November 10, 2012

Bunch of spin. Study that praises Michelle Rhee in DC schools done by group formed by her. WP

The Washington Post editorial links to the site that did the study, but fails to mention that Michelle Rhee was its founder and leader for ten years. She founded The New Teacher Project in 1997.

The New Teacher Project (TNTP) is an organization with a mission of ensuring that poor and minority students get equal access to effective teachers. It attempts to help urban school districts and states recruit and train new teachers, staff challenged schools, design evaluation systems, and retain teachers who have demonstrated the ability to raise student achievement. TNTP is a non-profit organization and was founded by Michelle Rhee in 1997.

Makes it hard for me to accept what they say as convincing.

Here is the editorial from the Washington Post.

REMEMBER THE predictions that former D.C. Public Schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee’s overhaul of teacher evaluation and compensation would lead to damaging upheaval? That there would be an exodus of good teachers? Those claims — like much of the criticism of D.C. school reform — have been proven baseless: Three years of dramatic change in personnel policy has made the District a model for smart teacher retention.

A study released this week by the nonprofit New Teacher Project lauds the District for its record of retaining good teachers while shedding low performers. Most school districts, as the group has established in previous reports, retain their best and worst teachers at similar rates. It’s the result of a cookie-cutter approach to personnel that enshrines mediocrity, tolerates ineffectiveness and has terrible consequences for students.

If a paper runs an editorial praising a study vindicating Rhee, then they should reveal that the group was founded and run by her.

My own opinion, for what it's worth. I think that aside from anything else she is doing, all the anti-teacher, anti-union activities in many states...including my own...she should NEVER be forgiven for this horrible ad which ran during the Olympics and ridiculed our country's public education.

It was created by her present group Students First, and they still proudly defend it.]

View it at You Tube:

November 9, 2012

About long FL lines to vote...Rick Scott keeps saying "we did the right thing". Proud of suppression

But the governor is sticking to his decision, repeatedly telling reporters that he “did the right thing” by cutting early voting. When confronted by a local station WKMG, Scott insisted that “the right thing happened” before simply walking away from the question:

REPORTER: Should you have extended early voting hours?
SCOTT: I’m very confident that the right thing happened. 4.4. million people voted.

Scott repeated the same statement almost verbatim to another station, WFTV:

SCOTT: The right thing happened. 4.4 million people came out and voted either absentee or early. On Election Day we had 20 times as many polling locations as we did early. So we did the right thing.

From Think Progress

November 7, 2012

Can we be honest now about the war on public education?

I think it is time. Arne Duncan played basketball with President Obama on election day. That sounds to me like he's around to stay in spite of the harm done to public schools already.

I am quoting from an open letter to President Obama from Bill Ayers. He says it better than I can.

An Open Letter to President Obama from Bill Ayers

First he congratulates the president on his win. Then he says:

The landscape of “educational reform” is currently littered with rubble and ruin and wreckage on all sides. Sadly, your administration has contributed significantly to the mounting catastrophe. You’re not alone: The toxic materials have been assembled as a bipartisan endeavor over many years, and the efforts of the last several administrations are now organized into a coherent push mobilized and led by a merry band of billionaires including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Sam Walton, and Eli Broad.

..."You and Secretary Arne Duncan—endorsed in your efforts by Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, and a host of reactionary politicians and pundits—now bear a major responsibility for that agenda.

The three most trumpeted and simultaneously most destructive aspects of the united “school reform” agenda are these: turning over public assets and spaces to private management; dismantling and opposing any independent, collective voice of teachers; and reducing education to a single narrow metric that claims to recognize an educated person through a test score. While there’s absolutely no substantive proof that this approach improves schooling for children, it chugs along unfazed—fact-free, faith-based reform at its core, resting firmly on rank ideology rather than any evidence whatsoever.

Recent events in Florida show just how extreme we have already become in the giving away public assets.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/03/1154823/-FL-failed-charter-school-did-without-computers-library-or-cafeteria-Principal-got-824-000

The principal in question not only received a $519,000 severance check, but she took home her $305,000 annual salary for a grand total of $824,000 during the 2010-2011 school year. The Orlando Sentinel also reported last week the school only spent $366,000 on teacher salaries and instruction during that school year. Nothing can justify that imbalance, especially for the leader of a charter that failed.

Public school district superintendents don't even make that kind of unconcionalble salary. School boards would face public rage for even proposing such pay.

.."Last week the Miami Herald reported that Charter Schools USA handed out in excess of $205,000 in contributions to political organizations and candidates for this election, three times the amount the Fort Lauderdale-based company spent two years ago.

That money must come from the profits the company earns at taxpayer expense; in effect, the public is paying that political price so charter schools can leverage even greater profits from the Legislature.

It's time to listen to those who believe that public education is vital to our country's future.

It's time for Arne Duncan to reconsider his embrace of the anti-teacher, anti-union pundits, or it's time for him to go.

Twittering about education

November 1, 2012

Florida says it will investigate unlicensed children's homes for abuse, neglect

Apparently this has been going on awhile, according to research by the Tampa Bay Times. It seems their investigation has gotten the attention of Florida's Department of Children and Families. Some of the privately run homes appear to have a religious background.

Florida investigates unlicensed children's homes for abuse, neglect

The review has identified seven "boarding schools" with no apparent credentials — no state license, no religious exemption and no other state-recognized accreditation. The Times had previously uncovered four of those facilities.

In addition, state investigators now say more than a dozen foster children have been illegally placed in unlicensed homes since 2001. Officials continue to look for more illegal placements and are trying to determine why they occurred and how much taxpayer money was spent.

There was a religious exemption given in 1984. Many have operated since then.

DCF started its review of unlicensed homes after the Times began asking about more than 30 religious facilities that have cared for children with no state license or monitoring. Many of those homes operate legally by earning accreditation from a private, nonprofit group under a religious exemption created in 1984. Others operate with no recognized oversight at all.

In a series of stories this week, the Times revealed that about a dozen unlicensed religious homes have been plagued by allegations of abuse, neglect and mistreatment. Children have been choked, threatened, shackled for days, bruised, beaten, sexually abused and medically neglected to near death.

The response from the legislative leaders here about the Tampa Bay Times research makes me wonder just how serious their investigation will be. They say it is "on their radar" and they are "going to take a look at it."

I doubt it helped that Florida began a risky policy several years ago in its system for reporting abuses. There was much room for serious abuses to be ignored. I do not know if the policy has changed since 2009.

Absolutely shocking. Calls to Florida family services abuse line often ignored deliberately

Sept. 16, 2:02 p.m.: A Broward sheriff's deputy calls the Florida child-abuse hot line to report that a 4-year-old had been molested by a babysitter as the sitter's boyfriend videotaped the assault. A hot-line counselor declines to forward the report to an investigator.

..." Nov. 16, time unknown: A father is attempting to break into his estranged wife's home. He says he will kill his children. That call, too, is not accepted for investigation.

These decisions, and thousands more, are the result of a little-known -- but potentially dangerous -- practice by the Department of Children & Families: Beginning last year, DCF dramatically increased the number of abuse calls considered unworthy of investigation. In an effort to reduce workload -- and the system-wide stress that high case loads generate -- intake workers at the Tallahassee-based hot line have been screening out tens of thousands of calls.

Among the screened-out allegations: reports of kidnapping, rape, aggravated child abuse, medical neglect, malnutrition, kids roaming the streets unsupervised and domestic violence that threatens to harm the children. Among the callers being turned away: school counselors, grandparents, circuit court judges, hospital social workers, day-care workers and juvenile-justice staffers.

Their new policy set "a new protocol to reject complaints about children who have suffered bruises or welts from beatings -- unless such beatings result in a trip to the doctor or hospital, or ``permanent disfigurement."