By the Numbers

Some random numbers to ponder during the Thanksgiving Recess...

TWO DOWN...AND MORE TO COME

Here's why two Indiana school systems went broke. And others are in danger.

The Indiana Constitution states in Section 1, of Article 8, Education, that

...it should be the duty of the General Assembly to...provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall without charge, and equally open to all.

And in Section 3, that

The principal of the Common School fund shall remain a perpetual fund, which may be increased, but shall never be diminished; and the income thereof shall be inviolably appropriated to the support of Common Schools, and to no other purpose whatever.

Let's keep those two sections of the Constitution in mind when we look at how the state has allowed...indeed, encouraged...the financial collapse of two of our public education systems.

In the rush to overhaul education, state lawmakers abandoned decades of commitment to the traditional public school system, pushing forward even as districts started closing schools, cutting programs and losing teachers.

They developed a system that encourages free-market competition with other public schools, charter schools and private ones — creating a sink-or-swim mentality that already has helped push Gary and Muncie schools into such a deep financial crisis that the state was forced to take them over.

They may not be the last.

And lest you think that it's not a state sponsored problem, there's this...

Breaking: Indiana didn’t set aside enough money for schools. Senate leader says a fix is ‘top priority.’

Don't worry, though. There was plenty of money for charter schools and vouchers...

State education officials are expecting a shortfall in school funding this year that could be as high as $9 million because state and local officials underestimated Indiana’s student enrollment.

STARK DIFFERENCES

Charters and Consequences: An Investigative Series by the Network for Public Education

Diverting money to charter schools has an impact on public education. The Network for Public Education has a report focusing on charters and how they hurt real, public schools.

The data show clear, dramatic differences between the charters and the local, neighborhood schools. The neighborhood public schools have greater proportions of students who are poor, and who need special education services. Digging deeper you will  find stark differences in the handicapping conditions of students who attend charter and public schools, with public school special education students having far greater needs.

FIVE ADMISSIONS

5 times Republicans admitted they work for rich donors

Here's why the latest Republican tax scheme favors the wealthy. Reason number three, from Lindsey Graham of South Carolina – deliver the tax breaks for the wealthy or lose political donor cash.

3. Lindsey Graham says the party’s coffers are dependent on tax plan passing.
In addition to cautioning last month that Republicans will lose seats in the House and Senate if the GOP tax reform bill doesn’t pass, Senator Graham issued a more dire warning on Thursday.

"The party fractures, most incumbents in 2018 will get a severe primary challenge, a lot of them will probably lose, the base will fracture, the financial contributions will stop,” Graham said, “other than that it'll be fine."

Graham has also suggested that Trump is a goner if this tax thing doesn’t happen, because the Dems will—politically speaking—take him out by attempting “to impeach him pretty quick.”

"[I]t would be just one constant investigation after another,” Graham groused, without a trace of irony. “So it's important that we pass tax reform in a meaningful way. If we don't, that's probably the end of the Republican Party as we know it."

16% CANCELLED PROGRAMS

Illinois’ teacher shortage and pension theft.

The war against public education is nationwide. Here, we read about the state-sponsored teacher shortage in Illinois and how 16% of the state's schools had to cancel programs. Guess who benefits from the programs lost?

According to a 2015-16 school year survey by the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools, 75 percent of districts surveyed had fewer qualified candidates than in previous years, especially in rural districts and those in central and northwest Illinois.

Furthermore, 16 percent of schools canceled programs or classes because of the lack of teachers — mostly special education, language arts, math and science classes.

$170 MILLION

Tech billionaires sank $170 million into a new kind of school — now classrooms are shrinking and some parents say their kids are 'guinea pigs'

Education is not a business, and shouldn't be run like a business. Public schools are a public good, which should be supported by everyone, for the benefit of everyone. When the profit motive gets injected in public education, then things start to fall apart.

Here's an idea...maybe educators, people who understand public education, ought to make the decisions impacting schools.

...some parents are bailing out of the school because they say AltSchool put its ambitions as a tech company above its responsibility to teach their children...

"We kind of came to the conclusion that, really, AltSchool as a school was kind of a front for what Max really wants to do, which is develop software that he's selling," a parent of a former AltSchool student told Business Insider.

FUDGING ATTENDANCE

Weekly Privatization Report 11-20-2017

Privatization of public education means profit. Profit means that the bottom line is money...not children.

Republican Gov. John Kasich’s Department of Education used Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow’s own attendance records to settle a dispute over student attendance at the charter operator. “When the Ohio Department of Education audited ECOT’s attendance for a second school year last summer, the embattled online charter’s verified attendance went up more than 80 percent, and the amount it was forced to repay was $19.2 million, down from $60 million the previous year.” The Columbus Dispatch reports “less than 24 percent of ECOT students spent enough time logged onto classes or participated in enough offline work that they received a full 920 hours of instruction, equal to a year of school.”

$100,000 FOR HOMELESS...OR FOR DEER?

Saving human lives is more important than killing deer

Here's a story about a city which didn't have enough money – $100,000 – to keep funding a homeless shelter, yet found more than that in order to kill deer damaging lawns.

America's priorities are backwards...to say the least.

After losing $100,000 in funding last year, Ann Arbor’s Delonis Center homeless shelter was forced to close a floor full of beds that were badly needed. Meanwhile, the city is spending more than that to shoot local deer.

800,000 MORE STUDENTS AND FEWER PUBLIC SCHOOL EMPLOYEES

Subtract Teachers, Add Pupils: Math of Today’s Jammed Schools

More on the war against public education. 250,000 fewer teachers and support personnel are now responsible for 800,000 additional children. Simple math...for a simple nation.

Across the country, public schools employ about 250,000 fewer people than before the recession, according to figures from the Labor Department. Enrollment in public schools, meanwhile, has increased by more than 800,000 students. To maintain prerecession staffing ratios, public school employment should have actually grown by about 132,000 jobs in the past four years, in addition to replacing those that were lost...

8 WAYS TO SPOT FAKE NEWS

From Climate Denial Crock of the Week

Survival tips for the attack on democracy. Worth circulating.

📊➗💰

2012 Medley #7

An 8th Grader Searches for a High School, Double Standards, News Media Reports on Education, Poverty, VAM, Reform Ideas, Technology, Finland vs. Indiana, ALEC.

An Eighth-Grade Sports Encyclopedia Finds Himself Without a High School

This article left me stunned. Where is this child's neighborhood school? Competition destroys public education. Notice the way this is worded...the high schools select the students. This is "choice" at work.

That so many people know Omri became important a few weeks ago when the 69,000 eighth graders across the city learned what high schools they had been selected to attend next year. Of the 127 eighth graders at East Side, only five were not picked by any school, and Omri was one of them.

“Omri was up in homeroom crying hysterically, so we brought him downstairs,” Mr. Goldspiel said. “I found him sobbing, sitting on the floor outside the main office waiting for me.”

“I was speechless,” Omri recalled. “Everyone else was saying, ‘I got in, I got in,’ and I just felt dumb and stupid. I had anger in me I never really felt before. I didn’t know how to react.”

...started preparing for the next round in the high school lottery.

Is There Really a Point to Advocating Both Standardization and Choice?

A Double Standard: The public schools have to reform or be replaced by charters...but then, why don't the charters have to meet the same requirements?

...what we have here is a massive effort on the one hand, to require traditional public school districts to adopt a common curriculum and ultimately to adopt common assessments for evaluating student success on that curriculum and then force those districts to evaluate, retain and/or dismiss their teachers based on student assessment data, while on the other hand, expanding publicly financed subsidies for more children to attend schools that would not be required to do these things (in many cases, for example, relieving charter schools from teacher evaluation requirements).

Flunking the Test

The American education system has never been better, several important measures show. But you’d never know that from reading overheated media reports about “failing” schools and enthusiastic pieces on unproven “reform” efforts...

"The idea that we have a crisis in American education, that there is pervasive failure, starts with policy makers," says Pedro Noguera, the eminent education researcher and New York University professor. "This is the line we hear in D.C. and in state capitals. There are certainly areas in which we're lacking, but when you report it that way, it doesn't at all acknowledge the complexity of the situation [and] where we're doing quite well. The discussion is quite simplistic. I'm not sure why exactly. My suspicion is that the media has trouble with complexity."

Stephen Krashen Pulls the Rug Out From Under the Standards Movement

Poverty is, in fact, the issue. While American students' scores on international tests are not as bad as critics say they are, they are even better when we control for the effects of poverty: Middle-class students in well-funded schools, in fact, score at or near the top of world. Our average scores are respectable but unspectacular because, as Farhi notes, we have such a high percentage of children living in poverty, the highest of all industrialized countries. Only four percent of children in high-scoring Finland, for example, live in poverty. Our rate of poverty is over 21%.

Now I Understand Why Bill Gates Didn’t Want The Value-Added Data Made Public

Being a Billionaire doesn't qualify you as an expert in the education of children.

Nor do these educational Deformers think that value-added mysticism is nonsense. They think it’s wonderful and that teachers’ ability to retain their jobs and earn bonuses or warnings should largely depend on it.

The problem, for them, is that they don’t want the public to see for themselves that it’s a complete and utter crock. Nor to see the little man behind the curtain.

Krash Course #5: Reform We Need

Each time I publish or post a critique of the education reform insanity coming from the Corporate Reformers, I receive badgering responses asking what I would do instead. So here is a list of Reform We Need...

• Secretary of Education Arne Duncan needs to resign...
• Federal and state policies must address the lives of children...health coverage...Food security...
• All aspects of the accountability era, including standards-based testing, must be dismantled...
• ...[end] all aspects of perpetuating inequity found in schools—testing, tracking, teacher assignments, "no excuses" practices.
• Teacher and schools must be afforded autonomy...

Testing Our Limits and Failing Our Students

Technology for the sake of technology (as opposed to technology as a tool for learning in and out of the classroom) is stealing time from real education.

Unless we stand together, erroneous computer data and educational officials detached from the realities of teaching will continue to determine our students’ futures.

Lesson from Finland: Everything Indiana is doing is wrong

There's an assumption that policymakers and "reformers" are well meaning and want to improve education. I don't believe that any more. The current debate about public education is not about education at all, but about who will control the pursestrings...the public, or the private sector. The same people who brought us the banking debacle and the economic collapse are working hard to take over public education -- the students, parents and teachers be damned. How much do Arne Duncan, Rahm Emmanuel, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and Eli Broad really know about how children learn?

You want to know why other countries score higher on average than we do? It's because they care about all their children. There's more to educating a child than standards and tests.

Finland’s system, he said, could not work in the U.S. Factors of societal, economic and cultural differences must be considered and will always shape a country’s education system to make it unique....In short, he argued that several of the fundamental beliefs of reformers here — reformers like [Indiana's Tony] Bennett — were just flat wrong.

Who's Really Behind Education Reform?

Julie Underwood, the Dean of the UW-Madison School of Education, discusses ALEC's school privatization agenda.

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