Duncan needs to deepen his apology

"Unbelievable progress"???

Arne Duncan was right to apologize for his offensive (especially to the thousands who lost family members and homes) remark that Katrina was "the best thing that ever happened to the education system in New Orleans." But once again, I'm urging the Ed. Sec. to go deeper than his, "I said it in a poor way, and I apologize for that. It was a dumb thing to say," mia culpa.

First, I hope he wasn't emphasizing the words TO SAY. Secondly, I hope he will take a deeper look at the data and re-examine the rest of his comments about the "unbelievable" progress "they've made in four years since the hurricane." By "unbelievable progress," of course, Duncan means there was a bump in test scores.

But that bump may have much more to do with death and relocation of tens of thousands of poor, mainly African-American families than it does with the ballyhooed recreation of Paul Vallas' two-tiered school system--one tier, traditional neighborhood schools, the other, privately-managed charter schools.

Posting on TAPPED, the group blog at The American Prospect, Gabe Arana writes:

The statement itself isn't really a call for outrage; it was a trite way to tie test-score gains to the mythology of the city's resurgence. I see it as just another excess of the "education speak" that's bandied about, where everything's about "reform," "achievement," "accountability" -- and "wake-up calls." However, the reason for the correlation should provoke anger. New Orleans schools aren't necessarily doing better with the same students. They are serving a different demographic, one that is more affluent, whiter, and more educated

Arana's comments are based on a 2008 study which was released last October, comparing pre- and post-Katrina census data and educational attainment. The study finds that compared with 2000 census data, the region is now less poor with fewer adults lacking a high school diploma, fewer households with children, more one or two-person households, fewer households lacking vehicles, a larger share of the population that is foreign-born, a higher homeownership rate, and more homeowners without mortgages.

New Orleans lost about 60,000 families after Katrina, according to Post Office mail surveys.

Could these demographic and population changes account for the relatively small bump in N.O. students' standardized test scores? You bet they could. Can they explain the "unbelievable progress" Duncan is referring to? Of course they can. Is Post-Katrina New Orleans a model for school reform and social reorganization in cities like Detroit, D.C., or New York? Of course not.

Duncan needs to deepen his self-criticism and rethink his assumptions about reform.

QUOTABLES

The Faces of School Reform

Led by a band of billionaires, the school-reform movement has gained increasing momentum during the past decade, spreading its reach into urban communities across the country. But instead of truly transforming public schools, private funders want to restructure them. They insist running schools like a business is the solution. At stake is not only control over hundreds of billions of dollars in local, state and federal funding, but also the future of the next generation of schoolchildren. (The Indypendent)

Apologies

President Barack Obama's tart-tongued chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has apologized for using the word "r**arded" to describe liberal activists whose tactics on health care he questioned. In a separate incident, Education Secretary Arne Duncan apologized Tuesday for asserting that Hurricane Katrina was "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans," calling the remark "a dumb thing to say." I have eliminated a word or edited it because I do not want it on my blog. It is not a word most people use today. And the way Mr. Emanuel used it is appalling. (Ruth's Report)

Deb Meier in response to: Will AFT Teacher Evaluation Effort Succeed?

But nothing stopped principals for judging teachers on the basis of their impact on student achievement. I know. I was a principal for 20 years. But to believe that test scores in ELA and Math tests are a synonym for achievement is either deliberate obfuscation or sad ignorance. But worse than that it drives schools further and further away from tackling the more important take--helping young people (as Ted Sizer put it) learn to use their minds well. (National Journal Online)

Duncan apologizes

On Morning Joe this a.m. Arne Duncan apologized for saying that Hurricane Katrina was "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans." Duncan this morning:

“I said it in a poor way and I apologize for that. It was a dumb thing to say.."

Thanks for that, Arne--even though it took 4 days of meetings with Cunningham and the political line fixers to get things straight. It still takes a big person to admit they were wrong. But I hope you believe it was really wrong and not just "dumb" to say it. Maybe, before it goes away, you could deepen the self-criticism a little. You know, like--what was wrong about it and about some underlying assumptions about how real change takes place.

I wonder what all the Duncan sycophants, apologists, RTTT suck-ups, and bloggers, who loved the Katrina comment, are going to say now that Duncan has criticized himself. I'm thinking here of Andrew Rotherham, who denied there was even any controversy, since nobody "credible" was "upset" by Duncan's remarks. Then there was the usually astute TV-1 interviewer Roland Martin, who made the rounds of next morning's shows to leap to Duncan's defense. Paul Pastorek, Louisiana’s superintendent of public education, was quoted in the Washington Post saying that Duncan’s remarks were “a strong statement” but “actually quite accurate.”

Then of course there was New Orleans school czar Paul Vallas, who told the Post, he had "no prolem" with Duncan's remarks. Remember, it was Vallas who bragged in 2008 that now, nobody could tell him what to do:

I have no “institutional obstacles” — no school board, no collective bargaining agreement, a teachers’ union with very little power. “No one tells me how long my school day should be or my school year should be,” he said. “Nobody tells me who to hire or who not to hire.

Suit to stop Bloomberg/Klein school closings

The UFT, the NAACP, the Manhattan and Brooklyn Borough Presidents, city councilmembers, state legislators, and two Community Education Council presidents have all joined to together in a lawsuit to block the DOE's plan to close 19 NYC schools. The N.Y. Post ran a nasty editorial attacking the NAACP for supporting the suit, while the Times basically ignored the whole story.

Says N.Y. schools activist Leonie Haimson:

Unbelievably, the NY Times did not run any story about the lawsuit, though it carried the news on its blog (Teachers' Union and NAACP Sue to Stop School Closings). The lack of judgment on the part of the Times editors never ceases to amaze.

GOOD READS

Against the Odds

Small schools educators, activists and researchers will want to read Against the Odds: Insights from One District's Small School Reform. The district is Mapleton, Colorado and Larry Cuban and his team have put together a good, readable, qualitative study. I even have a back-cover blurb which reads, "It's all there--struggle, resistance, leadership issues, the muscle foundations, parents, and community engagement. Against the Odds is a great resource for the small schools movement.”

The Strive of It

One of my favorite writers (people), Kathleen Cushman, has a great piece in the current Educational Leadership, "The Strive of It." It's all about practice, practice, practice--maybe not Alan Iverson's favorite topic, but the road to expertise for young learners. The Practice Project opens up real possibilities for teachers who are struggling to engage young students, capture their interests, and building expertise based on the habits of experts.

We discovered a great deal about why young people engage deeply in work that challenges them. And as we analyzed their experiences, the kids and I also began to think differently about what goes on in schools. Could what these young people already understood about practice also apply to their academic learning? Could teachers build on kids' strengths and affinities, coaching them in the habits of experts?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Who's "credible?"

Not Andrew Rotherham. At least not after his puny defense of Arne Duncan's insipid statement that Hurricane Katrina was the "best thing that happened" to New Orleans schools. Says Andrew,

But to have a controversy don’t you have to have some credible people really upset?

Fred (PREAPrez) responds:

Did he ask anyone in the lower ninth. Are they credible?

What about the Dept. of Ed. itself? Not credible? After first confirming Duncan's quote, Lesli Maxwell writes, they called Edweek, "to air concerns about this post."

Oh, did I mention that Rotherham was contracted to help Gov. Bobby Jindal's people write Louisiana's Race-To-The-Top application? Only 28 of the state's 70 school districts wanted any part of RTTT. Jindal has opposed taking federal dollars for post-Katrina reconstruction. He is pushing vouchers for state schools.

Other "reformers" who liked Katrina

Heritage Foundation VP Michael Franc called Katrina "the dawn of a great era of conservative governance"

Milton Friedman, the father of disaster capitalism, called Katrina, "Not just a tragedy, "but an opportunity."

Paul Vallas said, after Katrina, "now no one can tell me what to do."

I have no “institutional obstacles” — no school board, no collective bargaining agreement, a teachers’ union with very little power. “No one tells me how long my school day should be or my school year should be,” he said. “Nobody tells me who to hire or who not to hire.

Remember, Duncan himself referred to this, possibly the worst global economic crisis ever, as "this magical opportunity."

Book banners strike again in Virginia

The real version of Anne Frank's diary

Culpeper County public school officials have decided to stop assigning a version of Anne Frank's diary, one of the most enduring symbols of the atrocities of the Nazi regime, after a parent complained that the book includes sexually explicit material and homosexual themes. (NBC News)

'More losers than winners'

Forbes interviews the Sec. of Ed. on Race-To-The-Top

It's a free-market-style competition, and Duncan warns in an interview with Forbes that when the results are announced in April, there will be "more losers than winners." (Obama's Classroom Fixer)

Will "V.D." finally do the time?

They called him "Fast Eddie" back in the day, when he led the Democratic machine's racist assault on Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington. But we just called him, "V.D." Ed Vrdolyak was finally convicted last February after he collected illegal kickbacks in a crooked $1.5 million school construction land deal. But a crony U.S. District Judge, Milton Shadur, let V.D. walk free.

Today's Sun-Times reports that Vrdolyak’s probation-only sentence for fraud has been overturned by an appellate panel, meaning he could face prison time when he is re-sentenced. We're still waiting.

What passes for reform in Illinois

More RTTT testing madness

The most provocative reforms will replace the elementary school ISAT with a tougher exam, mandate testing at every grade and rate teachers and principals based on students' test results. (Tribune)

Bloomberg/Klein closing NYC schools but...

Replacing them with what?

Juan Gonzalez, in today's Daily News,

Hours after rebuffing parents and voting to shut 19 public schools, education officials announced plans to end most programs at Alfred E. Smith High in the Bronx and replace them with a charter school. That charter school, however, has its own troubled history. Read the rest here.

The DN carried another Gonzalez story on Wednesday, "Public sentiment has turned against Mayor Bloomberg's dictatorial school reforms" following the all-night protest against the mayor's school closing.

Daley appoints another fixer as board president

Daley said he does not "condone any misuse of taxpayers' money by anyone, no matter who it is."--Clout Street

Mayor Daley has appointed another of his trusted political manager/fixers to become the next president of the the Board of Education. Mary Richardson-Lowry, a corporate lawyer from the power-house Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw law firm, served as a City Hall counsel and Daley-appointed building commissioner. She also led the transition team for then-incoming County Board President Todd Stroger. She brings with her, no background in public education except for the fact that (like Arne Duncan) her mother was a teacher.

According to Catalyst,

Richardson-Lowry left the building commissioner post days after an accident at the John Hancock Center, where scaffolding plunged more than 40 floors to the ground during a wind storm and killed three women. But a city spokesperson said Richardson-Lowry’s departure had nothing to do with the accident.

Richardson-Lowry comes to a school board in the midst of a major scandal and her appointment will do little to change CPS image as an annex of City Hall, rife with corruption and patronage. The last two board presidents, Michael Scott (who committed suicide in November) and Rufus Williams, are the subject of investigations surrounding the misuse of funds. Daley's appointed schools CEO Ron Huberman recently revoked credit cards from 89 CPS bureaucrats. As one would expect, the current investigation is being carefully run by another Daley-appointed lawyer.

Richardson-Lowry's appointment should help keep a lid on the investigation and make sure that there's a firewall between it and the 5th floor of City Hall.

Blogs & Tweets, where do they go?

Yesterday, I was sending around a provocative piece by WaPo ed beat writer, Bill Turque, on the whole Michelle Rhee fiasco, when suddenly, about 7:30 p.m., his story disappeared. When friends went to the link, they were greeted with some kind of "no longer available" sign. I tweeted around, asking, "what happened to Turque?" Nobody seemed to know.

Had the Post editorial board censored him for revealing the disparity between street reporting and editorial decisions re. Rhee? Did Mayor Fenty and Rhee's big-money supporters demand Turque's head? Paranoia runs deep these days.

But as the sun comes up this morning, (everywhere except here in Chicago, I suppose) I see Turque's D.C. Schools Insider column is back on line. Must have been some kind of technical problem, right? But wait a minute. Something has been changed. In the last paragraph of Turque's original piece, he asks:

Are Fenty and Rhee gaming the system by using the editorial page this way? Of course. Is this a healthy thing for readers of The Post? Probably not. Is it going to keep me from doing my job effectively? Nope.

Damn! That was the very line I had pulled out and tweeted about yesterday. But when the column reappeared this morning, the entire last paragraph was missing--except for, "Is it going to keep me from doing my job effectively? Nope." Luckily, I had made a copy of Turque's original column.

Now that last question looms large. As the old saying goes, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not trying to get you.

Another disappearing Act

This one, not nearly as significant, although still Rhee-related.

On Tuesday, I had a little, not-so-friendly exchange with ed gadfly blogger, Alexander Russo. Russo, in his TWIE blog, had launched a broadside against Rhee's critics, charging them with opportunism for jumping all over the D.C. superintendent for saying:

"I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school."

Russo continued his Tweet assault, with the lead-in "I'm no Rhee apologist, but..."

When I responded, Russo took me to task for criticizing Rhee's stupid remarks claiming, I was "defending bad teachers."

But by Wednesday, all of Russo's blog posts about Rhee's statement had vanished along with all of Russo's Tuesday tweets about Rhee. When I and several other bloggers asked him if he had removed them, Russo simply tweeted, "Nope. They're still there."

They aren't. Russo made them go away. Why? Was he embarrassed? If you go to his blog now, you will find a dateline from Sept. 3 instead of his apologies for Rhee's remarks. Strange!

My campaign is over before it has even begun

Betti Cadmus and her book-banning board members in Menifee Union School Dist. undercut my campaign by putting Webster's Dictionary back on the shelves. I didn't even have a chance to send her our list of dirty words culled from Webster's soiled pages. But don't fret wing-nuts. Betti and the gang are allowing parents to have their kids read another version of the dictionary (presumably cleaner). Maybe we should start looking through the Oxford Dictionary. Yes! there it is: ORAL SEX.

I hope my blogs on this topic weren't responsible for Menifee's retreat. I was hoping a banning of the dictionary would increase readership and boost student test scores. Fortunately for them, board members aren't tested.

Duncan's donuts

Did he say it? We're never quite sure

Arne Duncan, who has called for the closing of 5,000 schools, is interviewed by Politico's Mike Allen

DUNCAN: And then finally, having the courage to challenge the status quo, and what we're calling the bottom 1 percent of schools each year; not the 99 percent that are either world-class or they're improving each year, but those schools where the status quo is frankly unacceptable. And when we fail to do our job, when we're not educating, we--we perpetuate poverty.

ALLEN: 99 percent of schools in the country are acceptable?

DUNCAN: I didn't say that.

The BATTLE IN BROOKLYN

By night's end, all the testimony by the community meant nothing to Bloomberg/Klein's Panel. They were going to close 19 city schools no matter what evidence was presented. Here's the last on-the-scene report from Anna & Maura at Gotham Schools.

4 a.m. After a two-hour protest that closed the streets in Fort Greene; nearly nine hours of testimony by concerned elected officials, parents, teachers, and students; and a series of votes that underscored the divide between Mayor Bloomberg and everyone else on school politics, the Panel for Educational Policy determined early this morning that 20 city schools, both young and old, small and large, will begin to close this fall. We’ll have more about the implications of the panel’s decisions starting sometime tomorrow afternoon.

QUOTABLES

Timothy Knowles is director of the University of Chicago’s Urban Education Institute. Here he responds on WBEZ to parents who are trying to save their neighborhood school from being closed.

This is deeper than bad data on standardized test scores. This is about an institution being taken away that my child goes to, I went to, maybe my mother went to. Frankly, it’s about communities, it’s about neighborhoods, it’s about relationships. Data doesn’t tip those things. And the district doesn’t factor those things in to its school closings. Most of Chicago’s closings and turnarounds have taken place in neighborhoods ravaged by poverty.

Knowles says it’s hard to measure the cost of eliminating one of the last remaining institutions in a disinvested neighborhood. If we could measure that, it might make closing schools more of a dilemma.

Alfie Kohn on Edweek's Live Chat

"Assessment systems must be aligned with [national] expectations (standards)." Now there's a sentence that should strike fear in the heart of all good teachers."

Supt. Michelle Rhee referring to 266 laid-off D.C. teachers

"I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn't we take those things into consideration?" (Fast Company)

Rhee, yesterday

"'It was never our intention, nor did I ever say, it was all of the teachers who fell into these categories...Our intention was not to paint all teachers with a broad brushstroke." (Edweek)

Rhee apologists

"Michelle Rhee's great virtue is that she's been willing to say what others have not been willing to say, and to take on fights others are not willing to take on," said Andy Smarick of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. (Washington Examiner)

Fire Rhee before she speaks again

"I didn't mean all of them..."

This morning, some ed reporters told me that they were still waiting by the phone for a return call from Michelle Rhee in hopes that the D.C. supt. would explain her vicious teacher-bashing comments from a week ago. The call never came.

Rhee, supposedly laying out the rationale for her firing 266 teachers had told a business magazine:

"I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn't we take those things into consideration?"

Dakarai Aarons at Edweek writes:

Questions immediately arose. If these teachers had been physically and sexually abusing children, why were they allowed to remain until a budget crunch required dismissing teachers? How many of the 266 teachers had been abusing students?

After days of embarrassed silence, Rhee and her PR team finally figured out what to say. The response came in a letter to D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray and members Kwame Brown and Marion Barry that was released to the press today. She probably would have been smarter exercising her right to remain silent. The letter contained not a hint of self-criticism for defaming hundreds of teaching professionals. Rhee still insists that there was one and only one teacher among those fired, who was accused of having sex with a student months ago and was no longer a classroom teacher.

"'It was never our intention, nor did I ever say, it was all of the teachers who fell into these categories...Our intention was not to paint all teachers with a broad brushstroke."

It's now time to fire Rhee and bring someone in with some leadership experience and self-control. Rhee's so-called reform has done nothing to improve schooling for most of the District's children. She has become an embarrassment, even for her most avid supporters/apologists like those at the Washington Post, who have been forced into damage-control mode.

Book burning dilemmas

It's not easy being a book burner. For one thing, as a Menifee, Calif. school board member, Betti Cadmus, discovered when she tried to ban Webster's Dictionary from district schools. "It's hard to sit and read the dictionary" to see if there's any graphic sex words contained therein.

For another, you've got to try and avoid embarrassment by making sure you are banning the right author. In Texas, for example, the State Board of Education banned children's author Bill Martin, who died in 2004, after board member Pat Hardy cited a book he had supposedly written for adults which contained "very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system."

"She said that that was what he wrote, and I said: ' ... It's a good enough reason for me to get rid of someone,' " said Hardy

Problem is--she mixed up DePaul University prof, Bill Martin, Jr. author of Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation with Bill Martin, author of Brown Bear, Brown Bear. What do you see?

I highly recommend reading both with a critical eye. For example, while Martin Jr.'s book has an explicitly Marxist bent, the kid's author Martin is potentially even more subversive.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see? I see a red bird looking at me.

RED bird, get it?

So now I'm starting a new campaign to send board member, Hardy examples of other books by authors with Martin in their name, to add to her to-burn list.

Let's start with another juvenile fiction writer Ann Martin, paper back writer, George R.R. Martin. Then there's Martin Amis, philosopher Martin Heidegger. Oh, and let's not forget that well-know subversive, Martin Luther King.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Duncan's critics

Duncan must contend with critics on the right who don’t accept the federal government’s active role in education, and ones on the left who see him as a neoliberal enforcer, exploiting Obama’s Democratic bona fides to impose the free-market reform agenda on the unions. (New Yorker)

Quoting me

Small schools expert Mike Klonsky has written about the controversy on his blog, asking his readers to help school officials comb through the dictionary and find the offending words. "The problem for the book-banning officials is, they have to be able to read through the dictionary themselves in order to find more sex-related words," he writes. (Edweek)

CPS resists "at-risk" kids

In spite of Chicago Public Schools chief Ron Huberman's pledge to help at-risk teenagers, in some instances school officials are undermining that effort, making it difficult for such troubled youths to return to school after they have been incarcerated, according to judges, attorneys, probation officials and others in the juvenile justice system. (Tribune)