Diane Ravitch just wrote about Georgia’s Governor Nathan Deal’s veto of opt-out legislation that passed the Georgia General Assembly. This immediately reminded me of Delaware Governor Jack Markell’s horrible veto of House Bill 50 in the summer of 2015. Say, State Rep. Earl Jaques, why the hell hasn’t the new opt out legislation, House Bill 60, been put on the agenda for the House Education Committee. You promised me it would be over two months ago. Guess it isn’t a priority for YOU so it won’t get on there. Being the Chair of the Delaware House Education Committee means allowing all education bills to be heard in committee.
Opt out is alive and well. I may not write about it as much, but it is still happening. New York continues to have terrific opt out numbers. It won’t be until July or so until we find out Delaware’s opt out numbers for this year. That is when the Delaware Dept. of Education releases all the Smarter Balanced information from this year.
Down in Georgia, Jeb Bush’s insane Foundation for Excellence in Education jumped on the veto bandwagon. Ravitch quoted the Atlanta Journal-Constituion:
“The proposal would have harmed students and teachers by denying access to measurements that track progress on standardized assessments,” the advocacy group, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, said in a statement. “Maintaining a transparent and accountable measurement systems is critical to ensuring students are on track to succeed in college and beyond — and indicates how successful schools are in preparing students for the future.”
Hey Jeb, we don’t want progress on standardized assessments, we just want regular student progress. These flawed and meaningless tests don’t provide that. They feed the data whore beasts and waste a crapload of time in our schools. They stress kids out and the tests are used to label and shame teachers and schools. Enough already!
Ron Russo, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Caesar Rodney Institute, wrote a blog post yesterday with a BOLD PLAN for Delaware schools. By even mentioning former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and the Foundation for Excellence in Education in the very first sentence, it was hard to lend any credibility to this piece. But I read the whole thing out of morbid curiosity.
…Governor Jeb Bush, the keynote speaker, told the attendees that they had to, “Be big, be bold, or go home.”
I would have left at that point and proudly went home. Jeb Bush has made a ton of money capitalizing off the backs of schools and students. He is the very essence of corporate education reform. I give anything he says zero weight.
Russo seems to view former Red Clay Consolidated Board President William Manning as the Messiah of Delaware education:
He recommended a confederation of independent schools each locally managed and free of regulations about who to hire and how to teach. The schools would be evaluated only by performance data that would be shared with the public.
Manning’s vision created charter schools that do not serve the populations within their district boundaries. Quite a few Delaware charters have selective enrollment preferences that seem to further segregation and push out kids with high needs. Manning was the lead attorney in the lawsuit against the Christina School District when charters that serve Christina students sued the district to get more money per student. Eventually the lawsuit wound up becoming a settlement that further stripped funds away from the district. Russo’s BOLD PLAN is modeled after the original charter school bill, Senate Bill 200:
The Caesar Rodney Institute is supporting a systemic change to our education bureaucracy called the “BOLD PLAN”. It significantly alters the way the current education system operates by empowering the individual schools to make operational decisions to best serve their students.
In theory, this would be a great idea. However, Russo lost me yet again when he brought up the VERY controversial priority schools as a potential model for this plan:
CRI’s BOLD PLAN incorporates the best features of the 1995 Charter School Law and the Memorandum of Understanding designed by Delaware’s DOE for Priority Schools. If the changes proposed in the MOU were expected to raise the performance of the state’s lowest performing schools, why wouldn’t those changes be offered to all public schools?
Sorry Ron, but the priority school Memorandums of Understanding were absolutely horrible and did more to create parent backlash in Wilmington than anything seen before. So what would this plan consist of? Therein lies the rub:
BOLD legislation would specify areas of local decision-making. Such areas would include: 1) Authority to hire and dismiss all staff; 2) All programing inputs (school calendar, schedule, curriculum aligned to Delaware standards, instructional practices and methodology, textbooks, technology, etc.); 3) Marketing and planning; 4) Support services including transportation, food, and maintenance; 5) Budget preparation and expenditure control with surplus operating funds retained by the school. Schools will have autonomy from any district or Delaware DOE requirements not mandated by state or federal law.
This legislation has more holes than a donut shop.
What happens if the board membership or the Superintendent of the district is not operating under normal parameters of their function? What if personal grudges get in the way of a sound decision to hire or dismiss all staff? Delaware is a small state and conflicts of interest are well-known in this state.
You lost me at “Delaware standards”. If you truly want to give local education authorities the coveted local control, they would be free to set their own curriculum without being tied to any type of standard pushed down from the state or federal government. I have yet to see any indication Delaware will get rid of Common Core which was created under false pretenses.
Don’t they already do this anyway?
See #3
That would not be a good thing. Delaware charter schools already keep their surplus transportation funds in a sweetheart deal with the General Assembly and there is no apparatus to make sure those funds are being used with fidelity. What is the point of even having a district or charter board if the school can do whatever it wants with extra money? This proposal sounds like anarchy.
Russo’s logic becomes even more confusing when he casually drops the Rodel Visionfests and Race To The Top into his conversation:
The BOLD PLAN complements Delaware’s other education improvement efforts (Visions, Races, etc.). In fact, it may even complete them.
I don’t think completion of those plans is something anyone in Delaware really wants. Race To The Top was an unmitigated disaster with funds going to the state Department of Education more than local school districts. The Vision Coalition goals further perpetuate many bad corporate education reform policies. It is hard to take anything they do seriously when the CEO of the Rodel Foundation of Delaware, Dr. Herdman, makes over $345,000 a year.
Ironically, Russo channels Dan Rich who has been very involved with the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission’s proposed Wilmington redistricting. But Russo doesn’t bring him up in any way related to that endeavor but rather his involvement with the Vision Coalition:
At the very first Vision 2015 meeting hosted by Dan Rich, then Provost of the University of Delaware, he ended the meeting by telling the attendees that if they wanted to improve Delaware’s public schools they had to be bold and, if they didn’t want to be bold, they should get out. Hmmmm, it seems that Dan was way ahead of Jeb.
Comparing Rich to Jeb Bush almost seems insulting. Of course, any education push should be bold. But by telling people if you don’t like it to “get out” or “go home” it is essentially saying if you don’t agree with us we won’t give you the time of day. That is NOT the way education issues should be ironed out and only creates more of a divide. The Delaware charter school experiment, now well into it’s third decade, has met with very mixed results. It has not been the rousing success the forefathers of the original legislation thought it would be. Why would Delaware even entertain this idea based on that? And lest we forget, all this imaginary “success” is based on standardized test scores, of which Delaware has gone through three different state assessments since then. Sorry Ron, but this is not a BOLD PLAN. It is an old plan, that just plain doesn’t work.
I have to wonder about the timing of this article. The Caesar Rodney Institute has long been a fierce supporter of school vouchers. Delaware has been very resistant to that system under Democrat control but under the Trump administration and the appointment of Betsy DeVos as the U.S. Secretary of Education, it is not surprising to see Russo coming out with this type of article. President Trump and DeVos want a federal school voucher system that has already met with disappointing results in several states.
PIC is the Parent Information Center of Delaware. Subsidized by the Delaware Department of Education, PIC is a federally mandated organization for parents to use as a resource center for special education. Every state is required to have this type of entity under IDEA, the federal special education law. Why is PIC of Delaware advertising Alliance For Excellent Education and “personalized learning”? Personalized learning, if implemented full scale, would diminish the role of special education in schools by giving every single student their own individual education program, otherwise known as an IEP.
As anyone in Delaware who regularly read this blog know, the biggest supporter for personalized learning has been the Rodel Foundation of Delaware. I get very concerned when I see special education groups pushing what Rodel pushes. As I’ve said before, personalized learning in its true context is light years away from the 21st Century push for it. It would turn teacher-led instruction into screen time for students with teachers becoming glorified moderators. This would take place in a competency-based education environment where a student doesn’t move on until they have “mastered” the material. All in a digital classroom with education technology that reaps high rewards for those who invest in them. Without any regard for the psychological and physical health effects on any student, much less those who have disabilities. As anyone who keeps track of progress for students with disabilities can tell you, special education students would be the last ones to “move along” in this type of classroom. Which makes it even more puzzling that PIC would promote this type of education. When I clicked on the link in the Alliance For Excellent Education ad, it brought me to a YouTube video.
Whatever the intentions were for the Every Student Succeeds Act, it was hijacked by corporate education reformers and they are taking full advantage of inserting what they want in every single state. States are working on their ESSA plans this fall and those who wish to profit off education at the expense of student futures are getting louder than ever.
PIC does a lot of good things. They can be a good resource. But I truly wish they would distance themselves from corporate Kool-Aid like this. It is misleading to parents who don’t know any better. There are enough issues with special education in Delaware. We really don’t want or welcome, for those of us who see these kind of education fix it companies as the charlatans they are, these kind of intrusions in our children’s lives.
Alliance For Excellent Education is led by former West Virginia Governor Bob Wise with funding by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Wise pushes the “Future Ready Schools” initiative, as detailed in the biography on the All4ed.org website:
Don’t let the fancy talk fool you. Future Ready Schools requires district Superintendents to sign a “Future Ready Pledge”, heavily pushed by the U.S. Department of Education, to turn classrooms into an ed tech wonderland. Five current or former Delaware Superintendents signed this pledge: Dr. Merv Daugherty with Red Clay Consolidated, Dr. Victoria Gehrt with New Castle County Vo-Tech, Alan Lathbury with Sussex Tech, Phyllis Kohel with Milford, and John Ewald with Laurel. I have to wonder if they got the consent of their school boards, teachers, students, parents, and citizens of their districts before they committed themselves to this bogus “pledge”. All you have to do is look at Future Ready’s “partners” to understand what this really is.
Remember when you were a child and someone, at one point in your life, told you “If I told you to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you?” Apparently, far too many of those in charge of school districts take the plunge with no regard for students whatsoever. And it looks like PIC of Delaware is pretty wet already…
A group of current and former State Superintendents, Secretaries, and Chiefs, as well as district Superintendents, wrote an Amici Curiae in Support of Petition to Review letter to the Honorable Tani Cantil-Sakauye, the Chief Justice for the California Supreme Court regarding the overturning of the Vergara verdict in April of this year. This is not the same letter Diane Ravitch wrote about here. This group consists of the following:
Dr. John Deasy: former Superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District
John White: Louisiana Superintendent of Education
Hanna Skandera: New Mexico Secretary of Education
Dr. Steve Canavero: Nevada Superintendent of Public Instruction
Mark Murphy: former Delaware Secretary of Education
Kevin Huffman: former Tennessee Commissioner of the Department of Education
Cami Anderson: former District Superintendent for Newark, New Jersey Public Schools
Jean-Claude Brizard: former Chief Executive for Chicago Public Schools
Dr. Randolph Ward: San Diego County Superintendent of Schools
Note that all the individuals in red are currently Chiefs in Chiefs for Change, the Jeb Bush run outfit. Does anyone really see that as a coincidence? As Diane Ravitch pointed out earlier this year,
which was established by Jeb Bush to promote school choice, charters, vouchers, online charter schools, the Common Core, and high-stakes testing
There are very good reasons why so many of these people are “former” education leaders. Cami Anderson resigned after students occupied her office as a result of her unprecedented charter school empire/public education destruction in Newark, NJ. Mark Murphy resigned after he royally botched a priority school initiative and was given multiple votes of no confidence by union organizations and the state administrator organization in Delaware. Kevin Huffman resigned in Tennessee as the Achievement School District continues to be a model of failure to be spread to other states. Jean-Claude Brizard admitted he didn’t know how to do his job so he threw the Chicago public schools to the charter wolves with Bill Gates money. Deasy, who resigned from the L.A. Unified School District, with lavish financial scandals and was last seen training district superintendents under the Broad fellowship training.
Should the courts listen to those who twist numbers for their own benefits in what they deem as a success while skewing words to label teachers as failures? Who help to create the very conditions that have and do lead to pressure cookers for teachers in public education? Who believe that corporate interference is the only viable solution to fix the problems in education? Who believe that one size fits all high-stakes tests are okay but scream about civil rights and what happens to low-income children the next? Who sign off on state accountability plans where children with disabilities have to “grow” three times more than their regular peers in an allotted time? Who disrespect the parents that see through their smoke and mirrors and push laws to take away their rights?
I urge this court to look at this letter as the conflict of interest it most assuredly is and give it the same weight they would of a con artist on its last legs. To read the full letter, please go here.
I was very confused when I saw the latest Mark Murphy update. Apparently, he is selling Griptape. When I did a Google search on Griptape, it shows many different kinds of images for the adhesive put on skateboards for a sturdier ride.
What in the world? Does he have his own skateboard? Nope. Apparently, the ex Secretary of Education from Delaware is still with America Achieves, but he is now leading an initiative called “Griptape”. I did some deep dives into more information on this youth empowerment magic, but I couldn’t find anything. I guess if students put some extra grip on their studies, they will have a sturdier ride to college and career readiness? Will Griptape be something like that Mark? Please, tell us. We are dying to know more about Griptape!
But I did find out Mark Murphy visited one of my old stomping grounds a few months ago, which just so happens to be one of the skateboarding empires of the world, San Diego. He went out in March to a Deeper Learning convention. The San Diego Convention Center is awesome by the way. If you go up the road, to the Gaslamp Quarter, there is an awesome bar called Dick’s Last Resort. If someone working there isn’t rude to you, they aren’t doing their job. Seriously! But this convention wasn’t held at the San Diego Convention Center. It was at High Tech High Graduate School Of Education (really, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried).
As well, even though he is no longer a chief, that doesn’t stop him from being listed as a member of Chiefs For Change, one of those offshoots of Jeb Bush’s Excellence In Education outfit. But he better watch out, cause nipping to become a Chief for Change is one of his former, now ex Delaware DOE employees, who is listed as a Chief In Residence. And even though that person is no longer in Delaware, his rot still lingers…
A few weeks ago, Murphy and many of the other Chiefs at the Jeb cabal, like Hanna Skandera (New Mexico Secretary of Education) and John White (Louisiana’s Superintendent of Education), wrote a letter regarding the recent Vergara appeal decision, urging the appeals court to overturn their ruling because teachers in California are “grossly ineffective” (a term that pretty much sums up his tenure as Secretary of Education in Delaware).
So for those who were clamoring for Mark Murphy updates, this is it. I couldn’t find anything more on him. But if you miss him that much, I would be remiss if I didn’t give a link to Murphy’s Greatest Hits. He may not be causing direct trouble in Delaware, but it looks like he is one to watch out for at a national level, especially if Griptape takes off! Maybe even Jack Markell will buy stock in it!
Personalized Learning, as a concept, has been around since the 1960’s. It is an effort to personalize learning so a student doesn’t always learn at the same pace as other students. The term has been bastardized by corporate education reformers over the past five years. Their idea is to launch a technology boom in the classroom where investors and ed-tech companies will get tons of money. To do this, they had to use education “think-tanks” and foundations to sway the conversation towards this lucrative gold-mine. No one has been a bigger supporter of personalized learning in Delaware than the Rodel Foundation. They began talking about this new and exciting education reform movement as early as November, 2011. A company called Digital Learning Now! released their 2011 report card on different states ability to transform into a digital learning environment and Delaware scored poorly on their report. According to this Rodel article on the report written by Brett Turner (the link to the report card doesn’t exist anymore), Turner wrote:
…the initial results are not promising, demonstrating that we have significant work ahead of us before the necessary policies are in place to ensure our students benefit from high-quality next generation learning opportunities.
Digital Learning Now! was an initiative of the Foundation for Excellence in Education. Other digital “experts” the company thanks in their 2012 report include the Alliance for Excellent Education, the Data Quality Campaign, iNACOL, SETDA, Chiefs for Change, Getting Smart, and the Innosight Institute. The Foundation for Excellence in Education was founded by Jeb Bush in 2008, just as Common Core was in its formation stages. In the Rodel article, Turner talks about how Delaware needs to adapt to this environment so our students can succeed.
Over the next two and a half years, as Race to the Top became more of a nightmare than a promise of better education, Rodel began to take steps to have Delaware become a part of this next big thing. They formed the Rodel Teacher Council to recruit well-intentioned teachers to join their personalized learning team. I don’t see these teachers as evil. I see them as unwitting pawns of Rodel. Rodel didn’t write much about personalized learning too much during this time, but they did release a Personalized Learning 101 flyer in 2013. At the same time, four Delaware districts formed BRINC: Brandywine, Indian River, New Castle County Vo-Tech, and Colonial. Using funds from Race To the Top and a Delaware DOE “innovation grant”, the districts used Schoology and Modern Teacher to usher Delaware into the digital learning age. Rodel’s blog posts about personalized learning didn’t touch on the concept again until February, 2014 when a Rodel employee by the name of Matthew Korobkin began writing posts about digital learning. More followed by other Rodel employees in the coming months. At this time, Dr. Paul Herdman of Rodel was palling around with an ed-tech company called 2Revolutions and went around Delaware talking to groups about the glory of personalized learning.
In the beginning of June in 2014, Rachel Chan with the Rodel Foundation attended a seminar in Washington D.C. on personalized learning sponsored by iNACOL. She wrote about this extensively on the Rodel website.
Later that month, the United States Department of Education released their state reports on special education in America. Delaware received a rating of “needs intervention”, prompting Governor Jack Markell to set aside funding in the state budget for a special education “Strategic Plan”. What no one knew until recently was this plan consisted of hiring Korobkin away from Rodel and into Secretary of Education Mark Murphy’s office to put this plan together.
Later in the summer of 2014, the Delaware Department of Education, with the Rodel Foundation of Delaware, banded together to form a clandestine group of “stakeholders” to look at competency-based education in a personalized learning environment in Delaware. The biggest hurdle in getting this going in Delaware was the barriers in the state code. Their were many players in this non-public group, including members of the Rodel Teacher Council who were also working on a “Personalized Learning Blueprint” at the same time. This group shaped the future of education in Delaware. But they used people to do so, including some of the members of this group.
The timing for this group couldn’t have come at a better time. There were many distractions happening that allowed them to fly under the radar with no one the wiser. Invitations were sent out to select participants from Theresa Bennett at the Delaware DOE. She was an Education Specialist for English/Language Arts in the Curriculum, Instruction and Professional Development area of the DOE. She was the person who scheduled all the meetings. An introductory webinar, sponsored by Achieve Inc., was held on August 14th, 2014.
After an explanation of competency-based education and personalized learning from some folks at Achieve Inc., they opened the webinar up for questions. At the 30:07 mark on the video, Appoquinimink Superintendent Matt Burrows explained his district already began the process for personalized learning. He mentioned several hurdles, especially the teachers’ union. Next came Judi Coffield, the former Head of School at Early College High School, a charter school run through Delaware State University. Coffield asked how Carniege units and high school grades would come into play with this. Bennett explained what role the DOE played in this and how she and Rachel Chan from the Rodel Foundation were going to run the group. Bennett went on to explain that select allies were invited to participate in this group. She also talked about a meeting with Achieve Inc. in Washington D.C. in May of 2014 to pave a path forward.
Bennett did a roll call of who was participating in the webinar. Jose Aviles, the director of admissions at the University of Delaware, was not on the call. Bennett explains how Aviles accompanied her to the Achieve Inc. meeting. “Is there a representative from Delaware PTA on the call?” No response. “Is Donna Johnson on the call?” Silence. “Kim Joyce from Del-Tech?” Nothing. “Pat Michle from Developmental Disabilities Council?” Empty air. She added Laurie Rowe and Stanley Spoor with Howard High School of Technology would be joining them. Susan Haberstroh with the Delaware DOE joined later in the Webinar.
Rodel and Markell knew they needed to stage a distraction to further this personalized learning agenda away from prying eyes while at the same time steering the conversation towards their end goals by using the distraction. They knew one of these distractions would automatically happen based on federal mandates from the US DOE, but the other would need careful planning and coordination. The first drove the need for the second.
A few weeks later, Governor Markell and then Secretary of Education Mark Murphy announced the six priority schools in Wilmington. The DOE picked the six “lowest-performing” schools in Wilmington, DE and announced the two school districts involved, Red Clay and Christina, would have to sign a “memorandum of understanding” and submit to the demands of the Delaware DOE. This put the entire city into an educational tailspin. Teachers in the affected schools felt outrage at the Governor and the DOE. Parents didn’t know what this meant. Politicians scrambled to make sense of it all as primaries and general elections faced them while constituents furiously called them. Teachers in Delaware were still reeling from the upcoming Smarter Balanced Assessment and the scores tied into their evaluations. Meanwhile, the secret meetings of the Delaware Department of Education Competency-Based Learning Guiding Coalition began without any public notice as an email went out from Bennett…
Thank you for your interest in the Competency-Based Learning Guiding Coalition. If you were unable to attend the informational webinar, please use this link to access the recording: http://www.achieve.org/DelawareCBLwebinar
The Guiding Coalition will be charged with laying the foundation for competency-based learning in Delaware. This will include creating a working definition of competency-based learning and what it could look like in Delaware, understanding current barriers to implementing CBL in Delaware, and establishing support for CBL initiatives to take root in the state. Once we have a common understanding of CBL, we will surface key ideas and develop recommended strategies for helping CBL take shape in the state.
The time commitment for the Advisory Group of the Guiding Coalition will be attending approximately two or three 2-hour meetings during the coming school year, with 30-60 minutes of pre-work for each meeting. There will also be opportunities to engage further through optional readings, school visits, webinars, and other convenings if your schedule/level of interest allows.
We are excited to share that an expert facilitator will be guiding each of our meetings; we would like to collect information to inform our meeting agendas. Please complete the following survey by September 10th: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DECompetency-BasedLearning.
Please complete a Doodle to help us best schedule the meetings for this group. We hope to begin late September/early October, with meetings held in Dover. Responses to the Doodle poll will help us find the best day/time for the first meeting. Please use this link: http://doodle.com/mts6ncf74v77mnf
Best,
Theresa
Theresa Bennett
Education Associate, ELA
Curriculum, Instruction, and Professional Development
As it was announced everywhere a couple hours ago, Vice-President Joe Biden will not run for President in 2016. Had Joe run, and won, it would not shock me to see Delaware Governor Jack Markell given a big seat in the Cabinet. More specifically, the Secretary of Education role. With Jeb Bush faltering in the polls, that is one more Jack Markell elimination as well. Does anyone know if Hillary Clinton and Jack Markell are close? In August, Markell endorsed Biden for President if he ran. Hopefully this caused a feeling of resentment on Hillary’s part. Should Bernie Sanders win, there is no way in hell he would pick Markell. And Trump? Let’s pray we don’t have to worry about that. Maybe Jack will just retire and spend his millions he got during the net-com boom in the late 1990’s…
Common Core has become very toxic. And now it’s becoming toxic for politicians! President Obama has nothing to lose by having his boy Duncan praising at as the best thing since sliced bread. Unless it makes such an impact by election time that the balance of power begins to rapidly shift…
No more TV spots. No more teacher Tweets. No more press releases.
What happened?
Scathing Purple Musingswrote in March about the Common Core initiative from Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Florida’s future. Learn More. Go Furtherwas designed to end all debate and educate the public on Common Core’s benefits and superiority.
So why did they pull the plug?
There are two possible reasons. Neither of them good for Bush or Common Core, the latter of which is being sounded defeated at every juncture. Bush has few political allies on Common Core left and its main private sector supporter, the Chamber of Commerce, has slowly been losing the benevolent status they once enjoyed from traditional conservative voters for its advocacy on Common Core and immigration reform.
Respected conservative columnist George Will said earlier this year on FOX News that a supporter of Common Core couldn’t win…
The Season Of Myths 