Monthly Archives: March 2016

The Southern Education Foundation has released a new report that explodes the myth that charters and vouchers increase opportunity for students of color and low-income students. Far from it. Privatization via charters and vouchers has intensified racial segregation and is reversing the Brown Decision of 1954. The disreputable concept of “separate but equal” is returning under the guise of “school choice.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Autumn Blanchard
ablanchard@southerneducation.org
404.991.6766

PRIVATE SCHOOL SEGREGATION: OLD NEWS, NEW PITCH
State-funded “separate but unequal” education billed as opportunity for underrepresented

MARCH 29, 2016 – The Southern Education Foundation (SEF), an advocate for equity in education, releases Race & Ethnicity in a New Era of Public Funding of Private Schools: Private School Enrollment in the South and the Nation. This report explores the phenomenon of publicly funded private school segregation occurring more than 60 years after the Brown v. Board of Education verdict declared segregated…

The tabloid press in New York City, which has consistently supported corporate reform, such as charters and high-stakes testing, regularly claims in its editorials that the parents’ opt out movement is secretly funded and manipulated by teachers’ unions.

This is absolutely untrue. There are teachers involved in the opt out movement, but as individuals and parents, not as representatives of their unions. When Karen Magee, the president of the New York State teachers’ union, endorsed opt out last spring, right before the testing started, it was big news. (My blog got the biggest one-day readership in its history [about 140,000 views in one day] when I reported Magee’s decision).

The New York City United Federation of Teachers never endorsed opt out, never funded it.

Please, editorial writers for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and yes, even the New York Times, please take note: The opt out…

On Tuesday, the Education and Workforce Committee held a Congressional hearing called “Strengthening Education Research and Privacy Protections to Better Serve Students”.  With one parent advocate, one data guy from the Georgia Department of Education, and two corporate schills (yes, there were two, more on that one later).  The hearing was stacked with U.S. Representatives who are, shall we say, sympathetic to the data-testing regime.  We all know the type!

If you looked at the witness list for who was giving testimony at this hearing on the EdWorkforce website, you can see who they were:

So who are these people?  Rachael Strickland is the co-founder and co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.  Neil Campbell is the Policy Director for Next Generation Reforms at the Foundation for Excellence in Education (Jeb Bush’s company).  Jane Hannaway is with the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.  Robert Swiggum…

In this post, Valerie Strauss recounts the sordid history of Florida’s State Superintendent, Pam Stewart, who tries to force severely disabled children to take standardized state tests.

One of them, Ethan Radiske, was dying as the Florida Department of Education harassed his family to get him to take the test. Poor Ethan cheated the state by dying without taking the test.

Valerie Strauss writes:

“Now, a mother named Paula Drew is fighting the same kind of battle with the Florida Department of Education. Paula’s daughter, 15-year-old Madison Drew, has cerebral palsy and cannot speak. She suffers from a number of conditions related to her condition and takes several medications daily to prevent seizures, which can affect her cognitive abilities, a doctor’s written diagnosis shows.

“Drew said she sought an exemption from state-mandated testing, but Pam Stewart, the Florida education commissioner, denied the request…

“I asked the Florida Department of Education…

Stephen Dyer of Innovation Ohio reports on the latest comparisons between charters and public schools.

“Here are the toplines:

“72.5 percent of all state charter funding went to charters that DO NOT outperform the local school district.

“Nearly 1 in 3 charter schools receive all their state funding from higher performing local school districts.

“50 percent of the charter dollars that leave the Youngstown Schools go to charters that perform worse on the state report card.

“80 percent of all money sent to eSchools came from higher performing local school districts.

“92 percent of Ohio school districts (563 of 609) received less per pupil state funding because of the way Ohio funds its charter schools.

“Here’s my blog about the report and some more about its methodology: http://bit.ly/1RiretJ

Stephen Dyer

Education Policy Fellow

Innovation Ohio

35 E. Gay St.

Columbus, OH 43215

http://www.innovationohio.org”

The Chicago and Detroit and Philadelphia school districts are out of money due to political fights in their statehouses. Privatization through charters and vouchers continues to grow.  States adhere to the supply-side theory that prescribes radical tax cutting as the only way to attract jobs and grow the economy.  States rank and rate school districts and create policies that explain low achievement in the very poorest districts by castigating the schools and blaming the teachers.  I hope those of us who know better will stay informed, get organized, and continue to lift our voices, because the forces on the other side have constructed and funded an institutional framework to ensure that their policies get enacted by the legislatures across the states.  And as more and more states have school vouchers, for example, that give tax dollars to families to fund private and parochial schools, vouchers become normalized in the public’s…

It really all comes down to this.

You can talk all day about delegates and superdelegates.

You can talk about polls and electability.

You can talk about political experience, likeability, and authenticity. You can talk about political dynasties, union endorsements and campaign ads. You can talk about how many people show up at who’s rallies and who did what during the Civil Rights movement.

But when push comes to shove, there is one undeniable reason Bernie Sanders is the best mainstream 2016 Presidential candidate: He is running against privatization.

That’s it. Sold.

Everything else is nice. It adds to the appeal, but that one essential reason is enough to tip the scales – knock them over, really – to Bernie’s favor.

America’s parents and teachers are fighting a battle for our children’s schools. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle…

EduShyster interviewed Preston Green, who has studied the legal status of charter schools and published scholarly articles on the subject.

Green points out out in the interview that a major difference between public schools and charter schools is the rights of students. The constitutional rights of charter students are significantly less than those of students in public schools.

Dr. Green points out that charter schools have a different legal status than public schools.

EduShyster writes:

“Dr. Green warns that both state and federal courts have issued rulings stating that students in charters do not have the same due process rights as public-school students. So what does this mean for cities like Los Angeles where a dramatic expansion of charter schools is on the table? *Half of the publicly-funded schools in Los Angeles might be legally permitted to ‘dismiss’ students without due process.* says Dr. Green. *We have to ask ourselves…

Valerie Strauss reports on an important statement signed by more than 100 education researchers, asserting that the Common Core standards will not improve the achievement of the neediest students and will not reduce the achievement gaps between haves and have nots. Furthermore, the education researchers recommended that high-stakes exams should be abandoned, because they are not reliable, valid, or fair.

She writes:

“The researchers, from public and private universities in California — including Stanford University, UCLA, and the University of California Berkeley — say that the Common Core standards themselves do not accomplish what supporters said they would and that linking them to high-stakes tests actually harms students.

The brief says:

Although proponents argue that the CCSS promotes critical thinking skills and student-centered learning (instead of rote learning), research demonstrates that imposed standards, when linked with high-stakes testing, not only deprofessionalizes teaching and narrows the curriculum, but in so doing…

Steven Singer writes here about a dumb policy that is now commonplace thinking among both Ivy League corporate reformers and redneck legislators: If you make the tests harder, they reason, students will get higher test scores.

No, no, no, and no.

Singer says his students are weary of the endless testing. And it is getting worse because the tests will be even harder to pass in Pennsylvania.

He writes:

In the last two years, Pennsylvania has modified its mandatory assessments until it’s almost impossible for my students to pass.

Bureaucrats call it “raising standards,” but it’s really just making the unlikely almost unthinkable.

Impoverished students have traditionally had a harder time scoring as well as their wealthier peers. But the policy response has been to make things MORE difficult. How does that help?

Consider this: If a malnourished runner couldn’t finish the 50 yard dash, forcing him to run 100…