A School Loses its Library

Can you remember the school library in your elementary school? Csn you remember the rows and rows of books...the tables and chairs...the check-out desk...the card catalog (if you're old enough!) and computers?

What would you do if your child's school had no library? Imagine, if you can, an elementary school without a library. Imagine a school where the only books for students were the ones in their classrooms.

Imagine no shelves full of picture books for kindergartners and first graders, no fiction section filled with Beverly Cleary or Roald Dahl, no poetry corner with Jack Prelutsky or Shel Silverstein, no baseball or football books, no books about dinosaurs, space and animals, no biographies or atlases.

I don't know about you, but I can't imagine a school without a library...

...yet there are over 150 such elementary schools in Chicago.

At one of them, Whittier Elementary School, parents, teachers and community members used an old fieldhouse near the school as a library. Over the past few years they took donations of books from all over the world so that their children would have a school library. In 2010, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) claimed that the building was unsafe and wanted it demolished. Parents camped in the building and fought to save it until CPS finally agreed to renovate the building so it would be safe.

The renovation never happened.

The parents at Whittier Elementary School may not have been aware of research which shows that access to books is one of the most important factors in a child's achievement level. They may not have been aware that access to books is one of the most important ways to fight the effects of poverty. They just knew that books were important at school...and that CPS didn't care enough to provide their school with a school library. So they fought for and built one themselves.

On Friday evening, August 16, 2013, CPS brought in bulldozers to destroy the building. Since the school system reneged on its promise to renovate the building, it was still unsafe.

A handful of protesters blocked the demolition until they were arrested on Saturday morning. [Read about it here, here, here and here. See videos of the arrests and demolition here.]

Can you imagine an elementary school without a school library?

Can you imagine a public school system destroying a school's library instead of repairing it?

What if this school had been in a wealthy, white neighborhood? What if this was a school that Mayor Emanuel's children attended...or a school that a school board member's child attended?

[UPDATE: CPS skips permit in demolition of Whittier school fieldhouse.]

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Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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2013 Medley #17

Bill Gates, Reading Wars, Poverty,
Chicago, Common Core,
Jim Horn

BILL GATES, MEDDLER

Gates pours millions in new grants to change teaching profession

Bill Gates is still meddling with public education...throwing his money around ("but you can't solve problems by throwing money at them"), damaging the American public school system in the process, and NEA is buying right into it. What strings are attached to the more than $6 million in grants for the NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education? The NEA leadership team has already caved on Common Core (in fact almost $4 million is for common core lessons)...what next?

Take a look a where else money is going...aside from a few school systems, Gates is giving money to "reformers" like Stand on for Children and Educators for Excellence.

Valerie Strauss had this to say,

Harvard University got $1.6 million to “test a new model of teacher evaluation that increases teacher ownership and buy-in, reduces administrative burden, and provides an auditable artifact to ensure and maintain reliable scoring.”

...After already spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the subject of teacher evaluation, it is interesting that the foundation seems to think teachers need to have more ownership and buy-in of the assessment process. Really now, it didn’t have to take hundreds of millions of dollars to learn that, of course, and it doesn’t take $1.6 million to Harvard either; the model has long existed in, for example, Montgomery County, Md., where teachers lead the successful evaluation system (without the high-stakes use of standardized test scores). Any good teacher in any school could have told the Gates folks that for free.

I think it would be nice if Gates changed his plan...start giving his millions in grants to local public schools so they could stay open and improve...like in Philadelphia or Chicago...you know, where real children live and real public school systems are in trouble because of "reformer" meddling.

In the meantime, I'm going to write to my friends in NEA and let them know how disappointed I am that they have sold out...

The NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education
Date: July 2013
Purpose: to support a cohort of National Education Association Master Teachers in the development of Common Core-aligned lessons in K-5 mathematics and K-12 English Language Arts
Amount: $3,882,600
Term: 20
Topic: College-Ready
Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA
Program: United States
Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia

The NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education
Date: July 2013
Purpose: to support the capacity of state NEA affiliates to advance teaching and learning issues and student success in collaboration with local affiliates
Amount: $2,426,500
Term: 26
Topic: College-Ready
Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA
Program: United States
Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia

Danny Westneat: Bill Gates, have I got a deal for you!

Maybe this will work for Bill. Here's a suggestion that he put "his money where his mouth is." Danny Westneat has suggested that Bill send his own children to a school that is built on "reforms" he approves of...specifically, larger class sizes. Westneat wonders if Gates is willing to try it with his own kids. I'd add a few other things, as well...aside from larger class sizes, maybe Bill would send his own kids to a school with...

• hours of the day spent in front of online learning programs
• beginning teachers who haven't wasted their time getting education credentials -- a five week summer course is good enough
• focus on reading and math...no need for the arts or physical education
• testing, testing and more testing

Right. I didn't think so. "Large classes, poorly trained teachers...good for other (aka poor) children...not mine."

Smaller classes just haven't worked, he said.

"U.S. schools have almost twice as many teachers per student as they did in 1960," he said. "Yet achievement is roughly the same."

Gates called for an end to state caps on how many kids can be in each classroom.

Now let me clarify: Gates is suggesting larger classes in public schools. Not private schools such as Lakeside or the ones his own kids attend today.

READING WARS

Literacy experts say reformers reviving ‘reading wars’

We've been using the "reformers" reading programs for more than a decade. You would think that we would have seen some progress by now.

So with one stroke NCTQ limits the teaching of reading to teaching the “scientific“ reading program, the same one which failed for 13 years in NCLB and it limits teacher education programs to training teachers in this one true method. And who needs reading research if the fundamental questions are already answered?

THE REAL PROBLEM: POVERTY

California test scores: the real problem and the real solution

"Reformers" complain that we spend so much money on our schools...more than other countries (which is false), and we get poor results. Maybe if we didn't spend so much money on testing we'd have enough money to offset the effects of poverty.

...let's attack the real problem: Poverty. Nearly 25% of students in school in the US live in poverty, which means inadequate diet, lack of health care, and little or no access to books. The best teaching in the world is of little help when students are hungry, ill, and have nothing to read.

PANTS ON FIRE

Byrd-Bennett's sleight-of-hand on charter schools?

Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett (another Bennett?!) said that closing the 50 schools in Chicago was not being done to make more room for charters...

Barbara Byrd-Bennett has promised that no school closed this year will be handed over to a charter. -- Chicago Tribune (April 23, 2013)

Yeah...right!

Even while some 30,000 students, most in African-American communities,were being targeted for ejection from their so-called "underutilized" schools, and even while neighborhood schools were facing draconian budget cuts, the plans were already being laid to open dozens of new privately-run, non-union schools, Most of the new charters will open on the northwest and southwest sides, but many will be put in the very same neighborhood as closed schools.

COMMON CORE

Why Common Core Standards Will Succeed

Actual results don't matter. All that matters is that public schools are shamed and then privatized.

Even though there is little evidence that state standards have increased student academic achievement...

Even though there is little evidence that countries with national standards do not necessarily score higher on international tests than nations without national standards...

Even though there is little evidence Common Core standards will produce the skilled and knowledgeable graduates that employers and college teachers have demanded of public schools...

Even though there is little evidence that state and national officials have resolved tough issues in the past when it came to curriculum standards...

With all of these “even thoughs" (and there are more), Common Core standards will succeed. How can that be?

The short answer is that evidence of success doesn’t matter much to those who make policy decisions.

THE MISMEASURE OF EDUCATION

Jim Horn, of Schools Matter @ The Chalk Face, and Professor of Educational Leadership at Cambridge College, in Massachussets, has a new book. Check out the reviews below...high praise from some good people.

The Mismeasure of Education

Publisher's information:

With new student assessments and teacher evaluation schemes in the planning or early implementation phases, this book takes a step back to examine the ideological and historical grounding, potential benefits, scholarly evidence, and ethical basis for the new generation of test based accountability measures. After providing the political and cultural contexts for the rise of the testing accountability movement in the 1960s that culminated almost forty years later in No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, this book then moves on to provide a policy history and social policy analysis of value-added testing in Tennessee that is framed around questions of power relations, winners, and losers.

In examining the issues and exercise of power that are sustained in the long-standing policy of standardized testing in schools, this work provides a big picture perspective on assessment practices over time in the U. S.; by examining the rise of value-added assessment in Tennessee, a fine-grained and contemporary case is provided within that larger context. The last half of the book provides a detailed survey of the research based critiques of value-added methodology, while detailing an aggressive marketing campaign to make value-added modeling (VAM) a central component of reform strategies following NCLB. The last chapter and epilogue place the continuation of test-based accountability practices within the context of an emerging pushback against privatization, high stakes testing, and other education reforms.

This book will be useful to a wide audience, including teachers, parents, school leaders, policymakers, researchers, and students of educational history, policy, and politics.

Reviews

"When the Obama Administration decided to spend the billions it got for schools as part of the stimulus package to launch the Race to the Top program and the NCLB waivers, forcing many states to adopt teacher evaluation based on changes in student test scores, leading experts warned that this “value added” system did not have a reliable scientific basis and would often lead to false conclusions. This sobering and important study of the long experience with this system in Tennessee (where it was invented) shows that it did not work, was unfair, and took attention away from other more fundamental issues." Gary Orfield Distinguished Research Professor, UCLA, Co-Director, Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, UCLA

"If The Mismeasure of Education offered only its penetrating new look at Conant and Coleman, it would be worth the price. But that’s just the beginning. Horn and Wilburn uncover the obsessive instrumentalist quantification and apocalyptic rhetoric soapboxed by both liberal and conservative political elites. Their autopsy of value-added accountability reveals the pathology of ed reform’s claim about teachers not being good enough for the global economy." Susan Ohanian Educator, Author, Activist

"A well-researched (and frightening) look at examples of shameful pseudoscience in America, the latest manifestation of which is value-added assessment for determining teacher competency... A well-documented and thorough analysis, inescapably leading to the conclusion that student test data cannot be used to determine teacher effectiveness. A must read for policy makers enamored of the idea that value added assessments will do what is claimed for them. They do not!....An excellent and scholarly history of how we got to an educational-testing/industrial complex, now promoting invalid assessment strategies that are transforming education, but not for the better. A scary book that should be thoughtfully read by those who value America’s greatest invention, the public schools." David Berliner Regents' Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University

"The Mismeasure of Education is a magnificent work, an elegantly written, brilliantly argued and erudite exposition on why the “what,” “how” and “why” of effective teaching cannot be adequately demonstrated by sets of algorithms spawned in the ideological laboratories of scientific management at the behest of billionaire investors... This book will serve as a sword of Damocles, hanging over the head of the nation’s educational tribunals and their adsentatores, ingratiators and sycophants in the business community... The Mismeasure of Education will have a profound resonance with those who are fed up with the hijacking of our nation’s education system. This is a book that must be read by everyone interested in the future of our schools. It is a book that advocates real educational justice, for student, teachers, administrators and the public; it is informed by impressive scholarship and compelling argument. It is surely to become a classic work." Peter McLarenProfessor, GSEIS, University of California, Los Angeles, Distinguished Fellow in Critical Studies, Chapman University

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Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

~~~

Hypocrisy in Action

FIGHTING OVER ALEC

Florida Republican Jeb Bush defended the Common Core standards to ALEC with the usual lies such as,

[The US] has become a global leader in education spending while also becoming a global lagger in math and science.

[See Fighting Myths with Facts]

Bush's ignorance about the field of education provides us a lesson in why he, and others like him, should not be allowed to participate in forming public education policy.

Bush called for state policies holding back third-graders who cannot read well and ending tenure systems that employ and pay teachers based on experience rather than student performance.

[See Articles Labeled: Retention --Nearly a hundred years of research has provided us with enough information so that we know retention-in-grade (aka flunking) is not an effective remediation technique. The research consistently shows that, with few exceptions, long-term success of students is not improved using grade retention.]

At the same time, protesters outside the Palmer House in Chicago where ALEC was holding its meeting, were demonstrating against the wholesale privatization of public education sponsored by ALEC and selected billionaires.

EMANUEL'S HYPOCRISY

The backdrop for this battle among Common Core advocates, privatizers and pro-public education forces is the city of Chicago where Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel has overseen the closing of dozens of public schools, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs for public education employees, and the disruption of the education of thousands of Chicago school children, all in the name of saving money (while still finding enough taxpayer cash to pay for a new arena for a private university).

Now, quietly, and entirely without a trace of irony, Emanuel's (appointed) board of education puppets have decided to open new schools.

"Wait," you ask, "they just closed 50 schools and now they're going to open new ones?"

I understand your confusion, but I think I can explain it in a way that will make everything clear.

CPS has issued a "Request for Proposals for New Schools" -- new charter schools!

Yes. You read that right...after closing 50 public schools because of "underutilization" the mayor and his rich friends want to open charter schools to relieve -- you guessed it -- overcrowding.

Despite closings and budget cuts, CPS calls for new charter schools

As Chicago Public Schools officials finish shuttering a record number of schools and leave many neighborhood schools to open their doors in two weeks with diminished budgets, the district has quietly issued a call for new charter schools.

In a 52-page PDF posted without fanfare on the district’s website, CPS is asking for new charter operators and campuses for the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years mainly — but not only — in 11 so-called “priority communities” on the Northwest and Southwest Sides where district-run schools have been complaining of overcrowding. [emphasis added]

Apparently, closing 50 schools, laying off thousands of education professionals and support personnel, and disrupting the education and lives of students (as well as placing them in danger as they walk to school across gang boundaries) isn't enough punishment for the mayor to heap upon the Chicago Teachers Union for having the audacity to strike last year. The Mayor needs to punish the CTU further by moving more and more children into privately run charter schools with apparent disregard for the safety and education of the children living in his city.

Make no mistake: this is a blatant move designed to further the privatization of public education in Chicago.

...and there's little doubt that he feels a zing of pleasure by turning the knife on the CTU.

Just months after closing 50 schools, Chicago issues RFP for more charter schools

The Chicago Teachers Union and others have argued for years that school closures are about making way for charters and weakening the union.

“We are not surprised at all by this,” said union president Karen Lewis . “We were called conspiracy theorists, and then here is the absolute proof of what the intentions are…. The district has clearly made a decision that they want to push privatization of our public schools.”

The district has been slowly shifting students to charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run. Around 13 percent of district students—and more than 20 percent of the district’s high school students— are educated in charter schools. Teachers at charters cannot be represented by the Chicago Teachers Union.

Only half of the teachers in the charter schools need to be certified...and the charter teachers are not covered by the Collective Bargaining Agreement between CPS and CTU.

There's no longer any pretense of "improving public education" on the part of the privatizers. There's no difference between Republicans and Democrats. The goal is the destruction of America's public education system.

Fact: Charters are not better than public schools. Charters not outperforming nation’s traditional public schools, report says
Fact: Mass closings of schools causes damage to communities.

GOOD SCHOOLS FOR MY KIDS

So-called "reformers" like Bush and Emanuel know what good education is. They are the products of elite private schools and have purchased an elite private school education for their children.

• They know that small class size is important.
• They know that trained, certified and experienced educators are important.
• They don't send their children to schools filled with uncertified teachers with 5 weeks of "education training."
• They don't send their children to schools where test prep takes up the first 2 hours of the day and the content of "the test" is the only curriculum guide.

They know what good education is and they make sure they have it for themselves and their children...everyone else be damned.

While Bush tries to bring the tea-party back to the Common Core, Rahm Emanuel is quietly going about the business of killing public education in Chicago.

[UPDATE: from Mike Klonsky "For those of you who miss the distinction between handing closed schools over to charter operators and opening new charters around the corner --- so do I."]

[UPDATE: Judge denies class-action status in CPS school closings suit]

~~~

Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

~~~

Fighting Myths with Facts

BACK TO SCHOOL

In the next few weeks the vast majority of America's school-aged children will return to their public schools ready to start a new school year under the guidance of their public school teachers, who, for the most part, begin the year with the same mixture of excitement and anticipation that the students do.

Unfortunately, during the past 3 decades the declining morale of public school teachers has made the beginning of the school year much more difficult. Valerie Strauss, reporting on the 9th annual MetLife Survey of the American Teacher wrote

Half of America’s public school teachers say they feel great stress several days a week and are so demoralized that their level of satisfaction has dropped 23 percentage points since 2008 and is at its lowest in 25 years, according to an annual survey of educators.

Morale is likely lower in some public school locations -- Chicago and Philadelphia, for example -- than others, but throughout the country teachers feel the pressure from years of attacks, blame and test-and-punish policies. This is the real status quo of public education.

The so-called "reformers" whose reform consists of a barely veiled attempt to privatize public education through the perpetuation of myths, favoritism towards private and privately owned schools, public sector union busting, anti-worker legislation, the demonization of professional educators and using billionaires, billionaires, billionaires, billionaires and taxpayers to foot the bill, have perpetuated myths about public education.

DISPELLING THE MYTHS

The myths that public schools are failing, that teachers are the problem, and that privatization will solve all our problems are coupled with billions of dollars in political pocket-stuffing, private school investments and media blitz campaigns designed to mislead the American public. Parents are, by a large majority, happy with the public schools their children attend. 77% grade their own child's public schools an A or a B. The largest percentage in 20 years...

Yet, most of what we hear from the daily news and commentary is that American schools are failing, teachers are greedy, and private/charter schools are the only hope for the future of our nation.

So, just in time for the start of a new school year, it's time (yet again) to dispel some of the myths that the "reformers" have foisted on the American people...and there are many. I've only chosen a few and instead of providing references for each myth response, I've provided a bibliography (a "baker's dozen" research and opinion articles) at the end. The information is widely available, yet rarely discussed.

Myth #1) American Schools are failing.

False: American students from low poverty schools score at the top of the world. The problem with our average scores is that we have many more students living in poverty than most advanced nations and there is a direct correlation between achievement and poverty.

Myth #2) Bad, lazy teachers abound and are the cause of school failure. Good teachers can overcome the effects of poverty. Teachers unions protect bad teachers and tenure means that a teacher can never be fired. Teachers are only in it for the money.

False: Most American public school teachers are well-trained professionals, but even the best teacher in the world can't overcome the effects of hunger, violence, lack of health care, lack of access to reading materials, and other effects of poverty. Children must be well cared for, safe, and healthy to achieve.

States with strong teachers unions do not perform worse than states without strong teachers unions, and in fact are often better. Tenure, which is more correctly defined as "due-process" for K-12 teachers does not protect bad teachers. It simply means that schools must provide a legitimate reason for firing a teacher.

American educators spend more time in actual teaching than those in other advanced nations.

Instead of blaming educated and licensed teachers with average salaries of between $50,000 and $60,000 a year, ask the following people why they, and others like them, are meddling in public education without any credentials or experience: Bill Gates (Net Worth $72.7 billion), Eli Broad ($6.3 billion), Michael Bloomberg ($19.5 billion), Rupert Murdoch ($11.2 billion), and Alice Walton ($26.3 billion).

Instead of blaming trained educators for what amounts to a national epidemic of poverty, ask the following people where they got their education experience and/or expertise: Arne Duncan (B.A. Sociology), Michelle Rhee (B.A. Government, Masters of Public Policy), Jeb Bush (B.A. Latin American Studies), Rahm Emanuel (B.A. Liberal Arts, M.A. Speech and Communication), Eli Broad (Accounting), Bill Gates (No college degree), Michael Bloomberg (B.S. Electrical Engineering, MBA), and Alice Walton (B.A. Economics and Finance).

Money doesn't make you an expert.

Myth #3) Charter schools are better than public schools.

False: According to the latest studies, charter schools are improving, but the differences are insignificant. Some charters do better than traditional public schools. Others do worse.

Myth #4) Poverty is just an excuse.

False: Poverty matters.

"Thousands of studies have linked poverty to academic achievement. The relationship is every bit as strong as the connection between cigarettes and cancer." —- David Berliner, Our Impoverished View of Ed. Reform, Aug. 2005

Myth #5) We spend more money on education than anyone else in the world and our results are worse. Our kids can't read. Our teachers can't teach.

False: The amount we spend on education, as a percentage of our GDP, varies, but overall, we're about average for advanced nations.

As a percentage of GDP, public and private spending on education in the U.S. is slightly below the OECD average for early childhood education (U.S. 0.4%; OECD 0.5%), significantly above average for primary and lower secondary education (U.S. 3.2%; OECD 2.6%), and below average for upper secondary education (U.S. 1.1%, OECD 1.3%). ...

However, more money in the US comes from private sources. In other words, we are not spending the same amount of public money as other nations.

For all levels of education combined, public sources account for 72% of all expenditures on education in the U.S., while private sources account for 28%. By comparison, across all OECD countries, 84% of education expenditures are from public sources, and 16% of expenditures are from private sources.

Where do the private sources of money go? Does it go to schools with the most pressing academic needs? Our low poverty public schools generally get more money than our high poverty public schools.

How much of our money is spent on testing? In the US our costs for education are slightly higher than Finland's, for example, but we spend billions on testing. The Finns, who have among the highest scores in the world, don't subject their students to constant standardized testing. Money goes to the schools...not to test publishers.

Our results aren't worse. Our students from low poverty schools score higher than any most other students in the world.

HEART OF THE COUNTRY

In 1999 public school champion Frosty Troy wrote

Name one other institution that flings open itself to all comers -- a perfect microcosm of our nation. Every autumn the miracle of America takes place when the doors of those 87,000 schools are thrown open, welcoming the genius and slow learner, rich and poor, average and developmentally disabled. Among them are the loved and unloved, the washed and unwashed.

Those who savage the public schools tear at the heart of this country. Everything America is or ever hopes to be depends upon what happens to those 46.3 million students in public school classrooms.

His article, The Myth Of Our Failed Public School System (yes...the same lies are still alive) included a simple and effective tool for debunking myths.

Fight back with facts. Challenge the mistaken, the misinformed and the outright prevaricator while acknowledging honest criticism.

That's still good advice.

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1. Serviceable Myths about School Reform: Second Time Around
2. New Data Shows School ‘Reformers’ Are Getting it Wrong
3. Myths About Public Education in Indiana
4. Myths and Realities in Public Education
5. 5 Biggest Lies About America's Public Schools -- Debunked
6. Myths vs. Facts about America’s Public Education
7. Myths Taken as Reality
8. From School Grades to Common Core: Debunking the Accountability Scam
9. PISA: It's Poverty Not Stupid
10. Charter schools that start bad stay bad, study finds
11. Number of the Week: U.S. Teachers’ Hours Among World’s Longest
12. Teachers: Will We Ever Learn?
13. Anthony Cody: "It's Poverty Not Bad Teachers"

[UPDATE: See a more recent article by Alfie Kohn, titled Five bad education assumptions the media keeps recycling ]

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Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

~~~