IN MY MAILBOX

Dear Friends:

 

Here is my brother Rick’s review of Waiting for Superman, Davis Guggenheim’s new documentary film on K-12 education.  This movie is likely to be a major hit this fall because of the compelling personal stories it tells.  Yet Rick thinks the director’s superficial knowledge of education leads  to simplistic conclusions, including that “bad teachers’ are the central problem in our schools. I have not seen the film, but I hear that Guggenheim is on Oprah today, so it must matter.

 

This piece of criticism was on the front page of the Huffington Post, and there was much commentary there.  Rick was just contacted by the Washington Post  and has been asked to write a point-by-point refutation of the film’s policy positions for that paper’s education blogspace next week. 

 

John S. Ayers

Vice President & Treasurer
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

51 Vista Lane | Stanford, CA 94305

: Direct: 650.566.5125 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              650.566.5125      end_of_the_skype_highlighting | Cell: 708.714.0961 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              708.714.0961      end_of_the_skype_highlighting  

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Dear Friends, 

On Sept. 24, a new film, "Waiting for Superman," will draw media attention to public education across the country. Unfortunately, most of it will be negative. So we've started a project to talk back to the film and the message it promotes. We hope you will join us at NOTwaitingforsuperman.org. 

The message of the film is that public schools are failing because of bad teachers and their unions. The film's "solution," to the minimal extent it suggests one, is to replace them with "great" charter schools and teachers who have less power over their schools and classrooms.
This message is not just wrong. In the current political climate, it's toxic. 

The film was made by the Academy-Award winning director of "An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary that helped awaken millions to the dangers of global warming. But this film misses the mark by light years. Instead of helping people understand the many problems schools face and what it will take to address them, it presents misleading information and simplistic "solutions" that will make it harder for those of us working to improve public education to succeed. We know first hand how urgently change is needed. But by siding with a corporate reform agenda of teacher bashing, union busting, test-based "accountability" and highly selective, privatized charters, the film pours gasoline on the public education bonfire started by No Child Left Behind and Race To the Top. 

Rethinking Schools has never hesitated to criticize public schools. We do it in every issue. We've been working for over 25 years to bring social justice and racial equality to our classrooms, our schools, our districts—and our unions. We know many of you have been doing the same. But this film does not contain a single positive image of a non-charter public school or a teacher. Despite a lot of empty rhetoric about the importance of "great teachers," the disrespect the film displays to real teachers working on the ground in public schools today is stunning. Not one has a voice in the film. There are no public school parents working together to improve the schools their children attend. There are no engaged communities. There is no serious discussion of funding, poverty, race, testing or the long and sorry history of top-down bureaucratic reform failure. 

It's as if someone made a film about global warming and did not mention cars, oil companies, or carbon dioxide. 

The film has an undeniably powerful emotional impact, and the stories of the children and families it highlights are compelling to all of us. But the film uses these stories to promote an agenda that will hurt public schools and the communities that depend on them. It's time to speak up for ourselves, our students, and our schools. 

Please join us at NOTwaitingforsuperman.org or email us at notwaiting@rethinkingschools.org and let's get to work. 

[Right now, the link will take you to a Facebook book page that anyone can view, though only those with a FB account can post. In a few days, the same link, NOTwaitingforsuperman.org, will take you to a brand new NOT Waiting for Superman website that's almost ready to launch. Both sites will remain active for the duration of this campaign.] 

Stan Karp
for the editors of Rethinking Schools
www.rethinkingschools.org
stan@rethinkingschools.org

It wasn't just in D.C.

They were the candidates of riches, flush with hundreds of thousands of dollars from Wall Street investors who believed in the promise of charter schools. But when the election results came in on Tuesday, all three State Senate candidates supporting education reform — Basil Smikle, Lynn Nunes and Mark H. Pollard — lost by huge margins, with none cracking 30 percent of the total vote in primary contests against union-backed rivals. (New York Times)

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Gray vs. Rhee

"Frankly, we live in a city that has been oppressed," Gray said after a 2007 list of prospective school closings appeared in The Washington Post before the council learned about it. "In this city, more than any other, how you do something is a major factor. It is a city that has been dictated to. People are very sensitive to being left out." ("D.C. school chief Rhee's next move probably toward the door"--WaPo)

Bobb vs. Rhee

He sees at least one difference between himself and the outspoken Rhee, who alienated black parents -- and ultimately black voters -- in a racially divided election in which whites tended to support Fenty and blacks mostly backed Gray.

"I can go into an African-American community and say I grew up on a sugar cane plantation where education was the only way out. . . . I think how you relate sometimes gives you a slight edge, particularly in an urban environment," (Times-Dispatch)

Learning from Rhee's Mistakes

But Fenty's defeat isn't about race or personality. It's about bad decisions, particularly on school reform. His school reform strategies, as shoved through by Rhee, alienated the voters.(Mark Simon, WaPo)

An inconvenient Superman

Waiting for Superman promotes the idea that we are in a dire war for US dominance in the world. The poster advertising the film shows a nightmarish battlefield in stark grey, then a little white girl sitting at a desk is dropped in the midst of it. The text: "The fate of our country won't be decided on a battlefield. It will be determined in a classroom." (Rick Ayers --Huffington)

Alfie Kohn vs. blaming kids

Blaming students is the next logical step after blaming teachers. In fact, the two reflect the same general perspective on education, one in which commentators look down from their aeries and inform us that the trouble lies with the people in the classrooms rather than with the policies imposed on them. ("Schools would be great if it weren't for the kids"--WaPo) 

Deb Meier visits Telpochcalli

Deborah Meier was in town yesterday. So we went out to visit Telpochcalli, a small neighborhood elementary school in Chicago's Little Village community. Telpochcalli (named after early Aztec schools) is an arts-focused, dual-language school where teachers work collaboratively to personalize instruction and support each other.

Deborah and I were invited to sit in on a regular Friday event called Teacher Talk where one classroom teacher presented a dilemma she faced in her teaching and listened while her colleagues asked probing question and offered suggestions.

I even got an autographed copy of her new book, Playing for Keeps: Life and Learning on a Public School Playground, co-authored with Brenda Engel and Beth Taylor. You should too.

"Payback is a . . . well, you know what they say. "

It was a "populist revolt" in D.C.

Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy let 'em have it today. 'Em being, the current version of D.C.'s "ruling troika," Mayor Fenty, Chancellor Rhee and Attorney General Nichols.

What happened Tuesday involved more than just the unseating of a mayor with an abrasive style. It was a populist revolt against Fenty's arrogant efforts to restructure government on behalf of a privileged few. The scheme was odious: re-create a more sophisticated version of the plantation-style, federally appointed three-member commission that ruled the city for more than a century until 1967.

It all makes for a kind of friendly fascism in which D.C. government serves the interest of business leaders and landed gentry.

Mayor Daley is pissed

Chicago's lame duck mayor is pissed. He's pissed at Arne Duncan and the DOE. He hates Race To The Top. He despises the State Board of Education. He's really down on the teacher unions. In general, he's just sputtering mad. Why? Because Chicago Public Schools, not only won't receive a nickel of a potential $400 million in Race To The Top windfall, but wasn't even allowed to be part of the state's presentation team that went begging, unsuccessfully, for the competitive grant. This is almost as bad as his loss of the Olympic Games to Rio.

"You leave no child left behind. You race to the top. Next year, you race to the bottom. Next year, you race to the side. Everybody's racing to something," Daley said. "Why can't you send us money to build our schools. ... All the teachers know that these are just political slogans. We should end it." (Sun-Times)

D.C. voters make a statement

 As predicted, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty took a pounding from voters in yesterday's primary election, losing to Vincent Gray who received 53% of the vote to Fenty's 46%.

The vote was as much a rejection of Michelle Rhee's top-down, divisive, anti-teacher school-reform as it was of Fenty himself. It came despite frantic, last-minute campaigning from none other than the Sec. of Ed. Arne Duncan who has spent an inordinate amount of time recently, visiting schools with Rhee and Fenty, handing out obviously politically-motivated awards and grants, looking for photo ops and badly overstating the results of the Rhee reforms.

On the eve of the election Duncan told the press that "by any measure, by every measure, D.C. has made real and substantive progress" even though District schools saw math and reading scores drop in the last year--the very measures that Duncan and Rhee have put at the center of their reform.

But voters weren't buying Duncan's pitch and as a result, the vote represents an embarrassing defeat for Obama and Duncan and a rejection of their own Race To The Top. It should be noted that the president himself never endorsed Fenty and passed up several opportunities to speak out on the mayor's behalf despite Fenty's desperate plea for help.

Rhee's reform was also propped up with millions of dollars from power philanthropists like Walton and Broad who threatened to pull $75 million in foundation funding should Fenty lose the election. Pro-charter, pro-voucher, and anti-union groups like Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) also rallied behind Fenty and an anti-union film bashing the teacher unions and touting Rhee, Waiting for Superman, was released just before the election.

Fenty's only pockets of support were found n predominantly white, wealthier parts of the district where fewer voters send their children to public school. It was in the black precincts where Fenty really took a pounding. Gray even beat Fenty in his home precinct in Crestwood with 56 percent of the vote. According the Post,

...despite the mayor's frenetic, expensive efforts to promote his accomplishments in all eight wards, he was unable to reverse the widespread belief among black Washingtonians that he favored residents of predominantly white, wealthier neighborhoods. 

Gray did not directly address Rhee's future, saying only: 

"Make no mistake -- school reform will move forward in a Gray administration. And it will be done in a holistic way, with a strong, empowered chancellor who works with parents and teachers."

The Broad Foundation vs Parents & Teachers in Seattle

Dora Taylor 

NBC's Education Summit

Louie (my barber) will keynote

There won't be any classroom teachers or students among the experts invited to NBC's upcoming Education Summit. What they hell would they have to contribute to the discussion, anyway? Not to worry, say the group sponsors, teachers are invited to "brainstorm" with each other in a separate conference call. Among the "experts" meeting at the Summit are singer John Legend and Louie, my barber, who has some really good ideas about what he refers to as "edumocation." But to be fair, Legend and Louie are both barred from attending the teacher's brainstorming session.

Brother Fred tweets: 

Singer John Legend banned from "summit on show biz." 45 math and science teachers invited to share their views.

It probably won't surprise you to see the list of sponsors for this extravaganza.

Someone quick, call Batman

A gang of evil billionaires is holding the school children in the nation's capitol hostage. A note says, "Vote for Fenty or else we will take away $75 million and bankrupt your schools."

CHICAGO A.D. (AFTER DALEY)

All the talk here in Chicago is about what changes will take place in the post-Daley era. Who will the be the new mayor and what political forces will hold sway in the upcoming elections? Will Rahm Emanuel be able to waltz in to the 5th floor at City Hall as expected, using Obama's cachet and millions in his political war chest to overwhelm contending factions?

Daley's late announcement was made purposefully only weeks before the deadline for entering the race, in order to leave the field to a few well financed and organized contending machine bosses. But independents and groups in the black and Latino communities are already meeting to see if a viable coalition candidate can emerge. Calling themselves Chicago A.D., youth organizers are also trying to pull various groups together to try and energize the young activists who rallied behind Obama in '08.

Greg Hinz, the most informed and informative writer at Crain's Chicago Business, gives us some insights into why the city's business community decided it was time for Mayor Daley to go. 

The city papered over smaller holes in recent years by selling the family silver: parking meters and the Skyway, parking garages and (almost) Midway Airport. That strategy worked for a bit, but it's not sustainable—not unless Chicago is to turn into a mini version of effectively bankrupt Illinois. The new mayor will have to slash and merge and rethink and say “no.” Emphasis on the “no.” There now appears to be no other option. 

Hinz writes that the new mayor will have to try seriously to end patronage and corruption.

Mr. Daley says he tried, but it said an awful lot when the man's own son a few years ago ended up with a piece of an inside city deal. Mr. Daley wasn't responsible for Rod Blagojevich, but Rod Blagojevich was a product of City Hall's “where's mine” culture. 

Looking at Chicago A.D. more from a community perspective is Sun-Times columnist  Laura Washington who writes:

The city's population is about one-third white, a third African American and nearly as much Latino. It needs a mayor with a foot in at least two of three camps...Yet, Emanuel is a bulldozer, not a bridge builder. His roots in communities of color are as shallow as a wading pool. If he plays it right -- and Rahmbo is a consummate political player -- he could wade right into the fifth floor and leave blacks, browns and progressives, once again, high and dry.

But Congressman Bobby Rush tells Laura:

"Whoever that person will be will have to come through my community -- and address my community and have an established record of working with my community on its many deep- seated problems."

Rush was talking about black folks, but the sentiment applies to a whole lot of other 'hoods. Latinos, Asians and independent voters all want a stake in this Daley-bereft city.

For another look at Chicago A.D. from the big business side, see Crain's Paul Merrion's piece, "Chicago's corporate honchos wonder whom to support after Daley."

Hey, Arne Duncan!

Where's your pal Newt? Not touring together any more? Remember 3 bedfellows tour one year ago w/ Gingrich & Sharpton? Reaching across aisle? What happened? Why not tell us about it?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Time for The Big Dog to Bite Back 

So far, his administration’s seeming coziness with some of the same powerful interests now vilifying him has left middle-class voters, including Democrats suffering that enthusiasm gap, confused as to which side he is on. If ever there was a time for him to clear up the ambiguity, this is it. (Frank Rich, NYT)

Academic Press

"Apparently, plenty of people around the country think it’s a bad idea to let small children play." (mariasallee in Failing Schools)

The Billionaire's Boys Club

“They made my campaign viable,” said Mr. Pollard, a lawyer who supports the charter school movement. The windfall has made him a legitimate contender. (NYT)

Boehner

They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign...

“So he often speaks with employers, rather than, for example, labor unions or environmentalists who support job-killing policies.” (NYT)

Latest on the Chicago schools 'miracle'

Daley/Huberman fall victim to their own poor grades

So the sneaky bastards at the Tribune somehow got hold of Ron Huberman's secret stash of school ratings and published them. Oh, goody!

The CPS document stolen by the Tribune shows the grade ranges that corresponded with the schools' numeric standardized test scores. Shades of the Tribune Co.-owned L.A. Times' release of internal rankings of supposed value-added, based exclusively on students' standardized test scores. So why am I smiling now when I was steaming then?

Because this time around, it's Huberman and outgoing Mayor Daley who are being (apologies to Shakespeare) hoisted with their own petard. Huberman came up with the A-B-C-D-F rating system for schools, to use to justify his massive school-closing scheme under Renaissance 2010. This, after the legislature forced the district to show some rationale for its arbitrary punishment and closing policies .

Among city elementary schools, 47 of 474 received As, while just 4 of 92 high schools met that mark. Meanwhile, 104 elementary schools and 39 high schools got Fs. But these grades have little, if any validity when it comes to judging the quality of individual schools or teachers. In most cases they are just coded measures of school or neighborhood poverty. Without mentioning any school names, I know of several excellent schools that received grades of C or C-, based only on standardized test scores.

According to the Trib:

Huberman last year pushed for those scores to be tied to decisions about closings — the highest sanction a school can face. Huberrman said he did not release the grades because they need to be more nuanced. The data does not take individual student growth into account, and school-wide comparisons can be imperfect, he said.

Isn't it interesting how "nuanced" these guys can get when their own asses are on the line, rather than teachers'. Take this line in the Trib article, for example"  

Observers caution that a single grade can't assess the complex work of fashioning the school system into a functioning body.

Or how about this one from Timothy Knowles, director of the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute. who back in June was calling for teacher jobs and pay to be tied directly to  these same test scores.

"There has to be some recognition — beyond what letter grades are put on school doors — of just how complicated this work is,"

The release of  these very un-nuanced grades, based on 2008-2009 test results as well as on trends over time, is particularly devastating for the mayor. They explode the entire Chicago turnaround miracle myth that former schools CEO Arne Duncan rode all the way to D.C. They show once again that the Daley/Duncan Ren10 reforms of the last decade were a complete bust, leaving the majority of district schools with low marks.

District officials say they want to give fair warning when schools are at risk of closure. But a few activists accuse Huberman of using the probation policy to wrestle control from local school councils, since schools on probation for two years can also lose the authority to hire their own principals.

More than 300 schools are on probation this year, the highest number since 1996-1997, according to an analysis conducted by Designs for Change, an education nonprofit.

"Probation has become a back-door method … for recentralizing the school system to strip Local School Councils, principals and teachers of their decision-making opportunities," wrote Valenica Rias-Winstead, an associate at the research group, in a February report.

After 15 years of mayoral control of the schools and hundreds of millions of dollars invested in Daley's test-crazy, privatization reforms which included neighborhood school closings, mass teacher firings, and privately-managed charter schools, the system has again flunked its own grading system. Some of the worst grades were assigned to some of the most highly touted charter schools. The implications extend far beyond Chicago since the current secretary of education was one of the architects and chief implementer of the failed renaissance and is now leveraging badly-needed federal funding to force these same failed policies on the states.


So as the old mayor departs to spend more time with his grand kids, let's put a hold all the eulogies to the education mayor and his string of hand-picked school bosses. Give them an D for Data-driven Deception.

Duncan does D.C.

Doesn't do politics, my...


Arne Duncan is walking the precincts with Mayor Fenty, desperately trying to drum up votes and support for the D.C. mayor's sinking re-election campaign and for his broom lady, Michelle Rhee. As election day draws near, he's spending every day he can in the District, using every means at his disposal, even dragging out awards from his closet to give to some D.C. school, as well as a big fat Race To the Top grant. Timing is everything, he hopes.

With less than a week before the District's hotly contested mayoral primary, Duncan was asked whether he was delivering an endorsement on behalf of President Obama, whom Fenty has asked for support.

"I don't do politics," Duncan said. "I'm the secretary of education." (WaPo)

We don't need no stinkin' Chief Education Officer

CPS starts school without an ed leader

Since Barbara Eason-Watkins' departure in April, Chicago Public Schools have been operating without anyone in the system's top educator position. BEW was one of few remaining African-American educators at Clark Street where CEO Huberman runs the show for the mayor, with his cadre of former CTA dept. managers and City Hall transplants. Apparently that's all he needs since school opened last week minus a replacement education chief.

Clarice Berry,  head of the Principals Assoc., says the job of education chief is critical and is pushing for an educator to be chosen to fill the position.   

The principals are feeling a little lost at sea. There's no continuous stream of educational advice, strategies, and directions coming out. I think we really do have to get someone. This is a post that can not go unfilled much longer. (City Room)

Crucial though it may be, under the system of mayoral control, the school system has been turned into a big part of the City Hall patronage system and every top administrative job has to be negotiated through a sea of contending forces and interests.

Mayor Daley caught heat back in July, especially from many black community leaders, when he tried to install one of his trusted managers, Mary Ellen Caron, in the position. The mayor picking Caron, founder and former principal of Daley's daughter's Catholic elementary school, would have looked exactly like what it was, another patronage pick for a job that has been held by a black educator since 1995, the year Daley took control of the schools. Caron is currently the $147,060-a-year commissioner of the city's new mega-Department of Family and Support Services.

Daley's announced retirement this week, may make it even more difficult to place someone of his choosing and he may decide to punish his critics by appointing no one.  He says he's not worried about starting a new school year without a chief education officer because, "We have enough educators at the Board of Education." (Sun -Times)

Good riddance

It seems like everyone is feigning surprise over Daley's "time to move on" announcement yesterday. Not me. The writing was on the wall back in July when da mayor's poll numbers dropped down into the 30s. And why not? Daley's botched attempt to land the Olympic Games caused havoc and scandal in the ranks of his speculating business patrons--possibly even leading to the suicide of his real estate-speculating school board president, Michael Scott. His giant privatization yard sale of everything not nailed down, from the Skyway, to the schools, even the city's parking spaces, has left this once-proud city, on the brink and mortgaged up to its eyeballs with federal investigators once again, sniffing around City Hall.

Daley was the first of the big-city mayors to take control of the public schools, which he then turned into another wing of his patronage machine. He reshaped the office of school superintendent, changing the title to CEO, pleasing his friends at the Civic Committee who had enough of the first-wave of Chicago's decentralized school reform. That reform movement, back in the late '80s and early '90s was the most radical, democratic and inclusive in the nation.

With a hand-picked board of bankers and corporate execs and a string of (hopefully) loyal CEOs --Vallas, Duncan, and now Huberman--Daley hitched his wagon, first to Bush's No Child Left Behind and then to a local, top-down model of reform called Renaissance 2010, hatched in the offices of the Civic Committee. Recognizing the need to reverse white flight and attract young, middle-class professionals and technocrats back into this post-industrial city, Daley engineered the move to a new two-tiered system of schools, with a neutered teachers union and a focus on privately-managed charters, neglect and then mass closings of neighborhood schools.

The Chicago model was touted as a political winner, a turnaround miracle without any research evidence to back up the claims. But there was enough good-news stories about the Chicago miracle from a compliant local and national media (shades of the Bush/Paige "Texas Miracle") to send Arne Duncan to Washington in hopes of leveraging the top-down, business-model reform nationally. But under the weight of the current global financial collapse and massive state and local budget crises, Daley/Huberman have moved from reform to mass firings of teachers and exploding class size in neighborhood schools.

Without any clear alternative in sight, the Daley era is coming to a close. It appears that Duncan's Race To The Top is also a political loser for D.C.'s Mayor Fenty, who has tied his fate to Michelle Rhee's divisive reform strategy and is now facing defeat in the upcoming elections. Good riddance to both of them.

Labor Day goof on Obama speech

It was early this morning as I prepared my post on Labor Day Weekend Quotables. Sleep was still in my eyes. I immediately turned to Huffington to grab some text from President Obama's annual Labor Day speech. It was a stem winder, knock-your-socks off speech aimed directly at Obama's union base--you know, the most powerful force behind his 2008 electoral victory. Here's the piece I pulled out for my blog:

We remember that the rights and benefits we enjoy today were not simply handed out to America's working men and women. They had to be won. They had to be fought for, by men and women of courage and conviction, from the factory floors of the Industrial Revolution to the shopping aisles of today's superstores. They stood up and spoke out to demand a fair shake; an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. Many risked their lives. Some gave their lives.

 And then this:

But in recent years, the American Dream seemed to slip away, because from Washington to Wall Street, too often a different culture prevailed. Wealth was valued over work, selfishness over sacrifice, greed over responsibility, the right to organize undermined rather than strengthened.

Finally, the best part of all:

That's why Secretary Solis has made it a priority at the Labor Department to protect workers-your safety, your benefits, your right to organize and bargain collectively. It's why some of the first executive orders I issued overturned the previous administration's attempts to stifle organized labor. It's why I support the Employee Free Choice Act-to level the playing field so it's easier for employees who want a union to form a union. Because when labor is strong, America is strong. When we all stand together, we all rise together.

The words sent a chill up my spine and put a grin on my face. "Yes," I said to myself. Obama has finally come back to the ideals he ran on. He's affirming workers' right to organize and even calling once again for passage of the Free Choice Act. There's a phrase we haven't heard in the past year and noticeably missing from Hilda Solis' Labor Day address last week.. It all started coming back to me--that same feeling I had that November night in Grant Park, celebrating the victory along with thousands that made up the new movement.

And then it struck me. Oh shit! Wait a minute. Obama wasn't speaking in Ohio yesterday. He was in Wisconsin. Damn, I'm reading last year's speech.

I turned back to the morning papers. Ah, there it was, a brief, tepid little talk with hardly any mention and little text in the Times and Post. Not a word about EFCA. Not a word about workers' rights to collective bargaining or standing up the culture of selfishness and greed. After much surfing, I did find some innocuous mid-term campaign rhetoric about not "handing back the keys" to the Republicans and posted it.

Things sure have changed in a year. Now it's sounding more and more like the keys have already been handed back. Maybe I'd better start blogging later in the day.

Inside Chicago's school "renaissance."

Amazing! They actually mention the words, Renaissance 2010. First time in months anyone will say the R word. Linda Lutton at WBEZ does her usual fine job of showing the contradictions in the Daley/Huberman approach to school reform. It's all about neglecting or closing neighborhood schools and privileging privately-run, for-profit charters, like Chicago International.

Many of the new Renaissance 2010 schools are funded based on how many students they enroll. Larry Hawkins is offering parents $50 gift cards for every additional student they refer to the school.

Labor Day Weekend Quotables

Obama's Labor Day speech

"I don't want to give them the keys back." Obama said to the cheering crowd. " They don't know how to drive." He added, "They're going to pop it into reverse and have special interests riding shotgun and we'd be right back in the ditch."

Fired teachers return to Central Falls H.S.

Several students this week said the mass firings were unnecessary and that teachers were unfairly scapegoated for problems beyond their control. Central Falls, a cramped city just a square mile in size, has budget problems so severe that this summer it was placed under the supervision of a state-appointed receiver. (WaPo)

Retiring SEIU leader, Anna Burger

“We have not developed public policies that support working women the way we should,” she said. “When women can be forced to work mandatory overtime when they have children at home and don’t have access to child care, that’s a huge problem. (NYT)

Best quote: reporters to Gov. Brewer

“Governor, please answer the question about the headless bodies." (Gail Collins, NYT)

Rat race

"It's a race to the top and the rats are winning." (Sabrina)

RACE TO NOWHERE

Duncan's OK with a Republican sweep

But he's "nonpolitical"

Arne Duncan is back on tour in anticipation of a Republican avalanche in the upcoming mid-term elections. This one reminiscent of his first Three Amigos tour with Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton--a kind of early surrender tour which let the country know that the new administration was fully committed to building on Bush's No Child Left Behind policies--now called Race To The Top. This time around, he's letting letting the public know that he's still on board.

Though Mr. Duncan called his bus trip “a campaign for education,” there was little political edge. Should Republicans seize control of one or both houses of Congress, he vowed to find common ground.

“I’m the most nonpolitical person there could be,” he said. “I’ll work with anyone.” (NYT)

The best quote in the Times piece comes from conservative Minnesota congressman, John Kline, the ranking minority member of the House Labor and Education Committee who pointed out that Duncan’s reforms, "especially ones unpopular with unions," came straight from the traditional Republican playbook.

“I said, ‘Arne, only you can do that, You’re the secretary of education for a Democratic president.’ ”

Chicago's new $100 million high school

A gift to Mike Koldyke and AUSL

Mayor Richard Daley and other officials on Wednesday toured Eric Solorio Academy High School, and Daley reminded everyone who picked up the more than $100 million price tag.

DALEY: Remember, this is all city money. Not state or federal government. This is taxpayers in the city of Chicago. They're paying for modern schools across Chicago.

It might be taxpayer money, but the school will be managed by a private company. Schools chief Ron Huberman says the Academy of Urban School Leadership, or AUSL, will run the school and act as a sort of teaching laboratory.  

The three-story school includes five computer labs and a six-lane pool. (City Room)

Fighting the pissants

Leave it to Alan Gottlieb from the Education News Colorado, to accuse my teacher/blogger brother Fred of trotting canards. We in the Klonsky family don't like to talk about this publicly, but since the L.A. Times set the tone by publishing the names and test-score rankings of individual teachers, I think it's only right, in the name of transparency, to inform parents that Fred has had this trotting-canards problem since his was a kid. My folks took him to the best doctors, but, alas, no cure was found. If some parents decide to seek another teacher for their child, it's perfectly understandable.

Fred quacks back: “Trotting out the canard?” Isn’t “canard” French for goose?

Posting at Huff, Gottlieb has even more brilliant observations to offer us re. the L.A. Times value-added fiasco, starting with his classifying all public school teachers as "insiders" and "choice" proponents, corporate reformers and Duncan as "outsiders" He goes on to admit that, "the methodology may be imperfect. Some teachers can't be evaluated based on value-added criteria. Yes, some embarrassment will result," but what the hell, publish anyway.

They used to teach ethics back when I was in journalism school. I guess things have gotten more technical and innovative since then, especially out there in Colorado, where they've dropped trow as low as it goes in hopes of attracting some Race To The Top money.  So far, no good.

Arne Duncan takes, pretty much, the same line as Gottlieb (or vice versa). He's critical of the poor tests we use. He doesn't think that these tests should be the only criterion for evaluating teachers. Yada, yada, yada. But still, he applauds the L.A. Times for doing just that--allthough with some qualifications. As the New York Times reports: 

In a speech last week, though, he qualified that support, noting that he had never released to news media similar information on teachers when he was the Chicago schools superintendent.“There are real issues and competing priorities and values that we must work through together — balancing transparency, privacy, fairness and respect for teachers,” Mr. Duncan said. On The Los Angeles Times’s publication of the teacher data, he added, “I don’t advocate that approach for other districts.” 

Another soldier in the pissant army is Jack Shafer. Writing in Slate, Shafer, salutes the Times for "bravery  to express in liberal, union-enslaved Los Angeles."

What can you say in response to that? Except, thank god we live in a country where even pissants can publish. 

A letter to Pres. Obama

Ira Socol gets a little too personal for my taste, but his questions are tough and to the point (Schools Matter). He's basically calling out Obama and Duncan, and in a way, all of us, by asking if some of the privately-managed charters they so highly tout, are only good  for other people's children? For example, if KIPP's Slant system of instruction, which tells kids to sit still, nod to demonstrate your compliance, and speak in unison according to the script, works well enough to deserve millions in i3 funding, why not send your own kids there?

What research is it, Mr. President, that Secretary Duncan cites to indicate that the students of KIPP Academy Lynn Charter School deserve so much less - of life, of creativity, of respect, of freedom, than your daughter's classmates at Sidwell?

Duncan's 'turnaround' reform

Few districts even know what it is

More than a third of school districts reported they had no familiarity with the models that are part of the federal School Improvement Grants heading to school districts this fall in a bid by the Obama administration to change the fortunes of the bottom five percent of America's schools, according to the report from the Washington-based Center on Education Policy. And fewer than 12 percent had implemented any of the models in their schools. (Edweek)

Gates' man in L.A.

His title is Deputy Supt., but there's little doubt that Broad Fellow and Gates Foundation implant, John Deasy is running the show in L.A. Supt. Ramon Cortines can hardly be found in the latest controversy around the L.A. Times public ranking of individual teachers based solely on student test scores. Deasy is all over it.

During a presentation to the board, recently appointed Deputy Supt. John Deasy said the district would move quickly and planned by October to begin issuing confidential scores to employees that would be based on a "value-added" analysis of student scores on standardized tests. He also said the district would include value-added scores for schools on campus report cards that are issued to the public. (L.A. Times).

Here's my post about Deasy, after he he bailed out of Prince Georges County, Md. two years ago for a soft landing at Gates. I guess they felt he was ready to go back on the field. Most interestingly, they have the power to decide when and where.

"But she's not there..."

The Zombies, 1964

But it's too late to say you're sorry.

How would I know, why should I care?

Please, don't bother tryin' to find her,

she's not there. --Zombies

I didn't know why the words to this '60s pop tune kept playing in my head. Then I realized, it was all because of Nancy Joanne Vinicor, the teacher who wasn't there. Normally she would have been there, there being teaching 5th graders at Clover Avenue Elementary School in L.A. But instead, Vinicor tells the L.A. Times, 

"I was out of the country this past school year as a Fulbright Teacher, a prestigious program granted to exceptional teachers after a thorough application process."

But her absence didn't prevent the Times from evaluating her teaching, along with that of  6,000 other teachers, based solely on their students' standardized test scores and using a new but highly suspect value-added formula.

A team of very smart Times reporters compared Vinicor with other Los Angeles Unified teachers and ranked her:

• More effective than average overall.
• More effective than average in math. Students of teachers in this category, on average, gained about 4 percentile points on the California Standards Test compared with other students at their grade level.
• Average in English. Students of teachers in this category, on average, did not gain or lose significantly on the California Standards Test compared with other students at their grade level.

All this while Vinicor was a thousand miles away, working on a Fulbright.

My teacher/brother Fred tweeted an intriguing question:

If not being there because you were on a Fulbright makes you average, what would being absent to accept a Nobel prize make you?

So far, no answer from the Times gang. The whole scene presents a problem, not only for the Times, which has published the names. pictures and rankings of thousands of  L.A. teachers; for the district, which is sharing that heretofore confidential information with the media; and for Arne Duncan as well. Duncan applauded the teacher-naming, not even waiting for the ink to dry. The problem is that it only takes one example like Vinicor's to cast doubt upon the entire process.

Writes Vinicor:

My question is: what data was used to so-called 'rate' me? Additionally, this rating is not a reflection of the scores or the learning of my students. My school (the last year I was there) had an API of 948. My students are high achieving and happy. The ceiling is a lot closer. A random viewer can now look at personal data that inaccurately labels my performance as a teacher and reach the conclusion that I am an 'average' teacher. It is misleading. The public will not necessarily see beyond this. I, personally, am not threatened by this label, but it is simplistic and unfair to so many dedicated and hard-working teachers.

I find this process unhelpful to everyone. How will this improve teaching practices? An education encompasses so much more than a numerical standardized score. Will this benefit anyone? Accountability is crucial in any profession, especially one with such a huge impact on the future of so many, but this is not accountability. This is witch-hunting in the guise of transparency.

I'm sure that somewhere in L.A. there's a group of hungry civil rights lawyers sitting at a planning meeting with the music playing in their heads.

"Well, let me tell you about the way she looked
The way she acted, the color of her hair ..."

Reformed out

"I appreciate how painful this may be for these...teachers, and I also appreciate the fact that even the best data systems won't tell the whole story."--Arne Duncan
 
I ran into a old friend yesterday, a (former) Chicago teacher. She is She was a veteran teacher at a large north side high school who has been a fine educator and a  leader in school reform efforts for two decades. She piloted the creation of one of the first teacher-led small learning communities in Chicago, an SLC that somehow survived the school's revolving door of principals and district leaders.

Visibly upset, she told me that last week, she received a paragraph-long notice from the board informing her that she has been "honorably separated" from CPS and that her long, distinguished teaching career is over. No notice. Just tossed out like an old coat. Plus, she and her family will lose her medical insurance coverage.

I'm sure there are thousands of stories just like hers. To Ron Huberman and his army of  former Transit Authority bureaucrats down on Clark St., she is just another saved salary in the middle of a deficit-heavy spread sheet, along with thousands of other riffed Chicago teachers. She's also just another sacrifice on the altar of Arne Duncan's Race To The Top--one that has so far gone unrewarded with any RTTT funding for our state.

But to me (and I have watched her teach), she is good, skillful teacher, close to retirement, at the top of her game, being pulled away from the very students who need her the most, students she knows personally and know she cares about them. She's one whose added value does not show up on a test-score-only evaluation sheet. Now there's one more mountain of instability that those students will have to surmount.

Here also is one fewer skilled mentor for the school's younger teachers and one fewer change agent in a school and a system badly in need of change. One less bread winner in a family. One less tax payer in a state badly in need of tax payers and consumers.

Such is the sordid nature of Arne Duncan's so-called "school reform."

WEEKEND QUOTABLES: KATRINA 5 YEARS AFTER

Obama in New Orleans

The president called Katrina "a natural disaster but also a man-made catastrophe - a shameful breakdown in government that left countless men, women and children abandoned and alone." (WaP0)

Duncan quiet this time around

Obama’s administration has faced some criticism for its handling of the rebuilding effort. It ran into trouble earlier this year when Education Secretary Arne Duncan linked the hurricane and educational reforms in the city. In January, Duncan said Katrina was "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans" because it forced the city to revamp its low-performing public schools. He later apologized.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said Duncan's phrasing was “wrong.” (The Hill)

Tale of two cities

New Orleans is, to steal from Charles Dickens, a tale of two cities. There is the French Quarter and St. Charles Avenue, which sparkle with the charm of a pre-Katrina, pre-flood New Orleans. And there is the 9th ward, and the 7th ward, and other residential areas that are still struggling to recover .(Tom Abrahams, ABC News)

7,000 school employees fired in wake of Katrina

But despite positive developments in the city's recovery, more than 100,000 New Orleanians received a one-way ticket out of town and still have received no help in coming back, and these voices are left out of most stories of the city. Many from this silenced population complain of post-Katrina decisions that placed obstacles in their path, such as the firing of 7,000 public school employees and canceling of their union contract shortly after the storm, or the tearing down of nearly 5,000 public housing units - two post-Katrina decisions that disproportionately affected Black residents. (Jordan Flaherty, Huffington)

The real death toll

John Mutter, a Columbia University professor, has been gathering personal testimonials and public records of those killed in Katrina for an effort he calls Katrinalist. Mutter estimates the true death toll will top 3,500 if those killed by the storm and by its many after-effects are accurately tallied. Mutter wonders whether initial government efforts to supply an accurate victims' list stalled because of the difficulties of the job - or because of a lack of interest in acknowledging the extent of the casualties.

"This is a mass fatality event - one that is more common in the Third World..."Why on earth did so many people die in 2005? The injustice of it is just amazing." (Houston Chronicle)

Racing to the cliché bar

Duncan sets national speed-rapping record for most ed clichés and "exceeds his wildest dreams" in just a 4-minute interview. "Raising the bar" tops. Count 'em.

Tiger's 'Action Plan' Curriculum

Conservative think-tankers and consultants like AEI's Hess & Tom VanderArk, were upset that more of Duncan's federal i3 "innovation" dollars didn't go to private sector providers. I agree. How about this one?

It's Tiger's Action Plan curriculum. Proof positive that you don't need to be an educator or have a Ph.D. and that even a golfer can design school curriculum.

One can only imagine what Tiger's "action plan" actually is.

"I felt more removed from teaching than I had in my 15 years on the job...."

In his recent Arkansas speech, Sec. Duncan crowed that,  "more than two thousand L.A. teachers have asked the Times for their scores." Here's one of them. She's Nation Board Certified teacher Kim Jones, who teaches at Ivanhoe Elementary School in Silver Lake. Kim's commentary appears in today's Times:

After reading the recent stories in this newspaper about "value added" evaluations, which look at whether individual teachers raise or lower their students' test scores, I requested a link that would allow me to look at my scores in advance of their publication. I had no idea where my ranking might fall. Heart pounding and palms sweating, I clicked on my name, and when I looked at the graph, I was relieved — momentarily. My scores were high. But almost immediately I felt terrible, like a fraud. I felt more removed from teaching than I had in my 15 years on the job. This was my value as a teacher? 

 To have my worth measured by a tool that I do not trust, and then to have that measurement published to show how I rank against my peers and colleagues, racks my nerves, and I am not one who rattles easily: Remember, I teach fifth grade. But I know how arbitrary those scores can be, and the idea that they alone can identify which teachers are most and least effective is absurd.

Read the rest here.

IN THE MAILBOX

FROM: Gary Rhoades, General Secretary, American Association of University Professors (AAUP)

October 7, 2010, has been designated a national day of action to defend public education and to protest its privatization. The AAUP supports these efforts. 

Privatization in higher education in recent decades has brought disproportionate increases in:
* non-educational, administrative expenditures;
* tuition/fees, with related proportional declines in state support;
* contingent faculty who are hired and fired at whim, with limited if any protections for being academically demanding (a few unhappy student “customers” can equal complaints and non-renewal), or for addressing controversial topics in their teaching and research (often on key public policy issues) in the full range of fields in academe, including science and engineering; &
* many costly ventures that too often fail for they are undertaken with too little consultation with the professionals who do the academy’s work.

Such patterns have compromised the provision of affordable, quality higher education for all who are qualified, the independent pursuit of knowledge in the public interest, the vitality of the academic profession as a national resource, and the ability and freedom of academics to fully engage students and to pursue knowledge. 

We encourage our members and chapters to organize and participate in activities on October 7, 2010, that call attention to the extraordinary costs of the current policy path.  In many ways, in many cases, and for many years privatization in higher education has largely failed, with the costs being passed on to students.  We must defend and invest in not-for-profit higher education to provide access and success for new generations of students to quality higher education at a reasonable cost, and to advance knowledge in the service of the common good. 

The strength of our nation’s higher education system is a function of the strength and academic freedom of its academics and professionals, and of their ability to exercise an independent voice in shared governance in shaping the path of the academy.  Both conditions are grounded in the broad provision of academic due process and peer review exemplified in the tenure system.  The founders of the AAUP understood and articulated that in their original declaration of principles.  We reaffirm that message today.  And we call on our members to exercise their collective voice on October 7, 2010, in defense of not-for-profit higher education.

Duncan: 'I feel your pain'

Speaking in Arkansas, Duncan offers his Race To The Top, replete with winners & losers, testing madness, union busting, and mass teacher firings, as part of a new "civil rights movement." But most civil rights groups are openly critical. And why not? They've been opposing two-tier funding of segregated public schools since they were created.

The sickest part of Duncan's speech, the part that is bound to breed the most cynicism, was about the L.A. Times recent publishing the names and pictures of district teachers with their supposed individual, value-added quotient attached. Duncan was the first to openly laud the publication.

Now he says: "I appreciate how painful this may be for these L.A. teachers, and I also appreciate the fact that even the best data systems won't tell the whole story." He feels their pain, sorta. But what the hell, let's stick it to 'em anyway.

Then comes the topper--AD says:

"We didn't publish this in a newspaper in Chicago and I don't advocate that approach for other districts -- but the fact that teachers did not have this information is ridiculous."

What? A mixed message? You don't advocate this approach for other districts? But why not?

Duncan knows full well that this public shaming and debasing of many excellent teachers who work under the most difficult conditions, with low-scoring kids, is not about sharing information with them.

But while he doesn't recommend it, he applauds it.

******

Habits of mind? Are you kidding?

On second thought, that wasn't the sickest part. The sickest part was this throw-away line:

We trust that high-quality teachers — rich in content knowledge, confident in their skills, and poised to teach habits of mind — are the people who will turn our students into autonomous learners."

Duncan's speech writer, Peter Cunningham must have been reading a little Ted Sizer. I'd love to see the look on Deb Meier's face when she reads that. I wonder where habits-of-mind show up in the Times' test score, value-added formula?

Love in the Ownership Society -- Part 3

I thought I was invited

This from Kevin: "Michelle and I have decided to change the date and location of our wedding. We greatly appreciate the well wishes from the community, and plan to have a private ceremony for our families in the near future. We apologize for any inconveniences we may have caused,"


No problem, Michelle. I don't take it personally.

I realize that you and  K.J.had to cut back on wedding invites after some rude bloggers began shouting, "conflict of interest" and the press picked up the story. Now you even have to change the date (I'm busy that day anyway) and the place of the wedding. 

The Sept. 4 wedding had been scheduled for Sacramento's St. John's Lutheran Church, followed by an "evening of dining and dancing" at the home of Sacramento developer Angelo Tsakopoulos. The plans raised eyebrows as a possible conflict of interest for Johnson because the well-connected Tsakopoulos has frequent business dealings with the city. Could that be the reason for the sudden shift? Johnson did not mention Tsakopoulos, saying only in an e-mail to invited guests that the former plans were "not what we had intended." (Reliable Source)

So thanks to you and Angelo for thinking of me and to let you know that I respect your "hope is to have a special and personal event that is respectful of the sanctity of marriage." And please, keep the wedding gift (the broom) as a small token of appreciation for all that you are doing to the D.C. schools and teachers.

Best wishes,
Mike Klonsky

P.S. Hope you don't mind, but I'm saving the invitation as a souvenir anyway. I've got one of the early ones. You know, the ones with T-S-A-K-O-P-O-U-L-O-S spelled wrong. 

Race to the Top: The Surge Phase II

Fallout from yesterday's grant announcements

Phase 2 of Race To The Top marks a new stage, and escalation, a surge (to borrow from past and current administration war rhetoric) in Arne Duncan's politically triangulated war on the schools. The early casualty reports are already trickling in.

It's clear now that last week's widely-criticized L.A. Times report, which published names and pictures of inner-city teachers and their supposed "value-added" test-score quotients, was no ill-considered aberration, but rather a calculated part of the surge. Duncan sat poised, press release at the ready, waiting to salute the Times board and dangle the prospect of Race To The Top funding if the public exposure of teachers continues. Of course, no RTTT money was forthcoming for bankrupt California. The Times' denigration of teachers and the teaching profession was not nearly enough to divert $700 million from politically hot-button states and the District of Columbia.

This morning's Times confirms all this with a follow-up by embedded hatchet-man/reporter Jason Song. 

The lack of public accountability in California's schools compared with those in some other states could have been a factor Tuesday in the state's failure to win any money in the federal government's competitive Race to the Top education grant program.

Duncan chimes in calling for more such public teacher exposures.

"The truth is always hard to swallow, but it can only make us better, stronger and smarter," according to remarks he plans to deliver in Little Rock, Ark. "That's what accountability is all about — facing the truth and taking responsibility."

The "truth" to Duncan is nothing more than a factoid--an equation--linking a child's standardized test score to an individual teacher. Hard-to-swallow? Sure, no credible researcher of educator buys into this crass, unethical, and probably illegal use of questionable school data.

One interesting sidelight in the Song piece: Gates Foundation implant, Deputy Supt. John Deasy, grabbing control of the district's rudder from Supt. Contines, voiced his support for value-added, albeit, a softer version than Duncan's. In a memo Tuesday to the Board of Education, Deasy said that a teacher's value-added score should NOT be reported publicly and that including it in a performance review "would shield it" from public disclosure. He also said the district had had "positive" preliminary talks with the unions on a new evaluation system. UTLA prez Duffy seems to confirm this, as well as his own willingness to comply with the surge.


Getting crass in D.C.


Speaking of crass, Duncan's election campaigning for D.C.'s Mayor Fenty, the morning of the grant announcement, followed up by a $75 million RTTT grant, has to raise more questions about granting process itself. The power-philanthropists underwriting Chancellor Rhee's crumbling teacher-bashing reforms, have threatened to pull the plug if Fenty loses in the upcoming elections.


Rhee used the grant award to make claims way beyond the award's scope:

"Winning this grant is a testament to the extraordinary progress we've made as a city," Rhee said in a statement issued early this afternoon. "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." (D.C. Schools Insider)

More fallout from the surge to follow. Stay tuned.