…a feeling of inferiority… stop privatizing education…

Posted on March 30, 2014 by rmberkman

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Charter Schools & Dog Whistle Politics in New York

Posted on March 26, 2014 by rmberkman

I’ve lived through my share of the outrageous when it comes to political pandering, having grown up in the days of Lyndon Johnson’s “Daisy” campaign advertisement, right up through Reagan’s “Cadillac Queen” to Bush the Elder’s take-down of presidential candidate Michael Dukakis using the infamous Willie Horton commercials. This is not to mention the “swift boating” of John Kerry and the classification of President Obama as not being “a real American.” The tactic was refined through the development of “dog whistle” politics that featured such loaded terms as “family values” and “welfare reform” to prick up the faithful ears of fundamentalist Christians and “angry white men.”  Until now, this was something that was favored by Republicans, who could depend on their sometimes veiled, and other times overt, messages of racism and religious intolerance to “bring out the vote.”

It worked for George Wallace, Ronald Reagan and many other demagogues: why not Andrew Cuomo, Michele Rhee and Eva Moskowitz?

It appears, though, that politicians like Andrew Cuomo, and neo-politicians, like Michele Rhee and Eva Moskowitz, have taken this strategy and re-purposed it for their own brand of racial-urban-class warfare. Their “dog whistle,” however, is designed to lure African-American voters to their side of the ledger by doing the bidding of the rich and powerful. How else would you get 10,000 people of color to rally for a practice that creates a new era of de facto segregation?

If you examine the racial composition of charter schools in New York, you would find that the numbers point to a new pattern of separate and unequal schools. While African-American students comprise 30% of the student population in NYC, they make up 60% of the charter school enrollment. On the other side, 40% of New York’s student body is Hispanic, yet they represent about 30% of the students in charter schools. This imbalance is clearly not accidental.

As if these numbers were not bad enough, the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles released a report today that New York schools have grown even more segregated, with charter schools leading the way. According to the report:

In New York City, the largest school system in the U.S. with 1.1 million pupils, the study notes that many of the charter schools created over the last dozen years are among the least diverse of all, with less than 1 percent white enrollment at 73 percent of charter schools.

Things are even more dismal on the status of children who are English Language Learners (ELLs.) In a city where 15% of students are ELL, the public school population of these students outpaces charters by 300%. Yes, you read that correctly: there are 300% more ELLs in public schools than in charters.

Here are the stats....

The stats from 2010; do you think things have improved since then?

In the days of George Wallace, African-American families rightfully demanded that they be admitted to the “separate and clearly unequal” schools that were reserved for whites; it was a basic issue of equality. When Brown vs. The Board of Education was handed down, it was not because the court believed that the solution was to create schools for African-Americans that were identical to those attended by white students: Thurgood Marshall, the lead attorney on the case, showed that the presence of all-white schools created a special class of students who would be considered superior to their peers of color. This was best exemplified by the research performed by the educational psychologists Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark: their “doll test” studies proved to the Supreme Court that segregation had an impact on black schoolchildren’s mental status. How is this any different than a charter schools network that uses public money to elevate the status of one group of students over another?

If 60% of charter school students are African American, then a back of the napkin calculation shows that over 30,000 African American children attend charter schools in NYC: multiply that by their caregivers, relatives and friends, and you’ve got a critical mass of 200,000 single-issue voters who will run to the candidate that is most aligned with the “pro charter” movement, especially if he/she is given Eva Moskowitz’s blessing. When Andrew Cuomo stands in front of a crowd of predominantly African-American families and proclaims the equivalent of “charters today, charters tomorrow, charters forever,” we know what kind of whistle he is blowing.

 

Addendum: this fun fact comes from the New York City Charter School Center!:

Question: What types of students attend charter schools?

The approximately 56,600 students who attend New York City’s charter schools come from all backgrounds and ethnicities, and include a higher percentage of Hispanic or African American students than traditional New York City district schools. Last year, there were 92% Hispanic or African American students in New York City’s charter schools, compared with 70% in traditional district schools. This is in part because charter schools are mostly located in areas in which a large number of Latino and African American students live. 

Indeed, 92% of students are Hispanic and African American, but let’s get something straight: just because you put the word “Hispanic” first does not mean that they are anywhere in the majority. Let’s repeat until necessary: 30% of charter school students are Hispanic and 62% are African American. You can change the syntax (since African American begins with an “a,” I believe it should go first) but you can’t change the facts.

Posted in charter schools, racial-urban-class warfare, urban-class warfare | Leave a comment

Torah, Talmud and the Common Core: Oy Veh!

Posted on March 25, 2014 by rmberkman

There’s an old joke that if you put two Jews in a room to debate a question, they’ll inevitably emerge with three opinions. This comes about from the fact that Judaism is based on an ancient text written in an extinct language which, depending on whom you ask, could be the literal word of a divine being, or the work of a single author inspired by this divine being, or, as archaeologists have shown, is the work of several authors, which was then compiled over several centuries until it emerged in its current form. This document, which is known the as the Torah, despite its age and mysterious origins, remains one of the central texts of Western civilization.

I am fairly serious about being Jewish, but this does not blind me to the eccentricities and downright nastiness of the Torah. It has elements of originality, lyricism and beauty, while at the same time being furiously murky and downright politically incorrect. On one hand, it can wax lyrically about the glories of the divine spirit, while at other times it can be downright racist, sexist and bigoted (I don’t know what the Hittites and Amorites did to arouse the ire of whomever compiled the Torah, but it must have been over something more innocuous than splitting the check at an ancient Chinese restaurant on a Sunday night….)

The most interesting thing about studying Torah is the lack of agreement on what the meaning and intent of any specific passage may be. This has led to thousands of years of discussions by millions of people, a small portion of which have been collected into such works as the Talmud, which is a record of the great rabbis’ interpretation of what this incredibly dense and puzzling document may be. This being a religious text, there is no “author” to ask for a definitive answer (although there is a comical anecdote where a rabbi makes a tree fly across the yard to prove his particular version of correctness), but that’s hardly the point: the Torah engages us because nobody has the final word. In the end, we read and interpret Torah to enrich our lives and develop new insights into the nature of spirituality.

Which brings me to the Common Core State Standards. Say what you will about how they were presented unto us as a gift from a different kind of “presence” (and whether anyone would regard Bill’ionaire’ Gates as “divine” is beyond my imagination), they are incredibly dry and dense in way that one wishes for some kind of hermeneutic laxative to calm the mental spasms one gets from reading them. Interpreting and implementing these standards has become a very profitable industry because the stakes are so high: failure to follow the Common Core chapter and verse could lead to low test scores, the firing of a teacher and the closing down of a school. Oh, and  no doubt there are consequences to the student as well, but his/her welfare seems to be far down that list.

So what are we to make of this section of the CCSS in 2nd grade?

2NBT 5: Add and subtract within 1000, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method. Understand that in adding or subtracting three- digit numbers, one adds or subtracts hundreds and hundreds, tens and tens, ones and ones; and sometimes it is necessary to compose or decompose tens or hundreds.

I’ll state my question clearly: does this mean that 2nd grade teachers should be taught the “standard algorithm” for adding and subtracting three-digit numbers? Inquiring minds want to know!

As is the case with many things related to the Common Core, “clear and definitive answers are hard to come by.” From what transpired when I asked this question of my colleagues, nobody will commit to a specific answer, because a) nobody really knows; b) nobody is in agreement; c) everybody is trying to protect their  asses; d) Common Core? How about “Common Bore?”

A representative from Houghton Mifflin, publishers of Go Math!, which devotes an entire chapter in the 2nd grade curriculum to teaching and practicing the “standard algorithm”  for adding and subtracting 3 digit numbers, gave me her interpretation, which would leave a Torah scholar incredulous at its astonishing  leaps of logic, and perhaps faith:

Dear Mr. Berkman,

I was forwarded an e-mail containing your question on the use of algorithms in the Grade 2 GO Math! program.

In order to prepare my response I went back and carefully reread the explanation of the Grade 2 content standards included in the Critical Area description – p. 17 of the CCSS – as Critical Area 2 was instrumental to our approach around addition and subtraction algorithms:

 “In Grade 2, instructional time should focus on four critical areas: (1) extending understanding of base-ten notation; (2) building fluency with addition and subtraction; (3) using standard units of measure; and (4) describing and analyzing shapes.”

“(2) Students use their understanding of addition to develop fluency with addition and subtraction within 100. 

They solve problems within 1000 by applying their understanding of models for addition and subtraction and they develop, discuss, and use efficient, accurate, and generalizable methods to compute sums and differences of whole numbers in base-ten notation, using their understanding of place value and the properties of operations. They select and accurately apply methods that are appropriate for the context and the numbers involved to mentally calculate sums and differences for numbers with only tens or only hundreds.”

 If one only reads CCSS 2.NBT.7, it is possible to conclude that the standard algorithm is not required. 

 However, by looking at the Critical Area description, and 2NBT.5, we believe (emphasis mine) it is clear the standard algorithm is expected for two-digit addition and subtraction, as this is what is meant by “fluency with addition and subtraction within 100.” The Common Core expects a conceptual approach to developing the standard algorithm by making use of the base-ten system and properties. This is precisely what is done in lesson 4.1 (break apart ones to add — uses pictures), 4.2 (make a ten — uses drawings and base-ten materials), 4.3 (break apart addends as tens and ones — uses drawings), 4.4 (model regrouping with base-ten materials), 4.5 (modeling and recording 2-digit addition — again, using drawings and base-ten materials to connect to standard algorithm), 4.6 continues to use drawings and base-ten models, only beginning in 4.7 do students actually begin to practice the use of the algorithm. A parallel approach in conceptual development is utilized for subtraction. In Chapter 6 we address standard 2.NBT.7 as outlined in the standards. By eventually using the standard algorithm in Chapter 6, we are reinforcing 2NBT.5. Our authors believe this fluency is required in order to properly prepare students for grade 3 so they can focus on multiplication and division. This approach is further supported by the critical area statement that students “develop, discuss, and use efficient, accurate, and generalizable methods to compute sums and differences of whole numbers in base-ten notation, using their understanding of place value and the properties of operations.” 

 The standard algorithm is a generalizable method to compute sums and differences, and our approach is based on understanding of place value.

 I hope this information is helpful. 

 Regards.

 Mary Connolly

What constitutes a “generalizable” method is open to discussion, if you get my drift. Yes, the “standard algorithm” is a “generalizable method,” but so are drawing diagrams and modeling with base ten blocks. There are many generalizable ways to solve an addition and subtraction problem, but there is only one “standard algorithm” (although who “standardized” this algorithm is one for the educational historians.) I’ll say it again, but this time in bold type: The word algorithm does not appear until the third grade standards. Was this by intention or oversight? What did the “creators” of this document intend?

Unlike the Torah (which, I am given to understand, lacks a bibliography) the Common Core State Standards were written by humans who, presumably, are still alive and well. Surely the person who wrote this standard and the committee which approved it had a specific idea in mind, and I believe the specific idea is that the “standard algorithm” for adding and subtracting three digit numbers would not be taught until 3rd grade. I’ll go even further: based on this footnote in 3.NBT.A.2, the authors clearly state “a range of algorithms may be used” for multi-digit computation. That is, they do not acknowledge or endorse a “standard algorithm” at any point.

It is more than likely is that this may have nothing to do with what the actual authors of Go Math! intended. The alleged “author” of  this chapter was evasive when I brought up the subject of algorithms, hedging her bets by stating “I am not concerned by the labeling; it could very well be called a procedure or process. I think what is important is our intent for children’s learning.” ” What was that intent?” I responded. No response.

Based on my research and conversations, my only conclusion is that the three-digit addition and subtraction algorithms were written into the 2nd grade Go Math! curriculum to placate those who believe the CCSS are not rigorous enough. If you’ve been around awhile, you know that curriculum adoptions are ultimately less about educational appropriateness and more about political appeasement.

The prevarication I’ve encountered leads me to believe that the marketing people at Houghton-Mifflin decided that it would be economically expedient to include content that was clearly out of line with the standards in order to lure in those who demand a traditional form of mathematics instruction. By defiling the standards to bloat their profit sheets, Houghton Mifflin has shown us that while the Common Core State Standards were “supposed” to change everything, it’s really “business as usual” for the big publishers.

Posted in Common Core State Standards, Computation, Go Math!, Junk | 1 Comment

Charter Schools and the Politics of Urban-Racial-Class Warfare

Posted on March 23, 2014 by rmberkman

It was once said that “all politics is local,” and when it comes to education, it should best be construed as hyper-local: a parent who sends his/her kid to the neighborhood public school does not gives a rat’s arm over what is going on in the next town or the adjoining district. It’s the nature of the beast: as Mel Brooks once quipped, “tragedy is when I cut my finger; comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” In this case, when the school in the poor neighborhood is shut down, re-opens as a charter and displaces hundreds of students, we all shake our heads. When the public school in your neighborhood loses funding for new monkeybars in the playground, we stand in front of the Whole Foods and get shoppers to sign petitions. It’s sad, but that’s the nature of education politics.

Probably the most disturbing images of the charter school battles here in New York is the blatant attempt by the charter demagogues to craft their image as one of the “educational savior.” Surely you’ve seen the photos like the one below, where the children of color are shown as victims of the public school establishment, who were “rescued” by the opening of a charter school.

Even more disturbing are the charter school “photo ops” like the one below which seeks to cast the battles as essentially racial, as opposed to economic. If these were, as Arne Duncan candidly coined them, white suburban moms on the front lines, there would be a much different interpretation of the story.

Who is standing at the front line of charter school battles?

You have to sympathize with these parents: after listening for years to the incessant fearmongering spread by the likes of Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee and their cohorts, as well as the ever present problems of the underfunded and humiliated public schools, these parents have found “safe haven” in the charters. They are correct in wanting the best educational opportunities for their children, and they should be applauded for the hard work they have put into advancing their cause. I support their work on behalf of their children, and I would count myself privileged to work in any classroom where their children were present.

At the same time, I hope they recognize that this opportunity is not “free” in any sense of the word. Do they understand that they are the lucky few who made the effort to research these schools, take part in the application process, agree to the rules and regulations that they involve, and take the risk that that their child will most likely not finish in that school eight years later, particularly if he/she is diagnosed with special education needs (where the chances of still being in that charter school 3 years later is an abysmal 20%.)

This is urban-racial-class warfare at its worst: by sorting poor families into the groups of educational “haves” and “have nots,” charters have created the conditions where they divert educational resources to the most “deserving” of children (read: easiest to teach) by systematically creating a new class of parents who want “good schools” for their children. While I’m sure there are not many parents who want to send their kids to a “bad school,” there are many, many parents who don’t know or understand the ins and outs of the educational system to advocate for their children.

Furthermore, there are many who prefer not to send their kids to a charter school, even if it allegedly offers a “superior education”, for a myriad of reasons (although not having your child’s face plastered in a full page ad in the New York Times might have something to do with it.) Some parents may prefer to have a child in a school close to where they live or work, others may prefer to have their child in a school that has a philosophy that is much more aligned to their own, while still others are scared of taking a chance on a charter, given their dismal record working with students who are learning disabled or not yet fluent in English. This is not even to mention the thousands of parents who may be undocumented and do not want to arouse the suspicions of the INS. Still others might find the prospects of an 8 hour school day daunting for their child.

While it would be a great idea if every parent took the time to learn about the educational opportunities available to their children, the sad fact is that the vast majority of parents are overwhelmed by the system. The educational-industrial complex is a vast bureaucracy that has its own thicket of paperwork and hoop jumping. Charters have cut through that thicket by doing something simple: sign on the dotted line, enter the lottery, obey the rules and we promise to give your kids the appearance of a good education; yes, it’s a roll of the dice, but for some desperate families, it is a chance they are willing to take.

So what do we find? Poor and minority families on the front lines advocating as proxies for billionaire benefactors for a separate school system that will systematically drain resources and hurt other poor and minority families who cannot or will not enroll their children in these schools. In effect, the charters ultimate goal is to create a new “educational underclass” composed of the most difficult to teach and the most difficult to reach.

But why should I care about what’s going on in the school across town if my child’s school is doing just fine?

 

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What kind of parents does Success Academy want? Well, me for one!

Posted on March 22, 2014 by rmberkman

There’s an old joke about a man who goes to synagogue week after week, beseeching God to let him win the lottery. Weeks go by, years go by, decades go by, and the man dutifully asks for one thing only: please, let him win the lottery. Well into his 90s, the man falls on his knees one day, begging God to do one thing for him before he dies, let me win the lottery! A little voice suddenly calls out to him from above in response: “So, meet me halfway and buy a ticket?”

Yes, it’s a silly (and incredibly old) joke, but I’m going to get serious. I am a solidly middle class, educated parent. I participate in my kids’ education (my daughter finished college last spring, and my son is in a public high school.) Yet day after day, I log onto the TeachersPayTeachers website (which is where I sell materials related to the teaching of mathematics) and what do I encounter each time? This!

Screen Shot 2014-03-22 at 6.03.34 PM

Because if you’re looking for a random distribution of kids whose parents would enter a lottery to send their kids to the Success Academy Charter School, where else would you look? On a website that has lots of teachers! And we know that the children of teachers are the hardest to teach, right? Look, we may have very low salaries, but do we really have the “impoverished” children that Success Academy brags it can reach?

This is not an isolated incident, by the way: when I see advertisements for Success Academy, I usually find them in places where the public schools are perfectly good. Park Slope, which is where my children went to elementary school, has some of the best schools in the city, yet where do we see ads begging parents to apply to Success Academy? Yes!

By contrast, I work in the Tremont section of the Bronx once a week: as I look out the window of the subway car, I never see an ad from Success Academy. I walk along Grand Concourse in this impoverished neighborhood: do I see any ads for Success Academy? Um, noooooo. But walk along 7th Avenue in Park Slope, where there is a very high probability of finding a high-scoring “easy to teach” middle to upper class kid, and it’s a different story.

This is what galls me most about charters like Success Academy stating that they have better “success” than public schools. Yes, it’s easy to get success when you filter out the most challenging kids, and a lottery is only “fair” to those who enter it. Success Academy has a terrible reputation for working with learning disabled students and those with limited English proficiency. Do you really believe that these parents are going to waste their time entering a lottery for a school that won’t serve their children’s needs?

This is not even to touch the subject of children whose parents are undocumented, who we know are among the poorest of the poor. So fearful are they of revealing their status, they wouldn’t go near entering a charter school lottery. They do know enough that the public schools are forbidden by law for checking on a child’s immigration status, so they enroll them there, knowing that it will be a “safe” place for their children.

Look, if Success Academy wants to stack the deck in their favor in all sorts of ways, so be it, but aren’t these the sort of rules that a 6 year old lives by? When will “little Eva” grow up?

Posted in charter schools, Junk, stacking the deck | 1 Comment

It’s all in how you ask it…

Posted on March 20, 2014 by rmberkman

This little factoid came across my feed this afternoon from the billionaire funded ChartSchools Work, which tweets under the transparently misleading name @Fam4ExcSchools. Their biases are painfully obvious, so it’s no wonder the responses they get to their tweets are inevitably antagonistic. You have to admire the nerve it took to compose this:

Poll finds 79% of NYers want to protect or expand public charter schools. #’s even higher w/ public school parents. chart.rs/uKSHZ

I knew I smelled a rat, so I immediately clicked on the link and was taken to Quinnipiac University’s latest poll that focused on funding a universal pre-K in NYC, with a few softballs about charter schools thrown into the mix. I’m no fan of Quinnipiac polls, especially because polling is much trickier than it looks. It seems to me that every college with a copy of SPSS and a bunch of bored students looking to pick up some extra beer money should not be in the business of determining the public’s opinion on anything.

Here’s the exact wording of the question that was asked:

As you may know, charter schools are operated by private or non-profit organizations. The schools are paid for with public funds and do not charge tuition. Do you think the mayor should increase the number of charter schools, decrease the number of charter schools, or keep the number of charter schools the same?

Hmmm, it seems like that question was just a teensy-weensy bit biased. Well, okay, maybe really over the top, liar-liar-pants-on-fire biased. I wonder how the responses would have been if it had been worded this way:

As you may know, charter schools are operated by private or non-profit organizations. The schools are paid for with public funds and do not charge tuition. Charter schools displace students who were already attending the school in a building, requiring them to relocate to a different school much further away. The operators of charter schools pay themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while working their young teachers for 12-14 hours a day, who then leave the school after 1- 2 years. The student attrition rates at charter schools is far higher than that found in public schools, and they educate a far lower percentage of students with learning disabilities and limited English proficiency. Charter schools regularly accept funding from hedge fund billionaires, which they use to pay for extra services which boost their standardized test scores.

Do you think the mayor should increase the number of charter schools, decrease the number of charter schools, or keep the number of charter schools the same?

I’m very curious to see how that would poll. What was most interesting is that even with this lead in, they could only get 40% of people to agree that the number of charters should increase, and nearly half still wanted them to pay rent. Imagine what the numbers would have been if the question had actually been “fair.”

 

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Moron the Bad: Go Math! can’t even get the “standards” correct.

Posted on March 17, 2014 by rmberkman

I’ll admit that I’m no fan of the Common Core State Standards, which is besides the fact that Bill”ionaire” Gates basically funded the whole endeavor , they are just badly written AND to make things worse, the “new and improved” textbooks are just as crappy as the old ones. Let’s look at the pitfalls of using “Go Math!” which is just the most worthless piece of junk imaginable. I still believe that someone in the NYC Department of Education had to be bribed to adopt this, because the more I look it, the more I hate it.

Let’s look at the latest element of educational malpractice that raises my ire. Let me start with this observation: the word “algorithm” does not appear in the math standards before third grade. Let me repeat this: the word “algorithm” does not appear in the Common Core math standards before third grade. Are we clear: algorithms are not meat to be part of the Common Core math curriculum before third grade. I should mention that Go Math! advertises itself as being “completely aligned” to the Common Core State Standards.

Just so we’re clear, I will publish the relevant standard that the page I’m about to examine refers to:

7. Add and subtract within 1000, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method. Understand that in adding or subtracting three- digit numbers, one adds or subtracts hundreds and hundreds, tens and tens, ones and ones; and sometimes it is necessary to compose or decompose tens or hundreds.

I don’t see the phrase “learn and practice algorithms” here, do you? Okay, let’s review the implications of this finding. Are we in agreement that 2nd grade < 3rd grade? Good!

So tell me, why does this page (and many other just like it) show up in the 2nd grade Go Math! workbook?

I'm sorry: these are not "strategies" - these are algorithms...

I’m sorry: these are not “strategies” – these are algorithms…

There are many pages of this nonsense in the 2nd grade workbook, and while perhaps the writers thought these were “strategies,” they are not: they are algorithms. I’m pretty sure that when the puppets hired by Bill”ionaire” Gates wrote the CCSS, they may have had a reason to not use the word “algorithm” before third grade. For example, because they are totally inappropriate!

Was this an isolated mistakes? Okay, let’s look at another page, which is hilariously entitled “Model and Draw.”

and where exactly is the "model" and "draw" part?

and where exactly is the “model” and “draw” part?

C’mon, give me a break, give me two, please give me a thousand! There is nothing in this turd of a page that would remotely be considered “modeling” and “drawing.”

I’ve tried to contact the weasels at the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, but wouldn’t you know it, there seems to be no telephone number where you can reach anybody who has anything to say about this. Of course, if you want some “training” on their poorly conceived materials, they’ll be glad to sell it to you; if you want to ask about the inappropriate material in this curriculum, well, write us an email and maybe we’ll get back to you. I doubt I’ll hear from either of the functionaries whom I emailed, but then again, you never know: it is St. Patrick’s day. Maybe some of that “luck of the Irish” will rub off me.

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Why does every slob with a billion dollars…?

Posted on March 16, 2014 by rmberkman

Why does every slob with a billion dollars to his name think he knows more about education than a teacher? Just because the teacher spent all those years studying the art and practice of teaching, just because that teacher was willing to sacrifice that billion dollars to roll up his/her sleeves and labor in a classroom day after day after day and bring the beauty of knowledge and understanding to his/her students?

Here’s my challenge: you got some extra time on your hands, “Bill”ionaire Gates? Why don’t you give up your inane crusade to decree what should be taught in the classroom and join us, the working teacher, in the classroom, say, for a month? Spend a month writing lesson plans, explaining and correcting students, correcting papers, attending meetings, making phone calls, encouraging students and explaining yourself to parents and administrators and billionaires who make crappo software.

Spend a month working for the most menial of wages, and then taking a second and third job so you’ll have something saved to send your kid to college (or tutoring, if he/she isn’t getting it for free at the Lakeside School.) Spend a month eating brown bag lunches or cafeteria food, cleaning up vomit from the sick child, showing the same child day after day after day how to put his/her coat on.

Spend a month wondering why the poor child comes to school hungry, why he comes to school with torn clothing, why he just doesn’t come to school at all. Spend a month contacting the parents, then the principal, then the social worker to find out where the child has gone. Spend a month helping a sixteen year old decide whether to stay in school or drop out so he/she can earn some money to support the family.

Really, what is your time worth?

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Don’t Cry For Me, Andrew Cuomo!

Posted on March 14, 2014 by rmberkman

evita-moscowitz

It won’t be easy
But you’ll get it through
When I try to explain how I much
That I need your legislation
After all that I’ve done
You’ll gladly believe me
All you see
Is the politician you once knew
Although she’s dressed up as an educrat
with $800,000 for you

I had to get support
I had to fake the numbers
Couldn’t say my schools were all just hype
Taking all that money
From the hedge fund billionaires
So I chose to pimp my scores
Running around collecting the most worthy children
But they only impressed me
When they scored all fours

Don’t cry for me, Andrew Cuomo
The truth is I’ll never leave you
As long as you’ll pass laws for me
And support my existence
I’ll keep my promise
Don’t keep your distance

And as for fortune and as for fame
I happily invited them in
For $475,000 worth
They were all I desired
They are not illusions
They’re the solutions
They promise to be
The answer was here all the time
I support you and know you support me

Don’t cry for me, Andrew Cuomo
The truth is I’ll never leave you
As long as you’ll pass laws for me
And support my existence
I’ll keep my promise
Don’t keep your distance

Have I said too much?

There’s nothing more I can think of to say to you
But all you have to do
Is look at me to know
That every word is true

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Give me your ESL, your handicapped, your learning disabled, your discipline problems, yearning to learn….

Posted on March 13, 2014 by rmberkman

According to this fine post on Diane Ravitch’s blog, what we suspected about the charter school movement has been true all along: you can’t compare country clubs with the  county park, even when the country club claims that it does not discriminate.

Many charter schools make the false claim that they do not to discriminate by pointing out that they choose students through “lotteries.” A lottery is not a “random sampling,” a concept which is so basic that it even appears in the Common Core State Standards for 7th grade. A lottery is a “skewed sample” of families that have an enhanced interest in their child’s education, are willing to fill out the necessary forms to take part in the process, and agree to follow the rules and regulations that the charter school demands (which might include extended school days, uniforms, prison style conduct codes, and “zero tolerance” discipline policies.)

I might have some sympathy for charter schools if they practiced the same kind of enrollment policies as their public school counterparts: that is, they would put out an “all welcome” sign and pledge to keep the child with the exact same policies as a comparable public school. I would even be willing to entertain the idea that they might be doing something better in the classroom if it could be proven that this was actually true.

But it can’t and it never will.

It seems to me that if you’re running a school that intentionally creams off the better students from the better families, there’s no way you cannot underperform a public school. Add to that that you’re enrolling ESL kids and those with moderate to severe learning disabilities in disproportionately lower percentages, well, aren’t you just stacking the deck a little too much in your favor? After all this screening, all this attrition (typically over 50% Success Academy Schools), all this focus on test prep, it would seem to me that posting high test scores would be a slam dunk. Yet the latest findings show equal results on ELA and a modest edge on math test scores. Yeeeeeesh, all this money, time and de facto segregation, and you can’t get this right? What gives?

Get the facts right: here’s Diane Ravitch to set you straight!

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