Florida Privatizer Stumps for Bennett

Patricia Levesque is a proponent of online learning schools and is a Florida associate of Jeb Bush. She is definitely not a friend of public education and is a supporter of Indiana's Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett.

The Nation has an article titled Online Learning Companies Bought America's Schools, as well as an interactive national map, The Privatization of Education, showing how charters and online schools are making inroads against regular public schools.

Levesque has been a strong player in the privatization movement in Florida. The Nation wrote,

Patricia Levesque, a top adviser to former Governor Jeb Bush, spoke to fellow reformers at a retreat in October 2010. Levesque noted that reform efforts had failed because the opposition had time to organize. Next year, Levesque advised, reformers should “spread” the unions thin “by playing offense” with decoy legislation. Levesque said she planned to sponsor a series of statewide reforms, like allowing taxpayer dollars to go to religious schools by overturning the so-called Blaine Amendment, “even if it doesn’t pass…to keep them busy on that front.” She also advised paycheck protection, a unionbusting scheme, as well as a state-provided insurance program to encourage teachers to leave the union and a transparency law to force teachers unions to show additional information to the public. Needling the labor unions with all these bills, Levesque said, allows certain charter bills to fly “under the radar.”

Levesque runs a lobbying firm in Tallahassee which lobbies on behalf of ed-tech companies. The advice above, however, was given to

a group of education philanthropists at a conference sponsored by notable charities like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. Indeed, Levesque serves at the helm of two education charities, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a national organization, and the Foundation for Florida’s Future, a state-specific nonprofit, both of which are chaired by Jeb Bush. A press release from her national group says that it fights to “advance policies that will create a high quality digital learning environment.”

Despite the clear conflict of interest between her lobbying clients and her philanthropic goals, Levesque and her team have led a quiet but astonishing national transformation.

A "national transformation" which encourages privatization.

Levesque sent the following mass e-mail, trying to raise out of state support for Bennett. We need to respond. Following the letter from Levesque is a list of talking points which explains why our legislators should not support Tony Bennett. Below the talking points are the names and emails of the members of the Select Commission on Education.

Letter From Levesque

Friends,

We need your help. I know you all are very busy, but if you could spare 15 minutes to write a few emails, we would be extremely grateful.

Tony Bennett, Indiana’s incredible reform-minded leader in education is getting a lot of “friendly fire” pushback on Indiana’s education reforms.

The Legislature has formed a Select Commission on Education which will have its first meeting on Tuesday and will meet for several weeks. While the public message is that this Select Commission is to get an update on the state of the reform policies and the implementation process, behind the scenes we have learned that the legislature will likely rake Tony over the coals. A lot of this is the normal tension between the legislative vs. executive branch. However, some of this hostility is due to legislative allies of charter schools who are concerned with the strong accountability Tony is putting in place to ensure all public schools, including charter schools are effectively educating their students.

Legislative leaders do not realize that thanks largely to Tony’s leadership and vision, Indiana is a national leader for reform. States across the nation are watching what Indiana is doing and trying to replicate or, to use Louisiana as an example, supersede them. If they force Tony to turn back the clock on the reforms – including school accountability, reading, school choice and teacher reforms – there will be national consequences.

Would you take a moment to email the commission members (attached is a list of the email addresses for the commission members)? The message should be focused on policy, not the person of Tony Bennett. But it would be good for these members to hear from folks outside of Indiana that what Indiana is doing is important. They must stay the course. Indiana’s students need them to; other states who want to follow Indiana’s lead need them to.

Even if you can’t support Tony/Indiana’s reforms as an organization, if you would write a personal email stating that as a citizen watching education reform across the country that you hope they stay strong, that would be greatly appreciated.

Please join us in supporting Tony and Indiana’s education reforms.

Let us know if you have any questions. Please feel free to email the members directly, but if we can be helpful in getting the letters to them, we are happy to do so. If you would like to copy us when you send your emails that would be great. We want to let Tony’s team know the volume of support that these legislative members will be receiving.

Thanks,

Patricia

Ps. Here is a link to the official committee page and meeting notice http://in.gov/legislative/interim/committee/sedu.html

Also, here is a really short summary of the work Tony has done with the Legislature as a partner in the past 3 years. Feel free to pick out issues to include in your emails.

• Modernizing the teaching profession – including alternative routes to certification for teachers, tying student data to teacher evaluations, eliminating LIFO and ending tenure as they know it
• Complete overhaul of the state funding formula
• Statewide scholarships for low-income students to go to the private school of their choice
• Charter school expansion and accountability
• A-F school grade accountability
• Reading for learning – a focus on early literacy and end to social promotion in the third grade

Talking Points

Here are some talking points you may use in your email to legislators regarding the Indiana Department of Education's policies. Feel free to leave comments adding additional ideas.

• There is no evidence to show that data driven teacher evaluations have any bearing on teacher quality. If one teacher has all AP classes with highly motivated students and another teacher has special needs students who are struggling to keep their heads above water, how exactly is that an adequate method to evaluate a teacher?
• "Tenure" is another issue which Dr. Bennett thinks is important. Tenure in Indiana is simply due process. Removing a teacher's job security just eliminates the teacher's ability to voice an objection to policies that he/she may think are unsound educationally. Teachers in Indiana can be removed from their positions if they are not doing their job. Administrators must, however, give teachers due process.
• Dr. Bennett's statewide "scholarships" are just another word for vouchers, which is an additional drain on already financially troubled public schools. The Superintendent of Public Instruction should be an advocate for public schools; however, it seems as though Dr. Bennett's goal is to undermine regular public schools in favor of charter and private schools.
• The IDOE states that they are expanding charter schools and making them more accountable. Only the first part of that sentence has been accomplished. Charter schools are expanding at an exponential rate, but since they don't have to accept all students and can pick and choose who may attend, they are hardly accountable. The playing field is definitely uneven.
• I-Read 3 is an example of the IDOE's lack of consideration given to the educational value of programs and the unintended consequences of poor planning. There seems to be no clarity about whether students who do not pass are to be retained in 3rd grade, a practice not supported by research, or whether they will be socially promoted and moved on to 4th grade while doing 3rd grade lessons.
• During your interim session, I hope that you will address some of these issues, and I hope that you will hold Dr. Tony Bennett and the IDOE accountable for the consequences of the policies they have instituted without thoughtful deliberation or the input of public school teachers, parents and concerned citizens.

Select Commission on Education- Indiana

200 West Washington Street, Suite 301Indianapolis, Indiana 46204-2789
Tel: (317) 233-0696 Fax: (317) 232-2554

Members:
Rep. Robert Behning, Co-Chairperson
h91@IN.gov

Rep. Rhonda Rhoads, Rep. Timothy Brown
h70@IN.gov

Rep. Edward Clere
h72@IN.gov

Rep. David Frizzell
h93@IN.gov

Rep. Kathleen Heuer
h83@IN.gov

Rep. Cindy Noe
h87@IN.gov

Rep. Jeffrey Thompson
h28@IN.gov

Rep. Greg Porter
h96@IN.gov

Rep. David Cheatham
h69@IN.gov

Rep. Clyde Kersey
h43@IN.gov

Rep. Vernon Smith
h14@IN.gov

Rep. Shelli Vandenburgh
h19@IN.gov

Sen. Dennis Kruse, Co-Chairperson
Senator.Kruse@iga.in.gov

Sen. Carlin Yoder
Senator.Yoder@iga.in.gov

Sen. James Banks
Senator.Banks@iga.in.gov

Sen. James Buck
Senator.Buck@iga.in.gov

Sen. Luke Kenley
Senator.Kenley@iga.in.gov

Sen. Jean Leising
Senator.Leising@iga.in.gov

Sen. Scott Schneider
Senator.Schneider@iga.in.gov

Sen. Earline Rogers
S3@iga.in.gov

Sen. Frank Mrvan
s1@iga.in.gov

Sen. Timothy Skinner
s38@iga.in.gov

Evaluate Pediatricians using Child's Growth?

Parents Across America suggests that using a Value Added Model for evaluating teachers is like using children's physical growth to evaluate pediatricians...

What’s next? Judging pediatricians on patient “growth”?

Judging pediatricians on the changes in the height and weight of their young patients as measured at their annual physicals from one year to the next makes just as much sense as using student “growth” on annual standardized reading and math tests to evaluate teachers.

But that’s just what the Chicago Public Schools will be doing beginning this fall, despite warnings from some 100 local education experts, who spoke out last week about the dangers of this evaluation model. Chicago Public Schools is rushing into a system in which test scores will soon account for up to 40% of a teacher’s job evaluation.

Click here to read the entire article.

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April 18, 2012: Question of the Day

NEIFPE has done considerable research on a number of topics regarding education. We have found a huge amount of information, yet this information has led us to ask even more questions.

Here are questions that we think you might want to ask your state legislators,
your school board members, your administrators, and the IDOE:

• With regard to IREAD, what happens to kids who don't pass?
• What are your school's plans to handle this?
• Will the 3rd grade students who do not pass be retained or will they be
  moved to 4th grade?

Get information about how to contact your legislators HERE and HERE.
Contact the Indiana Department of Education HERE.

Click the question mark below to see all our Questions of the Day or click the link in the sidebar.

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Book Review: The Shame of the Nation

The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America by Jonathan Kozol

Reviewed by Susie Berry

Jonathon Kozol has been writing about education and schools (particularly schools that support children of poverty) for more than 40 years. The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America provides compelling evidence that the poorest children in this country are being short-changed. For example when this book was written (2005), the amount of spending per pupil in Detroit was $9,576 compared to $12,825 per pupil in nearby, suburban, Bloomfield Hills. Kozol describes the horrible conditions of many schools in New York – mold, bugs, collapsing ceilings, and severe overcrowding. He quoted a letter from a child named Alliyah (an eight-year old from the Bronx) who said, “We do not have the things you have. You have clean things. We do not have. You have a clean bathroom. We do not have that. You have Parks and we do not have Parks. You have all the thing and we do not have all the thing … Can you help us?”

While making observations about the poor physical conditions of so many of these schools – and often comparing these conditions to the much better conditions of the schools in the suburbs, Kozol described teachers who were striving to do their best with kids despite all these obstacles. The descriptions of activities in classrooms and the high expectations of so many principals and teachers were heart warming. Kozol’s theme seemed to be that many principals and teachers are doing their best to be good teachers despite disturbing conditions.

Kozol and others (quoted in the book) are concerned about the discrepancies in money spent and the increase in “prescribed lessons” (He used “Success For All” as an example.) in the schools with underprivileged children. He compared that with more creative and joyful lessons in the schools with higher test scores. He sees a shift; schools are becoming segregated again – almost a case of “haves” and “have nots.” He quoted Congressman John Lewis (who was born to a family of sharecroppers in Pike County, Alabama) who spoke about the dismantling of court-ordered integration and the recent movement toward school vouchers. Lewis says that all these changes are leading us to “turn away from one another” and to “retreat into separate tribes.” This, contends Kozol, is “the shame of the nation.”

# # #

Evaluating Pediatricians like Teachers

Parents Across America suggests that using a Value Added Model for evaluating teachers is like using children's physical growth to evaluate pediatricians...

What’s next? Judging pediatricians on patient “growth”?

Judging pediatricians on the changes in the height and weight of their young patients as measured at their annual physicals from one year to the next makes just as much sense as using student “growth” on annual standardized reading and math tests to evaluate teachers.

But that’s just what the Chicago Public Schools will be doing beginning this fall, despite warnings from some 100 local education experts, who spoke out last week about the dangers of this evaluation model. Chicago Public Schools is rushing into a system in which test scores will soon account for up to 40% of a teacher’s job evaluation.

Click here to read the entire article.

~~~

Education Issues 2012 #2

Testing, Corporate Reform, Teacher Evaluation, Job Qualifications, ALEC, Arne Duncan,
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

(Click on the titles below to read the complete articles.)

Testing isn't teaching

To understand how tests and learning become enemies, imagine the impact on teachers whose job security suddenly depends on the inappropriate application of a statistical model that almost all assessment experts warn cannot validly measure teachers' performance.

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Coming Soon to a School Near You: Big Ed

Corporate America has given us Big Banks - banks too big to fail. Corporate America has given us Big Pharma - a pharmaceutical industry too big to fight. Coming soon to a school near you, courtesy of corporate America: Big Ed - a centralized education system too big to question its self-serving, profit-driven, intellect-destroying priorities.

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Stephen Krashen on Teacher Evaluations

Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California, responds to a USA Today article about evaluating teachers using test scores.

A number of studies have shown that rating teachers using test score gains does not give consistent results. Different tests produce different ratings, and the same teacher's ratings can vary from year to year, sometimes quite a bit.

In addition, using test score gains for evaluation encourages gaming the system, trying to produce increases in scores by teaching test-taking strategies, not by encouraging real learning. This is like putting a match under the thermometer and claiming you have raised the temperature of the room.

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The Tragedy of Education Transformation: Leadership without Expertise

Professional degrees in education and experience in the classroom don't matter. So say some politicians who have no professional degrees in education or experience in the classroom.

South Carolina's Superintendent of Education Mick Zais makes several claims in The State (March 25, 2012) that build on one central argument: "The most important information about teachers isn’t the degrees they have or their years of seniority. Their effectiveness in the classroom matters much, much more."

Like Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Zais has no experience teaching children in K-12 public education. This complete lack of teaching experience and degrees in the field of education is a suspect position from which to claim that these two characteristics do not matter. In fact, political appointees and elected officials sit in unique positions often above both accountability (the mantra du jour of the political elite regarding education) and qualifications—unlike the real world markets they often praise.

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Lobbyists, Guns and Money

ALEC isn’t single-handedly responsible for the corporatization of our political life; its influence is as much a symptom as a cause. But shining a light on ALEC and its supporters — a roster that includes many companies, from AT&T and Coca-Cola to UPS, that have so far managed to avoid being publicly associated with the hard-right agenda — is one good way to highlight what’s going on. And that kind of knowledge is what we need to start taking our country back.

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Condi Rice-Joel Klein report: Not the new ‘A Nation at Risk’

The report cites lots of statistics that paint public schools in the worst possible light, and continues the trend of comparing America’s educational system with that of high-achieving countries — but doesn’t note that these countries generally don’t do the kinds of things these reformers endorse. Its recommendations would lead to further privatization of public schools and even more emphasis on standardized testing.

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Flunking Arne Duncan

Diane Ravitch gives US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, a report card.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan loves evaluation. He insists that everyone should willingly submit to public grading of the work they do. The Race to the Top program he created for the Obama Administration requires states to evaluate all teachers based in large part on the test scores of their students. When the Los Angeles Times released public rankings that the newspaper devised for thousands of teachers, Duncan applauded and asked, “What’s there to hide?” Given Duncan’s enthusiasm for grading educators, it seems high time to evaluate his own performance as Secretary of Education.

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Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

Does non-fiction help children learn to read better than fiction? Maybe if you define "learn to read" as "passing a standardized test."

See also Keith Oatley's Scientific American article (Nov. 2011) Fiction Hones Social Skills.

The first article below touts a study showing that non-fiction helps students learn to read better than fiction.

Nonfiction Curriculum Enhanced Reading Skills, Study Finds

Children in New York City who learned to read using an experimental curriculum that emphasized nonfiction texts outperformed those at other schools that used methods that have been encouraged since the Bloomberg administration’s early days, according to a new study...

Howard Gardner, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, responds.

Reading Curriculums

To the Editor:

Re “Nonfiction Curriculum Enhanced Reading Skills, Study Finds” (news article, March 12): It is instructive to know that second graders who received a Core Knowledge curriculum performed better than comparison groups on measures of reading. But every choice of curriculum — and, more important, every choice of an assessment measure — entails a value judgment.

Those educators who selected a reading program that valued fictional works presumably thought that was an appropriate emphasis. It is now up to those educators to provide measures that might reveal better performances on their curriculum — for example, richer imaginations by students or a greater likelihood of reading books of any sort outside the school environment.

HOWARD GARDNER
Cambridge, Mass., March 12, 2012

...and Neuroscience responds...

Your Brain on Fiction

Reading great literature, it has long been averred, enlarges and improves us as human beings. Brain science shows this claim is truer than we imagined.

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Book Review: Learning on Other People's Kids: Becoming a Teach for America Teacher

This is from the blog, A Teacher's Fight

Reviewed by Eileen Doherty

Book Review: Learning on Other People's Kids by Barbara Torre Veltri

I just finished reading a book about Teach for America called Learning on Other People's Kids: Becoming a Teach for America Teacher by Barbara Torre Veltri. After countless numbers of conversations about whether or not TFA is good for schools and students, I decided that I better arm myself with some factual information since I don't want to unnecessarily discredit the organization. Here are a few of my thoughts from reading this book.

One only needs a little bit of common sense to realize that placing a TFA teacher, who only has about 5 weeks of training, into an urban classroom could be a recipe for disaster. Most TFA teachers have very little to no experience working with children or being in an urban environment. The original intention of TFA was to help urban or rural districts that had a difficult time finding and placing teachers in some of the most challenging schools by taking recent college graduates, putting them through teacher training during the summer, and placing them into these classrooms for at least 2 years. I can agree that using TFA teachers is better than putting uncertified, long-term substitutes into classrooms, but TFA has transformed into what I believe is a money-making business that ultimately preys on our neediest students.

"...many core members noted that they were "teaching out-of-field" (e.g., an English major teaching eighth-grade math). More serious questions surfaced with respect to the nearly 20% of TFA novices who were assigned to teach special education with no prior training or clinical exposure to special education classrooms."

The fact that TFA teachers were being placed in special education classrooms was a shock to me. Isn't this illegal? I figure that the only way schools would get away with this "crime" is if parents of special education students were not aware of their rights or that the teacher did not hold a special education license. This is just unconscionable.

Much of the book looks at how TFA teachers learn to be teachers. Unlike traditionally trained teachers who can refer to their combined practicum and student teaching experiences when they need to figure out what and how to teach, TFA novices can only rely on their limited group teaching experience from Summer Institute and their own experiences as students. When a TFA teacher enters the classroom, they have had no experience with running a classroom by themselves. The number of mistakes and mismanagement errors will be high and the students will be the ones waiting for their "teacher" to get things figured out. They are learning on other people's children.

Personally, I don't think poorly of the individual TFA teachers. The organization put them in an unfair situation in which they do not fully understand the true difficulty of the job or how they are ultimately giving children less than what they deserve. They also have to live up to some insanely demanding expectations. Corp members are expected to take on additional leadership responsibilities in schools like sponsoring clubs and writing grants. They also are required to attend corp meetings and attend university classes. Then there is the pressure to create results and make TFA look good. They have a certain type of allegiance to the organization that has to be maintained.

"It troubles me that, regardless of my good intentions, I am contributing to the cycle of inconsistency present in my school....

But, as I try to accomplish these goals, however, I am learning to be a teacher. Herein lies the struggle. My students need experienced teachers who know what works and can implement it effectively. Instead, they have me, and though I am learning quickly, I am still learning on them, experimenting on them, working on their time."

"I went through 4 years at Harvard and nothing was as hard as this."

The most troubling part of Teach for America is that there have been many corp members who have tried to speak up about problems and suggest ways to strengthen the educational foundations and provide better support to their members, but very little has changed. "Teach for America, Inc. spends three times as much on marketing and expansion, as it does on training." Any organization that does not address educational issues cannot claim to be putting students or schools first.

Some corp members have described TFA as acting like a cult. If you are not all for it, then you are made to feel that you are a bad person. There is a strange parallel between this organization mentality and the large charter school chains like Imagine Schools. I'll save that comparison for another blog post.

Overall, this book is worth reading to really understand how TFA harms schools and children. Veltri does a nice job of weaving research and anecdotes throughout the book. I also found it quite fascinating to look at TFA's tax forms and the example of their contract with a particular school district. My only criticism is that it gets a little repetitive with some of the ideas.