"Hartford admitted a Trojan horse to disrupt public education and disable democracy"

And should you ever wonder about why things like public acceptance of grants (along with backup documentation) matter, read Sarah Darer Littleton's blockbuster piece this weekend on the tangled web of private money and lack of public process in Hartford.

Today in things that are wrong

From around the web:

• States that already were funding their schools at the lowest levels are those that cut the most during the recent recession. Also, while Massachusetts is way down on that list, check out the actual numbers: 70.7% of our districts cut per pupil funding, and we're down 6.3% 2009-12 in actual dollars. Worrisome.
• New York City was going to go with universal lunch, then discovered what we had--that you're going to throw off your Title I funding if you do so. Two things wrong here: 1. this seems fixable. 2. the end of this article has a school nutrition director commenting that her enrollment is down 14% but her reimbursements are up. That has nothing to do with Title I, however: school nutrition reimbursements may well be up, but if her enrollment is down 14%, then the Title I funding for the district is down, as well. 
• The National Council on Teacher Quality is coming out with another report on teacher preparation and it's probably going to be a mess again. 
• The Gates Foundation is now calling for...a two year moratorium on consequences of Common Core testing? Really? 
• There are thousands of kids entering the US unaccompanied by parents or guardians due to growing violence in parts of Central America. 

what happened on data?

Short version: not much.
While I didn't get to stay for the whole thing, the bit I was there for (and the update I got afterward) is some more defense from the Commissioner, which built on top of the steady drumbeat throughout the meeting of "We MUST have ways to share data!" There were a number of unanswered questions from earlier testimony (which those who raised them will be raising again).
I took the whole packet of information that was handed out at the meeting on this issue, which I'll be sharing with the School Committee. At the least, you'll be seeing it on our agenda!

Gateway to College

Gateway to College program with QCC
Boone "who are close to graduating, need some credit recovery opportunities, to reengage in high school"
Vice President Dale Allen from QCC presenting
"national model...initially started by the Gates foundation...out of school or at risk of going out of school....both a high school degree and opportunities for college credit"
"we're dealing with the same children and limited public resources"
QCC leadership team: Tammy Boyle and Kyle Brenner from WPS; meet weekly
opportunity to apply for $300,000 from Gateway to College out of Oregon
(Note: interesting group of funders)
The college was the lead in the application for the grant
$100,000 for staff and for a planning year, which is now over
now for full implementation
31 students now accepted (ages 16-22)
can only accept 60 students in the fall and 40 students in the spring
"understood and viewed as the fourth option" in the Worcester Public Schools
majority of students not only graduate from high school, but go on to attend a two or four year college
Mount Wachusett Community College has been running this for some time
a year's lag in the ch.70 funding (they're getting this year's money next year)

Monfredo: how is recruitment is taking place?
through community-based organizations and through WPS
follow the usual QCC schedule; generally takes a year and a half to complete high school
work with last host school for that student, and then test into QCC levels

Colorio: is there a way for parents to get their kids in now (for kids who may have already dropped out)?
Boone: reaching out to young adults, as well

Foley: will they still need to pass MCAS?
Boone: yes, if they have not already

Novick: full ch. 70 per pupil amount will be going to QCC for each of these students
still working out whose students they will be in tracking (for graduation rates)

They talked about it

sorry, all, but the title ("Fight Club") of this one is a set-up


You know how you suspected that all of the big money "ed reformers" were actually all working together and talking to each other?
And then you thought, "Naaah, that's just being paranoid."

Nope, not paranoid:

The PIE Network emerged, according to executive director Kubach, because of “the growing realization that the arena of state policymaking matters a lot for school reform and you can’t just do everything at the federal level. We needed to connect the conversation in Washington with a coalition of different kinds of groups at the state level—business leaders, civic leaders, and grassroots constituents.” The 34 organizations in the network operate in 23 states and Washington, D.C. Network members include affiliates of Stand for Children and 50CAN, business groups like the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, the Oklahoma Business and Education Coalition, and Colorado Succeeds, and civic groups like Advance Illinois and the League of Education Voters (Washington). The PIE Network is also supported by five “policy partners,” which span the ideological spectrum but agree on the network’s reform commitments: Center for American Progress, Center on Reinventing Public Education, Education Sector, National Council on Teacher Quality, and Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Like many ERAOs, PIE Network is funded by the big three (Walton, Gates, and Broad) along with the Joyce and Stuart foundations.

And yes, you absolutely should read the rest, keeping in mind that Education Next is not, shall we say, an impartial source.

Hess with school reform slogans that didn't quite make it

Darkly funny:

Finally, it turns out that ED considered replacing those embarrassing Bush-era plastic schoolhouses outside the Department of Education with something fresher: a banner announcing "Welcome to the Gates Foundation, East Coast division"

"Hired Guns on Astroturf"

Ed reformers liven up their websites with photographs of happy-looking school children, many of them minorities: the kids are busy at work or smiling into the camera. Meanwhile, their self-appointed benefactors ally with politicians who are slashing school budgets, cutting social services and benefits, gutting jobs programs, undercutting health-care reform, pummeling public sector unions, and passing laws that make it harder for the children’s parents to vote. The disconnect between what ed reformers claim to be doing for low-income children and what they actually bring about boggles the mind.

Dissent magazine this month: read it.

Wide is the Gate(s)*

There's some strange things afoot with the latest round of Gates Foundation grants. In addition to continuing their grants for district/charter collaboration (I'm trying hard not to put that last word in quotes; it's warranted), they've given ALEC money for:

 ...to educate and engage its membership on more efficient state budget approaches to drive greater student outcomes, as well as educate them on beneficial ways to recruit, retain, evaluate and compensate effective teaching based upon merit and achievement

It's worth reading the whole Crooks and Liars post above on ALEC and the ongoing push to privatize education, but also notice what ALEC's latest work is on:

 A package of model legislation opposing the common standards gained ground yesterday at the American Legislative Exchange Council.

 That would be the same Common Core standards...that the Gates Foundation just spent a whole lot of money developing and getting everyone to adopt.
Confused yet? It seems the Gates Foundation might be!

 h/t Ken Libby for the tweets on this on December 5
*Matthew 7:13,14 (again)

Buying your good opinion

It seems that Charlotte-Mecklenburg (NC) has decided that it isn't that little matter of 52 new tests; you just need some convincing!

A school district that is a finalist for the soon-to-be announced $1 million 2011 Broad Prize for Urban Education is embarking on a public relations effort — funded with U.S. government and Gates Foundation money — to end public opposition to its school reform program, which includes a slew of new standardized tests.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina is using Race to the Top money — which wasn’t intended to fund public relations efforts — and $200,000 in Gates Foundation money for the campaign.

Sure doesn't sound like what it was supposed to be for, does it? Oh, but wait:

Hamilton said in a subsequent e-mail that he understands the role of the public relations specialists to be “to provide supports to stakeholder groups re: what the content and different elements of the new teacher evaluation system is… what the components are, how it will be used…”

Right, because that's the highest and best use of $150,000 a year for the next three years.

As for the Broad Prize, yes, Worcester's superintendent will be out of town this week for that award, for which the finalists this year, along with Charlotte-Mecklenburg, are Broward County in Florida, Miami-Dade County in Florida, and Ysleta in Texas.

I can't better the closing Strauss has:

So, here’s where we are: Lots of money for standardized tests, so that teachers can be evaluated by the results, and lots of money to convince the skeptical public that that bad assessment system is really a good one.

Behold the face of modern school reform.

TLSS standing committee report

O'Connell
cell phones: phones having a possible curricular use, now that they're smartphones
consulting with principals "who we trust will consult with teachers"
Gates Foundation grant: Literacy by Design grant not renewed next year
what can we thus take from it?
service learning: feasibility of requiring a service learning project at secondary level, also at elementary level, middle level, and Challenge and Reach Academies, alternative schools
five year comparison of trends in APs

City Solicitor needed for disciplinary hearings
"a very significant concern for those of us who watch this area closely"

More on tonight's School Committee meeting

The report of the superintendent is now up on the agenda.
Coming back are reports of the Standing Committees on Teaching, Learning, and Student Supports, and Governance and  Employee Issues.
TLSS has the cell phone suggested revision (allowing carefully defined use of smartphones in classrooms), one of the periodic updates on the Gates Foundation grants (we've bowed out of one), service learning, and our asking the city when we're going to get a solicitor back to handle disciplinary cases (the answer: not anytime soon), and a suggestion on updating report cards.
G&EI has a report back on outsourcing of funding of athletics, the continued pursuit of making WPS a choice (some interesting stuff here: the parent survey, better marketing, open houses at middle schools for 5th graders, and college internships), the savvy text messaging the district is using (hello, Twitter!), policy manuals,and funding a Kindergarten-4 step.

As I said, this is also the agenda when the new hires come through, so the list of those positions is in, as are transfers and retirees.
We've got responses back on using food as a reward, and National Walk to School Day (October 5th!).
We have items going to administration and various committees on training site councils, helping CPPAC get reps from every school, reports on security cameras and long-term suspensions, and an update on the district testing plan, which is a response to the state's looking into procedures surrounding testing at Goddard.
7pm, City Hall!

Gates-funded astroturf

Excellent--and badly-overdue--article on the far reaches of the Gates Foundation empire when it comes to education research, advocacy, and spin in the New York Times today.

Given the scale and scope of the largess, some worry that the foundation’s assertive philanthropy is squelching independent thought, while others express concerns about transparency. Few policy makers, reporters or members of the public who encounter advocates like Teach Plus or pundits like Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute realize they are underwritten by the foundation.

“It’s Orwellian in the sense that through this vast funding they start to control even how we tacitly think about the problems facing public education,” said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who said he received no financing from the foundation.

Mr. Hess, a frequent blogger on education whose institute received $500,000 from the Gates foundation in 2009 “to influence the national education debates,” acknowledged that he and others sometimes felt constrained. “As researchers, we have a reasonable self-preservation instinct,” he said. “There can be an exquisite carefulness about how we’re going to say anything that could reflect badly on a foundation.”

“Everybody’s implicated,” he added.

Indeed, the foundation’s 2009 tax filing runs to 263 pages and includes about 360 education grants. There are the more traditional and publicly celebrated programmatic initiatives, like financing charter school operators and early-college high schools. Then there are the less well-known advocacy grants to civil rights groups like the Education Equality Project and Education Trust that try to influence policy, to research institutes that study the policies’ effectiveness, and to Education Week and public radio and television stations that cover education policies.

Full house tonight: innovation schools

We've got a full house tonight: plenty of people here to testify on innovation, recess, special ed.
Public hearing on innovation schools
School Committee will deliberate and vote at next Thursday's meeting
with apologies in advance for all the names I miss
publishing as I go...updating as the testimony continues 

Goddard School of Science and Technology

Goddard School
strong culture of shared expectations
"not the typical top-down governance system" (and note that this is the first presentation with more than one speaker)
connection with Promise Neighborhood as well as innovation
"student achievement through innovation"

More Gates astroturf

..coming soon to a community near you!

The plan includes campaigns to reach out to parents, teachers, students, business and civic and religious leaders, and to build “strong ties to local journalists, opinion elites, and local/state policymakers and their staffs.” The plan explains how the organization will ensure “frequent placement ... in local media coverage of issues related to teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution of effective teachers” in accordance with the Gates approach.
The proposal calls for supporting local groups that promote the value-added evaluation systems, and who even get involved in unions so they can demand this approach in collective bargaining for teachers contracts.
But in a section entitled “Risks,” the proposal says that one big risk “is that Teaching First will be characterized as a tool of the Foundation.” To avoid that, it says, “Teaching First will need to be very careful about the national partners it brings into the work” and should “maintain a low public profile” and “ensure publicity and credit accrue to local partners whenever possible.”

(This would perhaps be a good spot to point out that a recent review of the L.A. Times value-added study found it fundamentally flawed. Good summary here. We continue to have research showing this.)
You'll find more on the mega-funding of the Gates Foundation in media management here and this excellent article.

Ravitch on Stewart

If you did not see Diane Ravitch on Jon Stewart, here you are:

The Daily Show - Diane Ravitch
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Updates on everything

The agenda for this Thursday's meeting of the Worcester School Committee is up. It appears that the Superintendent's report is an update on all of the various initiatives--Level 4 schools, Promise Neighborhood grant, Focus on Results, innovation schools, the Gates grant--that are currently going on in Worcester. If you're interested in any of the above, coming down to City Hall or tuning in around 7 on Thursday would be well worth your while.
We're also getting back the travel report (which appears to have quite a number of abbreviations and no explanations for those or for the travel...I'm told more on travel will be coming), and a report on the Listening and Learning sessions last spring.
Also, we are being asked to pass the FY11 budget at $362,251 less than we did in June, as the charter assessment rates have come in. It's being recommended that it come out of instructional materials (but, honestly, for FY12, as we'd planned on carrying just over $700,000 forward for next year. We're that much more in the hole for FY12, then.).

Note that the Worcester School Committee is having a legislative breakfast on Friday at 7:30 am at the Tech school.

New LA School Chief

...coming to you straight from the Gates Foundation.

Gates Foundation Timeline

KEI has a Microsoft/Gates Foundation timeline posted. Everyone will, I'm sure, find their own points of interest. What leapt out at me is how far we are from the Bill Gates who wrote (in 1998):

I am in agreement with my friend, Warren Buffett, when he says that people who are successful in one field should be careful about suggesting they know all the answers in other areas.

Blue Mass on education

Two good posts over on Blue Mass Group on education right now:

• the first responds to Thomas Friedman's New York Times column from earlier this week.
• the second gives an exhaustive list of people who have recently left the Patrick administration to go work for the Gates foundation...and do read the comments