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May 23rd, 2014

5/23/2014

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'In recent years, a group of Wall Street financiers and philanthropists such as Bill Gates have put money behind private-sector ideas, such as vouchers, data-driven curriculum and charter schools, which have doubled in number in the past decade. President Obama, too, has apparently bet on compe­tition. His Race to the Top initiative invites states to compete for federal dollars using tests and other methods to measure teachers, a philosophy that would not fly in Finland'.


PRIVATIZING YET ANOTHER PUBLIC SERVICE------THE FOUNDATION OF DEMOCRACY-----PUBLIC EDUCATION.

WHETHER YOU SUPPORT THE IDEA OF SEGREGATION IN EDUCATION IN EMBRACING THESE CHARTER/SCHOOL CHOICE POLICIES-----PEOPLE ARE CARING LESS ABOUT THE SEGREGATION AND SIMPLY WANT GOOD SCHOOLS IN THEIR COMMUNITIES.


One thing I do with my campaign is educate as to what is happening with these public private partnerships that corporate pols pretend are for the public good.  I've spoken of communications and the Post Office and public energy/water utilities and VEOLA/Exelon.  I am passionate about public education so much is shared on the road about the privatization of public education in Baltimore.  Wall Street chose urban communities for this push for two reasons.  One, these poor communities are desperate for jobs and to be small business owners and they are desperate for any means of quality education.  It is no coincidence that the majority of organizations supporting this privatization plan are black churches/ministers who are connecting to charter schools.  Do they know that these schools will be taken by Wall Street national charter chains that will not care about children or that the plan will end public education and equal opportunity and access?  I think many of these churches and ministers simply see a need-----and they want an opportunity to operate a small business and are not thinking what vocational K-community college means especially for people of color.  That is what is happening in Baltimore.  BUILD is a great group of people but they embrace this charter movement and they endorse the most global corporate of candidates that work against the interests of people in the communities they represent.  These pols work against all people's interests except the wealthy corporate crowd.

The Baltimore Education Coalition is only a Johns Hopkins organization that is basically a Michelle Rhee education privatization group of Teach for America, charters, school choice, and national corporate non-profits that come into a schools and take over all school policy.  If you take a look at these non-profit websites it is clear they are a standard site with very little information and absolutely no feel on local community.

THIS IS WHAT CORPORATIONS ARE USING TO TAKE OVER COMMUNITY MOVEMENT TOWARDS CHARTERS.  Remember, Hopkins = Bloomberg =Wall Street so the intent is to make businesses out of each individual school.


When I tell people Mike Miller of the Maryland Assembly said he would work to end state funding of public education I have only a case of he said-she said.  If I remind people that all corporations in Baltimore are receiving tax breaks excluding property taxes-----that corporations like Hopkins are still categorized as non-profits and pay no property taxes-----and that the Baltimore City Hall is shouting for large cuts to residential property taxes-----WHICH IS THE ONLY SOURCE OF FUNDING FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS----where is the money for funding schools going to come?  So, if we are eliminating resources locally----then is it likely that those state funds will disappear?  I encourage people to think what filling our school board with business people, Teach for America, and charter school owners means to public education.  Think about KIPP as the national charter chain that already has gone private in many states across America and is just waiting to do so in Baltimore.  Ending public funding will force schools to partner with corporations and national charter chains will be there to expand.

This Wall Street plan is happening in cities across America and the goal will be to build this private charter platform in these cities and then expand them across the state.  It only takes a few pieces of legislation to do this and we all know how quickly all of this Race to the Top and Common Core legislation passed the Maryland Assembly.  So, this is the goal and ending public education will take yet another cornerstone of democracy into the hands of Wall Street.  Controlling what people are taught is a must in an autocratic society.


I especially talk with religious communities about the intention and how Wall Street will not allow for religious teaching in the system they are developing.  The Catholic Church is taking most of its private schools to charters no doubt to receive education funding giving this charter movement more legitimacy.  I let these leaders know the intent and most are surprised but when they look at the big picture-----

THE CANARY IN THE COAL MINE IS CLEAR.  BALTIMORE'S SYSTEM OF CHARTERS AND SCHOOLS AS BUSINESSES ARE SIMPLY A PLATFORM FOR TAKEOVER BY NATIONAL CHARTER CHAINS.


Below you see an article that does a good job looking at both sides. I want to emphasize that when KIPP says the bulk of private donations go to building space for its schools----KIPP in Baltimore simply converts existing space as does most of KIPP across the country.  KIPP is already privatized in some states and as we see these charters are not public schools----they are simply getting the public money other public schools that are closed would be getting.  I have looked at how achievement data and demographic data in Baltimore schools is collected and shared and I know that KIPP in Baltimore just as around the country is allowed to hide much data under guise of 'charter' and that much of the data raises concerns.


So, KIPP is the Wall Street national charter chain of choice and heavy funding up front will end in massive profits when KIPP takes over most public schools across America.  Remember, these national charter chains are made to look good now but believe me----once they are allowed to replace our public schools----if left to move forward this could be in a decade----all of that private donation would stop, quality fall, and these schools will only be vocational tracking into what will be mostly low-wage employment.

Look at some of Baltimore's highest achieving public schools having their funding taken for advanced programs -----while achievement is truly excelling----and you see the future.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE REQUIRED TO FOLLOW THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF EQUAL PROTECTION AS WITH ACCESS AND OPPORTUNITY.  USING CHARTERS TO SKIRT THIS IS ONE STEP TO ENDING THIS REQUIREMENT.  WHAT HAPPENS TO 90% OF AMERICANS IF EQUAL PROTECTION LAWS DISAPPEAR?  THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT DISAPPEARS-----WHERE ALL PEOPLE ARE CITIZENS DESERVING A HUMANITIES/LIBERAL ARTS BASED EDUCATION.


Below you see the direct connection with the policy of advancing this one national charter chain.  Maryland is making it harder and harder for low-income families to receive any kinds of financial aid for 4 year institutions like U of M College Park.  Below you see a scholarship directed specifically at KIPP students.  If getting a scholarship to UMD requires attending KIPP----then more parents move their children to KIPP.  College Park and Wallace Loh is the most corporate of public universities and their desire to move public K-12 education to that of corporate is no secret.  More students graduating from KIPP going to college-----WELL, THAT IS WHY!

So, these are the clues one sees to which national charter chains will get the nod as all state funding for public education moves from public schools to these charters.


UMD Forms Partnership with KIPP Charter Schools Network

August 15, 2013 
Contacts: Beth Cavanaugh, UMD, 301-405-4625
Steve Mancini, KIPP, 415-531-5396

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – The University of Maryland and KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) announced today the creation of a formal partnership to attract and recruit KIPP students, including those in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. regions.
Through this partnership, KIPP students will have access to existing programs and resources created for low-income or first-generation college students, as well as scholarships created through a gift from Charles Daggs, UMD class of 1969 and a KIPP Bay Area board member. This partnership will also help to support KIPP's mission to increase college competition rates for underserved KIPP students throughout the country.

"We all win by creating new opportunities and upward mobility," says University of Maryland President Wallace D. Loh. "This new partnership extends our success with talented, low-income students, and our progress closing the achievement gap. It creates a much richer learning environment for all students. Congratulations to KIPP and our alums, whose vision makes this possible."

This fall, four KIPP students – three from Baltimore City and one from Washington, D.C. – will enter UMD's freshmen class. Three of these students have been awarded full scholarships through the Daggs gift and the UMD Incentive Awards Program.

"This partnership will support our hardworking KIPP students as they work toward a degree from one of the best public universities in the country," says Richard Barth, CEO at KIPP. "We are so grateful for Chuck Daggs's generous gift, which is helping to support this partnership and providing much-needed resources to some of our top graduates who have excelled in their schools and communities, to help them attain an excellent college education."

Established in 2002, KIPP Baltimore consists of two schools – one elementary school and one middle school. In Washington, D.C., KIPP operates nine schools – one high school, three middle schools, and eight elementary schools. All schools are free, open-enrollment charter schools that offer a rigorous, college preparatory education.

KIPP Baltimore and Washington, D.C. are part of a national network of 141 KIPP public charter schools. A report released this year by independent research firm Mathematica showed that KIPP middle schools nationwide are producing positive, significant and substantial achievement gains for students in all grades and four subjects—math, reading, science, and social studies. Mathematica researchers found that KIPP achieved these academic gains with students that entered middle school with lower achievement scores than their peers in neighboring district schools.

KIPP – the Knowledge Is Power Program – is a national network of open-enrollment, college-preparatory public charter schools with a track record of preparing students in underserved communities for success in college and in life.  KIPP was founded in Houston in 1994 and has grown to 141 schools serving more than 50,000 students in 20 states and Washington, D.C.  More than 95 percent of students enrolled in KIPP schools are African American or Latino, and 86 percent qualify for the federal free and reduced-price meals program.

Read a story from The Baltimore Sun on the new KIPP partnership here.


_______________________________________________
Keep in mind that Baltimore City schools perform so badly because they have been starved of revenue for decades.  The state underfunded them for decades, Baltimore City is left with systemic fraud and corruption that extends to the school funding....so, students of Baltimore City schools have been victims of misappropriation of education funds they were legally required to receive.  These funds mostly ended up in affluent and corporate development in Baltimore with a few corrupt education administrators joining in to the fleecing of the Baltimore education budget.

THIS IS WHY BALTIMORE CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE IN SHAMBLES AND NOT PERFORMING SO SIMPLY MAKING SURE THEY ARE FULLY FUNDED AND RESOURCED----THAT TEACHERS RECEIVE HELP IN THE CLASSROOMS IS THE ANSWER. 

What education privatizers are doing is sending all the funding, resources, and help to charters instead while most Baltimore public schools cannot even afford toilet paper.  Your warm and fuzzy community charter will be taken over by these national charter chains.

THE MIDDLE-CLASS NEEDS TO KNOW THAT THIS GOAL OF NATIONAL CHARTER CHAINS WILL NOT STAY WITH THE POOR STUDENTS----IT WILL BECOME ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS.




March 31, 2011


New study of KIPP says the charter chain pulls in more cash than other schools
By Sarah Garland

Charter schools that post unusually high academic gains are often accused of having unfair advantages over traditional public schools, including more advantaged students and more private money at their disposal. A new and highly contentious study released today attempts to prove that the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), the largest charter-school network in the country, is inundated with both in comparison to its regular public-school counterparts and other charter schools.

The study is likely to give ammunition to charter-school critics as evidence that KIPP’s high test scores can be attributed to extra cash and a population of students that’s easier to educate.
But the study’s findings are far from conclusive: The data used in the financial analysis are limited and, according to KIPP, often inaccurate, and the methodology used to examine KIPP students is problematic.

In the national battles over whether to increase the number of charter schools, research has been a weapon wielded aggressively by both sides. (Teachers’ unions and their supporters are typically on the anti-charter side, and ed-reformer-types like Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of the D.C. schools, and Joel Klein, former chancellor of the New York City schools, are on the other.)

But this study is different than many others because it accepts the fact that KIPP’s academic outcomes are indisputably extraordinary, and seeks instead to dig more deeply into “the reasons for its success.”

Most notably, the study, by Western Michigan University researchers at the Study Group on Educational Management Organizations, addresses the question of whether KIPP receives more money per student from government and private sources than other schools. Critics have wondered whether the chain’s reliance on philanthropic dollars, which have helped fund its rapid expansion, can be maintained as the network continues to grow.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at a KIPP school in Newark (photo courtesy of Gary He for Facebook)

“Are KIPP schools sustainable, and are we overly reliant on philanthropic dollars?”
are questions that KIPP also asks itself, Steve Mancini, a spokesperson for the charter network, told The Hechinger Report yesterday. The possibility that KIPP is getting more money per student than its traditional-school counterparts also raises the question of whether it’s reasonable to expect regular public schools to match KIPP’s achievements, and whether increasing the number of charter schools is an efficient use of money – an important question in tough economic times.

Here is what the study found:

In the 2007 school year, 12 KIPP school districts encompassing 25 schools received $12,731 per pupil from local, state and federal governments. Public-school districts where the KIPP schools were located received $11,960 (a few dollars more than the national public school average). Charter schools in general received much less on average: $9,579. Compared to regular public schools and other charters, KIPP received much more federal money, as well as more than double what other charters received in local funding.

Besides the extra government money that KIPP receives, the study found that the 12 KIPP school districts reported $37 million to the IRS in private donations in 2008, about $5,760 per pupil on top of the nearly $13,000 per pupil they received from the government.

“We were surprised they were getting so much,” said Gary Miron, a researcher at Western Michigan University and lead author of the study.

But KIPP vigorously rejected the study’s data after reviewing it yesterday. “This report has multiple factual misrepresentations,” Mancini said.

Mancini noted that the study focused on only 25 KIPP schools out of 58 open at the time when researchers calculated the financial data — missing schools in California, for example, which allocates much less money to charter schools than other states. According to KIPP’s own estimates, its schools receive about $9,000 to $10,000 per pupil, on average, from government sources, a figure that is closer to what other charters receive.

As for the private money, Mancini said the study does not take into account the fact that a significant part of the donations goes toward paying for buildings, often a large cost for charter schools in districts that don’t give them facilities. Miron, the study’s author, said that school districts must also pay for buildings, but Mancini countered that these costs are generally not included in per-pupil calculations.

KIPP estimates that it receives only about $2,500 per student from private sources, putting the total (including government money) at around $11,500 or $12,500 per pupil, right around what regular public schools receive. The study does not include data on the amount of private money other charter schools receive, but, keeping in mind that KIPP is the largest and best-known charter network in the country, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume KIPP does better at fundraising and that other charters receive less.

The takeaway is that KIPP’s model is not especially cheap, although KIPP does offer extras that traditional public schools don’t — like Saturday school and longer school days — for a similar amount of money.

“I think what this study does is at least give us pause about inferring that the KIPP model is a low-cost model,” said Jeffrey Henig, a political scientist at Teachers College who briefly reviewed the study before it was published, and who is affiliated with the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, housed at Teachers College. (The Hechinger Report is also located at Teachers College.)

The New York Times and Washington Post coverage of the study focused on the money issues, but articles in Education Week and Bloomberg News focused on the study’s examination of KIPP students.

KIPP uses a “no-excuses” model in which students and parents are required to sign performance contracts. Most of the students it educates are low-income. In fact, the WMU study found that KIPP enrolls higher percentages of low-income students than the public-school districts in which its schools are located.

But the idea that charter schools “cream” the best students from surrounding neighborhood schools and push out students who don’t perform well academically is a persistent critique of the schools, and the study claims to have found that the hardest-to-educate KIPP students tend to leave the schools at high rates.

A study finds that 40 percent of black males quit KIPP schools, a figure contested by KIPP (photo courtesy of brookesb)

In particular, the researchers argue that 40 percent of African-American male students, a group that generally posts lower test scores, “drop out” of KIPP schools between sixth and eighth grade. (Most KIPP schools are middle schools.)

“KIPP schools are cycling out those low-performing students, but they’re not replacing them,” said Miron. This is thought to be advantageous to KIPP for two reasons: first, the schools get to keep the funding tied to the student for that academic year even after he or she leaves the school; and, second, a school’s test score average goes up when low-performing students quit.

KIPP aggressively contests this finding, however. Mancini pointed to a study KIPP commissioned from the nonpartisan research group, Mathematica, which followed individual students over time. The WMU study used aggregated data taken as a snapshot and compared KIPP attrition rates to the rate of students who moved out of the school districts in which KIPP schools were located. Mathematica researchers said that a student leaving an individual school is not the same phenomenon as a student leaving a district.

“You have to do a school-by-school comparison,” said Brian Gill, one of the co-authors of the Mathematica report, which found that, on average, attrition at KIPP schools is about on par with schools in surrounding neighborhoods. “There’s a real danger from people drawing inferences from this that aren’t supported.”

The WMU study also assumes that all missing students have left the school and that none are held back a grade. In fact, many KIPP schools have policies that require low-performing students to repeat a grade, and they have been shown to enforce such policies at higher rates than other schools. Miron contends that students who are held back are more likely to leave, a phenomenon that we examined in a previous story. That some KIPP schools don’t replace students if they leave is true, however, and both Mancini and the Mathematica research team said they have been looking into this phenomenon.

Next week, Mathematica will release a new study on the matter, but as with most charter school studies, it’s unlikely to be the last word.


______________________________________________

The designation of charter schools as public is ridiculous and is done simply to allow taxpayers to pay to build the infrastructure for these national charter chains.  Once the structure is built in a city like Baltimore then all pretense to private will end and you will see these schools listed on the Wall Street stock exchange.

Charters fail to meet all the requirements of public schools as regards equal access and opportunity, public transparency with data, and any oversight of whether information provided is accurate.  It is when large institutions do extended research into these areas that all of the data becomes questionable.

We know that all of the pressure on teachers and administrators of both charter and public schools is forcing some to falsify data because it is impossible to make these changes as fast as these programs are implemented.  Remember, Bush created the No Child Left Behind laws that are now being used to close schools and force these evaluations and tests in the classrooms-----but it was unfunded and never advanced.  This push now for immediate change-----

IS A WALL STREET PLOY TO MOVE A VERY, VERY BAD PUBLIC POLICY THROUGH BEFORE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CAN STOP IT.


I want to emphasize------some charters are good----they do indeed offer choice and do so under the rules of public education.  The problem is that those that do not are gobbling up charter growth at tremendous speed.  That is what a corporation does----expands and takes the market share.

Public or Private: Charter Schools Can’t Have It Both Ways

Email to a friend Permalink Saturday, January 05, 2013

Aaron Regunberg, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™





Are charter schools public? Are they private? Are they somewhere in between? There is a lively debate in the education community over these questions. Charter advocates claim that charter schools are, of course, public schools, with all the democratic accountability that this entails. The only difference, they say, is that charters are public schools with the freedom and space to innovate. On the other side, charter critics argue that contracting with the government to receive taxpayer money does not make an organization public (after all, no one would say Haliburton is public) and if a school is not regulated and governed by any elected or appointed bodies answerable to the public, then it is not a public school.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was recently forced to weigh in on this question. It came out with a clear verdict that charter schools are not, in fact, public schools.

The ruling came in response to a case regarding a charter school in Chicago, the Chicago Math and Science Academy (CMSA). In 2010, two thirds of CMSA’s teachers voted to unionize, in accordance with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act, which grants the employees of all public schools the right to form unions. In an attempt to invalidate this vote, charter officials filed papers with the National Labor Relations Board arguing that CMSA should not be covered under the state law because it does not qualify as a public school.

And that is precisely what NLRB concluded, ruling that CMSA is a “private entity” and is consequently covered under the federal law governing the private sector. According to the federal government, the debate is settled—charter schools are not public schools, and that is all there is to it.

Of course, that is not the whole story, because the charter movement is diverse. On the one hand, there are some community-based charter schools that are very much of and by and answerable to the communities they serve, which to me is what the word “public” is all about. On the other hand, there are corporate charter chains that have been widely criticized for discriminatory practices and unaccountable governance, which do not seem public at all. We should acknowledge these differences, and carve out a place for some nuance in the public-or-private debate.

What we should not do, however, is allow the charter movement or any particular charter chains to have it both ways. The Chicago Math and Science Academy has taken at least $23 million in taxpayer money since it formed in 2004, so it is perfectly willing to be “public” with regards to whose money it spends. But when its teachers want to join a union, now it is a “private entity.” That is hypocrisy, plain and simple. The situation is similar regarding many charter schools’ demographic situations. Chains like KIPP claim they enroll the same student populations as public schools and, like public schools, do not turn any students away. Yet widespread evidence suggests these schools use a variety of tactics, such as counseling certain students out, to create unrepresentative student bodies. In fact, a recent study found that in 2008, 11.5 percent of KIPP students were ELLs, compared with 19.2 percent of students in their local school districts, while 5.9 percent of KIPP students had disabilities, compared with 12.1 percent of students in the local school districts. Likewise, I have written a number of posts about similar irregularities found in the Achievement First charter chain, whose cadre of well-paid lobbyists could not stop stressing the “public” nature of their schools during last year’s hearings in Rhode Island.

That is not how it works. If you’re public, you’re public—you take all students, not just the ones who are easiest to educate; you offer fair protections to your employees; you play by the same rules on an even playing field. And if you’re private, stop claiming otherwise—stop saying your schools are public schools when they are not. Charters cannot have their cake and eat it too, and it’s about time we stopped letting them do so.



___________________________________________

Remember, Finland's education system is based on the US public education of my time----before the Reagan/Clinton education reforms and defunding of public education.  We have a successful model that allowed for the best and the brightest in the world and moved more poor students into the middle-class in history.  So, why are we moving towards something with no research, no proof of achievement, and that takes the entire public education system down?

THAT'S WALL STREET------AND THEIR POLS FOR YOU


As you see below the Finns transformed their schools system 40 years ago----that was when the US system was thriving.....
now the Finns are performing as the US used to.


Why Are Finland's Schools Successful? The country's achievements in education have other nations, especially the United States, doing their homework

By LynNell Hancock Smithsonian Magazine

It was the end of term at Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School in Espoo, a sprawling suburb west of Helsinki, when Kari Louhivuori, a veteran teacher and the school’s principal, decided to try something extreme—by Finnish standards. One of his sixth-grade students, a Kosovo-Albanian boy, had drifted far off the learning grid, resisting his teacher’s best efforts. The school’s team of special educators—including a social worker, a nurse and a psychologist—convinced Louhivuori that laziness was not to blame. So he decided to hold the boy back a year, a measure so rare in Finland it’s practically obsolete.


Finland has vastly improved in reading, math and science literacy over the past decade in large part because its teachers are trusted to do whatever it takes to turn young lives around. This 13-year-old, Besart Kabashi, received something akin to royal tutoring.

“I took Besart on that year as my private student,” Louhivuori told me in his office, which boasted a Beatles “Yellow Submarine” poster on the wall and an electric guitar in the closet. When Besart was not studying science, geography and math, he was parked next to Louhivuori’s desk at the front of his class of 9- and 10-year- olds, cracking open books from a tall stack, slowly reading one, then another, then devouring them by the dozens. By the end of the year, the son of Kosovo war refugees had conquered his adopted country’s vowel-rich language and arrived at the realization that he could, in fact, learn.

Years later, a 20-year-old Besart showed up at Kirkkojarvi’s Christmas party with a bottle of Cognac and a big grin. “You helped me,” he told his former teacher. Besart had opened his own car repair firm and a cleaning company. “No big fuss,” Louhivuori told me. “This is what we do every day, prepare kids for life.”

This tale of a single rescued child hints at some of the reasons for the tiny Nordic nation’s staggering record of education success, a phenomenon that has inspired, baffled and even irked many of America’s parents and educators. Finnish schooling became an unlikely hot topic after the 2010 documentary film Waiting for “Superman” contrasted it with America’s troubled public schools.

“Whatever it takes” is an attitude that drives not just Kirkkojarvi’s 30 teachers, but most of Finland’s 62,000 educators in 3,500 schools from Lapland to Turku—professionals selected from the top 10 percent of the nation’s graduates to earn a required master’s degree in education. Many schools are small enough so that teachers know every student. If one method fails, teachers consult with colleagues to try something else. They seem to relish the challenges. Nearly 30 percent of Finland’s children receive some kind of special help during their first nine years of school. The school where Louhivuori teaches served 240 first through ninth graders last year; and in contrast with Finland’s reputation for ethnic homogeneity, more than half of its 150 elementary-level students are immigrants—from Somalia, Iraq, Russia, Bangladesh, Estonia and Ethiopia, among other nations. “Children from wealthy families with lots of education can be taught by stupid teachers,” Louhivuori said, smiling. “We try to catch the weak students. It’s deep in our thinking.”

The transformation of the Finns’ education system began some 40 years ago as the key propellent of the country’s economic recovery plan. Educators had little idea it was so successful until 2000, when the first results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a standardized test given to 15-year-olds in more than 40 global venues, revealed Finnish youth to be the best young readers in the world. Three years later, they led in math. By 2006, Finland was first out of 57 countries (and a few cities) in science. In the 2009 PISA scores released last year, the nation came in second in science, third in reading and sixth in math among nearly half a million students worldwide. “I’m still surprised,” said Arjariita Heikkinen, principal of a Helsinki comprehensive school. “I didn’t realize we were that good.”

In the United States, which has muddled along in the middle for the past decade, government officials have attempted to introduce marketplace competition into public schools. In recent years, a group of Wall Street financiers and philanthropists such as Bill Gates have put money behind private-sector ideas, such as vouchers, data-driven curriculum and charter schools, which have doubled in number in the past decade. President Obama, too, has apparently bet on compe­tition. His Race to the Top initiative invites states to compete for federal dollars using tests and other methods to measure teachers, a philosophy that would not fly in Finland. “I think, in fact, teachers would tear off their shirts,” said Timo Heikkinen, a Helsinki principal with 24 years of teaching experience. “If you only measure the statistics, you miss the human aspect.”






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May 05th, 2014

5/5/2014

0 Comments

 
I UNDERSTAND THAT MARYLAND IS A CONSERVATIVE STATE BUT I KNOW THAT EVEN CONSERVATIVES HATE GLOBAL CORPORATE RULE AND THE LOSS OF FREE MARKETS WITH THIS CRONY NEO-LIBERALISM.  THESE EDUCATION REFORMS ARE SIMPLY AN EXTENSION OF GLOBAL CORPORATIONS AND MARKET CONTROL THAT WILL TAKE AWAY ALL COMMUNITY CONTROL OF EVERY ASPECT OF EDUCATION AND NEITHER REPUBLICAN NOR DEMOCRAT WANTS THIS!  WAKE UP AND GET OUT TO PROTEST THESE POLICIES AS IS HAPPENING ALL ACROSS AMERICA.

CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR IS THE ONLY CANDIDATE FIGHTING AGAINST THESE REFORMS AND FOR STRONG FUNDING AND RESOURCING FOR COMMUNITY-LED PUBLIC SCHOOLS.



Today I wanted to look at the Maryland approach to education reform but also how the process of public policy debate has become so captured as to exclude any public input from the citizens of Maryland.  Remember, Maryland is moving quickly to privatizing all public agencies and this allows only the corporations tied with these partnerships writing the policy.  In this case it is education reform and Race to the Top.

I like to give people a broad history of education reform over decades because that let's us have historical perspective and as a baby boomer graduating with education degrees in early 1990, I was right at the last education reform of 1990.  Reagan/Clinton embraced neo-liberal
ism meaning they were leaving the social democratic structure of first world thriving economy and moving to empire-building global free markets and a return of wealth to the few.  This meant dismantling a strong public education system that gave highly educated citizens ready to work in leadership positions in government and business. They envisioned the middle-age structure of only the rich attaining the higher education and the 99% of people tracked into vocation.....pre-Age of Enlightenment.  To do that Reagan/Clinton with the help of the same Ivy League schools giving us Race to the Top installed an education reform that took text books out of classrooms because they 'stifled' creativity and told teachers to allow calculators in math classes at the earliest age because they said 'people are now only going to need to push a button for math'.  So, Stanford and Ivy League schools became rich selling lessons without textbooks and of course Hewlett Packard and the calculator corporations went wild.  The results for these students we know------children graduating unable to read and do math.  THEY TOOK A HIGHLY EDUCATED SOCIETY DOWN TO THE WORST OF ACHIEVEMENT WITH THIS 1990 EDUCATION REFORM.

Reagan reversed what was a progressive tax structure by lowering corporate and wealth taxes so much that education funding would not be sustained at levels that had the US ranked #1 in the world so this breakdown in education was leading to the defunding that followed.  So, from 1990 to this roll-out of Race to the Top education funding dropped considerably taking resources and opportunity from the classrooms until today......corporations paying nothing in tax but now using our tax revenue as corporate subsidy the citizens are reduced to begging for school funding. 

THIS IS WHY PUBLIC EDUCATION IS NOT DOING ITS JOB----AND IT WAS DELIBERATE.  WE WENT FROM THE MOST HIGHLY EDUCATED NATION TO THE LOWEST RANKED WITH THE REAGAN/CLINTON REFORM.

Now, the same Ivy League schools are back for round two of ending public education in America.  Citizens are desperate for good schools and now corporate education reforms pretend to give it to the people with all kinds of education businesses.  THERE GOES PUBLIC EDUCATION!  All we need to do is return to what worked before 1990 reform to return to a thriving public education system and none of it involved corporate education businesses, testing, and data.

Look below to see the players in Maryland pushing this current education reform that wants to hand all public education to businesses.  First, we need to identify Johns Hopkins as the institution behind this most severe of privatization efforts and we have this in Baltimore.  Let's start with Nancy Grasmick who as you see is now working at Johns Hopkins but she was the Maryland Education Superintendent throughout the Reagan/Clinton dumbing down of America.  When I moved to Baltimore  several years ago I interviewed parents, teachers, and administrators to get a feel of education in this area and it was very clear-----THEY ALL HATED WHAT WAS HAPPENING.  PARENTS BACK IN 2006 WERE DEMANDING THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION RISE.   Nancy's job was taking a first world high quality education system and make it fail.  She did her job as Maryland's state tests are some of the weakest in the country and education stats are massaged to make performance look better than it is.  You cannot hide widespread math and reading deficiency.  Let's have Nancy on the panel about failed education policy they say!

NANCY GRASMICK IS THE FACE OF CORPORATE AMERICA'S DISMANTLING OF A STRONG PUBLIC EDUCATION AND NOW SHE WORKS AT JOHNS HOPKINS---THE INSTITUTION PUSHING THESE REFORMS.

**********************

Sean Johnson's Overview
  • Assistant Executive Director for Political and Legislative Affairs at Maryland State Education Association
Past
  • Campaign Specialist at National Education Association
  • Deputy Political Director at Hillary Clinton for President
  • Vice President at Mack Crounse Group, LLC



The Maryland State Education Association is merely the product of who the Governor at the time appoints to head Maryland Education.  So, if Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland was elected I would appoint strong public education people to Maryland Education but O'Malley who works for Johns Hopkins appointed strong education privatizers so Sean Johnson will push these Race to the Top and Common Core policies for all he is worth.  As you see Sean is tied with the Clinton's -----the one's creating this mess in education and who better to lead the effort to fix education then the people who killed it.  Mack Crounce Group is a real estate/investment firm from Florida and has nothing to do with education.  Sean Johnson appears to have a job as top education appointee with only business/political science background and yet------Sean Johnson is on this education panel.

***************************************
Maryland CAN is a state organization that makes school privatization its goal.  My few contacts with MD CAN had this organization talking to parents with special needs and underserved schools telling them these reforms were good and all of the bad public schools in Baltimore were the result of bad teachers.  Below you see that Jason Botel is directly connected to the largest charter chain in the country----KIPP.  It also has a record as the worst in exclusion, hiding/skewing achievement data, and more talk than walk.  The Maryland Assembly wants this private charter chain to take over in Baltimore so badly it selectively assigned scholarship money to this KIPP chain only for higher education.  So, yet another education privatizer on this panel discussion on education policy in Maryland.




Jason Botel's Experience Executive Director KIPP Baltimore Educational Institution; 51-200 employees; Education Management industry

July 2002 – Present (11 years 11 months)



****************************************************

Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation

Well, taking America's schools private is a republican policy and indeed much of what Obama and neo-liberals in Congress are passing as policy originates from this most conservative of foundations----the Heritage Foundation.  So, if you are going to talk about concerns over the education reform and people hating it----you would want the people responsible for writing these policies there to give unbiased discussion
.  I want to caution those conservatives out there to watch for what you wish because if you like charters and control over your schools what these people have in mind takes all control away----Wall Street charter chains will control all and will not care less about what is good for the child----only giving what the corporations need.

FREE-MARKET SCHOOLS LIKE FREE MARKET FINANCE?  YOU BETCHA!!!!!!  WE ALREADY HAVE FOR-PROFIT HIGHER EDUCATION INFUSED WITH FRAUD AND CORRUPTION.


Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institution—a think tank—whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.


*****************************************

Nina Rees  is obviously a charter school advocate----


****************************************************
Dallas Dance straight from what is basically already a third world country----TEXAS.  Texas is one of the first to develop Teach for America and schools as businesses models as a raging corporate state. Texas wants to remove 'public' from its library system for goodness sake.   So Dance was brought to Baltimore area to install the next stage of reform----getting all students connected to online lessons and creating the cheapest education for the buck. This was Alonzo's task as education quality went nowhere but all the structures for making schools into businesses happened during Alonzo's term.  Dance has absolutely no administrative ability, he openly misleads the public and controls public discussion like any Chinese autocrat.  Dance is captured through and through to this school as business mentality.  This is a panelist on education policy in Maryland.

I encourage Maryland citizens to either attend this forum or protest outside and the most public of forums will include only people wanting these reforms to continue and the price of $35 to enter a public policy forum is ridiculous.  People can go to a national policy event at the Brookings Institution for free!



Maryland Policy Forum > Forum > Maryland Public Education: The Challenges Ahead Maryland Public Education: The Challenges Ahead

Debate summary Share: The Maryland Public Policy Institute hosts a debate on Common Core, universal Pre-K and the role of charter schools. Common Core is a subject of hot debate from all sides of the political spectrum, universal Pre-K is on the platform of a number of gubernatorial candidates as well as a topic of national discussion since President Obama noted it in his State of the Union speech, and Maryland’s charter law because it is one of the most restrictive in the nation. We think this heavy hitting group of panelists will not only draw a big crowd, but shed both light and heat on how to improve public education for all in Maryland. Join us for a reception at 6 pm, while the program begins at 7 pm. Sponsorships Available: Please contact Hillary Pennington at (240) 686-3510 or hpennington@mdpolicy.org


    

  Panel
Sean Johnson    Maryland State Education Association

Dr. Nancy Grasmick   Kennedy Krieger Institute

Jason Botel   MarylandCAN

Lindsey Burke   The Heritage Foundation

Nina Rees    National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

Dr. Dallas Dance   Superintendent of Baltimore County Public Schools


__________________________________________
Obama and Wall Street used Bush's No Child Left Behind and controlled Federal Education funding to force states to move these policies forward and much of these policies are not legal.  Tying Federal funding of public schools to policy not generated by Congress is unheard of.  OBAMA WAS NOT ALLOWED TO DO THIS. 

Crashing the economy with so much debt created from massive corporate fraud of government coffers set the stage for forcing these policies on states.  The first thing Maryland would have done was to take this Federal funding threat to court as it is illegal.  Maryland unfortunately had O'Malley in place as Governor and Gansler in place as Maryland Attorney General
ready to move these policies forward.  IT MATTERS WHO YOU ELECT. 

CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR WILL TAKE ALL OF THIS PROCESS TO COURT TO STOP THIS POWER GRAB.


Obama's Race to the Top Will Not Improve Education Posted: 08/ 1/10 01:27 PM ET React



President Obama spoke to the National Urban League this week and defended his "Race to the Top" program, which has become increasingly controversial. Mr. Obama insisted that it was the most important thing he had done in office, and that critics were merely clinging to the status quo.

Mr. Obama was unfazed by the scathing critique of the Race by the nation's leading civil rights organizations, who insisted that access to federal funding should be based on need, not competition.

The program contains these key elements: Teachers will be evaluated in relation to their students' test scores. Schools that continue to get low test scores will be closed or turned into charter schools or handed over to private management. In low-performing schools, principals will be fired, and all or half of the staff will be fired. States are encouraged to create many more privately managed charter schools.

All of these elements are problematic. Evaluating teachers in relation to student test scores will have many adverse consequences. It will make the current standardized tests of basic skills more important than ever, and even more time and resources will be devoted to raising scores on these tests. The curriculum will be narrowed even more than under George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind, because of the link between wages and scores. There will be even less time available for the arts, science, history, civics, foreign language, even physical education. Teachers will teach to the test. There will be more cheating, more gaming the system.

Furthermore, charter schools on average do not get better results than regular public schools, yet Obama and Duncan are pushing them hard. Duncan acknowledges that there are many mediocre or bad charter schools, but chooses to believe that in the future, the new charters will only be high performing ones. Right.

The President should re-examine his reliance on standardized testing to identify the best teachers and schools and the worst teachers and schools. The tests are simply not adequate to their expectations.

The latest example of how test results can be doctored is the New York state testing scandal, which broke open this week. The pass rates on the state tests had soared year after year, to the point where they became ridiculous to all but the credulous The whole house of cards came crashing down this week after the state raised the proficiency bar from the low point to which it had sunk. In 2009, 86.4% of the state's students were "proficient" in math, but the number in 2010 plummeted to 61%. In 2009, 77.4% were "proficient" in reading, but now it is only 53.2%.

The latest test scores were especially startling for New York City, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg staked his reputation on their meteoric rise. He was re-elected because of the supposedly historic increase in test scores and used them to win renewal of mayoral control. But now, the city's pass rate in reading for grades 3-8 fell from 68.8% to 42.4%, and the proficiency rate in math sunk from an incredible 81.8% to a dismal 54%.

When the mayor ran for office, he said that mayoral control would mean accountability. If things went wrong, the public would know whom to blame.

But now that the truth about score inflation is out, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein steadfastly insist that the gains recorded on their watch did not go up in smoke, that progress was real, and they have reiterated this message through their intermediaries in the tabloids. In other words, they are using every possible rationalization and excuse to avoid accountability for the collapse of their "historic gains."

Meanwhile Secretary Duncan travels the country urging districts to adopt mayoral control, so they can emulate New York City. He carefully avoids mentioning Cleveland, which has had mayoral control for years and remains one of the lowest performing districts in the nation. Nor does he mention that Detroit had mayoral control and ended it. And it is hard to imagine that anyone would think of Chicago, which has been controlled by Mayor Richard Daley for many years, would serve as a national model.

President Obama and Secretary Duncan need to stop and think. They are heading in the wrong direction. On their present course, they will end up demoralizing teachers, closing schools that are struggling to improve, dismantling the teaching profession, destabilizing communities, and harming public education.


_______________________________________
There was plenty of journalism against these reforms from both sides of the political aisle.  NO ONE WANTED THIS.  As you see below the reasoning for the reforms was based purely on the ideals of free market and running schools like businesses.  That was what Alonzo's tenure in Baltimore was all about with education achievements falling even as they massage the data.  Dance will do the same in Baltimore County.

Look as well at the so-called public debate issue here in Maryland to see----THERE IS NO PUBLIC DEBATE.....ALL PUBLIC DEBATES ARE SELECTED PANELISTS WHO SIMPLY REPRESENT THE CORPORATE VIEW.  This is critical folks.  If you do not fight for your rights as citizens.....you will become third world peasants.



SADLY THINGS ARE SO CAPTURED IN MARYLAND WE HAVE THE AFL-CIO AND THE BALTIMORE TEACHER'S UNION CAMPAIGNING FOR ANTHONY BROWN-----THE VERY PERSON WHO AS GOVERNOR WILL CONTINUE THIS PRIVATIZATION.




Posted at 11:47 AM ET, 10/23/2009

Educator: 'Race to the Top's' 10 false assumptions

By Valerie Strauss My guest today is Marion Brady, veteran teacher, administrator, curriculum designer and author. He writes about Education Secretary's Arne Duncan's "Race to the Top" initiative, which is intended to be the successor to "No Child Left Behind."

By Marion Brady
"Race to the Top? National standards for math, science, and other school subjects? The high-powered push to put them in place makes it clear that the politicians, business leaders, and wealthy philanthropists who’ve run America’s education show for the last two decades are as clueless about educating as they’ve always been.

If they weren’t, they’d know that adopting national standards will be counterproductive, and that the "Race to the Top" will fail for the same reason "No Child Left Behind" failed—because it’s based on false assumptions.

False Assumption 1:
America’s teachers deserve most of the blame for decades of flat school performance. Other factors affecting learning—language problems, hunger, stress, mass media exposure, transience, cultural differences, a sense of hopelessness, and so on and on—are minor and can be overcome by well-qualified teachers. To teacher protests that they’re scapegoats taking the blame for broader social ills, the proper response is, "No excuses!" While it’s true teachers can’t choose their students, textbooks, working conditions, curricula, tests, or the bureaucracies that circumscribe and limit their autonomy, they should be held fully accountable for poor student test scores.








False Assumption 2:
Professional educators are responsible for bringing education to crisis, so they can’t be trusted. School systems should instead be headed by business CEOs, mayors, ex-military officers, and others accustomed to running a "tight ship." Their managerial expertise more than compensates for how little they know about educating.

False Assumption 3:
"Rigor"—doing longer and harder what we’ve always done—will cure education’s ills. If the young can’t clear arbitrary statistical bars put in place by politicians, it makes good sense to raise those bars. Because learning is neither natural nor a source of joy, externally imposed discipline and "tough love" are necessary.

False Assumption 4:
Teaching is just a matter of distributing information. Indeed, the process is so simple that recent college graduates, fresh from "covering" that information, should be encouraged to join "Teach For America" for a couple of years before moving on to more intellectually demanding professions. Experienced teachers may argue that, as Socrates demonstrated, nothing is more intellectually demanding than figuring out what’s going on in another person’s head, then getting that person herself or himself to examine and change it, but they’re just blowing smoke.

False Assumption 5:
Notwithstanding the failure of vast experiments such as those conducted in eastern Europe under Communism, and the evidence from ordinary experience, history proves that top-down reforms such as No Child Left Behind work well. Centralized control doesn’t stifle creativity, imply teacher incompetence, limit strategy options, discourage innovation, or block the flow of information and insight to policymakers from those actually doing the work.

False Assumption 6:
Standardized tests are free of cultural, social class, language, experiential, and other biases, so test-taker ability to infer, hypothesize, generalize, relate, synthesize, and engage in all other "higher order" thought processes can be precisely measured and meaningful numbers attached. It’s also a fact that test-prep programs don’t unfairly advantage those who can afford them, that strategies to improve the reliability of guessing correct answers can’t be taught, and that test results can’t be manipulated to support political or ideological agendas. For these reasons, test scores are reliable, and should be the primary drivers of education policy.

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). The effectiveness of, say, band directors and biology teachers, or of history teachers and math teachers, can be easily measured and dollar amounts attached to their relative skill. Merit pay also has no adverse effect on collegiality, teacher-team dynamics, morale, or school politics.

False Assumption 8:
Required courses, course distribution requirements, Carnegie Units, and other bureaucratic demands and devices that standardize the curriculum and limit teacher and learner options are products of America’s best thinkers about what the young need to know. Those requirements should, then, override individual learner interests, talents, abilities, and all other factors affecting freedom of choice.

False Assumption 9:
Notwithstanding charter schools’ present high rates of teacher turnover, their growing standardization by profit-seeking corporations, or their failure to demonstrate that they can do things all public schools couldn’t do if freed from bureaucratic constraints, charters attract the most highly qualified and experienced teachers and are hotbeds of innovation.

False Assumption 10:
The familiar, traditional "core curriculum" in near-universal use in America’s classrooms since 1893 is the best-possible tool for preparing the young for an unknown, unpredictable, increasingly complex and dangerous future.


"Human history," said H.G. Wells, "is a race between education and catastrophe."

If amateurs continue to control American education policy, put your money on catastrophe. It’s a sure thing.

















   

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April 21st, 2014

4/21/2014

0 Comments

 
RAISE YOUR HANDS IF YOU UNDERSTAND THAT STARVING PEOPLE OF THE ABILITY TO EARN A LIVING IS A TOOL OF AUTOCRACY.  IF THE ONLY JOB PEOPLE CAN HAVE IS PRIVATIZING PUBLIC SCHOOLS----WHETHER AS CHARTER SCHOOL OWNERS OR TEACH FOR AMERICA COLLEGE GRADS-----THE PEOPLE MOST VICTIMIZED BECOME THE PEOPLE PUSHING THE AUTOCRATIC POLICIES.  THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING IN UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES AND IT IS WHY TEACHERS ARE FEELING UNABLE TO SHOUT OUT IN MANY PLACES LIKE MARYLAND!


STOP ALLOWING A NEO-LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PARTY CHOOSE YOUR CANDIDATES-----RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES!

As I showed with my blog on higher education in Maryland the structures created for privatizing our public universities have lowered the standards of education for most.  The same is happening in Maryland with the K-12 schools and much of this has to do with Race to the Top policies.  Baltimore's achievement has dropped to such a low status as it seeks to dismantle public education and all that is equal access and opportunity that long-term teachers in schools are starting to shout out about this attack on democratic education in America.

As I said, Maryland has no public media or public universities producing data to support this but we can look across the nation where real data is collected to see how things are working.  The article below shows how Wall Street and Bloomberg is working hard to skew all data for charters and successes that are not real.  Remember, the plan is simply to get these private charters to look like they are doing good so as to expand them.....and then they will be defunded and left to become the same as for-profit higher education.

We need to take a look at what institutions and politicians are supporting these privatization structures and give them the boot!  Stop allowing policy to be captured by Wall Street pols and private non-profits supporting them!


Baltimore residents will see the parallel to NYC and privatization-----the public education money being sent to these schools is completely wasted as money moves to administration and what will be profit.  No quality to be found.  If you are supporting charters because you want to use them for gentrification and/or segregation-----IT WILL COME BACK TO BITE YOU AS WALL STREET EXPECTS TO TAKE ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS----


Charter Schools: A UFT Research Report

Feb. 4, 2014
5:00 pm
by UFT Research Staff


As charter school proponents go to Albany this week to plead their case, let’s examine the realities behind their claims of stretched resources, unique student demand and stellar academic results.

How poor are charter schools?

While charters maintain they have very thin budgets, and some smaller charters in fact operate close to the margin, others are extremely well-funded.

A review of the most recently available public documents showed that as of 2011-12, the schools in six of the city’s most prominent charter chains had a total of more than $65 million in net assets, including nearly $16 million for the charters which are part of the Uncommon Schools Network and more than $13 million for the Success Academy Network.

What’s more, this supposed poverty doesn’t prevent some charters from paying very large salaries to their executives, as the Daily News recently reported.  The two Harlem Village Academies run by Deborah Kenny pay her a total of half a million dollars a year;  Eva Moskowitz of Success Academies reported a salary only a few thousand less, while David Levin of KIPP got just under $400,000.  All these salaries are dramatically more than those of the city’s mayor and chancellor, who supervise roughly 1,700 schools.

Charters’ opaque bookkeeping methods make it difficult to figure out how much many schools spend on their vendors, but tax filings by the Success Academy schools suggest that management fees charged by that network totaled $3.5 million of their schools’ per-pupil funds in 2011-12. In 2013, the Success Network requested and received a raise in management fees to 15 percent of the per-pupil funding it receives from the state and city.

The total amount of management fees charged by just four of the city’s charter chains in 2011-12 — Success, Uncommon, Achievement First, and KIPP — was over $12 million.  (see table below)

Charter Chain Financial Data, 2011-12

 


Network Name Number of NYC Schools with Audits Total Net Assets of Schools Total Management Fees Top Executive Compensation 2010-11

Achievement First 2

$3,585,931

$2,363,205

$224,200

Success Charter Network 4


$13,563,661

$3,516,362

$475,244

Uncommon Schools 7


$16,820,767

$5,054,626

$252,941

KIPP 1

$1,911,010

$1,089,475

$395,350

Village Academies Network 2

$3,236,767

Not Listed on Audit $499,146

Icahn Charters 4


$26,110,338

$2,236

$280,323

Total 20

$65,228,474

$12,023,668

$2,127,204

All of these figures are based on the schools’ own filings; the lack of publicly available audits for many other chains limits information about what other networks are charging.  Meanwhile, charter proponents led by Success Academy have launched a court fight to prevent an independent expert — the State Comptroller — from auditing charters’ and charter management companies’ books.

A study based on 2010-11 by the city’s Independent Budget Office calculated that as of 2009-10, co-locating a charter school in a public school building in effect gave the charter about $650 per student more in public funding than district schools spend. Their calculations were based on earlier, lower levels of charter per-pupil funding, however; at current rates, that disparity may now be over $2,000 per student.

Charters also get foundation grants — including from right-wing organizations like the Walton Family Foundation, which has given more than $1 million to Achievement First in recent years. In addition, a look at official filings by many charters — in particular the Success Academy network — show that the schools or chains have boards dominated by hedge funders and other financial interests whose contributions could theoretically absorb any reasonable rent charged for public school space; at a gala in 2013, for example, the Success Network raised more than $7 million in one evening.

How unique are charter waiting lists?

Charters make much of the length of their student waiting lists.  But the reality of New York City schools is that tens of thousands of students at all levels end up on waiting lists or completely frozen out of the schools they would like to attend.

More than half of the city’s nearly 64,000 eighth graders did not get into their first choice for high school last year and 7,200 — more than 10 percent of the total — did not get into a single school they applied to.  Approximately 20,000 students who take the test each year for the specialized high schools do not get into one of these schools.

The same is true for thousands of elementary school students who apply for slots in competitive middle schools, and for thousands more families who cannot find space in gifted programs or whose kids end up waitlisted for kindergarten in their neighborhood schools.

Students can and do get off waiting lists in district schools, which generally backfill empty spaces in higher grades if and when students transfer out; most charters, in contrast, almost never accept transfer students off their “waitlists” beyond their early grades.

Does admission to a charter guarantee academic success?

Student scores plummeted across the city last year when the state introduced new tests based on the Common Core standards. But in reading, charters schools as a whole scored under the citywide average (26.4 citywide average, charters 25.1).

Even highly touted charters had classes with significant problems.  Democracy Prep’s Harlem charter had fewer than 4 percent of 6th-graders proficient in reading and fewer than 12 percent passing math.  Fewer than 12 percent of 5th-graders at KIPP Star College Prep were proficient in math and just 16 percent passed the reading test, while 11 percent of their 7th-graders scored proficient in language arts and 14 percent in math.

These results come despite the fact that, as a group, charter schools serve a smaller proportion of the city’s neediest students, including special ed and English language learners.  A 2012 report by the charters’ own association —  the New York City Charter School Center — showed that on average, charter schools had only 6 percent English language learners, compared with 15 percent in district schools.

A recent IBO study showed that an astonishing 80 percent of special education students who start in charter schools in kindergarten are gone by the third grade.

Student attrition is a particular issue for the Success network, whose schools tend to have far higher student suspension rates than their neighborhood schools; they also see their class cohorts shrink as many poor-performing students leave or are counseled out and not replaced.

How can we level the playing field?

If charter schools are serious about playing an important role in New York City education, they should take four immediate steps to level the playing field between them and district schools, as outlined by UFT President Michael Mulgrew below in an article reprinted from the New York Daily News:

For the past 12 years, the Bloomberg administration has singled out charter schools for special treatment, a strategy that embittered many ordinary New York City public school parents and children. Here are four steps charter schools should take now to end that divisive relationship:

Serve the neediest kids

State law requires that charters serve the same percentage of poor and special-needs children, along with English-language learners, as their local district schools do. Unfortunately, many charter schools ignore this requirement. Meanwhile, parents complain that special-needs children and students who struggle academically have been “counseled out” of charters, most of them ending up in local district schools while the charters hold onto students with better scores. A recent report by the city’s Independent Budget Office found that a shocking 80% of special-needs kids who enroll in city charter schools as kindergartners leave their schools by the third grade.

Be good neighbors

The Bloomberg administration often shoehorned charters into public schools. Because some charters didn’t want their children interacting with public school kids, gymnasiums and cafeterias would be limited to charter students at certain hours. Worst of all, students in dilapidated classrooms with outmoded equipment and few supplies watched with envy as the incoming charters spent small fortunes on renovations, paint jobs, new desks and equipment, books and supplies. If they want to be good neighbors, charters should share the wealth — and make sure all students sharing one school building have the same opportunities and environment.

Open their books

If charter operators truly want a new start, they need to abandon the lawsuit they have filed against the state controller seeking to block his ability to audit their books. Parents and taxpayers deserve to know where their money is going.

Stop treating children as profit centers

Charters receive taxpayer dollars. In addition, many get donations from major hedge funders, have millions of dollars in bank accounts and pay their chief executives — who typically oversee a small group of schools — as much as half a million dollars a year, along with lavish benefits. Charters with such resources need to pay rent, as Mayor de Blasio has suggested. And charters should set realistic salary caps for their executives and appropriate limits on payments to consultants.



_________________________________________

You will notice the article coming from UFT in NYC addresses what is the democratic state of New York.  Governor Cuomo and neo-liberals in the New York state legislature are pushing the dismantling of public education as hard as the republicans and pulling the same tax policy bait and switch as we say with Reagan.....soak the middle/working class with taxation and then claim the tax reform that gives the rich the breaks is about helping middle-class families!

REAGAN/CLINTON GAVE CORPORATIONS/RICH THE BIGGEST TAX BREAK IN HISTORY WHILE DOUBLING-DOWN ON TAXATION ON THE MIDDLE-WORKING CLASS.  NEO-LIBERALS ARE NOW DOING IT AGAIN.

Maryland is ground zero for these voucher/private schools getting public funding policies.  I am telling these religious schools that seek support with public money------LOSING OUR DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION SYSTEM WILL NOT BODE WELL FOR YOUR MEMBERSHIP!  In an America currently controlled by global corporations-----totalitarianism does not end well for anyone!

We also see the private donation taking over paying taxes and the loss of tax revenue from writing-off these 'donations'.  The US had the strongest public education system in the world when corporations and the rich were good citizens paying their fair share of taxes.  WE WANT THEM PAYING TAXES AND NOT 'DONATING' TO OUR SCHOOLS!

I am listening as here in Baltimore one school gets air conditioning because of private donations while the others are allowed to operate in the worst of conditions.  It is public funding of schools that allow for equal opportunity and access.

Hurt schools, help rich people


Mar. 27, 2014
2:56 pm
by UFT Editorial Staff


[This editorial originally appeared in the March 27 issue of the New York Teacher.]

A new proposal making its way through the state Legislature is a thinly veiled voucher program that would use taxpayer money to fund religious and other private schools in New York City and across the state.

The proposal, already approved by the state Senate and included in its budget bill, threatens the future funding of public education and must be kept out of the final state budget.


It is misleadingly called the education investment tax credit. It would be more accurate to call it the plan to divest public education and further enrich wealthy donors to private schools.

The program would grant individuals tax credits of up to $1 million for donations to scholarship funds for religious or other private schools.

In other words, money that would go into state coffers to fund public education, affordable housing or infrastructure improvements would instead go into the bank accounts of wealthy people who donate to private scholarship funds.

And the scholarships themselves would benefit children of well-off families, with a generous household income limit of $550,000.


The tax credits would also be available for donors to public schools. But don’t let that fool you. Public schools were added to make the tax credit more widely palatable. This bill would allow wealthy donors to pick which public schools they want to support and which not.

In a cynical attempt by the bill’s writers to win over public school educators and their supporters, teachers would also get a tax credit of at least $100 for buying supplies.

Although the state Senate has passed the bill, which was sponsored by state Sen. Marty Golden, the Assembly leadership, to its credit, is showing less enthusiasm.

But the tax credit proposal has momentum. It is particularly alarming that 17 labor unions, most of them representing uniformed public employees, back the bill on the grounds that it would benefit their members, presumably because many of them send their children to parochial schools.

Have middle-class and working New Yorkers who choose to send their children to private school forgotten the importance of a well-funded public education system?


This proposed massive tax giveaway would hurt working people by increasing the already staggering wealth inequality in New York. By draining money that we need for our public schools, state universities, highways and other vital services, it would threaten the economic future of our state.


_______________________________________________

Chicago is the home of Rahm Emanuel and Arne Duncan------Obama's education-privatization team working for Wall Street.  What Rahm is doing in Chicago is happening in Maryland and especially Baltimore.  The difference is that Chicago, as with New York, has strong labor and justice advocate system.  Maryland and Baltimore has none.  Where Baltimore has organizations supposedly tasked with protecting civil rights and civil liberties working with these privatizers----- across the country parent and teacher groups are successfully fighting off this attack on public education.

Wall Street calculated that hitting underserved communities with this privatization scheme would allow them to create the structure for privatizing all public schools.  As we see in Baltimore it is the opportunity to own a business that drives people of color to play with Wall Street.  These small business charter school owners need to take a look at what happens when Wall Street simply steps in to take those businesses----as is happening today with Baltimore Minority Contractors.

STOP SUPPORTING THE DISMANTLING OF THE BEST PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM IN THE WORLD!





Chicago Teachers Union Advocates for Comprehensive Charter Reform in Illinois


For Immediate Release: April 07, 2014
Contact: Stephanie Gadlin - stephaniegadlin@ctulocal1.com/312-329-6250 CHICAGO –


The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has been a vocal critic of Illinois charter operations which compete with neighborhood schools for critical resources and often cherry-picks students based on test scores.  The law that sanctions the privately held, publicly funded charters is deeply flawed and in the wake of the UNO scandal the union and taxpayers have continued to lobby lawmakers to do something about it.

Thus, CTU, along with a number of education advocates, parents and others, currently backs several pieces of legislation under consideration in Springfield that will bring significant reforms to unstable charter movement in Illinois, including a bill calling for the elimination of the Illinois State Charter School Commission.

“Tax payers are demanding more accountability from charter operators; they want to know whether the money going to these schools is actually being spent on educating students,” said CTU President Karen Lewis, NBCT. “With all of this talk of school choice there is surprisingly little information about their students’ rates of graduation, drop out or push out from these organizations. The law as its currently written totally undermines the authority of the Illinois State Board of Education and gives it to a shadow commission with little to no oversight. This is unacceptable in the nation’s third largest school district.”

Charter operations not only lack accountability but with little to no innovation in pedagogy they also fail to outperform CPS’s traditional schools, according to research.  Another crucial and little-known element of charter proliferation is the large financial windfall that can flow toward investors such as billionaire political hopeful Bruce Rauner.  The would-be governor has given about $2.5 million to Noble Street, which has 8,850 students, 98 percent of whom are minorities and 89 percent who come from low-income families. A campus bears his name. His family foundation has also given about $4 million to other organizations that operate or support charter schools.

A vocal opponent of public education and unionized teachers, Rauner once floated a scheme that would call for the transferring of public wealth and resources to private hands throughout extreme leverage (debt) similar to financial structures that led to the Great Recession in 2008. In 2010, he instigated a plan that would raise $200 million in equity, borrow $600 million and purchase 100 CPS schools that the investor group would then lease to charter operators. In such a plan, the investor group would reap two benefits: First, they would receive steady streams of revenue from the leases, and second, they could claim tax credits from depreciation on the buildings.  In short, the public would ultimately pay to lease back its own buildings.

Such schemes have made charter proliferation big business in Illinois. While CPS cited budgetary reasons for closing and consolidating scores of neighborhood schools, their own charter proliferation policies have caused unnecessary expenditures.  Here is a look at current legislation pending in the General Assembly of which the CTU supports:

1. SB2627/HB3754: Eliminates the Illinois State Charter School Commission



What this bill does:  Seeks to eliminate the Illinois State Charter School Commission and return its functions to the State Board of Education (ISBE).

Rationale: The State Charter School Commission (SCSC) is an initiative of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to promote the expansion of charter schools, especially in suburban areas where there is little support for charters. The SCSC eliminates local control of schools by providing a second application round for charter schools. Charters whose applications are denied by the local school board can appeal to the SCSC for approval. Two Chicago charter schools linked to the Turkish Gulen movement were approved in this manner, and a Sun-Times investigation found that these schools had significant conflicts of interest regarding contracts and expansion.

2. SB2779/HB4237: Diminishes authority of State Charter School Commission by mandating a referendum



What this bill does: Would require a voter referendum for any charter approved by ISBE or the State Charter Commission. The municipal election would take place in the district where the charter would be approved.

Rationale: The bill provides for voter approval for charter schools that have been approved over the wishes of the local school board. It is an additional mechanism to return control over district policy to local school boards.

3. HB 6005/SB 3030: Charter School Accountability Act

What this bill does:  Requires the charter school authorizer to host charter school lotteries (rather than the school)

· Provides that a charter school waiting list must be centrally administered by the authorizer

· Prohibits a charter school from creating any admissions process subsequent to a lottery

· Requires the authorizer to inform the next parent or guardian on the waiting list in the event that a student transfers from a charter school

· Prohibits future charter schools from contracting with for-profit EMO/CMOs

· Mandates that the physical property of the charter school is owned by charter not EMO/CMO

· Forbids an employee to be employed by both a EMO/CMO and charter school

· Mandates that charters pay pro-rated portion of funding for student who leaves to the new school district

· Prohibits charter schools from spending public funds on marketing

· Charter is subject to an audit by auditor general administrative costs are 20% greater than those of the host district

· Requires a charter assessment report every 5 years

· Includes funding limits if charters are not in compliance with reporting regulations

· Creates a compensation cap for charter school CEOs—compensation cannot be greater than 80% of the compensation of the school district superintendent

· Creates a compensation cap for charter school principals—compensation cannot be greater than 10% more than the average compensation of principals in the district

Rationale: The UNO charter school scandal identified important weaknesses in the current law that have yet to be remedied and provide opportunities for future abuse. These reasonable regulations ensure a level governance playing field between charters and traditional public schools.

4. SB 3303: Limits charter expansion in areas where public schools have been closed



What this bill does:   Provides that no charter can be granted within the same zip code, or neighboring zip code, in which a public school was closed within 10 school years.

· Provides that no charter must be granted unless the General Assembly has appropriated transition impact aid for the school district where the charter school is to be located.

· Provides that CPS designate attendance boundaries for Chicago charter schools.

Rationale: In the wake of the largest mass school closure in US history and the subsequent approval of 18 new charter schools, this law would provide crucial limits on future charter school openings by ensuring that any new campuses opened only where needed and when resources are available.

5. HB3745: Requires all charter high schools to establish vocational academies



What this bill does: Requires all alternative schools and charter high schools to establish vocational academies for students in grades 10-12.

Rationale: True career readiness requires access to experiential job training that only vocational education can provide.

6. HB4655/SB3004: Applies sections of the School Code that pertain to student discipline policies to charter schools



What this bill does: Amends the school code as it pertains to school discipline policies, and seeks to apply sections of the school code disciplinary policy to charter schools. The bill seeks to redefine what school behavior rises to the level of expulsion or suspension, sets limitations on out-of-school suspensions, in-school arrests, and requires behavioral support services and alternative educational services to be provided to certain students. The bill also provides that a student may not be issued a monetary fine or fee as a disciplinary consequence.

Rationale: Charter schools should be held to the same discipline standards as traditional public schools. Fines and harshly punitive discipline measures have resulted in an expulsion rate in Chicago charters that is 12 times the expulsion rate in public schools. These discipline actions have a disproportionate racial impact, as Latino and especially Black students are subject to such discipline at far greater rates than white students.

7. HB4527: Mandates charter school compliance with state and federal SPED and ELL laws



What this bill does: Requires charter schools to comply with all federal and state laws and rules applicable to public schools that pertain to special education and the instruction of English language learners.

8. HB 5328: Mandates Chicago charter schools be administered by a local school council



What this bill does: Requires a school that is initially placed on academic watch status after a fourth annual calculation or that remains on academic watch status after a fifth annual calculation to be approved by the school board and by the school's local school council, if applicable.

Rationale: Parents and community members should have a role in the governance of institutions that receive public money and claim to be public schools. This bill ensures that parents have meaningful roles in charter school operations.

9. HB 5887: Creates restrictions on virtual school options for students



What this bill does: Provides that the State Charter School Commission must require Commission-authorized virtual charter schools to (1) ensure student access to teachers and report to the local school board or boards information regarding teacher accessibility, the teacher/student ratio, and the amount of teacher/student contact time; (2) provide opportunities for peer interaction and collaboration; and (3) adopt protocols to prevent bullying or other inappropriate online behavior. Sets forth requirements and limitations that the Commission must impose with regard to entities proposing virtual charter schools.

· With respect to Commission-authorized virtual charter schools, requires the Commission to limit the withholding of State funds from a school district in proportion to the per pupil expenditure used for building maintenance, classroom supplies, transportation, safety and security, and other costs unique to brick-and-mortar schools.

· With respect to all Commission-authorized charter schools, provides that the Commission must require that proof of continuing enrollment and attendance be submitted quarterly, with prorated refunds to the school district upon withdrawal of students from the charter school.

10. HB4591: Requires funding to follow charter students who transfer to district schools


What this bill does: Provides that if a charter school dismisses a student from the charter school after receiving a quarterly payment from the school district, the charter school must return to the school district on a pro rata basis, for the time the student is not enrolled at the charter school.

Rationale: Because of high dismissal rates, charters are able to keep funds for students they no longer educate. Such funding should follow the student if that student transfers from a charter to another charter school or to a public school.


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Common Core was written by corporations and developed during the Bush Administration.  It is simply an attempt by global corporations to capture all information and Race to the Top captures how it is distributed.  We do not need standardization of STEM------STEM is nothing but facts.  We do not need standardization of liberal arts/humanities because the US is a democracy embracing pluralities-----ALLOWING OUR PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM TO BE FUSED WITH DIFFERING OPINIONS IS WHAT MAKES A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY.

The neo-cons and neo-liberals working to make the US an autocratic nation play the republican voters off the labor and justice democrats with these policies.  Republican voters are fighting it because it will take control of what is taught in the classroom but they do not understand that it is their neo-cons that are pushing it.  Labor and justice democrats are being sold that this will raise achievement and get rid of those 'anti-evolution' nuts. 

STOP ALLOWING NEO-CONS AND NEO-LIBERALS KILL PUBLIC EDUCATION.  THIS COMMON CORE POLICY IS BAD FOR EVERYONE.

So, as labor and justice fight the Race to the Top testing and evaluation----charters and Teach for America------the republicans are fighting Common Core AND THEY BOTH NEED TO BE FIGHTING BOTH POLICIES!  Do not allow a need to segregate schools produce the conditions to take away your communities ability to control your own schools.  Don't allow decades of defunding public schools and dismantling education policy with rigor and accountability sell you on the need for privatized schools to get good education.

DEMAND STRONG PUBLIC SCHOOLS WORKING TO SUPPORT INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, LEADERSHIP, AND DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES!



Below you see again that a Wall Street privatization scheme uses the propaganda of 'raising the underserved' just as they used Affordable Care Act as 'raising access to health care for the poor'.  In both cases it has actually done the opposite.  As we see in this article Common Core fails to address the largest problems for the underserved students and it is bringing down the rigor and standards for middle-class students.  Achievement is in decline even as pols skew the data to make it sound as if things are going great.  Maryland is the greatest example of skewing data in the country!

IT IS NOT ABOUT FLAWED IMPLEMENTATION-----IT IS ABOUT ALLOWING WALL STREET TO HAVE OUR PUBLIC EDUCATION AS IT IS TAKING OUR PUBLIC HEALTH!


The Answer Sheet: The Myth of Common Core Equity



Carol C. Burris, Valerie Strauss, Alan A. Aja March 11, 2014
(freepik.com)

The Common Core State Standards were originally promoted as a way of raising academic standards for all children around the country. But is the initiative really about equitable outcomes? Here’s a post that takes on that question, by award-winning New York Principal Carol Burris and Alan A. Aja, assistant  professor and deputy chair in the Department of Puerto Rican & Latino Studies at Brooklyn College (City University of New York). In 2012, he was a recipient of a Whiting Fellowship Award for Excellence in Teaching. Burris has been writing about the flawed Core implementation in New York on this blog.

Burris, principal of South Side High School, has been chronicling the flawed implementation of school reform and the Common Core State Standards across the state for some time (here, and here and here and here, for example). She was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. She is the co-author of the New York Principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student test scores. It has been signed by thousands of principals teachers, parents, professors, administrators and citizens. You can read the letter by clicking here.  Her new book is “On The Same Track: How Schools Can Join the Twenty-First-Century Struggle Against Resegregation.”

By Carol Burris and Alan A. Aja

When the Common Core curriculum was promoted in 2009, its creators said unequivocally that principles of equity would be at the center of its eventual implementation. After all, the Bush administration’s test-happy No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate failed to close the “achievement gap” between whites and minorities. Then the Obama administration inaugurated a A Race to the Top contest among states and districts for federal funds and supported a new set of higher standards for all states intended to ensure college and career readiness for all students, with specific concern for our most under-served and disadvantaged.

On the surface, this seemed like a telling moment in a so-called post-racial, color-blind era, one where racism and institutionalized discrimination are viewed less and less as predictors of life chances. At last it appeared that policymakers were acknowledging the disparate effects of previous federal education policy toward marginalized communities, recommending instead to “raise the standards” through a rich curriculum and equitable teaching practices states could voluntarily adopt.

Five years and 47 states later, Race to the Top reforms are doing anything but to the communities that have been under-served. A barrage of news reports from states across the country underscore the growing discontent by students, parents, unions and legislators over the initial rollout of the Common Core, with a range of grievances from poorly constructed and confusing texts/materials, excessive testing preparation and concerns of children’s data-based privacy and security. But lost amidst the protests, town halls, so-called “delays” and potential “moratoriums” is the issue of equity all over again, making us wonder if “achievement gaps” were truly a primary concern of the Common Core architects at all.


In New York for example, one of the first states to roll out the new curriculum, scores from Common Core tests dropped like a stone—and the achievement gaps dramatically widened. In 2012, prior to the Core’s implementation, the state reported a 12-point black/white achievement gap between average third-grade English Language Arts scores, and a 14-point gap in eighth-grade English Language Arts (ELA) scores.  A year later enter the Common Core-aligned tests: the respective gaps grew to 19 and 25 points respectively (for Latino students the eighth grade ELA gap grew from 3 to 22 points). The same expansion of the gap occurred in math as well. In 2012, there was an 8-point gap between black/white third-grade math scores and a 13-point gap between eighth-grade math scores. In 2013, the respective gaps from the Common Core tests expanded to 14 and 18 points.

The problem however, is more than just a gap in average scores. Using another indicator, the percentage of black students who scored “Below Standard” in third-grade English Language Arts tests rose from 15.5 percent to a shocking 50 percent post-Common Core implementation. In seventh-grade math, black students labeled “Below Standard” jumped from 16.5 percent to a staggering 70 percent. Students with disabilities of all backgrounds saw their scores plummet– 75 percent of students with disabilities scored “Below Standard” on the Grade 5 ELA Common Core tests and 78 percent scored “Below Standard” on the 7th grade math test.  Also, 84 percent of English Language learners score “Below Standard” on the ELA test while 78 percent scored the same on the 7th grade math exam.

When a student scores in the Below Standard category of 1, there is a good chance that her or his answers were mere guesses, or that the test was so difficult, they simply gave up.  How do such tests help nine year olds who are struggling to learn English, or poor students starting school without the advantages of pre-school and the enriched experiences that affluence brings?  How do we advance the cause of equity by giving them the message: You are “below standard” and not on the road to be ready for college?

Rather than heeding the warning that something is very wrong, New York’s Board of Regents adds the highest of stakes for students—their very ability to graduate high school.  In February, the New York State Board of Regents established the college-ready scores that students will need for graduation, beginning with the class that enters high school in four years. These scores, which up until now have been known as “aspirational” measures, have been reported by the state in the aggregate and by sub-group for the past several years. If these scores were used last year, the New York four-year graduation rate would have plummeted to 35 percent. This low rate masks even worse outcomes for students with disabilities (5 percent), as well as black (12 percent), Latino (16 percent) and English Language learners (7 percent). New York Education Commissioner John King even told reporters that he was disappointed that the scores were not phased in sooner because the delay means more students would leave high school “unprepared.” He need not worry. With his preferred cut scores, most students—especially students of color, poverty and disability–will not leave high school at all.

We need not wait until graduation, however, for our most vulnerable students to feel the consequences. The designers and supporters of the Common Core never considered how the test outcomes would affect the school opportunities of disadvantaged students within the context of the competitive design of the American public education system.

For instance, in many school districts state tests are used to make decisions about promotion as well to assign students into “honors,” “enrichment,” and other “accelerated” programs. State scores are used as well for admissions to competitive middle schools and high schools. Given the disturbing evidence that the score gap has widened, if these scores are used for these purposes, many of our students of color, poverty, disability and our English language learners will have doors of opportunity shut as they compete using these very scores. This, in our opinion, is a discriminatory practice.

Research has already established that holding back students unnecessarily can have detrimental impacts down the road, and that by design and impact high-stakes testing disadvantages English language learners, special education, minority and low-income children. The research of Claude Steele, Joshua Aronson, and Aaron Spencer demonstrates that outcomes on high-stakes standardized tests underestimate the achievement and college readiness of children stigmatized as cognitively inferior by stereotype, while exaggerating the scores for individuals from groups whom society deems cognitively superior. Needless to say, we are baffled as to why education reformers continue to deny the evidence that standardized tests are invalid measurements of learning, and would instead “up the ante”’ with Common Core testing.

In the meantime, the Common Core aligned-tests will be used to justify the continuance of market-based education reforms.
This means firing teachers and principals based on test scores, closing urban schools with higher low-income populations and the proliferation of charters as punishment (which ironically scored worse in language arts and the same in math as New York City public schools in the latest round of Common Core-aligned tests).
These strategies, straight from what economist Naomi Klein calls the “shock doctrine” school of economics, lead to further gutting and pseudo-privatization of the most necessary of our public goods, while continuing the false narratives that teachers and their unions are the problem or that racism, poverty and inequitable resource distribution are merely excuses.

In the coming months and years ahead, the debate will continue over the role and efficacy of the Common Core. In some states and localities, that conversation will focus on local control and federal intrusion, while in others it will concern the dubious marriage between business and government.  Some will debate simply how to delay implementation, as though the reforms themselves are not the problem.  They will ignore the evidence that is right before their eyes.

It is time for those who fight for equity to question the very assumptions of reform. If a goal of public education is to expand the life chances of all students, why are we pursuing punitive policies and practices that push the opportunities of our most vulnerable students even further behind?







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April 10th, 2014

4/10/2014

0 Comments

 
NEO-CONS AND NEO-LIBERALS ARE PUSHING THESE EDUCATION REFORMS AS FAST AS THEY CAN BECAUSE NO ONE WANTING A DEMOCRACY WITH A BILL OF RIGHTS WANTS THESE REFORMS....DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN.

IF YOUR LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS ARE NOT SHOUTING AGAINST THIS.....IF COMMUNITIES DO NOT RISE AGAINST THIS ......YOU WILL LOSE DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION AND BE LEFT WITH AUTOCRATIC JOB TRAINING FROM KINDERGARTEN THROUGH CAREER COLLEGE.


HERE IS A LETTER FROM A PARENT AND HER EXPERIENCE WITH BALTIMORE AND MARYLAND EDUCATION REFORM:


This is my daughter, my sacrifices, the wind beneath my wings, the whole of my heart,my one and only and the catalyst for my advocacy. 3 months ago I posted that my daughter was being bullied in school. The school did not act responsibly & I removed her from school for her safety & to keep me from going to jail.
I stepped down from many of my community efforts to focus on my daughter and my family. For 3 months I studied the history of Balto City's special education & the legislation that is in place to protect our children. I can confidently say that the school system does not take our children's future seriously. My daughter has been out of school for 3 months and no one has contacted me to see if she is alive or dead. I soon realized why it's possible to have such a high percentage of special ed students go from the school system to the prison system and homelessness. It's not just the school system's fault, parents have to start showing up & representing their children. We have a small window of time to set the stage for our children's future.
 My daughter will began attending her new school on Monday for an appropriate safe education. If this could happen to us, an informed parent & special education advocate; imagine what could happen to a parent that is not showing up. The disparity and heartache I endured as a parent, brought me to my knees so many times. I was preparing to leave Maryland in order to give my child the best there was to offer. I never ask people to pray for me because I believe my relationship with God & Universe is solid, but I asked a new to pray for me because my spirit had broke. I don't want another parent's spirit to break while wanting better for their child. Though some in the community may be disappointed, my focus will remain with my daughter and special education. 32,000 special ed students were arrested in Maryland last year and no one cares. I believe that I can make a difference in the prison and homeless rate with our children and I'm going to try.
Thank you MH for your prayers. When much is given, much is required.

Whether Race to the Top or Common Core----the intent is to create an education environment structured completely on workplace training done as cheaply as possible.

The biggest issue to remember in judging the effects a policy like Common Core will have on the US is this: the idea the standardization will increase quality or achievement has no basis....all research shows otherwise. Take STEM courses....Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.....all of these subjects are based on facts so they are already standardized. To change the context of democratic education and plurality in society because the conservative states want to teach creationism over evolution is ridiculous. If national standard tests require knowledge of evolution and if evolution is taught in university......that will be the standard. What danger lies in Common Core is the standardization of the humanities and liberal arts. Keep in mind that it is the humanities that gave us THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT. You know, when all people are citizens having the right to education created by and including lives and accomplishments of all citizens. This is the major reason any democracy would reject Common Core. Every region of America has its own vision of history, religion, civics, psychology, literature, etc. This is what makes a plurality. In nations like China where plurality is not allowed-----they have standardization like Common Core. Remember when Bush/Cheney famously stated history would be kind to their administration even after they pushed the US into systemic fraud and corruption.....started war with lies.....removed the US from International Criminal Courts because they pushed crime and torture around the world? Well, Common Core started its development in the Bush Administration and you can bet the standard history lesson for Bush/Cheney will be that their administration was a beacon for American progress.


Regarding what Race to the Top really looks like in Maryland:

Below you see an article in the Baltimore Sun that addresses a media report on the state of education reform in Maryland.  I only posted the first part so look for the article in its entirety.  The point I make here is that while this report looks at factors that assess this reform it completely ignores what most people see as the major factors.  This is deliberate.  If public education is to be dismantled then the public cannot know the goals of these reforms.

Let's look at what we are told and what is actually happening.  I shared this with a friend having a special needs student in Baltimore City schools and she was shocked.
  Remember, special needs is not only physical disability-----it includes emotional and slow-learners as well.  TRUTH BE TOLD----IT WILL INCLUDE MOST OF US.
________________________________________

There are three issues with AP in Maryland.  One can be seen with a CATO Institute chart that shows the school spending curb in Maryland grow while SAT scores stayed flat and low.  Conservative CATO uses that to say more money does not improve education.  In Maryland, fraud and corruption takes 1/2 of most kinds of public funding from the system so we can best assume that this chart shows that it is the fact that the money never made it to the classrooms that caused SAT scores to remain flat.  Indeed, Maryland schools are so underfunded as to lack basic resources for decades. 

The same is happening with AP......the funds are allocated but are not used effectively or are redirected completely.




There is a second side to AP in Maryland.  IN Baltimore, AP is used as a development tool.  In Baltimore you have Dunbar High School designated as an AP school with almost none of the original students capable of achieving in AP.  The reason Dunbar was made AP was to change the student population from low-achieving and underserved to affluent.  This means you will have students never meant to be in AP failing to pass these tests.

The third side to this AP issue is a deliberate intent to skew education data by making it appear that Maryland had a high number of achieving students and therefore strong education programs when it doesn't.  This is a systemic problem in Maryland.  Skewed data all meant to make a politician or program look successful when it isn't.  Parents across the state are crying foul over this one.  So, limiting underserved schools to teaching math and reading just so those grades would rise while neglecting all other subjects causing these students to fail science and social studies for example.  Having AP classes just to have them while not funding these schools enough to make the classroom changes needed is purely political.

As an academic who writes about this nationally I will continue to encourage reporters who take the time to do good research to hold power accountable.



Destiny Miller sits in AP Biology class at Woodlawn High School. Among Baltimore County schools, AP class grades at Woodlawn have some of the weakest correlations with AP test scores, Sun analysis has found. Maryland schools have been leader in Advanced Placement, but results are mixed


Top students at low-performing schools can earn As and Bs, but still fail the exams


Story by Liz Bowie | Photos by Amy Davis  BAltimore Sun



Destiny Miller went online this summer to check one last set of grades from her senior year at Woodlawn High School — scores on three Advanced Placement exams.
The 18-year-old sat alone on her bed waiting for the scores to appear on her smartphone. For many top students like Destiny, the scores might seem an academic footnote; she already had her diploma and had been admitted to college. Yet the idea that she might not have succeeded on the AP tests made her so anxious that, just as the scores began to download, she turned her phone face down, unable to look.

Destiny was experiencing the pressures of being a pioneer on the frontier of Advanced Placement, one of thousands of minority, low-income students being targeted for a nationwide expansion of the rigorous college-level courses. She took a deep breath, turned her phone back over and looked at the three numbers on the screen.

For such students, the scores show how well their education prepared them for college and whether they might earn college course credits, potentially saving thousands of dollars in tuition. For federal and state education officials who have invested $400 million in taxpayer dollars over the past decade to subsidize AP exams for bright, low-income students, the stakes are even higher.

So far, the expansion has not lived up to its promise. It has not delivered vast numbers of students from low-performing high schools to selective colleges with credits in their pockets, helping to bridge the academic gulf between the nation’s rich and poor. Too often, students who haven’t been prepared in earlier grades flounder in AP classes, or are awarded A’s and B’s in the courses and then fail the AP exams.
.............


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When education becomes about profit there is no room for any student that just will not bring the most profit to the corporation owning these schools.  Goodbye special needs structures and good bye equal opportunity and education based on what is good for the student's learning experience.....

Baltimore City schools are now individual businesses with principals given so little money they look at a student with special needs as costing money and work to get rid of them.  That is what school choice and charters do....sets the stage for bypassing equal opportunity all the while handing a large chuck of public education financing to what are private businesses as charters.

Competition and fighting for funding leads to fraud and corruption in our education system just as our entire corporate and governing structure has today.  Quality and access is gone.......democratic education is gone.....and an autocratic standardization is established.  This is what Race to the Top with Obama and Bill Gates pushing nationally and Johns Hopkins and Rawlings-Blake/Baltimore City Hall and O'Malley/Maryland Assembly see as education reform.


ALL OF THE CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND WILL ADVANCE THIS EXCEPT CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND.



Youth group accuses district of pushing out students


DAVID MAIALETTI / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER


 BY SOLOMON LEACH, Daily News Staff Writer leachs@phillynews.com, 215-854-5903Posted: April 09, 2014


A GROUP OF current and former students launched a campaign yesterday to identify peers they claim have been pushed out of Philadelphia public schools through closings or cutbacks to key programs.

Youth United for Change said the closure of 24 schools last year, combined with cuts to the school district's Re-Engagement Center and slots in accelerated schools, has left students who drop out with few options.

"Being pushed out is unfair," said YUC member Maury Elliott, a former Simon Gratz High student who briefly re-enrolled in an alternative school. "The school district and the [School Reform Commission] fail to stop this injustice. Instead, they influence it."

Outside school district headquarters, members of the group wore T-shirts that read, "Have You Seen Me?" and stood in front of large makeshift milk cartons with blacked-out pictures.

About 10,000 students were displaced by last year's closures, the district said. Most have been accounted for, but 600, whom YUC described as "missing," have not.

District spokesman Fernando Gallard said an analysis indicated the 600 students either left the district, enrolled in private or parochial schools, or dropped out. Dropout numbers, he said, are typically a year behind.

YUC said another major blow has been cuts to the Re-Engagement Center, which provides former students with re-engagement options and links them to services. The center's workforce is down from five full-time staffers in 2011 to one this year, plus a few interns, the district said.

YUC wants the district to implement better tracking systems for student transitions; acknowledge that school closures increase the likelihood of dropouts; locate and re-engage missing students; conduct and release an analysis of school closings; and fully fund the Re-Engagement Center.

Gallard said that the center is an important part of the district and that the hope is to restore resources to that and other programs.

"This goes to the heart of the conversation we've been having since we had to lay off over 4,000 employees," he said. "It's all directly connected to funding."

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Make no mistake......this privatization will marginalize most families into substandard education.  Remember, only 10% of people would fall into the Advanced Placement category that these privatizers have decided are the only students needing a humanities and democratic rich education.

Baltimore has the most cruel system of culling and throw-away tiering of schools in the nation.  It is all done while Maryland media present education data that is false and propaganda that makes all of this privatization look like creation of quality education and achievement. 

Remember, as most parents and academics know, Common Core
lowers our current level of achievement, it does not enhance it.  While rigor was deliberately removed from classrooms over the last few decades to force achievement to fall......when public schools are allowed to function as they should with full funding and resourced-----THEY PROVIDE THE BROADEST AND DEEPEST EDUCATION AND RIGOR.  America ranked #1 in the world with people of color excelling when democratic education was thriving.



April 5, 2014 · 4:14 pm ↓


Jump to Comments
Quick: send your kids to charters lest they be “tossed in the lion’s den with the special needs student!”

Today, The New York Times published an op-ed piece by journalism professor Andrea Gabor that essentially describes a “two-tier” educational system: one created by the presence of charters that leaves the neediest students behind. And although many official charter spokespeople wouldn’t dare say it, it’s the practice of driving out children with special needs that accounts for lots of the “success” charters brag about.

Gabor devotes a good deal of her attention to charter school attrition, focusing on the effects “no-excuses” policies have on students with special needs:

Some students with I.E.P.s find charters, which often foster a no-excuses culture, a poor fit, and leave voluntarily. But sometimes there’s pressure: Administrators may advise parents that the school can’t support a child’s disability, or punish kids for even the slightest disciplinary infractions. However it happens, it leads to rising special-needs populations at nearby public schools.

Chrystina Russell, the founding principal of Global Technology Preparatory, a Harlem middle school, says charter-school “refugees” often showed up at her school after Oct. 31, when the Department of Education makes key funding decisions for traditional public schools based on head counts. This means that it can be difficult for the schools to hire additional teachers or support personnel when new students show up (though some funding is updated for special-education students who transfer by Dec. 31).

Global Tech had no post-October transfers this year, but had as many as eight two years ago. Nearby Isaac Newton Middle School for Math and Science has had about a dozen so far this year.

Global Tech, where more than one-third of the students have I.E.P.s, does impressive work despite the challenges. If special-education kids — most of whom are black and Hispanic boys — are segregated when they get to high school, they are unlikely to graduate. So Global Tech is committed to mainstreaming them in general-education classes by the eighth grade. Instead of suspending disruptive students, the school takes away extracurricular sports privileges and holds lunchtime detentions and meetings with parents. Some of its special-needs students have been accepted to the best public high schools in the city.

Gabor further notes that the charters which push out special needs students are often the very same ones to claim that they enroll the same types of students as do district schools.  Those charters aren’t, however, bound to “most regulations governing traditional public schools,” and their enrollment and financial policies allow them to manipulate the populations they serve.

Gabor ultimately concludes that “if charter schools are allowed to push out existing public schools, they should, at the very least, be subject to the same accountability measures for enrollment, attrition and disciplinary procedures, to ensure that the neediest students are being treated fairly.”

Amen.

Shortly after its publication, Gabor’s piece was flooded with comments, many echoing her sentiments about the misleading nature of charter schools’ “success.”  (Yay to the NYT for actually publishing a piece with this type of content; it seems, given the support for traditional public education voiced in the comments, that it was a welcome addition to the op-ed section.)

But perhaps most interesting is that the few commenters who advocate for charter expansion highlight exactly what’s wrong with charters in the first place: in general, they are publicly-funded experiments in resegregation. And, disturbingly, many people seem to be okay with that.

Here are some comments, copied and pasted from the NYT page, which show that many charter supporters condone the segregation of our nation’s children–whether it be in terms of race, class, socio-economic status, or ability/special needs.  All emphasis here is mine; misspellings and typos are not!



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As schools in Baltimore are closed because Carl Stokes and City Hall have decided that public funding of public schools will end and all schools will be tied to corporations and private funding......Baltimore adds its next round of national charter chains that have as a goal ending high school education and replace this with vocational job training.  Now, who goes to these schools?  It depends how your child tested in pre-K and the track that Johns Hopkins decides they see best.  This is what school privatization is about.  Restructuring schools with the complete drive being the cheapest vehicle producing made-to-order workers who will have no ability to move beyond the scope of that career focus and most of this leads to poverty wages.

This will hit communities of color first as they have no one speaking out for them.  Wall Street uses the fact that many people will think this will only happen to underserved schools.  Keep in mind-----WALL STREET INTENDS THIS TO REPLACE ALL PUBLIC EDUCATION AND ASK AS WELL....WILL MY CHILDREN BE MIDDLE-CLASS IN A WORLD WHERE TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT----TPP----IS LAW?  OF COURSE NOT.

As I said, urban areas like Baltimore and Philadelphia are being used to create a privatized structure that will be expanded all across the state of Maryland and Pennsylvania.  For those wanting to be rid of Brown vs Board of Education giving equal opportunity and protection with Race to the Top remember, conservatives are shouting because of Common Core and loss of control of their public schools and charters....so this is a bipartisan issue and it hurts all Americans regardless of class, race, or region.


Below you see that a plan to have students graduate with an associates degree......remember, what they have in community college now is simply corporate job training.  These students will graduate with a certificate equivalent to training received by any Human Resources program and every time a person changes jobs,......and we know that jobs are now on contract.....you have to go back to these community college job training programs to start another job. 

YOU WILL BE TRACKED INTO A CAREER LINE FOR LIFE BECAUSE YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO AFFORD, NOR WILL YOU BE GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY FOR HIGHER EDUCATION.


Adding a Baltimore Public School to its portfolio?  Sounds like consolidation of a school system readying to become a private national charter chain.


Four new schools apply to open in city Applicants include early college program



Erica L. Green 7:00 p.m. EDT, April 8, 2014  Baltimore Sun

Four new schools are vying to open in Baltimore in the next two years, including an early college high school that would bring a successful model to the city that allows students to earn a college degree by the time they graduate.

The Bard High School Early Colleges network, which operates five tuition-free college programs in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio, applied to open a campus in Baltimore in the 2015-2016 school year.

The organization applied to operate a "contract school," meaning it would have an entrance criteria, that would serve 500 students in grades nine through twelve. Its college-preparatory programs focus on a liberal arts and sciences education, and allows students to complete an associate's degree by the time they graduate high school.

The Baltimore Curriculum Project, which currently runs three charter schools in the city, applied to add Govans Elementary School to its portfolio.

The school would serve 459 students in grades Pre-K through fifth grade. The application says that the BCP would bring an "array of experiences" such as visual and performing arts and physical activities.

Morgan State University has applied to save the Bluford Drew Jemison STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) Academy, which has been on the district's radar for closure.

The school was one of two all-male academies started for young men in the city -- and highly sought after by parents -- but whose operators faced several challenges and recently had their charter licenses revoked. The city school board, however, has searched for a way that the school could stay in operation.

Morgan has proposed to operate the school, which would be called the Morgan State STEM Institute, for 644 boys in grades six through twelve. The school would continue to focus on the sciences and has the goal that "all students will be able to graduate within a five to six year period with a high school diploma and an associate's degree in a STEM area.

In 2016-2017, the National Education Partners has applied to operate William C. March Elementary School. The school would serve 850 students in East Baltimore.

The applicants will participate in a public review over the next several weeks. The school board will vote to accept or reject the applications on May 27.

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Returning to warehousing of people with special needs and disabilities because corporations and the rich will no longer pay taxes will include not only students with physical disabilities.....it will include students who are low achievers.  Remember, THE BEST OF THE BEST IN THE WORLD are the people getting what has been standard public education in America.  Not many students are going to test into Advanced Placement.



Governor Cuomo and charter lobby 'strong-arming' bid to evict special needs students in favor of corporate education expansion

NYC Parents vs. Wall Street-Backed Charter Schoolswww.commondreams.orgParents protest on the steps of the New York City Department of Education on Tuesday, April 8. (Photo: @NYChange/ Twitter)Parents and public school advocates staged a dramatic protest outside the..


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March 25th, 2014

3/25/2014

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Baltimore has a systematic privatization plan for public schools that have teachers, administrators, school principals and even schools buildings under attack.  THESE NEO-CONS AND NEO-LIBERALS WANT ALL THAT IS PUBLIC!  It is the long-serving City Hall and Maryland Assembly that are pushing these policies that will tie to the Trans Pacific Trade Pact giving all public policy-making to corporations.  You can see that clearly with Race to the Top and education privatization.

YOUR INCUMBENT IS NOT WARM AND FUZZY FOLKS!

Regarding Mary Pat Clarke coming to the aid of Baltimore principals:


Did you know that Mary Pat Clarke heads the education committee in a city that is privatizing public education and getting rid of seasoned teachers and educators just to replace them with Teach for America and VISTA employees and principals trained in making schools a business?  Now you see why these principals are being targeted with an impossible task of getting students to come to school when Baltimore public policy works to make this almost impossible.  

THAT'S MARY PAT CLARKE FOR YOU.....PRETENDING TO WORK FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE WHEN SHE IS WORKING TO INSTALL THE WORST OF GLOBAL CORPORATE POLICY!  MARY PAT ONCE LOOKED AT ME WHEN IN CITY HALL A JUSTICE ACTIVIST YELLED ABOUT THE MOST RECENT INJUSTICE AND SAID ------'SHUT UP AND TELL HER, SHE'LL WRITE ABOUT IT'.  

You won't hear Mary Pat Clarke use her position of head of labor and education to shout out what I do!  That's because she is not a democrat.  Feeling people's pain while being silent as totalitarian policy is put into place just isn't the same.  So, if you do not like labor and education policies in Baltimore-------Mary Pat Clarke is the face of it.  But it is Rawlings-Blake that gives O'Malley the power to appoint the privatization Baltimore School Board and Superintendent not Clarke you say.........

HER JOB AS THE ELECTED OFFICIAL HEADING LABOR AND EDUCATION IS TO SHOUT OUT AGAINST ALL OF THESE POLICIES FOR WHICH I WRITE.  MARY PAT IS NOT WARM AND FUZZY......SHE IS A CORPORATE POL.

The first thing Alonzo did when Wall Street sent him to Baltimore was to shake out many of Baltimore's teachers and administrators who labored for decades in school environments underfunded and resourced.  There was fraud and corruption in education administration just as it is systemic throughout Baltimore government so much of the funding for Baltimore schools was lost to fraud and corruption from the state to local people in power.  THIS IS NOT A REFLECTION ON TEACHERS AND MANY FRONT-LINE ADMINISTRATORS YET THEY ARE THE ONES BEING AXED.  Baltimore City has one of the worst environments for its schools in the nation and the WYPR report on student attendance problems is reflected in bad public policy these school principals have no ability to control  MARY PAT CLARKE IS THE VOICE FOR THIS. So, simply standing up against retaliation on principals not able to keep students in schools, we should hear City Hall shouting that Baltimore Development Corporation which runs City Hall has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to buying and running COLLEGE TOWN VEOLA bus systems with the only bus system with enough buses that they can actually run on time while sending these elementary and middle-school children to attend schools outside of their neighborhoods often having to change city buses to get there each morning.  This policy is meant to push families to relocate near the schools these children are being forced to attend because schools in their communities have closed and because schools that are funded and doing a good job are on the other side of town.  KIPP is a private chain charter that is allowed to operate outside of all public school parameters in order to look successful and the Maryland Assembly has even targeted this private charter chain with exclusive student college grants to make going to a private charter chain attractive.  THESE ARE THE POLICIES THAT MAKE IT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANY CHILD TO WANT TO COME TO SCHOOL.  Can you imagine having to catch a city bus to and from and get to school built as a business abandoning all quality education principals?  WELCOME TO BALTIMORE CITY SCHOOLS.  IT IS A MESS.

Since the Baltimore Development Corporation has as an objective of having maybe 8 healthy Baltimore districts and allowing all surrounding districts to deteriorate, this is what drives what schools stay open and where children are tracked.  Remember, the City of Baltimore has hundreds of millions of dollars from the subprime mortgage fraud much of which needs to come to Baltimore and what better way to provide justice for communities targeted by fraud to have their schools rebuilt.  Also, the Algebra Project won a $700 million dollar award from the State of Maryland for black schools in Baltimore but O'Malley/Brown has refused to pay.  

WHAT ANTHONY BROWN NOT SHOUTING TO GET ALL THIS MONEY TO BALTIMORE CITY TO REBUILD SCHOOLS?  RATHER, ALL THESE NEO-LIBERALS ARE SHOUTING FOR MORE WALL STREET LEVERAGE FOR SCHOOL BUILDING BUT JUST ENOUGH FOR THOSE 8 DISTRICTS. Remember, this is money simply recovered from fraud.....it does not have to come from our government coffers.  

No matter the development plans, all communities are required to offer its residence the opportunity and access to good public schools.  Gentrification does not have to have such a high level of injustice just because people at the top want to steal all the public's money by fraud and corruption.  Working class and poor communities are being hit hardest with these horrible education policies but the middle-class need to know these are people with no conscience and they will take all public schools just to maximize profit!


March 23, 2014    
“TFA Truth Tour” to Expose Dark Side of Corporate Education Reform

TFATT-logo    

By Robert Ascherman and Karen Li

Starting tomorrow, USAS is launching the next stage in our campaign to fight back against corporate robber barons of education reform on our campuses: the Teach for America Truth Tour. The tour will visit 15 campuses to expose the truth about TFA: not only does it fail to prepare teachers for the classroom, but it is systematically pushing to replace our system of community public education and replace it with an alternative largely controlled by profit-seeking corporations.

Imagine your favorite professor. Now imagine that this professor will be replaced by someone who has only been trained for 5 weeks and will only be at your university for two years. They don’t know anything about you, they don’t know anything about the community at your university, and they don’t know anything about your life and how it relates to your capacity to learn. Now imagine that this isn’t happening just to your favorite professor, but to every professor at your university. As you can tell, this is a situation that would devastate and destabilize your university.

That’s what’s happening in K-12 public education. For example, in Chicago the Board of Education slashed the budget for schools and fired teachers, yet increased its financing of TFA from $600,000 to $1.6 million and brought in over 300 TFA corps members. In Newark, the superintendent, an TFA alumnus, is likely to fire 700 teachers and replace most of them with TFA corps members. But as one study noted, TFA “is best understood as a weak Band-Aid that sometimes provides some benefits but that is recurrently and systematically ripped away and replaced.”

In order to operate, TFA depends on its partnerships with universities to get corps members certified to teach in each state. While teaching, corps members must attend classes at a university, which in some programs can lead to a master’s degree. In effect, TFA uses our universities’ names to make up for its own weak training programs and convince state boards of education that its members are “highly qualified” to teach.

But students are refusing to allow this to happen any longer. We are joining together with parents, teachers, and TFA alumni to expose the truth about TFA.

The TFA Truth Tour is just part of a larger campaign by USAS, our allies at Students United for Public Education, and the many TFA alumni who are beginning to organize and speak out against the organization, and is only the beginning of a growing groundswell of opposition to TFA’s destructive effect on our public schools.

TFA Truth Tour Itinerary

3/24/2014 George Mason University
3/24/2014 American University
3/25/2014 University of Pennsylvania
3/25/2014 Temple University
3/26/2014 New York University
3/26/2014 Hunter College
3/26/2014 Seton Hall University
3/27/2014 Boston University
3/28/2014 Harvard University
3/31/2014 University of Minnesota
3/31/2014 Macalester College
3/31/2014 Hamline University
4/2/2014 University of Wisconsin
4/3/2014 University of Illinois at Chicago
4/3/2014 University of Chicago

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Below you see the sad state of affairs in Baltimore's public transportation system.  It all centers on privatization of public bus service to private contractors who then place employees working under the worst of conditions.  Wages, work schedules, and route schedules that are not realistic all contribute to employee misconduct and bring danger to all citizens.  We watched as a

VEOLA CIRCULATOR DRIVER CHOSE TO DRAG AN WOMAN IN DISTRESS OFF A BUS A LEAVE HER.  HE WAS A PRIVATE CONTRACTOR NOT MEETING THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THIS JOB BECAUSE THE PAY IS SO LOW.

I was riding on a COLLEGE TOWN VEOLA BUS that had the driver under pressure to stay on schedule that clearing could not be met because of traffic and road closures speed up and drive dangerously because a dispatcher phoned to tell him to get on schedule.  THE PROBLEM IS WITH BAD ROUTE SCHEDULES FROM INCOMPETENT OR NO INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERS.  Now, all drivers are not innocent but this is what drives poor quality and labor abuse on the job.  At the same time, our children are being made to use these kinds of services every day.  CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM ------WE KNOW THE REAL PROBLEMS!



IT ALL HAS TO DO WITH PRIVATIZING ALL THAT IS PUBLIC.


The answer to cost is to have schools in each community that offer quality education opportunities for all and fund it with the billions of dollar stolen each year in fraud and corruption.




'Approximately 300 drivers are contracted to transport students in Baltimore County and Baltimore City, but the companies holding these contracts are not required to tell the districts when their drivers receive citations, WMAR reported'.

Baltimore Area Bus Drivers Cited for Over 800 Dangerous Traffic Violations


Oct. 25, 2012
By KEVIN DOLAK WMAR

Baltimore School Bus Caught Running Red Light
Next Video School Buses Over the Limit




School bus drivers in the Baltimore area have been caught on camera committing dangerous traffic violations, including speeding and running red lights, which have potentially put the lives of thousands of school children at risk and led to hundreds of citations.

Traffic citations obtained by ABC affiliate WMAR that were issued to Baltimore City and County bus drivers in the past two years show drivers breaking the law, often with children on-board. Speed and red light cameras have caught drivers in the area barreling up to 40 miles per hour over the speed limit and blowing through lights across the city and county.

"They're a driver like everybody else. If they're speeding or going through a red light, cameras are going to take them as well," said Kristy Knuppel, a concerned parent.

Of at least 99 camera citations that were issued to public school bus drivers in Baltimore County, 19 citations were issued for red light violations, 80 were for speeding, with 37 of the tickets issued specifically to drivers operating within a school zone, which is by law a half-mile radius of a schools.

Many citations for drivers who had repeated violations have been found. In an investigation launched by WMAR in Baltimore, at least 17 repeat offenders were found in the Baltimore County records, including a single bus that was cited five times in three months.

Baltimore City school records show at least 74 camera citations were issued in the same time frame. Eighteen of those tickets were issued for red light camera violations while 56 buses were cited for speeding.

The $40 tickets are issued only to vehicles recorded driving at least 12 mph over the speed limit, according to the Baltimore Sun, which reported that privately owned buses have received at least 800 automated speed citations in Baltimore City. The Sun reported that one bus was clocked at 74 mph.

Approximately 300 drivers are contracted to transport students in Baltimore County and Baltimore City, but the companies holding these contracts are not required to tell the districts when their drivers receive citations, WMAR reported.

Charles Herndon, a spokesman for Baltimore County Public Schools told ABCNews.com that the county has a progressive course of discipline for drivers that receive citations, which begins with a letters of reprimand and with repeated offenses can lead to dismissal. He said that in the county the drivers cover over 1,400 miles and 900 routes.

"When you take the mileage into consideration, it's a small number. But even one [citation] is too many," he said.

Herndon said that the county is now nearing the end of a five-year contract with its vendors, which he describes as "longstanding, reputable companies." Since the speed and red light cameras were installed in the county in the past few years, this was not a factor in the original contracts. As new contracts are negotiated with the three vendors Baltimore county uses, Herndon says they will find a way or "verifying who and how many" drivers received citations.

Herndon also noted that in instances where drivers received multiple citations, at the time of their offenses they were unaware the cameras were filming them. He said that though it's no excuse for speeding or running lights, it will influence future behavior.

"It's something that would help to moderate behave of drivers that are violation," he said. "And we'd hope drivers would not get into that position."

_________________________________________________


THE PROBLEMS ARE NOT ONLY WITH THE SAFETY OF OUR CITIZENS AND CHILDREN, BALTIMORE CITY HAS SUCH A HOSTILE LABOR ENVIRONMENT AS TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR EMPLOYEES TO DO THEIR JOBS SAFELY AND WITH REASONABLE WORK CONDITIONS.  SEE WHY PARENTS MAY NOT WANT THEIR CHILDREN ON THESE BUSES?

This is what creates a bad public policy cycle that comes back to schools and achievement.




'The Maryland School Bus Contractors Association strongly supports the locally-owned school bus owner/operator and values greatly their contribution and commitment to their respective local communities. These hardworking men and women not only frequently service the school bus routes they rode as children, they are often second and third generation contractors, continuing the legacy of their parents and grandparents. They employ fellow local residents, support local charitable causes and pay local taxes. It is MSBCA's belief that local school systems should seek to protect these small business owners as best they can'.


School bus drivers threaten to strike over deal with city


Joce Sterman 4:38 PM, Mar 8, 2013 12:42 PM, Mar 11, 2013 WMAR


Baltimore school bus drivers threaten strike

WMAR BALTIMORE - A group of nine local school bus contractors is threatening to strike in Baltimore city over a contract given to an out-of-state company.  ABC2 News Investigators broke the story Friday afternoon on Twitter, letting you know thousands of kids could be without a ride to school, all over an agreement they say will put hundreds of local drivers out of work.

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Roots and Branches is a chain charter school that does well in Mt Washington.  It gets lots of private donations, school choice lotteries have fixed the demographics that attend this school, and it gets public education funding because it is classified as a public school.  It does just what this article states----creams off the most engaged parents making the existing public school to struggle with less funding for the most challenging students.  Flash forward a decade of doing this and you have the model where these private 'public' charters are privatized and profit-driven and are no longer receiving all that private donation.  

IT'S GOAL IS TO WIN APPROVAL IN THE SHORT TERM SO AS TO END PUBLIC EDUCATION AND PRIVATIZE TO NATIONAL CHARTER CHAINS IN THE FUTURE.  THESE ARE VERY BAD POLICIES FOR 90% OF AMERICAN CITIZENS.

It is not choice when communities are left with only these charters.
Why do you think church leaders are not shouting against casino neo-liberalism taking all public money through fraud so that public schools can be supported with funding and resources?  


THE IDEA THAT THERE IS SCHOOL CHOICE IN BALTIMORE IS RIDICULOUS.  HAVING A NATIONAL CHARTER CHAIN MOVE INTO YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD AS PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE BEING CLOSED IS CHOICE?


A Hampden parent on Roots & Branches charter school: ‘not in my backyard’

Brew Editors May 5, 2011 at 1:09 pm


Hampden has sweet potato fries, banh mi, organic haircuts “and the deftest waxing north (or south) of the equator,” but it won’t have the Roots & Branches charter school, which — after recently floating the idea of moving into Hampden’s Florence Crittenden Center — is now moving into another neighborhood.

So writes Hampden parent Edit Barry, in this strongly-worded blog post that argues that a charter would “cream off the most engaged parents” and hurt the local public school, Hampden Elementary/Middle School.

It’s “a disappointing” reaction, responds Jen Shaud, founder and executive director of Roots & Branches, which will announce its new location on Wednesday.

“I believe in choice,” said Shaud, who hadn’t seen Barry’s piece. “When charter schools and parochial schools and community schools work together then all schools, all of Baltimore, all Baltimore students, benefit.”

Whichever side of the charter debate you take, you’ll find Barry’s Hampden-flavored version of the “anti” position interesting.


_______________________________________

Everyone understands that creating a system where only 10% of students of color have a strong education is not good.  People involved in these schools are making money on this charter chain that seeks to dismantle equal opportunity and access for most children of color.  It is very, very, very bad.

Why should middle-class America care what is happening to schools in underserved communities?  As with the article about Hampden above------IT WILL COME TO ALL COMMUNITIES.


The problems for the citizens of Baltimore regarding education and funding is that a crony system of politicians are allowing massive fraud and corruption to take money away from public schools-----

STOP VOTING FOR THESE CRONY POLITICIANS.


 KIPP - Knowledge is Power Program (student attrition)
STUDY FINDS HIGH DROPOUT RATES FOR BLACK MALES IN KIPP SCHOOLS
; March 31, 2011; Education Week

    KIPP charter middle schools enroll a significantly higher proportion of African-American students than the local school districts they draw from, but 40 percent of the black males they enroll leave between grades 6 and 8, says a new nationwide study by researchers at Western Michigan University.


    “The dropout rate for African-American males is really shocking,” said Gary J. Miron, a professor of evaluation, measurement, and research at Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo, and the lead researcher for the study. “KIPP is doing a great job of educating students who persist, but not all who come.”…

This is what we call  policy deliberately designed to create winners and losers and it happens because schools in Baltimore are so underfunded that parents are made to go to extremes to get a child into any school that provides funding.  

THAT IS NOT PUBLIC EDUCATION.  KIPP IS DESIGNED TO SELL THE IDEA OF CHARTERS AS WORKING WHEN ALL THEY DO IS SKEW ALL EDUCATION DATA AND UNDERMINE A PUBLIC SYSTEM THAT WORKS JUST FINE WHEN FUNDED.

People who say----we don't want our tax money going to underserved schools need to think this way....your tax money is being stolen through massive corporate fraud.  Do you really think it better to allow a few people all the money rather than allowing all people equal opportunity quality to education?  KIPP has a goal of becoming a national private charter chain that will not be providing good education as profits trump public service.

STOP SUPPORTING THE DISMANTLING OF PUBLIC EDUCATION AND FIGHT FOR WELL-FUNDED PUBLIC SCHOOLS!





NATIONAL REPORT SAYS CHARTER SCHOOL HAS HIGH STUDENT ATTRITION;

March 31, 2011; Baltimore Sun (MD)

    A charter network that has two schools in Baltimore has a high level of student attrition and of private and public funding that have positioned it to be successful, according to a national report published Thursday.

    The report on Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), which opened its first school in Baltimore about a decade ago and recently reached a long-term deal to remain in the city for another 10 years, suggests that the national charter school network's high performance is a result of having advantages over its public school counterparts.

    The study, which was published by Western Michigan University and jointly released with Columbia University, "What Makes KIPP Work: A study of student characteristics, attrition and school finance," based its conclusions on publicly available KIPP data measured against districtwide data…

    Nationally, the report found, on average about 15 percent of students leave KIPP every year, compared with 3 percent in public schools. Moreover, between grades six and eight, about 30 percent of students drop off KIPP's rolls.

    The majority of students who leave are African-American males, the report found, and the schools primarily serve African-American students.

    The lead researcher, Gary Miron, called KIPP's attrition a "tremendous drop-off," concluding that he believes "their outcomes would change" without the attrition.

    The study also concluded that KIPP's high performance, when compared to public schools, could be a result of serving significantly fewer special-education students and English language learners — two populations that are often less competitive academically and more expensive to educate…

    The report's researchers found that in addition to receiving more public funding per pupil than its public school counterparts, KIPP also received $5,760 per pupil from private funding…

    "Kids who persist at KIPP do well," Miron said. "But the question is, is KIPP lifting the public schools, or are they lifting the kids who have the support to persist?"

_______________________________________

This policy of catholic schools closing and reopening as 'public' charters is indeed another step towards privatization of public schools.  So, we can see why so many public schools are having to close as large numbers of private schools are now receiving public money to run religious schools.  We do not care if religious schools exist------

BUT THERE IS SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE THAT FORBIDS THIS.  WE WANT PUBLIC MONEY FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS.


  When I see catholic justice people out in the streets shouting for justice for the poor I ask does the Catholic Church really think  ending the public structures of democracy really help the poor?  Remember, we fought revolutions to end the Medieval church's capture of public knowledge----we do not want to go back there do we?  No one believes charters paying money to churches for space is nothing but privatized church schools.

Remember, when Obama and Congressional neo-liberals pushed Race to the Top with all the charters as public schools.....this is exactly what they were moving towards....good-bye public schools and public education!


CHURCH LEADERS NEED TO SHOUT OUT FOR STRONG DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION AND NOT DRIVE THE PRIVATIZATION!


Catholic schools see new life as public charter schools


Education Top News — 01 February 2012
By Tim Ebner
Capital News Service



BALTIMORE – At first glance, visitors to Tunbridge Public Charter School in Baltimore might confuse it with a Catholic school.

The outside of the building is adorned with stained glass windows, stone archways and a cornerstone inlaid with a cross.

But on the inside, the school looks like many other public schools.

“All of the religious materials and figures have been removed from the classroom,” said Lydia Lemon, the school’s principal. “When we brought students into the school, we made sure to explain that this was a public school even though it’s next to a Catholic Church,” she said.

Tunbridge is located on the parish grounds of St. Mary’s of the Assumption Catholic Church, one of a number of public schools that have taken over space that once housed a Catholic school in Baltimore.

As the Archdiocese of Baltimore confronts tough decisions on school consolidations and closures — tied to declines in student enrollment — 20 charter schools, early childhood development programs, nonprofits and private schools have moved into the once-sacred buildings.

The transformations represent a sizable share of the 70 Catholic schools currently in operation in the Baltimore archdiocese.

Almost half of the sites – nine schools – are being used as public charter schools or for head start programs for early childhood development. Charters are the single largest occupant of former Catholic schools, making up a quarter of all leases and sales.

Charter schools, like Tunbridge, offer parents and students greater school choice and free tuition, a benefit for families facing tough economic decisions, said J. Keith Scroggins, chief operating officer of Baltimore City Public Schools.

Tunbridge expects a competitive pool of 300 applicants for approximately 40 spots in next year’s class.  To make room, the school is expanding by renovating the former church convent.

“By bringing charters in and by creating transformed city schools, we are trying to put identical educational opportunities in every segment of Baltimore,” Scroggins said.

But church leaders worry that charters compete directly with Catholic schools for student enrollment, especially for non-religious families attending the schools as an alternative to public education.

Last year, student enrollment dropped by 4.3 percent in the archdiocese, which followed a 9 percent drop the year before, said archdiocese spokesman Sean Caine.

“Schools stay open because parents want their children to receive an excellent education. We see families overcome difficulties to send their children to our schools because they believe it’s important,” Cardinal-designate Edwin O’Brien said.

During a visit to St. Michael’s the Archangel School Tuesday, located just outside the city in Overlea, O’Brien stressed the importance of Catholic education in forming student character.

In Baltimore, Catholic schools play a historic role. The city was the first archdiocese in the United States, and a number of schools have been rooted in Baltimore neighborhoods for more than 100 years.

But at St. Michael’s, where student enrollment is down and nuns no longer serve as teachers, the school will consolidate from two buildings to one for the first time in its history.

“It’s an issue of economic climate, but people are also having fewer children, and there are more schools to compete with,” said the school principal Patricia Kelly.

Because remaining Catholic schools face competition from charters, the archdiocese has delayed allowing charter schools to move into some of their buildings.

In March 2011, church leaders delayed an application request by a local charter school, Baltimore International Academy, to move to St. Anthony’s of Padua because of concerns that the charter would affect enrollment at other nearby Catholic schools.

“We look at the population that the school will be serving, the proximity to other schools and considerations that may interfere with our schools’ viability,” said Barbara McGraw Edmondson, superintendent of the archdiocese’s Catholic schools.

Edmondson said she did not know when the archdiocese would make a final decision on St. Anthony’s.

“We think about both the long-term and temporary needs. We consider all the factors and decide on how to use the property when it’s the right time,” she said.

The archdiocese does not track the total revenue made by facility sales and leases within the archdiocese because a majority of funds go directly to local parishes.

Charters are not the only organizations moving into buildings that once housed Catholic schools.

When Mount Washington Elementary School in Baltimore, which is not a charter school, made an offer for space at Shrine of the Sacred Heart, the community made a hard sell for the archdiocese to accept the public school’s application even though the school was not the highest paying bidder, Caine said.

The archdiocese accepted the offer.

In other instances, the archdiocese has leased or sold buildings to programs funded by the federal government’s Head Start program and to private schools and nonprofits.

While charters may be seen as a threat, Lemon said she does not think that’s the case at Tunbridge. Charter school leaders worked with parishioners to host meetings while the school was being renovated in 2009 and they still continue to interact with the parish.

“We’ve had a very positive experience with the parish,” Lemon said. “I think we work together and both serve the community.”

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March 10th, 2014

3/10/2014

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We are seeing much research and organizing against Race to the Top and the intent to privatize all of K-college to Wall Street.  If you listen to corporate NPR/WYPR you hear that their sponsors are in fact these corporate education businesses having the goal of being handed our public schools.  As I said, Wall Street is using cities to build the charter structures that will then be expanded across the states and the absurd categorization of charters as 'public' will disappear to the private category in which they now fall.

Unlike what Maryland media and neo-liberals present, teacher's unions across the country as well as university academics are fighting Race to the Top and are succeeding in stopping this Wall Street funded policy.  It will be reversed as will the corporatization of our universities.

IN MARYLAND, BROWN, GANSLER, AND MIZEUR ALL SUPPORT RACE TO THE TOP AND THE PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP THAT IS EDUCATION PRIVATIZATION.  THEY WILL CONTINUE O'MALLEY'S KILLING OF PUBLIC EDUCATION BECAUSE THEY ARE NEO-LIBERALS.

CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR WILL REVERSE THESE POLICIES BY APPOINTING PEOPLE WHO VALUE STRONG PUBLIC SCHOOLS!



Parent 'Manhandled', Arrested While Speaking Out Against Common Core At Meeting

www.youtube.comhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBSodYYlYu0

Good for YOU...Cindy Walsh!!!


Please watch this video of a public forum on education by Maryland Department of Education.  The Maryland media passed this protest off as a fringe group of republican voters, but if you look there I am-------as progressive democratic voter can be shouting that the public must have voices in these public policies and not be threatened with jailing for demanding this right.  I told you people in the audience actually said to me that the procedure now was to stand up and shout your views as you walk to the door so security does not throw you out.  THIS IS CRAZY STUFF FOLKS!




Thanks to the AFT for getting in the stop privatization protest.  Please shout out in Maryland as Baltimore is building a template for the
state!
 
Whether it is Parents Across America or PURE in Chicago, these parent groups are helping teachers and academics fight this dismantling of what makes the US a democratic nation.  Why do we not see these groups in Maryland and Baltimore?  The leadership is silent and fearful.  If they had a governor that supported them and not Wall Street-----they would be just as active.

CORPORATE POLS IN MARYLAND USE THE MARYLAND STATE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION AS AN EXAMPLE OF TEACHERS SUPPORTING RACE TO THE TOP.  YET, BELOW YOU SEE THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS----THE LARGEST UNION HAS NOW SAID ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.


Check out
Cashing in on Kids

and help us spread the word by sharing with your social networks.

American Federation of Teachers


For-profit charter schools that operate in the dark without basic public transparency and without strong public control too often put their bottom line ahead of the public interest
and high-quality public education.


  Is the rapid expansion of charter schools about helping kids learn or about enabling for-profit operators to rake in millions in tax dollars?   Find out.

So, last week, in partnership
with In the Public Interest, the AFT launched the
website Cashing in on
Kids—a one-stop shop for the facts about for-profit
education in
America.

While we are working to reclaim the promise of public education, these for-profit charters are cashing in on kids. Help us call them out.

The site profiles five for-profit charter school operators:

K12 Inc., Imagine Schools, White Hat Management, Academica and Charter
Schools USA.


It identifies several issues that need to be addressed in charter school policy, including public control, equity, transparency and accountability, and it analyzes the impact of profit-taking and privatization in charter schools, where student results are mixed and mismanagement is widespread.

Curious to see how Jeb Bush’s friends are cashing in on kids? Check it out.

We built this site because we want parents, educators and policymakers to be better
informed about the impact of profit, money and private interests in education,
particularly charter schools.

Check out Cashing in on Kids, and help us
spread the word by sharing with your social networks.

In unity,

Randi
Weingarten
AFT President

P.S. Don’t forget to “like” Cashing
in on Kids on Facebook and to follow it on Twitter.

____________________________________________

Chicago is home of these Race to the Top privatizers from Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to Obama's Education Secretary of privatizing all that is public education Arne Duncan. So, these brave teacher's unions, parents, and justice groups are fighting for all public education and schools across America......we thank them for their activism!

Baltimore is the Maryland center for building this same platform for privatizing and if left to continue will be expanded across Maryland.  Don't think it will remain in the urban centers!     



Monday, Mar 3, 2014, 7:19 pm

CPS Threatens Teachers Over Standardized Test Boycott

BY Yana Kunichoff Email Print Sarah Chambers, a teacher at Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy, will not be administering the Illinois Standard Achievement Test this year—nor will any of her colleagues at Saucedo. (Chicago Teachers Union)  

Beginning Monday, teachers in schools all across Chicago are expected to sit their third- through eighth-graders down for two weeks of standardized testing. On students’ desks will be the Illinois Standard Achievement Test (ISAT), a state-level assessment that, thanks to the nationwide move to Common Core, won’t have any bearings on school ratings, grade advancement or instructor evaluations this year.

But teachers at Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy and Drummond Thomas Montessori School, which joined the educator-led boycott of the ISAT last week, have declined to participate. Teachers from both schools say they are willing to risk disciplinary action so their students can get two weeks of teaching, not testing.

In response to their decision, Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said in a letter this week that teachers who "advocate against the ISAT on work time"—referring, the Chicago Teachers Union believes, to an instructor boycott—risk disciplinary action. Although teachers say they have not encouraged any students to opt out of the test outright, Byrd-Bennett also wrote, "The State Certification Board may take action to revoke the certification of any employee who encourages a student to boycott the ISAT."

And some administrators have taken part in the pushback, too. In a letter distributed to teachers last week, the principal of Saucedo, Isamar Vargas Colón, wrote, “Failure to conduct yourself in a manner befitting your profession will subject you to serious disciplinary consequences up to and including termination of your employment and possible action by ISBE [Illinois State Board of Education] with respect to your educator’s license.”

In an email to Saucedo teachers sent over the weekend, Colón said she would ask each individual teacher Monday morning whether they would or would not be administering the test. Colón did not respond to requests for comment.

A teacher at Saucedo, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, says the warnings are particularly concerning for the handful of untenured educators at the school.

Overall, it is unclear to what degree CPS will discipline teachers. But the union contract negotiated following the Chicago teachers’ strike in fall 2012 includes a progressive discipline clause, which, among other requirements, forbids an employer from going to the harshest disciplinary action without probation and mandates warnings from employers.

The CTU has said it doesn’t consider the district’s reaction to be an “idle threat,” and is working with lawyers on the best ways to support boycotting teachers. Jesse Sharkey, vice president of the union, called the proposed disciplinary actions “really absurd and harmful.”

Nationwide, there are few precedents for the testing boycott, and none incurred any discipline against participating teachers.

Around the same time last year, teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle—alma mater of Jimi Hendricks and Macklemore—voted unanimously not to administer the standardized Measures of Academic Progress test. Like in Chicago, Garfield teachers had the support of the many parents who had also chosen to opt out their children.

Though teachers at Garfield were initially threatened with a ten-day suspension, the Seattle Public Schools superintendent eventually backed down when several other schools joined the boycott.

In 2002, a group of teachers in Chicago at Curie Metropolitan High School boycotted the Chicago Academic Standards Exam (CASE), despite the risk of losing their jobs, because, they argued, the test took away valuable instruction time.

The test had been an issue of contention for years, and even led to the firing of one teacher who published the test in its entirety in Substance News, a teacher-run education newspaper. Eventually, district administrators, including now-Education Secretary Arne Duncan, agreed to drop the CASE and develop a new test.

Even at schools where the test is still being administered, many students and parents decided to join the boycott. More Than a Score, a national anti-high-stakes-testing group of parents and community groups, says that more than 1,000 students across the city have opted out of the ISAT tests this year. A spokeswoman for CPS confirmed that students who opted out of the test wouldn’t have to take it, but was not able to give a definitive number of opt-outs. 

Teachers, for their part, say the opt-out process was rife with disinformation and confusing signals for students, parents and instructors. In a voicemail message directed to parents and obtained by In These Times, Saucedo principal Colón said, “ISAT testing doesn’t take away two weeks of instruction …  [it] will prepare out students to take next year’s Common Core-aligned questions … also helps our school tailor better instructions.”

These claims have been refuted by Saucedo teachers in their arguments against administering the ISAT: They say the test takes more than two weeks, because teachers must help students prepare for it, and that it does not assist in educational planning in any way.


Zerlina Smith, a Saucedo parent, says she believes the teachers have the students’ best interests at heart; she hopes the ISAT boycott will go down in history as a successful one. “We send our kids to school to learn,” she says. “We put our kids in the hands of these educators, and we have to trust their decisions.”
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NEO-LIBERALS AND REPUBLICANS MAKE A GAME OF FLIPPING BLAME TO EACH OTHER AS BOTH PUSH THE SAME POLICIES OF HANDING ALL THAT IS PUBLIC TO WALL STREET.  DO YOU HEAR ON YOUR MEDIA OUTLET THAT PROTESTS ARE GROWING LARGER AND PROTESTORS ARE NOT THE RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS......NOT THE FAR LEFT DEMOCRATS......IT IS EVERYONE.

PLEASE REMEMBER, RACE TO THE TOP IS A REPUBLICAN POLICY WRITTEN BY CONSERVATIVE THINK TANKS AND CORPORATIONS.  SO, HATING RACE TO THE TOP UNDER NEO-LIBERALS IN CONGRESS AND OBAMA IS NOT HATING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY BECAUSE THESE POLS ARE NOT DEMOCRATS....THEY ARE GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS.  DO NOT VOTE FOR A REPUBLICAN BECAUSE YOU HATE RACE TO THE TOP. 

GEORGE BUSH AND DICK CHENEY WROTE MOST OF COMMON CORE AS A CAPTURE OF DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION.  CHENEY FAMOUSLY SAID HE THOUGHT HISTORY WOULD TREAT HIS ADMINISTRATION KINDLY-----WELL, THAT IS BECAUSE CHENEY AND BUSH WROTE THAT COMMON CORE HISTORY LESSON!


Below you see the groups organizing against this kind of education involve all socioeconomic groups and political leaning.  As this article tells------THIS EDUCATION POLICY SHOULD DECIDE WHO YOU ELECT AS GOVERNOR AND IT IS GOVERNORS PUSHING THESE REFORMS FOR WALL STREET. 

You will hear none of this on Maryland media because Maryland media is captured by Wall Street as are all of the democratic party by neo-liberals.
          
Education Spring ‘Year Of Action’ Revs Up


When President Barak Obama, in his State of the Union address, called for a “year of action,” he probably didn’t have this in mind.

An extensive and diverse coalition of forces opposed to the education policies pushed by his administration, and many state governors, is organizing on an unprecedented scale to spur a variety of protest actions, including street rallies, sit-ins, walk-outs, strikes, boycotts, and disruptive legislative actions and lawsuits.

It’s clear, last year’s emerging Education Spring that revealed a nationwide movement of diverse factions opposed to unpopular education policies has now developed substantial new organizational capacity and a more powerful voice.

The “new populism,” as my colleague Robert Borosage reveals, that is defining the economic debate in 2014 is also firing a new populist movement to reject failed education policy mandates and call for new reforms of our public education system.


“Movements grow,” Borosage reminds us, “only when harsh reality is combined with dedicated organizers and teachers.” Well, the “dedicated organizers and teachers” for a populist education movement have arrived.

Meet The Organizers And Teachers

This week, hundreds of activists are gathering in Austin, Texas for the first annual meeting of the Network for Public Education, a group with a stated opposition to the status quo education policies pushed by federal and state governments, including “high-stakes testing, privatization of public education, mass school closures,” and “for-profit management of schools.”

Headlining the meeting are prominent critics of the nation’s current education policies, including education historian Diane Ravitch, Texas superintendent John Kuhn, and Chicago Teachers’ Union President Karen Lewis. A contingency is expected from a group calling themselves the Bad Ass Teachers Association that has the expressed “aim to reduce excess testing, increase teacher autonomy, and include teacher-family voices in legislative processes.”

This gathering comes on the heels of recent news stories about Testing Resistance and Reform Spring, “a new coalition of national groups,” explains a report in Education Week, that “hopes to bring together a growing number of grassroots boycotts, protests, and petitions aimed at reducing and revamping student testing.”

Valerie Strauss on her blog at The Washington Post explains, “The emergence of the alliance represents a maturing of the grassroots testing resistance that has been building for several years locally in states, including Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois.” This opposition, notes Strauss, contends that the Obama administration has gone beyond the excesses of high-stakes standardized testing mandated by No Child Left Behind legislation under the administration of President George W. Bush.

Among the first actions promoted by TRRS is an event in Denver Colorado, March 28-30, convened by United Opt Out, an organization “dedicated to the elimination of high stakes testing in public education” by advocating for boycotting standardized tests that are used to make “high-stakes” decisions about students, teachers, and schools.

Other events are being planned across the country.

Not to be left out of this new education populism are the students. Student activist Hannah Nguyen writes, “Students all over the United States, from Portland to Chicago to Providence, are tired of feeling powerless when it comes to decisions that affect their education … They’ve begun to organize together, forming student unions and fighting back against threats to their education, such as budget cuts, high stakes testing, and school closings. From mass walkouts and sit-ins to creative street theatre and flash mobs, these students are demanding that their voices be heard.”

Nguyen is widely known from a video that went viral over the Internet showing her taking on former Washington, DC chancellor Michelle Rhee and saying, “I used to stand by reformers, I will admit it, I did. But after seeing the facts, and the data and everything, and my own lived experience, I cannot –  I’m sorry – stand by what you preach if it has to do with high-stakes accountability, this ‘school choice’ … [and] charter schools, and how they push out certain students.”

Nguyen is now involved with the grassroots Students United for Public Education, “a national network of students who are committed to fighting for educational equity in America and to work collectively to organize action that works towards this vision.”


SUPE has worked with other student activists to organize the event EmpowerED: Los Angeles Student Power 2014 on March 29. The meeting claims to be “the first education conference led by students, for students,” drawing student organizers from Chicago, Newark, Portland, Providence, and Baltimore to “work with the student organizers in workshops to build organizing skills, discuss their ideas for education, and collaborate on developing a student power movement in their community.”

This spreading network of activist, organizers, and advocates is accompanied by teacher union activism that pushes the needs of students to the fore.

New Form Of Union Activism Emerges

Along with the grassroots direct action ramping up, a new form of union activism is connecting teachers’ labor grievances to their students’ learning conditions.

Earlier this month, when teachers in Portland, Oregon threatened to strike they made students learning conditions – particularly class sizes – a focal point of their grievances. District administration conceded to “hire 150 teachers to reduce class sizes and teacher workloads,” fewer than the 170 new positions teachers requested, but vastly exceeded the 88 new teacher hires proposed by the district.

When teachers made class size a main rationale for the threatened strike, they drew widespread approval from students and parents in Portland.


Also this month, in St. Paul, Minnesota, when negotiations faltered and the union considered authorizing a strike, the teachers made clear their actions were not over salary and working conditions, but over the students’ learning conditions. Those conditions included, according to a local report, limits on class sizes, less instructional time devoted to testing, increased student-support personnel, and expanded slots in the district’s pre-k program. It’s clear from the report that students and parents vocalized strong support for the teachers’ demands.

When a deal was reached and terms were announced this week, teachers got most of what they wanted: limited class sizes, less time spent on testing, and more consideration of increased student support staff and expanded Pre-k.

Too often in recent times, teacher unions have been portrayed as motivated by the narrow self-interest of their members. But the strategies exemplified by teachers in Portland and St. Paul turned that perception on its head.

Voices Louder, Stakes Higher

A year ago, the nation was roiled by the widespread, unified backlash to top-down education mandates driven by corporate interests, private foundations, and promoters of a market-based philosophy for education. The protests had huge impacts on elections for mayor in New York City and school board in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

This year, the voices of dissent are louder and the stakes are far higher. More states are pausing education mandates and challenging the status quo of high-stakes testing. “Testing season begins soon in U.S. public schools … But this year is filled with tumult,” reports Lindsey Layton for The Washington Post.

State elections this year will determine the fate of three-dozen governors and more than 6,000 legislators. Education, always a more important issue in these local races, could make or break some political contests. No candidate can afford to ignore the new education populism.


___________________________________________
This article shows how a candidate runs as a progressive and then simply serves as a neo-liberal.  Those who follow politics knew de Blasio was a Clinton neo-liberal embracing a few progressive bones to be electable.  Indeed he was elected by a landslide showing what the citizens want.  But, as with Obama, what we elect and what we get are now two different things as it is now OK to lie about platforms.  IT IS GOOD THAT THE OUTPOURING OF VOTERS WAS PROGRESSIVE.  WE SIMPLY NEED TO MAKE SURE OUR CANDIDATES ARE TOO!  You need to look beyond the standard 'progressive issue of the day' that neo-liberals put out to appease the masses......like minimum wage increases.

Baltimore education reform is controlled by Bloomberg and Wall Street through Johns Hopkins and all of this current public schools building fund leverage has to do with exactly the same issues Diane speaks to in the article.  The intent is to hand all of the remodeled schools over to charters having the public paying for the infrastructure for what will become private charter schools run by national chains.  Same thing happening with the MTA privatization of public transportation.

Leveraging school reconstruction of one billion dollars at a time government budgets are strained from the massive corporate frauds of last decade still waiting for justice-----at a time when Wall Street is imploding the economy again-----is simply a plan to have these Wall Street contracts in place so at the time of collapse government default will hand all these schools over to the private investors protected against the crash by CDS....credit default swaps.  HANDING OVER THE SCHOOL BUILDINGS AS THEY ARE FILLING THE SCHOOLS WITH CORPORATE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS CONTROLLING ALL POLICY IN THE SCHOOL BUILDINGS while parents are told this is what they want.

Remember, what is happening in NYC is happening in Baltimore.  You see Cuomo as with O'Malley behind pushing these policies and by no coincidence----they are both running for President in 2016.  NEO-LIBERALS GETTING THE PRESS!

DID YOU KNOW THAT BERNIE SANDERS IS AGAINST THIS PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND IN FACT VERMONT HAS LITTLE OF THIS POLICY BEING IMPLEMENTED!


THAT IS CORPORATE TOTALITARIANISM AS NOAM CHOMSKY SAYS!


Look for you education news at websites of groups fighting this reform!

Diane Ravitch's Blog: The Big Lie about Mayor Bill de Blasio and Charters



Diane Ravitch March 6, 2014
  • Diane Ravitch's Blog
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The New York City tabloids–whose owners are zealous about charter schools–have whipped up a frenzy against Mayor Bill de Blasio because he did not approve every single charter application rushed through the Bloomberg board at its last meeting in October 2013. That board, which never said no to Mayor Bloomberg, approved an unprecedented 49 charter applications, some of which are co-locations.

A co-location means that a charter, which is operated by a private board of directors, gets public space in a public school. The public school has to surrender “empty” rooms that were previously used for art, music, resource rooms for special education, and any other space that is not considered a classroom. The regular public schools–attended by 94% of all public school children, must be overcrowded to make room for the charters. Because the charters are heavily subsidized by private funding, they typically renovate the space (not good enough for them), and their students have the latest and best of everything. In New York City, the term “academic apartheid” is becoming a reality, in the very same building. In some co-located spaces, the children in the charters have separate entrances, to keep the others out of their space.

De Blasio had to decide what to do with so many co-locations. The city already has 183 charters.

He approved 39 of the 49. He turned down 9, and one is under review.

Let me say that again. He approved 39 of 49. That is hardly anti-charter. In fact, many public school parents are outraged that their schools will now be forced to give up space to a charter that operates under different ownership (private).

Of the 9 that were denied, three were destined for Eva Moskowitz’s charter chain called Success Academy.

But of the 39 that were approved, Eva won three.

Instead of celebrating the addition of three new charter schools to her growing chain (the largest in the city), Eva has gone on the warpath, claiming that de Blasio is anti-charter and wants to hurt the poor black and brown children she serves.

The media do not know that her schools do not serve the same demographic as the children in the public schools. She enrolls fewer children with special needs and fewer English language learners. Her schools have a high suspension and attrition rate.

Her logic seems to be that since she gets high test scores (note the above sentence as one does tend to get high scores by keeping out low-scoring students), she deserves to get whatever space she wants, rent-free.

By that logic, the city should give extra privileges to students with high scores, and should take away space and privileges and programs from those with low scores.

This makes no sense.

Public schools must serve all children, not just those who can get high scores on standardized tests. Public schools must serve children who don’t speak any English. They must serve children who have severe disabilities. They must serve those who have emotional and social problems. They must serve those who have all kinds of problems and who are unwilling or unable to walk in a straight line.

It is sad that Governor Andrew Cuomo threw his political weight on Eva Moskowitz’s side. As governor of the state, he is responsible for all children, not just the precious few in charter schools.

Everyone understands that the hedge fund managers and equity investors are supporting Eva’s fight against de Blasio. He has already annoyed them by saying he wants them to pay a slightly higher tax rate to fund universal pre-kindergarten. The charter school fight gives them a chance to strike back at him, while pretending “it’s all about the kids.” They would like nothing better than to take down New York City’s first progressive mayor in at least 20 years (some one say even longer).

De Blasio has not declared war on charters. He has made a judgment. Many public school parents are angry that he approved 39 out of 49 charter co-locations. Eva and the tabloids think she should have whatever she wants.

The question before the Mayor is whether he will continue to fund a dual school system–one sector able to choose the students it wants–and the other sector serving all. He is trying to have it both ways, and it doesn’t work. He gave the charter lobby almost everything it wanted, and they still came after him as if he had given them nothing at all.

This blog post, which first appeared on the Diane Ravitch's Blog (http://dianeravitch.net) website, has been shared by permission from the author.
Readers wishing to comment on the content are encouraged to do so via the link to the original post.
Find the original post here:


_________________________________________


For those wanting to know the goal of all of this privatization policy look to conservative and neo-liberal think tanks like Fordham Institute and Brookings Institution where all this policy is written.  You see the goal is online K-12 which falls with the policy of ending teachers in the classroom and having education techs who just facilitate the classroom connection to these online lessons.  Common Core works with this standardization and control of all information content as these few online instructors come to all schools across America.

None of this has to do with quality teachers......what is good for achievement......what is good for developing strong community and business leaders.  It is about building the cheapest model to educate children for specific vocations with tracking determined
by pre-K testing of children.  Businesses will profit off of selling education data.  IT IS ALL ABOUT PROFIT AND CORPORATE EXPANSION OF EDUCATION GLOBALLY.


FOR THOSE REPUBLICANS IN MARYLAND PRETENDING AS THOUGH THEY FEEL THEIR CONSERVATIVE VOTER'S PAIN......ALL OF THESE POLICIES ARE WRITTEN BY WALL STREET IN CONSERVATIVE THINK TANKS.  BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS THE SOURCE OF COMMON CORE AND RACE TO THE TOP. 

So, to stop this we need to shake the neo-liberal bugs from the democratic party rug by running and voting for labor and justice!!!!!


NOTICE YOU WILL NOT HEAR CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR TALKING ON MARYLAND MEDIA ABOUT MY PLATFORM ISSUES.  YOU WILL ONLY HEAR BROWN, GANSLER, AND MIZE


Overcoming the Governance Challenge in K-12 Online Learning



John E. Chubb Fordham Institute February 14, 2012

Michael K. Barbour March 22, 2012 Press Release → Media Citations →

This fifth and final paper in the Fordham Institute’s series examining digital learning policy is Overcoming the Governance Challenge in K-12 Online Learning. The purpose of this report is to outline the steps required to move the governance of K-12 online learning from the local district level to the less restrictive state level and to create a free market for corporate innovation in K-12 online learning. Unfortunately, the report is based on an unsupported premise that K-12 online learning will lead to increased student achievement. The body of research to date suggests that there is no learning advantage for virtual schools. Further, no evidence is presented that supports the wisdom or efficacy of centralizing governance at the state level or that moving to a market model is a superior, productive or economical practice. The recommendation that virtual schools should be funded at the same per-pupil amount as traditional public schools raises the question of profiteering, given Fordham’s claim that virtual schools operate more economically (a claim for which there is limited evidence). This report appears to be ideologically motivated and designed to open up the $600 billion market of K-12 education to for-profit corporations.




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February 25th, 2014

2/25/2014

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FIGHTING FOR AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION VS A MEDIEVAL CLASS-BASED ASSIGNMENT----CLASSICAL EDUCATION VS TRADES IS WHAT IS HAPPENING.  THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND FOUNDING FATHERS ALL INVOLVED THE CHOICE OF ENLIGHTENED DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION.

THERE IS NOTHING THE MATTER WITH TRADE EDUCATION.....WE DO NOT WANT IT PRE-K-COLLEGE WITH A COMMITTEE DECIDING HOW CHILDREN ARE TRACKED ACCORDING TO TESTING!


This is my last post for now on education.  I want to contrast the South Korean model I shared last with the Finnish (modeled from US public education before Reagan).


Regarding Maryland's education reform taking the Korean model and not the Finnish model:

I showed in my last few posts that Race to the Top is modeled from the Korean/China model of education and that US universities have already been taken by corporate interests. This is what education privatizers have been working towards this past decade or two. Clinton became the first pol running as a democrat to advance this-----because he was the first to take the democratic party neo-liberal by starting the privatized universities. Now Obama is placing privatization of K-12 on steroids with Race to the Top.

As I showed earlier, South Koreans have been trying to shake this education reform for decades and they are shouting just as US teachers are for the sake of educators, students, and parents for a strong democratic education as we see with the Finland model.

REMEMBER, THE FINNISH MODEL WAS MODELED AFTER THE AMERICAN EDUCATION SYSTEM BEFORE REAGAN/CLINTON DISMANTLING!

All of Baltimore's appointed School Supervisors are in place because they support this school privatization. Alonzo from NYC/Bloomberg's crew of privatizers and now Milwaukee's school privatizer under the likes of Scott Walker.

Let's look at what Americans see as a strong public education model that worked in the US for decades! The Finnish model values equality, equal access, places teaching as a prestigious profession that is well-paid and autonomous......AND IT HATES THE WORD COMPETITION, TESTING, and privatization.

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success


Anu Partanen Dec 29 2011, 3:00 PM ET

The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence.

Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West's reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point.

The small Nordic country of Finland used to be known -- if it was known for anything at all -- as the home of Nokia, the mobile phone giant. But lately Finland has been attracting attention on global surveys of quality of life -- Newsweek ranked it number one last year -- and Finland's national education system has been receiving particular praise, because in recent years Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world.

Finland's schools owe their newfound fame primarily to one study: the PISA survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The survey compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore. In the most recent survey in 2009 Finland slipped slightly, with students in Shanghai, China, taking the best scores, but the Finns are still near the very top. Throughout the same period, the PISA performance of the United States has been middling, at best.

Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play. All this has led to a continuous stream of foreign delegations making the pilgrimage to Finland to visit schools and talk with the nation's education experts, and constant coverage in the worldwide media marveling at the Finnish miracle.

So there was considerable interest in a recent visit to the U.S. by one of the leading Finnish authorities on education reform, Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? Earlier this month, Sahlberg stopped by the Dwight School in New York City to speak with educators and students, and his visit received national media attention and generated much discussion.

And yet it wasn't clear that Sahlberg's message was actually getting through. As Sahlberg put it to me later, there are certain things nobody in America really wants to talk about.

* * *

During the afternoon that Sahlberg spent at the Dwight School, a photographer from the New York Times jockeyed for position with Dan Rather's TV crew as Sahlberg participated in a roundtable chat with students. The subsequent article in the Times about the event would focus on Finland as an "intriguing school-reform model."

Yet one of the most significant things Sahlberg said passed practically unnoticed. "Oh," he mentioned at one point, "and there are no private schools in Finland."

This notion may seem difficult for an American to digest, but it's true. Only a small number of independent schools exist in Finland, and even they are all publicly financed. None is allowed to charge tuition fees. There are no private universities, either. This means that practically every person in Finland attends public school, whether for pre-K or a Ph.D.

The irony of Sahlberg's making this comment during a talk at the Dwight School seemed obvious. Like many of America's best schools, Dwight is a private institution that costs high-school students upward of $35,000 a year to attend -- not to mention that Dwight, in particular, is run for profit, an increasing trend in the U.S. Yet no one in the room commented on Sahlberg's statement. I found this surprising. Sahlberg himself did not.

Sahlberg knows what Americans like to talk about when it comes to education, because he's become their go-to guy in Finland. The son of two teachers, he grew up in a Finnish school. He taught mathematics and physics in a junior high school in Helsinki, worked his way through a variety of positions in the Finnish Ministry of Education, and spent years as an education expert at the OECD, the World Bank, and other international organizations.

Now, in addition to his other duties, Sahlberg hosts about a hundred visits a year by foreign educators, including many Americans, who want to know the secret of Finland's success. Sahlberg's new book is partly an attempt to help answer the questions he always gets asked.

From his point of view, Americans are consistently obsessed with certain questions: How can you keep track of students' performance if you don't test them constantly? How can you improve teaching if you have no accountability for bad teachers or merit pay for good teachers? How do you foster competition and engage the private sector? How do you provide school choice?

The answers Finland provides seem to run counter to just about everything America's school reformers are trying to do.

For starters, Finland has no standardized tests. The only exception is what's called the National Matriculation Exam, which everyone takes at the end of a voluntary upper-secondary school, roughly the equivalent of American high school.

Instead, the public school system's teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher. Periodically, the Ministry of Education tracks national progress by testing a few sample groups across a range of different schools.

As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs. "There's no word for accountability in Finnish," he later told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. "Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."

For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master's degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.

And while Americans love to talk about competition, Sahlberg points out that nothing makes Finns more uncomfortable. In his book Sahlberg quotes a line from Finnish writer named Samuli Paronen: "Real winners do not compete." It's hard to think of a more un-American idea, but when it comes to education, Finland's success shows that the Finnish attitude might have merits. There are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland. The main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between schools, but cooperation.

Finally, in Finland, school choice is noticeably not a priority, nor is engaging the private sector at all. Which brings us back to the silence after Sahlberg's comment at the Dwight School that schools like Dwight don't exist in Finland.

"Here in America," Sahlberg said at the Teachers College, "parents can choose to take their kids to private schools. It's the same idea of a marketplace that applies to, say, shops. Schools are a shop and parents can buy what ever they want. In Finland parents can also choose. But the options are all the same."

Herein lay the real shocker. As Sahlberg continued, his core message emerged, whether or not anyone in his American audience heard it.

Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity.

* * *

Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.

In the Finnish view, as Sahlberg describes it, this means that schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.

In fact, since academic excellence wasn't a particular priority on the Finnish to-do list, when Finland's students scored so high on the first PISA survey in 2001, many Finns thought the results must be a mistake. But subsequent PISA tests confirmed that Finland -- unlike, say, very similar countries such as Norway -- was producing academic excellence through its particular policy focus on equity.

That this point is almost always ignored or brushed aside in the U.S. seems especially poignant at the moment, after the financial crisis and Occupy Wall Street movement have brought the problems of inequality in America into such sharp focus. The chasm between those who can afford $35,000 in tuition per child per year -- or even just the price of a house in a good public school district -- and the other "99 percent" is painfully plain to see.

* * *

Pasi Sahlberg goes out of his way to emphasize that his book Finnish Lessons is not meant as a how-to guide for fixing the education systems of other countries. All countries are different, and as many Americans point out, Finland is a small nation with a much more homogeneous population than the United States.

Yet Sahlberg doesn't think that questions of size or homogeneity should give Americans reason to dismiss the Finnish example. Finland is a relatively homogeneous country -- as of 2010, just 4.6 percent of Finnish residents had been born in another country, compared with 12.7 percent in the United States. But the number of foreign-born residents in Finland doubled during the decade leading up to 2010, and the country didn't lose its edge in education. Immigrants tended to concentrate in certain areas, causing some schools to become much more mixed than others, yet there has not been much change in the remarkable lack of variation between Finnish schools in the PISA surveys across the same period.

Samuel Abrams, a visiting scholar at Columbia University's Teachers College, has addressed the effects of size and homogeneity on a nation's education performance by comparing Finland with another Nordic country: Norway. Like Finland, Norway is small and not especially diverse overall, but unlike Finland it has taken an approach to education that is more American than Finnish. The result? Mediocre performance in the PISA survey. Educational policy, Abrams suggests, is probably more important to the success of a country's school system than the nation's size or ethnic makeup.

Indeed, Finland's population of 5.4 million can be compared to many an American state -- after all, most American education is managed at the state level. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization in Washington, there were 18 states in the U.S. in 2010 with an identical or significantly smaller percentage of foreign-born residents than Finland.

What's more, despite their many differences, Finland and the U.S. have an educational goal in common. When Finnish policymakers decided to reform the country's education system in the 1970s, they did so because they realized that to be competitive, Finland couldn't rely on manufacturing or its scant natural resources and instead had to invest in a knowledge-based economy.

With America's manufacturing industries now in decline, the goal of educational policy in the U.S. -- as articulated by most everyone from President Obama on down -- is to preserve American competitiveness by doing the same thing. Finland's experience suggests that to win at that game, a country has to prepare not just some of its population well, but all of its population well, for the new economy. To possess some of the best schools in the world might still not be good enough if there are children being left behind.

Is that an impossible goal? Sahlberg says that while his book isn't meant to be a how-to manual, it is meant to be a "pamphlet of hope."

"When President Kennedy was making his appeal for advancing American science and technology by putting a man on the moon by the end of the 1960's, many said it couldn't be done," Sahlberg said during his visit to New York. "But he had a dream. Just like Martin Luther King a few years later had a dream. Those dreams came true. Finland's dream was that we want to have a good public education for every child regardless of where they go to school or what kind of families they come from, and many even in Finland said it couldn't be done."

Clearly, many were wrong. It is possible to create equality. And perhaps even more important -- as a challenge to the American way of thinking about education reform -- Finland's experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.

The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad.
___________________________________

If the Supreme Court want to 'interpret' Constitutional Law then they need to go back to the time in which it was written and by whom. Jefferson and many of those former American Revolutionary leaders had strong public and democratic education in mind. Equality is the founding principal in America and education has always been seen as central. Brown vs Board of Education simply extended this Constitutional right to all people.

We know strong public education when we see it. Building all citizens ready to lead in business and government. Collecting taxes to fund that goal. This is the model in the mid-1900s that had the US ranked #1 in the world.

REMEMBER, NEO-LIBERALS WILL HAVE YOU BELIEVE WE NEED THE BEST OF THE BEST IN THE WORLD TO BE COMPETITIVE IN GLOBAL MARKETS....BUT WHAT WE NEED IS TO GIVE ALL CITIZENS WHAT THEY NEED TO MAKE THEIR OWN WAY THROUGH LIFE WITH A STRONG DOMESTIC ECONOMY!

The idea of parents being in charge of their community schools goes without saying in a democracy. We have our local school boards that are voted into place by voters until recently. We have vigorous discussion of education policy in all schools and extended to communities until recently.


JEFFERSON AND AMERICA'S FOUNDING FATHERS WOULD SEE FINLAND AS THE SUCCESS AND SOUTH KOREA AS AN OPPRESSOR FROM WHICH THEY ESCAPED TO AMERICA.

18th Century Advice: Thomas Jefferson on Education Reform

Elena Segarra

April 14, 2013 at 2:10 pm

The original “Man of the People,” Thomas Jefferson, was born on April 13 in 1743.

Jefferson is best known for drafting the Declaration of Independence, but he also wrote prolifically and prophetically on education. “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be,” he wrote in a letter to a friend.

Jefferson understood that freedom depends on self-government: the cultivation of self-reliance, courage, responsibility, and moderation. Education contributes to both the knowledge and virtues that form a self-governing citizen. By proposing a bill in Virginia that would have established free schools every five to six square miles, Jefferson sought to teach “all children of the state reading, writing, and common arithmetic.” With these skills, a child would become a citizen able to “calculate for himself,” “express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts,” and “improve, by reading, his morals and faculties.”

Jefferson viewed this basic education as instrumental to securing “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” for Americans because it helps an individual “understand his duties” and “know his rights.”

Once taught reading and history, people can follow the news and judge the best way to vote. If the government infringes on their liberties, educated citizens can express themselves adequately to fight against it.

By providing equal access to primary schools, Jefferson hoped to teach children “to work out their own greatest happiness, by showing them that it does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed them, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.”

While Jefferson supported the idea of public education, he would not have placed schools under government supervision. Instead, he argued for the placement of “each school at once under the care of those most interested in its conduct.” He would put parents in charge.

But if it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by…[any] general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience.… No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to.

Taxpayers would provide the resources for public education; the community would arrange the schooling. Although we today face a very different set of challenges than Jefferson, his reasoning remains relevant: Those most concerned with the school’s performance, i.e., parents, will best manage education.

We spend more than enough on our struggling education system. Empowering parents with control over dollars, instead of increasing the amount spent on schools, will improve educational outcomes.


____________________________________________
Why Finland's Unorthodox Education System Is The Best In The World

Adam Taylor

Nov. 27, 2012, 8:45 AM



A new global league table, produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit for Pearson, has found Finland to be the best education system in the world.

The rankings combined international test results and data such as graduation rates between 2006 and 2010, the BBC reports.

For Finland, this is no fluke. Since it implemented huge education reforms 40 years ago, the country's school system has consistently come in at the top for the international rankings for education systems.

But how do they do it?

It's simple — by going against the evaluation-driven, centralized model that much of the Western world uses.

Finnish children don't start school until they are 7.

They rarely take exams or do homework until they are well into their teens.

The children are not measured at all for the first six years of their education.

There is only one mandatory standardized test in Finland, taken when children are 16.

All children, clever or not, are taught in the same classrooms.

Finland spends around 30 percent less per student than the United States.

30 percent of children receive extra help during their first nine years of school.

66 percent of students go to college.
The highest rate in Europe.

The difference between weakest and strongest students is the smallest in the World.

Science classes are capped at 16 students so that they may perform practical experiments in every class.

93 percent of Finns graduate from high school.
17.5 percent higher than the US.

.
43 percent of Finnish high-school students go to vocational schools.

Elementary school students get 75 minutes of recess a day in Finnish versus an average of 27 minutes in the US.

Teachers only spend 4 hours a day in the classroom, and take 2 hours a week for "professional development."

Finland has the same amount of teachers as New York City, but far fewer students.

600,000 students compared to 1.1 million in NYC.

The school system is 100% state funded.

All teachers in Finland must have a masters degree, which is fully subsidized.

The national curriculum is only broad guidelines.
Teachers are selected from the top 10% of graduates.

In 2010, 6,600 applicants vied for 660 primary school training slots

The average starting salary for a Finnish teacher was $29,000 in 2008

However, high school teachers with 15 years of experience make 102 percent of what other college graduates make.

In the US, this figure is 62%.

There is no merit pay for teachers

Teachers are given the same status as doctors and lawyers

In an international standardized measurement in 2001, Finnish children came in at the top, or very close to the top, for science, reading and mathematics.

It's consistently come in at the top or very near every time since.

And despite the differences between Finland and the US, it easily beats countries with a similar demographic

Neighbor Norway, of a similar size and featuring a similar homogeneous culture, follows the same strategies as the USA and achieves similar rankings in international studies.

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We want to be clear.....America's champions of industry throughout the late 1900s mostly attended public schools so we know they were not as dismal as corporations are making them to be. They taught citizens and corporations wanted students ready to work day one. This article does not include Clinton in on this Reagan turn towards privatization, but we know university privatization soared in Clinton's terms.

WE SIMPLY NEED TO GO BACK TO THE MODEL IN THE 1900s THAT MADE US #1 AND MAKE A FEW REFORMS TO ALLOW FOR THE COMPUTER AGE. NOT MAKE SCHOOLS COMPUTER-BOUND!


The Myth Behind Public School Failure


Monday, 24 February 2014 09:46 By Dean Paton, Yes! Magazine | News Analysis



Until about 1980, America’s public schoolteachers were iconic everyday heroes painted with a kind of Norman Rockwell patina—generally respected because they helped most kids learn to read, write and successfully join society. Such teachers made possible at least the idea of a vibrant democracy.

Since then, what a turnaround: We’re now told, relentlessly, that bad-apple schoolteachers have wrecked K-12 education; that their unions keep legions of incompetent educators in classrooms; that part of the solution is more private charter schools; and that teachers as well as entire schools lack accountability, which can best be remedied by more and more standardized “bubble” tests.

What led to such an ignoble fall for teachers and schools? Did public education really become so irreversibly terrible in three decades? Is there so little that’s redeemable in today’s schoolhouses?

The Beginning of “Reform”

To truly understand how we came to believe our educational system is broken, we need a history lesson. Rewind to 1980—when Milton Friedman, the high priest of laissez-faire economics, partnered with PBS to produce a ten-part television series called Free to Choose. He devoted one episode to the idea of school vouchers, a plan to allow families what amounted to publicly funded scholarships so their children could leave the public schools and attend private ones.

You could make a strong argument that the current campaign against public schools started with that single TV episode. To make the case for vouchers, free-market conservatives, corporate strategists, and opportunistic politicians looked for any way to build a myth that public schools were failing, that teachers (and of course their unions) were at fault, and that the cure was vouchers and privatization.

Jonathan Kozol, the author and tireless advocate for public schools, called vouchers the “single worst, most dangerous idea to have entered education discourse in my adult life.”

Armed with Friedman’s ideas, President Reagan began calling for vouchers. In 1983, his National Commission on Excellence in Education issued “A Nation At Risk,” a report that declared, “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

It also said, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

For a document that’s had such lasting impact, “A Nation At Risk” is remarkably free of facts and solid data. Not so the Sandia Report, a little-known follow-up study commissioned by Admiral James Watkins, Reagan’s secretary of energy; it discovered that the falling test scores which caused such an uproar were really a matter of an expansion in the number of students taking the tests. In truth, standardized-test scores were going up for every economic and ethnic segment of students—it’s just that, as more and more students began taking these tests over the 20-year period of the study, this more representative sample of America’s youth better reflected the true national average. It wasn’t a teacher problem. It was a statistical misread.

The government never officially released the Sandia Report. It languished in peer-review purgatory until the Journal of Educational Research published it in 1993. Despite its hyperbole (or perhaps because of it), “A Nation At Risk” became a timely cudgel for the larger privatization movement. With Reagan and Friedman, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist, preaching that salvation would come once most government services were turned over to private entrepreneurs, the privatizers began proselytizing to get government out of everything from the post office to the public schools.

Corporations recognized privatization as a euphemism for profits. “Our schools are failing” became the slogan for those who wanted public-treasury vouchers to move money into private schools. These cries continue today.

The Era of Accountability

In 2001, less than a year into the presidency of George W. Bush, the federal government enacted sweeping legislation called “No Child Left Behind.” Supporters described it as a new era of accountability—based on standardized testing. The act tied federal funding for public schools to student scores on standardized tests. It also guaranteed millions in profits to corporations such as Pearson PLC, the curriculum and testing juggernaut, which made more than $1 billion in 2012 selling textbooks and bubble tests.

In 2008, the economy collapsed. State budgets were eviscerated. Schools were desperate for funding. In 2009, President Obama and his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, created a program they called “Race to the Top.”

It didn’t replace No Child Left Behind; it did step in with grants to individual states for their public schools. Obama and Duncan put desperate states in competition with each other. Who got the money was determined by several factors, including which states did the best job of improving the performance of failing schools—which, in practice, frequently means replacing public schools with for-profit charter schools—and by a measure of school success based on students’ standardized-test scores that allegedly measured “progress.”

Since 2001 and No Child Left Behind, the focus of education policy makers and corporate-funded reformers has been to insist on more testing—more ways to quantify and measure the kind of education our children are getting, as well as more ways to purportedly quantify and measure the effectiveness of teachers and schools.
For a dozen or so years, this “accountability movement” was pretty much the only game in town. It used questionable, even draconian, interpretations of standardized-test results to brand schools as failures, close them, and replace them with for-profit charter schools.

Resistance

Finally, in early 2012, then-Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott kindled a revolt of sorts, saying publicly that high-stakes exams are a “perversion.” His sentiments quickly spread to Texas school boards, whose resolution stating that tests were “strangling education” gained support from more than 875 school districts representing more than 4.4 million Texas public-school students. Similar, if smaller, resistance to testing percolated in other communities nationally.

Then, in January 2013, teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High School announced they would refuse to give their students the Measures of Academic Progress Test—the MAP test. Despite threats of retaliation by their district, they held steadfast. By May, the district caved, telling its high schools the test was no longer mandatory.

Garfield’s boycott triggered a nationwide backlash to the “reform” that began with Friedman and the privatizers in 1980. At last, Americans from coast to coast have begun redefining the problem for what it really is: not an education crisis but a manufactured catastrophe, a facet of what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism.”

Look closely—you’ll recognize the formula: Underfund schools. Overcrowd classrooms. Mandate standardized tests sold by private-sector firms that “prove” these schools are failures. Blame teachers and their unions for awful test scores. In the bargain, weaken those unions, the largest labor organizations remaining in the United States. Push nonunion, profit-oriented charter schools as a solution.

If a Hurricane Katrina or a Great Recession comes along, all the better. Opportunities for plunder increase as schools go deeper into crisis, whether genuine or ginned up.

The Reason for Privatization

Chris Hedges, the former New York Times correspondent, appeared on Democracy Now! in 2012 and told host Amy Goodman the federal government spends some $600 billion a year on education—“and the corporations want it. That’s what’s happening.

And that comes through charter schools. It comes through standardized testing. And it comes through breaking teachers’ unions and essentially hiring temp workers, people who have very little skills.”

If you doubt Hedges, at least trust Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul and capitalist extraordinaire whose Amplify corporation already is growing at a 20 percent rate, thanks to its education contracts. “When it comes to K through 12 education,” Murdoch said in a November 2010 press release, “we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching.”

Corporate-speak for, “Privatize the public schools. Now, please.”

In a land where the free market has near-religious status, that’s been the answer for a long time. And it’s always been the wrong answer. The problem with education is not bad teachers making little Johnny into a dolt. It’s about Johnny making big corporations a bundle—at the expense of the well-educated citizenry essential to democracy.

And, of course, it’s about the people and ideas now reclaiming and rejuvenating our public schools and how we all can join the uprising against the faux reformers.

____________________________________

For those not minding academic research and history, this article shows from where our American leaders came at the time of writing the US Constitution. The Age of Enlightenment was in full swing and it saw education and access for all people central to society. It is from these philosophies that US education thought derived. Indeed, it is why the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Brown vs Board of Education and why Jefferson and founders writing the US Constitution created the public structures to provide for this.

What neo-liberals are trying to create in America is an education system that existed before this Age of Enlightenment when classical education was only for the rich and most people only learned what was needed for a trade.

Education in the Age of Enlightenment

The educational system played an important role in the transmission of ideas and ideals of the Enlightenment. The educational system in Europe was continuously being developed and this process continued throughout the period of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. During the period of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the development of the educational system began to really take off. The improvement in the educational system produced a larger reading public combined with the explosion of print culture which supplied the increase in demand from readers in a broader span of social classes.

Before the Enlightenment, the educational system was not yet greatly influenced by the scientific revolution. The scientific revolution broke the traditional views at that time, religion and superstition was replaced by reasoning and scientific facts. During the scientific revolution, it promoted the advancement of science and technology. People do not just accept opinions and views that the majority agrees on but they can do their own critical thinking and reasoning in order to determine the difference between what is right and wrong. This is mainly because everything has a reason behind its existence, the promotion of education helps the people to develop the ability to think on their own so that they are capable of judging things on their own instead of being bounded by religion and superstition. Philosophers such as John Locke proposed the idea that knowledge is obtained through sensation and reflection.

This leads into Locke’s idea that everyone has the same capacity of sensation and that education should not be restricted to a certain class or gender. Prior to the 17th and 18th century, literacy was generally restricted to males whom belong in the categories of nobles, mercantile, and professional classes.
[edit]
Growth of the education system

Universal education was once considered a privilege for only the upper class. However, during the 17th and the 18th century, education was provided to all classes. The literacy rate in Europe from the 17th century to the 18th century grew significantly. The definition of the term literacy used to describe the 17th and 18th century is different from our definition of literacy now. Historians measure the literacy rate during 17th and 18th century by people’s ability to sign their names. However, this method did not reflect people’s ability to read and this affected the women’s literacy rate most of all because most women during this period could not write but could read to a certain extent. In general, the literacy rate in Europe during 18th century has almost doubled compare to the 17th century. The rate of literacy increased more significantly in more populated areas and areas where there was mixture of religious schools. The literacy rate in England in 1640s was around 30 percent for males and rose to 60 percent in mid-18th century. In France, the rate of literacy in 1686-90 was around 29 percent for men and 14 percent for women and it increased to 48 percent for men and 27 percent for women. The increase in literacy rate was likely due to religious influence since most of the schools and colleges were organized by clergy, missionaries, or other religious organizations. The reason which motivated religions to help to increase the literacy rate among the general public was because literacy was the key to understanding the word of God. In the 18th century, the state was also paying more attention to the educational system because the state recognized that their subjects are more useful to the state if they are well educated. The conflict between the crown and the church helped the expansion of the educational system. In the eyes of the church and the state, universities and colleges were institutions that are there to maintain the dominance over the other. The downside of this conflict was the freedom on the subjects taught in these institutions was restricted. An educational institution was either a supporter of the monarchy or the religion, never both. Also, due to the changes in criteria for high income careers, it helped increases the number of students attending universities and colleges. The job criteria during this period of time became stricter, professions such as lawyers and physicians were required to have license and doctorate to prove that they had significant knowledge in the field.
[edit]
Print Culture

The explosion of the print culture in the 18th century was both the result and cause of the increase in literacy. The number of books being published in the period of Enlightenment increased dramatically due to the increase in literacy rate and the increase in demand for books. There was a shift in interest in the categories of books, in the 17th century, religious books had comprised around half of all books published in Paris. However, throughout the century, the percentage of traditional genres such as religion has dropped to one-tenth by 1790 and there was an increase in popularity for the almanacs. The scientific literature in French might have increase slightly but mostly it remained fairly constant throughout the 18th century. However, contemporary literature seems to have increased as the century progressed. Also, there was a change in the language that books were printed in. Before 18th century, a large percentage of the books were published in Latin but as time progressed, there had been a decline in the percentage of books published in Latin. Similarly, with the spread of the French language, demands for books published in French increased throughout Europe.
[edit]
Public Libraries

In the Enlightenment period, there were changes in the public cultural institution such as libraries and museums. The system of public libraries was the product of the Enlightenment. The public libraries were funded by the state and were accessible to everyone and were free. Prior to the Enlightenment, libraries in Europe were restricted mostly to academies, aristocratic, and private owners. With the beginning of public libraries, it became a place where the general public could study topics of interest and self-educate themselves. During the 18th century, the prices of books were not affordable for everyone especially the most popular works such as encyclopedias. Therefore, the public libraries offers commoners a chance of reading literates that could only are affordable by the wealthier classes.
[edit]
Coffeehouses and Sites of intellectual Exchange

During the 18th century, the increase in coffeehouses, clubs, academies, and Masonic Lodges became alternative places where people could become educated. In England, coffeehouses became a new public space where political, philosophical and scientific discourses were being discussed. The first coffeehouse in Britain was established in Oxford in 1650 and the number of coffeehouses expanded around Oxford. The coffeehouse was a place for people to congregate, to read, and learn and debate with each other. Another name for the coffeehouse is the Penny University because the coffeehouse has a reputation as a center for informal learning. Even though the coffeehouses were generally accessible to everyone, most of the coffeehouses did not allow women to participate. Clubs, academies, and Lodges, although not entirely open to the public, established venues of intellectual exchange that functioned as de facto institutions of education.
[edit]
Rise of Feminism in Education

The overall literacy for the general public had increase for both men and women during the 18th century. However, there was a difference in the type of education that each gender received. During the 17th century, there were number of schools dedicated to girls but the cultural norm during this period for women was mainly based on informal education at home. During the 18th century, there was an increase in the number of girls being sent to schools to be educated, especially the daughters of middle class families whom wanted to provide their daughters with aristocratic education. In France, one of the most famous schools for girls was the Saint-Cyr which was founded by Madame de Maintenon. Although, the school Saint-Cyr was meant to educate women, it did not dare to challenge the traditional views at that point of time such as sexual inequality and destined roles of women. Therefore, the fact that there were schools for women did not bring about a social change where there was sexual equality because the schools itself did not challenge the social ideals. Moreover, the education that women received in schools was much more restricted than that of males. Women were excluded from learning categories such as science and politics. In d’Epinay’s recollection of her childhood education, she pointed out that girls were not taught much of anything and that proper education were consider to be inappropriate for the female sex. The main issue about female education is mainly because the traditional view women’s weakness as being due to nature and there are those like John Locke and d’Epinay who argue that women’s weakness was due to faulty education.

During the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, there was a rise in number of publications made by women writers. The number of women who published their works in French during the 18th century remained constant around 55- 78 published works. Also, during the years after the French revolution from 1789–1800, the numbers increased to 329 published works. The reason for this increase in publication is most likely because the restrictions in publication were looser during this period. However, the increase in number of publication suggests that there was an increase in women’s education which allows more women to become writers.
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January 02nd, 2014

1/2/2014

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If you live in Montgomery County and feel safe from this---Wall Street has no boundaries.  If you live in conservative strongholds of Eastern Maryland and like the use of charters for gentrification and segregation you need to think about Wall Street not caring about how you feel on Constitutional rights and citizens control of their public space.

THE MARYLAND ASSEMBLY AND BALTIMORE CITY HALL ALL SUPPORT THESE PRIVATIZATION POLICIES BECAUSE THEY VOTE FOR THE LAWS ALLOWING IT!  GET RID OF THEM!


Once again I wanted to give historical prospective to the low achievement in US education.  It is tied with the decisions in Reagan/Clinton era to end democracy in the US by centralizing wealth and power to a few global corporations.  They wanted to move to empire-building and corporate rule and needed to get rid of a highly educated society that existed throughout the mid-1900s by dumbing down US education.  THIS ISN'T CONSPIRACY THEORY----IT IS FACT.  That is why Reagan and Clinton pushed an education reform in the 1980s-early 90s written by the same Ivy League schools giving us Race to the Top.....Stanford, Princeton, Harvard for example.  That reform told teachers to take textbooks out of classrooms because they stifled creativity, use calculators in math classes because people would now only need to press a button for math results, and do not hold children accountable for achievement as it hurt their feelings to see a red mark for a wrong answer or if they failed.  THESE WERE ALL EDUCATION POLICIES TEACHERS IN THE 1980s-90s were taught to follow.

IT IS THESE POLICIES THAT GAVE US PUBLIC SCHOOL GRADUATES THAT COULD NOT READ OR DO MATH.  THIS IS THE PROBLEM WITH ACHIEVEMENT IN THE US AND REVERSING THESE POLICIES IS THE ANSWER.

When education in the US was #1 we did not have all kinds of education businesses writing lessons or children and teachers being evaluated and tested every way possible.  We simply had rigor, accountability, and resources.  We simply need to return to OLD SCHOOL while integrating what we know to be good NEW SCHOOL practices.  Teachers and students will need time to adapt and do not need threats and fear to do that.

What we get with Race to the Top is education funding going completely to these education consultants and businesses as hundreds of billions of dollars that could have gone to K-12 classrooms are wasted paying Stanford and Princeton for patented education materials surrounding Common Core and testing.


WE MUST STOP THIS ATTACK ON DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA FROM K-COLLEGE!



This article does a good job showing the divide in education reform in a major city pushing the Bloomberg Wall Street education reforms of Race to the Top and how the Maryland region fits into this.  I showed just a few blogs ago that Baltimore is flooded with education businesses, schools as a business charters and Teach for America, and private education non-profits that control all education programming outside of a Teach to the Test emphasis on Math and Reading only.  Meanwhile, Montgomery county, a wealthy Washington suburb has none of this and as this article states, the Montgomery County School Superintendent is against all of Arne Duncan/Obama education reform.  We are glad he lost out on this NYC appointment because we need him right here in Maryland to curtail the Wall Street reforms in Baltimore!  Note as well the comparison of Washington DC's Michelle Rhee privatization supported by that city's mayor just as Rawlings-Blake and Baltimore City Hall-----working for Johns Hopkins----stacks the education deck with privatization.  At the end of the article you see the mention of Baltimore City's Alonzo as a candidate from Maryland, but Alonzo is a NYC and Bloomberg education privatizer brought to Baltimore to privatize our city schools......so he would only have been considered if Bloomberg sycophant Quinn had been elected.  We know the deBlasio is a neo-liberal (it would be hard to get someone anti-global corporations in the city of Wall Street) so his election shows more the power of voters moving strongly towards labor and justice and we all hope that the campaign pledges he keeps will be education and housing equity-----THE TWO ISSUES MOST IMPORTANT IN BALTIMORE AND MARYLAND!

Below you can read of the reaction of NYC teachers, parents, and academics on the issue in NYC and it mirrors concerns right here in Baltimore.  If we elect a REAL democrat as mayor of Baltimore and clean the house in City Council of Boss Hogg politicians, we too can reverse these Wall Street policies and get back to building strong public schools.  Remember, in Baltimore it is Rawlings-Blake who gave control to Governor O'Malley who then filled Baltimore School Board and system with education privatizers.  We need a mayor who takes back control of Baltimore City Schools and fills all appointments with real educators!


Dec. 20, 2013
12:19 pm
by Rachel Nobel


What went wrong in the Bloomberg administration’s approach to education? How could the de Blasio administration fix it? That’s the question posed today on Diane Ravitch’s blog by “an insider at the New York City Department of Education,” who examines lessons that could be learned from Bloomberg’s failed educational policies and suggests a course of action for the new administration. It’s a long but worthwhile read:

Tweed Insider: Where the Bloomberg Administration Went Wrong on Education

- See more at: http://www.edwize.org/#sthash.ZhRw1mXg.dpuf


U.S. education officials lobbied against Starr for New York City schools post (Jeff Martin/ ) - December 10, 2012 - Joshua Starr, Superintendent, Montgomery County Schools, at Washington Post Live's Education forum.


By Valerie Strauss, Published: December 31 Washington Post

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and at least one other Education Department official urged New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and his team not to choose Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Joshua P. Starr as the city’s next schools chancellor, according to several people knowledgable about the selection process. It was an unusual move by the nation’s top education official and came in the wake of Starr’s vocal criticism of some of the Obama administration’s school reform policies.

Starr, who has led Montgomery County schools since July 2011, was a finalist in de Blasio’s two-month search for a superintendent to lead the nation’s largest school system, and people familiar with the search said he might have been offered the job had Carmen Farina, a 70-year-old veteran educator and longtime adviser, not come out of retirement for it. Starr was offered the No. 2 spot in the department, with the understanding that he would become chancellor within a few years, but he declined it, according to several people familiar with details of the search who spoke anonymously because of its political sensitivity.



U.S. education officials lobbied against Starr for NYC post Valerie Strauss DEC 31

Montgomery chief was a finalist in the search for a superintendent to lead the nation’s largest school system.

Read more

De Blasio campaigned to reverse some of the school reform policies pursued under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I), and Starr was seriously considered for the chancellor job because his views on school reform align closely with de Blasio’s. Starr also is familiar with New York schools, starting his career as a special education teacher there and later serving as the city’s director of school performance and accountability.

Some high-profile educators — including Starr, a Democrat — have criticized the Obama administration’s signature education program, Race to the Top, in which states and districts could win funding if they enacted Duncan-approved school reforms, including the expansion of charter schools and the evaluation of teachers by using student standardized test scores to determine a teacher’s “value” in the classroom.

Starr, who runs Maryland’s largest school district, just miles from the White House, became nationally known last year when he made a call for a three-year moratorium on high-stakes standardized testing, a central component of Duncan’s school reform policies. Starr said the country should “stop the insanity” of evaluating teachers according to student test scores, calling it a flawed method.

Duncan spoke negatively about Starr to de Blasio in a discussion about a number of candidates, people familiar with the discussions said. Duncan did not return phone calls seeking comment. Duncan spokesman Massie Ritsch, asked about Duncan’s conversations about the chancellorship and his objections to Starr, said he “declined to comment on private conversations between the mayor and secretary.”

“Secretary Duncan looks forward to working with Mayor de Blasio, Chancellor Farina and their team,” Ritsch said in a statement. “He wants to do whatever he can to support continued progress for students in New York City.”

Starr referred requests for comment to Montgomery County Schools spokesman Dana Tofig, who released a statement Tuesday from Starr indicating that he is dedicated to his current job.

“I appreciate that my name was among those mentioned for the Chancellor’s position in New York City,” Starr said in the statement. “I am very happy as the Superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools and look forward to working with the staff and community to provide all students with the skills and knowledge that will prepare them to succeed in their future.”

Phil Kauffman, head of the Montgomery County Board of Education, said he did not want to comment on Starr’s candidacy for the position in New York.

Several people familiar with the New York selection process said that Jim Shelton, the assistant deputy secretary of education for innovation and improvement, also expressed to de Blasio’s team that he opposed Starr, although he was not speaking for the department or for Duncan. Shelton, asked about his comments, said in an e-mail that he did have conversations about the chancellor selection process, but Shelton did not answer specific questions relating to Starr.

“I have a number of decades old relationships in New York and when asked by friends and former colleagues I shared my personal impressions on the unique demands of the Chancellor role and at times specific candidates,” Shelton wrote. “I am excited to work with and support Carmen Farina, whose prior experience working in New York will surely be an advantage as she takes the helm of one of the country’s most complex and diverse school systems.”

De Blasio could not be reached for comment.

It is unclear whether Duncan’s views had any effect on the outcome of de Blasio’s search, but it is unusual for a U.S. education secretary to get involved in the selection of a district school superintendent.

But Duncan, seen by many as the most activist leader of the 35-year-old department, has done so before.

In January 2011, while D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) deliberated on who would succeed Michelle A. Rhee as D.C. schools chancellor, Duncan said publicly that he hoped Kaya Henderson, Rhee’s deputy, would get the job. She did.


Starr was one of three current or former schools leaders in the Baltimore-Washington region whose names surfaced in connection with the New York job, considered one of the premier education posts in the nation.

The others were Henderson and Andrés Alonso, former chief executive officer of the Baltimore City public school system, suggesting that the region is a hot spot for education reform and a training ground for education leaders.


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If you look at this map you will see solidly democratic cities/states like Seattle, Chicago, Denver, Montgomery County.....Massachusetts, NY, and California pushing back against these Race to the Top reforms.


Mapping the Backlash Against High-Stakes Testing [Infographic] Infographic: Erin Zipper

by Julianne Hing
Friday, April 19 2013, 6:00 AM EST

For many a U.S. public school student, spring is standardized testing season. This can mean long days of bubbling in answers that can affect whether their schools stay open, their teachers keep their jobs, or if they’re allowed to graduate from high school.

Much of this policy stems from former president George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law and Barack Obama’s Race to the Top federal grant program. The practice continues despite years of warnings from education experts who caution that standardized tests are just too blunt a tool to be used this way.

Students of color are disproportionately located in the poor and urban school districts that face the most political pressure to boost test scores. Therefore, they’re the kids most vulnerable to the nation’s high-stakes testing frenzy—and fallout.

The punitive use of standardized testing has also been connected to teacher cheating. Last month former Atlanta superintendent Beverly Hall and 35 other educators were indicted for their alleged involvement in a massive cheating scandal after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation found that teachers who were under enormous pressure to boost student performance routinely changed children’s answers. Last week, PBS uncovered a long “missing” memo detailing the possibility of similar misconduct in Washington, D.C., under the leadership of former superintendent Michelle Rhee.

From Texas to Seattle to New York, parents, educators and even lawmakers and public school officials have begun to push back against the barrage of standardized tests. Their message? High-stakes standardized testing is, in the words of former Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott, “a perversion of their original intent.” We rounded up the highlights of the growing movement.

—Julianne Hing



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I often pick on corporate NPR/APM because that is where many of us used to go for progressive news and public oriented broadcasting but since 2010 it has been handed to corporations and we hear only a global corporate/Chamber of Commerce view of all policy.  So I encourage people to look for public media outlets giving public interest viewpoints.

Today's report on NPR gave us the national stance on Common Core and as always it interviews people who are just confused to what these reforms mean and the goal and if it is bad or good.  The reality of the feeling across America-----right and left political spectrum-----has little confusion......NO ONE LIKES IT!

I want to emphasize this because the propaganda given by corporate media paints this as a Tea Party/conservative republican revolt when the revolt is coming from middle-class soccer moms and urban education justice sectors as well.  People are confused because they do not know the goals and that is why corporate media never gives any more than the events unfolding. 

PLEASE GET ACTIVE IN FIGHTING THESE EDUCATION REFORM POLICIES IN BALTIMORE AND MARYLAND.  NOTE THAT TEACHERS AND PRINCIPALS HERE IN BALTIMORE ARE UNDER THREAT OF JOBS AND UNION LABOR LAW CHANGES----PARENTS ARE THREATENED BY SCHOOL CHOICE AND SCARCITY OF SCHOOLS AND THE FEAR OF NOT GETTING INTO SCHOOLS IF THEY RAISE THEIR VOICES IN COMPLAINT.  THIS IS DELIBERATE.

We need the middle-class in MARYLAND AND  Baltimore shouting loudly against these reforms and supporting teachers and parents having these education policies used simply for gentrification and segregation and handing public education to privatization.


IT WILL EFFECT ALL PUBLIC EDUCATION IN THE CITY NOT ONLY THE POOR AND IT WILL BE EXPORTED ACROSS THE STATE OF MARYLAND IF THESE CHARTER/PRIVATIZATION STRUCTURES ARE ALLOWED TO BE INSTALLED!

If you live in Montgomery County and feel safe from this---Wall Street has no boundaries.  If you live in conservative strongholds of Eastern Maryland and like the use of charters for gentrification and segregation you need to think about Wall Street not caring about how you feel on Constitutional rights and citizens control of their public space. 

Duncan Apologizes For 'Clumsy' Common Core Remarks

by

November 19, 2013 4:40 PM 2 min 49 sec


Education Secretary Arne Duncan is in some hot water over remarks he made last week suggesting that opposition to Common Core of Standards was coming from "white suburban moms." He has since pulled back from those remarks.

Copyright © 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

And I'm Robert Siegel.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is apologizing today for what he called clumsy phrasing. Speaking last week about the new Common Core standards, Duncan said, white suburban moms are now finding out their children aren't as brilliant as they thought they were. As NPR's Eric Westervelt reports, Duncan's words have created an uproar online and led some to call for his resignation.

ERIC WESTERVELT, BYLINE: There's nothing like injecting issues of race, class and gender into the already politically-charged Common Core debate to set off the blogosphere and social media. During an otherwise routine gathering of state school superintendents on Friday, Secretary Duncan suggested that much of the opposition to the new reading and math guidelines is coming from soccer moms whose kids are facing tougher standards and tougher tests. The site Education Week posted scratchy audio of his comments from the event.

SECRETARY ARNE DUNCAN: And it's fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from sort of white suburban moms who, all of a sudden, their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were, their schools aren't quite as good as they thought they were. And that's pretty scary.

WESTERVELT: Duncan called that reality a punch in the gut for many parents. The online reaction has been fast, fierce and continuous. Many called Duncan a racist and said he was insulting. One mom tweeted, "white man in power dismisses, denigrates women and their opinions." On the Facebook group MAD, for Moms Against Duncan, another mom wrote, "I ain't white, and it doesn't matter a damn, but I am a mom, and I am now in angry Mommy Bear mode."

Some minority parents tweeted that all those outraged over Duncan's comments are conspicuously quiet when issues of education and white privilege are raised. One woman tweeted, "explain to me how a white male calling out white moms is racist?" and added "some folks really need to try decaf." Critics on the right have long voiced alarm that the Common Core is tantamount to a national curriculum that will erode local control.

Duncan has previously enraged opponents when he called the Common Core pushback political silliness and, quote, "a rallying cry for fringe groups." On his Education Department blog on Monday, Duncan apologized for what he called clumsy phrasing. Later on CNN, he said his comments were part of a larger point.

DUNCAN: So many of our children, not just in inner cities, but in suburban communities, I think, aren't getting the education they need and deserve. And so I was challenging the state leaders there, letting them know how important higher standards are, but what it takes for all of us to work to achieve those higher standards.

WESTERVELT: But today, many critics called Duncan's apology insincere and they charged that he's trying to silence criticism of the Common Core standards. Eric Westervelt, NPR News.

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NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.





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I placed this article last because it is so long but I encourage everyone to give it a good look as Ravitch is the leading academic against Race to the Top and has the most comprehensive approach to a solution.  Remember, most everyone thinks that some education is needed with increased rigor and accountability -------it is just that no one thought this kind of corporate takeover would spring from nowhere.  While it was being developed by Bush and his partnership with Wall Street, all was kept silent until a democratically elected President simply chooses to unleash this corporate reform with a bait and switch prompted by the starving of government coffers and the economic collapse from massive corporate fraud.

RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE SO WE CAN GET BACK TO BUILDING A STRONG PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM!



Diane Ravitch's blog A site to discuss better education for all

Where the Bloomberg Administration Went Wrong on Education

By dianeravitch December 20, 2013 // 17

The following was written by an insider at the New York City Department of Education, who requests anonymity, for obvious reasons.

“Bring This City To A Place Where Our Children Really Are Put First:” Implementing Mayor-elect de Blasio’s Education Platform in New York City


The above quote by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio captures his commitment to addressing the growing opportunity and income divide in New York City (NYC). Mr. de Blasio’s education platform focuses on improving all schools via principles of equity, engagement, collaboration and support. He has been attacked for this.  In order for us to move forward, the time has come for a comprehensive review of the outcomes of Bloomberg-era education policies.

Some of the Bloomberg educational initiatives and programs have shown potential for improving the educational experiences of students. The number of uncertified educators teaching in NYC has decreased and the qualifications of teachers, especially in high poverty schools, have increased. Programs such as the Interagency Taskforce on Chronic Absenteeism, the Expanded Success Initiative, and the Middle School Quality Initiative have shown promise based on early data. These programs should be continued and broadened throughout NYC. Alongside the significant strides in public health policies in NYC such as the ban on smoking in public spaces, the nutrition value of school food improved, in some cases thanks to advocacy by community groups. Other policies such as creating a centralized bureaucratic structure focused on accountability, evaluating schools and teachers based primarily on test scores, a recurring cycle of closing schools and opening replacement schools, and an emphasis on market-based reforms and charter schools have been less successful. The successful policies have been empirically responsive, thoughtful, and well-designed. They were crafted in response to issues of genuine concern to parents and educators and pulled together and coordinated expertise and resources from multiple agencies, partners and community groups. The less successful policies are characterized by an ideology that attempts to have incentives and market forces address issues without direct responsibility and ownership on the part of the NYC Department of Education (DOE). As we will see, they also do not acknowledge the data and empirical evidence.

The implications of the failure of these policies are of national importance. Similar corporate-style reforms are sweeping the nation. A recent survey of the last dozen years of education data in NYC showed the poor overall outcomes of Mayor Bloomberg’s policies.  If these policies have failed after 12 years, under a single mayor with no checks on his power and the backing of his personal fortune, it is obvious that the time has come to implement a very different reform platform.  The Big Apple now has the opportunity to blaze a different and better path.

This essay has five parts.

Part I. Have the current organizational structures and funding policies formed an environment necessary for a successful education system to thrive?

Part II. Are measures of school and teacher performance currently in use valid, reliable, and fair?

Part III. Is the policy of closing schools and replacing the closed schools with new schools working?

Part IV. Has the portfolio strategy based on market-choice and charter schools improved student outcomes?

Part V. What new policy directions should be considered for implementation?

Each fact and data point cited is sourced at the embedded links throughout the essay.

Part I. Have the current organizational structures and funding policies formed an environment necessary for a successful education system to thrive?

NYC’s non-geographic school support network structure and the central bureaucracy at Tweed are bloated, ineffective, inefficient, and lead to patronage. Of the non-geographic networks a full 1/3 received ineffective or developing quality ratings. An audit by the NYC Comptroller’s Office found that “it is difficult to determine whether or not that support increased the efficiency of the school’s day-to-day operations… a network’s contribution to the scores allotted to the schools cannot be directly ascertained.” This is not surprising. We do not assign police precincts to police blocks in different neighborhoods, even if those blocks have similarities. We do not have fire stations cover fires in different boroughs. So why should our schools be supported by teams responsible for 30 schools spread all across the city? A policy report by the NYC Comptroller revealed that this structure blocks parent influence in local school governance. The opportunities for conflicts of interest, patronage, and corruption, supposedly a concern under a geographic structure are, unfortunately, all too plentiful in the centralized structure. Favoritism is rampant. For example, schools were forced to hire Aspiring Principal Program (APP)/Leadership Academy principals despite the data showing that student suspensions increase, the” performance drop… is larger at the schools hiring an APP graduate” and over 40% of APP graduates are no longer principals in the same school after 3 years.

While community input was stifled the central office headcount increased by 70% and the salaries by 79%. The number of non-pedagogues employed by the DOE increased to the highest levels since 1980. According to the Independent Budget Office an ever increasing share of money budgeted to “total classroom instruction” actually went to central offices. In 2007 about $550,000,000 went to central offices and in 2012 about $793,000,000 went to central offices, approximately a 45% increase in total classroom instruction dollars going to central offices (figured derived from the bar chart in the IBO report). Tens of millions of dollars were spent on recruiting and at least $200,000,000 on subsidized tuition and training for the Teaching Fellows, a fast-track teacher preparation program. This despite the fact that the evidence showed Teaching Fellows are slightly less successful and have higher attrition rates than traditionally certified teachers. More money was spent on the “Innovation Zone,” though an audit by the NYC Comptroller found that the initial pilot had “no clear specific measurable criteria to use in assessing the effectiveness.” A United States Department of Education denial of an Innovation Zone grant application stated “NYCDOE does not provide a high level of transparency in… processes, practices, and investments.”

Financial and organizational mismanagement is rampant. An audit by the NYC Comptroller found that the DOE spent $67,000,000 on a special education information system that “is not meeting its overall goal.” Another audit of an $80,000,000 “achievement and reporting information system” concluded that the DOE “lacks effective measurements for gauging whether ARIS [Achievement Reporting and Innovation System] is an effective tool.” The DOE’s data system was so poorly designed that schools paid thousands of dollars out of their budgets to procure better systems. The cost for developing a High School Application Processing System increased from an originally contracted $3,600,000 to $23,000,000, after which use of the system was discontinued. An audit by the New York State Comptroller’s Office noted the “lack of documentation supporting the justification for non-competitive contracts submitted…vagueness of the categorization of “other special circumstance” which constituted the majority of the $342.5 million of non-competitive contracts…significantly diminishes assurance that DoE’s non-competitive contracts are justified.” Other audits “found significant control weaknesses, which prevent DOE from effectively monitoring its individual consultants for mandated services” and “DOE failed to provide Related Services to 72,302 of 285,736 students-more than 25%.” Nonetheless, Tweed was not held accountable for any of this, nor for the bungled centralized Regents scoring this past June. When a parent advocate requested performance evaluations of the DOE’s leadership team she received a reply stating that “no such records have been created. Accordingly, there are no records to provide.”

Schools are funded in a deliberately unequal and unfair manner. Under the current approach schools are not budgeted the money they are promised by the Fair Student Funding formula. The “percent of formula” that schools actually receive varies greatly between schools and is not based on clear and objective educational factors.  Some schools get 80%. Other schools get over 100%. For example: Flushing High School receives 80.8% of their funding. Queens High School for Language Studies, a new school co-located in the very same building, gets 100% of their funding. Veritas Academy, a new school co-located in the very same building, gets 100% of their funding. Dewitt Clinton High School receives 82.38% of the funding that they are supposed to get. Bronx Collaborative High School, a new school co-located in the very same building, gets 100% of their funding. World View High School, another new school co-located in the very same building, gets 100% of their FSF their funding. Lehman High School receives 81.44% of their funding. Westchester Square Academy, a new school co-located in the very same building, gets 100% of their funding.

Schools with a more impoverished student body receive, on average, 6+% less of the funds they should be receiving than schools with a relatively affluent student body.  Schools with the most academically struggling student body receive, on average, 13% less of the funds they should be receiving than schools with an academically privileged student body. A Daily News story revealed that new schools were overfunded at the expense of other schools. One small group of schools was underfunded by $30,000,000. A senior thesis from Princeton analyzed FSF at elementary and middle schools and concluded that “it does not appear that that relationship [between student need and school funding] generally increased with the implementation of Fair Student Funding.”

There are inequities in the construct of the formula itself. It does not distinguish between Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Long-Term English Language Learners. The formula also does not provide any weights for Students with Interrupted Formal Education. This means, for example, that schools that have many beginner and long-term ELL students are funded at the same level as schools with advanced ELL students, even though the instructional needs are dramatically different.  The formula deliberately overfunds Integrated Co-Teaching/Collaborative Team Teaching ($7173.81 of additional funding per student) at the expense of self-contained ($2407.91 of additional funding per high school student) settings.  There is no additional funding for students in temporary housing, students who are involved with the juvenile justice system, or other students requiring additional supports to succeed. A report by the Independent Budget Office found that Fair Student Funding never fully kept its already limited promises. Black and Hispanic students are less likely to have a gym, medical office, and library and have fewer art and music rooms and science labs in their schools than Asian and White students.

 

Part II. Are measures of school and teacher performance currently in use valid, reliable, and fair? 

NYC school report card letter grades do not reflect actual school quality. School grades on the Progress Reports fluctuate wildly from year to year and do not reflect genuine changes in school quality. One year’s data showed that 75% of the schools that received F’s the previous year got A’s or B’s the next. Another year, 60% of schools moved 200 places or more in the rankings as compared to the prior year. Yet another year, over 55% of schools moved a letter grade or more (out of only 5 possible grades) as compared to the prior year. One analysis demonstrated that this year-to-year change in grades is only slightly less than would be expected by random luck. One year’s grades showed a correlation of -.02, in other words no correlation at all from one year to the next, in schools’ progress scores. Another set of grades showed low moderate stability in school growth scores, with small schools showing very little stability. Schools with fewer than 500 students saw the largest swings.  A fascinating experiment demonstrated that a random number generator was 4-10% more accurate in predicting a school’s grade than the actual grade the school received the prior year. Summing up, it is obvious that the wild swings in school grades are not tracking real changes in the quality of education students are receiving. Despite claims to the contrary there is no evidencethat school report cards have improved school quality.

 

The metrics used in the school report cards are not valid. Many of the measures used in the report cards are easily gamed by schools and have nothing to do with the quality of education students receive. Up until last year schools graded their own Regents exams, leading to a situation where the number of passing scores was inflated by 4-8.3%, depending on the exam, and “the manipulation of Regents scores was noticeably more common in NYC than elsewhere in the state.” Allegations of test-tampering and grade-changing have “more than tripled” under mayoral control. Over 25% (in years past it was 33%) of a high school’s grade is based on how many students earn 10+ credits. Given the curve in these report cards, this can mean the difference between an “F” and a “B” or between a “D” and an “A”. There are, of course, no uniform criteria for what a student has to learn in order to earn a credit. As a result this measure has been entirely corrupted. In the first four years of school report cards the number of students earning 10+ credits a year jumped a remarkable 16 percentage points citywide. The increase at schools serving disadvantaged students was even greater. Some schools practically jumped over the moon and increased student credit accumulation by over 50% from one year to the next. New small schools in particular have corrupted this measure. An analysis of the data in this spreadsheet shows that new small schools as a group rank 10% higher on the credit accumulation measure than would be expected based on their Regents pass-rate ranking. This fact, along with the recently uncovered data showing disproportionate numbers of struggling students not accepted to a high school through the application process are sent to large/medium sized schools, raise serious doubts about the claims that new small schools are performing better than other NYC high schools.

Another 10% of the grade is based on responses to a school Learning Environment Survey. A report from New York University found that the “category scores were not strong measures for distinguishing between schools…the survey provides…less information about how that school differs from other schools…scores were not powerful predictors of other performance indicators.” It turns out that teachers inflate their responses by significant margins as compared to student responses in schools that received a “D’ or “F” the prior year. In addition to the potential for gaming, many of these measures are flat out invalid. The report cards use test scores to compare student performance across years in a manner the tests were not designed to do. The reports cards do not account for the statistical noise in test results, meaning that schools whose test scores are statistically indistinguishable nonetheless receive very different grades. The report cards use standard deviations in ways that make tiny differences in school performance seem bigger than they really are. For example a student attendance rate .8% lower than that at other schools ends up being unfairly graded as 18.4 out 100. Summing up, it is clear that the metrics used in these report cards do not really measure the quality of education students are receiving.

The school report cards penalize schools working with disadvantaged students. It is widely acknowledged that it would be unfair to compare a school whose students enter scoring above grade level on exams to a school whose students enter scoring well-below grade level. It would also be unfair to compare schools that work with disadvantaged and struggling students to schools that work with only selected students. The report cards claim to account for this by only comparing schools to other schools with similar student populations. But is this, in fact, the case? The data say no.  A report by New York University found that schools serving higher proportions of Black and Latino students, English Language Learners, and students with disabilities received lower grades. The same pattern was found by a professor at Columbia’s Teachers College and by NYC’s Independent Budget Office. They also found that the less selective a school was in accepting students the lower the average grade. Other analyses found that the report cards favor schools that start with higher student baseline scores, that as the percent of self-contained special education students at a school increases from 0% to 14.5% the average report card grade falls by over 20 points, and that schools that get “D” and “F” grades have many more students entering overage than schools that get an ”A.” But that is not all. Schools in the lowest quartile of grades have lower entering student scores and 2.5x more self-contained students than schools in the top quartile. An analysis of another year’s data found that the median proportion of self-contained special education students at schools with “F” grades was 2,100% greater than at schools with “A” grades. Schools with the lowest levels of students receiving free lunch were 3.5 times more likely to get A’s than schools with the highest levels. So it is obvious that the report cards do not account for differences in incoming student characteristics.

The peer index does not account for demographic differences between schools. The creators of these report cards invented “peer indexes,” designed to compare similar schools to each other. But the data show that schools with higher peer indexes receive higher average grades, that the peer indexes lump together very dissimilar schools, and that the peer indexes do not really control for incoming student characteristics. Summing up it is clear that the report cards are blatantly unfair and do not truly measure the quality of the education at schools.

 

Value-add use of test scores to rank and evaluate teachers is unsupported by the data. For years NYC created value-add reports for math and English 4th-8th grade teachers. As of 2013 New York State will be creating value-add reports for even more teachers as part of the Race to the Top teacher evaluation system. What does the data from NYC tell us about the reliability of such reports? The data used to create value-add teacher rankings in NYC was often inaccurate. The DOE itself admitted that a third of all value-add reports were not reliable and that in 30 schools the reports for every single teacher were not reliable. Scores for teachers of classes at the top or bottom were particularly unreliable, with 3,900 of 11,800 multiyear ratings falling into this category. Even with multiple years of data, up to 70% of teachers could not be distinguished from average. A .01 change in either direction changed a teacher’s percentile ranking up to 63%, making small real world differences appear larger than they really were. Scores changed by large amounts from year to year, with 49% of teachers moving downwards. There was almost no correlation between the English and math scores of teachers who taught both subjects during the same year. 98% of teachers fell in a very narrow range, meaning that the numbers should not be used to create rankings of teachers. Looking at the same exact teachers, in the same exact schools, teaching the same subjects there was no correlation between teachers’ 2005-06 scores and their 2007-08 scores. There was no correlation between a teacher’s value-add score from year to year. It was, in fact, close to random. A teacher in the 90+ percentile one year had only a 1 in 4 chance of remaining there the next. A teacher in the bottom 10% had only a 7% chance of remaining there the following year. Only 7%  of teachers landed above the median for 3 years in a row, with lots of movement between the upper half and the bottom third.  Predictions about future student achievement assumed by the formula were not accurate. Scores were biased against teachers of high performing students. There was a 3+:1 ratio of teachers who taught high-performing students rated below average versus above average. A single extra question correct on the exams of a teacher in this group raised their value-add score by 10-20 points while an incorrect answer lowered their score by 20-50 points.  The reports did not control for school level factors and class size. For example, a teacher was 7.3% less likely to receive a good rating for each additional student increase in average class size. A teacher’s score one year predicted only 5-8% of the next year’s score. The value-added scores of teachers who taught similar groups of students with similar pre-test scores for two years in a row showed almost no correlation. 43% of teachers with very high value-add scores in 2009 did not meet that mark in 2010. Of the thousands of teachers in the top 20% in 2005-06 only 14 math teachers and 5 ELA teachers remained there each year through 2009-10. The educator rated as the worst teacher in the city taught the highest need English Language Learners, very few of whom took the exams the rating was based on. What’s worse, 40% of her students had “imputed” scores which are wholly unreliable.

This year New York State is going to create such value-add rankings for teachers and principals in NYC. A review of the NYS model found significant biases in the model such as higher incoming student scores in both English and math correlating to higher growth scores. Yet another report found that teachers of high achieving students are more likely to get higher ratings and teachers of students growing up in poverty to get lower ratings. All this messiness means that the value- add scores have no practical value.

Part III. Is the policy of closing schools and replacing the closed schools with new schools working?

The student population at closed schools had significantly greater needs than other schools in the city. Schools were punished for working with disadvantaged students. According to a report by researchers from Brown University the data on all schools closed since 2003 shows that they had more special education students, more English Language Learners and a higher poverty rate than the citywide average. They also found that schools that were closed had 4x as many (15% more) students entering overage. The number of high needs students increased dramatically in the years before the schools were closed. Schools with the lowest peer indexes were closed. Within schools in the top 1/3 of student need 40% of the D’s and F’s closed, none of the D’s F’s in the middle 1/3 of student need closed and of the schools in the lowest 1/3 of student need  none got D’s and F’s. Within the top 1/3 of student need the schools that are closed had higher levels of poverty, special education students, high-needs special education students, overage students, and boys (note that poverty level and % boys are not factored into school report card grade). Among Persistently Lowest Achieving schools selected for school reform models the schools selected for closure had lower average incoming 8th grade scores, more students entering overage and a lower peer index (meaning higher student needs) than schools selected for the less punitive transformation or restart models. A report by the Independent Budget Office “found that on nearly every measure the closing high schools had greater concentrations of high needs students.” A second Independent Budget Office report found that “the share of their enrollment in some high needs categories,

such as the share of students in special education, has been increasing in recent years.”

As the percent of self-contained special education students in a school increased from 0%-14.5% the graduation rate declined from 68.6% to 54% (i.e. by an almost identical 14.6%). School report card scores, used to make closure decisions, also fall as the rate of self-contained students increase at a nearly 1 to 1 ratio.  Of the 69 schools that received A’s in the peer group of schools to be closed 40 had 5% or fewer high need special education students. Of the 18 schools that received D’s all except 2 had 25+% high need special education students (and 1/3 had over 55%). Closing schools had 25% or more students entering overage than schools that received A’s in the very same districts. Looking at 11 districts with closing schools the schools that received A’s had significantly fewer students entering overage than the schools that got D’s or F’s.

A review of two closed schools found that on the DOE’s own Regent performance metric they were doing much better than would be predicted based on incoming student need. One high school in Manhattan scored 10 percentile points higher than expected across all Regents exams and another high school in Brooklyn scored 19 percentile points higher than expected. The 17 high schools selected for “turnaround” by the DOE in 2012 had Regents pass rates 8.5 percentile points higher than would be expected based on incoming student performance for the two years prior. Nonetheless the DOE wanted to “excess” all the teachers at those schools, a process an independent arbitrator halted.

The Deputy Chancellor responsible for closing schools started a school that had virtually no self-contained students (.2%), only 11% overage students, and average incoming scores of 2.8, a much more advantaged student population than that in the schools he closed.

 

DOE did not follow its own set of criteria for school closures and ignored the needs of students in the schools they closed. One year 14 out of 20 schools that Bloomberg’s DOE wanted to close, in order to make room for other schools, scored above the criteria for closing a school as set by the very same department. Yet another Brooklyn school was closed even though it received a “proficient” on its Quality Review which should have protected it from closure according to the DOE’s criteria. Another school built a website showcasing extensive data demonstrating that the school in fact did a good job with its students. The department ignored the data and closed the school anyway. A report by a student group on “the abandonment of students in closing schools” found that of 33,000 students attending 21 closing high schools in their final years “5,612 dropped out, 8,089 were still enrolled, 9,668 were discharged, only 9,592 actually graduated.” They attributed this in part to the resources that were pulled from these schools.

 

Many new schools are able to selectively screen their students despite the official “limited unscreened” admissions process. New schools have access to prior student performance and attendance data and can use that information to rank students for admission. Some limited unscreened schools actually required students to write essay. A report by researchers at Columbia University’s Teachers College found that new schools accepted 9-10% more students proficient in reading and math, with 4% average higher prior attendance who were 15% less likely to enter overage, 6% less likely to be ELLS, 5% less likely to be students with disabilities, and 7% fewer males. Overall they found that the closing and opening of schools did nothing to reduce the segregation of students by academic need. A New York University researcher found that 2 of the 3 new small high schools she studied managed to screen their students, even though they were officially not allowed to. Other new schools seem to lose vast numbers of students from each cohort, in one instance from 26-37% of their incoming students over 3 cohorts.

 

New schools that replaced the closed schools have a much more advantaged student population than the schools they replace. New schools (for example those on the JFK and Columbus campuses) serve significantly fewer self-contained special education students than the schools they replaced. At the same time new schools with the higher proportions of self-contained special education students performed poorly on the DOE’s metrics. A review of new small schools on 8 campuses found that the proportion of self-contained students was on average 9% fewer than the schools they replaced. When new schools (for example Gateway and School for Community Research and Learning on the Stevenson Campus and UAA for History and Citizenship) do serve a similar proportion of self-contained students they are closed as well. In yet another example, at the closed Far Rockaway HS over 20% of the students had special needs while the new schools that replaced it had an average of 11% (of which, on average, 2% were self-contained students compared to 55% at Far Rockaway). At the closed Beach Channel HS school 19% of the students had special needs compared to 9% in the co-located school (of which 28% were highest need at Beach Channel vs. 0% in the new school). A review of 10 campuses showed that the schools that replaced the closed schools had students with incoming math/reading scores over 29 percentile points higher than those of the closed schools. In Queens, the large schools the DOE has targeted for closure admit overage students at about four times the rate of new schools in the same neighborhood. In Brooklyn, the rate is three to one, and in the Bronx it is double. The disparities are even greater when comparing closed schools to new schools by borough on the proportion of the highest need special education students. The new schools that replaced Morris HS in the Bronx have fewer overage, Limited English Proficient, free lunch and special needs students and  more students who have passed reading and math exams in middle school with higher prior attendance as well. The same is true of new schools that replaced the closed Bushwick HS in Brooklyn and Evander Childs HS in the Bronx.

 

DOE deliberately concentrated high needs students in specific schools and did not send high needs students to new schools. A report commissioned by the DOE found that concentrations of high needs students in schools was the most important factor by far in predicting low graduation rates. Nonetheless DOE continued to concentrate high needs students in specific schools, while other schools accepted very few high needs students. Advocacy groups found that ELL students were deliberately excluded from new schools and that special education students were deliberately excluded as well. A follow up report found that while the DOE formally reversed the policy of exclusion they did not actually ensure that ELL students were given access to new schools.

Researchers from Brown University found that the DOE deliberately sent the highest-need over the counter students to a specific group of large high schools and that most small schools were not sent such students. “Higher percentages of OTC students are assigned to struggling or persistently low-achieving high schools. Significantly higher percentages of OTC students were also assigned to high schools targeted for closure in the years before their closures were announced… our study identified a substantial group of high-performing high schools that are assigned very low percentages of OTC students and a similar-sized group of struggling high schools assigned very high percentages of OTC students.”

 

As a whole new schools perform no better than old schools. Despite some, thoroughly debunked, claims to the contrary new schools do not have very good outcomes. The Center for New York City Affairs released a report  that noted “of 158 new schools for which data is available, 90 saw their average daily attendance decline by at least 2 percent, and 37 saw their attendance decline sharply, by 5 percent. Only 15 had attendance rates that were increasing… a large proportion of the new schools achieved high graduation rates for their first class but sharply lower rates for their second class. Of 30 Bloomberg-era small schools that had graduated at least two classes in 2007, 13 had graduation rates that declined in the second four-year cohort.” However, the report did not take into account the more advantaged population of new schools when comparing their outcomes to old schools.  Taking into account the more advantaged students that new schools serve the Daily News reported that “on 2012 state reading test scores for 154 public elementary and middle schools that have opened since Mayor Bloomberg took office, nearly 60% had passing rates that were lower than older schools with similar poverty rates…Of 133 new elementary and middle schools that got letter grades last year, 15% received D’s and F’s — far more than the city average.” Old schools have a student college readiness rate 10 percentage points higher and a graduation rate 1% higher than those of the new schools. Schools considered for closure by the DOE have the same proportion of new schools as old schools (about 5% of all the schools in each category). When new and old schools, with comparable percentages of self-contained students, are compared old schools do better. The old schools have a 3% higher graduation rate and 11% more schools getting A’s or B’s on the school report cards. New middle schools are overrepresented on the NYS Focus list of struggling schools. They are 58% of the schools on the Focus list, although they are only 43% of schools overall. Looking specifically at schools working with the most disadvantaged students (the quartile of highest student need) the gap is even wider, with new schools being 66% of the Focus list and only 40% of all schools. Comparing new and old schools by decile of student need, new schools have lower college readiness rates across the board while passing a much larger proportion of students.

Part IV. Has the portfolio strategy based on market-choice and charter schools improved student outcomes?

The DOE’s portfolio/choice strategy has not addressed extreme divergence in school outcomes and the lack of diversity in schools. The DOE’s data sets show that schools in NYC are not providing students with equal opportunity. SAT scores- in only 28 out of 422 schools with reported data did the average critical reading score match or beat the national average score of 496 in 2012. In only 31 out of 422 schools with reported data did the average math score meet or beat the national average score of 514. Only 28 schools had scores that meet or beat the national average of 422 in writing.  Advanced Placement exams- in over 40% of schools not a single student took and passed an AP exam last year. In only 56 schools, out of the 468 with reported data, did more than 50% of students pass the AP exams they took. Eight schools account for over half of the number of AP exams NYC students passed last year. High school Advanced Regents Diploma graduation rate- only 20 schools out of 419 with reported data had 50% or more of their students graduate with this college preparatory diploma last year. College readiness- in only 30 schools out of 407 with reported data did 50% or more of students graduate with Math and English score that New York State consider indicative of college readiness.

De facto education redlining continues to exist in NYC with extreme inequities in educational opportunity across districts. One report concluded “low-income children and children of color are not receiving the benefits of school integration.” A report from New York University on the school choice process concluded “the decline over time in the number of academically mixed, educational option high schools is notable.” A report from Brown University found that “eighteen of the twenty-one neighborhoods with the lowest college-readiness rates are in the Bronx…thirteen of the fifteen neighborhoods with the highest college readiness rates are in Manhattan” and concluded that “high school choice seems not to have provided equity of outcomes for the city’s high school students.” The Independent Budget Office report analyzed data and found that African American, Asian, and White students in NYC now attend less diverse  middle and high schools than in the past. A New York Times infographic shows that although neighborhood diversity increased in NYC the typical African-American student’s school decreased in diversity. An audit of the high school admissions process by the NYC Comptroller’s Office concluded “we do not have reasonable assurance that the possibility of inappropriate manipulation of the student rankings, favoritism, or fraud is being adequately controlled.”  The number of Black and Hispanic students at the city’s specialized high schools has decreased although the tests used to determine admissions decisions are seriously flawed. One analysis found that the schools serving the most advantaged student populations have over 70% more “proficient” students than the schools serving the most disadvantaged students. Another analysis found not a single school serving and holding onto (i.e. without large cohort attrition rates) 90+% students living in poverty in the top half of city schools for English/Math proficiency.

 

Cohort attrition at charter schools is so high that parents end up with limited choice.  At some charter schools 24%-68% of the students are lost from each cohort. Up to 7 out of 10 parents at these charter schools do not see their child complete schooling at the charter school they chose. Other “high performing” charter schools suspend 25%-40% of their students a year in order to see gains in test scores. This means that each year up to 2 in 5 parents at these charter schools have their choice forcibly taken away by the very charter school they chose to send their child to. In one particularly egregious case a charter school pushed out 1/3 of its student body in order to improve test scores. Unlike public schools, charter schools are able to expel students and generally do not backfill the vacated seats in the cohort.

 

Charter schools do not serve a representative student population. If you are the parent of an English Language Learner or of a student with special needs you won’t have much choice since charter schools tend to accept very few of those students. And if they do accept your child it seems that at least some charter school chains will attrite English Language Learners and students with special needs at very high rates.  An academic research paper found that “English language learners are consistently underrepresented in charter school populations across 3 academic years.” An analysis of two districts found that the charter schools in those districts served 31% fewer students with low incoming Math scores, 18% fewer students with low incoming English scores, and 16% fewer special education students.

 

Charter schools are not transparent about their data and finances.  The DOE under Mike Bloomberg refused to share data on special education services in charter schools. A charter school chain sued New York State to prevent an audit of how it used public money. New York State backed down. Joel Klein, former DOE Chancellor, falsely claimed that charter schools “closed the longstanding achievement gap.” He made this claim even though the data showed it to be false. In 2007, when the big political push to open up more charter schools began, the data showed that charter high schools had an on-time graduation rate less than half that of public schools. Even so more charter schools were opened. As many sources have pointed out very little of the data that can be found for public view on the official web pages of public schools can be found on the official web pages of charter schools.

 

Charter schools do not have better scores than public schools. In 2009 a report showed that students in charter schools made less progress than those in public schools. In 2010 the data showed that public schools were 24% more likely to get A’s or B’s on the NYC school report cards than charter schools. In 2011 yet another analysis showed that charter schools are more likely to get D’s or F’s on the progress section of the NYC school report cards than public schools. In fact, charter schools were twice as likely to get F’s as public schools. Charter high schools had half the college readiness rate of public high schools. This past year charter schools saw bigger drops in performance on the Common Core exams than public schools. Additionally charter schools performed worse on average than public schools in English and the same as public schools in math. This is all the more concerning given the creaming, the extremely high suspension and alarming attrition rates. Despite these competitive “advantages” charter schools overall do worse than public schools. A report, funded by conservative groups, claiming the opposite had significant flaws and a review of the data found that, in fact, charter schools had student outcomes 6.5% below that of similar schools.  In 2012-13 Charter schools on average were at the 46th percentile in English and the 53rd percentile in Math growth. Focusing on the students that charter schools claim to be dedicated to serving, namely students who most need great schools and great teaching, they do even worse. The data reveal the sort of job charter schools are doing educating students who scored in the lowest third the year prior. Looking exclusively at progress with these high-needs student charters are at the 41st percentile in English and the 45th percentile in Math. This means that they are doing a below average job as compared to other schools in serving this population of students. According to teacher value-add metrics, an admittedly unreliable measure as we will see below, charter schools on average are not adding as much value as non-charter public schools in ELA and are adding about as much value in Math.

Charter schools are funded at higher levels than public schools. As a whole charter schools in public buildings receive almost $650 more per student in public money than public schools. When the fact that charter schools have fewer high needs student is accounted for charter schools in public buildings receive $2,200 more per student in public money than public schools. Many charter schools spend a lot more money per student than public schools. KIPP spends over $3,000 more per student. Other well-known charter chains spend $4,300 more per student than public schools. When charter schools are “co-located” with public schools they take resources such as libraries, science labs and computer rooms from the existing public school.

 

Student outcomes have not improved compared to similar districts, which did not implement the market-based reforms reviewed above, over the past 12 years. On the National Assessment of Education Progress (the only multi-year national measuring stick) Trial Urban District Assessment, NYC had lower growth in 8th grade reading and math by an average of 5 points and a single point of improved growth in 4th grade reading and math as compared to other large urban districts. The achievement gap increased by 3%. Sorted by demographic group NYC is second to last among large cities. NYC’s SAT scores declined by 20 points over the past 12 years, a larger decline than would be expected even with more students taking the exam. An educational impact statement prepared by the Coalition for Educational Justice found declining SAT and AP outcomes for Black and Hispanic students.

The high school graduation rate increased and there is plentiful evidence that this is due to changing student demographics, the lowering of standards, and the manipulation of metrics rather than educational progress. The under 18 population in NYC changed from 2000-2010 with a 15% decline among Blacks/African Americans, a 15% increase among Whites and 28% increase among Asians. Yonkers, the only demographically similar “Big 5” city in NYS has seen its graduation rate increase by 9% since 2008 while NYC’s has stalled.

The grading curve on the Algebra exam was lowered by over 25 points over this time period and the curve on the United States History exam by 13 points. At the same time, the content grew less rigorous and multiple choice questions compromised ever larger proportions of the exams.  As noted earlier, credits were granted at a rapidly increasing rate and Regents exam scores in NYC were inflated as compared to the rest of New York State. A 2009 NYC Comptroller’s Office audit “identified significant weaknesses that DOE has not addressed to help prevent or detect the manipulation of test scores.”

There is also evidence that schools started to cut corners to increase the graduation rate. A 2009 audit by the NYC Comptroller’s Office found that “schools 1) awarded students multiple credits for passing the same course two or more times 2) made numerous changes to transcripts without sufficient explanation and 3) did not maintain evidence that all transcript changes were properly approved.” It took another 3 years and pressure from the New York State Education Department (NYSED) for the DOE to follow-up. A 2012 internal audit “found problems at 55 out of 60  high schools reviewed… including the improper grading of Regents exams, the graduation of students who did not meet credit and testing requirements, the awarding of credits for work not performed, and gaps in reporting about students who supposedly switched to other schools.” It took additional pressure from the Commissioner of the NYSED for the DOE to finally begin to address the abuse of “credit recovery programs,” four years after the New York Times had reported on the issue. Data released after a Freedom of Information Law request revealed that in schools using credit recovery 2.6% of all credits were earned through this often unrigorous process. The graduation rate in 2012 got a bump of at least 2% from credit recovery. A 2009 report by a researcher at Columbia University found that from 2000 to 2007 the number of students discharged (and therefore not counted against the graduation rate) from NYC public schools increased by 3.5%. The 2007 graduation rate, reported as 62% by the DOE, was actually 43.6% when discharged students are factored in. A 2011 audit by the New York State Comptroller’s Office found that 14.8% of randomly selected general education students and 20% of special education students  the DOE coded as discharged should, in fact, have been classified as dropouts. It is disturbing to note that many of the fixes designed to address these issues were only put in place over the last year, when they will have no impact on the “numbers” for the Bloomberg-era.

 

Part V. What new policy directions should be considered for implementation?

A review of market-oriented reform policies in Chicago, Washington D.C., and New York found them to be largely failures. An in-depth review of the impact of the reforms reviewed found that the results in NYC as trumpeted by the media did not reflect the facts. Looking ahead, what specific alternative and improved policies should be implemented in the Big Apple?

An overall change from the zero sum game that characterized the Bloomberg years to a collaborative approach in which educators, parents and the DOE work together to improve all schools will definitely help. Improved tone will allow for an open and honest conversation on how to improve the experiences of our children in our schools. Parent groups have put forward specific proposals to bring back parent voice to schools. Limiting the focus on “accountability” will save hundreds of millions of dollars that can then be spent on supporting students and families via after school and summer programs. It will also help address the perverse incentives created by high-stakes accountability which encourages schools to avoid serving high-needs students, English Language Learners, and students with disabilities. As long as schools are penalized for working with such students a sad unfortunate version of “pass the hot potato” ensues and initiatives such as the special education reforms will have limited success.

It must be acknowledged however that many policy decisions are out of the DOE’s hands. NYSED signed on to Race to the Top with its emphasis on a free and largely unregulated education market, a form of corporate-style management not used by most high-performing corporations, and an extreme emphasis on test scores. An investigative reporter revealed many of these reforms are driven by a privately funded group within NYSED “not bound by Public Officer’s Law or ethics rules imposed on government officials.” As a former NYSED analyst recently testified “testing has been a defective engine driving the train.” Changing this is beyond the authority of NYC. Nonetheless, NYC should advocate with NYSED to allow students flexible options, in addition to standardized exams, to meet graduation requirements. This should include portfolios, demonstrations, and presentations and should be open to all students at all schools, not just the NYC Consortium Schools. Students should be able to be promoted and to graduate without having to score above a random cut-off number on a particular day on a specific test, as long as they can demonstrate learning in other ways. NYC should advocate for changes to the teacher/principal evaluation system with its reliance on invalid value-add metrics. Instead, teacher-driven goal setting on demonstrated student mastery of course standards should be used as a valid local measure. Educators would find the professional conversations around student success in their courses more meaningful than constant standardized testing. At the least, NYC should demand that NYSED prove that they have corrected all the problems with value-add metrics described earlier. Additionally, NYC should demand that NYS fulfill its funding obligations to NYC schools to the tune of the $3 billion shortfall they have refused to pay out.

There are a number of policy changes, entirely in NYC’s hands, that should be part of the conversations with parents, educators, students and communities as we blaze a new path:

Governance and Organizational Structures

  • Strengthen the role of the Panel for Educational Policy. The members should be selected for single fixed terms of office. The number of members on the panel should be increased to ensure greater diversity and more representation by the citizens of the city. The panel will then collaborate with the mayor in ensuring that community voice is heard. The Community Education Councils will be able to independently bring issues and concerns before the PEP.
  • Create a Youth Council, building on existing groups such as the Youth Researchers for a New Educational System, so that student voice is heard. Research in NYC shows that student policy level involvement and participation increases equity, opportunity, and engagement.
  • Create an independent research office to evaluate educational initiatives. Embed independent researchers in central and district offices to help evaluate the success of initiatives and to suggest new directions if necessary. This office should report to the Panel for Educational Policy. Complete comprehensive data sets of all DOE generated data, with student identifiers removed, should be posted online so that independent researchers can analyze and identify patterns and trends for possible follow-up by the DOE and the PEP.
  • Re-organize Tweed. The numerous program managers, directors, senior directors, deputy executive directors, executive directors, deputy CEOs, and CEOs should be streamlined so that every employee has clear goals and responsibilities. Only experienced educators with proven track records or people with proven oversight/control experience should be hired. Their work must be completed more efficiently and must directly support the work of schools. For example, enrollment and budgets should be finalized well in advance of the next school year (March at the latest). This will allow schools to complete hiring earlier, a strategy that research from NYC suggests results in positive outcomes.
  • Networks should be disbanded and a geographically-based structure that combines the support role of network leaders with the supervisory role of superintendents should be developed. Under the current split-function, both supervision and support functions receive less than full attention. Superintendents are overwhelmed by the number of principals they supervise and therefore often have little on-the-ground knowledge of the schools. Network leaders are overwhelmed by the compliance and back-office responsibilities that have devolved to the networks. Additionally, it is widely understood that although network leaders do not officially rate, select, or fire principals they are deeply involved in such decisions. Combining these functions so that supervisors are focused on school improvement will pay dividends.  In order to accomplish this, the nearly 1,000 current network personnel would be divided between instructional/youth development functions and compliance/HR/back-office functions. Each of the new superintendents will oversee/support no more than 15 or so schools. This would allow the superintendents to visit each of their schools multiple times each month, providing increased support and oversight. This will also allow the new superintendents to produce yearly short narratives of each school, on a staggered schedule, sharing strengths and areas of growth with parents. Another narrative report will be developed for the educators at the school. This will replace the School Quality Reviews, announced visits by outsiders that have become a dog and pony show. The savings from ending Quality Reviews will be returned to schools to support enriching field trips for students and families. Research has shown that well-designed field trips have significant positive impact on student critical thinking, historical empathy, and tolerance. The new superintendents will focus on instruction and youth development and will be supported by a team of 4-5 experts in these fields and in school data analysis. Each high school superintendent will have a dedicated programming/data specialist on the team to ensure that each school’s course sequencing/flow meets student needs. There have been more than enough disasters in this area. Programming is an often overlooked but very powerful lever for school improvement. After all the program determines where every single student and teacher is every period of every day. The remaining back-office functions around compliance, HR, budgets, legal, and the like would be carried out by a handful of regional geographically-based teams staffed by the remaining 600 or so network personnel.  This structure provides a differentiated structure of autonomy, support, and supervision for schools. A recent petition to keep networks was signed by fewer than 7.5% of principals, many of whom were selected to their positions by the very same networks and some of whom have said that they do not agree with the petition. Superintendents will need to be recruited through citywide and national searches, as many of the current superintendents, in their sidelined and minimalistic role, were not selected for their instructional/school support abilities. Finding and recruiting talent should not be difficult with the role and scope (even groups of only 15 schools is larger than most entire districts outside of NYC) of the new superintendent positions. Principals will form non-geographic affinity groups, facilitated by senior successful principals, to discuss and share practices across other non-geographic dimensions.
  • Implement school budgeting in a fair and consistent manner.  Fund all schools at 100% of the funding formula. Correct the weights to reflect true student needs such as weights based on ELL level and temporary housing status. Fund students with disabilities at the actual cost of the program each student receives. The money to do this can be found by ending the practice of special grants, programs, appeals and other off-budget items that are handed out with little transparency and accountability. Re-consider the policy of charging schools for the salaries of each teacher. This policy was designed to hold schools fiscally responsible for having a more senior staff, but there is no evidence that it helps students. Instead provide schools with a weighted teacher formula so schools receive an extra weight for 1st and 2nd year teachers on staff to support them, through one period of team teaching with a senior experienced educator, as they build capacity.  A report on other large districts that fund schools based on student need reveals that fewer than 15% of such districts charge schools directly for the salaries of their teachers. NYC should provide each school with a specific number of faculty “units” that are not dependent on salary/experience level. Additional units should be given for the early grades at high needs elementary schools to lower class sizes in a targeted way. All other funds should be distributed via FSF for schools to use as they determine is most beneficial which would include funding additional staff and any other resources. Currently school budget data can only be found through a tedious school-by-school process. Make the data public and easily accessible so that New Yorkers can see how schools are funded.
  • Discover and spread innovative practices from the ground up. Close the Innovation Zone office as top- down innovation is unlikely to work. Create challenge prizes modeled after the examples here http://challenge.gov/  and here http://www.xprize.org/. Educators and citizens would be able to submit specific challenges for inclusion on the DOE challenge list with prizes for workable and scalable solutions.
Student and School Support

  • Develop comprehensive early intervention and support services for students. Increase the number of speech teachers and math and reading intervention specialists in elementary schools and train all teachers on specific literacy and math intervention programs. This will require developing a citywide early warning system using indicators that have already been identified for the NYC context and specialized curriculum to identify and provide quality remedial opportunities to students who are falling behind.
  • Assist elementary schools in adding middle school grades and middle schools in adding elementary school grades. Research in NYC has shown that K-8 configurations work better for students.
  • Provide schools with expert support and guidance in curriculum. Curricula should, of course, include the fullest range of courses for students, including the arts which have intrinsic value and have also been shown to support improved graduation rates in NYC. Curricula should also include guidance and post-secondary counseling. We cannot take a sink or swim approach to teaching and learning, with every school left to their own devices. The Office of Teaching and Learning must be re-opened after having been shuttered under Bloomberg. Truly expert teachers must be identified at each grade level and subject area, their lessons videoed, their materials copied, and all of such resources must be shared with teachers throughout the city. Curricula must be developed at all grade levels, in all subjects and for all student populations. Curricula development should especially focus on developing interdisciplinary connections and projects. We should work towards the creation of interdisciplinary courses such as combined math and science or English and history classes that can be taught by teachers with certification in one of the disciplines thereby decreasing the number of students each teacher is working with. There is no one curriculum that works for every student and every school. Options and specific supports for students at different levels must be part of any curriculum. A platform should be developed for teachers to share and evaluate the usefulness of the customized changes they make for their students.
  • Tap into recent retirees, an underutilized resource, to support schools that are struggling. It is wrong to continue to close schools just because they serve a high-needs student population. Teams of experts must be formed to work directly with such schools in the areas of programming, data, and instructional cohesion. Each team must be assigned to one school to ensure quality support. The DOE and the UFT should collaborate on staffing teams with recently retired educators willing to work part-time who want to continue to contribute to schools and on evaluating results for further interventions if necessary.
  • The new administration has prioritized pre-K. This is long overdue as research shows that the achievement gap begins at the very earliest stages of the lives of our children. Growing income inequality over the past dozen years has led to poorer early childhood outcomes such as the increasing proportion of pre-term births in NYC since 2000. All the resources devoted to caring for and supporting parents and children from pregnancy through school enrollment should be combined in a single agency. We need to do everything possible to provide quality care such as home visits to parents in NYC. We need to partner with CUNY to ensure that we train and then hire the highest quality pre-K teachers and workers.
  • Provide schools with continuous feedback on how they are doing throughout the course of the year. Do not grade schools with a single letter, months after the school year ends. No teacher would ever use such a grading practice in the classroom.
  • Provide students with the additional quality learning time they need to succeed. The school year should be extended with a shorter summer break in the month of July and the new school year beginning again at the start of August. Summer learning loss is a huge factor in lower student outcomes and we must address it system-wide. After-school programs should be expanded and should primarily offer students enriched social and cultural experiences.
  • Build comprehensive learning communities offering a full array of advanced and AP courses, remedial coursework, College Now, CTE programs, GED and adult education options at all high school campuses. The data show that new small schools are often unable to offer students a variety of college preparatory courses. Many schools with specific CTE themes don’t have enough students genuinely interested in the program to develop a quality CTE option. Opening up such specialized courses to all students on a campus will build an academic community, communities that until now have only formed around the campus sports teams. A temporary moratorium on establishing most new schools, other than in exceptional cases of not enough seat capacity in specific neighborhoods, would allow resources to go towards building these rich campus-wide options, including 21st century CTE programs, for hundreds of existing schools. This will improve college and career readiness rates across all NYC schools. Ensuring that GED and adult education courses are also offered through every single high school and campus will increase the responsibility of every school to support each student through to graduation. It will also help address the poor outcomes of the current GED and adult education programs in the Alternative Schools and Programs District. These campus-wide programs will be ably supervised and supported by the new geographic-based superintendents. They will have the authority to ensure that these programs are well-aligned and that all schools on a campus are collaborating on providing access to these programs to all students.
  • Ensure that every single school has as diverse a student body as possible. Whether G&T programs, screened or specialized high schools, all schools must have a student body that reflects the diversity of NYC. The Office of Enrollment must improve their systems so that diversity is a crucial element of the process. Analyze the data on student characteristics to ensure that each school has a student body representative of the diversity of NYC. The Office of Student Enrollment should be held accountable for preventing the clustering of specific sorts of students in specific schools.
  • Negotiate contract changes to allow middle and high schools later start times that are better suited for the circadian rhythms of adolescents. Negotiate changes to allow elementary teachers to develop experience in and then have priority rights to specific grade levels. Both of these contract modifications are supported by the research in NYC.
  • Hold charter schools to the same standards of transparency and accountability as public schools if they want free rent and other NYC resources. They must be transparent about their budgets and their spending. This information must be posted on each school’s website, just as it is with public schools. Charter schools must be held accountable for every student who walks through their doors. They must no longer be allowed to transfer out 50+% percent of their students, but must work to educate and provide supports for every single student. An ombudsman position must be created so that parents of students in charter schools are able to have any issues, such as mistreatment of students with disabilities, addressed. Any new charter schools must be dedicated to the mission of serving truly underserved student populations as do the ROADS and Urban Dove charter schools.
  • Improve information sharing about schools with parents and students. Share a broad array of information about schools transparently and clearly. This should include, in addition to how students do on tests as compared to similarly situated students, such information as arts offerings, clubs, years of teacher experience, suspension rates, % of students leaving the school prior to natural transition point, and videos of classes for parents and students to view.  Develop a website and apps that allow parents and students to weigh this information at the level of priority important to them. Websites like this already exist, such as this one that allow the user to rank graduate programs based on individual priorities. Publish test score data using ranges to account for levels of statistical significance and include multiple years of data to account for meaningless year-to-year fluctuations. Create a system so that parents and students can write reviews of schools and publish that information on the website after a peer vetting and review process. Ensure that parents from every single school have timely updates on the children’s progress via an online grading system.
  • Use data in positive ways to identify specific teachers and departments that have outstanding results year after year. Data is crucial for improving education, as long as it is not limited to test scores and as long as it is used in transparent and honest ways. Given the misuse of data, of which numerous examples were cited above, it is critical that this be done in a way that educators find honest and professionally supportive. For example the Global History departments at the following schools have had results in the top 25% of all schools every year for the past 7 years accounting for, at least partially, incoming students characteristics: Bedford Academy HS, HS for Arts and Business, UA School of Design and Construction. The United States History departments at the following schools have had results in the top 25% of all schools every year for the past 7 years: HS for Arts and Business, Manhattan Bridges, Renaissance HS for Musical Theater and Technology. Let’s identify and do qualitative studies on what, if anything, these schools are doing well. Use technology platforms to have those teachers and departments share their practices and lessons across the city.
  • Use data to improve NYC schools. Instead of using data for political and ideological ends let’s start using data, only the statistically significant and meaningful data that is, to support and improve schools. Analyze the data to see if some schools have large gaps between course pass rates and Regents exam performance (including students who took a course but did not sit for the Regents exam). Support such schools in clarifying grading practices. Analyze the data to see if some schools have large gaps between graduation rate and student persistence in college. Support such schools in increasing the rigor of their academics and in building life-skills of students. Analyze the data to see if some schools lose, perhaps as a deliberate strategy to make their numbers look good, a large proportion of their students from each cohort. Support such schools in working with the every student who enters their doors and in lowering their attrition rate. Provide every school community with a data narrative identifying the long-term, multi-year trends and support each school in working to shift practices if necessary.
Teacher and Principal Development and Support

  • Select only proven and successful teachers to Assistant Principalships. Only Assistant Principals with proven track records should be hired for Principalships. Close down the Leadership Academy, which has had poor outcomes. Once the organizational structure suggested above has been implemented and quality superintendents have filled those positions they should carefully evaluate and make retention decisions about the existing principals. Quality school leaders must then be identified and developed over time. Current principals should offer sessions after school and over the summer in their areas of particular expertise for all educators. Teachers interested in administration positions would then be able to demonstrate their growing capacity for school leadership over time through performance tasks and on- the-job leadership.
  • Develop a clear job description for principals. Right now the DOE has created a paradoxical and hypocritical situation in which principals are told they should be instructional leaders while, at the same time, they are held responsible for numerous reporting and compliance duties that take up tremendous amounts of time. This has come about due to the fact that principal autonomy was more of a slogan than a reality. A clear set of responsibilities focused on the principal as chief teacher and coach must be communicated. A  Director of Compliance role should be established to handle the other managerial aspects of running a school. The principal must become the leader of the school community and all the members of the community, including school safety agents, custodians, and food service staff, must report to the principal. This will allow the academic and youth development goals of each school to be the primary focus of all adults in the building. Under the current structure school safety, for example, has become counterproductive with overemphasis on policing and punishment rather than restorative justice approaches. A simple change in reporting structure can help fix that.
  • Establish specific and clear outcomes required for the granting of tenure from the start of each teacher’s career. These outcomes should demonstrate the development of professional skill and expertise. Criteria should focus on the development of high-quality courses and class materials for each subject area in a teacher’s content area. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification process should serve as a model.
  • Develop a career ladder for teachers, supporting teachers in developing an area of professional expertise such as literacy interventions, remedial math instruction, or the use of technology in lessons. These teachers would teach 2-3 periods a day in their home school and then facilitate professional development in their area of expertise across school in their superintendency. This will save tens of millions of dollars yearly that are now paid out to consultants and for-profit groups. We have and can further develop expertise among the 75,000 NYC teachers and do not need to regularly call on outsiders without a deep current understanding of the classroom.
  • Negotiate additional pay for educators with stellar attendance (the contract refers to 7 sick and 3 personal days per year that are paid out at ½ their value upon leaving the DOE). Research shows significant impacts of teacher absences on student achievement. Paying teachers from 50%-75% of the value of days not taken (with the higher rate given to teachers with a higher proportion of unused days) above a floor (say 3 unused sick days) at the end of each school year will have positive impacts on students.
  • DOE and UFT should collaborate on a required pre-service summer training course for all new teachers. Data show that the first year of teaching is the most difficult for teachers resulting in the poorest student outcomes. Much of this is due to the fact that teachers are struggling with figuring out the curriculum and deciding what/how to teach content. Requiring every single new hire to take a summer course, taught by expert experienced teachers who share their teaching resources, on the specific curriculum the new teacher will be teaching over the school year will pay dividends.
  • DOE and UFT should collaborate on interviewing and selecting teachers into a hiring pool. The data shows that currently many teachers are hired at the last minute without going through a well-designed screening process. Much has been written about Finland’s approach to teaching as a profession, suggesting that improving the selectivity and quality of our teacher training programs would be of great benefit. That is, of course, not something NYC can address. But we can improve the selection and hiring of teachers. A mix of assessments, performance tasks, portfolio presentations, and group problem-solving scenarios/interviews should be created to screen teachers. This should include the Haberman Screener , the Math Knowledge for Teaching performance assessment,  Principals, parents, school staff, teachers, and students should form screening interview teams that will evaluate NYC teacher candidates on evidence of personal efficacy and other critical traits. All hiring must then be done from within this pool. Funding for this can come from the closing of the NYC Teaching Fellows program, a program that may have served a purpose when it was difficult to find credentialed teachers to teach in NYC and no longer has a purpose.

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December 30th, 2013

12/30/2013

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EDUCATION POLICY IN AMERICA BECOMES ALL ABOUT LABOR AND CORPORATE PROFITS.  DEPARTMENT OF LABOR AND LICENSING REGULATORY AGENCIES IN STATES ARE NOW TIED WITH STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION----

AND AS WITH CORPORATIZATION OF PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES, ALL THE PUBLIC MONEY FOR EDUCATION IS PAYING HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY TO ADMINISTRATIVE SALARIES, PRIVATE CONSULTING FEES, AND EDUCATION BUSINESSES LIKE PEARSON.




What needs to change asks the panel below--------the politicians pushing this mess.  We need to send these pols packing so we can go back to building strong public education!  Please listen to this video-taped panel on education policy and ask----why are we not having these conversations in Maryland?

Why are these education professionals shouting that Race to the Top is bad, and in Maryland the education leaders are saying the opposite? 

IT IS WHO THE GOVERNOR AND MAYOR APPOINT IN EDUCATION LEADERSHIP.  SEE WHY DEMOCRATIC STRONGHOLDS LIKE BALTIMORE AND NOW PRINCE GEORGES COUNTY HAS LOST ITS ABILITY TO ELECT SCHOOL BOARD OFFICIALS! 

When school administrators are making hundreds of thousands of dollars and have little background in education.....when billions are being spent in education businesses that make huge profits with no positive effect----you see a fleecing of our education system.


CTU President Karen Lewis joins us to discuss the effectiveness of No Child Left Behind.


‪#‎1u‬ The Professors | Dec. 22, 2013 - No Child Left Behind: Time for a Change? | WYCC PBS...video.wycc.orgCTU President Karen Lewis joins us to discuss the effectiveness of No Child Left Behind.
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If you look at the article below this one you will see all of the educational programming that leads to high-skilled jobs and education readiness for future higher education are being dismantled supposedly because of costs constraints but it isn't a lack of money, it is where the money is being funneled.  If public money is going to replace a businesses human resources department and pay for ordinary job training for an individual each time he/she changes jobs, you are not going to have money to expose these students to more sophisticated skills development.

What we want to do is allow unions and labor organizations that have always handled this take that expense and connect our K-12 to all of the corporate facilities built on public university campuses.  Those hundreds of billions used to build 'world-class' campuses need to come back to the communities and tying them to our schools is a first step!


Budget cuts kill acclaimed space program for students at Northeast High

Several NASA astronauts visited the program over the years; at right is a photograph of astronaut Michael Anderson, who died in the Columbia accident in 2003. The closure is "really, really unfortunate," said junior Leon Frame, who was an astronaut this month in the final simulated mission. (ERIC MENCHER / File Photograph)GALLERY: ERIC MENCHER. In this photo, John Schneider (left) and… By Kristen A. Graham, Inquirer Staff WriterPosted: December 24, 2013

For 50 years, Northeast High School students have taken part in sophisticated simulated space missions that halted asteroids speeding toward Earth, repaired satellites, and landed on the moon.

That era is over.

Last week, the nationally acclaimed Space Research Center after-school program - and dozens of other academic clubs - were eliminated, yet more victims of the Philadelphia School District's ongoing budget cuts.

"It's really, really unfortunate," Northeast junior Leon Frame said. He was an astronaut this month on the program's final mission.

The Space Research Center program, known as SPARC, was just one of dozens of extracurricular activities dropped at Northeast because of fiscal pressures. Debate, dance, Science Olympiad, and other clubs also were cut.

Sports are funded by the district's central office and were not affected.

The academic clubs had operated with no budget since September, principal Linda Carroll said, and teachers volunteered in the hope money could be found to keep activities going.

But recently, "the people who have been running things said, 'As much as we want to do it, we can't,' " Carroll said. "I don't fault them. People get tired of being disrespected. They bank on our passion."

Carroll hopes to restore the clubs, and laments their loss.

"I feel so badly," she said. "The kids are the ones who are suffering."

The space program, which had 120 student participants this year, has a rich history.

In the early 1960s, at the height of the space race, physics teacher Robert A.G. Montgomery launched it to pique students' interest when the United States was in a frenzy to beef up science education. Early flight simulations happened on the auditorium stage, with a rudimentary capsule made of lumber.

NASA donated money early on, and it recognized the program on multiple occasions. Northeast's Medical, Engineering and Aerospace magnet program - which still exists - began because of it.

Eventually, a separate wing was built for the after-school club and the magnet program, with elaborate capsules built on site.


Several NASA astronauts have visited the program, and one of them, Philadelphia native Chris Ferguson, was honorary flight director and teleconferenced with students in 2007 and 2008.

Students studied engineering, robotics, computer science, and trained in CPR and first aid. Their work culminated every year in a two-day simulated space mission that required months of planning.

Funding the program has been a continual problem, said retired teacher Anthony Matarazzo, who served as its director from 1991 to 2005.

"They almost did away with it for the last few years," Matarazzo said. "They did flights, but teachers were volunteering. Each year, there was a little less."

The loss of the space program is a loss for Philadelphia, Matarazzo said. It drew students from across the city.

"It was a marvelous program. The kids who went through this program have become unbelievable assets to this country," he said. Alumni include engineers, professors, surgeons, computer scientists, and others.

Senior Jeremy Cruz, one of the program's managers, was crestfallen at the news of its elimination, news he had to deliver to his classmates in an emotional meeting last week.

"We were heartbroken, all of us, even the teachers," Cruz said.

He and others are frustrated that academic clubs were cut but athletics remain, and they have vowed to fight.


"We were angry. We were sad. But we weren't just going to take this sitting down," Cruz said.

Students have reached out to Mayor Nutter and others in the hope someone can help. Cruz estimated it would take several thousand dollars to restore the program.

Cruz's mother, Lisa Maldonado, knows what the space research program has done for her son. He's not into sports, but this activity gave him a chance to shine.

"This teaches them about teamwork, and they loved doing it - they loved the flights, everything," Maldonado said. "To take this away from them is such a shame."

The loss of the space program is a symptom of a larger problem. Systemwide, massive money troubles have stripped schools of staff, programs, and services. Many schools have not run clubs this year.

At Northeast, the city's largest school with more than 3,000 pupils, things are so dire there was no cash to pay for batteries for students' calculators. A fund-raiser was held to drum up the $1,600 needed to keep the calculators powered.

Principal Carroll knows what losing the space program and other clubs means.

"If you want children to get a quality education, you can't just talk about it - you have to back it up," she said. "We want to keep their interest, but we just don't have the funding for these extracurriculars."

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One of the biggest complaints I hear from people in the workplace is that these programs do not emphasize workplace safety and teach employees labor laws and OSHA safety standards so we have workers entering the workplace without knowledge of these labor regulations and agency requirements.  Accidents and on-the-job injuries are at a record high and people do not feel safe while working their jobs because of this lack of readiness.  Apprenticeships would normally last several years where these job training programs are often several months at best.

So, as corporations disregard OSHA and labor law, as the Federal agencies tasked with overseeing workplace violations, this is another step towards ending New Deal labor protections.  In Maryland, the DLLR has no operations looking at workplace abuse, employee exploitation, and workplace safety......AND THAT IS THE AGENCY THAT DOES THIS.

We think that DLLR needs to spend its time and resources doing the job it was tasked to do and allow corporations and unions to train people for specific job readiness!



Putting employers in the driver's seat for job training New Md. program, other efforts across the country ask businesses to work together to close gaps in job seekers' skills


By Jamie Smith Hopkins, The Baltimore Sun 9:25 a.m. EST, December 29, 2013

Even as the manufacturing industry sheds jobs overall, a number of firms in Maryland want to hire — and aren't having an easy time of it.

That's what the Maryland Manufacturing Extension Partnership heard when the nonprofit talked to 40 employers this year. Most of the entry-level people the firms bring on don't work out, in part because it can be a culture shock to take a job in manufacturing for the first time, said Brian Sweeney, executive director of the manufacturing-assistance organization.

A new state program aims to fill such gaps with training designed and launched by employers. Twenty-nine groups in a variety of business sectors will get funding to analyze their needs and plan training next year, including the "boot camp" prep course envisioned by manufacturers, the state plans to announce Monday.

The Employment Advancement Right Now program, called EARN, is part of a national movement to get employers more deeply involved in efforts to develop a skilled workforce — a shift that has gathered steam in recent years as federal funding for training has shrunk.

Elisabeth A. Sachs, director of the EARN program for the state Labor Department, describes the benefits of the approach.

"Instead of … 'train and pray' — you sort of throw the money out there, hope people get a credential and then find a job — we're starting with strategically getting employers in an industry to the table and saying, 'What skill sets are missing, what curriculum changes, what on-the-job training, what expert teachers do you need to bring in … to get the skilled worker at the end of the investment?' "

The nation's major training programs in the 1970s, '80s and most of the '90s took a worker-centric approach.

"Very little was focused on understanding what employers needed," said Fred Dedrick, executive director of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, which aims to get industry more involved in training.

The 15-year-old Workforce Investment Act system requires states to appoint oversight boards made up mostly of employers. But Dedrick said that usually produces general ideas about needs — which he said is "not enough to build a program around."

Enter the industry partnerships, in which employers and industry groups in the same sector come up with specific plans for getting more trained job candidates. A growing number of states are encouraging and funding them.

"It's a real shift in the way we're doing occupational training in communities all over the country," said Rachel Gragg, federal policy director with the National Skills Coalition, which advocates for increased access to training.

Some Maryland employers organized years ago. The Baltimore Alliance for Careers in Healthcare, for instance, was launched in 2005 with funding from local foundations to work on creating a bigger pipeline of trained entry-level workers.

In other cases, groups that help low-income people teamed with employers to make training more effective. Halethorpe-based Vehicles for Change, working with like-minded nonprofits including the Center for Urban Families and Catholic Charities of Baltimore, launched an auto detailing training program this fall with assistance from a local detailing firm.

Cockeysville-based Diamond Detail helped with the curriculum, donated equipment, trained the trainer and offered suggestions about how to organize the work area.

"Since they helped us set the program up, we're giving them first crack at our recently trained detailers," said Philip C. Holmes, director of the new Academy for Automotive Careers at Vehicles for Change.

Chuck Heinle, Diamond Detail's president, said he's hired three graduates already. The 190-employee company is growing fast and needs a pipeline of new employees. Heinle likes getting them already trained and with a reference from Vehicles for Change. The organization can monitor work habits, because students who finish the four-week training program temporarily stay on as paid apprentices.

Vehicles for Change is working to get other employers involved in the program — if only to come in and watch participants clean, polish and repair scratches in cars donated for low-income families.

"Our key strategy is to get the company to visit and see the quality of the work our students can do, and then our theory is, if they can see the demonstrated skills, the company may overlook some of the issues that our students are dealing with," Holmes said.

Homelessness, for instance. Four of the program's five apprentices are living in shelter arrangements such as transitional housing.

Tyrone Carter, one of the apprentices, lives at Christopher Place Employment Academy in Baltimore, a residential program run by Catholic Charities. As he cleaned a slightly dented Nissan last week, first with water and then with clay to pull out stubborn dirt and dust, Carter said he has two jobs now — detailer during the week and security guard in a homeless shelter on weekends.

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If you look at the number of organizations tied to this nonprofit......many of them corporate representatives with some community organizations created just for the job training process.....and think to yourself

WE GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL AND EITHER WENT TO COLLEGE OR WAS HIRED TO A JOB AND TRAINED EITHER BY THAT BUSINESSES' HUMAN RESOURCES OR A LABOR APPRENTICESHIP.  WE GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE AND IF YOU HAD A DEGREE YOU WENT INTO MIDDLE-MANAGEMENT OR TO A PROFESSIONAL POSITION.

There was no need for this long list of organizations all taking public money to promote some kind of job training.  It is ridiculous and will lead to public money once going to strong advanced education now going to just placed people into individual jobs!


National Skills Coalition



Our Mission.

National Skills Coalition organizes broad-based coalitions seeking to raise the skills of America’s workers across a range of industries. We advocate for public policies that invest in what works, as informed by our members’ real-world expertise. And we communicate these goals to an American public seeking a vision for a strong U.S. economy that allows everyone to be part of its success.



How We Advance our Mission:

We organize.  We build multi-stakeholder coalitions that demonstrate broad-based support for a new national skills policy. We help our diverse coalition partners develop a common skills agenda that serves the common good. We then bring the real-world expertise of these workforce development practitioners into policy discussions.

We advocate.  We actively work to change policies. We do not focus on a narrow set of policies that impact a single stakeholder group, rather, we advocate across policy silos, ensuring that we’re helping all workers at every point in their careers. We also connect federal and state advocacy, providing policy expertise to our coalition partners to support their efforts both in Washington, DC, and in their state capitals.

We communicate.  We keep our members informed about policy efforts at the state and federal levels, providing timely and actionable information. We also reach out to people outside the workforce development field, helping our members reach new audiences and thereby better engage the American public.
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Below you see the words of educators in NYC in regards to Bloomberg and Wall Street's attempts to kill public education there.  Baltimore is a NYC satellite as Johns Hopkins is Bloomberg's to run.  We are seeing education policy straight from what is spoken of below brought to you by Alonzo and his privatizing Baltimore City School Board appointed by O'Malley.  Remember, the governor is appointing because Rawlings-Blake handed Baltimore City Schools to the state.

We need our schools back in Baltimore's hands and a mayor who works for the public interest and not Wall Street to reverse all these really bad policies as is happening in NYC.


Outsourcing Public Education: Things Fall Apart With The Incremental Privatization of NYC Public Schools
Jan. 27, 2007
1:19 pm
by Leo Casey


Edwize has obtained a copy of the RFP [Request for Proposal] for “Partnership School Support” that the New York City Department of Education has hidden from the general public in a remote precinct of its website accessible only to private vendors with passwords. In it one finds the details of one of the central components of the latest structural reorganization Chancellor Klein want to impose on New York City public schools.

What is remarkable about the RFP is the general plan to outsource to these private ‘partnership’ entities virtually all of the educational support functions traditionally fulfilled, for better or for worse, by the DOE. Instructional program, professional development, special education: all of these and more will now be organized and supported by the Partnerships. And in contrast to the current intermediaries such as New Visions and Urban Assembly, this RFP invites ‘for profit’ EMOs [Educational Maintenance Organizations, modeled after Health Maintenance Organizations or HMOs] like Edison Schools and Victory Schools to become Partnerships.

Corporate outsourcing operates generally on the theory that an organization should focus on its core mission, and turn over ancillary functions which are not central to its work to other institutions to run. Applied to education, such a theory would have an entity like the Department of Education outsourcing functions like transportation, food services and facilities, in order to focus on what is central to its mission, teaching and learning. One could argue that the DOE need not have top of the line luxury buses moving children or serve the most nutritious, most appealing food in its school cafeterias, and so could afford to outsource such services, but that it needs to provide world class, quality education in its classrooms.


But what the DOE proposes to do here is the inverse of this corporate model of outsourcing. They are taking the core mission of the Department of Education — the promotion of excellent teaching and learning which is at the center of any education worthy of that name — and are outsourcing it. Such a move is a tacit admission that those who make the decisions at Tweed are themselves incapable of providing educational leadership. They lack the most elemental understanding of how the world of instruction works, and so propose structural change upon structural change, with every one avoiding the substance of teaching and learning like it were the plague. If anything, they fear educational expertise, for it exposes their own lack of knowledge and leadership: just look at an organizational strategy which has systematically purged professional educators from the top echelons of the Department of Education. With this week’s retirement of Rose DePinto, in part a reaction to yet another structural revolution bringing more institutional chaos and instability, there remains in the inner councils of Tweed literally a single educator who knows what it takes to teach real classes and lead real schools — Eric Nadelstern, the last of the educational Mohicans. There is a sort of perverse logic to turning over to private entities what the current leadership at Tweed is so clearly incapable of doing itself, as a result of its own design.

The permanent revolution of endless structural reorganizations brought to us by Chancellor Klein has been bereft, from day one, of any educational vision and any instructional strategy for New York City schools. Instead, an obsession with structure — at its root, an obsession with power as an end in itself — has been the motivating spirit. The logic of this structure driven quest is the devolution not of educational decision making power and authority, but of accountability. The goal is to divest the Chancellor and the Department of Education of responsibility for what goes on in its own schools. Five years in charge, longer than any other Chancellor in two plus decades, and Joel Klein still blames everyone but himself for the shortcomings of New York City public schools. Now he wants to organize the entire school system around that political strategy of accountability and responsibility avoidance. A proper name for these perpetual organizational revolution and obsession with structure would be “Classroom Last.”

In this regard the details of the RFP are telling. Schools do not get to choose their partnerships — they can simply state their preferences, and the DOE makes the choices. Just as importantly, schools do not get to drop their partnerships if they find them useless or worse — only the DOE can do that. There is no system of accountability for the partnerships, no metrics by which their performance will be measured, no responsibility for their actual work in their schools — the best one can find is some vague language of how the DOE will canvas the schools to obtain their opinion on the quality of services provided. Most significantly, there is no responsibility and accountability for the Department of Education in Klein’s brave, new world. It turns over all of its educational support functions to the partnerships, and leaves for itself only the training of principals [the Leadership Academy], the setting of standards, the operation of the accountability system and actual decision making authority. All responsibility, all accountability rests with the schools.

This educational dystopia, one which Klein promoted in the recent Tough Choices, Tough Talks report, would remake public education in the image of what the Bush administration and the Louisiana Governor have done to the post-Katrina New Orleans public schools. The results in New Orleans should give anyone who cares about the education of children – and especially, children living in poverty who are at most risk for academic failure – serious pause about conducting more experiments in this vein. Make no mistake about it: we are clear that the management of our public schools needs to be reformed, and that real decision making power needs to be devolved to the schools, in the hands of school leaders, teachers, and parents. We need real empowerment of schools, not rhetorical empowerment smokescreens. We need public schools accountable to the public, not outsourced to private entities in a perpetual deferral of accountability by its top leadership. Klein’s “Classroom Last” will not accomplish these ends, but only make matters worse. It — and the New Orleans public schools — is a world perhaps best captured in the title of Chinua Achebe’s novel of post-colonial Africa, borrowed from a William Butler Yeats’ poem: The center can not hold. Things fall apart.

The way forward for New York City public schools is not putting up for sale the leadership of teaching and learning in New York City public schools. Rather, it is the replacement of a Chancellor of New York City public schools incapable of providing educational leadership with a Chancellor who can do precisely that. Since you can’t lead us in teaching and learning, Joel Klein, step aside for someone who can, someone who will accept responsibility and embrace accountability for himself and his administration, someone who will set about restoring the professional educational talent you have driven from the management of New York City public schools, someone who will empower New York City public schools to do their best.


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LET'S LOOK AT ONE ISSUE AS REGARDS EDUCATION AND JOB TRAINING......PRE-K. 

Now, pre-K is good, we like more money for pre-K right?  Only, none of the money gets to the classroom.....it is all administrative and building structures.

JOB TRAINING IS STARTING IN PRE-K WITH THESE NEO-LIBERALS.


Keep in mind the panel in the education discussion above stated clearly that none of the funding was getting to the schools and all are being sent to administrative agencies not even connected to education.  Keep in mind as well that Maryland has a long history of being at the low end of all social welfare funding.  Look at where we were in 2004.  Now, in Baltimore with tiered per-student funding and underserved and special needs children getting the least----most of our schools cannot even afford to buy toilet paper (unless a private corporation has partnered and donates tons of money).

I showed you how private non-profits are regarded as offering little help and actually appear to be fronts to move money.  Now, that's not ALL private non-profits, but those attached to these education reforms are just that.  From Special Needs to Wellness private non-profits, parents are seeing nothing useful from them and are shouting they are taking away all public voice on these issues.  INDEED, THAT IS WHAT THESE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS COMING WITH THIS REFORM ARE MEANT TO DO!

Look at yet another education issue that will take public education money and consider where they are going to spend that money.  Remember, the goal with education privatization is to create a Pre-K - college tracking of students through testing and assignment to vocational tracks from that testing.  So, we can bet that the pre-K funding listed below in the Federal stimulus is all about creating these education testing and structures for pre-K. 

THE CLASSROOMS THEMSELVES WILL GET ALMOST NOTHING......WHICH IS WHAT THE PANEL ABOVE IS REFERRING.




Costs Per Child for Early ChildhoodEducation and CareComparing Head Start, CCDF Child Care, andPrekindergarten/Preschool Programs

(2003/2004)Douglas J. BesharovJustus A. MyersandJeffrey S. MorrowAugust 31, 2007Welfare Reform AcademyUniversity of MarylandAmerican Enterprise Institute1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.Washington, D.C. 20036www.welfareacademy.org


Of those states with a prekindergarten or preschool program, state spending varied substantially, from a low of about $721 in Maryland to a high of about $9,305 in New Jersey(about $697 and about $9,000, respectively, in 2004 dollars)




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Remember how casinos and their profits were going to bring money to education coffers and we see it all being diverted to development projects around the casinos?  Job training for casino workers is education they say!  That is what is happening with all of the funding below.  It sounds great that funds are going to underserved schools, or funding head start but what are these private non-profits offering?

As we see with after-school programs attached to underserved schools.....it is more of the worst in education environment you can provide for students.  Pre-K will be more of the same.


DEMAND THAT RACE TO THE TOP AND EDUCATION FUNDING GO TO STRENGTHEN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND NOT BUILD A SYSTEM OF PRIVATE NON-PROFITS SERVING AS SCHOOL SUBSTITUTES!

The Stimulus Package: Education and Job Training By FARHANA HOSSAIN, AMANDA COX, JOHN McGRATH and STEPHAN WEITBERG



Category Programs Cost

Education and Job Training; Aid to States Help states prevent cuts to essential services like educationmore » $53.6 billion

Education and Job Training; Aid to Individuals Increase the maximum Pell Grant by $500, from $4,850 to $5,350 $15.6 billion

Education and Job Training; Tax Cuts for Individuals Expand higher education tax creditsmore » $13.9 billion

Education and Job Training Provide additional money to schools serving low-income childrenmore » $13.0 billion

Education and Job Training Provide additional money for special educationmore » $12.2 billion

Aid to States; Education and Job Training Create new bonds for improvements in public educationmore » $10.9 billion

Education and Job Training Finance job training programsmore » $4.0 billion

Education and Job Training Increase financing for Head Start and Early Head Startmore » $2.1 billion

Education and Job Training Finance technology upgrades in schoolsmore » $650 million

Education and Job Training; Aid to States Help states and local school districts track student data and improve teacher qualitymore » $550 million

Education and Job Training; Health Train primary health care providers, including doctors and nursesmore » $500 million

Education and Job Training; Energy; Unemployment Train workers for careers in energy efficiency and renewable energy fields $500 million

Education and Job Training
; Aid to States; Unemployment Help states find jobs for unemployed workers $500 million Education and Job Training Provide additional money for College Work-Study program $200 million


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If you look at Baltimore City schools all of the education programs having to do with students becomes attached to private non-profits, yet if you look below at the wealthy Montgomery County where democratic institutions still work-----the public schools are the ones getting the funding and growing strong public schools.

Baltimore City schools are largely charters and vocational academies and private non-profits control all student enrichment......only many of the families are not feeling the enrichment.  After school programs are largely just more of the reading and math online training that fills the public schools in the city. 

REMEMBER HOW THE PANEL ABOVE DESCRIBED THE TOTAL EMPHASIS ON READING AND MATH TO THE DETRIMENT OF ALL OTHER SUBJECTS?  THAT IS WHAT WE HAVE IN BALTIMORE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.



Montgomery County
Grantee: Montgomery County Community Action Agency


Delegate Agency:

  • Montgomery County Public Schools
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Now, we know the reason Baltimore City as with other urban schools like Chicago and Philadelphia do not get the money Montgomery County does is that the majority of students are underserved and special needs.  The funding is being kept from these 'public' schools and placed in the hands of selected charters and religious organizations for the most part.  The programs that these groups offer are often tied with the national education businesses pushing privately developed programs.  Where an individual school designs each program to fit its community's needs.

For those thinking this is happening only in poor schools think again......middle-class schools are getting these canned programs as well.


Head Start The Y of Central Maryland

is one of the largest providers of Head Start services in Maryland. We are the Grantee for Head Start in Baltimore County and are a Delegate of the Baltimore City Head Start program. Our main objective is to prepare young, economically disadvantaged children for success in school and life. We provide comprehensive early intervention to low-income children and their families and help support parents as the first and primary educator of their children. Collectively, we serve more than 950 infants, toddlers and preschool children through our Head Start programs.



Baltimore City
Grantee: Baltimore City Head Start/Mayor's Office of Human Services 


Delegate Agencies:

  • Baltimore Metropolitan Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc
  • Dayspring Head Start
  • Emily Price Jones Head Start
  • Morgan State University Head Start
  • St. Bernadine's Head Start
  • St. Jerome’s Head Start
  • St. Veronica’s Head Start
  • St. Vincent De Paul Head Start
  • Umoja Head Start Academy
  • Union Baptist/Harvey Johnson Head Start
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As you see  below all of this is tied with private corporate non-profits and you can believe that Maryland is just the same.  We do not have the media coverage on this until after things happen......but it will be the same as Johns Hopkins is behind Baltimore's education policy and they are neo-cons just as in Georgia.

Posted: 11:20 p.m. Friday, Sept. 20, 2013

All eyes on pre-k when Arne Duncan and U.S. business leaders converge here Monday

By Maureen Downey



Stephanie Blank is the chairman of the board of directors of GEEARS, the Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students. Carol Tome is the Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President, Corporate Services of The Home Depot. 

They wrote this guest column to highlight Monday's 2013 National Business Leader Summit in Atlanta where U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will discuss the importance of investment in early learning to strengthen the economy and global competitiveness. 

 The summit, hosted by ReadyNation-America’s Promise Alliance and the Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students (GEEARS), will bring together business executives and public officials to discuss support for early learning to build the nation’s workforce and strengthen the economy.

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Math Curriculum for Special Ed aligned to Common Core Standardswww.ablenetinc.com/
Curriculum/Equals-Mathematics-Program 

Equals is a Pre K-12 curriculum that provides the best in mathematics instruction for educators who work with special needs students or in alternative education programs.


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This is what vocational tracking gives you and in Chicago it starts with pre-K.  Remember, Arne Duncan and Obama come from Chicago and pushed this last decade on the citizens of Chicago and it is now being exported.  We know how much all parents and families are shouting against these reforms in Chicago and NYC.


It is not only the poor shouting so do not assume this is happening only in poor areas......it is happening to middle-class schools as well.  I Maryland, Baltimore is building a private structure for schools that will be exported to the state once finished


Cramming for kindergarten testsParents hiring tutors to prep preschoolers for CPS selective-enrollment exam

February 14, 2011|By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Tribune reporter
    •  

To test into some of Chicago's top schools, incoming kindergartners must be able to do more than just count to 10 or rattle off the alphabet.

They could be asked to identify trapezoids, figure out how many cookies they'd have if Mom put two more on their plate, demonstrate advanced literacy skills and, for gifted programs, be able to infer relationships, recognize patterns and predict what comes next.

You can probably predict what comes next yourself: With 3,337 applications filed for about 500 seats in Chicago Public Schools' classical and gifted kindergarten programs next fall, parents are helping their preschoolers cram for the tests.

"It's just yet another example that the country has gone test crazy," said Robert Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, a national nonprofit that advocates for other methods of assessing young children. "This sort of insanity testing produces test coaching for little kids and gaming of the system by parents and others to figure out what's on the test and get their kid a leg up. We're not letting kids be kids, and we're making them into little Einsteins."

But with low-performing neighborhood schools an unattractive option and the cost of some private schools out of reach, many parents see CPS' selective enrollment programs as the best public education option in the city. As kindergarten is an entry year for most of those programs, many parents are hiring private tutors, researching tests used in other large urban school systems, finding age-appropriate questions online and doing whatever else it takes to get their kids on the right track early.

"I was blissfully naive about how this all worked when my older daughter tested for first grade," said Shannan Bunting. Even though with no special preparation her daughter made it into Decatur Classical Elementary, a top-scoring school, "we realized we couldn't do that for our second child and just hope to be lucky," she said.

This year she hired a former Montessori teacher to tutor her preschooler on everything from learning continents to sounding out words.



On our newsroom blog Trib Nation, how a conversation with parents became a sidebar on how to prepare kids for these tests. Such a move would not be unusual in New York, where parents have for years hired tutors and paid upward of $1,000 for "kindercramming" boot camps for 3- and 4-year-olds, but in Chicago it's a new phenomenon.

Although a test prep company called SelectivePrep offers courses for sixth-graders and up for admissions to top-scoring middle and high school programs, nothing similar exists for kindergarten.

And getting a child in a school for that first year can help them ultimately secure spots in subsequent years, which is becoming increasingly difficult. This year, CPS has 13,058 applications on file for approximately 1,150 seats in classical and gifted elementary schools. Some of the best schools have found themselves rejecting students who score as high as the 98th percentile on entrance exams.

CPS officials don't encourage prepping children for the tests because it skews the results, said Abigayil Joseph, head of CPS' Office of Academic Enhancement.

"We want children to come to the table with their natural ability, without having been prepared," she said. "That's how we find the best match. We don't want them to come in and do well because they've been prepped, but then be in an environment that's two grades above their level."

But that doesn't stop parents from trying to do what they consider best for their kids. Some even wonder why CPS doesn't follow New York's example and tell parents which test they use.

"Why is it that there's so much secrecy about it?" asked Gail Wilson, who hired a tutor to work with her two daughters to prepare for gifted testing. "They tell you (that) you can't prepare, but you can."

Author Karen Quinn, who parlayed her extensive research and her personal experience into a popular book, "Testing for Kindergarten," agrees with those parents.

"So much of it is exposure to concepts," said Quinn, who sells a $300 Candyland-like test-prep game she developed. "If they're practicing the kinds of questions that are on these kinds of tests, they will be more prepped than a child that goes in cold."

Quinn said her game can help spark the critical thinking parts of the brain and gets children familiar with answering test questions similar to those used for gifted programs. She also offers daily questions and tips to people who pay $5 a month to access her website, testingmom.com. More than 1,000 Chicago-area parents have joined.

Tutor Lemi Erinkitola started a tutoring company for kids as young as 3, preparing children, mostly on the South Side, for CPS' admissions tests. She said that when she went through the process with her own three children, she found few resources.


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December 26th, 2013

12/26/2013

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FROM PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES TO PUBLIC K-12, PLEASE FIGHT THE CAPTURE OF OUR MOST DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTION-----PUBLIC EDUCATION!!!!!

MARYLAND IS GROUND ZERO FOR THE WORST OF THIS AND ALL OF THE CURRENT CANDIDATES ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND WILL CONTINUE THE PRIVATIZATION!



This is what is being made of our public universities as they have been tied to corporations as R and D extensions and now all academic research is tainted with the drive for profit. Maryland and O'Malley are ground zero for this and we need to dismantle these connections so we can go back to being one of the strongest systems of education in the world!

In Maryland, Johns Hopkins has been a corporation for this past decade and has used a trillion dollars in Federal, state, and local taxes to build a private global corporation and still pays no taxes.  THIS IS AN ANATHEMA TO PUBLIC AND DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION AND NEEDS TO BE REVERSED.


I listened as corporate NPR stated that a university in Kentucky was installing upscale dorms on campus with the goal of eliminating all of the old ones and charging high dorm costs to students.....obviously costing out the lower/middle class.  Recruiting those foreign students is the goal.  THIS WOULD HAPPEN SAYS NEO-LIBERAL NPR!  OH, REALLY????

Obama sent hundreds of billions of dollars in 'stimulus' funding to universities to do this-----it was a goal to make universities exclusive.  Now, labor and justice have campuses with strong facilities that need to come back to the people.  We can bring costs back down by using all of the corporate structures for our K-12 education extensions of the classrooms and allow our lower/middle class students quality dorms and classrooms on the cheap!


Please consider what all of this buildup of our public universities as corporate partners will look like as we return them to the public education mission.  Ending all of the administrative connections between university, corporations, and NIH and other Federal funding agencies will drop the costs of tuition....all of the costly product production research will be returned to the simplicity of basic research.  This is towards where we need to go. 

WE ARE NOT COMPETING WITH THE WORLD....WE ARE GROWING OUR DOMESTIC ECONOMY AND MAKING OUR COUNTRY STRONG FROM THE INSIDE OUT!

As MarketPlace Money finally admitted, the movement against Race to the Top is strong and growing.  No one wants it.  When you hear that over 40 states signed on that was because Obama made Federal funding for education tied to Race to the Top.  States signed on for the money!


Just an FYI----the NIH is now as heavily securitized as a military base and seems to be for corporate eyes only!!!

Berkeley training helps researchers 'work around' potential conflicts


By David Heathemail 6:00 am, December 20, 2013 Updated: 6:15 am, December 20, 2013 17likes22tweets1 commentE-mailPrint Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington in May 2013.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Lauded public health researcher also worked for industry, revealing entanglements of science


By David Heath December 20, 2013 BERKELEY, Calif. --

A faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, wanted to secure a National Institutes of Health grant to benefit his startup company.

That might be a problem, university officials in charge of complying with NIH’s conflict-of-interest rules said. Their solution? Resubmit the application and list another faculty member as the researcher. The academic withdrew the application instead.

This real example was presented in a September 2011 training video, posted on YouTube, showing how university officials help researchers avoid having to disclose possible financial conflicts of interest to the federal agency funding their research.

Records detail another case this year in which a professor said it was “highly likely” his company would license any technology produced from his NIH-funded research. Berkeley officials saw no conflict.

To some, such cases raise questions about how stringently UC Berkeley enforces NIH’s conflict-of-interest rules. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said they also raise questions about whether the NIH should leave enforcement to universities.

Concerns that financial entanglements can taint research prompted the NIH in August 2011 to strengthen its rules requiring disclosure of financial conflicts. The new rules expanded the definition of such conflicts and required more reporting to NIH.

“NIH can continue to rewrite conflict of interest rules, but the rules won’t do any good unless there’s a way to make them stick,” Grassley told the Center for Public Integrity. “Research institutions that look the other way on conflicts of interest appear free to do so knowing NIH will take them at their word.”

The NIH declined to comment on UC Berkeley’s practices or to respond to Grassley’s comments. In a written statement, a spokesperson said, “NIH strengthened the key provisions of the regulations and added accountability and transparency to send a clear message that NIH is committed to promoting objectivity in the research it funds.”

The issue of conflicts of interest in research is complex. Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980, allowing nonprofit organizations and small businesses with federal research grants to own the patents on their discoveries. Yet studies suggest financial conflicts can bias research findings.

The theory in the scientific community is that you can manage conflicts to reduce bias, and a common way to do that is to require public disclosure. NIH requires schools to investigate and manage possible conflicts; under the new rules, it directs schools to explain how it is managing the conflicts.

Graham Fleming, UC Berkeley’s vice chancellor for research, said the very nature of research is to make discoveries that aid the public.

“Conflict of interest is something we take very seriously. We don’t aim to eliminate it. In fact that would be counterproductive. What we aim to do is to manage the conflict of interest,” he said.

A standard way to manage a conflict is to name another professor without a financial stake as the lead researcher, something that the school would disclose to NIH, Fleming said. By naming a new researcher, he said, the conflict is eliminated.  oh really????  So, having corporate executives on each other's boards solves those conflicts?

In the UC Berkeley training video, Jyl Baldwin, coordinator of the university’s conflict-of-interest committee, says situations like this are "rare." The committee's goal, she says, is to help researchers so “the research can go on the way it’s proposed without causing any headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle."

Baldwin also said, “For certain programs, [the Department of Energy] also has a financial disclosure requirement. We’ve found a way to work around that — I shouldn’t say that; it sounds negative, or sounds manipulative. We found a way to handle the DOE disclosure requirements.”

The school’s website and the training video suggest that in some cases the university determines there is no conflict of interest even when the professor has a financial stake in the research.

“Is a financial interest automatically a conflict of interest? Not necessarily,” says UC Berkeley’s website. “This may be a matter of semantics. Some argue that any financial interest in a company automatically puts the individual into a situation where there is a conflict with his or her research responsibilities.”

NIH rules say a researcher has a significant conflict of interest if the researcher is paid more than $5,000 or owns stock in a private company with interest in the research. Sometimes, that standard is put to the test.

In April, genetics professor Andrew Dillin disclosed to UC Berkeley officials that he gets paid $90,000 a year and owns 2 million shares – valued at $200,000 – of Proteostasis Therapeutics, a company he co-founded to develop new drugs for people with cystic fibrosis and Alzheimer’s disease. Dillin said it was “highly likely” the company would license any technology arising from the $387,000 research grant he was seeking from NIH.

The school’s conflict-of-interest committee concluded there was no conflict and that no disclosure needed to be made to NIH. The research was not within the current “focus” of the company, the head of the committee wrote.

Even so, the committee said it would be “prudent” for Dillin to disclose his company ties to students in his laboratory and when presenting his research in talks or publications.

Asked why the committee suggested Dillin disclose ties to his students but not to the NIH, Fleming referred the question to university spokesman Dan Mogulof. Because the committee found no conflict of interest, Mogulof explained in an email, there was no requirement for Dillin to disclose his company ties to anyone.

“In other words, the Committee recommended that Prof. Dillin take steps beyond those required by federal regulations,” Mogulof wrote. Dillin did not respond to an interview request.

NIH rules say that even in cases where the university has more stringent conflict of interest rules than NIH, it must still disclose how it will manage the conflict.

The NIH had initially proposed that schools post all financial disclosures from researchers on university websites. But in the final rules, that proposal was changed to releasing the records, when requested, within five business days.

It took UC Berkeley more than two months to release Dillin’s disclosures following a Center for Public Integrity public records request. The school’s public-records officer said NIH’s five-day rule didn’t apply because the school determined there was no conflict.

Universities have their own conflict in trying to police researchers because they get a cut of research dollars, said Paul Thacker, a fellow at Harvard University and a former investigator for Grassley specializing in conflicts of interest in research.

School officials don’t fear retaliation from the NIH, Thacker believes, because the agency doesn’t have a history of cracking down.

The Center requested interviews with conflict-of-interest officials at NIH for weeks, but the agency declined. The NIH would not talk about its history of enforcing conflict-of-interest rules and said it had no data on how many times it had taken action against researchers or universities for failing to disclose conflicts.

Grassley said that despite the recent changes in NIH rules, more needs to be done.

“An effective enforcement mechanism might require legislation," he said, "since NIH either can’t or won’t get tough enough on its own.”


________________________________________

Stop allow global corporate politicians to define the goals of public education.  We are not in a race to compete with other nations for achievement.  We are a democracy with education as a tool towards making people good citizens and leaders in their communities.....well, that is where we used to be and that is towards where the American people are going.

We did need to return to rigor and accountability in K-college with teaching and student achievement.  The education reforms in the 1980s by Reagan and Clinton deliberately undermined the education system that was best in the world for just that by taking textbooks out of the classrooms and requiring calculators by used in teaching math----THAT WAS WHAT CREATED THE PROBLEM AND WE SIMPLY NEED TO REVERSE THIS.....NO TESTING AND EVALUATIONS OR COMMON CORE NEEDED.  We are a nation of diversity and if we allow our humanities to become COMMON CORE directed we are eliminating that freedom and diversity and handing all information distribution to those 1% wanting that control!


The problem with evaluations centered on student performance is that no classroom is standard and no school is standard.....THERE IS NO STANDARD TO EVALUATE. 


The Education Story The Numbers Don’t Tell

Education Opportunity Network

As 2013 closed out, the education world was roiled by yet another controversy over the calculation and interpretation of statistical data used to govern teachers and school services.

This controversy, coming to us from the nation’s capital, involved, according to the report in The Washington Post, “Faulty calculations of the ‘value’ that D.C. teachers added to student achievement in the last school year.”

“The evaluation errors,” noted reporter Nick Anderson, “underscore the high stakes of a teacher evaluation system that relies in part on standardized test scores to quantify the value a given teacher adds to the classroom.”

This controversy falls into a long line of previous ones stretched across the year. Now that the results from tests are being used to judge just about anything having to do with education, debates over education policy have become and endless back-and-forth over whether the data are reliable and what, if anything, they reveal.

Whether it’s “white suburban moms” disputing their children’s standardized test results or pundits parsing out the meaning of PISA, the nation has descended into a heated cross-fire over the impact and relevance of education statistics brandished by “reform” advocates.

While these arguments rage over the relevancy of test scores in policy making, some are now questioning, to use the operative phrase in Anderson’s sentence above, whether it’s even possible or preferable “to quantify the value” in education.

The whole idea that teaching and learning is a pursuit that can be expressed and judged by numbers and rankings, which seems to be a forgone conclusion to policy makers and economists, is increasingly an unsettled matter to most Americans. What they see instead more and more looks like a nation turning its back on the well being of students – especially those who are most in need.

The Impact Of IMPACT?

The reported problems with D.C.’s teacher evaluation system are just the latest example of the problems that occur when test data become a source for policy direction.


The mistake affected 44 teachers, or about 10 percent of faculty the calculations apply to. But the overall effect is way more significant when taking into account the numbers of students who are linked to each teacher.

Further any report of flaws with the teacher evaluations in D.C. is apt to reverberate across the country. The district’s system, known as IMPACT, was created under the administration of Michelle Rhee and has been touted by education advocates aligned with Rhee as a model for the nation.

As the Post’s Valerie Strauss, who also reported on the IMPACT controversy, noted, “Such evaluation has become a central part of modern school reform … In some places around the country, teachers received evaluations based on test scores of students they never had.”

The Truth Behind TUDA?

The reported problems with IMPACT fell on the heels of yet another statistical data dump from the week before.

That statistical disgorge is known as the Trial Urban District Assessment, or TUDA, which analyzed the performance of students in some cities with populations of 250,000 who took part in the National Assessment for Educational Progress.

The education reporter for The Huffington Post, Joy Resmovits, noted, “Washington, D.C. – a standard bearer for what’s known as the education reform movement since former school chancellor Michelle Rhee’s tumultuous tenure at D.C. Public Schools – was the only city to show score increases in both grades in both subjects since 2011.”

So Michelle Rhee’s organization, StudentFirst, immediately issued a press release claiming D.C. schools as one of the “bright spots” that show “what we can learn” from TUDA. First among the lessons was, you guessed it, IMPACT.

Of course, it’s entirely unclear how students analyzed by TUDA – just fourth and eighth graders in two subjects – were in any way affected by IMPACT. Other explanations for D.C.’s superior results seem equally if not more plausible.

For instance, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, pointed to changes in early childhood education and the city’s demographics as factors. “This is the first group of 4th graders that actually had pre-kindergarten. So what this is saying to us is that all-day kindergarten and prekindergarten is one of the most important investments.” And the city is ” becoming more and more middle class.”

Meanwhile, as Resmovits noted in her article, “Statisticians warn against citing these gains as evidence of efficacy or inadequacy in debates about particular school reforms. ‘It’s not a causal model,’ said Mark Schneider, a vice president at the American Institutes of Research, who used to oversee the Education Department’s research arm. ‘I get very leery when people say that ‘This shows that X happened.’”

Nevertheless, there seems little hesitancy to jump into these statistical suppositions games and then use them to craft whole policies for our children.

PISA Palaver

Perhaps no assessment data draws more media attention and generates more causal explanations derived from test results than the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA.

This year’s PISA results were no exception as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan staged PISA Day, a media event that spent most of five hours arguing that the scores were reasons to get behind his pet policies. And Michelle Rhee took to the pages of Time magazine to use the PISA scores as an opportunity to claim the countries that are excelling academically are doing similar things to what she espouses.

As Rutgers professor Bruce Baker explained at his blog, the primary use of PISA data in the public policy discourse is “to ram through ill-conceived, destructive policies.”


Baker – whose edu-stat crunching has been compared to “Nate Silver’s influential and statistically nuanced election forecast blog posts” – concluded about PISA, “Except for showing that economic conditions matter … simple rankings of countries by their PISA scores aren’t particularly insightful.”

“Nothin’ brings out good ol’ American statistical ineptitude like the release of NAEP or PISA data,” Baker continued in a different blog post. Any gains or losses on these tests, Baker contended are less a matter of proving a school system is doing better “because it allowed charter schools to grow faster, or teachers to be fired more readily by test scores,” and more a simple matter that swings in results “are cohort average score differences which reflect differences in the composition of the cohort as much as anything else.”

To mock the whole idea that these test results provide grand insights into “what works” in education, Matt Chingos, writing for the conservative education policy center Education Next, had a bit of year-end holiday fun and contrived “a rigorous empirical analysis that measures the causal effect of Christmas on student achievement.” His conclusion – including the mandatory Excel graph! – that “student learning rises more or less in lock-step with the amount of holiday spending” is about as convincing as what Duncan, Rhee, and other “reform” leaders pull from the data. But that doesn’t seem to stop them.

Testing data’s absurd level of impact on the nation’s entire education endeavor would be a laughing matter if there weren’t such tragic situations occurring on the ground in schools.


Back To Reality

While the nation’s education leaders get lost in a numbers game, there’s ample evidence from real life experiences that our children’s education destinies are becoming more endangered.

As The New York Times recently reported, “Many schools face unwieldy class sizes and a lack of specialists to help those students who struggle academically, are learning English as a second language, or need extra emotional support.”

According to the article elementary class sizes in parts of California have swollen to 30 students and more. The public school district in Dallas, Texas this year sought state permission for over 200 schools to increase class size of 22 students for kindergarten through fourth grade. Some high schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County in North Carolina have class sizes of as many as 40 students. And in Cobb County, Ga., average class sizes in fourth and fifth grades are now about 33 students.

The problem arises from the fact that “public schools employ about 250,000 fewer people than before the recession” while enrollments have increased by more than 800,000 students.

“The cutbacks have been particularly pronounced in less affluent school districts,” Times reporter Motoko Rich noted.

On nearly the same day, another New York City newspaper, The Daily News, reported on the alarming state of education services to minority students in the system. “Black and Hispanic high school students are “getting stiffed,” wrote the reporter, based on data provided by the school system.

“On average, white and Asian students attend high schools with twice as many Advanced Placement courses and almost twice as many science labs compared with schools attended by black and Hispanic students.

“Black and Hispanic students also have fewer science subjects available in their high schools and fewer arts classes and rooms … They’re also less likely to have a library, medical office or gym in their school buildings.”

Similarly, a report in a Boston news outlet looked at schools in California and noted, “Hispanic students in general are getting worse educations than their white peers. Their class sizes are larger, course offerings are fewer and funding is lower. The consequence is obvious: lower achievement.”


The Times article caused education historian Diane Ravitch to write on her blog, “We hear so-called reformers proclaim about the importance of teacher evaluation, merit pay, and test scores, but I have yet to hear any of them complain about budget cuts and lack of staff for the arts, physical education, foreign languages, libraries, and so on … How are schools supposed to enact any of their proposals when teachers are stressed out with crowded classrooms?”

How indeed?

2014: A Chance To Change The Conversation

When the last Great Big Education Innovation called No Child Left Behind descended on America’s beleaguered schools, the intention was to address the variance in test score data among K-12 students.

NCLB was supposed to close what was, and still is, called the Achievement Gap. But it’s now widely understood that the whole enterprise was an utter failure. The best that NCLB proponents can offer is that it “woke the country” to the stark differences between the academic attainment of African American and Hispanic school children and their white and Asian peers.

But anyone who needed “awakening” then has doubtless fallen back into slumbers as the country has drifted further and further into a vast sea of segregated schools and education inequality.

Rather than seeking a different course of action, reform-minded policy makers doubled down and brought us even more destructive ways to use test score data, while real experiences of students in actual classrooms – especially in our most financially strained, underserved communities – were ignored.

2014, an election year, offers an opportunity to change that conversation. The American people are ready for it.

__________________________________________
Think Common Core is not about privatization of universities?  It is universities like Stanford, MIT, and Harvard that are writing Common Core education supplements and tests and patenting them and having these schools pay for the pleasure of using them to implement these reforms at break-neck speed.

Common Core started with Bush-Cheney and when they said history would treat their administration kindly-----THEY WERE WRITING THE COMMON CORE SECTION IN HISTORY!




Diane Ravitch and the Angry Rebellion against Common Core Wielding her influential blog as a weapon, this 75-year-old activist has created a powerful network united by revulsion against top-down, elite policymaking.

by Mark Funkhouser | December 16, 2013

Since the Common Core State Standards for education were first proposed in 2009, 45 states have adopted them. As major public-policy initiatives go, this has been a hurtling train, backed by powerful people and institutions, that has been roaring down the track a breakneck speed.

Now, however, comes the backlash. In at least 17 states there is some kind of serious movement against the Common Core standards. The media have largely portrayed the push to scrap them as the product of a Republican repudiation of any and all things related to a federal government headed by Barack Obama. This is not true. The antipathy to Common Core is part of a much larger rejection of the dominant education-reform paradigm, supported by leaders of both political parties, that embraces charter schools, vouchers, more testing of students, increased accountability for teachers and hostility to teachers' unions.

The movement against Common Core is an angry rebellion that shares with the Occupy and Tea Party movements a revulsion toward top-down policy-making emanating from the nation's elite. At the center of the rebellion, and its animating force, is a 75-year-old grandmother named Diane Ravitch who once supported many of the elements of education reform that she now despises. Whether you agree with her or not, it is clear that Ravitch is an incredible political phenomenon, the likes of which we have not seen in a long time. As much as anyone I have ever seen, she has taken up the tools of social media and wielded them powerfully to try to change the course of American history. And she has managed to do it without staff or funding.

It's worth considering how she has done this.

First, it should be noted that she is a formidable person who herself has been near the levers of establishment power most of her adult life. She was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution until she went rogue. She has a Ph.D. from Columbia University and is a research professor of education at New York University. She was an assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush and was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the National Assessment Governing Board. She has published 10 books, the most recent being this fall's Reign of Error: the Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools. It made the New York Times best-seller list within days of its release, fueled I'm sure by the buildup for it among the readers of her blog.

The blog is a phenomenon unto itself. Ravitch blogs between five and 20 times a day, usually with links to local-media articles or pieces written by others within her network. In November, 18 months after she launched it, the blog recorded more than 8 million page views. She sometimes has others post on her blog. She says one of those, a post entitled "I Quit" written by a fed-up North Carolina schoolteacher, is the most popular ever to appear on her blog, garnering 66,000 page views the day it went up in October 2012 and more than 250,000 as of this month.

Her readership has evolved into a national network with bloggers and correspondents in virtually every state and every major city who use her site to link with and support each other's efforts. At least two national organizations have sprung up from the interactions of her readers: the Badass Teacher Association, co-founded by Mark Naisson, a historian and proudly radical professor at Fordham University, and the Network for Public Education, which actively engages in school-board fights around the country, advocating and raising money for candidates who share Ravitch's views. Ravitch herself keeps up a grueling schedule of public appearances, often speaking to large crowds and sometimes debating advocates of the reform paradigm such as former Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

Ravitch is a relentless and focused policy entrepreneur who has said that she goes at it so hard because it is important -- she believes that public education is essential to democracy and faces an existential threat from the reformers -- and because she doesn't have much time, an apparent allusion to her age.


The fact that she is willing to wage such an intense fight to change the course of a major public-policy initiative evidences deep faith and confidence in the American system of governance. Others who want major policy changes should also embrace that faith and take some lessons from how Diane Ravitch operates.





_____________________________________________

This privatization of our public universities is a direct attack on our democratic society and it is neo-liberals taking the lead in this.  Maryland has almost completely privatized all of public higher education!


The Lumina Foundation, Brice Harris, City College of San Francisco and the privatization of higher education

By Danny Weil on December 23, 2013 4:00 am

  Readers can take a look at the mendacious and sophistic Brice Harris, the former Chancellor of the Los Rios College.  He is a ‘Lumina Foundation’ made man.  If you do not know what Lumina is, do Google ‘Danny Weil and Lumina’ and you will find out fast that this criminal syndicate, formerly with Sallie Mae or the ‘outfit’, groomed and paid Harris so he could become Chancellor of ALL the community or should I say, corporate colleges and universities?



These paid supplicants are all on board with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Wall Street hucksters looking to stuff and engorge themselves on the $650 Billion dollar educational industry they have created.

  From charter schools to vouchers, from phony Student Success Outcomes (paid for by Lumina) to privatized for profit drive-by colleges, these miscreants have no morals, show no empathy and are in the process of caving the public commons while they feast on hefty CEO salaries and destroy public education.


 
It’s a shame, really but understandable.  America is a banana republic now; in-sourcing and outsourcing labor so the ruling class has no need for an educated populace.  In fact, after the 1960’s, they fear it!

 
No, obedience training is again the norm.  Harris is just one in a long line of courtiers for power.  He and Jerry Brown (the one candidate whom has taken more money from for-profit predatory colleges than any other political sharpie) are all invested in the demolition of the public commons.  This is a corporate democratic plan (http://www.dailycensored.com/the-obama-2020-plan-for-education-chump-change-you-cant-believe-in/) (http://www.dailycensored.com/part-two-the-obama-2020-plan-for-higher-education-chump-change-you-cant-believe-in/


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    Cindy Walsh is a lifelong political activist and academic living in Baltimore, Maryland.

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