2 Suburban NY Principals Attribute Rhee-esque Spike in Ed Urgency to Speaking Fees; Cite $ 500 Billion Market in Ed Profiteering

A NASSAU COUNTY PRINCIPAL AND A ROCKLAND COUNTY PRINCIPAL PEN DETAILED OPINION PIECE, ATTRIBUTING SPIKE IN URGENCY IN EDUCATION "REFORM" TO PROFITS TO BE MADE - $50,000 MICHELLE RHEE SPEAKING FEE + EXPENSES - CANADA AND MOSKOWITZ APPROXIMATE $ .5 MILL SALARIES CHUMP CHANGE TO MURDOCH'S CASTING ED MARKET AS $500 BILLION MARKET WAITING TO BE TRANSFORMED

Valerie Strauss, August 7, 2012, in her "Answer Sheet" column at "The Washington Post."

Posted at 08:00 AM ET, 08/07/2012
Principals: Our struggle to be heard on reform

By Valerie Strauss
This was written by Carol Burris and Harry Leonadartos. Burris is the principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre, New York. Leonadartos is the principal of Clarkstown High School North in Rockland County, New York. Carol is the co-author and Harry is an active supporter of the New York Principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student scores. Over 1,500 New York principals and more than 5,400 teachers, parents, professors, administrators and citizens have signed the letter which can be found here.

By Carol Burris and Harry Leonardatos

Several weeks ago, on Meet the Press, Michelle Rhee unveiled her new ad, designed to hammer away at how bad she believes American schools to be. The ad likened public schools to an unfit male athlete competing unsuccessfully in a women’s sport. Many found the ad to be offensive in its stereotypical portrayal of an overweight and effete man. But the true offense was that it took a moment of national pride, the Olympic Games, and used it to give American educators a kick in the pants.

It is reasonable to wonder why it is so important for Michelle Rhee and other “reformers” to constantly deride and disparage American public schools. Although we should always seek to improve, why should those efforts be expected to follow from derision? In truth, while we and others see daunting and unfilled needs in many schools, there has not been a sharp and sudden decline in student performance as is being implied, and in fact scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — sometimes referred to as the nation’s educational report card — are higher than ever before.

The answer is simple. School reform has generated a marketplace, and a profitable one at that. Michelle Rhee’s standard fee is $50,000 an appearance, plus expenses. In Michigan, Clark Durrant is paid over half a million dollars a year to run five charter schools. Eva Moskowitz, Geoffrey Canada and Deborah Kenney all make between four and five hundred thousand a year running their New York City charter school organizations.

And these are the minor players. The real money is corporate.

Rupert Murdoch announced that public education is a $500 billion market waiting desperately to be transformed. He is creating the data systems and hiring the people to help him make that profitable transformation happen. All the while, the editorial departments of his newspapers hammer away at New York City’s schools and teachers.

Reformers’ financial successes, their careers and their celebrity rest on their ability to convince the public of the failures — real, perceived, and generated — of our nation’s public schools. Yet in national polls the vast majority of Americans have continually awarded high marks to their own schools, even while giving substantially lower marks to public schools across the board. The poll results represent the disconnect between the judgment that the public makes based on day to day experience with their own neighborhood schools, and the perception the reformers and the press have created.

And this is all before the upcoming Parent Trigger advocacy movie, “Won’t Back Down.” There is now so much money and power backing market-driven reforms that it is nearly impossible for alternative views to break through.

We recently had our personal experience with how difficult it is to be heard. On July 26th, New York Governor Cuomo’s Education Commission held its only meeting in New York City.

[Ed.'s note: the linked New York state government education commission page has an introductory slogan, "Putting Students First," echoing Michelle Rhee's group's name.]

The purpose of the commission is to travel around the state in order to hear from stakeholders regarding suggestions for New York State school improvements.

Prior to the time and place of the meeting being posted, both of us sent a request to testify on the topic of teacher and principal quality. As high school principals, we are deeply concerned about the direction of the Regents reform agenda, especially in regard to evaluating teachers using test scores. We were joined by an outstanding New York City high school principal and two teachers from South Side High School. Both teachers had submitted requests to speak, one sending that request and her remarks weeks in advance.

We were not allowed to speak. That was certainly troubling, but even more troubling was the overall staging of the event to ensure that the weight of testimony would support the predetermined, favored policy agenda. The selected panelists on teacher and principal quality were not practicing educators. The first speaker, former CNN reporter Campbell Brown, spoke about sex abuse and arbitrators’ decisions. Brown has no experience as an educator or public school parent, and she has been inconsistent in disclosing that her husband [Dan Senor] is on the board of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst.

The other panelists were Jermima Bernard, the New York executive director of Teach for America; Lesley Guggenheim from The New Teacher Project; and Evan Stone, an 18-month sixth grade teacher who described himself as the CEO of Educators 4 Excellence, another group aligned with the favored policy agenda.

So, with the exception of Campbell Brown, they all represented organizations that embraced the governor’s policies, and they all advocated for the following three policies: state imposition of teacher evaluation systems if local negotiations are not successful, elimination of contractually guaranteed pay increases, and the use of test scores in educator evaluations.

We patiently waited through the testimony because the directions on the website stated that the final 30 minutes would be reserved for those who wished to speak, determined via a sign-in, first-come basis. Because we were among the first five to sign up, we believed we would have time to make brief remarks. We were stunned when the list in the lobby was not used. Instead, additional speakers were hand-picked. The speakers selected to comment on teacher and principal quality were a teacher who told the committee how she looked forward to being evaluated by test scores, and Anna Hall, the new head of StudentsFirst NY. Hall is a former principal from the Bronx, and she argued that teacher tenure should be abolished.

After one of us (Harry) confronted the governor’s representative, he promised us that we would be allowed to speak at later hearings. We are hopeful that he will keep his word. The rules on the website regarding public comment have changed to now say that the speakers chosen would be the first to email rather than the first to sign in. You’ll excuse us for worrying that this might be one more attempt to control testimony at what is supposed to be an opportunity for the public to speak.

None of us who came to the Bronx on that sweltering July day believed that we would change the direction of the Governor’s reform agenda by our testimony. We were there to give testimony and witness to the teachers and principals across our state who know that the barrage of negative press and misguided solutions generated by the young “CEOs” of hundreds of Gates-, Broad- and Walton-sponsored reform centers is wrong. We were there to give testimony that by setting teachers up on a bell curve, you are creating the contrived headline — “Half of all New York teachers not effective when judged by test scores,” thus cynically undermining the faith of parents in their public school teachers and principals.

We hoped to speak for the teachers and principals who know that our students are being over-tested [Marion Brady, "The complete list of problems with high-stakes standardized tests"] and that this is happening for purposes other than the assessment of their learning. We were there to represent the views of the 1,508 New York principals and the 5,400 teachers, parents, school board members, professors and administrators who have signed on to the principals letter in opposition to using student test scores in teachers evaluation. South Side High School teachers, Katie Burke and Debbie Tanklow were there to say how the evaluation system would undermine their relationship with their students. We also went to present our own ideas on how New York State schools can serve students better.

Ironically, across town on that same day, venture capitalists were eagerly searching to invest in companies that will sell the products to ‘fix the crisis.’ They were huddled in a private club in Manhattan to scope investment opportunities. As reported by Stephanie Simon of Reuters, the venture capitalists were told to “Think about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public schools… If they’re as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They’ll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it.”

These venture capitalists could stay in the club. They had no need to worry about their concerns being heard, and they had no need to attend the Governor’s hearing. They were well represented.

Follow The Answer Sheet every day by bookmarking www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet .

The original Answer Sheet post carries the YouTube video reproduction of StudentsFirst's video ridiculing the man representing American education.

Carole Burris on the Three Education Reforms Parents Should Worry About Most

From Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post
Three ed reforms parents should worry about most
By Valerie Strauss

This was written by Carol Burris, the principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre, New York. Carol is the co-author of the New York Principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student scores. Over 1,500 New York principals and more than 5,400 teachers, parents, professors, administrators and citizens have signed the letter which can be found here.

By Carol Burris

As summer comes to a close, students are preparing to go back to school. I find that most of them enjoy returning. Certainly, our daughters did. There is something exciting about a new beginning. Kids look forward to seeing their friends and meeting their new teacher. Teachers matter a lot to kids. When I ask the students in my school to describe their teachers, they use adjectives like “great,” “caring,” “smart” and “patient.” It is upon the caring and trusting relationship between student and teacher that learning is built.

If you ask most Americans what they think of their child’s school, by and large, they think it is really pretty good. Although most parents see room for improvement, few think that the “sky is falling” on the roof of their neighborhood public school. When their son or daughter comes home with poor grades, most of the time they understand that their child’s effort had something to do with it. Parents, I find, are quite sensible in their perspective and do not automatically fault the teacher.

It is unfortunate, then, we are lambasted with sweeping condemnations of public schools and the teachers who work in them. It creates cognitive dissonance between our faith in what we know and experience, and our opinion of public schools in general. You can see that ‘belief gap’ in polling.

Although I agree that we should all make a serious commitment to improving education, I worry that reformers, many of whom have built careers and fame by constantly disparaging our schools, are successfully promoting changes that are not in the best interest of students. It may be that the “cures” they propose are far more harmful than the problems they seek to address. Here are the three reforms that I think parents should worry about the most.

(1) Excessive testing.

I strongly believe that the assessment of student learning is an important part of schooling. Assessment helps inform teachers, schools and parents about what students know and have yet to learn. Aggregate assessment information informs teachers and principals about the efficacy of their programs and their curriculum. What has occurred, however, in the past decade, is that standardized assessment has grown exponentially — especially in the younger grades. This year, New York State fourth graders, who are nine or ten years old, were subject to 675 minutes (over 11 hours) of state testing. And this did not include test prep and field testing. Both a NYSUT survey of teachers as well as an informal survey of teachers and parents by www.newyorkprincipals.org found that young students were breaking down in tears and suffering from anxiety due to testing.

Excessive testing is unhealthy. Students begin to identify with their scores. Last June, I was appalled when I heard a 7th grader tell his mom, “What do you want from me? I’m only “a two.”

(2) The use of test scores for purposes which are not student-centered.

Student test scores should be used to help parents and teachers determine what a student knows and does not know. They should not be used for other purposes, such as evaluating teachers in order to dismiss them or to give bonuses. They should not determine which school should be closed or be rewarded. When that happens, the relationship between the child and the teacher, and the child and the school changes. Some children become more desirable than others. Some children might be looked upon as getting in the way of achieving a goal. This is not because teachers and principals are bad people; it is because they are human. They may be overly concerned, but I know outstanding, thoughtful teachers who are worried that their relationship with students will change when they are evaluated by test scores. They want to educate students, not test prep them.

Now that all of the teacher, principal and school evaluations are based on growth models, yearly testing, I predict, will continue to expand. Each time that happens, precious learning time is lost.

(3) The amassing of individual student scores in national and state databases.

State and national databases are being created in order to analyze and house students’ test scores. No parental permission is required. I wonder why not. Students who take the SAT must sign off before we send their scores to colleges. Before my high school’s students could participate in the National Educational Longitudinal Study, they needed written permission from their parents. Yet, in New York, massive amounts of student data are now being collected and sent beyond the school without parental permission —end of year course grades, test scores, attendance, ethnicity, disabilities and the kinds of modifications that students receive. This data will be used to evaluate teachers, schools, schools of education and perhaps for other purposes yet unknown. Schools are no longer reporting collective data; we are now sending individual student data. Although the name remains in the district, what assurances do parents truly have that future databases will not be connected and used for other purposes? The more data that is sent, the easier it will be to identify the individual student.

Eleven states have agreed to give confidential teacher and student data for free to a shared learning collaborative funded by Bill Gates and run by Murdoch’s Wireless Corp. Wireless received $44 million for the project. With Common Core State Standards testing, such databases are expected to expand. Funding for data warehousing siphons taxpayer dollars from the classroom to corporations like Wireless and Pearson. Because Common Core testing will be computer-based, the purchase of hardware, software and upgrades will consume school budgets, while providing profits for the testing and computer industries.

Although all of the above is in motion, it can be modified or stopped. Parents should speak to their local PTAs and School Boards, as well as their legislators. They should ask questions regarding what data is being collected and to whom it is sent.

I think it is time to get Back to Basics. Let’s make sure that every test a student takes is used to measure and enhance her learning, not for adult, high-stakes purposes. Basic commonsense tells us that student test results belong to families, not databases. Remind politicians that the relationship between student and teacher, not student and test helps our young people get through life’s challenges. Finally, let’s return to the basic purpose of public schooling — to promote the academic, social and emotional growth of our children. It is the role of schools to develop healthy and productive citizens, not master test takers.

Follow The Answer Sheet every day by bookmarking www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet.

Chicago Parents Urge Streep Avoid Parent Trigger Movie Event

As one Chicago parents group's blog (Parents United for Responsible Education: Building powerful public school parents and communities) notes, the education deform / privatization forces are in full propaganda war mode as they push the pro-parent trigger movie, "Won't Back Down." Parents United for Responsible Education publicized the letter it sent to acclaimed actress Meryl Streep, asking her to avoid a promo "Teachers Rock" subterfuge event for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) promoted film.

NYC Eye asks other progressive pro-student, pro-parent, pro-teachers to likewise petition Streep and other Hollywood media heavies to distance themselves from or renounce the mean undertoned "Won't Back Down."

Immediately after this letter I have posted contact information for personalities connected to the "Won't Back Down" film.

PURE's letter's text appears below:

Dear Meryl

August 10th, 2012

Ms. Meryl Streep

c/o Leslee Dart

Dart Group

sent by facsimile

212 277 7550



If you really appreciate teachers, please pull out of

phony “Teachers Rock” event promoting

the themes of the “Won’t Back Down” movie:

public school privatization and wholesale teacher firing



Dear Ms Streep:

I am writing to ask you to reconsider your participation in the “Teachers Rock” event next week. As parents, we are concerned that this event is part of a larger propaganda campaign to force privatization on public schools. The movie, “Won’t Back Down,” is just the latest and most intensive move in this effort.

While we have been unable to view the entire movie, we have seen the trailer and read promotional stories that are already being published. We also know that the producer, Walden Media and Philip Anschutz, were behind the “Waiting for Superman” documentary whose one-sided and often misleading content created a great deal of controversy among those of us who strongly support our nation’s teachers. Even Roger Ebert eventually rethought his positive “Superman” review.

“Won’t Back Down” is poised to be equally if not more controversial because it claims to be “based on real events” about the “parent trigger law” which allows parents to sign petitions to close their school and turn it into a charter school.

As an active and informed parent, I know that parent empowerment is not the real agenda behind this so-called parent trigger law. It was in fact written by the head of a charter management company which initiated the first parent trigger campaign. The law was taken up by ALEC and has been pushed in a number of other states with generous financial backing of the Walton Foundation (which is sponsoring “Teacher Rocks”) and other corporate school reform funders.

Our small Chicago organization and a larger network with which we are affiliated, Parents Across America, are working to get out the truth about “Won’t Back Down.” We can’t afford to put on a big show or produce a Hollywood movie to make our voices heard, but we do hope you will listen to us. You can find more information about this issue on our web sites, www.pureparents,org and www.parentsacrtossamerica.org.

Thank you so much for your attention.

Best wishes,

Julie Woestehoff

Executive Director

PURE's previous post:

Time to tweet some stars about the Won’t Back Down movie

August 10th, 2012
The propaganda campaign for the parent trigger law created by charter school operators and promoted by ALEC is in full swing.

The big kick-off event is a concert called “Teachers Rock.” Like the “parent tricker” itself, this concert pretends to honor teachers while promoting a movie, “Won’t Back Down,” that is designed to get a lot of them fired and replaced by Teach for America newbies.

The concert will take place this Tuesday, Aug, 14th, at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles. CBS will air a one-hour special using footage from the concert and the WBD movie, tributes to teachers from stars, etc. on Friday, Aug. 17th, at 8 pm EDT.

We know that most of the performers, like the actors in the movie, don’t have a clue how they are being used to promote school privatization in the guise of parent empowerment, but this concert and WBD movie are going to put the issue front and center and we need to make sure that our voices are heard.

Here’s what you can do:

PAA and I have written about the Won’t Back Down movie before, but if you don’t remember details, take a few moments to read PAA’s review of the WBD movie trailer (which is all we have been able to see so far – we are requesting a screening) and fact sheet on the WBD movie.

Then reach out to everyone you can about this movie and concert. This movie is designed to be even more powerful than Waiting for Superman, and we need to counter it with every thing we have. How do you fight Hollywood? Make the movie controversial, not feel-good. Take it to the stars who mean well but need to open their eyes to what they are doing. Everyone needs to write to CBS, too.

Everyone wants to write to a star, right? A list of contact info for a few of those involved in the Teachers Rock concert follows (gleaned from posters on Diane Ravitch’s blog). The easiest thing to do is to facebook and tweet them, keeping on mind that they are not the enemy. Post your thoughts on their facebook pages, twitter feeds, use their e-mails, write to their publicist! This is the big one and we need all hands on board!

I’ll post my letter the Meryl Streep next.

Here are a few message points:

*The Won’t Back Down movie and the 8/17 Teacher Rocks concert are propaganda for the parent trigger law created by charter school operators and promoted by ALEC.
*Won”t Back Down is a “feel-bad” movie for parents and teachers who support public education.
*The controversial WBD movie promotes charter takeovers of schools, yet charter schools are no better than our regular schools.
*No real teachers were depicted in the filming of the WBD movie.
*Parents won’t be fooled by the “Parent Tricker” or the Won’t Back Down movie.

Teachers Rock performers:
1. Dave Grohl: Manager-Gabby at 323-856-8222
2. Adam Levine: Receptionist will take message at 310-776-7640
3. Jack Black: email to sjackson_asst@WMEentertainment.com
4. Meryl Streep: publicist’s voice mail at 212-277-7555
5. Viola Davis: email to ewolff@apanewyork.com
6. Morgan Freeman: email to stan@sra-pr.com

More:
1. Dave Grohl – Foo Fighters – Agent: Don Muller – WME 1325 Avenue Of The Americas, New York, NY 10019 T.212.586.5100 F.212.246.3583
2. Adam Levine – Maroon 5 singer – Manger: Career Artist Management – 1100 Glendon Avenue, Suite 1100 | Los Angeles, CA 90024 | 310.776.7640 (p) | 310.776.7659 (f)
3. Jack Black – Agent: WME 1325 Avenue Of The Americas, New York, NY 10019 T.212.586.5100 F.212.246.3583
4. Meryl Streep – Publicist: Leslee Dart. Dart Group. 90 Park Avenue. 19th Floor. New York, NY 10016. Phone: 212-277-7555.
5. Viola Davis – Agent: Agency for the Performing Arts (APA) 45 West 45th St. 4th floor, New York, NY 10036 T. 212.687.0092 F. 212.245.5062
6. Morgan Freeman – Publicist: Stan Rosenfield & Associates, Inc., 2029 Century Park E., Suite 1190, Los Angeles, CA 90067, USA. Phone: (310) 286-7474, Fax: (310) 286-2255.
7. Josh Groban
8. Maggie Gyllenhaal (last, but not least)

More Corporate Fronts Behind Education "Reform" Exposed

Behind every education "reform" (actually, deform) group is a millionaire investor or donor. We've heard about the Broad and the Gates foundations manipulating public education policy. Here is more unsettling news of meddling 1%er families in the same vein.

Behind Education Action Group is Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the DeVos family of multi-level marketer Amway fame. (Wikipedia describes the Mackinac Center as: The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is a free market think tank headquartered in Midland, Michigan. It is the USA’s largest state-based free market think tank.)
(And see Right Wing Watch about the Mackinac Center: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/mackinac-center-public-policy
From the madfloridian blog (in democraticunderground.com):

As with the earlier Tempers Flaring in Memphis article, the following is from the madfloridian post, the indents are from the inset boxes throughout the article.

Another "false front" education reform group? Keep eye out for their op eds in local papers.
Posted by madfloridian in General Discussion
Sun Oct 09th 2011, 12:55 PM
The Michigan Education Association writes about the Education Action Group and warns to watch out for their activities.

Behind the false front

Note the ties to the Mackinac Center and the DeVos family.

EAG isn’t really a group. It’s two very partisan men with ties to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and Dick DeVos of Amway Corp. fame. Olson’s brother is director of education policy at the Mackinac Center, another anti-union, pro-privatization group. The man who incorporated EAG, Eric Doster, is a Michigan Republican Party lawyer who has served on the board of the Great Lakes Education Project, a political action committee linked to DeVos. DeVos, of course, helped finance the failed 2000 vouchers initiative.

EAG bashes the collective bargaining process and school employees’ rights to inform the community and to work to elect leaders who value students and the employees who teach and help them at school.

Olson claims to be nonpartisan, but he is a partisan Republican Party activist and an officer in the state party.

Olson refuses to disclose his group’s funding sources, making it difficult to discern whose agenda EAG is pushing.

This Michigan-based "reformer" group just had an opinion piece published in the Tampa Tribune. It is anti teachers unions.

Teachers' union seeks to nullify the public's will

The column refers to an effort by the teachers' union in Florida to fight the new anti-tenure law. They totally mispresent what the situation is about, and then they go on to express support for Rick Scott's extreme education changes.

By filing this suit, union leaders are telling people that teachers should not be held accountable for the performance of their students. They want us to believe all teachers are equally intelligent and motivated. They're saying that all teachers should continue to have a guaranteed job for life under tenure and remain on a common pay scale, regardless of the outcome of their work.

More than anything, FEA leaders are blatantly displaying their disrespect for the democratic process. They have no interest in the outcome of the elections that put Scott and his legislative allies in office. They are willing to use the courts to overturn the will of the people.

So much for majority rule. Union leaders, with all their wealth and influence, can simply shop for a politically-friendly judge who will rule in their favor. The eventual ruling may have little to do with the constitutionality of the new law and more to do with judges who accept donations from the teachers' union and feel obliged to pay them back.

And they speak of Rick Scott:

Reform-minded leaders like Scott have stood up to the unions and demanded accountability in the classroom. If teachers are not going to be held responsible for student performance, who will be? Can you think of another profession where employees are not held accountable for the final product?

They simply are not telling the truth. I wonder how many op eds in how many newspapers?

One member of this group has been regularly hounding an education blogger these last few months. They demanded and got all his education emails. The blogger, Fred Klonsky, posted about it often at his blog.

The return of Velderman. Ask GOP tough questions and you get put on a watch list.

It was late last school year that the goof ball ideological terrorists at the Michigan-based Education Action Group demanded that my school district hand over to them all my work emails.

Which they did.

EAG gofer Ben Velderman signed the FOIA request. The reason for the FOIA was that this blog asks tough questions about education and public policy and is outspokenly pro-teacher and pro-union.

Nothing has changed about that. Certainly not a FOIA request from some punk from EAG.

Now Think Progress reports that this is becoming standard GOP practice. Ask a Republican elected official a challenging question and you get placed on a watch list.

There are many of these groups which are fronts for corporations. One of them that is doing great harm to public schools is called the Parents Revolution. It is no parents revolution, it is funded by billionaires, connected to Green Dot charter schools.

The MEA website says this EAG group has tactics that "include sending anti-union mail to residents, attending local school board meetings and using the news media to further its negative agenda."

They also recommend:

If EAG surfaces in your district, please inform your local MEA UniServ director. You also may want to share what you know about EAG with your school board members and administrators, so they can consider EAG’s motives.

Maybe I should let them know it is surfacing in Tampa, Florida.

Why is Change.org hosting a petition for Michelle Rhee's group, Students First?

No. Denver News: Parents fight back vs. Eli Broad Foundation's wreckage of education

The Broad Foundation, the education policy play-thing of billionaire philanthropist / public policy meddler Eli Broad, is influencing education policy nation-wide.
Cities across the country are feeling the chaotic effects of his Foundation's training of superintendents.

Now, parents are fighting back against his manipulation of education, against his free-of-accountability policy influence.
Read this Scribd pdf from North Denver News.
Parents group hits back at billionaire Broad's influence on education
Contributed by Staff
Wednesday, 20 April 2011

A national parent group is attacking the influence of LA billionaire Eli Broad's influence on public education, a reach that extends into Denver with the controversial non-educator Superintendent of Denver Public Schools, Tom Boasberg.
Parents Across America have published this parent's guide to the influence of the Broad Foundation:

The question I ask is why should Eli Broad and Bill Gates have more of a say as to what goes on in my child’s classroom than I do? – Sue Peters, Seattle parent

In recent months, three prominent school district superintendents have resigned, after allegations of mismanagement, autocratic leadership styles, and/or the pursuit of unpopular policies. All three were trained by the Broad Superintendents
Academy: Maria Goodloe-Johnson (class of 2003) of the Seattle school district, LaVonne Sheffield (class of 2002) of the Rockford, Illinois school district, and Jean-Claude Brizard (class of 2008) of the Rochester New York school district.
Brizard resigned to take the job as CEO of Chicago schools, but his superintendency in Rochester had been mired in controversy. Another Broad-trained Superintendent recently announced his resignation: Tom Brady (class of 2004) of Providence, Rhode Island.

Three more Broad-trainees have been recently placed in new positions of authority: John Deasy (class of 2006), as Superintendent of the Los Angeles United School District, John White (class of 2010), Superintendent of the Recovery School District in New Orleans, and Chris Cerf (class of 2004), New Jersey’s Acting Education Commissioner. Tom Boasberg was appointed Denver’s Superintendent in January 2009, shortly after taking an “Intensive” training at the Broad Academy. (See map . . . from the Broad website, showing where until recently their trainees served.) (Actually, notice how the cartographer placed Cincinnati in Indiana --maybe he or she thought that geography was too teacher-centered.)

This summary is designed to help parents and other concerned citizens better understand the Broad Foundation’s role in training new superintendents and other “reform” activities, and how the foundation leverages its wealth to impose a top-down, corporate-style business model on our public schools. It is time for communities to become aware of how this major force works.

What is the Broad Foundation?

The Edythe and Eli Broad Foundation engages in venture philanthropy in four areas: education, medical research, contemporary art, and civic projects in Los Angeles. The foundation was established in 1999 by billionaire Eli Broad (b. 1933) who made his fortune in real estate and the insurance business.
. . . .

How the Broad Foundation affects public school families

Broad and his foundation believe that public schools should be run like a business. One of the tenets of his philosophy is to produce system change by “investing in a disruptive force.” Continual reorganizations, firings of staff, and experimentation to create chaos or “churn” is believed to be productive and beneficial, as it weakens the ability of communities to resist change.

As Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, a proponent of this philosophy has said,“…we can afford to make lots more mistakes and in fact we have to throw more things at the wall. The big companies that get into trouble are those that try to manage their size instead of experimenting with it.”

A hallmark of the Broad-style leadership is closing existing schools rather than attempting to improve them, increasing class size, opening charter schools, imposing high-stakes test-based accountability systems on teachers and students,
and implementing of pay for performance schemes. The brusque and often punitive management style of Broad-trained leaders has frequently alienated parents and teachers and sparked protests. . . .

(Read more at the North Denver News site: http://northdenvernews.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=2270)

PISA scores rank US low in math - brace yourselves for attacks from the Duncan-Black monster

The policy pursued under the DunKleinRhee monster (Arne Duncan / Joel Klein /Michelle Rhee) has been to attack American educators; this is continuing now that the Klein head has been lopped off and replaced by Cathie Black.

With the news today of the U.S. scoring low yet again on international tests, this time in the releasing of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 test scores. Click here for the PISA report. (Class matters -social class, that is; scroll to the bottom of this blog post for the report's statement that gets at the "essential question.")

Click to this ABC news story, "China Debuts at Top of International Education Rankings" and this Canadian television news report, "Canadian education among best in the world: OECD."

Look out for more attacks on teachers, teachers' unions and teachers' pensions, as ways out of the laggard US educational performance.

Forget that many school systems are run by people without masters' degrees in the academic subjects that they supervise (from curriculum standards at the state level down to the school administrators). Forget that in the US school systems and schools aggressively impose the fuzzy math of constructivist math that thinks that every third grader can be a math theorist.

You can be sure that in Finland and in Canada, some of the top countries in student math scores in the PISA tests, that policy makers do not accredit their success to:
denigration of teachers as a profession,
denigrate the practice of educating (in contrast to constructivist progressive anarchy),
blame teachers for poor education performance while failing to acknowledge a fraying social safety net, accompanied by ballooning poverty rates and a widening of gaps between the poor and the upper middle and upper classes,
pursuit of the closing of large comprehensive high schools,
paying of legions of highly paid consultants with no background in the academic subjects that the coach and consult on,
pursuit of laying off thousands of experienced teachers and practice age discrimination by demonstrating a preference for fresh-off-the-street teachers over experienced teachers,
whipping the public into a furor over teachers' pensions,
pursuing the fetish of the quantification of everything,
pursuing the shutting down of public schools and replacing them with for-profit (or non-profit, for that matter) charter schools,
you can be sure that these policies are not pursued in the realization of positive education outcomes.

ADDENDUM: class and resources matter:
The report says,

Within countries, schools with better resources tend to do better only to the extent that they also tend to have more socio-economically advantaged students. Some countries show a strong relationship between schools’ resources and their socio-economic and demographic background, which indicates that resources are inequitably distributed according to schools’ socio-economic and demographic profiles.

Meet the Press today highlighting the voices of education deform

NBC's Sunday morning news show, "Meet the Press," is running along the trajectory of "Waiting for Superman." It is having as lead guests Education Secretary Arne Duncan, possibly out-going Washington, DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

The first two are the lead proponents of only holding teachers accountable for educational performance. They singularly focus on testing. They do not consider the importance or impact of administrators, parents or students. How can teachers be held to have the exclusive determining factor as to whether students? When students are oppositional, distracted or disruptive, what do the local education leaders (principals, assistant principals) do? Nothing. They cite the teacher as causing the disruption, because the lesson did not "engage" [entertain] the students.

We'll here none of this perspective today; Weingarten doesn't raise this.

UPDATE: Suprise! Robert Bobb, cial Manager, Detroit Public Schools, another guest on the show, actually recognized that principals have some responsibility (not just teachers).

PBS addresses Chicago killing wave --Will it address claim of link to Duncan's school closings?

PBS' new, in-depth Friday evening news show, "Need to Know" with Alison Stewart and Jon Meacham will focus on Chicago's wave of youth violence, "Block By Block: Violence in Chicago." (Friday, Aug. 13, 8:30, local time, in NYC and Indianapolis, 9:00 in Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia, 10:30 in Baltimore and Annapolis [for the Washington, DC market --pre-empted on Aug. 13].)



Will the news program address activists' contention that Arne Duncan's (Chicago schools CEO [sic], 2001-2009) wave of schools closings has contributed to the spike in youth violence in Chicago's poor neighborhoods? Shootings spiked after the 2004 schools closings program (euphemistically called "phase-outs") began.

Links on this theme:
MSNBC: "School closings root of Chicago teen violence?: Activists blame education reform plan for spike in youth attacks"

Catalyst Notebook: "Chicago schools plan to combat violence: kinder, gentler security guards, disciplinarians"

WBEZ, Chicago Public Radio: "Parents, Activists Say Renaissance 2010 Exacerbates Youth Violence"

And alas, just like this endless ego-trip of "school reform" in New York City, that has produced lackluster school performance (no improvement), research shows that Chicago's school transformation produced little improvement:
Education Week: "Chicago School Closings Found to Yield Few Gains"

UPDATE:
See this great resource on the devastation that Duncan and his successors have wrought on Chicago public schools:
Paul Street, "Arne Duncan and Neoliberal Racism," at ZNet
At Amy Goodman's DemocracyNow, A Look at Arne Duncan’s VIP List of Requests at Chicago Schools and the Effects of his Expansion of Charter Schools in Chicago," the source of this quote:

The larger scandal is that Chicago has basically a two-tiered education system, with a handful of these selective enrollment magnet schools, or boutique schools, that have been set up under Renaissance 2010 in gentrifying and affluent neighborhoods, and then many disinvested neighborhood schools.

Looks familiar, eh? Just what mayor Michael Bloomberg and chancellor Joel Klein are doing in New York City.

Obama threatens veto to get his school-deform ways

Obama vetoing over his bullying for school de-forming.

He's making this the rare case of using his veto?????
And people wonder why we use the term, "Obushma"?

From the L.A. Times, July 12, 2010:
Obama's school-aid showdown
The president is wrongly threatening to veto a school-aid package unless cuts to his Race to the Top program are eliminated.

All across the country, the most pressing need in schools right now is to keep as many teachers, janitors, counselors and librarians as possible. Less important: expanding charter schools and linking teachers' evaluations to their students' test scores.

So we're surprised by the tumult over a school-aid package approved by the House last week as part of a larger appropriations bill. It would provide $10 billion to keep as many school employees as possible in their jobs during the recession, but would do so, in part, by imposing some cuts on the Obama administration's key education initiative. Race to the Top, a $4.3-billion program that provides competitive grants to states that draw up reform programs in keeping with the administration's priorities, would lose $500 million. Two other incentive programs would lose a total of $300 million.

President Obama has threatened to veto the school-aid package unless the cuts to these programs are eliminated. But Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), who inserted the aid package, included those cuts among many others to offset its cost, thus winning support from Republicans and conservative Democrats. Even with the reduction in its budget, Race to the Top would have billions of dollars to hand out. Would the president really undermine desperately needed school funding over a less-than-lethal reduction in the grant program's coffers?


Opponents of the cuts say that more money for schools won't help unless reforms are instituted. But the $10 billion doesn't represent "more" money; it simply makes up for — to a limited extent — devastating budget cuts that schools have suffered in recent years. And reforms will accomplish nothing unless schools can keep teachers in the classroom.

Of course, if Obey had seen Race to the Top as invaluable, he wouldn't have touched its funding. And here we agree with him as well. The concept behind the program is brilliant: Leverage a relatively small amount of money by using competitive grants as an incentive for states to embrace change. Dozens of states have drawn up new legislation and made new pledges in order to align with the administration's goals. But some of those goals are untested and others are too severe. We too believe that teachers' evaluations should have some connection to how their students score on tests, but are dismayed to see states win grants by promising to make those scores account for at least half of a teacher's performance. And though well-run charter schools have brought welcome new practices to public education, the jury is still out on whether charters improve educational outcomes as a whole. Just as important is the question of which charter schools work well; some perform significantly worse than public schools.

It's too bad that Obey's school-aid package doesn't include some reasonable accountability measures of its own, such as a requirement that states not lay off teachers strictly by seniority when doing so would hurt low-income and minority students, or that they begin drawing up plans for thoughtful teacher evaluations. But above all, let's keep teachers.