Unions organize teachers at Chicago Charter Schools

Unions Move In at Chicago Charter Schools, and Resistance Is Swift

By REBECCA VEVEA- NY Times.

In a trend that worries charter school operators, teachers at 12 of Chicago’s charters have formed unions over the past two years, and the Chicago Teachers Union is seeking to organize all 85 of the schools.

Union leaders say the growing charter movement is changing the landscape of public education and, with its disdain for unions, could leave teachers without a strong voice on issues like working conditions, teacher evaluations and curriculum.

Administrators and operators are battling back, arguing that unionization could undermine the basic premise of the charter school model: that they are more effective because they are free from the regulations and bureaucracies that govern traditional public schools.

Unionization of charter schools is a major step for the Chicago Teachers Union. Though charter teachers in other cities have formed unions, Chicago is one of the first where the public school system’s major union has directed the effort, according to the American Federation of Teachers.

The unions at the 12 charter schools are affiliated with the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff, which is a joint program of the C.T.U., the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers. At eight of the schools, teachers have contracts, at two they are in negotiation and at two they are fighting to be recognized by their school administrations.

“At some point, we would like all the charter schools to be part of C.T.U.,” said Jackson Potter, the union’s staff coordinator.

There were no charter school unions in 2008, when the Chicago Teachers Union formed its Charter Outreach Committee to knock on doors and help charter teachers organize.

Nationally, 604 charter schools, roughly 12 percent, have collective-bargaining agreements. But 388 of those schools are in states where the law dictates that charters be included in existing collective-bargaining agreements with local districts, according to data collected by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Illinois law does not require charter schools to be part of local collective-bargaining units.

Gates spends millions to promote his view of school change

Gates spends millions to sway public ( and you) on ed reform

By Valerie Strauss - Washington Post 

The Bill and  Melinda Gates Foundation is spending at least $3.5 million to create a new organization whose aim is to win over the public and the media to its market-driven approach to school reform, according to the closely held grant proposal.

The organization is tentatively called “Teaching First,” and already has a chief executive officer: Yolie Flores, a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, who has championed such issues as public school choice and teacher effectiveness. Flores did not immediately return phone calls for comment. A Gates foundation spokesman said she would take over the job fulltime when her board term is up in June.

The Gates proposal lays out a strategy to win public approval for the foundation’s investment of more than $335 million in teacher effectiveness programs in four school districts that involve controversial initiatives including linking teacher pay to student standardized test scores. Critics say this “value-added” model-based test scores is unfair measure of how well a teacher is doing because there are many factors that go into how well a student does on a test.

The plan includes campaigns to reach out to parents, teachers, students, business and civic and religious leaders, and to build “strong ties to local journalists, opinion elites, and local/state policymakers and their staffs.” The plan explains how the organization will ensure “frequent placement ... in local media coverage of issues related to teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution of effective teachers” in accordance with the Gates approach. 

Read the entire piece at  http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/gates-spends-millions-to-sway.html   See posts below. 

Does this sound like what Mayor Kevin Johnson and Michele Rhee are doing in Sacramento?

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Mayor Johnson active in school criticism

Feb.28,2011.

SACRAMENTO, CA – Today Mayor Kevin Johnson and STAND UP held the first ‘State of Schools’ meeting in Sacramento at the Guild Theater. Mayor Johnson was joined by Russlynn Ali, Assistant Secretary for Civil
Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, in a conversation on the urgent need for reform in Sacramento’s
public schools.

Today’s meeting focused on the condition of public schools in Sacramento and issued a call to action. The
meeting was sponsored by the Black Parallel School Board, Greater Sacramento Urban League, Sacramento
Chapter for 100 Black Women, Sacramento NAACP, and the Sacramento Observer in honor of Black History
Month.

Currently, less than half of Sacramento schools are meeting academic targets. While Sacramento’s public schools have shown slight increases in academic achievement over recent years, Mayor Johnson believes that the gap is not closing quickly enough.

Johnson stated, “Over the last seven years, city school third graders have improved by an average of two percent per year. This may sound positive, but think about it from this perspective: at the current rate, it will take 20 years before close to 80 percent of our third graders are on grade level. That’s an entire generation.”

Nominated by President Barack Obama to the U.S. Department of Education in 2009, Russlynn Ali has dedicated efforts to underscoring the urgent need to prepare all students for academic success in this global economy.

By Melody Gutierrez

Mayor Kevin Johnson is in Washington, D.C., today with education reformer Michelle Rhee for the launch of a national campaign aimed at eliminating “last in, first out” policies that base teacher layoffs on seniority.

The announcement came at a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Johnson is the founding chair of the group’s Public School Task Force.

“We have to eliminate old policies that satisfy adult needs, but have absolutely no bearing on student achievement,” Johnson said in a press release. “(Last in, first out) policies represent everything that’s wrong with our current education system. I urge every mayor and state leader to stand up for children by eliminating policies that deprive them of great teachers.”

The campaign is being called Save Great Teachers and is being organized through the political advocacy group StudentsFirst, which is run by Johnson’s fiancé Rhee. Over the next seven months leading up to the new school year, StudentsFirst plans to aggressively advocate for the end of seniority based layoff decisions.

Source: The Sacramento Bee
Feb.23,2011.

From. www.standup.org

Michele Rhee in Sacramento

The Sacramento Bee has an interesting news/ promotion piece   about Michele Rhee and her new foundation. It is here. http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/08/3241311/michelle-rhee-brings-her-fix-the.html

Yes, Michele Rhee is controversial.  More important, while firing and evaluation changed, there really is no solid evidence that her approach improved schooling for kids in D.C.  Please look at the data.

Just because Michele Rhee and her cohort make unfair and uninformed attacks on U.S. Schools, that does not mean that there are not serious problems in our schools.

I encourage you to read Diane Ravitch’s book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System; How Testing and Choice Are undermining education. (2010).  She used to be on their side, until she looked closely at the evidence.

The claim that persons entering teaching are in the lowest part of their university classes, well, we don’t have any evidence that this makes a major difference.  What she is really saying is that graduates of elite or selective colleges do better.  That is why she was in Teach for America and started the New Teacher Project.   There is simply no evidence that elite status makes a positive difference.  Primarily you are dealing with working class students attending public universities vs. upper middle class kids going to private universities.

The difference is in the class composition of the students and how many hours per week they work to get through college.

It is a mistake to dismiss every criticism of the “corporate reformers’, the problem is they solutions which they advocate.  There is little evidence that  testing and choice and the profit based solutions work.

More at www.choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com

Yes, Michele Rhee is controversial.  More important, while firing and evaluation changed, there really is no solid evidence that her approach improved schooling for kids in D.C.  Please look at the data.

Just because Michele Rhee and her cohort make unfair and uninformed attacks on U.S. Schools, that does not mean that there are not serious problems in our schools.

I encourage you to read Diane Ravitch’s book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System; How Testing and Choice Are undermining education. (2010).  She used to be on their side, until she looked closely at the evidence.

The claim that persons entering teaching are in the lowest part of their university classes, well, we don’t have any evidence that this makes a major difference.  What she is really saying is that graduates of elite or selective colleges do better.  That is why she was in Teach for America and started the New Teacher Project.   There is simply no evidence that elite status makes a positive difference.  Primarily you are dealing with working class students attending public universities vs. upper middle class kids going to private universities.

The difference is in the class composition of the students and how many hours per week they work to get through college.


For a view of Ravitch's position see this.  

   http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2010/12/we_need_public_schools_and_democratic_governance.html

Charters raid money from tax payers

by Michael Hirsch

They said charters would offer needed competition to community schools, but they didn’t say the competition would be about public dollars.  Last week Albany Times Union reported on the city’s Albany Leadership Charter High School for Girls “asking for $15 million in tax-free public financing to buy the brand-new charter high school for girls built by the Brighter Choice Foundation.”
Here’s the cute part. The nonprofit Brighter Choice Foundation, which runs all 11 charter schools in Albany and  erected the building at a cost of some $10.1 million, is directing its Charter Facilities Finance Fund to ask the city to back its selling tax-exempt bonds to investors so it can  buy the school building and — are you ready for this? — lease it back to Brighter Choice.

Forget about whether the deal sounds dodgy, because it does. If the deal also sounds a bit familiar, it may be because Thomas Carroll, the prime mover behind the Brighter Choice charter schools, has been profiting from a similarly questionable real estate tax loophole for the past several years, a story exposed earlier this year by Juan Gonzalez in the Daily News.
Critics say Carroll’s latest charter real estate trick runs counter to the purpose of the city providing tax free bonds, which is to jump-start job creation and promote economic development. No jobs will be created here; the school is already up and running. Where’s the public benefit in financing a project that’s already completed?



The paper cites Brighter Choice Chairman Chris Bender’s bright expectation that the high school’s sale would “replenish the revolving line of credit” it holds with the Walton Family Foundation, the charity run by the family that owns the nonpareil union-busting Wal-Mart.
As the paper notes, that cozy arrangement “could create another potentially controversial scenario in which Brighter Choice is essentially using the proceeds from the sale of tax-free bonds to bolster the account from which it builds new schools to compete with the city school district.”
Supporters say the school does create jobs —some two dozen new ones — but that’s denied by an Albany schools spokesperson who says it’s more a case of job shifting than job creation, given that 200 public school staff members, including 100 teachers, were laid off in the last two school years.
We should note that Carroll, the little man on the charter school stair, is the honcho behind School Performance Inc., which in turn runs the  Charter Facilities Finance Fund that wants to make deal for the city.
His adventures in education aren’t restricted to the state’s snow belt.  President of the charter-flacking Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability, Carroll is also president of the Empire Foundation and CHANGE-NY, both far-right-of-center organizations that mask conservative ideology as fiscal prudence. Ripping off Albany’s tax base must be the new style in protecting the public’s dollars.
On paper, charter schools can be useful experimental nonprofit projects offering urban students small classes and intimate surroundings in schools run by teachers, parents and community leaders -- and in schools covered by a union contract. Successes, especially in the charter school industry's claim to closing the shameful achievement gap between white students and children of color-- could then be imported into community public school curricula and pedagogy. Fine in theory. That's not how it works in practice. Charters are frequently run by for-profit operators who cream students out of district- or municipally run schools and either refuse to admit special education and English language learners or steer them away in the case of school lottery winners -- all in order to boost their statewide test scores -- while keeping unions out and teachers as at-will employees (though fresh organizing successes are changing that union-free picture, at least incrementally). Actually existing charter schools don't as a rule militate to increase the public pot of dollars going to education. In too many cases, they instead drain money from the community schools and --devilishly-- serve sizably as investment opportunities in land and in various for-profit urban redevelopment schemes by hedge fund managers and other Wall Street speculators. The attacks on public sector unions that are ongoing in every state and territory, which are sold as budget-tightening measures and common-sense economies, are all about privatizing education and other public services, and the bulk of vocal charter school supporters are union haters. These attacks are first-rank union issues.
Michael Hirsch is a staff reporter for New York Teacher newspaper.

Charter schools and school reform

  Charter Schools.

 Charters  are  usually public schools using public money  but without the direct over sight of school districts, school administrations and  school boards.  They often do not allow teachers to have a union and they usually do not have a union contract.  Charters are established by state laws and promoted by federal legislation including No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

In California, research shows  some charters do better than  some public schools, some do worse.  They are about average. The evidence is the  same in New York City.

 What are the clear effect of charters?   Charter school  teachers are paid about 20% less,  and usually  are expected to work much longer hours.  The average teacher works 69 hours per week for an average salary of  around $51,000 in California.

    In charters  teachers  are usually receive  less benefits and  little or no job security.  You can be dismissed by the director  of the charter for almost any reason.

  Charter advocates and other neo liberal reformers blamed the teachers unions for their own  failure to improve  public schools. Persons who claim to be reformers attempt to break the domination of the bureaucracy, such as in Washington D.C. under Chancellor Michelle Rhee, often focus on  bringing in superintendents with little background in administration and public schools, the firing of administrators and some teachers for failing to reform failing schools. It is the corporate world of individualism, competition, and consumption opposed to the public sphere of  learning civic cooperation and a pluralist democratic ethos. To date this strategy has produced a high teacher and administrator turn over, but it has not improved academic achievement.

           

In New Orleans, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., New York, and elsewhere reconstitution has been achieved by establishing charter schools and bringing in an outside management company to radically alter the school culture.  In other places the school districts have worked with charters such as KIPP, or intervention systems such as Wested,  Accelerated Schools, the Comer Project  as the primary intervention system.

  KIPP, the Knowledge is Power Program is one of several school restructuring programs that have emerged in the last two decades. KIPP schools are organized for academic achievement.  They insist upon a contract between the home  and the school.  They do not have unions for their teachers.   There are currently 57 KIPP public schools in 16 states and the District of Columbia enrolling more than 14,000 students. Across the KIPP network, 55 of the existing 57 schools are charter schools. The majority of KIPP schools, 48 of 57, are middle schools designed to serve fifth through eighth grade students.

KIPP schools are free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools where low income  students develop the knowledge, skills, and character traits needed to succeed in top quality high schools, colleges.   KIPP schools provide a structured, academic centered  learning environment, and more time  spent in classes. All of the students and the parents  sign a contract to complete their work and their homework.  If students and parents  do not agree to participate in this structured college prep environment, they are not accepted in a KIPP school.  By creating an on task academic environment for all students, KIPP has been successful in getting a significant number of its students to graduate and to enter college.  You can find out more about KIPP Charters at http://www.KIPP.org

See prior posts on Waiting for Superman.

Secretary Duncan and Race to the Top

Jim Horn


Arne Duncan stood before the NAACP convention last week to repeat his claim that "education is the civil rights issue of our generation." He also declared "the only way to equality in society is to achieve equality in the classroom." Since Mr. Duncan did not spell out what he meant by equality or civil rights, let's see if we can extrapolate his meaning from the policies he is pushing hard to be adopted across America, even if his heavy-handed forcing means ignoring the lawful Congressional role in making federal education policy. 





Apparently, Mr. Duncan does not believe that the equality shortage in classrooms that we have known about ever since poor children started going to school can be helped by fair housing policies, better transportation policies, improved health policies, or new jobs policies, any of which we know could affect the poverty levels of urban and rural America, where rates are now the highest, after taxes, of any industrialized nation. According to Mr. Duncan, it would seem that policy shifts or new efforts in these areas are unimportant, for it is "only" in the classroom that we may hope to achieve equality. 





Well, what kind of equality in the classroom would that be? Apparently, it is first and foremost a segregated kind of equality, a segregation that is aided by the spread of charter schools, which remains a top priority of the Administration. Two studies last year, in fact, showed incontrovertible evidence for the segregative effects of charter schools, whether run by non-profit or for-profit corporations. 





So by ignoring segregation within charters, we must assume that the kind of equality that Mr. Duncan is talking about does not depend upon the sharing of social and cultural capital that occurs when socioeconomic classes are educated together, and it is the kind of equality that apparently pays no attention to the facility and funding advantages accrued when middle class parents lend their voices to decisions within the schooling community. 





Secondly, it has become a harsh, punishing kind of equality centered on remediation, ever since the "let a thousand flowers bloom approach to charters" has been replaced by an urgency to ramp up and bring to scale the "no excuses" KIPP schools and the KIPP behave-alikes. In these "no excuses" schools, equality demands total compliance by children who go to school nine or more hours a day and then have 2 to 3 hours of homework each night. Plus Saturdays and part of the summer. In order to be equal in these school and, thus, make up for the poverty that puts these students behind, they must be willing to give up their childhoods, family, and friends for a chance at passing the necessary tests that may or may not prepare them for college some day. For even though the "no excuses" chain gangs remain the dominant model for corporate education reform, we know very little about how these children will fare in independent learning environments after years of total compliance and behavioral/psychological modification. 





Thirdly, it is the kind of equality that denies the importance of the other massive inequalities within the communities where these poor children live. It is the kind of equality that does nothing to aid the child who must dodge bullets on the way home from a 9-hour school day, or who must return home to find nothing to eat. It is the kind of equality that refuses to enroll a child whose parents are not willing to sacrifice their child to a schooling regimen that parents of the leafy suburbs would consider abusive to children if it were their own being subjected to it. 





Fourthly, it is the kind of equality that depends upon assessments that put poor children at a great disadvantage all along the line, for there is no standardized test used in schools today, whether in third or thirteenth grade, that does not demonstrate, on average, a direct correlation between family income and testing outcomes. 





In short, it is the kind of equality that depends upon a race that has many starting lines but only one finish line, a race wherein the hordes of losers claim their place among those who deserve to be the "unequal," children who will be dropped out, pushed out, and eventually forgotten behind the walls of the workhouses and correctional facilities that mark the destination in the school to prison pipeline. 





If Arne Duncan's views on equality are evidenced in his actions, it leaves us with a troubling realization. For to understand that for Mr. Duncan to be right in saying that "education is the civil rights issue of this generation," we must stand shamefaced in admitting that civil rights now demands from equality what we previously could expect only from oppression.

Jim Horne,

From Susan Ohanian’s post.

Charters and school segregation

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/research/new-study-looks-at-segregation.html#more

New study looks at segregation in charter schools

My guest is Kevin G. Welner, professor of education policy and program evaluation in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and director of theEducation and the Public Interest Center. He can be reached at welner@colorado.edu.

By Kevin G. Welner
The Washington Post published an article last Wednesday about a study from UCLA’s Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles which analyzed charter schools across the country and found them to be substantially more racially isolated than traditional public schools. The study has received quite a bit of attention, as well as pushback from charter school advocates.

Today, CU-Boulder’s policy center, along with its partner policy center at Arizona State University (collectively, EPIC/EPRU) is releasing a studyhttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/schools-without-diversity that, coincidentally, asks some of the same questions as the UCLA study did.
Our study provides a comprehensive examination of enrollment patterns in schools operated by private corporations and finds these schools to be segregated by race, family income, disabilities and English language learner status. As compared with their local public school districts, these schools operated by Education Management Organizations, or EMOs, are substantially more segregated, and the strong segregative pattern found in 2001 is virtually unchanged through 2007.


This new study, "Schools without Diversity: Education Management Organizations, Charter Schools, and the Demographic Stratification of the American School System," is written by Gary Miron, Jessica Urschel, and Elana Tornquist of Western Michigan University, and William Mathis of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Please find this new report on the web here. (http://epicpolicy.org/publication/schools-without-diversity)

The fact that our conclusions are remarkably similar to the UCLA study is particularly noteworthy. The two studies, conducted independently using different data, different researchers and different methods, both found extensive segregation in charter schools.
This type of independent verification is extraordinarily important. It establishes that the findings are robust – are not just the result of one particular way of looking at the data. Together, these two new studies paint a powerful picture of charters adding to the school segregation caused by the nation’s highly segregated neighborhoods.

The EMO study is particularly important because the Obama administration has placed a great deal of faith in the scaling up of nonprofit EMOs (sometimes called Charter Management Organizations, or CMOs) as part of the administration’s turnaround strategy.
The findings of this new study suggest that these policies have the very real potential to be harmful to the nation’s social and educational interests.

Having just read the various responses to the UCLA study, allow me to pre-emptively address those concerns, which may also be raised in response to the EPIC/EPRU study:

1.Pointing to the segregation is in no way condemning the schools, teachers, or students at those segregated schools. Individually, these can be great schools. What these studies highlight is a policy shift away from the Brown v. Board of Education understanding and ambition. We’ve moved from “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” back to a version of Plessy’s “separate but equal,” generally stated as something like, “segregation doesn’t matter; what matters is that we hold every school accountable for excellence.”
2.While high-quality segregated schools – whether charters or not – deserve praise for their excellent academic outcomes, I am troubled by the abandonment of the diversity goal. Why, in reading the responses to the UCLA study, do I see so many people buying into a false dichotomy between excellence and diversity? We should approach charter schools with the foundational understanding that diversity and high achievement are mutually reinforcing and then structure our charter policies accordingly.

3.The reality is that charter schools as a whole do not appear to generate improved test scores. So, looking at these two new studies, it seems that we are getting the harms of segregation without any significant achievement benefits. Yet charters and choice are here to stay, so the questions we should be asking concern how to best structure choice policies to further both goals – diversity and excellence.
The UCLA Civil Rights Project offers several recommendations for restoring equity provisions and integration in charter schools. They include establishing new guidance and reporting requirements by the federal government; incorporating some features of magnet schools into charter schools; heightened enforcement of existing state-level legislation with specific provisions regarding diversity in charter schools; and monitoring patterns of charter school enrollment and attrition, focusing particularly on reporting the demographic information of charter school students on low-income and English Language Learning characteristics.

4.Both the EPIC/EPRU study and the UCLA study show racial stratification in both directions. That is, we’re seeing both “white flight” and “minority flight." Several comments I'’ve seen therefore conclude that we’re attacking Latino and African American students for choosing non-diverse schools. Speaking for myself, I would never condemn a parent for making such a choice. If a parent perceives his or her best schooling option to be a segregated school, I would certainly hope that the segregation isn'’t the reason for that conclusion. But ultimately I’m not in a position to question any parent’s choice. I should note that surveys consistently show that parents of all races state a preference for integrated schools, all else being equal. So what I do question are state policies that fail to create incentives for schools, including charter schools, to have that diversity.
Ultimately, I hope those who criticized the UCLA report and who might be tempted to criticize the new EPIC/EPRU report take a step back and consider the long-term benefits to the charter movement if it embraces reforms designed to create greater school-level diversity. Yes, these reports do raise serious concerns about the current situation, but they aren'’t calling for charters to be abandoned. They are calling for meaningful reflection and change so that these schools can help move the country toward its ideals.

The costs of the economic crisis in the states

The current  economic crisis has forced the cutting of higher education, of k-12 education, and of social welfare systems. What caused this crisis ? It was caused by the greed and avarice of the financial class and aided by the politicians of both major political parties.

Major banks and corporations looted the economy creating an international meltdown.  Now, they have been rewarded with bail out money.  The crisis was not caused by students, teachers, public employees  nor recipients of social security.     Now we have cuts in parks,  in universities, in nurses, libraries.  School children did not create this crisis.  Foster care children did not create this crisis.

The major bankers, finance capitalists in the U.S. robbed the bank last year  – and the federal treasury.  They took hundreds of billions of dollars – and you and I will have to pay for it.    Goldman Sachs alone took $10 Billion.  For example,  Ken Lewis of Bank of America received an 81 million dollar pension.  They have not even been punished.  One thing we should do is arrest the top 100 executives and CEO’s of these companies, give them a fair trial, and throw them in jail.  Until we arrest some people – there will be no real changes.”

Our financial system as a whole crashed not because of one bank. Goldman Sachs certainly played a major role as did JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and CitiCorp, along with the many corporate finance institutions  like Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, WaMu, Depfa, Glitnir .  We had a systemic breakdown because nearly all of our policy makers, academics, politicians, and pundits promoted  a failed, self serving  ideology of self-correcting financial markets.

(Including specifically the econmics profession ) Finance  profiteers walked off with big bucks while contributing to the  crash  of the system. The looting continues to this day.

So, the financiers robbed the banks and created the Great Recession.  – and the government allowed them to do so.  Government policy, including the work of Geithner, Summers, and both the Bush and  the Obama Administration, regularly placed the interests of Wall Street ahead of the interests of working people.  Our economy was looted –we  lost $11 Trillion.   Now, working people are losing their homes.  Over 10,000,000 jobs have been lost.  Over 15 million people are unemployed. .  Nationally, unemployment  for African Americans  is over 15.4%,  for Latinos  it is over 12.7%. For African Americans and Latinos under 25 years of age; it is over 25%.  That is young people in the   African Americans and  Latino communities are in a Depression.

            42 of the states have financial crises.  We will have fewer teachers, fewer police officers, cuts in needed health care, cuts in school spending—all because a small cadre robbed the banks.  Today, this same group is making millions in bonuses and special payments, while the economy remains stuck in a recession.

            If you want some detail on how this was done, see:

Paul Krugman.  The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008.  (2009)

Dean Baker,  Plunder and Blunder; The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy.  (2009)

Nomi Prins.  It takes a Pillage; Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals         from Washington to Wall Street.  (2009).

            Future posts will detail the costs of this crash to schools and the public sector. For an early analysis, see the posted summary on the California Budget Project web site. http://cbp.org/pdfs/2010/100108_Gov_Budget.pdf

Arne Duncan and the Department of Education

The use of trumped-up numbers downplays the difficulty of the work Demmellash and other nonprofit leaders do -- and it downplays the stubbornness of problems like poverty, racial isolation, and lack of education. T The Social Innovation Fund is not the only corner of the Obama administration to fall under the sway of venture--philanthropy vogue, sometimes to the detriment of good social science. Through the Department of Education's innovation funds, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is promoting a very specific image of school reform, one that borrows liberally from the venture philanthropists' goal of bringing free-market values to the public sector. The federal guidelines encourage states and schools to embrace specific "innovations," such as enacting merit pay for teachers and lifting laws that cap the number of charter schools. Though such policies may have tertiary benefits, there is no research consensus on whether either one contributes to the "bottom line" of education reform -- increased academic achievement for high-poverty kids. A recent Stanford University study of charter schools in 16 states found that in math, only about 17 percent of charter schools increase student achievement over traditional public schools. The researchers described the results as "sobering." A competing study out of Stanford, by Hoover Institute Fellow Caroline Hoxby, found that students who win a lottery to attend a New York City charter school do much better on standardized tests than socioeconomically similar students who lose the lottery and return to traditional public schools. But New York's charters may be superior in quality exactly because state law allows only a few carefully selected organizations to manage charters. It is exactly such laws that the Department of Education claims stifle innovation. Regardless of whether you believe the charter detractors or defenders, it's undeniable that the obsession with innovative charter schools is out of proportion to the reality that less than 5 percent of American kids attend such a school. "[Charters] should not distract us from the challenging, important, and unheralded task of making process improvements in the operation of traditional schools," writes Grover Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution, in a gently mocking essay titled "Innovation, Motherhood, and Apple Pie." In Denver, the site of one of the largest experiments in merit pay for teachers, a 2008 study from the University of Colorado found no evidence that the new compensation system helped students; rather, teachers who were already high-performing chose to opt in to merit pay, while those who were less successful opted out. Even among teachers who participated in merit pay, only 38 percent believed the program directly improved student test scores. Critics contend the administration has ignored more difficult, yet proven school reforms, such as efforts to integrate schools, thus guaranteeing that fewer classrooms are overwhelmed by the challenges of poverty and racial isolation. Research by Cornell labor economist C. Kirabo Jackson found that when the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district in North Carolina ended a 30-year busing program and resegregated, the highest-performing teachers fled schools that became predominantly black and poor. Yet integration is seen as a pie-in-the-sky, old-school lefty goal by the venture-philanthropy crowd and has registered not at all on the Obama/Duncan agenda. It's not "innovative." Another criticism is that even when innovative social programs are proven to work well, the Obama administration under-estimates the costs involved with scaling them up. The White House's single favorite nonprofit is probably the Harlem Children's Zone, Geoffrey Canada's effort to flood 97 blocks of New York City with educational, health, and economic resources -- including several charter schools. The president has asked Congress to set aside $10 million in the 2010 budget to replicate 20 such "promise neighborhoods" across the country. But that figure is considered laughable by most nonprofit experts. The Harlem Children's Zone has an annual budget of $70 million. While the Social Innovation Fund and Department of Education grants are unlikely to result in systemic policy improvements, it would be a mistake to view the administration's social--innovation efforts in a vacuum. The same White House is pushing for a major overhaul of our health-care system. The $700 billion stimulus package is the greatest increase in federal spending since the Great Society. In the end, the administration's social-innovation push may be most useful for its signaling effect. Both Obamas have appeared in front of the moneyed and influential to tell them they should invest in community nonprofits and care about inner-city schools and unemployment. Nevertheless, it's true that the Obamas' infatuation with social entrepreneurship and venture philanthropy serves as a reminder of their aversion to a more robust, liberal, government-focused rhetoric. In this regard, they are, perhaps, more Clintonian than they'd like to admit. The administration's concept of social innovation injects government into the philanthropic sector as a sort of tastemaker, hopefully influencing charities to advance progressive public policy ideas without the federal government having to spend too much more money. With the Republican congressional delegation in a full-on tax revolt, the strategy is arguably politically savvy, at least in the short term. But is it innovative? Not so much. There's nothing new about vilifying big government and asking a stretched-thin philanthropic sector to address a truly staggering landscape of human needs -- 10 percent unemployed, 47 million uninsured, only half of all black and Latino boys completing high school. "Many of these social problems are of the scale that require the government to be involved," says Nee of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. "A lot of the nonprofit stuff is sort of ... nickel and dime." From: The American Prospect. DANA GOLDSTEIN | November 16, 2009

Los Angeles Board votes for Charter Schools

Vote could open 250 L.A. schools to outside operators
Backers of the Board of Education decision tout choice and competition. Foes call the move illegal, illogical and improper.

L.A. Unified School District to vote on school choice

District to relinquish control of some schools
In a startling acknowledgment that the Los Angeles school system cannot improve enough schools on its own, the city Board of Education approved a plan Tuesday that could turn over 250 campuses -- including 50 new multimillion-dollar facilities -- to charter groups and other outside operators.

The plan, approved on a 6-1 vote, gives Supt. Ramon C. Cortines the power to recommend the best option to run some of the worst-performing schools in the city as well as the newest campuses. Board member Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte dissented.

The vote occurred after a tense, nearly four-hour debate during which supporters characterized the resolution as a moral imperative. Foes called it illegal, illogical and improper.

The action signals a historic turning point for the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has struggled for decades to boost student achievement. District officials and others have said their ability to achieve more than incremental progress is hindered by the powerful teachers union, whose contract makes it nearly impossible to fire ineffective tenured teachers. Union leaders blame a district bureaucracy that they say fails to include teachers in "top-down reforms."

"The premise of the resolution is first and foremost to create choice and competition," said board member Yolie Flores Aguilar, who brought the resolution, "and to really force and pressure the district to put forth a better educational plan."

She and other backers said they expected the district to improve its own performance and to also compete to turn around schools. Bidders could apply to manage schools by mid-January.

For the charter school operators, the biggest prize is 50 new schools scheduled to open over the next four years.

"It's absolutely indispensable, of critical importance to us," said Jed Wallace, chief executive of the California Charter Schools Assn. "It's a once-in-a-generation opportunity: 50 new school buildings coming online at the exact same time that a cadre of charter operators has demonstrated that it can generate unprecedented levels of student learning."

Charters are publicly funded but independently operated and free from some regulations governing the traditional administration of schools. They also are not required to be unionized.

Some of them have failed to outperform regular schools, according to some recent research. But backers of the new plan say that only the top-notch charter companies have a realistic shot at operating any of the 250 campuses that could be included, about a fourth of all district schools.

Finding locations for schools has been a paramount problem for charter groups. Synergy Academy in South Los Angeles, for example, occupies rented space in a church 500 feet from where a new L.A. Unified school is being built.

Among those who could take advantage of the board action is Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who could use it to enlarge the 11-school effort run by a nonprofit that he controls. Villaraigosa, who helped elect a majority of the seven-member board, was an active participant Tuesday, speaking before more than 2,000 parents, teachers and others before the vote.

For several board members, particularly those with strong union ties, the debate was heated and often agonizing. Steve Zimmer, for one, sought to require that teachers, other union members and parents approve any school's reform plan through separate majority votes. At high schools students would also vote.

Leaders of United Teachers Los Angeles were once again frustrated that their own version of reform -- democratically run school sites with substantial and mandatory teacher input -- played second fiddle. Union President A.J. Duffy threatened legal action to thwart the Flores Aguilar plan.

Duffy chastised board members, especially those most closely allied with the mayor.

"When all is said and done you will have sold this district down the road for political gain for some of you," he said at the meeting, "and for a mayor whose own program has been a dismal failure. And if you end up . . . giving the mayor more schools, then shame on you."

Other critics have joined Duffy in questioning whether schools built with bond funds to relieve crowding, can be turned over to entities not under direct district control.

For their part, charter schools may have to operate differently in district-owned sites. They could be required to enroll more disabled students and higher numbers of lower-income students than at some current charter schools.

Both sides gathered coalitions of supporters. The charter-backed group Families That Can organized a massive rally outside district headquarters before the vote.

And the critics were not exclusively union members. Some called the plan an abdication of district responsibility or a failure to acknowledge district progress.

David Crippens, who chairs the committee overseeing school-construction spending, cautioned against "change for the sake of change."

But school board President Monica Garcia, a Villaraigosa ally, asserted that "kids can't wait. . . . My support for this resolution is in the hope that the district can move faster."

Shortly after the vote, Villaraigosa savored a political and policy victory at district headquarters in downtown L.A.

"We're not going to be held hostage by a small group of people," Villaraigosa said, referring to the teachers union and other opponents. "I'll let you infer who I'm talking about."

howard.blume@latimes.com
From the Los Angeles Times. Click on the title to read the entire article.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd-schools26-2009aug26,0,4203620.story

Change NCLB and fund it

No Child Left Behind should be re authorized, funded, and changed.

This is time for a change for our society and in our schools. We face a marked crises in the economy, the banking system, government, politics, families, communities and in the schools.
All children deserve a good education to participate in our democracy. Lack of education is a ticket to economic hardship. The more years of school that a student completes, the more money they are likely to earn as adults and the better their chance to get and keep a good job. Unemployment is highest among school dropouts as is incarceration for crimes.
We need to invest in urban schools, provide equal educational opportunities in these schools, and to recruit a well prepared teaching force that begins to reflect the student populations in these schools. We must insist on equal opportunity to learn, without compromise.

The school reform movement from 1983- 2008, including NCLB, was largely driven by corporate goals and corporate thinking. Corporate rule was established through the corporations influence and contributions to elected officials and their funding of “research” institutes. (Emery, 2007) This corporate view of school reform –called neo liberalism in economics- came to dominate the media and the government. Non corporate goals such as freedom, extending democracy, equal opportunity were driven from the curriculum and driven from the reform packages. And, at present, clearly the neo-liberal agenda is winning particularly as advanced in law in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and stalled for re-authorization in 2008.

President Bush worked with political leaders in both parties to pass PL 107-110 - The No Child Left Behind Act In 2001. He considers it one of the major victories of his tenure. NCLB made assessment based reform (testing) and accountability the central components of a new national policy on school reform. The results of NCLB and the accountability drive are now in: like Katrina relief, NCLB has been a dismal failure.
On national tests given by the U.S. Department of Education, student achievement is either flat (as in 8th grade reading) or has improved less than in the days prior to NCLB. NCLB is bad policy because it is punitive to schools and to teachers. It has caused nearly 40% of the nation's schools to be labeled "failing," and by 2014 over 90% of the schools will be declared to be failing. It is dysfunctional to not recognize the differences between really failing schools and schools that are doing quite well. Under NCLB when a school is struggling, there is little help on the way, just more tests, more punishment: fire the staff; close the school; turn the school over to private entrepreneurs (profiteers, charters ) , etc. 

Rather than facing the inequality of resources between schools, the NCLB imposed school reform efforts stress standardized testing. Current testing measures the ability to memorize small bits of information. It cannot measure critical thinking skills, the ability to function in a community or commitment to democratic principles. NCLB testing has not improved schools, improved school funding, nor improved teaching.
NCLB and its state by state progeny argue that the education system should operate primarily in service of the economic system. This is a business model of public schools, and we can see how well business is operating in the finance, credit, and banking system.
A substantial opposition to the re-authorization of NCLB developed in 2008. Its passage was blocked in Congress . NCLB will be re-written and re-authorized in 2009. NCLB testing does not, unfortunately, provide teachers with useful information on what to do to improve student learning and instruction. It also does not provide resources to improve the schools while it ignores the substantial inequality of resources in both schools and neighborhoods.
According National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) data there has been little improvement in student reading scores and only a small improvement in math scores. In California, with its large ELL population, there has been no measured improvement in scores by ELL students . At the same time The U.S. has one of the highest rates of high school drop outs in the industrialized world as well as one of the highest rates of incarceration for young people, particularly African American and Latino males.
The Bush Administration used NCLB sanctions including shifting money from public schools to private charters to respond to failing to raise test scores. The new Obama Administration has appointed Arne Duncan, as Secretary of Education and Russylynn Ali, as director of the Civil Rights division of the department. Both believe that more testing, not less testing, will improve schools.
The U.SA. spends less per student than 16 other modern industrialized countries . And, California spends less per pupil than 47 other states when you adjust the figures for cost of living differences. The recent California budget crisis, where schools were again cut by over $ 11.6 billion dollars demonstrates the failure of the political system to adequately fund some of our schools.
The collapse of tax revenues is leaving state and local governments with substantial shortfalls while demand for government services, like unemployment benefits, food stamps, and Medicaid is rising rapidly. Schools face severe budget cuts at the state level. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculated the shortfall in state budgets at $350 billion for 2009 through the first half of 2011. It also calculated that the recently passed stimulus package will reduce this shortfall by approximately $140 billion, leaving a gap of $210 billion.
The schools will receive some relief in the stimulus plan but not enough to make up for the state budget cuts.

Middle class schools could benefit from reform, but most middle-class schools work rather well. Most schools in urban areas, however, are unable to provide the equal educational opportunity. There will be no significant change in the quality of urban education without substantial new funds allocated to these schools. In the current economic crisis, while federal funds are being added, state funds ( over 80% of the school budget) are being cut). The only real school reform we will see in the next 3-4 years will be reforms carried out by dedicated teachers. Congressmen such as Chair George Miller of the Committee on Education and Labor should recognize that lack of funding for reform makes existing state and federal mandates irresponsible.

In addition to more funding for schools, if politicians were really interested in improving student achievement, recent research by David Berliner reveals that the following out of school factors. We could improve school achievement for the working poor by:


• Reduce the rate of low birth weight children among African Americans,
• Reduce drug and alcohol abuse,
• Reduce pollutants in our cites and move people away from toxic sites,
• Provide universal and free medical care for all citizens,
• Insure that no one suffers from food insecurity,
• Reduce the rates of family violence in low-income households,
• Improve mental health services among the poor,
among others.

(For a quick synopsis, see: http://epicpolicy.org/newsletter/2009/03/blame-school-achievement-gap-misplaced
The full paper is at: http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential)

Declining state funding for the last thirty years has produced a two tiered school system in California, one for the middle class and one for the working poor. When schools succeed for the middle class and fail for working-class students and students of color, schools contribute to a crippling division along economic and racial lines in our society.

Duane Campbell blogs at Choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com.
He is the author of Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. 4th. edition. Allyn and Bacon. 2010.
He is the director of the newly formed Institute for Democracy and Education: Sacramento.
www.democracyeducationinstitute.org

KIPP Charter School teachers organize: NYC

January 13, 2009
KIPP Teachers Organize

Filed under: Charter School by Leo Casey @ 1:43 pm | Edit This

In a ground-breaking development, the teachers of KIPP AMP Charter
School in Brooklyn today informed their co-principals that they were
organizing themselves into a union and seeking official recognition
from the state Public Employees Relations Board.

A super-majority of the KIPP AMP teaching faculty has signed
authorization cards with the United Federation of Teachers, well in
excess of the threshold needed for official recognition under state
labor law for public employees.

In a letter delivered to co-principals Jeff Li and Melissa Perry this
morning, the teachers said that they had decided to unionize in order
to secure teacher voice and respect for the work of teachers in their
school. We want "to ensure that the [KIPP] motto of `team and family'
is realized in the form of mutual respect and validation for the work
that is done [by teachers] each day," they wrote.

The letter stressed that the decision to organize was directly
connected to the teachers' commitment to their students. "[A] strong
and committed staff," the teachers wrote, "is the first step to
student achievement." Unionization, the teachers believe, will help
create the conditions for recruiting and retaining such a staff.

"We organized to make sure teachers had a voice, and could speak their
minds on educational matters without fearing for their job," says KIPP
AMP teacher Luisa Bonifacio.

"For us," KIPP AMP teacher Emily Fernandez explains, "unionization is
ultimately all about student achievement, and the ability of teachers
to best serve students at this crucial middle school time in their
education."

KIPP AMP teachers believe that the high staff turnover at the school
has harmed their efforts to build a positive and consistent school
culture for their students. "There is a need to make the teacher
position more sustainable," says Bonifacio, "so that teachers don't
burn out, but are able to make a long-term commitment to the students
and the school."

KIPP AMP teacher Leila Chakravarty makes a powerful case that
organizing a union is necessary to "build a sustainable community in
our school" and address the problem of teacher turnover. "Because as
KIPP teachers we are so invested in our kids and form such close bonds
with them, because we are always available to our students by
telephone and email and spend ten hours every day with them, it is so
vital and important that they feel they can count on us, and we will
continue to be there. When they become close to a teacher who is gone
in three months because she has burnt out, it undermines the trust we
are working so hard to build."

The teachers at KIPP AMP have received strong support for their
organizing efforts from the parents and families at the school.

At the same time as the KIPP AMP teachers informed their principal of
their decision to organize, UFT President Randi Weingarten reached out
to KIPP co-founder and New York City Superintendent Dave Levin,
informing him of the developments at the school and of the UFT's
intention to enter into collective bargaining at another New York City
KIPP school, KIPP Infinity Charter School, where the teaching staff
are members of the UFT.

Weingarten told Levin that the KIPP teachers and the UFT want to work
cooperatively with KIPP to ensure that its New York City schools
provide the very best education for their students and families. She
asked KIPP to recognize the unionization of the KIPP AMP teachers
immediately so that this work could begin without delay.

"KIPP teachers want what all good teachers want — the respect, the
support and the tools necessary to do the best possible job of
educating their students," Weingarten said. "Organizing into a union
of educational professionals will give them the collective voice and
support to make that happen."

"We know that teacher turnover is a major concern across the charter
school movement," Weingarten noted. "The unionization of KIPP's New
York City schools provides a unique opportunity to create a model of
sustainable teacher recruitment, development and retention."

Since the original KIPP Academy Charter School is a conversion charter
school with UFT representation, educators at three of the four KIPP
schools in New York City will now be members of the UFT.

Banking Collapse Lands on America’s Schools

From Truthdig.org

By Bill Boyarsky

One of the worst casualties of the Iraq war and the Wall Street failures is the U.S. public school system, which is central to the nation’s economic, intellectual and social health. With financial resources being consumed, education cuts are on the way.

We’ll be paying for this for many years. Poorly educated young people will be unable to get good jobs. We’ll lose our intellectual capital. For that, we can thank Wall Street and its anti-regulation political friends. Thank you, John McCain and President George W. Bush. And thank you both for the war.

Sen. Barack Obama has some pretty good ideas about education, but he might as well forget them. His education proposals would cost at least $18 billion in federal funds. When Jim Lehrer, moderator of last week’s presidential campaign debate, asked him what would happen to all his plans in the wake of the Wall Street bailout, he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, answer.

The importance of the question was clear last week when I visited with several high school teachers at Los Angeles High School.

The school is located between the poor neighborhoods east of the city’s downtown and the more affluent neighborhoods toward the west. Its student body of about 3,000 draws from them all. Some come from comfortable homes with professional mothers and fathers. Others live in crowded one-bedroom apartments with two underpaid working-immigrant parents who may or may not speak English.

I walked through the halls with my friend John Ogden, a veteran Los Angeles High School teacher who had set up my meeting with the teachers. As he greeted a colleague and then a student, I felt that I had entered a community—a complicated one, I knew, but still a community united in a common purpose: education.

Although the Bush administration and Congress took a hands-off attitude toward Wall Street—until the collapse—Washington enthusiastically reached into the classrooms of every public school in the country with the No Child Left Behind Act. This legislation, passed early in the Bush administration with bipartisan support, requires the states to assess students before they receive high school diplomas. Without such testing—in California it is called the California High School Exit Examination—schools could lose federal funding, which amounted to $24.4 billion last year under the No Child Left Behind Act.

The testing is the most controversial feature of No Child Left Behind. The controversy reached into the Los Angeles High School faculty.

Several of the teachers were gathered in a classroom for a faculty meeting on teaching projects. After they finished, I got up and explained that I wanted to talk to them about education for a piece for Truthdig. They were polite but didn’t say much until I raised a question that has always puzzled me in reporting on L.A. public schools: What kind of test scores can be expected from a Hispanic kid with working parents who is trying to do homework in a noisy and overcrowded apartment?

The discussion turned lively. One veteran teacher talked of the obstacles faced by his poor students, who often have to maneuver through gang territory on their way to school.

“Testing has the reek of punishment about it,” he said. “There is something unfair about it. … Is it fair to apply the same standards to parents with little education and who are unable to help their children? … Is it fair to compare that with a Beverly Hills High School student whose parents can offer help? It isn’t fair in my view to apply the same standards.”

A younger teacher disagreed. He said that the tests were good. They required teachers and students to meet standards that will be required of young men and women when they move on from high school. “We have to step up to meet the expectations that the kids in Beverly Hills have,” rather than “give excuses for not knowing what they are supposed to know,” he said. Students should know “you have to move up your game when you go to a university.”

We talked for about an hour. Our discussion covered other controversial areas, such as merit pay for teachers.

I thought they were a dedicated bunch. No matter how they felt about standardized testing, the school’s California High School Exit Examination score was substantially up in the 2007-2008 school year.

But they have been let down by Washington. It imposed the standards but now doesn’t have the money to help school districts finance the classes and extra other programs that will permit the Los Angeles High School children of poor immigrants to compete with their contemporaries in Beverly Hills High School just a few miles away.

They and other public students across the country are real, but unnoticed, victims of the financial crisis. They are another reason why the Wall Street failures and the war are two of the great calamities of our age.

flickr.com/mcoughlin

“No Child Left Behind” is written above each of these “little red schoolhouse” entrances at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education building in Washington, D.C.

A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
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