If Washington D.C. is the capital of America, than Delaware is the capital of corporate education reform.
Over the past week, many of us who are resisting the privatization of public education have been talking about The Ledger. Peter Greene broke the news for the world to see, which Diane Ravitch quickly picked up on. What is “The Ledger”?
Former Red Clay Education Association and current Red Clay teacher Mike Matthews replied to Delaware Governor Jack Markell’s controversial email to Delaware teachers with the words only a teacher can say. If any other teachers or Delaware citizens want me to publish their reply to our “education” Governor, let me know!
Gov. Markell:
Thank you for the email, but I feel I can’t accept your praise. First, the growth you’re praising is about as much as a margin of error in any political poll, so I’ll take said growth with a grain of salt. Second, you continue prop up this Smarter Balanced Assessment and the standards they are evaluating while failing to admit that this test provides virtually no diagnostic or beneficial material to educators in any timely fashion.
I’m going to keep this email short and say that while I respect you as a person and I respect many of the progressive stances you’ve taken during your nearly eight years in office, I continue to be disturbed by your tone and agenda when it comes to education matters. I would have thought you’d lighten up in your final year after the debacle that was Priority Schools. After mounting evidence has revealed that judging schools, teachers, and students on test scores is statistically unreliable and morally bankrupt. After charter after charter around Delaware continues to fail and close. After overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate vote to uphold a parents’ right to opt their children out of toxic standardized tests that do little to help their progress in school or out. After educators across the State vote unanimously no confidence in your corporate education reform Secretary of Education, Mark Murphy.
What other messages need to be sent to you, Governor, that your business-minded approach to education is not the way to go when we are working with students of varying needs and abilities. Using your business-model approach to education, Governor, who will get left behind when we close all those “poor-performing” schools because of a silly test score? Will it be the student with severe emotional needs that breaks down at the sight of a computerized test? Will it be the student who came to school on test day in soiled clothes after having eaten nothing the weekend before? Will it be the student who witnessed his brother get shot on the streets of Wilmington the night before?
While the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission has done a great job approaching many of the education issues your administration ignored during the first seven years of your administration (remember: the people you put in charge at DoE explicitly believe that poverty is NEVER a barrier to success. One Penny Schwinn actually stated that violence in Wilmington is never a challenge to a student’s success in school), it’s too little too late for your education legacy.
I wish this could have been different. I wish my outsized support for you in 2008 had been a little more probing when it came to education issues. As it stands, I regret the unequivocal support I offered you then both personally and by way of my blog, which no doubt contributed much to your narrow primary victory.
That being said, I genuinely wish you the best once you leave office and I hope someday you’ll realize the damage your education policies caused in this state and that you’ll have a change of heart in the coming years.
One suggestion: At the conclusion of your term, I’d ask you to please spend a week with Warner teacher Monique Taylor-Gibbs to see what’s it’s like working at one of those “failing” schools. Your opinions will change and I guarantee you’ll realize the damage your administration did to our schools with the neverending “test and punish” schemes hoisted upon them.
All the best,
Mike
Sent from my iPhone
“When it comes to justice for children of color in the city, it has never been the General Assembly, it has always been the courts or the federal government that acts,” Street said. “I don’t think this is going to be any different.”
Civil rights advocate Jea Street told the News Journal he will sue the state of Delaware if the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission’s redistricting plan doesn’t pass. The Delaware General Assembly has a limited amount of time to act on the plan. There are six more voting days in the House of Representatives and nine in the Senate. One of the bills was released from the House Education Committee but two others haven’t been heard yet. If the bills pass the House, they must go to the Senate Education Committee. Time is running out but so is the patience of advocates like Street.
Most other states have created systems that give extra funds to high-poverty schools, but Delaware’s system, he says, assumes a school in a violence- and poverty-wracked neighborhood can operate with the same resources as a school in a quiet, wealthy suburb. “You talk to any expert, they’ll tell you that’s not how it works,” Street said.
Street was front and center during the press conference announcing the American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the state and Red Clay Consolidated. I haven’t heard Street talk about that lawsuit since it was announced. That lawsuit alleged Delaware and Red Clay allowed charter schools to use discriminatory practices for enrollment purposes citing schools such as Charter School of Wilmington, Newark Charter School and Sussex Academy. I don’t see him beating on that drum anymore. That lawsuit has been lingering for over a year and a half while the Office of Civil Rights stalls on the investigation. I have to wonder why the News Journal doesn’t talk about that when they are writing an article about discrimination in Wilmington.
On the other hand, I agree with Street. Delaware passes the baton to the courts or the feds when things don’t change in the General Assembly. But when the article talks about the schools in Wilmington being operated by districts in the suburbs, the Wilmington schools will still be handled by a district from the suburbs. The inequities he is talking about will still be there, but they will be more concentrated in one district. From what I’m hearing, the Education Funding Improvement Commission report is delayed and may not be out by June 30th. Having gone to one of the meetings, no one could seem to agree on any one viable strategy. I’ve found Delaware likes to talk about education… a lot! But when it comes time to make the crucial decisions, everyone sits like a deer in the headlights. In the meantime, children suffer. We spend tons of money on research and reports but we don’t do anything with it. We had that huge Statewide Review of Educational Opportunities. The DOE paid Public Consulting Group somewhere around $50,000 to do that report. And what do we have to show for it? Absolutely nothing. It is money that could have been used on something viable, like an extra teacher in one of these schools. Instead we piss away money on absolute nonsense!
The Season Of Myths 