November 19, 2012

Rupert Murdoch sees $500 billion profit waiting in US public education. Getting his share.

There's a battle being waged in this country against our public school systems. It's not irate parents, it's a corporate battle.

These education "reformers" have the money to buy up politicians in both parties to get laws passed for their benefits. Public schools have little resources to fight back.

Hey, lobbyist, leave them kids alone!

There is no doubt that the performance of U.S. students against their international counterparts continues to disappoint. But since the reasons for this are so difficult to pin down, a parade of self-proclaimed experts and “reformers” has emerged in recent years, touting the urgency of their proposed solutions – never mind if they require redirecting streams of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of their friends.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch is among the more-recognizable faces of this movement, having purchased education technology firm Wireless Generation for $360 million in November 2010.

“When it comes to K-12 education,” Murdoch said at the time, “we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching.”

Despite the scandals associated with his name and his News Corp company, Murdoch is getting a foothold in the "reforms" going on now. He and his Wireless Generation company are getting a huge profit from a contract with the Chicago school system.

Just like I always say, accountability is only for public school teachers....never for the very rich.

Looks like Rupert Murdoch will profit from "reform" of Chicago school system.

In case Chicago missed it, Rupert Murdoch is now profiting from the testing craziness hitting Chicago's public schools. He owns an outfit called "Wireless Generation" that is now a contractor with CPS. Anyone who doesn't already know that the administration of Chicago Public Schools, the nation's third largest school system, is in the hands of amateurs (or worse, outsiders who want to destroy public education and turn it over to the private sector at all costs), should be contacting any of the 241 principals of the so-called "Track E" schools which begin receiving their students on August 13, 2012.

Things have gotten so crazy in the 2012 world of edits, memos, Power Points, orders, reforms, re-reforms, and re-re-re-reforms from the administration of former Rochester school supt. Jean-Claude Brizard and former "Relationship Banker" Rahm Emanuel that it would take a team of a dozen investigative reporters on the ground school-by-school (with a backup team of another dozen researchers) to separate out the greed, mendacity, incompetence, and silliness that is being foisted on Chicago behind the smokescreen of the latest iteration of "School Reform." Meanwhile, the city's communities, teachers, principals, and children will be facing centrally planned chaos as the first full year of Rahm's version of "School Reform" kicks in non Monday August 13, 2012. The 241 Chicago "Track E" schools would make this sub-system one of the 20 largest school districts in the USA were it a separate system. But it would be one of only three (the other two are Detroit and New Orleans) currently ruled by a group of outside mercenaries dedicated to destroying public education.

Murdoch was going to get 27 million from the Race to the Top money in New York City, but State Controller Thomas DiNapoli rejected the contract.

"New York City ditched a $27 million education contract with News Corp subsidiary Wireless Generation, citing the ongoing investigations into the phone hacking allegations related to News Corp's now-defunct News Of The World tabloid.

State Controller Thomas DiNapoli rejected the Education Department's contract with the company, the New York Daily News reports, which would have paid $27 million to create software to track test scores. The funding would have come out of the state's $700 million "Race to the Top" education funds, but DiNapoli's office said that there were concerns about News Corp's "incomplete record" and about the ongoing scandal

A NY education spokesman said that "“They’ll get a small piece of a smaller pie than they would have received under last year’s proposed contract".

I firmly believe that Rupert Murdoch should not be getting even a small sliver of the pie. He should get zero public money.

November 12, 2012

TN stripped local district of 3.4 million for refusing charter school that asked $1,200 of parents.

There is debate now by the school district on whether to sue over this situation. The Tennessee Education Commissioner is Kevin Huffman. He is/was Vice President of Teach for America, TFA, and is the former husband of Michelle Rhee.

There should be outrage from the country that a charter school will get taxpayer money and still be allowed to ask 12 to 15 hundred from parents plus other fees.

Great Hearts admits the fees, but claims they are optional.

A controversial charter school expected to be approved tonight by the Metro Nashville school board (Note: it was voted down 5-4) asks families in its Arizona schools to ante up a $1,200 gift, a separate $200 tax credit contribution, and a few hundred dollars in book and classroom fees.

However, a Great Hearts Academies official says the schools are free and that even the book fees will be waived if necessary.

“It is 100 percent clear to everyone in our schools that those are optional contributions,” said Peter Bezanson, president of Great Hearts Tennessee, the nonprofit management company set up for the five schools Great Hearts hopes to open in Nashville.

Here is more background on this from September.

The Tennessee Department of Education is withholding $3.4 million of non-classroom, administrative funding from Metro Nashville Public Schools due to the school board’s failure to comply with the state’s charter school law, the Jackson Sun reports.

Last week, the Metro Nashville school board disobeyed an order by the state Board of Education to approve an application from the Phoenix-based Great Hearts Academies, which it had already twice rejected.

The Associated Press reports that members of the school board raised concerns that the proposed charter school planned to draw from affluent white families, as opposed to cultivating a more diverse student body. They voted 5-4 to deny Great Hearts’ application, ignoring a unanimous order from the state school board to approve it.

Diane Ravitch covered this well in her blog last week.

[link:http://dianeravitch.net/2012/11/08/to-sue-or-not-to-sue-that-is-the-question/|
To Sue or Not to Sue: That is the Question]

In Nashville, two new members of the school board debate whether the Metro Nashville school board should sue the state for withholding $3.4 million to punish the board.

TFA Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman, who is devoted to charter schools and privatization, withheld the $3.4 million from Nashville to punish the board because it rejected an application from the Great Hearts charter corporation of Arizona. The board did not like the fact that Great Hearts had a defective plan for diversity, would locate in an affluent neighborhood, and has a reputation for requiring an upfront “contribution” of $1200-1500 from families.

Great Hearts looks like, smells like, sounds like a publicly funded school for affluent families. The board didn’t like that. It rejected Great Hearts four times.

Huffman, who once was a teacher for two years but has no other relevant experience to be a state commissioner, was furious. He held back $3.4 million from the district.

This goes way beyond the frequent arguments we hear. It goes beyond the "charter schools are public schools" argument. It goes beyond the premise that charter schools are necessary because "public schools are failing".

It reveals starkly that too many times it is all about profit and more profit. This school was to be in an affluent area. I think most got the right idea....that a lot of the education "reform" is about re-segregation.

And the "reformers" are managing to do all this on the public's dime.

Where's the outrage?

November 11, 2012

As media spins Rhee, her StudentsFirst dashes through states with anti-union "reforms"

New player jumps into state elections to push education overhaul

The group has infused cash and organizing into races in states such as California, Iowa and Michigan, where teachers unions have historically dominated politics and enshrined such policies as tenure and pay based on seniority in state law. StudentsFirst hopes to undercut unions’ power and remove many of the labor protections that unions support.

The 2012 election is the group’s first real test. In Missouri, another state on the brink of wide-scale changes in education, StudentsFirst has poured more than $100,000 into campaigns since the primaries and recruited more than 40,000 members to push for the election of 21 candidates it has endorsed. Nationwide, the group has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in primary and general elections.

StudentsFirst came to Missouri in January after being approached by both Democratic and Republican members of the state Legislature. It worked to get a charter school bill passed, but fell short on a bill that would reform Missouri’s teacher tenure law. The legislation would have extended the time before a teacher can receive tenure from five years to 10. It passed narrowly in the House, but failed in the Senate. Union officials say five years is more than enough time to weed out low-performing teachers.

She has also been busy with anti-union stuff in FL and TN.

November 10, 2012

Bunch of spin. Study that praises Michelle Rhee in DC schools done by group formed by her. WP

The Washington Post editorial links to the site that did the study, but fails to mention that Michelle Rhee was its founder and leader for ten years. She founded The New Teacher Project in 1997.

The New Teacher Project (TNTP) is an organization with a mission of ensuring that poor and minority students get equal access to effective teachers. It attempts to help urban school districts and states recruit and train new teachers, staff challenged schools, design evaluation systems, and retain teachers who have demonstrated the ability to raise student achievement. TNTP is a non-profit organization and was founded by Michelle Rhee in 1997.

Makes it hard for me to accept what they say as convincing.

Here is the editorial from the Washington Post.

REMEMBER THE predictions that former D.C. Public Schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee’s overhaul of teacher evaluation and compensation would lead to damaging upheaval? That there would be an exodus of good teachers? Those claims — like much of the criticism of D.C. school reform — have been proven baseless: Three years of dramatic change in personnel policy has made the District a model for smart teacher retention.

A study released this week by the nonprofit New Teacher Project lauds the District for its record of retaining good teachers while shedding low performers. Most school districts, as the group has established in previous reports, retain their best and worst teachers at similar rates. It’s the result of a cookie-cutter approach to personnel that enshrines mediocrity, tolerates ineffectiveness and has terrible consequences for students.

If a paper runs an editorial praising a study vindicating Rhee, then they should reveal that the group was founded and run by her.

My own opinion, for what it's worth. I think that aside from anything else she is doing, all the anti-teacher, anti-union activities in many states...including my own...she should NEVER be forgiven for this horrible ad which ran during the Olympics and ridiculed our country's public education.

It was created by her present group Students First, and they still proudly defend it.]

View it at You Tube:

November 9, 2012

About long FL lines to vote...Rick Scott keeps saying "we did the right thing". Proud of suppression

But the governor is sticking to his decision, repeatedly telling reporters that he “did the right thing” by cutting early voting. When confronted by a local station WKMG, Scott insisted that “the right thing happened” before simply walking away from the question:

REPORTER: Should you have extended early voting hours?
SCOTT: I’m very confident that the right thing happened. 4.4. million people voted.

Scott repeated the same statement almost verbatim to another station, WFTV:

SCOTT: The right thing happened. 4.4 million people came out and voted either absentee or early. On Election Day we had 20 times as many polling locations as we did early. So we did the right thing.

From Think Progress

November 7, 2012

Can we be honest now about the war on public education?

I think it is time. Arne Duncan played basketball with President Obama on election day. That sounds to me like he's around to stay in spite of the harm done to public schools already.

I am quoting from an open letter to President Obama from Bill Ayers. He says it better than I can.

An Open Letter to President Obama from Bill Ayers

First he congratulates the president on his win. Then he says:

The landscape of “educational reform” is currently littered with rubble and ruin and wreckage on all sides. Sadly, your administration has contributed significantly to the mounting catastrophe. You’re not alone: The toxic materials have been assembled as a bipartisan endeavor over many years, and the efforts of the last several administrations are now organized into a coherent push mobilized and led by a merry band of billionaires including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Sam Walton, and Eli Broad.

..."You and Secretary Arne Duncan—endorsed in your efforts by Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, and a host of reactionary politicians and pundits—now bear a major responsibility for that agenda.

The three most trumpeted and simultaneously most destructive aspects of the united “school reform” agenda are these: turning over public assets and spaces to private management; dismantling and opposing any independent, collective voice of teachers; and reducing education to a single narrow metric that claims to recognize an educated person through a test score. While there’s absolutely no substantive proof that this approach improves schooling for children, it chugs along unfazed—fact-free, faith-based reform at its core, resting firmly on rank ideology rather than any evidence whatsoever.

Recent events in Florida show just how extreme we have already become in the giving away public assets.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/03/1154823/-FL-failed-charter-school-did-without-computers-library-or-cafeteria-Principal-got-824-000

The principal in question not only received a $519,000 severance check, but she took home her $305,000 annual salary for a grand total of $824,000 during the 2010-2011 school year. The Orlando Sentinel also reported last week the school only spent $366,000 on teacher salaries and instruction during that school year. Nothing can justify that imbalance, especially for the leader of a charter that failed.

Public school district superintendents don't even make that kind of unconcionalble salary. School boards would face public rage for even proposing such pay.

.."Last week the Miami Herald reported that Charter Schools USA handed out in excess of $205,000 in contributions to political organizations and candidates for this election, three times the amount the Fort Lauderdale-based company spent two years ago.

That money must come from the profits the company earns at taxpayer expense; in effect, the public is paying that political price so charter schools can leverage even greater profits from the Legislature.

It's time to listen to those who believe that public education is vital to our country's future.

It's time for Arne Duncan to reconsider his embrace of the anti-teacher, anti-union pundits, or it's time for him to go.

Twittering about education

November 1, 2012

Florida says it will investigate unlicensed children's homes for abuse, neglect

Apparently this has been going on awhile, according to research by the Tampa Bay Times. It seems their investigation has gotten the attention of Florida's Department of Children and Families. Some of the privately run homes appear to have a religious background.

Florida investigates unlicensed children's homes for abuse, neglect

The review has identified seven "boarding schools" with no apparent credentials — no state license, no religious exemption and no other state-recognized accreditation. The Times had previously uncovered four of those facilities.

In addition, state investigators now say more than a dozen foster children have been illegally placed in unlicensed homes since 2001. Officials continue to look for more illegal placements and are trying to determine why they occurred and how much taxpayer money was spent.

There was a religious exemption given in 1984. Many have operated since then.

DCF started its review of unlicensed homes after the Times began asking about more than 30 religious facilities that have cared for children with no state license or monitoring. Many of those homes operate legally by earning accreditation from a private, nonprofit group under a religious exemption created in 1984. Others operate with no recognized oversight at all.

In a series of stories this week, the Times revealed that about a dozen unlicensed religious homes have been plagued by allegations of abuse, neglect and mistreatment. Children have been choked, threatened, shackled for days, bruised, beaten, sexually abused and medically neglected to near death.

The response from the legislative leaders here about the Tampa Bay Times research makes me wonder just how serious their investigation will be. They say it is "on their radar" and they are "going to take a look at it."

I doubt it helped that Florida began a risky policy several years ago in its system for reporting abuses. There was much room for serious abuses to be ignored. I do not know if the policy has changed since 2009.

Absolutely shocking. Calls to Florida family services abuse line often ignored deliberately

Sept. 16, 2:02 p.m.: A Broward sheriff's deputy calls the Florida child-abuse hot line to report that a 4-year-old had been molested by a babysitter as the sitter's boyfriend videotaped the assault. A hot-line counselor declines to forward the report to an investigator.

..." Nov. 16, time unknown: A father is attempting to break into his estranged wife's home. He says he will kill his children. That call, too, is not accepted for investigation.

These decisions, and thousands more, are the result of a little-known -- but potentially dangerous -- practice by the Department of Children & Families: Beginning last year, DCF dramatically increased the number of abuse calls considered unworthy of investigation. In an effort to reduce workload -- and the system-wide stress that high case loads generate -- intake workers at the Tallahassee-based hot line have been screening out tens of thousands of calls.

Among the screened-out allegations: reports of kidnapping, rape, aggravated child abuse, medical neglect, malnutrition, kids roaming the streets unsupervised and domestic violence that threatens to harm the children. Among the callers being turned away: school counselors, grandparents, circuit court judges, hospital social workers, day-care workers and juvenile-justice staffers.

Their new policy set "a new protocol to reject complaints about children who have suffered bruises or welts from beatings -- unless such beatings result in a trip to the doctor or hospital, or ``permanent disfigurement."