Video: NYC parent activists get a moment to challenge the corporate reform movement on Education Nation

Last week, NBC ran three days of programming called Education Nation, filmed at Rockefeller Plaza, which was primarily dominated by representatives from the corporate reform movement, who define accountability as more high-stakes testing and promote privatization through charter school expansion, both trends that in the view of many public school parents undermine our public schools and offer simplistic solutions to complex problems.

Many of the panelists and speakers were from organizations funded by the program's sponsors, which included the Gates and Broad Foundations, and echoed their pro-testing and pro-privatization views.  There was much talk about how we need "great principals" and "great teachers" and "great schools" with little realistic discussion of how we get there.  One panelist, Ralph Smith of the Annie Casey Foundation, offered a contrary thought:  that perhaps instead of relying on "greatness" we should build a system that enables ordinary people to be successful.

In general, there was little or no recognition of the frustration parents feel about the overwhelming obsession with standardized testing in our schools, the devastating impact of deep budget cuts and growing class sizes, and the way our voices have been increasingly shut out of the debate over education reform.   Even the panel on the role of parents included only one person who identified herself as a parent leader.  Rather than invite  any NYC parent to sit on the panel, Chancellor Walcott was included instead, despite the fact that the Bloomberg administration has consistently ignored parents and  treated our priorities with utter contempt.

This panel discussion, called Stepping Up: the Role of the Parent Advocate, focused  on the controversial proposal known as the “Parent Trigger", developed by the organization the Parent Revolution, which is headed by a Beverly Hills attorney named Ben Austin.  The Parent Revolution was started with funds from the Broad Foundation to encourage charter school expansion.  More information on this astroturf organization can be found on the Seattle 2010 blog, and on Diane Ravitch's blog Bridging Differences, where she calls the Parent Trigger "a stealth assault on public education."   ALEC, the secretive right-wing organization, has written a model Parent Trigger bill that has been introduced in state legislatures all over the nation, and reportedly, DFER and other pro-charter organizations are busy hiring staff to try to get a Parent Trigger bill passed here in NY state this session.  The Parent Trigger is particularly deceptive, because while it claims to empower parents, it is actually offering them only a limited number of damaging options, imposed from above. The Parents Across America position paper on the Parent Trigger is here.

At Education Nation, I challenged both Ben Austin and Dennis Walcott, pointing out that the Bloomberg administration as well as the US Department of Education have completely ignored our voices.  Most parents don’t want their schools closed or turned into charters, but yearn instead for their neighborhood public school to be strengthened with smaller classes and a well-rounded education, but this is not the choice they have been offered. 

Ben Austin responded with a sleazy attack that Parents Across America is entirely funded by the National Education Association, which is untrue.  (We received a $25,000 start up grant from the NEA, and have since raised money elsewhere, including a $5,000 gift from Diane Ravitch.)  I was followed shortly afterward by two other questioners, parent activists Mona Davids of the NYC Parents Union and Ocynthia Williams of the Coalition for Educational Justice.

But even during Ben Austin’s remarks the truth occasionally shone through.  He admitted that no parents want their schools closed, and that charter schools "are not remotely scaleable” – that is, they cannot be replicated on a large scale.  (Never mind that Walcott, who was sitting right next to him, appears to see both continued school closures and rapid charter expansion as the DOE’s top priority over the next two years.)

Other valuable moments on Education Nation were provided by Diane Ravitch during her debate with Geoffrey Canada.  Ravitch pointed out that Canada had fired his whole 6^th grade class when they didn’t test well enough; countered by Canada’s misstatement that he had “closed” the school instead.  Also you should check out the student panel,  which, among many other issues, discussed how important class size is, in allowing  them to develop closer relationships with their teachers and enabling teachers to show how much they care.

Below is video of my remarks and Austin’s response; followed by the comments of Mona and Ocynthia.  The entire segment on the Power of a Parent Advocate is here.  And don't forget to check out the video of MisEducation Nation  that followed on Tuesday night.

Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters and Parents Across America on what most parents really want:



Mona Davids of NYC Parents Union on Ben Austin's divisive tactics and her version of the "Parent Trigger":



Ocynthia Williams of the Coalition for Educational Justice on the failure of Bloomberg administration and Chancellor Walcott to collaborate with parents:

The Blind Side

In a recent opinion piece, Brent Staples, editorial writer on education for the NY Times, praised the "Green Dot" chain of charters that began in Los Angeles. Staples writes:

"Green Dot is one of the stars of this [charter] movement. Despite the fact that many of its 17 schools serve desperately poor, minority neighborhoods, its students significantly outperform their traditional school counterparts, on just about every academic measure, including the percentage of children who go on to four-year colleges. "

Green Dot currently operates 18 schools in Los Angeles and one in the Bronx, according to its website. Yet Green Dot has already had to close one of the first five charters it started, due to poor performance. According to the LA Times, the achievement results at another of its schools, Locke high school, have been "lackluster", despite substantially increased funding. "First-year scores remained virtually unchanged and exceptionally low."

Caroline Grannan, a California writer and one of the founders of Parents Across America, analyzed Green Dot's results. Based on the California Department of Education accountability system, Green Dot schools have shown mediocre test scores, and all but one had worse ratings than the supposedly "failing" public schools that Green Dot organized campaigns to take over, led by the group Parent Revolution.

The Parent Revolution is run by Ben Austin, an attorney who works for the city of LA, lives in Beverly Hills, has no school age children, is paid $100,000 as a part-time consultant to Green Dot, and yet regularly claims to be a typical, aggrieved LA parent.

In his opinion piece, Brent Staples also claims that Green Dot charters outperformed traditional public schools in "the percentage of children who go on to four-year colleges." Yet in an August 2010 interview, Steve Barr, the founder of Green Dot, admitted that "We only started tracking our graduates during the past year and a half."

I have searched the web far and wide for any independent analysis or study that might provide evidence that Green Dot schools outperform public schools with similar students, and cannot find any. I emailed Mr. Staples, as well as the Green Dot organization, asking for such data, and neither responded. I emailed Green Dot's PR consultant from the Rose Group, who replied that she thought the information was provided somewhere on Green Dot's website, but it is not.

This is not to say that Green Dot schools may not prove themselves over time, but the assertions in this NY Times column represent yet another example of the inflated claims regularly made in the mainstream media for charter schools.

Deborah Kenny, the founder of two charter schools called Harlem Village Academies in New York City has also had her schools praised repeatedly on TV and in magazines. Interviewed by Bill Cosby for a segment that ran on Oprah, Ms. Kenny said her schools' superior results were based on the way they recruited, trained and supported their teachers: "We attract the most talented teachers and then train them over 5 weeks over the summer..."

In a glowing column by Bob Herbert, Kenny again talked about how important it was to "put all of your focus on finding great people...and establish a culture that helps them constantly learn and grow ... to provide a community in the school that supports and respects teachers."

In a more recent piece for the Wall Street Journal, Kenny described how in her schools, teachers know that "the principal has your back in difficult situations, and the operations director works tirelessly to support you."

And yet this wonderful, creative and supportive culture for teachers has some of the highest teacher turnover rates in the city, according to the NY State report cards. One of her charters had annual attrition rates of 60% and 53%, for the two most recent years for which data is available; the other had teacher attrition rates of 71% and 42%
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This data does not suggest a great working environment for teachers, or an administration which has their "back."

In her Wall Street Journal article, Ms. Kenny also wrote: "When an observer commented that he had never seen middle-school students showing so much kindness to each other.... The reason our kids are nice to each other is because their teachers set a tone of kindness and respect. "

But according to the latest data available, the student suspension rates at one of her schools was at the strikingly high rate of 62 %.

(Steve Koss in this blog has previously cast doubts about the actual achievement levels at the Harlem Village Academies, based upon the sharp decline in the number of students in each grade, which reflects either extremely high student attrition or high numbers of students held back.)

Much of what has been written about Harlem Village Academies, Green Dot and many other charter schools is the product of a massive public relations machine, of which "Waiting for Superman" is just the glossiest example. Too often the mainstream media seems to take the accounts fed to them by this machine as gospel, without investigating as to how much is spin and how much reality.

Some charter schools do a great job; others not. We should study the best, and try to replicate their conditions in our district public schools. The Icahn chain of charter schools, for example, are consistently among the highest performing schools in the Bronx, and cap all class sizes at 18. Meanwhile, class sizes have been rising sharply in most public schools under Mayor Bloomberg's control, and more than one third of Bronx Kindergarten students, for example, are in classes of 25 or more, and nearly two thirds of 8th graders are crammed into classes of 28 or more.

Yet to stereotype charter schools as the shining hope of a dysfunctional public school system is wrong-headed. Charters should be regarded as small-scale experiments to test out new approaches, rather than a rapidly expanding parallel system, facilitating the transfer of public money into private hands. As a society, we should be focusing our efforts, our attention, and our resources on the public schools that the vast majority of our students attend.

As to "Waiting for Superman," I can easily imagine a very different documentary, with an opposing point of view, just as emotionally stirring: a film that interviewed parents of children who have been harshly abused at their charter schools, or have been excluded because of their special needs, like the charters currently being sued by parents in New Orleans.

This film could also interview the parents at some of the charters that have seen dismal results, despite promising otherwise. It could also explore the many charter schools whose operators have misused public funds, or interviewed the many teachers who have fled from these schools because of awful working conditions.

The movie might also feature the accounts of hundreds of bitter public school parents in NYC and elsewhere, whose children have suffered rising class sizes and/or lost their dedicated rooms for art, science, or remediation because of the expansion of better-funded charter schools installed in their buildings.

I could easily imagine such a film, as one-sided in its way as "Waiting for Superman" is in the other direction. But such a film is unlikely to be made or distributed. Why? Because at this point, no one with deep-pockets is likely to finance it, unlike the billionaires, celebrities, and hedge fund mavens who have made charter schools their current hobbyhorse. So instead, we are confronted with a non-stop barrage of propaganda, carelessly disregarding the actual experience of real life parents, students, and teachers.