Billionaire Boys Club moves to expand

'Time to give it up,' Buffett and Gates tell the super-rich

We say, please don't! Public education cannot withstand any more damage.

The Faces of Ed Deform

Check out the latest edition of the Indypendent devoted to the Bloomberg's administration's proposal to close 19 schools -- the best coverage of this issue anywhere.

Especially valuable is the centerspread -- showing how the destructive policies being imposed on urban schools here as well as nationwide are coming primarily from a small cabal of billionaires -- Gates, Broad and Walton.

The money of these men now controls the output of most of the inside-the-beltway think tanks, and they have successfully planted their agents inside the US Department of Education.

These moguls are pushing for mass closings of urban schools, the radical expansion of charter schools, for teacher merit pay tied to standardized test scores, and other ideologically- driven notions that have no backing in either research or experience.

Our Children--Only Pawns in Their Experimental Game

"We will have the willingness to try new things and be wrong — the type of humbleness to say, I have no idea whether this will work, but I’m going to try." --Dr. Roland Fryer; 9/24/08

Perhaps discouraged by the refusal of NYC children to respond to financial incentives by actually performing better as opposed to just taking more tests, Dr. Fryer is returning to Boston to head something called the "Educational Innovation Laboratory" (see the splashy EdLabs website).

Dr. Fryer laments that billions are spent researching drugs and developing airplanes, while little is spent “to scientifically test educational theories.” Thus his friend, Eli Broad, (see picture above) and the Broad Foundation are helping him with the first $6 million of a $44 million, 3-year, “research and development initiative” that will have EdLabs “partner” with NYC’s Department of Education, the Chicago Public Schools, and the District of Columbia Public Schools.

What does this “partnership” mean? EdLabs will “connect” top academics from various fields with its own “R&D teams that will be embedded in these three school districts.” (emphasis added). There, the EdLabs folks will “foster innovation and objective measurement of the effectiveness of urban K-12 school district programs and practices” and “quantify the expected "student return from an investment" (sic.) to help leaders direct their limited resources into high-return programs and initiatives.”

In other words, the cheerleader-in-chief for market-oriented education strategies will evaluate the results of programs devised by ideologically aligned education officials, his own teams or even himself (such as the preposterous scheme to reward student performance with cell phones, which apparently has collapsed.). This passes as “rigorous research.”

When a drug company funds research to study the safety and efficacy of its own product, we have no difficulty understanding that conflict of interest is a problem and means the results are suspect. Imagine what credibility a drug study would have if the research team actually included drug company personnel! And would anyone even entertain the suggestion that the head of Philip Morris USA’s Youth Smoking Prevention Program should be included in any study of teenage smoking?

The incestuous relationships in this new initiative would not be tolerated in a scientific study involving drugs or other products. That the proposal is made with a straight face by people who are smart enough to know better shows the utter contempt they have for our children. This is fundamentally a business enterprise, not a serious attempt to evaluate educational strategies by standards that are applied to scientific research. Calling it a “lab” and putting it at Harvard doesn’t cleanse it of this taint.

And here’s the kicker for all us parents and taxpayers. The Broad Foundation is committing a mere $6 million in “jumpstart” funds--where do you suppose the other $38 million will come from? Need I say it? EdLabs’ sources of support include “the three participating school districts.”

-- Paola de Kock

More on the Broad prize, our children's CFE dividend, and the parent voice

Although NYC did receive the Broad prize, as widely expected, our letter from parents protesting the award was mentioned in the NY Times today.

David Quintana, a parent whose statement we posted yesterday, and who participated in the focus group that met with Broad researchers, was quoted both in the Times and in today’s NY Sun .

In case anyone is wondering, none of us spoke out to deny NYC students their fair share of $375,000 in scholarships; (NYC was guaranteed at least $125,000 in funds as a Broad finalist.) God knows if these students got through our public school system alive – where fewer than 50% graduate in four years, they deserve it!

We knew our letter would have no effect on these scholarships. Eli Broad is a long-time supporter of many of the education initiatives of this Mayor, has given millions of dollars to DOE, and is in full agreement with the administration’s emphasis on corporate, top-down management, free market competition, and more charter schools. Indeed, we had heard months ago that the fix was in.

Instead, we were trying to ensure that the dissenting voices of parents would be reported along with the award, and to this extent we were successful.

In any event, the Broad award doesn't change the fact that DOE continues to misuse of millions of dollars of state class size reduction funds – in the process, depriving thousands of children of their right to smaller classes -- or the fact that thousands more students are forced drop out of school each year without getting a fair chance to earn a HS diploma, without their fates ever being reported in the official statistics. It is the ability of all these thousands of children to succeed in school and life that we continue to fight for.

$375,000 is a pittance compare to the more than $250 million in state funds that DOE is now putting at risk because of their stubborn refusal to submit a real class size reduction plan to the state.

For more on this more important “prize’ – which represents our children’s CFE dividend, and should be spent responsibly, rather than wasted on more consultants, “data inquiry teams” and testing, see this entry and the NY Sun article from yesterday.

Setting the record straight; why NYC should not win the Broad prize

It is widely expected that after being nominated three times, NYC will win the Broad prize tomorrow for most improved urban school district. We faxed the following letter to the foundation today, to set the record straight.

Dear Eli Broad and the Broad Foundation:

We urge you not to award the Broad prize to NYC this year. As parents and teachers, we have witnessed one incoherent wave of reorganization after another over the last five years, leading to unnecessary chaos and in many cases, disruption of educational services. None of these changes have been planned or undertaken with any consultation of the stakeholders in the system.

In the first phase, when districts were dissolved and schools placed into regions, a year went by when thousands of special education students were denied referrals and/or essential services. Now regions have been dissolved, and districts re-instated, but without the ability or manpower to supervise and provide support to individual schools. More recently, the Department of Education instituted bus route changes in the midst of winter, which left thousands of shivering children in the cold, and others as young as six years old who were given Metro cards and expected to take the subway by themselves.

Instead of transparency and accurate information, we get spin and PR. Though overall, the amount spent on education has risen, there is no evidence that a larger percentage of resources has gone to the classroom, despite repeated claims by DOE. Instead, each year the headcount grows of highly paid officials at Tweed, as well as the number of multi-million dollar consultants.

Though test scores have risen, a careful examination shows that for the 4th and 8th grade state exams, there was more growth during the four years before the administration’s reforms were put into place than in the four years since. Moreover, as recent news reports have revealed, the 4th grade exams in both ELA and math were much easier in 2005, when the largest gains in NYC performance occurred, putting into doubt their validity.

And while the city claims a rising graduation rate, the way in which the DOE calculates this rate excludes thousands of students “discharged” from the system to GED and alternative programs each year, none of whom are counted as dropouts. What is most disturbing is that the number of these students continues to rise, as the City Comptroller has pointed out. Without fully accounting for the fate of these students, as the DOE refuses to do, there is no way to assess whether graduation rates have actually improved. Even according to DOE’s own unreliable calculations, the six year graduation rate is no higher than it was in 1996.

With nearly every change they have made in recent years, this administration has ignored the input of parents, and continues to show its contempt for our concerns, including the need to communicate with our children before and after school and help ensure their safety through the use of cell phones. Though the City Council has passed a law that would allow students to carry cell phones to and from school, the administration has said they will not comply with this law, since they claim unilateral authority when it comes to our schools.

The DOE is similarly scornful of the legitimate desires of parents for their children to be educated in smaller classes. This was the number one priority of parents in the recent DOE survey, though the administration continues to attempt to obscure these results. Our classes remain the largest in the state by far and some of the largest in the nation, without any significant improvement in five years. The State’s highest court concluded that class sizes were too large to give NYC children their right to an adequate education, yet in 2006, an audit showed that the city created only 20 additional classes with $90 million in state funds meant to reduce class size. Despite the audit’s findings, the DOE has refused to adopt any of the recommendations of the State Comptroller to improve compliance.

On your website, you have said that you will take into account the views of stakeholders, including parents and teachers, in awarding the prize. We urge you to consider these facts, and withhold this award from the NYC Department of Education until it is more legitimately earned.

Yours, fifty one NYC parents and teachers

For the letter with footnotes and full list of signers, click here.

Does Bill Gates need a lesson?

Instead of yet another fawning profile of Bill Gates and his education iniatives, most of which have turned out to be absolute busts, take a look at the critique online at the Nation, one of the best that I've seen.

The author, Sarah Seltzer, who spent a year teaching in the Bronx, examines Gates' new Political Action Committee, Ed in '08, and its agenda: longer school days and years, merit pay for teachers, and a uniform national curriculum --- at least for the schools that other people's kids attend.

Instead, she recommends what's offered in elite private schools, including smaller classes:

In smaller classes, where conversation can flow more freely, the qualities that help students achieve are analysis, leadership and questioning. One set of skills puts students in managed mode; the other promotes students into manager mode. I can't emphasize that difference enough.

Since kids from poor and middle-class homes are less likely to have other mentors around--nannies, tutors, counselors and the like--the chance to talk with adults and air their opinions is more important for them. But they don't get that chance. When I taught during the NYC subway strike and attendance shrunk, all my formerly rowdy students turned docile. In the more intimate environment, their attitudes towards school and authority were different.

This kind of individual attention can do more than an extra half hour of classroom time will ever do. Kids are kids, after all--they tend to lose focus. An hour and a half and two hours of math are virtually equal in terms of what a child can absorb, and everyone who teaches knows that nothing gets done in June.

You don't see private schools clamoring for longer years; they have the shortest school calendars around! But those calendars are packed with vital activities--newspapers, sports teams, theater productions, field days. These are a bonus that encourages kids to come to school and help to build self-esteem and passion, not to mention a nice resume for colleges.