Schools Matter

Graduation for All Act of 2009

2009-11-20T13:20:00.009-05:00

Introduced today by House Democrats, the Graduation for All Act of 2009 would create a $2 billion grant program from middle and high school turnarounds. While the details are still vague, the website of the Committee on Education and Labor pushes the idea of school turnarounds by allowing a school district to choose from an appropriately mis-named "Model of Success" list, ranging from "transformation to restarting the school as a charter." It's no wonder DFER's President Joe Williams, one of hedge fund trader Whitney Tilson's many puppets, sent out a cheery letter supporting the bill. It's certainly the kind of message pro-charter/voucher crowd likes to hear.

Keep this in mind: the Race to the Top fund is a $4.65 billion pot of cash. For just a chance to win some of this money (and there will be many losers), the whole education establishment is expected to dance willingly to the tune of the oligarchs, private foundations, and corporate interests.

Meanwhile, President Obama is mulling the deployment of 40,000 troops to Afghanistan. That'd cost and additional $40-54 billion per year.

Edison-Operated School Receiving $460,053 from DOE

2009-11-19T18:58:00.003-05:00

In what is certainly yet another sign of "truthiness in education," the Department of Education is handing out nearly 500k to Edison Learning, probably the only charter operator that could challenge Imagine Schools in a contest of pure corruption and greed. Pathway Academy, a K-8 charter school operated by Edison, is the official recipient of this grant, but, just like their Imagine peers, there are plenty of ways for privatizers to wrangle a few bucks out of public education by using non-profits as fronts for their schemes.

One can only hope this isn't the beginning of Duncan's replication plan for the "good" charters...

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Three St. Louis charter schools get federal grants
By: David Hunn
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The U.S. Department of Education has awarded more than $2 million in Charter Schools Program grants to four new Missouri charter schools.
In St. Louis, Shearwater High School, St. Louis Collegiate and Jamaa Learning Center — all slated to open this fall — received three-year grants of more than $500,000 each.
Pathway Academy of Kansas City got $460,053. Pathway, a K-8 school, opened in August. It is managed by EdisonLearning and sponsored by the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
The grants aim to help leaders in planning, program design and opening their schools.
Shearwater High School, focused on dropout recovery and prevention, received $647,541. Shearwater will be sponsored by St. Louis University.
Jamaa Learning Center, a K-8 community school, received $703,266. Jamaa is set to open in the Ville neighborhood of north St. Louis.
St. Louis Collegiate, a college-prep middle and high school, received $524,693. It hopes to serve the Baden neighborhood in north St. Louis.

Gates to Announce $500 Million in Bribes

2009-11-18T12:18:00.003-05:00

In the coming days, the Gates Foundation will officially announce the winners of their $500 million bribe to school districts willing to revamp the teaching profession to improve "teacher effectiveness." In Memphis, for example, Gates allegedly will provide $90 million with the school district ponying up $36 million and local philanthropists chipping in additional $3 million. Pittsburgh Public Schools supposedly has been offered $40 million, with a school board vote scheduled for 6pm tonight. The Hillsborough County School Board (FL) voted yesterday to accept Gates' $100 bribe to change how teachers are "recruited, retained, rewarded and tenured" according to Gates spokesman Chris Williams. The Omaha Public Schools and Gates Foundation developed a $115 million plan to revamp the teaching profession "in part by tying performance to teacher pay" (with the unstated assumption that student achievement = test scores), but OPS withdrew their bid when the couldn't come up with $65 million from the local community (ahem...did anyone bother to ask Bill's buddy, the Oracle of Omaha?). The final potential recipient is a yet-to-be-named group of Los Angeles charter schools...

The Gates Foundation's reliance on and support of high-stakes testing and willingness to use testing data to define good teaching turns "teacher effectiveness" and "student achievement" into Orwellian language where all semblances of critique and thought collapse. One can only wonder exactly how these new teacher evaluation programs will be executed.

Michelle Rhee: Let's Go to the Videotape

2009-11-18T10:39:00.006-05:00

Let's hope the judges in the Rhee case will have a look at this video as they consider the lawsuits, those that have been filed and the dozens yet to come. The choicest clip, among many, comes near the end, with Councilman and Rhee backer, Jack Evan, as arrogant bastard who cares not about the the intent of the law he is sworn to defend:

I don't believe that she overhired with the intent of firing teachers she didn't want there. I don't think that's what happened, and even if it did, so what? . . .

From the NewsHour, reported by John Merrow:

Hungry? No Excuses. Don't know English? No Excuses

2009-11-18T07:42:00.006-05:00

Next year will mark 30 years since the Reagan team came to Washington and began the roll back on civil and human rights gains of the previous two decades. When it became apparent, in fact, that the attempt to close the U. S. Department of Education would fail, the Reagan team shifted its focus to, instead, utilizing the Department's resources to move the education and social agenda away from equity issues and toward a definition of excellence based on test scores, which, of course, is a system of rewards based on family income and wealth. And thus began a generation of classist and racist school testing reforms masked as a meritocracy, a false meritocracy that makes poverty invisible while grinding the poor under the heels of the well-heeled.

And the longer the educational genocide continues against the poor, the angrier we become at the poor, so much so that we saw the President exhorting the poor last summer at the 100th Conference of the NAACP in a way that sounded more like George Wallace than Martin Luther King:

“No one has written your destiny for you,” he said, directing his remarks to “all the other Barack Obamas out there” who might one day grow up to be president. “Your destiny is in your hands, and don’t you forget that. That’s what we have to teach all of our children! No excuses! No excuses!”

Mr. Obama did not acknowledge, of course, that his own destiny that was handed over to him included a Harvard legacy seat as a result of his father's Harvard alum status, or that he grew up in relative prosperity in a safe neighborhood with food and doctors and leafy suburban schools and a mother whose privileges included her whiteness.

(Click chart to enlarge: from WaPo). And so it was that the President seemed no less surprised than the rest of us that his U. S. Department of Agriculture released a report on Monday that showed 1 in 5 children in America hungry--and these numbers are from late 2008, before the effects of the Wall Street heist set in:

In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children -- more than one in five across the United States -- were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million youngsters the year before. And the number of children who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.

Among people of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food, compared with about 11 percent in 2007, the greatest deterioration in access to food during a single year in the history of the report.

Here are a few other relevant notations from Kristof's NYTimes column on Nov. 4:

. . . .The United States ranks 31st in life expectancy (tied with Kuwait and Chile), according to the latest World Health Organization figures. We rank 37th in infant mortality (partly because of many premature births) and 34th in maternal mortality. A child in the United States is two-and-a-half times as likely to die by age 5 as in Singapore or Sweden, and an American woman is 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as a woman in Ireland.

. . . . Yet another study, cited in a recent report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute, looked at how well 19 developed countries succeeded in avoiding “preventable deaths,” such as those where a disease could be cured or forestalled. What Senator Shelby called “the best health care system” ranked in last place.

The figures are even worse for members of minority groups. An African-American in New Orleans has a shorter life expectancy than the average person in Vietnam or Honduras.

And yet the Reagan education agenda of defining opportunity based on wealth continues unabated. In fact, the First Lady this week offered her own mixed message to poor immigrant children in Colorado:

Speaking to a student who had asked whether it's fair to use test scores to measure schools when some students don't speak English well, Mrs. Obama said the tests are "part of the system" and can't be avoided.

"You can fight the tests, or you can work with them and turn them into an advantage," she said.

So, then, Mrs. Obama, there is nothing we can do as a society about the testocracy we have created, but there is something that children can do to turn these abusive and unethical sorting instruments into "an advantage."

Please do say more about that, because I do not know and I do not know anyone who knows what you are talking about. What we do know, if we were to believe the stupidity to which you subscribe, is that all the poor, black, brown, immigrant, and disabled children in America will be proficient in reading and math by 2014, which is a full year ahead of your husband's pledge to eliminate hunger in America by 2015. Perhaps we should set that proficiency target back by a year so the two will coincide, and then we can have one big celebration together.

Imagine to Spread in Fort Wayne

2009-11-17T15:45:00.010-05:00

Oops, looks like someone in Fort Wayne didn't get the memo about Imagine Schools. A new "visionary partnership" between the charter chain and Master Ralph T. White, a TaeKwonDo instructor and CEO of White's School of the Arts Community Development Programs, Inc, will allow Imagine to provide more of their (lucrative) services in Fort Wayne - presumably with the usual Imagine strings attached. "One might think it would take a huge multimilliondollar school corporation to fill the [school]," the article notes, sans any kind of irony.

From the folks at Frost Illustrated, painfully unaware of Imagine's dubious history and rampant corruption:

White's School, Imagine Schools to partner
FORT WAYNE—The building that sits at 2700 E. Maplegrove Drive is huge. Having once housed Village Woods Middle School, the building is packed with classrooms, a cafeteria, gymnasium and office space. In fact, one might think it would take a huge multimilliondollar school corporation to fill the place. But, Master Ralph T. White is a man with big ideas, big dreams and a big heart to match. While the going has been tough at times, especially when it comes to economics and battles with nay-sayers from a number of quarters, Master White and his supporters and coworkers are ready to take those ideas and dreams to another level, thanks to a visionary partnership with Imagine Schools, perhaps the area’s premier charter school system.
Over the past four years, Master White has defied the odds and critics by taking over the once abandoned school building that many said was too big for a private citizen to manage and maintain, and has been turning the campus into a shining beacon of hope and achievement for young people. Now known as White’s School of the Arts Community Developmental Programs, the facility is home to a number of what the founder calls character building programs, including an educational daycare program, science and other programs as well as the piece that started it all—Master White’s acclaimed TaeKwonDo training program. While many might know the school for the hundreds of trophies they have brought back to Fort Wayne from national and international martial arts competitions, Master White explains that TaeKwonDo, while extremely physical in one regard, isn’t about athletics. It’s about self-control and discipline. And, he explains, if a person can control his or her spirit, temperament and emotions, that person can achieve anything, whether it be academically or athletically. But, he says, it all starts with being studious and learning the proper lessons in life.
“We teach them about the true focus of life—academia breeds athletics, not the other way around,” he explained. “We teach them to get their grades up.”
That philosophy permeates every aspect of the work and programming at White’s School of the Arts—a program he actually started more than 20 years ago, that now has evolved into the comprehensive non-profit White’s School of the Arts Community Developmental Programs Inc. And, while one would think everyone would be thrilled to have and support a program that is about getting the best out of the community’s young people, the going hasn’t always been easy for Master White and his dedicated staff. It takes money to get things done and, in tough times, getting the necessary resources can be a challenge. They’ve also had to fight off legal challenges from overzealous inspectors, whispering campaigns by apparently jealous competitors and other tribulations. But, White will tell you that God provides.
[Continued here]

God, in this case, is not the provider: Bakke's predatory charter chain doth giveth, but the Master should also be aware that which is given can also be taken back - and, in Imagine's case, millions can be taken right to the bank.

NB: Master White's organization looks like it does some good stuff - provides food for children during the summer and winter, operates a free medical clinic two days a week, and offers other educational classes. Kudos for providing badly-needed medical services and food for the hungry.

What Level of Corruption Is Required to Deny Imagine Schools, Inc. Another Texas Charter?

2009-11-17T09:19:00.003-05:00

As the corruption of Imagine Schools, Inc. approaches legendary status, and with the major news media now on the trail, we must wonder what evidence of deception, manipulation, and outright lying will be required for the Texas School Board to conclude that the corporate charter schools are as infected with profit fever as any other corporate venture. Public money, no oversight, corporate bottom feeders. From Abby Rapoport for the Texas Tribune (my bolds):

State Board of Education meetings are a little like Austin City Limits — know where to look and there's sure to be entertainment. At this week's gathering, the most bizarre and controversial scenes won't be in the full meetings, but unexpectedly in the Committee on School Initiatives where two Imagine International charters will make their case to receive charter contracts.

The company has a history of contentious school management and questionable non-profit status — the charter school community's nightmare. . . .

. . . .The state board granted Imagine International Academy of North Texas a charter for a school in McKinney in 2008 despite the fact that Imagine did not hold non-profit status. Imagine representatives told the board they would use the nonprofit status of an affiliated charter school... in Indiana. This week, the company will have a chance to defend itself.

But is it actually out to make money?

Matthew Haag at The Dallas Morning News followed the strange story and explained the general business plan:

"Typically, after an Imagine-managed charter school gets approval to open, Schoolhouse Finance, Imagine's real estate arm, purchases a campus and charges the school rent. After the school begins to pay that rent, Schoolhouse sells the campus to a real estate investment trust, which then leases it back to Schoolhouse."

Imagine has become a major business force, with several dozen schools in 12 states — but the states aren't what you'd call happy customers. Newspapers in North Las Vegas, St. Louis and Fort Wayne all report various complaints about the system. According to its annual report, Imagine hopes to expand into South Carolina, California and Texas in 2010.

In the case of Nevada, the schools reportedly spent so much on rent that they struggled to pay for textbooks. In Fort Wayne, the Journal-Gazette reports that local control was effectively ignored by Imagine Schools, Inc.

Haag quoted Barry White, the company's chief financial officer, saying the company's real estate deals are "transparent" and the company's interest is in offering quality education.

According to Haag's research, the schools spend up to 40 percent of their state allotment — money per pupil that comes from the state — to pay for real estate. Two principals, one in North Las Vegas and one in Fort Wayne, claim they were fired for asking too many questions about rent. The schools all contract with Imagine Schools, Inc., a company based in Virginia, for operations. In Florida, several schools failed to open after local and state leaders complained about the out-of-state management.

In Texas, when the state board offered Imagine its charter, it wasn't without strings. The would-be schools have to conform to a list of requirements, which includes proving its nonprofit status. Since then, four of its five board members have quit, saying the company wants to run the schools and doesn't have regard for local control.

Thursday, Imagine will make its presentation to the board, as they also propose another school in Georgetown.

"They’re still working out some of their contingencies," said SBOE Chair Gail Lowe, who said she was eager to hear their side of things.

It should be a show worth watching.

Breakfast at Edna's (Backroom), Starring Arne Duncan and Chicago's Top Political Posers

2009-11-17T08:34:00.008-05:00

Today we go the vault of golden oldies to remember the good ole days in Chicago, when Daley's henchmen played out their well-rehearsed Kabuki roles aimed to preserve their relationships with their constituencies while actually stabbing them in the back, or in the backroom, anyway.

A backroom deal in Chicago?
By Jesse Sharkey | March 10, 2006 | Page 2

CHICAGO ACTIVISTS opposed to a school-closing plan broke in on a backroom meeting that they believe was aimed at sealing the deal. Top school officials were found at a popular West Side restaurant Edna's--across the table from U.S. Rep. Danny Davis and state Sen. Ricky Hendon, whose districts include Collins High School, one of the schools slated to close.

Last month, the Chicago Board of Education (CBOE) voted unanimously to close four Chicago schools as part of its citywide privatization plan, called Renaissance 2010. The closings, announced a month earlier, aroused an outpouring of anger at the four high schools--Frazier, Farren, Morse and Collins--and the surrounding communities, all poor Black neighborhoods.

Davis and Hendon were among the most militant-sounding critics of the closures plan. At a town-hall meeting against the Collins closing, Davis and Hendon both denounced the city's plan as racist, and emphasized their long connection to the North Lawndale neighborhood. "We're going to show them how we fight," Hendon told the cheering crowd.

Several days later, at the CBOE hearing, Hendon threatened to cut off funding if the Collins closure went through. "You're not going to see a penny," he told Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan.

But Hendon seems to have been sending a different message behind the scenes. Last month, neighborhood activists spotted Hendon, Davis, Duncan and CBOE President Michael Scott in a back room at Edna's. Scott is also a local real estate developer with substantial business interests in the gentrifying West Side neighborhood.

After being alerted about the gathering, reporters from a local public access show, Hood News, burst into the room, with video rolling. "Is this the sellout crew?" the reporter asked. "Is this a secret meeting about Collins High School?" Ricky Hendon told the reporters, "Kiss my ass!" while Davis went for his cell phone and called police.

None of the participants would tell reporters what was on the agenda for the secret meeting. It is illegal under the Illinois Open Meetings Act for multiple elected officials to meet about policy in secret.

But it soon became clear what deal had been made when the board announced that Collins High School would close as planned--but only for one year, according to the board.

Hendon and his supporters hailed this as a victory, but the board had only ever planned to leave Collins closed for a year. Under Renaissance 2010, the board's scheme is to reopen closed schools as new charter schools, with new students and nonunion teachers.

Far from a victory, Hendon's deal gave the board exactly what they wanted--while delivering nothing to the teachers, parents and students in the neighborhood he and Davis pledged to represent.

Will Foreign Students Save Liberal Arts in American Universities?

2009-11-16T18:06:00.004-05:00

As the corporate education reformers now have the American university system clearly in their sites, the standardista critique of American higher ed escalates at the same rate as increasing demands for more scientists and technicians, hybrid courses and virtual learning. Gotta love that term.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports record numbers of Chinese, Indian, and Middle Eastern students coming to U. S. for a college education. And many of them are coming for something the Oligarchs and the corporatists would extinguish, if they could, as an inefficient waste of money--a liberal arts education.

As an indicator of where the priorities are today and who is setting them, last week a panel was assembled by the philanthrocapitalist's Chronicle of Higher Ed, to address the central question: Who should receive a college education? Of all the geniuses assembled to address this question, not one liberal arts spokesman was included. Counselors, economists, racists (Charles Murray), administrators, but not one historian, artist, or psychologist. Hey, forget philosophers.

Perhaps, then, if we can get enough foreign enrollment in our colleges, the liberal arts may survive for at least another generation. Perhaps by then all the right wing think tanks will out of business as a result of their success, and then, perhaps, we can get on with where education left off before the bean counter paradigm came to full flower.

. . . .The number of international students exceeded the past peak enrollment year, 2002-3, by 14.5 percent. In 2008-9, undergraduate enrollment rose 11 percent, compared with only a 2 percent increase in graduate enrollment.
In China, that shift has been quite sharp. Last year, China sent 26,275 undergraduates and 57,451 graduate students to the United States — compared with 8,034 undergraduates and 50,976 graduate students five years earlier.
Ms. Blumenthal said the growing share of undergraduates would change the face of the Chinese students’ presence in the United States.
“It used to be that they were all in the graduate science departments, but now, with the one-child policy, more and more Chinese parents are taking their considerable wealth and investing it in that one child getting an American college education,” she said. “There’s a book getting huge play in China right now explaining liberal arts education.”
The book, “A True Liberal Arts Education,” by three Chinese undergraduates from Bowdoin College, Franklin & Marshall College and Bucknell University, describes the education available at small liberal arts colleges, and the concept of liberal arts, both relatively unknown in China.
Meanwhile, many large public universities are devoting new resources to building up their share of international undergraduates. The State University of New York, for example, recently made Mitch Leventhal the vice chancellor for global affairs. Mr. Leventhal, who at the University of Cincinnati helped build a network of ties abroad, expects to increase undergraduate recruiting, especially in India and China.
“There’s growing disposable income in China, and not enough good universities to meet the demand,” he said. “And in China, especially, studying in the United States is a great differentiator, because when students get home, they speak English.”
Although the report tracks only the 2008-9 numbers, a smaller survey by the institute last month found that over all, the increase in international students seems to be continuing, with China remaining strong. Of the institutions surveyed this fall, 60 percent reported an increase in Chinese students, and only 11 percent a decline. In contrast, the number of institutions reporting increases in their enrollment of Indian students equaled the number reporting declines.
The survey also found continuing growth this year in the number of students from the Middle East, and continuing declines in the numbers from Japan.

Arizona Charter Schools Accept Average As Excellent

2009-11-16T16:55:00.004-05:00

Kudos to Nick Anderson at WaPo for reporting some of the facts about corporate charter schools. A clip (my bolds):

. . . .Advocates say charter schools . . . have influenced regular schools for the better. Critics call those claims overblown. Arizona State University education professor Gene Glass said he could show a visitor "exciting stuff" in at least 50 regular public schools.

Through test scores, Arizona rates about 24 percent of charter schools as "excelling" or "highly performing." About 37 percent of regular public schools win those marks.

"There's nothing to learn from these charter schools," Glass said. "There's so much mythology about this."

Obama contends that there is much to learn. His $4.35 billion Race to the Top education reform competition aims to lure states to expand the number of high-quality charter schools, which the president said in July would "force the kind of experimentation and innovation that helps to drive excellence in every other aspect of life."

It remains unknown whether states will heed Obama's call, though some have taken modest steps to ease charter restrictions. Eighteen years after Minnesota passed the first charter law, 4,700 charter schools are in operation nationwide. But 10 states have no charter laws, and many have caps on charter schools or give sole authorizing power to local school boards, which are often reluctant to approve a competitor.

The rapid growth of D.C. charter schools shows their appeal in urban areas where regular schools often struggle to lift the achievement of disadvantaged students. Arizona is an example to states such as Virginia and Maryland that good charter schools can compete anywhere. But weeding out weak schools and boosting underperformers can be tricky.

Dropping and flunking out
Arizona has revoked four charters since 2007, one for academic problems and the rest for management issues. Two dozen other charters were surrendered for various reasons, some academic. Now the State Board for Charter Schools, which oversees the sector, is preparing for the first round of charter renewals in state history.

Much is at stake. Arizona charters last 15 years -- longer than it takes a kindergartner to finish high school. Renewals last 20.

In South Phoenix, NFL YET (for "youth education town") College Prep Academy is preparing to apply for renewal next year. Latino leaders launched the school in the mid-1990s. They sought to create a safe harbor in what co-founder Armando Ruiz recalled as a dangerous neighborhood of junked cars, vacant lots, tire dumps and dilapidated apartments.

The school won a $1 million grant from the NFL when the Super Bowl came to Phoenix in 1996 and an additional $1.5 million when it returned in 2008. The grants funded an academic building, two athletic fields and a campus expansion.

Self-esteem and character education are big at this school of roughly 300 students in grades 7 to 12. The word of the week, written one afternoon on whiteboards, was "moral." Some of the uniformed students study leadership in addition to taking honors classes.

"How many of you have eaten in a restaurant where there's a basket of bread?" the leadership teacher asked in a lesson on manners. "What do you do? Where does it go?" She followed up: "You have a little bowl of little balls of butter -- what do you do with that?"

Frank Duarte teaches pre-calculus and aims to start what would be the school's only AP class within a year. "My job is to get to know them and to hook them," he said. "After that, I don't let 'em breathe. It's bam-bam-bam: 'You are going to learn. You can learn.' "

"People don't think we can do as much because we're from the Southside," said Samantha Gardiner, 17, a senior who aspires to attend Northern Arizona University. "That's what's good about this school: They tell us, 'Even though you're from the Southside, you're going to do great things and change the world.' "

For all the zeal of teachers and students, Ruiz acknowledged that the school he leads hasn't lived up to ambitions. Its key state test scores are below average and stagnant, its course offerings somewhat less than challenging.

"We got off-track," Ruiz said. "Why? The hard thing to maintain is the intensity of excellence. About three years ago, we accepted average as being excellent."

NCTE Sells Out: Supports Learn Act

2009-11-16T09:59:00.003-05:00

Suddenly I am ashamed to have ever been a member. From Dr. Krashen's blog:

The NCTE is supporting the LEARN act and asks NCTE members to support it. (http://www.ncte.org/action/alerts/learn)

I do not support the LEARN Act. As described in the Senate Bill, the LEARN Act is Reading First expanded to all levels. It is Reading First on steroids.

The methods required by LEARN are nearly identical to those promoted by NCLB and Reading First: "… systematic, and explicit instruction in phonological awareness, phonic decoding, vocabulary, reading fluency, and reading comprehension."

The Senate bill lists the same areas of instruction that were in the report of the National Reading Panel, which was heavily criticized by some of the most respected scholars in the field. These principles were used by Reading First, which failed every empirical test. LEARN assumes that direct instruction is the only way children become literate, that "The intellectual and linguistic skills necessary for writing and reading must be developed through explicit, intentional, and systematic language activities …" and assumes that there is no contrary view.

LEARN endorses excessive testing, requiring "diagnostic, formative and summative assessments … at all levels." This is an astonishing recommendation at a time when
children are already overwhelmed with tests, when schools are being turned into test-prep academies, and when education is facing severe budget cuts. It also presumes that we do not trust our teachers to evaluate their students.

There is no mention of the most important factor in developing literacy: quality school and classroom libraries, and professional librarians in all schools. The Senate bill only mentions "making available and using diverse texts at the reading, development, and interest level of students" and mentions "library media specialists" only once.

I must ask if those at NCTE who endorse this proposal have actually read it.

Rhee Gets Carats While Everyone Else Gets Sticks

2009-11-16T08:32:00.005-05:00

Will Adrian Fenty sacrifice himself in the next election to hold on the Queen of Pain, Michelle Rhee, who is arguably the divisive character to ever come to life from the corporate education planning boards of Eli Broad. The underlying question, of course, is does Fenty even have a say in the matter, when his political career is owned by the Oligarchs? Some questions for Michelle Rhee, as reported by Bill Turque:

. . . ."Considering his backing and considering the centrality of education to what he's trying to accomplish, how responsible will you feel or would you feel if Mayor Fenty were not re-elected?"

"Very responsible," Rhee said. "When he hired me he told me this was his number one priority and that he was willing to risk his entire political career in the pursuit of trying to fix the schools. The decisions we have made...were not always things that would guarantee harmony among adults."

Rhee described a recent senior staff meeting in which an unidentified official said the administration was "losing the PR battle" over school budget cuts and teacher layoffs.

Paraphrasing Fenty's response, Rhee said: "It doesn't matter if we lose the PR battle. And, in fact, it doesn't even matter if we lose the re-election as long as we are operating with the endgame in mind. And for us, that is improving the schools. We're not going to compromise any step of the way in that. And if I'm not re-elected then we'll go down in history as the only administration that made every decision in what we believed to be the best interests of children instead of what was in the best interests of getting re-elected."

In a lighter vein, someone asked how she relaxed when she took her "game face off." Her answer: she doesn't.

"I always have the game face on. It's sort of part of my personality. I'm driven by my work....When I don't have my kids with me I want to work."

Pressed for details about her recent engagement to Sacramento mayor and former NBA star Kevin Johnson, she said they would discuss a wedding date this weekend and that the imposing diamond on her finger was three carats. Of Johnson's proposal, she said only:

"I have to say it was very effective."

Duncan's Race to Reward the Lemmings

2009-11-15T22:44:00.003-05:00

The more I hear about this Bribe to the Flop, the more it sounds like just what we finally need to help states develop the courage they need to tell Duncan to take his dirty money and go to hell with it. As Chad Matlin's commentary in Slate notes, most states will end up getting nothing, any way you slice it.

In making sure that the losers are many, Duncan will assure new levels of resistance to the other federalized corporate education reforms like a national curriculum and national tests that the Oligarchs are hoping to roll out. Who knows--this could help to re-energize a public school renewal movement based on local elected control, while winning new levels of antipathy toward any further corporate attempt at renewal of NCLB. Now that would be some change I could believe in.

A clip from "The Race to the Bottom:"

. . . .The states that win the Race to the Top grants will reinvest the money back into the schools to help fortify reform. There are two rounds of awards. Everyone is free to apply both times, and the losers in the first round will get advice on how to do better the next time. It’s unclear how many states will be the cream of the crop—some estimate a dozen—but we know that the winners will get money and a major financial boost. Everybody else, meanwhile, won’t have met the administration’s criteria. They’re left SOL and will have to figure out how to reform their systems without federal help.

And so the winner-loser paradigm segregates states into two classes: those that have reformed according to Obama’s ideals and those that haven’t (or at least haven’t enough). But rather than give catch-up money to the states that have fallen behind the administration is rewarding those that have already done well. The administration would like you to think that this is the equivalent of getting extra credit or a gold star for a job especially well done. (“Rewarding excellence” is their terminology.) But it’s really like a teacher staying after-school to tutor only the teacher’s pets. The students who really need the help are the ones who are being ignored. And once they know the teacher doesn’t have the time to pay attention to them, there’s little incentive to keep trying to please.

On a conference call with reporters Thursday afternoon, someone asked Education Secretary Arne Duncan whether he thought the program would leave some states behind. Duncan responded with a flat “No,” saying that with all the other education stimulus money pumped into the system (more than $100 billion), no state was in this situation.

But then how will the losing states catch up? Duncan hinted that the administration hopes this issue will resolve itself. “We want to reward those states and those districts that have the courage and the political will to do that, and we think other states will follow.” Other states will follow. Two problems with this. First, how are they going to follow if they don’t have the money to do so? Second, what’s the incentive for them to follow through on reform without a big, Race to the Top-type reward? The behavioral economics don’t pan out.
After the call I asked Department of Education spokesman Justin Hamilton how they expected states to catch up. He was hesitant to get into hypotheticals. As no state has been refused money yet, he didn’t want to imagine how they’ll keep up with the states that will emerge as winners. . . . .

More on Bay Area KIPP Attrition Rates

2009-11-15T17:49:00.002-05:00

Many thanks to Caroline Grannan, who sent these comments that are extremely relevant to this earlier post on the KIPP attrition rates that go unreported in the corporate media:

One thing that the study on KIPP attrition that you cite did not research was the ethnic breakout of the students who "left." But I've done some of that (as an unpaid volunteer advocate for public education). So here is some critical additional information!

This is research that I did in February 2007 on KIPP Bridge Academy in Oakland, Calif.:

Here are the figures for KIPP Bridge's class that finished 8th grade in 2006:

Total enrollment, all demographics:
87 students started 5th grade in 02-03;
60 continued to 6th grade in 03-04;
50 continued to 7th grade in 04-05;
36 continued to 8th grade in 05-06.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Those are fall statistics, so we don't know how many actually finished 8th grade and were promoted to high school.
Similar pattern for the class that is to finish 8th grade in 2007:
82 started 5th grade in 03-04;
78 continued to 6th grade in 04-05;
47 continued to 7th grade in 05-06;
number who finished 8th grade unknown.

African-American boys:
35 started 5th grade in 02-03;
19 continued to 6th grade in 03-04;
15 continued to 7th grade in 04-05;
8 continued to 8th grade in 05-06.

Again, those are fall figures, so we don't know how many finished 8th grade and were promoted to high school. This means 77% of the African-American boys who started at this KIPP school either left or were retained to repeat a grade (this is unknowable unless KIPP chooses to tell us) by the FALL of 8th grade. We also don't know, unless KIPP chooses to tell us, how many of those eight finished 8th grade and went on to high school.

I looked at figures for all then-nine California KIPP schools when I did that research. Six of them showed that same clear pattern -- high attrition, but far higher for the most academically challenged demographic subgroup -- either African-American boys or Latino boys. The SRI study that you cite was done AFTER I did my research, and confirms it, except that as I say, that study didn't break out the attrition by ethnicity.

When Your Charter School CEO Doesn't Pay the Rent

2009-11-15T08:33:00.004-05:00

The testimony of Sister Hughes in the Jubilee Journal, 0/23/08:

Sis. DeVondalyn Hughes: With a degree from Florida State University, she was ready to pursue her dream of teaching. From the moment she graduated, she encountered many obstacles that kept her from the classroom. On the verge of giving up, the Lord blessed her with a wonderful job…ajob that was offered to her and taken away in the same day. That prompted her to fall on her knees again and contend with God for deliverance. He answered her. Now with a Master’s Degree in hand, God has blessed her with a good job and she continues to pursue her dream of having her own school.

And, lo, a school was provided, a charter school without earthly requirements or restrictions. And Arne said, it is good.

Apparently the Lord did not tell Sister Hughes, CEO of the Patterson Academy, that she had to pay her teachers or pay the rent at the empty office building that served as school.

Just another day in the corporate education reform world relieved of burdensome restrictions, oversight, or standards. Praise the Lord, and pass that $500,000, please: "Charter schools apply to the school board for a license and public funding, but operate more like a private school. Johnson said Patterson Academy received a $250,000 start-up grant and has received $250,190 in additional funding since July."

From newsjacksonville.com:

Duval County's rocky experience with charter schools continued Friday when Patterson Academy for the Arts was evicted from its Arlington location, leaving more than 70 students wondering where to show up for school Monday.

The academy's students were told Friday between 10:30 and 11 a.m. to leave the school, located in the old FBI building at 7820 Arlington Expressway.
The school's principal, De Vondalyn Patterson-Hughes, did not return calls for comment. Amnon Pri-Hadash the owner of the school's landlord, Hollywood-based HAI Investments, could also not be reached.

The first-year charter school had fallen behind on paying its employees and its rent, according to a Nov. 3 letter it received from Duval County Public Schools. The letter also stated that the academy had been served two eviction notices by Nov. 2.

The school started this year on shaky ground. It faced closure in late August because of a lack of health permits and safety testing. The school provided enough documentation to remain open in August.

Evonne Allen, whose son attends the school, said she received a phone call from her son about 10:30 a.m. giving her the news.

"Ms. De Vondalyn came in very politely," she said, recounting her son's call, "and told us all that we need to leave."

Allen said she believes in the school and wants it to be successful. She reserved judgment on the eviction until she hears from Patterson-Hughes.

Jill Johnson, spokeswoman for Duval County Public Schools, said the district is advising parents to contact the academy on Monday to see if it is open. If not, parents are advised to call the district's school choice office at 390-2144 to see what charter or non-charter school options are available.

There hasn't been a history of success with charter schools in Duval. Nine of the 14 charter schools that opened between 1997 and 2008 have closed. Those schools were plagued by a variety of problems, including insolvency, highly questionable money transactions and poor performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. One school was caught cheating on FCAT.

topher.sanders@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4169

The Three Stooges Go to School

2009-11-14T19:29:00.006-05:00

(Since Michael Bloomberg won re-election, Moe will now be played by Arne Duncan. Photo by Jed Kirschbaum, AP).

The hilarious trio took their political antics on the road Friday to a KIPP school in Baltimore. There to lightheartedly promote their support for segregated total compliance testing camps that focus on fixing children's minds rather than their impoverished neighborhoods and schools, the wise-cracking trio sat in on a class that, ironically, was studying what it means to be enslaved. Talk about a teachable moment!

Between some "incredible" and "unbelievable" comedy by Moe, Curly, and Larry, Moe had this to say:

Everywhere we're going, we're seeing not incremental change, not slight change, but dramatic change - exponential growth. And our challenge, and our opportunity, is how do you take to scale what's working," Duncan said. "For all the challenges we face, and they are huge, I'm unbelievably hopeful about where we're going.

Unbelievable, isn't it. Incredible, too. Huge.

What is not incredible, but very credible, in fact, is that the "exponential growth" that the Stooges are seeing at the KIPP cults they visit comes with a big premium that is paid in the large number of children who become pushouts and dropouts. In the only KIPP schools that have been systematically studied (pdf here), five Bay Area KIPPs lost 60% of their students between 5th and 8th grade:

Together, the four schools began with a combined total of 312 fifth graders in 2003-04, and ended with 173 eighth graders in 2006-07. The number of eighth graders includes new students who entered KIPP after fifth grade (p.12).

And here is another unbelievably believable bit of data regarding teacher attrition that is never brought to light at the Stooges' media circuses:

Since 2003-04, the five Bay Area KIPP school leaders have hired a total of 121 teachers. Of these, 43 remained in the classroom at the start of the 2007-08 school year. Among teachers who left the classroom, at four of the schools they spent a median of 1 year in the classroom before leaving; at one school, the typical teacher spent 2 years in the classroom before leaving (32).

Do these numbers present a problem for the corporate education reform movement, which pretends to use KIPP as a "scalable" model for the perpetuation of segregated containment schools? An incredible and unbelievable one, I'd say.

Hoxby Charter Study Turns Hoaxby

2009-11-14T09:07:00.004-05:00

I was at Substance News this morning enjoying the work of the Schmidt Team when I came across some important news I had missed. No doubt I would still be missing it if it were not for Substance News, for the research review by EPIC and EPRU announced below remains ignored by corporate editorial boards everywhere.

Jennifer Medina did have a brief, buried blog post in the NYTimes Saturday regional news, but you can be sure that the deflation of the gaseous Hoxby hoax will not be reported as news anywhere--it simply does not conform to the corporate education reform narrative, particularly since it is, yet, another loud smackdown to the anti-scientific approach to education policy being taken by Team Obama/Gates/Broad.

When the history is written on this sad episode of American educational policy, Arne Duncan will, no doubt, make Margaret Spellings seem, well, 99.44% pure.

The Press Release from EPIC at the University of Colorado:

Headline-Grabbing Charter School Study Doesn’t Hold Up To Scrutiny
Reviewer finds serious statistical flaws in research on NYC charter schools
Contact: Sean Reardon, (650) 736-8517 (office); (617) 251-4782 (cell); sean.reardon@stanford.edu
Kevin Welner, (303) 492-8370; kevin.welner@colorado.edu
Gary Miron, (269) 599-7965; gary.miron@wmich.edu

BOULDER, Colo. and TEMPE, Ariz. (November 12, 2009) -- A recent report on New York City charter schools found achievement results at the charters to be better than comparison traditional schools. But that report relies on a flawed statistical analysis, according to a new review.

The report is How New York City's Charter Schools Affect Achievement and was written by Caroline Hoxby, Sonali Murarka, and Jenny Kang. When it was released in late September, it was enthusiastically and uncritically embraced by charter advocates as well as media outlets. The Washington Post offered an editorial titled, "Charter Success. Poor children learn. Teachers unions are not pleased." The editorial's first paragraph reads:

"Opponents of charter schools are going to have to come up with a new excuse: They can't claim any longer that these non-traditional public schools don't succeed. A rigorous new study of charter schools in New York City demolishes the argument that charter schools outperform traditional public schools only because they get the 'best students.' This evidence should spur states to change policies that inhibit charter-school growth. It also should cause traditional schools to emulate practices that produce these remarkable results."

The editorial argues throughout that the study provides unquestionable evidence that charters result in improved student achievement. It ends, "Now the facts are in."

The New York Daily News was no less effusive: "It's official. From this day forward, those who battle New York's charter school movement stand conclusively on notice that they are fighting to block thousands of children from getting superior educations."

Because of the declared importance of the new report, we asked Professor Sean Reardon to carefully examine the report's strengths and weaknesses for the Think Tank Review Project and write a review that would help others use the study in a sensible way. Reardon, like the report's lead author Hoxby, is a professor at Stanford University. He is an expert on research methodology.

The Hoxby report estimates the effects on student achievement of attending a New York City charter school rather than a traditional public school. A key finding, repeated in press reports throughout the U.S., compares the cumulative effect of attending a New York City charter school for nine years (from kindergarten through eighth grade) to the magnitude of average test score differences between students in Harlem and the wealthy New York community of Scarsdale. The report estimates this cumulative effect at roughly 66% of the "Scarsdale-Harlem gap" in English and roughly 86% of the gap in math.

In his review, Reardon observes that the report "has the potential to add usefully to the growing body of evidence regarding the effectiveness of charter schools." New York charter schools' use of randomized lotteries to admit students to charter schools offers the possibility that the study of those schools can roughly approximate laboratory conditions.

But Reardon points out that the report's key findings are grounded in an unsound analysis -- an inappropriate set of statistical models -- and that the report's authors never provide crucial information that would allow readers to more thoroughly evaluate "its methods, results, or generalizability."

Reardon's review notes these shortcomings in the report:

In measuring the effects of charter schooling on students in grades 4 through 12, the study relies on statistical models that include test scores from the previous year, measured after the admission lotteries take place. Yet because of that timing, those scores could be affected by whether students attend a charter school. As a consequence, the statistical models "destroy the benefits of the randomization" that is a strength of the study's design. (The use of a different model makes the results for students in grades K-3 more credible, he notes.)

The report's claims regarding the cumulative effects of attending a New York City charter school from kindergarten through eighth grade are based on an inappropriate extrapolation.

It uses a weaker criterion for statistical significance than is conventionally used in social science research (0.05), referring to p-values of roughly 0.15 as "marginally statistically significant".

The report describes the variation in charter school effects across schools in a way that may distort the true distribution of effects by omitting many ineffective charter schools from the distribution.

Reardon explains that, as a result of the flaws in the report's statistical analysis, the report "likely overstates the effects of New York City charter schools on students' cumulative achievement, though it is not possible -- given the information missing from the report -- to precisely quantify the extent of overestimation." This, as well as the lack of detailed information in the report to assess the extent of that bias, make it impossible for readers to know whether the report's estimated charter school effects are in fact valid.

"Policymakers, educators, and parents should therefore not rely on these estimates until the bias issues have been fully investigated and the analysis has undergone rigorous peer review."

According to Professor Kevin Welner, director of the University of Colorado at Boulder's Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC): "Readers of this review will understand that, while Hoxby's charter school study is a contribution, it has significant flaws and limitations. Unfortunately, the editorial reaction of otherwise-respectable media outlets trumpeted the New York City findings as the final and faultless word on charter school performance. In fact, the study used inappropriate methods that overstate the performance of the charter schools it studied."

Welner notes that the Think Tank Review Project also recently reviewed another charter school study, released in June by Stanford's CREDO policy center. That study encompassed 65-70% of the nation's charter schools. "Our review pointed out a number of limitations but also noted the relative strength and comprehensiveness of the data set, the solid analytic approaches of the CREDO researchers, and the important fact that the CREDO results were consistent with a large body of research showing charter schools overall to be performing no better than (and perhaps worse than) traditional public schools," Welner says. But he added that "the CREDO and Hoxby reports used different designs and covered different schools. They are not directly comparable, nor are we able to say which is 'better.' Neither report is definitive or without notable weaknesses."

Welner concludes, "the important thing to understand is that if, after an appropriate reanalysis of the data, we still find that New York City's charter schools are in fact bucking the national trend, the sensible next step is for researchers to explore the causes rather than to jump to broad conclusions that fly in the face of the overall research base. It would be irresponsible to use the NYC results -- even if they were valid and reliable -- to drive policy in places throughout the U.S. where charters are apparently underperforming their competition."

Find Sean Reardon's review on the web at:
http://epicpolicy.org/thinktank/review-How-New-York-City-Charter

Find the NYC report by Hoxby and her colleagues at:
http://www.nber.org/~schools/charterschoolseval/

CONTACT:
Sean F. Reardon
Associate Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology
Stanford University
(650) 736-8517 (office); (617) 251-4782 (cell)
sean.reardon@stanford.edu

Kevin Welner, Professor and Director
Education and the Public Interest Center
University of Colorado at Boulder
(303) 492-8370
kevin.welner@colorado.edu

Gary Miron, Professor of Education
Western Michigan University
(269) 599-7965
gary.miron@wmich.edu

About the Think Tank Review Project

The Think Tank Review Project (http://thinktankreview.org), a collaborative project of the University of Colorado at Boulder Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) and the ASU Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU), provides the public, policy makers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank publications. The project is made possible by funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

EPIC and EPRU collaborate to produce policy briefs in addition to think tank reviews. Our goal is to promote well-informed democratic deliberation about education policy by providing academic as well as non-academic audiences with useful information and high quality analyses.

Visit EPIC and EPRU at http://www.educationanalysis.org/

EPIC and EPRU are members of the Education Policy Alliance
(http://educationpolicyalliance.org).

Keeping America Great with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet

2009-11-13T11:26:00.004-05:00

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet recently sat down at Columbia University with a crowd of MBA students for a program called, "Keeping America Great." An unofficial transcript is available here, but I wanted to point readers to one very important question posed by a member of the audience:

QUESTION: My name is Brian, first-year student here at Columbia. And I run a business school right now and seems to me a lot of the villains in the full credit crisis were business school graduates. To what extent do you guys think that business schools like Columbia were in some sense responsible for what transpired in the credit crisis?
GATES: Well, remember that capitalism has been massively successful, you know. Standard of life, medicine, all these great things have come out of it. And business schools play a role in training people to think about value, leadership. There's wonderful skills that are taught at great schools like this. And so the fact that, yes, we have had a crisis and we have dropped back, maybe we wasted two or three years net because of the things that were done wrong, that doesn't say that business schools aren't performing a great service, you know. The case studies of this crisis will be taught here for decades to come. And so at least we'll get that benefit out of the pain we went through...

"Capitalism has been massively successful," Gates says, dodging the question almost entirely. The late Gerald Bracey suggested we look at what is (and isn't) taught at America's B-schools to understand the financial conundrum we've gotten into. Looks like Bill missed that all-too-important Bracey memo.

The supercapitalists minds of Bill and Warren, however, fail to acknowledge that not all forms of capitalism are the same. Consider this excerpt from a recent DemocracyNow! interview of John Perkins, a self-described former "economic hit-man" and author of a number of highly-recommended books:

But I think what’s—you know, what’s really important about all this is that in this period of time, since the 1970s, and really beginning very strongly in the 1980s, we’ve created what I consider a mutant, viral form of capitalism. Earlier on the program, you showed the statistics of 37 percent of the people in the survey not believing that capitalism is working. I don’t think the failure is capitalism. I think it’s the specific kind of capitalism that we’ve developed in the last thirty or forty years, particularly beginning with the time of Reagan and Milton Friedman’s economic theories, which stress that the only goal of business is to maximize profit, regardless of the social and environmental costs, and not to regulate businesses at all—regulation is bad, all forms—and to privatize everything, so that everything is run by private business. And this mutant form of capitalism, which I think is really a predatory form of capitalism, has created an extremely unstable, unsustainable, unjust and very, very dangerous world.

But, in the minds of supercapitalists like Gates and Buffet, capitalism only exists in one form, and that one form is the best we can do. You wont find nuanced thought about capitalism coming from two men with a combined net worth approaching $100 billion. For that much money you can be awfully blind about the issues facing real people and no one will raise to challenge your beliefs - particularly not at Ivy League B schools.

Marion Brady's Truthout Essay

2009-11-13T08:00:00.002-05:00

Here is is the opening of Marion Brady's essay that appeared earlier this week at Truthout:

Sooner or later, a reluctant Congress is going to have to do something about replacing No Child Left Behind. If senators and representatives will listen, they'll learn why Education Secretary Arne Duncan's "Race to the Top" initiative is a really bad idea, and why thoughtful educators think politicians, business leaders and wealthy philanthropists are bulls in the education china shop.

Back in the 1980's, corporate America, listening to privatizer Milton Friedman, came storming into the shop, not to buy, not to examine or talk about the stock, but to evict educators and take over. With the help of state governors, Congress and the mainstream media, this they did. Professional educators weren't just fired. Convinced that experienced teachers were tainted by "the soft bigotry of low expectations," the self-styled "New Progressives" barred them from the premises.

Non-educators have now been in near-total control of US education policy for more than a full kindergarten-through-12th grade cycle, and things aren't going well. Lou Gerstner, ex-CEO of IBM, RJR Nabisco and The Carlyle Group, a leader in the takeover of education by corporate interests, admitted in a December 1, 2008, op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, "We must start with the recognition that, despite decade after decade of reform efforts, our public schools have not improved."

Those who follow educational issues carefully enough to see past the public relations hype, the test-score manipulations and the statistical game playing, will agree.

Gerstner advocates nationalizing the "standards and accountability" approach. And so, apparently, do the new administration, state governors, the conservative Business Roundtable, the liberal Center for American Progress and educators who should know better. Notwithstanding the ideological "big government is bad" reversal it requires many to make, and notwithstanding the US Constitution's provision that educating is a state rather than a national responsibility, "national standards" probably has enough of a no-nonsense ring to it to counter the philosophical misgivings of most states' righters.

Before Congress opens the national standards and testing can of worms, it might want to examine more closely the assumptions about public education to which the New Progressives cling. Those assumptions are at odds with research and the facts on the ground, but are held with such conviction that behind-the-scenes strategies (including the use of industry-sponsored front groups) have been set in furious motion to convince politicians and the public that the assumptions aren't just valid, but that basing education policy on them assures the success of America's "Race to the Top." . . . .

Read the rest here.

In Today's Non-News: NY Times Praises Final "Bribe to the Flop" Rules

2009-11-12T07:55:00.003-05:00

We know that when the Editorial Board's pocket reporter, Sam Dillon, wants to know about charter schools, he goes to Jeanne Allen, whose corporate advocacy outfit is dedicated to the promotion of charters. And when he wants to know about teacher quality, he goes to leading right-wing teacher basher for NCTQ, Kate Walsh. And when he wants to get the real dope on ed policy, he turns to prominent right wing prostitute, Rick Hess, of AEI. Here is an article from a few days back that has all three featured in the same piece of "reporting."

Today's headline says it all: After Criticism, the Administration Is Praised for Final Rules on Education Grants.
Upon reading the article, we find that none of the corporate reformer priorities has changed, and the "praise" that Dillon has gone looking for is as scarce as hen's teeth. The facts are acknowleged here by the reptilian Rahm Emanuel:

“Even after all the comments, the rules are as comprehensive and demanding as before, they haven’t changed,” said Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, in an interview. “We’re seeking reforms, so we haven’t backed off anything.”

The headline, no doubt, was written for the benefit of those who read just headlines.

Gates Backs $30 Million in KIPP Bonds

2009-11-11T10:44:00.007-05:00

"Like Mom and Dad backing us to buy a home, the Gates Foundation agreed to a total of $30 million in credit enhancements. So we are still responsible for the loan, but the bank knows if we're in trouble they can go to Mom and Dad," Feinberg said.

Feinberg said it best: the Gates Foundation is "Mom and Dad," particularly for the "no excuses" KIPP chaingangs and their multiple copycats. The $30 million in backed bonds is part of a $400 million pot of cash to be used for investments - not donations - in program-related expenses. In this case, Gates can back the $30 million without assuming much risk: do you really think Texas would revoke the charter of a KIPP school? If not, those tax dollars will continue flowing to KIPP's well-funded coffers and Bill won't be forced to fork over the $30 million. Call this investment the "Money Is Power Program" - the Gates Foundation can influence public policy by simply having money - they don't even have to spend it!

From the Wall Street Journal:

GETTING PERSONAL: Gates Foundation Invests In Charter Schools
New York (Dow Jones)--Even the country's richest foundation is looking for a way to conserve assets while using them to fulfill its charitable mission.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Wednesday announced it is making $30 million in bond guarantees to high-performing charter schools in Houston. It is part of a new two-year, $400 million push in so-called program-related investments, which can consist of direct loans, equity investments, bond guarantees and other non-traditional forms of financial support.
The first bond guarantees are going to the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, to help its schools in Houston secure funding in tax-exempt bonds. The financing is aimed at expanding student enrollment from 4,500 in 15 schools to 21,000 students in 42 schools in the next decade. It is the first time a private foundation has backed charter school facility bonds at this scale.
Charter schools, which are publicly funded and typically employ nonunion teachers, are granted more freedom by states in curriculum and hiring but often receive nearly 40% less public funding than conventional district public schools, according to the Center for Education Reform, a Washington advocacy nonprofit.
As one of the main pillars of President Barack Obama's education strategy, charter schools are looking to expand their programs and capacity. However, many lack the access to capital that conventional public schools have: They don't receive direct funding from the state for capital expenses, such as school construction or improvements, and can't issue voter-approved general obligation bonds, which are secured by taxes, to raise money. The problems were only heightened when the capital markets seized in the last two years amid the financial crisis.
The Gates Foundation's investment will allow KIPP Houston to obtain favorable borrowing terms, saving an estimated $10 million over the 35-year life of the bonds, said the charter network's founder Mike Feinberg. It will also allow the Gates Foundation - whose assets declinedn by about 20% in 2008 - to use their balance sheet to support the causes they care about without having to give the money away.
"Like Mom and Dad backing us to buy a home, the Gates Foundation agreed to a total of $30 million in credit enhancements. So we are still responsible for the loan, but the bank knows if we're in trouble they can go to Mom and Dad," Feinberg said.
The first financing through the program was priced last week, a $67 million bond issue that will allow KIPP Houston to expand its enrollment from 4,500 to 11,500 students over the next five years.
"The foundation's leadership is committed to supporting the very important work of charter school programs in the U.S. in new ways,??? said Allan Golston, President of U.S. Programs at the Gates Foundation.
"Leveraging the foundation's balance sheet is a low-risk way to provide big returns for the programs we support and spur additional investment interest," he said.

(Shelly Banjo is a Practice Management and Getting Personal columnist who writes about wealth management and philanthropy; she covers topics including the business of financial advisers, investment strategies and charitable giving. She can be reached at 212-416-2242 or by email at shelly.banjo@dowjones.com.)

"No Excuse" Charter School Sends 25 Children to Jail for Food Fight

2009-11-11T08:30:00.006-05:00

Last year Perspectives Charter Schools collected over $14 million from the State of Illinois and another million from Bill Gates to create this its own version of penal pedagogy in Calumet. This incident gives a whole new meaning to "a disciplined life." From the NYTimes:

CHICAGO — The food fight here started the way such bouts do in school lunchrooms most anywhere: an apple was tossed, a cookie turned into a torpedo, and an orange plunked someone in the head. Within minutes, dozens of middle-school students had joined in the ruckus, and spattered adults were ducking for cover.

By the end of the day, 25 of the students, ages 11 to 15, had been rounded up, arrested, taken from school and put in jail. A spokesman for the Chicago police said the charges were reckless conduct, a misdemeanor.
That was last Thursday afternoon. Now parents are questioning what seem to them like the criminalization of age-old adolescent pranks, and the lasting legal and psychological impact of the arrests.
“My children have to appear in court,” Erica Russell, the mother of two eighth-grade girls who spent eight hours in jail, said Tuesday. “They were handcuffed, slammed in a wagon, had their mug shots taken and treated like real criminals.”
“They’re all scared,” Ms. Russell said of the two dozen arrested students. “You never know how children will be impacted by that. I was all for some other kind of punishment, but not jail. Who hasn’t had a food fight?”
The students were released into the custody of their parents on Thursday night, the police said. They were also suspended for two days by the school, the Calumet middle-school campus of Perspectives Charter Schools, in the Gresham neighborhood on the South Side.
Diana Shulla-Cose, president and co-founder of Perspectives Charter Schools, said that an on-campus police officer had called for backup as the food fight escalated and that the resulting heavy police presence had led in turn to the large number of arrests.. . . .

Wonder how many of these cookie criminals are from the white, leafy suburbs?

Charter Schools Threaten Court-Ordered Desegregation in Arkansas

2009-11-10T18:00:00.004-05:00

Segregated charter chain gangs such as KIPP and the KIPP knockoffs have quickened the impetus toward resegregation of American schools. But only in school districts like Pulaski County and North Little Rock, Arkansas, which continue to have binding desegregation orders handed down from decades earlier, does the threat of the new apartheid via charter schools get any attention by education officials who are, otherwise, totally enamored by the total compliance black and brown containment model of penal pedagogy.

Since the third school district in the area, Little Rock School District, was ruled earlier this year to have achieved desegregation, the State's Attorney General has been on a crusade to get Pulaski County and North Little Rock the same designation. At stake is $60,000,000 per year in desegregation assistance from the State that can re-targeted to other leafier, whiter districts, once desegregation has been certified by the Courts.

Based on the findings of a report in 2006 by the Office of Desegregation Monitoring, Pulaski County Schools, however, has a ways to go:

A report by the federal Office of Desegregation Monitoring says that while the Pulaski County Special School District has made progress, equal opportunites for black students "remains frustratingly elusive."

The report says the district is inconsistent while carrying out plans for academic achievement, multicultural curriculum and discipline. It said the district, which surrounds the Little Rock and North Little Rock districts, is failing to meet goals set in 2000.

While the district "can point with pride to Advanced Placement, Gifted and Talented, and Honors Programs as an area of African-American progress," there were disparities between white students and black students.

The report's harshest criticism covered discipline, saying the strict made "no real progress in reducing the appalling disclipline sanction rates for black students, especially black males."

About 42 percent of the student body is black, but black students had 58 percent of the district's suspensions and 71 percent of the expulsions.

Pulaski County's district has had four superintendents since 2000 and has been on the state's "fiscal distress" list since 2005. It is at risk of consolidation next year if it doesn't regain financial stability. . . .

And so it is now that Arkansas State Board of Education is seeking a legal opinion from the Attorney General on the potential effects of approving another segregated chain gang to be known as the Little Rock Urban Collegiate Public Charter School for Young Men. Hmm. From Arkansas News, Nov. 9:

. . . .A 2008 study showed that boys are more likely than girls to drop out of school, be expelled, make low grades, commit suicide and be diagnosed with a learning disability, Jackson said. An all-boys school in Little Rock would be better able to address the issues faced by today’s young men than co-ed schools, she said.

The proposed school would serve kindergarten through eighth grade with a maximum enrollment of 696.

Chris Heller, attorney for the Little Rock School District, did not argue against the benefits of an all-boys school but said the board did not have enough information to say whether granting the application would adversely impact desegregation efforts.

“You’ve got a statutory obligation … to not approve this charter school or any other public charter school if it in any manner negatively affects the desegregation efforts of the public school districts,” Heller said.

Most likely the school would have a negative effect on desegregation, Heller argued. He said some charter schools the board has approved have much smaller percentages of black students than they claimed they would have when applying to the board for their charters, in part because black families are less likely to be able to provide transportation.

“Some of the most segregated schools in Pulaski County today are charter schools that were approved by this board within the last several years,” Heller said. . . .

This phenomenon is true, of course, for most any district in America that has charter schools--South or North.

Spreading Democracy to Chicago?

2009-11-10T14:30:00.004-05:00

Could it be that the citizenry is getting fed up with the corporate education reformers and their puppet mayors whose actions ignore the needs of children, parents, and teachers in favor of lining the pockets of the corporate welfare parasites of the education industry?

Illinois State Senator James Meeks's bill, SB 2500, would move Chicago closer toward the kind of democratic government we are trying to export to Iraq and Afghanistan. HT to John Kugler.

Synopsis As Introduced
Amends the Election Code to add members of the Chicago Board of Election to the list of offices to be filled by ballot at the general election. Amends the School Code. Provides that terms of all members of the Chicago Board of Education holding office on the effective date of the amendatory Act are abolished upon election and seating of the members of the new board. Provides that the members of the board (instead of the Mayor) shall appoint a full-time, compensated chief executive officer, and his or her compensation as chief executive officer shall be determined by the board (instead of the Mayor). Provides that the board (instead of the Mayor, at his or her discretion) may appoint the President to serve simultaneously as the chief executive officer, who must possess a type 75 administrative certificate. Provides that any vacancy in the membership of the board shall be filled through appointment by the board, by majority vote, (instead of the Mayor) for the unexpired term. Adds provisions concerning (1) the composition of, (2) membership requirements for, (3) nomination and election process of, and (4) terms of office for members of the board. Adds provisions concerning vacancies on the board. Adds provisions concerning the election of the president, vice-president, and secretary of the Board. Adds provisions concerning (1) the organization of the board and (2) board duties with respect to the chief executive officer. Effective immediately.

Rhee's CFO Thrown Under the Bus: Will Rhee Be Next?

2009-11-10T09:23:00.006-05:00

In March 2008, Noah Wepman, 34, had reason to be upbeat. He had just been appointed CFO for DC Schools by his young friend and colleague, Michelle Rhee. From WaPo, March 26, 2008:

"The chancellor and I have a very good relationship," Wepman said in an interview in his office at the school system's Northeast Washington headquarters.

"I have a good understanding of where she wants to take the school system and what reforms she has in mind," he added. "We're all on the same team."

By last Friday afternoon, Noah was no longer on the team. It seems that his cover-up of the out-of-kilter budget situation this past summer has now cost him his job, just like the 266 teachers who lost their jobs as a result of Wepman's and Rhee's duplicity. Does anyone believe that Wepman withheld this information without the permission of Michelle Rhee? Will Rhee be next? Will Wepman come clean? From Bill Turque:

DCPS chief financial officer Noah Wepman, excoriated by the D.C. Council last month for sitting on news about mounting budget pressures in the school system, submitted his resignation Monday, according to a top District source. WTOP, citing sources, reported late Monday afternoon that he'd been fired.

Whether he was thrown from the train or jumped off by himself, it was clear that Wepman had big problems after acknowledging at an Oct. 29 hearing that he had not reported the existence of a $12 million-plus deficit in DCPS' 2010 budget. Wepman handled school finances for Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, but reported to District CFO Natwar M. Gandhi, who certified the District's 2010 budget as in balance without knowledge of the deficit. Although he had told Rhee's people, Wepman conceded that he should have made Gandhi aware of the problem.

Both D.C. Council president Vincent C. Gray (D) and Council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large) had called for Wepman's head. Last week, Gray described Gandhi as "deeply concerned" about Wepman's disclosure, which came during a discussion of Rhee's decision to lay off 266 teachers and staff on Oct. 2. The layoffs were triggered in part by the deficit.
Wepman could not be reached for comment Monday evening.