Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé

Remember how the Every Student Succeeds Act was transferring power from the Feds to the states? Well, not everything. The law still requires annual testing as before. It still requires a participation rate of 95%. The U.S. Department of Education sent a letter to education officials across the nation to advise them about these basic facts.

But what happens when large numbers of students opt out to protest over testing, loss of the arts, and lousy tests?

As Alyson Klein explains in Edweek,

When it comes to opt-outs, ESSA has a complex solution. It maintains a requirement in the previous version of ESEA, the much-maligned No Child Left Behind Act, that all schools test at least 95 percent of their students, both for the whole school, and for traditionally overlooked groups of students (English Language Learners, racial minorities, students in special education, kids in poverty). Under NCLB, though, schools that…

Valerie Strauss posted the full transcript of Hillary’s remarks. It is important to see the context of what she said, which was not to bash schools or to advocate closing them.

Here is the relevant section of her comments:

I’m also going to do everything I can to defend education, and to make it clear that the best way to improve elementary and secondary education is to actually listen to the teachers and educators who are in the classrooms with our students and not scapegoat them and treat them like they don’t have any contribution to make.

And I wanna say a word about small rural schools like this one. Because I know that was the original reason that you all got so excited and why you were stalking presidential candidates. [laughter] And I don’t blame you. And I actually looked up some numbers.

Y’know Iowa has one of the…

I did not realize just how corrupt and connected the organization known as “Stand For Children Louisiana” was until I looked into some of their finances and their background.  I decided to do this after being told about this slanderous commercial attacking BESE member Carolyn Hill, on BESE member elect Jada Lewis’ behalf.  In case you didn’t see it, here it is:

Yes.

This is actually a campaign commercial (it’s hard to tell with all the flashing lights and rolling news feeds so I recorded it so you can pause the screen.)  This aired on a local channel, WBRZ.  You will note the call letters of the faux news broadcast are WBRD, so to a casual viewer it looks legit.  “Stand” even used the local background drop of our bridge across the Mississippi that our local news uses.  This commercial aired in the last week of the election and was…

Recently I chaired a televised panel discussion on the legacy of eliminating democratic local control over public education in Washington, DC and turning it over to the mayor and his/her chancellor. We looked at the National Academies report on the results of that major change, and found that the results were rather dismaying.

The other panelists were, in alphabetical order,

• Thomas Byrd, long time education and civil rights activist and host of We Act Radio Town Hall;
• Adell Cothorne, former DCPS principal and a current adjunct professor  (see here for a bit of background on her bravery);
• Elizabeth Davis, veteran and award-winning DCPS teacher, currently head of the Washington Teachers’ Union;
• Denisha Jones, assistant professor at Howard University’s school of education;
• Mary Levy, an independent analyst of education finance and policy.

The show aired several times on DC Channel 8, but you can…

The school board of Anaheim, California, asked for relief from charters. California has one of the most permissive charter laws in the nation. It also has one of the most powerful lobbies in the nation, the California Charter Schools Association.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

________________________

December 18, 2014

Contact: Pat Karlak
Public Information Officer
Phone: (714) 999-5662
Email: Karlak_p@auhsd.us

Anaheim Union High School District Calls for a Temporary Moratorium on Approval of Charter Schools

ANAHEIM—Board members of the Anaheim Union High School District and Superintendent Michael Matsuda on December 18 called for the state of California to implement a temporary moratorium on the approval of charter schools until legislators fix the overly permissive law that enables charters to operate on a business model whose main goal is to make money.

“Although there is nothing wrong with making money, when it comes to public education, our children should be our first priority,”…

Andrea Gabor signed up to tour a Success Academy charter school in the Bronx. She was accepted, but shortly before the big day, her invitation was rescinded. When she inquired why, she was told that the tour was limited only to principals of other schools.

So, I was dismayed when, on December 4, three days after my original acceptance arrived, Jaclyn Leffel, the director of New York City Collaborates, which was helping to organize the tour, rescinded my invitation. “In reviewing our guest list, I did see that you are currently not leading a NYC public school. This workshop is specifically designed for people in elementary school education. Unfortunately this event is only available to principals at this time. Thanks so much for your interest!” wrote Ms. Leffel.

The only problem was that to register for the event, you had to include your title and affiliation, which in my case…

Bill Phillis, former deputy Commissioner of Education in Ihio, runs the Equity and Adequacy Coalition.

Highway robbery is legal in the Ohio charter industry

The charter industry has been largely deregulated from the beginning. The charter promoters and operators have had unrestrained freedom to use public money recklessly and dumb down educational opportunities for children. This industry is not a part of the common school system but it is a bloated parasite extracting valuable resources from the public system.

It is legal or not illegal in Ohio’s charter industry:

For a for-profit charter school company to hold title to real estate, furniture, equipment and other tangible assets that were purchased with public money
For a charter school board to pay a company allied with their for-profit management company $700,000 per year rent to house 150 students
For a charter school of 600 students to pay $185,000 in year for marketing…

Some people think that Kaya Henderson is the Chancellor of the D.C. public schools. Think again. The real chancellor is a very wealthy woman named Katherine Bradley. She is married to a media mogul (The Atlantic), and she is very very interested in the public schools. She is quite certain she knows how to fix them. She works closely with the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Graham family that used to own the Washington Post. She is a power in D.C. politics. All decisions about the future of the schools must be cleared by her. You know by now that she believes in free-markets and privatization.

Katherine Bradley is a symbol of the erosion of democracy in our society. She has no obvious qualifications to make decisions about the future of public education. Being rich is not a qualification. I don’t know for sure, but I would…

University of Rochester (New York) education professor David Hursh has a new book coming out on November 23, 2015: The End of Public Schools: The Corporate Reform Agenda to Privatize Education (Routledge).

(The Kindle version is already available on Amazon.com. Moreover, this flyer from Routledge includes information on a 20 percent discount.)

  David Hursh

Hursh’s The End of Public Schools is divided into five chapters:

Chapter 1: The Demise of the Public in Public Schools

Chapter 2: Understanding the Rise of Neoliberal Policies

Chapter 3: Governor Cuomo and the Neoliberal Attack on Public Schools, Teachers, and Unions

Chapter 4: The Gates Foundation, Pearson, and Arne Duncan

Chapter 5: Manufactured and Real Crises: Rethinking Education and Capitalism

In this post, I offer a glimpse into each chapter via thought-provoking excerpts that attest to the overall quality of Hursh’s book. (Note: In-text citations removed for ease of presentation.)

From Chapter…

In an earlier post, one of our readers asked whether it was appropriate for the United States Department of Education to endorse commercial products. The product that won plaudits from federal officials, paid for with our tax dollars, is called Edgenuity. As you might expect, it is a computer program that replaces teacher-student interaction. The U.S. ED wants to solve the high cost of teachers by funding Teach for America and technology that replaces teachers.

Is Edgenuity a great product? Evidently not.

A blogger described what happened when his school district adopted Edgenuity.

He writes:

Students have expressed quiet and loud frustration; parents have also complained. To find compromise and rest the restless, a Digital Learning Committee was formed consisting of teachers, students, and concerned parents. Complaints center around concerns surrounding the implementation, the quality of education, student/computer over-use, and lack of teacher/student interaction. Some students are not only unhappy…