PLEASE BARE WITH ME AS I TALK ABOUT POLITICIANS-----WE MUST KNOW WHO IS BEHIND THESE POLICIES AND WHO THEY ARE WORKING FOR.....I WILL TURN TO HEALTH CARE ON THURSDAY!
THINK WHICH OF THESE POLS HAS LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS SUPPORT! THEY ARE WORKING AGAINST LABOR AND JUSTICE.
I want to end this session on education by taking a look locally at the politicians putting into place these corporatized and autocratic education policies for Wall Street and corporations like Johns Hopkins. It is very important to see that when a labor or justice leader supports neo-liberals and neo-cons----they are supporting all these policies moving the US to third world, autocratic, global corporate control. The Clinton/Obama and Bush/Cheney political machines are one in the same.
The US spends more on public health and public education then any developed country and we are last in rankings in both as far as quality and achievement. WHY IS THAT? IT IS THE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION THAT IS DRAINING ALL THAT FUNDING FROM WHERE IT IS SUPPOSED TO GO TO THE CORPORATIONS GETTING EVER RICHER. So, when Republicans lament that all that public education funding does not help as they dismantle oversight and accountability with neo-liberals that allows for all the fraud and corruption----they are lying. When neo-liberals pretend it is bad teachers and that testing and evaluation is needed to hold everyone accountable---they are doing it as they work with Republicans to dismantle all of the structures of oversight and accountability that funnels all that public education funding to private education corporations that are doing NOTHING for our schools.
THE PROBLEM IS THAT NONE OF THE PUBLIC FUNDING IS GETTING TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES AND EDUCATION POLICY IS DUMBING DOWN OUR CLASSROOMS.
Posted at 5:00 AM ET, 09/27/2010
What ‘Superman’ got wrong, point by point
By Valerie Strauss
This was written by Rick Ayers, a former high school teacher, founder of Communication Arts and Sciences small school at Berkeley High School, and currently adjunct professor in teacher education at the University of San Francisco. He is the co-author, with his brother William Ayers, of the forthcoming "Teaching the Taboo" from Teachers College Press. This post is long, but it is worth your time.
By Rick Ayers
While the education filmWaiting For Superman has moving profiles of students struggling to succeed under difficult circumstances, it puts forward a sometimes misleading and other times dishonest account of the roots of the problem and possible solutions.
The amped-up rhetoric of crisis and failure everywhere is being used to promote business-model reforms that are destabilizing even in successful schools and districts. A panel at NBC’s Education Nation Summit, taking place in New York today and tomorrow, was originally titled "Does Education Need a Katrina?" Such disgraceful rhetoric undermines reasonable debate.
Let’s examine these issues, one by one:
*Waiting for Superman says that lack of money is not the problem in education.
Yet the exclusive charter schools featured in the film receive large private subsidies. Two-thirds of Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone funding comes from private sources, effectively making the charter school he runs in the zone a highly resourced private school. Promise Academy is in many ways an excellent school, but it is dishonest for the filmmakers to say nothing about the funds it took to create it and the extensive social supports including free medical care and counseling provided by the zone.
In New Jersey, where court decisions mandated similar programs, such as high quality pre-kindergarten classes and extended school days and social services in the poorest urban districts, achievement and graduation rates increased while gaps started to close. But public funding for those programs is now being cut and progress is being eroded. Money matters! Of course, money will not solve all problems (because the problems are more systemic than the resources of any given school) – but the off-handed rejection of a discussion of resources is misleading.
*Waiting for Superman implies that standardized testing is a reasonable way to assess student progress.
The debate of “how to raise test scores” strangles and distorts strong education. Most test score differences stubbornly continue to reflect parental income and neighborhood/zip codes, not what schools do. As opportunity, health and family wealth increase, so do test scores.
This is not the fault of schools but the inaccuracy, and the internal bias, in the tests themselves.
Moreover, the tests are too narrow (on only certain subjects with only certain measurement tools). When schools focus exclusively on boosting scores on standardized tests, they reduce teachers to test-prep clerks, ignore important subject areas and critical thinking skills, dumb down the curriculum and leave children less prepared for the future. We need much more authentic assessment to know if schools are doing well and to help them improve.
*Waiting for Superman ignores overall problems of poverty.
Schools must be made into sites of opportunity, not places for the rejection and failure of millions of African American, Chicano Latino, Native American, and immigrant students. But schools and teachers take the blame for huge social inequities in housing, health care, and income.
Income disparities between the richest and poorest in U.S.society have reached record levels between 1970 and today. Poor communities suffer extensive traumas and dislocations. Homelessness, the exploitation of immigrants, and the closing of community health and counseling clinics, are all factors that penetrate our school communities. Solutions that punish schools without addressing these conditions only increase the marginalization of poor children.
*Waiting for Superman says teachers’ unions are the problem.
Of course unions need to be improved – more transparent, more accountable, more democratic and participatory – but before teachers unionized, the disparity in pay between men and women was disgraceful and the arbitrary power of school boards to dismiss teachers or raise class size without any resistance was endemic.
Unions have historically played leading roles in improving public education, and most nations with strong public educational systems have strong teacher unions.
According to this piece in The Nation, "In the Finnish education system, much cited in the film as the best in the world, teachers are – gasp! – unionized and granted tenure, and families benefit from a cradle-to-grave social welfare system that includes universal daycare, preschool and health care, all of which are proven to help children achieve better results in school."
In fact, even student teachers have a union in Finland and, overall, nearly 90% of the Finnish labor force is unionized.
The demonization of unions ignores the real evidence.
*Waiting for Superman says teacher education is useless.
The movie touts the benefits of fast track and direct entry to teaching programs such as Teach for America, but the country with the highest achieving students, Finland, also has highly educated teachers.
A 1970 reform of Finland’s education system mandated that all teachers above the kindergarten level have at least a master’s degree. Today that country’s students have the highest math and science literacy, as measured by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), of all the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries.
*Waiting for Superman decries tenure as a drag on teacher improvement.
Tenured teachers cannot be fired without due process and a good reason: they can’t be fired because the boss wants to hire his cousin, or because the teacher is gay (or black or…), or because they take an unpopular position on a public issue outside of school.
A recent survey found that most principals agreed that they had the authority to fire a teacher if they needed to take such action. It is interesting to note that when teachers are evaluated through a union-sanctioned peer process, more teachers are put into retraining programs and dismissed than through administration-only review programs. Overwhelmingly teachers want students to have outstanding and positive experiences in schools.
*Waiting for Superman says charter schools allow choice and better educational innovation.
Charters were first proposed by the teachers’ unions to allow committed parents and teachers to create schools that were free of administrative bureaucracy and open to experimentation and innovation, and some excellent charters have set examples. But thousands of hustlers and snake oil salesmen have also jumped in.
While teacher unions are vilified in the film, there is no mention of charter corruption or profiteering. A recent national study by CREDO, The Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, concludes that only 17% of charter schools have better test scores than traditional public schools, 46% had gains that were no different than their public counterparts, and 37% were significantly worse.
While a better measure of school success is needed, even by their own measure, the project has not succeeded. A recent Mathematica Policy Research study came to similar conclusions. And the Education Report, "The Evaluation of Charter School Impacts, concludes, “On average, charter middle schools that hold lotteries are neither more nor less successful than traditional public schools in improving student achievement, behavior, and school progress.”
Some fantastic education is happening in charter schools, especially those initiated by communities and led by teachers and community members. But the use of charters as a battering ram for those who would outsource and privatize education in the name of “reform” is sheer political opportunism.
*Waiting for Superman glorifies lotteries for admission to highly selective and subsidized charter schools as evidence of the need for more of them.
If we understand education as a civil right, even a human right as defined by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, we know it can’t be distributed by a lottery.
We must guarantee all students access to high quality early education, highly effective teachers, college and work-preparatory curricula and equitable instructional resources like good school libraries and small classes. A right without a clear map of what that right protects is an empty statement.
It is not a sustainable public policy to allow more and more public school funding to be diverted to privately subsidized charters while public schools become the schools of last resort for children with the greatest educational needs. In Waiting for Superman, families are cruelly paraded in front of the cameras as they wait for an admission lottery in an auditorium where the winners’ names are pulled from a hat and read aloud, while the losing families trudge out in tears with cameras looming in their faces – in what amounts to family and child abuse.
*Waiting for Superman says competition is the best way to improve learning.
Too many people involved in education policy are dazzled by the idea of “market forces” improving schools. By setting up systems of competition, Social Darwinist struggles between students, between teachers, and between schools, these education policy wonks are distorting the educational process.
Teachers will be motivated to gather the most promising students, to hide curriculum strategies from peers, and to cheat; principals have already been caught cheating in a desperate attempt to boost test scores. And children are worn out in a sink-or-swim atmosphere that threatens them with dire life outcomes if they are not climbing to the top of the heap.
In spite of the many millions of dollars poured into expounding the theory of paying teachers for higher student test scores (sometimes mislabeled as ‘merit pay’), a new study by Vanderbilt University’s National Center on Performance Incentives found that the use of merit pay for teachers in the Nashville school district produced no difference even according to their measure, test outcomes for students.
*Waiting for Superman says good teachers are key to successful education. We agree. But Waiting for Superman only contributes to the teacher-bashing culture which discourages talented college graduates from considering teaching and drives people out of the profession.
According to the Department of Education, the country will need 1.6 million new teachers in the next five years. Retention of talented teachers is one key. Good teaching is about making connections to students, about connecting what they learn to the world in which they live, and this only happens if teachers have history and roots in the communities where they teach.
But a recent report by the nonprofit National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future says that “approximately a third of America’s new teachers leave teaching sometime during their first three years of teaching; almost half leave during the first five years. In many cases, keeping our schools supplied with qualified teachers is comparable to trying to fill a bucket with a huge hole in the bottom.”
Check out the reasons teachers are being driven out in Katy Farber’s book, "Why Great Teachers Quit: And How We Might Stop the Exodus," (Corwin Press).
*Waiting for Superman says “we’re not producing large numbers of scientists and doctors in this country anymore. . . This means we are not only less educated, but also less economically competitive.”
But Business Week (10/28/09) reported that “U.S. colleges and universities are graduating as many scientists and engineers as ever,” yet “the highest performing students are choosing careers in other fields.” In particular, the study found, “many of the top students have been lured to careers in finance and consulting.” It’s the market, and the disproportionately high salaries paid to finance specialists, that is misdirecting human resources, not schools.
*Waiting for Superman promotes a nutty theory of learning which claims that teaching is a matter of pouring information into children’s heads.
In one of its many little cartoon segments, the film purports to show how kids learn. The top of a child’s head is cut open and a jumble of factoids is poured in. Ouch! Oh, and then the evil teacher union and regulations stop this productive pouring project.
The film-makers betray a lack of understanding of how people actually learn, the active and engaged participation of students in the learning process. They ignore the social construction of knowledge, the difference between deep learning and rote memorization.
The movie would have done a service by showing us what excellent teaching looks like, and addressing the valuable role that teacher education plays in preparing educators to practice the kind of targeted teaching that reaches all students. It should have let teachers’ voices be heard.
*Waiting for Superman promotes the idea that we are in a dire war for US dominance in the world.
The poster advertising the film shows a nightmarish battlefield in stark gray, with a little white girl sitting at a desk in the midst of it. The text: “The fate of our country won’t be decided on a battlefield. It will be determined in a classroom.”
This is a common theme of the so-called reformers: We are at war with India and China and we have to out-math them and crush them so that we can remain rich and they can stay in the sweatshops.
But really, who declared this war? When did I as a teacher sign up as an officer in this war? And when did that 4th grade girl become a soldier in it? Instead of this new educational Cold War, perhaps we should be helping kids imagine a world of global cooperation, sustainable economies, and equity.
*Waiting for Superman says federal “Race to the Top” education funds are being focused to support students who are not being served in other ways.
According to a study by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and others, Race to the Top funds are benefiting affluent or well-to-do, white, and “abled” students. So the outcome of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top has been more funding for schools that are doing well and more discipline and narrow test-preparation for the poorest schools.
*Waiting for Superman suggests that teacher improvement is a matter of increased control and discipline over teachers.
Dan Brown, a teacher in the SEED charter school featured in the film, points out that successful schools involve teachers in strong collegial conversations. Teachers need to be accountable to a strong educational plan, without being terrorized. Good teachers, which is the vast majority of them, are seeking this kind of support from their leaders.
*Waiting for Superman proposes a reform “solution” that exploits the feminization of the field of teaching; it proposes that teachers just need a few good men with hedge funds (plus D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee with a broom) to come to the rescue.
Teaching has been historically devalued – teachers are less well compensated and have less control of their working conditions than other professionals – because of its associations with women.
For example, 97% of preschool and kindergarten teachers are women, and this is also the least well-compensated sector of teaching; in 2009, the lowest 10% earned $30,970 to $34,280; the top 10% earned $75,190 to $80,970. () By comparison the top 25 hedge fund managers took in $25 billion in 2009, enough to hire 658,000 new teachers.
--
Waiting for Superman could and should have been an inspiring call for improvement in education, a call we desperately need to mobilize behind.
That’s why it is so shocking that the message was hijacked by a narrow agenda that undermines strong education. It is stuck in a framework that says that reform and leadership means doing things, like firing a bunch of people (Rhee) or “turning around” schools (Education Secretary Arne Duncan) despite the fact that there’s no research to suggest that these would have worked, and there’s now evidence to show that they haven’t.
Reform must be guided by community empowerment and strong evidence, not by ideological warriors or romanticized images of leaders acting like they’re doing something, anything. Waiting for Superman has ignored deep historical and systemic problems in education such as segregation, property-tax based funding formulas, centralized textbook production, lack of local autonomy and shared governance, de-professionalization, inadequate special education supports, differential discipline patterns, and the list goes on and on.
People seeing Waiting for Superman should be mobilized to improve education. They just need to be willing to think outside of the narrow box that the film-makers have constructed to define what needs to be done.
Thanks for ideas and some content from many teacher publications, and especially from Monty Neill, Jim Horn Lisa Guisbond, Stan Karp, Erica Meiners, Kevin Kumashiro, Ilene Abrams, Bill Ayers, and Therese Quinn.
__________________________________________
Let's look at the neo-liberal and neo-conservative pols in Maryland giving Maryland citizens this dismantling of public education and supersized fraud and corruption in how education funding moves in Maryland and Baltimore. Hopkins in Baltimore has even built the public school structure so that all of the highest achieving students are funneled to its school pipeline
Now, Mike Miller as Senate leader appoints all the heads of these committees as does Mike Busch in the House of Delegates.
THEY HAVE RULED THE ASSEMBLY FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS AND THIS IS WHY MARYLAND IS THE MOST GLOBAL CORPORATE AND AUTOCRATIC OF STATES.
Just a quick overview of this committee---education, health, and environment. Privatized public universities and now K-12-----privatized public health with exemption from Medicare that eliminates this Federal program and its protections in Maryland, and environmental policy that has no enforcement and fails in most measures because it protects corporate profits, not public interest.
Joan Carter Conway is the Hopkins politician from Baltimore as is McIntosh, Washington, and Anderson. THESE ARE NEO-CONSERVATIVES RUNNING AS DEMOCRATS. You see Conway as head of these Senate committees that pass all of this very bad education policy and she does it to her own constituents. Remember, privatizing public education hurts the middle and working class as much as the poor so this is not a race or class issue.....it is about democracy, our Constitutional rights as citizens to equal opportunity, protection, and access.
In Baltimore there are usually no challenges to these Maryland Assembly pols by labor, justice, or white collar middle-class professionals. The leaders of these groups simply allow these same pols to dismantle all public structures to build the Trans Pacific Trade Pact structure handing all public policy to global corporate tribunals. That is towards what the pols below work and NO ONE LIKES THESE POLICIES.
REMEMBER, THESE ARE NEO-CONSERVATIVE POLICIES SO VOTING REPUBLICAN DOES NOT CHANGE THIS----WE MUST RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES TO TAKE BACK THE PEOPLE'S PARTY.
Rumor has Maggie McIntosh-----Hopkins pol extraordinaire----will take Mike Busch's place in the House leadership----GLOBAL CORPORATE TRIBUNAL POLS IN PLACE. Joan Carter Conway in the Senate had a challenger this election because she strayed from the neo-conservative position a time or two----Bill Henry is a Hopkins graduate just as committed to Hopkins policies as McIntosh. So, the choice is neo-conservative most of the time vs neo-conservative all of the time. THIS IS THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY IN BALTIMORE. This is why all of the global corporate policies moving through Maryland Assembly often originate from Baltimore and Hopkins. 650,000 labor and justice residents being subjected to the worst of conditions mostly choosing not to vote because Baltimore elections are rigged towards these Hopkins candidates.
IT IS EASY PEASY TO CHANGE THIS DYNAMIC-----IF PEOPLE WOULD STOP WORRYING ABOUT RACE AND CLASS AND SIMPLY VOTE FOR A STRONG DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY THAT FOLLOWS RULE OF LAW AND THE US CONSTITUTION.
Baltimore is not the only voting region that hates neo-liberal and neo-con global corporate control of government. Republicans hate neo-cons-----progressives in Montgomery County hate neo-liberals----we simply need to become engaged in politics to reverse this! CORPORATE CONTROL OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IS AN ATTACK ON THE CORNERSTONE OF DEMOCRACY.
Make no mistake----the Michelle Rhee education privatization being built in Baltimore by Hopkins will be expanded to all of Maryland so voters across Maryland need to get rid of these pols.
THERE IS NO PUBLIC VOICE IN ALL OF THESE POLICIES FROM EDUCATION TO HEALTH CARE BECAUSE THESE POLS DO NOT CREATE THE PUBLIC STRUCTURES IN THEIR COMMUNITIES TO DISCUSS AND DEBATE ISSUES.
MARYLAND SENATE STANDING COMMITTEES
EDUCATION, HEALTH & ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
Origin & Functions
Subcommittees
Miller Senate Office Building entrance, 11 Bladen St., Annapolis, Maryland, January 2007. Photo by Diane F. Evartt.
Appointed by Senate President:
Joan Carter Conway, Chair (410) 841-3145, (301) 858-3145
Roy P. Dyson, Vice-Chair (410) 841-3673, (301) 858-3673
Staff: Sara C. Fidler; Theodore E. King, Jr.; Ryane M. Necessary.
Miller Senate Office Building, 2 West Wing
11 Bladen St., Annapolis, MD 21401 - 1991
(410) 841-3661, (301) 858-3661
e-mail
fax: (410) 841-3957, (301) 858-3957
Maryland Assembly
Senate SUBCOMMITTEES
EDUCATION SUBCOMMITTEE
Appointed by Chair, Education, Health & Environmental Affairs Committee:
Paul G. Pinsky, Chair (410) 841-3155, (301) 858-3155
Joanne C. Benson
Bill Ferguson
Karen S. Montgomery
Edward R. Reilly
James C. Rosapepe
ENVIRONMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Appointed by Chair, Education, Health & Environmental Affairs Committee:
Joan Carter Conway, Co-Chair (410) 841-3145, (301) 858-3145
Paul G. Pinsky, Co-Chair (410) 841-3155, (301) 858-3155
Bill Ferguson
J. B. Jennings
Karen S. Montgomery
Ronald N. Young
ETHICS & ELECTION LAW SUBCOMMITTEE
Appointed by Chair, Education, Health & Environmental Affairs Committee:
Roy P. Dyson, Chair (410) 841-3673, (301) 858-3673
Joan Carter Conway
Karen S. Montgomery
Edward R. Reilly
James C. Rosapepe
HEALTH OCCUPATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Appointed by Chair, Education, Health & Environmental Affairs Committee:
Joan Carter Conway, Chair (410) 841-3145, (301) 858-3145
Joanne C. Benson
Roy P. Dyson
J. B. Jennings
Karen S. Montgomery
Bryan W. Simonaire
LABOR LICENSING, & REGULATION SUBCOMMITTEE
Appointed by Chair, Education, Health & Environmental Affairs Committee:
Joan Carter Conway, Chair (410) 841-3145, (301) 858-3145
Roy P. Dyson
Bill Ferguson
Karen S. Montgomery
Bryan W. Simonaire
Ronald N. Young
______________________________________________
It is the House of Delegates that fund what the Senate passes into law. So, all that public money going to public private partnerships and corporate structure and control comes from these committees. Mary Washington is Hopkins' pol on this committee but we see Heather Mizeur who ran on continuing privatization and loving Baltimore's education privatization scheme. Yet, she was sold as a progressive. She is a neo-liberal and Mary Washington is a neo-conservative and they work for the same global corporate profit. goal.
Below you see Mike Busch has appointed the leaders from the most conservative regions to head these appropriation committees----even conservative Republicans do not like the crony, global corporate funding that undermines parent and community control of schools. While Republican voters are crying foul to the education reforms----these reforms are being funded by their own pols.
We need the 80% of registered Democratic voters not voting to run for office to get rid of neo-liberal pols. We need the 80% of Republican voters not voting to run and get rid of neo-conservative pols. Once we return to domestic control of our economy and government then we can have the political fights over progressive vs conservative.
House of Delegates Appropriations Committee
EDUCATION & ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Appointed by Chair, Appropriations Committee:
John L. Bohanan, Jr., Chair (410) 841-3227, (301) 858-3227
Heather R. Mizeur, Vice-Chair (410) 841-3493, (301) 858-3493
Melony G. Griffith
Adrienne A. Jones
James E. Proctor, Jr.
Nancy R. Stocksdale
Mary L. Washington
Appointed by House Speaker:
Norman H. Conway, Chair (410) 841-3407, (301) 858-3407
James E. Proctor, Jr., Vice-Chair (410) 841-3083, (301) 858-3083 Steven J. Arentz
Gail H. Bates
Wendell R. Beitzel
John L. Bohanan, Jr.
Steven J. DeBoy, Sr.
Adelaide C. Eckardt
Tawanna P. Gaines
Melony G. Griffith
Ana Sol Gutierrez
Guy J. Guzzone
Keith E. Haynes
Mary-Dulany James
Adrienne A. Jones
Tony McConkey
Heather R. Mizeur
Barbara A. Robinson
Theodore J. Sophocleus
Nancy R. Stocksdale
Kathy Szeliga
Mary L. Washington
John F. Wood, Jr.
Craig J. Zucker
_____________________________________
There you have Hopkins grad Mary Pat Clarke----she is the good cop of the neo-conservative Hopkins team. She is the face of all of these Michelle Rhee education reforms---Teach for America----schools as businesses-----corporate universities and there is Bill Henry fighting to be more neo-conservative than Joan Carter Conway.
When these pols say the city council has no control over the power of the Mayor's office shout back-----
Below are the faces of the worst autocratic, corporate education reform in the US.
THEN ORGANIZE A PETITION TO REFERENDUM TO CHANGE THE BALTIMORE CHARTER TAKING AWAY THOSE MAYORAL POWERS......EASY PEASY. THEY DO NOT BECAUSE THEY WORK FOR THE SAME JOHNS HOPKINS THAT THE MAYOR DOES----RAWLINGS BLAKE.
Baltimore City Council committees---
EDUCATION AND YOUTH
Mary Pat Clarke – Chair
Bill Henry – Vice Chair
Robert Curran
Nick Mosby
William "Pete" Welch
THINK WHICH OF THESE POLS HAS LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS SUPPORT! THEY ARE WORKING AGAINST LABOR AND JUSTICE.
I want to end this session on education by taking a look locally at the politicians putting into place these corporatized and autocratic education policies for Wall Street and corporations like Johns Hopkins. It is very important to see that when a labor or justice leader supports neo-liberals and neo-cons----they are supporting all these policies moving the US to third world, autocratic, global corporate control. The Clinton/Obama and Bush/Cheney political machines are one in the same.
The US spends more on public health and public education then any developed country and we are last in rankings in both as far as quality and achievement. WHY IS THAT? IT IS THE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION THAT IS DRAINING ALL THAT FUNDING FROM WHERE IT IS SUPPOSED TO GO TO THE CORPORATIONS GETTING EVER RICHER. So, when Republicans lament that all that public education funding does not help as they dismantle oversight and accountability with neo-liberals that allows for all the fraud and corruption----they are lying. When neo-liberals pretend it is bad teachers and that testing and evaluation is needed to hold everyone accountable---they are doing it as they work with Republicans to dismantle all of the structures of oversight and accountability that funnels all that public education funding to private education corporations that are doing NOTHING for our schools.
THE PROBLEM IS THAT NONE OF THE PUBLIC FUNDING IS GETTING TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES AND EDUCATION POLICY IS DUMBING DOWN OUR CLASSROOMS.
Posted at 5:00 AM ET, 09/27/2010
What ‘Superman’ got wrong, point by point
By Valerie Strauss
This was written by Rick Ayers, a former high school teacher, founder of Communication Arts and Sciences small school at Berkeley High School, and currently adjunct professor in teacher education at the University of San Francisco. He is the co-author, with his brother William Ayers, of the forthcoming "Teaching the Taboo" from Teachers College Press. This post is long, but it is worth your time.
By Rick Ayers
While the education filmWaiting For Superman has moving profiles of students struggling to succeed under difficult circumstances, it puts forward a sometimes misleading and other times dishonest account of the roots of the problem and possible solutions.
The amped-up rhetoric of crisis and failure everywhere is being used to promote business-model reforms that are destabilizing even in successful schools and districts. A panel at NBC’s Education Nation Summit, taking place in New York today and tomorrow, was originally titled "Does Education Need a Katrina?" Such disgraceful rhetoric undermines reasonable debate.
Let’s examine these issues, one by one:
*Waiting for Superman says that lack of money is not the problem in education.
Yet the exclusive charter schools featured in the film receive large private subsidies. Two-thirds of Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone funding comes from private sources, effectively making the charter school he runs in the zone a highly resourced private school. Promise Academy is in many ways an excellent school, but it is dishonest for the filmmakers to say nothing about the funds it took to create it and the extensive social supports including free medical care and counseling provided by the zone.
In New Jersey, where court decisions mandated similar programs, such as high quality pre-kindergarten classes and extended school days and social services in the poorest urban districts, achievement and graduation rates increased while gaps started to close. But public funding for those programs is now being cut and progress is being eroded. Money matters! Of course, money will not solve all problems (because the problems are more systemic than the resources of any given school) – but the off-handed rejection of a discussion of resources is misleading.
*Waiting for Superman implies that standardized testing is a reasonable way to assess student progress.
The debate of “how to raise test scores” strangles and distorts strong education. Most test score differences stubbornly continue to reflect parental income and neighborhood/zip codes, not what schools do. As opportunity, health and family wealth increase, so do test scores.
This is not the fault of schools but the inaccuracy, and the internal bias, in the tests themselves.
Moreover, the tests are too narrow (on only certain subjects with only certain measurement tools). When schools focus exclusively on boosting scores on standardized tests, they reduce teachers to test-prep clerks, ignore important subject areas and critical thinking skills, dumb down the curriculum and leave children less prepared for the future. We need much more authentic assessment to know if schools are doing well and to help them improve.
*Waiting for Superman ignores overall problems of poverty.
Schools must be made into sites of opportunity, not places for the rejection and failure of millions of African American, Chicano Latino, Native American, and immigrant students. But schools and teachers take the blame for huge social inequities in housing, health care, and income.
Income disparities between the richest and poorest in U.S.society have reached record levels between 1970 and today. Poor communities suffer extensive traumas and dislocations. Homelessness, the exploitation of immigrants, and the closing of community health and counseling clinics, are all factors that penetrate our school communities. Solutions that punish schools without addressing these conditions only increase the marginalization of poor children.
*Waiting for Superman says teachers’ unions are the problem.
Of course unions need to be improved – more transparent, more accountable, more democratic and participatory – but before teachers unionized, the disparity in pay between men and women was disgraceful and the arbitrary power of school boards to dismiss teachers or raise class size without any resistance was endemic.
Unions have historically played leading roles in improving public education, and most nations with strong public educational systems have strong teacher unions.
According to this piece in The Nation, "In the Finnish education system, much cited in the film as the best in the world, teachers are – gasp! – unionized and granted tenure, and families benefit from a cradle-to-grave social welfare system that includes universal daycare, preschool and health care, all of which are proven to help children achieve better results in school."
In fact, even student teachers have a union in Finland and, overall, nearly 90% of the Finnish labor force is unionized.
The demonization of unions ignores the real evidence.
*Waiting for Superman says teacher education is useless.
The movie touts the benefits of fast track and direct entry to teaching programs such as Teach for America, but the country with the highest achieving students, Finland, also has highly educated teachers.
A 1970 reform of Finland’s education system mandated that all teachers above the kindergarten level have at least a master’s degree. Today that country’s students have the highest math and science literacy, as measured by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), of all the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries.
*Waiting for Superman decries tenure as a drag on teacher improvement.
Tenured teachers cannot be fired without due process and a good reason: they can’t be fired because the boss wants to hire his cousin, or because the teacher is gay (or black or…), or because they take an unpopular position on a public issue outside of school.
A recent survey found that most principals agreed that they had the authority to fire a teacher if they needed to take such action. It is interesting to note that when teachers are evaluated through a union-sanctioned peer process, more teachers are put into retraining programs and dismissed than through administration-only review programs. Overwhelmingly teachers want students to have outstanding and positive experiences in schools.
*Waiting for Superman says charter schools allow choice and better educational innovation.
Charters were first proposed by the teachers’ unions to allow committed parents and teachers to create schools that were free of administrative bureaucracy and open to experimentation and innovation, and some excellent charters have set examples. But thousands of hustlers and snake oil salesmen have also jumped in.
While teacher unions are vilified in the film, there is no mention of charter corruption or profiteering. A recent national study by CREDO, The Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, concludes that only 17% of charter schools have better test scores than traditional public schools, 46% had gains that were no different than their public counterparts, and 37% were significantly worse.
While a better measure of school success is needed, even by their own measure, the project has not succeeded. A recent Mathematica Policy Research study came to similar conclusions. And the Education Report, "The Evaluation of Charter School Impacts, concludes, “On average, charter middle schools that hold lotteries are neither more nor less successful than traditional public schools in improving student achievement, behavior, and school progress.”
Some fantastic education is happening in charter schools, especially those initiated by communities and led by teachers and community members. But the use of charters as a battering ram for those who would outsource and privatize education in the name of “reform” is sheer political opportunism.
*Waiting for Superman glorifies lotteries for admission to highly selective and subsidized charter schools as evidence of the need for more of them.
If we understand education as a civil right, even a human right as defined by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, we know it can’t be distributed by a lottery.
We must guarantee all students access to high quality early education, highly effective teachers, college and work-preparatory curricula and equitable instructional resources like good school libraries and small classes. A right without a clear map of what that right protects is an empty statement.
It is not a sustainable public policy to allow more and more public school funding to be diverted to privately subsidized charters while public schools become the schools of last resort for children with the greatest educational needs. In Waiting for Superman, families are cruelly paraded in front of the cameras as they wait for an admission lottery in an auditorium where the winners’ names are pulled from a hat and read aloud, while the losing families trudge out in tears with cameras looming in their faces – in what amounts to family and child abuse.
*Waiting for Superman says competition is the best way to improve learning.
Too many people involved in education policy are dazzled by the idea of “market forces” improving schools. By setting up systems of competition, Social Darwinist struggles between students, between teachers, and between schools, these education policy wonks are distorting the educational process.
Teachers will be motivated to gather the most promising students, to hide curriculum strategies from peers, and to cheat; principals have already been caught cheating in a desperate attempt to boost test scores. And children are worn out in a sink-or-swim atmosphere that threatens them with dire life outcomes if they are not climbing to the top of the heap.
In spite of the many millions of dollars poured into expounding the theory of paying teachers for higher student test scores (sometimes mislabeled as ‘merit pay’), a new study by Vanderbilt University’s National Center on Performance Incentives found that the use of merit pay for teachers in the Nashville school district produced no difference even according to their measure, test outcomes for students.
*Waiting for Superman says good teachers are key to successful education. We agree. But Waiting for Superman only contributes to the teacher-bashing culture which discourages talented college graduates from considering teaching and drives people out of the profession.
According to the Department of Education, the country will need 1.6 million new teachers in the next five years. Retention of talented teachers is one key. Good teaching is about making connections to students, about connecting what they learn to the world in which they live, and this only happens if teachers have history and roots in the communities where they teach.
But a recent report by the nonprofit National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future says that “approximately a third of America’s new teachers leave teaching sometime during their first three years of teaching; almost half leave during the first five years. In many cases, keeping our schools supplied with qualified teachers is comparable to trying to fill a bucket with a huge hole in the bottom.”
Check out the reasons teachers are being driven out in Katy Farber’s book, "Why Great Teachers Quit: And How We Might Stop the Exodus," (Corwin Press).
*Waiting for Superman says “we’re not producing large numbers of scientists and doctors in this country anymore. . . This means we are not only less educated, but also less economically competitive.”
But Business Week (10/28/09) reported that “U.S. colleges and universities are graduating as many scientists and engineers as ever,” yet “the highest performing students are choosing careers in other fields.” In particular, the study found, “many of the top students have been lured to careers in finance and consulting.” It’s the market, and the disproportionately high salaries paid to finance specialists, that is misdirecting human resources, not schools.
*Waiting for Superman promotes a nutty theory of learning which claims that teaching is a matter of pouring information into children’s heads.
In one of its many little cartoon segments, the film purports to show how kids learn. The top of a child’s head is cut open and a jumble of factoids is poured in. Ouch! Oh, and then the evil teacher union and regulations stop this productive pouring project.
The film-makers betray a lack of understanding of how people actually learn, the active and engaged participation of students in the learning process. They ignore the social construction of knowledge, the difference between deep learning and rote memorization.
The movie would have done a service by showing us what excellent teaching looks like, and addressing the valuable role that teacher education plays in preparing educators to practice the kind of targeted teaching that reaches all students. It should have let teachers’ voices be heard.
*Waiting for Superman promotes the idea that we are in a dire war for US dominance in the world.
The poster advertising the film shows a nightmarish battlefield in stark gray, with a little white girl sitting at a desk in the midst of it. The text: “The fate of our country won’t be decided on a battlefield. It will be determined in a classroom.”
This is a common theme of the so-called reformers: We are at war with India and China and we have to out-math them and crush them so that we can remain rich and they can stay in the sweatshops.
But really, who declared this war? When did I as a teacher sign up as an officer in this war? And when did that 4th grade girl become a soldier in it? Instead of this new educational Cold War, perhaps we should be helping kids imagine a world of global cooperation, sustainable economies, and equity.
*Waiting for Superman says federal “Race to the Top” education funds are being focused to support students who are not being served in other ways.
According to a study by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and others, Race to the Top funds are benefiting affluent or well-to-do, white, and “abled” students. So the outcome of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top has been more funding for schools that are doing well and more discipline and narrow test-preparation for the poorest schools.
*Waiting for Superman suggests that teacher improvement is a matter of increased control and discipline over teachers.
Dan Brown, a teacher in the SEED charter school featured in the film, points out that successful schools involve teachers in strong collegial conversations. Teachers need to be accountable to a strong educational plan, without being terrorized. Good teachers, which is the vast majority of them, are seeking this kind of support from their leaders.
*Waiting for Superman proposes a reform “solution” that exploits the feminization of the field of teaching; it proposes that teachers just need a few good men with hedge funds (plus D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee with a broom) to come to the rescue.
Teaching has been historically devalued – teachers are less well compensated and have less control of their working conditions than other professionals – because of its associations with women.
For example, 97% of preschool and kindergarten teachers are women, and this is also the least well-compensated sector of teaching; in 2009, the lowest 10% earned $30,970 to $34,280; the top 10% earned $75,190 to $80,970. () By comparison the top 25 hedge fund managers took in $25 billion in 2009, enough to hire 658,000 new teachers.
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Waiting for Superman could and should have been an inspiring call for improvement in education, a call we desperately need to mobilize behind.
That’s why it is so shocking that the message was hijacked by a narrow agenda that undermines strong education. It is stuck in a framework that says that reform and leadership means doing things, like firing a bunch of people (Rhee) or “turning around” schools (Education Secretary Arne Duncan) despite the fact that there’s no research to suggest that these would have worked, and there’s now evidence to show that they haven’t.
Reform must be guided by community empowerment and strong evidence, not by ideological warriors or romanticized images of leaders acting like they’re doing something, anything. Waiting for Superman has ignored deep historical and systemic problems in education such as segregation, property-tax based funding formulas, centralized textbook production, lack of local autonomy and shared governance, de-professionalization, inadequate special education supports, differential discipline patterns, and the list goes on and on.
People seeing Waiting for Superman should be mobilized to improve education. They just need to be willing to think outside of the narrow box that the film-makers have constructed to define what needs to be done.
Thanks for ideas and some content from many teacher publications, and especially from Monty Neill, Jim Horn Lisa Guisbond, Stan Karp, Erica Meiners, Kevin Kumashiro, Ilene Abrams, Bill Ayers, and Therese Quinn.
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Let's look at the neo-liberal and neo-conservative pols in Maryland giving Maryland citizens this dismantling of public education and supersized fraud and corruption in how education funding moves in Maryland and Baltimore. Hopkins in Baltimore has even built the public school structure so that all of the highest achieving students are funneled to its school pipeline
Now, Mike Miller as Senate leader appoints all the heads of these committees as does Mike Busch in the House of Delegates.
THEY HAVE RULED THE ASSEMBLY FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS AND THIS IS WHY MARYLAND IS THE MOST GLOBAL CORPORATE AND AUTOCRATIC OF STATES.
Just a quick overview of this committee---education, health, and environment. Privatized public universities and now K-12-----privatized public health with exemption from Medicare that eliminates this Federal program and its protections in Maryland, and environmental policy that has no enforcement and fails in most measures because it protects corporate profits, not public interest.
Joan Carter Conway is the Hopkins politician from Baltimore as is McIntosh, Washington, and Anderson. THESE ARE NEO-CONSERVATIVES RUNNING AS DEMOCRATS. You see Conway as head of these Senate committees that pass all of this very bad education policy and she does it to her own constituents. Remember, privatizing public education hurts the middle and working class as much as the poor so this is not a race or class issue.....it is about democracy, our Constitutional rights as citizens to equal opportunity, protection, and access.
In Baltimore there are usually no challenges to these Maryland Assembly pols by labor, justice, or white collar middle-class professionals. The leaders of these groups simply allow these same pols to dismantle all public structures to build the Trans Pacific Trade Pact structure handing all public policy to global corporate tribunals. That is towards what the pols below work and NO ONE LIKES THESE POLICIES.
REMEMBER, THESE ARE NEO-CONSERVATIVE POLICIES SO VOTING REPUBLICAN DOES NOT CHANGE THIS----WE MUST RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES TO TAKE BACK THE PEOPLE'S PARTY.
Rumor has Maggie McIntosh-----Hopkins pol extraordinaire----will take Mike Busch's place in the House leadership----GLOBAL CORPORATE TRIBUNAL POLS IN PLACE. Joan Carter Conway in the Senate had a challenger this election because she strayed from the neo-conservative position a time or two----Bill Henry is a Hopkins graduate just as committed to Hopkins policies as McIntosh. So, the choice is neo-conservative most of the time vs neo-conservative all of the time. THIS IS THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY IN BALTIMORE. This is why all of the global corporate policies moving through Maryland Assembly often originate from Baltimore and Hopkins. 650,000 labor and justice residents being subjected to the worst of conditions mostly choosing not to vote because Baltimore elections are rigged towards these Hopkins candidates.
IT IS EASY PEASY TO CHANGE THIS DYNAMIC-----IF PEOPLE WOULD STOP WORRYING ABOUT RACE AND CLASS AND SIMPLY VOTE FOR A STRONG DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY THAT FOLLOWS RULE OF LAW AND THE US CONSTITUTION.
Baltimore is not the only voting region that hates neo-liberal and neo-con global corporate control of government. Republicans hate neo-cons-----progressives in Montgomery County hate neo-liberals----we simply need to become engaged in politics to reverse this! CORPORATE CONTROL OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IS AN ATTACK ON THE CORNERSTONE OF DEMOCRACY.
Make no mistake----the Michelle Rhee education privatization being built in Baltimore by Hopkins will be expanded to all of Maryland so voters across Maryland need to get rid of these pols.
THERE IS NO PUBLIC VOICE IN ALL OF THESE POLICIES FROM EDUCATION TO HEALTH CARE BECAUSE THESE POLS DO NOT CREATE THE PUBLIC STRUCTURES IN THEIR COMMUNITIES TO DISCUSS AND DEBATE ISSUES.
MARYLAND SENATE STANDING COMMITTEES
EDUCATION, HEALTH & ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
Origin & Functions
Subcommittees
Miller Senate Office Building entrance, 11 Bladen St., Annapolis, Maryland, January 2007. Photo by Diane F. Evartt.
Appointed by Senate President:
Joan Carter Conway, Chair (410) 841-3145, (301) 858-3145
Roy P. Dyson, Vice-Chair (410) 841-3673, (301) 858-3673
- Joanne C. Benson
Bill Ferguson
J. B. Jennings
Karen S. Montgomery
Paul G. Pinsky
Edward R. Reilly
James C. Rosapepe
Bryan W. Simonaire
Ronald N. Young
Staff: Sara C. Fidler; Theodore E. King, Jr.; Ryane M. Necessary.
Miller Senate Office Building, 2 West Wing
11 Bladen St., Annapolis, MD 21401 - 1991
(410) 841-3661, (301) 858-3661
fax: (410) 841-3957, (301) 858-3957
Maryland Assembly
Senate SUBCOMMITTEES
EDUCATION SUBCOMMITTEE
Appointed by Chair, Education, Health & Environmental Affairs Committee:
Paul G. Pinsky, Chair (410) 841-3155, (301) 858-3155
Joanne C. Benson
Bill Ferguson
Karen S. Montgomery
Edward R. Reilly
James C. Rosapepe
ENVIRONMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Appointed by Chair, Education, Health & Environmental Affairs Committee:
Joan Carter Conway, Co-Chair (410) 841-3145, (301) 858-3145
Paul G. Pinsky, Co-Chair (410) 841-3155, (301) 858-3155
Bill Ferguson
J. B. Jennings
Karen S. Montgomery
Ronald N. Young
ETHICS & ELECTION LAW SUBCOMMITTEE
Appointed by Chair, Education, Health & Environmental Affairs Committee:
Roy P. Dyson, Chair (410) 841-3673, (301) 858-3673
Joan Carter Conway
Karen S. Montgomery
Edward R. Reilly
James C. Rosapepe
HEALTH OCCUPATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Appointed by Chair, Education, Health & Environmental Affairs Committee:
Joan Carter Conway, Chair (410) 841-3145, (301) 858-3145
Joanne C. Benson
Roy P. Dyson
J. B. Jennings
Karen S. Montgomery
Bryan W. Simonaire
LABOR LICENSING, & REGULATION SUBCOMMITTEE
Appointed by Chair, Education, Health & Environmental Affairs Committee:
Joan Carter Conway, Chair (410) 841-3145, (301) 858-3145
Roy P. Dyson
Bill Ferguson
Karen S. Montgomery
Bryan W. Simonaire
Ronald N. Young
______________________________________________
It is the House of Delegates that fund what the Senate passes into law. So, all that public money going to public private partnerships and corporate structure and control comes from these committees. Mary Washington is Hopkins' pol on this committee but we see Heather Mizeur who ran on continuing privatization and loving Baltimore's education privatization scheme. Yet, she was sold as a progressive. She is a neo-liberal and Mary Washington is a neo-conservative and they work for the same global corporate profit. goal.
Below you see Mike Busch has appointed the leaders from the most conservative regions to head these appropriation committees----even conservative Republicans do not like the crony, global corporate funding that undermines parent and community control of schools. While Republican voters are crying foul to the education reforms----these reforms are being funded by their own pols.
We need the 80% of registered Democratic voters not voting to run for office to get rid of neo-liberal pols. We need the 80% of Republican voters not voting to run and get rid of neo-conservative pols. Once we return to domestic control of our economy and government then we can have the political fights over progressive vs conservative.
House of Delegates Appropriations Committee
EDUCATION & ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Appointed by Chair, Appropriations Committee:
John L. Bohanan, Jr., Chair (410) 841-3227, (301) 858-3227
Heather R. Mizeur, Vice-Chair (410) 841-3493, (301) 858-3493
Melony G. Griffith
Adrienne A. Jones
James E. Proctor, Jr.
Nancy R. Stocksdale
Mary L. Washington
Appointed by House Speaker:
Norman H. Conway, Chair (410) 841-3407, (301) 858-3407
James E. Proctor, Jr., Vice-Chair (410) 841-3083, (301) 858-3083 Steven J. Arentz
Gail H. Bates
Wendell R. Beitzel
John L. Bohanan, Jr.
Steven J. DeBoy, Sr.
Adelaide C. Eckardt
Tawanna P. Gaines
Melony G. Griffith
Ana Sol Gutierrez
Guy J. Guzzone
Keith E. Haynes
Mary-Dulany James
Adrienne A. Jones
Tony McConkey
Heather R. Mizeur
Barbara A. Robinson
Theodore J. Sophocleus
Nancy R. Stocksdale
Kathy Szeliga
Mary L. Washington
John F. Wood, Jr.
Craig J. Zucker
_____________________________________
There you have Hopkins grad Mary Pat Clarke----she is the good cop of the neo-conservative Hopkins team. She is the face of all of these Michelle Rhee education reforms---Teach for America----schools as businesses-----corporate universities and there is Bill Henry fighting to be more neo-conservative than Joan Carter Conway.
When these pols say the city council has no control over the power of the Mayor's office shout back-----
Below are the faces of the worst autocratic, corporate education reform in the US.
THEN ORGANIZE A PETITION TO REFERENDUM TO CHANGE THE BALTIMORE CHARTER TAKING AWAY THOSE MAYORAL POWERS......EASY PEASY. THEY DO NOT BECAUSE THEY WORK FOR THE SAME JOHNS HOPKINS THAT THE MAYOR DOES----RAWLINGS BLAKE.
Baltimore City Council committees---
EDUCATION AND YOUTH
Mary Pat Clarke – Chair
Bill Henry – Vice Chair
Robert Curran
Nick Mosby
William "Pete" Welch
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