State Senator: Get Ready to Sue the PA Department of Education Over Common Core Testing

September 4, 2016 stevenmsinger Civil Rights, Common Core, Corbett, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Every Student Succeeds Act, Keystone Exams, NAACP, National Academic Standards, Opt Out, PA Core, Parents, Pennsylvania, Politics, portfolio-based assessments, Republican, School Funding, Schools, Standardized Testing, standards, Teachers, Tom Wolf, Toxic Testing #StandUpForPublicSchools, Andrew Dinniman, Civil Rights, common core, Corbett, Corporate Education Reform, Democrats, education, education reform, ESSA, Governor Tom Wolf, Graduation Requirement, Harrisburg, Keystone Exams, NAACP, PA Budget, PA Core, Pennsylvania, Politics, public schools, Republicans, school funding, standardized testing, teachers, Tom Wolf, West Chester

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Pennsylvania State Sen. Andrew Dinniman is mad as Hell and he’s not going to take it anymore.

The West Chester Democrat is furious at the state Department of Education (PDE) over the Keystone Exams.

In February, the legislature unanimously passed a law to delay for two years using the Keystones as a graduation requirement for public school students. The exams will still be given to high school students in Algebra I, Biology and English, but passing them is not necessary to receive a diploma. During this time, the legislature is supposed to investigate alternate assessments above and beyond standardized testing.

However, Dinniman sent out an email to supporters this week claiming PDE is “blatantly ignoring the law and issuing directives to local school districts to use the exam if they want to for graduation.”

This goes against the delay, says Dinniman. The legislature is unsure requiring the Keystone Exam is a good idea, yet the state Senator contends the current administration is advising districts to move forward anyway.

Under the old law that was put on hold by the delay, if parents decided to opt their children out of standardized testing, students had to complete a Project Based Assessment. However, even though there is no test-based graduation requirement for current seniors, Dinniman says PDE still is forcing these children to complete Project Based Assessments.

“It appears that PDE is forcing the children of parents who opted out to take the Project Based Assessment, whose use is currently suspended by the legislature,” he says.

“There seems to be no respect by PDE for the rights of parents concerning their own children.”

Dinniman, who also serves as minority chair of the Senate Education Committee, has long been a critic of the Keystone Exams. He lead the charge to delay their implementation.

Now that PDE seems committed to the project despite concerns by legislators, he is asking for parents and other concerned citizens to contact him about suing the organization.

“If you know parents or organizations who might want to take PDE to court or file amicus briefs, let me know… This is a matter of great importance. A number of us have been working for years against excessive testing and have serious concerns about Common Core.”

He will hold an open meeting for those concerned about the issue on Monday, Sept. 12, at 7:30 pm in his district office along One North Church Street in West Chester.

One of the issues at stake is the exorbitant costs of the Keystone and Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests. With education budgets shrinking at the federal, state and local level, this money diverted to huge testing corporations could be better spent elsewhere.

Since 2008, the Commonwealth has spent $1 billion to proctor, grade and create new versions of the PSSA and the new Common Core-aligned Keystone Exams. Of that figure, $741 million went to Data Recognition Corporation.

Dinniman included in his email an explanation of the Commonwealth’s contract with Data Recognition Corp., a chart showing how much has been paid to the company, a list of materials PDE requested from the company but that has not yet been provided and an article written by education historian Diane Ravitch published in the New York Times explaining why these tests are troublesome.

In 2013, the state Conference of NAACP Branches issued a statement condemning the Keystone graduation requirement in extremely strong terms.

The organization called it a “present day form of Eugenics”, “a human rights violation”, “a clandestine social movement that strips children of their dignity and self worth” and that it would deprive impoverished and minority students “of decent income, decent food, decent homes, and hopeful prospects as well as the security of justice.”

The statement can be read in full here.

In the halls of state government, Dinniman has been one of the most vocal critics of high stakes testing and national academic standards.

“I have been fighting against the use of these standardized tests as the sole determinants of high school graduation since they were first proposed by the previous [Corbett] administration in 2012.”

“Strong standards and effective assessments are needed in our schools, but they must come with the necessary resources and support to be implemented in a way that does not negatively impact both students and taxpayers,” he says.

Chester County, where Dinniman is from, has been a hotbed of testing criticism. Located in the southeastern most part of the state, parents, teachers and students publicly spoke out against the exams. Almost all school boards in the county passed resolutions opposing the Keystones and 58 superintendents and Intermediate Unit Directors up through the Philadelphia suburbs also expressed opposition.

If the delay had not been approved, this year’s seniors would have been required to pass all three Keystone Exams in order to graduate. Now the exams won’t be a graduation requirement until the 2018-19 school year.

The federal government still requires the exams be given for evaluative purposes, but it was the Republican dominated Tom Corbett administration that went the extra step of making the exams necessary to receive a diploma.

The delay is supposed to provide additional time to resolve consequences of implementing the exams. This means investigating and reporting on the following:

Alternative methods for students to demonstrate proficiency for graduation in addition to the Keystone Exams and project-based assessments.
Improving and expediting the evaluation of the project-based assessments.
Ensuring that students are not prohibited from participating in vocational-technical education or elective courses or programs as a requirement of supplemental instruction.

Moreover, the newly passed federal K-12 education legislation, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), allows the Commonwealth even more leeway to implement fairer and more affective means of assessment, Dinniman says.

“Until now, education policy has been largely dominated by regulations implemented by the State Board of Education in accordance with the federal government. Some of these regulations seemed to be enacted with little to no consideration of fiscal impacts or educational value,” Dinniman said.

“However, the state legislature has a Constitutional duty and responsibility to oversee and provide for ‘a thorough and efficient system of public education.’ Going forward, I believe the legislature will be more aggressive in reasserting its role in the process.”

Dinniman can be reached by phone at 610-692-2112 (District Office) and 717-787-5709 (Harrisburg Office).

He can be reached by email here.

He is on Facebook and Twitter.

Below is the full text of Dinniman’s Email:

(Source: optoutpa.blogspot.com)

To Supporters of Ending Common Core Exams in Pennsylvania:

Despite Act 1 of 2016, which suspended any use of the Keystone exams or the Project Based Assessments for graduation purposes during the two year period of 2016-18, the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) is blatantly ignoring the law and issuing directives to local school districts to use the exam if they want to for graduation.

It certainly appears that PDE has shown their solid commitment to the Common Core testing process and the continued collection of data. They don’t seem to care about or respect the law. This is not government by the elected legislature but government by the bureaucracy.

You will be interested to learn the taxpayers of Pennsylvania, since 2008, spent $1.1 billion on these Common Core tests, with $741 million of that going to one testing company, Data Recognition Corporation (DRC).

Please view the supporting material at the following links:
1. An explanation of the Data Recognition Corp. (DRC) contracts.

2. A chart showing the DRC contracts, which come to $741,158,039.60, and the total paid to date of $440,512,625.69.

3. A listing of material requested from PDE but, as of this date, not provided.
4. A column from the July 23, 2016 New York Times providing background on these Common Core Exams, which in Pennsylvania are the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) and Keystone Exams.

Additionally, it appears that PDE is forcing the children of parents who opted out to take the Project Based Assessment, whose use is currently suspended by the legislature. There seems to be no respect by PDE for the rights of parents concerning their own children.

So the question now is “what will we do about this situation?” If you know parents or organizations who might want to take PDE to court or file amicus briefs, let me know.

In the meantime, I am having a meeting for those concerned about PDE’s actions in my district office, One North Church Street, West Chester, on Monday, September 12th, 2016 at 7:30 p.m.

This is a matter of great importance. A number of us have been working for years against excessive testing and have serious concerns about Common Core. Please invite your friends to join in the September 12th meeting.

Respectfully,

Andrew E. Dinniman

State Senator, 19th District

What’s More Important – Fighting School Segregation or Protecting Charter School Profits?

September 1, 2016 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Budget, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Democrats for Education Reform, Education, Journalism, Media, NAACP, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Racism, Republican, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Teachers #blacklivesmatter, #StandUpForPublicSchools, Barack Obama, charter schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education Reform, Democrats, DFER, education, Education Post, education reform, neoliberal, Peter Cunningham, Politics, public schools, racism, Republicans, School Choice, school funding, segregation, teachers

No one wants school segregation.

At least, no one champions it publicly.

As a matter of policy, it would be political suicide to say we need to divide up our school children by race and socio-economics.

But when you look at our public school system, this is exactly what you see. After the triumphs of the Civil Rights movement, we’ve let our schools fall back into old habits that shouldn’t be acceptable in the post-Jim Crow era.

When we elected Barack Obama, our first President of color, many observers thought he’d address the issue. Instead we got continued silence from the Oval Office coupled with an education policy that frankly made matters worse.

So one wonders if people still care.

Is educational apartheid really acceptable in this day and age? Is it still important to fight against school segregation?

Peter Cunningham isn’t so sure.

The former assistant Secretary of Education under Obama and prominent Democrat worries that fighting segregation may hurt an initiative he holds even more dear – charter schools.

Cunningham is executive director of the Education Post, a well-funded charter school public relations firm that packages its advertisements, propaganda and apologias as journalism.

Everywhere you look Democrats and Republicans are engaged in promoting various school choice schemes at the expense of the traditional public school system. Taxpayer money is funneled to private or religious schools, on the one hand, or privatized (and often for-profit) charter schools on the other.

One of the most heated debates about these schemes is whether dividing students up in this way – especially between privately run charter schools – makes them more segregated by race and socio-economic status.

Put simply – does it make segregation worse?

Civil Rights organizations like the NAACP and Black Lives Matter say it does. And there’s plenty of research to back them up.

But until recently, charter school apologists have contested these findings.

Cunningham breaks this mold by tacitly admitting that charter schools DO, in fact, increase segregation, but he questions whether that matters.

He says:

“Maybe the fight’s not worth it. It’s a good thing; we all think integration is good. But it’s been a long fight, we’ve had middling success. At the same time, we have lots and lots of schools filled with kids of one race, one background, that are doing great. It’s a good question.”

The schools he’s referring to are charter schools like the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) where mostly minority students are selected, but only those with the best grades and hardest work ethic. The children who are more difficult to teach are booted back to traditional public schools.

It’s a highly controversial model.

KIPP is famous for two things: draconian discipline and high attrition rates. Even those kids who do well there often don’t go on to graduate from college. Two thirds of KIPP students who passed the 8^th grade still haven’t achieved a bachelor’s degree 10 years later.

Moreover, its methods aren’t reproducible elsewhere. The one time KIPP tried to take over an existing public school district and apply its approach without skimming the best and brightest off the top, it failed miserably – so much so that KIPP isn’t in the school turnaround business anymore.

These are the “lots and lots of schools” Cunningham is worried about disturbing if we tackle school segregation.

He first voiced this concern at a meeting with Democrats for Education Reform – a well-funded neoliberal organization bent on spreading school privatization. Even at such a gathering of like minds, some people might be embarrassed for saying such a thing. Is integration worth it? It sounds like something you’d expect to come out of Donald Trump’s mouth, not a supposedly prominent Democrat.

But Cunningham isn’t backing away from his remarks. He’s doubling down on them.

He even wrote an article published in US News and World Report called “Is Integration Necessary?”

Here’s the issue.

Segregation is bad.

But charter schools increase segregation.

So the obvious conclusion is that charter schools are bad.

BUT WE CAN’T DO THAT!

It would forever crash the gravy train that transforms public school budgets into private profits. It would forever kill the goose that turns Johnny’s school money into fancy trips, expense accounts and yachts for people like Cunningham.

This industry pays his salary. Of course he chooses it over the damage done by school segregation.

But the rest of us aren’t burdened by his bias.

His claims go counter to the entire history of the Civil Rights movement, the more than hundred year struggle for people of color to be treated equitably. That’s hard to ignore.

People didn’t march in the streets and submit to violent recriminations to gain something that just isn’t necessary. They weren’t sprayed by hoses and attacked by police dogs so they could gain an advantage for their children that isn’t essential to their rights. They weren’t beaten and murdered for an amenity at which their posterity should gaze with indifference and shrug.

We used to understand this. We used to know that allowing all the black kids to go to one school and all the white kids to go to another would also allow all the money to go to the white kids and the crumbs to fall to the black kids.

We knew it because that’s what happened. Before the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education, it’s a matter of historical fact. And today it’s an empirical one. As our schools have been allowed to fall back into segregation, resources have been allocated in increasingly unfair ways.

We have rich schools and poor schools. We have predominantly black schools and predominantly white schools. Where do you think the money goes?

But somehow Cunningham thinks charter schools will magically fix this problem.

Charters are so powerful they will somehow equalize school funding. Or maybe they’re so amazing they’ll make funding disparities irrelevant.

For believers, charter pedagogy wields just that kind of sorcery. Hocus Pocus and it won’t matter that black kids don’t have the books or extra-curriculars or arts and humanities or lower class sizes.

Unfortunately for Cunningham, the effects of school segregation have been studied for decades.

“Today, we know integration has a positive effect on almost every aspect of schooling that matters, and segregation the inverse,” says Derek Black, a professor of law at the University of South Carolina School of Law.

“We also know integration matters for all students. Both minorities and whites are disadvantaged by attending racially isolated schools, although in somewhat different ways.”

Minorities are harmed academically by being in segregated schools. Whites are harmed socially.

At predominantly minority schools, less money means less educational opportunities and less ability to maximize the opportunities that do exist. Likewise, at predominantly white schools, less exposure to minorities tends to make students more insular, xenophobic and, well, racist. If you don’t want little Billy and Sally to maybe one day become closeted Klan members, you may need to give them the opportunity to make some black friends. At very least they need to see black and brown people as people – not media stereotypes.

Even Richard D. Kahlenberg, a proponent of some types of charter schools and a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, thinks integration is vital to a successful school system.

“To my mind, it’s hugely significant,” says Kahlenberg, who has studied the impact of school segregation.

“If you think about the two fundamental purposes of public education, it’s to promote social mobility so that a child, no matter her circumstances, can, through a good education, go where her God-given talents would take her. The second purpose is to strengthen our democracy by creating intelligent and open-minded citizens, and related to that, to build social cohesion.

Because we’re a nation where people come from all corners of the world, it’s important that the public schools be a place where children learn what it means to be an American, and learn the values of a democracy, one of which is that we’re all social equals. Segregation by race and by socioeconomic status significantly undercuts both of those goals.”

We used to know that public education wasn’t just about providing what’s best for one student. It was about providing the best for all students.

Public schools build the society of tomorrow. What kind of future are we trying to create? One where everyone looks out just for themselves or one where we succeed together as a single country, a unified people?

A system where everyone pays their own way through school and gets the best education they can afford works great for the rich. But it leaves the masses of humanity behind. It entrenches class and racial divides. In short, it’s not the kind of world where the majority of people would want their children to grow up.

More than half of public school students today live in poverty. Imagine if we could tap into that ever-expanding pool of humanity. How many more scientific breakthroughs, how many works of art, how much prosperity could we engender for everyone!?

That is the goal of integration – a better world.

But people like Cunningham only can see how it cuts into their individual bank accounts.

So is it important to fight school segregation?

That we’re even seriously asking the question tells more about the kind of society we live in today than anything else.

Common Core’s New New Math has the Same Problem as the Old New Math

August 27, 2016 stevenmsinger Accountability, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Parents, Politics, privatization, school closings, Schools, Standardized Testing, standards, Teachers, Toxic Testing #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, A Nation at Risk, common core, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, history, New Math, Politics, public schools, standardized testing, teachers

Bad ideas are like unlucky pennies – they keep coming back again.

Take the New Math. Or maybe I should say the New New Math.

Common Core State Standards suggests we teach children a new way to do arithmetic. We should focus on multiple ways to reach an answer with an emphasis on understanding the concept behind the problem rather than just manipulating numbers.

It sounds fine in theory – until you think about it for five minutes.

When learning a new skill, it’s best to master a single, simple approach before being exposed to other more complex methods. Otherwise, you run the risk of confusion, frustration and ultimately not learning how to solve the problem.

Take directions.

If you’re lost and you ask for directions, you don’t want someone to tell you five ways to reach your destination. You want one, relatively simple way to get there – preferably with the least amount of turns and the highest number of landmarks.

Maybe later if you’re going to be traveling to this place frequently, you may want to learn alternate routes. But the first time, you’re more concerned about finding the destination (i.e. getting the answer) than understanding how the landscape would appear on a map.

This is the problem with Common Core math. It doesn’t merely ALLOW students to pursue alternate methods of solving problems. It REQUIRES them to know all the ways the problem can be solved and to be able to explain each method. Otherwise, it presumes to evaluate the student’s understanding as insufficient.

This is highly unfair to students. No wonder so many are failing.

Sadly there’s some history here that should have warned us about the perils of this approach.

Common Core isn’t the first new math approach to come along. In the 1960s we had a method actually called “The New Math.” And like Common Core, it was a dismal failure.

Like the Core, it proposed to focus more on conceptual understanding, but to do so it needlessly complicated matters at the grade school level.

It introduced set theory, forcing students to think of numbers as groups of objects rather than abstractions to be manipulated. In an advanced undergraduate mathematics course, this makes perfect sense. In first grade, it muddles the learning tremendously.

To make matters even more perplexing, it mandates students look at numbers with bases other than 10. This is incredibly confounding for elementary students who often resort to their fingers to help them understand early math.

Tom Lehrer wrote a very funny song about the new math which shows how confusing it can be. The methods used to solve the problem can be helpful but an emphasis on the conceptual underpinning at early ages perplexes more than it helps:

Popular culture is full of sly references to this old New Math. Charles Schultz wrote about it in several Peanuts comic strips in 1965. In one such strip, kindergartener Sally gets so frustrated trying to solve a New Math problem she cries, “All I want to know is, how much is two and two?” New Math even made an appearance in the 1973 movie “There’s No Time for Love, Charlie Brown,” in which the titular Brown asks “How do you do New Math problems with an old Math mind?”

In the 1992 episode of the Simpsons, “Dog of Death,” Principal Skinner is elated that an influx of school funding will allow him to purchase school improvements. In particular he wants to buy history books that reveal how the Korean War ended and “math books that don’t have that base six crap in them!”

So where did this idea for New Math come from?

In 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik sending Americans into a panic that they were being left behind by these Communist supermen. As a result in 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower passed the National Defense Education Act which dramatically increased school budgets and sent academics racing for ways to reform old practices. One product of this burst of activity was the New Math.
A decade later, it was mostly gone from our public schools. Parents complained they couldn’t help their children with homework. Teachers complained they didn’t understand it and that it needlessly confused their students.

Fast forward to 1983 and President Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education. The organization released a report called “A Nation at Risk” that purported to show that public schools were failing. As a result, numerous reforms were recommended such as increased standardization, privatization and competition.

It is hard to overemphasize how influential this report was in education circles. Even today after its claims have systematically and thoroughly been debunked by statisticians like those at Sandia National Laboratories, politicians, pundits and the media persist with this myth of failing public schools.

“A Nation at Risk” birthed our modern era of high stakes testing and, in 2009, Common Core.

In theory, each state would adopt the same set of academic standards thereby improving education nationally. However, they were written by the standardized testing corporations – not working educators and experts in childhood development. So they ignore key factors about how children learn – just like the New Math of old.

In short, we repeated the same mistake – or a very similar one.

Children are not computers. You can’t program their minds like you would a MacBook or iPhone. In many ways, including math instruction, Common Core ignores these facts.

And so we have the same result as the old New Math. Parents all over the country are complaining that they can’t help their children with their homework. Teachers are complaining that the Core unnecessarily confuses students.

In some ways, the Core is worse than the old New Math because of its close connection with high stakes testing. In the ‘60s if a child didn’t understand how to add, he failed math. Today, if a child does that, he fails the standardized test and if that happens to enough students, his school loses funding, his teacher may be fired and his school may be closed. As such, the pressure today’s children undergo is tremendous. They aren’t just responsible for their own learning. They’re responsible for the entire school community.

Those are unfair burdens for school children – especially when the decisions that make it easy or hard for him to learn are not made by the student but by politicians, pundits and policymakers.

But perhaps most telling is this: it doesn’t help children learn.

Isn’t that what this was all supposed to be about in the first place?

Perhaps we don’t need a new math. Perhaps we simply need policymakers willing to listen to education and childhood experts instead of business interests poised to profit off new reforms regardless of whether they actually work.

Shouldn’t Our Schools At Least be as Logical as Dental Floss?

August 25, 2016 stevenmsinger Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Data, Education, Eugenics, Junk science, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, School Choice, Schools, Standardized Testing, standards, Teachers #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, charter schools, common core, Corporate Education Reform, Democrats, dental floss, education, education reform, logic, Politics, public schools, reason, Republicans, School Choice, standardized testing, teachers

Girl-flossing1

All my life I assumed flossing was essential to dental health.

It was safe, it was sound, it was normal.

Every day after brushing, I would stand before the bathroom mirror and carefully thread a mint-flavored filament through my teeth – like a chump.

And when I got to the dentist, I’d comfort myself that I had done the best I could to prevent cavities.

The hygienist would remove plaque and germs while scraping and sawing at my teeth with a specialized hook, and all the while I’d think, “At least I flossed every day!”

Yet now the federal government tells us that flossing is ineffective at best!

What!? After all these years!?

It turns out, there just is no evidence that flossing actually helps – never has been. So this summer for the first time in decades the good folks who compile federal dietary guidelines decided not to recommend the practice.

A total of 25 studies have concluded that the evidence for flossing is “weak, very unreliable,” of “very low” quality, and carries “a moderate to large potential for bias,” according to the Associated Press.

“The majority of available studies fail to demonstrate that flossing is generally effective in plaque removal,” said one review conducted just last year. Another 2015 review cites “inconsistent/weak evidence” for flossing and a “lack of efficacy.”

So flossing is out.

It’s not evidence-based.

It’s actually kind of shocking to see the federal government acting so logically.

Where’s the politics? Why aren’t Republicans taking one side and Democrats the other? Why isn’t the dental floss lobby making massive contributions to our lawmakers to influence the decision?

But we get none of that in this instance. Instead, here’s the evidence. It doesn’t support this policy. So let’s discontinue that policy.

I wonder what the world would look like if every government stance was as susceptible to argument, cause and effect, and rationality.

As a public school teacher, I’ve become inured to our lawmakers doing exactly the opposite. They look at the evidence, see it DOESN’T support an education scheme and then… they proudly give it their full support.

As a result, education policy is full of unfounded, fallacious and unproven practices.

Our schools are struggling under the burden of illogical laws. Our teachers are pulling out their hair at a series of half-baked mandates that go counter to everything they’ve learned about childhood development. And our students suffer from procedures that don’t help them learn and in fact actually do much to prevent them from doing so.

Take standardized testing, Common Core and school choice.

Our legislators think standardized testing is the best way to measure learning. Are you freaking kidding me!? In colleges and universities across the country where this has been studied in-depth for centuries, it’s been disproven, ridiculed and considered an antiquated way of thinking about learning. It went out with phrenology and eugenics!

Multiple choice tests like these have consistently been shown to correlate more closely with socioeconomic status than intelligence, retention or understanding. Put simply: if you’re rich, you do well. If you’re poor, you don’t.

Standardized tests as we know them were developed in the Victorian Age to “prove” that wealthy people were just smarter than poor people. They were created to show the innate inferiority of black and brown people and the natural superiority of the white race.

Yet these kinds of assessments still are the backbone of the public school system.

Another fallacious policy championed by many lawmakers is Common Core State Standards. But like The Four Temperments, the Geocentric Universe, and the Flat Earth Theory, they aren’t backed up by evidence. In fact, each of these disproven scientific hypotheses has MORE EVIDENCE behind it than Common Core! Each of these ancient models was based on evidence but later refuted. By contrast, Common Core was never empirically based. In fact, it has never even been studied. Someone just pulled it out of their butt!

Let me say that again: there has never been any proof that Common Core will help children learn. In fact, far from showing any improvement, since its adoption, student outcomes have plummeted. But in many states it’s the law of the land.

In truth, Common Core is a series of academic standards developed by the testing and publishing industry as a way to sell more standardized tests and remediation materials. They were only adopted because state officials were blackmailed to accept them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have enough money to continue running their state schools. In many cases, the standards weren’t even voted on by state legislators but instead by appointed boards of education.

Yet today these standards (or very similar ones) are required in public schools across 42 states.

Finally, we have the political darling, school choice. Many Republicans and Democrats champion some form of choice and competition in our schools. They all think it will help, despite the fact that there’s more evidence for UFOs, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster!

Very few countries try to help students by increasing their choices without also trying to increase the quality of those choices. Nowhere has it ever been shown that having more schools to choose from is better than less schools to choose from – if you don’t improve the quality of those schools. Simply having more options and having those options compete doesn’t make them better. As John Oliver pointed out recently, the town with the most pizzerias doesn’t necessarily have the best pizza.

In fact, in countries that have initiated school choice policies, they’ve seen educational quality drop – not rise. Yet billionaires all across the US push for us to adopt these policies all the while investing in schemes to enrich themselves if such a policy shift occurred.

It makes no sense. These are misguided, unfounded, and downright insidious ideas.

Yet everyday pundits, policy-makers and politicians still advocate for them – somehow with a straight face. And when someone who actually works in the schools like me points to the evidence – or lack thereof – I’m ignored.

In the words of Frank Zappa, “Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity.” And our education policies are doing nothing to fix it.

The problem is the very banality of corporate school reform. After almost two decades of these strategies pushed on both sides of the aisle, they’ve become the status quo. It’s just the way we do things.

They’re as common as… well… dental floss.

The federal government saw through the vapidity of that practice. Isn’t it time the administration does the same for corporate school reform?

Do Unions Belong in the Fight Against Corporate School Reform?

August 21, 2016 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, AFT, Bill Gates, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, Hillary Clinton, NEA, Opt Out, Parents, Politics, privatization, Propaganda, Schools, Standardized Testing, Teach for America, Teacher Tenure, Teachers, union busting, Unions #blacklivesmatter, #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, AFT, charter schools, Corporate Education Reform, Democrats, education, education reform, Election, election 2016, Hillary Clinton, labor, NEA, Politics, President, public schools, standardized testing, teacher bashing, teachers, unions

ct-chicago-teachers-rally-met-0610-20150609

In the fight for public education, the forces of standardization and privatization are running scared.

They’ve faced more pushback in the last few years – especially in the last few months – than in a decade.

The Opt Out movement increases exponentially every year. Teach for America is having trouble getting recruits. Pearson’s stock is plummeting. The NAACP and Black Lives Matter have both come out strongly against increasing charter schools.

So what’s a corporate education reformer to do?

Answer: Change the narrative.

They can’t control the facts, so instead they try to control the story being told about the facts.

It’s a classic propaganda technique. As Malcolm X put it:

“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

Their story goes like this – yes, there is a battle going on over public education. But the two sides fighting aren’t who you think they are.

The fight for public schools isn’t between grassroots communities and well-funded AstroTurf organizations, they say. Despite the evidence of your eyes, the fight isn’t between charter school sycophants and standardized test companies, on the one hand, and parents, students and teachers on the other.

No. It’s actually between people who really care about children and those nasty, yucky unions.

It’s nonsense, of course. Pure spin.

They want you to believe that the corporate vultures preying on our public schools are really just misunderstood philanthropists. And those demanding a fair shake for their own children and communities are really just paid shills from a monolithic and uncaring bureaucracy.

In essence, they want you to believe two things:

1) Despite profiting off the system and zero evidence supporting the efficacy of corporate school policies, they’re motivated purely by empathy.

2) Unions are evil by definition and they pervert everything they touch.

I’m not going to bother with the first claim here. There is an inherent bias from those who wish to change the laws so they can more easily profit off of schools without actually helping students learn and in fact exist at the expense of that learning. If you can’t see through the propaganda wing of the Walmart corporation, the Broad Foundation and Big Daddy Bill Gates, you probably won’t be very receptive to anything else I have to say.

Instead I will focus on the second claim, because it is the more pernicious of the two.

Put simply, unions are not perfect, but they are not evil. In fact, they are essential to the health of public education.

Many progressives are upset with teachers unions because of the current Presidential election. Both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) endorsed Hillary Clinton in the primary election without what many would consider adequately polling rank and file members. For better or worse, the endorsements were top-down affairs reflecting the preference of union leaders.

That’s not how unions are supposed to work. And it’s having consequences for the way both members and non-members view teachers unions.

Critics infer from this that unions don’t represent membership. They are de facto arms of the waiting Clinton administration and the neoliberal agenda.

There may be some truth to this, but it does not represent the whole picture. Not nearly.

Unions are like any other democratic organization. The larger the association, the further from the grassroots the decision making body.

In the mammoth national unions, decisions are made by representatives most removed from our schools. They probably were teachers or support staff at some point in the past, but that may be ancient history. Now they are professional leaders and therefore at a remove from the grassroots.

By contrast, in our local chapters, leaders are most often working classroom teachers. Decisions are made by those still meeting students’ needs on a day-to-day basis. As such, they retain an authenticity and expertise that may be more cloudy in the large bureaucracies.

This isn’t to say the national unions are by definition unconcerned with the needs of teachers and students. I’m sure that most of the NEA and AFT leadership who decided to endorse Clinton did it because they honestly believe doing so will help public education. And – who knows – they may be right. But what they forgot in this case was the democratic process they were tasked with preserving. As such, they may have to pay a price for their hubris when their terms are up.

In most cases, the leaders of national teachers unions are at too much of a remove to see what is best for our schools. And they usually know that. It is up to the rank and file to tell them what to do, and that’s what happens every year at representative assemblies through various caucuses made up of work-a-day members. And if leaders overstep their authority it is members’ duty to hold them accountable at election time.

So even though the national organizations are most likely to go astray, they often don’t. Usually even these giants are trying to improve the situation in our public schools.

However, it can’t be denied that the most intense and passionate activism happens a bit closer to where the rubber hits the road. It’s those local chapters that are there everyday and make the most difference. They are the heart and soul of unionism.

So when corporate education reformers sneeringly deprecate their opponents as mere unions, they’re glossing over an important distinction. Opposition to privatization and standardization policies doesn’t come from the leadership of the NEA and AFT. It comes from the grassroots. This is not a top down initiative. It is bottom up.

This is how it’s always been. There is no political organization directing the fight to save public education. The Democrats certainly aren’t overly concerned with reigning in charter schools. It was grassroots Democrats – some of whom are also union members – who worked to rewrite the party platform to do so. The Clinton campaign is not directing anyone to opt out of standardized testing. However, voters are demanding that Clinton be receptive to their needs – and some of them are union members.

There is no great union conspiracy to fight these policies. It’s called public opinion, and it’s changing.

That’s what scares the standardizers and privatizers. They’ve had free run of the store for almost two decades and now the public is waking up.

They’re desperately trying to paint this as a union movement when it’s not. Unions are involved, but they aren’t alone. And moreover, their involvement is not necessarily an impediment.

The needs of the community and the needs of teachers are the same.

Both want excellent public schools.

Both want the best for our students.

Both want academic policies that will help students learn – not help corporations cash in.

And both groups want good teachers in the classroom – not bad ones!

The biggest lie to have resonated with the public is this notion that teachers unions are only concerned with shielding bad teachers from justice. This is demonstrably untrue.

Unions fight to make sure teachers get due process, but they also fight to make sure bad teachers are shown the door.

In fact, in districts with strong unions, MORE bad teachers are fired – not less, according to a new study by economics Prof. Eunice Han from the University of Utah.

The study entitled The Myth of Unions’ Overprotection of Bad Teachers concludes that when unions are strong and successfully bargain for higher salaries, they have an incentive to help ensure ineffective teachers don’t receive tenure. In short, it costs too much to keep bad teachers on staff. It is in the interests of the collective bargaining unit to ensure those unfit to teach move along.

Moreover, Han also concludes that strong unions actually help reduce the dropout rate. It just makes sense. When you treat people like the professionals they are, when you give them autonomy and respect, they’re free to concentrate more energy into their jobs than fighting to keep those jobs.

But unions stand in direct opposition to the efforts of corporate vultures trying to swoop in and profit off of public education. Teachers provide a valuable service to students. If your goal is to reduce the cost of that service no matter how much that reduces its value to students, you need a weak labor force. You need the ability to reduce salary so you can claim the savings as profit.

THAT’S why corporate education reformers hate teachers and their unions. We make it nearly impossible to swipe school budgets into their own pockets.

So do unions belong in the fight against corporate education reform?

Answer: Heck yeah! In fact, they are essential to it.

What Real School Choice Would Look Like – And Why What They’re Selling Isn’t It

August 15, 2016 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, Charter Schools, Competency Based Education, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Local Control, Parents, privatization, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Student Mobility, Teachers #StandUpForPublicSchools, charter schools, common core, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, Privatize, public schools, School Choice, school funding, school vouchers, standardized testing, teachers

I can’t hear the words “School Choice” without thinking of Inigo Montoya from the classic film “The Princess Bride.”

I hear Mandy Patinkin’s voice saying, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Because just like the constant cries of “Inconceivable!” from Sicilian boss Vizzini (portrayed by the inimitable Wallace Shawn), policymakers seem a bit confused.

You would expect School Choice to mean that parents would get to choose the school their children attend. However, the policy being pushed by corporate education reformers has nothing to do with that.

It’s about allowing schools to choose students, not the other way around.

Want your child to attend a charter school? Great! In many cases he needs to meet the requirements of admission – good grades, well behaved, no learning disabilities – otherwise they boot him back to the traditional public school he came from.

Want your child to use a voucher to attend a private school? Fine! The voucher will pay for some of her tuition, but you’d better be able to make up the rest AND she needs to meet the criteria for admission.

If administrators don’t want to accept your child, they don’t have to, nor do they ever have to explain why, nor do you get a public forum where you can question them, nor do you have any power to vote them out.

They could decide to turn you down because your child is a minority, disabled, gay, has a belief system of which they do not approve, anything really! And they will never have to explain themselves to anyone.

To me, that’s not school choice. But that’s what they’re selling and some folks are buying it all up like an email sent to you by an inconvenienced Nigerian Prince who just needs your help with a funds transfer.

However, this isn’t to say that the idea of School Choice – REAL School Choice – is inconceivable. (Forgive me, Vizzini.)

You could devise a system of School Choice that actually involved parents being able to choose the school their children attend.

I wouldn’t suggest it. I’m opposed to all forms of School Choice for reasons I’ll make clear later. But I would certainly be more amenable to a plan that actually did what it seems to promise.

So what would real educational choice look like? What would we need to achieve this goal?

First, it would require a massive increase in school funding.

Think about it. You’re asking the government to pay for several separate, parallel systems of education. Students won’t just have School A to choose from. They’ll have School A, B and C.

So we need to construct more schools. We need to staff them. We need to provide each one with books, computers, equipment, etc. That’s going to cost an incredible amount of money.

We’re talking about at least doubling the amount of money we pay for public schools – more likely tripling or quadrupling it.

This is certainly possible. Maybe it’s even preferable. But it won’t be politically acceptable for many people. The push has been to downsize government, do things on the cheap, lower taxes, etc.

Strangely, School Choice cheerleaders often push their agenda as a way to save money. That’s because they don’t care about the quality of the choices they’re offering. They’re not providing enough money for several excellent schools that parents can pick from. They’re taking the money we already spend on one school and having multiple schools fight for it.

It’s like a dogfight for schools. They’ll rip and tear at each other, and the winner gets to take away the most funding. It’s a bad model for animals and an even worse one for schools because everyone loses. No one walks away with enough money to get the job done. You end up with several choices but none of them can really provide the best academic experience. None of them can even provide the kind of education that would come from having just one well-funded choice.

What’s worse, in most states even before you start adding parallel schools, the current funding system is broken. We simply don’t provide enough funding for the schools we already have without adding even more choices.

All public schools don’t get the same amount of money per pupil. That’s true even when you adjust for costs.

Under the current system, schools with a rich tax base provide Cadillac resources for their children. Meanwhile, schools with a poor tax base can’t provide everything that is needed so their kids have to do with less. That means fewer resources, fewer teachers, larger classes, etc.

So-called School Choice policies only make this worse. Schools that already don’t have enough funding to meet their students needs have to give larger portions of their shrinking budgets to charter schools. So instead of one school without enough funding, we have two. That doesn’t fix anything.

However, both of these problems are solvable and the solution is the same in both cases – money.

If you want real choice, you need to do two things: (1) discontinue funding schools based on local property taxes and (2) dramatically increase school funding. Both the state and federal government would have to kick in much more. Local taxes could still be collected to pay a portion for public schools – this could even be collected based on how much each community can afford – but no longer could we allow poor students to get less funding than rich kids. No matter where you lived – in the slums or in a gated community – you’d get whatever funding your school deemed necessary.

This would probably be paid for with a substantial tax increase, though you could also make cuts in other places in local, state, and federal budgets. For most people, I think this would be unacceptable, but it is certainly conceivable.

Second, you need the same rules governing these separate systems – especially when it comes to admissions.

This would be especially hard on charter school and private school administrators.

There could be no more picking and choosing which students get to attend your school. If an emotionally disturbed student with bad grades and an even worse record of behavior wants to attend your charter school, you’ve got to accept him. If a poor student whose parents don’t have the money for tuition (even with the voucher in hand) want to attend your private school, you’ve got to accept her.

This shouldn’t be such a burden. It’s what traditional public schools do now. They take everyone regardless of grades, ability, behavior or poverty.

Third, all schools would have to be transparent and democratically controlled. Their budgets and internal documents would have to be open to public record. Moreover, decisions about how to run the school could not be made behind closed doors – they would have to be made in public. And school directors would have to be subject to democratic control. Decision-makers could no longer be appointed by boards of investors, the mayor or any other bureaucrat. They’d be selected by voters. These would all be public schools, after all, and as such would be subject to rule by the public.

Think about what that means. If your child attends a school, you should get a say in what happens at that school. Even if your child doesn’t attend the school, even if you have no children, you should have a say simply because you pay taxes.

This has been the practice at traditional public schools since forever. In fact, unless the school has been taken over by the state, it’s required by law. But at charters and private schools, it’s not always the case.

It’s funny. In many ways under our current system, the public gets much more input, much more choice at traditional public schools than at so-called School Choice institutions.

Many charters and private schools would balk at this. They are not run democratically and are not beholden to the public.

That’s just the way they like it. Their business model requires it. If they had to be fully transparent and accountable to taxpayers, what would happen to those schools organized for-profit?

I would assume that they would disappear. I think very few parents and taxpayers would allow a fully transparent school to pocket a large chunk of its budget like that. I can’t imagine the public approving a decision to cut student services to boost the bottom line – but this is exactly what happens at certain charter schools every day. Only the protection of current School Choice policies that shield investors from taxpayers allows this kind of malfeasance.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

We can have real School Choice without all the drawbacks of charters and voucher schools. We can have a system where parents get to pick their children’s schools, where the public is in control, where every child gets an excellent education.

To do so, we’d need a series of fully funded, fully transparent, democratically run schools subject to the same rules and expectations.

Hmm. But that’s not so different than the traditional public school system we have now. Perhaps doing so would give all schools the latitude to experiment that is usually given to charter schools. But for the most part, we’ve equalized our school system and simply eliminated the worst abuses of charter and voucher schools.

We’ve also radically increased the raw number of schools in the system. And we’ve allowed students to attend schools where they don’t necessarily live, but ensured they get adequate funding no matter where they attend.

The result is real Student Choice. Parents get to decide where their children attend, and – at least in theory – all choices would be excellent.

I’ve got to admit – from a certain vantage point – it doesn’t look so bad. Sure it’s going to cost a lot of money, but maybe it’s worth it.

However, finding the cash isn’t the only obstacle. For instance, how do you adequately administrate such a system?

I cannot imagine how administrators could decide how much money their school needs from year to year if the student population can change so dramatically in that time period. How would administrators know how many teachers they need and in which subjects? How would they be able to determine the number of classrooms, how many school lunches are necessary and a host of other things? Wouldn’t it be terribly disruptive to have teachers moving from school-to-school every year following student mobility?

Additionally, how do we provide transportation with students traveling hither and thither? It would be difficult just to organize buses to get kids to school. Older students could be given bus passes, but that wouldn’t be safe for elementary and middle school kids to be traveling this way unaccompanied by adults.

I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it would be very difficult. Perhaps someone could find a system that works. However, I fear this kind of institutional instability would result in some schools being woefully understaffed and underprepared while others have too much.

Moreover, such a situation would be extremely wasteful. We’d be spending much more than we need to provide children with an excellent education. We’d be duplicating services unnecessarily. Personally, I can deal with that much more than its opposite. However, flushing tax dollars down the toilet is a bad practice.

Is there a middle ground that provides parents and students choice without wasting so much money?

Yes.

Instead of providing a series of parallel education systems, supply one system that is able to deliver multiple services.

First, you’d need to fix the funding inequities mentioned above. You don’t have to double or triple what we spend, but you’d probably have to increase support somewhat. And it would have to be distributed fairly.

Then once every school has the funding necessary to give every student what he/she needs, we can work on individualizing that experience. This is exactly the opposite of current education policies from the Bush and Obama administrations.

I’m not talking about Competency Based Education, either, the latest scam to make standardization look like a student centered model. I mean no more high stakes standardized tests, no more Common Core, no more corporate education reform.

Imagine if every district allowed parents and students to choose what kind of education they got within the system. Your child wants to study music? We’ve got an excellent music program. You want your child to study a foreign language? We have plenty of award-winning programs to choose from.

Schools would be able to meet the needs of all students because they would be fully funded. No more poor schools and rich schools – just schools.

To meet this ideal, we need to forgo the fake School Choice being offered at present. We need to stop having schools fight over dwindling resources like pit bulls.

THAT would be a choice worth making.

It would be the best kind of school choice.

PA Charter Schools Caught Gaming the System for $2.5 Million

August 5, 2016 stevenmsinger Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Schools, Pittsburgh Public Schools, privatization, School Choice, School Funding, Schools, Tom Wolf #StandUpForPublicSchools, audit, charter schools, Corporate Education Reform, DePasquale, education, education reform, Pennsylvania, Propel Charter Schools, public schools, school funding, Tom Wolf

Should a charter school be reimbursed for a lease to itself?

That’s the question at the center of yet another scandal about the industry.

Auditor General Eugene DePasquale found nine Pennsylvania charter schools taking $2.5 million from the state to pay themselves back for properties they already own.

“What we found in some of our audits the same people who own and operate charter schools create separate legal entities to own the buildings and lease them to their charter schools,” DePasquale says. “We keep finding it and supplying the information to the department and they do nothing with it.”

His office found this happening in nearly a third of the 40 charter school audits done since he took office in 2013.

This goes against Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) guidelines adopted 14 years ago, says DePasquale. A charter school is not eligible for lease reimbursement if it owns the building.

PDE spokeswoman Casey Smith agrees. Charter school CEOS “are required to sign a self-certification statement verifying that the charter school does not own the building and that the building is being used for educational purposes,” she says.

This is exactly the kind of malfeasance the U.S. Department if Education warned states to look out for as recently as 2015.

However, DePasquale found questionable lease reimbursements at Propel Schools in Allegheny County, School Lane in Bucks County, Chester Community in Delaware County, Perseus House of Erie County, Fell of Lackawanna County, Roberto Clemente of Lehigh County, Bear Creek Community of Luzerne County, Keystone Education Center of Mercer County and Evergreen Community of Monroe County.

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If this practice has been going on since the guidelines were enacted in 2002, many more charter schools also may have cashed in. DePasquale estimates charter operators could have bilked the state out of $10 million to $15 million over that time period.

It’s shocking that so many charter school operators would consider themselves entitled to state money for something that doesn’t cost them anything to provide. They are supposed to be running public schools, but they continually flaunt their ability to disobey the law at state expense. This money doesn’t do a thing to help students learn. It goes directly into charter operators’ pockets.

For education advocates, this is one of the most pervasive problems with the charter industry. Making profits is put before educating children. At traditional public schools, surplus earnings are not allowed by law. All taxpayer funding goes to provide services for the students. While staff earns a salary, no taxpayer money is ever allowed to be pocketed in excess to boost the bottom line. Extra money – if it appears – is saved to be spent the following year or later.

Charter advocates see it differently. They think competition is necessary to produce superior results, though the result is often a waste of tax dollars that could be put to better use helping our underfunded public schools.

In this case, lawyers for the charters in question say their clients have done nothing wrong.

These payments meet the letter of the law, says Alan Shuckrow, a lawyer for Propel, which took $376,922 in lease reimbursements of this kind.

“From Propel’s perspective, we’re following the law and if the law changes, we’ll comply with that law,” Shuckrow says.

It all depends on how you interpret the law, says Robert Fayfich, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools.

“The auditor general takes the position if the building is owned by a charter school then it’s not reimbursable and PDE says ownership is irrelevant to reimbursement,” he says. “I’m sure charters are working based on the recommendation from their legal counsel plus direction from PDE.”

DePasquale agrees with Fayich to a point. The auditor general says the fault isn’t so much with the charter schools for applying for these reimbursements. It’s with PDE for granting them in the first place, and then taking no action to get the money back.

DePasquale and his predecessor, Jack Wagner, pointed this out numerous times, he says, yet the department has “never made an attempt to clawback any of these funds.”

This is just one of many reasons he considers the Commonwealth’s charter school law the worst in the nation and in desperate need of reform, he says.

However, reform seems unlikely in a state where lawmakers typically put their own names to legislation written by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Just such a “reform” bill was pushed during the adoption of the 2016-17 state budget, but it was dropped due to lack of support.

Known as House Bill 530, it would have allowed for unlimited proliferation of charter schools without input from the traditional public school districts or voters who would have to foot the bill. While it did provide a bit more oversight, the bill was an unforgivable giveaway to the industry at the expense of taxpayers.

Supporters are threatening to take the bill up again later this month.

If this is what lawmakers mean by reform, we’re in big trouble.

The problems are out in the open. Public servants like DePasquale keep pointing them out to us, but no one has the guts to stand up against a big business like this one – even if it hurts school children.

The PDE needs to stand up. Lawmakers need to stand up. Voters need to stand up.

Otherwise we in Pennsylvania will continue to sell our children short in favor of the immediate financial gain of corporate vultures disguised as educators.

Why is Common Core Still Here?

August 1, 2016 stevenmsinger Common Core, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Donald Trump, Education, Every Student Succeeds Act, Hillary Clinton, Media, No Child Left Behind, Obama, Parents, Politics, President, privatization, Propaganda, Schools, Standardized Testing, standards, Teachers, Technology #StandUpForPublicSchools, Bill Gates, common core, Corporate Education Reform, David Coleman, Donald Trump, education, education reform, Election, Hillary Clinton, media, Politics, Profit, public schools, teachers

Common Core has become a national joke.

In fact, the set of academic standards has inspired a new genre of grade school humor – Common Core comedy.

For instance:

One student turns to another and says, “Common Core is about making us college and career ready.”

The other student replies, “It’s working. It’s making me drink more everyday.”

Here’s another one:

Question: Why can’t mommy help you with your Common Core math homework?

Answer: She only has a four-year degree.

And finally:

Question: How many whiteboards does it take to show you how to screw in a light bulb?

Answer: One, but it takes dozens to explain 1+4 in Common Core.

Parents nationwide know the pain of Common Core by the looks on their children’s faces.

They see bright, curious youngsters go to school and come back hating education and thinking they’re stupid.

Parents get the same feeling trying to decipher their children’s homework.

Meanwhile the majority of teachers hate the standards – and as they become more familiar with it, that number grows every year.

So why do we keep using Common Core? Why haven’t our schools thrown this bad idea on the trash heap of failed education policies?

In short – because industry is making a lot of money off it.

Common Core was created by private industry.

It was not made by the states, nor was it written by the federal government.

It was created to sell a new generation of standardized tests and textbooks.

It’s raison d’etre is profit not education.

School children didn’t need a unified set of academic standards. Big business needed them to sell more books and tests.

The standards were written by Achieve, Inc., a Washington, D.C., organization formed in 1996 by corporate leaders and six state governors. The endeavor was funded by Bill Gates and other corporate interests. It was reviewed by individuals and organizations also funded by Gates.

Then the federal government stepped in to strongly encourage states to adopt the standards. Not because anyone actually thought they were necessary. They did it because that was what wealthy donors wanted.

Eventually the standards were adopted in 42 states, but not because legislatures voted on them. The standards were quietly approved by state boards of education, unelected state education chiefs and boards of education. Many lawmakers didn’t even know what Common Core was or that their state had implemented it until voters started calling and asking questions.

Moreover, at the time of their adoption, the standards weren’t even completed. They were enacted in many cases sight unseen.

How did the federal government get state officials to do this? Money and threats.

Public schools were strapped because of the great recession. So the Obama administration swooped in to help – on the condition that states enact a series of reforms including Common Core.

The Obama administration did not write Common Core, but it did everything it could to make sure states enacted these standards. In the 2009 stimulus package, there was $4.35 billion in discretionary funds given to the U.S. Department of Education to hand out as state grants. But in order to qualify for these grants, states had to adopt the Common Core. With education funding at a premium, bureaucrats were only too willing to bend over backwards to keep their state’s schools running.

And when the carrot wasn’t enough, the federal government used the stick.

Many states were applying to the federal government for waivers to the disastrous No Child Left Behind legislation. Adopting Common Core and several other corporate education reforms was made a pre-condition. If states didn’t adopt these standards, their schools would be labeled “failing” and lose even more federal funding.

Despite all this, the media still often misrepresents the facts.

It is an objective fact that the Core was written by private industry. So the media never asks that question. It asks if the Core was “state led.” That way there is room for spin.

Who led the effort to enact these standards? Since a handful of governors and other government officials were involved in their creation, media patsies are able to pretend the initiative started with the states. But don’t believe it. It started with private interests – people like David Coleman and Bill Gates – trying to influence government to do what they wanted for their own ends. As President of the College Board, Coleman stood to profit off new books and tests. As co-founder of Microsoft, Gates stood to profit from the new technology needed to run many of these new tests and materials. They led the initiative, not the states.

No government official was ever given a mandate by the voters or their empowered representatives to create or enact Common Core. Those that did so acted in their private capacities. Bribing a handful of governors doesn’t make something a state initiative.

Just because a government official does something doesn’t make it policy. When Chris Christie orders a footlong hoagie for lunch, it isn’t the start of a government program to feed people at Subway. He’s just ordering lunch.

Moreover, when government officials are coerced into adopting a policy because otherwise they won’t be able to fulfill their obligation to voters, that isn’t an endorsement of those policies. You can’t offer a starving child a sandwich on the condition that he shouts a swear word and then pretend it was all his idea. You can’t offer a glass of water to a man dying of thirst on the condition that he shave his head and then pretend that he likes being bald.

Common Core was not adopted by states because they liked it. It was adopted to keep schools running.

Special interests used the federal government’s power over the states to circumvent the legislative process.

The result is a set of poor quality standards that are developmentally inappropriate and don’t help students learn. This should be no surprise since they were written with minimal input from classroom teachers or child psychologists. Instead they were created by standardized test authors. But even if the standards had been good, the process of their adoption was highly undemocratic.

Sadly, this is how government works now.

Charter schools, Teach for America, standardized testing – Public education has been high jacked by business interests.

Once upon a time, the goal was to help students learn. Now the main objective is to help big business profit off students.

If you can make a buck off something – even if it doesn’t help or actually hurts school kids – do it.

Nowhere is this clearer than with the Common Core.

Unfortunately, our 2016 Presidential candidates don’t seem to get it.

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump seems to understand the problems with Common Core.

Clinton thinks the only issue is the way the Core was implemented in schools – not federal coercion, not poor quality standards, etc. Schools didn’t implement them too quickly. The standards are badly written, unproven to help and increasingly shown to hurt.

Trump, on the other hand, thinks it’s all wrong, but he has no idea why or what he can do about it. Like too many Republicans, he acts as if the only problem with the standards is Obama’s participation. He ignores or omits the one-time advocacy of prominent members of his own party for the Core like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, and Mike Huckabee.

Neither candidate seems to understand that the new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) bans the federal government from doing anything to promote Common Core, or any other set of education standards. This does not, unfortunately, repeal the standards. It emphasizes the states’ power to choose their own academic standards.

Each state legislature can keep, revise, or repeal Common Core. And in some cases, this has already begun. In Oklahoma, for example, Common Core was repealed entirely. In other states, like New Jersey, Common Core has been revised but largely left in place. In other states, the standards remain untouched.

Why hasn’t Common Core gone away? State legislatures haven’t acted.

No matter who wins the presidential race, whether it’s a candidate in favor or against Common Core, he or she has zero power to do anything about it. Hopefully, no one tries to exceed that authority by coercing states one way or another.

Meanwhile, state legislatures need to pay attention to the wishes of voters. If Common Core is repealed – and that’s what the majority of taxpayers want – we can only hope it’s done so in a more democratic fashion than it was approved. We can only hope it isn’t replaced with something worse.

Whatever happens it should be to benefit students, not corporations.

Or to put it another way:

Question: What if Common Core was created just to drive parents crazy?

Answer: Somebody must be making a fortune on crazy meds!!

No New Charter Schools – NAACP Draws Line in the Sand

July 30, 2016 stevenmsinger Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Democrats for Education Reform, Donald Trump, Education, Election, Hillary Clinton, Pennsylvania, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, privatization, Puerto Rico, Republican, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Supreme Court, Teachers, voting #StandUpForPublicSchools, charter schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education Reform, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Diane Ravich, education, education reform, Election, election 2016, Hillary Clinton, Julian Vasquez Heilig, Pennsylvania, Politics, President, public schools, Puerto Rico, Republicans, school funding, segregation, standardized testing, teachers

In the education market, charter schools are often sold as a way to help black and brown children.

But The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) isn’t buying it.

In fact, the organization is calling for a halt on any new charter schools across the nation.

Delegates from across the country passed a resolution at the NAACP’s national convention in Cincinnati last week calling for a moratorium on new charters schools. Approval of the new resolution will not be official until the national board meeting later this year.

This resolution isn’t a change in policy. But it strengthens the organization’s stance from 2010 and 2014 against charters.

Specifically, the resolution states:

“…the NAACP opposes the privatization of public schools and/or public subsidizing or funding of for-profit or charter schools…”

“…the NAACP calls for full funding and support of high quality free public education for all children…”

The resolution goes on to oppose tax breaks to support charter schools and calls for new legislation to increase charter school transparency. Moreover, charters should not be allowed to kick students out for disciplinary reasons.

This goes against the well-funded narrative of charter schools as vehicles to ensure civil rights.

The pro-charter story has been told by deep pocketed investors such as the Koch Brothers and the Walton Family Foundation. But the idea that a separate parallel school system would somehow benefit black and brown children goes against history and common sense.

The Supreme Court, after all, ruled separate but equal to be Unconstitutional in Brown vs. Board of Education. Yet somehow these wealthy “philanthropists” know better.

People of color know that when your children are separated from the white and rich kids, they often don’t get the same resources, funding and proper education. You want your children to be integrated not segregated. You want them to be where the rich white kids are. That way it’s harder for them to be excluded from the excellent education being provided to their lighter skinned and more economically advantaged peers.

Julian Vasquez Heilig, education chair of the California and Hawaiian NAACP chapter which proposed the new resolution, says its ironic charter schools are marketed as school choice.

The endgame, says Heilig, is to replace the current public schools with privatized charter schools. This is exactly what’s been proposed in the US territory of Puerto Rico.

It’s not about giving parents more choices. It’s about eliminating one option and replacing it with another. It’s about reducing the cost to educate poor and minority children while also reducing the quality of services provided. Meanwhile, public tax dollars earmarked to help students learn become profit for wealthy corporations running charter schools.

As the Presidential election heats up, it will be interesting to see how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump address the issue. Already school choice policies have been wholeheartedly embraced by the Republican nominee. Not only does he favor charter schools, he also supports school vouchers and other schemes to privatize public tax money. This shouldn’t be a surprise since he ran his own private education scam – Trump University.

Clinton, on the other hand, has been more measured in her support, even criticizing some aspects of charter schools. However, her campaign has issued statements saying she supports only “high quality charter schools” – whatever those are.

Moreover, just this week at the Democratic National Convention, Clinton staffers met with hedge fund mangers from Democrats for Education Reform (DFER).

According to Molly Knefel who covered the meeting for Truthout, the mood was not positive toward ending corporate education reform strategies.

She reported that moderator Jonathan Alter worried about the argument becoming based on social justice.

“If it becomes a social justice movement, doesn’t that in some ways let, for lack of a better word or expression, Diane Ravitch’s argument win?” asked Alter. “Which is, ‘don’t blame any of us, don’t focus on schools; if we don’t solve poverty, nothing is going to get better.’ Isn’t there a danger of falling away from the focus on at least some responsibility on schools?”

Apparently Alter is falling back on the old chestnut that under-funded schools should be blamed and shut down if they can’t help the neediest children to the same degree as well-resourced schools. And any attempt to focus on underlying inequalities would somehow give teachers a free pass? I suppose Alter believes a fire company that can’t afford a fire truck should be just as effective as one with three new ones.

Meanwhile, longtime corporate education reformer Peter Cunningham was asked specifically if school integration was important. He responded tellingly:

“Maybe the fight’s not worth it. It’s a good thing; we all think integration is good. But it’s been a long fight, we’ve had middling success. At the same time, we have lots and lots of schools filled with kids of one race, one background, that are doing great. It’s a good question.”

The number of segregated schools where students “are doing great” is certainly in question. Perhaps he’s referring to well-resourced all-white private schools for the children of the rich and powerful. Or maybe he means the all-black charter schools where administrators handpick the best and brightest students and refuse to educate those most in need.

One hopes Clinton will continue to fight alongside the NAACP and other civil rights organizations like Journey for Justice and the Rev. William Barber’s Moral Mondays to defend public schools against the failed education policies of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.

Two weeks ago DFER President Shavar Jeffries criticized the finalized Democratic education platform for turning against corporate education reform. This transformation away from school privatization and standardized testing was the result of education activists Chuck Pascal of Pittsburgh, Troy LaRaviere of Chicago and Christine Kramar of Nevada who worked hard to ensure the platform – though non-binding – would at least set forth a positive vision of what our public schools should look like.

Make no mistake, the tide is turning. It is becoming increasingly difficult for charter supporters to claim their products boost minority children’s civil rights.

Too many people have seen how they actually violate them.

The Agony of Being a First Time Undecided Voter

July 27, 2016 stevenmsinger Bernie Sanders, capitalism, Charter Schools, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Democrat, Donald Trump, Dr. Jill Stein, Education, Election, Green Party, Hillary Clinton, Politics, President, privatization, Republican, School Choice, school closings, school vouchers, Standardized Testing, Unions, voter suppression, voting Bernie Sanders, charter schools, Corporate Education Reform, Democrats, Donald Trump, Dr. Jill Stein, education reform, Election, Green Party, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, Politics, Republicans, undecided voter, unions

Is there anyone else out there like me?

I’ve never been an undecided voter before. I’ve always known early which candidate I’m supporting and why.

But this election has my head spinning. One minute I’m ready to vote for Hillary Clinton to stop Donald Trump. The next I can’t live with myself if I do that and am willing to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein even though she has very little chance of winning.

And so on back-and-forth, hour-to-hour. The only thing I’m certain of is that I will never EVER vote for Trump.

Is there anyone else out there like me?

This seems to be the new reality.

I’d rather have Hillary as President than Trump, but I’d rather have another option than either one.

It’s agonizing. I can’t sleep. I toss and turn.

I hop into bed thinking I’ll just vote Hillary and then wake up passed midnight feeling disgusted with myself. I say I’ll vote Stein and go back to bed only to wake up an hour later with grave doubts about letting Trump win and how he’ll destroy the fabric of the country.

Those of you who have made up your minds, be thankful. You have a certainty many of us do not share.

Almost half of registered Democrats voted for Bernie Sanders in the Primary. You need us. And now that Hillary Clinton is the nominee, we have to decide – What do we do now?

These seems to be our options:

1) Vote Donald Trump. Let the nation burn. Let him deport 11 million people and build a wall to keep others out. Embolden all our hidden racists, xenophobes, sexists, homophobes and narcissists. Watch the economy take a nosedive just like many of his businesses did into chapter 11. Watch the Russians laugh it up as the US enters a period of isolationism and cedes power to strongmen across the globe.

No. That’s just not acceptable to me.

2) Vote Hillary Clinton. Defeat Trump but champion all of the neoliberal policies you fought against in the primary. Vote for a supporter of the prison industrial complex. Vote for a war hawk. Vote for someone who may do some good but will almost certainly support the TPP, someone who will continue to giveaway our national wealth to big business while doing very little to help the middle class. Watch as our schools are privatized, de-unionized and closed.

That’s a bitter pill to swallow.

3) Vote Jill Stein. Support a candidate who embodies all the progressive values you fought for during the primary. Vote for action against climate change. Vote to forgive all student debt. Vote to destroy corporate education reform. Vote against unnecessary wars of choice. But have very little chance of any of these policies actually being enacted. And increase the chances of a Trump Presidency. After all, she probably won’t even be on the ballot in some states! How can you win if you aren’t an actual choice!?

That’s hard to accept, too.

4) Don’t Vote for President. Vote for progressives on down ticket races but leave the presidential race blank or maybe even write in Bernie’s name. Send a message that you won’t accept the two-party system. But again increase the chances of President Trump and really who is going to be paying attention to this highly symbolic gesture? What will it get you really?

No. Not acceptable.

These seem to be most of the options. I’m certainly not going to vote Libertarian or for one of the other third party candidates.

So which is the best option?

Damned if I know.

I go back and forth between Hill and Jill.

My biggest problem with Dr. Stein is that there just doesn’t seem to be a clear path to victory. No one other than George Washington has ever won a third party bid for President. Even Ralph Nader who got millions of votes ended up not winning a single district or a single electoral vote.

I’m also disturbed by talk among Green Party members, even Stein herself, saying it doesn’t matter if they win. They just want to have a good showing. They just want to increase the power of the Green Party for the next election cycle and show the establishment that they aren’t to be taken lightly.

I’m all for that, but a Trump Presidency is too high a price to pay for it.

If Jill Stein could provide a clear and believable path to victory, I would vote for her in a second. I would campaign. I would do everything I could to help her win. But as it stands this isn’t even a Hail Mary. It’s not like throwing the ball from one end of the field to the other hoping for a touchdown. It’s like throwing the ball from the parking lot, from the highway, from a neighboring state!

However, voting for Clinton is repugnant.

She represents everything I want to change about American politics. She is the establishment, the status quo.

The best argument in her favor is that she’s not Donald Trump. Voting for her lets us survive as a nation for four more years. Things will be bad but manageable.

As a public school teacher, under Clinton I can expect more support for charter schools, more standardized tests, more corporate school reform. But under Trump it will probably be worse. He is the founder of Trump University, after all. He doesn’t just support school privatization. He actually started a privatized school – if you can call it that. And he doesn’t want just charter schools – he wants vouchers.

Pragmatically, I’d rather have Clinton. But morally it feels like a betrayal of all my ideals.

And that doesn’t even take into account how terrible the Democratic National Commission conducted the primary.

The recent leak of private emails from the DNC paints a picture of favoritism. The party unequivocally worked with the media against Sanders. (And, no, it doesn’t matter so much who leaked these emails and why, if they’re authentic.)

Add to that the widespread allegations of voter suppression in the primary match-up between Clinton and Sanders. In districts that leaned Bernie, voters had to face long lines. Voters registrations were mysteriously changed or they were purged from the rolls so they couldn’t vote for him. Bernie rallies were held in over-packed stadiums while Hillary’s were in much smaller venues – yet the results in these areas somehow favored Clinton. Exit polls consistently showed Bernie winning but the actual votes somehow went to Hillary. Meanwhile the media falsely painted the picture of Clinton inevitability even calling the election for her before all the votes were in.

It is hard to prove that all this subterfuge was enough to sway the election against Bernie. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. However, it is naive to think it didn’t help Hillary to some extent. Maybe quite a lot.

And after all that, I’m supposed to vote for her!? How? The party didn’t support my right to vote unless it was for the establishment choice. But now I’m supposed to actively help these same people gain more power!?

Please excuse me if I find that difficult.

So there we are. I just can’t decide. And I would venture to guess there are many more out there just like me.

To those who have decided one way or another, I’d like to offer some advice when dealing with the rest of us:

1) Don’t call us names. I’ve been called delusional, privileged, sexist, stupid, ridiculous, etc. And may I say that it doesn’t help convince any of us to be ridiculed? In fact, it actually turns us further away from your point of view. And it shows you to be somewhat hysterical. The right choice is by no means obvious.

2)Lay off the scare tactics. If you want to convince someone not to vote for Trump, by all means talk about how terrible he would be as President. If you want to convince someone to vote for Hillary, the horror stories won’t cut it. We need more than that. I’m sure Hillary Clinton has positives. Lead with those. Give us good reasons to vote for her and not just against her opponent.

3) If you want us to vote Green, tell us how Stein can win. We don’t want purely symbolic victories. We need to defeat Trump. Don’t regale us with how screwed up the system is. We already know that. Tell us how voting Green will help reverse it.

Have patience with us. Being undecided is not a comfortable position to be in.

We’re all in this together. We all want the same things. It’s just we don’t all agree how to achieve them.

gadflyonthewallblog

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

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