Reclaim School Reform from the Corporate Raiders

Reclaim School Reform 

The Nation

One of the greatest challenges facing American education today is a fantasy, spun by billionaire-funded “think tanks” and often repeated uncritically by
politicians and pundits, that our schools are failing, that teachers are shirking their responsibilities and that unions are

the root of the problem. Unfortunately, the peddlers of these distortions have held the microphone for so long that the word “reform” is now associated with the crudest assaults on the very infrastructure of public education.

It’s not that reform isn’t called for. Schools are beset with difficulties, mostly born of the inequalities rampant in the larger society. But, as ought to be obvious, education reform must be in the public interest—on behalf of public schools and the children who attend them—rather than private interests, furthering “the corporate agenda for public schools, which disregards our voices and attempts to impose a system of winners and losers,” to quote the mission statement of a new coalition of teachers and their unions, along with parent, student, religious and community groups. This coalition has set itself the task of nothing less than reclaiming “the promise of public education as our nation’s gateway to democracy and racial and economic justice.”

Backed by the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, as well as national groups like the League of United Latin American Citizens and local organizations like the Philadelphia Student Union and the Boston Youth Organizing Project, this coalition effort—beginning with a national day of action on December 9—picks up the themes of the Chicago Teachers Union strike of 2012, which saw educators and parents unite against school closings. It highlights concerns about resources and classroom energy being diverted to standardized testing instead of kids, concerns that have become a focus of the New York State United Teachers. And it embraces the message of Diane Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education, who argues that the right response to much of what ails public education is a comprehensive anti-poverty agenda that addresses racial and economic inequality [1] by providing healthcare, food and nutrition, and preschool programs that enable teachers to teach and students to learn.

Day of Action for Public Education

“Public education is under attack,” comes the warning from Philadelphia in a riveting new video from community and youth organizers in that city.

Their accusations are that education policies are “an attack on poor children” … policy makers “don’t care about the students” … public education “is being defunded” … and “it’s not something specific to Philadelphia.”

Indeed, Philadelphia “is an early warning sign for America,” a former science teacher wrote recently at the progressive news site PolicyMic. Chronically low per-pupil spending – “behind suburban districts” – combined with a “powerful charter school movement” intent on privatizing schools, have eroded Philly schools to the state where basic supplies like paper, pencils, and books seem like luxuries.

It’s a story that mirrors what’s happening across the country.

Americans everywhere are seeing their local schools being ground into pieces between the twin political augers of government austerity and top-down, corporate-backed “reform.”

What Do the 2012 PISA Scores Tell Us About U.S. Schools?

What Do the 2012 PISA Scores Tell Us About U.S. Schools?  NEA.

What Does the PISA Report Tell Us About U.S. Education?

Day of Action for Public Education. Dec. 9

“Public education is under attack,” comes the warning from Philadelphia in a riveting new video from community and youth organizers in that city.

Their accusations are that education policies are “an attack on poor children” … policy makers “don’t care about the students” … public education “is being defunded” … and “it’s not something specific to Philadelphia.”

Indeed, Philadelphia “is an early warning sign for America,” a former science teacher wrote recently at the progressive news site PolicyMic. Chronically low per-pupil spending – “behind suburban districts” – combined with a “powerful charter school movement” intent on privatizing schools, have eroded Philly schools to the state where basic supplies like paper, pencils, and books seem like luxuries.

It’s a story that mirrors what’s happening across the country.

Americans everywhere are seeing their local schools being ground into pieces between the twin political augers of government austerity and top-down, corporate-backed “reform.”

Parents' Message to de Blasio on Testing

Papering Over Public K-12 School Reform- Michelle Rhee?

Papering Over Public K-12 School Reform  By Seth Sandronsky

 Private interests are busy paying for political favors from lawmakers at the state Capitol in California, writes Dan Morain, a columnist with The Sacramento Bee: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/11/13/5905448/dan-morain-the-investigation-into.html

According to him, what we know about Sen. Ron Calderon, a pro-business Democrat representing Montebello, and snared in an FBI sting operation recently, is just the tip of the dollars-and-politics iceberg. 

The good senator has ample company, Morain continues. He mentions other actors and forces in the fetid pay-to-play of California state politics. 

Yet his column omits the donor role of a leading public K-12 school reform group under the state Capitol dome. What is going on? 

Al Jazeera America’s Oct. 31 unveiling of an FBI affidavit that alleges Sen. Calderon’s multiple alleged wrongdoings includes his brother Thomas Calderon’s meeting with star education reformer Michelle Rhee’s lobbyists. Her StudentsFirst group operates from a national headquarters in Sacramento. 

The affidavit alleges that StudentsFirst lobbyists met with Sen. Calderon’s brother on Feb. 20. On Feb. 21, Sen. Calderon introduced a teacher-reform measure, Senate Bill 441 that Rhee’s group supports: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/sen/sb_0401-0450/sb_441_cfa_20130423_084911_sen_comm.html 

Fast for Immigration Reform - for Thanksgiving

Pressure and Passivity on Immigration

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD. NY Times.  November 27, 2013.

President Obama made the case for immigration reform again on Monday, in a speech in San Francisco that seemed mostly directed to Republicans in Congress, who aren’t listening. (see http://antiracismdsa.blogspot.com/2013/11/barack-obama-on-immigration-reform.html)

Noting the Republican resistance to passing a single comprehensive bill, he struck an oddly lighthearted note. “It’s Thanksgiving,” he said. “We can carve that bird into multiple pieces — a drumstick here, breast meat there.” This drew chuckles. By suggesting that large-scale immigration overhaul can be done incrementally, he was retreating from an argument that has guided reform advocates for a decade: fixing the broken system requires three things at once — tighter enforcement, an improved flow of new immigrants and legalization for the 11 million living here outside the law.

Henry Giroux on the "School to Prison Pipeline" | BillMoyers.com

Henry Giroux on the "School to Prison Pipeline" | BillMoyers.com

Public Universities Should be Free

Public education should be free. If it isn't free, it isn't public education.

Aaron Bady.  Al Jazeera.

This should not be a controversial assertion. This should be common sense. But Americans have forgotten what the "public" in "public education" actually means (or used to mean). The problem is that the word no longer has anything to refer to: This country's public universities have been radically transformed. The change has happened so slowly and so gradually — bit by bit, cut by cut over half a century — that it can be seen really only in retrospect. But with just a small amount of historical perspective, the change is dramatic: public universities that once charged themselves to open their doors to all who could benefit by attending — that were, by definition, the public property of the entire state — have become something entirely different.

What we still call public universities would be more accurately described as state-controlled private universities — corporate entities that think and behave like businesses. Whereas there once was a public mission to educate the republic's citizens, there is now the goal of satisfying the educational needs of the market, aided by PR departments that brand degrees as commodities and build consumer interest, always with an eye to the bottom line. And while public universities once sought to advance the industry of the state as a whole, with an eye to the common good, shortfalls in public funding have led to universities' treating their research capacity as a source of primary fundraising, developing new technologies and products for the private sector, explicitly to raise the money they need to operate. Conflicts of interest are now commonplace.

How Charter Schools Are Undermining Public Education

Stan Karp

November 14, 2013  |  

Somewhere along the way, nearly every teacher dreams of starting a school. I know I did.

More than once during the 30 years I taught English and journalism to high school students in Paterson, New Jersey, I imagined that creating my own school would open the door to everything I wanted as a teacher:

• Colleagues with a shared vision of teaching and learning.
• Freedom from central office bureaucracy.
• A welcoming school culture that reflected the lives of our students and families.
• Professional autonomy that nourished innovation and individual and collective growth.
• School-based decision-making that pushed choices about resources, priorities, time, and staffing closer to the classrooms where it matters the most.

But reality can be hard on daydreams, and I got a glimpse of how complicated these issues are when my large comprehensive high school embraced the reform trend of the day and moved to create small theme academies inside the larger school. As the lead teacher of a new communications academy, I soon faced a host of thorny questions: Who would our new academy serve? What would the selection process be? How would the academy share space and resources with the rest of the school? How would our academy team be formed, and what impact would overlapping circles of authority have on teachers' contractual and evaluation processes? What would be the effect of the new academies on the larger school around us, which still opened its doors to everyone?

Why Good Teachers Embrace Culture

Meeting students where they are often requires knowing, celebrating, and incorporating their cultural backgrounds.

By Sophie Quinton

Arizona's attorney general called the program "propagandizing and brainwashing." An administrative law judge ruled that it "promotes racial resentment against 'Whites,' and advocates ethnic solidarity of Latinos."

With that, the Tucson Unified School District's controversial Mexican-American studies courses shut down in 2011. Yet a University of Arizona study found that the mostly Latino students who took the courses were 46 percent to 150 percent more likely to graduate from high school than those who did not. The study also determined positive effects on math and reading test scores. An independent audit of the curriculum confirmed that taking the courses helped students succeed in school.

All good teachers build a bridge between what students know and what they need to learn. Yet teaching that embraces students' cultural backgrounds has largely been left out of current debates on what makes teachers effective. The drama in Tucson helps explain why: Culturally responsive teaching often requires confronting some of the most painful divides in American life.

How our public schools became a threat.

How our Public Schools Became a 'Communist Threat'

By Paul Buchheit

Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast called the public school system a "socialist regime." Michelle Rhee cautions us against commending students for their 'participation' in sports and other activities.
Privatizers believe that any form of working together as a community is anti-American. To them, individual achievement is all that matters. They're now applying their winner-take-all profit motive to our children.

We're Sliding Backwards, Towards "Separate and Unequal"

In 1954, the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education seemed to place our country on the right track. Chief Justice Earl Warren said that education "is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms." Thurgood Marshall insisted on "the right of every American to an equal start in life."

Cost of schooling

More important than IQ

Reports Expose Extreme Pressure Groups Masquerading as Think Tanks

Reports Expose Extreme Pressure Groups Masquerading as Think Tanks

Free Screening of "A Place at the Table" Friday Ni...

SACRAMENTO PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE: Free Screening of "A Place at the Table" Friday Ni...: Campus Progressive Alliance Presents   A Place at the Table From the People Who Brought You FOOD INC.   “As important and eye...

Journalists get the data wrong on school improvement

by Jeff Bryant

It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry when an “All-Purpose-Pundit” atThe New York Times takes it upon him/herself to write a commentary about education.

“Thomas Friedman is infamous for his uninformed pieces on education,” Larry Ferlazzo, a retired schoolteacher and ubiquitous education commentator on the Internet recently observed. And there’s “David Brooks, who is equally off-base.”

Diane Ravitch, lamenting a recent column by Times editorialist Bill Keller, who lazily blamed widespread problems with education performance on university teacher preparation programs (without mustering a shred of evidence to support his claim), concluded, “It would be wonderful if theNew York Times elevated someone to the op-ed page as a columnist who actually knew something about education.”

Staying true to form last week was Times opinionator Nicholas Kritsof. Prompted by the latest results of the National Assessment of Education Progress, aka “the Nation’s Report Card,” Kritsof observed on Twitter, “Latest NAEP school test scores suggest that school reform helps. Big improvements in DC & Tennessee, both centers of reform.”

Since 1990, the “Main NAEP,” given every other year in grades 4 and 8 to measure national and state achievement in reading and math, has led to all sorts of overblown claims. This year’s results have been subjected to the same tendencies – despite the fact that the results were described as“stubbornly mixed” by reliable news outlets, with stagnation in 4th grade reading and math and slight gains in 8th grade reading only.

Krugman- The Mutilated Economy

RS Seminar- Economic Crisis: Krugman- The Mutilated Economy: The Mutilated Economy By  PAUL KRUGMAN Five years and eleven months have now passed since the U.S. economy entered recession. Offici...

Michelle Rhee revolution faces massive threat — and new accusations

Michelle Rhee revolution faces massive threat — and new accusations

Multicultural Education Conference

Michelle Rhee involved in the California Calderon Scandal

National education reform advocate sought Calderon'€™s influence

Al Jazera America. 

by Trevor Aaronson

 

October 31, 2013  5:41PM ET

A private meeting with lobbyists for Michelle Rhee occurred before the CA state senator sponsored education reform bill

Topics:

 

Politics

 

Crime

 

Law & Justice

Michelle Rhee, founder of StudentsFirst and former chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools, at a discussion on education reform in September.

Danny Moloshok/UPI/Landov

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Lobbyists representing the nonprofit founded by education reform activist Michelle Rhee met privately with Thomas Calderon, a political dealmaker here, the day before Calderon’s brother, state Sen. Ronald Calderon, introduced a controversial bill that would have toughened teacher performance evaluations, according to people familiar with the matter.

The meeting with lobbyists for StudentsFirst, Rhee’s nonprofit lobbying organization, occurred on Feb. 20 of this year. The next day, state and other public records show, Senator Calderon introduced the bill championed by Rhee’s group. There is no indication that Rhee attended the meeting, and she did not respond to requests for an interview.

More students, fewer teachers- it is called austerity

The Teacher Gap: More Students and Fewer Teachers

http://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-gap-students-teachers/

Portside Date: 

October 25, 2013

Author: 

Heidi Shierholz

Date of Source: 

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Economic Policy Institute

Over the last five years, government employment has dropped by 657,000 as a result of the Great Recession’s effects on federal, state, and local budgets. With kids getting settled back in the classroom this fall, it’s worth considering how much of that drop has hit public K–12 schools.
Of the decline in public-sector employment in the last five years, around 40 percent (258,000) is in local government education, which largely consists of jobs in public K–12 education (the majority of which are teachers, but also included are teacher aides, guidance counselors, and administrators, among others). Over the same period, public K–12 enrollment increased by 1.6 percent. Just to keep up with this growth in the student population, employment in local public education should have grown at roughly the same rate, which would have meant adding 132,000 jobs. Putting these numbers together (i.e., what was lost plus what should have been added to keep up with the expanding student population) means that the total jobs gap in local public education as a result of the Great Recession and its aftermath is around 389,000 jobs, as shown in the figure below.

Mayor Johnson Shoots an Air Ball

When A Mayor Shoots An Air Ball

 By Seth Sandronsky

Seth Sandronsky ZSpace Page 

Inaccuracy reigns in U.S. politics today. 

We turn to Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a two-term Democrat who rose to fame as a star guard in the NBA. Mr. Johnson is now visiting U.S. cities on a Mayors for Educational Excellence Tour with three mayors: Julián Castro of San Antonio; Michael Hancock of Denver and Angel Taveras of Providence, R.I.   

In a recent Politico opinion piece “On the road to school success,” Mr. Johnson shot an air ball concerning public education in Sacramento:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/on-the-road-to-school-success-98352.html 

He wrote: “Facing the inherent difficulty of addressing the challenges of the city’s five school districts, Sacramento saw a need to attract proven education practices to the city. The mayor’s office helped convene and recruit prominent national organizations, and within just one year, City Year, Teach for America, StudentsFirst and College Track launched sites in the city. Each organization has had an immediate impact on schools and on student learning, and the influx of talented individuals invested in student success has created a promising environment for collaboration and innovation.” 

It is inaccurate to write that “Sacramento” saw a need to change its K-12 public education system. For the record, the public did not vote on the matter as Mr. Johnson described it. 

Schools and poverty

By Elaine Weiss

So much has been said about new “21st century” skills, standards, and learning requirements, that they have become virtually synonymous with “college and career readiness” (a similarly poorly defined goal). The purportedly new demand for higher-level and different skills has further increased the pressure for more tests and higher stakes attached to them.

A new study showing explosive growth in student poverty suggests, though, that we have misidentified the problem. What if we have actually been teaching the right skills in U.S. schools all along – math and reading, science and civics, along with creativity, perseverance, and team-building? What if these were as important a hundred years ago for nurturing innovative farmers and developers of new automobiles as they are now for creating the next generation of tech innovators? What if these are the very characteristics of U.S. schools that have made us such a strong public education nation, and the current shift toward a narrower agenda just dilutes that strength? What if, rather than raising standards, and testing students more, the biggest change we need to address is that of our student body?

The October 2013 Southern Education Foundation study indicates clearly that poverty, which has long been the biggest obstacle to educational achievement, is more important than ever. It is our true 21st century problem. Fifty years ago, we educated mostly working-class kids and up, and we did not expect those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder to graduate. Now we educate all students, including the very poorest and otherwise disadvantaged. And we expect them all to graduate. Compounding this shift, a large and growing proportion of U.S. students students live in poverty and even concentrated poverty, have a disability, and/or are learning English as a second language. THAT is the paradigm shift, and we need a totally new set of policies to address that 21st century reality.

National Association for Multicultural Education - Conference

Obama is not a socialist. But, we are !

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS OF AMERICA

75 Maiden Lane / Suite 702 / New York, NY 10038

212-727-8610 / fax 212-608-6955 / www.dsausa.org

Obama is not a socialist, but we are !

The  nation’s largest  democratic socialist organization meets in Emeryville  Oct. 25/27  to plan for :

 Socialism in the Age of Obama.   

The  DSA convention begins with a Bay Area  outreach event -- Building the Next Left -- Rebirth and Renewal,  Friday, October 25, 2013,  Humanist Hall,  390 27^th Street, Oakland. The event features writer John Nichols; Catherine Tactaquin, Director of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights; Steve Williams, Co-founder of POWER ( People Organized to Win Employment Rights); and Maria Svart, National Director of Democratic Socialists of America.

Last week  right-wing politics in the Congress forced the nation precariously close to a default on the national debt that could  have produced  a second great economic crisis.  The Democratic Socialists of America view this political corruption and cynicism as an opportunity to organize a New Left -- a powerful political movement left of the Democrats working with labor, workers organizations, immigrant groups and social movements to --

Rebuild a Participatory Democracy in a Multicultural U.S.

Speakers at the convention include: John Nichols, Tom Hayden, union leaders Jose La Luz and Michael Lighty, immigrant rights activists Catherine Tactaquin and David Bacon,  Joe Schwartz, Maria Svart, Steve Williams and more.

Forum- School Closings in Sacramento

The Black Parallel School Board  & Southeast Village Neighborhood Association

Presents  A Community Forum featuring

Dr. Hernandez from the Sociology Department @ UC Davis

 “Residential Segregation and School Closures”  

Free and open to the public!!!

Thursday, October 24, 2013 from 5:30pm -8:00pm

George Sim Community Center, 6207 Logan Street, Sacramento, CA  95824

Many co-sponsors including the Democracy and Education Institute, DSA, Progressive Alliance and others.  See post below. 

Rhee's Failures- Promotion, PR, not Evidence

Jeff Bryant

Without doubt the poster person for the reform movement has been ex-chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public school system Michelle Rhee, who rocketed to the limelight of American consciousness with her grandiose portrayals in the popular press and the major documentary film “Waiting for Superman.”

Rhee is known as none other than “America’s most famous school reformer.”

But it is Rhee’s spectacular rise and fall that in many ways symbolizes the fallen arc of the education reform movement. This month, that trajectory sank even lower.

Despite a generation of pledges to advance American prosperity, the economic conditions of typical Americans continue to deteriorate: more widespread poverty among children, persistently high uninsured rates among the elderly, more people who lack the savings to cover basic expenses for three months if they lose their job, more wage earners in low-pay jobs barely able to cover basic needs, and explosive growth in income inequality.

The Black Parallel School Board 

Southeast Village Neighborhood Association

Presents

A Community Forum featuring

Dr. Jesus Hernandez, sociology professor at UC Davis

“Residential Segregation and School Closures”  

Free and open to the public!!!

Thursday, October 24, 2013 from 5:30pm -8:00pm

George Sim Community Center, 6207 Logan Street, Sacramento, CA  95824

Our Co-Sponsors: (partial list): Stephanie Francis, Parent, African Research Institute, Alpha Academy Program , Suzanne Brooks , Concerned African American Parents of Elk Grove, Democracy and Education Institute ,  Mexican American Digital History Project, Sacramento Progressive Alliance, DSA (Sacramento), Sac Cultural Hub, Sacramento Area Black Caucus, Order Of Olufunmi , Friends of Sabeel -- Sacramento Region, Chicano Consortium of Sacramento and Sacramento City Teachers Association, Avondale Glen Elders Neighborhood Association (AGENA), Hmong Innovating Politics (HIP), Bernard A. Goldberg, Capital Region Organizing Project (CROP), Sacramento ACLU Chapter of Northern California,  Master Barber & Beauty Shop and The Talking Drums News.

Opinion: On the road to school success - Michael Hancock and Kevin Johnson and Angel Taveras and Julián Castro - POLITICO.com

Opinion: On the road to school success - Michael Hancock and Kevin Johnson and Angel Taveras and Julián Castro - POLITICO.com

Interesting.  Kevin Johnson as an educational leader. The success he lists have not produced progress in Sacramento area schools IMHO.
This is how educational policy is shaped - by people with little real working contact with the schools.

Sacramento Unified Superintendent Resigns. Why this direction of school reform did not work.

Sacramento City Unified Superintendent Jonathon Raymond has resigned.  He will leave the district in December. Raymond was one of a number of national superintendents trained by the Broad Superintendents Academy- a project of the Broad Foundation.   Michelle Rhee serves on the advisory committee for the “Academy”. This is a significant part of Broad and corporate guided  strategy for school “reform”.  See prior articles by Randy Shaw and Joanne  Barkan, among others,    on the limits of this reform movement.

The district hired Raymond, and received Broad Foundation support, in an attempt to raise the achievement scores of public schools.  However, Raymond served during the last 4 years of economic crisis while state imposed budget cuts prevented many improvements.

Particularly divisive has been the decision to close seven low income elementary campuses.  This strategy of closing schools in minority districts has been used by Broad Foundation alumni in cities around the nation, including Chicago, Philadelphia and others.  The Foundation has a guidebook for how to select and to close these schools.

No Superintendent, no leader, can be individually faulted for failure to significantly improve scores in low income schools in a period when the per pupil expenditures were reduced by over $1,000 per student.

Increasing student poverty, as documented by economist Joseph Stiglitz, and Robert Reich, among others, explains a significant part of why U.S. in falling further behind other countries school achievement.   “When you break down the various test scores, you find that high income kids are high achievers and they are holding their own and more.” According to Micheal Rebell  the executive director of the campaign for Educational Equity at Columbia University.

The Government is Open. Now Fight for Just Gover...

SACRAMENTO PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE: The Government is Open. Now Fight for Just Gover...: The Government is Open: Now fight for Just Government Policies By Joseph M. Schwartz  Progressives  welcome the defeat of R...

What if we default on our debt?

“Sitting on the Pavement, Thinking About the Government” –

What if we default on our debt?  (Dylan, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”)

 Bill Barclay.

The debt ceiling, the dollar and hegemonic currencies

Let’s begin by clearing up a possible lingering misconception about debt and defaults.  If Congress does not raise the debt ceiling and we default, does that mean the U.S. is broke?  No.  The U.S., like any country that 1) controls the creation of its own currency and 2) issues its debt in its own currency, cannot go broke.  However, political calculations can impose deadbeat status on such a country. 

What about other countries, why don’t they have this problem?  The answer is equally simple.  With the exception of Denmark, no other wealthy industrial society has a debt ceiling – and Denmark’s is set at over twice their actual level of government debt – and it is not a political football.  So yes, the U.S. is, as our national meme says, exceptional.  The debt ceiling – and any associated problems – are our own creation.