Reforming Rhee-form

Some good news coming out of D.C. Mayor Gray is standing up to de-funding threats by corporate reformers. He says he's looking to reform Rhee's "reform", collaborate with the union & select permanent Rhee-placement.  

Gray's education transition team is recommending significant changes to the controversial IMPACT teacher evaluation tool created by interim Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson as a way to rate teachers and fire them on the basis of student standardized test scores.  Henderson was Rhee's assistant. But it's looking more and more likely that she herself will replaced based on recommendations from Gray's transition team which is headed by Katherine Bradley, president of CityBridge Foundation, and Michael Lomax, head of  the United Negro College Fund.

The question is, will Arne Duncan and the venture philanthropists who backed Rhee-form take revenge on the district by pulling badly needed foundation and federal dollars?

Gray's moves have conservatives like AEI's Rick Hess in a tizzy. 

...when Gray promised to stay the course on D.C.’s promising reform efforts and welcomed Fenty’s decision to name Rhee’s deputy Kaya Henderson as interim chancellor, reformers crossed their fingers and hoped (especially since Gray knows that any serious retreat from the D.C. reform agenda risks tens of millions in philanthropic support, and an equal amount in federal Race to the Top funds).

Voucher blackmail

Sen. Lieberman is already threatening to withhold ed funds from D.C. schools unless district approves vouchers for Catholic schools. Would this kind of blackmail ever happen in a mainly-white or middle-class district? Or in a city with full voting rights?  Uh uh.

All eyes are on Wisconsin

30,000 turn out today for pro-union rally

The British Guardian reports on the Tea Party's takeover of state government. Gov. Walker wants to ban unions and take away rights of all public service workers.

Wisconsin is rapidly becoming a disturbing showcase of where America as a whole is headed, as Tea Party political ideas takeover the Republican party. What began as a ragtag scattering of conservative activists two years ago is now starting to have real political power and putting its anti-government, slash-and-burn ideas into practice in ways that impact millions of Americans.

Schools throughout the state closed as thousands students walked out in support of their teachers.

Sights and Sounds from Tuesday's Wisconsin State Capitol Rally

Fallout from Rhee's bogus contract with the union

Hundreds more D.C. teachers could be "excessed"

Broom Lady Michelle Rhee is gone from D.C. but the school district and its teachers are now left to face the fallout from her destructive policies. It appears that Rhee pal, Arne Duncan has pulled the plug on federal funding, punishing this predominantly African-American district for giving her the boot.

Now, DCPS faces the loss of EduJobs funds from the Obama administration, along with reductions in other federal monies. It also faces other pending massive general cuts in the 2012 education budget, as well as  a pull-back of millions of dollars in foundation money that was promised on the condition that Rhee remain as chancellor.

Then there's that contract Rhee pushed on the teachers union; the one that the corporate school reformers were raving about; the one that gave Rhee and her successor a free hand in firing hundreds of teachers in exchange for supposed "merit pay" raises. But those pay increases were dependent on the good will of the Gates and Broad foundations and on Rhee's willingness to make massive cuts in other badly needed district programs.

The union leadership should have never signed on to the raise-for-tenure deal, as many of us warned back in 2009.  Now the district, teetering once again on the verge of bankruptcy, is prepping principals on another planned mass teacher tiring, why crying poor about the pay raises.

Writes WaPo's Bill Turque:

Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson denied speculation Monday that the District can't afford the increased teacher salaries provided for in the 2010 collective bargaining agreement. Sources have identified the loss of millions in one-time 2010 "Edujob" funds from the Obama administration, along with reductions in certain special education monies, as part of the hole school officials are trying to fill. But Henderson didn't have much to say about either.

According to Turque, the district is giving school principals a "refresher course" on how to eliminate teacher jobs as they assemble their 2012 spending plans. "Excessing" can occur when there's been a decline in enrollment, a cut in local school budgets, closings, changes in programs or restructuring under No Child Left Behind. Until last year, excessing was done almost exclusively by seniority. But Rhee's contract now requires the use of a "performance-based" formula in which last year's IMPACT scores count for 50 percent.

Yes, Rhee is gone. But she's left DCPS as a basket case and the district's teachers, parents and students will have to bear the costs--a lesson to Sacramento and Florida districts where Rhee has landed.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Cheney on Mubarak

“So he’s been a good man and a good friend and ally of the United States, and we need to remember that.” -- Dick Cheney at Reagan celebration.

Wrong Message

Seething about coverage that made it look as if the administration were protecting a dictator and ignoring the pleas of the youths of Cairo, the president “made it clear that this was not the message we should be delivering.” -- NY Times

Teachers in the cross-hairs

Groups like EAG go after public school teachers through the back door. They lie about who they are. They video tape teacher’s private lives and activities. They make FOIA requests of teacher emails. Then they cry the blues when they get caught and have their slime activities brought to light. In the end they’re all just different wings of the same bird. -- Fred Klonsky's Blog

Wisconsin gov threatens troops against unions

Gov. Scott Walker says the Wisconsin National Guard is prepared to respond wherever is necessary in the wake of his announcement that he wants to take away nearly all collective bargaining rights from state employees. --AP

A good day for democracy

Not just in Egypt

This morning I warned  the EAG wing-nuts about stalking my brother. I even expressed pity for the poor schmucks (h/t Mel Brooks). Now they are whining like babies just because brother Fred spanked them on his blog. So they went slobbering to Fred's boss but got nothing but a lesson in free speech from the school board president. Fred says, "Today I am proud to be a teacher in Dist. 64."

Read the exchange between EAG's Steve Gunn and Dist. 64 Board Pres. John Heyde -- obviously a stand-up guy.

"Just as you have a right to make a FOIA request under the law, Mr. Klonsky also has a right, protected by the First Amendment, to offer commentary on his personal blog. His blog apparently has developed a healthy readership, including – I have to assume – your organization. Because I am not aware of any connection your organization has with Park Ridge or Niles, Illinois, I assume your organization got the idea of requesting Mr. Klonsky’s e-mails because you did not approve of what he writes in his blog. And I understand that you also do not approve of his latest posts. I respectfully suggest that, if you do not like what Mr. Klonsky writes in his blog, you stop reading it."

It's a great day for democracy. A bad one for dictators and wing-nuts.  

Civil rights advocate Payne appointed CPS chief educator

Interim Chicago schools chief executive Terry Mazany has appointed Charles Payne, a University of Chicago sociology professor and author of “So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools.” to the position of Chief Education Officer. Payne is a long-time social-justice advocate who also authored one of the best histories of the Civil Right Movement, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle.

The post has been vacant since the departure of Barbara Eason-Watkins, in June. There has been a strong community demand, especially in the midst of the mayoral campaign, for the appointment of educators to leading positions within CPS. Both Mazany and Payne are educators as well as local foundation favorites. They are both critical of the testing madness of the previous administration. 

Payne's appointment will put even more pressure on whoever is elected mayor to keep educators in place. 

Wing-nuts stalking my brother? Oops, a tactical mistake.

There's a tiny group of right-wing crazies in Michigan called the Education Action Group. EAG claims it's all about "school choice." But for them, choice is merely a code word for privatization, anti-union, and anti-teacher politics. While they're tiny, as you might expect, they are heavily funded by a rich and powerful bunch of conservative types who group around the Mackinac Center for Policy Research. EAG serves as the Center's hired attack dogs, used against teacher unions and even spying on individual teacher pro-union activists. One of those they're currently stalking is my brother Fred. Ooops, a tactical mistake.

Fred is a veteran elementary school art teacher and a damn good one. He's well respected by his colleagues and has represented them for two terms as their elected local union president. Fred is also a long time social-justice, civil rights, anti-war and union political activist. He's very open about his political views and makes them known to all who are interested on Fred Klonsky's Blog. You can also follow him on Twitter.

Olsen

The other day, the district supt. informed Fred that someone named Ben Velderman had filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request demanding to see all of Fred's work emails. There is nothing specific about their request. It's just a fishing expedition and job harassment reminiscent of Joe McCarthy's tactics back in the '50s.  And there's good reason for the similarity. Venderman works for  EAG founder Kyle Olsen. Olsen is a disciple of McCarthy and a pal of new McCarthyites like Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart.  He is a contributor to Breitbart's blog,  BigGovernment.com, Fred is actually in very good company. Olsen, Beck and Breitbard are currently cranking out vicious attacks on liberals like the  renowned sociologist Frances Fox Piven. Previous targets include civil rights hero Shirley Sherrod and President Obama.

Knowing Fred as I do, there is no chance in the world  that he will be dissuaded  from his social-justice efforts or from the way he teaches his kids. If you want to know more about his teaching methods, read this letter to Velderman in response to his stalkers, written by film maker and Columbia College prof, Jeff Spitz. Fred's classroom work was featured in a Spitz film. In fact, I kind of feel some pity for Olsen, Velderman and their gang now that they have pissed off my brother. But as Fred points out, the real purpose of McCarthy-style bullying attacks is to intimidate other teachers and spread fear.

But I think we can turn that around. If you would like to respond to Velderman or Olsen and tell them what you think of their attack on Fred or on other educators, you can reach them at the Education Action Group Foundation, Inc at 213-733-4202. Velderman's email is ben@edactiongroup.org. Please copy me on any missives to EAG so I can post them here.

TSJ supports Del Valle for mayor

I received this statement of support for MdV from Teachers for Social Justice, in this morning's mail:

TSJ has decided to endorse Miguel Del Valle for mayor. We believe Del Valle is the candidate most likely to be responsive to the educational concerns of teachers, families, students and communities in Chicago. We know that real change in public education in Chicago will depend on all of us organizing and working together for the changes we need. But a mayor who listens to the people, not just business, is an important condition for us to have our issues heard and addressed and our solutions taken seriously. This election is a chance to make that happen.

Good going TSJ.

OWNERSHIP SOCIETY NEWS

I don't think so.

The education technology entrepreneur who started Blackboard Inc. and pioneered on-line (often teacherless) learning, has joined a new venture, which he claims will "revolutionize" the way academic institutions and their graduates move and use education credentials. Docufide, Inc., the company that makes a huge profit every time you have your high school or college transcripts sent, today unveiled a major leadership role and investment by Matthew L. Pittinsky, Ph.D., Blackboard's co-founder and former CEO and Executive Chairman.

“Matthew is both an educator and an entrepreneur," explained E. Rogers Novak Jr., General Partner of Novak Biddle Venture Partners. "I've seen firsthand his ability to identify a big opportunity to improve how education works." 

 Says Docufide, Inc. chairman John Reese, 

"Our passion is not just to reduce the cost and complexity they and their institutions experience along the way, but also to use data to guide their progress and ensure that each transition builds on the last and that the sum total of what they learn helps them realize their dreams."

Ah yes, using data to realize teachers' dreams. That's what it all about.

Isn't it?

Rhee's trail of destruction

Former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee left a trail of devastation in her wake when she left town. In December, the contractor she hired to run Dunbar High School, was given the boot. And yesterday, an arbitrator ruled that the first 75 teachers Rhee fired must be given about $7.5 million in back wages and offered positions with D.C. Public Schools. It's estimated that with an average annual salary of $50,000, each teacher would cash in on $100,000 -- costing the school system $7.5 million while the city faces a $545 million deficit in fiscal 2012. 

Take heed Florida. Rhee is now advising and "permanently partnering" with your T-bagger Gov. Scott on how best to fire teachers and privatize the schools. Take note also Arne Duncan who lost what little credibility his own reform initiative had when he staked it all on Rhee's success in D.C.

Where is the love?

I'm sending each of them a broken-heart cookie and a cup of coffee to help them past the pain. A Huffington Post report has AFT prez Randi Weingarten breaking up with billionaire media mogul and N.Y. mayor, Michael Bloomberg. Oh, well. I never thought it would last anyway. Guess they just weren't right for each other, coming from different sides of the barbed wire and all.  

"I'm very disappointed in the mayor. I don't know why he's gone from wanting to work with people to making teachers his enemy," says Randi.  The political atmosphere for teachers and teacher unions is "more toxic than I can ever remember."

Critical Voices

Go to the blog site of the Forum For Education and Democracy this morning, and you will find important and provocative posts by three of the nation's more thoughtful educators and social justice activists.

Pedro Noguera, "Obama has a Long Way to Go on Education Reform", offers some praise for the president for keeping education high on the nation's policy agenda for speaking up on behalf of undocumented immigrant students. But Noguera doesn't let Obama off the hook.

There is no reason to believe that simply by raising standards, academic performance among students will increase, followed by higher graduation and college attendance rates. The hundreds of schools that Education Secretary Arne Duncan has labeled "dropout factories" are unlikely to be transformed simply because the bar has been raised.

Noguera takes Obama to task for being "boastful" and overstating the impact of Race To The Top. He argues that NCLB need to be trashed rather than tweaked or renamed.

There's a lot more that Noguera could have added in his critique of Obama-style school reform, starting with the whole approach of placing the burden for global economic and military hegemony on the schools--Obama's "Sputnik moment."

But much of which Pedro leaves out is then picked up by Jan Resseger, "Sad, Sad School Reform" and Forum director, George Wood, "Putting the 'F' Word Back in Education."   Resseger unpacks the myth that private operators are a key to turning around "failing schools."

It has become the vogue in today’s school reform, a movement driven by billions of federal stimulus dollars from the U.S. Department of Education, to assume private companies can operate schools better than public school districts...Privatization does not guarantee a school’s success and reliance on contractors is not a district-wide panacea. School reform in 2011 will continue to depend on dedicated educators creating communities where students are cared for and nurtured.

Wood, a high school principal in his other life, calls on educators to recapture the part of schooling that made learning fun and engaging.

 I am not calling for a return to the “good old days,” a time when some children were consigned to less-demanding classes and other children were not even allowed through the school house door.  But I do think we have lost something in our unending quest of lofty standards, more rigor and higher test scores. That something is the joyfulness of play, and the creativeness of curiosity.  We have separated our children from the very world that sustains them.  They will be poorer intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually for it.

I'm putting all three posts on my student's reading list.

Another Sputnik Moment

"The United States never the led the world," the report says. "It was never number one and has never been close to number one on international math tests. Or on science tests, for that matter." -- EdWeek

Two myths of international assessments are debunked—the first, that the United States once led the world on international tests of achievement. It never has. The second myth is that Finland leads the world in education, with China and India coming on fast. Finland has a superb school system, but, significantly, it scores at the very top only on PISA, not on other international assessments. Finland also has a national curriculum more in sync with a “literacy” thrust, making PISA a friendly judge in comparing Finnish students with students from other countries. And what about India and China? Neither country has ever participated in an international assessment. How they would fare is unknown. -- Brown Center Report

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Cheney, Mubarak BFF

'I think President Mubarak needs to be treated as he deserved over the years, because he has been a good friend." -- Former V.P. Dick Cheney at event commemorating the Reagan centennial.

Re-segregating Wake County schools

"We used to be held up as a national model," resident Jamie Dunston said. "Now we're being held up … as objects of ridicule and disgust, and rightfully so." -- L.A. Times

Bachman finds meaning in life

"I take my first political breath every morning with one thought in mind," the Tea Party darling told her audience, the Missoulian reports. "Repeal Obamacare... That's my motivation in life."  -- Michele Bachman

Candidate for president of UTLA 

"Right now we're the big, greedy teachers.... We are not the villains in education; we are the saviors." -- Julie Washington

Good for peace?

I asked an old friend here in Cairo, a woman with Western tastes that include an occasional glass of whiskey, whether the Muslim Brotherhood might be bad for peace. She thought for a moment and said: “Yes, possibly. But, from my point of view, in America the Republican Party is bad for peace as well.”-- Nicholas Kristoff (h/t brother Fred)

Which schools are you going to close, Rahm?

Why isn't anyone asking Rahm Emanuel which 35 schools he intends to close if he is elected mayor? How about letting those school communities know in advance so they can decide how to cast their ballots?

Behind the new push against teachers' unions

FOX in full bashing mode

Paul Thomas, writing for the British Guardian, reveals some of the motives behind the current assault on teachers and their unions. He points out that the new push against teachers' unions, cloaked in discourse about the damage done by "bad" teachers, comes from the right and ironically from some Democrats, like Arne Duncan. 

But the political attacks on teachers and unions, which come from both the left and the right, would likely not resonate as much as they have done, if it were not for the celebrity tour on the back of the documentary Waiting for "Superman", whose message has been perpetuated by celebrity reformers. Two of those, Bill Gates and Geoffrey Canada, share an entrepreneur status that suggests expertise on everything simply because they are wealthy.

Ultimately, writes Thomas, this PR campaign by corporate and political leaders has been effective, even if it remains inaccurate.

That the evidence-based inequity of teacher assignment is ignored, while the myth of the bad teacher is perpetuated, is evidence of the motivation behind the new reformers – an unspoken commitment to the status quo of this social inequity that benefits the very people so keen to lay charges against teachers and unions.

John Merrow, who seems to have shifted somewhat from his earlier support for the L.A. Times' teacher-bashing scheme, follows up with a pretty good post on Huffington, "More on Teacher Bashing -- Getting Proactive.

Stopping teacher bashing is not enough. Nor is "better communication" between labor and management. What's needed is a proactive effort to make teaching a better job. 

Courage

I'm so moved, overwhelmed by the courage and spirit of the Egyptians, I can't even begin to focus on our own school politics today. Maybe later when I'm done plowing.  Best eye-witness accounts are coming on Twitter from NPR's Andy Carvin. Well worth following.

Ownership Society News

The Rise of the New Ruling Class: How the global elite is leaving you behind by Chrystia Freeland.

It's the cover story of the current special State of the Union issue of the Atlantic with some fascinating facts and quotes. It's all about how the emergence of this new global elite, whose wealth has come mainly from the information economy, is widening the gap between the super-wealthy and the rest of us.

What we were seeing...was not a single economy at all, but rather “fundamentally two separate types of economy,” increasingly distinct and divergent.

Freeland writes that a multi-billion-dollar bailout and Wall Street’s swift, subsequent reinstatement of gargantuan bonuses have inspired a narrative of parasitic bankers and other elites rigging the game for their own benefit. And this, in turn, has led to wider—and not unreasonable—fears that we are living in not merely a plutonomy, but a plutocracy, in which the rich display outsize political influence, narrowly self-interested motives, and a casual indifference to anyone outside their own rarefied economic bubble.

The new ruling class salutes no flag but the dollar sign in their quest for greater wealth and power. With modern technology and an increasingly educated global workforce ready to work for one-tenth of what a U.S. worker makes, the increased pauperization of the middle class is a certainty.

The U.S.-based CEO of one of the world’s largest hedge funds told me that his firm’s investment committee often discusses the question of who wins and who loses in today’s economy. In a recent internal debate, he said, one of his senior colleagues had argued that the hollowing-out of the American middle class didn’t really matter. “His point was that if the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile means one American drops out of the middle class, that’s not such a bad trade,” the CEO recalled. 

Freeland concludes: "The lesson of history is that, in the long run, super-elites have two ways to survive: by suppressing dissent or by sharing their wealth.' Not much sharing going on these days, I'm afraid.

Why compare Ohio mom to Rosa Parks?

After last night's Twitter discussion with some of my favorite folks, including Nancy Flanagan and David Cohen, I posted this comment in response to Nancy's post, "Equal Access: Rosa Parks, Lite" on her Teacher in a Strange Land blog at Edweek.

******

Good post Nancy.

Valerie Strauss (my favorite ed columnist) was wrong to make the comparison between Williams-Bolar and Rosa Parks. It sounded patronizing and wasn't helpful. Who among us could live up to that standard?

Of course, when white, advantaged parents seek out the "best school" for their kids (often as far away from  impoverished and isolated communities as possible) they are within the law. Why? The law, as it was 55 years ago when Mrs. Parks took her famous bus ride, reinforces, (now de facto),  segregation, or as Jon Kozol calls it, apartheid schooling.

People will resist our current segregated and increasingly 2-tier system of schooling  in whichever ways are available to them. Even the most liberal among us are often protective of the privileges we expect for our own children--privileges that occur only because we may be white or can afford a house in an affluent neighborhood. Of course we tsk, tsk at the thought of  Williams-Bolar being jailed but then somehow feel the need to compare her negatively to Mrs. Parks for lying on a form in order  to put her child with ours.

I like the way you put it: "There has to be something for everyone in building a truly equitable system, or it will never be built. When open access to quality education requires fraud, we're all in trouble."

Of course there's fraud and fraud, just like there's theft and theft. An impoverished mom stealing baby food for her hungry child is not a thief in the same sense as a Bernie Madoff. And we would see no need to make the comparison between her and Rosa Parks.

As John Dewey wrote: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children.”

******

Valerie Strauss' Answer Sheet column, "Not a Rosa Parks Moment" in the Washington Post can be found here. In fairness, I think that Valerie's commentary was aimed mainly at conservative "choice" advocates rather than at Mrs. Williams-Bolar. They were the ones who cynically raised the Rosa Parks banner, as if...

Also worth reading is a commentary by Dewayne Wickham in the Ohio NewsLeader, "Failed educational system forced Ohio mom to act desperately."