2012 Medley #13

Tenure, Teachers Unions, Parent Trigger, Poverty, Corporate Charter Funding, Quotes on Public Education, Teacher Turnover.

The battle against public education and public educators continues. Maybe for my next "Medley" I'll try to print find only good news.

Wouldn't it be nice if...

• Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Tony Bennett (IN) and other reformers spent an entire year teaching in a public school (non-corporate-charter) in a high poverty area.
• President Obama, if reelected, chose an actual teacher to be Secretary of Education.
• Republican Governors (Kasich, Walker, Snyder, Scott, et al) cared as much about the public school children in their states as they do about their reelections (and their corporate buddies).
• Children in high poverty public schools received the same resources that are provided to the children at Success Academy Charter Schools, the Harlem Children's Zone or Sidwell Friends School where President Obama's children go to school.

Is teacher tenure a myth?

...what a teacher does to a data system will always fail to capture the breadth and depth of what happens in a classroom.

There are, of course, plenty of awful teachers who shouldn’t spend another day in the classroom. And it should be easier for these teachers to be removed.

But that doesn’t mean that teachers shouldn’t have due process, which is really all tenure ensures.

Another Loss for the UFT and Teachers

Have the teachers unions given up?

...no other union has their evaluations published. Now, we will. The UFT will claim that only parents will get to see this info, but there is nothing to stop parents from sharing and publishing this information themselves. This will lead to more teachers being vilified due to faulty evaluations with a margin of error of more than 80%.

Mayors Support "Parent Tricker" Law

Something else about parent trigger laws...

I wonder why parent trigger laws never include the right of charter school parents to "seize control" of their school and give it back to the public system.

Gerald Coles: Why Bother Educating the Poor?

...business interests have realized that while pretending to create educational answers for poor children, profit could be accumulated by destroying public schools, privatizing education, and creating another version of "corporate socialism," i.e., public money going into private hands. However, while it is important to combat this additional funneling of money upward, Willhelm's insight explains the chief engine driving one educational charade after another: the poor have little economic value to the rich. If most of today's more than 15 million poor children were suddenly to disappear, business leaders and the politicians who serve them would respond with initial expressions of pain and sadness, then quickly add: "but doesn't this mean we can now further reduce domestic spending?"

Without social activism that will confront and change the economic system that has generated one educational reform charade after another, continued generations of poor children will be doomed to wretched adulthood.

Eva Moskowitz, Corporate Welfare Charter Queen

Public school funds keep getting cut...yet they're supposed to compete with corporate welfare recipients like this...What's wrong with this picture?

Even in public education, the rich keep getting richer.

That's the message the trustees of the State University of New York will send Monday when they vote to approve a huge 50% increase in the per-pupil management fee of one of the city's wealthiest, biggest-spending and most controversial charter school operators.

The Success Academy Charter Schools Inc., run by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, applied in April for an increase from $1,350 to $2,000 in the annual per student payment it receives from the state to run 10 of its charter schools.

...This will all come as a huge surprise to anyone who has bothered to examine Success Academy's financial reports or who has witnessed firsthand its almost limitless spending .

...The Success Network, in fact, is a fund-raising colossus, having received $28 million from dozens of foundations and wealthy investors the past six years, and millions more in state and federal grants.

On its annual tax forms, it has continually reported huge year-end surpluses for both itself and its individual schools. Those combined surpluses currently stand at more $23.5 million.

Hardly the picture of financial woe.

Support for free universal public education in the United States

The fight is not against Charters or Private Schools...or even lack of funding for public schools. The fight is between those people who want to continue to support a public school system in the United States and those to whom a public education system is anathema. Some interesting quotes (emphasis added)...

The whole people must take upon themselves the education for the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves. -- John Adams, US President, Letter to John Jebb, 1785

The good education of youth has been esteemed by wise men in all ages, as the surest foundation of the happiness of both private families and of commonwealths. Almost all governments have therefore made it a principal object of their attention, to establish and endow with proper revenues, such seminaries of learning, as might supply the succeeding age with men qualified to serve the publick with honour to themselves and to their country. -- Benjamin Franklin, US Statesman, Proposals Related to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, 1749

What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy. -- John Dewey, education philosopher, The School and Society, 1907

Smear Campaign Against Teachers is Freakish, New Low

And yet, if we believe what we see and hear in the media, the myriad problems with our public schools—from low test scores to a 25-percent drop-out rate—are the fault of incompetent teachers and their “powerful” teachers’ union. No one dares blame the kids or the parents. It’s the teachers who are the villains...Which is why so many teachers are reluctantly leaving the profession. This smear campaign is actually forcing good teachers to change careers because they no longer feel it’s worth the aggravation. Teaching is demanding enough without being accused of incompetence. So we’re forcing them out. Is this a great country or what?

Teacher Turnover Is Predictable

If there's one constant in the debate over how to improve failing schools, it's the demand to get rid of bad teachers and replace them with good ones...Reformers will be quick to assert that if teachers aren't up to the challenge, they shouldn't be in the classroom. In other words, let's not worry about losing these teachers. It's the students who deserve our concern. Yet they are precisely the ones who are hurt when teacher turnover is high. A new study titled "How Teacher Turnover Hurts Student Achievement" found that the morale and the culture of the school is negatively affected by teacher churn...No amount of money or pleading will prevent exemplary teachers from leaving. Their physical and mental health has to come first. Reformers can talk all they want about ways to address the alarming rate of departure of teachers. But unless they've taught in a public school, they can't begin to understand what's going on.

I Don't Want to be a Teacher Any More

Never once in the past 34 years of teaching did I ever want to quit. I even told my husband that if we won the lottery, I’d keep teaching. My students would just have all their own computers, art supplies galore, and any book we wanted to read as a class.

A comment on teacher turnover and the privatization of public education.

Don't it always seem to go,
That you don't know what you've got til it's gone

-- Joni Mitchell

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning

I first posted this in August of 2010...time for a refresher now that the pools are filled and kids are playing in the water. Be prepared.

There's plenty of time left in our part of the world for summer water fun, so when I came across this article I decided to link to it. Next year I'll try to remember to do it at the beginning of the summer.

How do you know if someone is drowning? The surprising thing is that they don't "look" like they're drowning. Here are some things to look for:

• Head low in the water, mouth at water level
• Head tilted back with mouth open
• Eyes glassy and empty, unable to focus
• Eyes closed
• Hair over forehead or eyes
• Not using legs – Vertical
• Hyperventilating or gasping
• Trying to swim in a particular direction but not making headway
• Trying to roll over on the back
• Ladder climb, rarely out of the water.

There's a lot more information at the link below.

http://mariovittone.com/2010/05/154/

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It's Important to Look in a Mirror Now and Then

Yesterday's post quoting Dov Rosenberg's WORKING LIST! Why Testing and Privatization are Harmful - Not Helpful - to Public Education brought a comment to my blog. I was about to answer it in another comment, but then I decided that the topic was important enough to deal with in a post of it's own. So here goes...

Bella said...
I know that this is a little trivial, but it irks me when people say "charter schools do this/that" as if they were all one homogeneous entity.

I get that privately-managed charter schools are detrimental. I know. I read this blog and Diane Ravitch's blog and many more.

But I work at a charter school that is a genuine non-profit; it is managed by a Board that consists entirely of elected parent representatives, an elected teacher representative, and founding community members. It is more racially diverse than the local schools, which are 100% black. The application process is very simple; most of the families come from very disadvantaged homes and have never had a problem. And here in MD, charter school applications must be decided by lottery, and it is illegal to either deny special ed services or deflect certain children back to neighborhood schools; they can only be expelled if do something that would be worthy of expulsion at any public school.

So can we start saying "privately managed charter schools" or "corporate charter schools" or even "most charter schools"?

Have there been any studies on the effect that progressive local charter schools (that start because they advocate for a progressive educational philosophy) have on communities, attitudes about learning, etc.?

Bella,

Thank you for your reasoned and gentle manner of taking me to task. I'm glad you did because 1) your objection is valid, not at all trivial and 2) you're correct.

Not all charters are the same. I think Dr. Ravitch would be the first to say (and, in fact, I've heard her say), "Some charters are excellent!" Grouping all charters together is no different than grouping all regular (or neighborhood) public schools together by someone who says, "public schools are failing." By the way, Dov Rosenberg did use phrases like "most charter schools" or "some charter schools" in his piece. He also wrote things like "Charter schools often..." or "Charter schools can..." implying that he was not talking about 100% of charters. He didn't do it all the time in his work in progress -- but if you look you can see he made the attempt. That doesn't mean that your objection is not warranted. I think it's important that everyone understand that not all charter schools damage the public school system...just like not all public schools are failing.

The phrase "corporate charters" works for me. I hope, in my own writing, when I have talked about the research into charters I have used a phrase similar to, "charters don't perform any better than regular public schools." By which I mean...there are some which are better...and also some which are worse...which is, in fact, what the research shows. I have tried to keep a balance and not say things like "all charters are bad." Further, when I complain about charters soaking money from the public schools, or not doing their fair share of educating the hardest and most expensive children to educate I am, indeed, usually talking about corporate charter schools. If I have erred in that respect, I apologize.

When I am quoting someone else's work, which is what I did with yesterday's post, I don't think about that balance since the writing is not mine. However, I don't think I want to begin every quote I put in my blog with "Not all charters are bad." Hopefully, if I do a good job with my own writing people will understand my position in these posts.

Dr. Ravitch has spent a lot of time in her talks, her writing and in her latest book discussing how charters got started...and what the original intent was. She has said that they were to be places where people could try new things...do research...find answers to some of the problems we're facing in education. I understand that there are some charters which actually do this. I don't dislike charter schools...or private schools for that matter. I think there's a place for all of us (see HERE, for example)...I do have a problem, however with some of the ways states are funding their schools...public and private, but that's probably a different discussion...for another time.

Part of the problem with charters in general is that state laws often allow (or encourage) money to be stripped from needy public schools to fund them. That's not the fault of the charter schools...especially the non-profits...however, fixing public schools is where my focus lies. That, too, is probably a different discussion...for another time.

As far as Special Education is concerned...that has been the focus lately because of research showing that some charters have been manipulating their special ed numbers in one way or another. If MD has a way to make sure that doesn't happen that's great...it's too bad that not all states are as genuinely interested in the education of all children to follow suit.

In the future I will endeavor to make it clear in my own writing that my objections about charters are usually with corporate charters. That is, after all, an accurate description of what I feel to be the "Charters" aspect of the drive to privatize. I do, however, reserve the right to complain about any school, public, charter, or private, which, in my opinion, somehow does damage to a public education system locally, statewide or nationally.

Thank you again for your response. I appreciate the mirror you held up for me to look into.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Why Testing and Privatization is Harmful...a Working List

Dov Rosenberg posted this on Facebook. It's a great list telling why testing and privatization is harmful to public education. Follow the link below to see the original...he said it's a Working List...aka a work in progress, so it will probably change. Spread it around!

WORKING LIST! Why Testing and Privatization are Harmful - Not Helpful - to Public Education
by Dov Rosenberg on Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 1:12pm

High stakes tests and charter schools make public schools less effective:
A) High stakes tests do not effectively gauge student ability, are harmful to children, and make public schools less effective.
B) Less than 20% of privately-managed public schools (charter schools) are successful; they also segregate children and minimize the decision-making power of parents and the community, ultimately making public schools less effective.

High-stakes tests do not effectively gauge student ability:

• Constrict wide expanses of knowledge into only what can be measured by a multiple choice test.
• Many tests contain nonsensical questions, have multiple correct answers, or have no right answers at all (look up Pineapplegate).
• With hundreds of millions of American kids taking the same test, ethnic and regional differences aren't considered, making them unavoidably culturally biased.
• Unduly reward the superficial ability to retrieve info from the short-term memory.
• Pass/Fail status is often determined by politicians while test scores are often manipulated for political purposes.
• National Academy of Sciences, 2011 report to Congress: "Standardized tests have not increased student achievement.”
• Measure only low-level thought processes, trivializing true learning.
• Hide problems created by margin-of-error computations in scoring; scoring errors can have life-changing consequences.
• Curricula constructed from high-stakes tests are based on what legislators assume children will need to know in the future. Countless previous attempts at predicting the future have ended in failure.
• Provide minimal feedback that is useful to classroom teachers.
• Penalize test-takers who think in non-standard ways (common in children).
• Test results are not able to predict future success.
• Claimed to be used as a diagnostic tool to maximize student learning, but are actually used to punish students, teachers, and schools.

High-stakes tests are harmful to children:

• Minimal time for socializing and physical activity b/c recess and PE are cut in favor of test prep, particularly affecting low-scoring students.
• Testing anxiety has lead to sickness, vomiting, and even incontinence in the classroom.
• Excessive testing stifles the love of learning.
• Year-end tests require sitting still and staying focused for 3.5 hours, which leads to behavior problems.
• Encourage the promise of extrinsic motivators such as rewards for high scores (bribes) and punishments for low scores (threats).
• Pressure to pass tests has lead to stimulant abuse in teenagers.

High-stakes tests make public schools less effective:

• The lowest and highest achievers are left out as instructional resources are focused on learners at or near the pass/fail threshold.
• Fewer opportunities for kids to enjoy creative classes that make them love school.
• Arts and other electives are cut in favor of test prep and testing, particularly affecting students from low-income families.
• Children don't receive adequate instruction in non-tested areas like science, history, geography, government, etc.
• Divert billions of state taxpayer funds from public schools to pay huge testing firms like Pearson and ETS (Educational Testing Services).
• Divert precious time resources to test facilitation, preparation (such as begging proctors to volunteer), and administration.
• More established parents move to private schools to avoid the abundance of testing in public schools.
• When test scores trigger automatic retentions, much older students in classrooms can cause additional behavior problems
• On norm-referenced tests, nationally, 50% of students are below average, by definition. Thus, requiring all students to be at or above "grade level" is statistically impossible.
• Give testing firms control of the curriculum
• Test scores are used to evaluate teacher effectiveness in lieu of more effective administrator observations
• Reduces teacher creativity and autonomy, thereby reducing the appeal of teaching as a profession
• Minimize teachers' ability to accomodate multiple learning styles and provide adequate differentiation
• Create unreasonable pressure on students and teachers to cheat as well as on administrators and school districts to "game the system"

Less than 20% of charter schools are successful:

• Even the pro-charter documentary "Waiting for Superman" notes that only 1 in 6 charter schools succeed.
• Charter schools can artificially inflate their published success rate by deflecting low-scoring kids back to public schools, usually

Charter schools segregate children:

• Most charter schools are racially homogenous.
• Without diversity requirements, charter schools can market to specific demographics, ultimately segregating communities.
• Children from the same neighborhood often go to different schools, don't know each other, and don't play outside together. Alienation negatively impacts neighborhood communities.

Charter schools minimize the decision-making power of parents and the community:

• Private control, as opposed to elected control via school board, leaves curricula to be defined by a corporate agenda.
• Corporate-controlled charter school home offices are often centralized out of state.
• One more thing for parents and kids to worry about as they wait for acceptance letters.
• Undermine a fundamental democratic principle that the people closest to (and therefore most knowledgeable about) problems are the best positioned to deal with them.

Charter schools make public schools less effective:

• Taxpayer dollars are deflected from public schools into charter schools where they're utilized w/o transparency or accountability.
• Charter schools have the freedom to select high-achieving kids w/ few needs so low-achieving kids w/ high needs get deflected and ultimately concentrated into an underfunded local public school.
• Charter schools aren't obligated to provide special services for high-needs kids so they often get deflected and ultimately concentrated into an underfunded local public school.
• Only families who can navigate application processes can apply to a charter. Families w/o the time or know-how to "work the system" (often very poor and/or immigrant families) are ultimately concentrated into an underfunded local public school.
• Private entities have already tried running school districts according to corporate models and seen disastrous results.

What's best for kids? 

Special thanks to Marion Brady, from whom I borrowed heavily!

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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