Clearing the Confusion on the Good and the Bad in the ESSA, the rewrite of No Child Left Behind

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is well over 100 pages. The bill received wide bipartisan support, winning by 359 to 64 in the House of Representatives. It heads next to the Senate.

The usual suspects have dissected and drawn out the important parts for you.

At the Washington Post they point out that the ESSA shifts authority from the federal government to the states. So, in New York State we have been wondering when or how governor Andrew Cuomo will let up his onerous treatment of teachers. See Emma Brown's "How schools would be judged under ‘Every Student Succeeds,’ the new No Child Left Behind", November 30, 2015 in the Washington Post.

Until his recent moderating moves on Common Core, one would expect that he would continue to heavily base teachers' evaluations on test scores. So, New Yorkers are in a wait and see mode on whether he will continue to heavily weigh teacher evaluation by test scores.

Same thing about how to treat "struggling schools." Obama and Bush's previous bills and bureaucratic initiatives pressed states to shut down schools. This new bill eases that, relegating the matter to the states. Do not hold your breath waiting for Cuomo to end his receivership approach to low income "failing" schools in New York.

The new bill still sets the bar for 95 percent of students to participate. But again, this time the new bill leaves the matter up to the states to decide how to act.

The new bill includes disturbing provisions that are give-aways to teacher education programs such as those funded by the New Schools Venture Fund. NSVF heavily prejudiced resources and respect to new small schools in New York City under the previous mayor, Michael Bloomberg.

Similarly Mercedes Schneider points out how the new law benefits various pay for success initiatives.
Also, she has pointed out how, while the new law has provisions for security of student data, it still requires states to collect it.

* * *
The ESSA is a flawed bill, but it is a great improvement over the state of U.S. educational matters. It is an improvement over the extra-legislative stratagems and dictates of the Race to the Top, as imposed by the Obama/Arne Duncan administration.

New Book on the Neo-liberal Assault on public education

There is a new book form on the ills that we have been talking about.

As publicized at Mercedes Schneider's blog. What is special in this instance is that the author pulls no punches in identifying the politicians responsible.

David Hursh’s New Book, The End of Public Schools: The Corporate Reform Agenda to Privatize Education November 3, 2015 University of Rochester (New York) education professor David Hursh has a new book coming out on November 23, 2015: The End of Public Schools: The Corporate Reform Agenda to Privatize Education (Routledge). the end of public schools hursh (The Kindle version is already available on Amazon.com. Moreover, this flyer from Routledge includes information on a 20 percent discount.) David_Hursh_2014-108-S David Hursh Hursh’s The End of Public Schools is divided into five chapters: Chapter 1: The Demise of the Public in Public Schools Chapter 2: Understanding the Rise of Neoliberal Policies Chapter 3: Governor Cuomo and the Neoliberal Attack on Public Schools, Teachers, and Unions Chapter 4: The Gates Foundation, Pearson, and Arne Duncan Chapter 5: Manufactured and Real Crises: Rethinking Education and Capitalism In this post, I offer a glimpse into each chapter via thought-provoking excerpts that attest to the overall quality of Hursh’s book. (Note: In-text citations removed for ease of presentation.) From Chapter 1, “The Demise of the Public in Public Schools”: We need to understand that the education reforms are not minor changes in how schools are administered, or how tests and curriculum are created, or teachers evaluated. Instead, the current reforms have transformed the purpose of schooling, teaching, and learning. The curriculum is being reduced to what will be tested, teaching to implementing lessons designed to resemble the test questions and often scripted by someone else, and learning reduced to test taking strategies and memorizing for the test. Good teachers are retiring early or finding other jobs and enrollments in teacher education programs are declining. … No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, the rise of charter schools, and the increasing privatization and corporatization of public education are not accidental developments. Rather, I argue that the current debate over the direction of public education exemplifies a larger debate occurring in the United States and globally: On the one hand we can continue pursuing the neoliberal agenda that aims to create a society in which decisions about how we are to live are made through unregulated markets, with a diminished governmental role as what was once public is privatized, schools focus on holding students and teachers accountable [through a system] in which students and teachers are infinitely examined… and the rich and powerful become even more so. On the other hand, we can pursue what I will call a social liberal democratic agenda in which the government plays its required role in the creation and development of markets, provides services that are best provided through the government, creates schools as learning communities that support the development of trusting and caring relationships, and aims to create democratic institutions and structures so that everyone has opportunities to participate in democratic processes. From Chapter 2, “Understanding the Rise of Neoliberal Policies”: …Economic and political power has been concentrated in the hands of the rich, who are unelected and unaccountable, and gain influence through means outside the democratic process. Therefore, as I will describe, we need to develop forms of governance that are more transparent and promote democratic decision-making. …Corporate reformers focus on education as a means of reducing economic inequality to avoid confronting the inequalities created by neoliberal capitalism. Pushing back will require both promoting more democratic forms of education but also working to reduce economic inequality and poverty and provide health care, housing, and other services that improve the quality of life. … …Market fundamentalists promote the idea that societal and economic decisions should be made through markets, rather than the political process. In response, I concur… that all decisions are really political decisions. …Recognizing that neoliberalism is necessarily political and that it privileges some groups over others helps refute the notion that we can and should use markets to make all decisions. From Chapter 3, “Governor Cuomo and the Neoliberal Attack on Public Schools, Teachers, and Unions”: …Over the last fifteen years, corporate reforms have encompassed a widening range of reforms, including evaluating teachers through standardized test scores, privatizing the developing of curriculum and assessments, and promoting charter schools. …These reforms are part of larger effort to turn education into a profit-making industry and are promoted by those who desire to profit financially from the changes. …Understanding the motives behind these proposals that aim to restrict teacher autonomy and open up opportunities to invest in and profit from privatization requires understanding the financialization of education…. …When Cuomo tells us that he aims to destroy the “public school monopoly” because he is the only one that cares about the students… the opposite is the case. His reforms are motivated not by caring about the students but by a desire to provide investment opportunities and tax breaks to the lobby groups and hedge fund managers who have contributed to his and his allies’ political campaigns. … …Contributions [to New York legislators and politicians] come from numerous groups promoting privatization and the corporate reform agenda. Some of these groups, including Education Reform Now, Students First NY, Families for Excellent Schools, and NY for a Balanced Albany, have interlocking boards and shift funds between each another. … Cuomo’s now blatant attack on public schools, teachers and unions has been building steadily over the last year. In this chapter I highlight three events that reflect his increasing support for charter schools and denigration of the public schools. These events include his convening and participating in a three-day retreat in May 2014 on educational reform called “Camp Philos.” His speaking, in October, just ten days before election day, at an Albany rally promoting charter schools…, and his January 2015 State of the State speech….. These attacks have culminated in what Bill Cala calls“a war on teachers”…. From Chapter 4, “The Gates Foundation, Pearson, and Arne Duncan”: …Education policy-making has shifted from the local and state levels to the state, federal, national and international. Two exemplars of international organizations are The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Pearson Education (hereafter Pearson). The Gates Foundation is the largest philanthropic organization in the world, headed by the wealthiest person in the world. Pearson is the largest education corporation in the world. Duncan is, of course, the federal secretary of education. … …They promote privatization and markets to solve what are social and political problems. … …They propose solutions to societal problems that assume that the political, economic and the social do not matter. … …[They rely] on technological solutions. … …They promote private solutions to public problems. … …Proponents of unregulated free markets have an unreasonable faith or quasi-religious certainty that markets can exist without regulation. </blockquote>

See the rest of Schneider's blog for the continuation of the book synopsis.

Live Blog: MO Gov.; Pres. Obama -- Outcry over Militarizing Police in Ferguson, MO

Go to Blue Republic for story. Live Blog: MO Gov.; Pres. Obama -- Outcry over Militarizing Police in Ferguson, MO

*Press arrested by police in McDonald's restaurant *CNN reporters on militarization of the police, something out of East Germany *Gaza Palestinians advise Ferguson on coping with tear gas *Wooden bullets, tear gas *Anonymous reports on shooting officer *Assailee Michael Brown two days from beginning college (Vatterott College, a local trade college) *Eyewitness Tiffany Mitchell video of shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri *Police wield stun guns and tear gas [report by Al Jazeera, by MSNBC]
*Governor Nixon in second Thursday press conference transferred police authority to State Highway patrol
*Fire Dog Lake blog: Local Police Will Be Militarized as Long as Federal Government is

Go to Blue Republic for full blogpost: Live Blog: MO Gov.; Pres. Obama -- Outcry over Militarizing Police in Ferguson, MO

Ed Reform is Vietnam War of Our Day; Resistance vs. King is Tet Offensive of Our Day

Common Core is a key weapon in the Vietnam War of today. It is the guns rather than butter issue of our day.

Which side is Bill de Blasio on? --Obama, Coleman, Cuomo's or the side of parents, students and teachers?

Even the New York Times took notice of the resistance against John King.

Vietnam War	Education in NYS today
Containment; hawks stayed with this script; prevailed from McNamara to Nixon's years Mobilization and radicalization of millions of draft age youth happened. Yet, it took years of this to make presidents shift their stances on the war.	Fixed tautology: All should go to college, but education is in crisis, and teachers caused the crisis as they are the only ones to be held responsible. Metrics-driven reform is imperative for turning out the teachers. Students must be tested 'til they drop, to root out the teachers. No hope for leaders like NYS Education Commissioner John King or Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch to change their minds on Common Core. Expecting them to listen to the people is like expecting McNamara to turn into an absolute dove. Moreover, check for any flow of Gates Foundation money going their way.
Carpet-bombing	Speaker at 4:30 speaks, in the video Commissioner King Scorned in Port Chester, to how the Common Core mandates will scuttle programs such as music in order to meet those mandates. The above video, this video and this blogpost report that children are becoming ill and depressed from the Common Core.
Tet Offensive- set of Vietnamese rebel offensive caught the war leaders off guard.	The rolling protests will continue from Suffolk County to greater Buffalo. But tin-ear Tisch and King won't get it. As noted by other bloggers here, here, here the more the public protests, the more the Tisch and King sing the same reformy script. The more they ignore the people, the more the people will become enraged. The town halls and the mass PTA meetings across NYS will be the Tet Offensive of 2011-2014. What they (Tisch and King) worry? They're not directly accountable to voters. Besides, the Regents that appointed them to their posts are themselves in their own five year posts until 2015 (NYS Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver 2010 announcement of their appointments). What the Regents worry about either? Legislative appointment insulates them from popular opinion. Already one Regent outright wrote that they will not depose King, whom they appointed in 2011. It'll take a lot of popular rage to get the legislature to make sure that the halls of the Regents get rattled. Now, even the Times took notice on Nov. 18, alas coupling with quotes of a TNTP reformer's insinuating that the parents venting at Comm. King are racists.
After Tet Offensive, worn-down president Johnson threw in the towel.	When will sheriff Cuomo or reformer-in-chief Obama throw in the towel and hear the people? Unimaginable at this point. Definitely not 'til after 2014 elections. Watch for big Democratic losses as voters soundly reject these Common Core at the polls, taking out their rage on Democrats. Backlash against Obama over Affordable Care Act? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

When would Commissioner King ever make this concession? Could he ever make this concession?

The war against teachers, parents, students will rage on.

Tisch and King, listen up well. In the words of Bob Dylan:

What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters [the parents of New York State schoolchildren]
Are beyond your command

The people are speaking:

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'

NYS Tests and Related Effects Drive Principal to Announce Early Retirement

The current test regimen and the effects that they are having on teaching and learning are driving teachers from the field that they used to love. Teachers are driven to be in a round the clock, year-round prep for test-prep mode, driven by fear. In some cases, such as the principal in the accompanying letter, principals are feeling that they can no longer work in the system.
The principal is from Lancaster, New York, a suburb of Buffalo in western New York. This is a principal of high principle: her critique also singles out New York State's new evaluation systems that it has been imposing across the state. Essentially all my days were spent typing at the computer writing up teacher observations and evaluations. Note that this comes right after the conclusion of the latest round of state tests this April. Implicitly, as the tests stem from the Common Core State Standards, this is an indictment of the Common Core as well. As these tests and evaluation systems are unequivocably pushed by President Barack Obama, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Governor Andrew Cuomo, N.Y.S. Education Commissioner John King, this statement is implicitly an indictment on their policies as well. We should also note that too many union leaders, such as the New York City United Federation of Teachers' Michael Mulgrew are complicit with these changes, only making complaints about the manner of implementation of these changes, not the changes themselves. Unions and their representatives should be the voice of conscience.
(Reposted from Chris Cerrone: AtTheChalkFace, April 30, 2013)

April 26, 2013

Dear Parents,
With much sadness, I will be taking an early retirement effective June 28, 2013. There are two main reasons. My philosophy of education and what I deem to be important for children are in conflict with the educational reforms implemented this year. Please allow me to explain the two reasons why, although they are actually interconnected.
During this school year, as your child’s elementary principal, there was little time to interact with your children, problem-solve, assist teachers and visit classrooms (authentic observations of teaching and learning). Essentially all my days were spent typing at the computer writing up teacher observations and evaluations. This was the first year for a complex new system. I knew it would be difficult for me, yet I still wanted to give it a try. I tried. I watched. I typed. We have always evaluated teachers in the Lancaster Central School District. I did not expect that this new system would impose such a drastic change in the job description, and did not expect that it would be so all consuming.
New York State is directing us to test and test your children, now starting in Kindergarten and continuing every year after. It is excessive. Along with the more frequent testing, the rigors of the New York State assessments have also increased making me quite concerned for our children with special needs and/or high anxiety. In addition, some of the students who typically perform well academically are quite upset because they were not able to finish many of the sections of the tests in the allotted time. The State Education Department is telling us to expect fewer higher end scores on the tests, even with all of the teacher focus on the test and the extensive test prep.
The students’ scores are used to measure teacher growth and effectiveness and to help plan instruction. The State claims that we need these tests to determine if students are on the path to college and careers. The students get a number that impacts the teacher’s number and impacts the principal’s number. This is not the purpose of public education and I believe this practice is destructive in many ways to the children and to the teachers, and to education as a whole.
I have been so proud of the Lancaster Central School District and the community for the past ten years. The new teacher evaluation system and the increased student testing were not created by the Lancaster Central School District but imposed at the national and state levels. Lancaster has had an effective and thorough evaluation system for years.
The greatest blessing for the children and me has been the fabulous teachers at Hillview and throughout the district. It is my hope that they remain grounded and centered knowing the difference they make each day. Teachers are so much more than a number and so are the children.
I have truly enjoyed serving as the principal of Hillview Elementary School. My goals for parents were to be visible and easily approachable. Another goal was to resolve any and all concerns you had in a timely and effective manner. I hope I met your expectations.
Thank you for sending me children who are simply adorable, mannerly, and ready to learn. I will miss their hugs and their humor. I will especially miss their pure innocence. Whenever I needed a lift, there was a fix right outside my door. It was as simple as looking into the eyes of a child. The past years have been filled with great memories and many laughs. This Dr. Seuss quote will guide me the next few weeks, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
Thank you for all of your support and the opportunity to be the principal of such a great school!

With warm regards,
Kathleen Carroll Knauth

The response to Principal Knauth's early retirement announcement has received some sympathetic attention in the western New York media. From Your News Now-Buffalo, N.Y. edition, May 3, 2013, by Katie Cummings, "Principal's symbolic stand applauded by some who say there's too much testing":

LANCASTER, N.Y. — "To see them tested over and over again, and the level of the rigor of the assessments is disturbing," said Kathleen Knauth. Knauth spent ten of her 36 years in education as principal of Hillview Elementary in Lancaster.

However, she submitted her notice to retire last Friday after getting fed up with all the paperwork she had to do as part of teacher evaluations and student testing. Knauth says it kept her away from checking in on classrooms.

"I felt like I was focusing on typing and data instead of focusing on what's truly important," Knauth said. "The social worker came in and asked what she should work on with children and with parents and families. I couldn’t tell her."

Western New Yorkers for Public Education is against some of the standardized testing required by the state and commended her decision. Member Eric Mihelbergel says the tests are designed for a narrow segment of students.

"If we focus our curriculum teaching to just math, teaching to just English language arts, we’re missing a whole other set of skills," Mihelbergel said.
. . . .
Knauth’s time in education is not completely over, as she plans to work on education reform and getting the word out about the testing.

"I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any testing. There should be, but leave it to the teachers. I think my message the most is let the children learn and play, let the teachers teach," Knauth said.

New Affront to Chicago Teachers, Other Workers: Obama Nominates Penny Pritzker Commerce Secretary

OBAMA NOMINATES CONTROVERSIAL BUSINESS FIGURE PRITZKER TO HEAD COMMERCE DEPARTMENT - OPPOSITION PETITION GATHERS OVER 3,200 SIGNATURES - CONTROVERSY NOW MOVES TO SENATE, WHICH MUST CONFIRM OR REJECT THE APPOINTMENT - MASS CHI. STUDENT WALK-OUTS OVER HIGH STAKES TESTS, TEACHER FIRINGS
President Barack Obama has made a number of moves that have been affronts to teachers and to working people.

His nomination of Penny Pritzker is one of his most brazen affronts to these groups. Of course, one can easily see a pay-back in all this: Pritzker was a key fund-raiser for his 2008 presidential campaign and a behind the scenes funds donations bundler in the 2012 election campaign.

She has drawn controversy in Chicago as the highest-profile member of the Chicago Board of Education overseeing the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), playing most loyal advocate for mayor Rahm Emanuel's "reform" program of closing schools, opening charter schools and fighting against the Chicago Teachers Union. Additionally, she's drawn criticism for her general labor stand --so much so, that progressives launched a petition on the CREDO site gained over 3,200 signatures.

Even by February anticipation of an Obama nomination of Pritzker was giving labor activists the willies, as the Huffington Post reported Februrary 8, 2013. But Obama went ahead, anyway.

Here is the text of the CREDO ACTION petition to Obama against his Pritzker appointment:

Penny Pritzker is an anti-worker business mogul who should not be appointed to head the Commerce Department. Why is this important?

Recent reports indicate that President Barack Obama has chosen Penny Pritzker as a finalist for an appointment to head the Department of Commerce. She is a long-time friend of the President as well as a billionaire, anti-worker business mogul from Chicago. The President received tremendous support during his re-election campaign from unions and working families and it is unacceptable for him to name an anti-worker businesswoman for this position.

As a member of the Hyatt Hotel chain board Penny Pritzker has refused to intercede on behalf of struggling workers. Last summer Chicago workers who organized a rally had the hotel's heat lamps turned on during a mid-summer heatwave. Housekeepers have had their workloads nearly double without proper compensation. All the while Penny has remained silent.

She stood by as her family's hotel chain received a companywide letter from OSHA that warned them of hazards facing housekeepers on the job.

Ms. Pritzker serves on the Chicago Public School's Board of Education. In her role she attempted to bust the union with her fellow board members by closing public schools and opening charter schools, mostly operated by the well-connected, that do not recognize the local union. She has stated that students merely need enough skills in reading, mathematics, and science to be productive members of the workforce. Forget the arts, gym, music, etc.

Her time in public service epitomizes the 1% versus 99%. As one of the wealthiest people in the country she wants our children to become members of the workforce instead of creative, engaged, and well-rounded citizens of the country that she seeks to serve as Commerce Secretary.

Mr. President, we are worth more than a Penny.

Sign my petition urging President Obama to not appoint an anti worker businesswoman as the next Commerce Secretary of the United States.

Here's what some of the press has been saying about Obama's nomination of Pritzker:
The Chicago Tribune wrote a piece lauding Obama for the appointment. However it noted some trouble absent from many of the recent accounts on Pritzker's business history. In addition to the controversies regarding her management stance and her posture towards Chicago students and teachers, she has been involved in banks that got involved in sub-prime mortgages, a role for which she has received kid gloves treatment for her wrong-doing.

During the early 1990s, she chaired Superior Bank, a suburban Chicago lender her family co-owned that later collapsed amid accounting irregularities and subprime loans gone bad. Federal regulators seized it in 2001.

The Pritzkers and their co-owners settled with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for $460 million, without admitting liability. The FDIC also let the family share in part of a recovery the government obtained from the bank's auditor, Ernst & Young. Neither the federal insurance fund nor some depositors were ever made whole.

It was an unusual deal, and Pritzker no doubt will be asked about it.

Recent national press reports have only obliquely addressed Pritzker's contentious role as head of the Chicago Public Schools Board.

The union fought back against Pritzker and the Board's plans this winter with a satire scary bed-time story, “Stand Up to the Fat Cats,” and a coloring book, the Sun-Times reported December 12, 2012.

With good reason, Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis welcomed her departure from the Board. See this interview, published March 14, 2013, by the Chicago Mag, "Karen Lewis Says Good Riddance to Penny Pritzker."

In recent weeks (in Pritzker's absence, as she has moved on from the Board) Chicago students have been staging mass walk-outs (April 24) against standardized tests and Friday, May 2 against teacher firings. Jacob Chamberlain at Common Dreams noted the various controversies she has stirred.

President Barack Obama nominated another corporate billionaire to his cabinet on Thursday, announcing hotel heiress Penny Pritzker—also longtime Obama supporter and "heavyweight" fundraiser— as his pick to be Secretary of Commerce.

U.S. President Barack Obama announces Penny Pritzker, right, as his nominee for Secretary of Commerce (Reuters) As the Chicago Tribune reports:

Pritzker's nomination could prove controversial. She is on the board of Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was founded by her wealthy family and has had rocky relations with labor unions, and she could face questions about the failure of a bank partly owned by her family.

With a personal fortune estimated at $1.85 billion, Pritzker, 54, is listed by Forbes magazine among the 300 wealthiest Americans.

Ahead of her nomination, a petition organized by CREDO Action urged Obama not to nominate Pritzker, calling her "an anti-worker business mogul who should not be appointed to head the Commerce Department."

The Chicago Tribune adds:

Pritzker also could draw fire from labor leaders. Hyatt has long battled Unite Here in Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere. And Pritzker, who served on the Chicago Board of Education until she resigned in March, has been harshly criticized by the Chicago Teachers Union. When she stepped down, a union official said she "has a long and storied history as an anti-labor and anti-worker kind of boss. [...] She could also face scrutiny over the collapse of Superior Bank, which was co-owned by her family. The bank, based in Hinsdale, Ill., was involved in subprime mortgage lending, and its failure in 2001 stirred charges of fraud and mismanagement.

The Tribune reports that Pritzker stepped down from the Chicago Board of Education in March just "days before Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced he had targeted 53 elementary schools and a high school program to close, affecting an estimated 30,000 students."

Such a move allowed Pritzker to avoid "a politically unpopular vote" and "further protests" from angry community members and unionized teachers who loudly objected to the closing.

"We know Penny Pritzker has a long and storied history as an anti-labor and anti-worker kind of boss," Kristine Mayle, financial secretary of the Chicago Teachers Union, told the Tribune in March. "Her policies adversely affect working families. She has worked to close schools and destabilize neighborhoods, and we hope she does a better job in her new position, if she gets it."

And investigative reporter Dennis Bernstein says that Pritzker's nomination is additionally controversial becuase of her involvment in a sub-prime mortgage scandal and the collapse of Superior Bank in Chicago in 2001.

According to Bernstein:

Penny Pritzker played fast and loose with the American Dream. Her pioneering sub-prime operations, out of Superior Bank in Chicago, specifically targeted poor and working class people of color across the country. She ended up crashing Superior for a billion dollar cost to tax payers, and creating a personal tragedy for the 1,400 people who lost their savings when the bank failed. Pritzker, whose family controls Hyatt Regency Hotels, is in the top one percent of the one percent. Her extreme wealth and privilege has not only made her virtually untouchable by law enforcement, but will now allow her to cleanse her sordid sub-prime banking record by becoming the first woman Secretary of Commerce.

During the official nomination ceremony, Obama said of Pritzker, "She knows from experience that no government program alone can take the place of a great entrepreneur."

But as blogger DS Wright suggests at FireDogLake, wouldn't a better Commerce Secretary be someone who was not "at odds with labor unions" or one without "problems complying with bank regulations".

Pritzker's nomination now awaits a confirmation process in the Senate.

Liberal and progressive Democratic senators now must show their integrity and oppose Pritzker's appointment.

Are President Obama's Education Policies Helping Our Kids?

AlterNet / By Kristin Rawls, June 19, 2012
Are the President's Education Policies Helping Our Kids?:
An end-of-term report card assesses how the Obama administration has performed on five critical education issues.

When Barack Obama ran for office in 2008, he did so on an education platform that was “ambitious” to say the least. Then-candidate Obama was clear that he aimed to reform America’s entire education system, from preschool on up through higher education -- and during his first term as president, his administration has indeed made significant changes to educational policy. But have those changes been for the better? Have schools, and their students, benefited from the Obama administration’s educational maneuvers over this first term? As it turns out, the answer is: not necessarily.

Herewith, a look at five critical education issues in America today, and how the president and his team have handled them so far:

1. Funding for Early Childhood Education

It is well-established that early childhood education is a crucial means of improving school readiness and performance among at-risk children. Studies show that preschool reduces high school dropout rates while increasing the likelihood that students will go on to higher education. Furthermore, early childhood education is a great investment: a 2005 MIT study found that every dollar spent on early childhood education reduces future social services expenditures by $13.

Given all that, Obama’s 2008 campaign promises to invest extensively in early childhood education seemed like a no-brainer. And on the surface, he seems to have delivered: the administration’s 2011 Race to the Top Early-Learning Challenge -- a $500 million grant competition that funds preschool programs like Head Start -- allocates a whopping 71 percent of 2011’s $700 million Race to the Top funds to early education.

But the devil, as always, is in the details. Of the 37 states that submitted applications for assistance, only nine won funding: California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington. The winning states were required to make a number of corporate-based reforms in order to compete for the preschool funding – including committing to a set of accountability procedures provided by a privately managed preschool assessment agency called Quality Rating and Improvement Systems. QRIS heavily emphasizes things like classroom décor, teacher assessment and parent participation – but even corporate reformer Sarah Mead of Bellwether Education Partners says, “[T]here’s not much evidence that creating QRIS will produce any significant improvements in children’s readiness to learn… The research that does exist is not encouraging: A study…by researchers at the RAND Corporation found little to no evidence of a relationship between childcare programs’….ratings and…outcomes.”

Ultimately, the states with preschool facilities most in need of money and support – those that could not afford to introduce the new QRIS standards in time – were shut out of the competition. States had just three months to prepare extensive applications, and most did not have the time or resources to introduce comprehensive QRIS accountability measures in that short amount of time. For the states that won, this is clearly a financial boon – but in 41 other states, preschoolers are still wanting.

So has the Obama administration invested in early childhood education? Yes -- but in a way that, as yet, has done little to improve early education in the majority of states.

2. Primary and Secondary Education Reform

There is little doubt that President Obama is a strong supporter of the corporate “reforms” that have crept into American education policy over the past three decades – and he appears to be a particular supporter of charter schools. As Ken Saltman, professor of educational policy studies and research at DePaul University, tells AlterNet:

[Obama] has pushed charter schools and other radical market-based turnarounds, like closing schools and firing all the teachers and staff… In some states, like Michigan, the chartering is heavily for-profit. In other states, like Illinois, chartering is predominantly non-profit, but the non-profits still contract with for-profit corporations. In any case, the key issue is that the model that has won is one of market competition and choice.

Yet there is scant evidence that replacing traditional public schools with charter schools improves learning outcomes – even conservative pro-charter think tanks like the Hoover Institute and Mathematica have found little, if any, proof that charter schools fare better than traditional publics overall: A 2009 report from Hoover found that “charter schools performed worse than public schools 36 percent of the time, performed better 17 percent of the time, and performed no differently the rest of the time. The…study suggests that charter schools are twice as likely to make student achievement worse as they are to improve it.”

The report also goes on to point out that subsequent research “on charter schools in New York City, California, Idaho, Indiana, Minnesota and New Jersey, among others, are all consistent with both the Mathematica and CREDO studies: Charters do not increase student achievement compared to regular public schools.”

Beyond charters, the Obama administration has pushed corporate reform in at least two other ways: 1) through the executive initiative called Race to the Top (RTTT); and 2) through continued enforcement of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

Launched in 2009 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, RTTT rewards a handful of states with large sums of money in return for implementing far-reaching corporate initiatives -- like replacing public schools with privately managed charters, introducing school choice, tying high-stakes test scores to teacher evaluations and promoting corporate partnerships through computerization (i.e., online coursework). The program is, as its name implies, a contest, or “race”: States compete for a slice of the $4.35 billion in federal funding, winning or losing dollars based on how comprehensively they are able (or willing) to introduce these “reforms.”

In addition, the administration has continued to enforce NCLB mandates, even expanding the focus on high-stakes testing. (The administration has begun offering one-year NCLB waivers to states – but only in exchange for more consistent implementation of corporate reforms.) For example, in March of 2010, the administration released a blueprint for revising NCLB that encouraged states to adopt federal guidelines called the Common Core State Standards Initiative. These “high quality statewide assessments” in reading and math aim to streamline curricula across states, and RTTT funding is tied to their adoption. The Common Core will also eventually result in students from states with poor educational funding being tested using rubrics nearly identical to those used to asses students in very wealthy states -- a huge red flag for anyone who understands that quality of education closely follows school funding, which is uneven at best across this nation.

Yet, ultimately, there is little substantive research that shows that corporate reforms of these kinds improve academic achievement overall. In March 2012, professor and public school advocate Gary Rubinstein’s released an analysis showing almost no correlation between high-stakes testing and student achievement over multiple years. These findings were consistent with a 2005 University of Arizona study that found “no convincing evidence” that testing improves student performance.

Still, the focus on test scores and “accountability” continues to grow, with solid policy backing from the Obama administration.

3. Access to Higher Education and Student Debt

President Obama’s record on higher education is mixed, but has more to recommend it than the rest of his education agenda. On the positive side, the administration has made real gains when it comes to expanding college accessibility and the treatment of student loans. It has doubled the amount of money provided for Pell Grants by cutting private companies out of federal grade exchanges, bringing the number of eligible recipients up to nine million -- a three million student increase during this first term in office. And administration has also promoted price controls to rein in tuition increases, though these have not yet been instituted in policy (such controls may actually be very susceptible to loopholes that allow universities to “revise their calculations of what families can afford to pay – and raise their tuitions accordingly.”)

In addition, the Obama team has made progress in making some student loans more manageable. Students who graduate in 2012 or later will not be required to make federal education loan repayments that exceed 10 percent of their income. Plus, if these graduates cannot repay the loans within 20 years, they will be forgiven.

But while this loan repayment program is clearly a step forward, it still doesn’t go nearly as far as it should. Though it will provided much needed help to the 1.6 million students who graduated or will graduate this year, there are another 34.4 million graduates with student loans who are not eligible to receive this benefit. Additionally, the program does nothing to rein in predatory private student loan companies like Sallie Mae that are hitting graduates with severe credit penalties, targeting them for harassment and leveling lawsuits against them. And students who have defaulted on student loans in the past cannot get help through this new program – even though student loans remain the only kind of debt not dischargeable through bankruptcy in the US.

Finally, the administration has made mixed progress in standing up to predatory for-profit universities like Strayer and the University of Phoenix. Encouragingly, the administration did issue an executive order banning these universities from recruiting among veterans and troops. But while veterans are now receiving protection from these institutions, there has been no move on the administration’s part to stop them from recruiting at, for example, high schools with large numbers of poor students -- leaving millions of young students terribly at-risk.

[Note: Last week, the administration announced a plan to grant legal work status – not a path to citizenship – to up to a million undocumented young people who would have been eligible for the DREAM Act. The memo removes the threat of deportation for these individuals and allows legal work status in the US. It is unclear whether the memo will have any impact on access to higher education at this time.]

4. Supporting Teachers

The country’s two largest teachers unions, the National Association of Educators (NEA) and AFL-CIO affiliate the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), endorsed President Obama in July 2011 and February 2012, respectively. They did this in spite of the fact that the Obama administration makes no secret of its disdain for both organizations. On May 25, Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Obama 2012, tweeted the following off-the-cuff rebuttal of Romney’s insistence that the unions and the Obama administration are close:

FACT CHECK: Romney off on Obama’s relationship with teachers’ unions; it’s anything but cozy: http://wapo.st/Lu0nYZ

[Ed.: the above link leads to a dead Washington Post link. The following is a posting on Matt Browner Hamlin's Hold Fast blog that includes part of that now deleting article on Obama's mythical cozy relationship with teachers' unions.]

OFA & Teachers’ Unions May 25th, 2012 · No Comments

Stephanie Cutter is OFA’s Deputy Campaign Manager. She tweeted:

@stefcutter FACT CHECK: Romney off on Obama’s relationship with teachers’ unions; it’s anything but cozy: //wapo.st/Lu0nYZ

The article she links to is an AP fact check that outlines how Mitt Romney is wrong to say Obama is cozy with teachers’ unions. From the article:

ROMNEY: “President Obama has been unable to stand up to union bosses — and unwilling to stand up for kids.”

THE FACTS: Several of the core tenets of the Obama administration’s signature education initiative, the Race to the Top competition, are policies first heralded by Republicans and are in opposition to the steadfast positions of teacher unions on topics like school choice and merit pay for teachers.

… At its annual meeting last year, the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, sent a message to Obama that it was “appalled” with Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s practice of focusing heavily on charter schools, supporting decisions to fire all staff and using high-stakes standardized test scores for teacher evaluations, along with 10 other policies mentioned.

“Obama has taken on teachers unions unlike any previous Democratic president,” said Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution. “Because of that his support among union members, although it is still there, is rather tepid.”

And again, this is an article that Cutter linked to approvingly.

Of course, Cutter is absolutely correct. Obama is not cozy to teachers’ unions. But the fact that the campaign is openly campaigning on the lack of support for workers shows they think unions are totally captured punks who won’t stop their support of Obama, even in the face of public humiliation like this. And, of course, OFA is right.

Update: Following pressure by pro-worker progressives on Twitter, Cutter has responded with this:

Pres. fights for unions/teachers b/c he believes in them-Mitt dishonest about being beholden to them MT@nitalovesmiles LAME.Explain yourself

Well Cutter certainly did a poor job expressing this. The article Cutter linked to does a pretty good job of showing how the administration’s education policies demonstrate real differences with teachers’ unions. These are differences manifested in concrete policy choices and frameworks for how they think about education. President Obama may way make the occasional good speech to a union audience, but his administration’s actions, especially around teachers’ unions, don’t really come close to his rhetoric. As is so often the case with this President, you are forced to ask, “Who am I going to believe: him or my lying eyes?”

When I read the fact check, I didn’t say, “Wow this is bad reporting,” I said, “Yep, that’s about right.” Staying within the GOP frame is not bad politics here (though it may be that too), it’s that the administration doesn’t have the policy record supporting statements outside the GOP frame.

Returning now to Rawls' article:

It may have been the most honest take on Obama’s relationship with the unions yet. The administration has indeed displayed very little “coziness” with teachers unions, consistently backing policies they oppose. Most importantly, the administration has expanded punitive teacher accountability measures beyond those set by NCLB. As noted above, Obama’s RTTT offers millions of dollars to school systems that tie teacher evaluations to student test performance, undermining job security protections like tenure. The result, Professor Ken Saltman says, is to “transform teaching into a low-skilled, low-paid workforce.”

Obama’s policies have also weakened the collective bargaining rights teachers still hold in some states.Though Obama claims to oppose mass teacher layoffs, and has introduced legislative measures to stop them, his support has been inconsistent: in February, Obama supported a Rhode Island school district’s plan to lay off all of its schoolteachers, and he has religiously supported so-called merit-based teacher layoffs for teachers whose students score poorly on standardized tests.

The only issue on which Obama and unions appear to see eye to eye is on school vouchers -- that is, the use of public money for funding private and religious school tuition. Like the teachers unions, the president has vocal and consistent in his opposition to vouchers -- but praise from far-right governors is at least one indication of how far to the right the president's education policies lie overall. Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who has just pushed an extensive voucher program through the state legislature, publicly praised Obama’s privatization measures in March. He joined a number of other pro-voucher, anti-union Republican governors who have supported Obama’s education policies, from Bob McDonnell of Virginia to Mitch Daniels of Indiana.

5. Advancing Equity

Corporate reformers like to dismiss calls for equitable school funding by claiming that “throwing money at the problem” of inequality in education doesn’t solve the problem. Yet in 2010, a Rutgers study found that,

"Student poverty -- especially concentrated student poverty -- is the most critical variable affecting funding levels. Student and school poverty correlates with, and is a proxy for, a multitude of factors that impact upon the costs of providing equal education opportunity -- most notably, gaps in educational achievement, school district racial composition, English language proficiency, and student mobility.”

In other words, student poverty and under-funded schools are the most important predictors of, among other things, low student achievement. As New York University professor Pedro Noguera points out,

"The achievement gap is first and foremost an educational manifestation of social inequality... In cities where the economy has collapsed and there is a shortage of good jobs -- as in Detroit; Cleveland; St. Louis; Buffalo, New York; and Erie, Pennsylvania -- schools lack the resources to improve and students increasingly lack the will to achieve… If educators fail to understand or fail to address the numerous ways in which other inequities -- in income, health, housing, etc. -- interact with learning outcomes, then much of what is done to ameliorate the problem will simply not work."

But despite much evidence that inequality is the defining educational issue of our day, the Obama team has largely chosen to skirt this thornier set of problems, focusing instead on teacher and student accountability -- and improving test scores. The president’s selection of Chicago-area corporate reformer Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education was an early indication of how little educational equity would feature in the Obama administration; true to form, Duncan quickly shaped the expansions of NCLB to mirror those already in place in Chicago public schools, where growing funding inequality and an increasing achievement gap have followed fast on the heels of Duncan’s market-based reforms.

As education scholars Pauline Lipman and Nathan Haines explain, the Chicago system masterminded by Duncan created,

"…an accountability system that institutionalized a simplistic, one-size-fits-all practice of demarcating students, teachers, and schools into those deemed ‘failing’ or ‘successful’ and then meted out penalties without regard for inequities in resources, opportunities to learn, teacher’s ideologies, cultural disconnections in curriculum and instruction, social contexts of the school, or strengths children bring to the school setting."

Duncan’s means of treating the dozens of schools deemed “failing” in Chicago under his watch was to shutter them, and to encourage charter schools to spring up in their place. But just as there is no real proof charter schools boost academic achievement, there is also little evidence that they ameliorate inequality -- in fact, they may actually promote it. As Chandra Nerissa Larsen of Sonoma State University points out, Chicago charters now “serve 6-7% fewer low-income students, half as many limited-English-proficient students, and statistically significant fewer students with special needs than regular public neighborhood schools” – prime examples of how charters exclude students most likely to bring down scores and abandon them to increasingly underfunded traditional publics as resources are shifted to charters.

Though few politicians can find it within themselves to admit it, there is no doubt that without treating the equity issue, we will forever fall short of resolving the real problems plaguing our education system. Paul Thomas, associate professor of education at Furman University, writes, “If leaders and policy makers are willing to confront the evidence of social and educational inequity, this hope may lead to the changes promised by the current president now trapped in ‘no excuses’ reform commitments that offer no hope or change.”

Educators alone simply cannot fix such entrenched social problems. But they might make better progress with equitable school funding to ensure that schools needing the most help get more money. Unfortunately, President Obama’s corporate reform measures do just the opposite.

It is widely understood that unfettered capitalist economic policies led to the financial collapse of 2008; we should not be surprised that they are also disastrous when applied to public goods like education. Without a renewed investment in the pro-equity educational tradition in America that spans from John Dewey to bell hooks, poor children and poor schools will continue to be left behind by the US education system. And our whole nation may pay the price.

Kristin Rawls is a freelance writer whose work has also appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, GOOD Magazine, Religion Dispatches, Killing the Buddha, Global Comment and elsewhere online.

Democrat Emanuel Pitching Same Anti-Teacher Line as Republican Bloomberg

Today there is a war against teachers. The war takes many forms.
Administration failings, which I cited on Monday, parental and student failings bear upon the educational outcomes at schools. However, teachers are the only ones blamed.
But there is a hidden agenda threaded through the attacks. There is an attack on pensions, by Democrat Andrew Cuomo, by Republican Chris Christie, and there is an attack on the experienced, higher salaried teachers.
EMANUEL GUNNING AGAINST HIGHER SALARIED TEACHERS
Democrat Rahm Emanuel, former White House advisor, former Democratic Congressman, is aiming to go after higher salaried teachers. He casts the argument as an anti-seniority argument. Emanuel is pushing the line of eliminating the older, experienced teachers, in the same way the Republican mayor Michael Bloomberg is.
Emanuel, in his get tough on veteran teachers zeal, is following in the footsteps of former Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan, another assistant to the Democratic president Barack Obama, who has blamed teachers for all of the ills of modern educational performance.