After a decade of NCLB and Florida test madness...

After a decade of No Child Left Behind, where the total focus was on standardized testing and FCAT, after test-crazed govs Bush and Scott, after millions spent on Michelle Rhee's consulting and $250 million more to  NCS Pearson to administer and score the FCAT through the end of 2013.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/04/2783911/whos-accountable-for-the-fcat.html#storylink=cpy

Florida's writing scores plummeted once again.

Passing scores in eighth grade fell from 82 percent to 33 percent. Tenth graders taking the test saw a similar drop in success. While 80 percent passed the test last year, only 38 percent scored a 4 or above on a 6-point scale this time

Students can be retained in third grade if they don’t pass their FCAT. They will be denied high school graduation if they don’t pass their FCAT. For the first time ever, 50 percent of teachers’ evaluations will be based on student FCAT scores. Two out of three negative (or two negative in a row) mean the unemployment line. As of 2014, the scores will also determine pay. Schools will, as always, be assigned a letter grade based on student FCAT performance — only now the test is harder and the proficiency scores are higher, meaning hundreds of schools in Miami-Dade County alone expect to drop as much as two letter grades. -- Miami Herald

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/04/2783911/whos-accountable-for-the-fcat.html#storylink=cpy

So the reformers brain storm and come up with this great idea to solve the problem. Hey, let's just lower the required passing score 4.0 to 3.5; a reduction that would dramatically increase the number of students having passing scores. Brilliant!

Under the lower standards, 48 percent of fourth graders, 52 percent of eighth graders and 60 percent of 10th graders would have passed the test. Though improved, the passing percentage is still at least 20 points lower than 2011 scores. -- News4Jax.com

Here's an even better idea. Why not stop all the testing madnes and let the teachers teach writing. So crazy it just might work. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Rupert Murdoch (left) with his boy, Joel Klein.

Joel Klein's email dump

For me, the other interesting point is that they are so afraid of any criticism. They are especially afraid of Deborah Meier, me and Jonathan Kozol. They refer to columns by Deborah Meier and myself–she an educator with decades of experience, I a historian with a long view–as “moronic” and “idiotic.” They refer to Jonathan Kozol and me as “deranged crackpots.” How can anyone take these mean-spirited, ignorant, arrogant people seriously? -- Diane Ravitch, "Something scary happened last night."

More Klein dump

“Who’s the heavy breather on the call?” wrote a participant, whose name was redacted. “Normally, I’d ask them to mute their phone but I don’t want to alienate any donors.” “Some overweight billionaire,” Mr. Klein replied. -- New York Times

Explore Charter student, Amiyah Young

“It’s a bit weird,” Amiyah said of the school’s racial composition. “All my friends are predominantly black, and all the teachers are predominantly white. I think white kids go to different schools. I don’t know. I haven’t seen many white people in a big space before.” -- NY Times, "Why Don't We Have Any White Kids?"

A decade of disaster

UFT Prez Mike Mulgrew told more than 1,000 union members attending the United Federation of Teachers' spring conference that Mayor Bloomberg has presided over "a decade of disaster." "It's almost as if we're running a shadow government to make up for the failures of the management that is not there for our school system," Mulgrew said. -- NECN.com

...But we'll never turn back

DANNY LYON Photo

Civil Rights Series, SNCC workers stand outside funeral: Emma Bell, Dorie Ladner, Dona Richards, Sam Shirah, and Doris Derby, 1963

Remembering the old Civil Rights Movement freedom song:

We've been 'buked and we've been scorned,
We've been talked about sure's you're born
But we'll never turn back
No, we'll never turn back

Anthony Cody: Building the Common Ground

Anthony Cody,  one of the organizers of last summer's SOS march in D.C., shares some tactical advice and raises good questions about movement-building. His latest EdWeek blog piece ("Finding Common Ground to Build the Movement Against High Stakes Tests") should be read as companion piece to Deb Meier's post yesterday on her Bridging Differences blog ("The Left Wing of the Possible"). As a lead up to the Aug. 3-5 Peoples Platform Convention in August, both Cody and Meier express concern over the sectarian tone taken and some tendencies of movement people to confuse friends and foes in arguing for their positions.

Rahm is soooo happy...

"This is the job I’ve wanted. This is the happiest I’ve ever been in public life."  -- Rahm Emanuel

Yes it's viva la vida for the little autocrat. Closing schools and turning them over to his turnaround cronies at AUSL. Running down to Springfield to lead a fight to cut teachers' pensions and health care for the elderly. Closing libraries and mental health clinics. Busting the unions. Entertaining the NATO war makers at taxpayer expense. Yes, life is just one big party for the mayor.

When asked Thursday during a sit-down interview about what's been the highlight of the past year, he quickly rattles off education gains as he notes "test scores have gone up" and a "school system that very much respects our teachers and kids." Of course Emanuel makes little mention of the teacher’s union labor unrest and a contract about to expire on June 30. -- Ward Room

Deb Meier's latest

Deb Meier

In her latest post on her Bridging Differences blog, ("The Left Wing of the Possible") Deborah Meier poses the question to Diane Ravitch: "How best to fight back?"

There are many ways, says Deb. She gives two examples of vehicles for starting and re-framing the national discussion around education, a discussion that so far, both political parties have been trying to avoid. The Democrats appear caught between their DFER hedge-fund reform wing on one side and the two large teacher unions with their millions of voting members on the other. The Republicans seem to have only only two points in their platform, cut taxes and bust the unions.

Deb, who is an elected member of the Save Our Schools (SOS) national steering committee offers this as her first example:

SOS (Save Our Schools) is holding a "People's Convention" Aug. 3-5 at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel in Washington D.C. Our plan? To come together around a small list of actionable planks—ones we wish the two political party conventions would adopt. We're not pretending they will, but we are also not claiming they couldn't. Our purpose: To begin to outline what the "other way" might involve if we turned away from No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, our standardized testing obsession and, above all, the gradual privatization of the American public education experiment.

Her second example is a Manifesto drafted by members of the North Dakota Study Group. Writes Deb:

Started in 1972 by Vito Perrone, the NDSG has met every year since. Brenda Engel, a retired Lesley College faculty member, was there at the start. She volunteered to put together a draft manifesto representing our priorities. After lots of back and forth, it is now available for public comment:

In recent weeks several local organizations, including the Chicago-based group of academics and researchers called CReATE, a group of 1460 N.Y. principals, and the March 30th Open Letter to the New York State Regents from New York State Professors Against High Stakes Testing, have all issued similar statements critical of current education policies. Most focus on opposition to the misuse of testing in school and teacher evaluation. Others hit at corporate reform policies of privatization of public schools and the erosion of public decision making, exemplified by the attack on union rights, vouchers and charter schools, and the re-segregation of public schools.

As the lead paragraph of the NDSG Manifesto describes it:

 Many of our country's enduring dilemmas are the products of inequalities in power and wealth created by social class, race, culture, and sexism. Challenges exist inside and outside the education system. Although the society has made visible historic progress on many fronts, our nation's most pressing educational problem remains the opportunity gap between the children of the haves and those of the have-nots; this gap has grown with the mounting social inequality of the last 40 years. 

 With all that said and written, now comes the really difficult part. How can we begin to unite this locally-based and fragmented movement around some of these basic, common, democratic ideals and images of schooling? And how can we use whatever interest is generated by the upcoming national elections to create new possibilities for change?

More on this to come. 

No "payoff" so D.C. cuts "investment" in school libraries

Whittier School parents struggled successfully in 2010 for a school library

Taking their cue from Chicago's mayor, D.C. officials are proposing to get rid of 34 school librarians in the 2012-2013 academic year as part of a cost-cutting measure proposed by Chancellor Kaya Henderson.
Henderson, who replaced Michelle Rhee as D.C. schools chancellor, had this to say in a discussion with a local reporter:

“We have invested in full-time librarians for the last three or four years and we haven't seen the kind of payoff we'd like” with reading test scores, Henderson countered, adding she is not disparaging librarians. "We have pulled away from programs where we haven't received a return on our investment.”  -- Washington Post

What kind of "payoff" was Henderson looking for? Test scores of course. Standardized test scores, which correlate more with poverty that anything else going on in schools, have now become the one and only standard for public investment in schools. We're looking at the obvious here. The poorest of inner-city schools will continue to see cuts in that "investment."

Washingtonians would do well to take their cue from the Chicago parents who occupied this city's Whittier School for months, successfully demanding a library. There are still some 160 CPS schools with no library.

RahmPublican

What Rahm must be thinking: Hey, this is great. It's like I'm back in the White House -- embracing the GOP, attacking teachers unions, their pensions and health care, closing mental health clinics, and warring on NATO protesters -- all on the same day.

Testifying before a House committee, Emanuel called for a 10-year holiday on paying cost-of-living increases in Chicago's four pension funds and other government retirement systems around the state. That freeze would apply to both current workers and those who already have retired.

As for Rahm's Teacher Appreciation Day pat on the head, the Reader's Ben Joravsky writes:

Apparently, Mayor Emanuel's appreciation for teachers is a little like his affinity for the principles of the Democratic Party... He's certainly not shown much appreciation for Chicago's public school teachers... Having already cut their pay, he's ordering them to work longer for less, while converting more unionized schools into lower-paying, nonunion charters and playing hardball in contract negotiations. It sure looks like he's itching for a strike. All in the name of helping the kids, of course.

Morello raging against Rahm

Then, just to top off his fine RahmPublican day, he ordered the nation's largest Nurse's Association's march permit pulled, claiming that 1,000 nurses marching to Daley Plaza would provide a "security threat." The mayor's people claim they are worried about the size of the crowd supporting the nurses.

Thousands are expected in the Plaza, especially with the addition of Rage Against The Machine rocker Tom Morello, as his solo act The Nightwatchman, to the rally's entertainment roster.

I can't wait to see what happens the next time Rahm is under a nurse's care.

“And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!”

Maurice Sendak is gone. But we should make Max's cry from Where the Wild Things Are, the thme of the upcoming SOS People's Platform Convention, Aug. 3-5 in D.C. 

The Recruiting of High Scoring Students Award goes to...

Here's one reason for the gap.

To determine the Best High Schools national rankings, schools were first analyzed at the state level in terms of how well students in each school performed on state assessments. -- U.S. News

I find it implausible that The School for the Talented and Gifted in Dallas should be named the "top public high school in the country." While I'm sure it's a perfectly good school for those students it selects, I find the name to be presumptuous.  After all, aren't all of our children talented and gifted in different way? Of course by talented and gifted, they mean, high-scoring on standardized tests. OK then why not just face up to the fact that you are only teaching kids who score high and then reaping awards from some business mag for having students with high test scores.

Among U.S. News' top 20 high schools are four charter schools, "which usually accept a limited number of students through an application process and are also exempt from some of the government regulations of other public schools." Charters have also become infamous for screening out English Language Learners and kids with disabilities. Two others on the U.S. News list are magnet schools, "which use an application process that typically involves test scores and grade point averages to attract the most talented students in a region."

This ranking system is little more than a marketing system. One that matches perfectly with Arne Duncan's Race To the Top approach to school funding and improvement. It can only lead to the reproduction of all the basic inequities our society faces with the end result being a two-tier system of schooling -- one tier for the elite and another, with few resources and little chance for success.

Teacher Appreciation Week? Forget it...

Obama proclaims it, "Nat'l Charter School Week. 

Snub is one more reason to come to the People's Platform Convention in D.C. Aug. 3-5 and have our voices heard.

Race To the Top. Guess who won?

Thanks 10 years and $1 Trillion worth of  NCLB! Thanks Race To The Top! Thanks Arne Duncan!

Teacher Appreciation Weekend Quotables

Dr. Shaq gets Ph.D. from Barry Univ. "Thank you Google..."

Push-back on Pearson

“This is something complex and we don’t like seeing it taken out of human hands,” said Barbara Madeloni, who runs the university’s high school teacher training program. “We are putting a stick in the gears.” -- NY Times

Primer on ALEC

"The ALEC agenda is today the “reform” agenda for education." -- Diane Ravitch

Now the charter school operators are saying it...

"Over-reliance on a single high-stakes assessment is a fundamentally illegitimate tool with which to answer the question that is on everybody's mind — or ought to be — and that is: What does it mean to be an educated person?" -- L.A. charter school co-founder Marcos Aguilar

New studies show, it's Rahm who needs a longer school day

"Research, schmeesearch!"

But the extended day approach being implemented in many schools as a result of the department’s push to increase instructional time falls short. It largely ignores the deep body of research on what makes effective expanded learning. Instead, too many schools are merely adding another hour or so of regular class time onto the school day. Not surprisingly, two very recent studies suggest we might not accomplish much with this approach to improving schools. -- Washington Post

Excuse me, Mr. Mayor. Did you see that there's more "new" research -- two new studies, in fact -- "flashing warning signs about the move to extend the school day."  Of course there's really nothing new here as I've been reporting for months now. 

Now I know you're not a big ed research guy and prefer repeating things planted in your noggin by people like Jonah Edelman of Stand For Children. Remember? He was the guy who told you that if your cousin lived in Houston, he/she would get three more years of education because of their longer day. What a load of crap that turned out to be.

Houston schools are floundering and parents there are also pushing back on longer school day plans. Your poll ratings are plummeting. Parents and teachers are rebelling against your imposed 7.5-hour day and you have become the poster boy for getting rid of mayoral control of the schools. Even Mayor Daley is bright enough to make some political hay over this at your expense.

Stop everything and read, Mr. Mayor. 

Obama Calls for DREAM Act Passage

“‘No’ is not an option. I want to sign the DREAM Act into law. I’ve got the pens all ready. I’m willing to work with anybody who is serious to get this done, and to achieve bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform that solves this challenge once and for all.” -- Barack Obama

Mybe this time around, with elections coming up, a large Latino swing vote in the balance, and no Rahm Emanuel in the White House to block it, The Dream Act can pass. Rubio's sham version can't even get traction within his own party. But with Obama's attempt to go "bipartisan", there's no telling what the final watered-down version of the bill might look like.

Kent State

Troops roll through Kent St. May 4, 1970

42 years ago today, following Nixon's invasion of Cambodia, National Guard troops fired on peaceful student anti-war protesters at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine. We had become, as the Presidential Commission on Campus Unrest put it, “a nation driven to use the weapons of war upon its youth.”

Today, as survivors of the Kent State massacre call for a new investigation into the shootings, the drums of war are beating again with Chicago the focus of another gathering storm.  Rahm Emanuel, with little more in mind that filling the hotels of his friends and cronies, has invited the war makers to town for their NATO summit. Once more, thousands are expected to take part in peaceful protests. As they did 42 years ago, the government is preparing to meet these protests with violence.

By next week, the downtown area of Chicago will be under virtual martial law. Thousands of heavily-armed federal troops and police are being massed against the demonstrators. Constitutional rights are being suspended. They're talking about special prisons being opened to hold thousands of protesters. Warnings have gone out that any civilian aircraft caught in the "no-fly zone" will be shot down. Downtown businesses, supposedly the beneficiaries of Rahm's great scheme, will be sealed off and put out of business during the Summit.

The cost for all this will amount to hundreds of millions of dollars

No nation can make war on others without ultimately making war on its own people. Something to consider as we reflect back on the Kent State massacre.

Building a bridge between teachers and parents

On last night's panel at DePaul were (right to left in photo) Monica Espinoza and Joanna Brown from Logan Square Neighborhood Association, Lynn Morton from Community Organizing and Family Issues, Julie Woestehoff from PURE, Wendy Kattan from Raise Your Hand, and Latrice Watkins, LSC chair of Piccolo Elementary, who led the Occupy Piccolo protest earlier this year (Cecile Carrol from Blocks Together arrived after this pic was taken).

Catalyst reports a growing connection being built between the Chicago Teachers Union and local parent groups. 

In recent weeks, teachers at dozens of schools have made efforts to reach out to parents about issues ranging from the longer school day and school funding to class sizes to teacher pay. The latest efforts represent a new target for outreach, as the Chicago Teachers Union has long collaborated with the city’s grassroots parent groups. Julie Woestehoff, the director of Parents United for Responsible Education, noted that her group was founded by parents who wanted to support the last teachers’ strike, in 1987, and believed that “politicians and bureaucrats weren’t doing their job.” Woestehoff spoke at a panel held for DePaul University teacher candidates on Wednesday.

See more on last night's panel at DePaul on PURE's blog.
Thanks to DePaul Colleague Diane Horwitz who organized the event. 

The Empire Strikes Back

Emanuel/Daley rift sharpens

Smiling faces...

The rift surfaced back in November. Actually, autocrat Rahm started it with his pokes at his predecessor.

His line of attack has been the longer school day initiative. His education plan is essentially a continuation of the failed Daley/Duncan reforms, previously known as Renaissance 2010 -- school closings in under-served  communities, turning neighborhood schools over to private charter school management companies, attacking teacher collective-bargaining rights and pensions.

None of these things has ever produced any significant improvement in measurable student learning. In fact, during the past two decades of mayoral control of the schools, the so-called "achievement gap" has grown wider. 

In response, Rahm claims  it's all because Mayor Daley didn't push for a longer school day -- a plan that has no basis in ed research and one that is being met with growing opposition among parents and teachers. The Daley faction is furious over Rahm's attempt to diminish the Daley legacy. I guess they feel Daley has diminished it enough on his own by selling off the parking meters to Morgan Stanley (his brother's bank) and the UAR in exchange for a retirement job with the law firm that swung the deal.

On Tuesday, Daley slapped at the longer school day plan, claiming that what we really needed was "quality instructions" [sic].  Today, Rahm and his boy Ald. O'Connor slapped back, calling Daley a "flip-flopper."

But this is more than a petty squabble among Chicago machine factions. Rahm seems to be making enemies everywhere he goes. His approval ratings are plummeting. The Obamas hate him. Nancy Pelosi flew into Chicago and sided with Jesse Jackson in his fight with Emanuel. Then Obama pulled the G8 Summit from Chicago without consulting with Rahm. And now the feds have put Chicago under virtual martial law in the run-up to the NATO protests -- discrediting Rahm's claim that there would be business as usual down in the loop.

In the midst of current contract negotiations with the teachers union and a growing community-based resistance to Rahm's top-down "reforms", it's a rift worth paying attention to by the CTU and ed activists.

Daley strikes back with poke at longer school day

The growing rift between Rahm Emanuel and former Mayor Daley has begun to surface publicly. Daley is punching back (well, maybe slapping is a better word) at Rahm's longer-school-day initiative.

Lengthening the school day at Chicago public schools is a key part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s agenda, but his predecessor doesn’t think it’s the answer to providing a better education. “At first I thought it was, but I don’t think so,” former Mayor Richard M. Daley said in an interview Monday night on WLS-Channel 7 News. “To me, to take a fourth-grader or a sixth-grader or a high school student, and say you’re going to stay more than six hours — we need quality instructions.” -- Sun-Times

That's more than one instruction, in case you missed the malaprop. 

Faced with the fact that mayoral control of Chicago schools has brought no real improvement over the past two decades, and asked what if anything would be different in his administration, Rahm came up with the only thing he could -- a 7.5-hour school day, implicitly blaming Daley for past failures.  

“It doesn’t bother me,” Daley said. “It’s all part of the rhetoric.”

Daley's people, seeing the growing parent resistance to Rahm's imposition of the longer-school-day, must have figured this as an easy point of counterattack. They're right, of course. As I and others have pointed out over and over again, there's no research to support Rahm's approach. 

What's going on down on Rahm's plantation?

Donoso's toast

Is anybody buying the story than Noemi Donoso "resigned" from her $195,000 post as the mayor's hand-picked chief education officer, after less than a year, in order to "pursue national projects.."?  Is that the new version of  "spending more time with my family"? She is the third top CPS officer to bail in less than three months.

And what timing -- right in the middle of union negotiations and Rahm's reckless move to impose his will, including a longer school day, on local schools. It was Donoso's job to ramrod the longer school day, push the Common Core curriculum, crack down on principals, and try and put a positive spin on miserably failed school turnarounds.

CTU Pres. Lewis calls it “troubling” that Donoso was leaving “at a time when seven or eight new initiatives have been imposed and implemented on teachers, paraprofessionals, clinicians and their students.’’ She's right. I mean, who does that?

Obviously Donoso does. The highest-ranking Latina in Rahm's "cabinet" previously led the Office of School Reform and Innovation in the Denver Public Schools, overseeing charter and turnaround efforts. She left that job after less than a year to come to Chicago. Prior to Denver, Donoso was the chief academic officer for Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, a network of six charter schools in L.A.

Donoso was CPS’ first full-time Chief Education Officer since Barbara Eason-Watkins left the district.  Eason-Watkins was the last remaining African-American educator in the top ranks of CPS, before Rahm brought in  J.C. Brizard from Rochester. Donoso’s selection was supposed to signify the final break from traditional public education to an urban system based primarily on privately managed, union-free charter schools.

Did Rahm, who's approval ratings are plummeting, underestimate the strength and scope of teacher and community resistance? You bet. Was Donoso too weak and unfamiliar with Chicago communities -- especially the African-American community, which has been the hardest hit by chaotic school closings and loss of teaching jobs? Is that why Rahm dumped her?

Then, three days after Donono's "resignation" comes the announcement that she is being replaced by Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who while in Cleveland, was the highest paid superintendent in the nation. Byrd-Bennett’s role beyond serving as interim chief education officer is “unknown at this time,’’ Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler said Monday. However, Ziegler said, Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard talked to Byrd-Bennett about joining the Chicago team last week — before Donoso’s resignation was announced Friday evening.

Byrd-Bennett, an African-American career educator, seems to be Donoso's complete opposite. She has been able to walk the line between the traditional superintendent's role as manager of under-resourced urban districts in Cleveland and Detroit and the new push towards dismantling and privatizing these districts. For example, she's an executive coach for the Broad Superintendents' Academy, of which Brizard is an alumnus. She also works for New Leaders for New Schools, which has become a trainer for charter school principals.

Someone of Byrd-Bennett's stature doesn't just drop everything on a few day's notice to come work on autocrat Rahm's plantation. This must have been in the works for a while. The internal crisis at CPS must be pretty deep and the deal must be pretty sweet.

******

CPS also announced on Monday a replacement for Barbara Bowman as Early Childhood Officer. Beth Mascitti-Mille worked with Brizard in Rochester, N.Y., where she was a deputy superintendent of teaching and learning. Bowman is returning to the Erikson Institute.