Dear @BetsyDeVosED THIS is what it means to "serve the students"

Dear Betsy,

I hear you aren't happy with Oklahoma teachers who walked off the job to protest the drastic cuts to school funding in their state. You told them they should "serve the students." You also called the strike by West Virginia teachers—who, along with OK teachers, are among the lowest paid in the country—an "adult squabble." Interesting choice of words from the head of a department that has, for the better part of the past 20 years, treated us like servants. Interesting choice of words from someone who knows virtually nothing about education law or policy; who never spent a day in her life inside a public school; who has absolutely no concept of what a public school teacher does or what it's like to work two, three or more jobs to keep a roof over your head; who wants nothing more than to shutter public schools and use that money to fund religious schools. 

What, exactly, should that "service" look like? Tea and crumpets and classical music at lunch? Neck massages after computer class? Or perhaps valet parking for those students who are fortunate enough to afford a car? 

How much more "service" must teachers perform? How many more classroom supplies, and food and clothing for their students must they buy with their own money? How many more students must be packed into their classrooms? How much more are they supposed to do with ever-decreasing budgets before you, or some elected official with strings attached to the oil lobby realizes what's going on in Oklahoma's schools? 

When is enough enough?

Since you continue to remain woefully ignorant of the workings of public schools (I guess that stuff's just not important to a billionairess who can build whatever school she wants with a wave of her magic wand), allow me to educate you on exactly what those teachers—and others around the country—are doing in "service" to their students:

Did you see these images? I can't imagine you didn't, seeing as how they went viral. But just in case you missed them, here's CNN's report. They were taken by real Oklahoma teachers, and are real pictures of what they have to work with every single day thanks to their state's massive education cuts. Did you have these problems when you were in school? Did your children? I bet not.

Sarah Jane Scarberry

According to the article: 

Scarberry also shared images of her classroom's broken desks and chairs, and said they weren't too bad compared to other classrooms. 

"As for the desks, I'm more fortunate than most I guess. My husband works with me at Heavener and works in maintenance. He usually can use salvageable parts from discarded desks to keep me going," she told CNN. (emphasis mine)

Sarah Jane Scarberry

Mary Burton

Teacher Mary Burton shared this picture of the anatomy books her students have to use at Eisenhower High School in Lawton, Oklahoma.

"I don't have enough and the ones left are in terrible shape," she said. 

Last year, her class's 25 anatomy books were shared by about 70 students, Burton said. 

"Because graduation requirements changed, I only have one section of human anatomy, so there are enough books for my students for the first year in a long time," she said.

On Twitter, user jamiebh73 shared a photo of a textbook from her daughter's eighth-grade history class in Owasso. In the book, George W. Bush is still president, she said. (emphasis mine)

Allyson Kubat, who teaches at Mustang High Scool, just southwest of Oklahoma City, said the textbooks students in her public speaking class use are so old that they advise them to ask librarians about "this new thing called the Internet" and explain how to use microfiche. (emphasis mine)

 The article ends with this quote from Scarberry:

"I could go on for days about the things we need, and the opportunities my students deserve. For myself, a raise sounds great, but this walkout for me was never about that. It was always funding for our schools," she said. (emphasis mine)

Can you imagine this??? I can. This is what happens when states give massive tax cuts to corporations. This is what happens when teachers are treated like servants instead of highly-educated professionals. This is what happens when years of begging and pleading with elected officials, who care more about tax cuts for corporate donors than the future of this country, falls on deaf ears. This is what happens when teachers and parents say, "Enough!" This is not an "adult squabble." This is a fight for every child in the state of Oklahoma (and West Virginia and Kentucky and Arizona) to have a good education. This is what happens when teachers "serve the students."

This is a national disgrace, and as Secretary of Education, you should be leading the charge to fix this instead of trying to sweep it under the rug. The wealthiest country in the history of humanity has schools that rival those of third-world countries while our government blames teachers, slashes budgets and says testing and privatization are somehow going to magically fix everything. 

This is just the beginning. This "service" to the students is only going to grow. You would do well to educate yourself.

An Open Letter to Star-Ledger Editorial Board Director Tom Moran

(Note: This piece was co-authored with Ani McHugh, aka. TeacherBiz, and Mark Weber, aka. Jersey Jazzman, and is cross-posted on both their blogs.)

Dear Tom,

This week, you crossed a line.

Until now, your pieces in the Star-Ledger about Newark’s school system and the reorganization of the district have been ill-informed and reckless. You’ve ignored the warnings of teachers, parents, community leaders, researchers, and students, preferring instead to cling to recycled talking points crafted by those with scant little experience in education policy, but much to gain in profits.

You’ve paid a price: like your ridiculous attempt to walk back from your disastrous endorsement of Chris Christie, your continuing effort to support State Superintendent Cami Anderson while distancing yourself from the consequences of her catastrophic leadership has shredded any integrity you had left as a journalist. Any standing your newspaper had left as a champion of the people of Newark has also eroded: as with Anderson, no one in the city trusts you or the Star-Ledger’s editorial page anymore.

But as awful as your previous meanderings about Newark’s schools have been, at least you never had the bad taste to try to pawn off Anderson’s failures and your own poor judgement on to others. At least you never tried to make the case that the impending disaster of One Newark was the fault of anyone but the Christie administration, its appointed superintendent, and her enablers in government and the press.

This week, however, you crossed that line. We have tried individually in the past to get your attention to set the record straight to no avail (see all the links later in this piece). Therefore, we—professional educators with a combined total of seven degrees, a PhD in the works, and 38 years of teaching experience—who, along with countless others across this state, have stood against the illogical, faith-based, and racist education policies you regularly espouse for Newark from your position of influence, have come together to deliver you a message:

Shame on you, Tom Moran

Shame on you for sanctioning One Newark, a plan so controversial and discriminatory that it’s the subject of both state and federal civil rights complaints. Shame on you for ignoring and then blaming the people your newspaper is supposed to serve. Shame on you for refusing to educate yourself about the policies you endorse.

Why do you insist that educators must be held accountable for the sins of greed and the failure of government to address generational poverty, while no one holds you, the editorial director of the state’s largest newspaper, accountable for the half-truths and misinformation you spread?

“Shame on you for refusing to educate yourself about the policies you endorse.”

Fact vs. Fiction

Fiction:

You claim: “At the same time, the city’s most successful charter school chains will take over management of three district schools, fueling their explosive growth.” As we have explained to you over and over again, the ‘success’ of these charters hinges on the fact that they do not serve the same population of students as their neighboring public schools.

Fact:

Percentage qualifying for Free Lunch

NPS: 80%

North Star (Uncommon): 68%

TEAM (KIPP): 73%

Robert Treat Academy: 60%

Fact:

Percentage Limited English Proficient

NPS: 9%

North Star (Uncommon): 0%

TEAM (KIPP): 0%

Robert Treat Academy: 1%

Fact:

Percentage Special Education

NPS: 17.7%

North Star (Uncommon): 7.8%

TEAM (KIPP): 12.3%

Robert Treat Academy: 5.8%

(All enrollment data 2014 from the NJDOE; special education classification data 2013 from NJDOE.)

Fact:

The small number of special education students within Newark’s charters overwhelmingly have low-cost special educational needs: milder learning and speech disabilities. And both TEAM and North Star have engaged in well-documented patterns of student cohort attrition: according to Julia Sass Rubin of SOSNJ, nearly 60 percent of the black males from North Star’s Class of 2014 dropped out between 5th and 12th Grade.

Fact:

Mark Weber and Dr. Bruce Baker have published several policy briefs explaining, in painstaking detail, why One Newark has little chance of succeeding:

• There is no evidence Newark’s charters can succeed with equivalent populations of students to those of NPS.
• The plan is racially biased, both against students and against their teachers.
• The district has apparently committed several serious methodological errors in creating the plan; we say apparently because NPS has never released its methods, and the Star-Ledger has never demanded that they do.
• The information the district released in the One Newark application about the quality of Newark’s schools is invalid.

We would think this last issue would concern you, a journalist, the most. You claim that Newark’s parents are clamoring to get into charter schools. What if, however, those parents are making their choices based on false information from Anderson’s administration? What if the waiting lists you point to—lists, by the way, whose lengths are wildly exaggerated—are the product of both the state’s neglect of Newark’s public schools and oversold claims from NPS—and your editorial page—of charter schools’ successes?

Separate and Unequal Education

The sad truth is that parents in your town of Montclair (or any other mostly white, mostly wealthy suburban community) would never willingly subject their own children to what’s happening in Newark right now:

• Public schools being closed without community input
• Children in the same family being sent to different schools in different parts of town on a transportation system that’s never been tested
• Tax dollars going to a school system that is separate and unequal: that segregates the neediest students from those who are the easiest and least expensive to educate
• The harsh, unforgiving “no excuses” disciplinary policies that are characteristic of so many charter schools
• Massive layoffs of education professionals
• A superintendent who has been a colossal failure at fiscal management  
• Schools in such disrepair that they are unsafe to occupy
• A superintendent who refuses to listen, who refuses to attend board of ed meetings, and who is not supported by the community

In fact, the parents of Montclair are fighting back right now, but you have not written one word about it. Why is it okay for them to fight back, but when the parents of Newark do so, you accuse them of “shrieking" and being "shrill and unreasonable"? Aren't the parents of Newark smart enough to know what’s good for their own children? Don’t you think they can smell a rat as well as someone from the ‘burbs?

Public education belongs to the public. The board of ed is answerable to all the people. But in Newark? Meh, what do those people know? They have no money, so they have no voice. They aren’t the right skin color, so they have no voice. They can’t write big campaign checks, so they have no voice. They aren’t concerned parents. They are, in your words:

“CONSPIRACY THEORISTS”

Yea, these parents look really crazy

... so do these students

Were these people “conspiracy theorists” too…?

Tin Foil Hats and Fox Mulder: The Truth is Out There

The message Newark parents hear from you is that if they would just shut up, take off their tin foil hats and let all these rich, smart (that term is used very loosely) white folk completely up-end their lives, they’ll crawl back on their hands and knees someday in thanks and praise.

But you’re wrong. Just because many are working class or poor, don’t speak the King’s English as well as you, refuse to stand on protocol at board of ed meetings because they’re sick and tired of the people in charge not listening when they use their ‘indoor voices’, are “voting with their feet” (as you so love to say of all those charter parents) by boycotting the first day of school, you accuse them of being crazy and—perhaps the cruelest cut of all—not giving a damn about their own children:

“[Anderson] is facing determined opposition from local activists and politicians who don’t seem to give a damn about the children.

…

“why not organize a protest march, or a sit-in, or even acts of civil disobedience? Why would your first big move be to keep kids out of classrooms when so many of them can’t read at grade level?”

Tom, the activists are parents. Keeping children home from school is an act of civil disobedience. The parents of Newark are not “conspiracy theorists”; they are concerned citizens who want what’s best for their children—just like parents in your town—but they’ve been shut out of the conversation. And you owe them an apology.

The fact is, Tom, the majority of opposition comes from parents and students who are supported by the clergy, unionized education professionals (whom you seem to hate for some reason even though NJ consistently ranks at the top in public education) and elected officials, some of whom also happen to live in the community. In case you hadn’t noticed, Mayor Ras Baraka ran and won on a platform to stop this madness. He was elected by a majority of the citizens of Newark, and he has dedicated his professional career—most recently as principal of Central High School—to the children and families of Newark.  But you, Tom, wonder “if the kids fit into the mayor’s political calculus at all?” Do you really believe that Ras Baraka is less committed to the children of his city than Cami Anderson, an outsider from California who lives in the suburbs?

In your X-Files world, conspiracy theorists are people “who see charter schools as a dark plot by Wall Street to somehow suck money out of the public system.” Should we assume you aren’t aware of the ways Qualified School Construction Bonds enrich charters while neighborhood schools starve—and at the same time translate to big profits for banks? (Are you also unaware that David Samson, who just resigned from his Port Authority position because of that pesky Bridgegate mess, is a partner of the law firm that oversees bond transactions between charters and banks?) The fact that you flat-out refuse to accept the mountains of evidence (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here) linking Wall Street profits with the explosion of charter schools completely discredits you as a legitimate journalist.

“The fact that you flat-out refuse to accept the mountains of evidence linking Wall Street profits with the explosion of charter schools completely discredits you as a legitimate journalist.”

And as for children not being able to “read at grade level,” it’s important first to note that the link you reference details students’ scores on standardized tests, which are inherently flawed and economically-and racially-biased—and which are not indicators of students’ “grade level.” But if we are to keep with your language, there are a myriad of reasons children can’t read at grade level; many have little to do with what goes on inside a classroom. And setting up a system that closes schools, replaces veteran educators with inexperienced ones, and prevents hundreds of parents from enrolling their children does nothing to help those children.

How many times do we have to say this?

We’ve tried to reason with you and the rest of the Star-Ledger editorial board many times (here, here, here, here, here, and here), but your failure to acknowledge the evidence with which you’ve been presented makes your defense of Cami Anderson and her One Newark plan all the more troubling.  

Unlike you, Tom, we believe that responsibility for the gross failures of One Newark rests solely on the shoulders of Cami Anderson and her supporters— not on the shoulders of the parents, educators, researchers, community members, and elected officials who recognize and denounce One Newark’s glaring flaws and Cami Anderson’s failed leadership.  

This image is from apartheid-era South Africa

Who will be sitting at this bus stop on the first day of school in Newark? It’s not hard to figure out, Tom. It won’t be kids from your town.

Sincerely,

Marie Corfield

Ani McHugh

Mark Weber