Vote Like A Goat

Today is School Board Elections…Polls are open 10-8…  If anyone is sponsored by Markell or Rodell or RTTT or WSFS, don’t vote for them.. If anyone is sponsored by DSEA, they are on the students side. They are safe.

So go out and vote like a goat… Be…  B-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-D

Why We Should All Be Against Raising Teacher’s Standards

I’d never thought I’d write that.  How could anyone in their right mind be against raising teacher’s standards… After all it is our kids we are talking about who will suffer….

Exactly,  Passing SB 51 with S/A 1 Amendment attached, will cause our kids to suffer. That’s how I can write that. Otherwise I’d be full force behind this bill just as was every senator who voted for it….

You ask, how can raising standards on teachers, hurt our children?

I will ask you back;  ”How would you like to take your brand new car you just purchased to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop and have him work it over? How could that possibly hurt your car?”

Basically that’s what this law does for education. It is as if we passed a law for cars that said every new car purchased had to be re-certified by Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop.  The entire premise on this auto legislation lies in this one single question: gee, who is Joe?

If Joe is someone who is the world’s best mechanic, factory trained by every car manufactured, a man or woman who can analyze myriads of problems by just with listening with a fine-tuned ear, then maybe this bill could possibly be ok.  But if Joe has no knowledge of electronic computers, but learned his mechanics back in the days of steel and oil, and is a complete loss when he sees a car with no distributer cap,  then taking your car that runs perfectly to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop, can damage your car pretty darn bad.

And THAT is the problem with SB 51…  We don’t know who Joe is….

What we do know, is that our car is purring perfectly, heck we just bought it, everything was tuned at the factory.  Since it is straight from the factory, it is running very well,  no play in the wheel, clean car smell, all items are working, and even our factory tells us to make sure we take it back to a “factory approved shop” for all repairs in order not to void the warranty….  But our government is making us take it to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop.… And we still don’t know who Joe is?

And we are not too enthralled by all the junk cars piled up in its back lot…….

That is what is wrong with SB 51….

Our great educational  training program that is functioning very well, is going to be tested and inspected by someone who doesn’t know crap…

That should scare the hell out of every single parent….

The educational system of America over the last 13 years has been disrupted. Good teachers have been fired, to be replaced with bad ones.  Students used to read literature, and now they are handed “packets” and read test questions. Schools that have been opened for a century,  have been closed…. The educational system is in disarray; a disarry that appears to have been forced down from the top.

We’ve all been there… The new boss walks in, and yells “things are going to be different now”.  Some are excited, some are afraid, but this boss is out of control… He arbitrarily fires, can’t hire fast enough, and the  business breaks down.  It becomes broken.  He came into fix, and it got put… into a fix.  So he storms out, blaming all those left for his need to make an exit.  And then everyone is asked to put it back together, and they do, then the next boss is hired…  If you work in America, you’re guaranteed to have  been through this scenario.

We are going to do that with teachers?  Who’s this guy, Joe again?  Is this test going to be made by the same ones that lowered Delaware’s results?  Is this test going to be like those 5th grader tests loaded with 7th grade questions using letters a,b,c in algebraic math?

As that car owner, we have the best educational system bar none.  Delaware educators have among toughest standards in the country. Counting every school, even the most stringent Ivy League schools, the University of Delaware is ranked 37th in the nation. That’s ahead of  Rutgers, Temple, and even Boston University. Delaware State University is solid Tier 2 school.

Currently in Delaware’s educational programs, only one third make it through the tough gauntlet into teaching. All students graduating from UD, DSU, and WU have passed Praxis I and II; have logged hundreds of hours of observation and additional hundreds more hours of supervised teaching under the watchful eye of master teachers in our public schools. Compared to the standards even 10 years ago, new Delaware teachers graduated by these universities are the best prepared to enter the classroom in our history.

Delaware should be pretty damn proud. Instead we appear to be on the verge of committing a rash act full of unintended consequences. Our head is in the sand. Ok, the argument may go…. “If we’re so good, what possiblE harm can befall us if we take our new baby to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop?

Apart from the fact that we do not know who “Joe” is or will be when we get there, there are these reasons. The changes in SB 51/SA-1 actually lower some credentialing standards rather than raise them [see the section on now accepting Composite Scores].

Currently all Delaware student teachers take the Praxis One and the Praxis Two. No pass, no teach. These are the factory cars in the educational equation. There are composed by NCATE, National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. This is a very solid organization. If you go to their website right now, you will see that they pre-published their accreditation standards for public view and comments. They also dropped Wesley College’s accreditation for not living up to the standards.

This bill would replace these standards with ones created by the Delaware Department of Education. Returning to the Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop analogy, one has to wonder how a 3 year Phys Ed elementary teacher, can do better than a national organization that accredits schools.

Delaware has the 37th BEST teacher school ranked in the nation. And after this bill is passed, we are going to completely gut our entire program out of all we do so well, and have a 3 year elementary Physical Education Teacher rebuild our entire program from scratch….. One who has never gone through the RTTT testing he inflicts on others? One who quite questionably doesn’t meet the minimum 5 year requirement necessary to be a DOE?

It’s in the bill. that is what it says.

Would we let someone who has never been a doctor create the state’s medical certification program? Would we let a non-lawyer create the state’s Bar exam? Would we let a manager of McDonalds create our state’s nutritional guidelines?

With this administration and this Senate, I really don’t know. We just might, based on what I’m seeing right before me!

So, you are saying you would really take your BMW, Rolls, or Cadillac to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop to be certified to drive it in Delaware? Wouldn’t you be afraid he’d mess it up, especially since it is working rather well right now? Ranked 37th!..

I can hear “Joe” now… “What are all these damn stupid wires for. (Rip,rip,rip) My old Model T never had this crap”…

It’s our kids. We can’t rush this, and this bill has been rushed far too fast through the Senate. The House needs to slow down and debate this one…

We can’t afford to lose our 37th top spot in the nation for which we worked so hard and so long to get….. We got to stop this bill that will make our cars all go to “Joe’s” .

NRA Gets Its Wish: Guns In Schools

Although it was not as they envisioned.  The gun was brought inside a backpack of a middle school aged child.  Relax, no one died.  He was a good kid and never had any intention of using it.   Just thought it was super cool and wanted to show it off  along with the ammo to his friends… (He didn’t even know it was a real gun.)

The 13 year old as of Friday was being held in the New Castle County Juvenile Detention Center on $39,000 secured bail. And the courts will determine the severity of his penalty.

Of course parents are concerned.  In typical parental fashion they said…. “we need metal detectors at every school.  .

So, let us work through that premise.   Start with how can that be done?   Electronic metal detectors are expensive, and we have a lot of schools.   Currently the Department of Educations website is listing 213 schools... Now for economic reasons, we would at first need only one security site or pass-through site per building, through which everyone enters, and everyone leaves… Once the initial investment is paid for, then incremental units at other entrances and exits can be later added.

So the number is 213 security machines… Here at  Detectronix we have an assortment of walk through metal detectors.  Since most of our state’s students are familiar with jails from visiting family members, perhaps the one that is most secure for our schools would the same brand use for jails, sensitive enough to detect a loaded revolve inserted up the anus or vagina.  That costs  $4199.  However, recognizing a future need after the December 14th Newtown shootings, Detectronix has made a commitment to mass produce a cheaper version which will pick up a hand gun and pinpoint it to a general area of the body.  That reduced rate is $2499.  This cheaper version is more than adequate to isolate incoming weapons, in all but the most sophisticated ploys.   Considering the savings, it is the one I would recommend, the  Detectronix 6-Zone Walk Through Metal Detector  …

Total state cost for walk-through metal detectors? Pretty cheap, just a half a million or exactly $532,500… ($894387 would be the more expensive choice)  This does not include the fee charged for the entity that places the phone call, at 10% that would be another $53,250 dollars….

A electroinic security system needs to be manned to be effective. Otherwise it could beep on every student passing through with no accountability.  One must assume the station should be manned all day.  Even though nothing much happens at any schools entrance after the opening bell, still, if one were intent on bringing a gun to school for say, the purpose of revenge. he would obviously time his arrival at some point after he knew the metal detector was shut down.  So personnel must be stationed until close.

The average school day is 7 hours…  Multiplied by 5 days per week and it is a thirty five hour job,  add half an hour  every day to set up and tear down, and it becomes a full time position.  At salary it averages $39,000 per year. Add the FICA and supplementary benefits costs, the total package runs to: $40,677 per school….  If contracted out to a guard service, the average rate if including fees and contract costs, averages close to $50 per hour used. The contracts per year would range around $78,000 per school… but at the benefit that all liability falls upon the service and not the educational department of the state of Delaware.

So for manning these position, Delaware has two options, government versus private, and as it always works out in everything in life,  government is the cheaper.  $8,664,201  versus $16,614,000

So for a minimum of $8,664,201 a year in personnel costs plus the $532,500 in buying and installing the metal detectors, the first year estimate for that should be close to $9.200,000 dollars with $8,664,201 being spent every year thereafter.

If this is levied to property owners, the average property owner will be charged, of course assuming that Senior Citizens don’t get out of the fee for policies they support,  the fee is $0.0001 per square foot or one/hundredith of a penny per square foot. {$8,664,201/(2490 X 27,878,400)}  If one exempts state land, or makes other exemptions, that cost will rise per private property owner as is to be expected. …

Or if one wishes to allocate that cost per resident, then the assessment rounds up to {$8,664,201 / 917,000} = $9.44 per inhabitant.   That is the price of security. A family of 4 should be willing to ante up $37.79 dollars for keeping children safe…

But, the argument gets quickly raised, as it does with money, … shouldn’t those responsible for creating the problem be the ones to pay for its solution?  Those would be owner of guns. We can’t publish the amounts for confidentiality reasons.  But the gross sales of Miller’s Gunshop alone as reported this quarter  to the Delaware Dept of Revenue, argues that a fair assessment on all gun and ammunition sales at at sales tax rate of 10% would be more than adequate to cover implementing the security of all of Delaware’s schools.

The $8 million a year should not out of a child’s education.  It should come from those those actions are the direct creation of the problem in the first place.

So lets securitize our schools, and make the NRA and all gun owners pay for it… Fair is simply fair.  If we had a registry of all weapons in this country, we wouldn’t be having this problem.  As history will one day determine, the fault lies with no one but the NRA that this common sense legislation was never implemented ….. 

Children! Sit Down! Time For Today’s Quiz!

Courtesy of Obamarmy

Ok kids, Look at the graph…. and see who can be the first to tell me….. Why do we really need to ramp up the education of our black and brown kids now?!!!!

Tax the Rich. Hire teachers to reach an 11 to 1 ratio. Test beginning, mid, and end of cycle only to evaluate the student’s needs ( don’t use them to close schools, fire teachers, or divvy out bonuses to your friends and supporters)… and lets get it done….

Btw, it has to start with the first one.

New Reforms Deliver Few Benefits And In Some Cases Harm The Students

I was shocked. Shocked these new reforms were not working.  After all, in the States of the Union speeches all we’ve heard were success stories… such as that of Michelle Rhee of Washington DC, Arne Duncun of Chicago, and Mayor Bloomberg of  New York…  With such beautiful marketing, I wasn’t worried. Sure our kids were finally learning how to be world class leaders with the world class education we were giving them….

But, just like marketing can sell a toothpaste we wouldn’t otherwise buy, “Hi, I’m Adam Scott, and I brush my teeth with Arm and Hammer Baking Soda and Mortons Iodized salt.  Now you can too.” we really don’t know how it tastes…   until we taste it.   Same with education.  Now in Washington, Chicago, and New York, there is a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths…..

An Executive Summary of a study was released today.   The study will come out later, but the executive summary does not paint a rosy picture on how this system seems to be working….

Here are key findings…..

The reforms deliver few benefits and in some cases harm the students they purport to help, while drawing attention and resources away from policies with real promise to address poverty-related barriers to school success:

Test scores increased less, and achievement gaps grew more, in “reform” cities than in other urban districts.

Reported successes for targeted students evaporated upon closer examination.

Test-based accountability prompted churn that thinned the ranks of experienced teachers, but not necessarily bad teachers.

School closures did not send students to better schools or save school districts money.

Charter schools further disrupted the districts while providing mixed benefits, particularly for the highest-needs students.

Emphasis on the widely touted market-oriented reforms drew attention and resources from initiatives with greater promise.

The reforms missed a critical factor driving achievement gaps: the influence of poverty on academic performance. Real, sustained change requires strategies that are more realistic, patient, and multipronged.

In most large urban districts studied, test score gains among minority students narrowed race-based achievement gaps, and low-income students had gains comparable to their affluent peers. This contrasts with reform cities, where achievement gaps grew as poor and minority students’ scores fell further behind those of their peers. Apparently disruption and “churn” do exactly that to the test scores of students in reform districts. If left alone, they’d be much higher.

This is for Jea Street. Without these reforms being pushed by RTTT, black 8th Graders nationwide increased their scores by 5 points… In Michelle Rhee’s DC district, the same group LOST 2 POINTS…. (Source:National Center for Education Statistics, Trial Urban District Reading Assessment, 2005 and 2011; National Assess-ment of Educational Progress scores for District of Columbia Public Schools provided by D.C. budget consultant Mary
Levy in 2012.)

“While test scores increased and achievement gaps shrank in most large urban districts over the past decade, scores stagnated for low-income and minority students and/or achievement gaps widened in the reform cities.” the study concluded….DC, Chicago, and New York all lost ground and other urban areas gained ground….

The reform policy does not work. It has not worked where it has been tried. We need to stop the poison from spreading. Reformers claimed massive test score gains that data proved false… For example Bloomberg claimed he decreased the achievement gap by 50%… It was 1%. Michelle Rhee stated that low income and minority high school students had gain in double digit proficiency. Instead, the gain was minimal, no improvement, and sometimes showing losses. Obama and Arne Duncun have announced a jump in proficiency from 38% to 67%, a jump of 29 points. However when adjusted to the national test, younger children jumped 8 points, and high schools only jumped 1.

Furthermore, these cities that used test scores to fire teachers, lost experienced educators and replaced them with people off the streets. Needless to say, there was no student improvement. In 2 years, 33% of DC’s teachers left. In four years, over half, 54% were working elsewhere….

New York City spent $50 million from 2007 to 2010 on awards to teachers who substantially raised test scores in high-needs schools. In 2011, it ended the program after a RAND study confirmed “mounting evidence that all those bonuses weren’t having much of an effect.” Way to set the trend Christina School Board. Jea Street: are you taking notes?

“The Schoolwide Performance Bonus Program, intended to “motivate educators to change their practices to ones better able to improve student achievement” failed to improve student achievement at any grade level, school progress report scores, or teachers’ reported attitudes and behaviors”…

Likewise closing schools that do not perform… just sends those students to other schools that do not perform. Only 6% of students moved in Chicago, actually landed in a better school… leaving 94% who were disrupted for no reason. In fact, many did worse.

Charter Schools did no better. Only 17% of Charter students did better than their public school counterparts. 49% stayed the same. 34% did worse.

Furthermore, some of the successes using more holist types of attack, are not given funding or praise because they clash with the corporate “message” being sold to the public. But, New York has 100 successful schools that increased the share of ninth-grade students on track to graduate and high school students’ college readiness. Instead of beating up teachers, these schools ensured strong, consistent student-teacher relationships; leveraged community partners for extra staff, coaching, and resources; and provided hands-on learning experiences, such as internships at lawfirms and seeding oyster beds….

To attract more high-quality teachers to Chicago Public Schools, then-CEO Arne Duncan identified the strongest teacher-preparation programs and encouraged CPS to hire from them, moved recruitment dates up, established job fairs to boost recruiting ability, and offered new teachers higher starting salaries. This improved teacher quality and reduced inequities across districts.

One of the better successes that is NOT a market based reformed program is that of Montgomery County of Maryland, which staunchly opposes using test scores to evaluate teachers, making it one of the best districts in the nation. It also never let in charter schools. Going in another direction, Cincinnati provides in-school health clinics which has cut down absences by a large factor. With no doctors care available for children at home, students previously stayed away from school getting behind and never catching up…

These reforms have better results than the reforms currently being foisted upon Delaware by it’s Race To The Top and by the Rodel Foundation. The best success comes from strong teacher-student relationships. The most successful students are ones in classes where a student teacher ration is under 11-1….

That is the direction the nation needs to go.

Erase To The Top

Courtesy of Support Public Schools

Time’s Woman Of The Year:

How one all-nighter of erasures set American Education Back 20 years. Not since Hitler invaded France has one person set back civilization as much.

Last DOE Conference

Top secret footage smuggled out of a recent DOE meeting showing what corporate education has planned and is planning for this year’s tests.

(Teachers, if you have similar experiences, send your stories under untraceable names to any of these addresses… Just drop the story in the comment tray at the bottom of any article and share your story…..   This is not time to be vindictive or name names; we’re  just trying to channel the information past those on top who are damming the natural flow….)

In alphabetic order:

http://kavips.wordpress.com

http://kilroysdelaware.wordpress.com/

http://mindofmrmatthews.wordpress.com/

http://transparentchristina.wordpress.com/

Send us your stories and we’ll mainstream them….  Looking forward to some good writing! …

Is Our Entire Educational System Being Based Off Cheating?

And now it is Michelle Rhee herself.  The DC darling who was praised by both McCain and Obama during the 08 campaign, now has to contend with the fact that she knew all along the cheating was beyond the parameters of  normal and did nothing about it…   It is one thing if you don’t know, and your underlings who you have told to “produce or else” change their scores underneath of you,   but it another to actually know  and understand the implications (that she and her principals erased and changed the answers from wrong to right), that what you may be proposing is false and to then go forward and propose it anyway using the compromised data to back you up….

Just this year, we had Texas acknowledge that the test results then under then  George W. Bush governorship, were faked.  That pilot project went on to become the “No Child Left Behind” which left a whole generation behind.

Again just this year we had almost the entire district of Atlanta whose amazing results sold the rest of the nation into diving towards Common Core and RTTT , indicted under falsifying all the test results…

You see.

This new fangled educational system does not work unless the results are fabricated.

This is the same new fangled educational system which the Markell administration and Mark Murphy seem to be forcing upon Christina School District as we speak.  This system is dependent upon holding teachers accountable to standards that don’t work….  Then pulling out these faked test results from Texas, DC, and Atlanta, waving them and saying… we want results like these….

Ummm.  No thank you.   Things used to be much better before corporate got involved…

Anyone who has ever worked in any corporation, no matter what geographical spot you live or work in, knows very well your success depends on how you look doing it, not on whether or not things get done ethically…  On the other hand, our sports teams have the opposite philosophy.  To them, it is what you accomplish that matters, no matter how you look in achieving it.

It is time we switch and use the sports model, not the corporate model for our educational needs.  Our children deserve the best.

Delaware’s “Broad” View of Education….

Eli Broad — the CPA-trained-billionaire-businessman-turned-public-education-reformer — informed Diane Ravitch, a distinguished education expert, about what needs to be done to education in America.  . According to Ravitch, “We talked about school reform for an hour or more, and he told me that what was needed to fix the schools was not all that complicated: A tough manager surrounded by smart graduates of business schools and law schools.”

According to Slate quoting Vanity Fair, Eli Broad boasted back in 2006 that he  “plans to virtually take over the Delaware school system in 2007, pending approval from that state’s legislature.” He backed the winning slate of candidates for the local board of education in 1999 and helped hire the superintendent.

Eli Broad trains Superintendents.  Christina School District has been the unfortunate beneficiary of his largess.  Joe Wise, followed by Lillian Lowery, followed by  Marcia Lyles, all are from Eli’s School of Superintendencies….Dr. Joe Wise was selected as a Broad Fellow by Eli Broad Institute for School Boards (2005), was appointed to the Eli Broad Urban Superintendents Academy as a Fellow (2003), and serves on the Broad Academy’s adjunct faculty and advisory committee. Although Broad Superintendents come in highly qualified, they often leave disgracefully. Joe Wise, may have been one of the first. Recently, across this nation many Broad Superintendents have been let go. All trained by the Broad Superintendents Academy: Maria Goodloe-Johnson (class of 2003) of the Seattle school district, LaVonne Sheffield (class of 2002) of the Rockford, Illinois school district, and Jean-Claude Brizard (class of 2008) of the Rochester New York school district. Brizard resigned to take the job as CEO of Chicago schools, but his superintendency in Rochester had been mired in controversy. Another Broad-trained Superintendent recently announced his resignation: Tom Brady (class of 2004) of Providence, Rhode Island, as well as these others from before: Arnold “Woody” Carter (class or 2002), formerly of the Capistrano Unified School District; Thandiwee Peebles,( class of 2002), formerly of the Minneapolis Public School District; and John Q. Porter (class of 2006), formerly of the Oklahoma City Public School District.

Ms. Lillian Lowery (class of 2004), Wise's replacement after supposedly cleaning up Joe Wise's disaster, was put in charge of all Delaware's schools, and now, is in charge of Maryland's. Broad's influence has touched every Delaware Student… and is about to touch all those of Maryland.

Our current head of the Department of Education, Mark Murphy, hails from a group NLNS funded by Eli Broad

If this was a good thing, it would be good.

So, what is the Broad influence?

Here is one take. It is one of the three influencers of education. Along with the Gates Foundation and the Walton's, it exerts a powerful influence, good or bad. It calls itself a venture philanthropy, as in venture capitalist. Meaning it invests in philanthropy expecting to yield a return on its investment. As an example, it can fund a study that says computers will help inner city kids learn, then sell those recommended computers to that school district.

Here is how it infiltrates a school district. Christina School District to be exact…

The Broad Foundation plants one of its elements in a school district, it is then highly likely they will plant another one along with it, so their influence is maximized.

For instance, an element might be:
- The presence of a Broad-trained superintendent
- The placement of Broad Residents into important central office positions
- An "invitation" to participate in a program spawned by the Foundation (such as CRSS's Reform Governance in Action program)
- Offering to provide the district with a free "Performance Management Diagnostic and Planning" experience

The Broad Foundation likes to infiltrate its targets on multiple levels so it can manipulate a wider field and cause the greatest amount of disruption. Venture edu-philanthropists like Gates and Broad proudly call this invasive and destabilizing strategy “investing in a disruptive force.” To these billionaires and their henchmen, causing massive disruption in communities across the nation is not a big deal.

The Broad Foundation has spent nearly $400 million on its mission of “transforming urban K-12 public education through better governance, management, labor relations and competition.”

That sounds nice. So let us look closer….

The signature effort of the Broad Foundation is its investment in its training programs…The Broad Superintendents Academy runs a training program held during six weekends over ten months, after which graduates are placed in large districts as superintendents. Those accepted into the program (“Broad Fellows”) are not required to have a background in-education; many come instead from careers in the military, business, or government. Tuition and travel expenses for participants are paid for by the Broad Center, which also sometimes covers a share of the graduates’ salaries when they are appointed into district leadership positions. The foundation’s website boasts that 43 percent of all large urban superintendent openings were filled by Broad Academy graduates in 2009.

The Broad Superintendents Academy’s weekend training course provides an “alternative” certification process which has come to supplant or override the typical regulations in many states that require that individuals have years of experience as a teacher and principal before being installed as a school district superintendents….

The Broad Residency in Urban Education is a two-year program, during which individuals with MBAs, JDs, etc. in the early stages of their careers are placed in high-level managerial positions in school districts, charter management organizations, or state and federal departments of education. The Broad Center subsidizes approximately 33 percent of each Resident’s salary.

The Broad Foundation founded the New York City Leadership Academy, which trains individuals to serve as principals in the city public schools, several of whose graduates have been accused of financial misconduct, as well as arbitrary and dictatorial treatment of teachers, students and parents. This was recently featured by Delaware’s WDDE reporting on Reshid Walker who is training in Cape Henelopen under the Delaware Leadership Project. DLP is an alternate certification program that this year is preparing six candidates to work as principals or assistant principals at public schools serving high-risk students in Delaware. Alternate Certification means it sidesteps requirements that a principal has to have stepped foot inside a school before. Through four days a week of on-the-job training, and no certification from an accredited college or university, he will soon be in command of your child’s education.

The Broad Institute for School Boards provides three training programs for elected school board members and non-Broad-trained superintendents conducted in partnership with the Center for Reform of School Systems (CRSS). The Institute trains new board members at a one-week summer residential setting…The Broad Foundation underwrites 80 percent of all program costs through a grant to CRSS.

The Broad Foundation also supports a broad range of pro-charter school advocacy groups, as well as alternative training programs for non-educators who want to work as teachers and principals (Teach for America, New Leaders for New Schools). In addition, the foundation offers free diagnostic “audits” to school districts, along with recommendations aligned with its policy preferences. It produces a number of guides and toolkits for school districts, including a “School Closure Guide,” based on the experiences of Broad-trained administrators involved in closing schools in Boston, Charleston, Chicago, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Miami-Dade County, Oakland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Seattle…..

Closing public schools to open opportunities for charters seems to be it’s prime directive. Although not officially enshrined as such, it does seem to be the consistent pattern of each of its graduates.

The foundation provided start-up funding for Parent Revolution (formerly the Los Angeles Parent Union), the group which developed the “Parent Trigger” legislation, designed to encourage the conversion of public schools to charter schools. Broad has also has given large amounts of money to Education Reform Now, a pro-charter school advocacy organization…

Eli Broad has said he “expects to be a major contributor” to Students First, former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s organization that advocates for the expansion of charters, vouchers, and an end to seniority protections for teachers. The pro-Rhee biography, The Bee Eater, was subsidized by the Broad Foundation as is mentioned on the book jacket.

Of course, there are campaign contributions (you will need to type in Broad, Eli) to facilitate the corporatizing of education… A quick look certifies that his coverage is a who’s who across party lines in Congress. Obviously there will be support for Charters streaming down from the top lines of government.

Ok, so how does all of this affect Delaware’s public school’s families?….
One of the tenets of his philosophy taught to his graduates, is to produce system change by “investing in a disruptive force.” Continual reorganizations, firings of staff, and experimentation to create chaos or “churn” is believed to be productive and beneficial, as it weakens the ability of communities to resist change.

A hallmark of the Broad-style leadership is closing existing schools rather than attempting to improve them, increasing class size, opening charter schools, imposing high-stakes test-based accountability systems on teachers and students, and implementing of pay for performance schemes. The brusque and often punitive management style of Broad-trained leaders has frequently alienated parents and teachers and sparked protests. A long laundry list of Broad Supertendants run out of town can be found here, near the bottom. But you can get an idea of what to expect, from just this one: Robert Bobb (class of 2005), the Emergency Financial Manager of the Detroit Public Schools, recently sent layoff notices to every one of the district’s 5,466 salaried employees, including all its teachers, and said that nearly a third of the district’s schools would be closed or turned over to private charter operators. At a recent town hall which Bobb had called so he could go over his plan, angry students, parents, and teachers drove him from the meeting. He was escorted out by his six bodyguards….

Disruption and chaos indeed…..

Delaware is fortunate to have a large parenting network of watch dogs who communicate well with legislators. Whereas the Christina District has had a rough go with Broad graduates, the rest of the state has so far been unscathed…..
Without the oversight being provided by parents and teachers watchdog organizations, the fate of Delaware’s students might be that of Philadelphia, Chicago, or Detroit.

if you are a parent or know one, you probably feel this way as well. Parents Across America considers Broad’s influence to be inherently undemocratic, as it disenfranchises parents and other stakeholders in an effort to privatize our public schools and imposes corporate-style policies without our consent. We strongly oppose allowing our nation’s education policy to be driven by billionaires who have no education expertise, who do not send their own children to public schools, and whose particular biases and policy preferences are damaging our children’s ability to receive a quality education.

In fact, this entire philosophy of forcing change upon children, strikes every parent as coming from those types of people we all run across, … who hate children…. “Someone smack that kid who’s crying.”

Amen And Amen.

Hmmm. The Fix For Delaware’s Education.

Here is a copy of Markell’s State of the State speech. i wanted to take his speech and break it down, piece by piece, and analyze it.

Bear with me. If your are following along or wrote this speech, I am only concerning myself with the part under the headline: A Great Economy Demands Great Schools…

The impetus seems to be on: providing a world class education…. That sounds great and when I heard it first, I cheered it on. But now if you pressed me I couldn’t define it. How does one determine a world class level for education? Especially nations where many different languages are spoken? Some nations require many languages in their curriculum. They succeed but at a cost to high math scores. Some nations do well on math scores. They fail on creativity and ethics. We will soon be competing with the world for jobs. So do we model our education on Finland? On India? On China? or do we stick with Belgium, Netherlands, England, France and Switzerland? Or do we use the methods of Brazil?

Anyone who has traveled globally knows exactly what I’m talking about. There are so many methods being used across the globe, that using the term “world class education”, could describe situations different as the interior of Mali and downtown Sydney….

So then before beginning, we must ask for a clearer definition of “world class”…

Moving on.

Let’s make this about the children, not the adults. For my part, I speak on this issue not only as a governor, but as a father. When it comes to decisions about education, our kids deserve our total focus and commitment.

Now here is the biggest bone of contention right now. Based on feedback from a) parents, b) teachers, c) administrators, and d) students, these new changes we are undertaking are not helping children. They are putting them further behind.

Now I don’t mean to be nasty or put anyone down. There was a lot of evidence presented to us that implied a “get tough” attitude on poor schools improved test scores. But instead, the reality was not what we were told. One of the great examples that led to this program being rolled out nationwide, was the success of Atlanta’s inner city. We were told a miracle had taken place. Inner city children were rapidly learning. Alas, .. we were fooled, there was just widespread cheating going on. They didn’t learn anything after all.

Michelle Rhee has been campaigning for cracking down on inner city schools. But allegations of cheating occurred during her reign as controller of DC’s schools. Test scores that climbed magnificently, while the children have no idea how to do the problems when the meet them again in the next grade.

Texas was the granddaddy of them all. The great scores of Texas’s inner city youth, so great they compelled the “leave no child behind ” mandate across America (look at Texas we were told), whose many parts were reincorporated into Race to The Top.– all those great scores were faked. Texas dropped on knowledge vis a vis with other states despite higher test scores. We were given false results and the whole nation pursued a program that did not work the first time, or the second….

It appears that none of these programs actually do what is wanted: which is to help the children.

And what does work? Human relationships. A love bond between teacher and student. A teacher teaches her best because that is what she was born to do. A child learns his best, because he wants the teacher to be proud of them.

Can we put that into an institutionalized setting? I don’t know. But I think most baby boomers had that growing up. So, it can be done, but how to return to that setting in todays modern time, will take some experimentation…

Moving on.

Built upon four cornerstones that stand on their own:

• Improving student readiness by holding them to high standards.

• Effectively using student data to drive classroom results.

• Ensuring teacher quality.

• Turning around persistently low-performing schools.

Holding students to higher standards. The worst possible thing one can do to a child, is force him to give up. Raising standards without raising the curve, does exactly that. An A student who strives to keep up his grade average, gives up when all he gets are C’s. What’s the point. A C student who dutifully studies to keep a passing grade, gives up when all he gets are F’s… In both cases they were doing all they could do. Society considers them good students. But the same test they took last year, is now graded higher. If one got a 5 at a score of 900, now it takes 950 to get the same. If one got a 3 at the score of 750, now it takes an 800 to achieve the same….
This in no way helps students. All it does is demoralize those who get shuffled downward by the curb.

We just had Delaware Women fall out of the final 16. We are all proud. But what if we arbitrarily changed the rules? What if we said, the final 8 will be determined not by whom was beaten by whom, but by the total number of baskets their team shot across the entire tournament. Suddenly a team that scored in the 80′s instead of the 50′s, goes forward, even though they’d been beaten in the first round by a team with fewer tournament points. Suddenly Delaware’s great run means very little. We are a loser like everyone else. “Oh, you should have tried harder to make baskets” they all say. I wonder who returns back to their home court with their heads high. I wonder who tries harder the next year. I wonder which teams recruit only guards with very high three point kill rates?

Higher standards do not work. They just mean fewer people can reach them. The do nothing for the top few elite who will be above 950 anyways. They ruin lives for everyone else… Higher standards on tests hurt our children. There is nothing wrong with what we are teaching now. The problem is that we are not teaching what we are teaching well enough so those on the bottom get it. Teaching even more, will do nothing to elevate the bottom. It will do nothing to put more into the top. All it will do, is make children think they are failures and give up….

Second. Using student data to drive classroom results. There have been cartoons this year showing students taking tests and the administrators joking that firing the teachers and just testing every school day could save them money. There is some sense to using technology to help students. However, theoretically, if tests are given 2 hours each day, how much instruction does that bite into? 10 hours a week? 40 hours a month? 360 hours a year? That last total is the equivalent at a 6 hour day, of 60 days spent taking tests. Remember, we are only talking about 2 hours a day, which in High School, is pretty accurate. Under which scenario does one learn new things better? During instruction? Or taking tests… ummm a? b? c? or d? On the other hand, the new software integrating parents, students, and teachers on the same page as grades get posted on a daily basis, is a godsend. Putting parents into the mix is rather helpful in creating a positive learning experience for each child.

Third. Ensuring teacher quality. This is a noble goal. But one of the great mysteries of Ancient Greece was that the Spartans who were rigorously disciplined and toughened to the highest order, almost always lost to the Athenians who were dilettantes in comparison. Imposing structure erases creativity. There is a tendency among government types to make all state employees into solders. That means drill Sergent techniques; it means battlefield toughening. In a military application, those techniques are necessary because in battle the mind gets blown; training has to take over. The only equivalent in a class room to such an experience, is if a student puts a gun to a teacher’s head… Our techniques are jeopardizing the sole proven tactic of transferring knowledge. A positive bond between teacher and student…. an understanding that success depends solely on the amount of knowledge downloaded from one to the other.

Here is where our education is facing its biggest problem… We are using the wrong tests to determine if a teacher should stay or go. We are putting teachers into a spot where they must cheat or fail. Since all up the ladder are accountable for the results that teacher brings, they do not insist with too much effort, that cheating does not occur. The best way to have a measurment of a student’s progress, is to remove teacher accountability from the testing. If a teacher keeps her job anyways, she does not have to cheat to get good results. Our results are accurate as to what a student knows or does not know. Of course, once we know exactly what a student does not know, we can rectify it.

Getting rid of all standardized testing is not the answer. Removing job safety concerns from these tests, is the answer. Ontario has done this. The tests are tools, opening a window into the soul of each child, and a teacher can then, fill in the blanks that got missed somewhere down the line…. Ontario, is probably the best in North America, to show real growth in their children across the board.

Turning around low performing schools. This is easy to do… Logically, focus on what works. A loving teacher and student relationship. To achieve that in a higher need school, you need more teachers. The ideal number would be eleven students for one teacher. If using the test scores, we were able to group students based off their scores into groups of eleven, so the average deviation between scores was 50 or 100 points, great headway could be made. For example in a grade of two hundred twenty students, twenty teachers would be needed. Using the bell curve the lowest eleven would be in one class, the second lowest eleven in another, as well as the highest eleven in another class, the second highest eleven in another, and so on. Those in the middle on the cusp of the curve, would probably be within one or two points of each other. But the beauty is that classes would be homogenized around their standard ability. A teacher wouldn’t be answering a top students question, when the person right next to him, had no clue what was even asked. They also wouldn’t cover a basic idea, thirty times until the student gets it, boring the top student next to him into giving up….

Testing is not the answer. Testing is a tool. Teachers are the answer. Teachers are not tools….

A student who can barely read or do math, does not need to be guessing at a physics problem far above his level. Likewise, for a physics student to answer a question of what is 2 +2 =__, is equally a wasted effort…. And this is where we err. Thinking that tests and corporate programs we buy into, can make that low performing student, suddenly get excited by a physics problem far above his grade level, and suddenly decided to become a math whiz. Reality fails to work that way….

Moving on.

But it is not enough to set high standards. Our students have to meet them. To do so, Delaware will use its rich data system and new assessment to support decision-making in the classroom. Good use of the data will make teachers and schools more effective. Parents and students will be able to use this information to demand that schools deliver.

Exactly what I said. But don’t use it to get rid of teachers or all we will get is teaching to the test and more cheating. The kids will learn how to take tests; not learn anything about the subject matter.

To that end, we will work with our institutions of higher education to establish teacher residency programs. We will develop a pipeline for strong principals by establishing leadership preparation programs. And we must better compensate teachers who produce results in our most challenging schools.

This sounds good and I find no fault with it’s aims. However your compensation packages are not effective. Being corporate hounds, monetary incentives are the first motivator one thinks of. I did the same. However, interaction with teachers, students and parents, has led me to believe there are better rewards. Teachers did not sign up to teach as a career for money. In public schools, I don’t think you can find one who is there to get rich. Talk to any teacher, and once they trust you, you understand they are there because they love to teach… THAT is what moves them. THAT is what moved each of our mentors that stick out from our early educational days. They love to teach. So the best way to motivate teachers is not with compensation, but, in making them teach even better by giving them more resources than they have now.

And the best way to get teachers to teach better is to limit their classes to 11 students… Whoever can achieve that goal first, will be the top educator in the world. Business will flock to that location just to absorb the talent of that labor pool…

If we are serious about education, we need to invest in more teachers, more schools, more infrastructure, and get our class sizes down to 11 students per teacher….

Only then, when every student doesn’t want to let either their peers or their teacher down, will we begin the resurrection of our educational system.

But, some people still don’t get it.

“We are requiring that new teachers show appropriate levels of student growth before receiving tenure. In addition, we have adopted a robust evaluation system under which teachers whose students do not show satisfactory levels of growth cannot be rated “effective.” Teachers whose students do show satisfactory levels of growth cannot be rated “ineffective.” We will also improve teacher preparation programs by linking teacher performance to the schools from which they graduated.”

It is still all about the test. This has to change….

But having world class schools does not alone ensure that all our children will get a world-class education. For that, we need an increase in parent’s engagement with their children’s education.

Parents need to realize the tests are hurting their kids. Across America this season, as tests are being rolled out in state after state, it is the parents who vote, who are asking their legislators the tough question. How does this test help my kid? When asked, the legislators agree with them that tests don’t.

Education has gotten worse since we went to standardized testing. Parents in Delaware need to increase their engagement with Delaware’s legislators and appeal to Governor Markell with their concerns.

My concern started because a little girl who loved English last year, who is in Common Core this year, says this year she has learned absolutely nothing… Nothing new.

When you think of the great United States of America and all the hopes, dreams, and visions it once held…. that is just so sad. So sad.