The Charter School Movement Has Failed. Time To Bury It.

Remember the bally-hoo over Obamacare?  It has performed better than have Charter Schools.

Remember the bru-ha-ha twixted up over Benghazi?  Even that has weathered better than have Charter Schools…

Remember the IRS scandals over investigating the Tea Party?  Those were nothing compared to the malfeasance being reported daily in Charter Schools across America.

Remember the Maine?  No, …no one was alive then who is alive today….

But despite the last exception, Charter Schools have performed worse than anything in American History… Even the futures on American Indians performed better across time.

A quick review of the record shows that Charter Schools underperform their public counterparts.  Charters under-educate their students.  Teachers have better knowledge and credentials at public schools.  Cost per student is cheaper at public schools.

The only valid reason for continuing Charter Schools is to allow whites to go to school where Blacks can’t get in.

Other than that, there is no viable reason for maintaining a failing program that sucks valuable resources away from the viable solution solving the problem….

It is time to end Charters… period….   “White purity” is not a good enough reason to keep them going…..

The One REAL Problem With Charter Schools

One thing that is important this election season is to find out who is for charter schools and who is against them… Then vote for someone who is against them….

Recently some regulations were changed deep inside the DOE to allow more money to go to charters and be taken out of public schools… They supposedly were stopped by loud noises from legislators. But such will keep coming again and again as long as Charter School law remains open and charters still remain an option….

Did you ever wonder why they always have to “sneak” charter school changes through? Why do YOU sneak things, like past your wife or husband, like past your boss, like past your children? Is it because you don’t want to get caught?  Exactly… So why are we “sneaking” changes to charter law in the dead of night?

Because it is bad legislation for Delaware’s soon to be one million people, and it benefits probably 5 friends of those players pushing it forward….  The only way to pass something that will piss off one million to make 5 people happy, is to keep it hidden from those million people…

When someone says at any forum that they are FOR charter schools…. if you can, ask them in public this question:…. Since only one in five children go to charter schools in Delaware, and since Charter Schools take money away from those other four…. how do you propose re-compensating those Public Schools who get hurt by having a Charter take their money, so the levels of educations for 4 out of 5 Delaware children, can remain the same??

And that’s the rub… When they say we are going to improve education for one fifth of our children by great charter schools, what isn’t said at all, is that 4/5ths of our children now have to suffer educational losses due to funding cuts!

How can that even make education better?

If you have a +1 and then add a -4 to it, Common Core or not, you still get a -3 compared to zero change if you did nothing at all….

So ask them, in public, out loud, how if they promote a charter, what is their plan to fill the gap of funding in the public schools system caused by those very charters they support….

Then, don’t vote for them.  Vote for their opponent…

Because in all campaigns leading up to this year…. there has been deep silence on that other side of the issue…..

But that other side,  the harm they do to the MAJORITY of students, is exactly why charters in 25 years, have never adequately functioned to improve education across any wide area….

Hillary Clinton’s Educational Proposals

Here are her educational proposals (in case you did not know).

A. Remold the entire American system for human resources development…scaling up the whole new human resources system nationwide over the next four years, using the (renamed) apprenticeship ideas as the entering wedge.

B. Create a seamless web of opportunities, to develop one’s skills that literally extends from cradle to grave.

C. It needs to be a system driven by client needs,  (Clients?)  guided by client’s clear standards and regulated on the basis of outcomes that providers produce for their clients.

D. Proposed Methods To Accomplish These Goals.

1) scaling up the whole new human resources system nationwide over the next four years, using the (renamed) apprenticeship ideas as the entering wedge.

2) combine initiatives on dislocated workers, a rebuilt employment service and a new system of labor market boards to offer the Clinton administration’s employment security program.

3) concentrate on the overwhelming problems of our inner cities, combining elements of the first and second packages into a special program to greatly raise the work-related skills of the people trapped in the core of our great cities.

4) advance the elementary and secondary reform agenda.

E.  Clear national standards of performance in general education and public schools are expected to bring all but the most severely handicapped up to that standard. Students get a certificate when they meet this standard, allowing them to go on to the next stage of their education.

F.  We have a national system of education in which curriculum, pedagogy, examinations, and teacher education and licensure systems are all linked to the national standards.

G.  We have a system that rewards students who only meet the national standard, with further education and good jobs, providing them a strong incentive to work hard in school.

H.   Our public school systems are reorganized to free up school professionals to make the key decisions. Most of the federal, state, district and union rules and regulations that now restrict school professionals’ ability to make these decisions, are swept away.

I.  There is a real — aggressive — program of public choice in our schools, rather than the flaccid version that is widespread now.

J.  All students are guaranteed that they will have a fair shot at reaching the standards: that is, that whether they make it or not depends only on the effort they are willing to make, and nothing else.

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Ok… here is my comment… Words can be used or misused.  If these ideas sound great to you, understand that all the measured results hinge on Item J above.

The current Smarter Balanced and PAARC through leaks made by students and teachers everywhere have been conclusively shown to be unfair to minorities, disabled, English language learners, the impoverished, or people who deeply believe in religion. All are put to a disadvantage compared to those who receive excessive stimulation from the cradle to kindergarten at home… To the difference of entering kindergarten with a 10,000 word vocabulary advantage…

The  biggest problem with Common Core, Race To The Top, the lowered NEAP scores, the drop in Smarter Balanced Scores over the previous DCAS, the pinning of teachers performance to the test, and school closures, etc.,…. is that the test is flawed… It is designed NOT to be fair, but the exact opposite… IT IS DESIGNED TO BE VERY UNFAIR AND SEPARATE THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF VERY EARLY ON……(“By 2nd grade we will know who and who is not, going to college” –Arne Duncun.)

If you are black; you will be 2nd class no matter how hard you work (no more black brain surgeons); if you are Hispanic and have parents who speak Spanish, no matter how hard you work, you will be 2nd class (no more conservative Hispanic immigrants running for Republican President); if you are disabled, sorry, automatically 2nd class; if you are gay or transgender, again sorry, you will be fixed to remain in the 2nd class; if you hail from fundamentalist religions, forget it, you will persecuted and designated 2nd class.  Bottom line: if you think differently from how an executive thinks,  your test guesses will not be correct, and you will never be given the opportunity to try your hand at making a decent living. Because:  “We” have already decided what you can or cannot be…

Now rereading that last paragraph, I know it could possibly sound to those who’ve not read previous in-depth test critiques,…. perhaps, a little overblown? Or stretching the fear envelope a little?

My simple answer is for you to take the test… (click the blue colored link), find your child’s grade level and take the test yourself… (the answers are also there so you can check your results; if you disagree with the answers (you will), you can also see the reasoning (or lack of it) as to why they chose their answer…

If you don’t come away from that experience thinking this test is nothing but arbitrary in its questions and responses, then you too have great executive potential in this upcoming brave new world created in alignment with corporate values done without any input from teachers, parents, students, or school districts….

Boils down to this:  it’s the test, stupid… It’s all about the test…It is only about the test… Change the test and some of these ideas are not bad… Keep the test and they will doom the next generation of Americans to the complacency of just being adequate at best, or chaos at worst…

In the meantime, I’d recommend all educationally concerned parents to vote for someone other than Hillary.  Not for any personal reasons or for support to other candidates.  Just that her ideas for education are bad for the nation’s future.. That’s all.  If you reading this have any pull with her, get her to change her views, will you?

 

 

Consider The Message

Those familiar with Rodel know it has recently morphed its Vision 2015 into Edu2025, a ten year extension.  Transparent Christina has their presser up here… 

A lot of time people use nice language to hide truth.  This may be a little hard for some, but we will take the presser as is and “reinterpret” it for you.

Text:  We have made tremendous progress in the last ten years, since Vision 2015 first started. But we aren’t there yet. We still have work to do.

Translation:  You had ten years and couldn’t get it done.  Ten years is 3,652.5 days.  Ten years means someone who is 50 now, was 40.

Text:  We should be proud of all that we have achieved together in the last ten years .In addition to all the progress we’ve made, we are small, we’ve proven we can work together,

Translation:  All we got done in 10 years was prove we could work together.

Text:  ED25 is a draft vision that builds on the foundation of Delaware’s and Vision 2015’s key goals: implementing higher standards, investing in early learning, supporting high-quality teachers and leaders, encouraging innovation, and creating an equitable funding system.

Translation:  We are committed on our new program to doing exactly what we started out to do ten years ago.

Text:  We still have some significant challenges ahead of us.

• Many students still struggle to reach basic proficiency in reading and math.
• Performance varies widely and the system remains inequitable.
• Only 30% of students entering college return for their second year.
• RTTT funding will end. State budgets are tight, and demands are growing.  And we mustn’t be afraid to tackle these challenges head on.

Translation:  We are where we were 10 years ago, or worse.  We haven’t made a bit of difference…..

Most places this would be a FAIL…  Did you win the game?  No, we failed, but we had fun… lol.

Now..

The serious question is:  if these same policies of corporate reform failed to achieve results over the past 10 years, what makes one think that by changing the name and pursuing the same policies one will get a different result?

IF you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got….. 

Here is what will work.

• 11:1 Student teacher ratio in every school k-5 and every 9th Grade where the low income level is over 50%…..
• Remove Charter School Funding from that of Public School Budgets.  Fund Charters as line item in state budget separate from property assessments.
• Remove Teacher Evaluations from Standardized Testing.  Anything over 5% weight, is unproductive.
• Increase the tax rates on those in the 1% bracket and allocate that towards reducing poverty.

Yes, if we go THIS way, we can fix education.  It won’t take 20 years.