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ELECTION GOP gains could prompt funding, policy shifts
By Alyson Klein | November 3, 2010 Republicans seized control of the U.S. House of Representatives and significantly bolstered their majorities in the Senate in Tuesday's election, an outcome that will almost certainly mean an end to emergency education aid to states and will heighten pressure for a more limited federal role in K-12 policy. Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, the House minority leader who is likely to become the speaker of the House, said in an election-night speech that Republicans will "take a new approach that hasn't been tried before in Washington—by either party. It starts with cutting spending instead of That's likely to mean a move toward less federal involvement in education policy, which expanded under the Bush administration and the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, analysts said. It's also likely to lead to leadership changes under the new House majority. For example, Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., who is now the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, is in line to become chairman of the panel, although final decisions about committee Some Democratic incumbents who have sought to influence K-12 policy—including some who had opposed expansive federal initiatives—lost their seats on Tuesday. Among them was Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who was defeated by businessman Ron Johnson. Sen. Feingold was one of just a handful of lawmakers to vote against the NCLB law, the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, back in 2001. Since then, he's Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., a member of the House Education and Labor Committee, lost to her Republican challenger, former Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta. Rep. Shea-Porter has also criticized the NCLB law, particularly its emphasis on standardized testing. Mr. Guinta pledged to rein in spending. And in Illinois, Rep. Phil Hare, a Democrat and a member of the House Education and Labor Committee, who tends to look out for rural schools, was defeated by Bobby Schilling, a pizza restaurant owner, who wants to allow states to opt out of the NCLB law's accountability requirements. In Florida, Marco Rubio, the GOP candidate and former state house speaker, beat Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Democrat, and Gov. Charlie Crist, who ran as an independent. Gov. Crist embraced federal economic-stimulus funding, and he vetoed a bill that would have made it easier to fire teachers and linked their pay to student test scores. That helped him earn the endorsement of the state's teachers' union. Mr. Rubio wants to boost school choice by offering scholarships to low-income students in failing schools, and he wants to see existing Head Start grant funds be used to fund prekindergarten scholarships for low-income children. And at least one successful contender backed by the tea party movement, Republican Rand Paul, who won a Senate seat in Kentucky, has even gone so far as saying he wants to scrap the U.S. Department of Education. But the Democrats were able to gain a victory in Delaware, where Chris Coons, the New Castle County executive, beat GOP nominee Christine O'Donnell, who was backed by tea party activists. Mr. Coons is a member of the board of the Rodel Foundation of Delaware, which worked on the state's winning bid for a slice of the $4 billion Race to the Top Fund. Ms. O'Donnell won a surprise victory over Rep. Mike Castle, a Republican, in the GOP primary. Rep. Castle has a long record of bringing the two parties together to make progress on K-12 issues, and his defeat disappointed many K-12 advocates. And Democrats prevailed in Connecticut, where Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic attorney general who sued the federal government over NCLB, beat Linda McMahon, the former World Wrestling Entertainment chief executive officer, for an open U.S. Senate seat. Democrats were expected to hold onto the Senate, though a number of races were still close as of deadline early this morning. Those included the Colorado Senate race, in which Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, former Denver schools chief, and a key ally of the Obama administration on The fate of Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., was also uncertain. Sen. Murray has championed education funding and has introduced a comprehensive literacy bill. Her Republican opponent, businessman Dino Rossi, wants to crack down on spending. In another pivotal race, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the majority leader, fended off a challenge from tea party favorite Sharron Angle, the Republican nominee, who also has said she wants to see the department scrapped. Spending Concerns Spending was also a major issue this election season in both state and federal contests. Republican congressional candidates continually attacked Democratic incumbents for supporting the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the federal economic- stimulus program, which provided some $100 billion for education. Only three Republicans ultimately voted for the package, and one of them, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, subsequently switched parties. In a "Pledge to America" outlining their governance plan, House GOP leaders said they would like to return federal spending to fiscal 2008 levels, before Congress approved the stimulus and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a rescue package for Wall Street. Still unclear is the specific education policy direction the new majority might take in the House. Mr. Boehner served as chairman of the House education committee back in 2001, and he worked closely with Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who at the time was the top Democrat on the committee. The two shepherded NCLB through the House, where it garnered overwhelming bipartisan support. Rep. Kline said in an interview earlier this fall that he's skeptical of the administration's $350 million program aimed at helping states develop common, richer assessments. He wants to ensure that it doesn't become a situation in which the Education Department is involved in creating the tests. The Obama administration also asked for $1.35 billion in the fiscal 2011 budget to continue the Race to the Top program, a key administration priority born of the stimulus program, for an additional year and extend it to districts. Rep. Kline said in the interview that he wouldn't support that. He thinks the program was too rigid and imposed federal policy preferences on states. But there are also issues on which Rep. Kline says he sees eye-to-eye with the administration, such as the need to encourage the proliferation of high-quality charter schools. And Rep. Kline and Rep. Miller's staff have been holding regular discussions on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act throughout the summer and fall with the aim of laying the groundwork for a bipartisan reauthorization.
ELECTION Bruised but emboldened, Patrick maps road ahead. Jobs, health care in his plans, but not casinos
By Frank Phillips and Michael Levenson, Globe Staff | November 7, 2010 At the start of Governor Deval Patrick's first term in 2007, he had grand plans for keeping his grass-roots network as engaged in governing as it had been in his winning campaign. Then legislative leaders balked.
ELECTION Voters limit repeals to alcohol sales tax
By Peter Schworm, Globe Staff | November 3, 2010 A ballot question to repeal the state sales tax on alcoholic beverages passed by a narrow margin last night, but voters soundly rejected a more sweeping measure to slash the general sales tax rate by more than half. With more than 90 percent of vote tallied, 52 percent of voters backed Question 1, the repeal of the alcohol sales tax, with 48 percent voting against, a margin of 67,000 votes, according to unofficial tallies. Its approval removed the 6.25 percent tax placed on liquor, beer, and wine last year, a surcharge that store owners said was causing them to lose customers to tax-free New Hampshire. "It was putting too many local businesses at a competitive disadvantage,'' said P.J. Foster, a spokeswoman for the Yes on One Committee. Voters in towns along the border approved the measure by wide margins. Dracut, for instance, approved it 66 percent to 34 percent, while Salisbury backed it 64 percent to 36 percent. Exempting alcohol from the sales tax will cost the state about $110 million in revenue, finance officials have said. Question 3, which called for lowering the sales tax from 6.25 percent to 3 percent, was defeated 57 percent to 43 percent, a margin of some 283,000 votes. Question 2, an initiative to repeal the state's affordable-housing law, was also rejected, with 59 percent opposed. Frustration over taxes and government spending took center stage in many political races this fall, statewide and nationally, amid anger over a heavier tax burden in a slumping economy. But voters appeared to heed the warnings of critics of Question 3, who said lowering the sales tax "Massachusetts voters made a smart decision tonight. They voted to keep our state number one in education and to make sure their police and fire first responders remain on the job,'' said Toby McGrath, with the Massachusetts Coalition for Our Communities, a group of public-employee Lawmakers had raised the sales tax from 5 percent to 6.25 percent last year as a way to avoid sharp budget cuts. Carla Howell, a leading supporter of the tax cut, said it would have helped families fight through hard economic times, jump-started the state's economy, and reined in spending. "We're encouraged by the direction we're moving in,'' she said, noting that the measure received substantially more support than previous tax-cut initiatives. "We still have work to do informing people on where their tax dollars go and what they support.'' Supporters of Question 1 said they hope the state maintains funding of alcohol-abuse prevention and treatment programs, which have been supported by the alcohol sales tax. By a wide margin, voters turned back the attempt to overturn the state's affordable housing law, which allows developers to sidestep some local zoning laws in exchange for setting aside a portion of a project's housing units for lower-income residents. Critics of the law, known as Chapter 40B, say it robs communities of control over development and lets builders reap large profits. Supporters say it has created thousands of homes, developments that would otherwise be blocked by local zoning laws. "The law has created 80 percent of all affordable housing outside of the major cities over the past decade,'' said Francy Ronayne, a spokeswoman for the Vote No On 2 campaign. "It's been enormously effective.''
ELECTION Post-election breakdown: how union, charter backers fared
by Anna Phillips A day after an election that saw most of the union-backed candidates win their races, New York City teachers union president Michael Mulgrew was still celebrating. "We had a very good night," he told me. In total, 157 of the 170 candidates the United Federation of Teachers supported were victorious on Tuesday, union officials said. Mulgrew said he was pleased to see former City Councilman Tony Avella take Republican Frank Padavan's seat in the State Senate. A month before the election, when polls showed Avella was down by over two dozen points, Mulgrew said he sent union members to campaign in northeast "It was fun because everyone told us we wouldn't win," Mulgrew said. Union-backed candidates lost in 13 races. Among them was Democratic Congressman Michael McMahon, who was also endorsed by Mayor Bloomberg and was expected to hold onto his Staten Island seat, but lost to Republican Michael Grimm. The union also lost races in the State Assembly, where two supporters of charter schools were reelected. Assemblyman Sam Hoyt and Jonathan Bing, both of whom were endorsed by the pro-charter school group Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), won. Before the election, Bing DFER also had a good night, faring far better than it did in the Democratic primary. It endorsed eight candidates in State Assembly races, all of whom won. The group supported 12 candidates for the State Senate, nine of whom won. Though man of DFER's causes are anathema to the teachers union, the two organizations supported nine of the same candidates. In the Senate, these candidates were Jose Peralta, Joseph Addabbo, John Sampson, Eric Adams, Daniel Squadron, and David Carlucci. In the Assembly, both groups backed Audrey Pheffer, Karim Camara, and Hakeem Jeffries. One of DFER's pro-charter school candidate's future remains uncertain. The ballots are still being counted, but Democratic State Senator Craig Johnson is down by about 400 votes. State Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs told Newsday today that he thinks Johnson has lost to Republican Jack Martins. The future of the Senate's leadership hangs on Johnson's race, as well as two others that will determine whether the Democrats keep their slim majority.
ELECTION Cuomo on a collision course with unions
November 3, 2010 It was perhaps the most memorable line from Eliot Spitzer's 2006 campaign for governor of New York, a pithy promise as well as a threat: "Day 1," he declared, "everything changes." For Andrew M. Cuomo, it is not Day 1 that may define his tenure as chief executive, but Day 90. That is when two labor contracts will expire for thousands of government workers and Mr. Cuomo's most important, distinctive and unexpected campaign pledge will face a test: Can he confront and outmaneuver the public-sector unions that have dominated politics and budgeting in Albany for decades? Onstage Tuesday night at the Sheraton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, as Mr. Cuomo basked in his decisive victory over the Republican Carl P. Paladino, he effusively thanked longtime allies from the labor movement, whose money and muscle have been instrumental in his political resurrection. But at the same time, Mr. Cuomo has telegraphed a message to those union officials that is both grim and urgent: The state is broke, and the era of gold-plated labor contracts is over. "There is a crisis," he told union leaders throughout the campaign, according to people involved in the discussions. "You need to rise to the crisis." The intractable troubles afflicting Albany — the tragicomedy of the place, with its routinely indicted lawmakers, the $20,000 sushi bills and the debt-masking budget gimmicks — are all real and serious. But as the state faces an $8 billion deficit next year, the soaring cost of providing pensions, health care and wages for state workers is the long-term problem that most profoundly needs fixing, watchdogs and economists say. A spin through some of the sobering figures: Out of an operating budget of $79.2 billion, the state spends about $11 billion on wages for its work force of 220,000. The cost of providing medical insurance for those employees will surge to $2.5 billion from $1.8 billion over the next three years. By 2015, state pension costs — which are, by law, set in Albany and underwritten by Democratic and Republican administrations — will exceed $8 billion a year, compared with $2.6 billion last year, according to a state projection. At the same time, New York has promised more than $200 billion worth of health benefits to its retirees but has set aside almost nothing to pay for them. In short, Mr. Cuomo argues, the public work force is on a collision course with the state's taxpayers. "The salaries you are paying and the benefits you are paying are unsustainable," he said recently. He has even encouraged business leaders to act as a greater counterweight to unions, encouraging them to, of all things, hire more lobbyists. Perhaps nowhere else in the country, then, has a Democratic candidate for governor taken such a hard rhetorical line against such a potent constituency within his own party. (Across the Hudson River, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has become a Republican folk hero and an attractive possible candidate for president by excoriating and defying public unions.) Yet, so far Mr. Cuomo has been strategically vague about what he will actually do, and his options may be limited. By ruling out tax increases, as he has done repeatedly during the governor's race, he has but three likely courses: sizable layoffs; a reduction in pension benefits for new employees; and a major restructuring of the work force, like the introduction of a 40- hour workweek (today, it is 37.5). All three options are anathema to union leaders, who in interviews said that they trusted Mr. Cuomo and understood the state's dire financial situation, but that they had no intention of giving anything away. "His policy positions are not aligned with ours," said Richard C. Iannuzzi, president of New York State United Teachers, which declined to endorse Mr. Cuomo. Lillian Roberts, the executive director of District Council 37, a New York City union with thousands of state workers, was even less diplomatic. Mr. Cuomo, Ms. Roberts said recently, was trying to "put labor in its place," and she warned that she was ready for a fight. Public-sector labor leaders are especially inflamed by Mr. Cuomo's willingness to consider replacing the state's pension system with a defined contribution plan similar to a 401(k), potentially stripping public workers of a guaranteed stream of retirement income. They grumble that Mr. Cuomo is biting the hand that fed him. Organized labor was crucial to his victory as attorney general in 2006, and it helped him again this year by nudging the incumbent, David A. Paterson, to drop out of the governor's race. But in private conversations, Mr. Cuomo had made a distinction: This time around, his support was drawn heavily — and deliberately, it seems — from private-sector unions, not those representing government workers. The strategy gives him not just the independence to take on government unions, but also the ability, he argues, to prevent the state's unions from coalescing against him. As Mr. Cuomo tackles the issue, he is likely to dismantle, in ways big or small, the legacy of his father, former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, who significantly expanded the size of the state's work force in the 1980s. Over the past few weeks, the younger Mr. Cuomo has mailed union leaders a copy of "The Man Who Saved New York: Hugh Carey and the Great Fiscal Crisis of 1975," which depicts how union leaders banded together in the 1970s to prevent New York City from filing for bankruptcy. Not all the union leaders are rushing to read the book. "I will try to read it when I get some free time," said Ken Brynien, president of the Public Employees Federation, which represents nearly 60,000 employees in New York, and backed Mr. Cuomo. Edmund J. McMahon, the director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, which studies the state's finances, said that if Mr. Cuomo could push through the introduction of a 401(k)-style pension system, "it would be a real Nixon-goes-to-China moment for him." The first Democratic governor in the country to do so, Mr. McMahon said, "would have a real future in national politics." This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: November 5, 2010 An article in some editions on Wednesday about union contract negotiations that Andrew M. Cuomo, the governor-elect of New York, must deal with misstated the amount of the state's operating budget. It is $79.2 billion, not $78.2 billion.
ELECTION Schneiderman is elected New York's Attorney General
By SAM ROBERTS Eric T. Schneiderman, a Democratic state senator from the Upper West Side of Manhattan who doggedly — even desperately — clung to Andrew M. Cuomo's coattails in the closing days of the campaign, was elected by a comfortable margin on Tuesday to succeed him as New York's 65th attorney general.
ELECTION Gov.-Elect Cuomo eyes NY education spending
November 9, 2010
ELECTION How Obama lost his voice, and how he can get it back
By Marshall Ganz President Obama entered office wrapped in a mantle of moral leadership. His call for change was rooted in values that had long been eclipsed in our public life: a sense of mutual responsibility, commitment to equality and belief in inclusive diversity. Those values inspired a new generation of voters, restored faith to the cynical and created a national movement. Now, 18 months and an "enthusiasm gap" later, the nation's major challenges remain largely unmet, and a discredited conservative movement has reinvented itself in a more virulent form. This dramatic reversal is not the result of bad policy as such; the president made some real policy gains. It is not a consequence of a president who is too liberal, too conservative or too centrist. And it is not the doing of an administration ignorant of Washington's ways. Nor can we honestly blame the system, the media or the public — the ground on which presidential politics is always played. It is the result, ironically, of poor leadership choices. Abandoning the "transformational" model of his presidential campaign, Obama has tried to govern as a "transactional" leader. These terms were coined by political scientist James MacGregor Burns 30 years ago. "Transformational" leadership engages followers in the risky and often exhilarating work of changing the world, work that often changes the activists themselves. Its sources are shared values that become wellsprings of the courage, creativity and hope needed to open new pathways to success. "Transactional" leadership, on the other hand, is about horse-trading, operating within the routine, and it is practiced to maintain, rather than change, the status quo. The nation was ready for transformation, but the president gave us transaction. And, as is the case with leadership failures, much of the public's anger, disappointment and frustration has been turned on a leader who failed to lead. Obama and his team made three crucial choices that undermined the president's transformational mission. First, he abandoned the bully pulpit of moral argument and public education. Next, he chose to lead with a politics of compromise rather than advocacy. And finally, he chose to demobilize the movement that elected him president. By shifting focus from a public ready to drive change — as in "yes we can" — he shifted the focus to himself and attempted to negotiate change from the inside, as in "yes I can." During the presidential campaign, Obama inspired the nation not by delivering a poll-driven message but by telling a story that revealed the person within — within him and within us. In his Philadelphia speech on race, we learned of his gift not only for moral uplift but for "public education" in the deepest sense, bringing us to a new understanding of the albatross of racial politics that has burdened us since our founding. On assuming office, something seemed to go out of the president's speeches, out of the speaker and, as a result, out of us. Obama was suddenly strangely absent from the public discourse. We found ourselves in the grip of an economic crisis brought on by 40 years of anti-government rhetoric, policy and practices, but we listened in vain for an economic version of the race speech. What had gone wrong? Who was responsible? What could we do to help the president deal with it? And even when he decided to pursue healthcare reform as his top priority, where were the moral arguments or an honest account of insurance and drug industry opposition? In his transactional leadership mode, the president chose compromise rather than advocacy. Instead of speaking on behalf of a deeply distressed public, articulating clear positions to lead opinion and inspire public support, Obama seemed to think that by acting as a mediator, he could translate Washington dysfunction into legislative accomplishment. Confusing bipartisanship in the electorate with bipartisanship in Congress, he lost the former by his feckless pursuit of the latter, empowering the very people most committed to bringing down his presidency. Seeking reform from inside a system structured to resist change, Obama turned aside some of the most well-organized reform coalitions ever assembled — on the environment, workers' rights, immigration and healthcare. He ignored the leverage that a radical flank robustly pursuing its goals could give a reform president — as organized labor empowered FDR's New Deal or the civil rights movement empowered LBJ's Voting Rights Act. His base was told that aggressive action targeting, for example, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee — where healthcare reform languished for many months — would reflect poorly on the president and make his job harder. Threatened with losing access, and confusing access with power, the coalitions for the most part went along. Finally, the president demobilized the widest, deepest and most effective grass-roots organization ever built to support a Democratic president. With the help of new media and a core of some 3,000 well-trained and highly motivated organizers, 13.5 million volunteers set the Obama campaign apart. They were not the "usual suspects" — party loyalists, union staff and paid canvassers — but a broad array of first-time citizen activists. Nor were they merely an e-mail list. At least 1.5 million people, according to the campaign's calculations, played active roles in local leadership teams across the nation. But the Obama team put the whole thing to sleep, except for a late-breaking attempt to rally support for healthcare reform. Volunteers were exiled to the confines of the Democratic National Committee. "Fighting for the president's agenda" meant doing as you were told, sending redundant e-mails to legislators and responding to ubiquitous pleas for money. Even the touted call for citizen "input" into governance consisted mainly of e-mails, mass conference calls and the occasional summoning of "real people" to legitimize White House events. During the 2008 campaign, transformational leadership defied conventional wisdom. Funds were raised in wholly new ways. Organizers set up shop in states that no Democratic president had won in recent times. Citizens were engaged on a scale never before imagined. And an African American was elected president! Now Obama must take a deep breath, step back, reflect on the values that drew him into public life in the first place and acknowledge responsibility for his mistakes. He must reverse the leadership choices of the first half of his term. His No. 1 mission must be to speak for the anxious and the marginalized and to lead us in the task of putting Americans to work rebuilding our future. He must advocate, not merely try to mediate in a fractious, divided Washington. And he must again rely on ordinary citizens to help us move forward. Although the stakes are greater than ever, only by rediscovering the courage for transformational leadership can he — with us — begin anew. Marshall Ganz helped devise the grass-roots organizing model for the Obama campaign. His most recent book is "Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement." He is a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University.
ELECTION What Yesterday's Election Means for Progressives
Robert Creamer Last week I argued that there was a path to victory for Democrats in the House. That turned out to be wrong. It was a brutal night for Democratic Members of the House. Many lost by narrow margins -- but a loss of any amount is still a loss. What caused this disaster? First let's talk about what didn't cause Democratic defeat. The Republicans will argue that their electoral success represented a ringing rebuke of progressive policies and values -- and a popular renunciation of the Obama administration. That reading of this election would be completely wrong. The polling shows that Americans still very much support Social Security and Medicare and want nothing to do with the Ryan "roadmap" that would privatize Social Security, eliminate Medicare and replace it with vouchers. Americans do not favor eliminating the new law that prevents insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions. Why then did they buy the Republican sales pitch and once again hand them the gavel of the House?
But it turned out that you can't be out-communicated seven or eight to one for months on end and not expect negative attacks to take their toll. In this election, the Empire struck back. Or I suppose you could be that the right wingers on the Supreme Court struck back by reversing a hundred years of American law and deciding that corporations had the same rights a people to "free speech" and could spend any amount to manipulate the outcome of American elections. Of course the irony is that the same forces that created the economic crisis, and profited from it, then turned around and played off the fear that the crisis created to convince voters to turnout Democrats who had stood up to them and reined them in. So what do we do now?
It will not take long for the voters to see that some of them were sold snake oil by Republicans who feigned their concern of everyday Americans and all the while are entirely beholden to the corporate special interests that they detest. I predict that the new "Republican revival" will burn brightly for a brief moment and flame out like a sparkler. Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: "Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win," available on amazon.com.
Charter students double in a decade
By Matt Carroll, Globe Staff | November 1, 2010 The number of children in Massachusetts charter schools has more than doubled over the past decade as parents, worried about the quality of their children's education, have increasingly sought alternatives to traditional public schools. Charter school enrollment climbed to 27,484 this year, up from 12,518 in 2000, according to data from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The Globe examined enrollment trends in more than 380 school districts across the state. "I was ready to leave the city,'' said Bill Choukas of Dorchester, recalling his unhappiness with the public schools when his son John was assigned to a kindergarten in a neighborhood he considered unsafe. Then his oldest child was accepted into a charter school, and his view began to change. Now he has three children at Boston Collegiate Charter and one at Neighborhood House Charter, both in Dorchester. He loves the discipline, the uniforms, and what he sees as a good education. Choukas is following in the footsteps of many other parents, even as some school officials and teachers unions complain that charter schools drain tax dollars from other public schools and that charter schools push out less capable students. "What upsets my members the most is when people say charter schools are doing a better job,'' said Paul Toner, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association. The schools pull a different demographic of parent and student, he added. "Charter schools, whether intentionally or not, pull away the most motivated students and parents,'' and that removes role models in the traditional schools, he said. The charter schools deny those assertions. "What affluent parents always had, now everyday parents have: choice, choice, choice,'' said Kevin Andrews, president of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association and headmaster of the Neighborhood House Charter School in Dorchester. Driving the whole movement are parents who are "tired of sending their kids to terrible schools,'' he said. As the number of Massachusetts students in charter schools has doubled over the last decade, the number of schools has also grown. It stands at 63, up from 40 a decade ago, part of a national phenomenon. The number of students in charters across the country has nearly tripled over the past 10 years, to nearly 1.7 million children, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Dennis Shirley, a professor at the Boston College Lynch School of Education, described it as a push-pull situation: Parents are disenchanted with public schools while at the same time they are attracted by the test scores they see at a number of high-achieving charter schools. Beth Toma moved her two girls to South Shore Charter School in Norwell after her older daughter had a "horrendous experience'' with a Weymouth elementary school teacher. "That was the turning point,'' said Toma, who helps runs the school library. Weymouth schools were much cooler to having parents volunteer in the classroom, she said, while at the charter she has helped run reading discussions. Amanda, her older daughter, decided to return to Weymouth High because the larger school offered more in the way of sports and club activities. However, Faith, a seventh-grader, "loves the school.'' Charter schools are public schools, funded with public tax dollars, which operate under fewer regulatory restrictions and are usually independent of school districts. Most do not have teachers unions. Admittance may be determined by lottery. Many supporters see charter schools as laboratories for educational innovation. About 10 charter schools in Massachusetts have fewer than 200 students, and only five have more than 1,000, including the largest, Sabis International in Springfield, with about 1,600. The growth in charter schools is set against a backdrop of changing enrollments throughout the state's public schools. Statewide, about 170 school districts have more children than a decade ago, while more than 200 districts have lost students, state enrollment figures show. Overall, there are 960,000 public school students, including the charter school students. But charter school students now make up a larger percentage of the statewide enrollment total — about 2.8 percent of that total — than they did 10 years ago. Charter schools have been operating in Massachusetts since the mid-1990s, and many of the schools boast high MCAS scores and college entrance rates, but are still controversial with some school officials and public teachers unions. A major concern is financial; when students leave for a charter, state education dollars go with them, and that can have a substantial impact. For example, Boston expects to lose about $50 million next year. The state has used various funding formulas to compensate public schools. A new formula this year reimburses public schools for several years for the students they have lost to charter schools. The change in reimbursement was part of a major education law signed by Governor Deval Patrick this year that could also allow doubling the number of charter schools in the state's lowest-performing districts. The new reimbursement formula has quieted debate, officials said, but there is still dissent. Nevertheless, parents are still flocking to charters. Thomas Connors of Hyde Park has had two daughters at the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter in Hyde Park, and both have done well. He likes the progress reports that parents get every two weeks on everything from homework to class participation. "People are really seeking options for quality education for their children and they increasingly see charter schools as a good option,'' said Susan Thompson, executive director of the Academy of the Pacific Rim, which has grown from 185 students in 2000 to nearly 500. The school year at the academy is 190 days — 10 days longer than the state requirement — and the day for middle-schoolers lasts from 7:45 to 4:15 p.m. Classes in Mandarin start in seventh grade, and 16 or 17 children each year go to an exchange school in China, some staying for three months. If there is still antagonism between public schools and charters, there are also signs that they can work together. The Neighborhood House Charter and the Boston public schools system have a partnership, in which Neighborhood House teachers work with teachers from the Harbor Middle School on math instruction. "The goal is to learn successful practices, wherever they are,'' said Carol Johnson, Boston school superintendent.
Superintendent wants to revisit school closures
By James Vaznis, Globe Staff | November 2, 2010 Under pressure from fiscal watchdogs and some School Committee members, Superintendent Carol R. Johnson is seeking to delay a vote on her proposal to close five schools as she examines the possibility of shuttering more schools to balance the budget. Johnson will formally ask the School Committee to hold off voting at tomorrow night's meeting, where hundreds of parents, students, and teachers from the affected schools were expected to make a final plea. Johnson will revise her proposal and expects to reintroduce it to the committee next month, marking the second alteration of her recommendation since it was unveiled Oct. 6. In an interview yesterday, Johnson said she did not know how many more schools could be added to her closure list and held out the possibility that the list could remain the same. "We are a business of mainly people and buildings, and we have to resolve what can and should be reduced,'' said Johnson, who has been trying to safeguard classrooms and teachers from three years of budget cutting. But she cautioned, "I don't think we can close the gap by merely closing schools.'' The School Department is preparing for a possible $63 million shortfall for the next school year, while the district has thousands of empty classroom seats among its 135 schools. Discussing the school closures in a budget context represents a departure for Johnson, who had said her aim was to improve academic quality, not save money. In introducing the original proposal, Johnson emphasized that low student achievement motivated her school-closure plan, although she did mention it could save a few million dollars. Johnson's plan quickly sparked outcry from both sides: Fiscal watchdogs, concerned about the district's bleak financial outlook, immediately criticized her for recommending too few schools for closure. Meanwhile, parents, students, and teachers at the affected schools protested on grounds that those schools have sound academic programs and deserve to remain open. School Committee members expressed an array of concerns, including whether the proposal would adequately address next year's financial woes and whether students at the closing schools would wind up at better schools next year. In some cases, Johnson urged parents to enroll their children at underperforming schools. The Rev. Gregory Groover, the School Committee chairman, said yesterday that it was a "very wise decision'' for Johnson to seek the delay. Groover indicated last week the committee might not be ready to vote tomorrow night and was preparing for a possible two-week delay. "We just thought we didn't have all the answers we needed to make an informed decision that is in the best interest of students, parents, and teachers,'' he said. "This affects the entire district.'' Groover said he did not know how many schools might need to close to remedy the district's budget problems and said it was an action committee members are pursuing reluctantly. "No one enjoys closing schools,'' he said. "It takes a lot of energy. It's not a pleasant situation.'' Samuel Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a government watchdog group, applauded Johnson for taking another look at closing more schools. "Frankly, one of the concerns we had is if there isn't adequate savings from addressing excess capacity in the schools . . . they would have to make deeper cuts in the classroom,'' Tyler said. He said the School Department might have to close schools over the period of a few years instead of in one swoop because the number could be so high. But in both cases, the estimates include only empty seats in classrooms staffed by teachers, and do not account for underutilized space in classrooms that are empty or those converted into storage or conference rooms. Meanwhile, the state is preparing for the addition of roughly 5,000 new charter school seats in the city, a move expected to draw more students from the city's school system, leaving it with more underutilized space. Under her original proposal, Johnson recommended closing the Ralph Waldo Emerson Elementary School in Roxbury, the Roger Clap Elementary School and the East Zone Early Learning Center in Dorchester, and three high schools at the Hyde Park Education Complex: the Social Justice Academy, the Engineering School, and the Community Academy of Science and Health. Last week, responding to word that the Community Academy is having success with students not fluent in English, Johnson decided to keep it open, though with plans to move the school to another building next year, and she opted to preserve the Lee Academy but with fewer grade levels. She also decided against starting an in-district charter high school from scratch, opting to have it take over a yet-to-be-identified high school. The School Committee will vote on that charter school plan tomorrow night along with another proposal that would transform the Gavin Middle School in South Boston into an in-district charter school. The additional time, Johnson said, will also provide the district an opportunity to better explain to the public why the school closings are necessary and how the cost savings should translate into maintaining stronger academic programs at the remaining schools. "The families feel very strongly about their schools, which is a good thing, but we also have to educate people about the challenges we face about the budget before us,'' Johnson said. "We need to make sure we act fiscally responsible.'' By James Vaznis, Globe Staff | November 2, 2010 Under pressure from fiscal watchdogs and some School Committee members, Superintendent Carol R. Johnson is seeking to delay a vote on her proposal to close five schools as she examines the possibility of shuttering more schools to balance the budget.
In sharp rise, 47 city schools may close over performance
By SHARON OTTERMAN The New York City Department of Education said Thursday that up to 47 schools could be closed for poor performance, a huge increase from previous years if all remain on the chopping block. In the eight years since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has used school closings as a cornerstone of his school reform strategy, 91 schools have been shuttered and replaced with new schools. City officials gave a few reasons for the jump. Nineteen of the schools were to close last year, but won temporary reprieves because of a lawsuit brought by the teachers' union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Obama administration asked states to identify their lowest-performing 5 percent of schools for closing or other serious interventions; 12 more are in that category. And the city identified 16 additional schools through its own process, weighing test scores, parent reviews and other measures. The schools face a potential "phase-out," a process in which the school stops accepting students and loses one grade per year until it ceases to exist. Simultaneously, new schools open in the building. Twenty-six of the schools that could be closed are high schools, including John Dewey High School in Brooklyn and Grover Cleveland High School in Queens; 21 are elementary and middle schools, including a few, like Kappa VII Middle School in Brooklyn, that are only several years old. To reduce the shock and anger that closing announcements met in past years, the city has a new process to explain its thinking before making a final decision. At least four meetings are being held at each school, and parents and staff and community members can object if they feel that part or all of the school should be preserved, officials said. "Right now, we are looking at those schools that have been consistently struggling to determine whether they can improve with help or need to be replaced with a new school," said Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld, a schools spokesman. At Sheepshead Bay High School, one of the schools that could be closed, educators and parents are mounting a spirited defense, said Reesa Levy, the principal. The four-year graduation rate is up to 63 percent, from 49 percent five years ago; most students enter well below grade level. The school, she added, also had one of the top track teams in the country. "We are working diligently on our academics," she said. "We improved our graduation rate; we make annual yearly progress. We believe, given a little more time, we could meet all of our targets." The efforts at dialogue also respond to the broader issues raised in the lawsuit last year, which found that the city broke the law in how it informed and involved the community in the school closing process. Still, the phasing out of many schools could create significant turmoil. When schools are phased out, their teachers can end up in a pool of unassigned teachers, where they remain until they find permanent jobs at other schools. "Closing a school is a difficult thing on the community, but it's lot easier on the administration than making sure every single one of your schools is working," said Michael Mulgrew, the president of the teachers' union. The city's final decisions on elementary and middle schools is expected by the end of November, with decisions on high schools by mid-December. Then the official, legally mandated closing process, involving additional public meetings and a final vote by the city's mayoral-controlled Panel for Educational Policy, begins.
Fewer Black males drop out in Baltimore schools
By Dakarai I. Aarons It started with being late. Brandan Howard would show up here at W.E.B. DuBois High School 2½ hours after school started—if he came at all. After a while, he'd fallen behind in all his classes. "When I realized there was so much I had to do to graduate, I dropped out," the 19-year-old said. But the Baltimore public school system wasn't content to let Mr. Howard go. It kept tabs on him after he left last spring and urged him to return. School leaders in Baltimore have mounted an offensive over the past three years to keep more students in school and on track. Last month, news came that the effort has produced a welcome dividend: Black male students are driving a marked increase in the district's graduation rate and a decrease in its dropout rate, and showing improvement at a faster clip than the rest of the system. "Typically, that's the hardest group to move. Oftentimes, when we see average graduation rates going up, it masks little or no improvement in African-American males," said Robert Balfanz, the co-director of the Everybody Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University here. "In this case, the fact African-American males are leading the improvement is notable." The 82,000-student district's on-time graduation rate for black males increased from 51 percent in the 2006-07 school year to 57.3 percent in the 2009-10 school year—a 12.4 percent increase, district data show. Its overall graduation rate increased from 60 percent in 2006-07 to 66 percent in 2009-10—a 10 percent rise. Black students make up 87.8 percent of the district's enrollment. Nationwide, black males lag behind all other students except Native Americans in high school completion, according to a June report from the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center. That report, using federal data from the 2006-07 school year, found that just 46.7 percent of African-American male students graduated on time that year, compared with 73.7 percent of their white male counterparts. ("U.S. Graduation Rate Continues Decline," June 10, 2010.) Michael D. Casserly, the executive director of the Washington-based Council of the Great City Schools, said Baltimore's trends are notable not only in the district's graduation and dropout rates, but also in its performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a set of congressionally mandated tests that serve as a national barometer of student achievement. The district has scored far higher than would otherwise be expected for a district with such concentrated poverty (83.6 percent), and the scores for black students match those of districts that have shown more success over the years, Mr. Casserly said. "Something is going on there that warrants the attention of both practitioners and researchers," said Mr. Casserly. He said the district's effort to build support systems for black males is "more targeted and concentrated than you see in other communities." Personal Touch Andrés A. Alonso, the chief executive officer of the Baltimore schools, said an array of factors helped drive the improvement. The district has put emphasis on reducing chronic absenteeism, cutting down out-of-school suspensions, providing students a wider variety of public school choice options, and enlisting community partners—all in a push to keep more students in school long enough to graduate. "It's a hopeful moment," Mr. Alonso said last week. "We are not going to cede ground." Schools in the city also have been held responsible for creating alternatives to suspension and building youth-development programs that give students opportunities to learn leadership skills, said Jonathan Brice, the district's executive director for student-support services. District suspensions decreased from 16,500 three years ago to 9,721 last school year. "This work has to be systematic, but it also has to be about the one-on-one work with students," Mr. Brice said. "Someone in the building has to know that student's story." The district attributes its success in part to its "Great Kids Come Back" campaigns, which have sent volunteers knocking on doors coaxing dropouts back to school. "In many school systems, kids can leave and drop out and it's treated as a nonevent," Mr. Alonso said. "I want everybody to feel an electric charge when a kid fails to show up." Similar initiatives are under way in other districts, including Minneapolis, which launched a "We Want You Back" effort last year. Ms. Berry-Binder, DuBois High's principal, has a number of students like Brandan Howard in her school that she and her teachers have recruited back into the building. It's meant going door to door sometimes, and, at other times, using Facebook and other social-media tools to track down students. "Isn't this what we are supposed to do?" Ms. Berry-Binder said. "I know [the students] can do it, so why not give them a chance? If you are committed, this is what you do." Mr. Alonso, who took the helm of the Baltimore system in 2007, said one key is changing the expectations of adults. "There was always an assumption we were going to lose kids," he said. "That was not tenable as a starting point for conversation." Karen Lawrence, the principal of the city's Heritage High School, said the culture has indeed changed. It was common practice for decades to show the door to those 16 and older who came to school infrequently, had major discipline issues, or were overage and undercredited. "We started trying to hold on to them longer, and then we started looking to see what we could offer them," Ms. Lawrence said. That has meant structural moves, such as creating an intervention period where the emphasis is on helping students, as well as practical efforts such as buying 600 binders so every student had a notebook. Changing Attitudes Students' mindsets had to change, too. "Kids internalize high expectations, just as quickly as they internalize low expectations," Mr. Alonso said. D'Antre Larry, a junior at the city's Friendship Academy of Science & Technology, said that without the encouragement and inspiration of his principal and others, he'd likely be on the street looking to make a quick dollar. But the staff at Friendship showed him other possibilities. "I'm glad I came here," Mr. Larry said, "because look at me now—I'm the person I've always wanted to be in life." The district has help in its push for improvement. Ronald Covington, who directs the High Expectations program for the community organization Child First, said district partnerships with community groups like his help Baltimore telegraph to the community that it's serious about its efforts. "We can speak a language the community understands," he said. "Young people who were defiant and disruptive," Mr. Covington added, "can be stabilized and put on a plan for success." Special coverage of district and high school reform and its impact on student opportunities for success is supported in part by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. 
Census: School dropouts missing out on $10K a year
By Jennifer Torres, The Record, Calif. (MCT) Thousands of San Joaquin County adults don't have a high school diploma, and what they lack in education could be costing each of them $10,000 a year or more in income, according to recently updated census figures that outline a stark—and growing—gap between education haves and have-nots. Andy Lee, 19, works as a cashier at a Panda Express restaurant, and for the past month, he has been taking GED preparation classes at Stockton School for Adults. "In the future, I want to get a better job," he said. On average, San Joaquin County residents who, like Lee, have neither a high school diploma nor a General Education Degree earn $17,426 a year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That's more than $10,000 less than someone who has finished high school ($28,593) and close to $20,000 less than workers with some college behind them ($36,891). The differences are even greater for women who can expect just $13,276 without a diploma. Those gaps have grown in recent years as workers without an education have reported difficulty finding any job at all and as, in a worrisome trend, education levels in the county seem to be slipping: The percentage of local adults who haven't finished high school is growing while the percentage with a college degree is shrinking. Clara Schmiedt oversees secondary education for the Manteca Unified School District, where she said demand for high school completion and GED preparation has risen sharply. "I think a lot of people, when they don't have a job, they have the time to go back and get their high school diploma," she said. "They're training to better themselves." Meanwhile, Schmiedt said Manteca Unified is working to lower its dropout rate, already smaller than many other districts in the county. "If students don't get their diploma, it really limits what they can do," she said. "That's the first job to go. When you're cutting back in your company, you're getting rid of the lowerlevel jobs." Helena Harrison, 21, said she hasn't had a good job since 2006. "I've tried," she said. "You can't do anything, you can't find any job without a diploma. A lot of people won't take a GED either." Harrison, a student at Stockton School for Adults, said she has tried three or four times previously to complete her diploma. "This time I actually stayed," she said. "I should be done by the time we go on Christmas break." Carol Hirota directs the school. She said that many students, like Harrison, are committing more hours to diploma and General Education Degree programs in order to finish faster. "Maybe their priorities are a little different," she said. "I do believe that literacy is really tied to employment, earnings, voting, parenting." Damien Philpott, 35, used to work as a bouncer. Now he is looking for a job that will pay enough to support his 4-yearold son. He expects to take the GED test next month and hopes eventually to attend culinary school. "The job market is real slow right now," Philpott said. "When they start hiring again, I want to have one more thing to put on my resume."
Racial jobs gap widens in county
October 31, 2010, by Angela Mapes Turner But the organizer of the forum on race and poverty said she was motivated to plan the program in part because she's concerned about future job prospects – and how they affect quality of life – for kids at risk of dropping out of school. "Race, poverty, education, the criminal justice system – it's all one," said Sheila Curry Campbell, who leads a local chapter of the national group Students Against Violence Everywhere. The topic was timely: Allen County's black community is bearing the brunt of the recession, with about one in four adults jobless last year as the racial unemployment disparity grew, U.S. census figures released last month suggest. Black unemployment grew dramatically in Allen County in just a year – from an estimated 15.5 percent unemployment among blacks in 2008 to 28.2 percent last year, according to statistics by the census's American Community Survey. Reliable data on local unemployment by race are difficult to find. The American Community Survey data on black unemployment – because they cover a small segment of the population – have a margin of error of about 5 percentage points most years. Even the best-case scenario in Allen County, based on the margin of error, has a 12-point spread, with black unemployment at 22.9 percent versus 10.8 percent for whites. The worst-case scenario based on that margin of error has black unemployment in Allen County last year at 33.5 percent, putting the county on par with Detroit's Wayne County, where an estimate of nearly one in three blacks was unemployed. The numbers come as no surprise to many in Allen County, including Campbell, whose after-school program at the Urban League gathered a group of kids of various races and all ages for a roundtable discussion. Despite the downturn in local manufacturing, Campbell still believes training in the skilled trades is an important part of the area's educational landscape. She's been working with a local executive to write letters to union halls, asking for skilled-trades workers to mentor students as a way to keep kids in school while teaching them job skills. She maintains hope that middle-class jobs will return, and she hopes the words of her father – who was always tinkering with cars and taught Campbell's brother the trade – will yet prove true. "My dad always told me, 'If you can build it with your hands, you'll always have a job,' " she said. National trend Racial disparity in unemployment isn't new. Nationally, the black unemployment rate tends to be about twice the white rate. In September, the national unemployment rate was 8.7 percent for whites and 16.1 percent for blacks, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The American Community Survey's data aren't directly comparable to those compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics because of differences in data collection. Other parts of the nation show the trend as well. In Washington, D.C., the employment gap is the widest it has ever been, according to a study this month by the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, which conducts research on budget and tax issues in the District of Columbia. And a report this year by the Economic Policy Institute found that in Minneapolis and Memphis, black unemployment rates were three times the white rates. The non-profit Washington, D.C., think tank focuses on the economic conditions of low- and middle-income Americans. The Economic Policy Institute's analysis looked at the country's 50 largest metropolitan areas, which do not include Fort Wayne. The report measured joblessness by looking at the percentages of people over the age of 16 who did not have jobs and were actively looking for work. But the number also includes "discouraged workers" who have given up looking for employment and those incarcerated or on probation or parole. The Economic Policy Institute also analyzed Current Population Survey data on Indiana's unemployment rate for The Journal Gazette. The data showed Indiana's black unemployment rate rose to 18.7 percent last year, the highest it had been since the mid-1980s, compared with 8.8 percent last year for whites. The estimates can't be directly compared with the American Community Survey, which comes from other sources and has less stringent criteria for its definition of unemployment. The American Community Survey showed Indiana's unemployment rate for blacks at 20.8 percent last year and 9.9 percent for whites. Comparable or not, all the data sources showed a disproportionate impact of the recession on blacks in the workforce. The situation has Princess Sharp, 21, rethinking her goals. The IPFW student clutched a stack of books and pulled her bright blue jacket closer as she walked across campus to a Friday afternoon class. She lost her job working with developmentally disabled people about two years ago but considers herself fortunate because she was able to find a similar job since then. Still, she's working toward a degree in psychology and, in the meantime, is also training to be a dental technician – all in hopes she'll find not merely a job but one that will last. "Job security is very important to me," she said. Promoting diversity As the Urban League works with job-seekers to find positions and promote education, it also wants to work with employers, CEO Jonathan Ray said. While the Urban League's goal is to make sure potential employees are prepared, Ray also wants local employers to work to make their job-selection processes inclusive. "We need to promote more diversity in the workplace," he said. The Economic Policy Institute's recent analysis of metropolitan areas found racial disparities in unemployment even at the same education level. But that doesn't mean education is any less important. The Rev. Bill McGill, president of the Fort Wayne-Allen County NAACP, has called it "issue one, issue two and issue three" on the local branch's list of priorities. The branch recently gave the largest scholarship to a college student in its history, a $2,000 grant to a student studying pre-medicine. It's part of a goal to teach black youth that the academic process doesn't stop at high school. "A college degree is no longer an option," McGill said. "It's a necessity." McGill believes fostering a spirit of entrepreneurship also will be an important element in reducing the racial disparity. He invokes the spirit of Madam C.J. Walker, the Indianapolis businesswoman said to be the first woman to become a millionaire by her own achievements. "It's not who you work for but who works for you," he said. "That's the reality of the new economy." Some professionals at McGill's church, Imani Baptist Temple, are planning a program to help people look at their résumés – specifically to address wording on résumés to help potential employees better sell and market themselves. The idea, similar to the Urban League's, is nothing new, McGill said, but the more programs like it, the better. "Somebody in Allen County is starting to hire," he said. "So we've got to make sure all individuals are put in the mix."
Overestimating our affluence / underestimating poverty
November 1, 2010, by Sara Mead Matt Yglesias flags an interesting poll showing that Americans dramatically overestimate the percentage of American households with incomes greater than $250,000 a year. Matt draws this out into a broader conclusion that Americans tend to underestimate how well off they are economically relative to their fellow citizens. But I think the converse is equally likely and important: Thanks to high levels of residential segregation by income and what Matt elsewhere calls "the near-total disenfranchisement of genuinely poor people in American politics and American political media" (although the absence of poor people is hardly unique to the political media), poor people are largely invisible to many middle-class Americans, leading folks to underestimate how many Americans really are poor or low-income.
Facebook-funded fix of Newark schools hits streets
November 1, 2010, by Associated Press The first phase of the $100 million Facebook-funded makeover of Newark's school system will reach far beyond classrooms and into living rooms. Over the next eight weeks, city residents will be targeted with phone calls, home visits and focus groups as part of an effort to get parents more involved in the educational process and to find out what is working—and what isn't—in the city's troubled school system. "We don't want to give anyone any excuses for not participating in this process," Shavar Jeffries, president of the Newark Public Schools Advisory Board, said Monday at a news conference. "There are no excuses." Mayor Cory Booker and city officials made the announcements Monday at the kickoff of the Partnership for Education in Newark, whose headquarters are housed in a converted furniture store in the city's heart. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in September pledged $100 million to improve Newark's schools, which have been plagued by low test scores, high dropout rates and crumbling buildings. The district already spends nearly $24,000 a year—more than twice the national average—on each of its 40,000 students. Gov. Chris Christie has said he will give Booker a major role in overseeing significant changes in the district, which the state took over in 1995. The outreach effort will cost about $1 million, Booker said. In addition to individual solicitations, the partnership will hold meetings at cafes and churches, place billboards around the city, and put ads on city buses. Several speakers on Monday echoed the theme that the money alone won't erase many of the ingrained problems with the schools if administrators and those making the decisions can't agree on how to use it, or if they don't listen to the concerns of parents and students. "The money is important, certainly, but mobilizing the community is the key," said Leonard Pugliese, regional vice president of the American Federation of School Administrators. "I've been in education for 40 years and I've never seen the potential for mobilization like this. I think people in the know are at least as excited by the spotlight this puts on Newark as they are by the money." Diane Parker said she has often been frustrated when her daughter, a high school senior taking advanced placement classes, has been told her school can't offer some of the classes she needs. She blamed part of the problem on the state's role in the schools. "As long as someone has someone over their head saying, 'This is what you have to teach,' then you have a problem," she said.
Memo from Lois Lane (AKA Michelle Fine)
To: Rethinking Schools From the Cutting Room Floor As soon as I heard about the film Waiting for Superman, I knew I had to chat with Clark's foster mother. I called her in Kansas: "Mrs. Kent, you must be so proud that Clark is a Hollywood star, the champion of public education. What do you think of the film?" "Lois, actually the film is very disturbing to me. As you know Clark suffered from a severe personality disorder; it was more debilitating than kryptonite. His savior fantasy was relentless. He would sneak out of the house and slip into tights and a cape in phone booths and then insist that the people need to be rescued from evil and removed from their communities for their own protection…" Questions of money haunt this film — largely for the mute button pressed when fiscal matters arise. Critical aspects of financing are aggressively neglected. First, the grotesque, cumulative consequences of finance inequity in low-income communities of color are never mentioned—the unpaid "educational debt" that Gloria Ladson Billings has so eloquently described. The decay of urban education is represented as an inevitable consequence of being public and unionized—no mention that these schools have been starved for resources for decades. Third, and perhaps most occluded, are questions about who is subsidizing the production of demand—who are the 21st century "Mad Men" behind this campaign? Who is making money in the rush to charter, who is spending money to fuel the unrelenting narrative of public education as a failure and who is subsidizing the popular clamor—both real and manufactured—for alternatives? How is power being reconstituted out of the hands of communities and into the pockets of an elite financial sector whom Diane Ravitch has called "the billionaires boys club"? How are pain and profit braided? An article by Juan Gonzalez, writer for the Daily News, sheds some light on the cost of marketing charter schools in New York City, in this case, the Harlem Success Academy: The cruel lottery was, after all, a well-financed advertising campaign mobilized to produce a public performance of desperation and demand. Many public schools are over-subscribed and by law use a lottery, but send a letter in the mail—without staging a high drama auction for admission. Fourth, we hear little of the irony that the very people who are celebrating Facebook, hedge fund, Gates, Broad and Walton investments in charters are the very people who object to tax reform and advocate radical cuts in public education budgets. This shameful parody could be no more apparent than in Newark. Imagine a cartoon showing New Jersey Governor Chris shaking hands with Facebook's Zuckerberg. The caption could read, "Manhattan was purchased for $24 in 1626; Newark was purchased for $100,000,000 in 2010." Priceless, with a smiling Mayor Corey Booker in the background. Who needs evidence? If issues of money are silenced in the film, empirical evidence on the well-studied impact of charters is severely distorted. Late last night, with the help of Jimmy Olson, I snuck back into the editing room of the movie and almost slipped on a simple thank-you note: Indeed. The best national data, published in the CREDO study by Stanford University researchers, suggest that 17% of charters outperform neighboring schools, and the New York City data are somewhat better than national averages. National and small local studies consistently document that charters tend to be more segregated than neighboring schools, exacerbate local patterns of segregation, under-enroll English language learners and special education students and have high attrition or charter leakage/push-out rates. I've attached a compilation of charter impact studies cataloguing the empirical evidence in terms of student achievement, equity, charters' impact on segregation/integration, levels of parent engagement, experience of educators and levels of innovation and innovation contagion to neighboring schools. Needless to say, the empirical story revealed in these studies—by charter supporters, critics and agnostics—is far more complex than the Hollywood narrative. Now, I have nothing against individual charter schools. Most of my grandchildren are working in them, for a pittance I might add, and long hours, because they can't get jobs anywhere else. But it seems clear that charters alone—enrolling 3% of all students—can't save public education. And they just might be swept into efforts to dismantle it. A nation seduced/a nation enraged The film advertises well the "demand" for charters, but fails to document the equally powerful community protests mobilized across the country, in response to what many consider a "charter invasion." In many communities one can find desire for education alternatives braided with a double-edged outrage. Outrage is rightly targeted at the traditional public school system which hasn't delivered quality, equity, sustainability or democratic schooling, but outrage is increasingly directed at a charter movement that has made and broken promises to local communities, while colonizing schools no longer accessible as local public institutions. A quick glance at another piece by Juan Gonzalez gives us a sense of the disruption and inequities experienced, for instance, during co-location of charters in existing public school buildings: "These strangers suddenly appeared, went up to the third floor, removed the cylinder locks from a bunch of classroom doors and started moving out all the furniture and computers, and piling everything up in the gym," said one teacher who was conducting a summer school class when the men arrived. The tense confrontation that followed reveals why Harlem has become Ground Zero in a growing neighborhood resistance to mayoral control of schools. It is a wakeup call to the politicians in Albany not to give Mayor Bloomberg a blank check to run roughshod over parents and teachers. The moving men claimed they had orders to empty and refurbish all the school's third-floor rooms to make way for an expansion of the Harlem Success Academy. Thus, back on the editing room floor, I was intrigued to find a multi-volume collection of articles about parents in Washington, DC, casting their votes against the Michelle Rhee regime, youth in Newark demanding quality schools in their communities, grandmothers and mothers in Chicago sitting in to protect a local school from closing, educators and students in Cleveland and Watts seeking educational justice, teachers and community members throughout Harlem, the Bronx and Red Hook in Brooklyn protesting the closing of schools, the testing fiascos, the opening of charters, the abuses of mayoral control, the alienation of parents and community, the privatized, elite occupation of their public schools. The mo(u)rning after privatization? For more than a century, scholars, writers and educators, including Carter Woodson, W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, and many since, have published scathing critiques of racial (in)justice and public education. But these same writers have always insisted that democracy requires a well-financed and equitable public education system. Given the sustained historic commitment in the African American community for quality education, it is a perverse irony that Black and Latino pain have become the sexy lubricant for selling the privatization of education; and as infuriating that the very Wall Street hedge fund managers who got us into our current financial mess are now redesigning schools in these neighborhoods. The ideological twinning of charter branding with public sector assault seems particularly insidious. One could imagine that the former project—the campaign for charters—wouldn't need to simultaneously attack the very base of public education. And yet although many charters began as social justice alternatives, the charter campaign has been conjoined with the hollowing and gentrification of the public sector. What began as a model of educational innovation, initiated by teacher unions, has been co-opted, under corporate leadership, into national policies for deregulation and "free enterprise"—with no safety net for youth or communities. So it occurred to me that perhaps we need to anticipate what happens after this round of reforms—if public systems are dismantled and privatization doesn't quite work out. I imagined asking Colin Powell to comment on questions of domestic occupation and exit, as he has on global occupations and exit strategies. I conjured his response to be something like: When you declare war, even on public education, you need a strategic vision and also a plan for sustainability or else you render everyone vulnerable—soldiers, educators, parents, concerned citizens, children. You can't take people out on a limb, destroy their local institutions and then say, "Oops, sorry, it didn't work out." This is a great American tragedy we keep repeating. When privatization fails, what is our exit strategy? Will we be able to rebuild public education after we have destroyed the infrastructure, smothered community passions, wiped out the innovation and dedication of educators, after we have curdled the desires of children? Waiting for Superman circulates a dangerous narrative, one more damaging for what is excluded than what is contained. We might just have to resurrect an online version of the Daily Planet to get a more complex story out, one that takes seriously the deep inequities that have historically scarred our public education system, the desires and outrage of communities seeking the best for their children, the strategic investments that would matter for all. Or perhaps we could federally subsidize mass subscriptions to Rethinking Schools. Thanks for launching this discussion,
Watchdog: Education foundations not doing enough
By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP, Associated Press A philanthropic watchdog group is hoping to light a fire under charitable foundations that support education by releasing a report Wednesday that points out how few of them focus enough attention on helping the most needy students. The study by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy said that only 11 percent of American foundations devoted at least half their grants to programs that benefit vulnerable students. It looked at 672 foundations that gave at least $1 million to educational causes from 2006 to 2008. It said only 2 percent met the watchdog group's other main criteria for philanthropic success: spending 25 percent of its grants toward advocating for long-term change, through community building, advocacy and civil engagement. The Washington, D.C.-based group believes that is the best way to improve learning for all children. It released the report at the Grantmakers for Education annual conference in New Orleans. When the group released a broader report on all kinds of foundations last year, it was criticized as being too paternalistic. This year, foundations have been more reluctant to take issue with the ideas, with several organizations saying they want more time to read and understand the report before commenting. "If no one thinks this report is pushing the envelope and is outrageous in some way, then maybe we didn't go far enough," said Aaron Dorfman, executive director of the committee, which was founded 35 years ago to be a voice for nonprofit and marginalized communities. Dorfman said his organization is comfortable with a robust debate and puts out these reports to get people talking. The organization's next targets will be foundations that focus on health, the environment and arts and culture. "Sometimes, philanthropy as a sector is too polite and uncomfortable with mixing it up," he said, adding that he believes the news media doesn't do enough to effectively criticize and question the nonprofit world. The committee said the purpose of the report is to get foundations thinking and talking, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have an agenda. Included in a list of questions suggested for starting discussion about these issues are statements that seem to encourage moving toward the organization's goals. "How do you measure up against exemplary grantmakers?" the report asks, for example, and then lists the organizations it considers exemplary. Several of the biggest foundation contributors to education are included on this list, including the Ford Foundation, which made $154.8 million in grants for education from 2006 to 2008, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which made $21.4 million in grants for education during that time period. Dorfman said he doesn't expect education foundations that don't focus on needy kids to change their missions. He said he wants those who are focusing on the most vulnerable children to do so effectively, but adds, however, that there is an equity crisis in the country that needs more money to fix it. "Ultimately, foundations need to be true to their missions," said Larry McGill, vice president for research at The Foundation Center, a national authority on philanthropy since 1956. McGill didn't find the criticism in the report unwelcome, and he said he believes others will find it useful. "For some people, anything that appears prescriptive isn't going to be welcome," McGill said. "It looked to me more like an invitation to consider new possibilities." Maybe not quite such a gentle discourse, said the author of the report, Kevin Welner, an education policy research professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "We're asking these philanthropies to ask themselves these tough questions," Welner said, adding that he was surprised by how few foundations were engaged in tackling inequity. All the foundation scores were not listed in the report, but the committee welcomes foundations to call for their numbers.
SCHOTT FOUNDATION HIGHLIGHT We must all rise up to help Midtown
By Sami Leigh Scott, Guest Columnist Residents of Midtown in south St. Petersburg are suffering from low socioeconomic status, minimal education and lack of job opportunities. They have become targets of thugs allowed to conduct criminal enterprises there. Neighborhood children must share sidewalks and playgrounds with drug dealers, gangbangers, sex offenders, prostitutes and drug addicts. It is uncivilized for us to witness the suffering of these residents and not respond. What are the mayor of St. Petersburg, the Pinellas County sheriff, judges, prosecutors, City Council members, county commissioners, School Board members, state legislators and the governor of Florida, who comes from St. Petersburg, doing about this tragedy in Midtown? It is time for detailed accountability from the police chief, senior city administrators, code enforcement agents, parole officers, social workers and mental health specialists. Our tax dollars should be used to ensure that safe neighborhoods and parks are returned to our children. We cannot accept excuses. With a barrage of news reports detailing crimes in and criminals from that area, we cannot accept statistics claiming a "drop in crime." Where is the accounting for millions of dollars in grants and public and private donations to nonprofit organizations, supposedly used to address the social ills of this community? While I am not a resident of Midtown, I have been active on many issues that involve that neighborhood. I would like to see a comprehensive plan by law enforcement to sweep criminals off the streets and into courts and prisons where they belong. Code enforcement officers should identify uninhabitable drug houses for demolition. The Florida Department of Education has identified 41 Pinellas County schools that have "Correct II" status, which is one step short of state intervention. Even more alarming, the Schott Foundation found that Pinellas County failed to graduate 79 percent of its African-American male students in 2008 — the worst rate of any large school district in the nation. With no education and few job opportunities, some of these teens become terrorists on our streets. The school district must be held responsible for pushing students through its dropout factories and into prison cells. What is the school superintendent's specific strategy to close the achievement gap and provide quality education to our children? Has she assembled teams of experts with proven records of turning failing schools around? Are we getting our money's worth from the School Board and highly paid administrators? Residents of Midtown, you don't escape some responsibility. The moment you abandoned the African proverb, "It takes a village to raise a child," you joined an underclass society. Have you discussed with your children that education is their first priority and crime is not their heritage? If not, they are at an immediate disadvantage. The crime wave in Midtown has generated a tsunami that threatens your safety and can deprive you and your children of a happy life. As we all rise to give a helping hand to residents in south St. Petersburg, let us not fall prey to those so-called "leaders" who benefit financially and politically from their own community's suffering. As stakeholders, we must take full responsibility for our actions and demand accountability from all. Sami Leigh Scott lives in South Pasadena. She is the former president of the Pinellas School Advisory Council Association. |
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The Snap Schott is distributed by the Schott Foundation for Public Education. For more information, please visit www.schottfoundation.org. |
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