Quotables

Teachers are at fault, "we perpetuate poverty..." says Duncan

Interviewed on NPR's Talk of the Nation, Arne Duncan does his usual speed rap. Some good stuff--calls for massive support for early childhood education--sorry Chester Finn. He counter attacks S.C. Gov. Sanford who originally refused stim money for schools--great. But mostly empty cliches: "move outside our comfort zone," education is today's "civil rights issue," "definition of insanity..." He knows 'em all.

Re: merit pay: "In every other sector of our country, we reward excellence."-- Not true, according to Fair Test's Monty Neil. He tells us that performance pay is fairly rare in general and in professions.

Duncan says he wants to pay [only?] math and science teachers more money. He wants to replicate Harlem Children's Zone in 20 communities. OK!

But then he drops a bomb on the teachers who work in the toughest schools and neighborhoods. Regarding schools where children are far behind and "not being successful", Duncan paints with a broad brush:

"We educators quite frankly are at fault. We perpetuate poverty and we perpetuate social failure."

Since Duncan isn't (has never been) a teacher, I wonder who the "WE" is?

College dropout rates

Dennis Littky, founder of the MET School in Providence, tweets:

"4 in 10 low income students graduate from our city high schools,,,you think that is bad? Colleges graduate. 1 in 10! Why no fuss?"

Inching Toward Equity

Gloria Ladson-Billings argues that if Brown v. Board (school desegregation) isn't going to be taken seriously than at least give us "a real Plessy v. Ferguson."

A real Plessy would mean that across this country, Black, Latina/o, American Indian, poor and immigrant students would have the same facilities as their White, middle-income peers. They would have a profession of teachers with the wisdom, qualifications and skills needed to provide high-quality instruction – not a “force” of novice teachers who, although eager, are unprepared and under-prepared to teach. They would have access to the same curricula and courses. They would have the same educational materials—textbooks, technology, science laboratory supplies, and fine arts supplies. And they would have the same funding to provide for their schooling. (Forum for Education & Democracy)

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

Ravitch on N.Y.'s testing "Ponzi scheme"

Diane Ravitch has gone through some big changes as a result of Bridging Differences, her diablog with Deb Meier. In her latest post she joins Fair Test in saluting Meier and then recounts her own transforming ideas on standardized testing and the ways test scores have been misused to "punish kids, teachers, and schools and to mislead the public." In the process, she exposes the "institutionalized lying" behind the magical statewide jump in test scores.

More news for Ravitch watchers: She tells me she has split from the conservative Fordham and Hoover think tanks. Welcome news. Nice going, Diane.

The bad joke that was "Ed in '08"

In case you were wondering whether that $25 million or so that the Gates and Broad Foundations invested in ED in '08 paid off, Strong American Schools, which managed the program, is here to tell you that the campaign "has helped turn the need for education reform from a low-priority campaign issue into one of the Obama administration's top policy priorities." (Politics K-12)

Not SmallTalk

According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled. (NYT)

Pushing out the low-scoring kids

I worked at Robeson High back in 1996, with a group of teachers who were actually trying to keep kids like Demetrius Davis from dropping out, using small schools, personal connections, and any means necessary to keep them in school and off the streets. Now that testing rules the roost, the name of the game in Chicago is push out the low-scoring kids to save the school from sanctions.

Demetrius began the school year determined to graduate. But all this year he struggled academically. He’s had a lot working against him--a spotty history of attending school, partly because he’s been in and out of juvenile detention. He’s a dad already—with three kids. And his mom, a recovered drug addict, only recently began to advocate for him at school. Then at the start of the second semester at Robeson high this year, he got another blow. Robeson decided to kick him out. (WBEZ City Room)

Most New Yorkers dissatisfied with schools

... and have had enough of Bloomberg

Ed Sec. Arne Duncan keeps tooting the mayoral-control horn. But N.Y. residents, it seems, have had enough of Duncan's EEP bedfellow, Mayor Bloomberg. A NYT poll finds that 57% of them oppose legislation to lift term limits, allowing Bloomberg to run again.

In addition, some 51 percent say that the city is on the wrong track, while 40 percent say it is going in the right direction.

According to the survey, they are also dissatisfied with their schools.

And even though New York City’s public school students showed substantial gains on state math tests this year, particularly in the middle school grades, most people are dissatisfied with the quality of public schools.

Edwize has a different take on the math score gains.

The irony is that even those most New Yorkers want to get rid of him, Bloomberg "maintains tremendous advantages heading into November’s city election". Three reasons--money, lots of money, and more money.

Gates blew it on small schools

The Gates Foundation blew it when it decided not to support small schools any longer. Latest analysis from the Annenberg Institute shows that, "small schools, created with the backing of advocacy groups in the city [Oakland], have shown stronger academic performance, better school climate, and an improvement in how teachers view their schools’ professional culture, compared with larger schools studied over the same period." (EdWeek)

Also, see results from Springfield (OH) High School.

Squabbles tearing the "bedfellows" apart

EEP's house of cards

There appears to be trouble brewing in EEP land. The unprincipled alliance between the "strange bedfellows," N.Y. Chancellor Joel Klein, Rev. Al Sharpton, and Republican wing-nut, Newt Gingrich, now appears to be coming apart at the seams. Shortly after the trio appeared at the White House two weeks ago, along with Mayor Bloomberg and Sec. of Ed Arne Duncan, preaching to their small choir the gospel of school privatization and unlimited mayoral control, the wheels began coming off.

First Gingrich twittered that Obama's Supreme Court appointment, Sonia Sotomayor, was "a racist." This put Sharpton as well as Duncan in embarrassing positions. How could Duncan be seen on stage, embracing the wing-Newt at the same time the wing-Newt was going off on his boss' most important pick? While Gingrich was forced to "take back" his abusive statements about Sotomayor, his attacks on Obama's policies have become even more strident and Limbaugh-like.

Meanwhile, Sharpton refuses to support Bloomberg's mayoral-control push. This also distances him from Duncan who has been threatening districts with loss of stim dollars if they refuse to give (urban) mayors control of the schools.

What a tangled web we weave...

More from Levy

I had to chuckle reading the NYT this morning. There was an op-ed piece by former N.Y. Chancellor and Wall Street (Citigroup) lawyer, Harold Levy, offering us the "5 ways to fix schools." And here I always thought there were 7.

Levy, who obviously hadn't yet discovered the 5 ways while he was still in power, now wants to make it "mandatory" that all kids go to college for a year. I suppose he hopes that will keep them out of the job market and off the unemployment line for a while longer and hopes that the feds will pick up the cost of tuition ($8,000 average for state colleges and $25,000 for private). As for those kids who want to take a year off after high school, to work or travel? I suppose we could arrest their parents. How will this "fix" schools? Maybe Levy will tell us later.

Levy, you may recall, helped engineer the back-door shipment of $500K to Sharpton via hedge-fund school reformers DFER which apparently bought Sharpton's temporary allegiance to the "bedfellows" club at EEP.

Inside the Ownership Society

Summit in Detroit

I wasn't invited and couldn't have afforded the $ 1,500 registration fee if I was. But more than 60 of "smartest guys in the room" will speak at the Detroit Economic Club's National Summit, set for June 15-17 at the Detroit Marriott Renaissance Center. The topic--how to improve America's competitive position in the global economy with plenty to offer on public school reform. Citigroup Inc. CEO Vikram Pandit will keynote. Other chief executives planning to take part are: Harold McGraw III, of McGraw-Hill, and Steven Ballmer of Microsoft Corp. The summit is co-chaired by Ford Motor Co. Executive Chairman Bill Ford and Dow Chemical Co. Chief Executive Andrew Liveris. Jim Shelton will represent the DOE.

Several groups are planning to hold a People's Summit, including a "Tent City" outside the Renaissance Center.

Gates fund takes in $10.4m in donations

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's annual report says it brought in $10.4 million in individual donations in 2008, without even trying. That doesn't even count new money from Warren Buffett, who gave the world's richest foundation's trust about $1.8 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock last year. Gates people say, "it's not right to say yes to Buffett and no to everyone else" who wanted to throw money at us. (AP Wire).

Good Tweet

Gates says it's not small schools but it's effective teaching. I ask why either/or? Why not both? http://bit.ly/lDWCu (Tiomikel).

Gates abandoned small schools -- But not me!

Check out these Victoria, Texas grads
Or this small alternative in Portland

Kopp on Gates

TFA founder Wendy Kopp spoke recently at the Washington University commencement and offered gave us a glimpse into the top-down, save-the-world mentality of the power philanthropist:

A couple of years ago, Bill Gates gave a commencement speech in which he shared his regret with his professors at Harvard — which he attended for one year — that he hadn't been exposed to societal inequities earlier so that he would have had time to truly solve them. (Record)

Quotables

Obama's Cairo Speech

In ancient times and in our times, Muslim communities have been at the forefront of innovation and education. And this is important because no development strategy can be based only upon what comes out of the ground nor can it be sustained while young people are out of work (Full text here).

Couldn't have said it better, myself...

The City of Chicago, led by Mayor Daley and a vast and tumorous army of aldermen and bagmen and yesmen and opportunists and spineless, parasitic political-machine halfwits of forms never seen outside the roiling cesspool of governmental slop-trough greed, has proven itself unworthy of something as potentially delicious and fulfilling as the 2016 Olympic Games (Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Telander).

And don't forget, these are the guys Arne Duncan wants running schools in every district.

Dr. Tiller's assassin: "They're treating me like a criminal" (AP Wire).

Duncan, Sharpton tour, but where's Newt?

Who got to Gingrich...?

Was it just the already badly isolated Limbaugh Party leaders and/or the badly embarrassed conservative EEP faction of the Democrats as well? The latter haven't said a critical word about their new-found bedfellow, Newt, even while Republican leaders beg him to tone down his racist comments.

After initially waiting a few nanoseconds to call Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor a racist -- not to mention advising that she just ought to withdraw from consideration -- Newt Gingrich has had a sudden change of heart. (Gloria Berger, CNN)

...and why isn't he on the Duncan/Sharpton tour?

White education reformers were looking for a prominent African American to lend them credibility, while Sharpton needed the money because his non-profit, the National Action Network, was nearly broke. Considering the distastefulness of this financial back-scratching, it was surprising to see Sharpton received in the Oval Office -- alongside Newt Gingrich -- as an education visionary, just a few weeks after the donation story broke in the Daily News. And it's even more surprising, as Politico reports, that Sharpton and Education Secretary Arne Duncan will now be embarking on a five-city school reform tour. (Dana Goldstein, American Prospect)

Which is it -- public or private?

Michelle Obama, as she always does, gave a great, inspiring commencement speech yesterday to the graduating students at a D.C. charter school. My only question is, after yesterday's NLRB ruling-- why is the school named the Washington Math Science Technology Public Charter High School?

A set-back for charter school teachers

Charters are "private schools"

For years, the charter school lobbyists and management companies have been fending off charges of "privatization" by arguing that charter schools were "public schools." But once teachers begain signing union cards their lawyers advised them to change their tune.

Yesterday, the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) issued a highly-anticipated ruling on the jurisdictional disagreement that has stalled a unionization bid by teachers at three Civitas charter schools in Chicago. The board determined that as a for-profit agency, Civitas -- which is owned by the non-profit Chicago International Charter Schools (CICS) -- is a private entity. As a result, the organizing campaign must petition the NLRB, rather than the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board (IELRB). (Progress Illinois)

Small neighborhood schools making a difference in Philly

These findings indicate that making non-selective neighborhood high schools smaller could play a role in stemming the dropout tide, according to the report, called Going Small. “The data suggest that families are interested in small high schools and that these schools, across admissions categories, are beginning to make a difference for student engagement and achievement,” the report says. “In addition, small neighborhood high schools seem to be a promising option for reform of large neighborhood high schools.” (The Notebook)

San Diego backs off of school closings

"It is extremely irresponsible to go to families and communities just before the last week of school and say, 'Your school is not going to exist anymore,'" said school board member John Lee Evans, who introduced the motion to forgo closing schools next year. He added, "This kneejerk closing schools is definitely not the solution." (Voice of San Diego)

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.

Klein's charter invasion of Harlem

"Dictatorship with velvet gloves"

Some young bureaucrat from the city Education Department's Office of Portfolio Development arrives one day with a bunch of maps under his arm and promptly orders a new allocation of rooms. Boom. Done. All part of Klein's rush to create 100,000 new charter school seats over the next few years. Well, yesterday afternoon at Public School 123 in Harlem a bunch of angry parents staged a noisy protest against the charter invasion...Sadly, Bloomberg's style of mayoral control has become more like a dictatorship with velvet gloves (Juan Gonzalez, Daily News)

In an email, Leonie Haimson writes: "Except many of us do not see the velvet."

h/t Diane Ravitch, Leonie Haimson

Another Chicago "miracle" -- Orr High School

One thing about Arne Duncan, like his Chicago predecessor Paul Vallas, he has no trouble getting favorable ink, especially now that he is working off of Obama's credibility in the community.

Here, NYT's Sam Dillon offers more puff on Daley/Duncan's Chicago turnaround miracle at Orr High School where they've disbanded the small schools they themselves created. Instead they've handed over the entire high school to the management company, AUSL

Despite parent, student and community protests, lots of teachers were fired and replaced with other CPS teachers, many of them new with no urban experience. This time around there's a new "no excuses" principal who replaces the previous "no excuses" principals appointed by the same board.

Reform and turnaround programs are nothing new to Orr. They go back some 20 years with the same "reformers" claiming the same miracle results. I'm remembering how the old Continental Bank (now Bank of America) and the big foundations bankrolled the Orr Network back in the '90s, with tens of millions of dollars and a partnership with DePaul University in order to put a new face on Orr and attract the middle class to this rough-and-tumble West Humboldt Park neighborhood. But it's all been top-down and done TO teachers, not with them. I guess we'll just have to take Dillon's word for the success of the latest miracle.

Also read: "Before and after: Orr's turnaround through students' eyes" by Amy Weiss.

***

"But it’s not clear that the results of Duncan’s Chicago reforms justify taking his ideas to a national platform."

What's the bottom line on Daley/Duncan's Renaissance 2010 reform? Nothing to write home about writes Mathew Blake at Understanding Government:

The NAEP records show that CPS student performance was very poor in 2002 and did not improve by 2007. On the NAEP reading test, scored from 0-500, Chicago 8th graders got an average score of 249 in 2002. In 2007, they got an average score of 250. The nationwide average in 2007, by contrast, was 261. In 2002, 15 percent of all Chicago 8th graders were judged “proficient” at reading. In 2007, that number had increased by all of two percent — 17 percent of all Chicago 8th graders were judged proficient. Nationally, for 2007, 29 percent of all 8th graders were deemed proficient at reading.

h/t Julie at PURE

Trade-off on charters

While Illinois legislators failed once again to adequately fund public schools (see brother Fred's blog) they did find time, in a 45 to 10 vote, to raise the charter cap statewide from 60 to 12o (an additional 45 in Chicago). Not really a big deal since outside of Chicago, the current cap has never been approached. In Chicago, of course, they cheat anyway, handing over dozens of schools to private charter operators under the same charter.

The good news is that the pols opened the door for teacher collective bargaining rights in those charter schools.

Says Catalyst:

Part of the deal ensured that charter school teachers can unionize under the Illinois Education Labor Relations Act. The issue surfaced in the current union drive at three Chicago International Charter Schools, recently certified by the state’s labor board. In that case, Civitas, which operates the schools, challenged the certification to the National Labor Relations Board.

You will recall that Civitas is where they claimed that the NLRB had no jurisdiction because "charters are private schools."

INCS, the number-one cheerleader for bad charter schools with unqualified teachers, is not happy about the union victory. Departing INCS lead cheerleader Elizabeth Evans tells Russo:

We stood firm against teacher union leaderships’ demand that the rules for collective bargaining change and were able to pull that labor law provision out of the charter reform package. As a result, we were able to bring our strongest opposition to that unfair change. Unfortunately, we lost that fight but are well positioned, as the result of careful negotiating and strategy, to take up the fight against union efforts to shorten the school day and school year.

L.A. teachers on Day 6 of hunger strike

Who has the stomach for this?

"And the states that don't have the stomach or the political will, unfortunately, they're going to lose out."--Sec. of Education Arne Duncan.

If you want an example of what Duncan is trying to impose on school districts, look no further than his own district, Chicago. In letters to Russo, a teacher at Catalyst Charter offers hair-raising tales straight from the heart of Duncan/Daley's Renaissance 2010 program. Here's the latest update:

Ms. Cole, our principal informed 11 of us that she will not renew our contracts for 11, plus fired 6 staff over the year, and has instead retained un-certified teachers. She herself is not certified or experienced in any academic area.

Russo's response? He asks if unionization will be the nail in Catalyst's coffin. Alexander, it sounds like that nail has already been driven.

Turn schools over to private charter operators "or else"

Stimulus or blackmail?

Arne Duncan is feeling powerful these days. After 9 years of "yes boss" on Mayor Daley's plantation, Duncan now finds himself with $15 billion in stimulus money in his back pocket and cash-starved schools in front of him. So he's trying to force school districts into accepting the Gingrich, Klein, Sharpton (EEP) model of reform--turning schools over to privately managed charter operators--or else.

"We want to reward those states that are willing to lead the country where we need to go and are willing to push this reform agenda very, very hard," Duncan told the AP... "And the states that don't have the stomach or the political will, unfortunately, they're going to lose out," Duncan said. (NewsObserver.com)

Yeah, that'll work.

Weekend Quotables

State Rep. Cynthia Soto's bill was an attempt to pull in the reins on Chicago's Renaissance 2010 school closings. It passed the Senate with unanimous support, despite vocal opposition from Mayor Daley's lobbyists and CPS administrators. In a May 28th press release, Soto spelled out the reasoning behind House Bill 363:

"The Act will lead to a framework of fair standards and procedures for building, repairing, and closing Chicago schools," said Soto. "To this point, Chicago's lack of clear standards has created two different worlds in which are children are educated, which are grossly unequal." (Designs for Change)

***

The same Newt Gingrich who once said that bilingual education was like teaching “the language of living in a ghetto” tweeted that Sotomayor is a “Latina woman racist.” (NYT columnist Charles Blow)

***

This may be an oppressive, even fascistic charter school, the model of what neo-con George Will lovingly calls, "the new paternalism," but the misnamed American Indian school, does succeed in raising test scores. And after all, isn't this what public education for poor kids is all about?

Reporting from Oakland -- Not many schools in California recruit teachers with language like this: "We are looking for hard working people who believe in free market capitalism. . . . Multicultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply." (LA TIMES)

What happened to "the civil rights issue of the 21st century"?

Who's with Newt? EEP?

A week ago, race baiter Newt Gingrich was at the White House, lecturing Obama about education being the "civil rights issue of 21st century." He's one of the three top leaders and spokesman for the "no excuses" EEP education policy coalition, along with Joel Klein and Al Sharpton. Now Gingrich is joining conservative wing-nuts Limbaugh and Tancredo ("National Council of La Raza is equivalent to the KKK") in calling Judge Sotomayor a "racist".

So the question is: what brand of "civil rights" are Gingrich and his bedfellows in EEP really talking about? Fellow Republicans are running as fast as they can from Newt, hoping to salvage some credibility among Latino voters. But will Klein, Sharpton, Bloomberg, and Duncan (who spoke with Newt at the EEP White House rally) and the rest of the EEP leaders follow suit and repudiate?