If Vouchers are so great why do their supporters feel compelled to lie and mislead?

Glenton Gilzean Jr.  wrote a passionate piece in support of school vouchers that appeared in the Orlando Sentinel, unfortunately he left out a lot of important details, that the general public may not be aware of. According to the Step up for Student’s website, only about a quarter of recipients came from schools with a D or an F grade, while ten percent came from schools with an A grade. This means the overwhelming majority of students who took vouchers came from schools performing well according to the states metric. Which begs the question why are we providing these students vouchers. Well there are two reasons and the first is religion, Florida wants to get in the business of providing a religious education to students, as two thirds of the schools that take vouchers identify themselves as religious.    

He then mentions a wait list for vouchers which I find odd as the amount of students receiving vouchers actually declined last year and please don't take my word for it, again, go to Step up for Student's, the voucher provider, web site and look there. The main reason there is a wait list is the amount we pay for vouchers has gone up over the years as they have gotten more expensive. Voucher providers used to say they could provide an education cheaper which reminds me of the saying be careful what you pay for.

Gilzean Jr. goes on to make the laughable argument that vouchers don't drain resources from public education. First the program is allowed to grow each year which means it will drain even more money year after year but public schools are obligated to offer many more services than private schools including basics like lunch and transportation. Then with this new voucher program, families that make as much as 77k are eligible.  Quite simply put the cost of electricity, a teacher, a bus, and so many other things don’t go down just because enrollment does.

Private schools can also take and keep whoever they want, teach whatever they want and most don't even have to report what they do with the money they receive. There are so few standards we might as well say there are none all happening at the same time that public schools are buckling from all the accountability heaped upon them. How anyone thinks this is a good use of public money is beyond me.

Finally, I have a question, if vouchers are so great why can’t the proponents of vouchers be honest with people. Why do they have to make fancible claims like it saves children from failing schools, or they don't siphon resources from public schools. Why can’t they be honest and say they want to provide a Christian education, and standards don’t really matter? They don’t because they know the truth is a losing argument for them, and once again don’t take my word for it, go to the chief voucher provider, Step up for Student’s web-site, and explore.

Vouchers, friends aren't here to save poor kids from failing schools, they are here to provide a religious education and to drain public schools of resources until there isn't anything left. They are not here to contribute to the common good.

To read Gilzean's piece click the link,  https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/guest-commentary/os-op-gilzean-scholarship-20190521-uahfdlspcrfjzemeje7gbrzytq-story.html

Northeast Florida, where public education died

Northeast Florida if you wanted to destroy education, knee cap the middle class and do harm to the state you have come up aces. Embrace what you have done; own it, because if we get much more of Wise, Thrasher and Scott that will be about all you do own, it’s definitely all your children will.

Congratulations Northeast Florida, you are the epicenter for the destruction of the state’s public schools. Your recent dogged insistence to vote against you and your children’s interests and for politicians that couldn’t care less about the both of you have signaled education’s death knell. When you voted for Steven Wise, John Thrasher and Rick Scott you may as well as put a stake through education’s heart and forks in our children, because they too like our schools are done.

Steven Wise is no friend of public education and this has been made more evident by his senate bill 736 or what he laughably calls the teacher quality bill. In his bill teachers become at will employees and can be fired regardless of performance. Speak up? You’re gone. The principal doesn’t like you? You’re gone. The principal’s neighbor has a nephew who thinks he might like to try teaching because it would be cool to have summers off? You’re gone. This not increased quality, is what senate bill 736 will allow to happen. It also gets rid of pay increases for advanced degrees. I hope this irony is not lost on you. In every profession we say the more education you get the better off you will be, every profession except education that is, and it also gets rid of seniority and due process, two of the long established tenants of education.

The bill is also another unfunded mandate. School districts will be required to come up with ways to finance the various teacher salary scales and all the increased testing that the bill calls for. Kids will be taught more to the test than ever because now a teacher’s job is on the line more than ever. These tests are not just going to magically appear. They will be developed and scored by educational testing companies who will drain much needed money away from schools coffers and reap millions in profits. Then there will also be teacher evaluation systems that has Michelle Rhee and others salivating. Oh you didn’t know Michelle Rhee has a teacher evaluation system. Why she does, it’s called IMPACT and it has widely been panned in Washington D.C. which means it is probably on the fast track to Florida; after all she is the darling of Rick Scott and Wise.

Steven Wise has cloaked the bill in simplistic easy to please statements like merit pay and reward our best teachers. He doesn’t mention that teachers, who may know better what’s best for them than he does are overwhelmingly against it. His bill is like giving doctors who didn’t ask for it a clump or dirt and saying it’s a cutting edge scalpel and they must use it. Wise also doesn’t mention that there is no study that says merit pay works. Not one! In fact all the studies say it is the equivalent of the luck of the draw. Teacher’s student’s success on standardized tests varies wildly as students enter and leave their classes.
Wise says he wants to improve education, my question is how? Is it by making teachers want to leave and replacements harder to attract because that is what his bill is really doing; hey Jacksonville great job in voting for him.

Then there is John Thrasher who makes no apologies for his distain, no make that hatred for teachers and their unions and he comes from St. Johns County which is the top school district in the state, thank goodness he didn’t come from a county lower on the list. Wake up St. Johns, his way of thinking is going to hurt the schools and kids in your county as well but I guess some of you didn’t think about that while shooting nine at the country club. Would Deborah Giannoulis really have been such a bad alternative? She ran on a platform of doing what’s best for our kids, Thrasher has a history of doing what’s not.

He wants to end collective bargaining and destroy workers rights. He wants to do this by ending payroll deductions for unions but at the same time continue to allow payroll deductions for the United Way and other organizations and by decertifying unions that have a membership of less than fifty percent plus one. Why should multi-million or billion dollar corporations, his friends and supporters be the only one with a voice in government? In the end all his bill amounts to is rewarding his friends and silencing his enemies. Even if you don’t like unions, is this the America you want to live in? Do you want to live in a country where our corporate over loads tell us what to think and feel and limit the earning power of millions of everyday citizens; if so communist Russia would have been the place for you. This is not just a teacher battle here, this is a battle for the future of the middle class and if we are going to have one or not. Way to go St. Johns, you have just destroyed the teaching profession and public education but potentially the middle class as well, talk about a trifecta.

Thrasher and Wise are so concerned about education that instead of demanding Scott rescind his draconian budget, they develop bills that will handicap and set back the profession. No thanks guys and don’t worry about me I’ll try and get somebody to pull the knife out of my and the thousands of teachers back you just put it in.

Then there is Rick Scott, he of the 1.7 billion dollar fine for fraud who won the election with less than fifty percent of the vote, which was more of a referendum against Obama than for him. You have to hand it to him though, while spending eighty million dollars of his own personal fortune he made the election about Washington D.C. not about Florida. I get it that you don’t like Obammacare but how do you feel about gutting social services for the sick, disabled and children. How do you feel about him curtailing protections for the environment and our rivers and how do you feel about him cutting billions from our already resource starved education system? Friends we were already fiftieth in the nation. He and this is adjusted for inflation, wants to send us back to 1976 levels of school spending, you know before all the unfunded mandates and changes to education that siphoned millions away to corporate charter schools, vouchers and education testing companies.

North East Florida voted for this transplant and while hoping to create additional tax breaks for corporations and wealthy individuals in addition to the billions we already give, he seeks to balance the budget on the backs of the working poor and the middle class. Cut your own throat much North East Florida.

He won by saying he would create jobs, well the tens of thousands of teachers and government workers who are about to find themselves unemployed aren’t so optimistic about his plan. And friends we are already a low tax, pro business state without an income tax. If companies aren’t rushing here now do you really thing they are going to do so after we destroy public education, curtail government services and harm the environment?

Northeast Florida once again, if you wanted to destroy education, knee cap the middle class and do harm to the state you have come up aces. Embrace what you have done; own it, because if we get much more of Wise, Thrasher and Scott that will be about all you do, it’s definitely all your children will.

Where do babies come from

When I was little the first time I asked my mother where babies came from she said, the hospital. A few years went by and when I asked her again, she said, when a man loves a woman he lies with her and nine months later a baby is born. When I was five and ten both of those answers were good enough and they were correct. However as an adult I learned the answer is a lot more complicated than that and there were a whole lot of factors, like unwanted pregnancy, stds and birth control among others that needed to be considered. The real answer became very complicated

Fixing the problems in education are likewise more complicated than saying, the hospital, but that’s what the powers-that-be and our state legislature will have you believe when they say merit pay and charter schools will make everything better.

Merit pay isn’t as simple as fire bad teachers/reward good ones. First of all reputable studies say merit pay does not work and I have yet to find one that says it does. It sounds seductive though doesn’t it? Pay the better teachers more, get rid of the worse teachers and things will improve. The thing is, do we want simple solutions that sound seductive or do we want solutions that work.

Then there are charter schools the darling of the right. Well friends study after study has shown charter schools, who get to pick and choose who they let in and keep and who often don’t play by the same confining rules that public schools do, don’t do any better. This means they get the best kids with the most involved families and don’t exceed what is happening at. P.S. this or P.S.. That says to me our public schools must be doing something right.

They do this while at the same time trying to limit the one reform that has proven to work and is on the books, the class size amendment. Why because the class size amendment costs money, whereas merit pay believe it or not and charter schools make money for corporations and big business. This is not about what’s best for the kids it’s about money and we know this because they ignore the number one thing that is known to affect how children do in school.

At no point do theses powers-that-be mention poverty, which is what study after study points to as the leading factor in determining how well a child does in school. In fact they marginalize it by saying things like, poverty is an excuse hoping that allows them to maintain the status quo.

Look there are more high performing teachers at the high performing schools and they draw a correlation from that. That's their proof that it must be the teacher’s fault. They hope we don’t notice that that the lower performing schools with the supposed lower performing teachers are in the neighborhoods hit hardest by poverty. It must be the teachers right?

That is what they say, that friends if their ultimate, from the hospital, answer and it's just as accurate as my mom was.

We have problems in education and we need serious solutions, not off the cuff ones designed to placate five year olds, which is what the legislature and governor must think most of us are and line the pockets of corporations while ignoring what’s best for our children.

Its not as simple as fire bad teachers, reward excellent ones

From the St. Petersburg Times

by Tom Marshall

Turkey Creek Middle PE teacher Tecca Kilmer worries that simply testing student knowledge, ignoring physical gains, misses a big part of what she’s teaching.

TAMPA — Everyone seems to have a bright idea in the tug-of-war to fix America's public schools.

Pay teachers more. Adopt a common curriculum. Give parents a voucher and let them pick the school.

But this spring, one solution is looming above all others, both nationally and in bills before the Florida Legislature. It rests on a simple claim: that it's possible to predict each student's performance on tests based on their track record, and then hold teachers accountable for making those annual predictions come true.

It's called value-added analysis. And the Hillsborough County School District is preparing to push the new science to its limits.

Nearly every Hillsborough student this spring will take exams in rarely-tested areas like physical education and the arts. Such scores, along with those already collected on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, will allow the district to rate virtually every classroom teacher using student tests.

"What it means is every student has their own starting line, and students are compared to themselves. That's a good thing," said Anna Brown, assessment director for the district's seven-year partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Teachers say the new emphasis on testing adds pressure to teach memorizable facts at the expense of exercise or creativity. They worry of being wrongly labeled and facing pay cuts or even termination as a result.

And experts say they're right to worry. Even those who find value-added methods useful say Hillsborough is venturing into uncharted waters by including non-academic subjects and special-needs students.

"All of these indicators are fallible," said Henry Braun, an education professor at Boston College and former vice president of research for Educational Testing Service. "I think we overestimate what statistical analysis can do for us."

Value-added is being used by hundreds of school districts nationwide, including New York City and Chicago. But research shows it's often inaccurate.

One federal Education Department study found such systems misclassify up to 35 percent of teachers in a single year. That error rate falls to 25 percent using three years' worth of data.

Steven Glazerman, a senior fellow at the consulting firm Mathematica, said it's not clear whether it's fair to use a 20-question test to determine 40 percent of an elementary art teacher's evaluation, as Hillsborough plans to do.

"Unfortunately, we don't know the answer," he said. "Because most of what we do know is based on the traditional grades in the traditional subjects. I'd have to say it is an open question."

Hillsborough officials say they won't rely solely on value-added. Starting this fall, such scores will make up 40 percent of a teacher's evaluation, rather than the 50 percent being considered by Florida legislators. And the district will use three years of scores to make decisions on teacher pay.

Observations by principals and peer evaluators will make up the remaining 60 percent in Hillsborough, with support from a $100 million Gates grant. Officials say their new system will be tougher than in previous years, when 99.5 percent of their 12,500 teachers were rated satisfactory or outstanding and one-third were called flawless.

It's true that value-added is imperfect, said David Steele, who oversees the district's Gates reforms.

"But is it better than what we have done?" he asked. "Is there more error built into value added? Or is there more error built into one principal sitting in his office, evaluating every person on his staff whether he's ever actually seen them teach or not?"

• • •

It's kind of like growing oak trees.

That was the analogy offered by Brown during a visit to teachers at Williams Middle School in Tampa.

She pointed to a picture of two trees, one of which had clearly done a better job of reaching its full, leafy potential. Would it be fair to judge their gardeners without knowing more about things like soil quality and climate?

"Gardener B must be superior, (because) he has the higher tree?" she asked. "I think we all know that doesn't tell the whole story."

In the same way, Brown said, University of Wisconsin statisticians will help Hillsborough to factor in variables like poverty or language fluency in predicting annual student gains.

But several national value-added specialists argued against Hillsborough's plan to use such scores as part of an automatic rating system.

Braun of Boston College said value-added often fails to account for things like a principal's weak leadership or school climate differences, lumping such factors into a teacher's score. He advised using it only to focus attention on potential concerns.

"What you (should) use it for is to do detective work," said Derek Briggs, an associate professor of education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He favors his state's approach of using value-added methods to spot potential problems with schools — not individual teachers.

Jesse Rothstein, an associate professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said using value-added as part of a teacher's evaluation can prompt them to change their teaching in unhealthy ways, dropping useful activities that aren't being measured by a narrow, simplistic test.

"You do have to worry that you create incentives for teachers to aim at the measure you're using, rather than aiming at being effective," he said.

• • •

"Okay, wait a minute!" called out PE teacher Tecca Kilmer. "I want you to take two fingers and check your pulse."

Her students at Turkey Creek Middle School were playing an energetic game of capture the flag on a wind-swept field. But now they dropped to one knee, pressed their necks and counted silently.

"What does it mean if it's beating faster than usual?" she asked.

"You're using more oxygen," said eighth-grader Logan Holland.

Even before Hillsborough won its Gates grant last year, PE teachers were teaching and testing more — both as part of a voluntary state merit-pay program, and to set the pace in an age where every teacher must show they're making a difference.

Kilmer said she's not doing anything differently this year. But she worries that a single, written exam that tracks student knowledge — not physical improvements — can't capture all of what she teaches.

"It's good in the sense that it's looking at what students are learning," Kilmer said. "But a written test is not enough for PE."

Hillsborough arts teachers, too, say the new tests miss a lot.

"It's a tiny snapshot," said Frank Hannaway, a music teacher at MacFarlane Park Elementary.

He said he likes the new teacher observation system, which includes visits by peer evaluators with experience in the arts. But teachers want an evaluation that measures musical learning, and not just facts about music.

"We're working on that," said district arts supervisor Melanie Faulkner. Music students will listen to a song as part of an "experience-based" test, and art students will look at a picture.

"It's not writing definitions," she added. "We want children to apply what they've learned."

Elementary art classes have already been reduced to 30 minutes per week due to budget cuts. With the new tests, some teachers have been forced to cut back on projects, said Amy Klepal of Ballast Point Elementary.

"The biggest complaint I've heard from teachers is that it really takes away from the creative process for children," she said. "We're stopping more, we're talking more."

On a recent morning, her third-graders used a full period to finish collages. Klepal said she'd wait until an early-release day, when she sees each class for 15 minutes, to brush up on test topics like the difference between Van Gogh and Renoir.

"We want them to gain deeper meaning in their learning," she said. "We're talking about cultures, we're talking about history. But when you see a child once a week for 30 minutes, that's a tall order."

http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/experts-see-perils-in-hillsboroughs-teacher-evaluation-plans/1154222

The assult on Florida's teachers continues

From the St. petersburg Times, Grade Book

by Jeff Solochek

Legislation to change the way Florida teachers are paid and evaluated still misses the mark despite increased public input, the Florida Education Association said Tuesday.

The FEA — Florida's largest teacher union — contended that the way that lawmakers want to craft performance pay plans does not take into account the complexities of today's education system. In conjunction with the Center for Teaching Quality, the group suggested that there are other, better ways to get result-oriented reform that leads to more effective teaching.

Among its recommendations:

•"Local districts should have the flexibility to create a fair, equitable and educationally sound system for student learning and teacher effectiveness."
•"The state and local districts should include teacher leaders in the decision-making process."
•"State and local districts should create teacher development systems that incorporate performance pay."
•"Get base pay right. Without a competitive base pay, it will become increasingly difficult to recruit teachers and retain them."
"If SB 736 is enacted as proposed, thousands of effective Florida teachers will be falsely branded, resulting in unfair decisions about pay and employment, potential lawsuits and, worst of all, lost educational opportunity for tens of thousands of the state's schoolchildren," said Barnett Berry, CEO of the Center for Teaching Quality. "Teaching is far too complicated to make high-stakes decisions about individual performance based on one standardized test, administered once a year. Only highly trained peer evaluators — for which SB 736 does not provide — should determine which teachers are more effective than others. And those evaluators should use a variety of measures to do so, taking into account all the key elements of good teaching."

The House and Senate versions of the bills are slated to be heard in committees again tomorrow. Several teacher organizations are trying to get people to go testify against the legislation. The Florida Department of Education, meanwhile, announced this morning the selection of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt as a consultant to help create teacher and administrator evaluation systems.

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/content/performance-pay-plan-florida-bills-not-good-enough-florida-education-association-says

Florida's education reforms questioned

From the MinnisotaPost.com

by Beth Hawkins

There are lots of great uses for data in education, many of them aimed squarely at helping to close the achievement gap. Data can help teachers identify which skills struggling students are missing, where their lesson plans need tweaking and — provided we ever got away from using data in punitive ways — to identify practices worthy of replicating.

You’d think, given the reams of data generated by all of the tests administered to the modern American schoolchild, that education policymakers might occasionally be able to point to a few objective, capital-T truths.

On Sunday, the Star Tribune carried a column by Katherine Kersten in which she suggested Minnesota look to Florida as a model for education reform. I admit I started reading mostly to find out whether Kersten would make it all the way to the end of the item without name-checking her erstwhile colleague, Cheri Pierson Yecke.

Kersten and Yecke both advocated various conservative education reforms as fellows at the Center for the American Experiment in the middle of the last decade, following the Minnesota Legislature’s failure to confirm Yecke as Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s education commissioner. Among the sticking points: Yecke’s belief that creationism had a place in Minnesota’s science standards.

Examples from Gov. Bush's era
In fact Kersten’s column did not mention Yecke, who served as Florida’s chancellor of K-12 education from 2005-2007, but she did toss out some impressive examples of progress made under the leadership of former Gov. Jeb Bush, who left office in 2007, on boosting test scores and closing the achievement gap.

“In 1998, almost half of all Florida fourth-graders were functionally illiterate,” Kersten reported. “Today, 72 percent can read.” She went on to detail impressive progress on narrowing the gap among African-American and Latino fourth-graders, who she reported now outperform their Minnesota counterparts.

“Since 2000, we’ve doled out about $4 billion in compensatory aid for low-income students and for ‘integration’ revenue,” she wrote of Minnesota. “We’ve got next to nothing in the way of academic improvement to show for it.”

Minnesota, she counseled, would do well to consider Florida’s bold reforms, which include an end to social promotion, a school-grading system, financial incentives for schools and teachers, alternative teacher certification and — wait for it — vouchers.

Florida and the achievement gap
Leaving aside for the moment the fact that Minnesota and lots of other states rate schools and have experimented with merit pay with mixed results, I was curious about Kersten’s argument that Florida, where racial and ethnic minorities make up the majority of students, was ahead of much of the nation in terms of closing the gap.

After all, as she put it, “Florida’s challenges dwarf ours.”

I wish I could tell you it took days of dogged sleuthing to pull the rug out from under her argument, but Jeb Bush’s campaign to spread the good word about his reforms throughout the country has already drawn criticism from a number of fact-checkers.

Since the late 1990s, Florida’s African-American and Latino fourth-graders have made impressive strides in closing the gap, particularly in reading. But at the eighth grade, the picture is decidedly mixed. According to Education Week, the state's math scores lag slightly behind national averages and are slightly ahead in reading.

It seems the impressive fourth-grade data can be credited to the same social-promotion policy Kersten cited as an effective reform. In 2002, Florida began holding back third-grade students who performed poorly on the state reading test, including 14 percent to 23 percent of Africa-Americans and Latinos.

“This policy of screening out the weakest readers, along with the presence of unknown numbers of older grade-repeaters in the grade four samples, changes the composition of the students tested in grade four and invalidates comparisons concerning student performance as a whole as well as results concerning ethnic group achievement gaps," Madhabi Chatterji of Columbia University’s Teachers College concluded in a report released last November.

“The evidence on Florida’s … achievement trends and gaps is mixed when other grade levels and subject areas are examined between 2002 and 2009,” the report noted. “A cursory review … shows that these gap patterns are neither consistent nor as impressive as one would think if one looked only at reading in grade four.”

Grad rates and college-entrance test scores
It gets worse. Florida's graduation rate and college-entrance test scores remain among the worst in the country. State officials put the graduation rate at 71 percent, while other assessments put it below 60 percent. Small wonder: In 2004 only 42 percent of Florida high-school students were taking upper-level math courses and only 27 percent were taking upper-level science courses.

The vouchers? Tossed out by the Florida Supreme Court in 2006. Bush subsequently tried to push two constitutional amendments through the Florida statehouse, but lawmakers rejected them.

Bush’s two Republican successors have, of course, gone on to promote their own reform agendas, with talk of merit pay, voucher-like educational choice funding schemes and challenges to teachers’ unions.

Charlie Kyte, executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators, pointed out that Florida’s school system has long been regarded as terrible. State leaders do deserve credit for instituting changes that sparked progress, and some of those changes probably hold lessons for Minnesota’s struggling schools. But Florida schools, he’s quick to add, still are not as good as Minnesota’s.

http://www.minnpost.com/learningcurve/2011/02/17/25870/floridas_touted_education_data_wither_under_scrutiny

The big bussiness takeover of Florida Schools

From the St. Augustine Record

by Kathleen Haughney

TALLAHASSEE -- As Gov. Rick Scott backs away for now from a push for an expanded school voucher program, former Gov. Jeb Bush's education foundation has begun quietly circulating draft legislation that may serve as the Legislature's template to massively expand the number of charter schools throughout the state.

Scott's budget team this week preached the governor's belief in school choice, saying the Scott wanted to expand virtual school offerings, allow more students to transfer from failing or sub par schools and create more charter school opportunities. Meanwhile, Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future has brought forth a plan that would allow colleges and universities to open charter schools without school district approval and set up a system for the per-student funding to follow the student and not be tied to a school district.

The governor and the foundation got a high profile push this week from former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, who made her name by promoting school choice and firing teachers she deemed failures. Rhee, who also serves as an informal adviser to Scott, was in Tallahassee this past week to lobby the Legislature on an education reform issues, particularly expanding school choice and abolishing teacher tenure.

"We have to be putting policies and laws in place that don't hamstring charters ... that create the right environment for them," Rhee told reporters. "And if Florida can do that, I think you're going to attract more and more of the high quality charter providers into the state."

Charter school expansion may be an easier route for Scott to test the waters of school choice expansion.

State Sen. Steve Wise, R-Jacksonville, who chairs the Senate's Prek-12 Education Committee, is open to the idea of charter school expansion, noting that the Kipp Charter School in Jacksonville has been relatively successful.

"Sometimes, they have a little bit more flexibility than the school districts, but I think they're going to be in this game," Wise said. "And we're going to try to work with them as best as possible."

Union officials aren't weighing in yet on potential charter school legislation. A Florida Education Association spokesman said the teachers' union has generally been in favor of charters in theory, but that it would not favor a system where per student funding left a school district to follow the student to a charter school.

A line in the foundation's draft legislation reads, "Charter school students shall be funded without regard to whether the student's home address lies within the school district sponsoring the charter school."

http://staugustine.com/news/local-news/2011-02-13/charter-schools-could-be-expanded

Vouchers, the irresponsible reform

From the Keystone State education Coalition

bny Laurence Feinberg

Most Americans believe that improving our system of education should be a top priority for government at the local, state and Federal levels. Legislators, school boards, education professionals, parent groups and community organizations are attempting to implement innovative ideas to rescue children from failing school systems, particularly in inner-city neighborhoods. Many such groups champion voucher programs. The standard program proposed in dozens of states across the country would distribute monetary vouchers (typically valued between $2,500-$5,000) to parents of school-age children, usually in troubled inner-city school districts. Parents could then use the vouchers towards the cost of tuition at private schools -- including those dedicated to religious indoctrination.

Superficially, school vouchers might seem a relatively benign way to increase the options poor parents have for educating their children. In fact, vouchers pose a serious threat to values that are vital to the health of American democracy. These programs subvert the constitutional principle of separation of church and state and threaten to undermine our system of public education.

Vouchers Are Constitutionally Suspect

Proponents of vouchers are asking Americans to do something contrary to the very ideals upon which this country was founded. Thomas Jefferson, one of the architects of religious freedom in America, said, "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves... is sinful and tyrannical." Yet voucher programs would do just that; they would force citizens -- Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists -- to pay for the religious indoctrination of school children at schools with narrow parochial agendas. In many areas, 80 percent of vouchers would be used in schools whose central mission is religious training. In most such schools, religion permeates the classroom, the lunchroom, even the football practice field. Channeling public money to these institutions flies in the face of the constitutional mandate of separation of church and state.

While the Supreme Court has upheld school vouchers in the Zelman v. Simmons-Harris case, vouchers have not been given a green light by the Court beyond the narrow facts of this case. Indeed, Cleveland's voucher program was upheld in a close (5-4) ruling that required a voucher program to (among other things):

be a part of a much wider program of multiple educational options, such as magnet schools and after-school tutorial assistance,

offer parents a real choice between religious and non-religious education perhaps even providing incentives for non-religious education),

not only address private schools, but to ensure that benefits go to schools regardless of whether they are public or private, religious or not.

This decision also does not disturb the bedrock constitutional idea that no government program may be designed to advance religious institutions over non-religious institutions.

Finally, and of critical importance, many state constitutions provide for a higher wall of separation between church and state -- and thus voucher programs will likely have a hard time surviving litigation in state courts.

Thus, other states will likely have a very hard time reproducing the very narrow set of circumstances found in the Cleveland program.

Vouchers Undermine Public Schools

Implementation of voucher programs sends a clear message that we are giving up on public education. Undoubtedly, vouchers would help some students. But the glory of the American system of public education is that it is for all children, regardless of their religion, their academic talents or their ability to pay a fee. This policy of inclusiveness has made public schools the backbone of American democracy.

Private schools are allowed to discriminate on a variety of grounds. These institutions regularly reject applicants because of low achievement, discipline problems, and sometimes for no reason at all. Further, some private schools promote agendas antithetical to the American ideal. Under a system of vouchers, it may be difficult to prevent schools run by extremist groups like the Nation of Islam or the Ku Klux Klan from receiving public funds to subsidize their racist and anti-Semitic agendas. Indeed, the proud legacy of Brown v. Board of Education may be tossed away as tax dollars are siphoned off to deliberately segregated schools.

Proponents of vouchers argue that these programs would allow poor students to attend good schools previously only available to the middle class. The facts tell a different story. A $2,500 voucher supplement may make the difference for some families, giving them just enough to cover the tuition at a private school (with some schools charging over $10,000 per year, they would still have to pay several thousand dollars). But voucher programs offer nothing of value to families who cannot come up with the rest of the money to cover tuition costs.

In many cases, voucher programs will offer students the choice between attending their current public school or attending a school run by the local church. Not all students benefit from a religious school atmosphere -- even when the religion being taught is their own. For these students, voucher programs offer only one option: to remain in a public school that is likely to deteriorate even further.

As our country becomes increasingly diverse, the public school system stands out as an institution that unifies Americans. Under voucher programs, our educational system -- and our country -- would become even more Balkanized than it already is. With the help of taxpayers' dollars, private schools would be filled with well-to-do and middle-class students and a handful of the best, most motivated students from inner cities. Some public schools would be left with fewer dollars to teach the poorest of the poor and other students who, for one reason or another, were not private school material. Such a scenario can hardly benefit public education.

Finally, as an empirical matter, reports on the effectiveness of voucher programs have been mixed. Initial reports on Cleveland's voucher program, published by the American Federation of Teachers, suggest that it has been less effective than proponents argue. Milwaukee's program has resulted in a huge budget shortfall, leaving the public schools scrambling for funds. While some studies suggest that vouchers are good for public schools, there is, as yet, little evidence that they ultimately improve the quality of public education for those who need it most.

Vouchers Are Not Universally Popular

When offered the opportunity to vote on voucher-like programs, the public has consistently rejected them; voters in 19 states have rejected such proposals in referendum ballots. In the November 1998 election, for example, Colorado voters rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed parochial schools to receive public funds through a complicated tuition tax-credit scheme. Indeed, voters have rejected all but one of the tuition voucher proposals put to the ballot since the first such vote over 30 years ago.

Voucher proposals have also made little progress in legislatures across the country. While 20 states have introduced voucher bills, only two have been put into law. Congress has considered several voucher plans for the District of Columbia, but none has been enacted.

A recent poll conducted by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies demonstrates that support for vouchers has declined over the last year. Published in October 1998, the Poll revealed that support for school vouchers declined from 57.3 percent to 48.1 percent among Blacks, and from 47 to 41.3 percent among whites. Overall, 50.2 percent of Americans now oppose voucher programs; only 42 percent support them.

Conclusion

School voucher programs undermine two great American traditions: universal public education and the separation of church and state. Instead of embracing vouchers, communities across the country should dedicate themselves to finding solutions that will be available to every American schoolchild and that take into account the important legacy of the First Amendment.

http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2011/02/anti-defamation-league-school-vouchers.html

The Sad Status Quo of Education

With a nod to Education Notes On-line, from the blog, Seattle Education

by Sue peters

The current crowd of ed reformers like to dismiss any of us who disagree with their agenda as “defenders of the status quo.”

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I am not a defender of the status quo in public education – because the status quo is currently “No Child Left Behind” and its insidious spin-off, “Race to the Top.”

In fact, I decry the state of public education in this country right now, because a beleaguered, underfunded system has been disparaged and ravaged even further this last decade by damaging policies based on failed concepts pushed by those who want to privatize our public schools.

I do not support the status quo because the status quo is teacher bashing. I don’t support the demonizing of teachers and belittling or weakening of the profession.

The status quo is standardization and high-stakes testing which narrows curriculum and kills all creativity and joy for learning and teaching.

It is “merit pay” which lashes teacher evaluations to student test scores, and which repeated studies and common sense show doesn’t work.

It is data-manipulation to create the illusion of ed reform “success.” (See: “Standards Raised, More Students Fail Tests.”

It is the re-segregation of public schools, exacerbated by the growth of charter schools.

It is overpaid, revolving school superintendents or chancellors with no ties to the local community, often no background in education, and no plans to stick around. That is the Broad Foundation model and the cause of the recent outcry in New York when Mayor Bloomberg chose a publishing executive with no background in education to be the chancellor of New York’s schools.

The status quo is national public education policy largely determined by unelected billionaires with zero expertise in education. “Venture philanthropists” Eli Broad and Bill Gates spend millions shaping public education policy. Formers staffers from the Gates Foundation now seed the Obama Administration’s Department of Education.

“Two of Duncan’s top aides, Chief of Staff Margot Rogers and Assistant Deputy Secretary James H. Shelton III, came from the [Gates] foundation and were granted waivers by the Administration from its revolving-door policy limiting involvement with former employers.”– “Bill Gates’ School Crusade,” July 15, 2010, Bloomberg Businessweek.

Obama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan, and former chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, are both former members of the Broad board of directors. The “Broad Prize for Urban Education” is a trophy and large cash sum awarded annually by the private Broad Foundation to school districts performing to its liking. In its 2009-10 Annual Report, Broad boasts that the trophy itself “resides at the U.S. Department of Education.”


You couldn’t ask for a better symbol of the infiltration of private corporate interests into federal government.

Have Mr. Broad or Mr. Gates been elected to public office, or to direct education policy? Do either have any expertise or experience in public education? No and no. Do either seek genuine parent input? No.

The status quo is Astroturf ed reform groups springing up like toadstools in the night, heavily funded by the same “venture philathropists” looking for a “return on their investment” and pushing the same corporate ed-reform agenda. Washington D.C. ex- school chancellor (Michelle Rhee’s new organization is apparently backed by the same wealthy interests. These organizations lobby for an ed reform agenda that we parents have no say in or may even oppose. But they have resources and media access at their disposal that ordinary parents don’t have. This is not a democratic dialogue about our children’s future when the main stakeholders — we the parents – are largely shut out of the debate.

I do not defend the current trend of sending recent college grads with just five weeks’ training and just a two-year commitment to teach in our nation’s most struggling schools which already suffer from high teacher turnover. But that is the model for Teach for America, Inc. a multimillion-dollar enterprise that is now funded by the Obama government to the tune of $50 million-plus and is arguably de-professionalizing the teaching profession.

Five weeks training does not make these uncredentialed grads “highly qualified,” despite the recent shenanigans by Congress.

I do not support the status quo that punishes teachers, principals and schools with mass layoffs, firings and closures because of student test scores, rather than addressing why some children are struggling and how else one might measure a child’s abilities and a teacher’s worth.

I do not support the status quo which is the mindset of the corporate ed reformers that schools should be run like businesses. Schools are not businesses. Their goal is not profit. The strongest schools are communities, more like families, and need to be cooperative, creative, engaging and nurturing environments.

I do not support the status quo of shameful attacks by the media on teachers and schools and the one-sided cheerleading for charter schools that fails to acknowledge the genuine proven limitations of these schools — their failure to serve children with special needs, the high attrition of kids (even a Geoffrey Canada Harlem Children Zone apparently booted an entire class of kids from a charter school because they weren’t deemed likely to do well on tests. (See: “The Myth of Charter Schools,” Brookings Institution, Nov. 11, 2010.)

I do not support the status quo which makes celebrities and “super(wo)men” out of spotlight-seeking figures like Michelle Rhee, Michael Bloomberg, and Arne Duncan, while all the real work is being done quietly by the thousands of anonymous teachers, principals, educators, parents and students, who suffer through reform after reform, trend after trend, searing budget cuts, and still manage to go on and offer a good education to many children in this nation without any national recognition.

I do not support a status quo that cuts so much from school budgets that the PTAs are left fundraising for such essentials as teachers and books, and school communities that do not have these extra resources suffer the most.

I do not support the status quo of education policies being driven by Wall Street interests and not by what’s in the best interests of our children.

I do not support mayoral control, abolishing of school boards, quashing of parent voices and end-runs around democracy.

I do not defend the federal government imposing its edicts on local school districts, suppressing local autonomy and skirting the edges of Constitutionality, which is what Race to the Top essentially does.

The research comes on the heels of a recent pledge by President Barack Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, to use $5 billion of the $100 billion in federal stimulus funds for education to press states on charter schools. “States that don’t have charter school laws, or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools, will jeopardize their application” for federal grant money, Duncan said in a call with reporters last week. Currently, 10 states lack laws that allow charter schools, and 26 others cap their enrollment.” — from: “Charter Schools Might Not Be Better,” U.S. News & World Report, June 19, 2009.)

No, I reject this status quo.

What I support and call for is: the long-term personal and professional investment in every child –which takes time and commitment, as has been demonstrated in Everett, Washington. It’s not flashy, doesn’t require expensive high-tech products, just good old-fashioned follow-up with kids, mentoring and genuine support. And an engaging curriculum.

I support small classes sizes that allow greater one-on-one interaction. I call for the parents’ voices to be the loudest in the discussion of how to run our schools. I support autonomy for schools, teachers and principals who know their communities best, and who can ensure their children are doing well, learning what they need to know and able to graduate.

I call for creative teaching, rich, varied curricula that include the arts and music and languages, science, physical education. I call for safe, decent well-maintained buildings and healthy school meals.

I call for an honest dialogue about the ravages of poverty on our nation’s children. We need to acknowledge the shameful fact that 21 percent of our children live in poverty, and that inequities in academic results are largely determined by income and home life of the child. This is not an excuse, it is a fact, and to expect teachers and schools alone to correct the deep and damaging inequalities of our society is irrational.

I call for an overhaul of school district administrations, to pare them down to the essentials, make them efficient and serving the interests of the school communities, not the whims of private foundations or vendors of standardized tests, text books or online learning products.

I call for the hiring of school superintendents and chancellors who have a local connection and commitment to the community they must serve which will in turn lead to greater accountability. I call to retain democratically elected school board members who must answer to their constituents and oversee the superintendent, and a paid position for school board so they can do their job thoroughly and well.

Public education is an integral ingredient in creating an informed public and a strong democracy. I believe we must keep our public schools free of private and political agendas and manipulations, strengthen our schools, not close them down, stop punishing and start nurturing.

If you agree that our nation needs a new vision for public education, I invite you to join a forum of parents from across the nation who are launching a new organization, Parents Across America, in New York on Feb. 7. Our keynote speaker will be education historian Diane Ravitch. The event is free and open to the public. It starts at 6 p.m. and will held at: PS/IS 89 – Liberty School, 201 Warren Street, New York, N.Y. 10282.

Help bring parents’ voices to the education debate and support progressive, positive, constructive education reforms that work.

http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/why-i-am-not-a-defender-of-the-status-quo-in-education-because-the-status-quo-is-failed-ed-reforms/

No need to wait for Superman, we already have big brothers and sisters

To paraphrase Warren Grymes of Big Brothers Big Sisters; Last year’s release of the film Waiting for Superman was a sobering wake up call, that people will believe anything put in front of them. Mr. Grymes wrote the first part, i wrote the second. Now where he is correct our education system has many issues, Waiting for Superman through misinformation and staged scenes exacerbates those problems by selling solutions, charter schools and vouchers that don’t work and by contributing to the false “bad teacher narrative” being sold by the maker of the film and its billionaire producers.

However Mr. Grymes in his guest editorial to the Times Union wasn’t all wrong. Our children do need mentors and organizations like Big Brothers/Big sisters provide them. Studies show that for every proactive dollar we spend, we save 7-11 dollars in reactive (remediation, incarceration, affects of crime, public aide, etc) dollars. Now where we do need mentors, do you know what we need more?

We need a school system that is filled with rigor and discipline, a system which is determined that every child comes out a productive citizen ready to maximize his or her potential not just put on an assembly line to college. You know basically the opposite of what we have now.

I appreciate Mr. Grymes and his valuable organization and he might not have realized it but we already have a lot of supermen and women in our community and in our schools working with our children, instead of referencing a piece oh blatant anti public education propaganda, he should have just said, that but we need a lot more too.

Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher

Teaching as a Service Industry

From the Guardian.co.uk with a Nod to Mike Klonskys Small Talk Blog

by Paul Thomas

Management and labour are hurtling towards an impasse, and a work stoppage looms. Workers are seeking public support by emphasising the importance of benefits for workers, specifically longterm healthcare for conditions caused by the profession that do not appear until later in life.

This may sound for many like the possible scenario for a teachers' strike, backed by a powerful teachers' union. But if this were a teachers' strike, in 2011, we could anticipate little support for those teachers – not least because of the propaganda created by Davis Guggenheim's documentary Waiting for "Superman" and the rise of false prophets of education reform (Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee).

However, above, I am speaking about the possible NFL strike that hangs over this coming Super Bowl weekend: a struggle between billionaires and millionaires, which, indirectly, shines an important light on the rise of teacher and teacher union-bashing in the US. Adam Bessie, on Truthout, identifies how the myth of the bad teacher has evolved:

"In this political season of faux anti-establishment anger born of very real economic desperation, public educators have become the villain du jour, their reputations collateral damage in the war against 'big government'. In a remarkable sleight of hand, the super rich who imploded the economy, manufacturing the recession which now enrages the public, have successfully misdirected the public's justifiable anger away from them and toward teachers."

While few people have begun to demonise and criticise either the billionaire owners or the millionaire players (represented by a union) in the NFL, the education reform landscape is built on a false premise – blaming teachers and unions for school failures – that lacks credibility and masks the overwhelming source of education failures: namely, poverty.

Ironically, the new push against teachers' unions, cloaked in discourse about the damage done by "bad" teachers, comes from Democrats. For example, Arne Duncan, speaking on behalf of the Obama administration in Little Rock, Arkansas on 25 August 2010, focused on teacher quality:

"The big game-changer for us, however, in terms of both formula and competitive programmes, revolves around the issue of teacher quality … Nothing is more important and nothing has a greater impact on the quality of education than the quality and skill of the person standing in the front of the class – and there is so much that needs to change in the way that America recruits, trains, supports and manages our teachers."

But the political attacks on teachers and unions, which come from both the left and the right, would likely not resonate as much as they have done, if it were not for the celebrity tour on the back of the documentary Waiting for "Superman", whose message has been perpetuated by celebrity reformers. Two of those, Bill Gates and Geoffrey Canada, share an entrepreneur status that suggests expertise on everything simply because they are wealthy. (Possibly, also, this is what protects NFL owners and players from social ridicule in their fight.)

Both Gates and Canada also use compliant media adroitly to promote their unsupported claims. Canada appeared on the Colbert Report as part of his tour, specifically reinforcing the idea that teacher accountability is central to school reform. "We've got to hold the adults responsible … We've allowed our schools to fail these kids with no consequences," Canada told Colbert's audience.

Gates, again due to his incredible wealth and corporate success, commands media attention – media that rarely question his claims. Take, for example, the Newsweek interview by Daniel Lyons with Gates and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. While the entire interview perpetuates misunderstanding about education reform, the focus on teacher quality and the role of unions exemplifies the claims of the new reformers – even as it exposes those claims' lack of credibility.

In August of 2010, the attack on teacher professionalism was intensified when the Los Angeles Times published teacher quality analyses based on value-added methods (VAM). The charges against teacher quality and teachers' unions elicited several stringent rejections (here, here, and here), but most challenges came from educators themselves – and, of course, received little media coverage when compared to the attention lavished on Gates, Rhee and Canada.

The message has solidified: US public schools are failures because we have too many bad teachers, and we have too many bad teachers because teachers' unions use their excessive power to keep bad teachers in jobs. But it doesn't end there.

By October 2010, the narrative developed further, to take in that our teaching core is weak because "[c]ountries with the best-performing school systems largely recruit teachers from the top third of high school and college graduates, while the United States has difficulty attracting its top students to the profession, a new report finds." The formula was growing complex, but there was a pattern to the proposed solutions: usurp teachers' union control and fire bad teachers; then restock the depleted teacher core with recruits from among top US students.

Ultimately, this PR campaign by corporate and political leaders has been effective, even if it remains inaccurate. Teacher quality represents only a small percentage of achievement, and there is little evidence that teacher quality is the greatest issue, or even one of the main problems, facing student achievement in public schools.

A provable problem with teacher quality, however, is teacher assignment. Peske and Haycock show that students in poverty, students of colour and ELL students are in classrooms with the least experienced teachers, who are often uncertified or underqualified. Of course, teacher quality does matter in terms of what happens once students are within the walls of schools, but we seem blind to the longstanding tradition of assigning the most experienced and best-qualified teachers to the elite students, who already experience major advantages in their lives outside of school.

That the evidence-based inequity of teacher assignment is ignored, while the myth of the bad teacher is perpetuated, is evidence of the motivation behind the new reformers – an unspoken commitment to the status quo of this social inequity that benefits the very people so keen to lay charges against teachers and unions. And the rants against unions are just as suspect as the claims that bad teachers are crippling schools. Two examples expose the flaws in union-bashing.

First, the new reformers hold up Finland as the model for education reform – while failing to identify two crucial facts: that Finland has low childhood poverty (about 3-4%, compared to over 20% in the US) and that Finland's teachers are nearly 100% unionised. Consider, also, South Carolina, a high-poverty state with a reputation for having a weak education system. South Carolina joined the accountability era at the beginning, taking "A Nation at Risk" seriously and creating standards, testing and accountability in 1984. Despite nearly three decades of precisely the process supported by the new reformers, South Carolina finds itself still ranking at the bottom of education in the US. The real dynamic here is that South Carolina remains a high-poverty state – the true cause of low test scores – and also that South Carolina is a non-union state, with no union contracts for teachers and no tenure.

Now, let's step back from all the separate but overlapping claims about teachers, teacher quality and teachers unions. If we look at them together, we discover that two powerful yet contradictory messages exist in the larger public discourse promoted by the new reformers: contradictory messages that allow one message to mask the other. Political and corporate leaders seek to speak about teaching as if it is a profession, while expecting those professionals to function as a service industry. The narratives offered by Obama and Duncan, Waiting for "Superman" and organisations such as Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and Teach for America argue for the best and the brightest to implement mandated, common core standards, so that their students can take national tests for which those teachers will be held accountable. And all that while teachers are required to waive their first amendment rights, right to due process, and work for salaries that are less than a regular NFL fine.

Beneath the political and corporate veneer espousing teaching as a profession lurks a simple fact: the corporate and political elite wants teaching to be a service industry. Worse yet, they have their wish, because teaching is now a service industry, ultimately devoted to perpetuating an economic system based on social inequity and a venal consumer culture.

So, let's return to the NFL dispute. Corporate, political and public sentiment is against teachers' unions, framing unions as the source of all that ails public education; this narrative now holds firm. But virtually no one has cried foul when it comes to the unionised labour struggle of millionaire NFL players pitted against billionaire team owners. This may seem contradictory, but I believe it is not.

Corporate America benefits from the NFL thriving and from the de-professionalising of teaching – regardless of the union element. Outcries about bad teachers and corrupt teachers' unions are not about educational reform, but about guaranteeing that teaching will become permanently a service industry in which schools are reduced to the sole purpose of producing compliant workers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/04/usdomesticpolicy-schools

Billionaires Plan for Education Reform: Distract Gain Control

From Labour Notes.org

By Julie Cavanaugh

The public conversation around education “reform” is dominated by a privileged few who seek to change schooling from a public service to a lucrative business.

Millionaires and billionaires, such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton family, owners of Wal-Mart, have spent years pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks and political campaigns.

They have captured the media through projects like the movie “Waiting for Superman” and NBC’s “Education Nation.” Their intent is clear: to gain control of public opinion and public policy and open up access to what they refer to as the K-12 “market,” namely, our schools.

Sadly, the Obama administration, led by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, has the same plan.

Two years ago I faced the billionaires’ agenda head on when my Triple A-rated public school was forced to give up part of our building to a privately run education corporation, commonly called a charter school. The charter was founded by the son of billionaire hedge-funder Julian Robertson.

As I watched our needy students, many of them with special needs, forced into shared classrooms, hallways, and closets, the intent became clear. Undermining public schools is part of a 30-year ideological offensive that says government services are inherently inferior, private industry will produce better results, and public sector unions present an obstacle to good services and rob taxpayers with over-generous salaries and pensions.

The education “reform” agenda cloaks itself in the language of the civil rights movement, but in truth the reforms would make conditions worse, particularly for children of color.

PUBLIC RESOURCE, PRIVATE HANDS

Until now, public officials have been responsible for providing a free and fair public education for all children. If our most important public resource is left in the hands of private interests, children are left without the protections government and unions provide.

One of the dangers is rampant discrimination. Charter schools across the country use selective enrollment to routinely turn away children with special needs and those learning English as a second language. They avoid serving the homeless and those in foster care or receiving reduced-cost or free lunches.

Billionaires’ School Reform: What It Means for Teachers and Students

Privatizers Chase Education’s Billions

How’s Partnership Working for Teachers?

Unions Beat Anti-Teacher Agenda in Illinois

Education Reform, The Union Way

In addition, charter schools largely have prevented their workers from organizing. Their ability to fire employees for any reason prevents educators and staff from advocating for the children.

Of course, real challenges do face our public schools: underfunding, overcrowding, and the social problems that weigh on student learning, especially in low-income communities. How do the “reformers” propose to address these problems?

First, get rid of “bad teachers,” because, after all, “good teachers” can overcome any problem.

To do this, ensure “accountability” with standardized tests as the measure of student and educator performance. Control what educators teach by standardizing curricula in alignment with the tests.

Parents and educators across the country complain that this focus has routinized students’ work and limited meaningful experiences. Often children are subjected to hours of standardized testing.

Next, link teacher job security and pay to test scores, which are used to identify teachers and their schools as failures.

Once a school is considered failing, close it and replace it with a charter that picks and chooses the best students and leaves the rest behind.

The charter school will rely on inexperienced, under-trained teachers through programs such as Teach for America. These overworked and under-supported teachers seldom have union protection. Less than half stay in the profession beyond two years.

The result of high turnover is low wages—saving the charter company money on salaries and pensions. Teaching morphs from a secure, stable job to a high-turnover, low-wage one.

In New York City, for example, half the teaching force leaves before reaching five years in the classroom. Leaving students without experienced educators damages their achievement.

DISTRACT, GAIN CONTROL

The billionaires’ agenda also includes a three-pronged strategy for gaining control of school governance: mayoral control, which has been devastating in both Chicago and New York City; funding school board takeovers, as in San Diego (now reversed); and funding fake parent groups.

“Parent Revolution” in California, for example, is funded by the Broad Foundation. It supposedly includes active parents in Compton, but is really run by a Beverly Hills lawyer with paid organizers.

All the while, teachers and their unions are attacked as the obstacle to all of the above. Non-union charters are promoted as the solution.

Focusing all the attention on teachers conveniently ignores the lack of equitable funding for schools, caused by state and local tax structures that tilt toward the wealthy. The crying need for more money for schools is sidestepped by cutting student services and teachers’ pay.

The need for policies to address poverty and other social factors that contribute to a child’s failure or success in life can be ignored, because the mantra is that educators are solely responsible for a child’s learning.

It’s no coincidence that those fueling and funding school reform are millionaires, billionaires, and large corporations. To believe that their interest lies in helping children would require a suspension of logic and a denial of our history.

Julie Cavanagh is a special education teacher in Brooklyn and is active with the Grassroots Education Movement, a group that educates and mobilizes teachers, parents, and students.

http://labornotes.org/2011/01/billionaires-school-reform-what-it-means-teachers-and-students

If only teachers could grade legislators

The Florida legislature is considering a bill that would require teachers to grade their students’ parents. As you can imagine the bill has garnered quite a bit of attention nationwide from education experts and in the state from teachers themselves. Almost universally it has been ridiculed though that has not slowed it down in the Florida Legislature. Where we all think more meaningful parental involvement would be beneficial, most of us think the unwieldy ht it with a hammer bill isn’t the way to go.
It did however get me to thinking, what if teachers could grade legislators, what kind of grade would they get?

Listening in class, D minus: There are very few members of the legislature that were teachers or worked in the education profession but that doesn’t stop them from meddling and thinking that every notion that pops in their heads won’t somehow improve education. They have also shown very little interest in listening to those on the front lines of education. Rick Scott’s transition team had only one teacher on it out of 23 people and he taught at a virtual schools

Completing Assignments, F: The Florida constitution requires the state to fund education at a world class level, instead the legislature has chosen to cut education funding in order to pay for tax breaks to special interests (and I don’t want to hear the argument that they are the group that creates jobs because if that is the case then they have failed too). They also ignored the people with the class size amendment, preferring to fine districts or violating it rather than properly funding it.

Critical Thinking, F: Their keep proposing the same solutions, vouchers, charter schools and merit pay, despite the fact the first one violates the constitution and the last two have been proven in study after study not to improve education that is right friends not one study has said those two things work. Their other solution, virtual schools, have been ripe with fraud and the jury is still out on how effective they will ultimately be.

Conduct, F: Rather than looking for solutions that would be beneficial to our children and schools they have engaged on a smear campaign against teachers and their unions proposing solutions that will only serve to weaken public education and force more teachers from the field (less than half of all new teachers last 5 years). Whether it’s by hook (incompetence) or by crook (maliciousness) the legislature has kneecapped our public schools and the children that go there and there seems to be no end in sight.

I give them a failing grade. What about you?

Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher

Scott and the state legislatures ideas don't add up

From Practical State.com

Posted by Umpire

With state legislators already drafting legislation that will impact public schools, the time to discuss education reform is now, not the legislative session’s first day. For those who follow trends in education reform, much of the debate centers on increasing performance pay and ending tenure for teachers. Sadly, few people want to discuss equally important issues such as school funding and student poverty. Florida’s education reformers must be willing to discuss all of the issues affecting our schools and not just politically trendy topics that research demonstrates will do little to improve student achievement. The reality is no quick fix exists for public schools. The only way sustainable reform can take place is if all stakeholders including educators, parents, elected officials and community members take action.

Gov. Rick Scott recently named Michelle Rhee, who resigned as superintendent of the District of Columbia’s public schools before she could be fired, as his education-reform advisor. Floridians should know that Rhee publicly admitted to taping her students’ mouths shut, causing them to bleed, when she was a teacher. This alone would have caused Florida teachers to be suspended or fired. Rhee also described swallowing a bee in front of her students.

During the coming months, Floridians will hear from Scott and Rhee about merit pay. Elected politicians who maintain veto-proof control of the Legislature also want to tie teacher salaries to student learning. Teachers are more than willing to discuss raising their salaries, which remain 28th in the nation, including performance pay.

Even so, when it comes to tying teacher salaries to test scores, research has shown that teachers do not control about 60 percent of the factors that influence student learning. Achievement is impacted significantly by what occurs in the students’ lives outside of the classroom. Vanderbilt University studied 300 teachers who received an additional $15,000 in salary if they raised student test scores. After three years, the students’ test scores of teachers receiving merit pay was no different than the students of teachers who did not receive more pay.

Successful merit pay requires student performance assessments to consider a variety of measures including attendance, ongoing classroom assessments, traditional letter grades, academic portfolios, and yes, even test scores. Reformers must recognize that teachers are already doing everything they can despite severe budget cuts to increase student achievement without performance pay. Florida schools are not filled with bad teachers.

Reformers such as Rhee also talk about ending teacher tenure as a solution to public schools’ problems. Tenure provides teachers with the right to due process so they cannot be fired arbitrarily. It does not mean they have a job for life.

Teachers do not give themselves tenure. After a teacher has worked successfully for several years, administrators decide which teachers deserve this protection.

Rather than ending tenure, reform should study improving teacher evaluations. Currently, most administrators conduct quick drive-by evaluations that provide teachers with little feedback that they can use to improve. By making evaluations more transparent and objective, teachers will have the opportunity to learn better ways to increase student achievement.

If Scott, Rhee and elected officials want Florida’s schools to rise to the very top in the nation, then they cannot continue to provide funding at the very bottom of all states. Good schools cost money.

Reducing child poverty also must be a priority as research shows students who live in low socio-economic conditions suffer academically. Nearly 66 percent of Broward County’s 281 schools are considered Title I, which means a majority of the students come from low income families. Miami-Dade County has 328 Title I schools.

Education reform cannot be dictated from Tallahassee. Increasing student achievement must be based on research and best practices that have been proven to work rather than political rhetoric. If we hope to achieve long-term school improvement than teachers, parents, elected leaders and community stakeholders must be involved in the process

With respect to Rhee, Santeramo’s piece is hard-hitting. It should be. These are the facts that far too many people dismiss about someone who is turning out to be the face of reform efforts all over the county. Floridians do not realize that education policy is being driven by the most radical of reformists in Rhee, Jeb Bush and Patricia Levesque.

Little evidence of Rhee’s Baltomore teaching tenure exists aside from what she tell us. It was only three years after a short training period with Teach for America. She touts a success level of her student’s test scores that not only is unverifiable, but is too high to believe. Santeremo is also correct in pointing out that the story Rhee herself circulates about taping a child’s mouth shut would result in a firing of a Florida teacher. And yes, even one who was a union member.

Scott’s teacher assessment proposal includes a 50 percent reliance on test scores. This is right out of Rhee’s controversial IMPACT system. This system is the reason why both Rhee and her boss the mayor both lost their jobs. Rhee is disingenuous when she blames the teacher’s union for her defeat, and IMPACT is now in danger of being scrapped by the new DC mayor.

If only teacher unions were as powerful as Rhee asserts and Republicans assume. Such influence would have long ago halted the juggernaut of high stakes testing like FCAT. Politicians like Scott and Bush along with policy makers like Rhee and Levesque are ignoring the voices of parents who realize the monster that high stakes testing became. In what was intended to be a means with which to monitor student achievement became an ends of final judgements on students, teachers, administrators and schools.

They dismiss mountains of evidence and refuse to take into account the role poverty has in a child’s learning. To do so would render null and void their teacher assessment scheme.

Levesque, who has no experience in education, is portraying the Scott plan as one which provides “choice” for parents. What if parents chose not to want their children and their children’s teachers and schools judged by high stakes testing?

You can find the piece by Pat Santeramo at: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/01/28/2038563_public-should-engage-now.html#storylink=addthis

http://www.practicalstate.com/2011/01/29/florida-must-begin-having-the-conversation-now-on-rick-scott-and-michelle-rhees-education-reform-efforts/

Decloaking Superman

From the blog Education Next

by Diane Hanfmann

I wish there was a hero that possessed the superpowers to fix what ails education in America, truly I do. Would they be able to sneeze and end poverty? Could they blink and make bad policy go away? Would a twist of their wrist send a message into the heads of bad teachers that they should leave the profession? Could a simple slap on the knees serve as a barrier keeping all persons without appropriate background from entering policy making? Perhaps a magical ring could detect political motive trumping student benefit and emit a purple ink onto the face of the perpetrator regardless of distance. We don't have that.

I reject the substitute. Her vision is blind to poverty and the very lives of the children for which she portrays herself as savior. Her voice is not used to reflect the enormous bulk of literature which correlates poverty to low static achievement measures. You can't fix a leaky pipe by adding Kool Aid to the water. The woman the media portrays bypasses the leak. That is not super thinking, imho. Her strategy is flawed from the start. Yet she is hyped by the media. I must be missing something.

Interestingly, her vision is eagle sharp on teachers as the blame for bad things. I am reminded of missing the gaping

gunshot wound in the chest of a man but notice instead his pale skin on his toe. Focusing on and coloring the skin via the world's best dermaologist won't solve the problem at hand. A hero with the wrong focus should only be called misguided.

I reject the substitute. Her presentation to the public is irksome to me. I am reminded of media handlers and words which sound good but beneath them lie a whole new plan. I can't say she knows what she is doing as she has no background in education. I do and I am aware of her use of placing static achievement measures in the face of the public, who is ill equipped to place such information in context. Certainly. this plays to her advantage. Wouldn't a hero teach the public and work at fairness in presentation of information?

Her visual field is missing the evidence of looking at policy which dictates teacher behavior. Why not look at NCLB and . in my state, the A+ Plan? Even I , a mere mortal, can show this supposed hero detriments of such policies.

She doesn't look. She is no hero and she has the glory. More worrisome, she has power.

Her rise is fraught with question but one certainty I found is her connection to bilionaires. Her test score claims are

uncertain. Erasures and other events during the time of her leadership add to the mystery surrounding the boost of this lady into stardom. Her choice to fire 266 teachers and then discover a budget surplus does not point to super powers of investigation.

I reject this substitute. She pushes merit pay and vouchers.. Why call someone a hero when their platform includes implementing practices research shows ineffective in education? Do heroes suggest wastes of energy and damage on thier mortal neighbors? Would Robin crusade that Batman should walk to the next crisis and leave the Batmobile in the garage? Would Spiderman shoot his web at the good guys t o immobilize them and their aid efforts? Would Superman give his crusader outfit to a mortal person and send them to the phone booth without instructions on flying? Did Batman protect Gotham by holding and promoting checker tournaments ? How little is her concern with our nation's children that ineffective practice is touted?

I guess there actually may be one tie in with superheroes. Ms. Rhee used tape to keep all her class's mouth shut, somewhat reminiscent of a Spiderman web shooting. Imagine the teachers who haven't done so. Imagine theteachers who advocate for better things for our students and schools. Imagine the teachers with appropriate background to address issues in education? Imagine teachers with a visual field that includes a larger scope?

If Ms. Rhee is the best example of a hero for America's teachers, parents, and policy makers, we are in more trouble than even she states.

http://myednext.org/profiles/blogs/decloaking-superman-or-looking

School Reforms don't make the grade

From the Orlando Sentinel

by Scott Maxwell

We're hearing some interesting ideas for "reforming" schools nowadays — from a legislator's desire to grade parents to gubernatorial advisors who want taxpayers to cut checks for home-schoolers.

So I thought maybe we should look closer at these ideas — and run them by the region's top school officials.

Let's start with the home-schooling.

Gov. Rick Scott's educational advisers are talking about redirecting public-school money to parents who home-school their kids.

Want specifics? Too bad. Our governor isn't much into such things. Scott's office didn't respond to a request for more details.

But let's think about this for a minute.

You take a dirt-poor mother of three and offer her vouchers — say $5,000 a kid — if she wants to "home school" her children.

So she can send them to public school and get nothing. Or she can keep them at home and collect 15 grand to spend on who-knows-what.

"How would we know that money would be used for the student?" asked Osceola School Board Chairman Cindy Hartig:

"Think of the drugs you could buy with that," said Seminole County School Board Chairman Dede Schaffner.

Obviously the majority of parents wouldn't do such a thing. But the bigger question is still there: Where's the accountability?

We have politicians obsessed with standardized tests to prove results. And yet now they're talking about just giving school money to anyone who wants it?

The real goal seems to be the continuing effort to de-fund traditional public education in this state. Lawmakers would rather give money to private schools, charter schools, virtual schools — apparently even home schools — than meet the constitutional requirements of a properly funded school system.

"Public education would lose," said Candace Lankford, the Volusia County board member who leads the Florida School Boards Association. "And students wouldn't necessarily gain."

Parents are, of course, free to home-school their kids. But they shouldn't expect to tap into money that was collected for public schools. (And by the way, the same goes for you retirees who attended public schools up North but gripe about paying taxes for schools down here. It's called a society. And you're part of it whether you like it or not.)

Now, on to grading parents.

The concept behind Polk County Republican Kelli Stargel's bill is decent enough. She wants more parents to be involved with their kids' education.

Amen. Who doesn't? President Barack Obama gave voice to that sentiment just last week, saying in his State of the Union speech that "responsibility begins not in our classrooms but in our homes."

But Stargel's demand that teachers start labeling some parents "unsatisfactory" is unsatisfactory itself.

Most school officials were troubled by several aspects of the proposal — including the presumptuous nature of a teacher, who may know nothing about a parents' work schedule or home life, labeling parents a failure.

Volusia County schools Chairman Stan Schmidt (also a Republican) doubted the bill would even be taken seriously. "What would happen to parents who receive poor grades?" Schmidt asked. "Is the state willing to fine the parents? Require them to take parenting classes? Take away the children?"

And while we're asking questions, I have another one for Rep. Stargel: Why are legislators in this state obsessed with butting their noses into other people's business?

You people scream bloody murder about "federal intrusion" — but try to control everything from term limits for city councils to tax rates for county commissions.

And now you're trying to dictate policies that should be set by local school boards.

You have more than enough of your own problems.

Besides, the latest test scores and graduation rates suggest things are actually improving in Florida's schools.

Leave the school policies to those who were actually elected to handle them.

As Seminole's Schaffner said: "We are the closest to the issues. Let us do our job."

If Tallahassee lawmakers want to do something productive, they could properly fund our schools in the first place. That would be better than ideas that are heavier on shtick than substance.

Scott Maxwell can be reached at smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6141.

NCLB responsible for the dumbing down of America

I think I wrote about this three yeas ago. -cpg

From the Hill.com

by Emmanuel Touhey

President Obama placed special emphasis on education in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, mentioning it 10 times in all. With Congress set to renew the ‘No Child Left Behind’ law this year, The Hill’s Comment Editor Emmanuel Touhey sat down Thursday with Education Secretary Arne Duncan here in Washington, D.C. They discussed the approach Congress should take to overhauling the law, school vouchers, the DREAM Act and proposed rules governing for-profit colleges and universities.

The Hill: ‘No Child Left Behind’ is up due for reauthorization this year. What exactly do you want to see fixed in the law?

Secretary Duncan: There are a number of things that I think are broken with the current law that working in a bipartisan way we can have common sense fixes. I think the law is too punitive, too prescriptive, it’s led to a dumbing down of standards, and it’s led to a narrowing of curriculum. We need to fix all of those things. We have to reward success, reward excellence, look at growth and gain, not just absolute test scores. We have to be much more flexible. When I ran the Chicago public schools, I almost had to sue this department for the right to tutor my children after school. It made no sense why I had to fight this department to help kids who wanted to learn after school, so we have to really get out of the way there. We have to continue to raise standards. We’ve seen 40 states provide leadership, and do that, and we need to provide a well-rounded curriculum, so reading and math are important, but science, social studies, dance, drama, art, music, foreign languages, physical education, all those things. We want the new law to be fair, to be focused to be flexible. And we think we can do these things working together this year.

The Hill: You said recently that education reform is a chance for bipartisan governing. Education is something that both parties have rallied around, but in the current climate where there is a lot of talk about budget cuts, do you think that is possible?

Secretary Duncan: I do think it’s possible. It’s possible and we want to continue to invest in education, not in the status quo but in this new vision of reform in where we’re going. But I think what folks haven’t really understood is reauthorizing the law, that’s a legislative fix, that doesn’t cost a nickel. There is no price tag attached with that. So these are two separate conversations, and we need to have them both and we need to have them at the same time, but fixing the law, we need to do and we need to do now, and there’s no dollars attached to doing that.

The Hill: Are there any programs that you would like to see actually cut that you think are not necessary now?

Secretary Duncan: We’re making some very tough calls on our budget. We’re looking to consolidate 38 programs into 11. We’re trying to streamline, we’re trying to become much more efficient and focus scarce resources in those areas that are making the biggest difference. And we hope Congress will understand that while we’re looking for an increased investment in education, we’re trying to do business in a very tough way and make some tough choices ourselves.

The Hill: Are you in favor of one single bill, or several small bills?

Secretary Duncan: I’m open to that conversation. What I’m interested in is getting to the right outcome, and whatever the best way to get to the finish line makes sense. I don’t think we need another thousand-page, thousand-pound bill. Maybe we do it in 100 pages, and do it in a way that folks can really understand it and be thoughtful on it. Whatever it takes to get there, what I want to get is to the right finish line. We did a national conference call Wednesday with Senator Harkin, Senator Enzi, Senator Alexander, they were very, very positive on this. And the goal is to get a bill to the President before the recess in August. And there are a lot of reasons why it may not happen, but if you ask me today, I’m actually very hopeful.

The Hill: As a practical matter, which do you think would be better, doing a number of small bills – John Kline in the House has talked about that possibility.

Secretary Duncan: Yeah he’s talked about that. I actually was in Minnesota with Congressman Kline on Friday and we talked about that. I talked about maybe the idea of maybe doing a smaller bill, he was interested in that, and I think that conversation will continue. So I don’t know if there’s an exact right answer on it. For me it’s been very clear about where we end up, and what’s the best way to get there.

The Hill: You did spend some time with him visiting some schools in Minnesota, what did you talk about in terms of education and moving forward?

Secretary Duncan: We talked about a range of things. I just have so much respect for Chairman Kline. He’s thoughtful, he’s smart and he’s committed on this issue. We share fundamentally a need to fix the current law. He has about 26 or 27 schools in his district. Under the current law almost every single one is going to be labeled a failure in the coming year. And we went to some phenomenal schools, they’re not a failure by any stretch, any definition of what failure is. So schools that are being mislabeled, that are being stigmatized is very demoralizing to hard working teachers, very confusing to parents, and we need to work together to fix it and to do it now.

The Hill: Speaker Boehner has introduced some legislation regarding the school choice program here in the District. Are you in support of that legislation?

Secretary Duncan: I’m just really pleased that the Speaker’s really focused on education. I think the more we have these conversations that’s helpful. In the past as you know we’ve fought hard to keep children who are in those current programs, in them, not have them leave schools. We didn’t push for renewal of it. And what I’m really interested in is not just saving one or two or three children, but in turning around these chronically underperforming schools. And as you know, we’ve put $4 billion behind these efforts, these school improvement grants, and I don’t want to just save a handful of children and leave 500 in the school to drown. We want to fix the entire schools, turn them around, and that’s the focus of my efforts.

The Hill: Can you do both though? Allow his legislation, and Sen. Lieberman is also doing a similar bill, and your efforts side-by-side?

Secretary Duncan: Well I’m happy to have the conversation and continue to talk it through. Again I think the more all of us are focused on education that’s a good thing, and we’ll continue to talk with Speaker Boehner. As you know he was a real champion in the previous authorization of No Child Left Behind, worked very hard in a bipartisan way, and I think he’s going to be a crucial leader as we move forward this year.

The Hill: The Cardinal Archbishop of Washington was his guest at the State of the Union, so this seems to be something that’s important to him, I just want to press you on it. Do you think that his piece of legislation should go forward?


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•Talking with Arne Duncan
Secretary Duncan: Well I haven’t read his piece of legislation, so I don’t know the specifics. I haven’t in the past supported the continuation of the voucher program. When I got here what I fought hard to do was to keep the current students in the program and what I’m most interested in is thinking about how we help every single student in this country be more successful.

The Hill: And new students maybe coming back into it, at the moment you’re not willing to go there?

Secretary Duncan: We hadn’t supported that in the past. Again my focus has been on these school improvement grants to significantly fix the schools here in D.C. As you also know D.C. is one of the places that won our Race to the Top grant, so we’re very heavily invested here in transforming the entire school system in D.C. Again not just saving one or two children.

The Hill: What do you say to the parents who have been invested in those programs themselves, that live in the District, that can’t because you don’t support that legislation as of now?

Secretary Duncan: Again, every family, every student that was in that program, we absolutely fought hard to keep them in that program.

The Hill: But new people that want to go in.

Secretary Duncan: Right, well we want to, I’m repeating myself here now, fix the entire program to make the District a high performing District.

The Hill: The DREAM Act almost made it in the last Congress, but didn’t. The president talked rather passionately about immigration in the State of the Union, you’ve also described it as personal to you. Can you elaborate on why the DREAM Act is personal to you?

Secretary Duncan: I will and I’ll also say how disappointed I am that it didn’t pass. I mean it was a big step in the right direction but ultimately this has to pass. When I ran Chicago’s public schools, I had about 400,000 students in my system. About a third of them, more than 100,000, were from the Hispanic community. Many of those were people who came to this country as 4- or 5- or 6-year-olds with their families, don’t have status. In my school system they worked extraordinarily hard. They got good grades, stayed in school, were often on the student council, were community leaders, played on sports teams, served in the neighborhood. And then when it was time for them to graduate, the dream of going to college wasn’t there for them. And that was just absolutely heartbreaking to me. That students who hadn’t committed any crimes, who had done nothing wrong, had done quite the opposite, quite the contrary, have played by all the rules, have been assets, for us to not take advantage of their skills and talents as a community and as a country, is absolutely backwards to me. And my wife and I set up a small, we don’t have much money, but we set up a small scholarship program to help some of these students. We had one young man who graduated from high school, was working 40 hours a week at a gas station trying to pay his tuition, the full freight at the University of Illinois-Chicago, it made no sense to me whatsoever. We should all work hard in college. I know I had a job in college, but you shouldn’t have to work 40 hours a week pumping gas to try and pay your tuition. And I just think as a country we’re leaving tremendous talent on the sidelines at a time when we need every smart, talented, innovator, entrepreneur, and to deny this community the chance to go to college is fundamentally backwards.

The Hill: So what happens now?

Secretary Duncan: I’ll do whatever I can to help this come back. I don’t know timing, I don’t know what the next move is, but I was just deeply, deeply disappointed that it didn’t pass.

The Hill: Have you had any conversations with the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the House, Lamar Smith or others on the Republican side of the aisle to moving this?

Secretary Duncan: I haven’t had a conversation with him directly. I have had conversations with folks from both sides of the aisle, and I just think as a country we missed a real opportunity to strengthen our nation by helping more young people go to college.

The Hill: Final question for you is on the lawsuit from the Association for Private Sector Colleges. What’s your reaction?

Secretary Duncan: We’re happy to continue working with them, and I’ve said repeatedly that our ultimate goal in this country is to see many more young people graduate from college, the president has drawn a line in the sand, he’s said by 2020 we need to again lead the world in college graduation rates, and that’s really the north star of all of our work. We think the vast majority of for-profits do a very good job of helping people get back on their feet and retrain or retool and get skills to be competitive in the global marketplace today. We have unfortunately some bad actors that have taken advantage of folks and left them with tremendous debt and without the skills they need to be successful. And so as we work through all of this, we want to really draw that line in supporting those folks who are doing great work, but also letting those know that where they’re abusing this situation, that where they’re taking advantage of taxpayer money, that where they’re taking advantage of disadvantaged folks who are trying to better their lives, and leaving them in a worse position and not a better one, that we simply can’t tolerate that.

The Hill: Any final words as we close on the possibility of cuts that are been talked about?

Secretary Duncan: These are very tough economic times, but there’s nothing more important than continuing to dramatically improve the condition of education. You saw in the State of the Union how passionate and how committed the president is on this issue. I don’t know if you’ve seen the president anytime ever talk so thoroughly and from the heart about education in a State of the Union Address. We want to work hard together and in a bipartisan, bicameral way, to improve the quality of education and to help our country get where we need to go.

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/the-administration/140977-interview-with-education-secretary-arne-duncan