Quotables

It's an illusion

The stark conclusion: Nothing that Paul Vallas or Arne Duncan did in the last 15 years has had any significant effect on the number of CPS students who can read and write acceptably and do arithmetic, fractions and elementary algebra easily. It's all an illusion. (Bill Sweetland, Huffington)

Duncan on the education business

Q & A with the Chicago Tribune:

Q Why include business in the policy debate about public education? A We all need to work together on this stuff, business leaders and educators. Everyone's mutual interests are absolutely aligned.
Q Business leaders want reform but don't want to pay for it, right?
A No; there's been unbelievable generosity, not just in resources but in ideas. We've had a great relationship with the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable. I've met with a number of CEOs.

Disconnected youth

The costs of leaving six million young adults completely out of the economy and bereft of hope are going to be dangerously high. Everyone recognizes that this population is inevitably a source of crime. Currently, New York State has 60,000 people incarcerated and 23,000 on parole and the fifth highest recidivism rate in the country. It destroys individuals, their victims, and their families (David Jones, President and CEO, Community Service Society of New York).

In my mailbox

WaPo's Jay Mathews says he doesn't deserve to be called "union basher":

...this is all fair comment, but i hope you also read the column and see the praise i heaped onto AFT president Randi Weingarten. that doesnt look like union bashing to me.

Okay, Jay. Maybe I shouldn't have called you a union basher. You did indeed praise Randi. But geeez, that was a crappy column you wrote. I'm glad you don't even try and defend it.

Anti-union spy Mike Antonucci claims he really did mingle with NEA teachers:

Repeating something over and over again doesn't make it true, Mike. Fred spent 10 minutes with me and claims to know where I've been for six days. Maybe he should have spoken to some of the people in his own delegation who complained they couldn't find me because I wasn't in the press area. You also left out the names Fred called me. Thank you for that.

You make some good points, Mike. Repeating something certainly doesn't make it true. And name calling is never right. Thanks for reminding us. But how do you know that Fred didn't have his own spies watching your every move? Do you have any evidence, ie. pictures, signed affidavits from teachers, proving that you left the press area? If not, I'm afraid I've got to go with Fred on this one.

Keep those comments coming.

Duncan at the NEA meeting

7,000 delegates. Lots of boos when Duncan says he want to tie teacher pay to test scores. Even my brother booed despite Andy Rotherham's admonition. But Fred points out something that most bloggers, obsessed with the booing (who never talked with teachers on the floor) missed. Many, if not most of the delegates seemed OK with Duncan.

Back to the speech

Lots of Arne's usual cliches--"the status quo is not good enough"..."it's a moving train and we all need to get on board." More of the same about Chicago's miracle "turnaround." No mention however, of the Civic Committee's report which blows all that away (surprise, surprise). He once again blames schools and teachers for "perpetuating poverty and social failure." He even told the teachers that they could "no longer blame the system." The system will be glad to know that.

But on the whole, there seemed to be an NEA buy-in to Obama's larger agenda of school funding and union participation. It's definitely a major shift from the Bush days and it offers new openings for partnership and for unions to organize amongst the growing base of disenchanted charter school teachers. Faced with the inescapable evidence of charter school failures, Duncan said: "Charter schools are public schools and they should be held to the same standards as everyone else." Did KIPP, Civitas and the NLRB hear that?

No wonder the privatizers and union-busters are nervous and here. For that matter, so is the left. I think Obama likes it that way. Fordham's Andy Smarick loved it. He admires Duncan's verbal gymnastics.

Finally, after all of Duncan's "ton-of-bricks" threats these past few weeks, this statement made me chuckle:

The President and I have both said repeatedly that we are not going to impose reform but rather work with teachers, principals, and unions to find what works.

Iif you buy that, I have this condo on Florida's Gulf Coast for sale. Call me. (:>)

Fighting words

Anti-union blogger/spy Mike Antonucci, who hid out during the entire meeting in the press area, went so far as to call my brother, the PREAPrez, "lame".

Memories...

Duncan even harks back to his days in the small-schools movement:

"After that, I helped start a small new traditional neighborhood public school - the Ariel Academy. It wasn't a charter. It had union teachers and today it is one of the highest-performing public schools in Chicago - even though all of the kids come from poverty."

Today's guest blogger. My brother Fred from the NEA RA

Hey bro,

I want to share with you some of my impressions of the NEA RA and try and respond to some of your questions.

1. What's different this year?

The main thing that's different is Barack Obama.

A lot of the hot button issues when we had Bush as president have a different meaning with Obama in the White House. The attitude towards charters is the most obvious, although not the only one. Perceived with little differentiation as an anti-union, anti- public school strategy under Bush, the simplest response that made the most sense was to simply say no. Now the discussion is more nuanced. New Business Item A, the main position statement on charters is an 8 point directive on how to collaborate on developing charters, rather than a plan of opposition to them. It was approved by the body overwhelmingly.

2. About the reaction to Duncan's speech. What does it signify?

Some education bloggers, including those who are here and some who are not, heard boos to some of Duncan's comments and got their pants all twisted around. There were some boos of course. But in plenty of conversations outside the hall, the reaction was considerably friendly and open. I found this was almost universally true among minority teachers. Remember, Obama got booed when he spoke at the RA in Philadelphia during the primary campaign and the NEA members voted for him in huge numbers.

Outside the hot house of wonker debates, and away from Chicago, where we have had
experience with Duncan's leadership, the Duncan approach works pretty well.

His personal story about his mom, and the success stories of the lives she touched, is a powerful one, particularly if you haven't heard it dozens of times before.

Again, there is the issue of context. As one observer said to me, a Bush EdSec could have come into the hall and given the same speech and the place would have gone up in flames (of course, no Bush EdSec ever did or ever would).

But Duncan can talk about pay-for-performance, teacher accountability, charter schools and even testing and get an entirely different reaction. He can do it because of Obama. Teachers know Obama isn't an anti-union guy, and Duncan says it in a way that implies respect for union input and voice. Nobody in the Bush USDE ever did that.

3. Will the NEA jump into charter organizing.

I can't tell if they are willing to put the resources, organizers and money into it that it requires. But they now have permission from the rank-and-file. That's new.

4. Why do I complain about my seats? Because it's funny. And true.

Two things you don't hear around the hall: Not much about the economic crisis. Nothing about the wars.

See you soon.

-Fred

Civic Committee's Martin denies blaming Duncan for failed reform

Sorry, I couldn't get the embedded video of Rick Arruza's interview with R. Eden Martin to play here. But you can watch it at WTTW Chicago's websight HERE.

Only "vested interests" to blame...LOL

Catalyst's Lorraine Forte sets him straight--It's not just about being a charter. There are good and bad. Both charters and neighborhood schools need good teachers and resources.

CTU's McGuire touts the Stanford report that shows only 1/3 of charters doing well. Martin responds--"But in Chicago, they're all good."

Background on R. Eden Martin from my August 19, 2006 post on SmallTalk, "R. Eden Martin, anti-monopoly warrior???"

The 'Four Assurances'

In recent speeches, Arne Duncan answers the question I asked last week--what do you (states) have to do to keep him from dropping "a ton of bricks" on your head? Answer--Give Arne four assurances.

...adopting rigorous standards; recruiting and retaining effective teachers; turning around chronically low-performing schools; and building data systems to track student achievement and teacher effectiveness. (Ed Review) h/t Bob Pearlman

Bricks will also fall if you restrict the growth of charter schools (only good ones, of course) or turnarounds.

The good news is that he leaves some openings for turnaround efforts besides the Gates "model" of just closing thousands of urban schools or turning them over to private charter operators.

“We have four basic models in mind,” including awarding planning grants in the fall so new principals and lead teachers can develop curricula to meet students’ needs, followed by recruiting new teachers in the spring; turning the school over to a charter or for-profit management organization; changing the school culture through a variety of actions (for example, extending learning time for students); and closing low-performing schools and re-enrolling the students in superior schools." (Turning Around Low-Performing Schools)

The other point of note is that Duncan, while continuing to make charters a centerpiece in his reform strategy, has opened the door to the AFT and NEA to organize charter school teachers and/or create union charter schools.

Is this the reason hard-line anti-union charterites, like the Chicago Civic Committee, have turned on him?

Is anyone buying the Civic Committee's bogus report?

The Sun-Times finally notices the Civic Committee's report that discredited the past ten years of Chicago school reform. Kudos to the editorial board for not falling for their BS.

Mostly, it's an overly simplistic analysis of test data, assembled largely
to bash traditional public schools and promote the business group's preferred
solution -- expanding the number of charter and other privately managed
schools.

They could have also mentioned that it was the Civic Committee's and Mayor Daley's own bogus Renaissance 2010 plan that led to the reform flop. Can you imagine a report on Chicago school reform that never mentions Ren10 nor the mayor?

Covering the back-stabbing

Catherine Gewertz posts today at Edweek's High School Connections blog re. the Chicago Civic Committee's back-stabbing of Arne Duncan.

Ouch. Not what Arne wants to hear as he crisscrosses the country encouraging folks to do more of what he just did in Chicago.

Strange. Neither the Sun-Times and Trib even covered the story. Is it an embarrassment for the mayor? Not an importnat enough story? What? Will we really miss them when they are gone? Yes to the Sun-Times. Where else will I get my daily patternless crossword puzzle or read Telander's sports column?

Analycize this...

Here's the latest from the mayor who runs the Chicago Public Schools. After facing something of a rebellion in the City Council following the parking meters/privatization scandal, followed by the forced 15-day furlough of 3,700 non-union city workers, Mayor Daley had this to say: "They can analycize anything. You know that."

The little red schoolhouse

WSJ ran this review of Jonathan Zimmer's new book, "Small Wonder," a history of the little red schoolhouse.

The one-room school was "neither as rundown as critics claimed nor as bucolic as defenders imagined," Mr. Zimmerman writes. But its champions understood its flaws. They were defending the principles of local autonomy and human-scale democracy. Mr. Zimmerman quotes a "rural mother" who lamented: "Individuality will be lost, the pride taken in 'our' school and 'our' teacher gone. Haven't the parents who bear the children anything to say?

Two letters

There were two good letters in this morning's Sun-Times. The first, "Want to retain teachers? Ask them for advice," from a retired teacher, helps explain why there's been such a high teacher attrition rate in Chicago. The second, "Don't revise history of 'police riot,' debunks the current rewriting of history around the '68 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

He removed his badge so I couldn't see his star number. In a few moments the crowd began chanting, "The whole world is watching . . ." And the cops began to drag demonstrators to the police vans.

Civic Committee stabs Duncan in the back

He toiled faithfully on their plantation for 10 years before going to D.C. to serve as Obama's education chief. He did all their bidding without question, closing dozens of schools in under-served communities to make way for gentrification and privatizing much of the system.

But now the Chicago Civic Committee, the city's ruling elite, has turned on Arne Duncan and in a report released yesterday, titled "Still Left Behind," attacked the Duncan-led Chicago school reform as an "abysmal" failure. Ironically, it was the Civic Committee that designed and financed the Mayor's Renaissance 2010 plan--the very plan that Duncan was hired to implement and enforce.

A flabbergasted Duncan, who rode the myth of the Chicago turnaround miracle all the way to Washington, tried to defend his record. But, well, 8th grade test scores did rise by a few points, was the best he could do.

Crain's Chicago Business blogger Greg Hinz writes:

The report directly challenges widespread claims by current and former CPS officials that local students have shown substantial progress over the last decade on standardized tests. For instance, it notes a 2006 letter from then schools CEO Arne Duncan, now U.S. secretary of education, stating that the share of CPS students meeting or exceeding state standards had leapt 15 points in one year. In fact, it says, the change occurred because of a change in the test, not because of real educational gains.

The fallout from the Civic Committee's report will be felt way beyond the city limits. Duncan has been touting the Renaissance 2010 model on his current "listening tour" and has even been threatening districts who won't follow along, with loss of federal dollars.

There are two lessons I hope Arne Duncan will take away from all this: 1) Tell no lies and claim no easy victories, and 2) He who lies down with dogs, wakes up with fleas.

The Washington Post's Jay Mathews is a union-basher

He's also a self-admitted apologist for KIPP, the nation's largest chain of business-model charter schools and one noted for its high teacher turnover rates and for its efforts to drive up test scores by pushing out low-scoring kids.

In the past Mathews has admitted overlooking such critical data to "make KIPP sound like more than it is." Now he's doing it again. Only this time, it's at the expense of the very teachers who are responsible for whatever successes KIPP has had. He's even threatening them if they dare "mess with" KIPP

An example of his union bashing: In Monday's WaPO, "Don't Mess With Success at This High Achieving Charter Middle School," Mathews quotes KIPP founder Jason Botel who charges that an unnamed union member responded unsympathetically to Botel's scare tactics. Botel claimed that KIPP, the wealthiest charter operator in the nation, wouldn't be able to afford to pay teachers overtime for working their typical 16-hour day, if those teachers dared to unionize.

"That's not my problem," the unnamed official supposedly tells Botel. The president of the union denies that anyone said that. But Mathews puts it out there anyway.

"Such stories," writes Mathews, "heat the blood of union critics. It is, they contend, a sign of how unions dumb down public education by focusing on salaries, not learning."

This type of journalism is nothing new for Mathews. He's become an important part of a national campaign aimed at discouraging and defeating activist KIPP teachers, who are finally standing up to abuse from Botel and company and organizing for collective barganing rights.

KIPP-AMP teachers in New York, for example, are currently part of a new movement among charter school teachers, asking for the union recognition long denied them. They got a majority of KIPP teachers to sign union cards only to have their pro-union colleagues fired, threatened and intimidated by KIPP management. The teachers want an end to 16-hour teacher work days (which Mathews thinks are good for kids), lousy pay and benefits (while KIPP founders rake in millions), and firings of pro-union teachers.

Botel claims that KIPP can't afford to pay teachers properly. He claims that African-American kids learn better with overworked teachers who burn out in three years. A good journalist would question those claims. A good journalist would fact-check the "not my problem" quote, find out who supposedly said it, name them and ask them if they really said it. He would also do some investigation and ask for some evidence before drinking the KIPP kool-aid. But a good journalist wasn't writing the "don't mess" story.

Another brick...

Doug at Borderland responds to my Arne Duncan/"Ton 'O Bricks" posts with the classic Pink Floyd video, "Another Brick in the Wall."

*****

My brother Fred says, "someone's missing" from National Journal's new panel of expert education bloggers. What else is new?

*****

For any teacher, the city of Chicago is a great classroom. I held my class last night at the Harold Washington Library so students could hear Henry Louis "Skip" Gates holding forth on Lincoln's Bicentennial and other topics. My own focus is on reflective teaching practices and Gates really brings home the importance of personalization and story-telling, especially in his family-tree studies of African-Americans. Gates is the director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. But he calls Harvard, "an historically white university." Amen!

Special thanks to one of my heroes, Prof. Timuel Black, who dropped in to meet the students following the Gates talk. For those who couldn't make it, the Gates talk will soon be available on Chicago Amplified on WBEZ Chicago Public Radio.

Latest on the Chicago schools 'miracle'

CPS losing half its teachers

Faster than Arne Duncan can speed-rap about his miracle turnaround in Chicago, comes piles of research showing that he's just been blowing smoke.

The latest comes out of the Univ. of Chicago's Consortium on Chicago School Research. It shows Chicago public schools under the Duncan regime losing more than half of all their teachers within five years -- and about two-thirds of their new ones. As one would expect in this racially segregated school system, the 100 schools suffering the highest teacher turnover rates are those in predominantly African-American and high-poverty neighborhoods.

"I find that really disturbing,'' said Elaine Allensworth, lead author of the study. "I just see no way they can improve if they can't maintain a stable work force.'

The Small Schools connection

The study claims to show higher rates of attrition in smaller schools. But that's misleading because the study looks at turnover and stability percentages. Therefore the loss of a single teacher in a small school could represent a 10-20% loss of staff. More interesting is the high stability rate in small neighborhood schools like Telpochcalli which despite its small size has a low teacher turnover rate.

As the study points out, "the schools that retain their teachers at high rates are those with a strong sense of collaboration among teachers and the principal."

From the Sun-Times:

Although Chicago's Clemente High had its share of fights and gangs, that wasn't why teacher Dana Limberg left last year for Oak Park-River Forest High School. Limberg was disappointed in her principal's leadership -- another factor the consortium tied to teacher turnover.

Many teachers felt a new small-school program "was making a dramatic improvement and he didn't seem to respect it,'' Limberg said. Plus, she said, teachers suddenly had less input -- another turnover trigger.

Huberman: "No problem..."

Chicago Schools CEO Ron Huberman cautioned that Chicago's overall teacher turnover rate is around the national average, and "not all turnover is bad'' because for some, teaching may not be "a good fit.''

But Huberman has to play the good soldier, left to apologize for Daley/Duncan and clean up their mess and start some new teacher mentoring programs that Duncan should have put in place years ago.

Renaissance 2010

There's no mention of Charter schools or of Renaissance 2010 in the entire Consortium report. Why not? The authors say they were unable to get data on teacher turnover rates from the charters. Why not??? If charters were included one can only imagine how much higher the district's attrition rate would be.

Under Duncan/Daley's Renaissance 2010 plan, many schools in the black community were closed and teachers blamed for their "failure." Then they were replaced by privately-managed charter schools like KIPP and Civitas, staffed with inexperienced teachers who work cheap and work 16-hour days, but who generally burn out after three years.

Letter from the "moderates"

There's a new faction in the Senate that calls itself the Moderate Democrats Working Group (Is Joe Lieberman still a Democrat? I forget). Last week they wrote a letter to Obama, basically letting him know they were out there; that they supported charter schools (only the good ones, of course), merit pay for teachers, and the use of data (what courage!). All of which would surely rocket the U.S. past Finland, Poland, and Iceland, in the economic race to the top.

"...had the United States closed the gap in education achievement with better-performing nations like Finland, Iceland, and Poland, our GDP could have been up to $2.3 trillion higher last year."

Who knew?

Another look at Duncan's Chicago "model"

Arne Duncan continues his tour, touting over and over again, his own Chicago miracle and threatening to withhold badly needed Stim 2 dollars from districts that don't accept the model.

That model is built on top-down mayoral control of the schools, widespread and often arbitrary school closings, mainly in black neighborhoods, and replacement with replicable, privately-managed charter schools.

There is no data to support most of Duncan's wild claims, Chicago's test scores remained flat during his term as CEO. More importantly, despite the best efforts of teachers, parents and community members, the devastating effects of Duncan/Daley's education and social policies on community life don't speak well for the model.

Examples:

• CPS and Cook County lead the nation in reported cases of gonorrhea, and has the third highest number of Chlamydia cases. Teenagers account for more than 60 percent of new cases in Chicago. Only after these grim statistics were duly reported in the media did Duncan's replacement, Roh Huberman announce a 6-school "pilot program" aimed at testing and treating kids for STDs. Since the program runs at no cost to CPS, one can only wonder why it wasn't included in Duncan's model?
  
• CPS also leads the nation in suspension rates of black, male students, a statistic that speaks for itself. Studies show a strong link between suspensions and dropouts.
  

Don't expect Duncan or Daley to take any responsibility for these numbers. You can't blame them, they will argue. How ironic, especially coming from Duncan who has now joined forces with the "no excuses" policy coalition that puts blame for low standardized test scores squarely on the shoulders of neighborhood schools.

To my way of thinking, if you want to judge or compare school systems, start with a look at the lives of the students and see how that system has helped improved the conditions of life for them--or not.

Turnarounds--more business for 'charter execs'

The turnaround model could be a road to greater growth for the charter-school movement which, after 16 years, comprises 1.4 million students in 4,600 schools — still only about 4% of all public schools. Charters, which are funded with public dollars but are typically free of school-district and teacher-union restrictions, have typically been regarded as labs of innovation (though a recent Stanford University study makes the case that charter-school quality can range greatly, from great to not so great). (Time)

A break from the past?

Obama has nominated Brenda Dann-Messier, the leader of a Rhode Island nonprofit who has a background in adult education, workforce, and literacy issues, to serve as his assistant secretary for vocational and adult education. Sean Cavanaugh at Curriculum Matters, calls Obama's pick, "something of a departure" from Bush administration policy on voc-ed.

Bush repeatedly tried to eliminate funding for the federal vocational program, arguing that it has not been successful in raising academic achievement and setting high expectations for students.

The Met

Now that the Gates Foundation has abandoned the small schools movement, I'm thinking that maybe the movement can survive. One of my favorite small schools is The MET in Providence, R.I.. Creating individual learning plans for every student and putting its emphasis on learning outside the classroom, the ideas of MET founders Dennis Littky and Elliot Washor are opening some eyes in several urban districts, including Camden and Indianapolis.

Here's a piece from AP's Geoff Mulvihill on Camden's MetEast High School:

The schools are small and very different from traditional schools. MetEast has just over 100 students — less than one-tenth the enrollment at each of the city's comprehensive high schools. The educators are called "advisers," not teachers, and they advise the same group of students all four years. Classes are built around the idea that students will learn by following their passions. Students do internships. Graduation requirements include a senior project with the aim of doing some good for the community.

Ironically, the two Met-type (Big Picture) schools in Chicago were closed down, despite their high graduation rates, when they didn't conform to district curriculum mandates.

The Broader, Bolder Report

As the battle around NCLB re-authorization heats up, the question remains of whether there will be substantial changes made in the old test-and-punish law or simply a cosmetic name change.

A new report from the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education (BBA) Campaign makes a strong case for making substantial changes. For example, it calls for using multiple measures and better tests when it comes to assessing kids, teachers, and schools. BBA wants the feds to rely more on the an expanded National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) and test kids on a broader range of academic subjects, including the arts, physical health and fitness, citizenship habits, and other necessary knowledge and skills.

Barack Obama appears to generally favor the BBA line on testing--which would be a significant break from the Bush/NCLB era. At a town hall meeting in Green Bay earlier this month Obama reiterated his call from last year’s campaign:

“If all we're doing is testing and then teaching to the test, that doesn't assure that we're actually improving educational outcomes. We do need to have accountability, however. We do need to measure progress with our kids. Maybe it's just one standardized test, plus portfolios of work that kids are doing, plus observing the classroom.”

In another major break from the NCLB approach and from the line of the more conservative think tankers, BBA's report continues to make their case that schools alone, can't be expected to overcome the effects of poverty and historic racial discrimination on the so-called achievement gap.

Ironically, conservatives at the Fordham Institute claim they find the BBA approach, "eminently sensible". But Fordham's Mike Petrilli only tips his hat to the report after mistakenly claiming that BBA has moved away from its previous focus on economic and social equity issues. Writes Petrilli:

That's a big surprise, for in the past this coalition has appeared eager to refight old battles about whether schools can be expected to help poor kids reach high standards.

Petrilli had better read the report more carefully. BBA still appears to be fighting the "old battle" which the report's authors call the "fundamental challenge facing America's education policymakers." Amen!

"Ton o' bricks"

Casey found it

A hat tip and an old Cohiba I brought back from Cuba in 2000 goes out to Leo Casey who found Arne Duncan's actual "ton of bricks quote." It turns out that the charter school lobbyist had it right. It's all about charters--fund 'em or feel the wrath of Duncan's mighty sword

So, charter schools should be funded like every other school. Where states are playing games and under-funding charters or whatever, we will come down like a ton of bricks on that. We are going to watch that very, very closely.

L.A.'s Cortines wants to be Supreme Leader

"It doesn't have to be me..."

What the system needs now, it doesn't have to be me, is a benevolent dictator, and it needs it for a period of time, probably 3 to 5 years and then you need to turn it back to the community.” (LA Magazine)

Latest from inside Chicago's school "Renaissance"

In Chicago, elementary schools and high schools are suspending and expelling students at alarming rates and African American male students are bearing the brunt of these punishments. (Catalyst)

No cigar for Russo

Russo thinks he found Duncan's exact "ton of bricks" quote. But he gets no cigar. The one he found is from March. I'm looking for the bricks he threw at last weekend's charter school conference in D.C. Anybody? Anybody?

Green Dot's takeover at Locke

Locke, which holds its graduation today, remains a troubled school, and Green Dot's strategy has relied on extra funds that may not be sustainable or readily replicable. But despite those caveats, a qualified turnaround appears to be emerging....

...Academic growth over the last year has been uneven, according to Green Dot data. And that has prompted concern. "My nightmare is that the state test scores come in and you're judged by that," said Green Dot founder Steve Barr. Leaders of traditional schools frequently complain about being evaluated mainly by test results; such concerns are often dismissed by charter school operators, including Green Dot. (L.A. Times)