Monday morning thoughts

Is Klein out of the running?

My brother Fred thinks so.

The Nation give credit to the push-back by a growing movement of activist teachers:

Teachers hamstrung for the past eight years by budget cuts, poor administration and policies like No Child Left Behind began working together on a national level three years ago, forming a coalition called Teacher Activist Groups (TAG). They are poised to make an impact on the future of education by speaking in unison with a voice loud enough to reach the White House.

I agree.

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Fred also exposes Boston Consulting Group’s Kermit King for his role in bankrolling the anti-gay Prop. 8, in California. It’s also worth mentioning that BCG was the group brought into Chicago by Daley/Duncan and the Gates Foundation to design the failed high school reform and school privatization component of Renaissance 2010. Coincidence? I think not.

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Remember Littleton, Colorado?

It’s the town, home of Columbine High School, where the horrendous mass shootings of students took place in 1999. The shootings sparked a debate in Congress about, among other things, the size of schools, which then led to bi-partisan passage of the federal Smaller Learning Communities initiative. To show how far the pendulum has swung, Littleton’s 2 small elementary schools are now being closed and students will soon be housed in one large school. Parents are outraged. But the Rocky Mtn. News blames the deepening economic crisis plus an aging population that doesn’t want to pay or can no longer afford to pay for schooling other people’s children.

Miriam Makeba

South Africa mourns




JOHANNNESBURG – Thousands paid their last respects on Saturday to music legend and anti-apartheid activist Miriam Makeba, whose death last weekend plunged South Africa into mourning. The public memorial in a Johannesburg concert hall drew some of South Africa's most prominent politicians, musicians and artists who used song and poetry to hail the woman known fondly as "Mama Africa."

South Africa's apartheid regime revoked Makeba's citizenship in 1960 and even refused to let her return for her mother's funeral. The singer spent more than three decades in exile, living in the United States, Guinea and Europe.

Muddied Renaissance

From NBC Chicago

Chicago school reform effort gets mixed reviews

By Steve Rhodes

Updated 10:33 AM CST, Fri, Nov 14, 2008

Related Topics:Chicago

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Is Chicago's vaunted school reform sinking?

Mayor Daley's latest signature school reform effort, Renaissance 2010, was launched four years ago with a goal "to increase the number of high quality educational options in communities across Chicago by 2010.

But a new study by Catalyst Chicago has found "a complex picture that raises questions about the equity of Chicago's dramatic expansion of school choice under Renaissance 2010, which has so far created 75 new schools and drawn the attention of national experts because of its ambition and scope."

Catalyst notes that experts so far lack "conclusive research that would back up the central premise of Renaissance: that opening new schools will spur competition and force traditional schools to improve. A recent report by the RAND Corporation, often cited by charter advocates as evidence of the benefit to students, suggests mixed achievement gains."

"At the heart of Renaissance 2010 is the belief that opening new schools will benefit families and students," Catalyst notes. But the magazine found a series of troubling issues, including the fact that "ten of the city's neediest neighborhoods have yet to get better schools" and "a significant number of black students are . . . bypassing their low-performing neighborhood school only to end up at one that's no better."

Families are also having a difficult time navigating the bureaucracy when it comes to choosing schools, Catalyst found.

Renaissance 2010 has come under fire from a variety of places, including the longtime reform group Parents United for Responsible Education, which accuses school officials of "manipulating" the student bodies of Renaissance schools to "improve outcomes."

Educator and author Michael Klonsky writes on at SmallTalk: "Well, 2010 is only a little more than a year away. Will Daley/Duncan's Renaissance 2010 initiative to transform public education in Chicago through more standardized testing, closing neighborhood schools, militarization, and the privatization of school management, be hailed as a great success? Will Ren10 seal Mayor Daley's legacy as the 'Education Mayor' and slide CEO Arne Duncan into a cabinet post in President Obama's administration? Not likely. Chicago's high schools are still the basket case they were when Daley took over the school system in June of 1995."

Klonsky, however, doesn't solely blame the mayor.

"Disastrous federal polices like NCLB and 'Reading First,' the lack of adequate school funding, deteriorating economic and social conditions in the community, and teachers union wracked with internal division, have all contributed."

WBEZ's Eight Forty-Eight says that "while the program does have its problems, at its heart it's serving the intended purpose," summing up what Catalyst editor Veronica Anderson said in an interview with the program this week.

Copyright NBC Local Media

Find this article at: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Muddied-Renaissance.html

Inside Chicago’s Renaissance 2010

John Myers at Catalyst shines a light on Ren10 inequities

… a Catalyst Chicago analysis shows the system of choice doesn’t serve all children equally. A surprisingly high percentage of black students end up at another lackluster school rather than a better one… Catalyst’s findings are part of a complex picture that raises questions about the equity of Chicago’s dramatic expansion of school choice under Renaissance 2010, which has so far created 75 new schools and drawn the attention of national experts because of its ambition and scope.

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Julie Woestehoff at PURE points to Ren10 school, Sherman Elementary, which is now being run by private management company AUSL, as an example of enrollment “manipulation.” WBEZ picks up the story here.

I think we're looking at a manipulation by a school that's trying to weed out students who might drive their test scores down.

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Is Admiral Brewer toast?

It looks like he's about to bite the dust in L.A.

More educators say no to Klein, Rhee-form

Deb Meier tells Ravitch—‘No Klein at DOE’

I shudder to think we may be in for another, even worse, Rod Paige of Bush fame. The so-called New York miracle is as phony as the Texas one that ushered in Paige. By the time we exposed the latter, much harm had been done. We cannot afford a repeat of this.

Read Deb’s entire post on the Bridging Differences blog

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Pushing back on Rhee-form

The power foundations and Mayor Renty may still adore D.C Chancellor Michelle Rhee but many teachers, parents, principals, and school activists are already getting tired of her arrogant, top-down union-busting approach to school reform, says WaPo’s Marc Fisher. He quotes critics who say that top-down won’t work without delivering support to teachers or changing conditions in the community. They are right.

Rhee still thinks she can force teachers to accept a deal that would take away their tenure in exchange for a short-term pay raise, supplied by foundation donations. She wants to be able to fire teachers without due process—one of the new pillars of the Gates Foundation. If teachers take the bait on this one, they are screwed. They can kiss collective bargaining rights good-by forever. Pay increases are great. But they can be reneged on at any time, especially as soft money dries up during this deep and long-term economic crisis, and their union is gutted. In fact, teachers and their unions across the country are watching this battle closely to see how it bodes for them.

Besides, what good is a pay raise if you are fired arbitrarily for speaking out against Rhee’s policies or when you are replaced by a low-paid TFA recruit, or when your school is closed to make room for a privately-managed charter or Catholic (now charter) school?

Obama’s first 100 days

'Reducing education to a number'--Delpit

Here’s an excerpt from Lisa Delpit's introduction to a new edition of Other People’s Children:

“Since the publication of Other People’s Children, the country’s educational system has become caught in the vise of the No Child Left Behind Act, which mandates more standardized testing of children than the country has ever seen…. We in education have allowed politicians to push us to act as if the most important goal of our work is to raise test scores. Never mind the development of the human beings in our charge—the integrity, the artistic expressiveness, the ingenuity, the persistence, or the kindness of those who will inherit the earth—the conversation in education has been reduced to a conversation about one number… Nowhere is the result more glaring than in urban classrooms serving low-income children of color, where low test scores meet programmed, scripted teaching.”

(excerpted by Jan Resseger of United Church of Christ)

h/t Monty Neill at Fairtest