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William Mathis: The High School Rankings: Born on Third Base or Hit a Triple?

11 May

dianeravitch's avatarDiane Ravitch's blog

William Mathis is managing director of the National Education Policy Center and a member of the Vermont Board of Education. He says that you can take the model below and apply it to any state; the result will be the same. The high schools in affluent communities are the “best,” and the high schools enrolling students in low-income communities don’t make the cut. That is about the way both NCLB and Race to the Top determined which schools needed to be closed: the schools attended by poor kids. It was knowing and heartless malpractice.

He writes:

Evaluating High Schools: Born on Third Base or hit a Triple?

If you were lucky, you missed it. But U.S. News and World Report recently committed their annual statistical malfeasance by offering up a rank order of what it proclaims as the nation’s “best” high schools. They amalgamated state tests, participation in AP/IB classes…

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Posted by on May 11, 2019 in Uncategorized

 

Mercedes Schneider: The Utter Failure of Louisiana’s Voucher Program

10 May

Betsy Devos is destroying our nation’s public schools.

dianeravitch's avatarDiane Ravitch's blog

Mercedes Schneider summarizes here the story of vouchers in Louisiana, which are now widely recognized as a train wreck.

New Orleans’ public radio station WWNO broadcast a detailed account of this policy failure, which steers students to D and F rated schools. State Superintendent John White, one of the voucher program’s most ardent advocates, refused to be interviewed for the program.

”Multiple local news outlets were involved in the investigation:

‘The Cost of Choice’ is the result of a reporting collaboration between NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune, WVUE Fox 8 News, WWNO and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.”

When the program was launched in 2012, Then-Governor Bobby Jindal “beamed with pride” and voucher proponent Betsy DeVos lauded the new vouchers, and the cheerleaders said they

“would free countless lower-income children from the worst public schools by allowing them to use state tax dollars in the form of vouchers…

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Posted by on May 10, 2019 in Uncategorized

 

Oregon: Tens of Thousands of Teachers Walk Out, Closing 600 Schools, to Protest Working Conditions

09 May

dianeravitch's avatarDiane Ravitch's blog

Thousands of teachers in Oregon joined the Red4Ed Movement, walking out to protest overcrowded classes and a lack of support staff, including school nurses and mental health counselors. 

Nearly 45% of all reported classes in Oregon have 26 students or more,” said John Larson, a high school English teacher and president of the Oregon Education Association.
Some classes have 56 or more students, he said.
So instead of going to class, many teachers were taking unpaid days off work to flood at least six protest sites across the state.
The mass exodus of teachers has already forced 25 school districts to close 600 schools Wednesday, Larson said.
The biggest district to close, Portland Public Schools, has more than 46,000 students.
“This is historic,” Larson told a sea of red-shirted teachers, parents and students at a riverfront rally in downtown Portland. “This is what we came here for today…

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Posted by on May 9, 2019 in Uncategorized

 

Steven Singer Has a Very Innovative Idea for Schools: More People

07 May

dianeravitch's avatarDiane Ravitch's blog

Steven Singer goes through the long list of failed innovations that “Reformers” have foisted on the schools.

Think how many billions have been wasted on standardized tests, interim assessments, data coaches, test-based evaluations, Common Core, etc.

He has an idea for an innovation that he is certain will make a difference: more people. 

Have you walked into a public school lately? Peak your head into the faculty room. It’s like snatching a glance of the flying Dutchman. There are plenty of students, but at the front of the overcrowded classrooms, you’ll find a skeleton crew.

Today’s public schools employ 250,000 fewer people than they did before the recession of 2008–09. Meanwhile enrollment has increased by 800,000 students. So if we want today’s children to have not better but just the same quality of services kids received in this country only a decade ago, we’d need to hire almost 400,000 more…

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Posted by on May 7, 2019 in Uncategorized

 

Jan Resseger: How the Federal Charter School Program Defunds Public Schools and Cheats Taxpayers

02 May

dianeravitch's avatarDiane Ravitch's blog

Jan Resseger has another brilliant article about the charter school strategy of privatization paid for by federal funding. 

Betsy DeVos wants to cut most of the programs in the Department of Education but has asked for an increase of charter school funding, from $440 million to $500 million a year. This year she used that funding to give $82 million to KIPP and $116 million to the IDEA charter chain, which is known for high attrition rates.

She cites an article by Jeff Bryant, a co-author of the NPE study of the federal Charter School Program, which concluded that about one of three charter schools funded by the federal government never opens or closes soon after opening. In some states, the failed charters were even more than 1/3.

In Michigan, 42 percent of the federal dollars granted by CSP were wasted on schools that never opened or subsequently closed. The…

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Posted by on May 2, 2019 in Uncategorized

 

A Message for Hoppy Kercheval in West Virginia

30 Apr

dianeravitch's avatarDiane Ravitch's blog

Hi, Hoppy,

A friend sent me the column you wrote about the stalemate in West Virginia over school choice. 

I would like to help you out.

The first thing you should know is that charter schools are NOT public schools. They call themselves public schools to get public money, but that doesn’t make them public schools. Might as well call Princeton University a public college or Boeing a public utility just because they get public money. Charter schools are private contractors with private boards of trustees that do not hold public meetings. Public schools have an elected school board or a board composed of people appointed by an elected official.

As this study shows, when charter schools open, the money to pay for them is deducted from public schools. The public schools lose not only the tuition for each student, but are left with “stranded costs.” If 10% of…

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Posted by on April 30, 2019 in Uncategorized

 

Bernie Sanders Has a Better Statement on Education than Before

23 Apr

Finally, a presidential candidate speaking up for the schools and teachers of the nation instead of demonizing them. Is this a first?

dianeravitch's avatarDiane Ravitch's blog

Bernie Sanders’ website has a better statement on the importance of investing public education and teachers than any other Democratic candidate so far:

Today, more than 60 years after the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision ending legal segregation in our public schools, and 50 years after President Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act into law, poor and minority students are still not afforded the same education as their wealthier, and often whiter counterparts. This is not only unjust and immoral, it endangers our democracy.

I’m running for president to restore the promise that every child, regardless of his or her background, has a right to a high-quality public education.

Growing inequality is both the cause and the effect of our nation’s desperately underfunded public school system. Many public schools are severely racially segregated—in some parts of the country, worse than before the Brown decision. With funding…

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Posted by on April 23, 2019 in Uncategorized

 

Donald Trump is Defined by Joseph Goebbels Playbook

20 Apr

Lloyd Lofthouse's avatarLloyd's Anything Blog

It is obvious to me why MAGA Man Donald Trump, Moscow’s Agent Governing America, and his pet minion AG Barr released the Muller report the way they did.  It was to give them the advantage in a dangerous game of manipulation and subversion.

Most if not all professional K-12 teachers will tell us that it is important for the teacher to be the first contact with parents/guardians after their child gets in trouble at school.  If the child reaches them first with his/her version of what happened, then the odds tend to favor the parent/guardian will believe the child or at least lean their support toward the child instead of the teacher no matter what the facts were.

This is what AG Barr did when he alleged (and deliberately misled): “After nearly two years of investigation, thousands of subpoenas, and hundreds of warrants and witness interviews, the Special Counsel confirmed…

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Posted by on April 20, 2019 in Uncategorized

 

Jan Resseger: Time to Close Down the Federal Charter Schools Program

20 Apr

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been awarded to schools that never opened or that were shut down: “We found that it is likely that as many as one third of all charter schools receiving CSP grants never opened, or opened and shut down.”

dianeravitch's avatarDiane Ravitch's blog

Jan Resseger is a voice of moral clarity in a time of moral turpitude.she reflected on the NPE report “Asleep At the Wheel,” about the slipshod, failed federal program to pump money into the charter industry and concluded the program should be terminated, with the money transferred to high-needs schools. 

She writes:

“The Network for Public Education published its scathing report on the federal Charter Schools Program three weeks ago, but as time passes, I continue to reflect on its conclusions. The report, Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride, is packed with details about failed or closed or never-opened charter schools.  The Network for Public Education depicts a program driven by neoliberal politicians hoping to spark innovation in a marketplace of unregulated startups underwritten by the federal government. The record of this 25 year federal program is…

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Posted by on April 20, 2019 in Uncategorized

 

California: East L.A. Community Defeats “Mega-KIPP” Plan, Plus the Identity of the Culprit Who Weaponized State Law

13 Apr

Discover what it takes to defeat the seven-headed Hydra corporate charter school industry and Reed Hastings one of its leading vampires.

dianeravitch's avatarDiane Ravitch's blog

Bill Raden of the California progressive website Capital & Main is one of the state’s best education writers.

In the latest issue, he brings good news about the victory of David over Goliath, plus an important insight into the rigging of the state law by Netflix billionaire Reed Hastings.

First, the good news:

“In a David vs. Goliath win, a coalition of East L.A. families, teachers and community groups announced last week that the City of L.A. has pulled the plug on a new “mega-KIPP” charter school development. The project was part of a $1 billion joint venture between former tennis star-turned charter school landlord Andre Agassi and money manager Bobby Turner to develop up to 130 charter properties across the country. The Boyle Heights community had been battling the 625-student facility since it was unveiled in the fall of 2017 and had filed suit against the…

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Posted by on April 13, 2019 in Uncategorized

 
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