Reviewed in Horace

Horace Book Review Source: Horace Summer 2008, Vol. 24 No. 2

Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society by Michael Klonsky and Susan Klonsky (Routledge, 209 pages, $26.95)

Mike and Susan Klonsky’s Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society deserves to have sunscreen stains on its pages and sand within as an unlikely recommended summer read for CES network educators. Okay, if there’s a great novel that you’ve been saving for the week that school’s out, read that first. But before school starts up again,* read Small Schools to get angry and radicalized, to remind yourself of the extraordinary value of your work, to cheer for yourselves as worthy alternative underdogs, and to rekindle your fire.

A nightmare gallery of monsters menace public education, and the Klonskys invoke some of the most frightening: the gang of politicians, foundations, think tanks, and corporations that have invaded schools during the still-current Bush administration. Documenting the ways that “the progressive grassroots educational reform movement for small schools has been hijacked by business groups, right-wing ideologues, and the ideology of the Ownership Society,” the Klonskys throw readers into the deep end of the small schools movement, the threats posed by corporate and governmental encroachment on public education, and the toxic ground on which privatization forces have co-opted small schools for corporate gain, both in the authors’ home turf of Chicago and elsewhere.

The breathless pace slows in the first chapter, which unpacks small schools’ “traditional democratic values of Deweyan progressivism combined with Information Age notions of professional community, personalization, and safe learning environments in an unsafe society.” This chapter focuses on the story of opposing school reform movements in Chicago, serving as a useful primer on that city’s tension around school size, control, and ideas of whom its schools are for. This inside baseball of Chicago politics, school reform, and role of the Klonskys’ Small School workshop is contextualized within the movement that includes Deborah Meier’s work in New York, southern Freedom Schools, and other results of progressive efforts around the country. This chapter also captures the “politics of disaster” that have been created in response to public schooling’s complex challenge, describing how a deficit model of education has evolved to dismantle existing public systems.

The sprawling second chapter details and defines the forces and practices of the Ownership Society and its “all-out assault on teachers, public schools, and public space in general.” Featured in President Bush’s 2005 inaugural address, the term was intended to sell the idea that individual citizens should control health care, finances, education, and other key factors of their lives. The Klonskys vehemently oppose the political practices that exemplify the Ownership Society, and their arguments effectively encapsulate the rhetorical co-option of words and ideas—such as the very concept of small schools—that may have originated from the grassroots progressive education movement, but have come to be fully integrated into the current administration’s “demagoguery.” This is compelling stuff.

The third chapter deals with the privatization of our school systems. When the Klonskys write, “In many districts around the country, the best of the small and charter schools have indeed become agents of change, responding to a national sense that the traditional system of public education needs transformation,” you’ll think “Hey, that’s us! That’s CES.” But such schools are anomalies whose existence emphasizes the gulf between intended purpose of charter schools—to provide stimuli to the system and grassroots-driven alternatives—and their current uses as for-profit collectives that rob the public system.

The book concludes with considerations of the role of philanthropy, with most of its attention on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (a CES funder). “It’s hard to say whether the world’s richest man has been part of the problem or part of the solution,” the Klonskys observe. They are far less ambivalent on the role of conservative think tanks that rose to power on a tide of private funding and adept use of technologies that allowed them to emerge from the shadows.

The conclusion “Alternatives to Top-Down Reform,” offers a welcome, and familiar, note of hope, with its faith in the power of professional learning communities. Critical Friends Groups to the rescue! Though its documentation of the forces that oppose what we know works to educate children, and preserve and improve the intellectual and other forms of health of their communities, is daunting and at times heavy-handed, you’ll finish Small Schools with renewed faith in your work as a CES network educator, and a healthy infusion of anger and energy.

* Year round schools: the bane of the education book reviewer. Sorry to slight those of you who are at year-round schools, but you still experience summer, yes? And you still read? Apply this as you see fit (Horace suggests liberally).

This resource last updated: July 24, 2008

Database Information:

Source: Horace Summer 2008, Vol. 24 No. 2
Publication Year: 2008
Publisher: CES National
School Level: All
Audience: New to CES, Teacher, Parent
Issue: 24.2

http://www.essentialschools.org/cs/resources/view/ces_res/580

Hated jaywalkers

Compassionate conservative Robert Novak ("The Prince of Darkness") always had a thing for jaywalkers. Here's a WaPo quote of his from 2001:

"I really hate jaywalkers. I despise them. Since I don't run the country, all I can do is yell at 'em. The other option is to run 'em over, but as a compassionate conservative, I would never do that."

Novak took off in his Corvette yesterday, after hitting a homeless person, knocking him up onto the hood of his car. After police caught up with him, Novak claimed he never noticed hitting the victim.

"I didn't know I hit him," Novak said as he walked back to his Corvette. "I feel terrible. . . . [But] he's not dead, that's the main thing."

More on WWAD (What Would Al Do?}

Which coalition would Shanker have supported?


I asked Deborah Meier to write a blog piece, following the UFT's Leo Casey post here last week. Here's her response:


I liked Leo's response. I'm a pretty harsh critic of the latter-day Shanker, starting with the two strikes (1967, 1968), but I think Leo is right about 1968. But the unwillingness, even after it was over,to understand better the nature of the divide that had opened up -- at least in part because of the UFT's "strategy"--was tragic. As was Shanker's position on the Vietnam war and his dismissal (literally) of anyone who disagreed with him on that question--like Abzug and many of my staunch democratic teacher colleagues.

His anti-communism (which God knows I shared!) was not the problem, but the allies
he made in its name. He aided and abetted the depth and rancor of the left
divide--not from communists alone, but from anyone he felt was not prepared to
reach his conclusions on principle and strategy. He made no such distinctions.
In the process he abandoned even some of his best union/teacher ideas--his
boldness about rethinking schooling. He unhappily engaged in ill-advised teacher
bashing of his own, and glibness about parents' sense of powerlessness that was
not useful.

It made it harder to build the alliance that was critical. But I found the worst aspect of the culture he left behind was an absence of respect for differences in the union, the kind of lively debate we so badly needed, the creating of a vigorous intellectually diverse climate. He was a master at the clever put-down, the quick dismissal, of scorn. Leo is also right, that Sandy and Randi both had a much deeper respect for their fellow teachers, and for the need for alliances with parents and community groups.

Now, of course, in criticizing Shanker for all this, I'm giving him magical powers.
Much of it would have happened without him, but it is a measure of my respect
when I also say that had he acted and spoken otherwise, it would have had an
immeasurably useful impact. But note, it's immeasurable so I have to leave it at
that.

He was never a straddler. But I don't care what he "would've" if he could've"--only what he "should've" when he "could've." The latter has passed us by, and the former can't take place on this earth.

But the Klein-line is and remains (see his recent statement in D.C.) plain teacher bashing,union-busting and pro-testing and more testing! Klein is who he is, and his
statement is a rejection of the argument that the Bolder approach was out to proclaim.

I doubt if Shanker would have moved far enough over to have joined Klein/Bloomberg, but that's not worth discussing.

Deb

DGQs (Damn Good Questions)

Lying or "finessing" the truth?


Eduwonkette on N.Y. achievement gap:

You ask, "But Bloomberg and Klein say the achievement gap is closing. Are they lying?" It's not lying as much as it's finessing with the intention of providing a rosier picture of progress than is warranted.

*****

Ravitch asks Meier: "What gives...?"

A group called Democrats for Education Reform, run by wealthy hedge fund managers and other zillionaires, has the primary goal of creating more charter schools. So, what gives here? How did some of your ideas migrate to become the plaything of the super-rich?

*****

I'm asking John McCain a DGQ: You planning to visit the Iraq/Pakistan border???

I'm afraid that it's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border. And I would not announce that I'm going to attack Pakistan, as Senator Obama did.

Republicans cavort with ‘60’s radical

SmallTalk has uncovered evidence that McCain, Bush, Cheney, Rice and the entire neocon leadership have all been cavorting with a well-known 1960’s radical. (No, it’s not Bill Ayers.)

In fact, just this past month, Bush completely reversed himself and removed this Marxist from the terrorist watch list and Sec. Rice even sent him a birthday greeting..their mouthpiece on the New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof who recently wrote that putting this former “terrorist” on a watch list was “absurd.” Kristof went so far as to call the ‘60’s radical, who spent 27 years in prison for his violent behavior, “the symbol of peaceful conciliation.”

Why so quiet on this one, Sol Stern?

HAPPY 90^TH BIRTHDAY NELSON

Quotables

John McCain made these remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2004 when interviewed by Council Chairman Peter Peterson:

PETERSON: Let me give you a hypothetical, senator. What would or should we do if, in the post-June 30th period, a so-called sovereign Iraqi government asks us to leave, even if we are unhappy about the security situation there? I understand it's a hypothetical, but it's at least possible.

McCAIN: Well, if that scenario evolves, then I think it's obvious that we would have to leave because— if it was an elected government of Iraq— and we've been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government, then I think we would have other challenges, but I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.

Now Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki endorsed Barack Obama’s 16-month timetable for the United States to withdraw from Iraq. In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.

“U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.” […]

All McCain can do now is keep repeating his mantra—“the surge is working…the surge is working…” while the White House now says it now wants a "time horizon," not a TIME LINE.

*****

From Chris Lehmann at Practical Theory:

By the way, and this is an aside, what is going to happen as charter schools fail? So many of these have five year charters, and a certain percentage of them are not going to get renewed. It's already happening in Philly. What is the educational / emotional costs for the kids who go to schools that get closed down after five years? Is anyone other than Mike Klonsky writing about issues like this?

Thanks Chris.

From Sunday’s NYT, “At Struggling School, Pride Displaces Failure”

The Newton experiment began last September after Mr. Thomas, under pressure from the lagging test scores, struck a partnership with the influential Newark Teachers Union and Seton Hall University to remake the school. Although the state has oversight of the Newark school district, Newton was given leeway to form a governance committee consisting of representatives of the teachers’ union and Seton Hall, along with district and state education officials, to approve daily operations ranging from intercom repairs to academic policies and teacher hiring.

Jena redux

Trib's Howard Witt shines a light:

What happened in the 39 minutes in between — during which Pikes was handcuffed by local police and shocked nine times with a Taser, while reportedly pleading for mercy —is now spawning fears of a political coverup in this backwoods Louisiana lumber town infamous for backroom dealings. Read on…

Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society

Reviewed by Tom Hoffman

So You Want to be a School Reform Star?

I'm about half-way through my copy of Mike and Susan Klonsky's book, Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society, which arrived yesterday. It is pretty much a book length take on the issues Deborah Meier and Doug Noon blogged about yesterday (and Mike blogs about all the time).

Specifically, the book is about the collision between the original strain of progressive small school reform (affably personified in the ed-tech blogosphere by Chris Lehmann) and "Ownership Society" neo-con reforms typified by NCLB and privatization schemes. Interestingly, the Ownership Society has no figure in the ed-tech blogging ghetto, but it defines the ground (e.g., a certain kind of crisis mentality) in ways the community has trouble perceiving.

It is genuinely difficult to pick apart the overlapping tactics and rhetoric these two groups employ, and the Klonsky's do an excellent job of explaining the history and philosophy of the dueling "small schools" movements.

Tom Hoffman

Leo Casey responds to my WWAD post

Thanks to UFT's Leo Casey for this response to yesterday's post, What Would Al Do?, my reflections on Richard Kahlenberg's own reflection on Al Shanker. Here's Leo:

What Al would do is never ask what Al would do – the part of him that I find admirable was his ability to be a fresh and innovative thinker, to avoid the ossification of his view of the world. I find this fetishization of him very un-Shanker like. It is like embalming Lenin -- except that Lenin had few of the redeeming virtues Shanker had, from where I sit. So I have a problem with taking a generally very dynamic thinker, and making him into someone frozen in time. I find it interesting for example that right before he died, he told the New York Teacher reporter doing a series on the history of the UFT that he thought he had been mistaken in the past in taking the Sidney Hook line that Communists should not be allowed to teach because they would propagandize. He said that they were no different that many others who held to rigid dogmas, and yet were not precluded from teaching: the true test was that they did in the classroom, not what they believed. I would never have predicted that change of mind.

In particular, Shanker would have been appalled at people like Checker Finn and Joel Klein attempting to use the moral authority of his name to attack teacher unions and teacher union leaders. Shanker was, first and foremost, a teacher unionist, and understood all that he did through that lens.

Shanker was a man of principle, and it is hard to imagine Shanker having anything to do with the Sharpton-Klein coalition on a whole host of principled grounds. Kahlenberg may be right that Shanker would also have problems with the Bolder, Broader coalition, but Shanker died over ten years ago and it is too easy to get into what is speculation on how he would have evolved – I don’t see the same sort of principled objections he would have had to Sharpton-Klein. But bottom line: if Shanker could change his position on Communists in the classroom, he could change it on a whole number of issues.

There is much in Randi which follows in Shanker’s path, but she is also her own woman, and has accomplished things here in NYC, such as the coalition with community groups, that was not possible under his leadership. How would have thought, ten years ago, that with the help of ACORN, the UFT would have together organized 28,000 home day care workers, overwhelmingly poor women of color? Who would have thought that the UFT would be partners with groups like the Coalition for Educational Justice and the Immigration Coalition?

For what it is worth, I think you misread Ocean Hill-Brownsville. I do believe that the UFT made mistakes in that conflict, but the community control side had a position far more mistaken and flawed – and while the union’s mistakes were ones of strategy and tactics that allowed the conflict to take on a racial and ethnic cast, the community control side were mistaken and flawed on principle, dismissing democratic procedures and due process procedures as meaningless. It is simply not true that the strike was about opening up positions in education for people of color – that had been already done. If anything, and from the union point of view, it was about protecting due process for teachers, and ensuring that teachers could only be dismissed upon a finding that they had not performed their duties as they should. That is a core value for a union. Significant mistakes were made in fighting for that goal, but the goal was one worth fighting for.

Leo Casey

Vice-President from Academic High Schools

United Federation of Teacher

Nursing the cuts

While education conservatives continue to claim that talking about the need for adequate resources for public schools equals “making excuses” for low test scores, I’m blown away by this latest report on the lack of school nurses. It seems that 25% of the nation’s public schools now have no nurse on staff. Federal guidelines call for one school nurse for every 750 students but the national average is now 1 nurse for every 1,151 students. Teachers are more and more being forced to take on the role of care giver to ailing students. This comes at a time when 16% of students have a condition that requires regular attention from the school nurse.

Conservatives like Chester Finn turn this issue upside down. Here he is on his on Gadfly blog:

A quarter century after A Nation at Risk, a growing number of America's education leaders appear to be abandoning hope for schools that significantly boost student achievement and are instead coming to view schools as multi-service community centers that do everything but teach.

You see, to people like Finn, having nurses based in the school would be “doing everything but teaching.” Even his own Fordham Foundation mentee Mike Petrilli, seems to have broken with him on this one. Finn in turn, not only rebukes poor Mike, but even compares him with the devil herself—AFT prez Randi Weingarten.

I’m not sure how to deal with the “excuses” argument. I’ll try speaking their language. How about this—if you have thousands of ailing kids in schools with no immediate nursing care available and if you have thousands of untrained teachers patching up, rather than teaching these (often seriously) ailing kids reading and math, won’t this create downward pressure on TEST SCORES?

There, that ought to get a rise out of him.

Things that make you go, “hmmm”

Philly’s horrible record with privately-managed charter schools didn’t prevent them from handing out eight more charter school planning grants. And what are the schools they are considering? How about a grades 7-12 school for prepare students to work on construction jobs? Or how about a school specifically for Russian immigrants? Remember the storm in New York over the Arab language and culture school, the Kahlil Gibran International Academy, which forced principal Debbie Almontaser out of her job?. Or how about a high school for “at-risk” kids? (At risk being a code word for what?) I haven't heard too many kids lately, referring to themselves as "at risk." Have you? I think it's Philly's Reform Commission that's at risk here.

What is it with these guys?

The other day it was NBC’s Matt Lauer referring to Barack Obama as “Osama.” This morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, it was Dan Rather praising Jesse Jackson as someone who set the stage for “Osama Bin Laden’s” candidacy. After each gaff, no corrections or apologies were made.

What would Al do?

WWAD?

That’s the name of one-note tune played by Century Foundation’s Richard Kahlenberg, author of the late AFT leader’s influential biography, Tough Liberal. Al Shanker plays Kahlenberg’s Jesus in the American Prospect, “How the Left Can Avoid a New Education War” and in the current issue of the Kappan, “Albert Shanker and the Future of Teacher Unions.” In fact, to Kahlenberg’s credit, it’s hard these days to pick up an ed journal without seeing a spin-off of a Tough Liberal chapter applying Al’s Thought to today’s situation.

Kahlenberg wants candidate Barack Obama to follow the resurrected Shanker’s lead and unite the two main, oppositional education policy groups, in order to avoid a “war” within the liberal camp. Problem is, the two groups represent real and substantial differences that are difficult to reconcile. One, led by the unlikely duo--N.Y Chancellor Joel Klein and Al Sharpton-- has a recipe for union busting and privatization. It attacks teacher unions and calls the other coalition’s focus on debilitating social conditions and fighting poverty, “excuses.” Why in the world would Shanker’s ghost find common ground here?

The other side, organized by the more labor-friendly Economic Policy Institute, recently took out full page ads in the NYT and WaPo calling for "A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education," arguing that schools can’t do it alone and that real school reform requires and improvement in living conditions of children and families. Its leaders include, Helen Ladd, Pedro Noguera, Deborah Meier, Diane Ravitch, Julian Bond, and Tom Payzant.

Shanker was the classic “tough liberal” of his day, a blend of militant unionism and cold-war anti-communism and militarism. One difference between then and now is--in the ‘60s the teaching corps was a bastion of protected jobs for whites as was the entire public school bureaucracy.

On the one hand, Shanker claimed to support racial integration. But when, with the failure of school deseg in N.Y., the black community, angered by white-only teacher hiring practices, organized a “community-control” movement, Shanker used demagogy to rally angry white teachers to oppose affirmative action and smash community control. Kahlenberg, like Shanker, still calls affirmative action “preferences.” How telling.

Shanker, like the AFL-CIO leadership, also supported the Vietnam War and CIA incursions and coups in Latin America, which makes me wonder why, if alive today, he would now be so concerned about an “education war.”

WWAD today? If Al’s channeler Kahlenberg is right, he’d try and water down the differences between the two coalitions and push candidate Obama further to the middle-right for the sake of political expediency. He may be right. But somehow, I still can’t imagine Shanker uniting with the Klein/Sharpton group.

The Ailing Ownership Society

Quotables


From the L.A. Times (“Americans may be losing faith in free markets”)

Even the Bush administration, which took office arguing that the Social Security crisis could be solved, in part, by tying some of retirees' future benefits to Wall Street, has begun advocating more government regulation of financial markets. When Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are government-chartered but investor-owned, began to teeter last week, the administration quietly went to work on possible government action.

"There may be a backlash against markets at the moment," acknowledged Kevin A. Hassett, economic studies director at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and an advisor to presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain. "But the backlash doesn't seem to be informed by any alternative view of how the world works."

Americans entered the new century convinced that "we had a new economy built on services and information technology that would let us win globally," said Harvard economist Robert Z. Lawrence. "The whole premise of globalization in the year 2000 was that it worked well for us and the other developed countries but that the developing countries would need help," Lawrence said. Today, virtually all those optimistic assumptions have been turned on their heads. "

*****

From the Washington Post (“Capitalism’s Reality Check”)

Since the Reagan years, free-market clichés have passed for sophisticated economic analysis. But in the current crisis, these ideas are falling, one by one, as even conservatives recognize that capitalism is ailing… In the presidential campaign so far, John McCain has been clinging to the old economic orthodoxy while Barack Obama has proposed a modestly more active role for government. But the economic assumptions are changing faster than the rhetoric of the campaign. “Reality has broken in,” says [Barney]Frank. And none too soon.

*****

NYT columnist Paul Krugman

“Owning a home lies at the heart of the American dream.” So declared President Bush in 2002, introducing his “Homeownership Challenge” — a set of policy initiatives that were supposed to sharply increase homeownership, especially for minority groups. Oops.

*****

Former CNN writer/producer Mike Malloy

Remember a few years ago when Bush (or was it Cheney?) touted the term "ownership society"? Uh-huh. Go buy a home. No money down. No money needed. Ever. Smoke and mirrors. Pretend it's all real. Pretend you have something. Watch how they snatch it away. Listen to the tearing sound. Smell the fear that is flooding the country.

DGQs (Damn good questions)

Diane asks Deb a DGQ from the past:

But, here and now, I have a question for you about the past. Friends have contacted me and said, "Ask Debbie what happened to the Annenberg Challenge." What they really want to know is how the small school movement turned into one of the favorite strategies of the corporate elites who are so interested in education. They also want to know how you feel about this idea that "headquarters" can decide to open 10, 20, 50 small schools, recruit principals, and will them into existence.

Diane, please tell them to read our book, Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society. It may answer their questions.

Organizing the charters

Even Russo asks a Chicago DGQ…

“What if anything ever happened to the idea of union-run, or organized, charters in Chicago?”

Answer—First you need a union that is not in self-destruct mode and is about real organizing. Charter school teachers I know are still looking.

Remember we raised the idea in Chicago last August, when we had CTU President Marilyn Stewart, IEA Director Jo Anderson and Green Dot Charter starter Steve Barr come together around the idea at a public meeting. While some small meetings with teachers from a few campuses have been held, CTU faction fighting has pretty much paralyzed organizing efforts here.

Maybe new AFT leadership will help turn things around in Chi-Town. Barack Obama made a point of it in his speech to the AFT convention, applauding the leadership for “representing charter school teachers and support staff. ... We know well-designed public charter schools have a lot to offer.”

*****

Authentic assessment

Jackie Bennett at Edwize is on to something I alluded to the other day, when I asked whether both Chris “The Minister of Truth” Cerf and Sol Stern, of the far-right Manhattan Institute, could both be full of it?

Cerf tells lies using standardized test scores to claim credit for reform gains that aren’t really there. Stern on the other hand, is wise to the Ministry’s game, but plays one of his own. He portrays all reform as a failure leading us to think that public school reform is impossible. The only alternative left—privatization, which is what the MA is all about.

But Bennett responds:

To me, however, there do seem to be gains, though I don’t know if we see them in the scores. This year, I felt a difference in the schools I know best, and I heard a difference when I talked to teachers and principals.

It still remains for Bennett then, to tell us how the school community can see those gains. How are students demonstrating what they’ve learned and what they can do with what they’ve learned?

Quotables

She and Helms get badge of honor

Ann Coulter on the late (what took so long?) Jesse Helms:

Helms was for integration; he was simply against "movements." To paraphrase Dan Quayle, to be called a racist by these people is a badge of honor.

Lewis Cohen, Director of the Coalition of Essential Schools on testing:

Policymakers are increasingly acknowledging the disconnect between what is being required to be successful on standardized tests and the skills our children will need to face an increasingly complex future. Last month Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama participated as an evaluator in a performance assessment at a new small high school in Mapleton Colorado. Afterwards he spoke about the need for more appropriate assessments.

*****

New Orleans charter school teachers get shaft on retirement benefits

Though charter school teachers remain eligible for the basic retirement benefits offered through the state retirement system for public school teachers, they generally are not eligible for ancillary retirement benefits, such as medical and life insurance, provided by the Orleans Parish school system.

Questioning retention in Florida

A Florida state law mandating that 3rd graders be held back a year based on low FCAT scores, has had a serious damaging effect on students.

”'The research stretching over a 60-plus-year period has consistently demonstrated the same thing: that retention in grade does not improve performance in subsequent years' achievement and bears a strong relationship to dropping out of school later…`No other body or research is so strongly one-sided, yet policy makers and politicians point to it as a way to improve performance.''

The D.C. test score bump

There may be a new sheriff in town., but in D.C. schools,testing madness continues as usual. The media’s all abuzz about this year’s increases on standardized test scores, and the bureaucrats are already elbowing their way up to the media trough to take credit for the bump.

New supe, Michelle Rhee, knowing full well that such a short time in office couldn’t have produced huge test score jumps, still claims it was her privatization efforts combined with teacher and staff firings that deserve all the credit. "I wasn't expecting to see such large gains early on," Rhee said.

Others, more accurately attribute the score increases to students getting used to the new DC-CAS exam, introduced by Rhee’s predecessor Clifford Janey. Still others say that schools’ preoccupation with test-prep led to the increases.

Either explanation, of course, begs the real teaching/learning questions in the District.

Side note: Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso said students in the traditional system made strong gains and were outperforming their peers in public charter schools.

Guru still “annoyed”

Says StarTribune.com:

Testing “ guru” Dave Heistadhad, “waited anxiously for months to proclaim that the district had made strides on this year's state reading and math tests… And, he really wanted to say that annoying achievement gap between black and white students had narrowed. No such luck…. Instead, a familiar pattern held true. Schools with high percentages of students of color and low-income families didn't do well.”

Talking real reform

Soon-to-be AFT Union Prez. Randi Weingarten, is sounding like the reincarnation of Al Shanker. She’s talking real school reform—charters with union teachers, and fully-resourced, community-based schools. Just what Obama's campaign needs to hear.

Says NYT’s Sam Dillon:

In the speech Ms. Weingarten is to deliver Monday, she praises the ideas of a group of Democrats led by Tom Payzant, the former schools superintendent in Boston, who have argued that schools alone cannot close achievement gaps rooted in larger economic inequalities, and that “broader, bolder” measures are needed, like publicly financed early childhood education and health services for the poor.

Her weaknesses also match Shanker’s. Back then, he broke with the power elite on union organizing and teacher empowerment, but stayed tied to them in support for the Vietnam War and in his backwards response to 1968 black revolt. Weingarten showed similar bias when she caved in to pressures from divisive anti-Arab factions in the removal of principal Debbie Almontaser from the Kahlil Gibran International Academy.

Dillon is perceptive enough to recognize the “fierce debate among Democrats seeking to influence the educational program of Senator Barack Obama.” Weingarten comes down clearly on the side of the “bolder, broader group” as opposed to the Klein/Sharpton group, which places all the weight of school reform wholly on the schools.

Blog Notes

Did I embarrass Russo into finally saying something about Obama’s clear opposition to school vouchers in speeches to the NEA and AFT? How else to explain this snide, rear-end-covering comment?

*****

It’s the “Minister of Truth” (Chris Cerf) vs. Manhattan Institute’s Sol Stern over at Eduwonk. Each accuses the other of lying with statistics. Could they both be liars? Stay tuned.

“The surge is working…” and “I’ll still respect you in the morning.”

Three biggest lies ever told: 1) the check’s in the mail; 2) I’ll still respect you…; and 3) the surge is working.

The John McCain surge strategy succeeded only in overextending and stretching U.S. military and support lines in Iraq. Now there’s not enough troop strength to battle Taliban forces in Afghanistan. It looks like Bush/Cheney/Patraeus will be forced to pull troops out of Iraq at an even faster rate than that promised by Obama leaving McCain’s commitment to 100 years in Iraq a silly pipe dream. On top of that, the U.S has lost it friend Musharraf and its credibility in Pakistan. What do you think the military brass will have to say to Obama, Hagel and friends when they pay a visit? Open up another front with Iran? No way.

But will that slow down the coming Israeli attack on Tehran? Probably not.

Ed '08...vouchers...NEA...Obama

Pitting education issues vs. the war--a trick bag

I must admit, I saw this coming as soon as Bill Gates and Eli Broad put up $60 million for their Ed in’08, campaign, supposedly to make “education” the number-one issue in the elections. Roy Romer, coming off of his unimpressive, do-nothing tenure as L.A. school superintendent, and Karl Rove lieutenant, Mark Lampkin, were put in charge of the campaign and predictably, it was all show and no go.

First of all, the campaign has no substance. What does education in the abstract mean to millions of voters? What about education? They’ve kept their agenda pretty well hidden.

Secondly, how could ed reform possibly be pitted against the war in Iraq or the worsening economic crisis here at home, as an isolated campaign issue? We all know that the cost of the war has had a devastating effect on public education. Was this simply a trick bag, an attempt to skirt the war issue-- the Republicans’ Achilles Heel? Now it appears so.

While Romer remains virtually invisible, former Oklahoma Republican Rep. J.C. Watts, has become the new front man for Ed in ‘o8 . His strategy seems to be—pit education against the war as THE focus issue for the candidates.

Watts, a darling of the neocons, went from being a college footballer to a cheerleader for the war. He once claimed that war opponents like Sen. Feingold, were “always on the side of the terrorists.”

He sure wasn’t a big school reformer back then, opting instead for support of school vouchers and privatization. Now that the vast majority of Americans oppose the war, Watts is claiming that “voters rank the economy and education as more important than the war in Iraq.”

Watts reveals his real intent, using the usual code language for vouchers--union bashing (his friend McCain won’t even mention the V-word on the campaign trail).

"A Democratic nominee will have to be willing to take teachers' unions places they're not willing to go," said Watts.

Although he never mentions vouchers, we all know which "places" Watts wants them to go.

Bloggers suddenly quiet on Barack & vouchers

Obama made it clear once again, in his speech to the NEA, that he wasn’t going to “take the union” down that road. Anti-union bloggers tried to make much of scattered boos Obama received when he mentioned merit pay. But teachers who were at the meeting told me that way too much was made of it. The program Obama supports is pretty much the same as that supported by the union leadership.

Funny thing—remember all those bloggers, looking for a split between Obama and the union, who carefully perused each line in Barack’s interview with a Milwaukee paper, and then reported over and over again that the candidate was “open to vouchers”?

I’m talking about Joe Williams, Whitney Tilson, Alexander Russo, David Hoff, and Michelle McNeil. Not one of them even mentioned Obama’s statement in opposition to vouchers, in their coverage of the NEA meeting.

Why not?

Can they handle the truth?

Last year they organized a “hit squad ” to silence critics like Diane Ravitch. Now they’ve organized a “truth squad” to go after critical bloggers. Shouldn’t New York’s DOE have at least done that in reverse order? I mean, don't you find the "truth" first and then contract the hit?

Here’s Eduwonkette (“Gimme Some Truth”).

Good riddance to Edison Schools

Edison Schools is no more, reports Edweek. They've changed their name to EdisonLearning and shifted into the software business. It's just another sign of what a flop they've been and doesn't bode well for the rest of the school privateers.

From Quick and the Ed:

Edison's competitors haven't fared much better. Of the dozen or so other substantial for-profit school management companies that sprung up in the 1990s, most have disappeared, switched to non-profit status, or are limping along. Only one or two companies are profitable and they haven't expanded as far or as fast as expected.

“At least you know where he stands…”

Here’s the latest bit of feint praise for McCain coming out of conservative spinners these days: “Right or wrong, at least you always know where McCain stands.” Actually, this “maverick” turned McBush, has to Google himself to know where he stands. But still the spin continues.

Mitt Romney on MSNBC: “John McCain, you know where he is…”

Then there’s Mike Huckabee’s defense of the late (what took so long?) Jesse Helms:

“He didn’t care what you thought about his view, but you were going to always know where he stood because he stood for something and he stood clearly.

Yes, and the one thing you could say about Hitler…

Is Finn a hater?

Will one of you Fordham guys please tell Checker (right) to chill?

Fordham’s Checker Finn hates the government:

I've hung around Washington for the better part of four decades and have never seen so total a breakdown of competence, will, and common purpose. Consider, just for starters: immigration, Medicare, Darfur, national debt, NCLB, climate change, Tibet, infrastructure.

He hates young people and their damn blogs, feelings and opinions:

…nobody I know under 30 much bothers either with newspapers or radio/TV news. The oddments of current affairs that they pick up arrive via internet and, increasingly, the "blogosphere," which is more about feelings and opinions than basic information or sustained analysis.

He hates diversity:

When you fixate long enough on oneself, on "diversity" and on "sensitivity," what makes us different from each another eventually trumps what makes us similar.

He even hates Starbucks (at least, it gives him pause):

Starbucks, in a way, symbolizes both the best of American ingenuity and entrepreneurialism and the hedonistic, live-for-today, save-not-for-tomorrow, bread-and-circuses "life-style" that gives me pause about the future.

What does Checker like? The ultra-right-wing Bradley Foundation and its latest report.

Plunder Dome—again?

Chileans protest school privatization

REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado

Everything's hitting the fan in Santiago, Chile. Hundreds of students and teachers protesting a bill which, they say, could lead to privatization of public education, have been arrested in clashes with riot police using water canons and tear gas. The crisis threatens the regime of liberal president Michelle Bachelet.

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NEA's Convention

I was going to write something about the NEA's conference and the crazy spin put on Obama's speech by the usual pack of union-hating bloggers—you know, the DFER's Joe Williams, hedge-fund operator Whitney Tilson, and of course Andrew Rotherham. But since Leo Casey and my brother Fred already opened up a can of butt-whup on them, I'll defer to those two union leaders.

I'll just add one point. Williams and Co. never mention Obama's strong rejection (again) of school vouchers, in his NEA speech. Gee, I wonder why? Remember when Williams tried to make Obama into a voucherite?

No wonder he hates unions

Last year in response to Williams' benefactor, hedge-fund operator turned school entrepreneur, Tilson, I explained what happens when charter schools meet the Ownership Society . Tilson then tried to make light of the fact that there was profit to be made in the charter school business. Remember how Tilson mocked the notion?

Yeah, that's right, the charter school business is so profitable that I'm telling all my friends in the hedge fund business that they're in the wrong business. My message: "If you really want to make a lot of money, start a charter school!" LOL!

Now Philadelphia, where Paul Vallas opened wide the door for privately-managed charters, offers us another vivid example of how the school hustle works. This time It's about the Philadelphia Academy Charter School and it's no joke:

Federal authorities and Philadelphia School District officials began investigating the school and its nonprofit in the spring over alleged mismanagement, nepotism, and conflicts of interest involving Brien N. Gardiner, a former elementary school principal who founded both entities, and Kevin M. O'Shea, the charter school's former chief executive officer.The charter school's nonprofit, led by O'Shea's wife, Jamie, has received more than $2.4 million in taxpayer funds in rent payments since 2005, state records show.

Plunder Dome

Then there's Rhode Island's new mayoral academies. Scheduled to open next year, these academies have the potential to become legalized patronage handouts to developers and private management companies—a legacy of George Bush's Ownership Society. While the legislation doesn't give the mayors total control over their local school systems, a la New York and Chicago, it does give them the power, during their brief 2-year stints, to subcontract schools and leverage real estate deals to politically friendly companies.

Maybe Providence ex-Mayor Buddy Cianci can find a way back into the game, now that he's out of prison (remember Operation Plunder Dome?) and back in business.

Edweek points out a big advantage for Rhode Island privateers in the new legislation:

Unlike the state's existing charter schools, mayoral academies would get exemptions from state provisions on teacher pay and benefits. They would not be required to follow the state's "prevailing wage" and retirement statutes for teachers or rules on teacher seniority and tenure.

What's in their wallet?

The Times-Picayune reports that principals are dropping like flies at a New Orleans network of privately managed charter schools. Three of the four network's principals and all four assistant principals have just been fired.

The overhaul represents tremendous turnover for the network of three charter schools operated by the University of New Orleans College of Education and Human Development, and a fourth school operated in partnership with the local state-run district. The leadership changes have unsettled some teachers and parents, according to former administrators at the schools who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The name of that charter school network? Capital One-University of New Orleans Charter Network. Capital One Financial Corporation is a Fortune 500 financial holding company and the largest independent issuer of Visa and MasterCard. They paid $1 million to get their name on these schools. It's a sweet deal--a lot cheaper than a bowl game sponsorship.

The company, whose stock was clobbered by its association with the sub-prime lending scandal finally had to jettison its mortgage company, GreenPoint, because of pressure from investors.

What a perfect partner for post-Katrina charters. Hope these principals know what’s in their wallets.

Speaking of Austin Poly...

...one of their students, 15-year-old Yasmin Acree, is missing. She hasn’t been heard from since January. Nobody who knows Yasmin thinks she ran away. Instead, foul play is suspected. Why haven’t you heard much about Yasmin’s case? Why hasn’t it been all over the national media like the cases of white, suburban women like Stacy Peterson and Lisa Stebic? That’s the question Mary Mitchell asks in today’s Sun-Times column.

A thorn in the side...

One of the best bloggers, Eduwonkette, is the subject of Elizabeth Green’s N.Y. Sun piece, An Anonymous Education Blogger Becomes Thorn in City's Side.” It seems, Kette has become a real pain-in-the-ass for Bloomberg/Klein in N.Y. Green quotes Rotherham taking his usual paper-thin jab at the anonymous one. Green also mentions me, along with Bill Ayers and Sol “It’s all politics” Stern, as past Kette’s guest bloggers.

She[Eduwonkette] has excoriated Mr. Klein's signature small-schools initiative, under which large, failing high schools are split into smaller new schools, as a "bulldozer" that has displaced students with special needs.

Russo fantasizes. A Kette wannabee.

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Barry Crimmins wishes the late Bill Kunstler a happy 89^th birthday. Me too.

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Seems like every time John McCain opens his mouth, bloggers jump for joy. This time it’s Matthew Yglesias (“John McCain hates me”) having fun at McCain’s expense after his “I hate bloggers” flub. Oh joy!

Another look at Chicago's Austin Poly

Austin Poly Principal Bill Gerstein

American Prospect’s Ezra Klein takes another look at Chicago’s Austin Poly High School, a progressive small school that is seen by its founders as part of a strategy to save Chicago’s manufacturing base. Klein links to a more in-depth look at the school over at Progress Illinois. Principal Bill Gerstein says:

“Students who chose our school are choosing it for a lot of factors,” he says. “The safety is a big issue; quality of the teachers is a big issue. Location in the community where they live is a big thing. The career focus, we want to make that a much bigger reason why students chose our school. I think it’s a reason, but not as big as we’d like it right now.”

Last week's quotables

From Condoleezza Rice—“I’m proud” we invaded Iraq

From Manhattan Institute's Sol Stern--"I guess it's all politics, Leo"

“I’m not enough of a historian to wade into that issue”—Fordham’s Eric Osberg, in response to Thomas Sowell’s absurd claim that the teachers unions were responsible to Hitler’s victory in France.

Best quote this week comes from no less than Barack Obama on Huffington, trying to explain to critical supporters, why he voted for the FISA legislation, which gives federal immunity for com companies who illegally spied on the public:

I learned long ago, when working as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago, that when citizens join their voices together, they can hold their leaders accountable. I'm not exempt from that. I'm certainly not perfect, and expect to be held accountable too. I cannot promise to agree with you on every issue. But I do promise to listen to your concerns, take them seriously, and seek to earn your ongoing support to change the country.

Yes, it's pretty thin. But it shows that he has to pay attention and be accountable to his base when that base acts powerfully, the way we should.

Just so we remember what we're up against, I'm reminded of Dick Cheney, who responds differently to criticism. Remember when Cheney was told that recent polls show about two-thirds of Americans opposing the war in Iraq , he basically replied, “f**k ‘em if they can’t take a joke.”