Opt Out Rate On NY State Tests Goes From 5% to 20%

From Nick Reisman at State of Politics:

About one-fifth of New York students in April did not take state examinations for grades 3 through 8 in English-language arts and math, while the students that did made “incremental” progress overall in their scores, the Department of Education on Wednesday announced.

The results, released earlier this morning, showed 31.3 percent of students had “proficient” scores on the ELA examinations, while 38.1 percent had proficient results on the math tests.

...

Nevertheless, the opt-out movement did show a spike in the number of students not taking the test. In 2014, only about 5 percent did not take the test. This year, the percentage grew to 20 percent, with some school districts reporting opt-out rates as high as 89 percent.

Reisman reports that reformers like StudentsFirstNY are using the test scores as proof positive for why the state needs to “dramatically improve teacher quality.”

Unstated by StudentsFirstNY is that NYSED sets the passing scores of the state tests based upon political calculations.

They decided that 70% would fail the new Common Core state tests when they were rolled out a few years ago and the state would see "incremental" progress in the years since - and lo and behold, that's what has happened.

One area where we have seen definite progress is in the increase in opt outs - from 5% to 20%.

NYSED Commissioner Elia has promised "ramifications" for the Opt Out movement.

We shall see soon what those ramifications will be.

Diane Ravitch To Run Against Andrew Cuomo In November?

This bit of political news surprises me:

The Working Families Party is eying education activist Diane Ravitch as its gubernatorial candidate should the liberal minor party decide to withhold its backing of Gov. Cuomo, a source told the Daily News Wednesday morning.

The party has spoken to Ravitch, 75, about possibly being its nominee and she has expressed interest, the source said.

"Either way, she'll have a role at Saturday's (WFP) convention," the source said.

It's still unclear in which direction the party will go.

... 

If she runs, Ravitch's candidacy would put a spotlight on charter schools, one of the issues that appears to be a source of conflict between Cuomo and the Working Families Party.

Like the many of the party's leaders, Ravitch is an opponent of charter schools.

"Billionaires like privately managed schools. Parents are lured with glittering promises of getting their kids a sure ticket to college. Politicians want to appear to be champions of 'school reform' with charters," Ravitch wrote in the Los Angeles Times last year.

"But charters will not end the poverty at the root of low academic performance or transform our nation's schools into a high-performing system.

Working Families Party heads want nothing to do with nominating anybody on their ballot line who doesn't have the name Andrew M. Cuomo - that's quite clear.

It's also pretty obvious that many rank-and-file WFP members despise Andrew Cuomo and do not want the party to endorse Cuomo for re-election.

The problem WFP has with putting a candidate other than Andrew Cuomo on their ballot line is that if they garner less than 50,000 votes, they lose that line on the ballot next time around.

This is one of the reasons that some party leaders give for why WFP should not nominate anyone other than Andrew Cuomo - political expediency.

Putting a high profile candidate like Ravitch on the ballot line might solve that problem for WFP, as parents and teachers opposed to high stakes testing, Common Core, teacher evaluations tied to test scores and other corporate education reforms promoted by Andrew Cuomo and his corporate Democratic ilk could flock to support Ravitch in November.

It's an interesting idea, but I have a difficult time seeing the union heads who help fund the Working Families Party letting Ravitch grab the ballot slot when they have contract negotiations to do with Cuomo and they want to use the WFP endorsement as collateral.

Still, crazier things have happened in politics than WFP nominating an esteemed candidate like Diane Ravitch to run for governor.

After watching disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner jump into the 2013 NYC mayoral race, grab the lead in at least one poll, then suffer through a second scandal when it turned out he actually hadn't stopped sexting when he said he had, I'm ready to believe just about anything can happen in politics.

So Ravitch on the Working Families Party ballot line to take on Andrew Cuomo in November?

Let's do it!

Does The Obama Administration Have A "Starr Group" Out To Destroy Joshua Starr?

Valeria Strauss reported in the Washington Post that two members of the USDOE, including Arne Duncan himself, lobbied against Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Joshua Starr for the NYC schools chancellor position.

Duncan and Company don't like Starr because he has called for a three year moratorium on high stakes standardized testing and has expressed skepticism around the validity of the test score-based Obama/Duncan education reform agenda.

A few years ago, Mike Klonsky wrote a post about the USDOE's "Ravitch Group," a secret propaganda coterie within the USDOE that followed education reform critic Diane Ravitch and worked behind the scenes to damage her credibility and reputation.

At the time, a Duncan spokesman laughed at the claim, saying that that rumors of a "Ravitch Group" created by Duncan to dish dirt on Diane ought to be put on the shelf next to rumors of "Black Helicopters."

This year, we learned that the Duncan USDOE indeed had a secret Ravitch Group out to dish dirt on Diane because a former assistant secretary of education in the Duncan DOE admitted it in a blog post at Huffington Post:

With the acknowledgement today from former Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach in the U.S. Department of Education, Peter Cunningham, that he had the job to "monitor criticism of our policies and develop our responses" and "one of the people I monitored pretty closely was Diane Ravitch," Klonsky's post about Duncan's "Ravitch Group" rumors turns out to be very, very prescient.

Turns out Duncan did indeed have a "Ravitch Group" that was "monitoring" her "pretty closely" and developing responses to her criticism (i.e., dishing dirt to Duncan- and Obama-friendly journalists like Jonathan Alter and David Brooks to use in their columns on education reform.)

At the time of the Cunningham revelation, I wrote

They may not have called this an "enemies list" or anything like that, but this pushback strategy within Duncan's DOE is indeed Nixonian in breadth and scope.

Somebody ought to ask Arne Duncan about the "Ravitch Group" again.

Why is Ravitch so threatening to Arne and his Merry Men and Women in Reform at the USDOE that they have convened a group to target her, a group that still seems to be functioning, given the anti-Ravitch piece Cunningham posted at Huffington Post as a preemptive strike before her new book on education reform is published? 

Well, we know why Ravitch is so threatening to Duncan and Company - she articulates credible opposition and criticism of their reform agenda and represents a huge threat to their hegemony in the education messaging wars.

Starr is a huge threat to the Obama/Duncan/Gates/Broad agenda as well, having worked as a fairly high profile schools superintendent in a district that had a teacher evaluation system in place that was both well-regarded and not test-score based.

In addition, Starr has called for a three year moratorium on high stakes standardized testing, a direct threat to the Obama/Duncan/Gates/Broad agenda, which cannot allow the high stakes tests to ever disappear, since these so-called accountability measures are the way they try and ratchet up the "Public Education Is In Crisis!" meme that allows them to drive their radical reform agenda.

So it's not a surprise that Duncan and other members of his USDOE lobbied against Starr getting the top schools job in NYC - Starr represents a serious threat to their agenda and they don't want him pushing his own agenda in a high profile place like NYC.

But in addition to the pushback from Duncan and Company as reported by both Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post and Rachel Monahan at the NY Daily News, there have been other hits against Starr.

The NY Post, for example, launched an attack against Starr last month when they published a story alleging Starr oversaw a school district rife with widespread sexual abuse of students by teachers that he failed to crack down.

I wrote at the time that it was odd the Post was hitting Starr for failing to "aggressively" crack down on so-called pedophile teachers abusing students when the article only reported one incident of abuse.

But of course there was a reason the reform-friendly Post went after Starr:

And then we get to the meat of why Starr was attacked by the Post:

Formerly the director of school performance and accountability for New York City public schools, Starr is considered a favored candidate of the teachers union for the chancellorship.

This slimy attack from the Post comes on the heels of the Daily News report that the Obama administration is lobbying against Starr because he is anti-testing.

The attacks from the Obama people and now Murdoch shows how threatened the reformer camp feels over the possibility of Starr as NYCDOE chancellor.

In today's Washington Post article reporting that Duncan and other USDOE employees lobbied against Joshua Starr behind the scenes, there is the following comment from someone named Lilly41:

My guess is that the future mayor of NYC based his decision on information other than that from the USDOE. Dr. Starr is probably embarrassed and now trying to spin the negative outcome of his application.

From what I've heard, Josh should focus on being effective in Montgomery County. Some have said that he is in over his head.

Love the vague accusation that Starr is in over his head, hasn't been doing a good job in Montgomery County schools, etc.

It's a classic hit comment - anonymous, with vague accusations, and nothing documented.

Has all the earmarks of somebody looking to undercut Starr and destroy his credibility - like a USDOE or Gates Foundation employee working behind the scenes as a Starr Group troll.

I'm sure the Duncan DOE will laugh off the accusation that they may have a Starr Group out to destroy the credibility and reputation of Joshua Starr, just as they laughed off the Ravitch Group accusation from Mike Klonsky.

But we know they lied about the existence of the Ravitch Group, that they indeed did have a high level USDOE employee working to undercut Ravitch and destroy her credibility and reputation because Peter Cunningham admitted as much, that still do giving the pushback they do whenever she publishes a book or gives a speech.

It is totally plausible and completely believable that they have a Starr Group as well, especially since we know they felt very threatened by the possibility of Starr being appointed NYCDOE chancellor and worked very hard behind the scenes to ensure that wouldn't happen.

Clearly they feel threatened by Ravitch, Starr and others who oppose their reform agenda and will use any means necessary to destroy the credibility and reputation of the opposition.

There seems to have been a coordinated effort to undercut Starr and destroy his reputation so that if Duncan and Company couldn't convince de Blasio Starr shouldn't be named as chancellor, they could destroy his reputation enough to ensure that de Blasio couldn't name him to the post anyway.

De Blasio Puts Diane Ravitch On Inaugural Committee

This is a good sign:

.@deBlasioNYC puts @DianeRavitch on his inaugural committee
— Lisa Fleisher (@lisafleisher) November 30, 2013

Again, putting a few pro-traditional public school advocates on his transition team and inaugural committee does not guarantee a pro-traditional public school agenda for his administration, but it surely is a good sign.

He could have put a DFER like Resham Saujani (whom he hired as deputy public advocate) or a Students First figure on these teams.

He chose instead to put friends of traditional public schools there.

A very good sign.

Diane Ravitch Calls For Civil Disobedience Over Common Core Standards, Tests

From Newsday:

Diane Ravitch, the outspoken education historian, policy analyst and author, called on educators across Long Island Tuesday to boycott Common Core-related curricula and refuse to administer state tests as an act of defiance against the state and federal governments.

"Your community is your boss, and you do what's best for children," said Ravitch, speaking at a Hauppauge meeting that drew about 175 school superintendents and administrators from Suffolk and Nassau counties.

"Do not take the Common Core tests. Stop the testing," said Ravitch, of Southold, who wrote the critically acclaimed "Reign of Error," which defends the American education system and criticizes privatization moves as a drain on public schools. "Neither teachers or students are prepared for these tests. Stand together and there will be no punishment."

School officials did not commit to a boycott, but said they will keep pressure on the state regarding the reforms.

"I don't know if it would fly here, but there are appropriate moments for civil disobedience," said Roberta Gerold, president of the Suffolk County School Superintendents Association and superintendent of the Middle Country school district. "I would really have to think about it. I would love us to have the courage."

Because of the rising of the parents in opposition to the SED/Regents reform agenda all over this state, Sheriff Andy Cuomo is making believe like he never heard of the Common Core before John King and Merryl Tisch brought it to his attention, legislators from Long Island, Westchester and upstate are calling for changes to the testing regime and the Common Core mandates, some are calling for John King to resign or be fired.

If ever there was a time when concerted civil disobedience over the insane Common Core mandates, testing, teacher evaluations and data collection could be possible, it would be about now.

It's not something to take lightly, of course:

Michael Mensch, chief operating officer of Western Suffolk BOCES, said he believes a boycott could occur -- but only if educators had full support of school boards and their communities.

These are interesting times we are living in.

If I said to you a year ago that Cuomo would be running from his education reform agenda, King would be described by Newsday as the "besieged" state commissioner, politicians from up and downstate would be calling for King to resign and the Regents to reverse their reform agenda and parents all over the state would be up in arms over the reforms, would you have believed it?

On Name Calling In The Education Debate

My response to the Stephanie Simon article in Politico in which the reformers cry to the press about how their feelings have been hurt by that mean Diane Ravitch and those nasty education bloggers:

For years now, the education reformers have branded themselves with names like "Children First" or "Students First" for their groups, they've called teachers "special interests" and made movies where unionized teachers at traditional public schools are the villains. 

Suddenly when there is pushback from teachers sick of being scapegoated by Bloomberg, Emanuel, Klein, Rhee, Duncan, Gates et al., some of the reformers decry the negative tone in the education debate.

The education reform movement has implemented a no-compromise agenda, pushing through the Common Core, tests aligned to the CCSS, teacher evaluations based on those tests, and collection of students data that gets handed over to third party vendors whether parents like it or not. 

Had education reformers shown some willingness to compromise on that agenda, some humility in pushing that agenda, some ability to acknowledge mistakes, and less willingness to smear teachers as the villains in public education, perhaps the tone would not be so negative.

Alas, many in the education reform movement have not shown any of that. 

NYSED Commissioner John King is the perfect emblem for the reform movement - arrogant, isolated from other stakeholders, he pushes a reform agenda few want and many see as wrong.  Even as evidence mounts his agenda is harming students, he continues to push it and ignores critics and opponents.  Then when faced with parents telling him to his face in Poughkeepsie why they don't support his agenda, he gets mad at their audacity for not bowing down to his wishes, calls them "special interests" and tries to shut down future town hall meetings over Common Core until public outcry forced him to change his mind.

King sees himself as the victim here, not the aggressor.  But of course, the aggression starts with King and then, when there is a pushback, suddenly he decries the aggression from the other side.

No quarter on this stuff anymore. 

For years there was name calling from the reformers. 

For years, they have pushed through their agenda wholesale without regard for other stakeholders like students, parents or teachers who don't agree with that agenda. 

It's a cliche but it holds true here - reformers are like the guy who kills his parents, then tells the judge he deserves mercy because he's an orphan.

Why Did This Politico Story On Education Reform Disappear?

I put a Politico link on my blogroll after Stephanie Simon joined the media outlet to write about education issues.

I've never been a huge fan of the site, but Stephanie Simon's work at Reuters was excellent, so I decided if she was going to be writing education stories at Politico, a link to the site was warranted.

Last night at 10:52 PM, a story went up entitled "Do U.S. Schools Really Stink?" by Stephanie Simon that started out like this:

POLITICO Pro Report: A vocal group of contrarians is challenging the conventional wisdom…

That sounded like an interesting story to read, especially at a conventional Beltway media outlet like Politico, so I clicked on the story and got taken to -

Nowhere.

The story is gone.

Vanished into thin air.

Politico has an excerpt of it on its Pro Report page:

“The drumbeat is hard to miss: Our schools are failing. Public education is in crisis. Our students are falling further and further behind. The rhetoric comes from the left and right, from educators and politicians and lobbyists and CEOs and even Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The deep dysfunction of our public schools is said to threaten not only America’s economy but also its national security. But a vocal group of contrarians is challenging that conventional wisdom. The latest weapon in their arsenal: A new book is out this week by education historian Diane Ravitch, who argues that the biggest crisis facing public education is the relentless message that public education is in crisis. It’s a debate with broad power to shape the nation’s $600-billion-a-year investment in public education. Where’s the truth? That’s not always easy to discern.”

There's a "Read the full story" link after the excerpt, but that link also goes nowhere when you click on it.

Did anybody see the story before it disappeared from the Internet?

Does anybody know why it has disappeared?

Was it accidentally posted too early and taken down for a later posting or did Politico editors take it down for other "editorial" reasons?

I have to admit, when an education story starts out with the sentence "A vocal group of contrarians is challenging the conventional wisdom…" and focuses on Diane Ravitch's new book on the reform movement, I get a little suspicious when it disappears.

There are a lot of entrenched education reform interests these days feeling under the gun from Common Core opponents, anti-testing advocates, and other critics of corporate-style education reform and I wouldn't be surprised if one of those entrenched corporate education reform interests tried to have something they didn't like about the contrarians to education reform taken down.

Maybe nothing nefarious happened here, maybe the story simply was pulled because it was posted too early (as supposedly happened with an Anthony Weiner story posted by the NY Times during the Democratic primary campaign.)

Still, let us hope the story returns.

I would like to read it and I bet a lot of other people would too.

Reign Of Error - Diane Ravitch's New Book

Diane Ravitch has a new book out today.

It's called Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools and you can purchase it here.

There will be many reviews in the education blogosphere today for the book and you should try and read as many as you can, post them on Facebook, Twitter and the like.

The book deserves to be read far and wide.

In a defense I wrote of Ravitch and her book after the NY Post launched a vitriolic attack against her, I wrote the following:

In the book, which I just finished reading, Ravitch very carefully lays out the history of the education reform movement going back to "A Nation At Risk" and shows how the underlying linchpin to so much of the rhetoric, so many of the reforms, has been to undercut the public schools in people's minds and promote choice, vouchers, merit pay, online schools. Teach for America, and charters.

Ravitch then presents the problems with the reforms promoted by the corporate education reform movement, shows how they never have worked and presents real reforms that while costly and not 100% guaranteed (because nothing in life is 100% guaranteed), work in the places they are applied - early childhood education, schools with full and rich curricula, experienced teachers and school staff, rich full programs in the arts, fully-funded libraries, well-maintained school campuses, wrap around services for physical and emotional health, and small class sizes.

You can read the rest of that review here.

Buy the book.

Read the book.

Link to the book.

Help people outside of the education blogosphere, outside of education activism, to learn about the hoax that is being perpetrated on America by the reformers.

I'm getting a couple of copies for my family to read, since many of them only know about education issues from watching Oprah or The Today Show.

Those are the people we want to read this book and to become familiar with Ravitch's arguments.

Those are the people the reformers want to keep fooled into believing charter schools, merit pay, online schooling, firing teachers and all the other corporate reforms they are promoting make the system better rather than push it toward their ultimate goal - privatization.

NY Post Launches Attack Against Diane Ravitch In Review Of Her New Book

There have been attacks against Diane Ravitch in the past, but the one by Kyle Smith in the Post is particularly vicious.

Ravitch has a new book out entitled “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to Public Schools.”

Smith, in his review of the book, accuses Ravitch of making stuff up, ignoring scientific evidence, being a hair-shirt-wearing zealot, engaging in nepotism and taking bribes from the teachers unions.

It's a hit piece that uses harangue, invective and personal attacks to try and destroy her arguments that the education reform movement is actually a privatization movement.

Smith never really engages with her arguments, however.

In the book, which I just finished reading, Ravitch very carefully lays out the history of the education reform movement going back to "A Nation At Risk" and shows how the underlying linchpin to so much of the rhetoric, so many of the reforms, has been to undercut the public schools in people's minds and promote choice, vouchers, merit pay, online schools. Teach for America, and charters.

Ravitch then presents the problems with the reforms promoted by the corporate education reform movement, shows how they never have worked and presents real reforms that while costly and not 100% guaranteed (because nothing in life is 100% guaranteed), work in the places they are applied - early childhood education, schools with full and rich curricula, experienced teachers and school staff, rich full programs in the arts, fully-funded libraries, well-maintained school campuses, wrap around services for physical and emotional health, and small class sizes.

Smith says Ravitch ignores all the successes the reform movement is having.  He trots out all the old reform cliche favorites in his review - charters outperform traditional public schools in NYC (apparently he missed the new Common Core test score results - they didn't outperform traditional public schools), teacher tenure means a lifetime job (he says very few teachers are fired because of teacher tenure protections but fails to note the overall attrition rates in the profession that often means schools have almost whole new staffs every few years), charter schools are just like public schools - just freed from "union red tape"( actually they're also freed from the same rules and regulations that public schools are forced to operate under, like taking every student who applies, evaluating teachers using test scores, etc.), and if we just fire the bottom 5%-8% of teachers, we can improve student performance (this stack ranking system hasn't worked at G.E. or Microsoft or any other place it's tried, but reformers sure are going to try and use it in school systems anyway!)

Smith then goes with a whole section of personal attacks on Ravitch, quoting from or referencing Arne Duncan, Jonathan Alter, Steven Brill and a New Republic hit piece.

These attacks serve only to try and marginalize Ravitch as a crazy person, a zealot, and in the case of the New Republic attack, corrupt and vengeful.

They have no place in the Post review, but since the whole Smith review is just vitriol masking as a rebuttal of Ravitch's book, I see why the writer has so many there.

That the Post published an attack on Ravitch that is this personal and this fraudulent just goes to show how much she and her arguments are getting under the skin of the corporate reformers.

A few years ago, every time you saw an education story in the news, it almost always contained a corporate reform agenda frame to it.

But that is no longer the case these days, as the reform agenda narrative about charters, choice, merit pay and the like gets challenged.

Diane Ravitch is not the sole reason why the reform agenda gets challenged these days in the media and the culture, but she is certainly a large part of the reason why because she has been the most prominent and outspoken in her challenges to the reform movement and those promoting it.

It is clear from the viciousness of the personal attacks against her that the corporate education reformers and their allies in the corporate media are not taking her critiques lightly.

In a strange way, the more vicious they get, the clearer it becomes that the arguments against the corporate reform agenda made by Ravitch and other critics are starting to take hold.

Ravitch wrote on her blog that she knew she was going to be in for some harsh attacks against her when her book was published.

She was right.

I am part of a group of education bloggers given advanced copies of the book for review.

I am supposed to hold my review of the Ravitch book until Tuesday when the book will be published.

This post isn't really a review of Ravitch's book so much as a rebuttal of Kyle Smith's vicious review in the Post of the Ravitch book.

I didn't think the Smith piece should stand out there until Tuesday without some pushback.

Diane Ravitch's book is well-written, well-researched (apparently Kyle Smith missed all the endnotes and charts at the back that document the points Ravitch makes in the book), and, in the end, leaves you convinced that we must improve both schools and social conditions for children, that schools cannot and should not be expected to solve all of society's ills, that schools are simply reflections of the larger society and community around them.

It leaves you convinced that every child, regardless of class or circumstance, should go to a school with a full curriculum that includes history, civics, literature, foreign languages, physical education, math and science.

Every child should have a chance to sing and dance, write and act, sculpt, design and build, learn an instrument and enjoy cultural activities.

Every child deserves to learn more than the basic skills schools often teach them (a consequence of the accountability "sticks" in NCLB and RttT), every child deserves the opportunity to develop their individual talents. 

Every child needs a motivation to come to school, not out of fear, not as a duty, but because she/he wants to come, because there is something enriching, valuable and worthwhile in school for that child.

Every child deserves to have a well-qualified, well-prepared teacher who is not forced to teach from a script but is given autonomy to teach the curriculum as she/he sees fit.

Every child deserves to go to a school with small class sizes so that she/he is not just another piece of data.

Gee, those seem like reasonable, sensible and indeed, worthwhile reforms to pursue in the school system.

I guess Kyle Smith, employed by edu-entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch, doesn't see it that way, however.

Know A Man By The Enemies He Makes

NYC Educator says if Weingarten, Bloomberg and Wolfson don't like de Blasio, there may be something to him.

I think he makes a good point.

Diane Ravitch made some good points in her endorsement of de Blasio as well.

Let's see - Ravitch for, Weingarten/Wolfson/Bloomberg against.

Hmm, which side am I on...

Randi Weingarten Attacks Bill De Blasio Over Pre-K Plan

Fresh from stealing a microphone from a 9 year old so that she could do what she does best - get the spotlight on herself and talk - Randi Weingarten tried to grab the spotlight again today by attacking  Bill De Blasio as an impractical dreamer:

Former city Controller Bill Thompson on Monday deployed national teachers' union boss Randi Weingarten to pooh-pooh Bill de Blasio’s plan to fund pre-K with a tax hike on the wealthy as a “great soundbite” -- and little else.

“When you put out a plan that basically says, ‘We’ll raise money from the rich so that we can actually fund pre-K’ when Albany has already called it dead on arrival’... it sounds non-serious,” said Weingarten, who headed the United Federation of Teachers when Thompson ran the now-defunct Board of Education.

“It sounds like it’s a talking point,” continued Weingarten, who repeatedly praised de Blasio's "idealism" during a conference call with reporters but said Thompson would be the mayoral manager who could put together a plan to achieve real change for the schools before going hat in hand to the State Capitol.

Well, if anybody should know what am empty soundbite and talking point sounds like, it's certainly Randi Weingarten.

Let's revisit Weingarten offering some empty talking points and soundbites of her own after she stole the microphone from Asean Johnson yesterday at the commemoration of the March on Washington:



How's that for empty rhetoric spewed by someone loaded with talking points and little else?

As for Weingarten's point that de Blasio won't be able to get Albany approval for his tax hike on rich people (a claim that was made in the NY Times endorsement of Quinn and is now quickly becoming CW), the de Blasio campaign had a quick response:

De Blasio on Monday parried the attack in part by unveiling an endorsement from education historian Diane Ravitch, who in a campaign release specifically cheered the idea of gleaning more money to fund pre-K by taxing high earners.

A spokesman for de Blasio, who’s jumped to the head of the primary pack in recent polls, noted "every one of the past three mayors has won approval for local income tax increases for New York City.”

In continuing response to Weingarten's brush-off, de Blasio rep Dan Levitan added, “if you're not prepared to be ambitious on behalf of saving a generation of kids and millions more from a 'Tale of Two Cities,' you shouldn’t be running.”

Hey, that's a pretty good three-pronged response.

Well, Randi, Diane Ravitch likes my idea.

The last three mayors have gotten approval from Albany for tax hikes.

And if we're not going to go big for kids, what should we go big for?

Pretty good response from the de Blasio campaign.

Your move, Randi.

Mike Klonsky Was Right - Duncan DID Have A "Ravitch Group"

Remember back in 2011 when Mike Klonsky posted about rumors that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had convened a "Ravitch Group" to dig up dirt on Duncan critic Diane Ravitch and feed it to the press to undercut her credibility and damage her public standing?

I remember - I even blogged about it at NYCEducator.com in a post called "Arne Duncan's Dirty Tricks" back on August 6, 2011.

At the time, Duncan's spokesperson, Justin Hamilton tweeted that rumors of a "Ravitch Group" created by Duncan to dish dirt on Diane ought to be put on the shelf next to rumors of "Black Helicopters."

With the acknowledgement today from former Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach in the U.S. Department of Education, Peter Cunningham, that he had the job to "monitor criticism of our policies and develop our responses" and "one of the people I monitored pretty closely was Diane Ravitch," Klonsky's post about Duncan's "Ravitch Group" rumors turns out to be very, very prescient.

Turns out Duncan did indeed have a "Ravitch Group" that was "monitoring" her "pretty closely" and developing responses to her criticism (i.e., dishing dirt to Duncan- and Obama-friendly journalists like Jonathan Alter and David Brooks to use in their columns on education reform.)

They may not have called this an "enemies list" or anything like that, but this pushback strategy within Duncan's DOE is indeed Nixonian in breadth and scope.

Somebody ought to ask Arne Duncan about the "Ravitch Group" again.

Why is Ravitch so threatening to Arne and his Merry Men and Women in Reform at the USDOE that they have convened a group to target her, a group that still seems to be functioning, given the anti-Ravitch piece Cunningham posted at Huffington Post as a preemptive strike before her new book on education reform is published?

Christine Quinn Skips Mayoral Debate On Education For UES Fundraiser

Just in case you think Christine Quinn won't treat public school parents and staff with the same contempt Bloomberg and his Tweedies treat them with, take a look at this story.

Quinn's skipping a mayoral debate on education tonight that is to be moderated by Diane Ravitch so she can raise campaign funds on the Upper East Side.

This is the kind of scornful treatment the Bloomberg administration and the Bloomberg NYCDOE have given to parents and public school teachers for 12 years now.

We don't care what you think, we don't have time to listen to what you want to say, we have to meet with some hedge fundies who are our real constituency.

Again and again, we can see the kind of mayor Christine Quinn would make by the way she is running this campaign.

A Dark Day Indeed

See here.

The firings commence next year.

So what if the teacher who started the year at the top of the value-added rankings saw her students test scores drop 5/100 of a percentage point, finished the year at the bottom 6th percentile of all teachers and is slated to be fired for being a "bad teacher"?

This is science, after all.

Carefully devised metrics meant to improve educational outcomes for students by pointing out the bad teachers and allowing the state to eliminate them from the workforce.

Uh, huh.

Tell that to the teacher ranked bottom 6th percentile because her students' test scores dropped 5/100 of a percentage point.

What Valerie Strauss Says

I can't think of anything to add to Valerie Strauss's column about Diane Ravitch today.

I do think you should read it.

Gates And Ravitch

Valerie Strauss has Diane Ravitch respond to an attack Bill Gates launched against her in a Newsweek column by Jonathan "Not To Torture Is So Pre-9/11" Alter.

Read the whole thing.

Here is a part where she responds to Gates' demonizing of teachers:

If we follow Bill Gates' demand to judge teachers by test scores, we will see stagnation, and he will blame it on teachers. We will see stagnation because a relentless focus on test scores in reading and math will inevitably narrow the curriculum only to what is tested. This is not good education.

"Last week, he said in a speech that teachers should not be paid more for experience and graduate degrees. I wonder why a man of his vast wealth spends so much time trying to figuring out how to cut teachers' pay. Does he truly believe that our nation's schools will get better if we have teachers with less education and less experience? Who does he listen to? He needs to get himself a smarter set of advisers.

"Of course, we need to make teaching a profession that attracts and retains wonderful teachers, but the current anti-teacher rhetoric emanating from him and his confreres demonizes and demoralizes even the best teachers. I have gotten letters from many teachers who tell me that they have had it, they have never felt such disrespect; and I have also met young people who tell me that the current poisonous atmosphere has persuaded them not to become teachers. Why doesn't he make speeches thanking the people who work so hard day after day, educating our nation's children, often in difficult working conditions, most of whom earn less than he pays his secretaries at Microsoft?"

I just had a discussion with another ELA teacher about the upcoming Regents exam.

We think that they are going to do to the ELA Regents exam scores what they did to the 4th-8th grade scores last year.

They have already said they're going to recalibrate them.

That means the rampant inflation of scores the state has seen the past few years is going to disappear.

Which means the scores will drop - a lot.

When the scores plummet, guess who they'll blame for the drop?

Uh, huh - teachers.

And of course as Accountable Talk has pointed out, you'll notice that they're doing all this recalibration of inflated test scores AFTER they have changed teacher evaluations and tied them to test scores.

No mistake there.

It's the fault of the teachers.

Let's fire those "bad teachers," especially the expensive vets, and replace them with those "great teachers," the cheap newbies.

And in a few years, when the newbies make a little more money, we'll call them "bad teachers" and fire them too.

And soon, if Gates and Klein and Bloomberg and other ed deformers get their way, most K-12 education will be done online anyway so it won't matter.

And that's really when you should fear for the future of the Republic.

A handful of billionaire oligarchs making all the policy calls - what do they call that again?

Is it democracy?

No, wait, it's on the tip of my tongue...oh, yeah - an oligarchy.

Or Bloombergville.

Whichever you want to call it, it's the same thing.

Bill Maher Changes His Tune On Teachers

OK, I didn't see this one coming.

Bill Maher attacked teachers last year on his HBO show. He said teachers unions were "corrupt," tenure was bad and unions perpetuated a terrible education system by protecting "bad teachers" and moving them from school to school the way the Catholic Church moved pedophile priests.

Not exactly an endorsement of teachers.

But then, almost one year to the day that he attacked teachers and teachers unions, he said this last night on his show:

New Rule: Let's not fire the teachers when students don't learn - let's fire the parents. Last week President Obama defended the firing of every single teacher in a struggling high school in a poor Rhode Island neighborhood. And the kids were outraged. They said, "Why blame our teachers?" and "Who's President Obama?" I think it was Whitney Houston who said, "I believe that children are our future - teach them well and let them lead the way." And that's the last sound piece of educational advice this country has gotten - from a crack head in the '80's.

Yes, America has found its new boogeyman to blame for our crumbling educational system. It's just too easy to blame the teachers, what with their cushy teachers' lounges, their fat-cat salaries, and their absolute authority in deciding who gets a hall pass. We all remember high school - canning the entire faculty is a nationwide revenge fantasy. Take that, Mrs. Crabtree! And guess what? We're chewing gum and no, we didn't bring enough for everybody.

But isn't it convenient that once again it turns out that the problem isn't us, and the fix is something that doesn't require us to change our behavior or spend any money. It's so simple: Fire the bad teachers, hire good ones from some undisclosed location, and hey, while we're at it let's cut taxes more. It's the kind of comprehensive educational solution that could only come from a completely ignorant people.

Firing all the teachers may feel good - we're Americans, kicking people when they're down is what we do - but it's not really their fault. Now, undeniably, there are some bad teachers out there. They don't know the material, they don't make things interesting, they have sex with the same kid every day instead of spreading the love around... But every school has crappy teachers. Yale has crappy teachers - they must, they gave us George Bush.

According to all the studies, it doesn't matter what teachers do. Although everyone appreciates foreplay. What matters is what parents do. The number one predictor of a child's academic success is parental involvement. It doesn't even matter if your kid goes to private or public school. So save the twenty grand a year and treat yourself to a nice vacation away from the little bastards.

It's also been proven that just having books in the house makes a huge difference in a child's development. If your home is adorned with nothing but Hummel dolls, DVD's, and bleeding Jesuses, congratulations, you've just given your children the gift of Duh. Sarah Palin said recently she wrote on her hand because her father used to do it. I rest my case.

When there are no books in the house, and there are no parents in the house, you know who raises the kids? That's right, the television. Kids aren't keeping up with their studies; they're keeping up with the Kardashians. We're allowing the television, as babysitter, to turn us into a nation of slutty idiots. By the way, one sign your 9-year-old may be watching too much One Tree Hill: if she has an imaginary friend with benefits.

Last night Bill Maher got it right - teachers are not the problem with the system.

We are the scapegoats.

And by saying so, he echoed what Diane Ravitch wrote on Bridging Differences last week:

I absolutely do not agree that our schools are overrun with terrible teachers; part of the goal of my book is to discredit the current knee-jerk reaction of editorialists and public officials, who blame teachers for everything that goes wrong in the schools. Blaming the teachers lets everyone else off the hook: families, the media, the popular culture, policymakers, and students themselves. The overwhelming majority of our nation's teachers are doing the best they can under difficult circumstances, with not enough support from society, parents, or the media.

I dunno if this message will resonant with too many people in the media.

It seems like every time I turn on the TV and watch the news, I see "experts" on MSNBC or CNN or CNBC talking breathlessly about our "education crisis" and blaming teachers, teachers unions and teacher tenure for the problems in education.

And every time I look at a newspaper or magazine these days, I see "journalists" like Elizabeth Green or Evan Thomas rewriting Gates Foundation pamphlets about how bad teachers are and including liberal quotes from "education reformers" from foundations funded by Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg and founded by Michelle Rhee to support their anti-teacher themes.

So I am not too optimistic that the tide has turned in the message war and people in the media will stop being reductionist about the problems with the public education system.

But it is good to hear somebody who slammed teachers just last year say this year that by scapegoating teachers, America is letting the real culprits off the hook - the culture, the parents, and the students themselves.

MLK's Dream

I saw way too many "Education Reform is the Culmination of MLK's Dream" stories and posts this year.

So apparently did Diane Ravitch.

Her response to that jive is better than anything I could say.

Here it is in full:

There is something distinctly unsettling about seeing people invoke Martin Luther King Jr.'s name to support the current effort to privatize large swaths of American public education. It has recently become customary to claim that "education is the civil rights issue of our time." True enough, for no one can succeed in our society without an education. But the people who make this claim insist that public school students should be enrolled in schools run by for-profit corporations, hedge-fund managers, and earnest amateurs, who receive public money without any public oversight. There are now about 5,000 such schools, called charter schools, across the nation, and President Obama wants many more of them. As it happens, about 98% of these schools are non-union; their teachers work 50-60 hours each week, which could not happen if they were union schools.

Today's education "reformers" think they are advancing a civil rights agenda by creating charter schools, advocating merit pay, enshrining standardized tests of basic skills as the highest measure of achievement, closing neighborhood schools, and getting rid of unions.

Was that Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream? King fought for equality of educational opportunity, not for a "Race to the Top" for the lucky few. He fought for fundamental fairness and justice for all, not for special treatment for the few. He never promoted private management of public education. When he was assassinated, he was defending the right of workers to join a union. It is impossible to imagine him standing alongside the business executives and politically powerful who demand more standardized testing, more privatization of public schools, and more schools in which teachers have no organized voice.

The biggest problem with education reform these days isn't the hedge fund managers and Wall Street types who see public education funding as another punch bowl for themselves to slurp and get fat on.

They're pretty transparent about that.

The biggest problem is these clueless two-bit celebrities jumping on the education bandwagon and regurgitating Gates Foundation pamphlets or Joel Klein speeches ad nauseum on the TV, in newspapers or the Internet.

Not sure why people seem to trust some singer on education reform more than a noted education historian with many decades experience in the education policy field, but they do.