urban public schools?  I don't think so.

Andy Smarick, who works for right-wing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Fordham Institute, tweeted me yesterday, saying that I was being unfair to him for equating his call for the destruction of urban (code word for black and Latino) school districts with destruction of urban schools, in my Twitter post. He says he was only talking about "urban districts" in his call for urban mass demolition.  Is he playing with words here? I think so.

In fact, I don't think I was being unfair at all. I told him basically to stop whining and own up to his obvious anti-public school perspective. After all, Smarick says he wants to replace urban schools with privately-run charters. He thinks urban schools are a "total failure" even though they outperform most charters by every measure,  and he claims that our urban schools system is "broken, and it cannot be fixed. It must be replaced."

He writes:

 Given urban districts’ unblemished record of failure over generations, you’d think these statements would be widely accepted and represent the core of the education-reform strategy... The blueprint for the urban school system of the future can be found in charter schooling.

Of course, he offers no evidence about this record of failure, or to support the supposed superiority of charters. The reason -- there isn't any evidence. To his credit, likeable Andy tries to find some common ground with me, tweeting, " I bet you're not always a fan of what districts do."

He's right, of course. I'm not always a fan. But public schooling is not some sporting event where fans cheer for their favorite team; i.e., the public school team vs. the privatization team. Being a critical voice is a lot different than bashing and destroying.

The dismantling of urban school districts and replacing them with a market-driven system, would mean that the neediest public schools would be left to sink or swim on their own. The mechanism through which they received public funding and support would be smashed. Parents would be completely reliant on small, often self-interested and corrupt, charter school operators for their children's education. Schools would be at the mercy of private sponsors, (Fordham itself is one) for their existence. Teachers would lose all rights to bargain collectively and all constraints on the operator's attempts to cream kids or re-segregate schools would be lost. Smarick's anti-public vision strikes at the very heart of democracy.

As Smarick writes:  

First, we must see chartering not as a sector and not even as a system but as the system for urban education’s future. The systemic practices it has introduced into public education must be the playbook for how urban school portfolios are managed. Second, we must accept that the full flourishing of this new system requires the permanent demotion and the potential cessation of the district.  

Smarick (left) and his team at Fordham

Smarick and Fordham have a record for for all kinds of unethical shenanigans. It's because of groups like this that we need government regulation. In the state of Ohio, for example, Fordham has been both a lobbyist for charters and at the same time,  a sponsor (authorizer) of charter schools. In other words, they authorize (vet) the very schools that they sponsor. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house.

Despite their protestations to the contrary, privately-run charters are a source of wealth for both Smarick and Fordham. Smarick makes his money working for Bellwether Consulting, which is basically a union-busting and school privatization company run by his pal Andrew Rotherham and with clients like Louisiana Tea-Party Gov. Bobby Jindal. 

Even the most corrupt of the charter school operators, White Hat's David Brennan, is hailed as a "revolutionary" by Smarick's Fordham group.

And he's not just about smashing urban public school systems. He wants to "re-invent" government as a group of privately-run enclaves. He calls it "entrepreneurial government."

As I see it, Andy Smarick's plan calls for nothing less than the end to the institution of public education and the erosion of public space and public decision-making. Behind all his buzzwords, cliches, and obfuscating language about "innovation" and "re-inventing," he and his right-wing think tank pals are really just about narrow self-interest and the profitability for themselves and wealthy patrons like David Brennan.For me, this is about the future of democracy.

Oh yes -- fair? Yes, I'm fair. Didn't I call him likeable?

The view from right-field on class size

Checker Finn (right) and his Fordham Foundation crew are upset at White House report.

“So it should concern everyone that right now – all across America – tens of thousands of teachers are getting laid off....Think about what that means for our country. When there are fewer teachers in our schools, class sizes start climbing up. Our students start falling behind. And our economy takes a hit.” -- President Obama

Finn, Petrilli & Co. (pictured above) over at the right-wing Fordham Institute are freaking out over a recent White House report, Investing in Our Future: Returning Teachers to the Classroom, which they describe as"decrying lost teaching jobs that will allegedly swell classes around the country." In the latest edition of Fordham's Flypaper, TFAer (of course) Tyson Eberhardt goes off on Obama for his apparent flip on the question of class size. 

As the election heats up, the Obama camp clearly sees class size and teacher layoffs as promising lines of political attack and important ways to energize powerful labor allies less than thrilled with many of the White House’s education priorities over the last four years. Unfortunately for the Dems, however, strident infomercials and gloomy white papers can’t undo the now-awkward but still-sound remarks of Mr. Obama’s education secretary on the issue. “Class size has been a sacred cow and we need to take it on,” Arne Duncan correctly said in 2011, a year after arguing that “districts may be able to save money without hurting students, while allowing modest but smartly targeted increases in class size.”

Eberhardt has a point. Why has it taken until election time for the Dems to say the right thing on this crucial ed issue? Is this a real break from Duncan's blathering about the benefits of larger class size or just a bone being thrown to bring union voters back into the fold?

Either way, the fact remains that Obama has finally responded to Romney on an important issue of education. Will the Dems actually come up with a convention education plank?

With the loss of 300,000 teaching jobs in the past two years, resulting from budget cuts as well as from  the administration's own Race To The Top policies, class sizes in urban districts (not where Duncan or Obama send their children to school) have swelled to crisis proportions.  According to the report, "the national student-teacher ratio increased by 4.6 percent from 2008 to 2010, rolling back all the gains made since 2000." But that doesn't even begin to tell the real story.

In urban districts with high concentrations of children of color, like Detroit and Los Angeles, class sizes are now reaching 45-60 students. Duncan, along with his pals on the right -- remember, Duncan first made ridiculous bigger-is-better comments at an American Enterprise Institute conference -- continue to pose the false choice between a good teacher or a rational class size -- a choice wealthy suburban or private school parents never have to make.

Whatever his motives, Obama has taken a meaningful step forward in this report. It's no wonder he has the flies at Flypaper buzzing. I'm sure the boys at DFER aren't too happy either.

For more info and the latest research on class size, go to Class Size Matters.

Unprecedented victory in Colorado school funding case

In a 183-page ruling in favor of the plaintiffs Friday, Denver District Judge Sheila Rappaport ruled in the 6-year-old Lobato v. Colorado case that the state's education funding is "irrational and inadequate" and violates the state constitution's pledge to provide a "thorough and uniform" education system. She specifically pointed to the lack of funding to serve the need of the state's poor, minority and disabled students. (Read the full report) "There is not one school district that is sufficiently funded," Rappaport writes in the report. "This is an obvious hallmark of an irrational system."

The ruling was a slap in the face to conservative, anti-public school forces, including the Hoover Institute's Eric Hanushek, who testified that more school funding wouldn't lead to better schools. The judge said that Hanushek's claim was 'contradicted by testimony and documentary evidence from dozens of well-respected educators in the State, defies logic, and is statistically flawed.”

Conservatives, led by right-wing Attorney General John Suthers, and some corporate "reformers" are already working to have Rappaport's decision overturned.

Michigan's union-busters caught sending secret emails to pols

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan, calls itself a "nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to improving the quality of life." But recently this far-right, free-market think tank has been exposed for its shady, very partisan, and possibly illegal lobbying of state politicians, aimed at nothing less than breaking the back of the state's teachers union and outlawing collective-bargaining in the state of Michigan.

According to Dave Murray, writing in the Grand Rapids Free Press, the Mackinac Center's true purposes were revealed in secret email communications with state lawmakers, including one from Mackinac's Jack McHugh to state Rep. Thomas McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, the newly appointed head of the House Education Committee. In his June 1 email, letting McMillin know exactly what was expected of him, McHugh wrote: 

“Our goal is (to) outlaw government collective bargaining in Michigan, which in practical terms means no more MEA.”

McMillin, described as a "vocal school choice and reform advocate," was named head of the Education Committee after former chairman, Rep. Paul Scott, R-Grand Blanc, was recalled by angry voters earlier this month. Before being recalled Scott had become the darling of Michelle Rhee and Michigan's T-Party Gov. Rick Snyder, after leading the charge against teachers' collective bargaining rights and raids on their pension fund. Rhee's front group, Students First donated heavily to help Scott avoid a recall effort.

Doug Pratt, the MEA’s public affairs director, said the comment reveals the Mackinac Center’s conservative, anti-union leanings that he believes are often cloaked behind glossy publications.

“It’s right there in black and white, exposing the group for what it really is,” Pratt said. “That proves that the Mackinac Center is nothing but a front for corporate special interests intent on destroying the middle class.”

When Murray's story broke, McMillin, obviously trying to avoid Scott's fate, immediately tried to distance himself from Mackinac, claiming that McHugh's emails “don’t represent my views.”

For more on the Mackinac Center see Fred Klonsky's blog and the MEA's website.
Cross-posted on my Schooling in the Ownership Society blog. 

Are there really too many 'mediocre' charter schools?

Incubator

Right-wing think-tankers at the Fordham Institute are looking for answers and I'm sure they'll find them. You see, it's all in how you pose the question.

Their latest quest has to do with charter schools. Fordham, which doubles as a charter school lobbying and support group in Ohio, and their business-minded partners, Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust), are getting together to ponder whether or not so-called charter incubators can "can solve the problem of too many mediocre charter schools."

Right away, just by the way the question is asked, you can assume that the answer is yes. Otherwise why would they go to all the trouble to dredge up that old incubator thing from back in the early '90s? I mean, isn't this what the old charter authorizers were all about? I figure that there must be some Walton or Gates money coming on line to fund charter incubators; thus a convening of the clan is definitely in order, including a panel of the usual entrepreneurial types lining up at the trough.

But what got me most interested was the other part of the question. I mean, are there really too many "mediocre" charter schools? Let me ask this another way: Can there be too many mediocre schools, students, or teachers? Not, I would argue, if you're speaking the language of corporate school reform or Race To The Top, which has schools, teachers and even nations, competing with each other to see who's better, worse or somewhere in between. Within that paradigm, a large dose of mediocrity is required. If the middle became the top, re-norming would certainly be in order.

Many companies are built on a model which rewards a small percentage of top performers, encourages a large majority in the middle to improve, and lays off the bottom performers. If you're at all interested in the theoretical side of this business model, see "Punishing by Rewards:  When the Performance Bell-curve Stops Working For You", by a group of MIT researchers who argue that this model often actually decreases performance.

On a standard curve, most schools, whether charter or public, group around the middle or mean.  No matter what miracles the corporate reformers work, no matter how many schools they turn around or close, there will always be "too many" in the middle, with fewer at the top and bottom (or ends of the curve). This applies to teachers, schools and test-takers as well.

When Arne Duncan and Pres. Obama announced, more than two years ago, that they would solve the problem of high school "dropout factories" by closing 5,000 of the schools at the bottom, they failed to take into account that now there would still be 5,000 more schools at the bottom. What they did instead was demoralize lots of struggling schools and their dedicated, hard working teaching staffs. Even if every charter school was run by top-feeders like KIPP or even by Fordham themselves, there would still be "too many" mediocre  charters--especially if they would be pitted against one another in a Race To The Top for a shrinking pool of resources, teachers, and high-scoring students (no special-ed or ELLs, please).

We already know that, when compared with traditional schools, only about one-third of the nation's charter schools score higher. On most lists of top-performing schools, you will rarely find a charter school. So since the reformers already knew that mediocrity is a necessity in this market-driven game they are playing, and since they already knew before they posed the question, that incubators are the answer-- why then are they continuing this charade?

The early charter schools were largely experimental attempts by teachers and community-based organizations to re-think schooling and to provide a critical force for systemic change. Once the charter movement was taken over by school-reform entrepreneurs called CMOs, market forces went into full play. Starbucks-style replications, going to scale, leveraging real-estate, and vertical integration became the new lingo of charter reform. Huge charter school chains sprung up with lots of backing from powerful philanthropists, squeezing out the smaller innovative, teacher-run (mediocre?) charters. The consolidation continues. Thus, too many "mediocre" schools. The think-tankers obviously have an interest in how this question is answered.

Cuts have been a disaster for public ed

Conservatives hail cuts as "an opportunity"

Huffington's Joy Resmovitz reports that a UFT survey of 900 New York City schools finds that three quarters of elementary schools, 61 percent of middle schools and 59 percent of high schools had increased class sizes. 

"What we know is what we feared was happening," [UFT Pres. Mike] Mulgrew says. "Now, all 1 million of our students are ... having their education negatively affected by what has happened between the federal, state and city budgets." In addition to budget cuts, all city agencies were recently warned that they would have to make a total of $2 billion cuts in aggregate for the next year. -- Huffington Post

The problem is that our political leaders, particularly our secretary of education, don't believe that exploding class sizes are a problem. Get rid of him, President Obama.

Even worse, Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey and Florida for example, are pushing for even deeper cuts and the privatization of public schools. Chester Finn and his cabal of right-wing think-tankers over at the Fordham Institute  are celebrating the massive cuts.

“If states look at this as a way to really look at how education is structured, it can be seen as an opportunity,” said Chris Tessone, director of finance at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank in Washington, D.C. “It’s a chance to be innovative, to rethink their staffing model. We see this new normal as an opportunity.” -- Fiscal Times

The Daily News reports that almost half of the city's middle schools bought fewer textbooks. Over a third of high schools cut advanced placement classes, electives and gym. 

“We’re suffering from these budget cuts,” said Christine Wong, a special education teacher at Public School 1 in Chinatown. She said her classes have on average jumped from 17 to 25 students this year. If these cuts continue, it will be devastating,” she said. Wong said her classes suffer from a lack of basic supplies, including copy paper, workbooks and pens.

Over at Bridging Differences, Diane Ravitch describes a district (San Diego) which has been  recovering from years of top-down control by corporate reformers.

The district is now led by a dynamic school board chairman, Richard Barrera, and a low-key superintendent, Bill Kowba. Barrera has a background as a community organizer in the labor movement, and Kowba is a retired rear admiral with 30 years in the Navy and administrative experience in the San Diego public schools. Together, they are passionate and effective advocates for the San Diego public schools.

But whatever progress district schools are making is now threatened by budget cuts.

The state legislature has slashed $15 billion in funding from California's public schools in the past four years. San Diego alone has lost $450 million since 2007-2008 and has had to lay off teachers and other staff, increase class size, and eliminate programs for children. San Diego may be forced to declare bankruptcy, along with many other districts.

The latest NAEP scores are but one indicator that the combination of corporate-style reform and massive budget cuts are failing to improve things and are instead continuing to widen the so-called "achievement gap." WaPo's Valerie Strauss suggests a new T-shirt which would read:  “My nation spent billions on testing and all I got was a 1-point gain.”

Without mentioning the Occupy Wall Street movement, Merrill Goozner, writing at Fiscal Times, believes that a political backlash is building against education spending cuts which could have an impact in 2012.

Nearly all the top ten toss-up states in next year’s presidential election have sharply curtailed their education budgets since the recession began in 2008, a survey by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities shows. And with federal stimulus money evaporating, a new round of cuts to state and local budgets are in the offing. That could turn education into a major campaign issue next year, or at least one that roils the local waters where presidential politics will play out.

It's again worth mentioning one more time that after 10 years, we are continuing to spend upwards of $2 billion a week fighting a murderous, senseless, and unwinnable Afghan war. Can we do this and still maintain a public education system in this country? Uh uh.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Duncan's biggest fan

“I’m a fan,” said Margaret Spellings, Duncan’s immediate predecessor, who was education secretary during President George W. Bush’s second term and an architect of Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind policy. “He’s a good man who I think is doing the best job he can.” -- Politico

Petrilli agrees

He has “used his power responsibly for the most part,” said Michael J. Petrilli, executive vice president at the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a former Bush-era Education Department official. “The priorities he’s been pushing on are the right ones.” -- Politico

Ravitch not so much
“If you like federal control of education, he’s your man.” -- Diane Ravitch

Gates knows best

"It may surprise you—it was certainly surprising to us—but the field of education doesn't know very much at all about effective teaching." -- Bill & Melinda Gates

Measurement and its discontents

One way is to ask ourselves what is missing from our measurements. Are the tests administered by schools making students smarter and more educated, or just making us think we know how to evaluate education?  -- Robert Crease, New York Times

Fordham's "High Flyer" report gets low marks

"The report’s flawed analysis and interpretation leads to biased results and to an unsupported conclusion that many high-performing students do not maintain their academic edge while more low-performing students catch up." -- NEPC review of High Flyer

These days, it's getting tougher for right-wing think tanks to pass off their school reform propaganda as legitimate research. The reason? There's a group of skilled academics over at NEPC, armed with the necessary research skills, who are able to take on and debunk their politically-aimed studies.

Case in point -- A recent report put out by the conservative Fordham Institute and Northwest Evaluation Association, Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude?, claims that the academic performance of high-achieving students is being undermined by a policy focus on lower-achieving students.

The problem is, their claim isn't supported by solid evidence. University at Buffalo, SUNY, professor Jaekyung Lee, a nationally known expert on accountability and equity issues in education, finds that Fordham's conclusions rest on biased methodology and misleading arguments.

Lee concludes:

"So the good news or bad news, depending on one’s predilection, is that everybody improves to more or less the same extent over time, implying equal benefits of schooling. However, if we are concerned about the issue of equity, the picture looks gloomy. The clear bad news is that the achievement gap between high and low achievers is large and does not narrow over time in general. And more specifically, racial and poverty gaps also do not narrow (and sometimes widen) over time."

Find Jaekyung Lee’s review on the NEPC website at: http://greatlakescenter.org/docs/Think_Twice/TT_Lee_HighFlyers.pdf

In fairness, Fordham's Mike Petrilli went on the Jim Bohannon Show and got Jimbo to say that he found the study to be "very important."

More on the DOE's anti-Ravitch strategy

Following up on yesterday's post re. the DOE's anti-Ravitch strategy, one need look no further than this disgusting piece ( "Double-Agent Diane") by willing anti-Ravitch think-tanker Jay Greene. Greene is a long-time hack fellow at the far right-wing Manhattan Institute where he shares a home with racist Bell Curve theorist Charles Murray. Not surprisingly, Greene and the Institute currently find common ground with Duncan and the D.O.E in their crusade against Ravitch, teacher unions, and support for privatization. If Greene's diatribe is any indication, they also share worries about last week's Save Our Schools March.

In an exchange of tweets yesterday, Duncan PR guy Justin Hamilton responded to a reporter's question about a secret anti-Ravitch group within the D.O.E. this way:

EDPressSec Justin Hamilton
File under black helicopter RT @DianeRavitch: Reporter asked if I knew of secret DOE group working to intimidate/silence me.

You will notice that snarky Hamilton doesn't confirm or deny the group's existance and given current adminstation's black-ops and the recent DOE early-morning raid on the Wright family home in Stockton, his helicoptor crack is inappropriate, to say the least.

Thanks to that unnamed reporter, whoever he or she was, for asking the question. I'm sure you won't be the last.

SOS Think/Do Tank

SOS Institure Workshop (R. Sanders pic)

One of the many good things that came out of the SOS conference was a committment from a significant group of attendees to move ahead with, what we're now calling, a Think/Do Tank. Diane Ravitch and I offered up an outline for an institute of some kind to emerge from this week's protest. The response was encouraging.

About 80 people attended a session I facilitated on Thursday and after a couple of hours of discussion, nearly all expressed an interest in taking part on some level. Some folks offered to blog, tweet or otherwise use their new-media skills to promote the ideas and positions voiced by Saturday's marchers. Others were interested in research, publishing, public speaking, cultural criticism, or being part of strategic discussions, nationally and/or regionally.

I will be notifying all those who took part, about upcoming meetings and follow-up discussions. For those who couldn't attend, feel free to let me know you are interested and we will keep you in the loop.