KIPP and Duncan's ED Under Scrutiny

It has been a long time coming, but legitimate watchdog groups are finally coming to the "no excuses" charter school scandal.  This investigative piece is from the Center for Media and Democracy.

the volume of such private philanthropic support begs the question of why the American taxpayer ought to be subsidizing schools that are touted as public but act like private ones when it comes to executive compensation and roadblocks to transparency, especially at a time when traditional public schools are facing such budgetary pressures?
KIPP is a taxpayer-subsidized school franchise that pays no taxes on its revenue and provides a tax-deductible vehicle for uber-wealthy families to promote the school "choice" agenda.
And, the fact that taxpayer money is going to a group spending millions on luxury trips to resorts in Las Vegas is mind-boggling in an age of austerity when many public schools are going without basic necessities.
- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13096/exposed-cmd-kipps-efforts-keep-public-dark-while-seeking-millions-taxpayer#sthash.sjQLpiOA.dpuf

the volume of such private philanthropic support begs the question of why the American taxpayer ought to be subsidizing schools that are touted as public but act like private ones when it comes to executive compensation and roadblocks to transparency, especially at a time when traditional public schools are facing such budgetary pressures?
KIPP is a taxpayer-subsidized school franchise that pays no taxes on its revenue and provides a tax-deductible vehicle for uber-wealthy families to promote the school "choice" agenda.
And, the fact that taxpayer money is going to a group spending millions on luxury trips to resorts in Las Vegas is mind-boggling in an age of austerity when many public schools are going without basic necessities.
- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13096/exposed-cmd-kipps-efforts-keep-public-dark-while-seeking-millions-taxpayer#sthash.sjQLpiOA.dpuf

the volume of such private philanthropic support begs the question of why the American taxpayer ought to be subsidizing schools that are touted as public but act like private ones when it comes to executive compensation and roadblocks to transparency, especially at a time when traditional public schools are facing such budgetary pressures?
KIPP is a taxpayer-subsidized school franchise that pays no taxes on its revenue and provides a tax-deductible vehicle for uber-wealthy families to promote the school "choice" agenda.
And, the fact that taxpayer money is going to a group spending millions on luxury trips to resorts in Las Vegas is mind-boggling in an age of austerity when many public schools are going without basic necessities.
- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13096/exposed-cmd-kipps-efforts-keep-public-dark-while-seeking-millions-taxpayer#sthash.sjQLpiOA.dpuf

the volume of such private philanthropic support begs the question of why the American taxpayer ought to be subsidizing schools that are touted as public but act like private ones when it comes to executive compensation and roadblocks to transparency, especially at a time when traditional public schools are facing such budgetary pressures?
KIPP is a taxpayer-subsidized school franchise that pays no taxes on its revenue and provides a tax-deductible vehicle for uber-wealthy families to promote the school "choice" agenda.
And, the fact that taxpayer money is going to a group spending millions on luxury trips to resorts in Las Vegas is mind-boggling in an age of austerity when many public schools are going without basic necessities.
- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13096/exposed-cmd-kipps-efforts-keep-public-dark-while-seeking-millions-taxpayer#sthash.sjQLpiOA.dpuf

the volume of such private philanthropic support begs the question of why the American taxpayer ought to be subsidizing schools that are touted as public but act like private ones when it comes to executive compensation and roadblocks to transparency, especially at a time when traditional public schools are facing such budgetary pressures?
KIPP is a taxpayer-subsidized school franchise that pays no taxes on its revenue and provides a tax-deductible vehicle for uber-wealthy families to promote the school "choice" agenda.
And, the fact that taxpayer money is going to a group spending millions on luxury trips to resorts in Las Vegas is mind-boggling in an age of austerity when many public schools are going without basic necessities.
- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13096/exposed-cmd-kipps-efforts-keep-public-dark-while-seeking-millions-taxpayer#sthash.sjQLpiOA.dpuf

the volume of such private philanthropic support begs the question of why the American taxpayer ought to be subsidizing schools that are touted as public but act like private ones when it comes to executive compensation and roadblocks to transparency, especially at a time when traditional public schools are facing such budgetary pressures?
KIPP is a taxpayer-subsidized school franchise that pays no taxes on its revenue and provides a tax-deductible vehicle for uber-wealthy families to promote the school "choice" agenda.
And, the fact that taxpayer money is going to a group spending millions on luxury trips to resorts in Las Vegas is mind-boggling in an age of austerity when many public schools are going without basic necessities.
- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13096/exposed-cmd-kipps-efforts-keep-public-dark-while-seeking-millions-taxpayer#sthash.EOUa99Md.dpuf

the volume of such private philanthropic support begs the question of why the American taxpayer ought to be subsidizing schools that are touted as public but act like private ones when it comes to executive compensation and roadblocks to transparency, especially at a time when traditional public schools are facing such budgetary pressures?
KIPP is a taxpayer-subsidized school franchise that pays no taxes on its revenue and provides a tax-deductible vehicle for uber-wealthy families to promote the school "choice" agenda.
And, the fact that taxpayer money is going to a group spending millions on luxury trips to resorts in Las Vegas is mind-boggling in an age of austerity when many public schools are going without basic necessities.
- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13096/exposed-cmd-kipps-efforts-keep-public-dark-while-seeking-millions-taxpayer#sthash.EOUa99Md.dpuf

Ed Deform

NOTE: This letter appeared in the New Republic, November 9, 1992. Look at how relevant it would still be  if it had appeared yesterday. Ed deform remains constant.

School Drill

To the editors:

As a longtime teacher I've seen a lot of loony advice offered up from the media, but "Back to School" (September 28) is definitely my choice for the fruitcake award. You offer the solution to the nation's educational woes: restrict toilet trips by fourth-graders from certain socio-economic areas.an d hire drill sergeants whose sole qualification seems to be organizing desktops and bathroom lines.

For nearly twenty years I have taught the children nobody else wants. It is no picnic. But "control" and "order in the classroom" just aren't the issue, not in the simplistic way you pose them, anyway. The issue is figuring out a curriculum that makes sense to children the socio-politico-economic system has failed. Our educational system is in desperate need of renewal. It isn't going to come from Washington or NCOs who run classroom boot camps or editors whose only information about inner-city classrooms comes from reading other editors.

The Exxon Education Foundation gave me a grant to travel around the country for a year looking at the way math is taught in primary grades. I was in rich schools and poor schools, and as I sat here thinking about your editorial I realized that "control" was not the issue in any of them. When the curriculum is really good, it engages the students, and stupid things such as when the children will go to the bathroom are just never an issue.

Susan Ohanian

Addendum: The book I wrote about my travels in 28 states looking at how primary grade teachers were changing the way they taught math, <i>Garbage Pizza, Patchwork Quilts, and Math Magic </i> (1992), won several awards, including 'best book of year' from Child Magazine, a publication of The New York Times Magazine Group.

After 25 Years of Education Reform, NAEP Results Down

Since Ronald Reagan began the war on public education, school has become an increasingly unpleasant and miseducative place to learn and to work.  With the coming of corporatists' NCLB and RTTT, children have learned less and suffered more, humane teachers have been run out of the profession, and we now have corporate know-nothings in charge of schools where learning needs are the most severe.

Is there anything to recommend another 30 years of testing, segregation, and corporate control?  Please let me know if there is.

Here is a useful overview of the latest NAEP results for 12th graders.  Links are provided in the video:

AFT Leads Privatization Efforts

When charter schools first appeared on the educational horizon, Albert Shanker supported the idea.  By the early 1990s, Shanker had awakened to the fact that charter schools were going to be the primary tool in the corporate tool box for privatizing public education and crushing the teaching profession and unions.  See this post for excerpts of Shanker's writing on the subject of charters. 

Under Randi Weingarten, the AFT has re-written history to leave out Shanker's opposition to charter schools.  This is from AFT's website in 2016, which needs updating--there are now 7,000 charters, rather than the 4,000 claimed on their website. 

AFT and Charter Schools
The American Federation of Teachers strongly supports charter schools that embody the core values of public education and a democratic society: equal access for all students; high academic standards; accountability to parents and the public; a curriculum that promotes good citizenship; a commitment to helping all public schools improve; and a commitment to the employees’ right to freely choose union representation.

Charter schools are publicly funded schools that are granted autonomy from some state and local regulations in exchange for meeting the terms of each school’s charter. State laws, which vary widely, govern who can authorize charters, who can apply for them, and the total number allowed. Today, there are more than 4,000 charter schools across 40 states and the District of Columbia, enrolling more than 1 million children.

Charter Schools Can Empower Teachers

In a landmark address in 1988, former AFT President Albert Shanker became one of the first education leaders to champion the concept of charter schools. Shanker envisioned teacher-led laboratories of reform that would experiment with new instructional practices. These practices would then be subjected to rigorous evaluation and, if successful, serve as models for other public schools.

Shanker also saw charter schools as a way to empower teachers, free them from overly bureaucratic regulations, and strengthen their voice in school and curriculum decision-making. In his view, unions were essential to charter schools, because unions help create the kind of secure work environment that encourages innovation and risk-taking.

The AFT and Charter Schools Today

The AFT believes strongly in Shanker’s vision and the vital connection between charter schools and unions. In fact, the AFT represents charter school teachers and support staff across the country.  In just this past year, nearly a thousand employees at more than a dozen charter schools voted for union representation.  . . .

The real story: The scheme to destroy public education

Forget the gossip. The real story is the destruction of public education – comments on a letter to the Chicago Tribune

Letter writer Suzanne M. Gray focused on the name-calling but missed the point ("Where's the respect?"April 23): the scheme to destroy public education. 

Teacher Katie Osgood, quoted at the end of "CTU's Lewis calls Gov. Rauner 'the new ISIS recruit'" (April 21), revealed the cause of the financial crisis in Chicago Public Schools: "We're broke because they're allowing us to be broke … And they want us to be broke, so they can do these things to our system and claim they have no other choice."

This is a perfect example of the standard technique of privatization described by Noam Chomsky: … defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital." (Lecture, University of Toronto, 2011).

Forget the gossip: Focus on the real story.

Ms.Gray's letter:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/ct-where-s-the-respect-20160422-story.html

To Answer Dr. Miller's Question

Yesterday as I was listening and on hold during the second hour of The War Report, James Miller asked the rhetorical question that many have asked over the past 15 years regarding the blindness of educators to the realities of the school privatization agenda.  One school administrator in Buffalo, I think, had Dr. Miller particularly puzzled.

This young man was able to identify a number of the corporate reforms going around around him such as charters, corporate curriculum, and corporate professional development, but he could not seem to wrap his head around the prospect that public school privatization is a well-funded and deliberate strategy being carried out by hostile ideologues, business interests, and corporate welfare experts of the charter school industry.

I did not get a chance to respond to Dr. Miller's question on air, so here is my take, just in case he or his listeners are interested.

Part of the reason has to do with a studied silence on the privatization of schools by the teachers' unions, which are now steered by corporate interests.  New York in an AFT state, and when AFT misleaders don't acknowledge the threat of privatization and, in fact, engage in acts of privatization themselves, how are its affiliates and rank and file members to realize the depth of the problem.  

If you go to the AFT website, Dr. Miller, I hope you will enter "privatization" in the search box.  You will find that it is not even part of the AFT vocabulary.  Nothing, nada.  

Recently, Randi Weingarten and Lily Eskelsen signed  a letter to Pearson urging a reconsideration of Pearson's efforts to privatise education on the African continent.  Have Weingarten or Eskelsen ever demanded that Pearson stop its efforts to privatize education in the U. S.?  

The answer, of course, is no, because the unions' U. S. presidential picks over the past 25 years depend upon Pearson and McGraw-Hill, Gates, and Broad to fund their campaigns.  When privatization in not part of the national union discussion or even part of its vocabulary, educating members about the threat takes on monumental proportions.

Last week for the first time, Lily Eskelsen acknowledged that state and local affiliate members had raised the red flag on the threat posed by charter schools.  What kind of union leadership would depend upon members to warn the national union about the threat posed to the profession by privatization?  

There are 7,000 charter schools in the U. S. today and more promised, thanks to the vast federal grants linked to ESSA.  That's the same ESSA that the union affiliate, NPE, energetically supported, and that the teacher union misleadership is so excited about now that it has arrived.

Anyone sending money to NEA or AFT under this rigged and morally-corrupt system is doing nothing more than paying for his own professional funeral in advance.

Former Teacher Speaks of Experience at Memphis KIPP High School

Schools Matter: KIPP Denies Access to KIPP Schools: Former Teacher...: Update March 24, 2016: My new book on "No Excuses" KIPP Model schools is now available from Rowman & Littlefield and online ...

Reactions to NPR's Interview with NEA Prez

by Jim Horn

From my reading NPR's interview with NEA president, Lily Eskelsen, in the wake of the ESSA passage, some of NEA’s positions and priorities are made disturbingly clear.   

First and foremost, it is clear that NEA’s aggressive marketing of ESSA continues with the same bubbly and unrelenting intensity, entirely unaltered by either factual reading or studied interpretation of the ESSA testing and privatization plan.

It is clear, too, that NEA wants more data, rather than less, in a dashboard of information that it hopes will replace the testing thermometer.  Eskelsen boasts that NEA “got language in there” that even our best friends said, ‘You’re never getting in.’” That magic new language that NEA’s intrepid negotiators insisted upon for the ESSA: “multiple indicators of success.” 

Does Eskelsen not know, or does she think that teachers don’t know, that the old NCLB had the same empty rhetoric, except that it was called “multiple measures:”

NCLB calls for multiple measures that assess higher order thinking and are diagnostically useful. However, these provisions are not enforced by the U.S. Department of Education and are not embedded in most state practices. The push for standardization and the requirements for quickly imposing "in need of improvement" judgments and sanctions make it nearly impossible for states to implement an assessment system that fosters high-quality learning.

Perhaps someone should tell Eskelsen this, since she seems to count the inclusion of this same empty promise about mulitiple indicators as a major victory for teachers and children.  We should know, too, that with ESSA’s weakening of ED, any chance to enforce “multiple indicators” will be even weaker than during the bad old days of NCLB.

And speaking of “in need of improvement,” it is clear that NEA has chosen to ignore this continued school crushing element of ESSA, even as NEA celebrates the end of AYP in a manner that would be fitting if the bubonic plague had ended overnight.  Yes, AYP is gone, but what remains is just as odious if you are trying to keep your public school doors open in a poor neighborhood. 

You see, Eskelsen’s pretensions and posturing about the end of test and punish are based on the purest of fictions.   ESSA maintains the federal requirement that states test at least 95 percent of students, and it includes no opt out provisions for parents.  Additionally, ESSA requires that states continue to take corrective action for the bottom five percent of schools each year, as measured by annual tests. 

What kind of corrective action will be left up to the states, even though ESSA provides for unprecedented levels of federal grants for “no excuses” charter start-ups and expansions.

Oh yes, Eskelsen does mention charters in her interview.  Seems someone out there beyond Washington offered her some news:

The other thing that we're really looking at, and this is coming from our state and local school district affiliates, as people have now started to see charter schools as: Wow, there are studies that say they are really no better, depending on which charter schools and how selective they are, and they're not really improving the public schools the way the original concept had hoped.

Twenty years after charters began draining school budgets and 6 years after a national study showed the majority of charters as worse or no better than the public schools in the same neighborhoods, the NEA has been given this news by its affiliates.  Since the ESSA could have been more accurately named the Charter School Protection and Expansion Act, it is hard to fathom the level of duplicity and bone-headedness that NEA represents.  If they were as stupid as they pretend, that would not be forgivable, but we know they are not, and that is reason for demolition of the entire corporate union structure.

Finally, what is most clear from Eskelsen's interview is that NEA will continue to do nothing with its billions 1) to challenge standardized testing, 2) to confront and demand the end of segregation in schools, 3) to use its lobbying prowess to end policies that continue systemic poverty in urban America (besides handing out used clothing), or 4) to fight for ending corporate control of public education. 

It is clear that NEA will continue to stand on the sidelines and wait for unfunded parents and teachers and students to stand up against the corporate education reformists.   No responsibility, no accountability, no guts—but lots of unearned glory and vacuous celebration.  

More Great "holes in annual data"

from Alaska:

Alaska officials have canceled the state’s computer-based standardized testing for the year, citing repeated technical problems that were interrupting students’ exams, throwing schools into chaos and threatening the validity of results.

“I don’t believe under the circumstances that the assessment we were administering was a valid assessment,” Susan McCauley, interim commissioner of the state education department, said in an interview Tuesday. “Validity relies on a standardized assessment condition, and things were anything but standardized in Alaska last week.”

The cancellation means that tens of thousands of Alaska’s public school students in grades 3 through 10 won’t sit for math and reading exams that are mandated under federal law, leaving a hole in annual data on student performance statewide, and in each district and individual school. Science tests for students in grades 4, 8 and 10 also were canceled.

and New Jersey:

TRENTON — When New Jersey scrapped its old standardized tests in favor of the new PARCC exam given on computer, education officials said the online tests would be less costly and easier to score than the old paper-and-pencil exams.

But Wednesday, state education officials experienced the downside of online testing when a computer glitch left students across the state staring at blank screens.

New Jersey was forced to postpone testing in grades 3 through 11 for the day as its testing vendor scrambled to figure out what went wrong with PARCC, short for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.

A Useful Gift for Every New Teacher This Spring

I hope you will give a gift this Spring that could save a new teacher's future career from being sabotaged by a life-changing negative experience in a KIPP Model "no excuses" charter school.  

Or if you know someone who is thinking about enrolling a child in one of these schools, please buy her this book.

Or if your school board is contemplating bringing a KIPP Model school to your town, send them a link to this post.

Twenty percent discount still applies.  Use code RLEGEN16 at R&L or at any online bookstore.

Please ask your college library to buy it, too.  Cambridge College and Harvard's Gutman Library have been the first to order so far.

With so many reluctant to buy anything critical of the KIPP Machine and the billionaires who fund it, this book needs all the help it can get to find the readers who need to understand what "no excuses" is all about.

School Board Proposes Closure of 2 KIPPs

Shelby County Superintendent, Dorsey Hopson, has proposed closing a number of charter schools in Memphis.  Among them are two KIPP schools. 

. . . .The recommendation to close nine schools comes a week after an informal proposal that the district shutter up to 10 schools in order to help close a budget gap and avoid cuts to programs that keep students in the district.

Hopson recommended closing Northside and Carver high schools and Messick Adult Center and revoking six charters: Memphis Academy of Science and Engineering, KIPP Memphis Collegiate Middle School, KIPP Collegiate High School, Omni Prep Academy-North Point lower and middle schools, and Southern Avenue Middle School.. . . .

Unfortunately, another KIPP is not on the chopping block, even though it has been among the lowest-performing in the state for 13 years.

Hillary Proposes Boarding Schools for the Poor: KIPP is On It

Clinton loves testing, Common Core, segregated charter schools.  A new idea emerged during an interview last week: boarding schools. The boarding school idea has been pursued by the billionaires behind the KIPP movement in Camden, New Jersey.  In fact, another Republican, Chris Christie supported a bill allowing KIPP and their patrons to build dorms so that its students would be under 24-hour control:

The KIPP Cooper Norcross Academy, which plans to open as the state's first Renaissance school in 2014 in Camden, is trying to load up its toolbox in anticipation of its debut.

A bill introduced Thursday by State Sen. Donald Norcross (D., Camden) would amend the Urban Hope Act, which he sponsored in 2010 and Gov. Christie signed in January 2011, to allow:

A dormitory and related facilities for one school project per Renaissance school district.

A Renaissance school project to build its facilities within a two-mile radius of the site of the initial school.

A municipality, county, or county improvement authority to issue bonds to finance construction of a Renaissance school project.

Here is the clip with Hillary's supportive statement included: 

Over a couple of winding answers to pretty clear questions from Newsday, Clinton managed to show how much she knows while simultaneously saying nothing of value. As she noted in the interview, she’s previously discussed her support of charter schools, national education standards, universal pre-kindergarten, and creative solutions to solving the achievement gap. She didn’t elaborate on her more interesting ideas, As she brings up often, she helped found Eagle Academy, a chain of all-boys charter schools. She says she’d like to see more gender-specific schools, especially for impoverished students, and she also mentioned “boarding schools for poor kids.” Not sure what that last one is all about, and Clinton didn’t explain. Nor did she say how the federal government could go about encouraging such things or where funding might come from. She doesn’t elaborate on any of this on her website either. Her issue page on K–12 education includes just a couple of basic bullet points and a 30-second video of her giving a bland speech while B-roll of smiling children flashes across the screen.

Comment on NPR interview with Lily Eskelsen Garcia: Testing every day?

Comment on “A Union Firebrand Speaks Out On Politics, Testing And More”  NPR interview with Lily Eskelsen Garcia: Testing every day?


Posted at http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/04/20/474369584/a-union-firebrand-speaks-out-on-politics-testing-and-more

The new education law does indeed appear an attempt to calm down our national testing hysteria.  Even President Obama has spoken out about the negative impact of over-testing.  Some of this is of course due to the impact of the opt-out movement.

But the testing industry is striking back, with the full cooperation of the US government: The new plan is to replace end-of-year standardized tests with what could be daily testing. The core of education will consist of modules of programmed instruction that students will work through online and be tested on, which will drastically diminish the role of teachers and increase profits of technology companies. The new education law announced grants for the development of these teach-and-test machines (see sections 1201 and 1204).
The National Governor’s Association has admitted that there is little evidence supporting this major shift to what they call “competency-based education,” yet has enthusiastically supported it.

It looks like things will be much worse, not better.

For more on competency-based education, please see:
McDermott, M., Robertson. P.,and Krashen, S. 2016. Testing All The Time? Language Magazine, January 16. http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=125014;
Steven M. Singer, Standardized Tests Every Day: the Competency Based Education Scam. http://tinyurl.com/j8s2tuh
Emily Talmage,  Warning: Gates is Infiltrating Opt Out. http://emilytalmage.com/2016/01/05/warning-gates-is-infiltrating-opt-out/
Morna McDermott, Reading between the lines. http://educationalchemy.com/2015/10/25/reading-between-the-lines-obamas-testing-action-plan/)
Peggy Robertson, Opt-out revolution, the next wave.   http://www.pegwithpen.com/2015/10/opt-out-revolution-next-wave.html

Getting Compromised and Neutralized at NPE

Norm Scott has a post up about the special platform that NPE provided the corporate unions to propagandize all the NPE-attending autograph seekers, book salesmen, union apologists, blogger celebrities, button collectors, self-proclaimed activists. 

Half-way through Norm's piece, his ire and consternation at sitting through this bit of bad theater without a chance to ask questions is soothed by his conversation with Leonie Haimson, whose formidable prowess of the protector of the Ravitch myth is exercised with hypnotic power, obviously, on Norm's hot head. 

Calmly, then, Norm concludes:

...I came away with a more nuanced view of the relationship between the leadership of NPE and both teacher unions. While some call for them to declare war on the unions the most we can expect is a form of neutrality for a lot of reasons based on long-term relationships that are not easy to break.

When the money NPE collects from NEA/AFT is added on top of those "long-term relationships" and that "neutrality," you can expect, Norm, that you or the teachers will never be allowed to ask at one of these infomercial events why their unions have sold teachers, children, and parents down the river. 

For NPE, it is loyalty before principle, silence before criticism, secrecy before forthrightness.  These are the qualities that make NPE what it is and has been and will be until it peters out, just like its predecessor, the zombie outfit, Save Our Schools.  NPE is a place for all those desperate, downtrodden, angry, and the angst-filled educators to be dimed, dined, duped, and dumped once again back into schools that remain the products of that ever-important neutrality and long term relationships that keep things just as they are and have been. 

As Myles Horton said, "a preference for certain values determines what is good and what is bad in the eyes of the teacher. So call neutrality, therefore, is a surrender to the status quo." 

Horton goes on to say that dignity can only come to the teaching profession when its guiding values  become "honestly proclaimed" and acted upon.

The movement to end corporate education, segregated schools, and standardized testing can do be better than NPE.  If it can't, it is not movement anymore but, rather, just another blockage.

Memphis Smells the Coffee After the Pot Boils Over

With 45 cash-sucking corporate charters in operation, and with tens of thousands of children placed into penal school environments with no oversight, and with thousands of experienced teachers replaced by untrained temps, and with hundreds of millions of dollars poured into local and out-of-state charter businesses with nothing to show for it, and with dozens of communities disrupted by school closures, and with parents and teachers ready to burn down the Board of Education, the Shelby County school administration has finally admitted what we have been saying for a long, long time.

From the Commercial Appeal:

. .. .SCS currently has 45 charters operating, with five more set to open in the fall. Another 13 applied by the deadline this month to open the following year. SCS administrators have said loss of enrollment due to charters and the state-run Achievement School District is driving this year's $86 million budget gap.

"If our enrollment is going down based on ASD and charters, and this is causing us to have a financial deficit, why are we continuing to approve charters in areas where there is no need?" board member Stephanie Love asked. "It seems like we're approving a charter that then, as budget time comes, we say we have to cut the budget because of a charter that we approved."

Hopson said the district can legally deny a charter application if the school would create "substantial financial hardship to the district," but the state overruled when the district tried that a few years ago. But with so many charter schools now open, Hopson said they may have another shot at that argument.. . . .

KIPP Hands Agassi's Real Estate Company Million Dollar Profit on Building

While KIPP was building up its enrollment at KIPP Philadelphia, it was paying rent with public dollars to Andre Agassi's real estate company, which was renovating the building.  When the renovation is completed, KIPP will buy the building from Turner-Agassi Charter School Investment Fund for $9.2 million, which will provide Agassi's investors over 9 percent return on their investments.  This is a 9 percent return without risk. 

Wonder why charters are big business?

Meanwhile, one of the KIPP franchises in Memphis has raised a little over four thousand dollars for a library (minus librarian, of course).  Sorry, boy and girls, the KIPP business model has not worked out a way to make a profit from your reading.

NPE Offers Platform (Again) for NEA and AFT

This year when Anthony Cody "interviewed" AFT and NEA vice-presidents at the latest NPE talkfest in Raleigh, he only appeared to be the imperious judge looming far above the witnesses.  Cody's job was a tough one, in fact: he had to appear skeptical of the official stories being spun by the corporate unions' TURN-supporting officers, while offering opportunities for AFT and NEA to say anything they wanted without being challenged.

As you listen to the "interview," you will come to understand why The Union Reform Network loves both of these individuals and why they have been sent into the NPE tent to offer the Broad message that unions can only work when they are run by management.

Both Pringle and Ricker have earned their stripes as #2 in NEA and AFT respectively.  Pringle served as the former NEA chief's brain in 2011 when NEA signed on to support the use of value-added test scores for teacher evaluations.  Pringle has also been active in supporting the new TURN chapters, wherever teachers can duped in thinking that supporting the Broad and Gates agenda is a good thing for teachers or children.  

At the founding of a new TURN chapter in Florida in 2013, Pringle served on a panel moderated by TURN kingpin, Adam Urbanski, whose leadership of TURN goes all way back to the days when Eli Broad publicly acknowledged the millions of dollars he was sending to create a new kind of corporate-friendly union. 

The panel theme of "The Political Landscape Impacting Educational Reform" included: 

Becky Pringle, NEA Secretary-Treasurer
Karen Castor-Dentel, FL State Representative
Melissa Erickson, Hillsborough Alliance for Public Schools
Vince Verges, FL Dept of Education
Dr. Adam Urbanski, TURN Director, as moderator.

The event was focused on ways to push Common Core to teachers in Florida.

Mary Cathryn Ricker's role in TURN has been even more visible.  During the Cody "interview," she refers repeatedly to when she was President of the St. Paul AFT affiliate.  In St. Paul, Ricker served as "primary liaison & spokesperson" for TURN.  Information regarding Ricker's association with TURN is now behind a TURN firewall.

Both Ricker and Pringle have been tapped to replace Randi and Lily when they float away on their golden parachutes.  Have a "listen" to the interview.  Fascinating theatre.

Hillary Wants to Experiment with the Lives of Poor Children

Sequester "poor" children in boarding schools?...Again?

by Daun Kauffman @ Lucid Witness 

Native American students at the boarding school Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pa. in 1884.

Hillary Clinton spoke briefly, about a week ago, on a wide range of educational topics with Newsday editors on Long Island. The detailed, public video and transcript are posted HERE.

(The “Education” portion of the Newsday video runs from minute 40:40 to minute 51:15).

Clinton claimed to support “National Standards” in education and a “Common Core”. She supports “Public Charter Schools” and a litany of “good” things: “Good” teachers, ”Good” schools, “Good” Charters, “Good” choice, “Good” testing, “Good” explanation (to parents) of “standardized testing”.  Never once did she define “good”, although she used the terms “good” or “great” at least ten times during the eleven minute segment on education.

She did not speak to the structural inequity (nor the instability) of “National Standards” or a “Common Core” with no “National”, or “Common”, funding.

The most shocking aspect of her views on public education was her thought about improving education for “poor kids”, whom she had earlier acknowledged are now a majority in public schools.  The “poor” majority of children are described HERE as about 70% Hispanic, Black, Asian, Native American and Multiethnic.   Clinton describes “poor” children as coming to school with “all kinds of issues and problems”, her deficit view.  Then she cites the “need” to “experiment” on “poor” kids.
Clinton’s experiment will be “boarding schools”:  Segregate “poor” children in boarding schools, “if we can do it right”.

Click here to read the entire article.

Meritocracy myths allow neoliberal Democrats to proffer education as an inequality palliative

“They favored policies that created “equal opportunity” and fostered “individual rights,” instead of those designed to eradicate the structural underpinnings of racial segregation and economic inequity.”—Professor Lily Geismer, "Atari Democrats", Jacobin

Thomas Frank has a new book out. While I've only read excerpts from his previous works, and several of his essays, I think Paul D'Amato sums up Frank well in that he: "offers some important food for thought–but it’s more of a snack than a full meal." That said, given the precariousness of public education in this era of neoliberalism, even a snack may stave off starvation. Frank is making the tour discussing his new work, and a friend posted one of the interviews. I was listening to it in the background while studying for my Civil Procedure midterm (the arcana of Judgment Non Obstante Veredicto, and other FRCP 50 mysteries), when I heard Frank say something that most of us touch upon when discussing the plutocrats pushing neoliberal corporate education reform. That is regarding the meritocracy myth.

The audio being discussed is at the 21:07 mark and my rough transcription follows.

Democrats are like no, no, no... that's not right. You've got to give everyone student loans. You got to build charter schools. Both sides have their pat answers that have nothing to do with the problem...

This is a book about Democrats, and they see every economic problem as an educational problem, requiring more student loans, more charter schools. That sort of thing. People studying STEM subjects, or whatever it is. This is just how they interpret the world. Why do they do they interpret the world that way? Because that's what worked for them personally. If you look at the biographies of different, prominent Democrats of our time, they all have this eerily similar biography. They are often plucked from obscurity by prestigious universities. Look at Bill Clinton, this kid in Hot Springs Arkansas, goes to Georgetown University, then he's a Rhodes Scholar, then he goes to Yale Law School. All his friends have this similar kind of background. Look at Barack Obama. He goes to Columbia, then Harvard Law School, and is the editor of the Harvard Law Review. For these guys academic achievement and prestige, that's what opened the doors for them, and it is very natural for them to assume that is what will open the doors for everyone else. Now I'm a great believer in education, I spent twenty-five years of my life getting one. But I'm here to tell you that that's not the solution for inequality. We need education, obviously everyone needs to know how to read and do math. We need experts.

That is not the problem with the economy. The problem is not that workers are not smart enough. The problem is that workers don't have any power.

That last, overarching issue is the crux of the problem. I'd like to delve into it further, but that will have to wait until summer break. The other issue of the Democrats championing the meritocracy myth and their pandering the false notion that education will solve inequality is of crucial importance during this election cycle. The Geismer piece cited in the beginning of this post discusses a Democratic Party candidate's ties to many of the worst of the cult of meritocracy.

In her 2016 campaign bid, Hillary Clinton has strengthened these ties, surpassing candidates from both parties in individual donations from employees at the ten highest-grossing companies in Silicon Valley, including Google, Facebook, Apple, and eBay.

Four more years of neoliberalism and wrongheaded education policy are a frightening prospect. Now is time for action.

Riding the 'Turnaround' Merry-Go-Round in the Continuing Assault on Philadelphia Public Schools - Part III

by Ken Derstine @ Defend Public Education!
April 14, 2016

On April 7, 2016, at a Hillary Clinton campaign rally in Philadelphia, Bill Clinton got into an argument with demonstrators from Black Lives Matter over his legacy. He later said he “almost want[s] to apologize” for his remarks in defending his “welfare reform” and Violent Crime Control and Enforcement Act of 1994. It is these policies that led to a drastic increase in homelessness and explosion of the prison population in the U.S. in the 1990’s and after.

No matter how contrite Bill Clinton may be for the purposes of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, however, nothing he said at the rally was true. The fundamental premise of Bill Clinton’s neoliberal policies was that the working class needed “welfare reform” even as the industrial base of the U.S. economy was eroding because of globalization. This right-wing position was based on free market myth that the workers as individuals are responsible for their deteriorating conditions. At the same time, his deregulation of the corporate and financial sectors led to historically unprecedented accumulation of wealth by the top 1% of the American population and the near collapse of the U.S. economy in 2008. This was only averted by the $700 billion bailout of banks and various financial institutions with taxpayer money. No such relief has ever been contemplated for the workers and the unemployed.

The neoliberal agenda for privatization that became corporate education reform began as part of Clinton’s neoliberal reforms. The Clintons’ relationships with billionaires Eli Broad, the Walton Foundation (Walmart) and the Gates Foundation were to play a fundamental role in its development. The 'no excuses' philosophy would become a fundamental premise of charter schools in the subsequent administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

The 'No Excuses' Education Philosophy 

The 'no excuses' philosophy of school management was first implemented in 1994 in the original KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) schools in Houston. Created by Mike Feinberg and David Levin (who is also a co-founder of Relay Graduate School of Education), the philosophy basically says that students from low-income families should be taught to overcome the problems brought on by poverty through a rigid pedagogy that accepts no excuses for failure. Any consideration of social factors in student achievement is considered “low expectations”.

  

In his recently released book, Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys through “No Excuses” Teaching, Jim Horn, Professor of Educational Leadership at Cambridge College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says of the 'no excuses' model:

The “no excuses” school model that KIPP charter schools popularized owes significantly to an assumption made two decades ago by paternalistic school reformers (Finn, 1997), who argued that schools and teachers could “reduce inequality in educational achievement if disadvantaged students were held to the same high standards as everybody else” (Cohen, 1996, p. 101).  This belief remains widespread today, and it has contributed to at least four bad outcomes for children, teachers, and public schools:  1) it leads us away from altering the corrosive socioeconomic realities that affect children’s lives outside school, while pushing our attention toward fixing children and their teachers’ belief systems, 2) it requires educators and children to subscribe to an ideology that demands toxic levels of anxiety and stress to attain some modicum of success, even temporarily, 3) it has led to widespread failure to live up to expectations that prove more fanciful than real, which creates self-loathing or self-blame for failing to achieve what students and teachers, alike, are told is achievable, 4) it has contributed to a totalizing compliance regimen for students and teachers that is more penal than pedagogical.

The heart of Horn’s book comes from twenty-five interviews with former KIPP teachers about their experience at KIPP. He summarizes what these teachers say in the interviews in his book (page 141, 142):

  

Click here to read the entire article.

Also see:

Riding the ‘turnaround’ merry-go-round in the continuing assault on Philadelphia public schools ­– Part I
The Battle for Wister; The SRC’s Projected Five-year Plan

Riding the ‘turnaround’ merry-go-round in the continuing assault on Philadelphia public schools ­– Part II
Mastery Charter Schools; The Unequal Funding of Public vs. Charter Schools

Tech for tots

 The US Department of Education just tweeted support for  a report from "Common Sense Kids Action": https://www.commonsensemedia.org/kids-action/our-initiatives/the-right-start-commission, a recomendation for "universal access to quailty early ed." I took a look.

The major thrust: Create a "consumer's report" on tech-ed products.  The group is supported by the Gates Foundation: http://www.scoop.it/t/bill-melinda-gates-foundation/?tag=Common+Sense+Media.

I posted three comments to their tweet:  

(1) Worried about this: "quality" early childhood ed sometimes = too much academics, testing. (2) I don't see much representation from preschool teachers in commonsense long list of advisors.  

(3) commonsense supported by Gates, to inform teachers about ed-tech products.

Ravitch Labels Sanders Remarks "Dreadful and Petulant"

When Clinton lost the Wisconsin primary, her campaign devised a new strategy as they headed toward New York: paint Sanders as unqualified to be President.  The next day she launched the new smear tactics.  From WaPo:

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton on Wednesday questioned whether her rival in the Democratic presidential primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), is qualified to be president.

"I think he hadn't done his homework and he'd been talking for more than a year about doing things that he obviously hadn't really studied or understood," Clinton said in an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," just one day after losing the Wisconsin primary to Sanders, "and that does raise a lot of questions." . . .

The Sanders campaign answered the same day:

"My response is if you want to question my qualifications, then maybe the American people might wonder about your qualifications Madame Secretary," he said. 

Sanders added: "When you voted for the war in Iraq, the most disastrous foreign policy blunder in the history of America, you might want to question your qualifications. When you voted for trade agreements that cost millions of Americans decent paying jobs, and the American people might want to wonder about your qualifications. When you're spending an enormous amount of time raising money for your super PAC from some of the wealthiest people in this country, and from some of the most outrageous special interests ... Are you qualified to be president of the United States when you're raising millions of dollars from Wall Street whose greed and recklessness helped destroy our economy?" 

Diane Ravitch waited a few days to offer this reaction to Bernie's response: "His statement that Hillary is 'not qualified' to be President was dreadful and petulant. Would he prefer Trump or Cruz?"  

It makes one wonder what Diane might advise Bernie to do when this kind of planned assault comes his way.  Is he supposed to pretend that Clinton is something she is not, for fear of further damaging the corporate Left's choice to run against the corporate Right in the general election?   

Bernie Sanders, like everyone else, knows that Clinton has the requisite experience to be President.  She has been privately tutored for years in the imperialistic and criminal foreign policy of Henry Kissinger.  She has learned from her husband and from Barack Obama and from Robert Rubin how to mouth the words of financial reform, while growing the "too big to fail" banks even bigger and ignoring their crimes against the citizenry.  She has learned how to aggressively pursue the corporate education reforms with enough vigor to please the hedge funds and the corporate union presidents--both superdelegates, I might add.  And she learned to frame the environmental crisis to fit the needs of her dirty energy contributors.

Diane Ravitch has been a conservative for so long that her brand of Republicanism, which was shed like an old snakeskin as her old neoconservative pals slithered further Right, is now worn by the DNC's centrist candidate, Hillary Clinton.  In the meantime, Ravitch's pretense that she remains neutral just underscores how content she is with the status quo.  I guess some things, indeed, never change.

Here is a clip from yesterday's Meet the Press, where Sanders updates his earlier remarks about Clinton vastness of experience that masks some very serious shortcomings.  In the end, if Bernie Sanders falls short of leading the political revolution under the Democratic banner, it surely will not be led by Hillary Clinton.  She will be as irrelevant as the official Republicans and their deserted followers that they left behind to become Democrats.

Half of Long Island Students Opted Out of Testing Last Week

from the Wall Street Journal:

The number of students who opted out of state tests in Long Island rose to more than 97,500 this week, according to tallies by test-refusal advocates—or about half of the students in grades three through eight.

Long Island Opt Out, which has promoted the movement, said Friday it had volunteers cull numbers from officials and teachers in 124 districts this week. The group lacked data for six districts.

The group said the boycott grew from last spring, when it said 82,492 Long Island students opted out of at least one of the three days of English language arts exams. Next week will have three days of math tests. . . .

BustED Pencils Episode on "No Excuses" Teaching

After Tim and Jed give me an opportunity to talk some about Work Hard, Be Hard, they interview Emily Talmage, one of the former "no excuses" teachers in the book.  Check it out here.

Peg with Pen: The Opt Out Irony

Peg with Pen: The Opt Out Irony: Currently it's Spring of 2016 and we are in the thick of Opt Out.   Opt out is still surrounded by intense bullying and harassment ...

KIPP Teacher Caught Bruising Student

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The KIPP Model is both unustainable and inhumane in numerous ways that I document in a new book thatexamines inner workings of "no excuses" charter schools. Both teachers and students are being used, abused, and discarded in order to benefit a paternalistic corporate ideology that advantages powerful elites at the expense of the most vulnerable children. Parents should be up in arms.

When teachers with little teacher preparation or child development training and even less understanding of disadvantaged children's needs are commanded by school CEOs to keep children in a psychological lockdown state and laser focused on raising test scores by any means necessary, abused children often result.  The abusers are rarely apprehended, and if they are, they are almost never prosecuted.

After earlier KIPP abuse incidents this school year in New Orleans and St. Louis, a Denver KIPP is the latest venue for, yet, another bruised and battered KIPP student.  It is time for the white elites who support this dehumanizing form of education for the children of the poor to share the liability for this kind of predictable outcome that has become commonplace, even though most incidents go unreported to parents or police.

From Channel 9 in Denver:

Riding the ‘Turnaround’ Merry-Go-Round in the Continuing Assault on Philadelphia Public Schools: Part II

by Ken Derstine @ Defend Public Education!
April 6, 2016

Part I of this series detailed how Mastery Charter is using the hostile takeover methods of the corporate world to takeover more Philadelphia Public Schools each year. But education deals with relationships between human beings, not the industrial products and natural resources of the corporate world. Thus, these hostile takeovers aggravate historic class and ethnic tensions (watch the video). Philadelphia schools have struggled for years with underfunding at the state level; now charters bring the added disparity in funding between public schools and charters within Philadelphia. Philadelphia currently has 83 charters. Other charter companies, including KIPP (four schools), ASPIRA (six schools), and Universal (seven schools) are looking to expand their enrollment, but Mastery increasingly dominates the charter sector in Philadelphia. Also, with many independent charters, Philadelphia is ranked third in the nation for the number of students enrolled in charter schools with currently roughly 70,000 of Philadelphia’s approximately 200,000 students being enrolled in charters.

Mastery Charter Schools

Mastery currently manages nine elementary schools, eight middle/high schools in Philadelphia, and six schools (five elementary and one high school) in Camden, New Jersey, in total, serving over 12,000 students. In its five-year budget plan, announced March 24^th, at the School Reform Commission (SRC) meeting, the District anticipates an additional enrollment of 10,000 more charter students in the next five years. Adding to the District's problems, on February 16, 2016 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the SRC had overstepped its authority in imposing enrollment caps on charters. That will probably result in an increase in charter enrollment in existing charter schools. The SRC also announced on March 24th its intention to add at 10,000 more charter students in the next five years and to close at least three public schools each year beginning in 2018. 

Click here to read the entire article.