More Stupidity By This Local School District

in trying to "reform" the "lowest" schools in order to receive Duncan's blackmail money.

This article just goes to show you what utter morons the members of the school board are, not to mention Eli Broad flak Heath Morrison. As if getting rid of the staff is going to change ANYTHING.

It's the poverty, morons, and you can't make cosmetic changes when the problems of poverty and the transient population continue to exist.

There are MANY things out of a teacher's control, but this idiot superintendent and school board don't care. In the end there will be mass firings of teachers and principals, and not mere reassignments. It's coming, people, and it's being encouraged by a so-called Democratic president.

"Turnaround" Comes to Washoe County School District

This is bad, bad, bad shit, and this stupid school board is going to rue the day it ever looked at an Eli Broad hack like Heath Morrison to be superintendent. Mass firings are going to happen at WCSD too, despite disclaimers:

Key elements of the turnaround process include assigning a new principal, having a new management group of administrators, teachers and parents and requiring current teachers and staff to apply for their jobs, with a limit of hiring only half of them back.


“These are schools with kids impacted by a high numbers of poverty, mobility and language,” Superintendent Heath Morrison said.


The federal government requires the money be used for transformation, turnaround, restart and closure, said Kristen McNeill, director of state and federal programs. She stressed that staff would be transferred but none would lose their jobs.


“We’re not anticipating closing any schools at this point in time,” McNeill said. “That leaves turnaround and transformation.”

OF COURSE they are going to be closed and "charterized" wherever possible. That's the trend everywhere else in the United States, and the Eli Broad hacks in charge of WCSD will make sure it happens.

There will be mass firings of senior teachers to be replaced by cheapo bimbos, who in turn will be fired in a couple of years to make room for even cheaper hires.

Anybody who thinks of going into this field is insane.

link

The Education Wars: Diane Ravitch

Just because Ravitch has finally smelled the coffee and says something is rotten in the state of Denmark regarding public school "reform," some are pissed off at her for telling the truth:

In January 2001, Dr. Ravitch was at the White House to hear President George W. Bush outline his vision for No Child Left Behind, which Congress approved with bipartisan majorities and which became law in 2002.

“It sounded terrific,” she recalled in the interview.

There were signs soon after, however, that her views were changing. She had endorsed mayoral control of New York City schools before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg obtained it in 2002, but by 2004 she had emerged as a fierce critic. Some said she was nursing a grudge because close friends had lost jobs in the mayor’s shake-up of the schools’ bureaucracy.

In 2005, she said, a study she undertook of Pakistan’s weak and inequitable education system, dominated by private and religious institutions, convinced her that protecting the United States’ public schools was important to democracy.

She remembers another date, Nov. 30, 2006, when at a Washington conference she heard a dozen experts conclude that the No Child law was not raising student achievement.

The Education Wars: The Usual Suspects

Colin Powell's "foundation," among others, is in the forefront in destroying public education, and Obama is right in there with the privatizers.

It's becoming more and more obvious my initial opinion of Obama being a ringer is coming true:

Mr. Obama is seeking to use federal money as an incentive for local schools to improve their standards. The initiatives his administration is pursuing are similar to those of the Bush administration. At the event on Monday, Mr. Obama recognized Margaret Spellings, a secretary of education under President George W. Bush, who was seated in the front row.

Some fucking "Democrat" he is. He might as well change parties at this point.

The Education Wars: A Stupid Proposal in Utah

Since there is this huge budget shortfall in Utah, like other states, one legislator has come up with a novel idea: Let's just get rid of 12th grade and make it "optional."

I think that is the last thing schools need.

The Education Wars: Student Feedback

It would be something indeed if administrators actually implemented these students' suggestions on improving the school district.

Snip:

Mariah Gramolini has a vision for her school district.

“For every student who attends a Lyon County school to be able to do whatever they want after they graduate,” said the 17-year-old senior at Silver Stage High School.

And the people best equipped to prepare students to meet those goals, said Superintendent Caroline McIntosh, are the students. That's why the district organized a student summit Saturday where school board members met with students to discuss the direction the district should take to ensure success after graduation.

The suggestions from the summit will be compiled along with responses given from nearly 1,800 students in the district who couldn't attend the summit but answered an online survey.

The Education Wars: More Assault on Teachers

Massachusetts wants to circumvent unions by opening up charter schools without their approval and also give superintendents the right to sack "ineffective," (read senior, more expensive) teachers.
_____

Meanwhile, in New York, Klein wants principals to "shrink" their budgets, i.e., sack senior teachers in the name of cost.

The Education Wars II: More Arne

By the way, I don't believe I ever saw this piece from December 2008 analyzing Arne Duncan and his corporate model for American education.

It's worth a snip:

Since the 1980s, but particularly under the Bush administration, certain elements of the religious right, corporate culture and Republican right wing have argued that free public education represents either a massive fraud or a contemptuous failure. Far from a genuine call for reform, these attacks largely stem from an attempt to transform schools from a public investment to a private good, answerable not to the demands and values of a democratic society but to the imperatives of the marketplace. As the educational historian David Labaree rightly argues, public schools have been under attack in the last decade "not just because they are deemed ineffective but because they are public."[1] Right-wing efforts to disinvest in public schools as critical sites of teaching and learning and govern them according to corporate interests is obvious in the emphasis on standardized testing, the use of top-down curricular mandates, the influx of advertising in schools, the use of profit motives to "encourage" student performance, the attack on teacher unions and modes of pedagogy that stress rote learning and memorization. For the Bush administration, testing has become the ultimate accountability measure, belying the complex mechanisms of teaching and learning. The hidden curriculum is that testing be used as a ploy to de-skill teachers by reducing them to mere technicians, that students be similarly reduced to customers in the marketplace rather than as engaged, critical learners and that always underfunded public schools fail so that they can eventually be privatized. But there is an even darker side to the reforms initiated under the Bush administration and now used in a number of school systems throughout the country. As the logic of the market and "the crime complex"[2] frame the field of social relations in schools, students are subjected to three particularly offensive policies, defended by school authorities and politicians under the rubric of school safety. First, students are increasingly subjected to zero-tolerance policies that are used primarily to punish, repress and exclude them. Second, they are increasingly absorbed into a "crime complex" in which security staff, using harsh disciplinary practices, now displace the normative functions teachers once provided both in and outside of the classroom.[3] Third, more and more schools are breaking down the space between education and juvenile delinquency, substituting penal pedagogies for critical learning and replacing a school culture that fosters a discourse of possibility with a culture of fear and social control. Consequently, many youth of color in urban school systems, because of harsh zero-tolerance polices, are not just being suspended or expelled from school. They are being ushered into the dark precincts of juvenile detention centers, adult courts and prison. Surely, the dismantling of this corporatized and militarized model of schooling should be a top priority under the Obama administration. Unfortunately, Obama has appointed as his secretary of education someone who actually embodies this utterly punitive, anti-intellectual, corporatized and test-driven model of schooling.

Barack Obama's selection of Arne Duncan for secretary of education does not bode well either for the political direction of his administration nor for the future of public education. Obama's call for change falls flat with this appointment, not only because Duncan largely defines schools within a market-based and penal model of pedagogy, but also because he does not have the slightest understanding of schools as something other than adjuncts of the corporation at best or the prison at worse. The first casualty in this scenario is a language of social and political responsibility capable of defending those vital institutions that expand the rights, public goods and services central to a meaningful democracy. This is especially true with respect to the issue of public schooling and the ensuing debate over the purpose of education, the role of teachers as critical intellectuals, the politics of the curriculum and the centrality of pedagogy as a moral and political practice.

The Education Wars II

Arizona joins Nevada and other states in subverting tenure and seniority rights of teachers in order to get Arne Duncan's blackmail money:

Lawmakers entered murky waters with the changes, setting limitations on how public-school districts can negotiate with teachers. The restrictions and changes, such as removing protections and prohibiting factors for hiring, make Arizona one of the more-restrictive states for teachers.

This is going to be hell, and very soon, nobody will apply to be a teacher given the absolute flagrant abuse of them by shitty principals.

The Education Wars III

There is little doubt at all President Obama is the most anti-public education president in the nation's history. The fact he appointed his buddy Arne Duncan to the secretary of education post tells it all.

Charter schools are by and large jokes; the truly scary part is existing public school districts are being privatized. Anti-public school billionaires like Eli Broad and Bill Gates are infecting school districts with their crackpot notions school districts can be run on business models and giving out oodles of money to make their privatized paradise come true.

Teachers are collateral damage. Kids are being screwed because they have no stable educational environment.

Ravitch:

Two things are becoming clear to me: One, people who have an agenda will pursue that agenda regardless of evidence. They will tell you that conditions weren't exactly right, that the bonus should have been larger, that the program should have been tweaked this way or that way. But the bottom line is that teachers got bonuses, and the impact on student achievement (using those same lousy measures that we complain about) was hard to quantify.

The other is that the Obama administration has an education plan that was written by corporate-style ideologues. They are determined to fasten a business plan on the schools and will not be deterred by arguments or evidence. If incentives and sanctions work in the business world, then by gum, they will work in education. If deregulation is what the corporate sector wants, then why not foist it on the schools as well.

So, the outline of the Obama education vision is emerging. It is a business plan, designed by people who know nothing about schools and care nothing about evidence.

It takes a Democrat to destroy public education.

The Education Wars II

I liked this comment from this blog (typos in original):

Anonymous said...
As a teacer I'm not inclined to agree with any negative comments regarding seniority.

Furthermore, imagine the ridiculous standards that teachers are measured by, would be used to hold doctors and lawyers "accountable".

It is like telling a dentist that if your patients keep on getting cavities then you are going to be held accountable and we will revoke your license.

The problem with accountability is that those who are truly in need of being held accountable are never brought to task. Consider that Bloomberg and his henchmen are never held accountable for the educational catastrophe that has been in existence for eight horrible years.

The entire gist of the ed deform is to privatize public sector funds. The loot goes into the corporate bottom lines of corporate cronies of the administration. How else would you explain the no bid contracts.

The entire city is corrupt and there is no light at the end of the tunnel except that of an oncoming train.

Merit pay is another ploy to destroy the dues harvesting union that has aided and abbetted all of the monstrous changes in the education sector.

Teaching to the test only skews the statistics in favor of more of the same.

It is the responsibility of the education system to turn out educated functional citizens. Education is not to generate statistics so Reichfuhrer Bloomberg can slap himself on the back and tell us his marvellous achievements in education.

Turning out people who cannot think or function, yet can fill in a bubble sheet is not what education is about.

What the system wants is corporate drones who will work for an ever shrinking paycheck, diminished benefits and longer hours.

All of you students who defend your wonderful teacher should know one thing. When your great teacher falls out of favor with the administrators it will be him who is either in the rubber room or an ATR.

Consider the fact that both groups are filled with excellent teachers who are not two year wonders. These are people who have devoted their lives to helping young people get an education. We are your advisors, your surrogate parents,and we also worry about you.

What the ed deformers have done is try to reinvent the wheel. Teachers have lost respect and control over their own profession.

How come anybody who ever sat in a classroom is now an expert on education. Why do those in positions of power wield such influence over something they know absolutely nothing about?

Do you know that the standards are dropping and that NYC public schools are graduating functional illiterates that need intensive remediation once they walk into college.

Mr. Polazzo spoke with authority on something that he has no understanding of.

What protections would Mr. Polazzo have if he was to have the union agreement scrapped and it was him that was being targeted?

It is admirable that students are participating in this discussion. However, there are many things that they are not aware of, in the many challenges and sacrifices that teachers have to go through in this so called profession.

By the way kids, be aware of one thing for certain. You know have unparalelled power over your teachers. Any complaint that you lodge, no matter how stupid, is taken with utmost seriousness by the Nazi's who are also called administrators. In fact they will listen to you and then start an evil quasi legal process against the teacher who has no hope of anyone reasonable ever listening to what they have to say.

There are frightning similarities to what transpired in Pol Pot's Cambodia, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union and Chairman Mao's China, to what is happening in this country today.

We are becoming if not already a facist state. Jesus was also a teacher and look what they did to him.

Frunabulax

The Education Wars

Everybody should pay close attention to what is happening in NYC schools and Joel Klein and worry like hell what is or what will be happening in every single school district in the United States.

Running schools on a business model, whether it is New York City or Washoe County School District, is the rot that will kill the system once and for all. And that's what the privatizers want.

Ohanian:

Working in private industry, three months after receiving the highest employee rating ever, I was forced out because a new boss perceived me as a threat. Anyone who has ever worked in private industry has similar tales to tell.

Corporate politicos like Welch and Klein can pooh-pooh seniority all they want, but there is no question that years of experience season a teacher. After five years, she begins to have a real grasp of what teaching is all about, and by ten years she's probably standing on solid ground. But even then, every day is a new day with new challenges. Teaching, when practiced by a professional, is never static, never just bean counting--or test training.

Yes, some teachers "get it" more quickly and some few teachers never do get it. But to let the corporate politicos scrap the seniority system, turning teaching into one more competitive rat race for test scores would be destroy any semblance of teaching as a profession.

Here's Klein's view of teachers: Most people who came to public education think that if you show up on day one and just stay out of trouble, you can be there forever.

She writes about the UFT being scared to confront this crook, but he should be sent packing.

The Education Wars

The New York Times once again spews nonsense about public schools of which it knows nothing.

I'd like to know how special education teachers, and teachers of "specials" such as music, art, PE, and home and careers are supposed to be evaluated, since "standardized test scores" are to be used in evaluations.

Nobody is going to go into those shitholes called public schools at the rate it is going. Of course, they are turning into shitholes by design.

The Education Wars III

The filthy regime of D.C. chancellor Michelle Rhee gets only worse.
_____

It's great Arne Duncan found a way to ruin the continuity of children's lives by having revolving door faculty.

More about this horrible trend.

That was one of the reasons in the past teachers were dismissed for only the most egregious of offenses. Children need stability in public education.
_____

The Education Wars II

Besides the fact she is completely unqualified to be a school administrator and thus is one of the worst in the entire United States of America, who in the hell is Michelle Rhee, and why do we want to know what is really inside her head?

Some of the comments illustrate how brainwashed the public is about a brazen incompetent such as Rhee.

The Education Wars

D.C.'s chief Michelle Rhee, NOT a real educator, is at it again. I expect the union to capitulate, and thus hundreds of "ineffective," i.e., older, more senior teachers, will be tossed out on their asses.

What bullshit from Rhee:

Tenure protections are likely to remain in place despite Rhee's outspoken criticism of the provisions as a major obstacle to reform. As recently as July 5, she told an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival: "Right now, the culture within education and within the teaching ranks is once you have tenure, you have a job for life. I believe that mind-set has to be completely flipped on its head and that we have to move out of the idea that a teaching job is a right. . . . And unless you can show you are doing positive things for kids, you cannot have the privilege of teaching."

You DON'T have a "job for life" unless you are a crooked administrator. Teachers have NO protections, just some dubious right to a kangaroo hearing dubbed "due process" for those fond of Orwellian terms.

Obama and Education

To understand Obama's hatred of public education, which way exceeds our dictator's or any other previous president, one has to understand the neoliberal underpinnings of his philosophy.

Or simply listen to the rhetoric of Arne Duncan, and you know teachers and teaching are being assaulted all over the country. Tenure will be done away with, not that it was ever worth a shit because of how much the deck is stacked in the arbitration hearings, but just think what would happen if tenure were eliminated. Parents could run roughshod over any wimpy principal, and those who aren't wimpy are corrupt and devious, and teachers would have no recourse whatsoever.

It's a tragedy that the public really doesn't know the truth about our dysfunctional schools to be able to really reform them. Instead, what we get is this privatization-corporate jargon horseshit from Eli Broad Academy superintendents or a push for worthless charter schools by the likes of Arne.

More Education Wars

The people who propose middle school students take algebra classes should be taken out and shot.

One of the biggest outrages I saw as a teacher was middle school students were being taught pre-algebra and algebra in middle school. Most students couldn't grasp it, and of course a lot of them were already special education students, students who were put in sped because of shitty curriculum taught in elementary schools.

It's totally inappropriate to teach algebra to students who for the most part don't have the abstract capability to learn it.

Many adults NEVER master it, and those who do usually find out they forget it and have to relearn it.

Practically speaking, you almost never use algebra anyway unless you are a math teacher.

The Education Wars

Get ready for the wholesale privatization of schools, with LAUSD being a pioneer in the total destruction of what once made this country great:

The scene today outside the downtown headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District is a bit chaotic, with hundreds of competing activists and traffic jams. At issue is today's vote on a plan that would allow outside groups to take control of 50 new campuses scheduled to open over the next four years. The proposal has been expanded to include more than 200 existing schools that have persistently failed to meet state and federal improvement targets. These schools could be shut down and converted to charter schools or turned over to outside groups.

The strategy sessions for today’s theater began before dawn. By 5 a.m., about 50 supporters of the proposal, wearing light-blue T-shirts emblazoned with “My Child, My Choice,” began lining up to be the first into the auditorium, where the school board is scheduled to deliberate over the measure at 2 p.m.

Right behind this contingent came a larger one, distinctive for its red T-shirts. The group is spearheaded by United Teachers Los Angeles, the district's teachers union, which is leading opposition to the proposal, authored by school board member Yolie Flores Aguilar.

Teacher "Quality"

This poster hits the nail on the head about the cluelessness of non-educators pontificating about education, and the author is also correct it takes 3-5 years minimum for new teachers to really know their craft. All too often school districts, including the infamously horrible NYC district, aren't even letting new teachers, whether they be young teachers or older career-changers, get a chance at being quality teachers.

But with all of this bitchery about "tenure" and general workplace abuse of teachers for the sole reason of either denying them tenure and thus retirement benefits and saving money on budgets, children increasingly have NO "quality" teachers who are teaching them.

The public school system is turning into a revolving-door system of temporary and throwaway teachers, with none getting tenure, much less lifetime careers, unless they are related to somebody already in the system. Disgusting.

The characteristics for a "quality teacher" is quite simple. First, the teacher must have small class sizes, Second, the teacher must know the curriculum like the back of their hand. Third, let the teacher be the master of his or her classroom, not the administrators. Finally, the teacher must demonstrate skills in classroom management and punish misbehaving students with reasonable penalties. For a teacher to be a quality teacher, the above skills must be mastered and that takes a minimum of 3 to 5 years and in many cases longer. Is it any wonder that in New York City 50% of the new teachers quit within the first five years?

This is deliberate. It's NOT about the kids at all.