If You Didn't See It, Here

is a clip from C-SPAN of the Senate hearing on the reauthorization of ESEA or NCLB or whatever you want to call it:



The C-SPAN link

It's No Surprise

Obama's "blueprint" for education "reform" is going to make the "achievement gap" even worse.

That's the whole of point of it, I'm afraid.

The WSJ DOES, to its Credit, Point Out

the Obama administration's non sequitir that says kids won't all be "proficient" in reading and math by 2014, yet it pushes the insanity kids will be knowledgeable enough to be admitted to colleges and universities by 2020.

That's Arne for you. Once a dipshit, always a dipshit.

If You Were to Read the NYT and Nothing Else

when it comes to Obama's proposals, you'd think the only thing holding up his ideas are the nasty teachers' unions, and never mind there is widespread outrage over his privatization scheme:

Facing intense resistance from teachers’ unions, the Obama administration has begun trying to persuade union leaders, teachers and the public that its proposals for overhauling federal education policies are good for teachers and for public schools.


In remarks prepared for delivery to Congress on Wednesday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan argued that the proposed policies would elevate the teaching profession by encouraging better tests, by ending the demoralizing practice of mislabeling thousands of schools as failures and by offering teachers opportunities for career growth.

“We think there is a lot in our proposal that teachers will like,” Mr. Duncan said in the prepared testimony, a copy of which The New York Times obtained on Tuesday.

But the union leaders were not easily convinced. In interviews, they said the administration’s proposal for rewriting the main law outlining federal policies on public schooling, No Child Left Behind, would continue what they called an overemphasis on standardized tests, impose federal mandates on issues traditionally handled in collective bargaining, and probably lead to mass firings of teachers in low-performing schools.

More Anti-Teacher Editorializing from

know-nothing NYT. This paper is completely in bed with the billionaire boys like Broad and Bloomberg. The ignorance about education and public schools is astounding:

President Obama’s blueprint for reworking the No Child Left Behind Education Act of 2002 has good ideas, but it doesn’t have anything close to the rigor that the word “blueprint” would suggest. Whether the president’s plan will strengthen or weaken the program will depend on how the administration fleshes out the missing details — and how Congress rewrites the law.

Teachers’ unions, state governments and other interest groups have long wanted to water down or kill off the provision of the law that requires the states to raise student performance — especially for poor and minority children — in exchange for federal money. They will likely gin up their lobbying. Congress must resist.

President Obama’s blueprint adheres to the principles first set by former President George W. Bush. The new proposal, however, would focus federal sanctions and monitoring heavily on the relatively small number of chronically failing schools and allow better-run schools more flexibility to fix themselves. That makes sense, but only if the latter group is not allowed to shortchange poor and minority children.

The fucking fact is the "poor" schools will NEVER have the test or so-called "achievement" scores of the rich ones because of the students and their backgrounds outside of school. Teachers can't do a thing about it. Bring the high achievers in the wealthy schools into the poor income schools and watch the test scores go up. Move the kids in the poor schools to the rich schools and watch the test scores go down. Move the teachers from the poor schools to the rich schools and there will be no change in the test scores. Move the teachers from the rich schools to the poor schools and the test scores will still be low.

It's the poverty, stupid, and there's not one damned thing NCLB or any of the other "reforms" pushed by the privatizers can do about it. Poverty is a completely different issue.

In Case You Want to Know,

the major teachers unions or "associations" or whatever the hell you want to call them, have issued what I term tepid responses to Obama's latest assault on public education in the United States.

WSWS Comments on Obama's Disastrous Proposals Regarding NCLB

Is there any doubt the proposals are anything other than disastrous?

President Obama released plans Saturday to overhaul the No Child Left Behind law, embracing the main thrust of the right-wing education plan adopted under the Bush administration, while proposing modifications that would in many cases make even greater inroads into the principle of universal, high-quality public education.

Most significantly, the administration plan would change the funding mechanism established in the bedrock Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), one of the last major progressive reforms enacted in the United States, substituting grants awarded on a competitive basis for a formula that awarded funded largely based on population.

...


State governments are using Race to the Top as a pretext for wholesale attacks on job security and wages. In Florida, for example, the Republican-controlled state government is pushing for the adoption of a new state law, SB 6, that would require new teachers to take five-year probationary contracts, followed by a series of one-year contracts, meaning that teachers could face firing every school year. The law would also exclude salary from collective bargaining, with all salary determinations made by the state.

No Child Left Behind amended ESEA by favoring charter schools and other forms of privatization, and mandating a regimen of testing that has made it increasingly difficult for public school teachers to provide a well-rounded education for their students, rather than “teaching to the test” to insure that students meet the arbitrary benchmarks set by the law.

...

One significant change was to abandon the goal of 100 percent student proficiency in math and reading by 2014, which was used by President George W. Bush and the late Senator Edward Kennedy to give a reformist gloss to the bipartisan agreement that produced the 2002 law. There will be no goal of 100 percent proficiency―which amounts to an admission that many millions of working class youth will be condemned to functional illiteracy and innumeracy.

Instead, the Obama plan offers a deadline of 2020―four years after Obama would leave office if elected to a second term―for all graduating high school students to achieve “college or career readiness.” This has a clear class significance: the children of the privileged layers will go to college, while large numbers of working class youth, without basic literacy and math skills, will be slotted into “careers” that would be nothing but an endless series of low-wage, unstable jobs.

...

Rank-and-file teachers who posted comments on a union blog were angered by the Obama plan. One teacher wrote, “I am disappointed that we, as a union, are merely ‘disappointed’ with the president and Arne Duncan. We should be OUTRAGED.”

Another asked, “What do you think would happen to your country’s education system if the largest teachers’ union had a strike for one day to make sure what we are saying is heard? I bet parents and politicians would listen! Is there anyone in up there in NEA who is brave enough …?”

They'd be fired for not working and replaced by the thousands of scab teachers who are already out of work. Because teachers are a dime a dozen, districts and politicians can treat them like shit.

Education Groups Vary in Their Opinion

of Obama's blatant attack on public education. If they are right-wing think tanks, they think it's great; the new groups knowledgeable about learning and education don't think it is great.

After all, if 5,000 schools a year are targeted to be eventually closed, in twenty years ALL 100,000 public schools will be gone.

It shouldn't be that hard to "get it." ALL school districts and teachers will "GET IT" alright.



Yours truly has been concentrating a lot on educational issues recently because this is where Obama's true political colors are shown and the war against public schools has been relentless. It is all orchestrated and it is coming from the White House, which is bought and paid for by the billionaire boys and propaganda being funneled down through the major media outlets like the NYT, WP, LAT, etc.

More Bad News About NCLB II

As if we don't need more, but here it goes:

But another arbitrary accountability system will be put in its place — and the current standardized testing schedule put in place by NCLB will remain. Very bad. The lowest achieving 5 percent of schools in every state will be punished even harder than under NCLB, according to my colleague Nick Anderson, who reported about the Obama plan today.

NCLB had a deadline of 2014 for all students in all public schools to achieve “proficiency” in basic subjects under a scheme that was impossible to reach.

Everybody knew it was illusory — even the legislators who passed it. Goals, they said, are good to set, even if they are unreachable. That may be true, but certainly not if that unattainable goal is connected to an unworkable accountability system.

The Obama plan understands that--at least about the 2014 deadline. But it sets up a new deadline of 2020 for states to have all kids on a path to “college and career readiness” — whatever that path is supposed to look like.

The president is SO fucking clueless about education, it's almost an insult to call him another George W. Bush. Bush was bad on education, but not THIS bad.

People who did the research on Obama during the campaign tried to warn people, but to no avail.

The Obama Follies (NCLB II)

There is so much to be outraged over with the president, I can't keep up. His NCLB II, as pointed out yesterday, is not a rehash so much as it is a radical makeover into a Frankenstein-like monster.

When you have a liberal like Tom Harkin signing on (George Miller I am not surprised one iota) to this debacle, it's beyond hope.

It was bad enough when Ted Kennedy helped push through the original NCLB, but timing had a lot to do with its passage (it passed shortly after 9/11, with pressure to be bipartisan and all of that). Kennedy, to his credit, wasn't happy at all with the lack of funding to implement it.

Well, who would have thought I'd have yearned for the days of yore when our beloved George W. Bush spearheaded education policy.

There is this:

Teachers and administrators will be fired if they do not raise the test scores of their students, schools will closed if the test scores of their students do not go up, and states will only get Title 1 money by showing the Obama administration how "innovative" they are - in other words, the Race to the Top competitive grants are going to be enshrined in the new education law every year and districts are going to have to do what the administration wants, like tie tenure and evaluations to test scores and open lots of charter schools in order to qualify for Title 1 money.

And for some reason known only to the Great Obama, schools that are already doing well on their measurements will receive more money while schools that are not doing well will be closed or re-structured a la Duncan's policy in Chicago and Bloomberg's here in NYC.

This is really really bad.

Any teacher who voted for Obama who still supports this man needs to have his or her head examined.

Within a few years, the entire public school system - both urban and suburban - will have been destroyed by Obama and Duncan.

He's throwing a time honored institution over a cliff, and it's all because of neoliberal ideology.

And of course bribery from the billionaires with the same neoliberal outlook.

NCLB Needs to be Thrown in the Garbage Can,

Barack.

Nothing more needs to be said.

Well, maybe Schools Matter can take this crap apart:

If Obama did not doom his Party's chances with the bollixing of health reform, he seems intent on sealing fate of the Ineffectuals by adopting the Business Roundtable plan for school privatization, a future citizenry of non-thinking drones, and total segregation of the poor.

The Education Wars: Central Falls, Rhode Island, Firings

The firings of the Central Falls, Rhode Island, high school teachers isn't sad or desperate; what it is is illegal and it is union busting ala Ronald Reagan and PATCO in 1981. People thought that was a good thing.

It's at least as bad as that because the kids are victims here of idiotic politics peddled by Frances Gallo and her buddy Arne Duncan.

I do have to say though it is unusual for the Washington Post to have anything critical of a school administrator. Well, this is Rhode Island and not D.C.

There is no evidence that wholesale changes at schools make a difference at schools, though it has been tried repeatedly in districts around the country -- even in Duncan's Chicago public schools, which he ran for years before leading the Education Department.

Duncan tried a lot of things during his more than seven years as Chicago schools chief: shutting down schools, hiring experts in turning around schools and firing a lot of people. The results? To put it nicely, there was no Chicago miracle. Some schools improved, others didn't.

That's because grand gestures don't work to improve schools. It would be nice if they did, but time and time again, we've learned they don't. Making schools work is a very difficult job. There is no one thing to blame; there is no single remedy that works for every school or district.

That's because teachers have absolutely no control over the outside factors leading to "poor" academic performance. They aren't miracle workers.

The Education Wars: ESEA Reauthorization

The U.S. House will start hearings next week on the reauthorization of ESEA, which includes the despicable No Child Left Behind law, which has created this mess public schools are in and Obama/Duncan have accelerated.

The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is getting kicked into high gear with the announcement today that the House will start holding hearings next Wednesday, with the first meeting focused on charter schools.

In a joint statement, the top Democrats and Republicans on the House Education and Labor Committee said they were launching a "bipartisan, open, and transparent effort to rewrite No Child Left Behind," the current version of the ESEA.

Of course, take note that this is a bipartisan group in the House; the Senate has been mum. But given the failure so far to get passage of health-care reform--a top domestic priority for the Obama administration--many have hoped the ESEA would provide an opportunity for bipartisan support, and a success for President Obama.

They don't need to "rewrite" NCLB--they need to throw it in the trash.

But of course the billionaires aren't going to allow that.

The Education Wars: Open Warfare by Obama

against teachers. He wants "sweeping" changes to NCLB, but what is needed is to throw this piece of shit out.

He HATES public schools; after all, he never went to one. And he thinks test scores should go into teacher evals, even though special education teachers and "specials" on the elementary and secondary level (art, music, computer, physical education, home and careers, shop teachers, etc.) don't have anything to do with standardized tests.

The ONLY good thing is the proposal to eliminate the silly 2014 goal:

A new goal, which would replace the 2014 universal proficiency deadline, would be for all students to leave high school “college or career ready.” Currently more than 40 states are collaborating, in an effort coordinated by the National Governors Association and encouraged by the administration, to write common standards defining what it means to be a graduate from high school ready for college or a career.

The new standards will also define what students need to learn in earlier grades to advance successfully toward high school graduation.

Of course this means even MORE inappropriate curriculum for kids, thus creating even MORE special education, i.e., underclass, students.

Not to mention what will happen in colleges and universities:

Not only will funding and teacher pay be based on test scores in this brave new world of corporate schooling, but teacher credentialing programs will be approved by the Feds based on a program's history of producing test scores. Implications? Well, as we see in Illinois and New York, two of the states that have made their RTTT intial bribe acceptance packages public, these states have drunk the Dunc's Kool-Aid by undercutting, in one fell swoop, entire teacher credentialing and accreditation requirements in favor of self-certifying permanent temp agencies like Teach for America. Gone are required knowledge of child development, school psychology and sociology, history of education, educational theory, teaching methods courses, student teaching, special populations, etc. Professional teachers? A thing of the past, just like the professional associations they were a part of.

Just think: A bunch of know-nothings taking alternative "certification" programs which further deprofessionalizes teaching, not to mention TFAs, who are nothing more than temps.

Duncan and Obama, both of whom have NO CLUE about teaching AT ALL, push inappropriate teacher preparation programs, inappropriate teacher evaluation proposals, and inappropriate curriculum for children, and they are doing untold damage to millions of kids as a result.

The Education Wars

Speaking of Obama, he and his chief nitwit Arne Duncan still intend to implement the ruinous No Child Left Behind. Never mind it doesn't work.

Ravich:

We promised to keep a close watch on what is happening at the federal level, and now it begins to get interesting. And a bit scary, if you care about the future of public education.
The U.S. Department of Education announced its plan to spend at least $3.5 billion to push local officials around the country to close failing schools and reopen them with new teachers and principals. At this time of fiscal crisis and budget cuts, districts are desperate for federal dollars. To qualify for these dollars, districts must do one of four things: 1) fire the principal and at least half the staff and reopen the school with new staff; 2) turn the school over to a charter operator or other private managers; 3) close the school and send the students to higher-achieving schools in the district; or 4) replace only the principal and take other steps to change the school.

Sounds just like the sanctions in NCLB. The Obama-Duncan plan might as well be called "NCLB 2.0."

Arne Duncan is certainly familiar with school turnarounds. He closed down a number of schools in Chicago. Studies done by Chicago think tanks have shown that most of the brand-new, turned-around schools enrolled few of the students who previously attended "failing" schools. The Consortium on Chicago School Research produced a report revealing what happened to students when their "failing" school was closed: 80 percent of the students enrolled in low-performing schools transferred to other low-performing schools. There is no evidence that the turnaround strategy in Chicago has produced positive results. Catalyst, the first-rate independent group that covers education issues in Chicago, reported in September that high school test scores in Chicago were stagnant, even in the highly-touted transformation schools.

There is nothing like a "Democrat" to help the Republicans achieve their aims at destroying public education and thus democracy.

The Education Wars

Anybody who pushes for the reauthorization of NCLB is not to be trusted. Period.

Duncan isn't benign given his track record.

OF COURSE No Child Left Behind's

goals of every student being at grade level by 2014 is unattainable, but it sure made for good political rhetoric.

Even though NCLB is an unworkable and truly evil piece of crap legislation, neither party is going to ditch it. Obama and Duncan are supporters, after all.

The Audacity of Arne

Once again a writer is taken in by the snake oil salesmanship of the secretary of education.

Destroying Teachers' Careers for Sport

is becoming a popular pastime for corrupt superintendents all over the country, using NCLB as an excuse to subvert union contracts.

Of course, that was one of the primary goals of No Child Left Behind, to undercut unions, which are despised by the right. What is hilarious to teachers and former teachers like myself who know the truth about our schools, the unions are in cahoots with the districts; they are next to worthless in defending individual teachers against these sociopaths running our schools and school districts.

A snip from this article:

Superintendent Patricia Hamamoto says she intends to again seek the authority to replace the principals, most teachers and other staffers at public schools that have consistently failed to meet federal No Child Left Behind requirements in light of a push by President Obama's administration for school districts to turn around the lowest-achieving public schools.

Last week, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan notified school districts of more than $3.5 billion in Title I School Improvement grants, which should be spent on drastically reorganizing chronically low-performing public schools.

Obama and Duncan are enemies of every teacher in the United States, regardless of political persuasion.

The Education Wars

As if we didn't know this would be one of the results of No Child Left Behind.
_____

Some sage advice from a Nevada educator talking about the absolutely shitty school system there. It isn't just confined to Clark County or even to Nevada: bad administrators and ineffective unions are rampant throughout the United States.

It is indeed a crapshoot whether a teacher survives in public schools. One rotten, sociopathic principal, and it's all over, not just in Nevada but in every school district in the entire United States. You are blackballed and prevented from ever teaching again.

A snip:

First, the average annual teacher salary, roughly $46,000, is about half what police officers and firefighters make. In the first three years of this decade, as prices were tripling here, teachers received 0 percent (zero) in cost-of-living increases. In fact, teachers' cost-of-living raises for the entire decade have totaled only 16 percent, while police and firefighters have gotten between 35 and 45 percent.

In this derelict academic climate, psychopathic principals have frequently run rampant to create "lasting wounds and damaged schools," to quote Jo and Joseph Blase, co-authors of the book Breaking the Silence. According to one study cited by the Blases, 40 percent of principals nationally are knuckle-dragging troglodytes. In Vegas, this figure is probably closer to 60 percent. Hence, getting in a school here with a good principal is a crapshoot. The odds are stacked against you.

In a revealing speech to our school board recently, Ruben Murillo, president of the local teachers union, said, "We ask teachers to speak up [about working conditions], and they can't because they're afraid of retaliation." Sadly, Murillo's statement was a tacit admission the union has consistently failed its job of protecting teachers from unethical administrators.

One must understand, however, these "unions" aren't real unions at all and are nothing more than subsidiaries of school districts. And the problems with teachers' unions are the same all over the United States.