Live Long and Prosper...

AFT JUMPS THE GUN

Big news with the AFT leadership endorsing Hillary Clinton...before the primary. In 2011 NEA endorsed President Obama early despite his dismal record in education, but there were no other Democratic candidates, so NEA was saying that they wanted a Democrat over any of the Republicans left in the race at that point.

And NEA endorsed Obama without getting any guarantee that he would rein in Arne Duncan.

Fast forward to 2015 and now AFT endorses Clinton without getting her to change her position on charters or CCSS. She answered the questions on the AFT questionnaire, and had the right answer for vouchers...

I strongly oppose voucher schemes because they divert precious resources away from financially strapped public schools to private schools that are not subject to the same accountability standards or teacher quality standards. It would be harmful to our democracy if we dismantled our public school system through vouchers, and there is no evidence that doing so would improve outcomes for children.

When talking about charters however, she neglected to include the "divert precious resources away from financially strapped public schools" and jumped straight to the transparency and accountability issue...

Charters should be held to the same standards, and to the same level of accountability and transparency to which traditional public schools are held. This includes the requirements of civil rights laws. They can innovate and help improve educational practices. But I also believe that we must go back to the original purpose of charter schools. Where charters are succeeding, we should be doing more to ensure that their innovations can be widely disseminated throughout our traditional public school system. Where they are failing, they should be closed.

I have three objections to her comment about charters. First, I agree that they should be held to the same transparency and accountability as real public schools, but, to get back to the original purpose of charters, they should be run by real public school systems, not private corporations. The big problem with charters is that they, too, suck much needed funds from public schools and drop it into corporate pockets.

Second, she said that voucher schools don't follow the same "teacher quality standards." In Indiana, at least, charter schools are allowed to hire non-teachers to fill classrooms -- up to 50% of the staff. Charters should also follow the same "teacher quality standards."

Finally, her last sentence in the quote above is noteworthy. Schools are generally failing because of high levels of student poverty...when charter schools fail it's because they haven't understood that children in poverty can't make up the difference in their experiential differences by simple test-prep. Those charters that have the means, skim for higher achieving children, wealthier children, and children whose parents are more involved. The phrase "failing schools" implies that it is the school that is at fault...not American society for allowing nearly one-fourth of our children to live in poverty. The implication here is that Clinton accepts the "reformist" line that schools "fail" and that public education in the U.S. is "failing." [For a good discussion of "failing schools" see Reign of Error, by Diane Ravitch.]

So, AFT, and likely NEA to follow, has endorsed another "reformist" for president without getting any guarantee that the attacks on public schools, public school teachers, and their unions will end.

Also see the AFT candidate questionnaires for Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley.


Who Is Served by the Unions?

Peter Greene takes AFT to task for their foolishly early endorsement of Clinton. What will AFT get for the endorsement? "Nothing at all."

What did or will AFT get out of endorsing Clinton? I'm going to predict the answer is "Nothing At All." Particularly now that she landed the endorsement without even having to make a show of backing public education. This is not realistic politicking. This is giving away milk for free in hopes that someone will then decide to buy your cow.

Teachers do have an interest in having their unions cultivate political power. But the union leaderships interest in political power does not always align with the interests of teachers.

Other commentary about AFT endorsement of Clinton:

• Did AFT Rank and File REALLY Endorse Hillary Clinton for President? If So, Release the Raw Data

• AFT's early Clinton endorsement is creating a rank-and-file backlash

• AFT Endorsement Of Clinton Shows Lack Of Democratic Process

• Democracy appears to be a burden for the “modern” American Federation of Teachers

• No Surprise Except the Timing: AFT Endorses Hillary Clinton for President

TEACHER SHORTAGES

Teacher shortages are exactly what "reformers" want. Since they believe that "anyone can teach" the fact that traditional teacher preparation programs are drying up...the fact that fewer students are going into education as a career...the fact that teachers are leaving the profession in large numbers...is a plus, not a problem.

Untrained teachers, TFA's who only want to teach for 2 years, and others who think that teaching is an easy way to get summers off, are all cheaper to hire...cheaper to keep...and will leave before they become expensive. They won't need pensions. They won't need extended benefits. The bottom line is to privatize America's schools while spending the least amount of money possible, thereby maximizing profits.

States like Indiana have lowered qualifications for teachers so those school systems who are struggling to fill classroom positions can start to recruit people who aren't qualified. Is this how we increase achievement?


Indiana schools see shortage of teacher applications

School leaders say state funding constraints, testing pressures and a blame-the-teachers mentality have steered people away from education as a career.

Many education programs have seen their enrollments drop in recent years.

Enrollment in Ball State University’s elementary and kindergarten teacher-preparation programs has fallen 45 percent in the last decade. Other schools are reporting similar declines.

Denise Collins, associate dean with the College of Education at Indiana State University, said enrollment there has fallen 7 percent, and the number of students completing an education degree has dropped 13 percent.

How to keep teachers from leaving the profession

News Flash: Indianapolis teachers are leaving the profession by the hundreds.

Well, this is not news to teachers. We have been predicting this shortage for years as we see veteran teachers retire early and new teachers stay only three to five years. The lack of positive, supportive working conditions, i.e., school culture, is the main reason for teacher flight. How long can a new teacher be subjected to a more than eight hour working day which provides little job satisfaction and little support, to sustain his teaching passion, for $35,000 a year? Not long.

Most public school teachers fall into one of three categories: Those who will leave soon, those who have too many years vested to seek a new career, and those good souls who have accepted the victim mentality of, “It’s all about the kids.”

North Carolina Teacher to General Assembly: “I Can No Longer Afford to Teach”

I realize that no one in Raleigh will care or feel the impact when this one teacher out of 80,000 leaves the classroom. I understand. However, my 160 students will feel the impact. And 160 the next year. And the next. My Professional Learning Community, teachers around the county with whom I collaborate, will be impacted, and their students as well. Young teachers become great when they are mentored by experienced, effective educators, and all their students are impacted as well. When quality teachers leave the classroom, the loss of mentors is yet another effect. This is how the quiet and exponential decline in education happens.

Higher teacher pay may be unpopular, and I am aware it is difficult to see the connection between teacher pay and a quality education for students, so I will try to make it clear. Paying me a salary on which I can live means I can stay in the classroom, and keeping me in the classroom means thousands of students over the next decade would get a quality education from me. It’s that simple.

Teacher shortage “emergency” grows in Oklahoma

Right now, there are approximately one thousand teacher vacancies in Oklahoma, according to the Oklahoma State School Board Association (OSSBA)

The emergency certification allows someone without formal training to step into the classroom and teach.

For example, a private sector scientist could become a chemistry teacher if their skill set is comparable and the district specifically requests them.

“Someone who is an accountant and wanted to be a business teacher,” Smith gave as another example. “We’re just trying to accommodate and help schools any way we can to get them through this rough patch.”

That emergency certification lasts till the end of the school year, officials say, and the teacher must achieve certification during the year if they want to continue teaching.

NCLB AND RttT ARE FOR OTHER PEOPLE'S KIDS

Education Secretary Duncan’s children to go to Chicago private school he attended

I have said this over and over again...Lame duck Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has never taught in a public school. He never even attended a public school. As a child he attended the University of Chicago Lab school...then went to Harvard. He majored in sociology and played on the basketball team. When he graduated he played professional basketball in Australia, then came home and found a job in the education world. He has no education qualifications...no education credentials.

Yet Duncan is the man who has, for the last 6 and a half years, foisted his "education reform" agenda on America's schools, school children, and public school teachers.

Race to the Top, often called NCLB on steroids, has done nothing to improve education in the U.S. The money spent by the federal Department of Education has not gone to help the schools and children with the greatest need. It's gone to help schools in states who toe the line by increasing charter schools, accept the Common Core standards, and evaluate their teachers using test scores -- three plans which do nothing to increase achievement.

And what about his own kids? While in Washington D.C. they attended public school in Arlington, Virginia, where the Common Core has not been adopted. Now they have moved back to Chicago and will attend Arne's alma mater, the University of Chicago Lab School. They will be taught by highly qualified teachers who are union members, and who are not evaluated by their students' test scores. Arne's children will not be affected by Arne's public education policies.

And in a year and a half, Arne will likely go to work for some "reformy" company...

...While Duncan is interested in making his own family’s logistics easy, the very public charter schools that Duncan and his department have supported and pushed for expansion have hastened the closure of many neighborhood public schools, making it more difficult for many families — especially single-parent families — to get their children to schools that are nowhere near their homes. Charter schools have been permitted to open wherever the founders want with no consideration for what cities need to serve all of their students. Charter schools can limit the number of students who attend; traditional public schools can’t. As a result, in urban areas where neighborhood schools have been closed, parents must apply to charter schools and hope to get into one that is near them. It doesn’t always happen....

See also Arne Duncan’s Children Were Never Exposed to Common Core

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

Diane Ravitch posted information about the AFT and NEA move to unionize teachers at charter schools.

What Happens When Charter Teachers Join a Union?

The NEA and AFT are actively trying to organize charter teachers. This is challenging because of high teacher turnover and often hostile charter management. As the numbers show, they have had limited success, but Cohen says that the unions have softened their opposition to charters in hopes of establishing unions in more charters.

Her post references an article at the American Prospect discussing labor's push to unionize charters...a distinctly non-union part of the education world.

When Charters Go Union

In 2014, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University released a report that documented a host of charter school problems, ranging from uneven academic performance to funding schemes that destabilized neighboring schools. The report laid out national policy recommendations designed to promote increased accountability, transparency, and equity.

The AFT and NEA came out strongly in support of the Annenberg standards, and have been working to promote them to state legislatures and school boards around the country. Leaders in the charter world, however, were less than pleased. The National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), an organization that seeks to influence the policies and practices of state authorizers, called the standards “incomplete, judgmental, and not based on research or data.” Michael Brickman, then the national policy director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education policy think tank, said the Annenberg standards would stifle charters’ innovation by “bludgeoning them with regulation.” He accused the authors of “standing in the way of progress” with their “overzealous statutory recommendations.” (The president and CEO of NAPCS, Nina Rees, told me she actually likes the Annenberg standards, but doesn’t know if they should be adopted across the board.)

In response, Jim Horn, at Schools Matter, took time off from fighting the privatization of public education to update his attack on Diane Ravitch, the Network for Public Education, and Anthony Cody, claiming that they're pro-charter. [This is not the first time he's gone after the Ravitch branch of the pro-public education movement. See HERE and HERE, or just search his blog for Ravitch.]

Ravitch Rationalizes NEA/AFT/NPE Pro-Charter Position

The anti-reformy groups and self-promoting individuals that crouch under the Ravitch umbrella, along with the bloggers who are kept in line by NPE's censorious Anthony Cody and Jon Pelto, go about their business pretending that the corporate unions are allies of corporate education resistance. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First of all, I agree with Horn that the NEA and AFT are not as anti-reformy as I would like them to be. I've written against Dennis Van Roekel's support of CCSS and "reform" in order to get a "seat at the table," Lily's misguided support of the CCSS, how NEA endorsed President Obama in 2012 completely separating him from the work of his Education Department, and the fact that neither Randi nor Lily seems serious about rejecting corporate funding from "reformist" foundations.

However, I disagree with his description above about those who agree with Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody. I'm a member of both the Education Bloggers Network run by Jonathan Pelto and the NPE that he references above. Neither Diane Ravitch, Jonathan Pelto nor Anthony Cody dictate what gets written on this blog, nor do I hesitate to disagree with Ravitch, Pelto, Cody, or anyone else if I choose to.

I also don't agree that the Education Bloggers Network or the NPE "pretend" that there is nothing wrong with the AFT and NEA positions on education reform. However, instead of lashing out angrily at them, those of us who are sometimes "under the Ravitch umbrella" understand that the unions are made up of teachers...and it's in our best interest to try to get them to change rather than just berating them because we disagree. That's why Diane Ravitch put both Randi and Lily on the spot earlier this year by asking them if they would refuse "reformy" foundation money. That's why the crowd cheered when they answered in the affirmative (even though Lily walked back on that position later). That's why thousands of us across the nation are working hard to influence voters, legislators, teachers, and parents to join us in the fight against privatization and "reform."

Furthermore, I don't think Horn's "my way or the highway" attitude is productive. Even if I do agree with his positions on school reform, I find his attitude towards the rest of us to be condescending and his language bordering on abusive. His attacks sound more like the anonymous trolls who populate the comments sections of political web sites rather than an educated, pro-public education advocate. If he doesn't like what you stand for he does indeed argue against you, often with good reason...but he paints with a wide brush and tells you to go to hell in the process. This is, of course, his right...it is his blog after all, and I'm sure he really doesn't care what I think, but it's counterproductive.

His attitude plays right into the corporate "divide and conquer attitude" so popular with "reformers." If we are busy blasting each other for not being "pure enough" in our pro-public education policy making, then we are that much weaker when we need to work together to end the misuse and overuse of testing, the destruction of the teaching profession and the privatization of public education.

Horn needs to quit playing the equivalent of the education "Hunger Games" by fighting those would should be allies instead of focusing his energy on Gates, Duncan, the Waltons, and the rest. It's helpful...and even important to speak our disagreement when we differ on particular issues, but we need to stand together against the real enemy.

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

Here's an excellent video from the AFT discussing the recently released PISA scores. Our nation is more than just a test score!

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

Gary Stager wrote,

American public school educators have been insulted, mocked, punished, shamed, blamed and threatened by politicians, Bill Gates, corporations and the media for a decade. Their professionalism has been reduced by name-calling, scripted curricula, “common core” standards and the publication of standardized test scores. Their schools have become the playthings of billionaire bullies and hedge fund managers with public school treasure being surrendered to shady privatizers and charter school conglomerates. American public school teachers have watched more of their students come to school hungry and without proper medical care. They’ve watched public education be dismantled by unqualified clowns in NY, Louisiana, Chicago, Michigan and Wisconsin. American teachers have seen their benefits cut, right to organize eliminated, working conditions deteriorate, supplies dwindle and pensions disappear.

And what have American educators done about this?

The answer of course, is not very much.

Look at what happened in Australia (the subject of Stager's blog post above) when the state (Victoria) PM backed out of a promised raise...25,000 teachers took to the streets.

In the US, however, what did teachers do when the entire staff of Central Falls High School (RI) were fired? What was our response when the US Secretary of Education and the President of the United States cheered that act by the local superintendent?

Silence...except for a few blogs.

What's been our response to this administration's "Race to the Top" where federal money is not provided where it's needed most, but instead is given to those places which open up more charter schools, judge teachers by their students' test scores, and VAM evaluation techniques (none of which are based on research)? What have American teachers said and done about that?

Again, not much except on the blogosphere.

Oh...here's something. The AFT and the NEA, the nation's largest teachers unions, have endorsed for reelection the man responsible for Race to the Top...

Have I missed something? Why are former minor league basketball players, retired computer gurus and former editors of the Harvard Law Review the ones making education policy for the country?

What do...Barak Obama, Arne Duncan, George W. Bush, Michael Bloomberg, Rahm Emanuel, Bill and Melinda Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton Gang have in common?

Answer -- They are the ones who have made/bought or are making/buying education policy in the United States and NONE of them -- not ONE of them -- knows anything about educating children. There are NO TEACHERS among them...not one. None.

Where are the experts? Where are the teachers?

While the leaders of the NEA and AFT are busy helping the corporate interests destroy public education, the rank and file teachers have been overwhelmed with too many tests being used and misused by administrations, states and the media.

While the politicians and pundits have been blaming public education and specifically teachers unions and the "bad teachers" they protect for the collapse of the world's economy, public school teachers around the country have been struggling to keep their heads above water doing more and more for the children under their care with less and less support from the outside world.

While Bill Gates wants to use Skinner-box technology to see whether or not teachers are entertaining their students, those teachers are drowning in a data driven morass created by the greed of edupreneurs and politicians.

Democrats, led by President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan, have joined Republicans in the fight against public schools. Mayors Bloomberg (New York City) and Emanuel (Chicago) are vying for the title of least-public-education-friendly mayor in the country. Bloomberg has been shoving charter schools into public school buildings, displacing public school teachers and children without any hesitation during his never ending term as mayor.

Finally, however, the newcomer Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, not even 2 years into his term, is facing an uprising he apparently didn't expect. Mayor Emanuel figured that teachers would do as they were told, as they have done for the last 2 decades. He figured that teachers would just whine a bit, but then accept the inevitable...and increase their already overwhelming work load for no additional pay. He assumed that he could continue the nation's insulting assault on public school teachers and the weak teachers would simply fall in line.

He was wrong.

On June 11 the Chicago Teachers Union released the results of a strike vote.

Public school educators say they are fighting for smaller class sizes, art, music, world language and physical education classes for students, and fair compensation for being asked to work under more difficult guidelines as determined by CPS.

23,780 teachers, 90% of the members of the Chicago Teachers Union, voted to strike.

What was the reaction of the parent union, the AFT, when the CTU voted to strike if a negotiated settlement couldn't be reached? I went to the AFT website and couldn't find a thing about it. It's possible I missed it...

It's time for teachers across the country to stand up, like our colleagues in Chicago, to those who want to destroy public education. Demand support from our unions. Demand support for public schools.

Big news from Atlanta. Teachers, principals, and likely even central office administrators have cheated -- or ignored cheating -- on the state achievement tests.

Schools matter posted this report about the scandal…

The full Georgia Office of Special Investigators' report was just posted online -- no time to read its 400+ pages, let alone digest them, but a quick scan finds these superb quotations (it is informative to substitute the words "Bush and Obama administrations" and "Arne Duncan" in appropriate places to see the national implications of this story).

WHY CHEATING OCCURRED

Three primary conditions led to widespread cheating on the 2009 CRCT"

- The targets set by the district were often unreasonable, especially given their cumulative effect over the years. Additionally, the administration put unreasonable pressure on teachers and principals to achieve targets;

- A culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation spread throughout the district; and,

- Dr Hall and her administration emphasized test results and public praise to the exclusion of integrity and ethics."

http://www.ajc.com/news/volume-3volume-3-conclusions-why-1000781.html p. 350

and

"What has become clear through our investigation is that ultimately, the data and meeting 'targets' by whatever means necessary, became more important than true academic progress" (p. 356).

Diane Ravitch commented to CBS News that the law, NCLB, gives teachers and principals "an incentive to cheat."

The pressure to cheat in order to reach unreasonable expectations (such as every child proficient by 2014) is not just Atlanta's problem. In an article in the Huffington Post, Joy Resmovits said,

Atlanta is not alone in allegedly gaming its numbers. Schaeffer said cheating headlines have popped up in the last month alone from Baltimore, Norfolk, Va., Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Florida.

The Christian Science Monitor called this America's biggest teacher and principal cheating scandal.

It's also a tacit indictment, critics say, of politicians putting all bets for improving education onto high-stakes tests that punish and reward students, teachers, and principals for test scores.

"When test scores are all that matter, some educators feel pressured to get the scores they need by hook or by crook," says Mr. Schaeffer. "The higher the stakes, the greater the incentive to manipulate, to cheat."

And what about the big bad teachers union? Well, it turns out that, if Atlanta Public Schools administration had listened to the union, the scandal might have been nipped in the bud. Think Progress reports:

Interestingly, one aspect of the scandal that has not been covered by the major media is the role of the local teacher unions. While Atlanta’s teacher unions are largely powerless when it comes to actual bargaining and strike powers — unlike many of their northern counterparts, they currently have no collective bargaining rights enshrined into law — one local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) was the very first body to internally report cheating to the district superintendent, Dr. Beverly Hall

What happened to the teachers union report?

AFT President Randi Weingarten provided the following statement to ThinkProgress: “The governor’s investigation found that Atlanta Federation of Teachers was the first to expose cheating in December 2005, but the union’s complaint was ignored and sadly, subsequent whistle-blowers in the district were punished and silenced."

Standardized tests, as they are commonly used, are damaging for public education and public school teachers. In state after state, the US DOE plan of judging teachers in part by test scores, is becoming a reality.

Don't get me wrong...I don't approve of cheating. No one likes a cheater. What the principals, teachers, and central office administrators (who covered up the cheating) did was wrong. It was wrong professionally, morally and politically.

Still the current educational climate in America, which has been building for the last 10+ years, is just begging teachers, administrators and entire school systems to cheat. The Texas miracle (more info here) upon which NCLB is based was nothing more than a cheating scandal.

It's a no win situation.

Should teachers forego politics? Do either of the two major political parties represent the interests of public education?

Bob Sikes has an interesting take on the direction public education is going.

Teachers Need to Take the Lead and Not Yield the Future of Education to Either Political Party

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Bob Sikes

The following is a Facebook post I made yesterday. Its titled, Understanding What You are Really Choosing in Market Based Reform. Some additional comments follow.

"My conservative friends who believe in market-based education reform need to understand what they are choosing. The privatization movement will effectively change the teaching profession from one of public service to one not unlike that of a door-to-door salesman. For over 200 years, America’s teachers have patiently applied their efforts and time to any child without prejudice to their socio-economic status. Market-based reform changes that dynamic. Strict adherence to a pay-for-performance plan will force a teacher to themselves choose where and whom they will be teaching. Like a door-to-door Fuller Brush salesman, teachers will need to reach their quota if they will want to maintain a livelihood in the profession. Worse, the system forces teachers to change their motivations. It will be all about the child passing a test and no longer about the unprecedented nurturing thats been happening in our nations classrooms since well before the Civil War."

During the current four pronged assault on teachers by Florida’s Republican legislators, conservatives don’t want to consider what the consequences of the current path. We are witnessing what I characterize as “Teacher derangement Syndrome,” of which we are not blameless. The hyper-partisan nature of the NEA and AFT over the last decade has changed our image from one of a serious profession to one who is simply an operative arm of the Democrat party. Satirically I wrote a few days ago that many say we are not to be listened to any longer. We’re in a union.

Still this doesn’t excuse away Republican hyper-partisanship either. Extremism begets extremism. [It's] easy to illustrate a parallel between the manner Democrats legislated during the first two years of the Obama presidency [and] the current Wisconsin-Florida GOP thuggery.

Its time for teachers to take the high road and to move toward separating ourselves from blood sport politics like this. Neither political party is able to get beyond acting in their own self interest. We need to be the shepherds of our schools and the protectors of the teacher-student relationship.

Do we rise above or do we continue to try to influence politics in America?

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Annual Meeting took place earlier this month in Seattle. And it just happened that Secretary of Education Duncan was also in Seattle at the same time.

Some of the AFT teachers, along with teachers from Seattle, went to the ___location of Duncan's speech in order to picket the Secretary with signs such as "Race to the Top: First place business, last place students."

The speech organizers convinced the picketers to meet with Duncan in exchange for good behavior during the speech. Jesse Hagopian, a laid-off Seattle Public Schools teacher wrote about the meeting. His article was printed and reprinted. I caught up with it at Schools Matter.

Clueless in Seattle

The Secretary and the teachers met and exchanged comments...

A study by the University of Chicago's Consortium on Chicago School Research released in October 2009 examined the academic effects of the closings on students at 18 elementary schools shut down between 2001 and 2006. The study concluded that the vast majority of students went from one low-performing school to another, with no achievement gains--and in fact, even saw temporary decreases in test scores during the stressful period when the announcement of their school being slated for closing was made.

Moreover, a massive study by Stanford University, looking at data covering some 70 percent of all charter school students nationally, found that bad charter schools outnumber good ones by a ratio of roughly 2 to 1--and an astonishing 83 percent of charter schools were either no better, or worse than, traditional public schools.

ONE TEACHER from Detroit opened our meeting with Arne by summarizing the results of our "pre-assessment," saying, "What you are doing is stepping up privatization, charterization, and segregation and inequality...and you know that."

Secretary Duncan tried to respond but he was unprepared. My question -- how much does he really know about the public schools in the United States? We know that he has never taught in a public school classroom -- has never even attended a public school.

Some of his comments:

There is nothing inherently good or bad about charters...

To be clear, we [the Department of Education] want curriculum to be driven by the local level, pushing that. We are by law prohibited from directing curriculum. We don't have a curriculum department.

No one is mandating merit pay (but he admitted he supported merit pay).

Mr Hagopian summarized...

While Arne's performance during our lesson was disappointing, none of us educators were surprised, given his chronic absenteeism from the realm of pedagogy. As a spokesperson for Arne recently admitted to the media, his only instructional experience came as a youngster when "his mother ran an after-school program for underprivileged kids in a church basement, and he was both a student there and a tutor."

Parents: Don't let Arne close your child's school. If the federal government can bail out the banks and find the money to bomb children in Afghanistan, then we know there is enough money to build a world-class education system in your neighborhood. Demonstrate and speak out for the funding your school deserves rather than let it be shut down or privatized.

Students: You are not a number generated by a Scantron machine. You are a passionate, creative young person who can change the world. Refuse to be categorized solely by a test score and demand an education that speaks to who you are and what is important to your community.

Teachers: Unions brought us the weekend. They are indispensable, don't let Arne bust your union. Fight to make your union stronger. Replicate the success of the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators in Chicago--the reform caucus newly elected to run the Chicago Teachers Union--with its vision of social justice education and social movement unionism in unflinching opposition to those who would seek to profit off of the public schools.

Click here...it's worth reading the whole thing.