Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York State, recently released a report called The State of New York's Failing Schools. This report claims to present "statistics and facts" that "expose a public education system badly in need of change" and is designed to support Cuomo's proposal to turn "failing" schools over to private management and convert them into charter schools. But are these public schools failing? Are charter schools the answer? The facts say no. To help concretize the question why don't we take a closer look at one charter chain"

"It's a plan reviled by teachers, loathed by parents, and decried by local politicians, but against huge opposition, York may become the third city in America to privatize the entirety of one of its public school districts. How did a public school system in the midstate rise to the forefront of a national experiment in education reform? And how did an entire community lose control of its own decision-making ability? The answer to both those questions, education researchers and public watchdogs say, lies in large part on a concerted, multi-million dollar campaign over the past decade by for-profit schools to alter Pennsylvania law. Those changes, and the industry lobbying that continues behind-the-scenes, have implications for teachers and students across the entire state. It's a subject we have tackled in a series entitled "The Rise of Charter Schools in Pa.""

"Horace Meister, a regular contributor, has discovered a shocking instance of contradictory research, posted a year apart by the same "independent" governmental agency. The first report, published a year ago, criticized New York City's charter schools for enrolling small proportions of high-need students; the second report, published a month ago, claimed that the city's charter schools had a lower attrition rate of high-needs students than public schools. Meister read the two reports carefully and with growing disgust. He concluded that the Independent Budget Office had massaged the data to reach a conclusion favoring the powerful charter lobby. Eva Moskowitz read the second report and wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal called "The Myth of Charter School 'Cherry Picking.'" Horace Meister says it is not myth: it is reality."

"Filmmaker Michael Elliot stirringly documents special education teacher Jia Lee's historic testimony on the dangers of standardized tests before Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken and other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. "

"RTI raises many concerns. Some parents worry that RTI winds up denying children with learning disabilities services. One fear is that some parents don't think they can request an evaluation, or they are led to believe it isn't necessary."

"Bianca Tanis explains in the AFT publication why high-stakes testing is wrong for children with special needs. She describes a system under political pressure to produce data, where data trumps instruction and the needs of children."

"Battles between charter school operators, like Eva Moskowitz, and public school parents and education advocates are nothing new to the mass media. Recently The New York Times ran an article on this topic, featuring Moskowitz and her Success Academy schools. However, too often this kind of media coverage does not accurately portray our side of the story. The SUNY board of trustees recently voted to approve 17 charter applications, 14 of them by Moskowitz, in New York City. It is more important than ever for the public to understand the reality of the charter movement."

"There continues to be much bluster out there in ed reformy land that money really isn't all that important - especially for traditional public school districts. That local public schools and districts already have way too much money but use it so inefficiently that any additional dollar would necessarily be wasted. An extension of this line of reasoning is that therefore differences in spending across districts are also inconsequential. It really doesn't matter - the reformy line of thinking goes - if the suburbs around Philly, Chicago or New York dramatically outspend them, as long as some a-contextual, poorly documented and often flat out wrong, blustery statement can be made about a seemingly large aggregate or per pupil spending figure that the average person on the street should simply find offensive. Much of this bluster about the irrelevance of funding is strangely juxtaposed with arguments that inequity of teacher quality and the adequacy of the quality of the teacher workforce are the major threats to our education system. But of course, these threats have little or nothing to do with money? Right? As I've explained previously - equitable distribution of quality teaching requires equitable (not necessarily equal) distribution of resources. Districts serving more needy student populations require smaller classes and more intensive supports if their students are expected to close the gap with their more advantaged peers - or strive for common outcome goals. Even recruiting similarly qualified teachers in higher need settings requires higher, not the same or lower compensation. Districts serving high need populations require a) more staff - more specialized, more diverse and even more of the same (core classroom teacher) staff, of b) at least equal qualifications. That means they need more money (than their more advantaged neighbors) to get the job done. If they so happen to have substantially less money, it's not a matter of simply tradin

"Beverley Holden Johns, a nationally recognized expert in the field of disabilities, strongly disagrees with Arne Duncan. Duncan wants children with disabilities to be able to perform on the highest level of NAEP tests. She points out that NAEP was not designed for this purpose. Duncan unilaterally changed the requirements of the IDEA act, without Congressional authorization. Having changed NCLB without Congressional authorization, he must think that ignoring the law is routine. In Néw York, we learned how students with disabilities do when they took the Common Core test: 95% failed."

"What they saw should chill the ardor of the most doctrinaire followers of Milton Friedman. Vouchers began in Milwaukee nearly 25 years ago based on the claim that they would save poor black children from "failing" public schools. Today, Milwaukee should be a national symbol of the failure of vouchers. Yet state after state is endorsing vouchers, egged on by the Friedman Foundation and rightwing think tanks. Let's be clear. Vouchers, charters, and choice have failed the children of Milwaukee. The city ranks near the bottom of all cities tested by the federal NAEP, barely ahead of Detroit. Black children in Milwaukee score behind their peers in most other cities and states. Study after study shows they don't get better test scores than their peers in public schools."

"More than 250,000 pre-K, elementary, junior high and high school aged children - many of them disabled and of color - are restrained or put into isolation each year for behaving in ways that are considered disruptive or threatening."

"On July 28, 2014, following the  BAT Rally outside the US Department of Education, a delegation of BATS went up to  the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights to share some of the main issues that BATS had with  Department Policy."

"General students from kindergarten to third grade are retained by the privately operated schools at a slightly higher rate than district schools, according to the study report by the Independent Budget Office released Thursday."

"One of the most common claims against charter schools is that they "push out" special education students. The basic idea is that charter operators, who are obsessed with being able to show strong test results and thus bolster their reputations and enrollment, subtlety or not-so-subtlety "counsel out" students with special education plans (or somehow discourage their enrollment). This is, of course, a serious issue, one that is addressed directly in a recent report from the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), which presents an analysis of data from a sample of New York City charter elementary schools (and compares them to regular public schools in the city)."

"When our schools are run for profit, there are disastrous consequences for both students and teachers. Teachers are "managed" through the "outcomes" they produce, meaning their students' test scores. This makes teachers focus not on their students strengths, not on their students' needs or interests, but rather on their deficits, on the skills and concepts the students must master to pass the next test. Students who are, for whatever reasons unable to produce test score gains (perhaps they might be uninterested, alienated, traumatized, hungry, special education, new to the English language, or a hundred other reasons) become a liability for the teacher and the school. Under the pressure to produce "profits" is the form of higher test scores, schools begin to systematically reject students like these, as we are already seeing among some charter schools. Schools care less about nurturing students or teachers. The environment becomes less humane. Turnover increases among teachers, and attrition rises for students. Residual public schools become a dumping ground for students too difficult to educate."

"The Upper West Side Success Academy charter school has touted itself for not trying to push out kids with special needs or behavior problems, but a parent has audio to the contrary."

"The charter school chain Success Academy is being criticized for its high suspension rate, as parents complain that special-needs kids are pushed out and students are being denied due process."

"The rationale here is muddled at best, but the detriments are obvious. For instance, young students in New York State who are developing as they should will be placed in remedial services, forgoing enrichment in the arts because they are a "2" and thus below the new proficiency level. That is where the vast majority of students fall on the new scales - below proficiency and off the "road to college readiness."  Students, who in reality may not need support will be sorted into special education or "response to intervention" services.  Parents will worry for their children's future. The newspapers will bash the public schools and their teachers at a time when morale is already at an extreme low. The optimism teachers first felt about the Common Core State Standards is fading as the standards and their tests roll into classrooms."

"Publicly funded, privately run charter schools enroll less than half as many English-language learners and fewer kids with disabilities than district-run schools do. "

"One of the model laws promoted by ALEC creates vouchers for students with disabilities. ALEC is the far-right group that brings together big corporations and very conservative state legislators to figure out strategies to advance privatization and protect corporate interests. ALEC does not like public education, does not like regulation, does not like unions, and does not like teacher professionalism. It likes vouchers, charters, online learning, all as unregulated as possible, and teachers who can enter the classroom with little or no certification or training. ALEC pushes vouchers for students with disabilities as a way of establishing the legitimacy of vouchers, using the most vulnerable children as the poster children for their favorite anti-regulation, anti-government ideas."