Live Long and Prosper...

In keeping with tradition, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of New York City, has appointed Cathie Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, to be the new New York City Public Schools Chancellor. She replaces Joel Klein who resigned because, it's "his time to leave."

Why did Bloomberg pick Ms. Black, a publisher with no education credentials?

"She is a superstar manager who has succeeded in the private sector," Bloomberg said of Black.

Asked why he didn't pick somebody with a traditional education background, the mayor said he wanted a chancellor who could build on what Klein started and prepare the city's school children for the jobs of the future.

There are those who believe that, what Klein started," was the demise of the New York City Public School System.

In any case, Bloomberg's appointment of Cathie, "Cheaper than a Hooker," Black, was not shocking. Most top education officials in the nation and in the nation's largest cities are no longer educators.

The US Department of Education was started during the Carter administration. President Carter appointed Shirley Hufstedler, an attorney, as the new Secretary of Education. President Reagan vowed to disband the new department if he was elected, but instead, bucked what was to become tradition and appointed a former high school teacher and bus driver, Terrel Bell, to the Secretary position. That was the last time a public school teacher was appointed to the position. Here's the complete list of the US Secretaries of Education, followed by the president under whom they served, and their profession, college major, or previous occupation.

US Secretaries of Education:

• Shirley Hufstedler (Carter) - Lawyer
• Terrel Bell (Reagan) - High School Teacher and bus driver
• William J Bennett (Reagan) - Lawyer
• Lauro Cavasos (Reagan/Bush I) - College/University Educator
• Lamar Alexandar (Bush I) - Lawyer, Politician, College/University Educator
• Richard Riley (Clinton) - Lawyer
• Roderick Page (Bush II) - College Coach (degree in Education, P.E), Dean, Superintendent
• Margaret Spellings (Bush II) - Poli Sci Major, Political Appointee
• Arne Duncan (Obama) - Sociology Major, Professional Athelete, Charter School Entrepreneur, Chicago Public Schools CEO, Political Appointee

In New York City, none of the last three Chancellors (with Black as the third) were educators. In Los Angeles, the current Superintendent is an educator, but he follows an attorney and a US Naval Officer. Similarly in Chicago, since Mayor Daley took over the schools, the last three CEOs have been political appointees...not one of them had any experience in public education. I haven't researched it, but my guess is that a similar pattern holds true for state superintendents and top school administrators in other large urban districts.

Why is it that educators, people who have actually spent time teaching in public schools, show up so rarely on the list of school administrators at the national and "nation's biggest school systems" level?

Here's one reason...

"Once Vander Ark and Gates shifted their focus from startup schools with proven track records to “school-within-a-school” academies in large, failing urban high schools, it was no surprise to anyone who understood the small-high-schools movement that results would be underwhelming. Vander Ark and Gates ignored the research; they ignored the advice of the successful practitioners; and they acted with arrogance and contempt toward the existing high school faculties, whom they assumed would do what they were told in the academy model." -— David Marshak, Educaton Week online, 2/19/10

...and another...

"No Child Left Behind is part of this global project to deprofessionalize teaching as an occupation. . . . The thinking is that the biggest expenditure in education is teacher salaries. And they want to cut costs. They want to diminish the amount of money that's put into public education. And that means they have to lower teacher costs. And in order to do that, they have to deprofessionalize teaching." —- Lois Weiner, Democracy Now! 9/3/2010

...and again...

"Obama has expanded the importance of standardized testing to determine how much teachers will be paid, which educators will be fired and which schools will be closed -- despite evidence that such practices are harmful." -— Dana Milbank, Washington Post, Aug. 15, 2010

...and more...

"The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them [fads and ill-considered ideas in American Education], for it threatens to destroy public education. Who will stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so?" -— Diane Ravitch, The Death & Life of the Great American School System

...and, finally...

"Almost all of Duncan's polices are indebted to the codes of a market-driven business culture, legitimated through discourses of measurement, efficiency and utility. This is a discourse that values hedge fund managers over teachers, privatization over the public good, management over leadership and training over education. Duncan's fervent support of neoliberal values are well-known and are evident in his support for high-stakes testing, charter schools, school-business alliances, merit pay, linking teacher pay to higher test scores, offering students monetary rewards for higher grades, CEO-type management, abolishing tenure, defining the purpose of schooling as largely job training, the weakening of teacher unions and blaming teachers exclusively for the failure of public schooling." -— Henry Giroux, Truthout, May 25, 2010

It's the money...the power. It's politics, not education.

(The last five quotes come from the web page, Notable Quotes, collected by Susan Ohanian.)

A great article on this topic...at the Answer Sheet.

This is why Diane Ravitch calls Valerie Strauss our nation's most indispensable education journalist.

The Elephant that Obama and Lauer Ignored: Poverty and Student Achievement

About two-thirds of the way through President Obama’s interview Monday with NBC’s Matt Lauer on school reform, I thought the two were about to really dive into the biggest issue plaguing the country’s most troubled schools.

Already discussed were the usual subjects raised by the Obama administration when it addresses school reform: charter schools, standards, how to get terrific teachers in every classroom, the length of the school year, Race to the Top and did I mention charter schools?

Then, there it was, the moment when Lauer raised the issue of poverty and the new Census Bureau figures showing that one in seven Americans live at or below the poverty line, defined as an annual income for a family of four of $22,000. That’s one in seven -- and that figure doesn’t include families of four with a $23,000 annual income.

I thought Lauer would make the obvious connection between poverty and student achievement. After all, the most consistent link in education and social science research is between family income and standardized test scores.

Today’s breed of school reformers, however, have ignored this link and adopted a “no excuses” policy, which essentially claims that good teachers can overcome anything, including medical, sociological and psychological problems that children who live in poverty bring into the classroom.

There is an oft-stated claim that three (or four, or five, depending on the source) “effective” teachers in a row can wipe out the effects of poverty. In fact, Education Secretary Arne Duncan made this claim today in an interview with Tom Brokaw as part of the network's Education Nation Summit.

There is no valid research to show this -- historian Diane Ravitch explains how this bogus notion gained credibility in Chapter 9 of her best-selling book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” -- but that hasn’t stopped people from wrapping policy around it.

David Berliner, regent’s professor emeritus at Arizona State University, a prominent researcher and educational psychologist, has studied how achievement is affected by poverty-induced physical, sociological and psychological problems that children bring to school.

These are six out-of-school factors Berliner has identified that are common among the poor and that affect how children learn, but that reformers effectively say can be overcome without attacking them directly: (1) low birth weight and nongenetic prenatal influences; (2) inadequate medical, dental and vision care, often a result of inadequate or no medical insurance; (3) food insecurity; (4) environmental pollutants; (5) family relations and family stress; and (6) neighborhood characteristics.

Statistics tell this tale. Here are some from “Early Warning!: Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters,” the latest in a series of “Kids Count” analyses by the Casey Foundation, a private charitable organization that advocates for policies to help poor children and families.

The authors take the 2009 reading test results released in March from the National Assessment of Educational Progress -- considered to be the gold standard in K-12 standardized assessment -- and break down the numbers to show how well different groups of disadvantaged students are doing:

• 90 percent of low-income black students in high-poverty schools were not reading at grade level by fourth grade.
• 83 percent of poor black students in schools with moderate to low levels of poverty did not reach the goal.
• 88 percent of Hispanic students in high-poverty schools missed the mark.
• 82 percent of Hispanic students in schools with low or moderate rates of families living in poverty did not read at grade level.

So there Lauer was, on the verge of making the most important point in any discussion about student achievement, and ... he moved on. Without making it.

Obama and Lauer started talking about the poverty statistics in regard to the economy, tax cuts and the economic recovery, and the moment was lost.

So the most important issue in school reform was ignored again.

Those who raise this issue are often attacked for resisting change and wanting to maintain the lousy status quo. It’s a silly, false argument; critics of the Obama administration’s reform agenda want to get rid of bad teachers just as much as anybody else, but they are pushing for workable, fair reforms, not turning back the clock. But the agenda has powerful backers. Obama, for example.

This is why so many people who voted for Obama hoping that he would reverse this school reform view promoted by his predecessor, George W. Bush, in his No Child Left Behind law are terribly disappointed and increasingly angry.

Obama should know better as president. Lauer should have pushed him on this as a journalist.

That their discussion ignored the elephant in the room tells you everything you need to know about what is missing from today’s school “reform” efforts and why they are doomed to fail.

In the past few days the state of Florida has taken the forefront in the nation-wide assault on public education and the teaching profession.

Diane Ravitch put it this way:

The assault on public education and the teaching profession is now in full swing, as states scramble to qualify for the billions of federal funds in President Obama's Race to the Top program. The latest outrage just occurred in Florida, where state legislators passed an extraordinarily stupid piece of legislation. This law abolishes teacher tenure and ties teacher pay to student test scores. In addition, the state will no longer consider either education or experience as factors in teachers' compensation. What teachers earn will depend on their students' test scores.

In other professions experience is a positive thing. To the legislators in Florida, however, teaching experience is not a plus. The national trend towards assuming that all or most teachers are incompetent established by No Child Left Behind and reinforced by the Race to the Top has been codified into law in Florida.

Valerie Strauss, in her Answer Sheet blog on the Washington Post web site wrote:

...the folks behind this either don’t care about public education or don’t understand a single thing about it...The bill was sponsored by state Sen. John Thrasher, the new head of Florida’s Republican Party...He got that post with the influential support of Florida’s former governor, Jeb Bush...Bush’s brother, Neil Bush, co-founded a company called Ignite! Learning that created software used in Florida for FCAT test prep.

What a small world.

It’s pretty clear that this bill is intended to force teachers to accept lesser pay and benefits and a worsening of conditions in the classroom...Florida’s teachers are going to have to make a very loud stand against it. It would be very helpful if they had the support of Education Secretary Arne Duncan...Duncan and President Obama have unfortunately supported the notion of using standardized test scores as a measure to evaluate teacher performance. This is what happens when idealogues take the notion to extremes.

There's very little chance that the current administration in Washington will have any objections to this. They have been against teachers and public schools from the day they took office (during the campaign, then Senator Obama decried the over use of standardized tests, especially when he was talking to teacher). They cheered when an entire school full of teachers were fired because of the poverty that they and other politicians refuse to address (See also here, here, here and here).

Thankfully, teachers in Florida are speaking out - as we all should do.

Again, from Valerie Strauss:

They are taking to the streets, literally and digitally, to transmit their horror over legislation that would end teacher job security, increase student testing and tie teacher pay to student test scores. It also prohibits school districts from taking into account experience, professional credentials or advanced degrees in teacher evaluation and pay...They also plan to bring their protest to Washington D.C. soon, to let their representatives in Congress and federal officials know that they don’t want what they consider an assault on their livelihood and on public education...

Join the facebook group supporting the Florida teachers.

The Secretary of Education said, when talking about firing entire school staffs, "I will tell you what doesn't work. Doing nothing."

He's correct, of course, but his ideas about what to do have been researched and found wanting.

First of all, I have to be honest and admit that in my opinion, Arne Duncan doesn't deserve the office of Secretary of Education any more than Margaret Spelling did. Search out Duncan's biography and you'll find a couple of interesting things. (Read various versions of his bio here, here, here and here.)

First, the man is not an educator. He is a tutor, turned sociology student, turned professional basketball player, turned politician. As a young man, he tutored low income students for his mother's business. He never worked in a school as a teacher. He never had his own classroom with 25 or 30 third graders, or 150 9th graders during a seven period day. He never had to deal, as a classroom teacher, with other teachers, administrators, school board members, or parents.

He worked at his mother's tutoring business. He never went to a public school. He attended the University of Chicago lab school -- his father was a professor at the University of Chicago. He went to Harvard and majored in Sociology and Basketball. After a stint playing pro basketball in Australia he returned to Chicago and ran a tutoring business with his sister...eventually landed a job with the Chicago Public Schools...and found his way to the top as CEO.

He never attended a public school. He studied sociology, not education. He never set foot in a classroom as a teacher.

Duncan claims that Charter Schools are the answer, but Charter Schools, on the whole, don't perform any better than do public schools...on the whole.

The research found that 37 percent of charter schools posted math gains that were significantly below what students would have seen if they had enrolled in local traditional public schools. And 46 percent of charter schools posted math gains that were statistically indistinguishable from the average growth among their traditional public-school companions. That means that only 17 percent of charter schools have growth in math scores that exceeds that of their traditional public-school equivalents by a significant amount.
In reading, charter students on average realized a growth that was less than their public-school counterparts but was not as statistically significant as differences in math achievement, researchers said.

Part two of the Duncan/Obama plan is paying teachers on the basis of their students' test scores...i.e. Merit Pay.

As reported by the Economic Policy Institute, Adams, Heywood and Rothstein said,

...the use of merit pay systems based on quantitative measures is fraught with perverse consequences that often thwart the larger goal of improving the quality of services and outcomes...

Merit pay schemes tend to pit people against each other, in direct contrast to the cooperation and collaborative atmosphere needed in a school setting. Making test scores the end all of education leads to corruption and "doctoring the books" as was clearly demonstrated during the administration of G.W. Bush. The "Texas Miracle" authored by Bush's first Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, turned out to be based on test cheating and pushing students out of school and onto the streets.

Indeed, "Rothstein’s work shows how even the best-intentioned attempts to create systems for measuring performance often subvert the goals and values of the firm or organization being measured."

Duncan's reliance on questionable methods for improving schools shows that he is, at best, unfamiliar with the research and at worst, purposely ignoring it. His lack of qualifications for and dangerous policies as the Secretary of Education calls into question the motives and judgment of President Obama who appointed him.

"I continue to believe that everyone who opines about education should first be required to spend several months in a public school classroom...Only that way can their writing have authenticity. It's called walking around in the other person's shoes." -- Walt Gardner

Other sources:

Texas Merit-Pay Pilot Failed to Boost Student Scores, Study Says

Nine Myths about Public Schools

Top Ten Reasons Why Merit Pay for Teachers is a Terrible Idea

Merit Pay Could Ruin Teacher Teamwork

The Folly of Merit Pay

It seems that Rod Paige's Houston Miracle, in which schools falsified scores and pushed out low achieving students has been duplicated in Chicago.

The Houston Miracle-that-wasn't formed the basis of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act. NCLB is being helped along to a third term by the Obama administration and the new Secretary of Education, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, Arne Duncan. It seems that Duncan's Chicago plan is the same as the Houston plan of 8 years ago...cheat.

A business oriented group, the Civic Committee of The Commercial Club of Chicago, has finished a report on the Chicago Public Schools. They found that the "increased scores" on "the tests" for the Chicago Public School system were due to changing the requirements...lowering the standard, so to speak...lowering the passing score on the test. Read it.

Education in Chicago: Chicago Public Schools Have Improved? Baloney!

by Bill Sweetland | Posted 07.06.2009 | Chicago

...The committee's logic is compelling.

The stark conclusion: Nothing that Paul Vallas, Mayor Daley or Arne Duncan did in the last 15 years has had any significant effect on the number of CPS students who can read and write acceptably and do arithmetic, fractions and elementary algebra easily. It's all an illusion.

No Child Left Behind is leaving thousands of children behind!
Dismantle NCLB!
Sign the petition by clicking HERE.
Nearly 35,000 signatures so far...

Fairtest has a report about recent research on No Child Left Behind. The current administration, led by President Obama and Ed Secretary Duncan, are continuing the assault on public education begun by President Clinton and pushed by Bush and company.

The only thing is...and we have been saying this for 8 years now...it doesn't work. Here's the research to prove it...

Two recent reports add to the mounting evidence that the federal No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) is failing on nearly every level, and another finds serious harm done to students by California’s exit exam. The Civil Rights Project and Bill Mathis analyze NCLB, while Sean Reardon evaluates California.
NCLB is not achieving its goals and may in fact be degrading education. That’s the conclusion of the latest in a series of 13 reports from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA (formerly the Harvard Civil Rights Project). As the report’s foreword put it, “We have bet the future of federal education policy on a theory of accountability that does not work.”

Click here to read it all...pass it around...

Guess what the education bloggers are talking about? Right...the President's comments on Charter Schools, Incentives for Teachers (Merit pay?), and all the things that make Arne Duncan happy. Maybe the new version of No Child Left Behind won't be as punitive as it has been under the Bush administration...and that's good...if it turns out that way. Still, Margaret Spelling (Bush's Secretary of Education) is a big fan of Arne Duncan (which in itself is enough to make me sick), and with good reason. He spews the same pro-charter, pro-testing, pro-standards, pro-business roundtable, anti-child-centered-education drivel that has brought public education in the US to the brink of disaster.

This is definitely not change we can believe in.

Time to tell him what we think...Email the President at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

If you're interested here are some good articles among those critical of the President's speech from Tuesday night...in my order of importance...Click on the title to read the whole thing...or just read the blurb I cut.

by Diane Ravitch
February 24, 2009
Is Arne Duncan Really Margaret Spellings in Drag?
"...Everything I have seen and learned since Duncan came to office has supported Secretary Spellings' admiring comments about Secretary Duncan. It turns out that Duncan, like the Bush administration, adores testing, charter schools, merit pay, and entrepreneurs. Part of the stimulus money, he told Sam Dillon of The New York Times, will be used so that states can develop data systems, which will enable them to tie individual student test scores to individual teachers, greasing the way for merit pay. Another part of the stimulus plan will support charters and entrepreneurs..."

by Jim Horn
February 24, 2009
Roosevelt Economics, Reagan Education Policy
"...The President reminded us tonight that we are going to offer hundreds of billions more to bail out the banks AGAIN, but if the overpaid and lazy teachers expect a raise, they are going to have to prove they can wring out higher test scores for a couple of thousand dollars a year. And as the President reminds us, "from the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age," we are now ready to sacrifice that system for a ragged collection of cheap corporate charter schools without public governance..."

by Gerald Bracey
February 25, 2009
On Education, Obama Blows it
"I have not the expertise to address the merits of President Obama's speech to Congress on the issues of the economy. I do claim some expertise on education. He blew it.

"He accepted the same garbage that the propagandists, fear mongers such as Lou Gerstner, Bill Gates, Roy Romer, Bob Wise, Craig Barrett and many others--God help us, Arne Duncan?--have been spewing for years..."

by Norm Scott
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Did Obama Fail His Ed Test?
"So what exactly did Obama say in his speech tonight about reforming education? You see, it's not just about getting resources for schools but about, you know, reform. Like incentives for teachers - you know - merit pay. And charters. And early childhood ed. Well. 1 out of 3 ain't zero.

"But as you drill down it gets worse. Shame on you if you don't graduate from not only high school, but college. Does he know that an overwhelming number of jobs over the next decade - if there are any – will not require a college education? I mean, he is telling us his stimulus plan will stimulate infrastructure jobs - mostly vocational-like skills that do not come from a college education. Then in the next breath he makes it look like you are a failure and unpatriotic if you don't go to college. If anything, he should have talked about NOT going to college and learning how to do the kinds of work with your hands that is so missing in this society..."

by Terry
February 25, 2009
Obama, Charter Schools, and the Pearl
"Nancy Pelosi was a veritable jack(ie)-in-the-box during Barack Obama's speech last night to a joint session of Congress, leaping to her feet to lead an ovation anytime Obama said something inspiring. There was one notable exception, however. When Obama raised the issue of charter schools--

'We'll invest ... in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. And we will expand our commitment to charter schools.'

"--Pelosi remained seated. In fact, the mention of charter schools was perhaps the weakest applause line of the evening..."
No Child Left Behind is leaving thousands of children behind!
Dismantle NCLB!
Sign the petition by clicking HERE.
More than 34,000 signatures so far...

Thursday, April 19th...

"It is important for all of us to make it clear that accountability is not a way to punish anybody," said Bush in a meeting at the White House, "It's an essential component to making sure that our system, our education system, frankly, is not discriminatory. Education isn't about learning, or getting an education, it's about ensuring that people of all races and all backgrounds have identical test scores."

. . . .

"There cannot be one nationwide federal test that compares all students equally," said Bush, "that'll just never work. Some parts of the country have more minorities than others, some are overflowing with illegals, and some are in the south; we cannot expect these states to perform at the same level as other, less unfortunate states."

Read it here:

Schools Matter
Bush Addresses Notion that No Child Left Behind Punishes Schools

Bush: NCLB not meant to punish schools, but to help them

This letter comes from the Contra Costa Times (California).
Sign the petition...

-----
December 13th, 2006

LETTERS TO THE CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Testing, testing, testing and still we have the problem of increasing high school dropouts, fewer highly qualified/veteran teachers, more failing schools and fewer people entering a beat-down profession.
It's time for the politicians to stop playing with our educational system and begin listening to the people who have been working directly with the students and schools' staffs. It's time for President Bush and the politicians to show all of America that our schools are just as important as the war in Iraq.
Invest in the building of highly supplied and efficiently run schools. Invest in educational settings that are technologically current and aesthetically pleasing. Value the teachers by paying them living wages and sound benefits. Encourage youths by having community support centers that have homework help, as well as social and philanthropic activities for our young people.
Cheryl Powell
Richmond

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/local/states/california/16228361.htm