New revelations have surfaced this week about carefully orchestrated plans by privatization interests to drive "education reform" in Louisiana and most other states. The planning and organizing group for this reform legislation is called ALEC which is an acronym for American Legislative Exchange Council. The group provides an opportunity for business interests to offer template legislation to supportive governors and legislators. (Click on this link to view the ALEC Exposed website which contains descriptions of Template legislation designed to protect business interests and privatize various government functions.) National Chairman for the ALEC group is Louisiana State Senator, Noble Ellington.
ALEC is almost totally financed by big business interests. (The misleading name is intentional!) The ALEC education task force which writes the template education legislation includes a representative from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers represented in Louisiana by Caroline Roemer Shirley, the sister of Chas Roemer, current member of BESE. The education task force includes also a representative from Connections Academy, a "for profit" which sponsors a virtual charter school in Louisiana. This school is allowed to take students and their funding from any public school in the state. The annual ALEC national conference is an invitation-only meeting in New Orleans on August 3-4. Governor Jindal will be a keynote speaker leading up to a session on education reform focusing on "school choice". Breaking News! Louisiana Taxpayers are funding trips for our legislators to this special interest conference according to an article today in the Baton Rouge Advocate! (click on this underlined link for the story) Also click on this link to see the editorial by the Lafayette Advertizer.
Why are these influential business people so interested in public education? Are they involved because they want to support and improve public education and enhance opportunities for students? I believe many of these big business leaders genuinely believe that their support for privatization is contributing to the improvement of education. Their theory is that free enterprise and competition will apply business principles to improving education. If parents can choose the best schools for their children, the marketplace will allow only the best schools (public or private) to survive. Lazy and incompetent public educators will be replaced by effective teachers and administrators who will be rewarded for excellence by merit pay.
Unfortunately, it does not work that way! Many other sponsors of ALEC see privatization as a way to make an easy buck using public tax money!
The free enterprise system often works well in a system where competition and the profit motive produce better products and efficiencies in production. Unregulated free enterprise can also wreak havoc as we have seen in the banking collapse that recently caused the great recession. As it has been applied in Louisiana education, free enterprise and competition results in an extreme focus on test preparation, student selection to enroll the most motivated and cost efficient students in some charters, excessive salaries for administrators and neglect of special education students. Allegations about the Abramson Charter operation exposed in news reports last week include teachers who takeover science fair projects for students, lack of special education staffing, LEAP cheating, cover up of child abuse, bribery attempts and other unethical behavior.
The firing of Education Department staff who produced a critical report of the Abramson Charter is nothing new. An independent audit of Baton Rouge area charters reported numerous weaknesses and violations of accountability procedures. The Department chose to blame the messenger and fired the independent audit firm, and decided to conduct future audits with in-house staff. Since then one of the schools audited has continued to experience serious disruptions and the rape of a student on campus. How has the Department responded? The charter organization, Advance Baton Rouge was awarded a 13.3 million dollar federal grant to implement the TAP (Teacher Advancement Program). This amount was twice the per-student amount allocated to a few other public school systems in Louisiana.
The Louisiana School Boards Association web site, this week, includes an article by consultant Don Whittinghill which outlines how to Follow the Dollars for school privatization interests.
This report shows that the public was led to believe that privatization would spend a larger percentage of education dollars on students through a site-based management system, which would cut central office waste. The fact is, central office costs for the Recovery District which serves half as many students as the East Baton Rouge school system spends 13 million dollars on their central office compared to 10 million dollars for the EBR central office.
In another example, the Edison Charter Management organization, a "for profit" company, operating Capitol High school in Baton Rouge, saw its student enrollment fall to a fraction of the original enrollment while student achievement continued to be awful. The company was happy to give the school back to the Recovery District. Meanwhile, EBR-operated schools in the area have demonstrated much greater academic success than Capitol High School, yet the Recovery District refused to allow management to go back to the public school system. So much for competition rewarding the more successful management!
Takeover of schools in the New Orleans system by mostly Charter operators was supposed to do away with dropout factories. Yet it took a public records request to reveal that the cohort graduation rate for the Recovery District high schools was the second lowest in the state. The new grading system adopted by BESE will award 32 Fs to Recovery District schools. Most of the others will get D or D-. The latest rules by BESE make it almost impossible for failing charters in New Orleans to go back to the public school system which has one of the best performances in the state.
So when ALEC meets in New Orleans next week, the participants from across the country will probably be told that the Louisiana Recovery District with its major privatization effort should serve as a model for the rest of the nation. Organizers are not about to let the facts interfere with their agenda.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
Charter School Scandal Expands to State Department
Two more educators have fallen victim to the botched efforts by the LA Dept. of Education to deal with irregularities at a New Orleans charter school. The article linked here by reporter Andrew Vancour of the Times Picayune identifies Folwell Dunbar and Jacob Landry as the two Education Department staff members fired this week connected with the problems at Abramson Science and Technology Charter School.
But it looks like once again the wrong educators have been fired. The questionable firings started at the school when two young teachers were apparently fired for making legitimate complaints to the State Dept. about possible violations of education and child protection laws by charter school operators. Now the firings have extended to at least one of the Dept. staffers who tried to properly report and correct the problems at the school. According to the Picayune article, Dunbar after an attempt was made to bribe him last year, insisted on corrective actions by the Dept. including suspension of the school's charter. Now that the charter has been suspended and the charter operators removed, it's mystifying to observers why Mr Dunbar and his boss Landry, would be fired.
All this demonstrates why the practice of approving dozens of charter operators with minimal qualifications and with little state oversight has been a very bad policy. These rampant charter school adoptions proliferated under the administration of State Superintendent Pastorek who apparently never met a school privatization scheme he didn't like.
In a statement, Dunbar said, "I was terribly shocked and disappointed" when the department of education let him go, adding, "I am very proud of the department's post-Katrina reform efforts, and am honored to have been given an opportunity to contribute."
Last summer when Dunbar's recommendations were ignored and apparently hidden from BESE, he recommended the following: "Dunbar made six recommendations for improving oversight: more clearly defined roles for the state, the RSD and charter school boards; a "comprehensive" school quality review system; a more clearly spelled out procedure for handling complaints; whistle-blower protection policies; and more of an effort to live up to the idea of "complete transparency."
Maybe if BESE had seen his recommendations and adopted at least the whistle-blower protection, Dunbar would still have his job today. Possibly the two young teachers fired by the charter operator may have been allowed a hearing and had a chance to be reinstated by BESE which is supposed to have authority over all state approved charters. But because of a State Superintendent dominated-dictatorial culture at the State Department, BESE never got a chance to do its job.
In a statement announcing the firings, acting Superintendent Ollie Tyler said there was a need for the charter school oversight department to go "in a new direction".
That "new direction" should be as follows:
BESE should reclaim its constitutional authority over the State Department of Education, and the State Superintendent of Education should answer to BESE instead of the reverse. We also need to elect more members to BESE who are not just lackeys of privatization interests and our anti-public education governor!
But it looks like once again the wrong educators have been fired. The questionable firings started at the school when two young teachers were apparently fired for making legitimate complaints to the State Dept. about possible violations of education and child protection laws by charter school operators. Now the firings have extended to at least one of the Dept. staffers who tried to properly report and correct the problems at the school. According to the Picayune article, Dunbar after an attempt was made to bribe him last year, insisted on corrective actions by the Dept. including suspension of the school's charter. Now that the charter has been suspended and the charter operators removed, it's mystifying to observers why Mr Dunbar and his boss Landry, would be fired.
All this demonstrates why the practice of approving dozens of charter operators with minimal qualifications and with little state oversight has been a very bad policy. These rampant charter school adoptions proliferated under the administration of State Superintendent Pastorek who apparently never met a school privatization scheme he didn't like.
In a statement, Dunbar said, "I was terribly shocked and disappointed" when the department of education let him go, adding, "I am very proud of the department's post-Katrina reform efforts, and am honored to have been given an opportunity to contribute."
Last summer when Dunbar's recommendations were ignored and apparently hidden from BESE, he recommended the following: "Dunbar made six recommendations for improving oversight: more clearly defined roles for the state, the RSD and charter school boards; a "comprehensive" school quality review system; a more clearly spelled out procedure for handling complaints; whistle-blower protection policies; and more of an effort to live up to the idea of "complete transparency."
Maybe if BESE had seen his recommendations and adopted at least the whistle-blower protection, Dunbar would still have his job today. Possibly the two young teachers fired by the charter operator may have been allowed a hearing and had a chance to be reinstated by BESE which is supposed to have authority over all state approved charters. But because of a State Superintendent dominated-dictatorial culture at the State Department, BESE never got a chance to do its job.
In a statement announcing the firings, acting Superintendent Ollie Tyler said there was a need for the charter school oversight department to go "in a new direction".
That "new direction" should be as follows:
BESE should reclaim its constitutional authority over the State Department of Education, and the State Superintendent of Education should answer to BESE instead of the reverse. We also need to elect more members to BESE who are not just lackeys of privatization interests and our anti-public education governor!
Monday, July 18, 2011
BESE Takeover Planned This Fall!
I'm not exaggerating! There is now a major plan shaping up to take over Louisiana's chief education policy making board and convert it into an anti-public education institution. Don't take my word for it. Just take a look at what these groups themselves are saying about their plans for Louisiana and the teaching profession.
The Louisiana Federation for Children (click on the highlighted section to view their web site) which is a branch of the American Federation for Children is sponsoring a training session for pro-privatization candidates to BESE and the Legislature this Saturday, July 23. This workshop will train candidates who want to help the group promote "school choice" which is a code term meaning privatization of schools. According to their web information, the group supports both charter schools and the expansion of the voucher program. School vouchers are a major goal of privatization. Such programs allow parents to use tax money to send their children to private schools, most of which do not participate in accountability. It's ironic that the school reform movement with its emphasis on testing and accountability may result in allowing students to attend private schools at public expense where no testing takes place and standards are minimal.
Closely allied with the above group is a group designed to attract minority parents to support vouchers. This groups is called the Louisiana Black Alliance for Educational Options. Click on the highlighted phrase to go to their web site. This group conducts community organizing to convince minority parents that the answer to their education concerns is the funding of vouchers for minority children.
New pro-business BESE candidates are being sought to push for repeal of teacher tenure and seniority benefits of teachers.
The following is a story from the Baton Rouge Business Report on May 24:
"Grigsby to target support of teacher tenure
Candidates for state offices who hope to gain the support of Cajun Industries’ chairman, deep-pocketed political activist Lane Grigsby, can expect to be asked their position on eliminating tenure for public school teachers. "During this next election cycle, every candidate that comes before every organization that I sit on is going to have to tell that organization how they feel about teachers’ tenure," and whether they would commit to eliminating tenure for new school teachers, Grigsby says. "Florida just did it," he says. "It can be done. Louisiana needs to be one of the leaders, not one of the followers." In March, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed a law ending tenure for new hires and requiring districts to come up with an evaluation system to determine which teachers get merit pay raises and which might face dismissal; the system would be at least halfway based on how much students improve on standardized tests. Proponents say the law will help attract and retain the best teachers, while opponents say it imposes an unfunded mandate on districts and requires compensation and evaluation systems that haven’t improved student learning when tried elsewhere. Teachers unions are expected to challenge the law in court, according to Florida media reports."
The above report came out as a response to a call by BESE member Chas Roemer for a repeal of tenure.
Here's what John Maginnis of the blog LA Politics Weekly said recently:
"BESE to Be Targeted by 3rd Party Campaign
A politically active contractor known for putting his money where his mouth is has promised to raise a big war chest to target BESE incumbents who have opposed education initiatives backed by the Jindal administration.
Baton Rouge contractor Lane Grigsby says he will put up and raise $1.6 million to back challengers to three members: Dale Bayard of Sulphur, Walter Lee of Shreveport and Keith Guice of Monroe."
So that's the plan for takeover of BESE. Grigsby and other business interests will come up with major funding for BESE campaigns and the Louisiana Federation for Children will train hand picked candidates about how to run their campaigns and will also give them technical support.
Why do business interests and many media owners want so badly to attack job protections of teachers and turn over public schools to private operators? I sat down a few months ago with the editors of the Baton Rouge Advocate to try to convince them that school takeovers have not been successful and that the new letter grading system for schools was unfair and destructive. They listened politely, and they admitted that many charters and vouchers have not worked but they admitted that they no longer have confidence in the public schools. They basically said that they are willing to support anything but public schools!
That kind of attitude is unfortunate because our public schools are willing and able to educate those students that are willing and able to learn. The data nationwide shows that non-poverty students trained in our public schools score at the top of international rankings. Public schools have the expertize and can do much to help close the learning gap for at-risk students if we place maximum resources including experienced teachers and more instruction time where it is most needed. Dismantling public education and de-professionalizing the teaching profession will only set back our entire educational system and our ability to prepare our children to compete in the world job market!
Last Friday there was another news story about the chaos we encourage when we open our school system up to indiscriminate privatization. Our State Department of Education under pressure from a devastating news report of numerous unethical and possibly illegal actions by the Abramson Science and Technology Charter school in New Orleans took a belated action Friday to suspend the charter and close the school for the fall 2011 enrollment. The linked news story from the Times Picayune gives details of the alleged infractions and describes the fate of two teachers who blew the whistle on the charter school administration. Its ironic that the firing of the two whistle blowing teachers makes the best case possible for due process protections such as tenure in preventing unfair dismissals or reprisals.
Other recent examples of the failure of privatization include the collapse of the Edison schools management of Capitol High school in Baton Rouge, the Filipino teacher abuses, many of which were connected with Baton Rouge area charters, and the repeated academic failures of the Advance Baton Rouge takeover schools. ABR just replaced their Director and have experienced high turnover of principals and teachers in addition to very low student test scores. Enrolment in most of their schools is drastically down. Apparently choice is not working well in the Baton Rouge area.
The takeover of BESE in the Fall elections, however is far from being a done deal. BESE elections usually are not high profile elections. In such elections, public school employees and their friends and relatives can have a huge impact, if they are organized to support pro public education candidates. The Coalition For Louisiana Public Education has taken on the challenge of finding good candidates and of informing school employees about such candidates. This blog will support and help publicize the work of The Coalition for Louisiana Public Education. Please stay tuned for further information in the coming months.
I hope all professional educators will get involved in the BESE elections this fall to insure that our public education system continues to be truly public.
The Louisiana Federation for Children (click on the highlighted section to view their web site) which is a branch of the American Federation for Children is sponsoring a training session for pro-privatization candidates to BESE and the Legislature this Saturday, July 23. This workshop will train candidates who want to help the group promote "school choice" which is a code term meaning privatization of schools. According to their web information, the group supports both charter schools and the expansion of the voucher program. School vouchers are a major goal of privatization. Such programs allow parents to use tax money to send their children to private schools, most of which do not participate in accountability. It's ironic that the school reform movement with its emphasis on testing and accountability may result in allowing students to attend private schools at public expense where no testing takes place and standards are minimal.
Closely allied with the above group is a group designed to attract minority parents to support vouchers. This groups is called the Louisiana Black Alliance for Educational Options. Click on the highlighted phrase to go to their web site. This group conducts community organizing to convince minority parents that the answer to their education concerns is the funding of vouchers for minority children.
New pro-business BESE candidates are being sought to push for repeal of teacher tenure and seniority benefits of teachers.
The following is a story from the Baton Rouge Business Report on May 24:
"Grigsby to target support of teacher tenure
Candidates for state offices who hope to gain the support of Cajun Industries’ chairman, deep-pocketed political activist Lane Grigsby, can expect to be asked their position on eliminating tenure for public school teachers. "During this next election cycle, every candidate that comes before every organization that I sit on is going to have to tell that organization how they feel about teachers’ tenure," and whether they would commit to eliminating tenure for new school teachers, Grigsby says. "Florida just did it," he says. "It can be done. Louisiana needs to be one of the leaders, not one of the followers." In March, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed a law ending tenure for new hires and requiring districts to come up with an evaluation system to determine which teachers get merit pay raises and which might face dismissal; the system would be at least halfway based on how much students improve on standardized tests. Proponents say the law will help attract and retain the best teachers, while opponents say it imposes an unfunded mandate on districts and requires compensation and evaluation systems that haven’t improved student learning when tried elsewhere. Teachers unions are expected to challenge the law in court, according to Florida media reports."
The above report came out as a response to a call by BESE member Chas Roemer for a repeal of tenure.
Here's what John Maginnis of the blog LA Politics Weekly said recently:
"BESE to Be Targeted by 3rd Party Campaign
A politically active contractor known for putting his money where his mouth is has promised to raise a big war chest to target BESE incumbents who have opposed education initiatives backed by the Jindal administration.
Baton Rouge contractor Lane Grigsby says he will put up and raise $1.6 million to back challengers to three members: Dale Bayard of Sulphur, Walter Lee of Shreveport and Keith Guice of Monroe."
So that's the plan for takeover of BESE. Grigsby and other business interests will come up with major funding for BESE campaigns and the Louisiana Federation for Children will train hand picked candidates about how to run their campaigns and will also give them technical support.
Why do business interests and many media owners want so badly to attack job protections of teachers and turn over public schools to private operators? I sat down a few months ago with the editors of the Baton Rouge Advocate to try to convince them that school takeovers have not been successful and that the new letter grading system for schools was unfair and destructive. They listened politely, and they admitted that many charters and vouchers have not worked but they admitted that they no longer have confidence in the public schools. They basically said that they are willing to support anything but public schools!
That kind of attitude is unfortunate because our public schools are willing and able to educate those students that are willing and able to learn. The data nationwide shows that non-poverty students trained in our public schools score at the top of international rankings. Public schools have the expertize and can do much to help close the learning gap for at-risk students if we place maximum resources including experienced teachers and more instruction time where it is most needed. Dismantling public education and de-professionalizing the teaching profession will only set back our entire educational system and our ability to prepare our children to compete in the world job market!
Last Friday there was another news story about the chaos we encourage when we open our school system up to indiscriminate privatization. Our State Department of Education under pressure from a devastating news report of numerous unethical and possibly illegal actions by the Abramson Science and Technology Charter school in New Orleans took a belated action Friday to suspend the charter and close the school for the fall 2011 enrollment. The linked news story from the Times Picayune gives details of the alleged infractions and describes the fate of two teachers who blew the whistle on the charter school administration. Its ironic that the firing of the two whistle blowing teachers makes the best case possible for due process protections such as tenure in preventing unfair dismissals or reprisals.
Other recent examples of the failure of privatization include the collapse of the Edison schools management of Capitol High school in Baton Rouge, the Filipino teacher abuses, many of which were connected with Baton Rouge area charters, and the repeated academic failures of the Advance Baton Rouge takeover schools. ABR just replaced their Director and have experienced high turnover of principals and teachers in addition to very low student test scores. Enrolment in most of their schools is drastically down. Apparently choice is not working well in the Baton Rouge area.
The takeover of BESE in the Fall elections, however is far from being a done deal. BESE elections usually are not high profile elections. In such elections, public school employees and their friends and relatives can have a huge impact, if they are organized to support pro public education candidates. The Coalition For Louisiana Public Education has taken on the challenge of finding good candidates and of informing school employees about such candidates. This blog will support and help publicize the work of The Coalition for Louisiana Public Education. Please stay tuned for further information in the coming months.
I hope all professional educators will get involved in the BESE elections this fall to insure that our public education system continues to be truly public.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
TFA Set to Displace Qualified Teachers
Because of severe budget problems facing most states, thousands of certified and qualified teachers are expected to be laid off this fall. CNN reported last week that California is expected to lay off up to 36,000 teachers and New York state is expected to lay off approximately 20,000 teachers. All states combined are expected to lay off over 100,000 teachers. At the same time Teach for America plans to place between five and six thousand non-education major college graduates as teachers in public schools this coming year. In Louisiana, the Recovery District provides employment for a large number of TFA teachers each year.
So why would major charitable contributors continue to fund the Teach For America organization with up to 50 million dollars this year to recruit 5,000 new unqualified college graduates to teach in states that are laying off up to 100,000 certified teachers? These insane statistics tell us a lot about how cynical influential people in this country have become about the teaching profession. TFA recruits are given about six weeks summer training in teaching methods before being allowed to fill teaching positions in mostly urban schools. Schools that should be getting the most expert experienced teachers possible. No wonder the NEA passed a resolution recently opposing the hiring of TFA recruits for positions where qualified teachers are available.
I just finished reading the book Relentless Pursuit; A year in the trenches with Teach for America by Donna Foote. One of the 4 teachers followed for one year by Ms Foote is a new Psychology major with no training in education who is assigned to teach Biology to special education students at a large inner city school in Los Angeles.
It is obvious from the description of her teaching efforts that this well intentioned young person has no clue about what to do, much less how to teach handicapped students. Other TFA members profiled seemed at least to have a good grasp of the subject matter they were expected to teach. All seemed to be idealistic and dedicated to their students. But so are most of the many thousands of qualified, certified teachers out there who will soon be laid off. As Lance Hill of the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University asks: "Why not a 'learn as you go' program for prosecuting attorneys or legal aid attorneys? A bright person can learn the law as they go—what does it matter that their mistakes result in freeing guilty violent criminals or imprisoning innocent people? Why not a TFA program for fire fighters? Law enforcement officials? Tax assessors? Bridge engineers? EMTs?"
Yet influential leaders such as Senator Mary Landrieu, Bill Gates, and many others seem to have written off the education profession just at the time we should be working to improve the professional status of teachers. Finland, the country with the most successful public education system in the western world, has done just the opposite in building its education leadership position. Instead of putting new teachers in the classroom with only 6 weeks of training, Finland requires all new teachers to have a masters degree in education before entering the classroom.
Teach for America does attempt to attract top academic students to TFA. The organization claims that only one of 5 applicants is accepted into the program. But the problem is that these recruits are only expected to commit 2 years to teaching before moving on to their true profession where most will earn many times what average teachers do in public education. The main TFA drawing card for their recruits is that two years of TFA experience will look good on their resume in applying for their next real job. In Finland, the drawing card is that teachers there will be among the highest paid professional workers in the country and unlike American teachers, they will be given a high degree of autonomy in the classroom. In other words they train like professionals then they are treated like professionals in their employment. In Finland the educator unions are not bashed and blamed for every problem in education.
Are American teachers really that bad? Do they deserve the punishing indictment made last week by Senator Mary Landrieu? (see my post of last week below) If you look at the education attainment of non-poverty American students compared to similar students in other countries, the U.S. students score at the top of the rankings. U.S. teachers are doing an excellent job of educating students who come to school ready and willing to learn. Readiness to learn is a condition most other educational systems take for granted.
Our problem is in educating the large percentage of high poverty students we have in this country. Our teachers are being blamed because of the low performance of students who have the poorest school attendance rates, who routinely fight at school, who behave in a disrespectful manner to teachers and other students, who use profane language in school, who sleep in class, who never do homework, and who generally have little motivation to make good grades. Teachers are now expected to take the role that should have been assumed by parents in motivating students to do well in school and in teaching them to control their unacceptable behavior.
Yet the pressure on teachers and administrators from the LA State Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education is to discourage both in-school and out-of-school suspension for even the most disruptive behavior. What do you think happens when teachers attempt to use counseling, peer mediation, positive behavior methods or the assignment of punish work instead of suspension? Many of these hardened cases, often as young as age 13 laugh at positive behavior measures. Punish work is a joke to them, and they not only refuse to do such assignments but usually insult the teacher who attempts to implement such lesser measures. Such students do not show up at detention and dare the school administration to do anything further about it. There is no question in my mind that much of the difficulty of teaching in some public schools occurs because of the lack of authority of teachers to enforce simple discipline in their classrooms. Constant disruptions and general lack of respect for teachers by relatively few students in some schools prevents all students (even the truly dedicated ones) from getting the education they need.
An Evolving Privatization Strategy
While state and national authorities systematically interfere in a way that prevents effective discipline in public schools, there are some schools that are allowed to enforce strict discipline. Charter schools in Louisiana and in most other states have generally been given the go-ahead to remove students who interfere with or who disrupt school operations. Such schools either expel or "counsel out" students who are disruptive, who do not have proper parental support, or who do not seem interested in meeting academic standards. State officials generally take a "hands off" attitude in enforcing state laws and policies governing suspensions and expulsions of students in charter schools. BESE member Chas Roemer recently incorrectly stated that charter schools are exempt from discipline laws and BESE discipline policy. Such quasi-private schools feel free to use the regular public schools as a dumping ground for incorrigible, disruptive and disinterested students. After using this culling process to remove the lowest performers, charter operators proudly announce success in improving performance of at-risk students and set themselves up as a model for reform of schools.
In the book, Relentless Pursuit, the TFA teachers profiled are assigned to a large, mostly dysfunctional urban school where discipline rules are not consistently enforced. Teachers seem to accept daily disruptive and disrespectful behavior as par for the course. Nearby however, the Green Dot charter schools have set up several small competing high schools that insist on strict discipline, intense parental involvement and a strong work ethic by students and teachers. These schools are seen as successful because they are providing a solid education to those students who are motivated to do well in school. The regular public schools, in attempting to educate all students are seen as failures no matter how hard the teachers work. It's no wonder that the Green Dot schools are able to pick and choose the teachers they want from the regular public schools. The Green Dot schools by the way, are supportive of and hire unionized teachers. While they work hard in attracting good teachers, I believe their success is primarily because of their policies that are selective in the enrollment and retention of students.
This cannibalization of public schools by both charter schools and private school voucher programs is certain to perpetuate the deterioration of public schools and further erode public support. Yet there are groups that are organizing right now to elect only pro-charter and pro-voucher candidates to BESE in the elections this fall (more on this next week). If they are successful, I believe they will greatly increase the number of charter schools statewide and continue the practice of letting such schools pick and choose the students with the most potential while dumping the rest back into regular public schools. The same strategy will be used with expanded voucher programs for private schools.
I hope my readers will consider participating in the Save Our Schools march in Washington DC on July 30. After that, educators will need to get involved in supporting pro-public education BESE candidates this fall and in the election of legislators who truly support public schools and a new governor who believes in public education.
So why would major charitable contributors continue to fund the Teach For America organization with up to 50 million dollars this year to recruit 5,000 new unqualified college graduates to teach in states that are laying off up to 100,000 certified teachers? These insane statistics tell us a lot about how cynical influential people in this country have become about the teaching profession. TFA recruits are given about six weeks summer training in teaching methods before being allowed to fill teaching positions in mostly urban schools. Schools that should be getting the most expert experienced teachers possible. No wonder the NEA passed a resolution recently opposing the hiring of TFA recruits for positions where qualified teachers are available.
I just finished reading the book Relentless Pursuit; A year in the trenches with Teach for America by Donna Foote. One of the 4 teachers followed for one year by Ms Foote is a new Psychology major with no training in education who is assigned to teach Biology to special education students at a large inner city school in Los Angeles.
It is obvious from the description of her teaching efforts that this well intentioned young person has no clue about what to do, much less how to teach handicapped students. Other TFA members profiled seemed at least to have a good grasp of the subject matter they were expected to teach. All seemed to be idealistic and dedicated to their students. But so are most of the many thousands of qualified, certified teachers out there who will soon be laid off. As Lance Hill of the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University asks: "Why not a 'learn as you go' program for prosecuting attorneys or legal aid attorneys? A bright person can learn the law as they go—what does it matter that their mistakes result in freeing guilty violent criminals or imprisoning innocent people? Why not a TFA program for fire fighters? Law enforcement officials? Tax assessors? Bridge engineers? EMTs?"
Yet influential leaders such as Senator Mary Landrieu, Bill Gates, and many others seem to have written off the education profession just at the time we should be working to improve the professional status of teachers. Finland, the country with the most successful public education system in the western world, has done just the opposite in building its education leadership position. Instead of putting new teachers in the classroom with only 6 weeks of training, Finland requires all new teachers to have a masters degree in education before entering the classroom.
Teach for America does attempt to attract top academic students to TFA. The organization claims that only one of 5 applicants is accepted into the program. But the problem is that these recruits are only expected to commit 2 years to teaching before moving on to their true profession where most will earn many times what average teachers do in public education. The main TFA drawing card for their recruits is that two years of TFA experience will look good on their resume in applying for their next real job. In Finland, the drawing card is that teachers there will be among the highest paid professional workers in the country and unlike American teachers, they will be given a high degree of autonomy in the classroom. In other words they train like professionals then they are treated like professionals in their employment. In Finland the educator unions are not bashed and blamed for every problem in education.
Are American teachers really that bad? Do they deserve the punishing indictment made last week by Senator Mary Landrieu? (see my post of last week below) If you look at the education attainment of non-poverty American students compared to similar students in other countries, the U.S. students score at the top of the rankings. U.S. teachers are doing an excellent job of educating students who come to school ready and willing to learn. Readiness to learn is a condition most other educational systems take for granted.
Our problem is in educating the large percentage of high poverty students we have in this country. Our teachers are being blamed because of the low performance of students who have the poorest school attendance rates, who routinely fight at school, who behave in a disrespectful manner to teachers and other students, who use profane language in school, who sleep in class, who never do homework, and who generally have little motivation to make good grades. Teachers are now expected to take the role that should have been assumed by parents in motivating students to do well in school and in teaching them to control their unacceptable behavior.
Yet the pressure on teachers and administrators from the LA State Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education is to discourage both in-school and out-of-school suspension for even the most disruptive behavior. What do you think happens when teachers attempt to use counseling, peer mediation, positive behavior methods or the assignment of punish work instead of suspension? Many of these hardened cases, often as young as age 13 laugh at positive behavior measures. Punish work is a joke to them, and they not only refuse to do such assignments but usually insult the teacher who attempts to implement such lesser measures. Such students do not show up at detention and dare the school administration to do anything further about it. There is no question in my mind that much of the difficulty of teaching in some public schools occurs because of the lack of authority of teachers to enforce simple discipline in their classrooms. Constant disruptions and general lack of respect for teachers by relatively few students in some schools prevents all students (even the truly dedicated ones) from getting the education they need.
An Evolving Privatization Strategy
While state and national authorities systematically interfere in a way that prevents effective discipline in public schools, there are some schools that are allowed to enforce strict discipline. Charter schools in Louisiana and in most other states have generally been given the go-ahead to remove students who interfere with or who disrupt school operations. Such schools either expel or "counsel out" students who are disruptive, who do not have proper parental support, or who do not seem interested in meeting academic standards. State officials generally take a "hands off" attitude in enforcing state laws and policies governing suspensions and expulsions of students in charter schools. BESE member Chas Roemer recently incorrectly stated that charter schools are exempt from discipline laws and BESE discipline policy. Such quasi-private schools feel free to use the regular public schools as a dumping ground for incorrigible, disruptive and disinterested students. After using this culling process to remove the lowest performers, charter operators proudly announce success in improving performance of at-risk students and set themselves up as a model for reform of schools.
In the book, Relentless Pursuit, the TFA teachers profiled are assigned to a large, mostly dysfunctional urban school where discipline rules are not consistently enforced. Teachers seem to accept daily disruptive and disrespectful behavior as par for the course. Nearby however, the Green Dot charter schools have set up several small competing high schools that insist on strict discipline, intense parental involvement and a strong work ethic by students and teachers. These schools are seen as successful because they are providing a solid education to those students who are motivated to do well in school. The regular public schools, in attempting to educate all students are seen as failures no matter how hard the teachers work. It's no wonder that the Green Dot schools are able to pick and choose the teachers they want from the regular public schools. The Green Dot schools by the way, are supportive of and hire unionized teachers. While they work hard in attracting good teachers, I believe their success is primarily because of their policies that are selective in the enrollment and retention of students.
This cannibalization of public schools by both charter schools and private school voucher programs is certain to perpetuate the deterioration of public schools and further erode public support. Yet there are groups that are organizing right now to elect only pro-charter and pro-voucher candidates to BESE in the elections this fall (more on this next week). If they are successful, I believe they will greatly increase the number of charter schools statewide and continue the practice of letting such schools pick and choose the students with the most potential while dumping the rest back into regular public schools. The same strategy will be used with expanded voucher programs for private schools.
I hope my readers will consider participating in the Save Our Schools march in Washington DC on July 30. After that, educators will need to get involved in supporting pro-public education BESE candidates this fall and in the election of legislators who truly support public schools and a new governor who believes in public education.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Senator Landrieu Condemns Public Schools
In a recent article about a speech given by Louisiana Senator Landrieu on school turnaround efforts in New Orleans, the Senator expressed her disdain for public school teachers and administrators. She made it clear that she condemns the many traditional public school teachers who have dedicated their lives and careers to the education of children as not being worthy of participating in school turnaround efforts.
Landrieu's exact quote is as follows: “If traditional teachers and principals can rally themselves and admit that they failed … they can be part of turnaround,” she added. “If not, they can leave.”
This verbal attack by Senator Landrieu is like a kick in the gut to teachers who have toiled in the trenches of public education, many of them for 20 or more years, and who have contributed much to the lives and futures of many thousands of disadvantaged children.
Such an attitude by a high government official demonstrates a basic distrust of public education and public educators, just at a time when educators need support to tackle some of the most difficult problems facing our public schools. It also perpetuates the myth that privatization schemes such as charter schools and vouchers offer a miracle solution to closing the achievement gap for at-risk students. Readers may want to visit a new web site that exposes major flaws in recently discovered "miracle" schools. Also, a New Orleans group that supports charter schools points out that the New Orleans voucher program that allows public school students to attend mostly Catholic schools at public expense is basically failing to improve student achievement.
The article quoting Senator Landrieu, points out that charter schools have not made a significant improvement in the education of at-risk students in New Orleans. Sure, a few charters that have perfected a system of selection of the students with most potential, are able to "game" the system and show higher test results than other schools in the area. But this is done by using direct run RSD schools as dumping grounds for special needs students and for disciplinary problems. Regular public schools do not have these options. Even so, public magnet schools and even some general admission schools all over the state have demonstrated very high performance with many different levels of student poverty.
For Senator Landrieu and others to point to a few selective charter schools as a miracle cure to the ills of education amounts to a con job for the privatization of schools. As has been demonstrated, such student selective schemes only serve to cover up the root of the problems and the need for good basic strategies to close the achievement gap. Many public schools in Louisiana are now demonstrating that all children can attend safe schools where each child has a great opportunity, but is not guaranteed to succeed. This is the realistic approach that works in the real world, not the miracle approach that is being sold by the Landrieu types.
Join the Save Our Schools March and related activities scheduled for July 29 through Aug. 1 in Washington DC. If you click here and go to the Save Our Schools web site you can find out about speakers such as Diane Ravitch and Jonathan Kozal and special events starting as early as this Thursday, July 7. These events should help prepare educators to defend their public schools and their profession from these unprecedented attacks.
Landrieu's exact quote is as follows: “If traditional teachers and principals can rally themselves and admit that they failed … they can be part of turnaround,” she added. “If not, they can leave.”
This verbal attack by Senator Landrieu is like a kick in the gut to teachers who have toiled in the trenches of public education, many of them for 20 or more years, and who have contributed much to the lives and futures of many thousands of disadvantaged children.
Such an attitude by a high government official demonstrates a basic distrust of public education and public educators, just at a time when educators need support to tackle some of the most difficult problems facing our public schools. It also perpetuates the myth that privatization schemes such as charter schools and vouchers offer a miracle solution to closing the achievement gap for at-risk students. Readers may want to visit a new web site that exposes major flaws in recently discovered "miracle" schools. Also, a New Orleans group that supports charter schools points out that the New Orleans voucher program that allows public school students to attend mostly Catholic schools at public expense is basically failing to improve student achievement.
The article quoting Senator Landrieu, points out that charter schools have not made a significant improvement in the education of at-risk students in New Orleans. Sure, a few charters that have perfected a system of selection of the students with most potential, are able to "game" the system and show higher test results than other schools in the area. But this is done by using direct run RSD schools as dumping grounds for special needs students and for disciplinary problems. Regular public schools do not have these options. Even so, public magnet schools and even some general admission schools all over the state have demonstrated very high performance with many different levels of student poverty.
For Senator Landrieu and others to point to a few selective charter schools as a miracle cure to the ills of education amounts to a con job for the privatization of schools. As has been demonstrated, such student selective schemes only serve to cover up the root of the problems and the need for good basic strategies to close the achievement gap. Many public schools in Louisiana are now demonstrating that all children can attend safe schools where each child has a great opportunity, but is not guaranteed to succeed. This is the realistic approach that works in the real world, not the miracle approach that is being sold by the Landrieu types.
Join the Save Our Schools March and related activities scheduled for July 29 through Aug. 1 in Washington DC. If you click here and go to the Save Our Schools web site you can find out about speakers such as Diane Ravitch and Jonathan Kozal and special events starting as early as this Thursday, July 7. These events should help prepare educators to defend their public schools and their profession from these unprecedented attacks.
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