Schools Matter

A top priority of the handful of oligarchs who control federal education policy and Arne Duncan is the elimination of public governance of the public schools by ceding power to CEOs, once known as mayors, and eliminating elected school boards.  Mike Klonsky gives us a rundown on how it's going in Chicago.  Not well.  Here's a clip, but do read it all, please at HuffPo:

. . . . Duncan couldn't deliver a victory for Fenty, even while resorting to threats of pulling millions of federal grant dollars from D.C. schools should Gray win. This left many wondering if Duncan only favored mayoral control if he could control the mayor.

But now, with Chicago's schools in a state of leaderless limbo, the problems of having a single autocrat running big-city school systems have become obvious to all. After a decade and a half of Daley's top-down reform efforts, seven of those years with Duncan as the CEO, neighborhood schools remain pretty much as they were. Scores have flattened out. The so-called "achievement gap" continues to widen. Violence has reached pandemic proportions and the school system is on the brink of insolvency. Daley's pet reform project, Renaissance 2010, has been discarded and the phrase banned from usage within the bureaucracy.

Daley's appointed school board has been riddled with scandals, including probes of patronage and civil rights violations. Daley's former board president Michael Scott committed suicide when faced with an investigation of his misuse of school board funds.

The mayor's announced retirement has been followed by the departure of Duncan's successor, Ron Huberman. As the crisis deepens, both he and the mayor, it seems, suddenly want to spend more time with their families. So much for stability and strong leadership.. . .

When you have the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, and right wing media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, on your side, state legislators soon begin to line up where the bread is buttered and where the rum is pouring--aargh!. Such was the case last week as the New York Senate renewed Little Bloom's one man rule of New York City Schools. Dunc took the opportunity to thank the New York Post for its contributions to the discourse in favor of ending public discourse on and in NYC Schools.

Now Little Bloom cannot delay pushing his failure machine into overdrive. Instead of waiting for the results of a Rand study this fall on the effects of using a single test to retain students in grades 3, 5, 7, and 8, the Bloomberg/Klein machine will add grades 4 and 6 to the failure opportunity list. After all, if the Rand Study finds the policy ineffective in raising test scores, that would make the policy change more difficult for the public to swallow.

From the NYTimes:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Monday that he planned to make it harder this year for fourth and sixth graders who score poorly on standardized tests to move on to the next grade, extending a policy that his re-election team hopes will help him curry favor with voters.

Under the requirements, which are already in place for grades three, five, seven and eight, students who perform at the lowest level on state tests in English and math will have to repeat the grade unless they can master the material in summer school.

Previously, under a policy known as social promotion, school officials gave a pass to low-performing students under the belief that they would be more likely to drop out if they were held back and separated from children their own age.

Mr. Bloomberg won approval for the stricter requirements in 2004, beginning with the third grade, after a bruising battle that involved the firing of three members of an education oversight board and criticism from elected officials, educators and good-government groups.

Over all, fewer students are being held back in the city, even with the tougher promotion requirements — a trend that education officials attribute to rises in test scores across the city since the mayor took over in 2002.

In the third grade, for instance, 864 students were held back in the 2007-8 school year, compared with 3,105 in 2002-3, the year before the policy went into effect. In addition, enrollment at summer school has decreased in recent years (it was 105,531 this year, down from 119,954 last year).

Now, as Mr. Bloomberg seeks a third term, he is trying to play down divisions over the policy and portray the end of social promotion as a major reason for the city’s large gains in test scores and graduation rates, even though it is difficult to definitively prove that relationship.

At an East Harlem elementary school on Monday, Mr. Bloomberg said social promotion was “as cruel and mean a thing as we could possibly do for any student.”

“All we’re doing is setting those students up for failure,” he said. “We are not going to do that.”. . . .

After all, why just set them up for failure when you can assure their failure now, as well as in the future?

From HuffPo:

Our Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has been on a "listening tour" where he's done most of the talking. He advocates, repeatedly, that mayors should take control of urban schools. Obviously he cannot take an honest look at his own accomplishments under this governance system or--he'd have to shut up.

The usual rationale a mayoral power grab is it brings more accountability and a clear line of authority. School boards are generally elected in off years and few people vote, allowing special interest groups (usually education unions, some claim) to essentially rig the elections. School boards are fractious and try to micromanage. They are amateurs and prisoners of deeply rooted school bureaucracies.

But do mayors do better? Depends on how you feel about democracy. The Spring 2009 issue of Rethinking Schools, said that, as Daley's man, Duncan "has shown himself to be the central messenger, manager and staunch defender of corporate involvement in, and privatization of, public schools, closing schools in low-income neighborhoods of color with little community input, limiting local democratic control, undermining the teachers union and promoting competitive merit pay for teachers."

The most important corporate involvement involves the 132-year-old Commercial Club of Chicago. Yet that organization recently published Still Left Behind, slamming Chicago's public schools as awful and that the reforms they've endured were designed to make the adults running the schools look good, not improve the lives of children. You could say the Club stabbed Arne in the back except that they did it upfront in the open, without once mentioning Duncan's name. The Club report backs up its case with many data.

If we look at the other most visible case of mayoral control, we see an even more autocratic system in place. When the New York legislature handed control of the schools in 2002 to Mayor Mike Bloomberg and his Chancellor, Joel Klein, it created the Panel for Educational Policy, attempting to establish a "balance of authority." The group is universally referred to as the Panel of Educational Puppets. The panelists, "an investment banker, a lingerie store owner and an expert on electromagnetics among them--rarely engage in discussions with those who rise to address them. They do not debate the educational issues of the day, but spend most sessions applauding packaged presentations by staff. Some have barely uttered a public word during their tenures" (New York Times, April 23, 2009).

And if they do utter a public word, it damn well better be in support of Hizzoner or else they're history. Said Bloomberg, "Mayoral control means mayoral control, thank you very much. They are my representatives, and they are going to vote for things I believe in."

Both Bloomberg/Klein and Daley/Duncan have touted rising state test scores as proof of their success. But analysts in both cities have shown that the rises only show how easy it is to manipulate test scores. In New York, a narrow range of standards is tested and the content from year to year is highly predictable. In Illinois, the state made it easier for systems to meet the standards with new item formats and lower passing scores.

But if one looks at the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), both cities look dreadful and show little progress. This is especially true for black students, the group most affected. Compared to kids nationally in math, for example, NYC's black eighth-graders rank at the 26th percentile, while Chicago's come in at the 18th percentile. In 2003, 9% of NYC's black students were proficient or better in math and by 2007 the proportion had "jumped" to 10%. In 2003, 4% of Chicago's black eighth-graders were proficient or better in math, and by 2007 the figure had risen to 6%. The black-white achievement gap shrank slightly in NYC, but grew in Chicago.

A June 2009 Chicago Tribune article noted that two thirds of all new Chicago teachers leave within 5 years and that half of the teachers in high poverty areas disappear after only three. Hard to have a turnaround with that kind of turnover.

Of course, some of the teachers got a push. Ron Huberman fired the faculty and staff of 16 schools in less than three months after replacing Duncan. If Duncan had worked the miracles his PR machine claimed, Huberman should have been able to spend most of the day smoking cigars, tweeting and embellishing his image on Facebook. Newsweek said the district "is mired in urban woes--and, in some cases, a sense of complacency." Complacency? Daley has had control of Chicago's schools for 13 years and Duncan was there for seven of them, but the test scores above are evidence that they didn't do much to stir anything but the public relations pot.

Bloomberg's authority expired in June, but about then collective insanity infected the Senate and the legislature adjourned for the summer without passing a new authorization. Bloomberg says he will ask the governor to call them back into session until he gets a bill, HIS bill. Checks and balances, anyone?

As Dunc inserts himself in the New York City schools battle on the side of Bloomberg and his continued privilege of choosing and dismissing members of a puppet School Board, what was to be a public search for a new Superintendent in Houston just went private:

The Houston school board hopes to keep the public from finding out who is in the running to be the next leader of the state’s largest school system until the field is narrowed down to a single candidate.

Houston Independent School District trustees agreed Thursday to keep secret the names of the candidates who interview for the superintendent’s job because the best candidates want their privacy protected, the trustees said. The decision is at odds with a request from the city’s largest business organization, the Greater Houston Partnership, which called for a transparent search shortly after Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra announced earlier this year that he will soon step down. . . ..

And here is the real story posted by Caroline Grannon on Saturday at Examiner.com (from an fearful insider). As you can see, the tentacles of Bloomberg and the School Deformers are struggling to get another urban school system in their grip in order to apply their preferred brand of cultural eugenics to the black and brown children of Houston:

The Wolf at the Door: Are school-reform radicals hijacking the Houston Independent School District's Superintendent process?

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) has avoided becoming just another urban system in perpetual crisis. Its leaders have encouraged racial and political moderation and incremental reforms. The district pioneered magnet programs, and continues to offer families a host of specialized, high-quality choices, particularly at the high-school level. Its students outperform school districts which have opted for radical reform in most categories of the recently published National Assessment of Educational Progress comparisons.

Now some members of HISD's nine-member elected school board want to change course and adopt drastic measures. They want Houston to follow in the footsteps of school districts like Philadelphia, Washington D. C., New Orleans and New York City by choosing a new superintendent in the mold of Michelle Rhee or Joel Klein [chancellors of D.C. and New York City schools, respectively].

According to HISD board member Paula Harris, HISD has gone as far as it can under the current model of reform; now it needs a change agent to “shake up” the district, which she labels a “monstrosity.” Natasha Kamrani, wife of the CEO of YES PREP charter schools, has repeatedly mentioned both Rhee and Klein as the kind of leader HISD should pursue. Harvin C. Moore IV, a founding member of the KIPP board and its longtime treasurer, is another supporter of uprooting reform.

The school board selected the firm Heidrick & Struggles over four competing firms to manage its superintendent search. This is a sign the school board's reform-radicals may have their way. Heidrick & Struggles has a history of directing districts to candidates advocating charter schools and subcontracting to private agencies, specifically in Philadelphia and Buffalo. Heidrick & Struggles also has close ties to the charter-school movement and to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's mayoral control approach in New York City.

Richard Greene, a managing partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ Chicago headquarters, was recently the chief operating officer for the KIPP national foundation. KIPP plans a $100 million expansion in Houston. KIPP and its junior partner, YES PREP, hope to use this private money to create a separate school district of 21,000 students cut from the heart of HISD.

The Heidrick & Stuggles board of directors includes two high-level Bloomberg allies. Robert E. Knowling is the former founding CEO of the New York Leadership Academy, Mayor Bloomberg’s factory for churning out new principals who see things his way. Richard Beattie heads up New Visions for New Schools, a partnership nonprofit supporting Bloomberg's reforms in some New York City schools.

Beattie is also chairman of the Simpson Thacher & Bartlett law firm, which provided free legal services in arguably the most important school-finance suit in New York City's history. This suit brought several billion dollars in extra state funding to the city schools, which aids the big-spending mayor who has upped school spending by five billion bucks in five years.

One major candidate for Houston mayor, Councilman Peter Brown, has called for creating a mayor-controlled district from the inner-city portions of HISD, allowing more suburban areas to carve out new districts.

Heidrick & Struggles and school board members have emphasized that this search would be open and transparent, without a predetermined outcome. HISD Board President Lawrence Marshall has promised “100% transparency.” The firm has held 30 community and stakeholder meetings to come up with a job description and list of qualities the next district leader should have. The list turned out to be highly amorphous, including just about every imaginable positive quality one could desire in a political leader.

HISD's board is replacing Dr. Abelardo Saavadra, the first Hispanic to hold that position in a district where 60% of students are of Hispanic origin. Houston Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg recently derided Saavedra for his lack of political savvy, and some on the school board seem to agree, nearly pushing him out last year.

Saavedra had a tendency to announce his policy proposals well ahead of time, and hold town-hall meetings all over the city before finalizing his decisions. In some cases, as when he sought to reduce transportation for magnet students this past spring, Saavedra was opposed by organized groups of parents and his proposals were nixed by the school board. This sort of popular revolt will not be a problem for future superintendents if advocates of mayoral control have their way.

Once Heidrick & Struggles presents its candidates to HISD's board, parents and teachers' organizations will have limited, if any, influence on the final decision. The search firm and the HISD board have decided to issue the name of only one finalist.

The gist from the New York Times:

. . . . Mr. Silver’s proposal includes several measures aimed at increasing transparency, by requiring, for instance, that the Department of Education’s data and finances be regularly audited. But it leaves largely untouched a key point of contention: the mayor’s power to appoint a majority of the central education board, known as the Panel for Educational Policy, and remove them at his pleasure.

. . . .

Another concern among critics of mayoral control has been bolstering the independence of panel members. Over the past seven years, the panel has become something of a rubber stamp for the mayor’s policies, having never rejected a proposal from Mr. Bloomberg.

Critics have pushed for fixed terms for panel members, a measure aimed at preventing the mayor from removing panelists who voice opposition to his proposals. But Mr. Silver’s plan maintains the requirement that panelists serve at the pleasure of the mayor.

(Photo: Clarence Tabb Jr. / The Detroit News)
In terms of one-man rule, Detroit has been there, done that. In 2004 voters overwhelmingly rejected mayoral control and put an elected school board back in charge. Unfortunately, that did not stop the blowing up of the system as NCLB's impossible explosive devices (IEDs) continued to wreak havoc in the schools. The current $300 million dollar deficit is the result of parents fleeing the effects of the onslaught.

Now Dunc and the vulture philanthropists have moved in, advocating for dictatorial control of the schools in order to make sure the school buses run on time and the corporate charter franchises are given free rein.

Too bad Wayne County Commissioner, Keith Williams, did not get to meet Dunc yesterday:

While Duncan met with state and local leaders this morning, other local representatives and parents met with Peter Cunningham, assistant secretary for communications and outreach for the federal education department.

Wayne County Commissioner Keith Williams said poverty is a big concern in Detroit. Others raised the problems of gangs in schools, and text messaging in classrooms.

"If you can solve the poverty issue, you will solve the education issue," he said.

Cunningham said the secretary and his team generally see education as the way out of poverty.

Cunningham also raised the issue of whether mayoral control was a consideration here in Detroit. Williams said mayoral control isn't the answer.

"We don't need a takeover," he said. "We need cooperation."

A little history of the Detroit situation from the Detroit Free Press:

. . . .DPS has been under mayoral control before. In 1999, a state law gave the mayor power to appoint six of Detroit's seven school board members. The other was the state superintendent or his designee. The board had no financial powers, solely existing to hire, evaluate and fire the chief executive officer who ran the district.

In 2004, Detroit voters became the nation's first to repeal a school takeover, giving power back to an 11-member elected board. Those against mayoral control resented Lansing legislators for passing the law, calling it a racist power grab for control of the district's $1.5-billion construction bond.

Freman Hendrix, adviser to Bing, a former mayoral candidate and the first president of the reform school board appointed by then-Mayor Dennis Archer in 1999, said frustration and apathy favor mayoral control. "I think the mood is different now, the city is beat down now," he said.

After 3 1/2 years under an elected board, DPS has an estimated $305-million deficit, and the governor, in March, took financial control from the school board for the next year. DPS has lost 45% of its students in the past 10 years, fueling the financial problems.

Wednesday's meeting with Duncan came one day after Bobb announced that 29 of DPS's 200 schools will close for good this summer -- bringing the five-year total to 100 closed buildings. An additional 40 schools will be restructured; some may be placed under control of private companies.

Duncan, a supporter of mayoral control, is the former chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools. In that city, Mayor Richard Daley appoints the CEO and school board. . . .

From EdNotesOnline:

In a brilliant new video, Angel Gonzalez of ICE and the Grassroots Education Movement exposes the hypocrisy of mayoral control and the phony mantra that their critics are all about adults and they are all about children. And yes, that's Michael Fiorillo with the sign at the end. A must see.

Angel sent this along as an intro:

4-3-09 Sharpton-Klein NAN / EEP Forum with pro-mayoral control and pro-charter school panelists from across the US. Councilman Barron condemns their privatization of public schools agenda. After protests from the NO Mayoral Control Coalition, Sharpton conceded Barron's address prior to the speeches of the panelists. Barron condemns the profiteering & the educational devastation promulgated by the BloomKein Dictatorial Control of public education in NYC.
Angel Gonzalez