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NPE Throws Cold Water on CREDO Paper

By Thomas Ultican 7/23/2023

The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) just released another pro-charter school study, “CREDO also acknowledges the Walton Family Foundation and The City Fund for supporting this research.” It is not a study submitted for peer review and so opaque that real scholars find the methodology and data sets difficult to understand. Carol Burris and her public school defenders at the Network for Public Education (NPE) have provided an in-depth critical review.

With the new CREDO study, Education Week’s Libby Stanford said that “charters have drastically improved, producing better reading and math scores than traditional public schools.’’ Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal declared charter schools are now “blowing away their traditional school competition.” Burris retorted with “despite the headlines, the only thing ‘blown away’ is the truth.” (Page 3)

Putting a CREDO Thumb on the Scale

CREDO uses massive data sets, unavailable to other researchers, getting minuscule differences which are statistically significant. No one can check their work. They employ a unique and highly discredited statistical approach called “virtual twins” to compare public school with charter school testing outcomes. Instead of reporting the statistical results in standard deviations, CREDO uses their “crazy pants” days of learning scheme.

NPE discovered that the “blowing away” public school results amounted to 0.011 standard deviations in math and 0.028 standard deviations in reading. The minuscule difference is “significant statistically but is meaningless from a practical standpoint” according to CREDO. In a 2009 report showing public schools with a small advantage, CREDO declared, “Differences of the magnitude described here could arise simply from the measurement error in the state achievement tests that make up the growth score, so considerable caution is needed in the use of these results.”

To give these almost non-existent differences more relevance, CREDO reports them as “days of learning” instead of standard deviation. “Days of learning” is a method unique to CREDO and generally not accepted by scholars. They claim charter school math students get 6 more “days of learning” and English students, 16 days.

CREDO Days of Learning Conversions

The above chart comes from the Technical Appendix of a previous CREDO study, which reveals that Eric Hanushek and Macke Raymond used NAEP data from 2017 to create the table. No justifications for the conversions are given. It appears to be sloppy science and headlines generated by its use are unfounded propaganda.

Bad Methodology

The CREDO method does not compare charter school performance to actual public schools. It creates mathematical simulations. Professor Andrew Maul of UC Santa-Barbara stated, “The study’s ‘virtual twin’ technique is insufficiently documented, and it remains unclear and puzzling why the researchers use this approach rather than the more accepted approach of propensity score matching.”

CREDO’s stipulation that “virtual twins” comes from “feeder schools,” favors charter schools. Management expert, Andrea Gabor, explained that CREDO used less than five student transfers to a charter school as the cutoff for a particular public school’s data. She notes the “study excludes public schools that do NOT send students to charters, thus introducing a bias against the best urban public schools, especially small public schools that may send few, if any, students to charters.”

This study is singularly focused on test results as determinate of school quality. Many charter systems, like IDEA and Success Academy, spend an inordinate amount of time preparing for standardized tests. This biases results.

Professor Mark Weber of Rutgers University adds a few more observations:

“The matching variables that create the counterfactuals are far too crude to do the job properly.”
“The definition of the treatment — enrolling in a charter school — does not account for factors such as increased spending, peer effects, and other advantages which have nothing to do with ‘charteriness.’”
“The consistently small effect sizes have been pumped up by an unvalidated conversion into ‘days of learning’ which has never been properly justified by the authors.”

The NPE report highlights another source of bias for charter schools:

“In addition to their presence in a CREDO-identified feeder school, students are matched by gender, grade level, scores, race, and special education and English language learner status. Yet special education students are not a monolith. Research has consistently shown that charters take fewer special education students and enroll fewer students with more challenging disabilities than public schools.” (Page 9)

The combination of rejected methodologies, murky data studies and biases toward charter schools render the CREDO study useless. Minuscule advantages reported, favoring charter schools, indicate that in reality, public schools outperform charters.

The CREDO Story

In 1981, Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained economist, Eric Hanushek, wrote “Throwing Money at Schools.” Right-leaning philanthropies and institutions were drawn to his declaration:

“The conventional wisdom about public schools is that they face serious problems in terms of performance and that improving schools requires additional money. However, the available evidence suggests that there is no relationship between expenditures and the achievement of students and that such traditional remedies as reducing class sizes or hiring better trained teachers are unlikely to improve matters.”

In a 1981 Ed Week commentary referencing this paper, Hanushek points to SAT testing as the gold standard for judging school performance. He claims, “Advanced statistical techniques are employed to disentangle the influences on achievement of schools and teachers from those of other factors such as family backgrounds and student abilities.” This motivated him to push for teachers to be evaluated, using “value added measures”, that since have been thoroughly discredited.

At the time, he was teaching political science and economics at Rochester University and meeting his future wife, a significantly younger student, named Margret (Macke) Raymond. She completed her Rochester University political science PhD in 1985.

A 1999 announcement from the school said, “The Center for Research on Education Outcomes has been established at the University of Rochester’s Wallis Institute of Political Economy…” In the same posting, it revealed, “Two foundations have committed $1.25 million to fund a three-and one-half year initiative to address the current shortage of evaluation research in education policy matters.” CREDO never made the names of the two foundations public but a knowledgeable academic disclosed one of them was the Walton Family Foundation. It is documented that the Waltons give generously to CREDO.

The announcement listed Eric Hanushek first and Macke Raymond as founding Director.

CREDO moved to Stanford University’s Hoover Institute in July 2000 which made networking in conservative circles much easier. Their 2^nd year report stated that moving to the Hoover Institute brought many new contacts, including the New Schools Venture Fund, the District of Columbia Charter School Board, the Teacher Union Reform Network and others.

Public Schools are Superior to Charter Schools

Staffing in public schools is made up of mostly college graduates with certified state teaching credentials. Before the appearance of the billionaire-created Teach For America (TFA), nearly 100% of public school teachers had a year of teacher training and a bachelors degree or higher. A significant percentage of charter school teachers come from TFA with just five weeks of education training. Charters are typically not required to use certificated teachers.

The depth of experience in the public school teaching corps is larger than that of charter schools. A Fordham Institute article states:

“That being said, there is a bona fide but often unaddressed teacher shortage: experienced teachers in charter schools. In the United States, a third of charter teachers have fewer than three years of teaching experience, compared to only a fifth of public school teachers.”

“Comparative inexperience and youth in front of classrooms carries costs. More than any other school-related factor, a teacher’s efficacy matters most to student learning. And especially in the early years, nothing improves a teacher’s efficacy quite like experience.”

Stability is important for school-aged children and especially for those growing up in difficult home environments. In 2020, NPE conducted an in-depth look at charter schools since their inception. They discovered that charters were closing at extremely high rates; 18% by year 3, 25% by year 5, 40% by year 10 and 50% by year 15. In some cases, charters closed their doors mid-semester without warning; this never happens in public schools.

Management in public schools must meet state credentialing requirements. They focus on good pedagogy, safe schools and parent engagement. In charter schools, supervisors are often untrained in education and make return on investment, a key goal.

Safety in public schools is state-mandated but charter schools can ignore some rules. In California, all public schools must be earthquake-safe facilities. Charter schools may not heed this requirement.

In 2013, Christopher A. Lubienski and Sarah Theule Lubienski published The Public School Advantage – Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools. Nothing has happened over the last ten years that invalidates this scholarly work. Charter schools are private schools with a state contract, similar to garbage collection companies, contracting with a city. They are private companies, paid with taxpayer funds.

Charters are substandard education organizations that only survive because of marketing.

Tags: Charter schools, CREDO, Eric Hanushek, Margret (Macke) Raymond, NPE, Public Schools, testing

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Categories DPE, education

GOP Activist Attacks Teachers’ Contract

16 Jul

By Thomas Ultican 7/16/2023

On June 12 2023, San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) ratified a new 3-year contract with the teachers and paraeducators unions (San Diego Educators Association (SDEA) – California School Employees Association Paraeducators Chapter 759). Before the month ended, Todd Maddison of the conservative Parents Association placed a scathing indictment of the new contract in the Voice of San Diego. This relentless GOP led disparagement of teachers and public schools has become the standard operating procedure throughout America.

It is not obvious what Maddison wants. The headline for his opinion piece says “San Diego Unified Is Putting Adults First, Not Students.” It is incongruent with the new contract. He apparently thinks teachers are overpaid and a 15% pay raise is a theft of public money.

Contract Details

SDEA had been negotiating this 3-year deal with the district for more than a year. The last contract expired June 30, 2022. They demanded an 18% pay raise and settled for 15%.

Several other issues were also negotiated.

SDEA Chart Negotiated Pay Raise

The contract was ratified on June 12th by a 98% positive vote from SDEA members. Board Trustee Richard Barrera said, “With the agreement, we’re on our way to being able to tell young people you can pursue a career as an educator and still be able to raise a family in a place like San Diego at the same time.” He said that first-year teachers can make $64,000 a year, those in the middle of their careers $105,000 and veterans, up to $124,000.

Other issues agreed to included:

Community schools require a part-time community school coach at each campus
Elementary schools, with more than 250 students, get a counselor three days a week, those with more than 375 students get one four days a week and schools with more than 500 students get a full-time counselor
Full-time nurses remain in every comprehensive high school
Middle and high school physical education classes capped at 50 students, down from 60
Middle and high schools add a part-time restorative-justice position
Transitional kindergarten classes are capped at 24 students and first grade through third-grade capped at 29 – all were previously capped at 35
Every transitional kindergarten classroom will have an early-childhood teacher and a teacher with multiple-subject credentials
Paid maternity leave doubled to six weeks

This negotiation ended with a substantial pay raise for teachers. Students got smaller classes throughout the K-12 system and improved staffing ratios in kindergarten. Both administration and teacher negotiators actually paid considerable attention to improving the plight of students.

Yet, Maddison claimed, “San Diego Unified Is Putting Adults First, Not Students,”

More Maddison Assertions…

He opened by saying:

“Anyone who follows K-12 education will tell you we’re facing a crisis. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) numbers expose declines in academic performance to unprecedented levels …”

I follow K-12 education closely and do not see a crisis because the 2022 test scores wiggled down a few points. We just came through a pandemic and test preparation was not a priority. Give the children a chance to recover from the recent trauma and they will be fine unless faux educators convince us to do crazy things like high intensity tutoring, double math and mandatory summer school.

Maddison, the data analyst for Transparent California said:

“From SDUSD’s own payroll records, obtained using a legal public records request and posted for anyone to see on the Transparent California website, data show in 2022 the median total pay of a full time certificated employee was $102,024. For comparison, the latest U.S. Census Bureau data shows private workers with equivalent education in San Diego County made $87,784.”

His teacher salary data seems reasonable but professionals with “equivalent education” and time on the job are generally paid more than teachers.

San Diego is very expensive. Multiple rent tracking web sites report that the average two-bedroom apartment rents for over $3,200 a month. To attract and retain quality educators, a living wage is required to support more than bare survival.

Maddison writes:

“Last year, teachers had 27.8 percent of their pay contributed to their retirement. That’s a whopping 17.6 percent more than private workers, where total retirement contributions typically average 10.2 percent.”

This is disingenuous.

California teachers are not part of the Social Security system. They and their employers pay into the California teachers’ retirement system and have to contribute more to match the amount non-teachers accumulate.

He concludes his editorial claiming that SDUSD is financially unsound and quotes from the County Board of Education July 2022 response to the district’s budget proposal: “[T]he district will need to make budget reductions of approximately $129 million by fiscal year 2024-25 and an additional $53 million in 2025-26 in order to remain fiscally solvent and meet the required minimum reserve.”

On the same issue, he ignores the County’s September 2022 comment:

“The Adopted Budget shows the district will be unable to meet its multi-year financial commitments in subsequent fiscal years without additional budget solutions; however, the district’s adopted budget was developed prior to adoption of the 2022-23 state budget. Actual state budget data should be incorporated into the district operating budget and multi-year projection during the First Interim Report process. Any necessary budget reductions should be detailed and approved by the board along with submission of the First Interim Report.”

The County was not concerned with the district’s solvency. They merely stated that under the current revenue stream, the budget needed to be adjusted for future requirements. As of September 2022, without knowing how much money was coming from the state, once enrollment was finalized and state contribution known, the district was directed to make any necessary budget adjustments and report.

The Parent Association

Todd Maddison’s biography says, “Todd is also a founding member of the Parent Association and is the San Diego County Chair of the California School Choice Foundation.”

Parent Association apparently grew out of the loud, right-leaning, pandemic protest movement. They were responding to President Trump and Education Secretary DeVos who were calling for schools to be opened in person. Maddison immediately joined in the call. In 2020, a July 12^th Union Tribune article on the protest quoted him extensively.

It is true that children are less susceptible to COVID-19 infections but not immune. People working in schools, especially teachers, would be at risk, as would the children’s adult family members. On July 12 2020, with the first vaccines more than six months away, San Diego County reported 508 new infections with 2 more deaths. By November, the number of new cases was more than 1,000 per day.

On April 21 2021, the IRS granted the Parent Association tax exempt status as a charity under the 501-c3 rule (EIN 87-1693090), meaning donations are tax deductible. In July, their sister organization, the Parent Advocacy Center, was granted 501-c4 status (EIN 87-1487817). This means they don’t pay taxes but because they are a political action group, donations to them are not tax deductible.

Both organizations are registered in San Francisco, care of the James Sutton law firm, the campaign lawyers. The executive director of the Parent Association is Ginny Merrifield, a very connected operator in San Diego Republican circles and trustee of the E3 Civic High. She was also co-founder and trustee of the private and pricey Pacific Ridge School in Carlsbad, California and boardmember of governors for the $750 million San Diego Foundation. Her husband, Marshal, ran for San Diego city council as a Republican but was not elected.

When billionaire, Arthur Rock, put up hundreds of thousands to remove the San Francisco school board, Sutton and hedge fund founder Patrick Wolff of Grandmaster Capital, took the lead. Wolff founded Grandmaster Capital with seed funding from his billionaire friend, Peter Thiel. According to the hedge fund journal, they were initially brought together by a common interest in chess.

As county chair of the California School Choice foundation, Maddison campaigns for Education Savings Accounts, another name for vouchers. He writes about not being able to make the changes that failing public schools need and realized “The best way to give parents real power over school districts is to have the ability to take their money somewhere else.”

Are you sure that is not taxpayer money?

Observation

Research paper after research paper have over the last more than a decade consistently found terrible results from voucher schools. Last year, Professor Joshua Cohen wrote in the Hechinger Report, “After two decades of studying voucher programs, I’m now firmly opposed to them.”

Todd Madison and the wealthy right want to privatize public education and undermine teacher professionalism.

That is a mistake.

Public schools have been under assault by a well-funded group of oligarchs for more than 40 years. We have the best school system in the world. They are not now nor ever have been “failing.”

It is the height of foolishness to diminish this national treasure, the bedrock of American democracy.

Tags: Ginny Merrifield, James Sutton, Parent Association, San Diego Educators Association, San Diego Unified School District, Todd Maddison

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Categories education

Chartered to Indoctrinate

3 Jul

By Thomas Ultican 7/3/2023

Carol Burris and team at Network for Public Education (NPE) just published, “A Sharp Turn Right” (STR). NPE President Diane Ravitch noted there are several problems associated with charter schools’ profiteering, high closure rates, no accountability…

“This new report, A Sharp Turn Right, exposes yet one more problem — the creation of a new breed of charter schools that are imbued with the ideas of right-wing Christian nationalism. These charter schools have become weapons of the Right as they seek to destroy democratically governed public schools while turning back the clock of education and social progress by a century.” (STR Pages 3 and 4)

STR focuses on two types of charter schools. One characterizes themselves as “classical academies” and the other touts “back to basics,” without noting they also employ the same “classical” curriculum. Both provide right-wing clues on their web-sites, alerting parents of alignment with Christian nationalism. Marketing is often red, white and blue, with pictures of the American founding fathers, and discussions on patriotism and virtue. Some schools include direct references to religion like Advantage Academy’s claim of educating students in a “faith-friendly environment.”

STR further clarifies,

“These schools are distinguished by a classical “virtuous” curriculum combined with hyper-patriotism for Christian nationalist appeal. They are exemplified by charters that adopt The Hillsdale College 1776 Curriculum…” (STR Page 7)

Using keyword searches, NPE identified 273 active charter schools fitting this description and noted they surely missed more. Nearly 30% of them were for-profit; about double the rate for the charter sector in general. Almost 50% of them have opened since Donald Trump was inaugurated president in 2017. (STR Page 7)

Apparently the school founders want to turn the clock back to the nineteenth century. STR states,

“Founders of classical charters view the rejection of modern instructional practices as a selling point. Proponents of classical education vilify the progressive movement, accusing John Dewey and his followers of removing Christian ideals and redesigning schools to achieve social goals.” (STR Page 9)

It identifies the largest charter school systems indoctrinating students with Christian nationalist ideology and discloses where they are operating. Discussing, in some depth, Hillsdale College with its Barney charter schools and the large number of new charter affiliates, the report asserts:

“What they all have in common is teaching Hillsdale’s prescriptive 1776 curriculum, which disparages the New Deal and affirmative action while downplaying the effects of slavery. Climate change is not mentioned in the science curriculum; sixth-grade studies include a single reference to global warming.” (STR Page 15)

The reality is today’s taxpayers are forced to pay for schools teaching a form of Christianity associated with white superiority; politically indoctrinating students with specific rightist orthodoxy. What happened to the principal of separation of church and state? This charter schools for indoctrination movement must be stopped before American democracy is sundered.

Church and State

James Madison proposed the Bill of Rights to codify protections not addressed in the constitution. In the first article, four freedoms are guaranteed – freedom of speech, freedom the press, freedom of peaceable assembly and freedom of religion.

In an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist association of Connecticut, Thomas Jefferson explained,

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.” (Emphasis added)

Katherine Stewart’s deeply researched book, The Good News Club, shares that tensions between Protestants and Catholics became fever-pitched in the 19^th century. A student in Boston, named Thomas Whall, refused to recite the Protestant version of the Ten Commandments and was beaten for thirty minutes. In 1869, the Cincinnati Bible War over classroom Bible use raged in the streets. (Good News Pages 72 and 73)

Stress over religion in school mounted to the point that President Ulysses S. Grant in an 1876 speech counseled,

“Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.” (Good News Pages 73-74)

Clarification of the Establishment Clause came in a 1947 Supreme Court decision over a New Jersey school board providing transportation costs for schools run by the Catholic Diocese. In Everson v. Board of Education, Justice Hugo Black stated in his majority opinion:

“The ‘establishment of religion’ clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining of professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.” (Emphasis added)

The 1962 Supreme Court decision in Engle v. Vitale ended prayer in school. This was not a particularly close call, with only Justice Potter in descent. Justice Black, writing for the majority, stated:

“We think that, by using its public school system to encourage recitation of the Regents’ prayer, the State of New York has adopted a practice wholly inconsistent with the Establishment Clause. There can, of course, be no doubt that New York’s program of daily classroom invocation of God’s blessings as prescribed in the Regents’ prayer is a religious activity.”

By the time Ronald Reagan was elected the 40^th president of the United States, the “separation of church and state” had been firmly established.

America’s Riven Rights

Reagan’s nomination of the proclaimed originalist, Anthony Scalia, to the Supreme Court began the attack on the Establishment Clause. According to Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, Scalia maintained that the Constitution not only permits entanglement between church and state, but encourages it. (Good News Page 85)

Katherine Stewart observed,

“According to Scalia, the secularism of today’s liberals is really just another religion – and an unattractive one at that, suitable for the weak of mind and character. It is the creed of relativism, which says that no belief is better than any other, and no value is better than any other. This philosophy of religion is the genuinely immovable part of Scalia’s judicial philosophy in cases involving religion, and it has proven to be the real source of his disdain for the Establishment Clause.” (Good News Page 86)

Scalia was a lonely voice on the court until 1991 when President Bush appointed Clarence Thomas.

The first big break for the anti-establishment forces came in the case of the LAX Board of Airport Commissioners v. Jews for Jesus. In the case, Jay Sekulow defended the constitutional right to stand in an Airport and hand out tracks about Jesus. The case was not controversial. Sekulow achieved a unanimous victory but more importantly, the new legal concept of speech from a religious viewpoint being protected was created.

Stewart writes, “Henceforth, Sekulow would appear repeatedly before the Supreme Court, playing a song with just one note: religious activity is really just speech from a religious viewpoint; therefore, any attempt to exclude religious activity is an infringement of the freedom of speech.” (Good News Page 90)

When Center Moriches Union School District turned down James Dobson’s request to use their facilities for a religious film series based on a no religious groups policy, Dobson sued. Sekulow claimed they were engaging in speech from a religious viewpoint and in 1991, the court ruled for Dobson, based on freedom of speech.

The Rosenberger v. University of Virginia case was decided in 1995, favoring Rosenberger with a split 5-4 decision. University student Rosenberger had asked for several thousand dollars from a student activity fund to subsidize the cost of “Wide Awake”, a Christian magazine. The court ruled that denial of funding based on the religious message amounted to viewpoint discrimination. Justice Souter noted that the University of Virginia was directly subsidizing religion by paying for a magazine that exhorts its readers to convert to Christianity.

In 1996, the Child Evangelism Fellowship applied to establish a Good News Club at the K-12 Milford Central School. The New York school had a policy of restricting the use of its property by organizations and individuals for religious purposes. In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the plaintiffs in Good News Club v. Milford Central School.

Stewart reports, “In his majority opinion, Justice Thomas laid out a philosophy that essentially destroyed the postwar consensus on the separation of church and state.” Scalia conquered with Thomas’s reasoning and said religion is such a complicated thing that the court should refrain from even attempting to define it. (Good News Page 95)

With their newfound allegiance, to the Free Speech clause the court majority created a dubious attack on the Establishment Clause. In Widmar v. Vincent, Justice Byron White observed:

“A large part of respondents’ argument … is founded on the proposition that, because religious worship uses speech, it is protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. Not only is it protected, they argue, but religious worship qua speech is not different from any other variety of protected speech as a matter of constitutional principle. I believe that this proposition is plainly wrong. Were it right, the Religion Clauses would be emptied of any independent meaning in circumstances in which religious practice took the form of speech.”

In this light, Stewart asks the obvious question, “Was it the intention of the country’s founders to include redundant or meaningless clauses in the Constitution?”

Conclusion

Time to wake up and smell the coffee; the modern Supreme Court is corrupt and needs reformation. Instead of deciding issues based on law and precedence, they create theories designed to support a political philosophy rather than showing fidelity to the constitution. This reflects a complete degradation of jurisprudence. The poorly formed decisions regularly undermine the rights and protections the founders bestowed on citizens; all while some Justices appear to be ethically compromised.

For the first time in American history, billions of taxpayer dollars are flowing to private religious schools. The STR report shines a light on charter schools with religious agendas. Even more disturbing, these new taxpayer funded privatized schools are literally indoctrination centers, teaching a depraved political ideology.

This cannot stand!

Tags: A Sharp Turn Right, Anthony Scalia, Carol Burris, Charter schools, Clarence Thomas, Diane Ravitch, Hugo Black, Jay Sekulow, Katherine Stewart, NPE, The Good News Club

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Categories education, Law

“The Right to Read” is Horse Manure

27 May

By Thomas Ultican 5/27/2023

The new 80-minute video “The Right to Read” was created in the spirit of “Waiting for Superman.” It uses false data interpretations to make phony claims about a non-existent reading crisis. Oakland’s NAACP 2^nd Vice President Kareem Weaver narrates the film. Weaver is a full throated advocate for the Science of Reading (SoR) and has many connections with oligarch financed education agendas. The video which released February 11, 2023 was made by Jenny Mackenzie and produced by LeVar (Kunta Kinte) Burton.

Since 2007, Jenny Mackenzie has been the executive director of Jenny Mackenzie Films in Salt Lake City. Neither Mackenzie nor Burton has experience or training as educators. However, Burton did star on the PBS series “Reading Rainbow.” He worked on the show as an actor not a teacher.

One of the first media interviews about “The Right to Read” appeared on KTVX channel 4 in Salt Lake City. Ben Heuston from the Waterford Institute answered questions about the new film and the supposed “reading crisis” in American public schools. Heuston who has a PhD in psychology from Brigham Young University claimed that two-thirds of primary grade students in America read below grade level. That is a lie. He is conflating proficiency in reading on the National Assessment of Education Performance (NAEP) with grade level and should know better.

Diane Ravitch who served for seven years on the National Assessment Governing Board explained NAEP rating levels,

“Proficient is akin to a solid A. In reading, the proportion who were proficient in fourth grade reading rose from 29% in 1992 to 34% in 2011.”

“Basic is akin to a B or C level performance. Good but not good enough.”

“And below basic is where we really need to worry.”

Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers NAEP, has stated that the basic level is generally viewed as grade-level achievement.

“The Right to Read” was filmed in Oakland, California with some of it done in first-grade teacher Sabrina Causey’s classroom at Markham Elementary School. There have been many public showings scheduled around the country but strangely none in Oakland. Causey claims she was using a bad Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) reading curriculum until Kareem Weaver brought her a program based on the SoR. She adopted it without OUSD approval. The film claims “The results were astounding.”

The Chart was Clipped from “The Right to Read” Trailer

Selling SoR

LeVar Burton and Jenny Mackenzie made media rounds to promote “The Right to Read.” They were booked on major shows like CBS’s “Good Morning America” and on cable news. US News conducted an interview sharing that Burton and Mackenzie spoke “about the film and what they are calling ‘the literacy crisis’ within the United States.”

In the interview, Mackenzie claimed, “We need to have policy that supports scientifically proven evidence-based curricula.” While Burton asserted,

“The balanced approach doesn’t work. Whole language doesn’t work.”

“We also have a sort of an old boys’ network that has been established, and there are companies that make millions of dollars a year publishing and selling to schools curricula that do not work.”

There are two obvious observations here. Number one is that neither Mackenzie nor Burton have any professional expertise in reading pedagogy. Number two, it is their team that is setting the stage for businesses to make “millions of dollars a year” selling phonics centric reading curricula.

The chart in the graphic above is the same lie Ben Heuston from the Waterford Institute told on KTVX. Heuston’s father Dustin founded the Waterford Institute in 1976 to develop computer based education. He was using the world’s first commercial computer with the Motorola 68000 chip. Today, the institute is selling the digitally based Waterford Upstart reading program.

Heuston and colleagues are making great money working at the nonprofit. The twenty-two employees listed in the 2021 form 990 tax document are averaging a yearly income of $225,571 (TIN: 51-0202349). Those are some big salaries out in Utah. Maybe that explains the lying to support SoR.

Ben has stepped down as Waterford CEO and Andy Meyer has assumed the role. Waterford reports that Andy’s background includes several leadership positions in sales and marketing before becoming COO for Pearson’s digital learning business unit and later Senior VP of Digital Product Development for Pearson’s U.S. K-12 curriculum division. More recently, Andy served as CEO at Scientific Learning and as CSO at Renaissance.

Kareem Weaver is a shameless promoter of anything oligarch funded. He is a Fellow at the Pahara Institute which was organized to train new privatization friendly education leaders. His bio there shares that he was a managing partner at the NewSchools Venture Fund and also executive director for the western region of New Leaders that received big financing from Walton, Broad, NewSchool Venture Fund and Gates. Weaver is also a member of the National Council on Teachers Quality.

Just this week Weaver was a featured presenter for a Reading Week edWebinar held by Lexia, a Cambium Learning Group company. They claim, “K12 educators and administrators will now have another opportunity to learn about aligning teaching practices with scientifically-researched methods.” Lexia is looking to cash in on SoR and Weaver is down in the muck slopping with them.

It is hard to imagine anyone being more sold out than Kareem Weaver.

Professionals Shake Their Heads in Frustration

Misinterpreting the data shown above is the basis for the specious crisis in reading claims. It is known that students develop at different rates and in the lower grades the differences can be dramatic. That explains some of the low scoring. All but a very small percentage of these fourth grader will be reading adequately when they get to high school.

America’s leading authorities on teaching reading are frustrated. Their voices are being drowned out by forces who want to monetize reading education and privatize it.

Peter Farruggio is a professor of bilingual education from the San Francisco Bay area and an organizer of anti-KLAN actions throughout California. Although his specialty was not teaching reading his experience with bilingual education and federal law caused him to work in the field. In our conversation, he explained to me how some of the data supporting high dose phonics instruction came about.

Farruggio observed that often when there were groups of students with reading disabilities, graduate students would take the opportunity to conduct a study. The treatment would be for the grad students to give intense phonics lessons. The children would learn to decode words including nonsense words from lists. Then they would be given a reading test on the lists. The students would successfully decode the words and the results would be pronounced successful but the children still could not read a sentence with comprehension.

Worst of all, Professor Farruggio fears this kind of teaching is undermining the ability to think.

Observations like this are wide spread among education professionals. This week Valerie Strauss put a piece in her Answer Sheet blog at the Washington Post written by three highly credentialed scholars dismayed by the oligarch financed nationwide push for SoR.

David Reinking, Professor of Education, Peter Smagorinsky, Professor of Language and Literacy Education, and David Yaden, Professor of Language Reading and Culture, state,

“As researchers and teacher educators, we, like many of our colleagues, shake our heads in resigned frustration. We believe phonics plays an important role in teaching children to read. But, we see no justifiable support for its overwhelming dominance within the current narrative, nor reason to regard phonics as a panacea for improving reading achievement.”

“Specifically, we do not see convincing evidence for a reading crisis, and certainly none that points to phonics as the single cause or a solution.”

“But crisis or not, is there evidence that more phonics instruction is the elixir guaranteed to induce higher reading achievement? The answer isn’t just no. There are decades of empirical evidence that it hasn’t and won’t.”

They point out that even the National Reading Panel report that all of this SoR malarkey is supposedly based on states, “Phonics should not become the dominant component in a reading program, neither in the amount of time devoted to it nor in the significance attached.”

This understanding is not new. The Reading First program during the George Bush years spent big dollars to study the use of intense phonics. Teachers were trained to deliver “scientific” reading instruction that included a numbing 1.5 to 3 hours of phonics instruction each day. The lead sentence in a 2008 Washington Post article stated, “Students enrolled in a $6 billion federal reading program that is at the heart of the No Child Left Behind law are not reading any better than those who don’t participate, according to a U.S. government report.”

Conclusion

Big money from billionaires is funding an effort to take control of primary education by selling the Science of Reading as a silver bullet. In the early 2000’s, schools were blamed for not fixing failing communities. The “proof” offered was students living in poverty stricken communities did not do well on standardized testing.

It put schools in a no win situation because the only strong correlation in standardized testing is with family income. Obviously, the broken communities were the problem not their schools. This subterfuge led to claims that reforming “failing schools” was the civil rights agenda of our time. Now “The Right to Read” is playing that same phony civil rights card. It is a contemptuous lie used to profit off the backs of the poor and people of color.

There is no reading crisis and the lionization of SoR is a push toward bad pedagogy. It is a sinister ploy that will harm each student and not just those living in poverty. There is currently a concerted effort to legislate SoR use in all primary classrooms which has either passed or is proposed in every state capital.

Tags: Ben Heuston, Jenny Mackenzie, LeVar Burton, Science of Reading, The Right to Read, Waterford Institute

Comments 7 Comments
Categories DPE, education

The Teachers

15 May

By Thomas Ultican 5/15/2023

Alexandra Robbins’ new book is an authentic look into the life, working environment, emotional struggles and triumphs of America’s K-12 teachers. The book opens up many unnecessary issues that America’s professional educators face as they try to give their best in the classroom. It also reminded me of my own teaching journey with its unjust treatments and eventual success.

The Book can be Purchased Here

It is Not Burnout

Teaching is a much higher stress job than it needs to be because of factors outside of the classroom. Robbins reports on a special education teacher named Prisha being left by herself in classes of 28 to 35 special education students when her co-teacher had to take a two month medical leave. The school’s staff was almost all first or second year teachers like Prisha who didn’t know what to do. The principal’s solution was to call all the special ed teachers “fucking morons” and start monitoring Prisha’s grade book. No actual support for a new teacher in a no win situation. (Teachers 217)

Robbins cites a gallop pole claiming that teachers tied with nurses for the highest rate of daily stress on the job among all occupations. She shares a study asserting, “It is confirmed that teachers have the highest burnout levels as compared to other professionals in social services.” (Teachers 218)

It needs to be noted that teaching only became high stress after the 1983 Department of Education report “A Nation at Risk.” That fraudulent polemic misused SAT data to cook the books and claim American public schools were failing. Later, Anya Kamenetz reported for NPR, “A 1990 report produced by the Energy Department’s Sandia National Laboratories broke down the flaws in the “A Nation at Risk” analysis but got little attention.”

“A Nation at Risk” was followed by a dramatic expansion of teacher responsibilities but no accompanying structural support. The report inspired a push for state-mandated testing. This led to a major demoralization of teachers when in 2002 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) became federal law. Robbins writes,

“NCLB, which mandated rigorous standardized testing and penalized schools and teachers based on students’ scores, remains ‘the worst federal education legislation ever passed by Congress. It was punitive, harsh, stupid, ignorant about pedagogy and motivation, and ultimately a dismal failure,’ as New York University research professor of education Diane Ravitch, a former assistant secretary of education and leading educational expert, has written.” (Teachers 224)

I remember in about 2007 a principal saying to me that school used to be fun; hopefully we’ll get back to that someday. Today, there is a large problem with teachers quitting the profession that is being attributed to burnout but it is more accurate to call it teacher frustration; a frustration with not being able to provide the kind of good pedagogy that their students and communities deserve.

Robbins points to a need for school leadership to step up to the plate. She writes,

“The responsibility for resolving teacher demoralization, or what the public calls burnout, should lie with districts and administrators. Telling teachers to relax doesn’t cut it. … Instead of halfheartedly attempting to mitigate the effects on teachers, school leaders should fix the underlying causes – their school climate, staffing numbers, and resources – not just to prevent employee demoralization, but because that’s how a proper workplace should operate.” (Teachers 228)

A Personal Experience with Education Reform

In Diane Ravich’s seminal book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, she describes how my home town of San Diego, California was chosen as an education reform test site. Ravitch noted that it was an unusual choice for where to launch a reform movement because San Diego was viewed as having “one of the nation’s most successful urban school systems.” (Page 50) In 1998, the former US Attorney for the southern district of California, Alan Bersin, was hired to be the school district superintendent and lead the reform experiment. The local education community was against hiring an uncertified non-educator to lead the district but the San Diego business community which held sway over the school board wanted it.

I started education graduate school at the University of California San Diego in 2001 and found that a few of my instructors were consulting on the district’s education reforms. Some of the changes being introduced were quite good but the authoritarian implementation alienated most of the district’s teachers who had no input into what was happening.

One major change affected me. It was mandated that all ninth graders take the new conceptual physics class. That caused the district a severe shortage of certified physics teachers. I had just completed my masters in education with a physics certificate. It was not long before I got an offer to be a probationary teacher via a telephone interview.

Turned out the Bell Jr. High principal was not being totally up front with me. Going to the district office to sign my contract, I was told the probationary positions were filled and was offered a temp contract. I discovered that teachers in California normally needed more than two years to become full time with job protections. Temp contracts do not count as tenure track teaching time.

The principal at Bell literally had a hole in her head having recently gone through brain surgery to remove a tumor. Two retired administers were convinced by the district to come back and serve as assistant principals, provide support during the convalescence and take over if medical issues arose. One of them became my evaluator.

In my first written evaluation, the AP wrote that discipline was a problem and that I never checked for student understanding. In a written response, I wrote that during the lab period she observed every team coming to me multiple times to have their lab progress reviewed and checked off before moving on to the next phase. I questioned her observation of not checking for student understanding? While my class may be a little free, all 36-students successfully completed and submitted their lab reports so class discipline was not leading to dysfunction. I should have added that the classes were too large for safe lab science activities.

One time the evaluator came in while I had the class working on a poster project. A student that had not had much success in school rushed up to her and proudly showed off his poster. She later told me that I should have written him a referral right then for leaving his group without permission. I was thinking what is wrong with a child engaged in learning? Why punish his new pride?

At Bell we had 13 sections of regular physics plus I taught the only section of honors physics. My classes tested amazingly well. The regular physics classes ranked 1, 2, 4 and 6 in comparison to all 13 sections at Bell. The honors physics class was the number 2 scoring class in the entire district. I was stunned at the end of the year when my evaluator said she could not recommend me for rehire because of “not moving classes toward achieving standards” and the lack of classroom disciple. The quoted line meant that I could not even apply for a substitute teaching position in San Diego Unified School District.

I talked to several district administrators who commiserated with me and even admitted how strange this looked but none of them felt they could do anything. The Bersin administration had set up an arbitrary quota system for teachers being fired and the percentage of new hires retained. It turns out a determined administrator can fire tenured teachers. This was aimed at keeping everyone following orders and not complaining. At Bell, I was the 50 year old new hire who was sacrificed to protect the younger teachers.

It is remarkable that the evaluation from my next school in another district noted discipline as one of my classroom strengths.

The Teachers is a Great Read

Alexandra Robbins uses the experience of three teachers during the 2021/22 school year as the backbone for her book. In the August chapter, she introduces Rebecca, Penny and Miguel. Month by month, Robbins reveals the sometimes horrific and sometimes triumphant experiences of these three amazing teachers. Along the way she shares insights, research and some eye-popping experience from other teachers. It is the most revealing and authentic view of teaching I have ever read.

I will end with this quote from page 279 which shows in gory detail why teacher opinions should be sought out and adhered to.

“Florida teachers compiled a mountain of evidence that public school was not the place for one particular student who had numerous mental health issues, was obsessed with guns, and was suspended 18 times in one school year. But it took five months to get him transferred to a special middle school – and when he was determined to attend public high school, Florida’s disability law allowed him to. The student was Nikola Cruz, the school Marjory Stoneman Douglas. In 2018, Cruz massacred 14 students and three staff members in one of the deadliest school shootings in history.”

Tags: Alan Bersin, Alexandra Robbins, Anya Kamenetz, Diane Ravitch

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Categories education, Justice

Representative Lauren Boebert’s Controversial High School Civics Address

23 Apr

By Thomas Ultican 4/23/2023

When it was learned that Lauren Boebert the gun enthusiast who represents Colorado’s third congressional district was going to address middle and high school students in Dolores, there was angst. Emails to The Journal, the local newspaper, expressed concern that it would be a political event and some parents worried that the congresswoman would be packing a concealed weapon. The fact that parents and media were barred from attending heightened tensions. Fortunately, The Journal was able to force its way in.

According to the 2020 census, Dolores, Colorado is a small community of 885 people located in Montezuma County. It sits in the middle of rugged mountainous terrain making up the Southwest portion of the state. Dolores is part of Boebert’s congressional district which covers about 50,000 square miles of sparsely populated territory and constitutes almost half of the Colorado land mass. It is an interesting twist that Montezuma County has Dolores County on its northern border.

Colorado Annotated Congressional District Map

In the 2021/22 school year, Dolores’s middle school reported 209 students and its high school 168. The school demographics are about 79% White, 16% Hispanic and a small percentage of Indians and Asians.

For Boebert’s event, students were free to opt out. After the affair, Superintendent Reece Blincoe estimated that 250 students attended Boebert’s presentation.

Two days before Boebert arrived, the school district emailed parents with details of her visit. It said the Representative would provide a “rare chance to hear from the sitting congresswoman from our region and to promote civic engagement.” The missive stated that no parents could attend and that she would not carry a firearm on campus. It said the students were not required to attend and an alternative classroom would be available. The message stressed that Boebert’s visit would “NOT” be a political event.

Following the student assembly, when The Journal reporter in attendance asked about the safety and political concerns of some parents, Boebert replied,

“That’s really unfortunate that they would politicize something like this, and it was certainly an honor for me to be there. I wasn’t making anything political of it. You know, just explaining the basics of civics and government and the way things operate and giving them kind of an insider’s look without a partisan lens. I’m not sure exactly what the safety concern would be. But I think that it was well received and the students were amazing, friendly and welcoming … they were a joy,”

The day following the event, The Journal reported that she did get quite political:

“Boebert contended that the response to COVID-19 infringed on liberties during the pandemic and told students they should know about those issues and let it motivate them to stand up for their freedom.

‘“I was happy being a mom,’ Boebert said. ‘I was a business owner, but I saw government over-regulating, overtaxing, overspending and destroying everything that we were working so hard to build.’”

The Durango Herald wrote an editorial stating,

“We strongly support students engaging in civic matters. But we’re uncomfortable with U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s visit on Wednesday to Dolores High School because her talk ventured beyond governance into political territory.”

“According to our latest news story, she spoke about “moral decay”; becoming aware of issues that could infringe on students’ rights; the Freedom Caucus, a conservative group of GOP representatives; and liberties infringed on during the pandemic. Apparently, she also told students they should know about those issues and let it motivate them to stand up for their freedom.

“Come on! This is Boebert’s brand on stage in front of students without parents present.”

“Tom Burris, superintendent of Montezuma-Cortez School District, said he had previously received an email from Boebert’s team inquiring about an assembly with middle and high school students. Burris said he respectively declined, saying MCSD was “focusing energies on students in the classroom and academics.”’

The Denver Post reports that in the 2022 congressional election Montezuma County voted 57% for Boebert and 43% for her opponent Adam Frisch. So this event was clearly in an area of political strength for the Congresswoman. However, in her 2022 re-election effort, she only won the district by a margin of 546 votes out of the 327,132 cast or by a 0.17% margin.

This prompted several parents to believe that her visit was nothing but a campaign maneuver trying to capture new soon to graduate high school voters for 2024.

Like her or loath her, the fact is that Boebert is a very divisive personality. Even though her political support in the county is strong, her opposition is impassioned. The Post speculated this was because,

“Boebert has a history of espousing anti-LGBTQ views. She’s called women “weaker” than men, criticized the separation of church and state and made Islamophobic comments implying a colleague in Congress might be a terrorist. Political and religious experts say her Christian nationalist rhetoric presents a danger to the country’s democratic foundations.

Molly Cooper, a district parent, explained at a recent school board meeting, “This is about Boebert herself, the hate she spews and the policies she continues to support and put forward that vilify those that are different from her.”

An A3 Surprise

A concerned parent said this was all started when High School Social Studies teacher Ed Miller and Principal Justin Schmitt invited Representative Boebert to the school in October 2022, but she declined. The Boebert team appears to have decided to run a low key barely concealed series of campaign events at local high schools and reached out to Dolores in early March. The school scheduled an assembly for March 15.

The shocking revelation here is not only that Representative Boebert is willing to use public schools for partisan politics but that Dolores High School has convicted A3 conspirator Justin Schmitt as principal. It turns out he grew up and attended school there. In October, 2019 while under indictment for conspiracy to defraud the state of California out of $80,000,000, Schmitt was hired as Dean of Students in Dolores. The Journal reported that then Superintendent Lis Richard claimed he is “an extraordinary administrator.” And she continued,

“I promise you that we are aware of anything you may have heard and we stand by him in full support. He is the right person for our secondary dean of students position. His passion, dedication and wisdom are exemplary.”

Eric Beste the San Diego lawyer representing Schmitt in the A3 case emphasized that Schmitt was a salaried employee and not an A3 business owner. In other words, he was just a working guy caught up in the illegal scheming of his employer and was not a criminal at heart.

The next year Schmitt was hired as interim Principal at Dolores High School. The April 16, 2020 announcement of the appointment carried in The Journal stated, ‘“If he does not meet the ‘conditions set’ (if he is found guilty of anything more than a misdemeanor), his position will be ‘terminated,’ the update states.” However, Superintendent Richards declared, “I think it is fair to mention that a misdemeanor is not a disqualifier for licensure and I still stand by that Mr. Schmitt did nothing illegal ….”

I wrote about the A3 scandal in the summer of 2019 and it was clear to me that Justin Schmitt was not a peripheral player. He was always among the five people mentioned in stories about the indictments. I used, “The Grand Jury of San Diego County heard the testimony of 72 witnesses and voted out a 67-count indictment against Sean McManus, Jason Schrock, Justin Schmitt, Eli Johnson, Steven Zant and six others.” He was the office manager the other conspirators were communicating through.

Schmitt came to A3 through his connection with the Colorado online charter school system Foundations of Learning. At one time, he listed himself on his LinkedIn page as the Foundations of Learning Director of Schools. When McManus and Schrock bought Foundations of Learning to manage Mosaic online Justin Schmitt came with the purchase. Mosaic eventually became Valiant Academy through which Schmitt supervised the summer school sports scam.

In 2022, as part of the nobody goes to jail resolution to the A3 theft, the Voice of San Diego reported,

“Schmitt pleaded guilty to a felony count of taking money in order to conceal crime. The charge was later reduced to a misdemeanor and Schmitt was sentenced to one year probation.”

In August 2021, Reece Blincoe was introduced as interim Superintendent of Dolores School District. He had previously served as superintendent for the Brownwood ISD in Brownwood, Texas. It appears that after seven years he was forced out of Brownwood with an agreement that included $300,000 for his resignation. There was no claim of malfeasance against Blincoe but there were rumors that it had to do with an unsubstantiated claim of bullying.

Blincoe, Schmitt and the rest of their team come out of the Boebert episode looking badly used and inept. What do they do when Boebert’s Democratic challenger Adam Frisch comes to Dolores and requests a similar event? How can a public school that has already hosted one politician legitimately turn away another politician? There is no good answer.

Tags: A3 Charter Schools, Dolores Colorado, Justin Schmitt, Lauren Boebert, Politics

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Categories education

El Guapo’s Election Report Card

22 Jan

By Thomas Ultican 1/22/2023

Going into the recent general election, I prepared and published recommendations for forty-two K-12 school board seats on various voters’ ballots. Those positions were from the fifteen largest school districts out of San Diego County’s forty-two school districts. Twenty-nine of my recommendations won and thirteen were defeated.

Across that nation, school board races became targets of culture warriors speciously targeting schools to promote their ultra-right ideology often verging on fascism. Schools were unscrupulously accused of teaching critical race theory (CRT) and grooming students to become gay. It did not matter that CRT has never been taught in the K-12 environment or that turning a straight student gay is not any more possible than turning a gay student straight.

There was some of that kind of dishonest campaigning in San Diego but it was largely unsuccessful.

Awaken Church is not Woke

In 2004, C3 founder Phil Pringle asked veterans of the evangelical megachurch tradition in Australia, Jurgen Matthesius and his wife Leanne Matthesius, to move to San Diego and found the church. They arrived in 2005 and began holding services in hotels, elementary schools and even at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). The year 2014 witnessed the establishment their first permanent site in Carlsbad and they have since grown to five campuses with about 10,000 parishioners. Originally established as the C3 church, in January 2020 they relaunched as Awaken Church.

Early in the pandemic Awaken Church defied government orders not to hold indoor services. Until the orders against indoor gatherings were lifted, Awaken continuously defied cease and desist orders from the county even in the face Covid-19 outbreaks linked directly to their services.

In the recent school board elections, Awaken became extremely active calling for a change in school operations. Their RMNNT political action arm labels themselves as “warriors of liberty.” They self define as a remnant of people rising up violently, if need be, to fight tyranny. They are a dangerously misled and armed people with a doctrine that could hardly be more un-American. Following the national movement, school boards were targeted as the place for promoting their radical ideology of change.

Out on Coronado Island, Awaken found a fellow traveler in the MAGA right organization, We the Parents Coronado (WTPC). Like Awaken they have rudely railed against state and local mask mandates and vaccine requirements. WTPC’s web page links to anti-CRT and anti-LGBTQ materials. The reality is WTPC is a small organization but very loud.

Coronado is an upscale city of 20,000 on a sort of island with San Diego Bay to the north and east plus the Pacific Ocean to the west. There is a narrow strip of land known as the Silver Strand extending south to Imperial Beach. Driving down the strand one sees the iconic Hotel Del Coronado, the Seal Team training facility and Silver Strand State Beach. It is a stunningly beautiful community filled with naval flag officers, doctors, lawyers and expensive real estate.

In the general election, there were 3 four-year school board terms and 1 two-year board term on the ballot for Coronado Unified School District. The Awaken candidates were Scott Youngblood, Lisa Meglioli and Geri Machin. Scot Youngblood is an orthopedic surgeon and retired Navy Captain who was endorsed by the Republican Party. On his campaign webpage this Navy doctor revealed himself to be anti-vax and anti-mask. RMNNT the political action group affiliated with Awaken offered candidate training. Lisa Meglioli is a member of Awaken who took the RMNNT training where Coronado’s Republican Mayor Richard Bailey served as an instructor. Awaken’s third candidate, Geri Machin, was a founder and former executive director of WTPC.

When the election results came in, three of my four recommended candidates won (Alexia Palacios-Peters, Malachy Denis Sandy and Renee Cavanaugh). However, it was disappointing to see the anti-masker who is supposedly a doctor win that fourth seat. There are five total seats on the Coronado school board.

In San Diego Unified, the Awaken style change candidate was Becca Williams. She is the anti-mask and anti-vaccine mandates candidate endorsed by the Republican Party. Becca has teaching experience in charter schools and along with her husband founded Valor Education a charter management organization whose classic education is a conservative response to progressive values. She lost to the candidate I endorsed environmentalist and UCSD lecturer Cody Peterson.

In Carlsbad, the Awaken style change candidate was Sharon Mckeeman locally infamous as the founder of the anti-mask and anti-vaccine mandates organization “Let them Breath”. She was endorsed by the Republican Party. I endorsed Michele Tsutagawa Ward a 20-year educator and a school principal in Poway. She won.

The Encinitas Elementary School District is relatively small, but I agreed to review it at the request of a few concerned parents. The Republican Party endorsed Andre Johnson for one of the three seats on the ballot in which voters selected three from a list of candidates. Johnson manages information technology and the database for Awaken Church. It is a reasonable conjecture that he aligns with writer Jakob McWhinney’s observation that Awaken candidates have a “hyperbolic worldview that casts them as righteous fighters against a diabolical liberal ruling class.”

In Encinitas, my three endorsements all carried the day.

Looking at some Election Misses

My recommendations won almost 100% of the seats in the school districts within 30-miles of the Pacific Ocean. However, in an exception, San Diego Unified candidate Shana Hazan defeated Godwin Higa. Godwin has a decade’s long history as a teacher and principal. He is also a leading expert in trauma informed teaching. Hazan had two years of teaching experience and has worked more than the last decade at Jewish Family Services. Still, she raked in big campaign contributions and racked up an impressive list of endorsements including from the Democratic Party and the San Diego Union Tribune.

I was fairly certain that Hazan would win but recommended Higa. Besides his superior experience and training, I was also concerned by her campaign reports showing $1,500 from Alan Bersin, $1,500 from Scott Peters, $1,500 from Irwin Jacobs, $1,500 from Joan Jacobs, $1,500 from Allison Price, and $1,500 from Robert Price. This is support from two neo-liberal politicians and a group of billionaires. There are reasons to believe she is a gifted young woman who believes in public education and protecting the commons. She just might be one of those political leaders who starts on a school board and goes on to higher office. Hopefully she is not a neoliberal.

In East County, the school boards are dominated by members who are recommended by the Republican Party. I am fine with Republicans, who believe in traditional Republican values like local control, public education and fiscal management. That is why I recommended all three of the Republicans running for the Escondido Union High School District and they all won.

I was quite disappointed to see that Zesty Harper won a seat on Escondido’s elementary school board. After winning a seat in 2014, she became a controversial figure proclaiming, “No longer will it be OK for this disservice we have called your education to continue.” She declared that creationism should be taught in classrooms alongside evolution. She also sent her own children to Heritage Charter School instead of an Escondido Union School District campus. Her campaign web page states, “Zesty strongly believes in school choice and has supported local charter schools to increase innovation, competition, and choice in Escondido public schools.”

The Grossmont Union High School District has been run by the same Republican cabal for more than a decade. It was time for a change, but my council was ignored. I find board member since 2008, Gary Woods, particularly troubling. He taught online graduate courses at Liberty University and serves as executive director of the Equip Biblical Institute. Woods was endorsed by the Republican Party. There is a strong whiff of Christian nationalism here. This is the board that turned venerable Helix High School into a charter school.

Why is it El Guapo’s Report Card?

When I first entered the classroom students often asked if they could call me Mr. U. Something about that just put me off so I decided to have some fun with it. The vast majority of my students were Mexicans. Which was not unexpected since you could clearly see the Las Playas bullring just a mile or so away. I told them, “You can call me El Guapo.”

Guapo is pronounced wăpō like the Washington Post’s (WAPO). Most of the kids knew El Guapo meant Mr. Handsome. More than any kids I have ever worked with, Mexican kids love to joke around and tease. They immediately latched on to my new name and shortened it a little. Pretty soon I was Guapo as in “hey Guapo when will we ever use this stuff?” Which I would answer with the ever so encouraging “YOU; probably never.”

We all had a lot of fun learning math and physics.

The relationship between teachers and students is unique. We aren’t really friends but often develop deep attachments. We are not parents but students come to us – adults in their life that they trust – with issues they might not be willing to discuss with their parents. We are the example in their life of how to live that is working to prepare them for the future. This relationship is so important it is why machines should never replace teachers. It is probably more important than the curriculum being delivered.

Some Final Thoughts

We are a society being buried in lies.

“The election was stolen; everybody knows I won in a landslide.” This lie is still believed by 60% of Republicans because they watch Fox News which blatantly lies.

School choice is based on Milton Friedman’s lie that Public Schools are government monopolies. There are about 19,000 school districts in the United States each with their own governing bodies the vast majority of which are elected. That is not a monopoly and in reality school choice is about not having to go to school with those peoples children. It’s a racist agenda.

Well financed propagandist Christopher Rufo has widely spread the lie that CRT is being taught in K-12 Schools. He claims it is making white children uncomfortable; another lie.

A lot of people believe the lie that public schools are grooming students to “turn them” gay. The result is censorship and a small minority of LGBTQ+ students being tormented for who they are. They are people and they deserve respect. Prejudice is a social disease.

These lies have been used to divide us and distract us from billionaires grabbing more and more for themselves. Economic inequality has reached heights never before witnessed in this country and putting up with lies is a root cause. If we lose our Democracy then there will be no choice but to put up with lies. Look at what is going on in Russia, China and Hungry.

The American public school system is a treasure and must be protected from liars and their paymasters. If someone tells you that voucher schools and charter schools are superior to public schools, they are lying.

Tags: Alan Bersin, Awaken Church, Christopher Rufo, Irwin Jacobs, Milton Friedman, Scott Peters

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Categories education

Palomar Community College Board Election

26 Oct

By Thomas Ultican 10/26/2022

There are three positions up for election on the Palomar Community College board.

There is no incumbent running in Area 1. The Republican Party is endorsing Frank Xu. The Democratic Party, Palomar faculty and students at are endorsing Judy Patacsil.

Patacsil is a community college professor with an amazing list of endorsements. This daughter of Filipino immigrants is obviously well liked and respected by colleagues. She has the endorsement of four currently serving board members and is also the choice of organized labor.

The student newspaper, Telescope, was impressed by Frank Xu’s technical and business background. However they endorsed his opponent because “we do not agree with his statements about changing the race-based admissions quota and his dislike of race and diversity inclusion.”

Frank Xu appears to be a far right ideologue. He is President of the new non-profit California for Equal Rights Foundation (CERF) (IRS ID 85-2315151). Last year CERF joined a law suit against San Diego Unified School District over Critical Race Theory. CERF legislative reports read like they were lifted from Christopher Rufo and the Manhattan Institute.

Recommendation Area 1: Judy Patacsil

Area 4 has a match between Kartik Raju who was appointed to the board last year and Michelle Rains a restaurant owner from Ramona.

Rains is endorsed by the Republican Party and has substantial support from building contractors. She also has the endorsement of several elected officials in Ramona.

Raju is endorsed by the Democratic Party and he is supported by four existing Palomar board members and the Palomar college faculty. Raju is an electrical engineer with diverse experience in project management, defense and aerospace. Telescope endorsed him stating,

“He expressed enthusiasm for student culture, and the connections he’s made here at Palomar. He also shared his personal experience at a community college, and the joyous discovery of all the benefits it offered.”

Recommendation Area 4: Kartik Raju

In Area 5, Jacqueline Kaiser – endorsed by the Republican Party – is running against incumbent Nora Miyamoto.

Kaiser is from Fallbrook where she was involved in community planning. She has a masters in business administration and is supported by the San Diego Chapter of the Association of General Contractors. County Supervisor Jim Desmond, Asseblywomen Marie Waldron and State Senator Brian Jones all support her candidacy. Telescope also endorsed her stating, “While she doesn’t have any prior experience at Palomar, we feel that a forward-thinking business mindset could bring fresh ideas to the board.” The students seemed to really be taken with her in their one on one interview.

Miyamoto who also lives in Fallbrook has worked at Palomar for 21-years. Her bio states, “With nearly 30 years of community college experience, she served in various positions—a part- and full-time faculty member, a classified employee, a temporary employee, a mid-level academic director and as an Instructional Dean.” She shares an impressive list of endorsements including that of four existing board members and the Palomar faculty.

Recommendation Area 5: Nora Miyamoto

Tags: California for Equal Rights Foundation, Palomar Community College, School Board Elections

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Categories education

Encinitas School Board Election 2022

4 Oct

By Thomas Ultican 10/4/2022

Nine schools serve 4,813 students in K-6 classrooms administered by the Encinitas Union Elementary School District (EUSD). This November, residents will be voting to select who will serve four year terms in three at large board seats from a list of six candidates.

The Democratic Party endorses the three incumbents running; Emily Andrade, Marla Strich and Raquel Pfeifer. By a vote of the board, Pfeifer was appointed to the board in July. She assumed the deceased Gregg Sonken’s seat.

Emily Andrade was first elected to the EUSD board in 2010 after spending time as a principal at three different schools in the district. Marla Strich was originally elected to the EUSD board in 1998. In 2000 she completed the California School Board Association’s Masters in Governance professional development series. Raquel Pfeifer is workforce development facilitator for San Diego State’s Academy for Professional Excellence in the Child Welfare Development Services program. Her facebook page indicates she is running on a slate with Strich and Andrade. The Encinitas Teachers Association supports this slate.

Candidate Thomas Angel has no online presence and the only thing known about him is that he claimed to be a retired physicist. Justin Ried is a marketing executive at Qualcomm. His linked in page shows deep experience in digital marketing across several companies but no engagement with or experience in education.

The Republican Party makes one very odd endorsement for Andre Johnson. He manages information technology and the database for Awaken Church. The Voice of San Diego’s Jakob McWhinney reported this May,

“Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Awaken has played a pivotal role in a new movement of conservative activists who thunder in public and at times make vaguely threatening statements toward elected officials. As the Republican Party’s influence in local politics wanes, some conservatives, sensing a vacuum in the regional power structure, have pivoted away from traditional Republican values, and toward a more hyperbolic worldview that casts them as righteous fighters against a diabolical liberal ruling class.”

“Over the past two years, several of the church’s pastors have actively spread medical misinformation at events and rallies throughout the region, and from the pulpit. The church itself has also allied with political groups looking to recruit like-minded conservatives to run for office, and others seeking positions of influence.”

Recommendations: Emily Andrade, Raquel Pfeifer, Marla Strich

Tags: Encinitas Union Elementary School District, School Board Elections

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Categories education

Community Schools Promises and Pitfalls

28 Sep

By Thomas Ultican 9/28/2022

Community school developments are surging in jurisdictions across the country. Since 2014, more the 300 community schools have been established in New York and this month Education Secretary Miguel Cardona was touting them at an event in Pennsylvania. In May, the California State Board of Education announced $635 million in grants for the development of these schools and in July, they disclosed a $4.1 billion commitment to community schools over the next seven years. However, some critiques are concerned about a lurking vulnerability to profiteering created by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

What are Community Schools?

For decades America has turned a blind eye to the embarrassing reality that in many of our poorest communities the only functioning governmental organization or commercial enterprise is the local public school. No grocery stores, no pharmacies, no police stations, no fire stations, no libraries, no medical offices and so on leaves these communities bereft of services for basic human needs and opportunities for childhood development. Community schools are promoted as a possible remedy for some of this neighborhood damage.

The first priority for being a community school is being a public school that opens its doors to all students in the community.

A Brookings Institute study explains,

“According to the Coalition for Community Schools, a community school is ‘both a place and a set of partnerships between the school and other community resources. Its integrated focus on academics, health and social services, youth and community development, and community engagement leads to improved student learning, stronger families, and healthier communities.’ In community schools, every family and community member is a partner in the effort to build on students’ strengths, engage them as learners, and enable them to reach their full potential.”

The Brookings article notes that although community schools have a different looks in different communities they all have four common pillars: (1) “Expanded and enriched learning time,” (2) “Active family and community engagement,” (3) “Collaborative leadership and practices” and (4) “Integrated student supports.”

That means health care including vision and hearing is available through the schools as well as family housing and nutrition support. Families and other community members are encouraged to contribute both labor and leadership to the schools. Community services provided by governmental agencies also have site based coordinators.

Joshua Starr is the CEO of PDK International and the former Superintendent of Montgomery County Schools in Maryland. In a recent article for Kappan, he claims to “strongly support the community school model” but perceives some speed bumps. He asks, “Does the community school movement suffer from the “give me more stuff” syndrome? And concludes it probably does. However, his two biggest concerns are (1) the use of resources and (2) the use of data.

He points out that there are multiple streams of revenue coming into Title I schools and worries that these streams, meant in part to promote parental engagement, need to be administered wisely. He makes clear his belief in the importance of family engagement but asks, “However, before agreeing to fund additional staff positions, shouldn’t we make sure that every staff member who has a family-facing responsibility in their job description is actually doing that work (and doing it effectively)?”

Starr claims that by the end of the first quarter of 1^st grade, it is possible to identify whether or not a student is on track to graduate. He notes that a student who is failing every class and has accumulate many absences is quickly noticed but the students who fail one class and only has a few absences are often overlooked.

He concluded,

“All of this is to say that the process of identifying and responding to students’ needs is enormously complicated. Ideally, schools will begin with early warning indicators to identify kids who aren’t on track to graduate on time, teachers and staff will know how to interpret that data, school leaders will give them time and resources to build relationships with students and families, and school teams will coordinate among district resources and community assets to provide the supports children and families need.”

Profiteering Hawks Looking to Feast on Community Schools

There has been some encouraging anecdotal evidence from several of the original community schools. In March, Jeff Bryant wrote an article profiling two such schools for the Progressive, but there are also bad harbingers circling these schools. In the same paper from Brookings quoted above, there is a call to scale the “Next Generation Community Schools” nationally. They advocate engaging charter school networks and expanding ArmeriCorps. Brookings also counsels us, “Within the Department of Education, use Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) guidance and regulations to advance a next generation of community schools.”

Brookings was not through promoting a clearly neoliberal agenda for community schools. Their latest paper about them notes,

“There is a significant and growing interest in the community schools strategy among federal, state, and local governments seeking to advance educational and economic opportunities and address historic educational inequities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Building off this momentum and with support from Ballmer Group, four national partners—the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution (CUE), the Children’s Aid National Center for Community Schools (NCCS), the Coalition for Community Schools (CCS) at IEL, and the Learning Policy Institute (LPI)—are collaborating with education practitioners, researchers, and leaders across the country to strengthen the community schools field in a joint project called Community Schools Forward.” (Emphasis added)

Steve Ballmer was Bill Gates financial guy at Microsoft and is the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. His Ballmer Group recently gifted $25,000,000 to the City Fund to advance privatization of public education in America. This is the group that funded the supposedly “unbiased” report from Brookings.

John Adam Klyczek is an educator and author of School World Order: The Technocratic Globalization of Corporatized Education. New Politics published his article “Community Schools and the Dangers of Ed Tech Privatization” in their Winter 2021 Journal. Klyczek declares,

“Bottom-up democracy through community schools sounds like a great idea. However, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the federal legislation funding pre-K-12 schools that replaced “No Child Left Behind,” requires ‘full-service’ community schools to incorporate public-private partnerships that facilitate ‘wrap-around services’ managed by data analytics. Consequently, ESSA incentivizes the corporatization of community schools through ‘surveillance capitalism.”’

He contends that ESSA’s mandate for “full-service” public-private partnerships creates “structured corporatization” paths similar to those in charter schools. Klyczek claims the mandates are a greater threat to privatization than current high stakes testing because in addition to academic data they are mandated to collect data on health care, crime prevention, workforce training and other wrap-around services. He states, “In other words, community schools are required to track data pertaining to the health, crime risk, and workforce readiness of community ‘stakeholders.”’

A Washington DC educator and union leader, Dylan Craig, responded to Klyczek in the same 2021 Winter Journal. He wrote,

“This leads me to what is perhaps the most striking assumption in Klyczek’s response: Union and community pressure is not just prone to but will inevitably succumb to corporate co-optation. Again, I find this reading deterministic and overly pessimistic. It is due to public pressure that the ESSA included language for community schools.”

“Now, if democratic control were to be gained in individual schools as I propose, local community members and unions could better organize around the issues that Klyczek discusses, potentially finding methods to meet the current data-reporting requirements in ways that serve the individual school and not tech oligarchs. If a suitable method cannot be found, communities can fight to change the language.”

Conclusion

Although I appreciate the positive we-can-do-it attitude Dylan Craig exhibits, I find John Adam Klyszek’s analysis more persuasive. Klyszek may be a little over the top, but seeing the wealthiest owner in the NBA, Steve Ballmer, underwriting research on community schools shows me that these schools are certainly privatization targets. The 2015 rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was a delight for neoliberal politicians and their billionaire patrons. It opened the door to market based solutions for many education needs including community schools.

In the 1930’s the great historian Arnold Toynbee observed in his masterpiece, A Study of History: “The bread of universal education is no sooner cast upon the waters than a shoal of sharks arises from the depths and devours the children’s bread under the educator’s very eyes.”

It is going to be a challenge to keep profiteers from devouring the promise of community schools.

Tags: community schools, ESSA, Joshua Starr, philanthropy, Politics, Standardized Testing, Steve Ballmer

Comments 2 Comments
Categories Corporate Education Reform, DPE, education

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The Parent Association

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