If anyone had any doubts...

Nothing subtle about this

Thanks to Turque at Wapo for pointing out the obvious:

If any doubt remained about where the Obama Administration's sympathies are in the District primary, they were eliminated at a morning photo op that preceded the official RTTT announcement by the Department of Education. Education Secretary Arne Duncan started his day with Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, leading a walk of children from Lincoln Park to Maury Elementary on Capital Hill to tout a federal initiative promoting safe routes to school. 

Broom Lady takes it from there:

"Winning this grant is a testament to the extraordinary progress we've made as a city," D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said. "The U.S. Department of Education clearly recognizes that students in Washington, D.C., are progressing at an unprecedented pace, and that the reforms DCPS has instituted are working and should be expanded."

L.A.'s mega-high school

$578 million, 4,200 kids

I guess the small-schools movement is dead in my old home town, where 3,000 teachers have been laid off and where class size in many city high schools is up to over 50 students.

With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation's most expensive public school ever. The K-12 complex to house 4,200 students has raised eyebrows across the country as the creme de la creme of "Taj Mahal" schools, $100 million-plus campuses boasting both architectural panache and deluxe amenities. (AP)

From the name, Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools (what community?) I assume that they will divide the monster into smaller learning communities of some sort. But still...

Don't get me wrong. I like the "panache" and "deluxe amenities." But L.A. continues it's huge school tradition with disastrous results--high dropout rates & school violence. Let's just hope the new Kennedy Complex isn't being built on a toxic site or earthquake fault, like L.A.'s last mega school, the Belmont Learning Center--now the Roybal Learning Center. .

Whose idea was this, Donald Trump? No. The Donald wanted to build the world's tallest building on the sight.

TFAers being used to replace thousands of experienced, laid-off teachers

WaPo reports that 4,500 Teach for America recruits will be placed, mainly in inner-city in public schools, this year after five weeks of summer preparation.They will take the place of thousands of riffed veteran teachers.

In an economy in which options have narrowed for new graduates, competition is intense....

"What's terrific about it is that it makes teaching sexy for a group of people for whom teaching would not ordinarily be sexy. And it attracts bright people," said Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College at Columbia University. But he said five weeks of training is not enough. Nor is it adequate, he said, to know the subject matter: Teachers also must know how to connect with children.

U.K. study: Kids do better if teachers are not fixated on test results

Pupils show greater motivation, are better behaved and are more likely to be independent and strategic thinkers when teachers are not obsessed by grades, the study by the Institute of Education found. But Brit gov't. policy increasingly mirrors U.S. No Child Left Behind testing madness. .

"Our preoccupation with exam performance could be a key element in explaining the ... underachievement in secondary schools in England," says the study's author, Chris Watkins. "If there is one new thing we need in our school system right now, it is a well-developed focus on learning."(Guardian)

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Pres. Obama

"We can't allow the corporate takeover of our democracy." (Weekly Address)

Diane Ravitch responds

"What about our schools?" (Tweet)

Wapo's Jay Mathews

If Mayor Adrian M. Fenty loses the Democratic primary, Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee -- the most divisive D.C. educator in my 39 years at the Post -- will likely leave.(Class Struggle)

Deb Meier on Merrow's applause for L.A. Times

Shocking, awful, embarrassing–especially since I have long admired you both–Grant [Wiggins] and, John... Even when I fired people for far better reasons, I did it in ways that would cause the least hurt possible. Teachers who are unsuccessful are not criminals, or bad people, or deserving of being mistreated. It’s a blow against our common humanity–surely the most precious thing we have to pass on to our children. By our way of treating each other shall we be known. (Do you imagine the possibility of this being done to one of your own offspring??? In any field?) I presume you’d like us also to go back to the days when the kids scores are publicly posted too. Maybe we can add their families–to spread the “shame” as widely as we can. (Comment on Merrow's Taking Note blog)

Pushing the so-called "charter model"

Be prepared for lots more stealth advertising and public promotion of the so-called "charter school model" and spinning the supposed superiority of privately-managed charters over all other public schools.Why? Duncan's DOE is doling out more than $250 million this year, going up to $310 million in 2011,  to state ed agencies to be used, in large part, to pay charter cheerleaders, lobbying groups and state charter associations for the dissemination of PR about the charter model.

The purpose of the Charter Schools Program is to increase financial support for the startup and expansion of these public schools, build a better national understanding of the public charter school model [my underline-M.K.], and increase the number of high-quality public charter schools across the nation. (Ed.gov)

Questions for Duncan:

1) Is there really such a thing as a "charter school model"? Never mind, I'll answer--uh uh.
2) Isn't the public already being flooded with propaganda, paid for by mega-foundations like Broad, Gates, and Walton, aimed at undercutting most major studies showing that charters, as a group (some great charter schools not withstanding), fail to outperform other public schools, as a group?
3) Is it really the role of the DOE to divert millions of badly-needed public ed dollars, to promote privately-managed charters over other public schools and to pit one "model" over the other without any basis in research?

Am I a Luddite? No

I love my i-phone as much as the next guy. I've been Tweeting all morning, haven't I? And here I am at 6 a.m., on a perfectly good Thursday morning, tied by a thousand threads to the blogging machine. I hope I'm still around in 2020 when I'm sure all kid's will have tracking devices sown into their clothes (skulls?) like the elementary school kids in Contra Costa.

So why am I so unimpressed with all the latest chatter about "innovation" by the education experts over at the National Journal? It's not that I don't find it interesting. I do (wonder why I'm not on the invited list?). I'm especially interested in the tepid responses to Arne Duncan's i3 innovation grants which basically poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the pockets of long-established Duncan favorites like KIPP (are time-outs "I am a miscreant" signs around kids' necks, really innovations?), TFA, and New Leaders.

The problem I have with the whole discussion is that innovation is equated only with technology (Tom VanderArk is even selling ipads). Missing is the total absence of words like, "equity," "democracy," and "community."

Case in point: the early small-schools movement was a real driver of ed-innovation. Why no mention? Same could be said of the Mississippi Freedom Schools of the early 60s. It seems the experts are looking up, not down, for innovation.

No, I'm not a Luddite. I just think that technology and democratic education have to develop in harmony for real innovation to take place.

Even Hess had a problem with L.A. Times story

The right-wing think-tank's man at Edweek, Rick Hess, liked the L.A. Times' singular use of student standardized-test scores and value-added assessment, to rank teachers. But even Hess was somewhat critical.

I'm all for building and refining these systems and using them to evaluate, reward, and remove teachers. But I think it's a mistake to get in the business of publicly identifying individual teachers in this fashion.

Hess' criticisms makes me wonder, just how far to the right does one have to be to really get behind this latest Times debasement of city teachers?


Value added?

There was one part of Hess' post that gave me a chuckle. It was his comment on public transparency:  

"It typically doesn't entail reporting on how many traffic citations individual LAPD officers issued."

I'm laughing only because I'm reading the front-page story in the Sun-Times about a memo from Mayor Daley's office (the man with singular power over our public schools) ordering Chicago cops to write more tickets. It's accompanied by a sidebar story: "Commanders told to make lists of worst cops" which reads as follows:

"Over the last year, officers have undergone evaluations on everything from the number of tickets they write to the number of arrests they make. But they don't know the standards for winding up on a list of worst performers."

You should understand that in the past year, Daley, in full privatization mode of any bit of public space that isn't nailed down, sold the city's parking meters to a private firm. The resulting anger from Chicago masses have left Daley popularity ratings down in the dirt.

It sounds now like City Hall has taken Hess' counsel to heart -- it's a kind of L.A. Times value-added approach without the actual naming of names in the press. It shows that VAA works sometimes, depending of course on what it is you value. In this case writing more tickets and thereby generating for cash for the city's coffers. Or in the case of the schools, a singular focus on test scores as a new gold standard in teacher evaluation.

******

Aftermath

Before I could finish writing this post, Daley went ballistic in response to criticism from the S-T story. The mayor now claims he knew nothing about the City Hall ticket quota memo.

"Stupidity. Just stupid. Just stupid. Some bureaucrat sent that out. That's all it is." (WBEZ)

And guess what? Daley is calling for the name of the poor schmuck who wrote the memo. No value-added, .

Duncan in hog heaven over L.A. Times story

He liked the mass firings of teachers at Central Falls. But that was nothing compared to this  L.A. Times story, posing as research. He loves it.

Spurred by the administration, school districts around the country have moved to adopt "value added" measures, a statistical approach that relies on standardized test scores to measure student learning. Critics, including many teachers unions and some policy experts, say the method is based on flawed tests that don't measure the more intangible benefits of good teaching and lead to a narrow curriculum. In Los Angeles, the teachers union has called public disclosure of the results "dangerous" and "irresponsible." 

Ah, perfect, says Duncan.

OWNERSHIP SOCIETY NEWS

Exelon Corp.was in the news here in Chicago twice in one week. First as the parent company of Commonwealth Edison, the largest operator of the country's nuclear plants and then as a major supporter of charter schools.

At Exelon's Braidwood plant, neighbors were awakened Monday morning, by a thunderous noise. Steam was billowing from the plant after a malfunction of the cooling system and Tom Zimmer, who lives next door to the plant, says it sounded like a tornado or jet engine.

"It’s been up and down, real, real loud. I mean last night at 2:18 it woke me up. I thought the place was gonna blow. Matter of fact, the wife said she thought it was over with for us out here, you know." (City Room)

But Exelon execs as well as a guy from the NRC assured neighbors that it was only "low levels" of the radioactive isotope, Tritium, blowing into their living rooms and not to panic.

Tritium occurs naturally but is produced in greater concentration in nuclear reactors. The isotope can increase the risk of cancer but is considered one of the least dangerous radioactive substances because it leaves the body quickly, according to the U.S. Enivronmental Proctection Agency. This March, Exelon agreed to pay more than $1 million to settle lawsuits filed by Attorney General Lisa Madigan after the company allowed radioactive tritium to leak outside three nuclear power plants. (Tribune)

Exelon is also among a host of corporate giants, including names like Dell, Baxter, Walton, Pritzker and Gates, whose donations are the only thing keeping the mayor's favored charter schools alive. 

Interesting thing about all this, is that Exelon recently froze executive salaries because of the company's heavy losses in the recession. CEO John Rowe, after whom one of Chicago charters is named, saw his total compensation for 2009 fall 40 percent to $6.3 million. Now that's what I call merit pay. Donations to Mr. Rowe and his family can be sent here and I promise I will forward them on.

Keeping the 'private' in private philanthropy 

Richard Marker, an adviser to donors and a professor at New York University's Center on Philanthropy, tells the mega-foundations not to sign on to any "external standards" of helping the poor or racial/gender diversity. He's fears that philanthro-capitalism is loosing its independent edge.

Philanthropy, too, needs to be careful about caring too much about what's popular or what the majority thinks, he says. Efforts to push private philanthropy away from being so "private," by creating consensus measurements around societal needs, could be harmful, says Mr. Marker. (Journal of Philanthropy)

He needn't worry too much. The Gates Foundation has consistently rejected any and all such consideration when it comes to their investments.


WaPo's main profit center hit by ed scandal

The Washington Post Company said on Monday that its reliable profit center, the Kaplan Higher Education division, may come under serious pressure if new federal rules meant to rein in the for-profit college business go into effect. (NYT).

Among the incidents uncovered at the Pembroke Pines location, an admissions officer falsely told an applicant that the school had the same accreditation as Harvard and the University of Florida. The officer wouldn't let the applicant speak to a financial aid representative until she signed an enrollment contract. And he told her not to worry about repaying student loans because "tomorrow's never promised." (Sun-Sentinel)

The business model of "accountability." The real reason H.P. fired Hurd

The stand-up thing would have been to fire Mr. Hurd on the altogether legitimate grounds that the directors didn’t have faith in his leadership. But of course Wall Street would have had a conniption if the board had taken such a step. So instead, it ginned up a tabloid-ready scandal that only serves to bring shame, once again, on the H.P. board. (Joe Nocera, NYT Talking Business)

H.P. is a major player in ed philanthropy and current school reform and charter initiatives.

Bracey's debate with William Sanders

In light of the current response/debate over the L.A. Times misuse of Value-Added Assessment of teachers, I am posting this 2007 Huffington column by the late Gerald Bracey, in full.--M.K.

Value Subtracted: A "Debate" with William Sanders

 I knew in advance that things would be weird at this debate, symposium, whatever with William Sanders. About three years ago in my Phi Delta Kappan research column, I summarized an article critical of Sanders' value-added assessment model. Sanders visited upon me a two-hour telephone explanation-harangue of why I was wrong. He visited upon the editors a lonnnggg letter. On learning that I would be the other principal speaker, Sanders insisted that he have the last word. Otherwise, he wouldn't come. Can you accept these terms, my host at North Carolina State wanted to know. I said I could.

Sanders made a presentation which had virtually nothing to do with anything that he is known for, which is using value-added assessment (VAA) to determine which teachers are effective. I had been less than enamored with this from the beginning since his first model used off-the-shelf items from McGraw-Hill's CTBS. Wait, you're using norm-referenced test items to pass judgments on teachers? Oh, please. In this talk, though, he did not consider the background knowledge of the listeners, most of whom were teachers hearing about value-added for the first time and one could almost see the bullets of jargon zipping past their ears.

A value-added model tests students at the beginning of the year and at the end. The change in test scores over the year is the "value" that has been added. The question then becomes: how much of this added value does the teacher account for (as opposed to what is added by parents, community, etc.)?

My points were these:

VAA makes more sense than the current successive-cohorts system for determining AYP. It makes more sense to follow kids over time, although if the goal remains 100% proficiency the whole operation remains nuts.

VAA is circular: it defines effective teachers as those who raise test scores, then uses test score gains to determine who's an effective teacher.

Aside from Sanders, those working in VAA (Henry Braun, Howard Wainer, Dan McCaffrey, Dale Ballou, J. R. Lockwood, Haggai Kupermintz, from all of whom I had quotes) acknowledge that it cannot permit causal inferences about individual teachers. At best, it is a beginning step to identify teachers who might need additional professional development.

It is regressive in that it reinforces the idea that schools have teachers in boxes with 25 kids. Sanders claims his technique can deal with team-taught classes, but even if that is true, and he offered no data, it misses the dynamic of schools. As Kupermintz put it, "The TVAAS model represents teacher effects as independent, additive and linear. Educational communities that value collaborations, team teaching, interdisciplinary curricula and promote student autonomy and active participation may find [it of little use]. It regards teachers as independent actors and students as passive recipients of teacher 'effects'..." In fact, as class size gets smaller, the TVAAS makes it harder for a teacher to look outstanding or ineffectual.

Sanders' model improperly assumes that educational tests form equal-interval scales, but they do not and no amount of finagling with item response theory will fix that. On a thermometer, a true equal interval scale, the amount of heat needed to go from 10 degrees to 11 is the same as that needed to go from 110 to 111. On a test, it might require very different amounts of "achievement" to get from one point to another on different parts of the scale. Sanders believes that using NCE's cures this (ha). It presumes that the teacher "effect" persists -- like a diamond, it lasts undiminished forever. I'd like to run that by a few cognitive psychologists. It presumes that academic achievement is unidimensional.

And, perhaps most crucially, it presumes that students and teachers are randomly assigned to classes and overlooks that they are not. Many people choose a school by choosing where to live and within districts they sometimes choose a school other than the neighborhood school. Teachers with seniority get to choose what school or what classes they teach. They don't usually choose hard-to-teach kids. And parents exert pressure--here, parents kill to get their kids into Pat Welsh's high school writing classes. Big changes in test scores might well reflect these deviations from randomness as much as anything teachers do in their classrooms. Value-added models typically act as if this isn't important. It is.

Worst, even ignoring its failures, value-added might not give stable results. An article by J. R. Lockwood and others in the Spring, 2007 issue of the Journal of Educational Measurement finds that, using a test that tests mathematical procedures, they could generate a list of effective teachers. Using a test of math problem solving they could generate a list of effective teachers. But they weren't the same lists!

Value-added is currently being oversold. At the Battelle for Children website, one read, "Combining value-added analysis and improved high school assessments will lead to improved high school graduation rates, increased rigor in academic content, high college going rates less college remediation and increased teacher accountability." And how many validity studies support these assertions?

Sanders' 15 minutes of last word was a rambling, illogical lecture of the type a father might visit on a prodigal. The sponsors were embarrassed, the audience was pissed. At the reception that followed, for a while Sanders sorta took over a group I was talking with and I concluded that Sanders has an extremely limited yet extremely rigid idea of how schools work (his doctorate is in biostatistics and he worked with the Atomic Energy Commission and in agriculture until the late 80's), rejects any conclusion counter to his own and, in spite of his age, somewhere around 75, is as defensive as any novice.

Posted: May 1, 2007 06:20 PM 

THE VALUES BEHIND VALUE-ADDED

The LA Times in cahoots with Rand researchers, and the Hechinger Inst. ran an article Sunday that's the first in a series leading to the release of scores of teacher effectiveness based on a value-added model. If the point, as the Times claimed, was to show the importance of having top-notch teachers in classrooms, especially those classrooms with the neediest kids, I would have been okay with it.

But instead, I found the article to be simply another a vile piece of teacher-bashing by the notorious Tribune Company. It's the kind of crap we have become used to reading here in the Chicago Tribune. In this case, questionable research methods based on the so-called "value-added" model, were used to supposedly rate teachers' effectiveness based entirely on student test scores. The Times faux researchers claimed that they "controlled" for outside-of-school factors, such as the effects of poverty, family and community issues, racism, etc... Of course they didn't, couldn't in a purely statistical study. To make matters worse, teachers' names and pictures were posted along with possible career-ending assumption made about them without any chance for them to respond. Talk about bullying!

But on the positive side, the Times piece inspired lots of us researchers, educators, bloggers and tweeters to get off our asses and respond which created some good controversy--not just about the Times piece, but about the limitations and proper use of value-added assessment.. Hopefully some light will be shed on this important issue and some valid and more authentic approaches to teacher evaluation will emerge. I also hope that, in the end, the Times will pay the price for its callous disregard for ethical research standards and its disrespect for the teaching profession.

I've collected some good tweets and links in response:

Larryferlazzo

New blog post "L.A. Times Prints Cheap Shot At Teachers" http://bit.ly/8YJhlE 

SchlFinance101

http://goo.gl/vxD6 LA Times "analysis" assumes prior scores correct entirely for other background characteristics? No details provided?

  shermandorn

Re L.A. Times story: my wonkish thoughts on growth models 5 years ago: http://shermandorn.com/wordpress/?p=416
DianeRavitch

Experts like Helen Ladd of Duke say that VAA is not ready for prime time, but LA Times doesn't care, ready to ruin careers.

leoniehaimson

dumb reductionist article at L.A Times using Value-added; admits should only be part of eval system but makes it all http://bit.ly/aXlTuZ

skrashen

LATimes publishes naïve analysis of teacher quality, with reporters as expert classroom observers=practicing educ research without a license 
 
 Larryferlazzo

New blog post "More On The L.A. Times Article" http://bit.ly/bm0wBy

DianeRavitch

New study by US Dept of Ed shows huge error rates when using VAA: http://tinyurl.com/2fn93uw  

DianeRavitch

I felt terrible for the LA teacher whose picture was in LATimes, id as ineffective by their measure. Why shd he be humiliated?  

charliemax

Union leader calls on L.A. teachers to boycott LA Times for reporting failing teachers | The Daily Caller http://goo.gl/nIJx  


More to follow

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

The problem with billionaire philanthropists

A strong nonprofit sector, fueled by tax-deductible donations, is one of the great things about the United States and it's hardly new. What is unnerving is the scale of philanthropy today and the growing clout of super rich donors. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gives away six or seven times as much money every year as the Ford Foundation, which just a decade ago was the largest foundation in the United States. And there's plenty more where that came from: In 1982 the combined net worth of the richest 400 Americans represented 2.8 percent of GDP. Now that figure is around 10 percent. (David Callahan, Huffington)

Al Sharpton

Sharpton told the Daily News last week his National Action Network never got any of Bloomberg's money - "not that I know of."

CTU Prez Karen Lewis

Apparently the Tribune was unconcerned with the facts. Nor did the Tribune check its facts on the 241 teacher firings under Washington, D.C., schools chief Michelle Rhee, citing that 165 were "judged as the worst teachers in the system." It turns out only one-third of those dismissed teachers received poor ratings on a newly installed teacher evaluation system that has been proven neither valid nor reliable. But that would make the Tribune's persistent teacher-bashing, under the guise of protecting students, moot.

Can the editors truly make the next leap in their logic? That laying off 239 expert career teachers this year while Teach for America novices, 80 percent of whom will leave the classroom in fewer than three years, remain in classrooms, is in the best interest of students? (Letter to the Tribune)

IN L.A....

 

Blowing away the Ren10 mythology

Some of the best analysis and reportage on Daley's mess at CPS is coming from Catalyst's Sarah Karp. 

In the current issue of Catalyst, Karp blows away much of the mythology around the Renaissance 2010 "miracle" in Chicago--the mythology that Arne Duncan rode all the way to Washington and is now imposing on school districts nationwide through his Race To The Top.

The inescapable conclusion after reading Karp's story: 15 years of mayoral control,  plus 7 years of Duncan's leadership, plus 6 years of Ren10, combined with an over-reliance on charter schools at the expense of neighborhood school reform, has only succeeded in reproducing and widening systemic inequality in the city's schools. 

Mayor Richard M. Daley and then-CEO Arne Duncan stressed that goal when they announced Renaissance in a packed hotel conference room in June 2004. The launch came on the heels of a 2003 report from the Civic Committee that argued for a market approach to education: Force neighborhood schools to improve through competition from more charters. But six years later, the initiative has not sparked widespread improvement or equity. Eleven of the 25 neighborhoods identified as most in need of better-performing schools have gotten none.

Karp's expose of charter schools' reliance on private financing made it all the way to the pages of today's New York Times via the new Chicago News Cooperative. She questions the viability of charter expansion, especially in the face of the current crisis in all of public school funding.

Congratulations Sarah.

More Atlanta...

Authorities: Kids and dogs to blame for fiasco

From CNN:

But officials said crowd control became an issue after many families brought more than one member -- children, other relatives and even dogs in some cases, according to Kimberly Lemish, executive director of the East Point Housing Authority.

Teacher purge begins in Chicago's Little Village

 Little Village hunger strikers and supporters created the school

I'm sickened by a message I received this morning telling me that the Race To The Top teacher purge has begun in earnest in Chicago with mass firings at Little Village High School's Multicultural Arts School. Readers will recall that LVHS was created as a campus of four small schools,  by parents and community members in this mainly-Mexican community, following a 19-day hunger strike in 2001.

The message from a not-yet-fired LVHS staff person reads in part:

Patricia Gonzalez, the new principal at MAS, fired everyone. All but 4 have reported that they were notified, most by voicemail...She fired tenured founding teachers with superior evals. She must be using that Race To The Top crap that I hear created a loophole. 4 teachers with new babies... Do the hunger strikers know about this?

They do now.

IN ATLANTA...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/11/thousands-wait-to-apply-f_n_678840.html

Obama signs bill that could save 300,000 jobs

But 40 million Americans on food stamps may pay the price

Congrats to Pres. Obama, Pelosi and the Dems for passing the Edujobs Bill despite near total opposition of the Limbaugh Party. Doesn't it feel good to stand up for a change? The vote, as expected, was basically along party lines with Boehner and his boys calling the jobs bill, nothing but a "a payoff to union bosses and liberal special interests."

As the Wonk Room explained, this bill is deficit neutral, so there is no “tax hike” necessary. But more importantly, does Boehner really consider teachers, firefighters, and police officers “special interests”? Overall, the funding will save the jobs of about 300,000 workers, including about 140,000 school employees, and according to the Department of Education, 5,000 teaching jobs in Boehner’s home state of Ohio will be preserved. (Think Progress)

But the problem is that nearly half of the "deficit neutral" $26 billion temporary patch on the bleeding public school artery came largely at the expense of poor families who still put dinner on the table only with the aid of  food stamps. Currently, some 40 million people, or 1 in 8 Americans, receive food stamps. Nearly half (49.2%) of this country's children depend on food stamps, including 26.1% under the age of 5.

"The cutbacks in food stamps in the bill are plain wrong,'' said House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, (D-WI).

Having won the edujobs battle, it's now up to the Dems to "find their spine," as my brother puts it, and come back with a bill to restore the food stamp cuts.

We also need to recognize that the bill remains a limited and temporary fix until some of the more fundamental and systemic issues are dealt with.

Despite those expenditures, the economy continues to struggle. The prospect of layoffs or tax increases by state officials who are almost uniformly required to balance their budgets remains a major worry. The package approved Tuesday represents less than a quarter of the $116 billion shortfall that states face over the next two years, according to the National Governors Association. "This isn't plugging the hole. This is helping to transition," said David Quam, NGA director of federal relations. (WaPo)

Where's the money going to come from? How about $2 billion/week going to the eternal war in Afghanistan, for starters.

Inside Chicago's School "Renaissance"

Whose idea was this?

Gage Park junior Kelly Greenan said "it was boiling" inside her classroom Monday.
(Brian Jackson/Sun-Times) 

 

Year-round school is the latest buzzword coming from the new reformers in Chicago. That's probably because Daley and Huberman sit in air-conditioned offices all day, during this brutal heat wave, and never set foot inside overheated and over-crowded classrooms in schools like Gage Park High.

Stifling hot, humid and sometimes crowded classrooms greeted some students at 10 Chicago public high schools that kicked off classes Monday under a year-round calendar. "Sweat-dripping-down-our-face hot," is how one student described her day. At that school, Gage Park High, the school year also started with a shooting. An 18-year-old senior was shot in the back as he exited a vehicle outside the school before classes began, officials said.

At TEAM Englewood, an air-conditioned high school, junior Shunnetta Brown didn't like her new larger class sizes of as many as 36 kids. Her art class had more kids than desks, Shunnetta said. "I just don't think that's a proper learning environment,'' Shunnetta said. (Sun-Times)

'Not the Change I Had in Mind' says George Wood

George Wood is a high school principal in Ohio and also serves as the director of the Forum for Education and Democracy. I received George's response to the firing of Vermont principal, Joyce Irvine this morning and am posting it here in full.-- M.K.

I am still not over the sadness and anger I feel over what happened to my colleague, Joyce Irvine.

Even though I have never met her, I call Ms. Irvine my colleague because of the way her work as principal of Wheeler Elementary School in Burlington, Vermont, has been described. As reported in the New York Times parents are grateful for her leadership, she knows all her students, she has begun innovative programs, her teachers and her superintendent give her high marks, even her U.S. Senator praises her work.
And she has been fired.

Yep, call it what you want (she has been transferred to a district administrative spot) but she has been fired because the children in her school, overwhelmingly poor and immigrant, did not get the test scores the federal government says they should have. And given the choices the district faces—pass up on federal stimulus money or take on one of the federally mandated ‘school turn around’ strategies—Joyce Irvine was removed from her job.

Recently, apparently feeling the sting of repeated criticisms of his administration’s education policies, President Obama said that part of the resistance to his Race to the Top initiative (which led to Ms. Irvine’s firing) “reflects a general resistance to change.”
Guess again.

What it reflects, in the case of many dedicated educators, is a resistance to change that does not have any basis in reality.
Many of us have been involved in the front lines of change in our schools since the time that the President was an undergraduate at Harvard. While not counted among the so-called education reformers today, these leaders such as the late Ted Sizer, Linda Darling-Hammond, James Comer, Gerry House, John Goodlad, Robert Moses, Deborah Meier, and others have demonstrated how to change schools so that all of our children can have more equitable educational opportunities and outcomes. There are lessons to be learned here, but they do not include firing principals who choose to work with those students whose test scores will never reflect the mandates of Washington.

As noted, some of the critiques of the current administration’s agenda seem to be getting through. At a recent speech Secretary Duncan admitted that the current ways we measure student progress are wrong and that the criticism of teacher’s unions and blanket praise of all things ‘charter’ are not useful or factual.

Perhaps this is in response to the recent critiques put forth by a network of civil rights groups. And maybe the Secretary will look at the alternatives to his current ‘turn around’ strategy found in the recent report put out by Communities for Excellent Public Schools.

But this comes too late for Joyce Irvine. As I have pointed out many times before, current federal policy has created at the local level all the wrong incentives. When rewarded or punished solely on test scores schools are encouraged to push out or not take students who will not score well, narrow the curriculum to basic skills, cut out enrichment and engagement activities, and narrow teaching to rote memorization drills. Joyce Irvine would not do any of that, and she is paying the price for it.

Federal policy works by creating incentives for particular actions. Funds are dangled before states or other entities if they will do what the feds want. We know this strategy can work—it desegregated schools and has opened up educational opportunities for groups of students excluded from public education. The problem with the current set of incentives is that they have things backwards. Rather than reward principals like Irvine for taking on students who are the least likely to do well on standardized tests, it punishes her for the work we all want to have done. Meanwhile, schools that work with the easiest to teach—through district boundaries or admission policies in some charter or similar schools that skim off the most motivated students and parents—get all the praise and rewards.

Over the next few weeks school will reopen, ushering in a school year in which ESEA may be reauthorized. Congress should heed what happened to Joyce Irvine and her school when they finally get around to overhauling NCLB. The Forum has, as have many front-line educational groups, issued our recommendations for change. But above all when Congress acts they should remember the physician’s admonition—first, do no harm.

Look Ma, I'm a turnaround expert!

With the Obama administration pouring billions into its nationwide campaign to overhaul failing schools, dozens of companies with little or no experience are portraying themselves as school turnaround experts as they compete for the money.(NY Times) 

Mr. Duncan helped trigger the stampede in a June 2009 speech, saying that only a handful of groups, nationwide, had any experience in school overhauls.“We need everyone who cares about public education,” he said, “to get into the business of turning around our lowest-performing schools.

Ownership Society News

Innovation impossible in public schools says Gates

Billionaire Bill proved once again that you don't have to be all that smart to be the world's second-richest man. At the recent Techonomy conference, Gates thanked God for charter schools and wrote off any possibility of  "innovation" coming from within the public school system. (The Daily Riff)

Actually it was public school teachers who created the original charter schools (God was busy that day helping Microsoft's lawyers settle their anti-trust case so the teachers asked us for help). This alone shows a big problem in Gates' thinking. If innovation isn't generated from within the public schools system, how do you explain the birth of charter and small schools? 

Why WaPo and Kaplan stock crashed, Friday

Testing giant Kaplan, WaPo's main profit center, is under investigation by the feds. NYT reports that undercover officers have uncovered "deceptive practices."

Speaking of the Post, they ran this story, page 1 on Saturday, where the FDA assures us that the dispersant COREXIT, used in massive quantities by BP to break up oil globs in the Gulf, is NOT harmful when ingested by humans (that's us). My tip for investors like Warren Buffet, who already owns millions of shares of NALCO (NLC)  producer of COREXIT--buy more. It's currently trading at only $24.5/share.  My tip for fish eaters, this stuff goes great with crab meat or shrimp.

Business 'standards'

Hewlett-Packard is big into the e-Learning business and is a big player in the world of ed philanthropy. But last week, HP's CEO Mark Hurd was forced to resign after he was caught diddling around with a company contractor on company time and on the company dime. OK, stuff like this goes on all the time in the biz world. No big deal, right? But the statement that caught my on this story was:

The shakeup stems from an internal investigation launched after a former HP contractor came forward to accuse Hurd of sexual harassment. A subsequent investigation overseen by HP's board found there was no violation of the company's sexual harassment policy, but concluded Hurd had violated standards of business conduct. (Tech Chronicles)

So the obvious question is, why the gap between HP policy on sexual harassment and "standards of business conduct"? Then I wonder about the size of Hurd's golden parachute.



Side note: Hurd replaced former CEO Carly Fiorina, the T-Party wing-nut Republican senate candidate in California.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Obama--'If I were a teacher...'

So FDR I think said—he was asked once what he thought about unions. He said, “If I was a worker in a factory and I wanted to improve my life, I would join a union.” Well, I tell you what. I think that’s true for workers generally. I think if I was a coal miner, I’d want a union representing me to make sure that I was safe and you did not have some of the tragedies that we’ve been seeing in the coal industry. If I was a teacher, I’d want a union to make sure that the teachers’ perspective was represented as we think about shaping an education system for our future. (AFL-CIO Now)

Richard Trumka, Pres. AFL-CIO

We cannot accept as "normal" almost 15 million Americans out of work and another 8.5 million underemployed, or unemployment rates of 15.6 percent among African Americans and 26.1 percent among teenagers. Maybe our companies can function with the status quo, sheltered by hidden wads of cash and a recovering stock market -- but our families can't. (Huffington)

Joel Klein's PR flack lying and hating on Diane

But if Ms. Ravitch had her way, she'd probably do away with tests all together -- she doesn't believe in a system of accountability because, in her words "children arrive in school with poor attitudes toward learning" and even the best teachers are "not going to make them learn." (Huffington)

UFT member, Mark Kagan

It’s morally and ethically wrong to take away the jobs of people who have worked hard for decades simply because a cheaper body can be found. It is a spiritual pollution of the values that we should uphold. It is another step away from civilized behavior toward the idea that only might makes right. If we can make this case to the public we can win; otherwise, scratch and claw as we will, we will be fighting an ultimately losing battle. (The Chief) 

Columbia prof, Justin Snider

We remain very far from an accountability system impervious to perverse incentives. Therefore, we must be very careful in how we use student test scores in any decisions, especially those about personnel. (The Answer Sheet)

The arrogance of power

Klein--"I'm above the law. I know Ravenel Boykin Curry IV"

Mayor Bloomberg's hand-picked schools Chancellor Joel Klein, is bigger than the law. He laughs at law. Giggles at union contracts. Guffaws at the very idea of community input. On Wednesday, Klein announced he would use his little-known "emergency powers," to do an end run around state law and take space away from a program for autistic children in order to expand his patron's favorite Girls Preparatory Charter School. 


State law forbids such a move without consultation with parents. According to the N.Y. Times:

Parents of students affected by the move brought the case to the state commissioner, complaining that the city had given them no information about where the autistic children would go. In his ruling on Monday, Mr. Steiner agreed, saying that the city had to hold new public hearings before moving students, a process that would effectively put off any change for at least a year. 

When State Commissioner Steiner ruled that Klein's charter expansion was illegal, Klein responded by invoking the little know emergency clause which permits the DOE to act unilaterally when it is, “immediately necessary for the preservation of student health, safety or general welfare.”   

Silver's response:

“The school governance law is crystal clear that the Department of Education must consult with parents in a meaningful way when they are considering co-locating a school in an existing school building.  This is really a breathtaking end run around both the law’s requirements and the right of parents to have a voice in a decision that will impact the lives of their children. Unfortunately it’s the kind of arrogance that too many parents have come to expect from Chancellor Klein when it comes to having a voice in their children’s education. This is blatant abuse of the Chancellor’s emergency powers.” (The Lo-Down)

It's worth mentioning that Girls Prep is the darling of billionaire hedge-fund operator and DFER patron, Ravenel Boykin Curry IV of Eagle Capital Management. The school's curriculum appears to be little more than test-prep with hefty contracts going to Open Court Reading Program, and Saxon Math.


Check out this piece of satire, "Klein Declares Martial Law" on NYC Public School Parents blog.

More Rhee lies

 When will she be fired?

Remember back in January, when D.C. Chancellor Rhee fired hundreds of teachers claiming, "I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school"?

Well nothing's changed in the nation's capitol. Her latest round of mass teacher firings was accompanied by another round of lies and mistatements. The broom now claims  that she had fired 241 teachers, including 165 who received poor appraisals under the so-called IMPACT system which tries to tie student's standardized test scores to individual teachers.

In fact, the actual number of teachers fired for scores in the "ineffective" range on the IMPACT evaluation system is 76, or fewer than half of the 165 originally cited.

4 questions:

Why does Rhee continue to lie and mislead about teacher firings? Why did it take so long for the press to expose her lies? Will WTU leaders finally stand up? And finally, when will Rhee be fired?

In my mailbox

To: Supporters of the campaign for a Broader, Bolder Approach to Education (BBA).
From: BBA Co-Chairs Helen Ladd, Pedro Noguera, and Tom Payzant
Date: August 4, 2010
Re:      
     Job Search for BBA Coordinator;
     Civil Rights Groups Criticize Administration Policy
     Media Coverage of BBA Newark Pilot Site
 
1. We have now secured funding from several foundations that permits us to hire a full time national coordinator for the BBA campaign. By filling this position, we hope to expand our efforts to persuade policymakers that education improvement must be complemented by improvements in the socioeconomic conditions impeding children's ability to benefit from what schools can offer (particularly the lack of high-quality early childhood services, limited access to routine and preventive health care, and the unavailability of high-quality programs for out-of-school time); and that schools accountability for providing a quality education cannot be defined primarily by standardized tests of basic skills, but most include a holistic qualitative review of schools' resources and outcomes.

A job description for this new position is now on our website at: http://www.boldapproach.org/BBA%20Job%20Description%20announcement%200810.pdf
If you know of anyone who would be suitable for this position, please urge him or her to apply, and let us know of your recommendation as well.

2. An important statement was issued last week by a coalition of civil rights organizations, criticizing Administration education policies for failing to provide sufficient resources (opportunities to learn) to schools serving disadvantaged children, while demanding that these schools perform at high levels. The statement calls attention to the Administration's shifting of funds from formula grants to competitive grants that benefit only a minority of children whose schools are in need of additional resources, while allowing the majority of disadvantaged children to languish in schools that have insufficient resources.

The statement also critiques other aspects of the Administration's education policy, and aligns itself with BBA's call for schools that are rooted in their communities and provide "wraparound services."
Until now, the civil rights groups have been hesitant to publicly criticize the Administration's education policies, despite private misgivings. The significance of this new statement is that the groups have apparently given up hope that private discussions alone can dissuade the Administration from its present course.

The civil rights groups that sponsored this statement include: Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, National Action Network, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., National Council for Educating Black Children, National Urban League, Rainbow PUSH Coalition, Schott Foundation for Public Education.

The civil rights group's statement can be found at: http://www.otlcampaign.org/sites/default/files/resources/CivilRights%20framework-FINAL7-25-10.pdf

3. Another important statement was also issued last week by a coalition of community organizations in minority and low-income communities, pulled together by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. This statement also denounces the Administration's education program, focusing on the failure of the Administration's school turnaround strategies to involve parents and other community representatives in decisions about drastic measures to turn around schools deemed to be low performing. The statement observes that the Administration's policies are "both time-tested and flawed." It insists that low-performance is not solely attributable to school quality, because "both internal and external obstacles" contribute to this low performance: "The Administration's interventions lay the burden of failure on the schools themselves, and do not encourage an analysis of other factors that may be contributing to poor performance." The coalition's statement can be found at: http://www.ceps-ourschools.org/pdfs/Communities_Left_Behind.pdf
The combination of BBA, the civil rights statement, and the Annenberg statement can add new momentum to efforts to chart a more reasonable framework for the re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act over the next year.

4. For over a year, BBA Co-chair Pedro Noguera has led an effort to demonstrate, in a pilot project in Newark, NJ., that BBA principles can be effective. An article in the New York Times recently described this effort. In the long run, we hope to establish a few more pilot projects along these lines, in other cities and in other parts of the country. The Times article is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/education/26newark.html

Love in the Ownership Society -- Part 2

T-S-A-K-O-P-O-U-L-O-S

Turns out, Crate & Barrel doesn't carry brooms. So I ran over to Home Depot and got this Rubbermaid puppy with a stained/lacquered wood handle for only $21.79. I'm sure Michelle will love it. Problem is, how to ship it to Sacramento? Will they let me take it on the plane? I hear they're now charging big money for carry-ons.

Got home and sure enough, my wedding invitation was in the mail (KJ and Michelle must have read my blog yesterday and realized they had left me off the list). That's when I found it--the typo of the century. Sure, you say, it's only a spelling error. But jeez, now there's even a story in the Post. How the hell do you misspell the name of the billionaire real estate mogul who's footing the wedding bill and hosting it at his mansion? I mean, this is Kevin's patron, the guy who bankrolled his campaign.

Come on Michelle. I know you're not an educator but...

Love is in the air in the Ownership Society

They're not the Clintons, but...

KJ/Rhee wedding on Labor Day (irony) is at home of billionaire real estate speculator Angelo Tsakopoulos (no irony). He got KJ to run for mayor of Sacramento and bankrolled his campaign. He also owns most of California and is Wal-Mart's land developer.

Does this mean Broad Foundation darling, Rhee is leaving D.C.? Definitely if Fenty loses the mayor's race because of her. Hopefully she leaves anyway, and like BP, cleans up her mess before she goes.

OK, gotta run. On my way to Crate & Barrel to check the gift registry. I'm sure my invitation is in the mail. I'm leaning towards a new broom. Oh BTW, Michelle will be wearing a gown designed by Monique Lhuillier. 

Talk about "retrograde" -- how about turning back clock to 1868

In case you've you've forgotten why the Republicans need another butt-whupping in the upcoming midterm elections (I almost have), here's a reminder. The latest GOP game plan includes the repeal of the 14th Amendment. You know, that's the one that guaranteed full and equal rights for African-American, former slaves in 1868 and overruled the Dred Scott decision, which held that black people could not be citizens of the U.S. The 14th Amendment also became the basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

The Republicans' target in 2010 is no longer fugitive slaves, but rather undocumented immigrant workers. Repeal will allow laws like Arizona's SB 1070 to remain in place. While repeal has no chance of passing (unless frightened Dems decide to "reach across the aisle"), the campaign provides another wedge issue around which the party's anti-immigrant base can be mobilized for the mid-term elections. The party's brigade of racist demagogues is led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Arizona's Jon Kyl and newcomer to the cause, Lindsey Graham,

I'm watching to see if Democrats stand up or wilt on this as elections grow near.