Stealing Your Right to Appeal – Tortured Logic in York Schools Takeover

January 2, 2015January 3, 2015 stevenmsinger Charter Schools, Corbett, Pennsylvania charter schools, Corbett, Corporate Education Reform, education, justice, York County, York Pennsylvania, York Schools

Q: When can’t you take a robber to court for stealing your stuff?

A: When the robber steals your ability to appeal.

Such is the tortured logic being used by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania against one of its own public school districts.

Last week, a judge ruled that the state was entitled to take over York City Schools from taxpayers.

The district filed an appeal, which the state is trying to strike down.

None of that is surprising. But the justification the state Department of Education is using to overturn this appeal is something out of Alice in Wonderland.

Get this! When the state was granted control of York Schools, the district lost the ability to appeal unless that appeal was approved by the state.

So goes a motion filed by the state in York County Court.

When the judge allowed the district to go into receivership, control of almost all functions except taxation went to the Chief Recovery Officer David Meckley.

“Consequently, at the time that he filed the notice of appeal, the (school district) solicitor had no lawful authority to appeal the order on behalf of the district,” the state argues.

And Meckley did not approve the appeal to unseat himself.

That this is ridiculous should need no explanation. There can be no justice when wronged parties lose the ability to petition for a redress of grievances in a court of law.

If the court rules for the state, one could easily imagine a murderer getting off because his victim was unavailable to testify. Or a thief might complain that the original owner has no right to sue because he no longer owns the item in question.

But what’s obvious to you and me is sometimes obscure to judges.

The state also accuses York School Directors of violating the state’s open meeting “Sunshine” laws by voting to appeal the decision in a closed meeting.

The school board should have voted to authorize the appeal during an open meeting in full view of the public, the state alleges.

While the state’s first objection is absurd, this one is simply incorrect. School boards are – in fact – allowed to vote behind closed doors in executive sessions for various reasons including litigation matters. School boards are given this right because if they had to discuss legal matters publicly, they could easily endanger their cases.

A judge is expected to rule on the state’s motion Tuesday.

It’s just another sad page in a history of governmental overreach and circular logic in York, Pennsylvania.

First, outgoing Governor Tom Corbett slashes $1 billion from education funding, taking the lion’s share from impoverished districts like York that need it the most. For York Schools that was an $8.4 million cut – over 15% of the district’s budget.

Then when York can’t cope with the loss of funding nor does it have the tax base to make up the difference, the state labels the district a failure.

So the state swoops in to save the day – not with the money the district desperately needs – but with a bureaucrat to come up with a recovery plan: Meckley.

And what a plan it is! Let’s try these few targeted reforms, tighten our belts and if that doesn’t work, give the entire district over to a charter school operator.

How will that help?

It’s funny, but no one ever answers that question. They just assume it makes sense.

It doesn’t.

Unfortunately, the school board approved this plan in 2013, but it was having second thoughts. Thus the bid by the state Department of Education to take it over and let Meckley continue with his privatization scheme.

Let’s hope the court doesn’t fall for the Mad Hatter defense against appeal.

Even if the judge allows the appeal to move forward, the court still needs to decide who controls York Schools in the meantime.

One would assume it should be the school board.

That seems to be a no brainer.

Obviously the state shouldn’t be in control of York Schools until the appeals process is completed.

Obviously Meckley shouldn’t be able to move forward with charterizing the district until his legal right to do so has been firmly established.

But in York, a “no brainer” no longer means something obvious – it often means people with no brains get to make the decisions.

The district’s appeal isn’t the only one.

Attorneys for the district’s two employees’ unions also filed appeals mere hours after the court decision allowing the state takeover.

The matter should be tied up in court for a while. However, this move by the state and the question of who controls York in the meantime may make the court’s other actions irrelevant.

The Corbett administration – which backs the privatization of York – has only a few weeks left before Governor-elect Tom Wolf takes office on Jan. 20.

Wolf has said he is not in favor of privatizing the district. In fact, he asked the Corbett administration to hold off on the state takeover until the Gov.-elect takes office.

He was ignored.

One could easily read this motion to strike the school district’s appeal and remain in control of the district as a last ditch effort to push through a charterization scheme that no one else seems to want.

The school board is against it. The parents are against it. The students are against it. The teachers are against it. Even many York County Commissioners such as President Steve Chronister – a Republican – are against it.

The people have spoken. Unfortunately, the lame duck Corbett administration doesn’t care.

When Wolf takes office, he could easily direct the state Department of Education to drop the whole matter, return control of York Schools to its duly-elected school board and create a recovery plan that makes sense.

But if this matter is settled before he takes office, his power to intervene becomes questionable.

So once again in York, the rule of the people hangs by a thread.

Will it hold for just a few more weeks?

NOTES:

-This article was also published in the LA Progressive and on the Badass Teachers Association blog.

-Please sign the petition from York residents asking the PA Department of Education drop the petition for receivership, replace David Meckley as Chief Recovery Officer, and to approve a new recovery plan that does not include turning the school district over to charter schools.

-Feel free to use the following memes created by madly talented BAT Sue Goncarovs to help spread awareness of the injustice unfolding in York:

Off the Beaten Gadfly – the Best Education Blog Pieces You Never Read in 2014

December 31, 2014April 4, 2015 stevenmsinger Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Labor, satire, Standardized Testing, Teacher Tenure, Unions badass teachers association, charter schools, common core, Corporate Education Reform, education, Kafka, standardized testing, Union Contract

So you’re interested in education.

You’ve read your Diane Ravich. You peruse Peter Greene’s blog with your morning coffee. You have a Badass Teachers Association jersey on under your button down work shirt and tie.

But you need something more.

Well, friend, have I got a treat for you!

Please to enjoy Gadflyonthewallblog! This is the site where all the cool intellectuals go – the folks who want an edge to fight corporate school reform.

You probably already read Gadfly’s Top 10 Posts of 2014. That wouldn’t get by a discerning customer like you. But have you seen this – Gadfly Deep Tracks?

That’s right! These are the five posts selected by the author that maybe didn’t get the page views of the popular articles but are really worth your time.

Take a look. There’s some really good stuff here!

So for your continued edification, elucidation and just plain old enjoyment, I present to you the Top 5 Gadfly Rarities:

5) RAIDERS OF YOUR LOST PENSION

Views: 50
Publication: July 22

Description: Have you ever wished you could be a fly on the wall and listen to a secret meeting of corporate education reformers to hear what they REALLY think? Well, here’s your chance. I came across a conservative think tank paper that outlines ways to manipulate school boards to reduce teachers pension benefits. It’s all right here: Teach for America, Disaster Capitalism, Reducing School Budgets, etc. This is a smoking gun.

Fun Facts: My first post. It’s where I got the name for my blog. I thought this was really important, but not many people saw it. Here’s my attempt to change that.

4) FORGET CORPORATIONS… UNIONS REALLY ARE PEOPLE

Views: 152
Publication: Nov. 1

Description: Why do some people hate labor unions so much? Maybe it’s because they don’t understand them. In this article I outline the philosophy behind unions and debunk many common criticisms.

Fun Facts: Strong union folks loved this. Randi Weingarten was a fan. But it never gained the audience I feel it deserves. This is important. At best, it’s a way to convince reasonable people that unions are relevant and in fact indispensable to our economy. At worst, it’s at least a good tool to use to help explain your support of unions. It’s worth noting that this article is about unions in general – not any particular union.

3) THE MULTIPLE CHOICE MIND

Views: 356
Publication: July 29

Description: What’s the problem with standardized tests? What do they do to growing minds? This article answers those questions and more. The basic thesis is that bubble tests are horrible ways to help create thinkers, but excellent for creating consumers.

Fun Facts: Standardized testing is central to all corporate education reform. But few people question its purpose. I think it’s important the public understand that none of this is about education. It’s about creating a permanent underclass just smart enough to be customers at Walmart but not smart enough to question the status quo.

2) A CURRICULUM OF COMPASSION

Views: 623
Publication: Nov. 8

Description: This is just a simple story about a poor, damaged student who entered my class needing so much more than just an education. I got her to smile. That’s it.

Fun Facts: This girl was in my class about a third of the time last year, and only two days this year. I hope she returns someday soon. It just breaks my heart. Wherever she is I send this article out to her as a virtual hug so my readers might love her as much as I do. Sometimes that’s more important than lesson plans, etc.

1) FRANZ KAFKA AND THE METAMORPHOSIS OF TEACHER EVALUATIONS

Views: 775
Publication: Aug. 30

Description: Value-Added Measures of teachers are absurd. So I mixed them up with the master of absurdity – Franz Kafka. Thrill as a teacher wakes up in class transformed into a giant insect about to be evaluated by a reformy principal.

Fun Facts: This is one of my own personal favorites. I think if more people actually saw it, they’d feel the same. I hope you enjoy it, too.

P.S. – I stole the idea for this Top 5 list from the excellent blogger Russ Walsh. He came up with the concept of writing a list of hidden gems – not a typical Top 10 list. His Russ on Reading is well worth your time.

P.S.S. – Diane Ravich gave this article a shout out on her blog.

Merry Christmas. We’re Stealing Your Schools.

December 27, 2014December 28, 2014 stevenmsinger Charter Schools, Corbett, Corporate Education "Reform", Pennsylvania, Unions, York Schools charter schools, Corbett, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, York County, York Pennsylvania, York Schools

Merry Christmas. We’re stealing your schools.

That’s the message from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to York City School residents Friday.

Gimme’ that local control!

A judge ruled the district is now under direction of its Chief Recovery Officer David Meckley instead of its duly elected school board.

Why?

Meckley wanted the board to approve a plan to convert all district schools into charters run by Florida-based operator Charter Schools USA. This would make York the only all charter district in the entire state.

The agreement was made in secret by Meckley and details weren’t forthcoming before the board was asked to make a decision.

The board just couldn’t make up its mind fast enough. Members tabled it – they might even have refused it if given enough time to think!

So now Meckley will just make the conversion, himself. Dictatorship is so much easier than Democracy!

What else?

The school board reached an agreement with the teachers union that was simply too fair. How dare school directors agree to pay educators a fair wage when the recovery plan clearly indicated slave wages! Sure, district finances had improved, but… UNIONS!

The district could spend some of its $3 million surplus on teachers or engage in a possible $120 million contract with Charter Schools USA. Fiscal responsibility, people!

The district went back and rescinded its controversial teachers contract when the state initiated a petition to take over the district, but it was too late. School directors were acting like they were actually in control. We can’t have that. It might give people the idea that they are in charge! Hilarious!

How’d we get here?

Simple.

Back in 2012, Gov. Tom Corbett decided to slash public school budgets by $1 billion. Most of this came from the poorest schools since they relied more on state funding to keep operations going.

For York Schools that was an $8.4 million cut – over 15% of the district’s budget. To cope, the district cut the arts, student services, increased class sizes, etc. So it was labeled a “failure” simply because it couldn’t survive the funding cuts deemed necessary by the state.

Enter Meckley.

The state declared York City School District in “moderate financial recovery” in 2012 and appointed Meckley to create a financial recovery plan. That plan, adopted in summer 2013, laid out a path for internal reform but called for city schools to be turned into charters, run by an outside operator, if internal reform didn’t work out.

What’s that have to do with Friday’s ruling?

Plenty.

York County Judge Stephen Linebaugh tried to preserve the veneer of Democracy by defining the issue as narrowly as possible. He said it didn’t matter what the state would do once it had control of the district. He could only rule against a state takeover if it could be proven to be “arbitrary, capricious and wholly irrelevant to restoring the district to financial stability.”

In other words, if the district was in financial recovery and it agreed to a recovery plan (as it did), the only issue was whether it was following that plan – not whether the plan was any good or not, and not if the district had a right to refine that plan.

So apparently it is perfectly legal in Pennsylvania to beat someone up and demand a week’s worth of their lunch money – and if they don’t pay, you can sue them in court for welching on a contract!

Judge Linebaugh’s decision is expected to be appealed. This would cause an automatic stay to be put in place. But the state department of education would almost definitely try to have that stay lifted. So that issue will ultimately be up to the courts again.

Is the recovery plan any good?

Of course not!

If you’re problem is you don’t have enough funding, how do you improve that by giving over control of your district to someone whose goal is to make it turn a profit!?

They’ll reduce spending on services for children and increase administrative costs while earmarking a large portion of taxpayer money to boost the bottom line. That’s what for-profit charter operators do! It’s no secret!

Charter Schools USA – the operator waiting to take over York – is no exception.

A Florida League of Women Voters report found that a charter school operated by the company in the Sunshine State spent almost as much on fees and leases to itself and an affiliated company as it did on classroom instruction in 2011.

Another Charter Schools USA school in Indiana came under fire for keeping more than $6 million of “misappropriated” Indiana state funds for 1,800 students who never enrolled in its schools, according to an Indiana Public Media report.

CEO of Charter Schools USA Jonathan Hage has made himself filthy rich by doing the same thing to district-after-district throughout the country.

He even brags about it!

Take for instance his yacht. Yes, I said yacht. He brazenly named it “‘Fishin’ 4 Schools” after where he gets his cash.

To pay for it, he found a new revenue stream that’s just this side of legal. Charter Schools USA is the largest seller of charter school debt in the country. “It will sell $100 million worth of bonds this year, Hage says. … The bonds come with tax-exempt status because they are technically held by the nonprofit founding boards that oversee the schools.” Over a three-year period, the company made closer to $200 million.

So if you believe Meckley – the guy tasked with writing a recovery plan for York City Schools – bettering the district’s financial predicament means giving it to a company engaging in the same kinds of risky monetary practices that crashed our economy not even a decade ago. Run up debt, then sell it to others tax free! That’s not exactly a prescription for sound fiscal management.

Wait a minute. This takeover is being orchestrated by the Corbett administration. Isn’t he a lame duck? Won’t he be out of office in a few weeks? What about incoming Gov. Tom Wolf? Is there anything he can do about it?

Good questions.

Wolf has come out against turning York into an all-charter district. He even asked the Corbett administration to hold off until the governor elect takes office on Jan. 20.

While no comment was made to the press from Corbett, actions speak louder than words. Once again, he could give a crap about what’s best for schools.

Wolf has yet to comment on the takeover, himself, but his spokesman Jeff Sheridan had this to say:

“Gov.-elect Wolf knows that schools across Pennsylvania have been starved for resources over the last four years and our children are being put at a disadvantage. As a result, districts like York have been forced to the brink of financial collapse. Gov.-elect Wolf will make education his top priority by working to restore funding cuts and providing adequate resources so school districts can deliver on the promise of a high-quality public education for all Pennsylvanians.”

It’s unclear at this time exactly what Wolf will be able to do once he takes office if the takeover is complete.

Hopefully, the matter can stay tied up in the courts for a few weeks. Then Wolf may be able to direct the state to drop the matter and take a more logical course.

Cynics often say there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to educational matters. And history has done a lot to justify that position.

Gov. Wolf may have a chance to demonstrate exactly what that ideological difference is – if it exists at all – in coming weeks.

Right now, it’s all up to the speed and fairness of our courts.

In the meantime, Christmas cards in York, Pennsylvania, should contain the following resolution:

Goodnight and good luck.

This article has also been published in the LA Progressive and Badass Teachers Association Blog.

Fight Corporate Education Reform and Meme It!

October 19, 2014October 20, 2014 stevenmsinger Charter Schools, Common Core, Corbett, Corporate Education "Reform", memes, Politics, satire, Standardized Testing, Teacher Tenure, Uncategorized, Value Added Measures charter schools, common core, Corbett, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, education reform, Lee County, Lee Schools, michelle rhee, multiple choice, No Child Left Behind, public schools, Race to the Top, reform, school vouchers, standardization, standardized testing, standards, teachers, Tom Wolf, Union Contract, VAM

Sometimes words alone aren’t enough.

Has this ever happened to you? You’re arguing with someone and just not able to get your point across. You know if you could just show them the picture in your brain, they’d understand what you meant with the force of a bullet. But lacking psychic abilities, you’re reduced to the efforts of your poor twisted, tangled tongue.

That’s where memes make all the difference.

A meme is “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” Though originally coined as a term to describe genes, the expression has expanded to encompass anything that can carry ideas from one mind to another with a mimicked theme.

I know that sounds daunting, but you’ve probably seen hundreds or thousands of memes already. At least half of the images on Facebook and Twitter are memes – Grumpy Cat, Condescending Wonka, One Does Not Simply, Conspiracy Keanu and enough facepalms to break your jaw.

As a meme-maker, myself, I’ve been surprised that some of my efforts have taken on lives of their own. By no means am I a master at the art, but a few of my 50 plus memes have been surfing the Internet on their own for a year or more. I’ll go on a nationwide education organization’s Facebook page and see my little meme staring back at me. “Hi, Daddy!”

I leave you with an experiment. Here is a collection of some of my favorite creations. I’ve limited myself here to memes on the subject of education. I’ve also organized them to some degree based on subtopics.

Please feel free to browse. If you see a meme that you like – that helps make your point about the errors of corporate education reform – you have my blessing to take it. Post it on your Facebook page, in a tweet, on Tumbler, whatever you please. Send my little message off again into the great sea of interconnected webs and communication nets. Maybe one day it’ll return to me.

Happy shopping!

STANDARDIZED TESTING
1

BUDGETS
6

COMMON CORE
9

TENURE

13

14

VALUE-ADDED MEASURES (VAM)

CORPORATE EDUCATION REFORM

ACCOUNTABILITY

PENNSYLVANIA ISSUES
24

26

27

28

MISCELLANEOUS

When All Else Fails, Cash In: Charter Schools as Miracle Cure

September 27, 2014December 28, 2014 stevenmsinger Charter Schools, Corporate Education "Reform" charter schools, Corbett, Corporate Education Reform, crisis, Miracle, Tom Wolf, York Pennsylvania

Do you believe in miracles?

If you live in York, Pennsylvania – you’d better.

Still hurting from $1 billion in statewide education cuts, York City School directors are considering giving their entire district over to a failing charter operator. This would make it the first all charter district in PA.

It’s the kind of decision that no rational individual would normally even entertain. My school doesn’t have enough funding so I should give it to a company to run for-profit!?

Oh! That ALWAYS works!

Such a boneheaded idea could only be proposed by a government bureaucrat. Enter David Meckley, the district’s state-appointed chief recovery officer.

Tasked with guiding the district’s financial recovery, Meckley developed a plan that leads to charter conversion if monetary and academic goals are not met.

Let me get this straight.

Back in 2012, Gov. Corbett cut $8.4 million – over 15% – from York’s budget. To cope, the district cuts the arts, student services, increased class sizes, etc. And now we’re calling the school a “failure” simply because it couldn’t survive the funding cuts deemed necessary by the state.

Reminds me of a bully shouting, “Why are you hitting yourself!?” as he slaps a little kid in the face with the child’s own hands!

So, to review, the same people who hobbled the district in the first place by slashing its funding are responsible for fixing the problem they created. And their solution is to give up. Give the schools to someone else to run.

Q: What was the straw that broke the camels back? What was the final factor that convinced Meckley it’s charter time?

A: School directors can’t agree to a new teachers contract.

Of course! Those greedy teachers asking for a fair wage for a fair day’s work! How dare they!? Don’t they know the district is suffering from a manufactured crisis!?

Do doctor’s ask to be paid for working in poor neighborhoods? Do lawyers work exclusively pro bono to defend poor clients?

Of course not! They’ve got to earn a living! They’re freakin’ professionals after all! Not like these.. yuck! …teachers!

Okay, so the public sector can’t miraculously get blood from a stone. How will a for-profit company be able to succeed where democratically-elected school directors have failed?

The short answer: charters can fire the entire staff and rehire teachers at a lower rate. Yep. Cheap labor! That’s bound to increase the quality of kids’ educations!

Everyone knows the lower the salary, the better the service. That’s why NFL players are all on food stamps. It’s why the most luxurious hotels charge the least for a room! Want a good, Michelin star meal? Welcome to McDonalds, my foodie friends!

For Meckley there’s really only one question to consider. “What’s best for our kids?” he asked at a recent board meeting.

It’s hilarious he can even say that with a straight face! How could reducing teachers’ salaries be best for kids!? That means the most talented and experienced educators will leave for greener pastures. The kids will be left with only the most substandard teachers who have no choice but to accept whatever crumbs charter operators deign to throw their way.

Imagine that happening at a rich school. Imagine that happening at the (private) schools where President Obama or Bill Gates send their kids.

Ha! They demand the best for their children – as they should. But when it comes to your kids and mine – let them eat cake!

Let’s get something straight: most charter schools are not about academic excellence. They’re about high profit margins. Period.

Politicians and corporate school reformers rhapsodize about the power of the free market to cure all the ills of our school system. But from a market point of view, it makes sense to provide the most substandard product possible that parents will still allow their children to endure. The less money spent on the actual job of educating children, the more money to boost the bottom line.

Don’t believe me? Check out the two charter companies vying for a chance to take over York Schools: Charter Schools USA and Mosaica Education.

Charter Schools USA

“Floridian of the Year!” That’s what Florida Trend business magazine calls CEO of Charter USA Jonathan Hage. The rest of us would just call him a douchebag.

Hage probably considers himself some kind of pirate or profiteer. In fact, he brazenly advertises where he gets his precious booty by naming his yacht “Fishin’ 4 Schools.” That’s clever! Morally repugnant, sure! But clever!

So York Schools are considering bettering their financial predicament by giving their district to a company engaging in the same kinds of risky monetary practices that crashed our economy not even a decade ago. Run up debt, then sell it to others tax free! That’s not exactly a prescription for sound fiscal management.

Mosaica Education

This company has a string of scandals that go back decades. Let’s just look at some of the most recent.

In 2006, Mosaica was forced to end its contract to run Lafayette Academy Charter School in New Orleans, Louisiana, because it failed to align its curriculum to state standards, provide after-school programs for students below grade level and organize transportation to and from the school. The charter even ended up paying Mosaica $100,000 for early termination of the contract!
In 2009, Mosaica-run Howard Road Academy leaked a copy of the DC-CAS standardized test to two teachers, who then distributed copies of the test to their students prior to exam day. One administrator and two teachers were fired.
In 2012, Mosaica botched a situation similar to the one they may enter in York, PA. The company was contracted to manage a public school that had just been turned into a charter district in Muskegon Heights, Michigan. Prior to contracting with Mosaica, the emergency manager of the struggling district, Donald Weatherspoon, had fired the entire staff. Mosaica had “three months to hire and train staff members, including those rehired from the old district, bring neglected facilities up to code, and persuade parents to keep their children enrolled.” The school’s first principal quit within the first month and, within 3 months, a quarter of the teachers hired by Mosaica in the summer had left the district. According to Education Week, “the largest single proportion [of teachers who left the district]—28 percent—cited the charter district’s lack of participation in Michigan’s public school employee retirement plan as the reason [for leaving].” Helluva job!
As of 2013, Mosaica did such great work running Atlanta Preparatory Academy, the charter ranked in the bottom 20% of schools in Georgia. Atlanta Public Schools recommended that the state not renew the school’s charter. They were also concerned that the charter school’s board lacked sufficient independence because it owed $801,384 to Mosaica!

Read closely, York taxpayers. These are the people you’re being asked to invite to manage your school district! It just makes sense. Foxes make such excellent hen house guards!

Perhaps more disturbing, though, is the Tom Wolf connection.

The Democratic challenger to Gov. Corbett in the November election is a York resident and knows all parties involved too darn well.

Wolf eventually (reluctantly?) came out against turning York into a charter district but was too cozy with those involved, even calling Meckley, “my good friend.”

Moreover, Wolf’s chief financial officer for his business and his campaign treasurer, Michael Newsome, served on the work group that recommended converting York to an all charter district. But don’t worry. Wolf says he disagrees with this trusted advisor, as well.

If you really disagree so much, Tom, why have you surrounded yourself with privatizers and profiteers!?

The Democrat seems poised to an easy victory over a certainly more radical Corbett, but let’s hope we don’t have another Wolf in Progressive clothing!

In any case, charterization is a terrible idea.

Turning public schools into charter schools will not solve any problems. It will only make them worse. There is no proof that charters as a whole are any better than public schools. In fact, as we’ve seen, there is plenty evidence to show that charters are much worse.

Yet despite this dismal track record, when public schools struggle, politicians and corporate school reformers keep suggesting charters are the only answer.

We need to look at the source of the problem. Our schools are being starved of funding through the reduction of tax revenue. When the state and federal government refuse to make the richest pay their fair share of taxes, the burden of funding our schools falls to the local taxpayer. In rich districts, this is fine. They can just raise taxes. However in poorer districts like York, this is unsustainable. Putting aside the issue of fairness, it’s impossible to raise local taxes where there is no tax base capable of supporting it.

In any sane country, the shortfall would be taken up by the state and federal government. Education is a right, after all, not a privilege. All schools should have adequate, equitable and sustainable school funding – not just the rich ones.

One wonders if this situation would be allowed to continue if there weren’t people making a mint off the suffering of our school children.

Do what’s best for our kids? Certainly. But it isn’t a charter school miracle.

Enough cashing in on our kids educations. As a nation, we need to grow up, put on our big boy pants and pay for shit. You want to live in a country that leads the world in innovation, industry, freedom and happiness? You want to live in a country that educates it’s children – all it’s children?

Then it’s time we force the rich to reach for their wallets and stop blaming us for being robbed by the policies they’ve bought and sold.

Class Warfare begins in the classroom.

As a result of this article, I was invited on the Rick Smith Show for an interview.

No Pineapple left Behind – the Consolation of Satire and Video Games

September 20, 2014September 27, 2014 stevenmsinger satire, video games charter schools, common core, Corporate Education Reform, education, No Child Left Behind, public schools, Race to the Top

Q: What’s the difference between a pineapple and a human child?

A: Pineapples are more profitable.

Let’s face it – kids have.. yuck … needs! Maslow even came up with a hierarchy of needs that must be met before you can get the little tykes to do anything. Physical well-being, safety, emotional… Argh! It’s just so much work!

Pineapples, however, are money-makers from the get go.

Chop them up, and you’ve got a tropical fruit salad.

Juice them, and you can make about a hundred different premium cocktails.

Heck! Just plop one in a hat and you’ve got an island-themed mascot!

But kids!? You can’t even get them to take a lucrative standardized test without… bleugh … educating them first.

Imagine if you could make pineapples take tests and get grades instead. Schooling would be like a gardening contest. Who has the best recipe for success? There would be no intangibles like the effects of poverty, home-life, special needs. It would all be neat, measurable and objective.

Yes, sir. Pineapples would be great for business – especially if your business is education.

That’s the premise of Subaltern Games current project No Pineapple Left Behind.

The satirical fantasy video game is the brainchild of former teacher, Seth Alter.

Alter taught at a Boston middle school before giving up the classroom for the programmer’s chair. According to his blog, he “became fed up with the callous administration” and decided he could teach more effectively through video games.

His first game, Neocolonialism, was inspired by world history and economics. The goal is to extract as much wealth as possible from the world through any means necessary. While many video games invite the player to engage in senseless violence, Neocolonialism inevitably forces players to consider the consequences of their actions. In fact, the game’s tagline is “Ruin Everything.”

The project was completed through a $10K Kickstarter campaign in January 2013 and released in November of the same year.

Now Alter and his 4-person team are writing No Pineapple Left Behind (NPLB) – a game he calls his “response to his old teaching job.”

While still in the early stages, the company has provided some video of what the game may look like when completed:

A Kickstarter campaign is anticipated to help the company finish this ambitious project.

Even in its early stages, NPLB confronts us with a host of essential questions about education:

1) WHO ARE PUBLIC SCHOOLS DESIGNED FOR – CHILDREN OR WIDGETS?

2) WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF OUR SCHOOLS – EDUCATING KIDS OR MAKING MONEY?

Examine the state and federal education policies of the last dozen years and you’ll be forgiven for thinking we’re servicing widgets.

Federal programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top increase high-stakes standardized testing to absurd lengths. Public schools are repeatedly defunded at the state and federal level, forcing them to rely on local taxes to survive. This is fine for affluent districts that can just raise property taxes, but it is unsustainable for the 99%.

To make up the difference, poorer schools are forced to compete for the remaining funds by enacting reforms that don’t benefit children but enrich the special interests that lobbied for them. Test companies like Pearson rake in the cash creating and scoring the tests on the one hand, and then earn even more profit providing the inevitable remedial test prep materials districts are forced to buy on the other.

Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates poses as a disinterested philanthropist funding Common Core, but then increases his company’s market share by providing the computers and technology necessary to take the standardized tests required by Common Core.

Moreover, for-profit companies entice away students to charter schools in order to garnish their per student funding. Then just before it comes time to take their standardized tests and thus be judged as effective or not based on these scores, charters boot the lowest achievers back to the public schools. The money, however, they keep. And they get to boast of how well they teach kids since the only ones left are the cream of the crop!

Children then become little more than a means to school funding. Schools are forced to use children to earn money for the district to remain open.

But schools are supposed to be places where funding is used to educate kids – not places where kids are used to earn funding.

3) IS COMPETITION THE BEST MOTIVE FOR A PUBLIC SERVICE?

No. Emphatically not. When you have competition, you by necessity have winners and losers. The goal of public schooling is to educate EVERYONE. Didn’t we call this nonsense No Child Left Behind? How can it be about doing that, if the goal is to see who wins the Race to the Top? In a race, the objective is to leave everyone else behind!

4) WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE CLASSROOM TEACHER – GUIDE OR SORCERER?

In the early draft of NPLB, teachers will cast spells on their pineapple classes to get them to learn. This works well, apparently, for fruit. However, if classes are left unattended, the pineapples will turn back into children who are much harder to educate in this manner.

Go to any school of education in any university in the country and you’ll learn this simple fact: Education is not something someone does to you. No one can put a finger to your head and make you learn. There are no mystical words to engender wholesale epiphanies. Learning is a complex process that requires a relationship between the teacher and student. It happens gradually over time. There is no magic here.

However, our national education policy acts as if all children go to Hogwarts. Teachers are evaluated on how much their students learn. That’s only looking at one part of this complex relationship. What about the children? Aren’t they part of this equation, too?

Moreover, the metric administrators are being forced to use to determine if this learning has actually taken place is… standardized test scores! These are tests graded by temps who may or may not have an education degree working for corporations that make more money if more kids fail the tests! That’s a classic case of conflict of interests.

So we have a faulty evaluation method that is using faulty data to come up with faulty conclusions that will determine whether a teacher gets to keep his job or not. The ONLY way that works is through magic!

And so we’re left with the consolation of satire and video games. Will No Pineapple Left Behind be a big hit on the market? It’s still to early to tell.

However, the concept shows tremendous promise.

Perhaps players will recognize their own schools in the game.

Perhaps policy-makers will become embarrassed and discredited as the objects of virtual ridicule.

Perhaps encountering such everyday absurdism in video game form will serve as a wakeup call to the slumbering masses.

Otherwise, it may be game over for American Education.

UPDATE: No Pineapple Left Behind is now on Kickstarter looking to raise $35,000 to finish the project. New pictures, promos and information is available on the site.

Perfect Strangers: Racial Injustice as a Symptom of Continuing School Segregation

August 17, 2014 stevenmsinger school segregation charter schools, common core, eric garner, michael brown, racism, school vouchers, segregation, trayvon martin

I remember faces.

Names fade over time, but after more than a decade of teaching in impoverished Western Pennsylvania schools, I still remember all my students’ faces. I remember the smiles, the mischievous looks, the winks, the fronting, the brows knit in concentration and the rare honest smiles when they surprised themselves that they really can do the impossible.

Most of those faces are brown though mine is white.

Does that matter? Sometimes I lie to myself and say it doesn’t. We’re all just people, after all. Sure we have different stories, different cultures. What does it matter how much melanin we have in our skins?

But it does matter.

All those brown-skinned faces walking in-and-out of my life everyday are in real danger. I’ve seen their pictures in the newspaper – gunned down, wounded by a stray bullet, sometimes even pulling the trigger. These aren’t strangers. They were my students. They came to my class almost every day and sat right there in those desks. I may still have their writing journals locked away in a drawer and I can read about what they wanted from life. I can read my pen-marked critiques on their papers – a beautiful image here, bad spelling and grammar there, did that really happen to you, excellent creativity…

And in a week there will be a whole new group. They’ll take those same seats and look up to me with the fear of the future shinning in their eyes. As time goes on, it’ll get easier to hide, but on that first day it will be piercing like a knife. It’ll be my job to calm them, to let them know it’ll be alright – at least for a while.

I love my students, but I don’t know what they go through. Even when they tell me. The only gun I ever saw as a child was a BB gun. The only dead body I saw was on TV or in the movies. The police never followed me through a department store. I never knew what it was like to go hungry, to wonder who my father is, to wonder when he’s coming back from prison, to wonder what he did to end up there so far away from me.

Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin – they could have been my students. Eric Garner could have been any of their fathers. And they were murdered – each and all – for no reason except they had brown faces. Meanwhile, white lips strained, white cheeks filled with blood and white foreheads creased with furrows as they killed these boys and men. But it didn’t matter. The White World – my world – would let their murderers go. They had only shut the eyes on black faces. A misdemeanor at most.

It’s a shock to me, but not to my students. It just reaffirms the fear I’ve seen in their eyes. And no matter what I do, I will always be a part of that White World where they can be gunned down for nothing. Will I rise my voice in protest once their bodies lie cold in the ground? Is that what I’m doing now? Does it matter?

In the adult world, black and white keep so apart, so distinct. We live in different areas of the city, work at different jobs, go to different entertainments. Separation breeds fear. Maybe if we knew each other better, maybe if we saw each other every day, maybe it would make a difference.

It used to be the job of the public schools to introduce us to each other. We used to go to class together side-by-side. Many of us even ate lunch together, played sports together, even got in trouble together.

Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal but it taught us something important: we couldn’t know what it was like to BE each other – you have to live a life to really know what that’s like – but at least we knew the other person was human, too.

Among all the educational “advances” of increased standardized testing, ipads and data walls, we’ve lost one of the most important lessons we could teach each other: each other.

Some schools – not all schools – still teach that. Certain schools that are given the most oversight, squeezed financially and bad mouthed in the press – the kind that serve impoverished populations. They’re the only kind that still mix. My kind.

But our educational policy of the past few decades has been to segregate public schools of all stripes – encouraging charter schools and private schools and taking the remaining public schools and making sure they serve mostly one race or another.

Charter schools have always been about segregation. They were invented in The South after Brown v. Board of Education as a means to facilitate white flight. Now these mostly for-profit ventures are set up in impoverished neighborhoods to suck out the black kids and bleach the public schools a more respectable color. Or sometimes they do just the opposite – enticing away the white kids. Remember charters can accept whoever they want. They don’t have to take everyone. The bottom line is profit.

School vouchers are just the same. What’s a school voucher but a free ticket to get away from all those brown faces? Marketers claim they want to help the black kids go to private schools, yet those same vouchers never provide enough money to completely cover tuition. They end up being a boast for more affluent white kids to get away from all those stifling black faces.

For those left behind in public schools, we have Common Core. It’s job is to feed the School-to-Prison Pipeline by sucking the life out of education. For instance, imagine being told to constantly read every text three times looking for different things each time. A poem – three times. A short story – three times. A nonfiction piece – three times. That will kill any love of reading for sure – especially if you didn’t have much to begin with! Policymakers like Bill Gates decry low graduation rates but then make huge dividends from the for-profit prisons that sweep up these same dropouts.

For a country that prides itself on being a melting pot, we certainly work hard to keep the various ingredients separate. I wonder if changing our education policies would make a difference. After all, it’s harder to fear the known. It’s harder to kill someone when you see them as a person. It’s harder to ignore the injustices of lost opportunity, unfair funding, senseless murder.

I live my professional life among brown faces. Most days I give my time, my strength, my thoughts to helping them, loving them. I don’t want to keep losing them. I want to be able to do more than just dim the fear in their eyes. I want to do more than just give them platitudes. I want more than to dry their tears after the violence is done. I want to stop if from happening in the first place.

Please help. Fight segregating education policies. Or else be haunted by the faces of all colors we fail.

gadflyonthewallblog

"To sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

charter schools

Stealing Your Right to Appeal – Tortured Logic in York Schools Takeover

Off the Beaten Gadfly – the Best Education Blog Pieces You Never Read in 2014

5) RAIDERS OF YOUR LOST PENSION

4) FORGET CORPORATIONS… UNIONS REALLY ARE PEOPLE

3) THE MULTIPLE CHOICE MIND

2) A CURRICULUM OF COMPASSION

1) FRANZ KAFKA AND THE METAMORPHOSIS OF TEACHER EVALUATIONS

Top 10 Education Blog Posts (By Me) You Should Be Reading Right Now!

10) LIFE OR DEATH PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

9) FIGHT CORPORATE EDUCATION REFORM AND MEME IT

8) TOXIC TESTING MY KINDERGARTEN TOT – OR DADDY DON’T PLAY THAT

7) TRACKING, TESTING AND THE MYTH OF MERITOCRACY

6) A MOMENT OF SILENCE FOR MICHAEL BROWN

5) THE REAL AMERICAN EDUCATION CRISIS

4) MERRY CHRISTMAS. WE’RE STEALING YOUR SCHOOLS

3) THE BEST EVIDENCE AGAINST COMMON CORE

2) CHECK YOUR WALLET – YOU TOO CAN BE AN EXPERT ON TEACHER TENURE

1) THE FINAL STRAW: CANCEL OUR LABOR CONTRACTS, WE CANCEL YOUR TESTS