IN CORPORATIZATION THEY TRUST.

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@anthonycody, @dianeravitch, education, Educators, students, teachers, urban education

How many of us get the big picture about what is happening to American Education?

How many of us have seen the grand scheme? Scholars have followed the attempts to privatize education, one of the biggest industries in America, for 100 years. John Bellamy Foster wrote a paper in Monthly Review (referenced below) about that. But up until now these attempts were not successful.

What is different now is that this movement has become successful and it will take everything we have to hold it off. We must fight with every ounce of strength and try to capitalize  on our numbers, not just in voicing our concerns on social media but also by financially supporting efforts to fight their media machine by supporting pro public education documentaries so they can be screened at well known film festivals.

I recommend these two as starters.

Jack Paar’s “Corporatized” (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/261761415/corporatized)

Bill Baykan’s “The Public School Wars” (http://www.publicschoolwars.com)

As we know, commercial concerns look constantly for new markets and areas of activity. In the last quarter of the twentieth century there was strong pressure to ‘roll-back’ state regulation, and to transform non-market and ‘social’ spheres such as education into arenas of commercial activity.

According to Colin Leys, such a transformation – the making of a market – entailed the meeting of four requirements:

1. The reconfiguration of the goods and services in question so that they can be priced and sold.

2. The inducing of people to want to buy them.

3. The transformation of the workforce from one working for collective aims with a service ethic to one working to produce profits for owners of capital and subject to market discipline.

4. The underwriting of the risks to capital by the state.

What we have here is a process of commodification – and the development of attempts to standardize ‘products’ and to find economies of scale.

Do those four look familiar?

(http://infed.org/mobi/globalization-and-the-incorporation-of-education/)

In the 1980s, a powerful conservative political coalition, led by corporate interests, was organized against the public schools. Ronald Reagan sought to institute school vouchers, while frequently indicating his desire to abolish the U.S. Department of Education—established as a cabinet-level department during the Carter administration. Reagan appointed a National Commission on Education, which issued its report, A Nation at Risk, in 1983. Its message was that the U.S. education system was failing due to its own internal contradictions. (No mention was made of slowing economic growth, increasing inequality, growing poverty, etc.) In the words of A Nation at Risk: “If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves….We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.

The Reagan administration, which initiated a huge Cold War military buildup while cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations, used the rhetoric of reducing the skyrocketing federal deficit to justify jettisoning federal support for schools—including a 50 percent cut in federal Title I funding for schools in low-income districts.28 The late 1980s and 1990s saw the first dramatic shifts toward more rigid standards, accountability, and assessment systems, backed up by coercive mechanisms, in states like Kentucky and Texas (the latter under Governor George W. Bush). This general approach to educational reform was pushed forward within the federal government in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations, and materialized as a major bipartisan national program for the transformation of elementary and secondary schooling in the presidency of George W. Bush.

(http://monthlyreview.org/2011/07/01/education-and-the-structural-crisis-of-capital/)

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Some good news and bad news.

Actually it’s the same news but good or bad depending on whether you like what I write or post.

I haven’t posted or blogged for two weeks because I took a marvelous drive around Ireland and Northern Ireland. Pictures have been posted. 

Nor will I be posting or blogging from Monday,June 29th until I sufficiently recover from the open heart Aortic Valve replacement Surgery I must have because of a congenital defect they call a “bicuspid aortic valve”. Oh well, another thing I can blame on my parents.

There have been too many reports of things bad ranging from issues in education and the testing cancer that seems to be spreading more rapidly and Pearson running teachers’ and students’ lives more and more.

The 2016 election list of potential candidates ranges from Bernie Sanders, who is at smart, sane, and trustworthy, to Hillary Clinton who in my opinion is 2 out of those three, to the Republican list that gets sillier and sillier. Donald Trump? Really?

Finally, people in this country are crazy. Nine people get shot in a Charleston church by a mad racist and we still have to debate over gun control and racism? It all makes me want to go back to Ireland, drink some Guiness and maybe write as the Irish do.

One last thing. When Jack Paar sends out his notice about his new documentary, “CORPORATIZED”, do your utmost to support it. It promises to be our battle cry and anti “Waiting for Superman”.

We are the super men and women.

I’ll be back after surgery, and I promise no scar pictures.

A CONVERSATION ABOUT EDUCATION ON EDCIRCUIT.COM

Come watch and share:

On a variety of Education issues.

  http://www.edcircuit.com/the-state-of-education-a-conversation-with-educatorauthor-david-greene/

SCOTT WALKER IS THE LEADING REPUBLICAN DERP

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@anthonycody, @dianeravitch, @Koch, @valeriestrauss, education, Educators, politics, teacher, teachers

Paul Krugman just wrote a column on “Fighting the Derp” in economics. I had never heard the word before and was surprised to find out, “’Derp’ is a term borrowed from the cartoon “South Park” that has achieved wide currency among people I talk to, because it’s useful shorthand for an all-too-obvious feature of the modern intellectual landscape: people who keep saying the same thing no matter how much evidence accumulates that it’s completely wrong.”

We have become a nation of “Derps”. Once upon a time the privilege of derping was relegated to pundits, columnists, and a few talk show hosts. Now everyone can derp. (Is it a coincidence that it rhymes with twerp?) Social media has instantly connected millions of derps to us all.

Krugman states, “True, the peddlers of politically inspired derp are quick to accuse others of the same sin. “ So I should probably add a disclaimer.

(Disclaimer: I am sure some of you consider me a derp as well. You however, are wrong as usual.)

Nary a day goes by without evidence of derping, especially in discussing politics, race, and education. These three topics are symbiotic these days.

How often have we seen “predictions that just keep being repeated no matter how wrong they’ve been in the past,” or “the never-changing policy prescription.”?

So who are the  derps sending those denigrating messages about teachers and their unions? Why does someone like Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin and other derps like him exist? Patrick Healy and Monica Davey of the New York Times tell us in their article, “Behind Scott Walker, a Longstanding Conservative Alliance Against Unions”.

There is a cadre of conservative businessmen and foundations who have paid for the rise of Walker and other derps to serve their interests. Michael.W. Grebe and the Bradley Foundation support the initiatives, ideas, and financing conservative public intellectuals, bankers and industrialists want implemented.

For example, “While the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation could not endorse candidates outright, it provided more than $2 million in grants to think tanks that implicitly championed Mr. Walker’s small-government platform, and $520,000 to Americans for Prosperity, a national group that held Tea Party rallies at which Mr. Walker spoke. In the months that followed, he would deliver on that promise, breaking Wisconsin’s public employee unions in a bitter battle, surviving a recall effort led by angry Democrats and making his fight the centerpiece of an as-yet-unannounced presidential campaign.”

Here is why Walker scares me more than any other Republican Candidate at the moment. He has put the conservative “less government is better at any cost” agenda into effect and is being rewarded for it. He is being “revered as a leader brave enough to face down unions and their liberal supporters.” In fact, “Scott Walker didn’t have the stature, influence or money to become governor on his own or to end collective bargaining on his own,” said Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the Wisconsin A.F.L.-C.I.O. “All of that flowed from Mike Grebe, the Bradley Foundation and a network of influential conservatives, including the Kochs.”

Mr. Neuenfeldt added: “He wouldn’t be running for president without these people. He would be their guy in Washington.”

He is the derp’s front man much as the character Bob Roberts was in the 1992 movie of the same name. Although Roberts was supported by some vague “Broken Dove” foundation, Walkers support is there for all to see. “The Bradley Foundation gave to Americans for Prosperity but was more integral to generating policy ideas and talking points that were picked up by Wisconsin’s powerful bench of right-wing talk radio hosts. In 2009, the foundation gave a $1 million grant to one of the think tanks, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, to recommend policy ideas for the next governor. It also backed the MacIver Institute, providing one-third of its budget.

Both think tanks proposed dozens of small-government policies, and at the top of their lists was curbing the power of the public employee unions.” “Koch Industries donated $43,000 to Mr. Walker’s 2010 bid.” He also received their support to defeat a 2012 recall and then get reelected in 2014. No surprise that, “David Koch offered an opinion at a recent private gathering that Mr. Walker was the favorite for the Republican nomination. And Mr. Walker’s old allies are hungry once more for a leader who will go to extremes, this time as president.” Or, as Grebe said in a recent video, “We believe that through that collaboration, together we can help change the world.”

I would translate that to mean, “conspire to make the US less equitable” one derp at a time. Mr. Walker is their Republican “candiderp” for President.

OLD SCHOOL BEATS NEW SCHOOL AGAIN

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@anthonycody, @dianeravitch, @valeriestrauss, Amanda Ripley, common core, education, Educators, Elizabeth Green, High Stakes Testing, students, teacher, teachers

Author Alfie Kohn explains, and even makes the case that the 3 decade old K-W-L chart should be viewed “as radical in today’s learning environment.”

“The iconic K-W-L chart [was] first described by literacy expert Donna Ogle in an article published almost 30 years ago in “The Reading Teacher.” Students are asked to brainstorm what they already know (K) about the subject matter of the text they’re going to read and also to anticipate the kinds of information it’s likely to contain. Then they discuss what they hope to learn (W). Finally, after reading, they consider what they actually did learn (L).

It’s status as one of those nifty practical ideas that teachers can pick up quickly and start using the following morning probably explains why it became so popular.

Although first developed as a tool for reading, it has many uses. I have used this KWL a number of ways, as have many teachers over the past 30 years. Imagine students (either individually or in groups) using it as a framework for both preparing and assessing a project or research? Imagine teachers using it to plan their own lessons? What do my kids know? What do they want and need to know? How well have they learned?

Why does Kohn say, “K-W-L, used properly, is actually radical? To begin with, it’s collaborative. Kids aren’t asked just to come up with questions and conclusions individually but to engage in a conversation with their peers that has the potential to deepen each child’s initial ideas.”

Some “radical” notions are funny. They aren’t so radical if they have been used by many for years and to the teachers who use them they are a “best practice” to share with others. It is however radical in how it is “a striking contrast with the nothing-matters-but-the-text-itself ideology that informs the ELA Common Core standards.”

K-W-L charts aren’t merely a clever way of organizing kids’ ideas. They “drive the lesson — as opposed to a list of prefabricated outcomes produced by the teacher, district administrators, state legislature, or Pearson employees. The learning is owned by the learners; they actively select and use texts to find out what they want to know.”

“This approach constitutes not just an alternative to the top-down standards-and-testing movement that has come to define “school reform”; it’s a rebellion against traditional teacher-centered classrooms that remain the norm in most public and private schools — classrooms where virtually the entire curriculum (with learning goals, expectations, and assessments) is devised without any input from the students themselves and without attention to the needs and interests of these particular students.

Unfortunately smart devices like this “tend to be jettisoned when there’s pressure to plow through a large quantity of material. The obstacle here is threefold: a view of teaching as covering rather than discovering; a simplistic emphasis on rigor; and a top-down model of education in which policy makers far away from classrooms impose their to-do lists on those actually engaged in the learning.”

Quoted excerpts of Kohn’s work are from:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/06/05/why-a-simple-30-year-old-chart-is-an-ingenious-teaching-tool-today/

STOP. LOOK. LISTEN.

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@anthonycody, @dianeravitch, @Koch, @valeriestrauss, Amanda Ripley, education, Elizabeth Green, opt out, Parents, politics, students, teachers, urban education

Elected officials. IT’S TIME TO FINALLY STOP, LOOK,  LISTEN:

How much will it take for policy makers to stop the education reform led by corporate interests? How much longer will they ignore the will of the people who vote them in…. OR OUT!

All the campaign money in the world will not get you re-elected if you refuse to see the handwriting on the wall. Eric Cantor learned that last primary season. It looks like many will learn that same lesson in 2016 and 2018.

Samantha Williams, of Dunkirk Maryland writes to her local newspaper.

“Standardized testing is not an accurate measure of a student’s ability to perform, as many people do not test well, even though they know the information being presented.”

“Another problem arising from standardized tests is the lack of proper teaching practices. Instead of “teaching to learn,” educators are now “teaching to test.” A major chunk of the school year is spent rushing to prepare for tests instead of making sure students are actually learning. Also, the amount of stress placed on students to perform well causes them to do poorly.”

The Quinnipiac University Poll, on June 4, 2015 rates a governor on his education policies that are strongly based on the use of standardized tests.

“New York State voters disapprove 59 – 30 percent of the way Gov. Andrew Cuomo is handling education.

Voters have a dim view of standardized tests to measure student performance, saying:

• 64 – 30 percent that these tests are not an accurate way to measure how well students are learning;

• 69 – 26 percent that teacher pay should not be based on student test scores;

• 65 – 29 percent that teacher tenure should not be based on standardized test scores.

“Rating teachers on how their pupils do on standardized tests is a bad idea, New Yorkers think,” Maurice Carroll Assistant Director of the Quinnipiac University Poll said. “As a matter of fact, voters don’t trust those tests to be an accurate measure of teachers’ performance.

The same poll also reports that:

 Voters trust the teachers’ unions more than the governor, 54 – 30 percent, to improve education in New York and… that they oppose allowing the New York City mayor to continue control of the city’s public schools by 55 – 34 percent.”

STOP. LOOK. LISTEN. OR LOSE YOUR JOBS.

How A$$Irma$ive Ac$ion really works.

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@anthonycody, @dianeravitch, @valeriestrauss, achievement gap, common core, education, Educators, High Stakes Testing, stereotypes, urban education

Susan Dynarski writes in the New York Times on June 2nd 2015 that “For the Poor, the Graduation Gap Is Even Wider Than the Enrollment Gap”.

Rich and poor students don’t merely enroll in college at different rates; they also complete it at different rates. In 2002, researchers with the National Center for Education Statistics started tracking a cohort of 15,000 high school sophomores.”

“The project, called the Education Longitudinal Study, recorded information about the students’ academic achievement, college entry, work history and college graduation. The study divided students into quartiles, depending on their parents’ education, income and occupation. Thirteen years later, we see the results.”

“Among the participants from the most disadvantaged families, just 14 percent had earned a bachelor’s degree. Among those from the most advantaged families, 60 percent had earned a bachelor’s.”

“Seeing these numbers, some readers may wonder whether the low-income children weren’t completing college because they were not able. As part of the study, high school students completed a battery of tests in math and reading. And the results show that the hypothesis is wrong: educational achievement does not explain the gap in bachelor’s degree attainment.”

“Academic skills in high school, at least as measured by a standardized math test, explain only a small part of the socioeconomic gap in educational attainment.”

“A poor teenager with top scores and a rich teenager with mediocre scores are equally likely to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. In both groups, 41 percent receive a degree by their late 20s.”

“And even among the affluent students with the lowest scores, 21 percent managed to receive a bachelor’s degree, compared with just 5 percent of the poorest students. Put bluntly, class trumps ability when it comes to college graduation.”

Let’s examine what this means for education policy and so-called reform. It tells us that what has been imposed on schools all across the nation via No Child Left Behind, Race To The Top Common Core, and excessive standardized testing was bogus. (A milder B-S word than I would like to have used.)

It tells us that those if us who have been screaming, “It’s the economics stupid” have been right all along. Until we find a way to narrow the economics gap, the real achievement gap will not be reduced. We can easily see how the scientific evidence once again shows how a$$Irma$ive ac$ion really works.