Search Results for 'charter schools'
A Modest Proposal
I have been following the charter school/high-stakes testing/Priority Schools debacle for the past few years. My proposal is that we use the same model for another daunting and complex problem: Crime.
We have a major crime problem in Wilmington and other locales around the state. I think we can solve it with a few transformations of the way that we structure our public safety. The key is to use the invisible hand of the market to reduce crime.
Begun, the Education Wars Have.
Today’s News Journal Dialogue Delaware section dovetails nicely with the post I wrote on Friday. I’ve been told by multiple people, in and out of the education field, that it has the best headline ever. Sometimes cutting through the bullshit calling bullshit bullshit is the best way to garner attention to an important truth: all standardized testing is bullshit. At least in relation to the stated goal of helping students learn and gauging their learning progress.
Representative Sean Matthews, himself a teacher, has penned a wonderful op-ed in the above Dialogue Delaware section, and he uses more polite language to make the same point.
There are many ways to talk about the role standardized testing plays in our public schools, but there’s one question that we have to answer before we can debate the issue: Do these tests make our students smarter, more capable and more prepared to lead successful lives?
After decades of testing at all levels, with different standards, methods, benchmarks and outcomes, the answer to that question is not what we thought it would be. Overwhelming numbers of scholars, parents, statisticians and legislators are starting to realize, with evidence, that standardized testing and the policies that flow from testing are doing more harm than good.
Over the next three months, students in Delaware’s charter and traditional community schools will be asked to take a standardized test called the Smarter Balanced Assessment. The stated goal of this test is to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses in our educational system.
But that’s not the whole story.
Most standardized tests are designed by for-profit companies that market their materials to states, which are required by federal law to test public school students in return for federal funding. Under this business relationship, the best interests of the testing firm are not aligned with the best interests of students, teachers and schools. Instead, there is great incentive to make students and their educators look like they’re “failing” so that these same firms can offer their own branded “reforms” and “solutions” to states and districts, for a worthy fee.
The Greatest Hits of 2014.
So it is the time of year when we all look back on the year that has past, and compile top ten lists, or something. So I started to compile a list of the top DL posts of 2014. But what’s the criteria we are judging by? Page views? Number of comments? Best Subject Matter? Most controversial? The last two criteria area are subjective, and usually if a post is controversial or a highly “viral” subject matter, like this year with charter and priority schools and Chip Flowers, they tend to already generate the most comments and page views. El Somnambulo has already posted his Good, Bad and the Ridiculous column this morning, and that focused substantively on the crazy Delaware political stories this year. So I am going to strictly follow the page view criteria. So, excluding the main and index pages, and this post by Jason330 in 2012 about Bacon numbers, which, for some reason, gets tons of views yearly (probably because of a good Google search term), here are the most viewed stories by Delaware Liberal contributors this year….
Attendance Zone Decision for Cooke Elementary School Results In A Protest
An ipetition landed in my email. Here’s what it says:
Protest of Red Clay School Board’s Attendance Zone Decision for Cooke Elementary School
We demand that the Red Clay Consolidated School District School Board reverse their October 15 decision to deviate from the Attendance Zone feeder pattern that had been presented by the Attendance Zone Committee and accepted by the community. This last-minute decision undermined six months of work by the Attendance Zone Committee and did not give the community an opportunity to voice concerns. The students of Lancaster Court Apartments will not benefit from this decision, and the decision contradicts the Neighborhood Schools Act. The Board’s action was not ethical and the decision is not acceptable.
So… I made some calls to try and figure out what happened. I’m piecing this together from various conversations, so if anyone has additional insight please let me know. Here’s what I heard….
Your Vote Should Be For The Party.
I argue that when you vote, your vote should be for the Party. I do not buy the concept “I vote for the candidate, not the Party”. Sorry, but it is not unsophisticated or unthinking to vote a “straight ticket” in the case of partisan elections.
Governor And Department of Ed: “Announcing New Education Initiative” Event
I just returned from attending this: Announcing New Education Initiative What: Governor Markell and the Department of Education will announce a new initiative to support many of the state’s most disadvantaged students–Joined by state legislators and education and community leaders, the Governor will provide details of the state’s plan. Who: Governor Markell Secretary Mark Murphy, […]
General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Weds., June 11, 2014
OK, let’s talk about Delaware’s position as the nation’s corporate leader. Our lofty perch is not based on having ‘better’ lawyers, ‘better’ judges, or having the abiding respect of the corporate community. We’re in this position because we’ve passed laws that enable corporations to engage in unsavory practices that otherwise would be considered criminal activity. We make it impossible for people to know who are behind straw corporations, or why these shells exist in the first place. We enable the worst kinds of criminal activity, including arms sales, drug-running, and, yes, human trafficking, by enabling corporations to create impossible-to-follow paper trails. The entire political establishment props this up by worshipping at the feet of the Court of Chancery and by placing those who are its most effective defenders in positions of power. It’s no accident that the preponderance of judgeships go to those from the corporate law community . It’s no accident that people like Ed Friel and Jeff Bullock, both from Carper Cyborgenics, have served as Secretaries of State. They’re all in on Delaware’s dirty secret: Our vast revenues generated by Delaware’s corporate hegemony are derived from Delaware’s willingness, no, eagerness, to enact laws that benefit even the worst actors at the expense of, well, people. In Delaware, corporations are not merely people, they have rights superior to people. You can put suits on these people, and they can be heralded as Delaware’s best, but they are merely well-learned shills and shysters.
Hey, it’s no surprise that Delaware was the state to legalize usury. We were the most experienced when it came to legalizing criminal activity via corporate shell games.
So it was no surprise that HB 327 and HB 328 flew through the House yesterday, it’s what we do. Every year. In June. A package of bills emerges from the Corporate Section of the Delaware Bar every year. Proponents cite them as necessary to continue Delaware’s pre-eminent position in corporate law. But now you know just what kind of stuff is in these bills. Thanks to the ADA, League of Women Voters, and the Delaware Alliance for Community Advancement, for shining a light on Delaware’s dirty secret. Maybe, just maybe, this will start a debate that should have been taking place all along.
General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Tues., May 13, 2014
Good news/bad news: The good news: One of this session’s best bills was introduced. HB 331(Kowalko) ‘removes the exemption from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and thus fully applies FOIA to the University of Delaware and Delaware State University’. Delaware may now be the only holdout when it comes to requiring academic institutions receiving state funds to open their books. The bad news: The bill has been assigned to the House Administration Committee, where Pete Schwartzkopf and Valerie Longhurst are likely to keep it buried. I also wonder why this bill wasn’t introduced earlier in session. It would have given proponents the chance to push for the release of this bill.
The Senate also passed SB 209(Townsend), a good first step in considering the potential impact of granting additional charters on existing schools. The bill ‘requires the Department of Education to promulgate regulations to further define the meaning and process for consideration of impact in the charter school application review process, to be considered and approved by the State Board no later than its October 2014 meeting. It also clarifies the conditions that an authorizer may place on an approved application, and provides that the State Board of Education may place or modify conditions to address considerations of impact’.
I think that people are finally seeing that public education is endangered by the worst elements/excesses of the charter movement. Based on the broad sponsorship here, let’s hope that this can be brought under control before it’s too late.
Steve Newton to Run For State Rep!
A true friend of Delaware Liberal, Steve Newton, will run for the 22nd Representative District seat currently held by Republican Joe Miro. Miro, BTW, is one of those legislators who has basically retired, but never bothered to tell anybody. If any third party candidate has a real shot, Steve is at the top of the list. He is consistently one of the most thoughtful and on-point analysts of public policy in our state. Here is the press release in its entirety.. inside…..
Tuesday Open Thread [8.6.2013]
The School District of Philadelphia is reviewing their options in suing some Wall Street banks for illegally manipulating an index that underlies the derivatives that the District invested in and lost money on. The Philadelphia City Paper is reporting:
The School District took out swaps with Wachovia (purchased by Wells Fargo in 2008), Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. But a lawsuit could name more banks as defendants. Philadelphia’s lawsuit names banks that were direct counterparties and also those that are accused of rigging Libor, including Citi, JPMorgan, RBC, Bank of America, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, RBS and UBS.
The Lottery and Gaming Study Commission = The Fix Is In to Bail Out Casinos
This study commission — created when the GA and the Governor decided to help improve the balance sheets of our local casinos who are being hurt by rising costs (who isn’t, really?) and by a failed competitive stance in a market where we are surrounded by a glut of gaming options. This Commission met for the first time on Tuesday — and tell me if you can spot why I think the fix is in:
General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Weds., June 26, 2013
I’m disappointed that HB165(Jaques) passed, and will be signed by the Governor today. But the Senate also passed two bills sponsored by Sen. Townsend that will make that passage at least a little more palatable. SB 147 creates more of a partnership between charters and public schools, including the sharing of ‘best practices’. Here is the 17-4 roll call. SB 148:
promotes transparency in government spending relating to competitive grants administered by the Department of Education by requiring that the Department publish on its website the eligibility requirements, criteria and successful applications for every competitive grant it administers.
I believe that the Markell Administration has signed off on both bills. Seriously, you don’t see legislating of this quality very often in Dover. A lesson to legislators: If you know you’re gonna lose on an issue, at least try to get something positive out of it. Sometimes you succeed. And thanks to the Markell Administration for working with Sen. Townsend on this.
SS1/SB33(Ennis) got final Senate approval and heads to the Governor. Yay!! The two bitter holdouts who voted no were Bloviator Bonini and, wait for it, Pope Pompous I, formerly Monsignor Lavelle. To quote the parrot from ‘Aladdin’, “Why am I not surprised?”
Wilmington Budget Follies
For the past few weeks, the back and forth over coming to some agreement over the Wilmington budget for the next fiscal year has been a source of a great deal of cynicism, exasperation and a fair amount of entertainment. While there is not alot to be proud of here — at bottom we have a new administration who seems to think that they can get things done by fiat. For all of the yelling and screaming about what the Wilmington City Charter says — it still gives the Administration the power to spend the money that City Council allocates to it. That is pretty basic everywhere. Even though the Council spent much of its time rubber-stamping much of the Baker Administration’s work, I wish I could be more hopeful in a more energized Council who will actually do what the Charter expects of them.
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