Thursday, November 29, 2012

Help Circulate Our Petition to End Mayoral Control NOW!

Download this petition, make copies and get as many signatures as you can before January 20, 2013. The Coalition for Public Education (CPE) is looking to gather at least 20,000 signatures from citizens of NYC and elsewhere. If people want more info about the horrendous policies and results of Mayoral Control, refer them to this blog or www.icope.org  or http://www.bnyee.org/fightmayoralcontrol.htm

CPE End Mayoral Control Petition2012

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Education Commission Publishes Report Condemning Privatisation and Immigration Controls in UK Universities
21 November, 2012

London, UK – On the day of the first major NUS demonstration in nearly two years, the Education Commission published a report into the effects of increased tuition fees and privatisation in the higher education sector.

Education Commission spokesperson Lou Shelley said: "Our research clearly shows that the rise in tuition fees and the Con-Dem's program of privatisation has sent out a clear signal to private equity fund vultures like KPMG that the bloodied carcass of higher education is ripe for the taking."

The report highlights the ways in which higher education legislation passed in December 2010 has not only led to massive rises in tuition fees, and a widening gap between elite and other universities, but has also opened the door to a growing number of private corporations offering university degrees and university estates services in Britain.

The report, entitled 'Foot in the Door: Profit and Public Education', argues that changes to legislation mean that public money is increasingly being funnelled to private higher education providers and that the new university funding system will likely lead to future privatisations of public higher education and deeper segregation within the university sector.

The report also points to the increasingly repressive policing of universities by the UK Border Agency.

Key Findings
    •    Three quarters of English universities charge the maximum possible fee of £9,000/year
    •    Private colleges have received almost £25 million in state-subsidised student loans since increased tuition fees were introduced
    •    The government’s Skills Funding Agency gave over £300 million to companies backed by just five private equity funds to provide education to adults in 2011-12
    •    Private equity-backed education corporations now take up 9% of the government’s entire adult learning budget and 27% of the Conservative Party’s funding
    •    Private higher education corporations don’t pay VAT on student fees, a response to lobbying by the massive “Big Four” global accounting firm KPM


About the Education Commission

The Education Commission is an open research and action group, made up of students, lecturers, admin workers, teachers, and parents. It aims to research and take action around the current conditions in the education sector.

In the wake of the UK Border Agency’s revocation of London Met’s Highly Trusted Sponsor Status and consequent plans to deport potentially thousands of international students along with further plans for privatisation across the sector, the commission proposes to investigate and take action around the changing nature of the education in the UK since the abolition of the EMA and mass increase of university tuition fees in 2010.

It aims to draw together student, parent, and education workers’ experiences as well as available data in order to produce and disseminate as accurate a picture as possible of the current state and trends in higher education in the UK.

It does so in support of and solidarity with current and future struggles in education.  


Contact:
Lou Shelley
The Education Commission
E-mail: contact.edu.comm@gmail.com

-------------------------------

Click Title to download
UK Education Commission Report 1

Monday, November 19, 2012

On the Rise of Pearson 

(oh, and following the money)

A long post that is worth a read here on the rise and influence of Pearson and corporate influence in education reform.  Take pause, friends.  Take pause but feel free to share and post comments here.  Thoughts?

The Pearson Monopoly  
Jennifer Job, UNC Chapel Hill

If you haven’t heard of Pearson, perhaps you have heard of one of the publishers they own, like Adobe, Scott Foresman, Penguin, Longman, Wharton, Harcourt, Puffin, Prentice Hall, or Allyn & Bacon (among others).  If you haven’t heard of Pearson, perhaps you have heard of one of their tests, like the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the Stanford Achievement Test, the Millar Analogy Test, or the G.E.D. Or their data systems, like PowerSchool and SASI. [1]

 In a little over a decade, Pearson has practically taken over education as we know it.  Currently, it is the largest educational assessment company in the U.S. Twenty-five states use them as their only source of large-scale testing, and they give and mark over a billion multiple choice
tests every year.[2]  They are one of the largest suppliers of textbooks, especially as they look to acquire Random House this year.  Their British imprint EdExcel is the largest examination board in the UK to be held in non-government hands.[3]
Pearson has realized that education is big business. Last year, they did 2.6 billion pounds of business, with a profit of 500 million pounds (close to a billion dollars).[4]  And business is looking up, which I will return to in a minute.  First, I want to talk about the vicious cycle that Pearson drives through education. 

Pearson’s first big jump was acquiring Harcourt’s testing arm in 2008, taking Harcourt’s 40% market share and parlaying it into controlling more than half of all assessments taking place that year.[5]  At this point, Pearson began to coordinate all of the textbook imprints it owns (as one of the three biggest textbook publishers in the U.S.) with its tests, completing its own equation of curriculum and assessment.  It was just a matter of locking down their territory and growing it.

To grow into the multibillion-dollar corporation they are today, Pearson blurs every line among for profit, nonprofit, and government systems.  They have prominently partnered with University of Phoenix, whose parent company’s CEO also sits on the board of Teach for America.  They acquired America’s Choice, which partners with the Lumina, Broad, and Walton Foundations.  The Chief Education Advisor for Pearson is Sir Michael Barber, a lobbyist who pushes for free-market reforms to education.  And the list of executives and partnerships goes on.[6]

What are some of the benefits of these partnerships? Pearson’s advocates for education reform were instrumental in the development of the Race to the Top initiative, from which they have benefitted in numerous ways.  For example, Race to the Top requires significant data accumulation, and thus Pearson partnered with the Gates Foundation to be the ones to store the data.[7]  Pearson also is a key partner of the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State Schools Officers. 

When the plan for the Common Core Standards was hatched, Pearson paid to fly the policymakers to Singapore for luxurious “education” trips to promote the educational methods they promote. [8]

As a result of their work with the NGA, the Common Core Standards and Race to the Top assessment requirements for those standards work heavily in Pearson’s favor.  It doesn’t matter that Stephen Krashen found that 53% of educators oppose the Common Core—nearly every state has adopted it anyway, and they encourage a 20-fold increase in the number of tests given every age from preschool to grade 12. [9] Tests that will be administered by Pearson.

And despite the emphasis of Race To the Top and Common Core on state-led education initiatives, in reality, Pearson does not produce different texts and tests for different states.  As Texas is one of its oldest and largest customers, and many of the states that are adopting Pearson materials are “red states,” they make sure that the materials they provide will pass muster with those particular school boards. 

Then they recycle the same material for other states. [10] This tilts curriculum in obviously ways, with US History coverage leaning decidedly right wing, but also in less obvious ways.  Light was shed on these changes with a recent Pearson reading comprehension test administered to eighth graders.  This was the first such test for several states that had recently adopted Pearson’s materials, including New York, which was previously known for its rigorous reading comprehension topic. 

This year, the passage was a story called “The Pineapple and the Hare,” which was an adaptation of another story that went so awry the original author disavowed the new version.  Students complained that the story was childish and that it was confusing what the test makers were trying to convey by using it.  Parents in other states lodged the same complaints.  But New York state doesn’t seem to care—not only will Pearson continue to provide a large portion of New York’s tests, but they are contracted to run New York’s teacher licensure process beginning in 2014.[11]

How Pearson got into New York’s teacher licensure program can probably be attributed to another one of its higher-powered partners—Susan Fuhrman, president of Teachers College. 

Not only is Fuhrman the head of one of the most prestigious teacher education schools in America, but she now holds the title of “Non-Executive Independent Director of Pearson PLC” and has received almost one million dollars in stock and fees to date.[12]  So it is really not surprising that Pearson has its foot in the door to make decisions about who will hold NY Teaching Licenses.

Stanford was responsible for designing the edTPA (Teacher Performance Assessment), but they did so with, quote, considerable seed money from Pearson from the beginning of the project. 

The edTPA relies on evaluation of two ten-minute videos of the candidate’s teaching and the responses to a written examination. Supposedly, the scorers are retired teachers who receive $75 per evaluation (although, many of us applied to Pearson to be scorers, and not one person from UNC was chosen to my knowledge). And to prove validity of the edTPA, the Education Development Center, a non-profit in Waltham, Mass, performed a field test across five states.  The Education Development Center is funded by Pearson.[13] 

The insidiousness of Pearson’s tentacles’ reaching across education would be enough to set off alarms in the community.  Huge corporations and conglomerates own stock in Pearson, including the Libyan Investment Authority, owned by Gaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam, who owns 3% of the company. 
The Koch brothers have connection to Pearson, as does Teach For America.  And the more Pearson acts, the fewer choices we have over education in our towns and cities. Pearson just bought a large online charter school consortium that opened across America, and they now own the G.E.D. for students who drop out altogether.[14] 

And when a company called Boundless Learning tried to offer free and alternative textbooks to create a choice for students, Pearson partnered with Cengage and MacMillan to not only sue the company out of existence, but also the venture capitalists that funded it.[15]

States are beginning to rely on Pearson not only for materials, but also for the actual data that drives them to make crucial decisions in student learning and teacher retention.  There is an assumed validity to these materials that is never proven and now, never challenged.  Ironically, the free-market argument has paved the way for a system with no competition.  Scores from Pearson tests are used in value-added measurements.  Scores from the edTPA are used in hiring and firing decisions.[16] 

As Rob Lytle, an education consultant, said,“If new standards are as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad…they’ll want help, quick.  And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software, and student assessments will be right there to provide it.”[17] It is no longer a piece of the puzzle we can afford to ignore.


[2] Ibid.

[3] www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/usa-education-investment-idUSL2E8J15FR20120802

[4] www.pearson.com

[5] www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/testing/companies.html

[6] www.unitedoptout.com/boycott-pearson-now
[7] dianeravitch.net/2012/05/07/the-united-states-of-pearson-2/

[8] www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/hacking-away-at-the-pears_b_1464134.html

[9] blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/04/Stephen_krashen_testing_and_te.html

[10] www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/pearson-education-new-york-testing-_b_1850169.html

[11] www.schoolbook.org/2012/05/04/pearson-says-its-tests-are-valid-and-reliable
[12] www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/pearson-education-new-york-testing-_b_1850169.html
[13] www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/hacking-away-at-the-pears_b_1464134.html

[14] Ibid.

[15] www.osnews.com/story/25774/Major_textbook_publishers_sue_open-education_texbook_start-up

[16] www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/hacking-away-at-the-pears_b_1464134.html


Thursday, November 8, 2012


November 7, 2012

Youth help guide Sandy relief effort in Queens

By Michelle Miller 
 
(CBS News) ROCKAWAY, Queens -- We've seen the agony caused by a storm named Sandy -- Homes destroyed; Families left in the dark; Fistfights on gas lines -- but there are always stories about our better nature.

Shalaka Cox has been navigating darkened hallways and staircases in Rockaway, Queens, for three days.

The 17-year-old is handing out food, water and flashlights to people stranded in their apartments.

"There's times when it might be overwhelming but then I think about what we're actually doing.

I think in the last few days we've been able to reach over 500 families, so knowing that keeps me going," Cox said.

Cox is a foot soldier in a relief force recruited by 23-year-old Milan Taylor.
 "It's time for us to step up and prove we are willing and able to step up," Taylor said.
The college student directs the effort from his smartphone.

"We put out a call on Facebook, and the supplies and the food just started to come pouring in," Taylor said.

He's enlisted more than 100 teens and twenty-somethings to help their neighbors.

If he wasn't helping Sandy victims, Taylor said he "would be in school right now."

At the core of his band of volunteers is the community group he founded a year and a half ago to mentor kids. He's spent the group's last $500 to buy diapers and blankets.

"There is no community leadership guiding FEMA, guiding the Red Cross, because they're not from this community, so they don't know where the needs are," Taylor said.

In less than a week, they've figured out how to distribute two days' worth of supplies to three apartment houses.

FEMA has set up a distribution trailer less than three miles away, but it might as well be a thousand for the elderly who live here.

"They're saying honestly that they wouldn't know what they would do without us," Taylor said. "There needs to be a little bit more faith put in young people and our capabilities and what we are able to do."

While many in Rockaway are without power, they've discovered they're not powerless.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

RACISM, SUPERSTORM SANDY & DISASTER CAPITALISM
From: Marjorie Stamberg <marjoriestamberg@yahoo.com>
Sent: Thu, Nov 1, 2012

Red Hook faces racist Katrina-like treatment
 
Having been to housing projects in New Orleans, post-Katrina, where authorities were trying to force residents out by cutting off essential services, what's happening in Red Hook, post Sandy, has an eerie familiarity.

Beyond the DOE's nasty harassment, making teachers "prove" and "appeal" why they can't get to school in the middle of a catastrophe where the trains aren't running into the most-affected areas, Brooklyn is sealed off, people are trapped in their flooded homes in Jersey, Long Island is still without power, NYU Hospital and now Bellevue are evacuated because of failing back-up power, and we in lower Manhattan are still living in the Nether World of Darkness, the New Yorkers who are suffering most terribly right now are in Red Hook.

To get the people in the Red Hook NYCHA projects to leave, the city gratuitously turned off their electricity, water and gas before the storm -- this was not a result of Sandy but a deliberate attempt to force them out.  Many decided to stay anyway as they needed to project their property and did not have family or friends in other places.

Now, four days later Red Hook project residents still have no heat, no gas, no electric.  Many cannot shop in the small bodegas that are open in the area, because these stores require cash only, and many folks do not have cash, but food stamps.   According to NPR, food stamps are not being accepted because the system is down.

The city did truck in Meals-Ready-to-Eat tonight, after they practically starved everybody out.  With all the mutual praise and back-slapping over this city's response to this catastrophe (which engineers have warned of for years), the nightmare in Red Hook, a deliberate man-made disaster, is being virtually ignored. As one gentleman said on the radio today, there's racism, and then there's Hurricane Racism.

And let's not forget that this is the same area where the DOE, Bloomberg and mega-billionaire hedge-fund operators have been trying to destroy community schools like PS15 with their charter school co-locations.  It's all about class and race.

P.S.  Although many people have been incredibly accommodating in these trying times, yesterday I ran down to the World Financial Center because I heard they had power.  They did.  I plugged in my phone until the security guard came by and stopped me. "Oh, you own the electricity here?" I said. "This is a emergency situation and you won't let New Yorkers use your outlets?"  The answer reinforced by a burly supervisor was "No."  The WFC is managed, he told me, by Brookfield Properties.  This is the same outfit that got Bloomberg to get the cops to run Occupy Wall Street out of Zuccotti Park so that it would be "accessible" to the "public" and then surrounded it with double and triple barricades to keep everyone out. 

-------------------

Evangean Pugh, far right, talks on a phone as she waits in line to apply
for recovery assistance at a FEMA processing center in Coney Island,
in the Brooklyn borough of New York


Marjorie,

Please do not forget NYCHA on Coney Island! There was little or no reporting regarding that area in the news media.The electricity, hot water and elevators were deliberately turned off on Monday; after the mayor ordered mandatory evacuation. This area is inhabited mainly by disenfranchised people of color! Talk of blatant racism by Bloomberg and his cronies!

Akilah Toure
Retired Pedagogue

---------------------------

An NYC Activist-Teacher's Update on the Impact of SuperStorm Sandy


Dear Substance News (www.Substance.net) Comrades,

My family and I are doing fine.  We live on the lower east side in Manhattan, below 34th st where power, out since Monday evening,  started to come back on Friday around 5PM.  Power outages remain in some lower Manhattan areas particularly large buildings where the basements flooded. In the other boros and towns in NJ, Westchester, Rockland, Nassau and Suffolk counties some folks will remain without power until trees are removed and power lines can be repaired.  The 8 foot tidal surge wiped out some sea level communities.  Subways are still not running in lower Manhattan as of last night.  I am just catching up with email.  Julie Cavanagh, MORE's candidate in the upcoming UFT elections emailed reports on the Red Hook projects in a low lying Brooklyn area by the harbor where her school PS 15 is located. 

The area was badly flooded and residents were still without power and water as of last night.  Another teacher, Marjorie Stamberg wrote that the city was saying that power at the Red Hook projects may remain out until 11/11 and she warned that folks should be on the look out for efforts by the city housing authority to use this disaster to push out public housing residents as was done in New Orleans.  I read similar reports from the projects in Coney Island. 

The scenes from the gated community, Breezy Point, which lies at the tip of the Rockaway peninsula have been widely publicized by the media.  NYC Teachers were instructed to return to work on Friday even while the subway service was only partially restored and buses were jammed.  It took me three hours to get to work and the same to return. For many teachers it was just impossible to get in.  It remains to be seen whether the city will require teachers to use personal leave time if they were unable to return on Friday. 

Schools are slated to be reopened on Monday. I think it is obvious that the feds responded better in NYC than they did in New Orleans. This is partially due to the difference between the administrations but also due to the housing pattern in NYC where for example you can find a million dollar condo located across the street from a public housing project. This grates on the real estate interests to no end and they will be looking to revamp infrastructure while at the same time speed up efforts to turn Manhattan into the ultimate gentrified gated community for the wealthy surrounded as it is by water. 

A young woman helps bag Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MREs) for distribution to the
residents of the Lower East Side who remain without power due to Superstorm
Sandy, Friday, Nov. 2, 2012, in New York. In Manhattan, where 226,000 buildings,
homes and business remain without power, Consolidated Edison says they should
have service restored by Saturday.


The heroes of this disaster are the working class people who supported each other and worked tirelessly to restore essential services.  Thank the working class for the public sector.  No private charters or privatized transportation companies would respond to human need as a fully funded public sector can.  There were very few reports of looting or violence even though people were without food and water and had no access to cash machines or open supermarkets. 

The Daily News today carried a report of 11 arrests outside a Coney Island supermarket across from a housing project.  One of the men arrested holding toilet paper, water and candy pleaded with officers saying 'I'm no criminal, what am I supposed to do let my grandmother go hungry.' 

Similar to Katrina, if you are white you are "foraging" for essential supplies, if you are a Black or Latino you are "looting." Bail was set for $20,000 and the Brooklyn DA says that they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. 

The climate change disasters have opened up  new arenas of class warfare as the rich seek to guard their wealth and power even as the ship is sinking.  It seems clear to me that public sector workers and our unions will increasingly  emerge as the true leaders of society to the extent that we identify our working conditions with the living and working  conditions of the working class and society as a whole.   We in NYC enter into another season of struggle against school closings and privatization with this heightened awareness. Thanks again to the CTU which has pointed the way.  

A queue of people forms behind a fence as they wait for distribution of food, water, and other
supplies intended for residents of the Lower East Side who remain without power due to Superstorm
Sandy, Friday, Nov. 2, 2012, in New York. In Manhattan, where 226,000 buildings, homes and
business remain without power, Consolidated Edison says they should have service restored
by Saturday.

One final observation, Richard Grasso, former head of the stock exchange was on Bloomberg radio all day Thursday patting himself on the back for waiting to reopen Wall Street out of consideration for the people operating the exchange.  'Sure we can trade electronically but what about the people', he repeated.  The financial sector doesn't need the real estate, but the NYC real estate industry does and I think the latter group in particular has the jitters about climate change. 

Romney and his financial sector clowns can dismiss climate change but it will prove to be a political dead end.  This is an interesting and potentially significant fissure in the ruling elite that may pressure the so called "radical" and liberal think tanks and non profits to reassess their slavish non political subservience to their funding sources.  A historic opportunity presents itself. If the "white" led unions, affordable housing groups, and parent groups can break through their historic indifference to racial equality and demand justice for all and not just the so called "middle class" (which I think is often used as a code word for all those "white" Reagan democrat males now wondering what went wrong), a real mass based alternative to the oligarchy will continue to grow.

Peace,
Sean Ahern
NYC teacher, parent and CPE Member

Friday, November 2, 2012

New York State Graduation Rates for Black, Hispanic Boys Lowest in Nation

By Melissa Russo and Tom Burke Monday, Sep 24, 2012
October 30, 2012  •  wnbc.com
New York State with 266,933 Black males only graduates 37% from high school in four years versus 78% for White males

For African-American and Hispanic male students, New York has the worst four-year high school graduation rate in the country, according to a study by the Schott Foundation for Public Education.

For African-American and Hispanic male students, New York has the worst four-year high school graduation rate in the country, according to a study by the Schott Foundation for Public Education.

In fact, the researchers say, a meager 37% of black and Hispanic boys are graduating for New York high schools in four years.

The number for male, white students is 78%, according to the foundation's report titled, "The Urgency of Now."

"I think this is just an enormous tragedy and it's happening under the nose of the people in the wealthiest city in the country," said Michael Holzman of the Schott Foundation.

NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott says the city is working to improve graduation rates and his office points out that while the Schott study focuses on four-year graduation rates, many students do graduate in five or six years.

"Our commitment is to make sure that all students are graduating and graduating college and career ready," said Walcott.

To help combat the problem, the Chancellor has created a special unit in the Department of Education to improve outcomes for black and Hispanic students.

Researchers in the unit are studying ways to keep a brush with the law from stopping an education, like it did with 22-year old David Echols.

"I loved school, I really did," said Echols. "The reason why I left school was due to incarceration."

He was arrested on drug charges as a teenager and dropped out of high school six years ago.

Echols is now in a program funded, in large part, by Mayor Michael Bloomberg using his own personal fortune.

"I won't feel right until I obtain my GED and go to college," said Echols.

Another factor that is disproportionately affecting black students, according to the study, is out-of-school suspensions.

"They suspended me for 90 days," said Corey Pettaway. "It's all my fault. I made my own decisions."

Pettaway said his father died when he was 13, so he was more interested in making money to help his mother than doing schoolwork.

"It's a devastating, devastating situation," said Dr. Richard Reeves, who runs a young adult literacy program in East Harlem through the Union Settlement Association. "Our young men have issues that stop them from being able to function in the system. And the system is not designed to meet those needs."

Echols and Pettaway are in the program now, working towards their GED's.

Echols looks forward to attending college.

Pettaway wants to be a chef.

New York City Department of Education: Stop the colocation of a Success Academy in the Washington Irving HS Campus

TO SIGN, GO TO:
https://www.change.org/petitions/new-york-city-department-of-education-stop-the-colocation-of-a-success-academy-in-the-washington-irving-hs-campus
 
Petition by SOS from Eva

1. Six expanding high schools already reside in the building, with only one shared cafeteria and limited gym space.

2. Placing an elementary school in the building, which will occupy three floors, will divert resources from the growing high-need populations already established in the building.

3. An elementary school can not collaborate to strengthen the community and share resources in a campus of high schools.

4. The construction of separate facilities will decrease the number of fire exits available to the high schoolers and destroy the historic lobby and murals in the Washington Irving building.

"Success Academy Charter Schools are guilty of taking space away from existing public schools, counseling out high needs students and enrolling lower percentages of special education students, English language learners and students receiving free lunch, in respect to public schools. Real success doesn't come at the expense of the highest need students, while demonizing public schools. 

New York Parents & Teachers support quality education for all kids!"
(Quoted from New York City  Communities for Change)
------------------------

Petition Letter

Dear Mr. Walcott,

Please help us to prevent the co-location of Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy Charter School in the Washington Irving High School Campus.

The students in this building are already starved for resources: Six expanding high schools already reside in the building, with only one shared cafeteria and limited gym space.

Placing an elementary school in the building, which will occupy three floors, will divert resources from the growing high-need populations already established in the building. An elementary school can not collaborate to strengthen the community and share resources in a campus of high schools. The construction of separate facilities will decrease the number of fire exits available to the high schoolers and destroy the historic lobby and murals in the Washington Irving building.


"Success Academy Charter Schools are guilty of taking space away from existing public schools, counseling out high needs students and enrolling lower percentages of special education students, English language learners and students receiving free lunch, in respect to public schools. Real success doesn't come at the expense of the highest need students, while demonizing public schools.
New York Parents & Teachers support quality education for all kids!"

(Quoted from New York City  Communities for Change)
[Your name]