BRAVE NEW VOICES, 2009

During the week of July 14, 2009, hundreds of young poets ages 13 to 19, representing 50 cities and four countries, competed in the 2009 Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam in Chicago,...

'Chicago high school reform a bust' --new study

Another day, another study, showing Duncan's "model" high school reform a bust. Gates pulls plug on more studies. Problem solved.

Former CEO Arne Duncan often said that a key to creating the best urban school district in the country was to improve long-failing high schools. But Duncan’s broadest, most expensive effort, called High School Transformation, sputtered in implementation and has failed to spark significant improvement, according to an evaluation released Thursday. (Catalyst Notebook blog)

Philly's Ackerman--'We don't need no stinking oversight'

Community activist, Heidi Ramirez, has been driven from Philly's School Reform Commission. School boss Arlene Ackerman is now free to privatize school management and use TFA replacement teachers, with no oversight from a puppet SRC.

Read the full story at the Philadelphia Public School Notebook.

Test scores up, but gap widens

News out of Oakland, just recovering from the state takeover of public schools.

Test scores are up. Standout schools are small, as we would expect, including the new West Oakland Middle School and East Oakland Pride, both "small schools" carved out of larger middle schools.

But as far as the so-called achievement gap goes, it's the same old story.

Good news for "innovative" non-profits

Here's the latest from the DOE. Non-profit school reform groups will be eligible for federal grants as large as $50 million each. Arne Duncan announced the Innovation Grants yesterday at a meeting of school superintendents as part of a $650 million initiative.

The good news is that the grants will open up other possibilities for districts besides closing schools and firing entire teaching staffs. But many worry that the bulk of the funding could go to already flush business-model reformers like Teach for America and charter schools operators.

But hope springs eternal:

"I was just trying to highlight that innovation comes from different places," Duncan said. "I was trying to set a tone that we're not going to look at the usual players, the usual suspects."

We'll see.

Fallout from Chicago's 'Turnaround'

Under Vallas, it was called "reconstitution." Under Duncan, it was "turnaround." Firing teachers, closing schools, revolving-door principals, and eliminating Local School Councils and other forms of community engagement. Little done to improve the lives of kids. Results--Harper High same as ever.

Teachers and principals are mad about getting fired, communities are incensed over another reform agenda they feel excluded from and students are confused returning to a group of teachers they don't trust. The program's newness means there's little evidence such efforts have been successful, but that's not stopping Secretary of Education Arne Duncan from touting it. (Chicago Tribune)

The real force behind mayoral control

It's none other than the world's richest man, Bill Gates. Gates secretly bankrolled the recent campaign to preserve N.Y. Mayor Bloomberg's one-man rule over the public schools.

According to a story in yesterday's N.Y. Post, Gates funneled about $4 million to the pro-mayoral-control forces during the recent debate in the state legislature. When questioned by the Post, a Gates spokesperson confirmed the donation and the approximate size.

Gates money paid for Learn-NY's extensive public-relations, media and lobbying efforts in Albany and New York City. The effort include advertisements, parent organizing and canvassing -- including a five-borough bus tour and trips to the state capital. Gates gave the money from his personal pocket -- not from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has pumped $150 million into the city to develop small schools.

It was N.Y.'s Bloomberg-appointed Chancellor, Joel Klein, who, as a federal prosecutor, helped settle the Justice Dept.'s multi-billion anti-trust suit that could have destroyed Gates's company, Microsoft.

According to the Post:

He made it clear that he liked having city CEOs in charge of education decision-making and accountable for results. "You want to allow for experimentation. The cities where our foundation has put the most money is where there is a single person responsible. In New York, Chicago and Washington, DC, the mayor has the responsibility for the school system," Gates said during a CNN appearance.

Another billionaire philanthropist -- Eli Broad, a proponent of charter schools -- also gave millions to Learn-NY.

Weekend quotables

A Nation of its own?

Sometimes it seems like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a nation unto itself. Its endowment of over $30 billion makes it the 300-pound gorilla of philanthropy, and the backing of a pair of business superstars (Warren Buffett is a big contributor) adds luster. (WSJ Health Blogger Jacob Goldstein)

"We have to live with it"

Arne Duncan's press guy, Peter Cunningham responding to "outpouring of complaints" about Race-To-The-Top testing madness:

“We’re mindful of all the criticisms about federal overreaching, about too much testing, of all the complaints about No Child Left Behind,” Mr. Cunningham said. “These complaints come up all the time in conversations about all our programs, not just this one, with education officials across the country. The context that No Child has generated is the context that we have to live with.” (Sam Dillon, NYT)

"Test frenzy may get worse..."

“I am a public school teacher who vehemently wanted to vote for a president who would save us from No Child Left Behind,” Diane Aoki of Kealakekua, Hawaii, wrote to the department. But linking test scores to teacher evaluations, Ms. Aoki said, means “the potential is there for the test frenzy to get worse than it is under No Child Left Behind.” (NYT)

Obama's dream

This, from Paul Krugman's column last Thursday:

So much, then, for Mr. Obama’s dream of moving beyond divisive politics. The truth is that the factors that made politics so ugly in the Clinton years — the paranoia of a significant minority of Americans and the cynical willingness of leading Republicans to cater to that paranoia — are as strong as ever. In fact, the situation may be even worse than it was in the 1990s because the collapse of the Bush administration has left the G.O.P. with no real leaders other than Rush Limbaugh.

But then there's always Newt Gingrich, the former Dixiepublican congressman from Georgia and erstwhile 2012 presidential candidate, who, alongside of Limbaugh and Sarah ("Death Panel") Palin, has led the charge of the paranoids against Obama's healthcare reform and tried unsuccessfully, to deny Judge Sotomayor her seat on the Supreme Court by labeling her a "racist."

Yet Gingrich, desperately seeking a measure of credibility outside the shrinking base of the Limbaugh Party, now stands, anointed by Arne Duncan as the face of his Race-To-The-Top ed reform. Gingrich will stand next to Duncan on their current RTTT speaking tour. It's worth asking again, what is it about RTTT that makes it so attractive to the likes of Gingrich? And what is it about Gingrich that makes him so attractive to Obama and Duncan?

The Bedfellows Tour

Arne Duncan is going on tour with strange bedfellows, Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich to promote the Race to the Top. Newt, as a leader of the most backward wing of Republicanism, launched a racist campaign against the appointment of Judge Sotomayor and has been rallying the T-baggers against Obama's health care reform. So the question is, does this version of united front around school reform represent an adjustment in Gingrich's approach to politics or is it a statement about the character of Duncan's reform agenda that makes it acceptable to someone like Newt?

I guess you can tell what I think.

It's not just about testing

"There’s more to good education than math and reading scores," says Rich Rothstein, in an Edweek commentary well worth the read. Rothstein is one of the voices calling for a Broader, Bolder Approach to education. Here, he finds some areas of common ground with Barack Obama around testing issues and critique of NCLB. He also makes the case that neither schools nor teachers should be held accountable for scores alone.

A look back at Denver's Manual High

A man-made disaster for hundreds of Denver's kids

It's been three years since the disastrous Gates Foundation's early venture into small schools at Denver's Manual High ended in defeat. This early turnaround project failed, primarily because of the foundation's top-down approach, ignoring teacher, parent, and community wisdom. As one parent summed it up: "We weren't against small schools. We just wanted it done with us, not to us."

It didn't take long for Bill Gates to throw his hands up and abandon Manual and the small-schools movement altogether, claiming that high school restructuring was "too difficult." The school was closed at the end of the 2006 school year amid militant community protests. 558 students were scattered across the city to new schools, lives disrupted and relationships with teachers destroyed.

According to a recent University of Colorado study:

Nearly a third of those students are now classified by the district as withdrawn. They are either dropouts, have moved to a different state or their whereabouts are unknown. One student has died, and 94 transferred out of Denver Public Schools. Their progress is no longer tracked.

The C.U. study is one of the few projects that watched what happens to kids after a school closes.

Its findings:

• Only 52 percent of the students who were juniors when Manual closed went on to graduate. Manual had previously graduated 68 percent of its seniors.

• Historically, Manual students had a 6 percent chance of dropping out of school. After closure, the chance that a displaced Manual student would drop out soared to 17 percent.

• Colorado Student Assessment Program test scores among displaced Manual students dropped from between 3 and 38 points in reading, writing and math. Historically, Manual students typically gained between 8 and 19 points each year in those subjects.

The Gates Foundation chalked it up to experience and left town. Arne Duncan now says he wants to close 5,000 schools. I'll leave it at that for now.

Quotables

Arianna Huffington: Is health care reform going the way of NCLB?

...the chance to enact meaningful change doesn't come along often. And when the opportunity is squandered, it is lost for a long, long time. When reform that isn't reform passes, people check it off their list and move on -- and we are left with worse-than-no-reform boondoggles like No Child Left Behind and Bush's Medicare drug plan.

Fly me to the moon

Herb Kohl is interviewed by John Merrow.

H.K.: Arne Duncan, on the official Department of Education website said, “For states, school districts, nonprofits, unions, and businesses, Race to the Top is the equivalent of education reform’s moon shot.” I thoroughly agree with him. Remember we went to the moon, not to improve science or the quality of life in our country, but to face down the Soviet Union. We spent a lot of money doing it, got little return, and never went back. I believe Duncan’s analogy should be taken seriously.

Casey at the bat

UFT's Leo Casey goes toe-to-toe with Moscowitz & anti-union let-em-eat-cake, Gang of Four. http://bit.ly/QGVq1

Inside Chicago's school 'renaissance'

CPS bans Twitter

H/t to Russo on this one. It's Huberman's latest edict -- No communicating with students or their families via personal email. No cell phones. No Twitter. No Facebook.

Just a few days after patting itself on the back for enlisting a R&B singer with a MySpace page and lots of Twitter followers, CPS's new email policy (PDF) requiring teachers to use official email for all communications with students has come to light.

Paying for test scores?

National Journal's panel of experts holds forth on paying kids for test scores. Responses are pretty much as expected (except the V.P. of the Chamber of Commerce is opposed).

Alfie Kohn: "Rewards, like punishments, can produce only one thing: temporary obedience. What they can never do is help kids become more effective or enthusiastic learners."

Monty Neill: "Test score 'bribes' for students are like steroids for athletes -- they can temporarily boost performance, but their long-term impact damages the very thing you are trying to improve."

Those in favor include former Bush advisor Sandy Kress and of course, VanderArk.

VanderArk credits power philanthropy

Former Gates Foundation front man, Tom VanderArk confirms pretty much everything we wrote in our book, about the disproportional influence exercised by power philanthropists (Gates, Broad, Walton, etc...) over current public ed policy.

VanderArk writes:

Duncan's announcement of Race the Top criteria didn't come out of the blue -- it's the result of the smart investment of several billion dollars by a coalition of foundations supporting the work of hundreds of education policy entrepreneurs.

He calls the new educational agenda "a consensus" created over the past 8 years and an extention of No Child Left Behind.

The difference between us and VDA is, he marvels at the power of power philanthropy and its ability to leverage billions of dollars behind an ownership society agenda-- and we don't.

Quotables

Arne Duncan sums up his communique from the DOE during his term as Chicago's school boss:

“It wasn’t a call about teaching kids to read,” Duncan recalled. “It was a call about a compliance report or something."

Mayor Daley, responding to his school board president's involvement in an Olympics land deal:

"The facts are wrong."

Tom VanderArk marvels at the power of power philanthropy and its ownership society agenda:

The 'human capital' agenda has also matured in the last eight years with the scaled success of foundation favorites Teach for America, New Leaders, and New Teacher Project.

Chicago's true Olympic spirit

Scott just helping his friends

In between appearances before the clout-gate grand jury, Chicago west-side developer and School Board President Michael Scott appeared to be using his connections to corral public park land he hopes will become a valuable Olympic Games site.

Scott was criticized back in 1990 for his insider connections when he left his job as the city's chief cable administrator to go work for a cable company. Earlier this year Scott used his position to force school principals to form plans to promote the Olympics.

Teachers and union officials said Scott's tactics were heavy-handed and they feared retaliation if they did not support Daley's quest for the Games.

But Daley claims that Scott isn't in it for the money. The facts are wrong," insisted Daley, possibly forgetting that facts are just facts.

Daley claims that Scott was "just helping out some friends." Good point Mr. Mayor. I mean, if a School Board prez/real-estate developer can't reach out and help his own friends, what's this world coming to?

Weekend Reads

Charters need to change their ways

While Obama and Duncan keep calling for more and more charter schools, even threatening to cut funding for states that fail to lift their caps, it is clear that charters aren't doing much for the cause of equity and diversity. But they can, write Harvard researchers, Susan Eaton & Gina Chirichigno. (Education Week)

Duncan as "King Maker"

“They don’t have a balanced education program when they put so much emphasis on charter schools. I think they have latched onto charter schools as a magic solution, and it isn’t,” said Jack Jennings, president and CEO of the Center on Education Policy, an advocacy group for public schools. “I think they should focus on regular public schools. That’s where the majority of students are.” (Politico.com)

Some stim $$$ finally reaching Detroit

The Detroit Public Schools, one of the biggest local recipients of stimulus cash, is set to receive more than $148 million, and many local districts and charter schools are getting money as well. Another $80 million is headed to students at universities, colleges and vocational schools in the area, with Wayne State and University of Michigan-Dearborn students getting a lot of the money.

Another recipient, the Everest Institute, which trains dental assistants, massage therapists and medical administrative assistants, is expecting more than $9 million for student Pell Grants. Vocational schools like those training beauticians and barbers are also getting a chunk of the Pell Grant money. (Detroit News)

Vallas' New Orleans becomes privatization Mecca

From Nola.com

Though charter operators guard their autonomy, the trend toward clustering represents a kind of middle ground between traditional centralized school systems and stand-alone charters. The strategy allows "CMOs" -- nonprofit charter management organizations, which typically take on from two to ten schools -- to achieve economies unavailable to stand-alone charters, whose principals are often heavily burdened with business-side affairs.

Rockford redux

Readers may remember back to March, when I wrote about Paul Vallas' virtual takeover of Rockford's public schools. After landing a huge consulting contract, while still holding down his job as New Orleans school boss, Vallas used his clout to push a Chicago-based chain of charter schools on the city. He also brought in his lieutenant in New Orleans, Lavonne Sheffield, to become the new Rockford superintendent, over the objections of several local board members.

Only one problem--Sheffield isn't certified. As if anyone needed proof that Vallas was calling the shots. Why else would an economic basket case like Rockford pay top-dollar for an uncertified supe?

Like a rope "supports" a hanging man

Mayor Daley says he "still supports" Board of Education President Michael Scott who, this week, was hauled before a a grand jury investigating Chicago's cloutgate scandal. Will Scott return the favor by continuing to protect Daley and other city clouters who used admission to the elite magnet schools as political handouts.

And who will Daley sacrifice to the feds in order to keep their investigation from going any higher up the ladder? It could be Scott. Or more likely, a couple of school principals. But fed involvement points to this being much more than just a local school-based problem.

It all adds new meaning to the term, affirmative action. Not what the feds had in mind when they ordered Chicago to establish magnet schools as a step towards deseg.

Attention--other school districts

This isn't the way you want to begin the new school year--federal investigators in your principals' offices and school board prez Michael Scott sitting in front of a grand jury.

Asked whether he has ever made a call on behalf of someone else, Scott said, "Nope. Never." Asked whether he had ever heard of a call being placed to get a student clouted in, he said, "That's a different question. You asked me if I made a call. No comment. It's an ongoing investigation." (Sun-Times)

Daley's pretzel logic

Mayor Daley continues to argue that the clout scandal "is a good thing." He says, it shows how attractive Chicago public schools have become, prompting one commentator to respond: "That's like saying car theft is a good thing because it shows how badly people want fancy cars."

Daley's defense of clout-based admissions to the city's few selective-enrollment schools is really a testament to his failed Renaissance 2010 initiative and the length's some people will go to escape the second tier of his under-resourced, racially segregated, two-tier school system. Ren10 was from the start, a plan to widen the gap between the two tiers which only encouraged clout-based admissions (a clear violation of the court-ordered desegregation plan).

The running of the rabbits

A week ago I wrote about former Gates Foundation lieutenant, Tom VanderArk and the way he wanted to divide states seeking stimulus money, up between rabbits, rebels and laggards. The laggards, those states that might question VDA's (Duncan's) 8-point reform package, would be hard pressed to receive any federal dollars, if he had his way. As an example of a rabbit state ("those ready to move") VDA offered up only Florida, even though it's the state with the lowest high school completion rate in the nation.

What then does he like about Florida? He says, they "put data to work to narrow the achievement gap."

Well, according to the Palm Beach Post, they sure put data to work all right. Half of Palm Beach students performing below grade level attend A-rated schools. The Post reports that Palm Beach County's highest rated A schools do no better than D and F schools at teaching the students who are most behind.

That stinging indictment comes directly from the Palm Beach County School District in a proposal for a $120 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Usually district administrators tout Palm Beach County as a shining star among the state's urban districts, the only one to earn an A rating five years in a row.

As you might expect, PB district leaders blame the failure completely on the teachers. claiming in their Gates grant proposal, that, "70% of their teachers are ineffective." That alone ought to get them some Gates money. The district's grant proposal calls for shifting over to merit pay, paying teachers on the basis of test scores and dividing them up into one of four categories: associate, professional, master and Palm Beach Certified.

How will that improve teaching/learning for the bottom quartile of students? Well maybe Tom VanderArk can explain that to us. In the meantime, Florida's data gathering system (grading of schools A to F) continues to make it the laughing stock of the nation.

Chicago follies

"It's a good (I mean) bad thing..."

Chicago high school admissions/clout scandal has federal Civil Rights implications. Selective enrollment magnet schools were set up to enforce deseg consent decree. Arne Duncan tried like hell to get out from under it.

Federal subpoenas have now been issued. Duncan/Daley are still playing dumb. Russo thinks it's "slowly heading Duncan's way." Duncan tells his media people: stonewall it.

Duncan is still leveraging $100 billion in stim money to push the Chicago model. Oy!

Mather H.S. principal says he felt pressure "from parents and politicians." But which politicians? He doesn't say.

Daley's hand-picked board prez, Michael Scott swears, "I've never called about a student.'' Translation: he called.

Daley first says, "it's a good thing" that clout heavies are trying to back-door their kids into elite schools. He even thanks God for sending them. But after talking to his law dept., he says, "it's a bad thing."

NPR:

Federal investigators are among those looking into the city's elite public schools. The investigation suggests there is more to the admissions process than just the lottery that several thousand students enter each year. There are allegations parents use their clout to get their kids into certain schools. (Listen to the NPR story here).

Poor Huberman. He inherits Duncan's mess:

"We are carefully reviewing the existing selective enrollment policies and guidelines, and we will be implementing additional controls in the near future," Huberman said in the news release. (Trib)

Economics of dropout rates

EdNews Junkie posts and interesting comment on both my blog and Gewertz'. Here's my response:

Junkie,

No doubt you are right about the economics of dropout rates and test scores. Clark County was the fasting growing county in the nation. They were building new schools hand over fist, even before there were any communities to support them. Now Nevada has become the state with the fastest rising foreclosure rate in the nation and Clark County leads all counties in foreclosures.. Time to rethink validity of state accountability measures and the notion that schools alone must shoulder the entire responsibility for reform.

Vallas contracts with TFA while hundreds of teachers are pushed out

There was much blogger ado last week when USA Today's Greg Toppo wrote about Teach for America kids being brought in to Boston and North Carolina to replace laid-off veteran teachers. He could have just as easily been talking about New Orleans' Recovery District.

Student activists are leading the push for small schools in Philly

Meanwhile, the two student organizations that helped build momentum on the small schools issue, Philadelphia Student Union and Youth United for Change, continue to push for action on small high school conversions at West Philadelphia and Olney High Schools, respectively. The District is working to secure the land for construction of a new small-schools campus across the street from West. (The Notebook)

More on the Las Vegas turnaround

Edweek's Catherine Gewertz is one of the few education writers/bloggers in the country, really focused in on high schools and one who takes high school transformation seriously. However, she and I each looked at this Nevada high school turnaround story through different lenses.

I liked the Valley High story because it showed a large, traditional high school making big improvements without draconian measures like privatization, school closing, or wholesale teacher firings, being forced on them--NCLB-style. In other words, it was being done with teachers, not to them. The educators at Valley relied on things like artful leadership, personalized teaching (smaller learning communities), after-school tutoring, and a strong focus on literacy.

Catherine also salutes the school for making big gains in reading and math, but thinks the state is being too soft with its accountability standards by awarding a school that graduates only about half its kids.

But I'm still stuck on the part of the story that has to do with a state accountability system honoring a school that graduates only 55 percent of its students. That troubles me. It's not new news, of course. Many a wonk has pointed out that No Child Left Behind permits states to low-ball their academic goals. So while the test-score gains at Valley are impressive, and obviously signify a lot of hard work and staff devotion to the students, the fact that the school is being honored while losing nearly half its kids is still troubling to me.

What do you think? You can jump in here or over at Catherine's High School Connections blog.

Is WaPO in the media or ed biz?

The Washington Post was one of the only big-city newspaper companies to turn a profit last year. But it had nothing to do with selling newspapers or even ad space. The only real profit center in the Post organization was its Kaplan education division, an online test-prep education company.

According to Market Watch

For some reason, the Washington Post Co. still considers itself to be in the media business. It shouldn't. In the middle of a punishing recession, education revenue at the Post Co. grew 13%, producing $649 million in the second quarter, the company said Friday. Driven by the Post's Kaplan education division, it reported a profit in the second quarter, earning $12 million, or $1.30 per share. Revenue rose to $1.1 billion, up 2%. Investors like what they're seeing. Shares jumped almost 8% Friday.

You don't suppose that has any influence on WaPo editorial decisions around testing issues, do you?

Gates/Viacom tell students, "get out of Northeast Philly"

Gates in partnership with media giant Viacom, is paying millions to put subliminal messages into youth oriented television productions. No lie.

The Gates messaging experiment begins on September 12, when BET, a division of Viacom, premieres, as part of the network's ongoing education initiative and Viacom's new Get Schooled platform -- an award-winning documentary called PRESSURE COOKER.

At a school where more than 40 percent of students don't even make it to their senior year, Ms. Stephenson's class stands in stark contrast, with 11 members of last year's class earning more than $750,000 in scholarships. She offers the kids her version of the American Dream: You choose a realistic goal. You work hard. You work the system. You get out of Northeast Philly.

Weekend reads

Don Rose tells us what it was like when Daley's old man ran the city and Benjamin Willis ran the schools for him.

The new schools were built primarily in white areas, far from existing color lines -- or well within the boundaries of what came to be known as the ghetto. (Mayor Daley famously opined, however, "There are no ghettoes in Chicago.")

Toughest jobs

Arne Duncan, quoted in WaPo D.C. story, says that fixing broken neighborhood high schools without firing all the teachers or bringing in different kids, "is the toughest work in education today." Of course, he's never done it. Nor has he ever tried teaching in those schools, with little support or resources. If he had, he'd know that done right, and with good partners--not Gates-style takeover managers like Edison--success is possible. Michelle Rhee appears to be giving it a shot.

Of the remedies available under No Child Left Behind -- which include wholesale replacement of teachers and administrators and even conversion to a charter school -- outside partnerships are among the least popular. Deep-pocketed players, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the for-profit Edison Project, have spent enormous sums trying to reimagine the American high school but have achieved mixed results at best.

TFA replacement squads used against career educators

Look who's in denial

Gregg Toppo in USA Today writes that TFA teachers are being brought in to replace laid-off experienced teachers in Boston, North Carolina and elsewhere. Isn't that how they were used by Vallas after they busted the teachers union in post-Katrina New Orleans? After all, TFA-ers do work cheap.

In Boston, TFA corps members replaced 20 pink-slipped teachers, says Boston Teachers Union President Richard Stutman. "These are people who have been trained, who are experienced and who have good evaluations, and are being replaced by brand-new employees."

In March, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., schools Superintendent Peter Gorman told board members he was laying off hundreds of teachers but sparing 100 TFAers because the district "made a commitment to this program." Gorman noted that TFA teachers "are placed at schools with high populations of underprivileged students where the placement of personnel has proven to be difficult."

Funny--Rotherham is in a state of denial over Toppo's story. A tweeting Russo enjoys AR's "meltdown." Me too.

Las Vegas turnaround

They did it without firing teachers, closing the school, or privatizing the management. Principal Ron Montoya of Valley High School tells the Las Vegas Sun how.

Rescue Me

After reading Chicago Mag's piece on Ron Huberman, the The Reader's Ben Joravsky counts this as the fourth time Mayor Daley has "rescued" Chicago's public schools.

This time around he's bringing in Huberman to rescue the system from Arne Duncan, who was brought in to rescue it from Paul Vallas and Gery Chico, who were brought in to rescue it from—oh hell, even I can't remember. Apparently, the schools need rescuing now more than ever. "What Huberman is walking into is a mess," reads a quote from the story. (Don't tell President Obama—he hired Duncan to rescue the Department of Education.)

Jogging Ben's memory: Vallas was brought in to rescue the system from Argie Johnson, the last of the African-American superintendents (now they're all white guys and are called CEOs).

These are the guys Duncan wants to run the schools?

The Old Testament story has Abraham bargaining with God over the destruction of Sodom. God says he will not destroy the city if Abe can produce 50 righteous citizens. Abe gets him down to 10 but dares go no lower.

Arne Duncan has made a fetish out of the mayoral control issue. He's become the nation's leading advocate for top-down, unfettered control of public schools by big city mayors. He's even made mayoral control a benchmark for his success as Sec. of Education.

"At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed," Duncan said. (Teacher Magazine)

So I'm waiting for him to tell us what he plans to do about New Jersey, now that the mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield, and Seacaucus have all been busted for things like money laundering and (ugh!) selling body parts. They join a long, long list of N.J. and other urban mayors currently in the slammer or on their way, including:

Passaic, NJ Mayor Samuel Rivera
Jersey City Mayor Jeremiah Healey
Bayonne, NJ Mayor Joseph Doria
Jackson MS Mayor Frank Melton
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick
Birmingham, Al Mayor Larry Langford
Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon
Racine, WI Mayor Gary Becker

Gee, I hope I haven't left anyone out.

Hundreds of Jersey mayors, deputy mayors and other officials have gone to prison over the years. And they're just the ones who've been caught. It's actually hard to find a N.J. city without a record of corrupt mayors. Take Newark for instance, where according to the WSJ's Brad Parks:

You have to go back to 1962 in New Jersey’s largest city to find a mayor who completed his time in office and wasn’t later indicted for it. The current mayor, the ever-trendy Cory Booker, has positioned himself as a real reformer. Yet so had the former mayor, Sharpe James, when he came into office in 1986... But that still pales in comparison to Hugh Addonizio, who left the U.S. House of Representatives to reign over Newark City Hall from 1962-1970, in part because, as he was quoted as saying, “You can’t make much money as a Congressman, but as mayor you can make a million bucks.”

But don't worry Arne. I'm confident that if you search carefully, you can find more than 7 still running free. But a biblical warning--don't go any lower.

And New Jersey--please don't take this post personally. After all, I live in Chicago.

Are you now or have you ever been...?

With his usual disingenuous I'm-just-saying innuendo, Russo launches a get-to-the-bottom-of-this investigation ("AKA's too powerful in CPS?") of a black sorority with lots of Chicago educators and administrators among its members. Funny, I still remember when Chicago was forced by a deseg consent decree (still in effect) to first hire black/Latino principals.

Russo rallies his readers to name names and tell stories out of school. Several do it gladly, regaling us with tales of a sorority "sistah" being promoted in the bureacracy's ranks, over someone more deserving.

But as Russo well knows, the real power in CPS, doesn't reside in any black or Latino frats or sororities. Not on Daley's plantation, that is. Remember, Huberman was picked over logical choice and sorority member, Barbara Eason Watkins, to run the mayor's schools. Before Huberman, there was Duncan and before Duncan, Vallas. This in a district where 93% of students are children of color. Thousands of black teachers have lost their jobs and dozens of schools in the black community have been closed under Daley's Renaissance 2010.

Maybe it's the Chicago Civic Committee (CCC not AKA) that Russo should be investigating. Does he even have a clue about why black sororities and frats were created in the first place?

Racing to the bottom

California's already ravaged school districts are ineligible for federal Race to the Top dollars, reports Edweek's Michele McNeil. So are states like New York and Wisconsin. The reason? They all have laws barring the use of standardized test scores to determine individual teacher salaries, in violation of RTT guidlines.

******

Fernando Camberos often comments here on SmallTalk. Check out his compelling piece, "Expected to Fail: Making the Familiar Strange," on the Demockracy blog. I'm adding it to my course syllabus for the fall.

Shorts

Here's how the supt. selection game is now played in urban school districts. Don't tell the public.

A gloomy Huff poster says school reform can't happen--ever. Blame the kids, b-ball, everything.

I hated the idea of building another 5,000-student high school in L.A. Especially one built on a toxic site. But now that it's built, the Belmont Zone of Choice with its autonomous small schools (Pilot Schools) for students in downtown L.A. looks interesting.

Green Dot's Steve Barr and UTLA prez A.J. Duffy go at it on KPCC. Listen here.

Inside Chicago's School Renaissance

"It's a good thing..."-- No it's not Martha Stewart

Reason # 437 why (sorry, Arne) Mayor Daley shouldn't be running the schools

The city's magnet schools, which were created to meet court-ordered racial deseg requirements, have become another link, like jobs and contracts, in the patronage chain. Daley's response:

In responding to claims that clout played a role in magnet school applications in the city, Mayor Richard M. Daley said Chicagoans should be glad that students are competing to get into Chicago Public Schools. "Thank God people are trying to get in," Daley said at an unrelated news conference Tuesday. "It's a good thing." (Channel 2 News)

Closing the gap

National Journal Online asks its teacher-free panel of experts, what to do to close the achievement gap? The response from most is the usual blah, blah, blah. Monty Neill and Pedro Noguera, as expected, are on target. Andrew Rotherham, as expected, is the worst. He's still moaning over the collapse of Reading First, the great neocon reading swindle that nearly got past the investigators.

Ownership Society news

Taking the public out of public schools

If it's broke, fix it, right? Only what happens when the people who are supposed to fix it are the ones who broke it in the first place? And they happened to have run out of the money it's going to likely take to do the fixing? Easy solution: Sell management of the school(s) to the highest--well, "superior"--bidder. (4LAKids)

Where's Rhee?

My brother wants to know what ever happened to Michelle Rhee? Anybody? Anybody?

The pub biz

Pearson Publishing, along with rivals Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill (main profiteer and beneficiary from Bush's scandal-ridden $4.8 billion Reading First program), dominate the textbook and test publishing markets. But digital publishing and major cuts in public school budgets (especially in California) are gnawing into Pearson's bottom line, reports Forbes and WSJ. The British-based company will still do okay because it is well diversified but its U.S. education business accounts for 80% of its total sales.

According to Forbes:

There is still hope that the Obama administration's strong emphasis on education could benefit Pearson. "Around $6 billion from the U.S. stimulus package will go into books and materials. This will definitely benefit Pearson," said Lorna Tilbian, an analyst at Numis.

The big three are all depending heavily on the boost from Obama's stimulus package and increased demand for testing, testing and more testing. You can imagine how hard and in which direction their lobbyists will be pushing.

Rabbits, rebels, and laggards

Tom VanderArk, as much as anyone, helped set the Gates Foundation's education program on its current tragic course. It was VDA who, before he was bounced from leadership, claimed that high school transformation was "too difficult," pushing instead for closing 1,000 high schools, devastating entire neighborhoods, and replacing them with privately-managed charters. The latter have been shown to perform no better on average, than the former. It was also VDA who created the conditions for Gates' abandonment of small schools.

Now he's at it again. Writing on Huffington, VDA gives Obama's Race-to-The-Top (RTT) reforms their worst possible spin. RTT's 8 major points are broad enough to unite blue-dog republicrats with the leadership of the teacher unions. But VDA can't resist putting his own divisive stamp on them.

In his words, the $4.35 billion in RTT money should be be used to "feed the rabbits" (the states ready to move) and not "the rebel, laggard, and the complacent states" [let's just call them RLCs-mk.]. I guess the RLC states are any who question things like the willy-nilly expansion of privately-managed charters or more testing madness.

To give you an indication of where VDA is going with this, one of the rabbits he wants to feed, the only one he mentions by name, is Florida, the state with the largest high schools in the nation to go along with the lowest high school completion rate. Florida's school grading system, using ABCDF letter grades to label districts based solely on FCAT scores, became the laughing stock of the nation when dozens of A and B districts were punished by the feds for failing to make AYP under No Child Left Behind.

RTT demands that districts develop high quality data systems. If Florida with its Jeb Bush/FCAT legacy, becomes the model for rabbits, one can better understand the RLC's. Thanks for clarifying, Tom.

Bloomberg turns his guns on Deb Meier

Mayor-for-life wannabe Bloomberg is rapidly becoming the poster boy for those who question Arne Duncan's mantra of mayoral control of the schools. Bloomberg has lately been throwing fits and striking out wildly against any and all who question his autocratic one-man rule over public education. Now he's even launched a personal assault against renown educator Deborah Meier and her relationship with NYU's prestigious Steinhardt School of Education.

Writes Wayne Barrett in the Village Voice:

The protracted battle between Mayor Bloomberg and senate Democrats -- featuring the mayor's comic Neville Chamberlain attempt to liken the Dems to Nazis -- revolved around the original amendment's language, which proposed that the parent funding go to NYU's Metropolitan Center for Urban Education. The Bloomberg negotiators, according to a senate source, threw a fit at the thought of it.

I pointed out in last Wednesday's post, that the Mayor was claiming that state Democrats were trying to "shower enemies of mayoral control" with $1.6 million, and slamming Meier. The mayor's "enemies" in this case are simply those trying to educate and prepare parents for their rightful role as educational change agents.

"The mayor got his facts wrong," says Meier, who has authored articles questioning Bloomberg's school achievement claims. "But even if he got his facts right, it would have been disgraceful to block the funding for the reasons he said. He needs a little understanding of academic freedom." Meier called the Bloomberg/Klein denial of the funding "blackmail," accusing them of "threatening anyone out there who disagrees with their version of mayoral control."