Press
November 23, 2009
We're All Right-Wing Bastards Now
(From City Journal, November 20, 2009)
By LARRY SAND
On the last day of the National Education Association's convention this summer, its outgoing general counsel, Bob Chanin, gave a speech for the ages. After sharing fond recollections of his 41 years as the NEA's top lawyer, he switched gears and started lobbing grenades at "conservative and right-wing bastards," including Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. The NEA and its affiliates, by contrast, were "the nation's leading advocates for public education and the type of liberal social and economic agenda that these groups find objectionable." Chanin's glowing portrait of the NEA was wildly wrong, of course, but so was his characterization of the union's opponents. People of all political stripes--not just right-wing "bastards"--are starting to realize that the single biggest impediment to education reform is the NEA itself.
Take the nation's 4,000 charter schools--public schools that operate with less red tape, fewer suffocating union rules, and a higher percentage of minorities and poor students than regular public schools do. In California, 12 of the top 15 public schools are charters, including three in Oakland that cater to exceptionally poor children. Los Angeles charters' median score on California's Academic Performance Index (API) was 728 in 2008, compared with 663 for regular public schools.
Who are the "right-wing bastards" who support charter schools? Well, there's Los Angeles's liberal-leaning school board, which looked at its large number of failing schools and voted 6-1 to turn 200 of the lowest performers into charters. There's Steve Barr, a card-carrying Democrat who served in the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton and Michael Dukakis and who now operates 17 successful Green Dot charter schools in L.A. And don't forget Democrats for Education Reform, a political action committee that supports charters and that says, in its statement of principles, that American public schools, "once viewed romantically as avenues of opportunity for all, have become captive to powerful, entrenched interests that too often put the demands of adults before the educational needs of children."
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November 12, 2009
After Criticism, The Administration Is Praised For Final Rules On Education Grants
(From The New York Times, November 11, 2009)
By SAM DILLON
Three months after provoking an outpouring of criticism with preliminary plans for the nation's largest competitive education grant program, the Obama administration has added flexibility in the final rules, released Wednesday, drawing praise from a state governor who was initially critical and from leaders of the national teachers' unions.
But the Race to the Top program, which will reward some states undertaking bold school improvement initiatives with awards totaling $4 billion, retains politically volatile elements.
Those include President Obama's emphasis on charter schools, using standardized test scores in teacher evaluation and merit pay systems, and encouraging local districts to dismiss entire staffs of thousands of failing schools.
After draft rules were published in July, some 1,200 public comments poured into the Department of Education from educators, union leaders and nine governors, many criticizing the program for seeming to replay approaches embodied in the Bush-era federal No Child Left Behind Law.
November 5, 2009
Tisch Calls On Charters To Take On City's Worst High Schools
(From Gotham Schools, November 5, 2009)
By MAURA WALZ
Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch yesterday called on city charter school operators to move away from elementary education and take on the problems of fixing large failing high schools.
Speaking at Hunter College, Tisch said that charter schools have benefited from being the political "darlings" of the city and state, blessed with the most qualified teachers and some of the highest-achieving students. Instead, Tisch said, charter schools need to branch out to serve more struggling high school students, English language learners and special education students.
"It's really time for charter schools to say to me, 'I don't want to just grow my own, I don't want to operate in this zone where I am the darling,'" Tisch said. "I want them to dig in and say, 'what can we do to help?'"
Currently, thirteen of the city's roughly 100 charter schools serve high school students, though more are slated to grow to include ninth through twelfth grade classes.
Tisch was speaking on a panel organized by the group Democratic Leadership for the 21st Century about the future of the city schools post election. The panel also included teachers union head Michael Mulgrew, founder and CEO of Success Charter Network Eva Moskowitz and Democrats for Education Reform director Joe Williams.
Moskowitz disputed the notion that charter schools are given preferential treatment, noting that charter schools receive lower per-pupil funding and do not receive public funds for school buildings. "Everything that the charter schools have has been fought for tooth and nail," she said.
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Obama Gets Tough On Teachers--What Does That Mean For NYC?
(From WNYC, November 5, 2009)
By BETH FERTIG
NEW YORK, NY November 05, 2009 --President Obama is praising Wisconsin for changing its law to allow student achievement to be used to evaluate teachers. The president visited Madison, Wisconsin yesterday, to promote his Race-to-the-Top fund which will award over $4-billion in total to states in exchange for reforms. As WNYC's Beth Fertig reports, that puts pressure on New York, just as the city and the teachers union are negotiating a new contract.
REPORTER: Schools Chancellor Joel Klein talks often about the importance of getting better quality teachers.
KLEIN: President Obama himself has pointed out time and again it's not race, it's not poverty, it's not zip code, it's the teachers you're getting that's going to determine the quality of your education and we've got to get right on that in America.
REPORTER: Klein was furious last year when the state legislature passed a law preventing student test scores from being used to determine teacher tenure. And that law has come under renewed scrutiny now that the Obama administration is tying billions of dollars in education grants to specific reforms.
Obama didn't mention New York in his visit to Wisconsin yesterday. But he alluded to states with so-called firewall laws.
OBAMA: Now here's what a firewall is. It basically says that you can't factor in the performance of students when you're evaluating teachers. That is not a good message in terms of accountability.
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Schools Sprinting To Win Obama's Race To The Top Billions
(From The Christian Science Monitor, November 4, 2009)
By AMANDA PAULSON
President Obama touted Race to the Top to the nation in a speech in Madison, Wis., Wednesday. But schools already know it well.
Mr. Obama's $4.35 billion in Race to the Top funds have already spurred significant education reform in a number of states - even though the final guidelines for the program haven't yet been announced, no states have yet applied, and the first grants won't be made until at least April.
The program offers competitive grants to states that have policies aligned with certain federal priorities. These priorities include a willingness to evaluate teachers using student achievement, an openness to charter schools, and a commitment to building long-term data systems to track student performance.
Now, numerous states are revisiting laws that would disqualify them from the grants or make their applications less attractive.
"The administration has done a good job of having a lot of states make a long-odds bet that they're going to win Race to the Top funds, so they've shaped their behavior a lot in advance of a single dollar being awarded," says Russ Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Most of what the administration is going to get [in terms of reform] it will get before the competition is actually completed."
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Election Offers Varied Impact For Education
(From Education Week, November 4, 2009)
By ERIK W. ROBELEN
The results from yesterday's state and local elections around the country offer some potentially significant implications for K-12 education, as voters sent two big-city mayors with authority over their school systems back for another term and replaced Democrats with Republicans in two governors' mansions. They also rejected ballot measures in Maine and, apparently, Washington state that some education advocates feared could harm school coffers.
Both Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City, an Independent, and Democratic Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston won re-election bids. But Mr. Bloomberg--whose education record was a central theme in the campaign, and who spent some $90 million of his personal fortune on the race--won with a smaller-than-expected margin, and some observers say he will likely have a weaker political mandate for his third term in office.
"We're all watching him very closely to see how a new, humbled Mike Bloomberg treats education as an issue," said Joe Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, a New York City-based political action committee, which took no position on the race.
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Will Bloomberg's Third Term Bring Big Change To City Schools?
(From Gotham Schools, November 4, 2009)
By ANNA PHILLIPS
Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered a victory speech last night promising, among other things, that the city's schools would see even more changes in his third term.
"If you think you've seen progress over the last eight years, I've got news for you, you ain't seen nothing yet," the mayor whooped, his face flush with triumph.
Despite these declarations, many observers wonder if the mayor's greatest overhaul of the city's schools isn't already behind him. The last eight years have seen Bloomberg win mayoral control of schools, wrestle work rule concessions out of the teachers union in 2005, and give principals power over how they apportion their budgets. The mayor has staked his claim to a third term on the idea that he needs more time to transform the schools, but whether he'll add a few touch-ups or knock down walls is the subject of intense speculation.
Some, like executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, Joe Williams, believe the mayor will make good on his promise of delivering more of the same, and therein lies the problem.
"We haven't really seen new fresh ideas coming out of this administration in a few years," said Williams, who has pushed for significant changes to union's contract and the expansion of charter schools.
"I think that's what's kind of frustrating to people who view this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring change. The mayor himself has said that this is about evolution rather than revolution. I'm not sure it can evolve past where it is right now."
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