Ownership Society News

Should this guy be running the schools?

Bloomberg bought the election for a cool $100 million and still barely won. It was the most expensive race in history outside the presidency and teaching N.Y. students the Golden Rule: He who has the gold gets to make the rules.

Ford Fund puts $100m into urban high school reform

The grants focus on New York City, Los Angeles, Denver, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago and Newark, N.J. Among the early grant recipients so far: The American Institutes for Research in Behavioral Sciences, to develop new school-finance models; Stanford University education professor Linda Darling-Hammond, to write a series of papers about assessment methods; and the American Federation of Teachers Innovation Fund. (Gewertz, H.S. Connections)

More charter schools, more cuts at LAUSD

Fewer students ultimately result in staff reductions --- over and above those already caused by the state budget crisis. Even if the charter students are added in, district enrollment is down 1.4% from last year, continuing a recent trend. (L.A. Now)

What tests may really be measuring

90% African-American children on food stamps, lack Vitamin D

I'm no statistician, but I was taken by the statistical correlation I found in two recent studies.

One released Monday in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine reveals that half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers even higher.

The other Academy of Pediatrics study, which came out a week ago, shows a similar percentage of children and black and Hispanic children in particular, suffering from Vitamin D deficiencies. Such deficiencies compromise the immune system and can make children more susceptible to diseases like the H1N1 virus.

What's missing is a study of the effect the two above may have on student learning and relative scores on standardized tests. Is it possible that what these tests are really measuring in large part, is the relative health and nutrition levels among school children?

If so, shouldn't the new version of NCLB mandate states to look after the proper nutrition of all students, close the Vitamin D gap, and track annual yearly progress (AYP)?

What's happened to Chicago Vocational?

In the early 90's Chicago Vocational High School became the first large high school in the city to restructure into smaller academies. With strong leadership and a skilled veteran faculty, this massive school, which peaked at 4,200 students, was able to offer students and parents a range of career academies with lots of student choice and personalized learning, while still maintaining after-school activities, sports teams and marching band. CVCA's reputation was transformed from that of, as one student put it, "a thuggy school" to being "the pride of Chicago". The transformation was beautifully portrayed by filmmaker Jeff Spitz in his 1994 documentary, "Tell No Lies" and documented in several case studies, including "Breaking Down the Monolith."

But when CPS and foundation leaders moved away from the small schools strategy to a singular focus on testing and ultimately to school closings, CVCA suffered from an increase in school violence and severe program cuts. Its reputation suffered and its small academies disintegrated.

Flash forward to the story appearing this morning at Chicago Talks.

Teachers at a South Side vocational school last week accused Chicago Public School administrators of creating chaos for students by shifting teachers around weeks into the school year and preventing students from taking courses in their majors. Carol Caref, a math teacher at the Chicago Vocational Career Academy on the city’s southeast side, told Chicago Board of Education members that the late-September layoffs forced the school to shut down three of its areas of study...But Ron Huberman, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, said little can be done to fix the problem. With CPS facing a massive $700 million deficit next year, the district cannot afford to keep teachers with small classrooms on the payroll, he said.

Multiple measures for teacher assessment

"Not just test scores", says Duncan

Arne Duncan's recent call for use of multiple assessments in teacher evaluation should have gone without saying. Instead, it came only after months of struggle with teacher unions and advocacy groups. But I'm concerned that, despite Duncan's vague pronouncement, single standardized test scores will still be used as the main, evidence in teacher evaluations by over-compliant district bureaucrats. If test scores remain the predominant factor in rating teachers, the other factors will become tokens.

Dealing with the Bush recession

I'll give Arne Duncan his due here. 325,000 ed jobs saved by the stimulus.

Of course, counting jobs that were saved can be a squishier proposition than counting jobs that were created. Teachers have been laid off in some areas — and budget officials say that there would have been more layoffs without the stimulus money — but it is difficult to say with certainty how many teachers would have been laid off without that money. (NYT)

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

AFT prez on Chicago charter union contract

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said: “This contract is a great example of how charter schools can be incubators for innovative reforms and good labor-management practices…Civitas teachers are walking the education-reform walk by forging a new path for charter schools that value collaboration.” (Catalyst)

From Deborah Meier's tribute to Ted Sizer

The newest fad is mayoral control, as though the corruption, cronyism, and patronage that led us to abandon it earlier were no longer dangers. The poster boy for this is New York’s mayor Bloomberg. (Then comes Chicago under Arne Duncan.) Bloomberg, the richest Mayor we have ever known, has managed to garner staggering control over not only all decisions made about schools, but also control of the data accessible to us about how it has been spent and what it has achieved. (Deborah Meier.com)

Case of the missing juniors--how the testing game is played in Illinois

School districts statewide are using a loophole that allows them to define what constitutes a "junior." By ratcheting up the credit hour requirements, schools are disqualifying thousands of third-year high school students from taking the 11th-grade exam that is the primary tool to hold the schools accountable for student achievement. Many then take the test as seniors, but their scores are not used for state and federal No Child Left Behind accountability purposes. In fact, the state does not even track how well seniors perform on the test. (Chicago Tribune)

A VICTORY!

Congratulations to teachers at Chicago International, the city's largest chain of privately-managed charter schools.

Teachers at three Chicago charter schools have ratified a labor contract with education management group Civitas—ending months of negotiations and finalizing the city's first teachers union contract for charters. The vote was 87 to 8 in favor of ratification. The deal was signed this morning by all parties. (Catalyst Notebook)

Civitas had tried to block teachers from winning collective bargaining rights by claiming that since they were a private, for-profit company, teachers under their management were no longer public employees.

Quotables

"Shake & bake"--Alan Singer at Huff

Will Arne Duncan bring a "revolution" to the way our schools operate? According to the New York Times, based on his Chicago "experience" all we will get is more of the same. Duncan in Chicago and Bloomberg in New York believe in "Shake and Bake." Shake it up, close failing schools and reopen (bake) them with new names and somehow things will get better. It turns out that a University of Chicago research report showed that reading and math scores of students in failing schools actually declined because of the disruption in their education when schools were closed. While the study found students who transferred to more middle-class schools did perform better on standardized tests, students who transferred to similar schools with high concentrations of minority youth from poor families did just as poorly in school. What a surprise! ("Show Me The Money" at Huffington)

Urban devastation fertile soil for charter growth

Charter schools are mainly concentrated in the most devastated urban school districts, those with the highest percentages of African-American children. A "market share" report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools tells the story. New Orleans, D.C., and Detroit lead the way.

Where's Beverly Hills? Winnetka? Scardsdale? Greenwich? Rich people probably just don't understand what's best for their kids, I guess.

Chicago's parent union

After reports surfaced last spring of students being wrongly sent home from Chicago public schools for not wearing their required uniforms, a concerned group of parents decided to take action. (Medill)

Quotables

'Why don't they Trust me?"

"What can I do to regain the trust of my teachers?" Rhee asked, according to one participant. "I don't understand why everyone is so afraid." (WaPo)

Here's why...

By trotting out a righteous-sounding and at first blush irrefutable “motive” (to manage the budget) she is trying to capitalize on a crisis in order to advance her agenda. That kind of trick was used against the public schools of New Orleans, courtesy of Hurricane Katrina and the kindred spirits of Rhee. (Ron Isaac, EdWize)

View from right field--'School closings, little benefit to Chicago students'

“The Obama administration’s solution is that we’re going to make all the lousy schools better, but that’s harder than the administration has let on. The next most attractive alternative is to shut them down, and let the kids go to other schools, but this Consortium report has found that that brought little benefit to students in Chicago.” (Frederick Hess, AEI)

My comments at Edweek blog

Yes, school closings did hurt learning

In response to Catherine Gewertz' otherwise fine post on her High School Connection (Edweek) blog:

I'm surprised to see the way the Consortium study is being spun. 60 schools closed, mainly in Chicago's under-served African-American communities.Thousands of lives disrupted. An explosion of violence in their wake. 94% of kids end up at some of the worst schools in the city.

Your headline reads: "Little Academic Impact, Report Finds." WBEZ headline reads: "CPS School Closings Neither Help Nor Hurt Learning." Sun-Times editorial says, "Academically, it's been a wash."

This is what happens when journalists accept the current proposition that "academics" = a single test score.

No, the arbitrary closing of dozens of schools in Chicago wasn't a "wash." Yes, the closings did have an affect on academics and learning.

Latest sudy on Chicago school closings

"We now know what success looks like"--Arne Duncan, June 2009 speech

Duncan's model "fell short" by 94%

When former Chicago schools CEO Arne Duncan ignored the protests of thousands of parents and students, and began closing neighborhood schools under the Mayor's Renaissance 2010 program, he promised that the closings would lead to improvements in student learning outcomes. Now, Sec. of Education Duncan is leveraging federal dollars to force school districts to follow Chicago's school-closing 'model'.

But the latest study out of the University of Chicago's Consortium for Chicago School Research shows that for all but 6% of the displaced students, there were no significant learning gains. The other 94% ended up in some of the city's worst schools and made no measurable gains in learning.

The Consortium researchers looked only at standardized test scores and didn't even take into account the disruption in thousands of students' and families' lives. Nor did they look at the devastating impact on the school community in terms of lost jobs, after-school programs and social services. According to Consortium researcher Marisa de la Torre,

"the study didn’t examine social or emotional effects of school closings on kids. Nor did it examine whether the closings influence school violence."

Quote of the day comes from a leading Ren10 school-closing supporter:

"The quality of the school a kid attends matters," said Robin Steans, director of Advance Illinois, a nonprofit education group. "Obviously the focus and drive to make sure these kids ended up in better placements fell short."

"Fell short"? Yes, but only by 94%.

Second best comes from CPS spokesperson Monique Bond who called the study "fair" and promises that,

"CPS will consider the report as it develops future school-closing policies."

But the coup de grace comes from Duncan himself:

"I closed about 60 schools in Chicago, some for low enrollment and some explicitly because they were failing academically. We reopened about a dozen of these schools with new leadership and staff. Some are run by the district and some are run by the Academy of Urban School Leadership, a non-profit partner. All of them use union teachers. Today, these schools are doing much better. (Duncan's speech in June to a national charter school group)

From Catalyst Notebook:

Hot on the heals of the Consortium report, community groups are planning to protest at today's Board of Education meeting over school closings and the link to youth violence. Get the agenda here.

I'm reading...

Billions of Drops--A drop in the bucket

If the social entrepreneurs like Gates and Broad, and agencies like TFA, New Leaders and NewSchools Venture Fund, where to be evaluated on the basis of performance or results--the way schools are--they would flunk the test. This, despite their access to tons of money, tax incentives, and efficient management styles. As least that's the conclusion drawn by author Steven Goldberg in his book, Billions of Drops in Millions of Bucket: Why philanthropy doesn't advance social progress.

For example, writes Goldberg,

Since 1998, NewSchools has raised and deployed tens of millions of dollars for educational innovation at dozens of charter-management and school-support organizations. It states that “over the next several years, the organizations we support will run more than 200 charter schools and serve nearly 75,000 students, making NewSchools’ national portfolio comparable in scale to a mid-sized urban district. After 10 years of exceptional work and highly sophisticated financial management, the aggregate result (at least of the charter school portion of its portfolio) amounts to one school district that performs at the level to which the entire country aspires.

But Goldberg--who buys into most of the premises of the ownership society--and I, reach totally different conclusions from all this. He thinks the big foundations need even greater centralized power, have to become even more top-down, more efficient and results-driven by "scaling up" and replication.

I think the problem is they've become too big, ill-purposed, and anti-democratic.

But Billions of Drops is still worth the read.

Poets tell the story

Demetrius Amparan

'Lost Count'

I remember you wearing Guatemalan green matching your flag on your Independence Day/Your hair was a black puff of curl and confidence/ ... I couldn't sleep for a week/When you washed up water logged in the Calumet River/Puffed and purple like violets before bloom

The students began writing "Lost Count" when Young Chicago Authors, a group that provides workshops on artistic expression for teens, asked students to prepare for local and national contests. (Chicago Trib)

Here's the video from Brave New Voices

90% of African-American kids vitamin D deficient

At least one in five U.S. children aged 1 to 11 don't get enough vitamin D and could be at risk for a variety of health problems including weak bones, the most recent national analysis suggests.

By a looser measure, almost 90 percent of black children that age and 80 percent of Hispanic kids could be vitamin D deficient — "astounding numbers" that should serve as a call to action, said Dr. Jonathan Mansbach, lead author of the new analysis and a researcher at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital in Boston. (AP Wire)

Duncan attacks Hawaii for being broke, cutting school year

But he offers little in way of solutions

I understand that Hawaii is feeling the pain of the economy more than many states. The tourism industry is struggling. The unemployment rate is climbing. Investments in commercial real estate are declining. Tax revenues aren't meeting your budget projections. These are tough times, I know. But now is not the time to decrease investment in education. Hawaii's economic problems should not be creating an educational crisis for its children. (Duncan opinion piece)

Really?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Not funny

The real secretary of education, the joke goes, is Bill Gates. (AP Wire)

Jeb Bush, speaking to college Republicans

Jen Goldstein ’11, a Florida resident, asked Bush to address criticism that the high stakes standardized tests create an environment that narrows the focus in the classroom to passing the test. In defense of Florida’s testing system, FCAT, Bush said, “it’s the only way you know you are improving.” (Daily Colonial)

Race to the Top: 10 false assumptions

False Assumption 7:

Notwithstanding the evidence from research and decades of failed efforts, forcing merit pay schemes on teachers will revitalize America’s schools. This is because the desire to compete is the most powerful of all human drives (more powerful even than the satisfactions of doing work one loves). (Veteran teacher Marion Brady at WaPo)

Quotables

Sizer's legacy

Though much of Professor Sizer’s work focused on the roles of teachers and administrators, he seldom lost sight of the group he considered the primary actors in the educational process. He wrote in “Horace’s Compromise,” “Horace Smith and his ablest colleagues may be the key to better high schools, but it is respected adolescents who will shape them.”(New York Times)

His view of education reform -- with a premium on classroom creativity, bottom-up innovation and multiple measures of student learning -- was often at odds with the movement toward state standards, achievement testing and school accountability that culminated in the 2002 No Child Left Behind law. (Washington Post)

"He was an incredible connector," recalled Professor Howard Gardner. "He knew everybody, was on good terms with people, and helped the career development of many people. There were hundreds, or thousands, of people who went through his shop. He had a human influence on many people." (Harvard Graduate School of Education)

TED SIZER 1932-2009

"Good schools focus on habits, on what sorts of intellectual activities will and should inform their graduates’ lives. Not being clear about these habits leads to mindlessness, to institutions that drift along doing what they do simply because they have always done it that way. Such places are full of silly compromises, of practices that boggle commonsense analysis. And they dispirit the Horace Smiths, who know that the purpose of education is not in keeping school but in pushing out into the world young citizens who are soaked in habits of thoughtfulness and reflectiveness, joy, and commitment."--Horace's School

It's with deep regret that we report the passing of friend, colleague, and teacher, Ted Sizer. Ted lost his long battle with cancer Wednesday night at the age of 77. Ted will long be remembered as one of the great educators of our time. He was a teacher, the Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the founder of, and a guiding light behind the Coalition of Essential Schools and a major force in the modern-day school reform and small-schools movements.

I last saw Ted and his wife Nancy a few weeks ago at a meeting in Providence and was amazed by the clarity of mind and sharpness of purpose evident in his contributions to the discussion despite his obvious physical deterioration. He remained an activist until the end.

Thanks to Coalition Director Lewis Cohen for sending me this CES tribute to Ted. Also, in"CES at 25: Changing Schools, Changing Lives," the Fall 2009 edition of Horace, Ted Sizer's longtime colleagues shared their thoughts about the impact of Ted’s life and work.

This from George Wood and the Forum for Education and Democracy