January 30, 2013

Billionaire reformer says public school students entitled to "skills" to be productive workers.

I always thought education was about far more than that. This is a Chicago parent speaking at a Chicago Teachers' Union rally in May. Matt Farmer quotes Penny Pritzker on her goals for Chicago public school students. He compares the elite Chicago lab school where political leaders send their own children to the public schools these same leaders are trying to "reform".

Recent reports indicate that Pritzer may be Obama's Obama's new Commerce Secretary

January 30, 2013

President Obama has made far fewer recess appointments than any recent president. Graph.

From Think Progress.

January 29, 2013

Seattle Teachers' Uprising. Refuse to give faulty standardized test. Democracy Now video.

From the You Tube link for Democracy Now:

Published on Jan 29, 2013

DemocracyNow.org - Earlier this month, teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington, voted unanimously to stop administering a widely used standardized test, calling them wasteful and unfairly used to grade their performance. They are now facing threats of 10-day suspension without pay if they continue their boycott. We go to Seattle to speak with two guests: Jesse Hagopian, a high school history teacher and union representative at Garfield High School who has refused to administer the MAP standardized test; and Wayne Au, a former high school teacher, assistant professor at the University of Washington, and author of "Unequal by Design: High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality."

To watch the entire weekday independent news hour, read the transcript, download the podcast, search our vast archive, or to find more information about Democracy Now! and Amy Goodman, visit http://www.democracynow.org.

Here is some background on this issue. It seems the test does not have much to do with what is taught in the classroom. Teachers are judged on a test that does not follow the curriculum.

Battle in Seattle

The courageous action taken by teachers at Seattle's Garfield High School has won growing support and admiration, not only from the city's teachers, parents and students, but from teachers nationwide. Their announced refusal on January 10th to administer the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP), a poorly-constructed, high-stakes, standardized test, has once again brought national attention to disastrous testing-madness policies being pushed and enforced for the past 12 years under No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top.

..."Little kids in winter hats and parkas held hands, older folks waved signs. "I'd rather be teaching," read one. "Parent supports Garfield," read another. The vice president of the Chicago teachers union, Jesse Sharkey, called in, and his speech was shouted out to the crowd. "Sisters and brothers... There's only one way forward: Stick together and fight." Teachers learned today, in emergency after-school staff meetings, that they could be subject to 10-day suspensions without pay if they did not administer the test, according to Garfield teacher Jesse Hagopian. "They say we're disruptive?" Hagopian called out, right outside the closed doors of the school board meeting. "I think a test that is not aligned to my curriculum is disruptive. Threatening teachers with 10 days without pay is disruptive." The rally ended with a hearty rendition of "SCRAP THE MAP! SCRAP THE MAP!" before leaders reminded everyone to be respectful, and most of the group crowded into the meeting.

January 28, 2013

Michelle Rhee just getting started on shaping California education policy

Source: Sacramento Bee

Rhee has hired three lobbying firms to represent StudentsFirst in the state Legislature. Her group helped kill an evaluation bill it said was too easy on teachers and shopped around a piece of legislation to change teacher layoff rules that was never introduced.

StudentsFirst also has begun political efforts to take on one of the most powerful forces in state politics: the California Teachers Association. Her group put $2 million into a California campaign committee ahead of the 2012 elections, and two of the three legislative candidates it supported were elected over candidates supported by CTA.

CTA President Dean Vogel said he doesn't feel threatened but is keeping an eye on Rhee as she rolls out her strategy.

"Any time you're gathering up huge amounts of money and hiring huge amounts of staff and moving a particular agenda, you're going to have an effect. What effect that will be is hard to say until it starts to unfold," Vogel said.



Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/01/27/5143422/michelle-rhee-just-getting-started.html

---

The money her group has given legislators is paying off as they introduce bills which she favors. Tennessee is moving quickly. That's where her ex-husband, Kevin Huffman, is in charge of schools.

TN 'parent trigger' bill would allow school takeovers


The "parent trigger" bill was filed Wednesday by Rep. John DeBerry, a Memphis Democrat and member of the House Education Committee. / AP / File

The bill was filed Wednesday by Rep. John DeBerry, a Memphis Democrat and member of the House Education Committee.

“It is, in my opinion, important legislation that will get the debate started,” DeBerry said Thursday. “One thing we can’t afford is we can’t continue to support the status quo.”

"Status Quo"...one of the favorite terms used by reformers to refer to public schools.

DeBerry was supported in his last election by Students First, the national education reform organization founded by Michelle Rhee, but said that support is not related to his bill. Rhee, the ex-wife of Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman, is known for pushing the reform ideals most often associated with Republicans, but recently said she is a lifelong Democrat.

January 25, 2013

CA Gov Brown trusts the teachers in the classrooms, calls for local control. Blasts

YvonneCA posted the video earlier. She is rightly proud of her governor.

MY Governor (Jerry Brown)CA Education...

I found a little more about the speech, some of it in transcript form. It is very impressive. Since he is blasting the policy of his own party, his own president....he is courageous. Good for him.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/24/californias-gov-brown-blasts-state-federal-education-policy/

California’s Gov. Brown blasts state, federal education policy

California Gov. Jerry Brown smacked state and federal education policy in his State of the State Address Thursday, calling for more local control of school issues and saying, “I would prefer to trust our teachers who are in the classroom each day, doing the real work – lighting fires in young minds.”“Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice,” he said.

Here is more of the transcript:

The laws that are in fashion demand tightly constrained curricula and reams of accountability data. All the better if it requires quiz-bits of information, regurgitated at regular intervals and stored in vast computers. Performance metrics, of course, are invoked like talismans. Distant authorities crack the whip, demanding quantitative measures and a stark, single number to encapsulate the precise achievement level of every child.

We seem to think that education is a thing—like a vaccine—that can be designed from afar and simply injected into our children. But as the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats said, “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”blockquote]

He praises the teachers for taking a stand. More and more of them are doing that now.

And early in his speech, he said:

I salute the teachers and the students, the parents and the college presidents, the whole school community. As the great jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, once said when describing what stirs people to action: “Feeling begets feeling and great feeling begets great feeling.” You were alarmed, you stirred yourselves to action and victory was the outcome.

Teachers in Seattle are risking their jobs to stand against high-stakes testing which does NOT include what students are taught in classes.

Teachers take stand against high-stakes test. Could get suspensions.

The teachers in Chicago stood up for the rights of teachers to teach and students to learn without outside interference by the Billionaire Boys Club.

Since I am retired I can write about the injustices being done to public schools by both parties now, and I don't have to fear retribution.

Sure, my posts drop, but I can either let that discourage me or just keep on doing what I can. I knew when I came back to DU I would not be allowed near front page because of my insistence on posting about education wrongs. So I will just do what I can.

Kudos to Governor Brown.

January 23, 2013

FL paid $1.9 million of Race to Top funds to be evaluated independently of US internationally.

From Politifact:

Rick Scott says Florida fourth graders are world's second-best readers

"I like measurement," Scott said during a Jan. 15, 2013, discussion with black lawmakers. "One positive, as you know: In the fourth grade reading, we're second to Singapore in the world, Florida students were. In math, we're above the international average. So there's some good things happening."

...That year, Florida used federal grant money to be evaluated independently of the United States -- the only U.S. "benchmarking" state for the PIRLS exam. Florida paid $1.9 million from a federal Race to the Top grant for this assessment and two other international studies, including the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) of fourth and eighth graders.

The Politifact ruling:

But it’s important to note these rankings do not account for every country in the world. Or every state in the United States. In fact, Florida was the only state included in the ranking Scott cited because Florida paid to be included.Scott would have been correct to say Florida finished second in the study, but he stretched the truth a bit when he said Florida ranked second in the world.

It would have been more accurate to say Florida ranked second among 53 education systems that were included.

I do not believe that was the purpose of the Race to the Top money. $1.9 million to take an international test?

I have my own opinion about why 4th grade was chosen. In Florida students in 3rd grade have not been able to move to 4th unless they pass the standardized testing. Last I heard they could grow old in third grade....I hope they have changed that since I retired. Terrible policy.

January 23, 2013

Some charter schools admit sending students back to public schools. How they "counsel out" kids.

Some charter schools admit sending students back to public schools. How they "counsel out" kids.

They get public money for their students. Therefore they should be required to keep the students who are low-performing or have problems....and provide for them. Public schools do that.

It's easy to claim higher test scores when you have counseled out those who might not test as well.

This post is by Gary Rubinstein, a TFA blogger.

Some Charters finally admit attrition then rationalize it

Up until very recently, most charter schools simply denied their attrition problem. I was frustrated by this because I ‘knew’ they were lying, just as a woman can ‘know’ that her husband is cheating on her. As I investigated several schools, I got the proof I needed. But, to take the cheating husband analogy a bit further. Getting ‘proof’ wasn’t enough for me. I wanted the charters to admit what they’ve done.

I’ve gotten at least five examples of people at charters acknowledging their attrition over the last few months. The most notable is KIPP’s own report card where, after saying that a school with high test scores and high attrition is not a great school, then admits that their attrition rate is 40% over four years (though they mask this number with some clever math.) Then in this article from a Florida newspaper a charter superintendent verifies their high attrition. In this New York Times article which was just published, an example of how charters counsel out kids is discussed.

I think that the ‘party line’ for charters, in the wake of all the evidence which is fairly easy to attain on the state websites is no longer to try to hide or deny their attrition. Instead, as you see in these articles, they have found a way to rationalize their attrition — to explain that it is a good thing! A place where I have seen this a lot is in some of the comments that have been left on my recent blog posts. In my post about expulsions from New Orleans charters, a reader identified as ‘dcchilin’ wrote

“I’ve worked in a high-performing charter, and yes, my school did expel some disruptive kids who were making it difficult for their peers to learn (or bringing drugs or weapons to school), and I’d do it again in a heartbeat to preserve a school culture where hard work and good behavior are the expectation for all.”

That's great...let's allow public schools to do it as well. Right? That's a silly question, the answer is of course no.

Should we just let DC public schools expel anyone?

Charter schools get to do something similar. If that's fair (and some say it is), shouldn't DCPS get to do the same?

Emma Brown reports in the Washington Post that "DC charter schools expelled 676 students in the past three years, while the city's traditional public schools expelled 24."

Charter schools thus get rid of the problem students and often boost their own average test scores in the process. DCPS schools cannot expel elementary students and must convince judges to expel older students. Charters have no such restrictions.

..."Of course, I don't really support allowing DCPS to expel anyone into DYRS safety net schools. Instead, charters need to operate under the same expulsion policies as DCPS.

This is the Florida charter school which Rubinstein mentions above. They are openly feuding with the school board on their attrition rate. They arrogantly justify it.

McKeel Charter superintendent defends policies and practices.

McKeel Charter School System has no control over which students are admitted to its three schools, its superintendent said, but it does control who gets to stay.

...But McKeel has a specific, and very defined, policy on reasons for dismissal, including behavior, attendance and academic performance problems. Maready said McKeel students and parents sign contracts stating they understand the schools' rules as well as participation requirements for parents.

Failure to meet the requirements results in dismissal.

At a school board meeting one of the members read a letter sent out by McKeel Charter to a student they were sending to public schools.

FL charter school gets praise and high ranking..yet sent 12.5% of students back to public schools.

The letter:

School Board member Frank O’Reilly wants district official to start tracking how many students are transferred from charter schools to public schools as a result of their grades, social economic status or behavioral issues. During a work session this morning, O’Reilly read a letter sent by Harold Maready, superintendent of McKeel charter schools, to a parent about their third grader who flunked the FCAT.

“Your child does not meet the criteria to be a McKeel student,” O’Reilly read.

If public schools were to reject students based on their academic performance, then they could be A schools, too, O’Reilly said.

“We must take every child that comes through that door whether we like it or not,” O’Reilly said. ‘‘That is a public school paid by taxpayers’ dollars, and I like to remind Mr. Maready of that.”

Here is a perfect example of "counseling out" a student. The source is the New York Times, and the charter is one founded by Eva Moskowitz. This is the school whose director said that by test day they were all "little test-taking machines."

How a charter school can "counsel out" a student after just a few days.


Librado Romero/The New York Times
Matthew Sprowal and his mother, Katherine. He left a charter school for a traditional public school, where he is flourishing.
By MICHAEL WINERIP

In Matthew’s three years of preschool, Ms. Sprowal said, he had never missed time for behavior problems. “After only 12 days in your school,” she wrote the principal, “you have assessed and concluded that our son is defective and will not meet your school criteria.”

Five days later, Ms. Sprowal got an e-mail from Ms. Moskowitz that she took as a veiled message to leave. “Am not familiar with the issue,” Ms. Moskowitz wrote, “but it is extremely important that children feel successful and a nine-hour day with more than 23 children (and that’s our small class size!) where they are constantly being asked to focus and concentrate can overwhelm children and be a bad environment.”

The next week, the school psychologist evaluated Matthew and concluded he would be better suited elsewhere: “He may need a smaller classroom than his current school has available.”

A nine-hour day? 23 children? Heck of a long day, not a bad class size. She is calling the environment of her school a bad one for students with special needs. I wonder if she is aware she is doing that.

January 21, 2013

Remember this 2010 order for 27 combat-ready shotguns for the Department of Education?

When Arne Duncan was asked about why the department needed them, he said to ask his Inspector General's office. The whole thing was strange.

Here is the 2010 coverage from WLS-TV in Chicago. There is an interesting video at the link as well as the article.

Unusual gun order headed to Chicago

According to the bid solicitation, the department is purchasing 27 Remington Model 870 pump-action shotguns with 14-inch modified choke barrels. They are custom-made for law enforcement and have shorter barrels than required for purchase by private citizens.

The Remington shotgun being purchased by the education department is intended to replace an older, malfunctioning arsenal, according to officials, and would have to be compatible with existing combat armor.

The I-Team called US Education Secretary Arne Duncan Thursday afternoon to find out why his inspector general's office requires guns at all. Duncan, who previously ran the Chicago Public Schools, referred questions to the inspector general's office.

In an e-mail, a spokesperson told the I-Team that their special agents work waste and fraud cases involving education funds and programs, and they have full law enforcement authority and training, and they sometimes conduct search warrants and make arrests.

Here is more about that order from McClatchy in 2010.

Agency places shotgun order FBI? No, Education Department

WASHINGTON — Schools may be gun-free zones, but the U.S. Department of Education is locked and loaded.

The agency put in an order this month for 27 new short-barreled shotguns to replace some of its aging arsenal.

...""Major (inspectors general) not only perform audits and review the efficiency of federal programs, they also conduct extensive criminal investigations," said Paul Feeney, a spokesman for the inspector general at the Department of Agriculture. "Many people may not be aware of the dangerous circumstances that agents may encounter."

.."More than just eagle-eyed numbers crunchers poring over records for waste and fraud involving federal tax dollars, special agents for the inspectors general actually hit the streets to round up the bad guys.

I have some ideas for the Department of Education about some fraud they might start addressing. They won't even need shotguns, just some ethics and common sense.

They can read the blogs and search online for how their policies are giving millions to charter schools and vouchers that are unregulated and have no oversight. They are using money from taxpayers that should go to public education.

Here are examples of several who defrauded to the tune of millions of dollars.

Example of an FBI investigation:

Philadelphia charter school mogul Dorothy June Hairston Brown was charged Tuesday -- along with four colleagues -- with defrauding three charter schools of more than $6.5 million in tax dollars.

Brown and her executives were indicted on 62 counts of wire fraud, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. She had earned praise for student test scores and had a reputation for claiming large salaries and filing suits against parents who questioned her, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

Brown founded three Philadelphia charter schools: the Laboratory, Ad Prima and Planet Abacus. She also had a hand in creating the Agora Cyber Charter School, which offers online lessons to students across the state. Brown was reportedly paid $150,000 for working 30 hours weekly at Laboratory and $115,904 for a single week at Ad Prima.

There are more listed here that are wasting public money.

NYT's investigative article about Imagine Charter Schools and Dennis Bakke.

The company (NYSE: EPR) purchased five new charter schools from Imagine Schools Inc. of Arlington, Va., at a cost of $44 million and agreed to finance expansion of two others at a cost of $4 million. Entertainment Properties Trust, which is based in Kansas City, will lease the five new schools back to Imagine Schools, a leading operator of public charter schools.

Entertainment Properties Trust’s portfolio now includes 27 charter schools that Imagine Schools operates in nine states and the District of Columbia.

And a paragraph about some Philly charter schools.

City Controller Alan Butkovitz yesterday blasted the Philadelphia School District's Charter School Office for failing "to monitor charter schools," which spend millions in taxpayers' dollars.

Butkovitz released a scathing report citing financial mismanagement, excessive executive salaries and "opportunities for possible fraud" at 13 charter schools his office investigated over the last 14 months.

"Many charter schools, through leasing agreements and associated nonprofits, are transferring taxpayer-funded assets to nonprofits that are not accountable to the school district," the report said in one of its key findings.

I find it questionable that the Department of Education needs those "combat-ready" shotguns.

Let them investigate the loss of public money flowing through greedy hands of charter management schools. They don't need guns for that.

January 20, 2013

NY will share your child's private info with private companies w/o your permission.

New York is going "to share confidential NYC student and teacher data" with the Shared Learning Collaborative, funded by the Gates Foundation.

I don't understand how they can do this without notifying the parents. We had to let parents know about anything we did concerning their children.

From Parents Across America:

Parents beware NY and eight other states plan to share your child’s confidential school records
with a group funded by Gates Foundation.

The data to be shared will include the names of students, their grades, test scores, disciplinary and attendance records, and likely race, ethnicity, free lunch and special education status as well.

These records are to be stored in a massive electronic data bank, being built by Wireless Generation, a subsidiary of News Corporation. News Corporation is owned by Rupert Murdoch and has been found to illegally violate the privacy of individuals in Great Britain and in the United States.

Yes, Wireless Generation is part of Murdoch's empire.

Over the next few months, the Gates Foundation plans to turn over all this personal data to another, as yet unnamed corporation, headed by Iwan Streichenberger, the former marketing director of a company called Promethean that sells whiteboards, based in Atlanta GA.

Many are concerned this violates student privacy. There is a Federal law protecting student privacy, called FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), which allows states or districts to disclose students' personally identifiable education records without parental consent only in very limited circumstances and under stringent conditions, none of which apply in this case.

Moreover, we have learned that this confidential information is to be put on a cloud managed by Amazon.com, with few if any protections against data leakage.

January 20, 2013

Fiscal cliff bill allows Medicare drug, Sensipar, 2 more years without any price controls.

Sounds like the company will make a huge profit over that time and will raise costs for Medicare. That company had just pleaded guilty in a major federal fraud case.

From the New York Times:

Medicare Pricing Delay Is Political Win for Drug Maker

WASHINGTON — Just two weeks after pleading guilty in a major federal fraud case, Amgen, the world’s largest biotechnology firm, scored a largely unnoticed coup on Capitol Hill: Lawmakers inserted a paragraph into the “fiscal cliff” bill that did not mention the company by name but strongly favored one of its drugs.

..." The language buried in Section 632 of the law delays a set of Medicare price restraints on a class of drugs that includes Sensipar, a lucrative Amgen pill used by kidney dialysis patients.

The provision gives Amgen an additional two years to sell Sensipar without government controls. The news was so welcome that the company’s chief executive quickly relayed it to investment analysts. But it is projected to cost Medicare, and thus taxpayers, up to $500 million over that period.

Supporters of the delay, primarily leaders of the Senate Finance Committee who have long benefited from Amgen’s political largess, said it was necessary to allow federal regulators to prepare properly for the pricing change.

The article mentions Amgen's closeness to "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, and Senators Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah".

A spokesperson for Baucus says he always votes for what is best for Montanans and people across the country.