Saving Oregon schools: Targeting the wrong areas for budget cutsh/t JH
The job of destroying America's public schools, left unfinished by No Child Left Behind, has now been taken over by our economic recession.
In nearly every state, teacher layoffs, a shortened school year, class-size increases and elimination of vital parts of the school curriculum are in progress, So far, Congress has failed to respond. Apparently our public schools, unlike Wall Street banks, are not "too big to fail." Ironically, the business community, the leading advocate of school reform in recent years, remains silent.
To make matters worse, the only assistance the Obama administration has offered to states is a Faustian bargain: Allow the unlimited proliferation of charter schools that drain the most dedicated students, their families and funds from public schools; evaluate teachers' competence by their students' scores on flawed, once-a-year state tests; and accept national standards designed by people who haven't been inside a classroom or near any kids but their own since they graduated. Then -- maybe -- we'll give you enough money to keep school buildings open.
In the face of this national disaster, the public appears to be accepting the inevitable, perhaps thinking that it's all just temporary and soon, as the recession ends, all school losses will be restored. But will they?
Most of the teachers being laid off today are the young ones, who are also the ones most likely to change course and pursue other careers. Few will come back to teaching by the time the economy recovers. We can't count on public support for school rebuilding either because the people who vote and speak up most often -- the wealthy, the retired and parents with children in private or charter schools -- won't be affected by public school cuts.
Moreover, the public memory is short. A couple of years from now, hardly anyone will remember that schools once taught history, science, music and physical education, just as they've already forgotten that schools used to have nurses, art teachers and librarians.
Although I can't argue that states are not suffering a severe financial crisis or that big reductions in this major state budget item don't need to be made, Oregon is targeting the wrong areas. By looking for a few places where the most money can be saved with the least trouble, school leaders are about to sever vital arteries that nourish educational excellence and to miss opportunities to eliminate the real expendables in our schools.
Instead of laying off teachers, eliminating physical education and jamming more students into already crowded classrooms, the state and school districts should be targeting non-classroom personnel, delaying purchases of all textbooks and commercial materials, reducing sports and other extracurricular activities, eliminating teacher professional development programs, denying approval of additional charter schools and, above all, putting a moratorium on state tests.
Whether we like these things or not, we have to agree that they are nonessential and far more likely to be restored in the future than the people and programs that stand by all our kids every day.
Joanne Yatvin is an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Education at Portland State University.
7/3/10
Public Education: NOT Too Big To Fail
7/2/10
It Was Coercion, Not A Pledge
Arne Duncan didn't make states pledge to open more charter schools in order to get RTTT funds, he just coerced them, as pointed out by Valerie Strauss:
Correction on Ed Dept and charters
The Education Department’s press secretary e-mailed me to say that I was wrong when I wrote in a recent post that states wishing to win federal money in Duncan’s Race to the Top contest “had to pledge” to open more charter schools.
The spokesman, Justin Hamilton, said that the department did not require states to make such a pledge.
Hamilton is right. My mistake.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan did not ask states to “pledge” -- which is literally “a solemn promise or agreement to do” -- to open more charter schools.
Duncan has, of course, said that states that did not agree to open more charters would be at a disadvantage in the $4 billion competition. He wrote the following last year in an article published by The Washington Post, entited "Education Reform's Moon Shot:"
“The Race to the Top program marks a new federal partnership in education reform with states, districts and unions to accelerate change and boost achievement. Yet the program is also a competition through which states can increase or decrease their odds of winning federal support. For example, states that limit alternative routes to certification for teachers and principals, or cap the number of charter schools, will be at a competitive disadvantage.”
7/1/10
I Am Back
It was a nice break to be in the woods with my son for a couple weeks. We are home, dirty, tired and hungry. I will resume blogging in the morning.
6/20/10
Protest Arne Duncan June 25 In Los Altos
I will still be on vacation, so all of you need to go and protest the privatization and re-segregation of American public schools!!!!
6/19/10
6/18/10
$20 Billion? They Got Off Easy
From HuffPo:
BP holds enough oil in its reserves to single-handedly supply the United States for two years. It has little debt for a company of its size and makes more money than Apple and Google combined.
So when the White House arm-twisted its executives into setting aside $20 billion for the Gulf oil spill, investors weren't worried it would bankrupt BP. They barely batted an eye.
"The U.S. government will become insolvent before BP does," said Bruce Lanni, a stock analyst with Nollenberg Capital Partners.
6/17/10
Obama: The Teachers' Enemy
From Glen Ford:
The nation's unionized public school teachers are in a race for survival, whether they know it or not. Their worst enemy - the one that can do them and the public the most harm - was not George Bush, the white Republican, who called teachers' unions "terrorists." It is Barack Obama, the Black Democrat, who has taken the corporate education agenda farther than Bush could ever dream of.h/t KL
By all rights, the nation's five million unionized teachers should be in the forefront of resistance to the corporate money bags that dominate the Republican and Democratic parties. Teachers are the best-equipped for the job, in raw numbers, in depth of union penetration and, especially on the moral front: most people like and admire teachers. George Bush's Republicans were made to look like ogres when they tried to vilify teachers as a class. Yet that is precisely what Barack Obama is doing: making teachers the scapegoats and villains for all the ills that have been inflicted on the inner cities of America for the past five or six decades. Obama is having considerably more success than Bush in his offensive against teachers, mostly because teachers' unions cannot seem to recognize their enemy when he is a Democrat, and Black. [emphasis mine]
That lesson has finally been learned in Chicago, hometown of Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. Chicago's teachers, students and neighborhoods were the guinea pigs for Arne Duncan's campaign to hand over public education to corporations, when Duncan was CEO of the city's schools. Mass firings were the order of the day, decimating the ranks of Black teachers, especially. Whole communities were destabilized.
Last week, reformers finally won control of the Chicago Teachers Union, in what will hopefully set an example for teachers, nationwide. Karen Lewis, co-chair of the victorious Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators, or CORE, told the truth that so many teachers' union hacks have been avoiding: "This so-called school reform is not an education plan," she said. "It's a business plan." Lewis continued:
"Fifteen years ago, this city purposely began starving our lowest-income neighborhood schools of greatly needed resources and personnel. Class sizes rose, schools were closed. Then standardized tests, which in this town alone is a $60 million business, measured that slow death by starvation. These tests labeled our students, families and educators failures, because standardized tests reveal more about a student's zip code than it does about academic growth," said the union reformer.
And that is the heart of the matter. Public and private policies have devastated inner city America, with totally predictable results in terms of inner city student performance. And yet, what do both the Obama's and the Bush's propose? They demand more privatization, more so-called "public-private" initiatives that outsource Black and brown schools to corporations, for profit. Barack Obama and Arne Duncan learned the privatization game in Chicago. Hopefully, Chicago teachers can awaken five million union members and millions more inner city residents to the clear and present danger posed by Obama's corporate school agenda. For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
6/16/10
Bob Reich Speaks For Me
From the good doctor:
Tomorrow he’s “informing” the president of BP of BP’s financial obligations. “Informing” is what you do when you phone the newspaper to tell them it wasn’t delivered today. Why not “directing” or “ordering?”
The President distinguished what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico from a tornado or hurricane because they are over quickly while the leak is an ongoing crisis, lasting many weeks and perhaps months more. He likened it to an “epidemic.” But the real difference has nothing to do with time. Tornadoes and hurricanes are natural disasters. Epidemics occur because germs mutate and spread. The spill occurred because of the recklessness and ruthlessness of a giant oil company in pursuit of profit.
6/15/10
Senator Frank Lautenberg Introduces Smart Oil Drilling Bill
I wrote earlier that we need to drill concurrent relief wells. Now Senator Lautenberg has introduced a bill to do just that...
"My bill takes a common-sense step to contain damages that come with the inherently dangerous drilling business. If relief wells had been in place before the BP rig explosion, the gushing oil could have been stopped in weeks instead of months," Lautenberg said in a statement sent to the Huffington Post. "Clean energy that will reduce our dependence on oil is the long-term solution - but while offshore drilling continues in the Gulf and Alaska, this bill provides a proven way to contain oil spill drilling disasters. I will also continue to oppose any energy proposal in the Senate that does not protect New Jersey from oil drilling in the Atlantic."h/t JM
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