Quite A Mentor That Barack Obama

Thank goodness Senator Barack Obama defeated Senator John McCain in 2008.  If he had not, big money from corporations and billionaires still would be controlling American politics, the U.S.A. would not have finally ended its national nightmare in Iraq, effective gun control measures would not have been enacted, and low-paying jobs still would be dominating the national economy.

Oops.  While productivity has more than doubled since 1968, the minimum wage of $7.25 today is worth $2.00 less than it was worth in 1968.  And the end of the recession and gradual recovery has meant a far greater increase in low-wage, rather than medium- or high, wage jobs as the chart (via Think Progress) below indicates.

The Obama Administration has been consistently advocated a higher minimum wage.But the educational policy of Administration figures, past and present, belies any understanding of the nature of the socio-economic challenge facing American families today.The President and especially his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, have supported the Destroy the Public Education, aka "education reform," movement. Now Politico reports

Teachers unions are girding for a tough fight to defend tenure laws against a coming blitz of lawsuits — and an all-out public relations campaign led by former aides to President Barack Obama.

The Incite Agency, founded by former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and former Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt, will lead a national public relations drive to support a series of lawsuits aimed at challenging tenure, seniority and other job protections that teachers unions have defended ferociously. LaBolt and another former Obama aide, Jon Jones — the first digital strategist of the 2008 campaign — will take the lead in the public relations initiative...

Obama has bucked the teachers unions on many occasions, though they poured resources into electing him in 2008 and again in 2012. His education secretary, Arne Duncan, hailed the Vergara ruling, writing in a blog post that “it took enormous courage for tenth-grader Beatriz Vergara and her eight co-plaintiffs to stand up and demand change to a broken status quo.”

Duncan’s positions have so angered some teachers that the Badass Teachers Association, a more militant offshoot of the two major teachers unions, recently publicized a vote of no-confidence in the secretary.

But LaBolt said he joined Duncan and other Democrats in embracing the idea that “the best way we can ensure that every child has access to a quality education is to provide strong teachers in every classroom.” 

Oh, if only that were true.  Duncan employs the "strong teachers in every classroom" tripe, but there are weak teachers- and weak lawyers; weak doctors; weak construction workers; weak engineers; weak computer programmers; weak retail clerks... and so forth.  In every profession, there are workers who either are not very capable or not very efficient; it is the human condition.

So, too, are sickness and death part of the human condition.  It would be spectacular were they not, just as it would be spectacular if we could dramatically improve education by providing "strong teachers in every classroom," marking education as the only profession in the world in which everyone was top-notch.   (By contrast, the vast majority of teachers already is (are?) well-intentioned and devoted to their students.) Perhaps Duncan is enervated by the idea that we can ignore the evidence and imagine that the quality of teachers is paramount in providing quality education. Alas, that is not the case, notwithstanding the propaganda of the reformers.

Jersey Jazzman (blogroll, on right) presents three graphs demonstrating the strong correlation between socio-economic status and test scores of students in New Jersey.   The first demonstrates the relationship "between the percentage of a school's students who qualify for free lunch (a proxy measure for poverty) and average or 'mean' test scores. He observes "nearly three-quarters of the variation in Grade Eight language arts test scores can be explained by poverty."

The next graph indicates "60 percent of the variation in Grade 9 math scores can be explained by free lunch eligibility."

This tendency applies to older youngsters, wherein "over two-thirds of the vaiation in schools' SAT scores can be explained by their poverty rates."

And that tendency evidently applies also to the state of Georgia, in which SAT test scores and eligibility for free lunch are strongly correlated.  This would be less significant, presumably, if Georgia and New Jersey had more in common than both being on the eastern seaboard and having four vowels in their name.

Test scores are not the best indicator of student achievement.  But they have been the holy grail to the likes of Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Campbell Brown, and now, we find, to President Obama's former Press Secretary.   To their fellow travelers, test scores are almost as important as the ability of career-minded administrators to hire and fire teachers at will, as their professional aspirations dictate..

Share |

Oh, How Alarmed We Are About School Segregation!

The speech (excerpt, below) in Topeka, Kansas marking the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court's school desegregation ruling should have been good for a few yucks because

First lady Michelle Obama marked the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that ended school segregation during a speech on Friday before graduating high school seniors in Topeka, Kansas.

In her prepared remarks, the first lady praised the legacy of that decision, Brown v. Board of Education, noting the diversity of the crowd before her. But she also warned that the specter of school segregation is returning as people of different races cluster in separate communities, urging the graduates to continue striving for inclusion and mutual understanding.

"I think it's fitting that we're celebrating this historic Supreme Court case tonight, not just because Brown started right here in Topeka or because Brown's 60th anniversary is tomorrow, but because I believe that all of you -- our soon-to-be-graduates -- you all are the living, breathing legacy of this case," she said. "Just look around this arena. Look at all the colors, cultures and faiths represented here tonight."

That diversity "would have been unimaginable back in 1954," she said, when a group of black parents in Kansas took their fight for school integration all the way to the Supreme Court.

"Today, 60 years later, that probably seems crazy to all of you in this graduating class," she said. "But remember, not everyone has grown up in a place like Topeka."

"You see, many districts in this country have actually pulled back on efforts to integrate their schools and many communities have become less diverse as folks have moved from cities to suburbs," she explained. "So today, by some measures, our schools are as segregated as they were back when Dr. King gave his final speech. As a result, many young people in America are going to school largely with kids who look just like them."

That segregation, Obama said, is worsened by the fact that many schools serving predominantly minority communities are not as well-equipped as schools in other areas.

She also said the problems created by a lack of diversity don't stop in the classroom.

Even funnier was the Secretary of Education when he remarked (as Diane Ravitch reported) on Tuesday at the national seminar of the Education Writers Association

While the Education Department has promoted a number of programs and measures to improve the achievement of disadvantaged students, the singularly thorny problem of racially isolated schools has remained and has worsened... While [Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 107 LRP 36247 (1954)] struck down de jure segregation as unconstitutional, de facto school seg- regation has worsened in many respects in the last two decades, Since 1991, all regions of the nation have experienced an increase in the percentage of black students who attend highly segregated schools, where 90 percent or more of students are students of color. Here in the South, more than a third of black students attend such racially isolated schools. In the Northeast, more than 50 percent do.

Both of these people seem to be interested in integration.  But Michelle Obama is married to President Barack Obama, who appointed Arne Duncan as his Secretary of Education. Shortly after being approved to the position, Duncan raved "The charter movement is absolutely one of the most profound changes in American education, bringing new options to underserved communities and introducing competition and innovation into the education system."  He warned "states that don't have charter laws or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools will jeopardize their applications under the Race to the Top fund.  Simply put, they put themselves at a competitive disadvantage for the largest pool of discretionary dollars states have ever had access to."

One critic responded by charging "He's blackmailing states, saying you either have to have charters... or lift the caps, or your stimulus money will be at risk. There's no evidence out there to justify it."

Oh, but there is a justification- it's called segregation.

Experimental psychologist and education researcher Iris C. Rotberg has found

Studies in a number of different states and school districts in the U.S. show that charter schools often lead to increased school segregation (Bifulco & Ladd, 2007; Booker, Zimmer, & Buddin, 2005; Cobb & Glass, 2003; Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2013; Frankenberg, Siegel-Hawley, & Wang, 2011; Furgeson et al., 2012; Garcia, 2008; Glenn, 2011; Michelson, Bottia, & Southworth, 2008; Nathanson, Corcoran, & Baker-Smith, 2013), a finding that is consistent with research in a number of other countries, including Australia (Luke, 2010), Canada (Yoon & Gulson, 2010), Chile (Elacqua, 2012), Denmark (Rangvid, 2007), England (Burgess, Wilson, & Lupton, 2005), Germany (Pietsch & Stubbe, 2007), Israel (Nir, Inbar, & Eyal, 2010), the Netherlands (Karsten, Felix, Ledoux, & Meijnen, 2006), New Zealand (Thomson, 2010), and Sweden (Böhlmark & Lindahl, 2007). In many cases, school choice programs exacerbate current school segregation and, in more heterogeneous settings, lead to the stratification of students who were previously in integrated environments.

The primary exceptions to increased student stratification are in communities that are already so highly segregated by race, ethnicity, and income that further increases are virtually impossible, or they occur in school choice programs that are targeted to increase diversity — not a goal of most charter schools or school choice programs generally (Kahlenberg & Potter, 2012; Ritter, Jensen, Kisida, & McGee, 2010).

Michelle Obama may be excused for bloviating about school resegregation, given that she is not in a policy-making position, and her speech was as much a platform to promote same-sex marriage and immigration reform, and to slam racial profiling.

But Arne Duncan is the man appointed by Obama to be his point-man to undermine (or as their educational allies call it, "reform") public education with charter schools, which promote segregation and whose results are at best on a par with the traditional public school.  The YouTube video below is amusingly entitled "MIchelle Obama warns of encroaching segregation."  She can talk all she wants, but the policies advanced by her husband and his Education Secretary promote that very same segregation.

Share |

President Obama's Feint


Bloomberg last week reported Applebee's

announced on Tuesday that it will install 100,000 tablets nationwide so diners can order food, play video games, and pay the check.

The chain is following on the heels of Chili’s Grill & Bar (EAT), which began installing tablets in its restaurants this year and has said it will have the devices in most of its 1,266 U.S. locations by the first half of 2014. The objectives for each company are the same: They’ve found that tablets cut wait times and lead customers to spend more on appetizers and desserts and to leave bigger tips. 

For now, at least, the computers won’t take over for human employees. Applebee’s says it’s not changing staffing levels in restaurants as the tablets are installed. 

Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams, while explaining that she adheres to a "no distractions" policy for her family at its table, nevertheless maintains

... all the pearl-clutching over the fear that Applebee’s is single-handedly going to wreck dining out – especially in a manner that has nothing to do with its food – is pretty silly. Here’s the truth – everything is already wrecked. Family-friendly chains already have television sets blaring out of every corner. And should you find yourself in a Chili’s or similar sometime soon, look around the patrons, especially those with kids. The kids are engrossed in their DS systems, and the parents are taking pictures of their spinach dip to post on Instagram. They’re already not paying attention to each other. What’s one more device on the table, one more distraction?

So the cultural implication of the introduction of tablets in chain restaurants probably is overstated.  But not the economic implications.

As tablets become more common in restaurants, there will be fewer jobs for waiters and waitresses, even though Chili and Applebees are understandably reticent to admit it.  As low-wage employment requiring relatively little training, they serve as entry-level jobs for many people, especially of the youthful variety. The loss of even these low-paying jobs is a metaphor for disturbing trends in the economy.

In his recent speech on the economy, President Obama helpfully gave a nod to "empowering our workers. It’s time to ensure our collective bargaining laws function as they’re supposed to -- (applause) -- so unions have a level playing field to organize for a better deal for workers and better wages for the middle class." Nevertheless, he remains wedded to the notion that growing economic inequality in the nation is due primarily to what economists term "skill-based technological change." He assumes "we’re creating more good-paying jobs in education and health care and business services; we know that we’re going to have a greater and greater portion of our people in the service sector."

Ever faithful to the aim of exporting jobs, the President advocated "a trade agenda that grows exports and works for the middle class." He claimed  "It means streamlining regulations that are outdated or unnecessary or too costly.  And it means coming together around a responsible budget -- one that grows our economy faster right now and shrinks our long-term deficits, one that unwinds the harmful sequester cuts that haven't made a lot of sense -- (applause) -- and then frees up resources to invest in things like the scientific research that's always unleashed new innovation and new industries."   While a "responsible budget" (presumably a reduced one) would retard economic growth in the short term and the idea that regulations kill jobs is largely a conservative/neo-liberal nonsense, the President places his faith in employment which would be created in "new industries," especially those spurred by innovation.

But two months ago, well before the President's remarks, Robert Kuttner explained

There are several problems with the skills hypothesis, but here are the main ones. The four-decade transfer of income to the top had little to do with skill and more to do with opportunities for corporations to weaken labor and capture more of the national product. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute concluded that deregulation of financial markets has allowed elites to extract abnormal profits that are neither checked by market competition nor restrained by rules—super-profits that economists call “rents.” In this case, rents were available thanks to the deliberate opacity of toxic financial products and trading strategies. Consider: Some of the most “skilled” financial engineers on Wall Street were rewarded with billions for costing the economy trillions. Measured against the economic consequences, the value of their skills was negative. A regulated labor market may be imperfect at aligning pay with skill, but a laissez-faire economy can be even worse.

Conversely, other highly skilled people, such as physicians and research scientists, have had fairly flat incomes. The relative premium to college education, the usual proxy for a skilled workforce, has increased more slowly since the 1990s. Further, there are many occupations in which people learn to work with advanced technology but receive no additional compensation. Today’s autoworker has an impressive set of computer skills but earns less than his father.

As the economist Robert Gordon points out, all of the major advanced economies have had essentially the same technological trends but widely differing income distributions. Further, there is no evidence that the economy’s rate of new demand for skills is above its historic trend.

According to a report from the blue-chip business group The Conference Board, jobs for architects and engineers have declined this year by 18,800, and jobs in computers and mathematics have dropped by another 35,500. Meanwhile, jobs have increased in such low-wage service occupations as transportation (by 36,200) and food service (by 18,800).

A large cottage industry of academic economists and policy advocates contends that America’s widening income inequality is primarily a reflection of new technologies and global competition that leave lesser-skilled workers far behind. So the main cure for widening inequality is said to be a better-educated and -trained workforce. The economist’s term for this supposedly inexorable trend is “skill-biased technological change.”rofessionalized Human Services. A related need is a national policy to convert all jobs caring for the old, the sick, and the young into good professional jobs. Nearly all human--service jobs are underwritten or subsidized by government. Public policy has a choice. We can define child-care and pre-kindergarten positions basically as baby-sitters or train and compensate people who work with preschoolers to the standards of schoolteachers.

If after-school and pre-K jobs pay, say, $40,000 a year rather than $8 an hour, our kids will benefit from a child-development--oriented experience instead of merely custodial care. Better-trained and -compensated professionals will produce better-educated students, and the whole society gains.

Nurse’s aide positions in eldercare facilities and hospitals, likewise, can either be minimum-wage jobs with little training and frequent turnover or they can be part of a continuum of well-trained health professionals. Studies of nursing homes have shown that increased training and pay improve patient outcomes and reduce adverse incidents such as falls and bedsores. The problem is that nursing homes rely heavily on Medicaid reimbursements, which are too low to allow decent pay for nurse’s aides. Professionalizing these occupations will require different national priorities.

The President speaks of "good jobs."  But he believes that will come about through the growing domination of the economy by what used to be termed the "new economy"- education, health care, business, and finance and other "new industries." He urged "investments in education" and brags that his Administration "launched a Race to the Top in our schools" and is "pushing for redesigned high schools that graduate more kids with the technical training and apprenticeships, and in-demand high-tech skills that can lead to a good job." "making sure we empower more Americans with the skills and education they need to compete in a highly competitive global economy.

They will compete for vanishing jobs, sent abroad by companies enabled by the President's trade policy. The training touted by the President is ever less likely to the "lead directly to a good job and a middle-class life" he imagines.Researchers Lawrence Mishel, Heidi Shierholz, and John Schmitt  last month noted

Skill-based technological change (SBTC) has been a leading explanation for the rise in wage inequality almost since economists first noticed the increase in wage inequality that began at the end of the 1970s. A recent wave of research, however, has questioned important aspects of the standard version of SBTC models of wage inequality

They argue "Occupational upgrading has occurred in decades with both rising and falling wage inequality and in decades with both rising and falling median wages, indicating that occupational employment patterns, by themselves, cannot explain the salient wage trends."   They explain

The tasks framework suggests that differences in returns to occupations are an increasingly important determinant of wage dispersion. Using the CPS, we do not find this to be the case.  We find that a large and increasing share of the rise in wage inequality in recent decades (as measured by the increase in the variance of wages) occurred within detailed occupations.  Furthermore, using DiNardo, Fortin, and Lemieux’s reweighting procedure, we do not find that occupations consistently explain a rising share of the change in upper tail and lower tail inequality for either men or women.

The policy implications of the myth promulgated by President Obama are enormous. Without addressing Obama, Kuttner recognized

It's important to appreciate the political and ideological function of the emphasis on worker skills. For conservatives seeking to divert attention from the true causes of inequality and low wages, the focus on skills promotes the scapegoating of public schools and places the blame for paltry pay and job insecurity on workers rather than onchanges in the rules of the system. Blaming high overalll unemploymenton skills deficits also gives conservatives a basis for opposing fiscal stimulus.

It gives conservatives a basis for opposing fiscal stimulus- and conservatives and centrists the opportunity to scapegoat public schools through a school "reform" movement exemplified by Obama's boast that his Administration has "raised standards for teaching and learning." Teachers are to be held responsible for the poor performance on standardized tests without regard to the home environment which can have a devastating impact on student performance.  There is a race to close those schools- and dismiss their teachers- while replacing them with charter schools characterized by poorly paid, non-unionized teachers. The Obama-Duncan Race to the Top, increasingly revealed as a failure, is but part of a larger school reform movement which obscures an economy in which jobs are unavailable (table, below), and wage stagnation the norm, not only among restaurant staff but in the high-technology field.

As Williams contends, the restaurant chains substituting technological capital for human capital probably cannot be held responsible for destroying the American dinner table, already in decline.  But failing to resist the gradual removal of jobs for male and female waiters may be a metaphor for the myth that jobs, and good jobs at that, will flow like manna from the sky for young people acquiring those "high-tech skills" the President touts as a panacea.

Share |

Teflon Rhee

Fraud (noun):

a: a person who is not what he or she pretends to be (Merriam-Webster);
b: Michelle Rhee (not Merriam-Webster)



When then-District of Columbia Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee closed schools and fired teachers, it was inevitable that she would become the toast of Washington for what was widely, euphemistically, touted as "reform." It was nearly as predictable that she would appear on the cover of Time Magazine and on the Oprah Winfrey Show and draw praise from Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

And oh, the Today Show. Bob Somerby caught the propaganda piece of propaganda from NBC correspondent/news host Savannah Guthrie and Jenna Bush Hager (Somerby's critique is well worth the read.):

GUTHRIE (3/17/11): This morning on “Education Nation Today,” saving America's schools.
Michelle Rhee captured headlines as the chancellor of schools in Washington, DC, making sweeping changes and some enemies along the way. Rhee lost her job, but not her passion for education reform. “Today” contributing correspondent Jenna Bush Hager, a teacher herself, caught up with Michelle Rhee recently.

Jenna, good morning!

HAGER: Good morning. That's right. Michelle Rhee is truly a maverick in education reform. She's controversial and a courageous change-maker. And these days, as budget cuts mean teacher layoffs, Rhee is leading the fight for a quality education for every child.
Michelle Rhee may have lost her job, but she gained a mission. She continues her life's passion to fix America's broken schools with a new lobbyist group, Students First.....

HAGER: Rhee's reforms are part of a recent documentary, “Waiting for Superman.” But her firebrand approach also inspired relentless criticism and protests in Washington. (Speaking to Rhee) While you were chancellor, the union and others who protested you, calling you names such as "hatchet lady”- How could you keep a thick skin during all of that?

RHEE: For me, what was going through my mind was, You know what? You can call me whatever names you want, you can yell at me as loud as you want to, under my watch I am not going to continue to allow the absolute dysfunction.

Who is this Michelle Rhee and why does she hold this spell over the nation's movers and shakers? Bob Somerby reports a portion of the profile of Rhee in 2008 by Evan Thomas of Newsweek:

THOMAS (9/1/08): Over the next two years, working with another teacher, she took a group of 70 kids who had been scoring "at almost rock bottom on standardized tests" to "absolutely at the top," she says. (Baltimore does not keep records by classroom, so NEWSWEEK was unable to confirm this assertion.) The key to success was, in her word, "sweat," on the part of the teacher and the students. "I wouldn't say I was a great teacher. I've seen great. I worked hard," says Rhee.

She had an epiphany of sorts. In the demoralized world of inner-city schools, it is easy to become resigned to poor results—and to blame the environment, not the schools themselves. Broken families, crime, drugs, all conspire against academic achievement. But Rhee discovered that teachers could make the critical difference. "It drives me nuts when people say that two thirds of a kid's academic achievement is based on their environment. That is B.S.," says Rhee. She points to her second graders in Baltimore whose scores rose from worst to best. "Those kids, where they lived didn't change. Their parents didn't change. Their diets didn't change. The violence in the community didn't change. The only thing that changed for those 70 kids was the adults who were in front of them every single day teaching them.”

And neither, as it turns out, did their academic achievement change much. The University of Maryland Baltimore County was commissioned by the Baltimore City School System to conduct a study of seven privatized elementary schools, one of which was Harlem Park Elementary, the school at which Rhee taught. On August 2, 1995, the day after the report was released, the Baltimore Sun's Jean Thompson reported of Tesseract, the name given the the schools by their corporate owner:

THOMPSON (8/2/95): Baltimore's privately managed public schools show little difference from comparable city-run schools on test results, attendance, parent involvement—or even cleanliness, an evaluation released yesterday found.

The report, prepared by the Center for Educational Research at University of Maryland Baltimore County, represents the first outside evaluation of the closely watched Education Alternatives Inc. experiment.

While reporting few positive results in achievement, the report said, "Change takes time and there has been an investment in the first three years that can be recouped by continuation."

[…]
In scholarly terms, the study lays out EAI's academic struggle: Only in the past year has the Minnesota-based management firm improved test scores to near the levels recorded at its schools before EAI assumed control in 1991.

Researchers said that with 11.2 percent more money, with new computers and with college-educated interns in its classrooms, the firm's schools don't do significantly better than seven comparable elementary schools run by the city.

"The evaluation team found Tesseract and comparison schools more alike than different," the study says.

It adds, "The promise that EAI could improve instruction without spending more than Baltimore City was spending on schools has been discredited."
Intensely watched nationally as the largest experiment in school privatization so far, the company's "Tesseract" program—the name comes from a children's book about time travel—has spent $106 million in public funds since 1992.

This didn't inspire Rhee to object to the "outstanding success" claimed for her on the website of District of Columbia mayor Fenty nor of the nonprofit, the New Teacher Project, she headed. Nor was she deterred from telling The Washington Times' Harry Jaffe, in yet another adoring profile

The experience I had in Baltimore was I went into one of the poorest, most segregated communities in Baltimore. I taught at a school with 100 percent African-American kids, most all of them on free and reduced lunch. I was in the neighborhood where they later filmed The Wire....

In my second year of teaching, we took them from the bottom to the top on academics, and what I learned from that experience was these kids were getting screwed because people wanted to blame their low achievement levels on the single-parent households and on the poverty in the community. In that two-year period, none of those things changed. Their parents didn’t change.... (only) What we were doing with them in school.

The acclaim kept on coming, though, as Jack Gellum and Marisol Bello report today in USA Today

In just two years, Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus went from a school deemed in need of improvement to a place that the District of Columbia Public Schools called one of its "shining stars."

Standardized test scores improved dramatically. In 2006, only 10% of Noyes' students scored "proficient" or "advanced" in math on the standardized tests required by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Two years later, 58% achieved that level. The school showed similar gains in reading.

Because of the remarkable turnaround, the U.S. Department of Education named the school in northeast Washington a National Blue Ribbon School. Noyes was one of 264 public schools nationwide given that award in 2009.

Michelle Rhee, then chancellor of D.C. schools, took a special interest in Noyes. She touted the school, which now serves preschoolers through eighth-graders, as an example of how the sweeping changes she championed could transform even the lowest-performing Washington schools. Twice in three years, she rewarded Noyes' staff for boosting scores: In 2008 and again in 2010, each teacher won an $8,000 bonus, and the principal won $10,000.

But they note

A closer look at Noyes, however, raises questions about its test scores from 2006 to 2010. Its proficiency rates rose at a much faster rate than the average for D.C. schools. Then, in 2010, when scores dipped for most of the district's elementary schools, Noyes' proficiency rates fell further than average.

A USA TODAY investigation, based on documents and data secured under D.C.'s Freedom of Information Act, found that for the past three school years most of Noyes' classrooms had extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones.

Additionally

Among the 96 schools that were then flagged for wrong-to-right erasures were eight of the 10 campuses where Rhee handed out so-called TEAM awards "to recognize, reward and retain high-performing educators and support staff," as the district's website says. Noyes was one of these.

Rhee didn't erase anything on her own- managers know not to do the dirty work themselves but to put subtle pressure on their subordinates to do what they want done. Rhee was no exception:

From the start, Rhee emphasized a need to raise scores, restore calm to chaotic schools and close those with lagging scores and small enrollments. She paid bonuses to principals and teachers who produced big gains on scores. She let go dozens of principals and fired at least 600 teachers. Others retired or quit.

Turnover was brisk. Richard Whitmire, author of The Bee Eater, a biography of Rhee, reported that Rhee hired 1,918 teachers during her three years in office –– about 45%of those on the payroll last October. Only 2,318 current teachers had been hired before Rhee took charge.

The pressure on principals was unrelenting, says Aona Jefferson, a former D.C. principal who is now president of the Council of School Officers, representing principals and other administrators. Every year, Jefferson says, Rhee met with each principal and asked what kind of test score gains he would post in the coming school year. Jefferson says principals told her that Rhee expected them to increase scores by 10 percentile points or more every year. "What do you do when your chancellor asks, 'How many points can you guarantee this year?' " Jefferson says. "How is a principal supposed to do that?"

But the paeans to Rhee, a star of the documentary "Waiting for Superman," continue unabated. She now heads a new nonprofit, StudentsFirst, and tours the country advising such anti-worker governors as Ohio's Kasich and Florida's Scott.

Eventually, this empty suit will lose steam. But the ideas she pushes, including evaluation of teachers by student test scores and privatization of public education, will find a new spokesperson and the schoolchildren will continue to be the pawns in their political power play.

Share|

Gobs Of Money Await


You know it's not an election year when you read

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”

Those "white suburban moms" are coveted in election years, but not so much when an advocate of privatizing public education chooses them as a target.  In some contexts, invoking race- as in white suburban moms- is a fireable offense, though apparently not when the cause is one near and dear to the the heart of the private sector and, one suspects, the "socialist" Barack Obama.

Ethnic stereotyping aside, Duncan's characterization fails to meet the test of accuracy.  Bob Somerby picks up on Diane Ravitch arguing

So, contrary to the loud complaints from the reform chorus, American students are doing quite well in comparison to those of other advanced nations. Are the scores of American students falling? No. Between 1995 and 2011, the mathematics scores of our students in fourth and eighth grades increased significantly. In science, the scores did not fall; they were about the same. In reading, the scores increased from 2001 to 2011.

But that won't do.  The rationale, raison d'etre, and pretext of the education reform (i.e., for profit) movement is that public schools and their teachers are failing children.  The numbers don't bear it out; neither does the reality that socio-economic status has an enormous impact upon educational achievement. Significant also are related factors, including a large immigrant population handicapped by a language barrier and the legacy of a political system determined for generations to keep one race of people ill-educated.

It is comforting for neo-liberals to imagine, and push on the community, the idea that vouchers here, a charter school there, an end to teacher tenure over here will turn around an educational system the "reformers" are determined to convince the public is failing.  Rather, in his state, Jersey Jazzman observes (graph, below), approximately 2/3 of the discrepancy in proficiency rates across schools can be attributed to the variation in free/reduced school lunch, one indicator of relative affluence.

But the "free market"- which increasingly demands government preference and favoritism- cannot be denied. Ravitch explains the Ocean Charter school was given by the Los Angeles Unified School District

an iPad for every student, whether they want it or not.  After all, they will need the iPads for Common Core testing. Curiously, the devices cost $768 each, more than the retail price.

The iPad giveaway is a pilot run on the district's $1 billion planned purchase.

The part that puzzles me most is the cost. If the cost for Los Angeles alone is $1 billion, what will be the cost for the nation?  $50 billion? $100 billion? No wonder the big tech corporations are thrilled with the Common Core. And since the devices and the content will be obsolete in three years, how many more billions will leave America's classrooms to pay for new technology?


Share |

Going Private


Guess who was confirmed by the Senate this week as the new head of the U.S. Marshalls Service?

That would be Stacia Hylton. Last month Talking Points Memo reported

Human rights groups and criminal justice organizations are criticizing President Barack Obama's nomination of Stacia A. Hylton for director of the U.S. Marshals Service because of her ties to the for-profit prison industry.

Hylton was a 29-year career employee of the Justice Department until she left her post earlier this year and accepted $112,500 in consulting fees from the GEO Group, a for-profit prison industry group. Hylton awarded contracts worth up to $88 million to the GEO Group during her nearly six years as DOJ's Federal Detention Trustee, according to a press release. The GEO Group is the second largest operator of for-profit prisons in the United States.

"Sounds like the fox watching the henhouse to me," Ken Kopczynski, the director of the nonprofit watchdog group Private Corrections Working Group, told TPMmuckraker.

"This is a prime example of the revolving door between the public and for-profit private sectors," said Alex Friedmann, associate editor of Prison Legal News.

Among some issues causing concern for human rights groups is the fact that, as a Federal Detention Trustee, Hylton objected to a recommendation from the Justice Department Office of Inspector General that called for limiting the amount of profit that a state or local jail -- some of which are owned and/or operated by for-profit companies -- can earn for housing federal prisoners.

GEO Chairman and Chief Executive Officer George Zoley admitted recently that "the primary driver for growth continues to be the incarceration of criminal aliens" in the area of federal contracts, the Washington Times reported.

The Washington Times reported last month on Hylton's contract with the GEO Group and the possible conflicts of interest. She received $112,500 in income from her own private company through "consulting services for detention matters, federal relations and acquisitions and mergers" from March through July of 2010, the newspaper said.

"The U.S. Marshals preside over one of the nation's largest privatized federal detention systems," said Bob Libal of Grassroots Leadership. "Policies that have driven the private prison expansion such as Operation Streamline are carried out by the U.S. Marshals. Ms. Hylton's consulting work with the GEO Group, a troubled company that benefits handsomely from such policies, is a cause for major concern."
Of course that's a conflict of interest. But the larger issue is privatization of federal prisons, especially for detaining illegal immigrants. And there are a lot of illegal immigrants detained, facing new charges or otherwise, in federal prisons. The Obama administration has detained and deported more "criminal aliens"- individuals here illegally who have committed other serious offenses- than has the Bush Administration. One hopes: that is because enforcement of borders is a priority rather than because high ranking officials like Hylton can go from government to industry to government, padding the bottom line of the private prison industry. The U.S.A., after all, is not Arizona.

But one cannot be sure. Consider federal education policy under the current president, who wears the uniform of a Democrat. President Obama and education secretary Arne Duncan, who made his name in Chicago by closing public schools and opening charter schools, are enamored of No Child Left Behind, despite evidence that it is a failure. Diane Ravitch, Assistant Secretary of Education under Bush 41 and member of National Assessment Governing Board under President Clinton, explains

And the institutionalized fraud is that No Child Left Behind has mandated that every child is going to be proficient by the year 2014. Except they’re not, because no state and no nation has ever had 100 percent of the children proficient. Kids have all kinds of problems. And whether it’s poverty or a million things, there’s no such thing as 100 percent proficiency.

But every year we get closer to 2014, the bar goes up, and the states are told, “If you don’t reach that bar, you’re going to be punished. Schools will be closed. They’ll be turned into charter schools.” That’s part of the federal mandate, is that schools will be privatized if they can’t meet that impossible goal.

Replacing public prisons with private prisons. Replacing public schools with private schools (and in the case of charter schools, paid for by the public). Replacing jobs with decent pay and benefits with jobs with neither. Remarkably, organized labor, presumably part of that "professional left" which so bothers the White House, generally has stayed fairly loyal to this president, even while its jobs go to union-free companies, South Korea, and elsewhere as the middle class continues its descent, this time in a Democratic Administration.

Share|

A Simplistic View Of Education

To be fair: he did promise us "change we could believe in." True, some of us had no idea what that meant, but Barack Obama did promise us "change." In late February, the Providence (R.I.- but is there any other Providence?) Journal reported

the Central Falls school Board of Trustees, in a brief but intense meeting, voted 5-2 to fire every teacher at the school. In all, 93 names were read aloud in the high school auditorium — 74 classroom teachers, plus reading specialists, guidance counselors, physical education teachers, the school psychologist, the principal and three assistant principals.

This began when Secretary of Education Arne Duncan decided to require

states, for the first time, to identify their lowest 5 percent of schools — those that have chronically poor performance and low graduation rates — and fix them using one of four methods: school closure; takeover by a charter or school-management organization; transformation which requires a longer school day, among other changes; and “turnaround” which requires the entire teaching staff be fired and no more than 50 percent rehired in the fall.
Negotiations between the teachers' union and the Superintendent of Education eventually broke down, apparently because of a demand that teachers assume more duties- with some additional pay, but not commensurate with the increased responsibilities.

In separate statements, both Duncan and President Obama supported the radical response of the school board in what the newspaper called "Rhode Island's tiniest, poorest city."

And that is the problem which seems to have escaped the attention of Messrs. Duncan and Obama. Richard Rothstein, a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute and visiting professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, has written Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap. In it, he explains

The achievement gap between poor and middle-class black and white children is widely recognized as our most important educational challenge. But we prevent ourselves from solving it because of a commonplace belief that poverty and race can't "cause" low achievement and that therefore schools must be failing to teach disadvantaged children adequately. After all, we see many highly successful students from lower-class backgrounds. Their success seems to prove that social class cannot be what impedes most disadvantaged students.

Yet the success of some lower-class students proves nothing about the power of schools to close the achievement gap. In every social group, there are low achievers and high achievers alike. On average, the achievement of low-income students is below the average achievement of middle-class students, but there are always some middle-class students who achieve below typical low-income levels. Similarly, some low-income students achieve above typical middle-class levels. Demography is not destiny, but students' family characteristics are a powerful influence on their relative average achievement.

Widely repeated accounts of schools that somehow elicit consistently high achievement from lower-class children almost always turn out, upon examination, to be flawed. In some cases, these "schools that beat the odds" are highly selective, enrolling only the most able or most motivated lower-class children. In other cases, they are not truly lower-class schools—for example, a school enrolling children who qualify for subsidized lunches because their parents are graduate students living on low stipends. In other cases, such schools define high achievement at such a low level that all students can reach it, despite big gaps that remain at more meaningful levels.
According to Sara Mosle, who has reviewed Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of The Great American School System for Slate, President Obama's Race to the Top fund rests on the assumption that data, gleaned from testing, can pinpoint schools that are failing and prescribe a remedy. He

wants to tie individual students' scores to individual teachers, so achievement can be monitored not only school by school but also classroom by classroom, and then teachers can be fired or given raises accordingly.

The fallacy behind standardized testing of students- including, but not limited to the practice of "teaching to the test"- has been well described and documented. Beyond that, however, Ravitch (a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution before she saw the light), notes

No school or school district or state anywhere in the nation had ever proved the theory correct. Nowhere was there a real-life demonstration in which a district had identified a top quintile of teachers, assigned low-performing students to their classes, and improved the test-scores of low-performing students so dramatically in three, four or five years that the black-white test score gap closed.
The idea that schools can be improved by simply identifying bad teachers and replacing them has been one of the underling rationales for the charter school movement. However, Mosle reports that Ravitch found a

study by two Stanford economists, financed by the Walton Family and Eli and Edythe Broad foundations (staunch charter supporters), involved an enormous sample, 70 percent of all charter students. It found that an astonishing 83 percent of charter schools were either no better or actually worse than traditional public schools serving similar populations. Indeed, the authors concluded that bad charter schools outnumber good ones by a ratio of roughly 2 to 1.

Ravitch concluded that no one has found the "silver bullet" which would significantly improve student performance across the nation. She argues, rightly, for "humility" in determining causes and solutions and concludes

The only guaranteed strategy [for improving schools] is to change the student population, replacing low-performing students with higher-performing students.

Notwithstanding the wealth of factors imperiling the American school system, Ravitch here appears to have fingered one routinely overlooked: the students. It's understandable that few on the left or the right (and President Obama routinely is on both simultaneously) even consider the individual when assessing the woes of public education. The right, as expected, wants to run down teachers (government employees) and their union and much of the left is wary that acknowledging that students in disadvantaged districts (such as Central Falls, R.I.) are underperforming compared to students elsewhere invites (unjustified) racial explanations.

While blaming teachers and basing evaluation of their performance on test scores is easy and comforting, President Obama could invoke one of his famous "teaching moments" and explain the cold, hard facts to the country. Unfortunately, he lacks either the understanding or the fortitude to do so.

Address To The Nation

Pat Buchanan, being Pat Buchanan, didn't mean it favorably; but this afternoon on MSNBC, Buchanan commented this afternoon "Barack Obama emerged last night as a Great Society liberal." Sorry (not) to disabuse the former Nixon speechwriter and Presidential aspirant, syndicated columnist, and so much else, but the Great Society was, on the whole, a success, especially until derailed by the Vietnam War.

And I guess the public agrees. A CNN/Opinion Research Survey taken promptly after completion of Pesident Obama's non-State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress found

Eighty-five percent of those polled said the president's speech made them feel more optimistic about the direction the country is headed in the next few years, with 11 percent indicating the speech made the feel more pessimistic.

Eighty-two percent of speech watchers say they support the economic plan Obama outlined in his prime-time address, with 17 percent opposing the proposals.

Sure, the polling director cautioned the numbers "are no better or worse that Bill Clinton or George W. Bush got after their first speeches to Congress," but, for whatever significance one wants to vest in the results, Americans certainly like what they heard.

As well they should have. Obama laid out the issues in a manner likely to be understood those of us not economists, as when he explained

The concern is that if we do not re-start lending in this country, our recovery will be choked off before it even begins.

You see, the flow of credit is the lifeblood of our economy. The ability to get a loan is how you finance the purchase of everything from a home to a car to a college education; how stores stock their shelves, farms buy equipment, and businesses make payroll.

But credit has stopped flowing the way it should. Too many bad loans from the housing crisis have made their way onto the books of too many banks. With so much debt and so little confidence, these banks are now fearful of lending out any more money to households, to businesses, or to each other. When there is no lending, families can't afford to buy homes or cars. So businesses are forced to make layoffs. Our economy suffers even more, and credit dries up even further.

Still, this plan will require significant resources from the federal government - and yes, probably more than we've already set aside. But while the cost of action will be great, I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade. That would be worse for our deficit, worse for business, worse for you, and worse for the next generation. And I refuse to let that happen.
Striking a populist note, the instinctively and stylistically non-populist Obama advocated "finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas" and noted

I intend to hold these banks fully accountable for the assistance they receive, and this time, they will have to clearly demonstrate how taxpayer dollars result in more lending for the American taxpayer. This time, CEOs won't be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet. Those days are over.

And with GOP mouthpieces like Limbaugh and Hannity incessantly claiming that Obama intends to raise taxes, the President made clear:

In order to save our children from a future of debt, we will also end the tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. But let me perfectly clear, because I know you'll hear the same old claims that rolling back these tax breaks means a massive tax increase on the American people: if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime. In fact, the recovery plan provides a tax cut - that's right, a tax cut - for 95% of working families. And these checks are on the way.

Not all the speech was sound, of course. Obama again promoted charter schools as a prescription for our education woes suggesting, with appointment of Chicago's own Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education, that he is not triangulating or trying to appease the corporate elements of his party, but instead severely misguided.

As economist Paul Krugman has pointed out, Obama was insufficiently bold with his stimulus package- and may prove to be so in his general management of the economy. Still, the President appears to have convinced the nation that, above all, he is committed to finding what will work, and has impressed the nation with his seriousness. The latter may be setting the bar rather low but, judged against his opposition in November and the response of the Republican spokesman following the address, is quite an achievement.

Pennsylvania, And Charter Schools

Perhaps charter schools are not a panacea.

The toast of many Republicans and New Democrats, charter schools are no longer free from criticism. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports today of a federal criminal probe into at least four charter schools in Philadelphia. Allegations of nepotism, conflicts of interest and financial mismanagement are not uncommon.

And no wonder, given that

The law allows little scrutiny of charters. Districts approve charters but have limited power to shut them down. The state exercises scant oversight on charter spending, which totals more than $633 million this year.

The law dictates a crazy-quilt pattern of funding for charters. Each district pays a different amount even when the students attend the same charter. For example, Philadelphia pays $8,088 per student; Jenkintown, $15,174. Cybers get the same payments as other charters even though students receive online instruction at home.

Charters are paid extra for special-education students, regardless of their disability. There is no requirement they spend all the money on special-education services. Chester Community Charter spends only 20.7 percent of its special-education funds on special education.

The law bars school board members from serving on charter boards, but it does not prohibit politicians or a founder's friends and relatives.

It's clear, nevertheless, why so many conservatives like the idea of charter schools. In a 12/25/08 column in the Wall Street Journal, editorial writer Collin hailed President-elect Obama's selection of Chicago School CEO Arne Duncan (known for his Renaissance 2010 program, which calls for closing approximately 60 public schools and opening 100 new ones, many of them charters, by 2010. He laments:

unions aren't about to slink off into the sunset. If they're losing some of their clout at the national level, they maintain their grip locally. In many places, teachers angle to usurp the language of the reformers while pushing their own agenda.

It's understandable that Levy says little about academic achievement. However, in a 12/23/08 opinion piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Kevin Kumashiro noted Duncan's market-based school reform approach and wrote

There is evidence that encouraging choice and competition will not raise district-wide achievement, and charter schools in particular are not outperforming regular schools. There is evidence that choice programs actually exacerbate racial segregation. And there is evidence that high-stakes testing increases the drop-out rate.

The effort to give up on America's public schools will continue, perhaps in the next Administration, and probably beyond. Responsible policymakers not tied to an anti-union or anti-government ideology, though, will consider the actual causes of our inadequate educational system instead of rushing headlong into unproven, costly alternatives which undermine public schools and do little if anything to help students.

Obama And Duncan

Highlights from Barack Obama's press conference (pdf) of December 16, 2008 at Dodge Renaissance Academy in Chicago, Illinois:


1) Barack Obama nominates as the next Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Public Schools.

2) The President-elect acknowledges "(We) all agree that the Chicago public schools aren't as good as they need to be."

3) The President-elect declares "I can't think of anything more important for America's next Secretary of Education to do than what Arne has been doing all along."

Apparently: Arne Duncan should be Secretary of Education.... Chicago Public Schools are in trouble.... Arne Duncan should do for the country what he has done for Chicago.

The observation of the inadequacy of the schools for which Mr. Duncan has been responsible came in response to the reporter courageous enough to ask (in part) the President-elect:

You yourself have sent your daughters to private schools. What kind of commitment can you make for resources now as president for the public school system? Do you agree with Arne Duncan's proposal of cash incentives, giving kids a- who receive A's and B's perhaps $100?"

The President-elect did not respond to the obvious irony: as a Chicago resident, he did not have enough regard for Mr. Duncan to send his youngsters to the schools he was administering, but now believes he should be in charge of the school system(s) of the entire nation.

Bad Idea

When President-elect Obama announced the appointment of Arne Duncan, Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Schools, as his nominee for Secretary of Education, he stated (pdf)

I'll never forget my first visit to this school several years ago, when one of the teachers here told me about what she called the "These Kids Syndrome" - our willingness to find a million excuses for why "these kids" can't learn - how "these kids" come from tough neighborhoods, or "these kids" have fallen too far behind.

"When I hear that term, it drives me nuts," she told me. "They're not 'these kids,' they're our kids."

I can't think of a better way to sum up Arne's approach to education

Duncan was appointed head of the Chicago public school system in June, 2001 and has become most associated with Renaissance 2010, described by wikipedia (objective evaluation of the initiative being hard to come by) as an effort

to create 100 high-performing public schools in designated communities of need by 2010. These schools will be held accountable for performance through 5-year contracts while being given autonomy to create innovative learning environments using one of the following governance structures: charter, contract, or performance.

Wikipedia does not mention, however, that Renaissance 2010 is based on a plan, named Left Behind (not the evangelical series), which came on the heels of transfer of control of schools from an elected school board to the mayor's office. It called for opening 100 schools and has included closing at least 60 others. Drawn up by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club, the plan left final selection and approval of the new schools with the Chief Economic Officer (now Duncan) of the the Chicago Public Schools but

the Commercial Club, in exchange for agreeing to help fund the project by raising $50 million, was, was granted increased power over the education system through New Schools for Chicago, an organization composed of leading corporate respresentatives, 'civic leaders' as well as the Chicago Board of Education President and CPS CEO. This unelected body participates in the selection and evalutation of Raenaissance 2010 schools, while distributing Commercial Club funds for which the schools must complete. School enrollment policy is also murky and leaves room for formal and informal selection processes.

Far from presenting the "new vision for the 21st century education system" he touted during his press conference, the President elect, urging us to "hold our schools, teachers, and government accountable for results," is practicing the same old politics of education. While Obama wishes to hold everyone but students accountable, Renaissance 2010 represents a movement which

believes educators are the problem with public education. The anti-practitioner nature of this movement is visible in urban districts, from Chicago to New York to San Diego, where businessmen and lawyers, with no background in education, are selected to run the school systems. You can see anti-practitioner slant in organizations like the Broad Foundation, where executives and ex-military men are being recruited and trained as school superintendents. And you can see it in Edison's for-profit schools, which use a business model based on low-cost labor, in the form of de-professionalized teachers who are treated as interchangeable parts in an assembly-line approach to education. What is common to these approaches is prioritizing the management of schools and teachers over a serious analysis of the state of teaching and learning.

The President-elect, referred, by way of unverifiable anecdote, to a "These Kids Syndrome," cited by an unidentified teacher (who often has heard the complaint), thereby insinuating that teachers spontaneous develop, or have intuitively, an attitude of neglect toward children in deteriorating neighborhoods. It is a reprehensible suggestion, artfully and casually delivered, that removes accountability from youngsters and redirects it toward public school employees. Not unlike the guiding philosophy of Renaissance 2000, in which

The business approach to education is a manifestation of the larger critique of the public sector that has become conventional wisdom in recent years. This critique focuses on the "waste, fraud, and abuse" in government and asks why government can't be run like a business. It assumes that efficiency is an alien concept in the public sector and that the introduction of elements such as competition will spur new ideas and more effective practices. Most important, it assumes that everything is a management problem, and, in the case of education, this means that those unaccountable teachers need to be forced to do their jobs. There is little or no recognition of the disconnect between what teachers are being asked to do and what students really need.

It is no coincidence that Barack Obama chose to announce his selection of Arne Duncan at a school which was closed and revamped during Duncan's adminstration. Now a charter school, Dodge Renaissance Academy may be emblematic of the misguided notion that while public money is always welcome, control of schools by the community or the educational profession is not.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy