More N.Y. charter teachers opt for union

Teachers at a N.Y. charter school, run by the for-profit chain Victory Schools, have opted to unionize.

Seventeen of the 19 teachers at the Bronx’s NYC Charter High School for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industries (AECI) signed union authorization cards, the UFT announced, and the union is petitioning the school’s board to recognize it as the teachers’ bargaining agent. (Gotham Schools)

The for-profit charter management company has become the main target of community protests as well. At the Merrick School in Queens, parents and teachers are demanding an end to Victory's management contract. The protesters are furious that Merrick Academy is spending $1.3 million in management fees on Victory Schools, a for-profit management company — that’s 25 percent of the school’s total annual budget, while they claim teachers and students are suffering. (Queens Chronicle)

Mary Anne Raywid

I'm deeply saddened to hear of the death of my good friend, mentor, and colleague Mary Ann Raywid. Mary Anne was a brilliant scholar and professor emerita of Educational Administration and Policy Studies at Hofstra University, well respected in her field and former president of the Society of Professors of Education and the Philosophy of Education Society. She was a great researcher and prolific writer. Her research focused on school reform and in particular small and alternative schools. Mary Anne was also kind enough to sit as a member of my doctoral dissertation committee and lend her critical eye and voice, for which I shall be ever grateful.

She spent her last years in Hawaii caring for her late husband Ray, but still continuing her work, helping to create small schools and schools built around native Hawaiian culture. She continued to teach in the College of Education at the University of Hawaii and sat on the board of the League of Women Voters in Honolulu.

QUOTABLES

Riding the Democratic Party horse

Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, in response to AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten's call for use of "multiple measures including student test scores" in evaluating teachers:

"When a Democratic administration, which obviously is the only horse the union has to ride, is pushing these kind of reforms, you have to go with the flow." (Washington Post)

Diane Ravitch: Secrets of charter success

If charters are going to be the models for public education in the future, we may have to roll back many civil rights laws and court decisions that prevent schools from excluding or limiting certain types of students. (Bridging Differences)

L.A. TIMES editorial asks:

"At what point do financial gifts begin reshaping public decision-making to fit a private agenda?" (Gifted Schools)

Wanted--a new brand name for Daley school closings

What ever happened to accountability?

As I have been pointing out for the past few months, the words Renaissance 2010 are rarely even uttered these days, either by Mayor Daley, his appointed schools chief Ron Huberman, or by Ed Sec. Duncan, who rode the myth of the "Chicago miracle" all the way to Washington. The parents of the failed school reform plan, Chicago's Civic Committee, haven't been heard from since their report last June ("Kids Left Behind") which called the Daley/Duncan reform, "abysmal."

Listen to WBEZ's Linda Lutton's latest report, Renaissance 2010: A Tainted Brand? which pretty much confirms what I've been saying. Interesting--Linda has one of the plan's architects, Greg Richmond, currently head of the National Assoc. of Charter School Authorizers, complaining that Ren10 was never supposed to be about massive school closings, but rather a new small-schools creation program. Was he naive? Misled?

Now that Ren10 is being seen for what it is; now that study after study is confirming the "abysmal" verdict; now that the current upsurge in student violence is being laid directly on Ren10's doorstep; now that the brand name has become a bloody flag for a growing community protest movement, Daley and Huberman still say they will continue with the plan, only this time under a different brand name.

What happened to accountability?

Stress factors

In Los Angeles County, where the unemployment rate hovers around 12 percent, anxiety is very real among the nearly 700,000 students enrolled at Los Angeles Unified School District, said Pia Escudero, director for school mental health services at LAUSD.

"We know that in Los Angeles County the economic situation is affecting several of our families," she said. "We have poverty, community violence, child abuse, domestic violence, and we know now that more families are struggling to put food on the tables."

While teachers and administrators are better equipped to identify anxiety and depression, dwindling state dollars takes away from services that could do more. (Daily Breeze)

IN THE MAILBOX

Hi,

I read your tweets and have just subscribed to your blog. I'm a teacher by trade, and I also sit on the school board of the largest school district in my county. I've been reading about RTTT and Arne Duncan as much as I can, and the more I read, the worse everything seems. I sent you the link to this TruthOut story, Obama's Betrayal of Public Ed? Arne Duncan and the Corporate Model of Schooling, by Twitter; I didn't notice it on your blog, but maybe you've already seen it.

A few days after I read that, this story ran in my local putrid rag on Sunday: Sonoma County school officials split over Race to the Top funds. You'll see a quote in the middle of the article from "Kate Walsh, president of the nonpartisan National Council on Teacher Quality." I looked them up on SourceWatch which says, "The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) is a nonprofit organization that 'advocates for reforms in a broad range of teacher policies at the federal, state, and local levels,' according to its website. In particular, NCTQ supports 'a more market-sensitive approach to the structure of the profession, in order to encourage a more equitable distribution of the finest teachers to the schools that need them the most and in the subject areas that are particularly difficult to fill.'" This is all the market stuff the TruthOut article was talking about.

Like I said, the more I read, the more scared I get. Maybe I'm hyper-paranoid, but I think "they" want to dismantle public ed and make it all free-market, of which a by-product would be no more unions. Appalling.

Keep writing! We need people like you to spread the word.

Laura Gonzalez

Chicago meeting demands end to school closings

300 parents and teachers met over the weekend to demand an end mayoral control of the schools and especially to school closings under Mayor Daley's Renaissance 2010 policies. Daley and his appointed schools boss, Ron Huberman, are expected to announce a new round of closings this month. (Chicago Catalyst)

WBEZ interviews one of those teachers, Carol Caref from Chicago Vocational Career Academy, who fears all staff at her South Side high school may soon be replaced in a so-called turnaround. CVCA was one of the receiver schools that saw a spike in school violence directly as a result of Ren10 school closings of other area high schools.

IN THE MAILBOX

From Lyn DeLorme, North Dakota Study Group

Dear NDSG 2010 participants:

The reading for this year's NDSG meeting is Mike Rose's 2009 "Why School? Reclaiming Education for All of Us," a thin (144 pages) but powerful book that looks at contemporary American education. You can order your copy at:

http://www.amazon. com/Why-School- Mike-Rose/ dp/1595584676.

Or, you can pick up a copy from your local library. Look forward to rich conversations about the reading, and about so much more.

NDSG planning committee

--
Lyn DeLorme
Instructional Designer
North Dakota State University
Distance & Continuing Education
1919 N. University Drive
Office: SGC D125

Mailing Address:
NDSU Distance & Continuing Education
Dept. 2020
PO Box 6050
Fargo ND 58108-6050

701-231-6371 (direct)
701-231-7016 (fax)
http://www.ndsu. nodak.edu/ dce

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Bush's Texas buddy & NCLB hustler Kress on Duncan's Race To The Top

"They're using the carrot - we used the stick," chuckled Sandy Kress, who negotiated No Child Left Behind with Congress on behalf of the Bush White House. "I'm rooting for them." (SF Gate)

Me: According to the Texas Observer, "Kress has been teaching businesses to turn a profit helping schools meet the mandates of No Child Left Behind. In the process, he’s made about $4 million in lobbying contracts, in large part from companies that profit from provisions of the law he helped to design." Enough said.

L.A. has more than 160 charter schools, far more than any other U.S. city

"The union's position on charters has evolved over time," said UTLA Vice President Gregg Solkovits. "I think that the best way to describe our position now is, it's not so much a question of charter or no charter but is it the best school for all students, including special education students, including English language learners?" (L.A. Times Special Report)

To charter--a verb

Ted Kolderie was one of the early charter school pioneers. But his vision of charter schools appears to be at odds with semi-religious charter advocates who swear they are a panacea.

‘To charter’ is a verb; chartering is a platform on which teachers and others create schools. A chartered school is not a kind of school; at least not in terms of its approach to learning. (Eduwonk)

Me: Charters were originally created by teachers. Pretty rare these days, Ted. How come?

MORE MAIL

This from Monty Neill from the North Dakota Study Group

Bill Schechter, a teacher in MA, forwarded this to me, with a comment.

Monty,
On January 3, the New York Times published an interesting article about "Teach for America." Based on a study done by Stanford sociologist Doug McAdam. See link below. The study concluded that Teach for America volunteers were actually less likely to remain civically engaged after their 2-year than their peers who has been accepted into the program but declined or those who dropped before their commitment had been fulfilled. [See my post from January 4, 2010--m.k.]

That was interesting enough, but there was a strange paragraph in the Times story, strange in that an intriguing and important reference was not explained in the remainder of the story. The story comprised 21 paragraphs. The fourth read as follows:

"The reasons for the lower rates of civic involvement, Professor McAdam said, include not only exhaustion and burnout, but also disillusionment with Teach for America’s approach to the issue of educational inequity, among other factors."

What was it, I wondered, that turned some volunteers off from "Teach for America's approach to economic inequality"? I decided to email Dr. McAdam and ask him. I got his email address from the Stanford web site but also learned he was on leave. Sure enough, my email received a prompt response; "I will be out of the office until..."

Then to my surprise I received this reply today:

"Dear Bill Schechter,

Roughly 20% of the TFA “graduates” in our study reported that they came to be “disillusioned” by the TFA approach. Without follow up interviews it’s hard to know exactly what they meant by that, but my impression is that many TFA teachers came to see the issue of educational inequality as much more complicated and far more structural than the TFA approach would suggest. So while laudable, putting well meaning college grads in 2,000 resource poor schools was not going to meaningfully address the more intractable issue of educational inequality. Hope this helps. Doug McAdam"

http://www.nytimes. com/2010/ 01/04/education/ 04teach.html? scp=2&sq=teach%20for% 20america&st=cse

IN THE MAILBOX

From Chicago's Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE)

Hi Mike,

Thanks for posting this.With the weather against us yet again, we need to really promote this to get the kind of turnout Daley will notice.

Last Winter, The Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) asked Chicagoans to attend a community forum and voice their grievances against Renaissance 2010. There was a blizzard and over 500 people still showed up. This year, CORE will be hosting another community forum, where they will unveil their slate of officers who will run against Marilyn Stewart and the UPC Machine in the May 2010 Chicago Teachers Union elections. CORE will also be hosting workshops where they will teach you how to fight and win! 10 AM-1 PM. Malcom X College 1900 W. Van Buren 60612. Parking Available off Jackson. Refreshments and childcare will be provided. $10 suggested donation. CPS is gearing up to announce what schools it intends to close, it's time to gear up the effort to stop them.
Joe Linehan
CORE

Quotables

Minn. math teacher to Obama: "Don't explain..."

As part of her recognition, Barbara Stoflet met with Obama for three minutes, time they took to talk about the importance of math and science for girls, she said. Obama asked her how best to explain math problems to his daughters, and her response was: "Don’t explain it to them. Let them explain it to you." (Politico44)

On the backs of teachers

“A lot of charter schools are doing their work on the backs of teachers willing to work their hearts out,” says the University of Chicago’s Timothy Knowles, whose Urban Education Institute manages a handful of charter schools. “Class sizes are big, numbers of classes taught are often excessive, basic working conditions are poor, salaries are low, and benefits are worse than those in the traditional public system.” (Russo article in Harvard Education Letter)

Rockford teacher diversity

“The Caucasian population in the district is the minority,” [Executive Director of Schools Earl] Hernandez said. “We’re predominately Latin and African-American, yet the makeup of our staff is predominately Caucasian.” The student makeup is about 38 percent white, 30 percent black and 23 percent Hispanic — compared with about 88 percent of the faculty that’s white, according to the Illinois State Board of Education. (RRStar.com)

Obama's $250 million for math/science

Looking back, it seems that whenever we are at war, school funding shifts from humanities to math/science and from small to large schools. This shift has less to do with pedagogy than it does with production.

View from right field

Conservatives Finn, Petrilli and the boys at the Fordham Institute think-tank are rightfully impressed by union-supported teachers in L.A. applying to run new schools being outsourced under LAUSD's reform plan. In the latest Gadfly, they claim that this move towards teacher empowerment is merely a response to the threat of competition from charter schools.

Competition, the universal motivator They're working 24/7 to write management proposals for the LAUSD competition. "For the first time we're trying to show that we can, as teacher-educators, build a school that will benefit our children because we know our children best," says Josephine Miller, a first-grade teacher at Hillcrest Drive Elementary, a school deemed "failing." It seems that teachers are both energized by the competition--and determined to prevent their schools from turning charter and being run by independent organizations. Too bad it took the threat of actually being held accountable for teachers to sit up and take notice of their schools' shortcomings and what they might to do rectify these. Better late than never, however.

There's a kernel of truth is their assertion that L.A. teachers are responding to threats of privatization, school closings, and mass teacher firings, although this is certainly not "the first time." But crediting ownership society assaults with energizing resistant teachers is a bit like crediting southern segregationists for the Civil Rights Movement.

In fact, teachers were creating and running new small schools, including charters, long before the current wave of takeovers, turnarounds and privatization. If anything, the latter was a reactive move on the part of conservative, anti-teacher/anti-union groups and think tanks like Fordham. They were (are) the ones acting in fear of the democratic reform movement of the late '80s and early '90s. Hopefully, now teachers are once again pushing back.

Yes, better late than never.

One positive turnaround alternative

The lead story in the Jan. 6 Edweek ("Focus on Instruction Turns Schools Around") examines an alternative to the punitive assaults on low-performing or struggling schools, being pushed under Race To The Top.

Strategic Learning Initiatives is a Chicago-based staff development and support group who's approach includes helping teams of teachers develop sound instructional strategies. SLI is one of many such organizations that grew out of the early Chicago school-reform movement. It's program aims to empower teachers rather than blame them for low student test scores or use test score-based merit pay as a material incentive.

Results have been impressive, especially when compared with the dismal results of school closings and re-opening as privately-managed charter schools under the Mayor's Renaissance 2010 plan.

Writes Edweek's Dakarai Aarons:

What Strategic Learning did with the struggling schools, says its chief executive officer, John Simmons, was “not rocket science.” But it worked, according to an evaluation by the Washington-based American Institutes for Research. And the approach the group took offers some lessons as states and districts confront the need to turn around the nation’s lowest-performing schools.

“The results that SLI has achieved, and that AIR has validated, are very impressive and suggest that well before decisions are made to reconstitute schools under the mandates of [the federal No Child Left Behind Act], school districts would be wise to consider far less drastic, but clearly powerful, interventions such as the Focused Instruction Process,” wrote AIR analysts Steven Leinwand and Sarah Edwards in their July evaluation.

Quotables

What's happened to N.Y. small schools movement?

“The bureaucratic proliferation of small schools feels more like a management strategy,” said Michelle Fine, a Distinguished Professor of Urban Education at the City University of New York and longtime small schools supporter. (Neighborhood Beat Box)

Failed two classes

"Not only did the Bloomberg/Klein machine fail math, but they fail basic human decency." (Alan Singer at Huffington)

Charter schools--public or private?

A federal appeals court has ruled that an Arizona charter school is not a "state actor" for purposes of federal civil rights law.

"Horizon is a private entity that contracted with the state to provide students with educational services that are funded by the state," Judge Sandra Ikuta explained. "Ultimately, Horizon's actions and personnel decisions were 'made by concededly private parties, and turn[ed] on judgments made by private parties without standards established by the state,'" Ikuta added, citing Supreme Court precedent. (Courthouse News Service)

There, he said it...

Last week I posed this question: "It's 2010, Mayor Daley. Do you know where your Renaissance 2010 is?" Could it be that my blog post prodded the mayor to finally drag Ren10 out of the closet?

After nearly a year without mentioning the words, "Renaissance 2010", Daley and his Chicago schools manager Ron Huberman informed the media that they will continue the failed school-closing initiative indefinitely.

"We'll always continue," Daley told a group of educators and reporters at a news conference. "I hope there's a chapter two [of Renaissance 2010], a chapter three, a chapter four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10."

This despite several major studies and reports, including one by the Civic Committee--architects of Ren10--showing that the so-called "reform" plan has been an "abysmal failure."

Chicago Teachers Union officials and some parents have complained about children being shuffled from school to school, teachers being displaced, and spikes in violence at schools forced to absorb kids from closed schools. Some call the initiative an attempt to "privatize" the system with outside operators and "gentrify" struggling neighborhoods. (Chicago Sun-Times)

CES seeks new director

With the departure of Lewis Cohen, the Coalition of Essential Schools is searching for a new executive director.

THREE CLASSROOM TEACHERS ASK YOU TO SPEAK OUT

Please forward--M.K.

AN OPEN LETTER

TO THE ADMINISTRATION & FACULTY

OF THE HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

- JANUARY 4, 2010 -

The Harvard Graduate School of Education pursues the goal of training leaders in the field, and will soon offer a new degree in educational leadership. The school's website mission statement reads as follows:

Mission

To prepare leaders in education and to generate knowledge to improve student opportunity, achievement, and success.

Overview

Education touches every aspect of human activity. At the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), we believe studying and improving the enterprise of education are central to the health and future of society.

Since its founding in 1920, the Ed School has been training leaders to transform education in the United States and around the globe. Today, our faculty, students, and alumni are studying and solving the most critical challenges facing education: student assessment, the achievement gap, urban education, and teacher shortages, to name just a few. Our work is shaping how people teach, learn, and lead in schools and colleges as well as in after-school programs, high-tech companies, and international organizations. The HGSE community is pushing the frontiers
of education, and the effects of our entrepreneurship are improving the world.

As veteran public school teachers, we are disappointed that the HGSE has not shown the leadership it professes by speaking out against the unprecedented attack on public education. To be sure, there have been courageous voices on your faculty who have defended public schools and the endangered idea of educating the whole child. We know that a thoughtful faculty does not think with one mind, and that there will always be differences about what constitutes the most effective pedagogies or curricula. But we have not heard the HGSE as an institution speak out on issues fundamental to the educational well-being of children and their schools.

These issues include:

. The over-testing of students, beginning as early as 3rd grade, and the misuse of single, imperfect high-stakes standardized assessment instruments like MCAS;

. The expansion of charters through funding formulas that divert resources from those urban and rural public schools charged with educating our most challenged children;

. The stripping away of art, music, critical thinking, creativity, experiential learning, trips, and play periods-of joy itself-from schools so that they might become more effective test preparation centers;

. The use of state curriculum frameworks-and soon, possibly, national standards to narrow and standardize our schools, an effort that only encourages increasing numbers of affluent middle class parents to seek out for their children the same private schools that so many "reformers" have already chosen for theirs;

. The cynical insistence that all schools be equal in a society whose social and economic policies make us increasingly unequal;

. Merit pay proposals that deny and undermine the essentially collaborative nature of teaching;

. And finally, the sustained media vilification of hard-working, dedicated public school teachers.

These depressing developments have intensified over the past fifteen years. They violate the first principles of humane and progressive education, as we understand them.

We are proud to have served as teachers in the commonwealth where public education began a century before the country itself was founded and where Horace Mann reinvented it a century and a half ago. We have many wonderful public schools in Massachusetts that can serve as models for all schools. No child in our state deserves any less. Certainly all deserve more than a parched vision of standardization and incessant testing. A global economy demands more than multiple-choice thinking. Most importantly, human beings require more.

. HGSE administration and faculty, we need you to speak out in defense of our public system of education and against abuses that have been allowed to pass silently as reforms. We need you to remind our leaders, administrators, parents and students-all of us-what it means to be educated.

As young teachers, we were inspired by the words of John Holt, Herbert Kohl, Joseph Featherstone, A.S. Neill, and Paulo Friere. Later, we would read the works of Deborah Meier, Diane Ravitch, Ted Sizer, and Jonathan Kozol. These were powerful voices to encounter. Now we need to hear your voice.

The time for Veritas is now.

Thank you.

Larry Aaronson, Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, 37 years (retired) Teacher of the Year (Class of 2007) Recipient, Key to the City of Cambridge for "Outstanding Service" (Mayor) Recipient, Special Cambridge City Council Citation Mentor, Student teachers from the HGSE, 1985-2005

Ann O'Halloran, Boston & Newton Public Schools, 30 years (retired) Massachusetts History Teacher of the Year, 2007 (DOE) Finalist, National History Teacher of Year, 2007 Honorable Mention, Massachusetts History Teacher of the Year, 2006 (DOE) Friend of Education, 2009 (Newton Teachers Association)

Bill Schechter, Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, 35 years (retired) METCO Recognition Awards, 2001-2005 (L-S METCO Program) "Outstanding Educator" Award, 2002 (Cornell University) Faculty Recognition Award (Class of 1992) Finalist, Lucretia Mott Award, 1986 (DOE) Horace Mann Grant, 1984 (DOE)

larindge@aol. com ohalloran.ann@ verizon.net schech@rcn.com

Rethinking education as the practice of freedom

Henry Giroux on Paulo Freire

Freire understood quite keenly that democracy was threatened by a powerful military-industrial complex and the increased power of the warfare state, but he also recognized the pedagogical force of a corporate and militarized culture that eroded the moral and civic capacities of citizens to think beyond the common sense of official power and its legitimating ideologies... At a time when education has become one of the official sites of conformity, disempowerment and uncompromising modes of punishment, the legacy of Paulo Freire's work is more important than ever before. (Truthout)