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Education Reform as Class Warfare

Horace Mann, Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey and others had a very simple view of public education.  To these men, public education in America would be the great equalizer.  It would create a common American culture and an educated citizenry that would make decisions that would benefit the whole nation.  An educated citizenry that could think for itself would preserve democratic institutions and create a nation that would give opportunity to all.

However, in the warped view of Gates, Zuckerberg, Duncan, Broad, Bloomberg, Rhee, et al., public education has been nothing but a failure.  To them, traditional public education has prevented the achievement of high need students, and is the main, if not the “only” cause, of poverty in America.  There is only one solution. A standardized national curriculum will enable every child to become college ready.  All you need is a super bright Ivy League college student who can efficiently teach this curriculum to 40 to 60 kids at a time (according to Emperor Bloomberg) or a computer program that has enough artificial intelligence to differentiate instruction.  Their magical curriculum is teacher proof and student proof.  The only thing standing in our way are these reactionary unprofessional unionized public school teachers who only teach kids to line their pockets with public money and who work less than six months out of the year.  In the view of these billionaires, only the private sector can implement the magic curriculum in such an efficient manner that it will save the public money while, at the same time, create the most literate nation in the world.  Only market forces can create the type of efficiency that will enable everyone to master a common national curriculum that will put a college degree within grasp of every child–no matter their socio-economic status or disability.  According to these “experts in education,” all this can be efficiently measured by testing and more testing to see if teachers are successfully implementing this magic curriculum, which will get every student a college degree in America.

One would think that these great benefactors want to create a Utopian society in which there would be no poverty and in which everyone would be college educated. Unfortunately, the reality is much darker.  Just like the robber barons of the 19th century who built libraries, museums, and concert halls, which hid their barbaric labor practices within a nation of unbridled wealth, our modern robber barons, want to take themselves off the hook by blaming the economic inequality and pockets of extreme poverty in our urban areas squarely on the door classroom teachers. They are like the con artist that distracts you while he picks your pocket.  They point to and blame hard working teaches while they redistribute public money to line the palms of hedge fund operators and venture capitalists that see education as a way to make themselves ever richer.

When one looks objectively at the history of American public education, one sees success against many odds.  I would recommend Callahan’s Education and the Cult of Efficiency.  I read this book when I was taking graduate courses in Educational Administration.  This 1962 books reveals that all this happened before.  Callahan describes that at the turn of the 20th century, the economic elite of this country attempted its first top-down reform of education.  They decided to turn schools into little factories, which used Frederick Taylor’s methodology of “scientific management” to create an efficient educational system that would educate vast numbers of students in the shortest time to be “educated” workers manning America’s great industrial engine.  The result of this reform was that by 1920, the number of high school graduates in America rose from 7% in 1900 to 19%–an insignificant number.   Unfortunately, we are still left with much of this legacy.  Our eight-forty to three school day, classroom structure, school calendar, as well as a sad history of labor strife between teachers and administrators are all remnants of this so-called reform.

However, with the advent of the use of social science research practices to measure different educational models along with large increases in state and Federal funding for public education after 1940, the high school graduation rate went from about 23% in 1939 to 78% in 2010.   And as for American schools not graduating college ready students, in 1899-1900 only 30,000 college degrees were awarded as compared to over 3 million college degrees awarded in 2009-2010.

Rhee and company are right about one thing.  We have not been as successful in educating high need urban minority, disabled and foreign born students.  Unfortunately, all their solutions are not backed up by legitimate educational research.  If anything, their magic curriculum violates every law of child development.   The deformers, as I call them, refuse to admit that education is a complicated process and research has shown that one important variable in creating academic achievement is ones address.  Obviously, if one lives in a resource rich suburban school district, one has the time, energy and extra resources to help a child and support the education provided by a school.  Unfortunately, parents who have to worry about their basic needs cannot do so.  Begin to end poverty and you will be well on your way to improve educational outcomes.

Additionally, our modern educational deformers refuse to admit that one cannot measure achievement when the measures themselves are unreliable and invalid.  Countless research has shown that their value added measures of teacher performance are less than useless.  The new State tests that are being retooled for their magic Common Core curriculum will also be useless.  The powers that be admit that many students will fail this test this year.  One cannot create a curriculum that does not account for child development in which probably only 15% of the school population may pass (students with above average and superior verbal and intellectual ability).  If you use scientific research methodology to measure the efficacy of an educational assessment, there is only one premise.  If most people fail a test, the fault is not really with the student, but with the test itself and what it is supposed to measure.

The next question one should ask is if there is so much research that shows that these people are wrong, why is all this happening?   Why won’t someone like Bloomberg acknowledge research that shows smaller, not large class size creates greater academic achievement?  Why won’t  Broad admit that the Common Core standards violate Piaget?  The reason is because they have a political agenda.  It is a political agenda that is completely undemocratic so that this elite can be free to do what it wants with public money.  They also want to further erode the power of American labor.  They want a Charter School system that will be free of the AFT and NEA.  They want to destroy the political power of these organizations.  Diane Ravitch recently described a proposed teacher contract by the head of the Philadelphia school system.  It is a proposal that only Andrew Carnegie could love.  It is a contract to demoralize and enslave the public school teachers of Philadelphia.  The contract cuts wages by 12%, allows principals to fire teachers at whim, and has no class size limits.

As for ending poverty, their proposals will probably result in a segregated education system in this nation.  Defunded public schools will only provide a limited education to those in poverty, the disabled and second language students based upon teaching to a test that measures literacy through multiple-choice answers and short written responses to short passages.  On the other hand, some students who are in private or charter schools will have an expanded curriculum (because their schools are exempt from being measured by state tests) as well as small class size.  As for a common American culture, these exempt charter and private schools will be free to teach such wonders as creationism and the benefits of carbon pollution.  As for the disabled, I guess those who remain in traditional public schools will have to make due with few services and programs.  Rhee and company talk about school choice, but what they really wish to create is a dual educational system in America that will be separate, unequal and and benefit economically as well as politically America’s 1%.

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Common Core and the Suspension of Child Development

It was 1977 and I was taking a child development course for my Master’s level program to become a special education teacher. The assignment was simple. Take two children of different ages and conduct some learning experiments on them. The objective was to see if Piaget’s theories were true. I needed two children, so I asked my cousin if I could borrow her two kids—David and Rachel (who still remember as adults the fun we had doing all this). David was eight-years-old at the time while Rachel just turned five. Of course, I did that famous conservation experiment of pouring water into a tall thin glass and the same amount of water into a wide narrow glass. Obviously, both thought that the tall narrow glass held more water even after both watched me pour the same amount of water into both glasses. What is the importance of this experiment? Well, young kids think very concretely and not abstractly. And how do you develop abstract thinking skills? Give them many of concrete experiences over a long period until their brains become mature enough to understand the abstract concept that no matter what the shape a container may be, if you pour the same amount of liquid into that container, it is still the same amount

This experience I had with my cousins came hauntingly back to me about a month ago when I tried to teach a bunch of fifth graders to estimate fractional sums using benchmarks. The concept appears simple. Take a number line, start at zero, make several benchmark points, such as ½ and 1, and then estimate whether a given fraction is close to these benchmarks. For example, if we add 7/8 and 3/8, we should estimate that our answer will be about 1 and ½. Obviously, 7/8 is close to one and 3/8 is close to ½. With our adult minds, this is a no brainer, but not to the fifth grade mind—especially a mind that may have a learning disability. My kids just did not get it. I used every special education, multisensory method on the books. I color coded, used fraction bars, as well as visual illustrations, etc., etc. Most just wanted to add the like denominators and did not want to estimate first using this method. I then decided to question them intently to understand why they were having such difficulty estimating. To my amazement I discovered the reason. All my concrete manipulatives and illustrations confused them even more. Each manipulative and drawing was a different size and they did not understand that no matter the size or type of fractional illustration presented that the fraction was really the same size. It was hard for these fifth graders to understand that if I cut a pizza in or a jelly bean in half, it was still a half. Therefore, I made a fatal teaching error that many new teachers make. I assumed knowledge or understanding that my students really did not have. To prove their lack of understanding, I took two jars of different sizes and poured a glass of water in each. I asked them to write on their personal white boards which cup had more water and most chose the tall, thin cup again. Piaget came hauntingly back and now I understood why these LD kids were having such difficulty with this common core concept. I realized that it was not that many wouldn’t learn it, but that many couldn’t learn it. They were just not ready.

Furthermore, I tutor several middle school students in math. I work with one learning disabled 8th grader who is, with a lot of extra help, passing within an integrated setting. Fortunately, his parents have the resources to purchase my services for three hours a week. In addition, not only does the student have a highly experienced special education co-teacher in his math class, but he also gets additional special education teacher support services three times a week within a very wealthy suburban school district on Long Island. To his benefit, the student although learning disabled has strong intellectual potential that enables him to easily learn the various strategies I and his teachers have developed to help him do the math. Yet, when tested on these concepts, he mostly gets grades in the low seventies on tests in which problems contain three or more steps and which requires him to describe using mathematical terms various math processes. One problem he got wrong had to do with the Pythagorean Theorem. Mathematically, he knows the formula and can apply it to solve problems presented algebraically. He understands that if we want to find the unknown length of one side of a right triangle, he can do so as long as he knows the length of a hypotenuse and an adjacent side. However, on a test in which a problem derived from a sample CCLS standard, he got completely lost. The problem had a right triangle containing adjacent squares for each side. The question asked what assumption the student can make about the area of the largest square. Furthermore, he was expected to explain his assumption in mathematical terms.

After looking at the problem, it appeared familiar to me. I then remembered where I saw a similar problem. I decided to take a trip to my attic and opened up an old box. Within the box, I found my high school review books. After a little skimming, I found a very similar model problem—within my 10th grade Amsco geometry review text. Then I remembered the difficulty I had with my first term of geometry in high school and all the extra help I needed to master and understand those theorems at the time. Now we expect a student to master concepts that used to be taught to 15-16 year old students thirty of so years ago. A 16 year old student is well into what Piaget calls the formal operational stage of development. Those are fancy words that mean that a student of that age can more easily understand very abstract concepts. Now we are supposed to expect a 13 year-old student to have the same capacity as a student that is very close to college age. Obviously, some 13 year-old students can understand such concepts, but most will have difficulty, again, because they may not be developmentally ready—especially if a disability is present. When I recently stated this at a meeting, I was told that I have low expectations for students. I replied that I do not have low expectations, but realistic expectations. And that these expectations are based on a good deal of scientific research.

The Common Core curriculum appears to be one that was developed by anecdote and not by research. I remember when my youngest son graduated from high school, the Valedictorian was an Asian young man who came to the United States two years previously without knowing a word of English. I recall the Principal saying to the audience that it was possible to accomplish so much when one perseveres and works hard. What he didn’t mention was that this student probably had an IQ that was through the roof! It would be unreasonable to expect other immigrant children to accomplish what this student did when research has shown it takes an older student five to seven years to learn enough academic vocabulary to perform well in an English language school. One should not build a curriculum that could only be easily mastered by above average and superior students that make up only 15% of the total population.

Interestingly, just yesterday I received an email from my school district which contained a list of math vocabulary terms students are expected to master at each grade level. When I looked at the kindergarten math vocabulary, there was the term “decompose” which means to break down complex numbers to get a better understanding of place value. To expect a kindergarten student to understand and use this concept is beyond ridiculous. When I was in Kindergarten, I am pretty sure I had no idea what this term meant and I am also sure my kindergarten teacher had no interest in teaching me its meaning when her greater concern was that I know how to write my name, address and phone number in case I got lost. I really don’t think there is any necessity for a five-year-old to use college level vocabulary to explain complex math terms when many still need to develop one-to-one correspondence. Of course, someone who supports common core would say that all they are doing is raising the bar. However, this is a bar that is twenty feet up and for a five year old impossible to master. By the way, yesterday I asked three kindergarten students to decompose the number 12 and they replied with blank stares. I have been involved with educational testing for nearly thirty years. A good part of my career involved administering diagnostic tests to determine if students had learning disabilities. I clearly remember when I was taking courses in diagnostic assessment, a professor saying to us that when most students fail a test, the problem is not with the student, but with the test. Therefore, if most students at a certain age will not be able to master these so-called common core standards, the problem is not with the kids, but with the standards. Standards that unfortunately violates every rule of child development.

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The Re-discrimination of Disabled Students

On July 10th, The New York Times had an interesting article by Michael Winerip about a disabled child forced out of a charter school.  This charter was founded by a woman named Eva Moskowitz who founded her Harlem Success Academy to supposedly give high need students a choice.  Well, this charter school gave this child little choice but to leave and ended up treating the child like a leper. You can read the story here.   However, when I read this article it came as no surprise to me.  I know a special education teacher who works during the summer for one of the city’s ten Committees on Special Education.  These offices are in charge of holding IEP meetings for students who attend private schools, parochial schools, charter schools, and New York State approved nonpublic schools that provide services to the disabled.  Many of the private/charter schools have students who receive special educational services paid for by the Department of Education.  Therefore, they need a special type of individual educational program which allows parents to find a provider that serves the child either at home or within the school itself during the day.  It should be noted that several charters do provide minimal special educational services, such as Harlem Success, but because they do not have IEP teams within their school, the meetings must be held in these CSEs.

Well, this special education teacher has repeatedly told me of his dealings with these charter schools.  If a child is not a problem to them, they usually do not attend the yearly meetings to update a student’s IEP.  However, the CSE appears to always have a lot of difficulty acquiring updated teacher reports and service provider reports from these charters.  Although the CSE requests these reports in advance of the meeting, the parent often have to take the initiative and do the legwork necessary to get progress reports and updated goals from service providers in these charters.  On the other hand, if a student receives a special education service, but continues to have academic difficulty, the charter convinces the parent to ask the CSE to re evaluate the student (because most do not believe in investing in personnel that will conduct multidisciplinary assessments within the charter itself).  When these CSEs have IEP meetings for these students, the charters always send their “educational director” to the meeting.  The purpose of this person is to make sure the CSE recommends a special education program that the school does not have, so he or she can counsel the parent into leaving the school.  This looks so much nicer than the school expelling the student because of a disability. The parent decides “by her own free will” to leave the school so that the child can get needed services which are often within a public school.

This special educator told me of a situation last year in which the IEP team disagreed with the charter.  The CSEs IEP team felt that if the charter’s resource room teacher used a more multisensory approach to teach decoding skills, it might make a difference.  The charter disagreed saying that their resource room teacher can’t take the time to teach this child differently than the other students that were being served.  I found this situation to be very interesting because I always thought that the charters claimed that they can differentiate instruction better than those tired old public school teachers.  When, at the end of the meeting, the district representative for the IEP team decided that the child’s present level of services were appropriate to meet his needs, this educational director said to the parent that he had no choice but to “terminate the contract we have with you because the agreement was that you (the parent) had to ensure that your child would achieve at a certain level.

Simply, what transpired at the end of that IEP meeting between the parent and the charter’s educational director was nothing less than discrimination and the school got away with it.  If a public school administrator said such a thing to a parent, he or she would probably be brought up on charges and subsequently fired.  I have a problem with these charter schools that are accepting public money and yet are forcing disabled students out of their schools.  To me, if a school accepts public money, they have to accept and work with all students.  If a charter refuses to take that public money and create programs that can serve a wide variety of disabled students through a continuum of services (which the Federal law states public schools must do), then these charters should not be given any public money.   Furthermore, parents must be willing to take these schools into court and charge them with discrimination.

At this point, the state and the Feds do nothing about the rediscrimination of the disabled by these charters.  There cannot be two different standards–one for public schools and one for charters.  The Individual Disability Education Act which governs disabled children in this country is clear.  If you accept public money, you must serve “all” disabled students.  Those who want to privatize education are smart.  It is in their interest that disabled children not be served by their beloved charters so they can inflate the school’s achievement scores and they also know that most parents–especially of high needs students, do not have the sophistication to legally challenge these schools.  It is no wonder that these schools do not have multidisciplinary teams that would tell parents their legal rights.  Simply, these charters do not want such parents to know their rights.  Here are these charters who claim that they care more for the education of kids in poverty, but in reality treat certain parents–those of disabled children–with complete arrogance and disrespect.  It is the attitude that we know what is best for your child.  I have news for such charter schools. The Federal law governing disabled students has a very different philosophy. It is the philosophy that the parent is a partner in determining the educational needs of a student.  An IEP meeting is not legal unless a parent participates and know their due process rights in case of a disagreement.

What is going to happen to disabled students if government entities allow charters to discriminate and at the same time defund public schools which will result in programs and services being cut for such children?  Secondly, with public school teachers being evaluated based upon student achievement, teachers will not want to become special educators in fear that the they will not be able to get such children to achieve at a level mandated by a district.  Are you going to fire a special educator someday because NCLB states that by 2014 all children must be proficient on an “invalid and unreliable” state assessment? Do those in power really believe they can get “all” children who are autistic, have traumatic brain injury, or have significant pervasive developmental disabilities on grade level in math and reading?  If they do, then why do we even need special education when supposedly by a stroke of a pen “all” kid will be at grade level in just a few short years.  Any law, such as NCLB or any rating system that asks for the impossible is disingenuous and really has another type of agenda.  It is an agenda that will cause irreparable harm to disabled students and those public school teachers who devote their lives to serve them.

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Hypocritical Standards, Bloom Taxonomy, and Censorship

In the last few weeks, a bunch of students in a high needs secondary school in Jamaica, New York had the audacity to put into practice New York State’s Common Core Standards.  They used Bloom’s highest thinking skills–synthesis and evaluation.   By creating a play critical of ideas that are affecting their very lives, these young men and women showed they were combining information to form a unique product requiring creativity and originality (synthesis) and that they were also creating a viewpoint that required a deep understanding of different values (evaluation).   According to Bloom, when someone can think and perform at such a level, they are more than ready for higher education.  You know, for such high level thinking to be taking place in a school that is slated to be closed down, maybe some really positive learning is taking place in this very challenged environment.

However, instead of having pride in the theatrical, literary and artistic achievements of these students, the administration of this school is in terror.  They are afraid that if they allow the least bit of criticism against  Emperor Mike and his cohorts, something terrible might happen.  Well, Mr. Principal, it already has!  Your school is being closed down, so who cares what this naked Monarch thinks.  The First Amendment has not been repealed yet.  The real purpose of education is to foster free thought and creativity, not the censorship of a totalitarian state.  By preventing this play, the Principal and the cabinet of this school are no better then those Germans terrorized into silence by the Nazis during the last century.  These administrators have completely surrendered their values as educators.

And here is the essence of a culture clash, which is the heart of the issue.  There is an unbridgeable chasm between corporate values and educational values.  The corporate creed has a bottom line while educators believe that  kids have limitless potential that we must try in every which way to foster.  Educators have the duty to help develop citizens that are always critical and suspicious of any government authority.  You would think that those in power want the same thing when they developed these supposed Common Core Standards that are supposed to enable “all” students to be able to handle college level material.   Well, this incident in Jamaica High School shows the true values of those who developed these standards.   In reality, these high standards were developed as a set up.  These standards were set up to doom most public schools to failure by creating standards that are all but impossible to achieve.

Of course, those in powers would say that I am one of those people who are trying to hold back students  because I have low expectations for some kids.  On the other hand, I and most educators have high expectations, but realistic expectations.  And who would agree with me, but Mr. Bloom himself.  I have recently reread Bloom and he himself states that most students up to 8th grade should be expected to gain knowledge and comprehension in order to apply and analyze this information by the end of high school.  According to Bloom, it is in college and graduate school where most students will learn to synthesize and evaluate.  Of course, if a younger child has higher cognitive ability, an educator will encourage higher level thinking skills at a younger age.  But to expect a second grade student to synthesize and evaluate information when they have no knowledge base is totally ridiculous.  Unfortunately, many elementary high needs students do not have the foundation skills of knowledge and comprehension to develop such higher level skills.  Thus, educators must in such schools work extra hard to develop such skills against the many life challenges that these students have.  Of course, now, if a teacher in a high needs elementary schools would primarily focus upon building knowledge and comprehension, his or her lesson will be rated as unsatisfactory.  Instead, higher level questions must be asked regardless.  Recently, a third grade teacher told me that during an observation, she asked  her students to contrast the themes within a fable they were reading to themes usually found in folk tales.  At that point, a student raised his hand and asked, “What is the difference between a fable and folk tale?”

It is a miracle that these Jamaica High School students have developed such critical thinking skills in this present learning environment in which we now have a curriculum whose purpose is to teach students to pass invalid and unreliable tests.   If the cabinet of this school and Bloomberg/Klein feel that these students have crossed the line, then they forgot what happened in the early 70s when I recall another generation of students in Queens taking over classrooms to have teach-ins to protest certain government policy’s concerning the Vietnam War.  Interestingly,  many administrators and teachers encouraged their students to use  Bloom Taxonomy to evaluate America’s political policies at that time.  Silence kills freedom, but legitimate criticism makes freedom stronger.  If we remain silent, it will  be public education that is killed,  but if we speak our mind and encourage all stakeholders to remain critical, there is still hope.  I think the administration of the school should allow this play to go on.  Let Chancellor Black stop the play and then publicly state why she did so! Let this magazine publisher be a censor and a true hypocrite.

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The True Face of Charters

Scam artists have been with us since the beginning of time.  Probably the first one mentioned in literature was that pesky serpent in the Garden of Eden.  The scam artist can always size up an easy mark.  Usually, it is someone a little bit naive, looking for an easy solution to a difficult situation.  I was not expecting to find a bunch of sly and slick hustlers this summer when I worked on an IEP team for a Committee on Special Education in a large urban school district.  These hustlers often came in the guise of educational directors for some very well-known charters that have found fertile ground in one of America’s most diverse cities. 

For over three decades I have dealt with parents of disabled children at IEP meetings that often determine the classification and educational program of such students.  Often, these parents are traumatized by such meetings.  At such conferences, parents have to deal with the fact that their once normal child is replaced by a child who now has a “handicap.”  I have seen sophisticated parents freeze up at such meetings and lose the ability to ask rational questions or make appropriate decisions.  But when parents are not sophisticated, they become easy prey to being hoodwinked by the system  or by someone who often puts themselves up as an “expert” who has “the child’s best interest in mind.” 

The scenario often goes like this.  Little Johnny begins a neighborhood public school in a high needs community.  If the child did have any preschool, it was often an unstructured or informal day care situation so the parent can work to make ends meet.  But often, the entrance of the child into a neighborhood school is the student’s first educational experience.  Immediately, the child begins to have difficulty.  The school attempts to help the child through some interventions but finally a decision is made to refer the student to see if he or she is eligible for special educational services.  Usually, the parent is resource poor and has little knowledge about where to find the necessary help for the child.  On most occasions, I have found such parents first concerned and then desperate for help because their situation prevents them from having the ability, resources or the means to help the child themselves.  I remember one such family this past summer.  It consisted of a mom, dad and a young child of color who after a year of kindergarten could not recognize the letters of the alphabet and most sounds.   The father was working two jobs and the mother had a third job so they could have a roof over their heads.

Someone gave them a flyer about a charter school in the area and they talked to the educational director.  When they met this director, they brought along the child.  The director told them, obviously without formally assessing the student, that the problem was probably not with the child but with public school.  They were told that the charter had young,dedicated teachers who were “always” successful in getting “every one of their students to read.  They even told the parent that they even had special educational services.  They had a fabulous resource room teacher that has gotten every child he has worked with to read.   They applied and luck was with them.  The child was chosen to go to the school. 

The parents must have had high hopes that the child would finally succeed, but it became clear that by the time the school year was coming to an end that the child was not succeeding in first grade.  To be fair, the charter gave the child at risk resource room services and at risk speech services.  But when Spring came, the educational director told the parent they were referring the child to the Committee on Special Education for some formal services.  She told the parent that she always comes to these meetings to make sure the Academy’s children get what they need. 

When I reviewed the case with the team’s psychologist, general education teacher and parent member, it was obvious that this boy probably had significant problems for a long time.  The psychoeducational assessment showed that he had a borderline IQ, significant language delays and was working academically still on a preschool level.  Obviously, the child needed a small class.  When the parents, child, and educational director came into the meeting, the first meeting I ever had with a charter school, I was expecting the parents and educational director to disagree.  However, when the meeting began, the director begin to speak.  She said that they realized right away that the child had very special needs and that they did their best.  She went on to say that it was obvious that “The Academy” could no longer meet the needs of this child.  Immediately, I was able to read the body language of the parents.  They were not expecting that the charter would abandon their child.  They were in tears.  I naively asked if the charter had a collaborative program or a self-contained class.  I should have realized the obvious answer. 

As the summer progressed, I soon realized that with charters, it was the same play, but with different actors.  Here would come a young educational director to the meeting with the parents.  The child often needed more special educational services than the school provided.  The director was always there to help the parent make the “right” decision.  Obviously, the “right decision” cut the child loose from the school “in a nice way.”  The charter did not have to expel the student who did not fit in.  The parent, voluntarily, with a little coaxing from the educational director, chose to put the student in a special educational program that the school did not provide.  Thus, the pupil had to return to the public school. 

This is the true face of the charter movement.  They scam the parent into believing that their school can work miracles without really knowing the child.  When it does not work out, they cut the child loose.  Of course, it looks, on paper, like the parent made the decision, but in reality, it was a well-calculated manipulation.  Interesting, years ago, some high achieving public schools in this urban area, used to do the same thing.  These high achieving public schools, ten, twenty years ago, had few special educational services, and thus if a student needed more, the pupil was sent elsewhere and the building’s high reading scores were saved.  But eventually, being public schools, they were forced to create more services and these children would eventually remain to be served.

It is easy for a charter to say that all their kids perform well when they can easily skim off those children who cannot succeed in reaching grade level performance without a lot of help and intervention.  It is easy to say all your kids are college bound when you get rid of those who can never reach such a goal through no fault of their own.  To me, if you are a public school or if you accept public money as they do, then you must obey the law and serve all disabled children as traditional public schools have to do.  In the years I was a classroom special education teacher, I could not choose the kids I wanted.  I knew it was my job to serve all kids that came to me.  Charter schools have to do the same.  No charter school should get a penny of public money unless it is willing to serve “all” children.  A child may get into a charter through a lottery, but once there, the student must be served no matter what.  By the way, I have not yet seen a charter school devoted solely to special needs students!

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For A New Political Movement

What did Thomas Jefferson once say?  He said something to the fact that if a government no longer protects your interests, it must be overthrown.  Well, we live in a democratic society and I do want to keep it that way.  Thus, to overthrow this present government, we have to defeat an entity called the Republicratic Party.  Sadly, I used to believe there was a real difference between the Democrats and Republicans.  The progressives that controlled the Democratic Party from the time of the New Deal until the 1960s had a view of government that was mainly positive.  Most really wanted to use the power of government to increase economic, social, and political equality and opportunity.  There was a social contract between average Americans, government, and even corporations that lead to ever increasing opportunity for many citizens.  However, I now believe that there is really only one political party that has two wings.  What used to be two entities are now controlled by a corporate elite controlled by old money and a new monied class that I label the Kiddy Billionaires.  This wealthy class gained their wealth by harvesting the Internet.  They are very smart when it comes to computer technology, but in terms of ethics, they are no better than the Robber Barons of the 19th century.  All you have to do is watch “The Social Network.”  As portrayed in the movie, the founder of Facebook, looks like someone suffering from Asberger’s and thus has no social conscious .

This old and new money elite are now setting the education policy for both political parties.  Unfortunately, their policy is simple:  The power of government should be used to further enrich themselves by impoverishing most Americans economically, politically and socially.  This is why they want to destroy teacher unions–one of the last strong unions left in this society, as well as public education.  Their goal is to create a two tier educational system.  One group will go to charter schools subsidized, but not regulated by what is left of the government.  Those who are chosen to go to those schools will have the privilege of getting a higher education as a ticket to enter the corporate world.  However, those who remain in defunded public schools will get an inferior education based upon passing watered-down ELA and math assessments.  They will not garner the skills to access a higher education and will become the drones who will be the minimum wage workers who must toil at two or three jobs just to survive.  And no one will want to educate the disabled or truly high needs student for fear of being fired because the poor unfortunate teacher who may want to work with such students will not be able to get them to grade level.   A shill who works for Chamber Street (Department of Education) once told me that there is no such thing as a disabled child, only disabled teachers.  This person said to me that a superior teacher can get a mentally retarded student to college.  Then I asked this person ,who works for Joel Klein, if a profoundly retarded child can get to college?  The answer this person gave was yes and then I was accused of limiting such children by having low expectations.

I read many blogs and I see mostly anger and despair among progressives and educators.  I feel that the time has come for us to turn this anger into action.  Two years ago, the Republicans created a fake Tea Party movement that has unfortunately gained legitimacy because the old media has lost its ability to truly investigate who is funding such organizations.  We must form a new political organization, a new political party.  It has to be made up of public educators, parents, and true progressives who want to use true data driven research to save public education as well as to create true economic and political reforms to benefit middle class, working class and impoverished Americans.  I believe there are many Americans who are waiting for such a movement.  They want an alternative to the Republicrats who are unable to get us out of this economic mess.  History tells us that most true reform movements in this country were started by educated middle class people.  We are teachers.  We are educated.  We are sophisticated.  We are not sheep.  We must now push back politically.  If a third party is formed and becomes a political force, American history also tells us that possibly one of the political parties may begin to incorporate the ideas of such a party.  And if they do not, it may be time for one or both of the present parties to go the way of the Federalists and Whigs.

A two prong approach will be necessary if we want to save public education.  A new political entity must go to the courts to litigate each and every aspect of this fake reform movement.  If laws are passed to remove tenure, then we have the 14th Amendment.  This is the denial of due process.    If disabled kids are not being educated by charter schools that accept public money, again, the 14th Amendment will help us.  Judicial precedent has stated that education is a property right and to deny a child the right to attend a school that takes public money is a denial of that property right.  And the second prong is to elect candidates under a different banner who will support public schools as well as other social reforms.

Charter schools should not be destroyed.  They have a place.  We have to go back to their original purpose as stated by Al Shanker.  They should be a place of experimentation so we as educators can come up with new ideas and new ways to educate those who are uneducable.  But to do this, charters have to be regulated.  If they accept public money, then their budget has to be open to public scrutiny.  If they have lotteries for limited spaces, then that lottery has to be a blind lottery.  They, as public schools must, educate all children.  Finally, those who work in such schools should have the right to unionize and due process.  Because those who presently fund and support charters oppose such reforms, it proves they are afraid of something.  If there is a charter in which teachers and administrators work collaboratively and pay these dedicated teachers handsomely for the extra time they put in to educate their children, there is nothing to worry about. There would be no need for a union.  However, we know that I did not describe the real world.

We have to take back our schools and our country.  Anyone who is interested in doing this, let me know.