TFA: The Not-So-Subtle Trojan Horse of Corporate “Reformers,” Part II

It Is Not a Conspiracy When They Admit It.

The last post about TFA alumni in administrative positions and Corps members in the classrooms here in Minneapolis Public Schools appears to have caught the attention of local TFA supporters.  The general reaction is shock.  They are amazed that anyone could question the intentions of the ambitious young recruits to TFA.

Repubulican Representative Pat Garofalo, chair of the House Education and Finance Committee tweeted:

“StatusQuo/Teacher's union in pathetic effort 2 demonize college grads who focus on SocialJustice + EducationalEquality

A former Minneapolis School Board member, who is now involved in charter school organizations and a number of anti-teacher union groups, began a long series of posts on a Facebook page with this charge:

“When bright, gifted, young people committed to social justice and educational equity dedicate themselves to pursuing better schools - who could assail that?

Teacher unionists of course...”

A current TFA teacher responded to the post with, “I just think that PEJAM post is hysterically hysterical,” ”Like, I laughed out loud.,” an ultimately referred to the comments as “conspiracy theories.”

Even a long-time teacher colleague who agreed with the questions I raised felt the need to add, “these TFA alumni will not/do not have the authority that [Rob] seems to suggest they have…”

Many of the people who were upset with the last post seem to confuse my criticism of the organization and some of its most active members with many of well intended recent college graduates who believe they are making the world better.  Some of those who attacked the post as outrageous believe the free market does nothing but good, and they are part of the effort to privatize our public schools.

Calling out TFA as the vanguard of the corporate reformers is not exactly a radical statement.  It doesn’t really expose much of a “conspiracy theory” either.  Daniel Sellers, the Executive Director of Teach For America – Twin Cities, openly admits the organizations long-term goal is “is to be the talent pipeline for education reform in Minnesota,” because “the ultimate solution resides beyond the individual classroom.”

As part of a Civic Caucus on July 11, 2011, Sellers and another TFA leader, Sarah Kemper, outlined the role of TFA in influencing public policy.

Teach for America can't solve the nation's education problem by pumping 10,000 new teachers into the system, the speakers said. The ultimate solution resides beyond the individual classroom, but will likely stem from the longer-term influence of the TFA alumni. The program boasts among its former corps members many education leaders including 400 principals, 15 superintendents (in Washington, DC, Newark, New Orleans, Tennessee, and elsewhere), and 12 elected officials and policy makers.

"In communities where we have seen the needle move," Sellers said, "TFA alums have had an impact." Their immediate goal in Minnesota is to provide students with a talented teacher, who is energetic, excited about getting kids to achieve big goals and not jaded by the "compliance culture" and the low expectations so often entrenched in the school system. In the long run however, TFA - Twin Cities' goal is to be the talent pipeline for education reform in Minnesota.  

What kind of reforms can we expect from TFA alumni?  We can look at the “reforms” of Michelle Rhee or the vast number of TFA alumni now running charters schools.

We can also look to the funders of Teach for America.  The top three are, not surprisingly, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Trust.  Also in among the top 20 financial backers are:

The Bank of America Charitable Foundation, Inc.

The Wal-Mart Foundation, Inc.

Eli & Edythe Broad Foundation

The J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation

GE Foundation

Ironically, this list of funders can be found on a site called the ERIN Project.  This "impartial" project is funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, which is also listed as a funder of Teach for America.  When you look at Laura and John Arnold Foundation website, it describes its goals for education which have “four major levers for change:” “Efficient Markets,” “Human Capital,” “Learning Systems,” and “Performance Management.”  Those are terms for corporations not education, and they seem to have missed the section on social justice.

These organizations are supporting TFA because they believe it will help them to promote their corporate reforms in education.  This means TFA is part of the effort to privatize our public schools and impose a competitive, free market system for our students, whether the recruits realize it or not.  And competition, by definition, always creates winners and losers.

At this point, it may seem we have moved far from those TFA Corp members and alumni working in Minneapolis Public Schools.  They do not operate in isolation, however.  No matter their motivation, they are part of an organization that aims to implement educational changes that will make our schools more segregated and less socially just.

To point out the damage wrought by TFA is not a defense of the status quo.  Our schools do have real problems with racial and social justice, but the free market will not fix that.  Why would the corporations, banks, and billionaire philanthropists that support TFA be suddenly interested in things like justice and human rights in education. Walmart, which suppresses workers' right to organize and bargain collectively, and promotes the creation of sweatshops around the globe, they suddenly care about poor inner city kids and kids of color?  Bank of America and J.P. Morgan, major contributors to the recent economic collapse due to fraudulent or at least questionable practices, they care deeply about all children?

If Teach For America is truly working to close the achievement gap and create socially/racially just schools.  They have some surprising financial supporters.  

Representative Garofalo, you are welcome to tweet this as well. 

Posted by: Rob Panning-Miller

TFA: The Not-So-Subtle Trojan Horse of Corporate "Reformers"

Teach for America, may have started as a stop-gap to supply teachers for school districts that could not find enough licensed teachers, but they quickly became nothing more than the vanguard of the corporate reformers.  TFA Corp members and alumni are actively promoting the corporate neoliberal "reforms" that are designed to privatize our system of public education while trying to lend them credibility by identifying themselves as “teachers.”

It was announced three years ago that Minneapolis was going to hire TFA teachers for hard-to-staff positions.  Despite many licensed teachers in Minnesota looking for a job, TFAers without a license were put into classrooms across the District.  A group of TFA Corp members in Minneapolis have joined the teachers’ union and have simultaneously worked to dismantle core union rights, mainly seniority and tenure.  These hard-earned rights empower teachers to speak up and do what is best for all students.

At one school in Minneapolis, a TFA Corp member became the union steward.  He also co-authored a commentary for the Minneapolis Star Tribune with other TFAers who spoke at legislative hearings to argue for the end of seniority rights.

What may surprise some people is that you don’t need to just look to the classrooms to find Teach for America.  Recent TFA alumni, most only a few years out of college, are being hired as district administrators, building leaders, and we could soon end up with a TFA alum as a Minneapolis School Board member.

Minneapolis is building a teacher evaluation system and attempting to implement what they call “Focused Instruction” across the District (other school districts in the country know it as “Managed Instruction").  It is essentially the local equivalent of the National Common Core State Standards.  It is, no doubt, laying the groundwork for implementing the Common Core and a new testing regime that will be used for the teacher evaluations (more on this in a later post).

Two people leading the implementation of these changes in Minneapolis Public Schools are recent TFA alumni.  The Executive Director of Teacher and Learning graduated from college in 2006 and worked as a TFA teacher for 3 years.  He then work for a couple years at McKinsey and Company (another global corporation that is looking to get its hands on some of the billions that go into public education) before being hired by MPS to implement Focused Instruction and the evaluations of experienced, licensed teachers.

While the information available on the web is sparse, it appears the Director of Instructional Leadership also spent 2 years in the classroom as a TFA corp member.  She then worked another 2 years for TFA, but it is unclear if she was actually working in a classroom.

They have a combined 5 to 7 years of teaching experience between them.   They work directly under our Chief Academic Officer who has 4 years of classroom experience (Not with TFA).  The average teacher in Minneapolis has been in the classroom at least as long as the three of these individuals combined.  TFA alumni will be overseeing the evaluations that will assess the quality of all Minneapolis teachers and imposing a one-size-fits-all curriculum with more standardized tests.

We need teachers who go into the profession with a commitment for the long-term.  Professional, licensed teachers, committed to teaching as a career, need to be respected, supported, and empowered, not micromanaged.  Teaching, working with children, is a career, not a stepping-stone to law school, a corporate job, school administration, or a political career.  Two years in the classroom with minimal training does not make someone an educational expert.  

Posted by: Robert Panning-Miller

Astroturf "Reformers" Focused on School Board Elections

Yesterday, the League of Women Voters in Minneapolis hosted a forum for school board candidates running in the upcoming election.  The candidate responses to very generic questions yielded no new information.  The questions in the first half were written by the League of Women Voters followed by questions from the audience.  However, audience questions were "screned" by the moderators.  There were at least nine Minneapolis Public School Teachers who each submitted a number of questions.  Needless to say, none of our questions made it through the screening.

The truly telling part of this event came from the list of sponsors, a who's who list of people wanting to dance on the grave the teachers' union and universal public education.  While not all of the sponsors fit this description, more than half did, most notably the recent arrivals to Minnesota such as Teach for America and MinnCAN.

Teacher members of PEJAM handed out flyers to counter the message of the education "deformers" and to expose their true agendas.  Here is one of our flyers:

Stop the Privatization of our Public Schools:

           

Minneapolis Public Schools are heading down the path to privatization. Standardized testing, under the guise of accountability, has been used to blame and punish schools and teachers.  The testing regime has been used to label schools as failures.   It is also being used as a justification for creation of a one size-fits-all curriculum. 

Minneapolis Public Schools has begun to implement what it calls “Focused Instruction”.  Like most “reforms,” this is an idea coming in from the outside.  In other districts around the country they call it “Managed Instruction.”  While teachers are told they can determine how they teach (a debatable point), they are told what they must teach.  It is also a practice that involves the implementation of more standardized tests!

We have seen school districts in Chicago, Detroit, and New Orleans dismantled and sold off to private charter management organizations, and business interests.  Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, infamously said Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”  This was because it gave him and Wall Street, the chance to privatize the schools.  The same destruction of public schools is happening in Detroit and Philadelphia, and ironically, is being justified by the economic collapse of 2008, a disaster created by some of the same corporations and individuals looking to profit from our children’s education.

Some of the organizations sponsoring this forum are no more than astroturf groups and shills for the corporations, billionaires, hedge fund managers, and self-appointed reformers hoping to destroy true public education and benefit from its demise.  Their main target is the teachers union, because teachers are the last line of defense for ALL of our students.

MinnPost’s founder and editor, Joel Kramer, has one son who is the President of Teach for America, a daughter-in-law who works for an organization called Charter School Partners, and another son who runs a charter school in Minneapolis.

MinnCAN came into Minnesota two years ago.  Modeled after it’s parent organization ConnCAN.  It has a staff of three people and millions of dollars.  It is not working to build relationships with parents and the community.  It is focused on lobbying the state government to bring in free-market corporate reforms.  In other words, they are hoping to hasten the privatization of our schools.

Empowering Educators for Equity, is a group made up of Teach for America members and alumni.  They are promoting changes that would weaken the rights of teachers and the teachers’ union, and since most do not stay with the profession, they only help to destabilize our schools.

Minneapolis Public Schools cannot excuse themselves from their responsibility to educate ALL children.  We cannot privatize our schools and leave our students to the whims of unelected charter school boards, or the corporate “reformers.”  Parents, teachers, students, and the community, must work together to build true, democratic, and socially just public schools.  We must have schools that welcome and serve the needs of all students. 

·       For more information on how you can be part of a real education reform movement, go to the websites for the Public Education Justice Alliance of Minnesota (PEJAM): https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/101351126592234/

http://pejamn.blogspot.com/

* MinnPost is a local online newspaper that continually prints stories that perpetuate the myths of the neo-liberal corporate agenda, attacking public schools and teachers' unions.  Their article advertising this event really shows their role as a shill for the corporate "reform" agenda.  Find it Here.

Posted By: Rob Panning-Miller

Charter School Rejects Special Ed. Students

PEJAM was part of the effort in Minneapolis to save North High, but we were also part of the unsuccessful effort to save Cityview Elementary from being closed and turned into a charter.  Cityview did not have the same deep roots as North High and the parents, students, and teachers who did step forward were easily ignored.  Now look at what has happened to some of our most vulnerable students.

The online paper, Twin Cities Daily Planet, reports the charter school, Minnesota School of Science (MSS), that took over the Cityview site and was authorized by the Minneapolis School Board has now said it will not serve children with disabilities such as Down’s syndrome and autism.  The intense needs of special education students contributed to the “poor performance” of Cityview, which enable the Minneapolis School Board to justify its closing of this school. 

Now the unelected board of the MSS Charter School has voted to walk away from some of our neediest students because they get in the way of the charter school's goals on standardized tests.

Minneapolis School Board member, Carla Bates, acknowledges mistakes, but falls short of admitting that her, and the Board's, support of charter schools is part of the problem.  If it is simply a failure of the MSS charter school, the Minneapolis School Board can talk to Eric Mahmoud of Harvest Prep Academy (another charter).  The school district recently authorized him to open a District sponsored charter school next year and possibly five more, in total.  Rather than scattering the Special Education students across north and northeast Minneapolis, lets put them in Harvest Prep Academy, and have them participate in mainstream classes there.  Our School Board seems to believe that if anyone can succeed with our neediest students it is Mr. Mahmoud and his Harvest Prep Academy.

Of course, in reality, the Minneapolis School Board should immediately cancel its lease with the MSS Charter School and its authorization.  

This is just the latest evidence that charter schools do not serve all students.  We need to have true public schools that meet the needs of ALL of our students, and our elected school board members need to accept that responsibility.  Charter schools are not part of a universal, democratic, and socially just system of public education.

Rob Panning-Miller

Twin Cities Daily Planet story: http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2012/07/24/cityview-leaves-north-minneapolis-special-education-students-behind

Integration Works to Close the Gap.

This Thursday the Public Education Justice Alliance of Minnesota's Forum featuring Myron Orfield will examine the growing number of racially and socially segregated schools in Minnesota.  As the corporate education reformers call for more free-market solutions, including charter schools, to close the achievement gap, they continue to undo one of the real reforms proven to close the achievement gap - integrated schools.  David Kirp, a public policy professor from UC, Berkeley explained this in an opinion piece in today's New York Times.

Join us this Thursday at 7 pm to hear more about this from Myron Orfield and to discuss ways to bring back integrated schools and communities.

Public Education: A Look at Segregation, Housing and Our Collective Future

When: Thursday, May 24, 2012  at 7:00 p.m.

Where:  University of Minnesota Law School, Mondale Hall, Room 50

What: The presentation and discussion will focus on public education, housing, and segregation in the Minneapolis/St Paul met...ro area.

Orfield will present data from the past twenty years, looking at the trends and policies that have closed public schools and further segregated our schools and our city.

 

No need to reserve a spot, but you can let us know you'll be attending on our Facebook Event page:  https://www.facebook.com/events/#!/events/413030492049276/

 David Kirk's Opinion Piece can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/opinion/sunday/integration-worked-why-have-we-rejected-it.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

 

Weingarten still Supporting the Corporate Reformers

The College Board, which administers the SAT and Advance Placement (AP) courses and exams, has just announced David Coleman is their new president.  Coleman is identified as an architect of the Common Core State Standards.  This news was welcomed by the AFT President, Randi Wiengarten.  She described Coleman as “innovative and an excellent choice,” who “put the common core on the map and he's very respectful of the teacher voice."  He has pushed for "informational texts" rather than fiction.  He said “[A]s you grow up in this world you realize people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.”  Weingarten’s comments are very troubling.  I would hate to meet the teacher that feels Coleman is “respectful” of their voice.

Coleman worked for McKinsey and Company, which has become a major supplier of education “experts” even here in Minneapolis.  His appointment is troubling, but AFT President Wiengarten's comments are even more so.  Wiengarten's record, which includes inviting Bill Gates to the AFT Convention is marred by the collaboration with those who are interested in destroying public education.  

Learn more about David Coleman at Perdido Street School Blog: http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2012/03/david-coleman-and-common-core-consortia.html

An end to Testing Season

We are not just nearing the end of the school year, but the end of the testing season.  From March to June, schools are deluged by tests, after spending much of September through February prepping for the tests.  As politicians and pundits perpetuate the myth that confuses standardized testing with learning, students’ education suffers, and teachers are blamed.  Schools spend less and less time working on what would improve the educational experience of all of its students; instead spending more time and resources trying to survive wave after wave of new tests.

I teach at South High School in Minneapolis.  It is a school that highlights the ridiculous realities of our obsession with testing, although I’m sure most every other school could tell a similar story. 

According to the latest US News and World Report High School Ranking, South High ranked the 24^th best high school in the state of Minnesota, out of 786, and in the top 5% of high schools nationally.  At the same time, No Child Left Behind rules label South as a “Stage 4 AYP” school.  This requires the school to take “corrective action” and prepare for “restructuring.”  While neither the US News ranking or the NCLB labeling actually tell us about the real quality of education at a school, they are both based on the same testing data.  The disparate results exemplify the failed nature of standardized tests.

Despite the mixed messages, our District is requiring students in all schools to take a new series of standardized tests this year called the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP).  This is apparently being done to improve our scores on the state mandated MCA tests, and includes 9^th graders in the high schools.

The MAP test has two parts - math and reading, and they are taken once in the fall and again in the spring.  At South, ninth graders took the fall portion during their English classes, and are taking the spring portion now during their social studies classes.  This means students in my five World History classes need to spend two class periods taking the two parts of this test.  While two days of missed class time might not seem like too much, the set up requirements of the computerized test, along with the limited computer lab space results in the testing of my students being scattered over six days rather than just two.

The tests cost the district about $12 per student, which amounts to at least $400,000 annually, and this is only one of the many standardized tests given in Minneapolis Public Schools.  The District has also recently negotiated a contract with teachers that will add four additional student days next year.  They are paying millions of dollars for these four additional days.  The merit of these additional days is itself questionable, but why claim students need more days in school only to use up more of that time taking standardized tests?

Every few days a new story comes out about the dysfunction of standardized tests themselves, and the dysfunction they create in our school environment.  Recent example include, the “Pineapple” story in New York, the FCAT writing scores in Florida, and numerous cheating scandals across the country.  Yet these are just the superficial problems with standardized tests.  Todd Farley worked for 15 years at Pearson Education, one of the largest for profit companies in education and testing, and he said, “there aren’t scoring problems on some standardized tests—my experience suggests there are scoring problems on all of them.”

Beyond the scoring problems, the manner in which the questionable test results are used compound the problems.  They have narrowed the curriculum and reduced the opportunities for students to engage in creative play and critical thinking.  They have been used to punish teachers and schools, and forced educators to teach to the test rather than meet the individual needs of the children.  An incredible amount of time and money is dedicated to testing rather than actual learning.

If we really want to improve the educational experience for all students, we would not add more time in school and require more testing.  We would try to eliminate standardized testing and focus on empowering teachers to make time in school a rich meaningful experience for students.  If politicians and administrators cannot or will not end the testing obsession, parents, students, and teachers must work together to force an end this destructive process.  It pains me too much to watch my students sit in front of a computer answering questions they don’t care about and are not making them better students or better people.

Public Education: A Look at Segregation, Housing and Our Collective Future

Public Education Justice Alliance Minnesota is hosting a forum with Myron Or field from the University of Minnesota's Institute on Race and Poverty.  The presentation and discussion will focus on public education, housing, and segregation in the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area.

Orfield will present data from the past twenty years, looking at the trends and policies that have closed public schools and further segregated our schools and our city.

Racial segregation in America also means class segregation.  The segregation of schools is dramatically increasing because of failure to enforce federal, state, and local civil rights laws. Whether public or charter, segregated schools are associated with low achievement and increased learning gaps. Charter schools not only aggravate the problem of segregation, they also under-perform and undermine our public schools. Teachers and schools are being blamed and punished for the results of increased segregation, and the current “solutions” are making problems worse.

Join us at the University of Minnesota Law School, Mondale Hall, Room 50, 229 19th Ave. South
Thursday May 24th, 7 PM

https://www.facebook.com/events/413030492049276/

Fighting for Relevant Reform

The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers is holding elections this spring.  The following is a highlight of a speech I gave as a candidate for re-election to the Executive Board:

Teacher unions cannot continue to fight to simply stay relevant, we must fight for what is relevant.  Our union, at the national, state, and local levels, has tried to deal with the neo-liberal corporate attacks by looking for areas to collaborate, to compromise, and to get a “seat at the table.”

Fighting to sit at a table set by education deformers like Bill Gates, Arnie Duncan, and Wendy Kopp is to accept their premises and to immediately silence any questioning of the need for the table.  To sit at the charter school table is to accept the argument that competition will make schools better and ignores the fact that by definition, competition results in both winners and losers.

Instead of trying to out-reform the self-appointed “reformers,” we must work with students, parents, and the community to revitalize our public schools.  The Chicago Teachers’ Union, under the leadership of the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (C.O.R.E.) is already doing this.  In New York, teachers in the Grassroots Education Movement (G.E.M.) are also doing this.  Brian Jones, who spoke in Minneapolis in March, is a member of G.E.M. and helped to create the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman.

The documentary outlines some of the real reforms we need.  They include, among others:

·      More teaching – Less Testing

·      Anti-racist Educational Policies

·      Culturally Relevant Curriculum

·      Qualified and Experienced Educators in every Classrooom

·      Democratic and Social Justice Unionism

·      And Small Class Size

We need to work with parents to build the public schools our students need and deserve.  To do this, we also need to work to create the community our students need and we all deserve.

Robert Panning-Miller

Discussion with Brian Jones following the screening of An Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman

PEJAM's screening of An Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman on March 3, 2012 was well attended and included a Q & A Discussion with Brian Jones, one of the writers and narrators of the documentary.  Here is the discussion:

National Opt Out Day - January 7th

High stakes testing is hurting our students and our system of public education. Ending this damaging practice will take parents, students, teachers, and the community working together. Join in this growing national effort by making a statement on January 7th.

Here is a message from the United Opt Out National:

"United Opt Out National has declared January 7th as National Opt Out Day. On this day we are encouraging Occupy movements everywhere to endorse this action. We are asking parents, students and community members to write letters/postcards to their school districts stating how they will OPT OUT. We have created a postcard that allows for multiple ways to opt out and it can be purchased in bulk to share. Of course, the slam dunk is opting out of the state test as this will shut down corporate education reform. If everyone opts out in mass they will have NO test data to punish students, teachers and communities.

"Occupy our Public Schools"

“Occupy Our Public Schools”

Below is the original written version of a speech I gave at the Occupy Minnesota Rally on October 28, 2011.

I’ve been a teacher in Minneapolis public schools for 20 years, and have been active in the union the entire time, including two years as president of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. I have watched corporations continually push their way into the public schools the entire time. It is clear, corporations hate to see our government money go to the public good, instead of their own pockets. Unfortunately, corporations and the “1%” have managed to buy out not just the Republicans, but the Democrats as well.

Wall Street is destroying our system of public education as much as every other aspect of our democracy. Educators, parents, and students need to not only "occupy Wall Street," we need to "occupy our public schools." Testing companies, textbook corporations, charter school operators, corporate "philanthropists," and other profit seekers need to be removed from our public space so schools can be truly democratic institutions working for social justice. And, we cannot "hope" for change from the Obama Democrats any more than we can from the Republicans. Both parties are dominated by corporate money.

1 in 5 children live in poverty in the United States. In some areas it’s close to 1 out of every 2 children. Corporations and the politicians they have bought and paid for have created this economic and social reality, and yet it’s the public school teachers who are made the scapegoats for the failed economic system. When teachers point out the additional challenges facing students in poverty and the need for more resources, we are told we are simply making excuses. The so-called “education reformers” argue that teachers need to stop making excuses. This “no excuse” mentality is itself an excuse for corporations and politicians to do nothing about the real problems they have created!

Corporate education “reformers” like to talk about accountability for teachers and public schools, but there is no accountability for them.

Big banks triggered massive home foreclosures and a recession with their sub-prime mortgage scams and faulty mortgage-backed securities. The banks then got bailed out with our tax dollars. At the same time, tax revenue in Minnesota and other states has tanked because of the recession caused by the banks. In response, the Minnesota legislature took money from public education with gimmicks including funding shifts to pretend to balance the budget. Schools districts were forced to borrow money from the same big banks that created this disaster and pay them back with interest!

Education is a right and the public schools belong to all of us. We must occupy our public schools as well as Wall Street.

The banks got bailed out, and our schools got sold out!

Rob Panning-Miller,
Minneapolis Public School Teacher
PEJAM Co-founder
Executive Board Member of MFT, Local 59

How are Contracts Awarded by Minneapolis Public Schools? Good Question.

Accountability, a buzzword of corporate education "reformers" is a concept that seems to be missing at the District level in Minneapolis. Sheila Regan of TC Daily Planet published a two part series on the process for awarding contracts by Minneapolis Public Schools. Transparency and accountability are apparently not part of the process. In fact, as Ms. Regan points out, recent changes to the process may in fact reduce transparency and accountability. Here are the links to her stories:

Part 1: http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2011/06/17/mps-school-contracts

Part 2: http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2011/07/11/contracts-and-transparency-minneapolis-public-schools

Now we need an examination of what the numerous outside "consultants" hired by Minneapolis Public Schools actually do for the students of Minneapolis. Spoiler alert: very little!

More Psuedo-Administrators, Fewer Classroom Teachers

The Administration of Minneapolis Public Schools recently passed a budget for next school year. They said they had to close a $20 million hole in the budget. Among other things, this means class sizes will remain well above the original Referendum targets. In spite of this, the District will hire another 24 teacher "coaches" that will NOT work with students.

Today Detroit – Tomorrow, Every City in America

by Rania Khalek

If Milton Friedman, father of the free market, were alive today, I imagine he would be jumping with joy at the prospect of the abandonment of public education for private, for-profit charter schools.
Back in 2005, following the devastation of hurricane Katrina, Friedman wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal where he said “This is a tragedy.  It is also an opportunity to radically reform the educational system.”  Soon after, Friedmonites rushed into New Orleans for the chance to implement what Friedman had long envisioned. With the help of the Bush administration, they dissolved the public school system and in its place built a network of publicly funded charters run, not by educators, but by private entities that made their own rules.
At the time, New Orleans residents alerted the rest of the country, that what was happening to their city was only the beginning and it wouldn’t be long before it spread to our neighborhoods.  In 2006, Bill Quigley, a local lawyer and activist warned:

We know that what is happening in New Orleans is just a more concentrated, more graphic version of what is going on all over our country. Every city in our country has some serious similarities to New Orleans. Every city has some abandoned neighborhoods. Every city in our country has abandoned some public education, public housing, public healthcare, and criminal justice. Those who do not support public education, healthcare, and housing will continue to turn all of our country into the Lower Ninth Ward unless we stop them. Why do we allow this?

If only we had listened.  Soon after New Orleans came the drastic transformation of the Chicago school system by Obama’s Labor Secretary Arne Duncan, New York City schools by Mayor Bloomberg, and Washington DC schools by Michelle Rhee. Which brings us to Detroit.
Following the passage of Michigan Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s “Financial Martial Law,” Emergency Financial Manager (EFM) of Detroit Public Schools (DPS) Robert Bobb is closing 8 schools and selling 45 to charter companies.  DPS is currently preparing a charter school board through training sessions provided by the National Charter Schools Institute, which had more than 70 charter operators and entrepreneurs in attendance just this month.  In addition, DPS has hired the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) to review applications.  NACSA’s president, Greg Richmond, worked with charter schools set up in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and claims “The system opened up to the people of New Orleans in a way it hadn’t before…Now there are dozens of opportunities to get involved.”
In sharp contrast to the lingering unemployment that plagues Detroit, the auctioning off of Detroit’s schools is taking place with breathtaking speed.  Gov. Snyder is on a mission to reinvent public education.  He is calling for more measurements of student and teacher performance, while at the same time proposing deregulation and more teacher autonomy.  He says “We have to put much more emphasis on proficiency, on growth, on measurements and results than we have had in the past” and “Michigan’s public schools need to more rigorously measure students’ academic growth, but with fewer state rules to make that happen.”
Detroit residents have already started protesting.  Just last week, eight students, along with their children and some faculty members of the Catherine Ferguson Academy of Detroit, began a sit-in at the end of the school day in protest of EFM Robert Bobb’s announcement to close the school.  About a dozen or so were arrested by Detroit police for refusing to leave.  The school is specifically designed for pregnant and teen parents and their children, and has a 90% graduation rate and 100% college and higher education acceptance upon graduation.
Gov. Snyder recently said his focus is a holistic approach to education from pre-natal to life-long learning.  He says early childhood education is important and should involve “a public and private partnership.”  If shutting down an award-winning school and arresting, rather than listening to the students he claims to care so much about, is his idea of a holistic approach, then Detroit is in for a treat.
Shanta Driver, National Chairperson of By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), in an interview with Voice of Detroit at the sit-in, said it best:

The massive school closures that have been carried out in DPS since 2004 have led to the depopulation of Detroit and to the deepening financial crisis of the district. Public schools are being closed to make way for charters and are part of the national attack on public education. Today Detroit – tomorrow, every city in America. The parents and students of Catherine Ferguson are fighting to maintain the right of every student in our nation to a free, quality public education. Every supporter of public education should do everything possible to support their fight and make sure they succeed

Driver is warning us, as did the people of New Orleans in 2006.  This corporately funded education reform movement that praises standardised tests, non-union teachers, and private management as the solution to the budget woes of Detroit’s education system is a threat to us all.

Saturday APRIL 9TH - PEJAM presents, Chicago Teachers' Union President, Karen Lewis.

Public Education Justice Alliance of Minnesota (PEJAM) announces spring forum:

“Stand Up for Public Education: Testimonials from the Struggle to Save Our Schools.”

facebook event page - invite all your friends!

Saturday, April 9th
2pm-4pm
Minneapolis Labor Center
312 Central Ave NE, Minneapolis
 

The “Stand Up for Public Education” Forum will take place on Saturday, April 9 from 2-4 PM at the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation Building, 312 Central Ave in Northeast Minneapolis. This event is part of PEJAM’s efforts to defend public education and the... unions that empower our teachers and families. Speakers will discuss the current efforts to counter the national and local attacks on our schools, our teachers, and our communities.

The keynote speaker is Karen Lewis, President of the Chicago Teachers Union and a member of CORE- Caucus of Rank & File Educators. In her election acceptance speech in June, Ms Lewis declared, “Today marks the beginning of the end of scapegoating educators for all the social ills that our children, families and schools struggle against every day. Today marks the beginning of a fight for true transparency in our educational policy — how to accurately measure learning and teaching, how to truly improve our schools, and how to evaluate the wisdom behind our spending priorities.”

Additional speakers will address local school concerns such as the struggles to keep North High School alive, the closing of Cityview, school changes in St Paul and reports from Wisconsin teachers, whose collective bargaining rights are under attack by their governor.

PEJAM is a grassroots community organization of teachers, parents, students, and community members dedicated to defending and supporting a fully funded, just, equitable, and democratic system of public education.

Hundreds of Idaho Students Walkout to Protest Education Cuts!

by KTVB & Associated Press

KTVB.COM

Posted on February 28, 2011 at 8:53 AM

Updated Tuesday, Mar 1 at 11:44 AM

BOISE -- Hundreds of students across the state organized a walk-out in protest of Superintendent Tom Luna's plan to overhaul education.
Word about the protest spread quickly among students thanks to social networking and text messages.
There were protests in Nampa, Meridian, Caldwell, American Falls and Pocatello.
In Boise, nearly 250 students skipped school and came to the capitol to protest the reform bills before the legislature.

Click here to read more

Wisconsin Solidarity Actions!

Unions enable teachers to stand up for what is best for students. The attack on teachers' unions must be resisted. We need to stand with the people of Wisconsin and defend our right to collectively bargain. The Minnesota AFL-CIO has posted information on a number of opportunities for those of us in Minnesota to stand with Wisconsin teachers and laborers.
http://www.mnaflcio.org/

PEJAM General Meeting 6:30pm Monday @ Stewart Park Rec Center

All PEJAM supporters, especially folks looking to get more involved in our work are welcome to our next general meeting this Monday, Jan 24th. It will be at 6:30pm in the Meeting Room at Stewart Park Rec Center (2700 12th Ave. S, Minneapolis, MN 55407 - map here).

We will be discussing numerous ideas and projects to take things forward in the Twin Cities, building on the great work we've already done along with many supporters in the last few months fighting school closures and privatization in North Minneapolis.

JOIN US!

Check us out on Facebook.

Defense Contractor Desires to Make Math and Science "Cool" and "Fun"

One of the contributors to the Chamber of Commerce' educational reform effort, Profiles in Innovation: Institute for a Competitive Workforce, is Northrup-Grummen, the defense contractor that produces the B-2 stealth bomber and F/A 18 fighter. Arne Duncan is coming to discuss programs like Profiles in Innovation with the Chamber on Friday, Jan 21.
 

In a video on the Chamber's website, a representative from Northrup-Grummen states "Right now we have educational programs that impact the entire k-12 pipeline". He continues to say that, by making math and science "cool" and "fun", the initiative is designed to help pave the way for university students who could eventually help them develop "products".
 

We should resist the notion that math and science
education are designed to support the military-industrial complex, or
that an appropriate application of these subjects is the business of
making war.

SEE POST BELOW for info on PEJAM rally to protest corporate and militaristic education policies that Arne Duncan will be promoting in his Luncheon with MN Chamber of Commerce

FRIDAY: PROTEST Arne Duncan and Pro-Corporate Education Policies

SAY NO TO PRO-CORPORATE EDUCATION POLICIES!
Rally to Demand Duncan/Dayton Listen to Teachers and Parents, not the Chamber of Commerce!

10:30 a.m. Meet at Caribou Coffee next to Brit's Pub 

(1116 Nicollet Ave. Minneapolis)
10:50 a.m. Walk one block over to Hilton
11 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Rally in front of Hilton

...
Friday, January 21, 2010, Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, will be in Minnesota to speak at a luncheon of the MN Chamber of Commerce and meet with Governor Dayton. We are asking PEJAM members and supporters to come and let Secretary Duncan and Governor Dayton know that the so-called education reforms like Race to the Top are destroying our public schools. Let them know they need to listen to teachers and parents, and not corporations.

The rash of school closures, conversions of public schools to privately managed charter schools, and the destructive culture of “shame and blame” that have seriously damaged our public educational system are the result of No Child Left Behind and Obama/Duncan’s Race to the Top. Now Governor Dayton is asking Secretary Duncan to let Minnesota reapply for the Race to the Top program.

Let Governor Dayton and Secretary Duncan know that we oppose these destructive policies that privatize our public schools and have the greatest negative impact in minority and poor communities. Recent effort to close North High School, the closure of Cityview, and the opening of a charter school in the Cityview building, are all examples of the damage done by Secretary Duncan’s pro-corporation agenda.

ACTION ALERT! Arne Duncan coming to Minneapolis on Jan 21st

Friday, January 21, 2010, Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, will be in Minnesota to speak at a luncheon of the MN Chamber of Commerce and meet with Governor Dayton.  We are asking PEJAM members and supporters to keep this date available for a possible rally in response to Secretary Duncan’s message and policies.

Meeting to plan the protest will be Saturday, 9am, Common Roots Cafe (Lyndale Ave & 26th St.)

The rash of school closures, conversions of public schools to privately managed charter schools, and the destructive culture of “shame and blame” that have seriously damaged our public educational system are the result of No Child Left Behind and Obama/Duncan’s Race to the Top.  Now Governor Dayton is asking Secretary Duncan to let Minnesota reapply for the Race to the Top program.

Let Governor Dayton and Secretary Duncan know that we oppose these destructive policies that privatize our public schools and have the greatest negative impact in minority and poor communities.  Recent effort to close North High School, the closure of Cityview, and the opening of a charter school in the Cityview building, are all examples of the damage done by Secretary Duncan’s pro-corporation agenda.

Mr. President, We Want Your Children's Education, Too

Sunday 09 January 2011

by: Rachel Levy, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

I agree that it was the economy that doomed the donkeys' midterm election results this past November, but something rang true for me in the descriptions of last week's voters as resentful of Obama's tin ear for the common person. I used to think that claims of Obama's elitism were baloney. As Jon Stewart quipped about "arugula-gate": "He's an elitist! He eats … slightly more bitter green leafy vegetables than I do."

But now, given the comments Obama made on NBC's Today Show while talking about why he and the first lady don't send their children to DC public schools, I'm not so sure. Obama's alleged elitism may not deter his ability to govern, but it does undermine his legitimacy in the face of growing populist sentiment (and not just of the Tea Party), and it further erodes my confidence in his education policies.

I went to DC public schools from the age of four until I walked across the graduation stage at the end of 12th grade. I went on to teach in public schools and I am currently a public school parent. I value my DCPS education, but my experiences there were far from perfect. There were times I pined to go to the Georgetown Day School, or the Field School or even to the public Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School over in the Maryland burbs. From what I know, Sidwell Friends (the private school where Obama sends his daughters) offers amazing academics and extracurricular activities. But I wouldn't trade most of the teachers and coaches I had, nor my friends or even the peers who called me names because of what the color of my skin represented to them. It's all a vital part of my identity, of how I view the world, of how I relate to others. My DCPS past, warts and all, has made me a different person than I would have been had I gone to a place like Sidwell, different in a way that seems lesser to my current eye.

Back in September, when asked on the Today Show if, "Malia and Sasha would get the same kind of education at a DC public school compared to the elite private academy that they're attending now," President Obama responded:

I'll be blunt with you. The answer is no right now. The DC public school systems are struggling. They have made some important strides over the last several years to move in the direction of reform. There are some terrific individual schools in the DC system. And that's true, by the way, in every city across the country. There are some great public schools that are on par with any private school in the country. … I'll be very honest with you. Given my position, if I wanted to find a great public school for Malia and Sasha to be in, we could probably maneuver to do it. But for a mom and a dad who are working hard but who don't have a bunch of connections, don't have a lot of choice in terms of where they live, they should be getting the same quality education for their kids as anybody else, and we don't have that yet.

That sounds like perfectly respectable honesty, except it isn't, not really.

Obama could have cited security concerns as the Clinton's did when they chose Sidwell over my school, Alice Deal Junior High School, for their daughter (although I'm tempted to think that the Secret Service has got bigger problems if they can't secure a junior high school). Obama would have been more honest if he had said, "We understand that a small private school, with a large budget and very restrictive enrollment, is able to do something different than an urban public school could ever do." Or, most candidly, "We want our children to be surrounded by highly motivated, well-behaved, upper-middle class students. Sidwell can offer us that." Instead, the president subtly plugged his own administration's plans for education reform while using the coded language of the urban neoliberal elite.

We believe in public education, and the public schools, but they're not ready for our children, not yet. I hear: "We have passed judgment on the schools, but we use these words to show how the decision was tough, and temporary." Yet, I don't see too many younger siblings of private school students going to public schools. "I want to send my children to public schools, but no one here sends their children to them." No one? Are the buildings empty? I am tempted to ask. But I don't, because I know what they mean: that no one who looks and dresses like us (wink, wink) goes to them. Not enough well-educated, upper-middle class people send their children to them. They value public education in the abstract, but not the schools that are the real choice. To some of those who do send their kids to DCPS or who worked in the system during Michelle Rhee's "Great Leap Forward," Obama's words may sound like coded language for DC public schools got much better once Chancellor Rhee came in and got rid of all that deadweight. Deadweight meaning experienced teachers and administrators, many of them DC natives.

The next rationalization is, "Well, we could have gotten our daughters into one of the 'better schools,' but then we would have been supporting the inequities that exist in the system." Apparently, Francis Stevens, the Obama's neighborhood school, is not among DCPS's "better schools." It's true, for example, that DC's mayor, Adrian Fenty, got his children into Lafayette Elementary in upper Northwest out of boundary, but most people, even those with a "bunch of connections," do what everyone else does when they want to send their child to a school out of bounds: they participate in the lottery. What's more, how is the discomfort in using one's connections to get into a better DCPS school eased by sending one's kids to Sidwell Friends? Is the system that Sidwell exists in somehow less unfair or less a use of one's connections? Is Sidwell part of a more equitable system?

What is this progress in DCPS that Obama refers to? Mass firings, fiscal incompetence, recruitment of unqualified and inexperienced teachers, high teacher turnover, lack of curriculum and pedagogic programs, questionable evaluation tools, disregard for democratic principles, overemphasis on standardized tests, the expansion of charter schools and merit pay for teachers are all part of Rhee's legacy. This set of bankrupt and ideological educational policies was rejected by the majority of voters in DC, but if President Obama and his secretary of education Arne Duncan (who resides in neighboring Arlington, Virginia) have remained such "big fans" of Chancellor Rhee and her reforms, as they have said they have, why wouldn't they have enough confidence in them to send their own children to her schools? Wouldn't it be informative if Obama and Duncan sent their own children to one of the very urban school systems they are so endeavoring to reform, or if they at least sought the same experiences for their children that they are imposing on the rest of the country?

Do they educate according to such policies at the University of Chicago Lab School, where the Obama's once sent their children while Duncan was running Chicago's public schools? Is Obama bringing the great educational principles, which he rightly valued for their role at the Lab School, into his reform of the public school system? In graduate school, I studied the remarkable work of John Dewey and its influences on pedagogy at the University of Chicago Lab Schools, and I would say no, Obama's administration is doing no such thing. How about at Sidwell Friends? I've taught at a Quaker school, and I know people who went to Sidwell, and I'm going to have to say no. Fortunately for their teachers and students, they are not implementing more standardized testing, instituting performance-based pay for teachers or eliminating teachers' unions.

Mr. President, if the public schools aren't good enough for your daughters, fine, just say so. But don't denigrate, with your coded language, the experience of those who choose urban public schools for their children, who want the democratic experience of attending a public school with all sorts of young people, some quite able, some suffering from the ravages of poverty. If the new school reformers' policies, which you and your administration support, are the right ones, why don't you send your own children to the very schools where such policies are being implemented? If that is not possible, why send them to a school that is in many ways the mirror opposite of your revolutionary reforms? Is it possible that the very things that make Sidwell so enticing to you (from their website: "We offer these students a rich and rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum designed to stimulate creative inquiry, intellectual achievement and independent thinking in a world increasingly without borders") do not apply to children in public schools, and, specifically, inner-city schoolchildren?

Your educational reforms leave interdisciplinary curriculum, creative inquiry and independent thinking by the wayside in the pursuit of higher math and reading scores. Elite kids get to read, find learning fun and relax in moments of quiet reflection, but public school systems, apparently in a crisis, have to drop recess, the arts, science and social studies, not to mention many of their neighborhood schools, in the quixotic quest for higher test scores and school "choice." Are such policies fine for the education of other children, but not your own?

Mr. President, if we should all have your healthcare, as you have said we should, then shouldn't we all have your children's quality education, too? No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Arne Duncan and Bill Gates are not going to get us there, and your choice in where you send your children to school demonstrates that. No Child Left Behind was a nobly intended response to the very real "soft bigotry of low expectations." The problem is that NCLB, and now Race to the Top, won't vanquish that bigotry; rather, they codify it.

Furthermore, your policies expand the target of the bigotry, from the soft bigotry of low expectations on the students, to a hard bigotry of crude expectations on the teachers. Your policies won't bring DCPS any closer to Sidwell, because your policies, your words and your actions suggest that you think that a broad, interesting curriculum along with time for creative reflection are luxuries for the wealthy, whereas the poor need basic reading and math skills and drills.

Do you think that children in public schoools aren't ready for these luxuries? Or are their brains somehow different? Less curious? Less creative? I don't think you believe this. But it seems to me you should at least say that they deserve exactly what your own children have. When you fail that basic test, it makes me think you're just the elitist that your populist critics say you are.