Write to the President

Here’s a quick thing you can do today that could have a big impact. We’ve had a state level call-to-action this week with the charter reform bill, which is being voted on by the PA House today. (See “Where are the Real Republicans?”) We’ve had a local call-to-action for the PIIN public meeting tomorrow. (See “Please Come Thursday”) Now here’s a federal level call-to-action to help put the battle for public education in full context:

Eminent education historian Diane Ravitch has launched a letter writing campaign urging us to write to President Obama today. Ravitch explains, “Our campaign is meant to include everyone who cares about public education: students, parents, teachers, principals, school board members, and concerned citizens. We want everyone to write the President and tell him what needs to change in his education policies.” She is hoping for thousands of letters from across the country to really make a statement to the White House today.

Ravitch has written a model letter for teachers to send. I have revised this slightly for parents and others in our grassroots movement here in Southwest Pennsylvania and pasted below. Please feel free to use this letter or change how you wish. Here are the instructions:

1. Email your letters to anthony_cody@hotmail.com. Or you can submit your letter as a comment to Ravitch’s blog post about this campaign. All letters collected through these two channels will be compiled into a single document, which will be sent to the White House.
2. If you want, you can also mail copies of your letters through US mail to The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 20500
3. You can also send them by email to the White House. If you choose to write or email the White House, please send a copy to Cody or Ravitch so they can keep track of how many letters were sent to the President.

Ravitch says, “Let’s raise our voices NOW against privatization, against high-stakes testing, against teacher bashing, against profiteering. Let’s advocate for policies that are good for students, that truly improve education, that respect the education profession, and that strengthen our democratic system of public education. Let’s act. Start here. Start now. Join our campaign. Speak out. Enough is enough.” I couldn’t agree more.

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Sample letter:

Dear President Obama:

I am part of Yinzercation, a grassroots movement battling to save public education in Pennsylvania. You have invited our representatives to the White House twice this year to meet with your senior policy advisor, Roberto Rodriguez. But when you continue to tout Race to the Top, as you did in last night’s debate, we don’t think you are listening to us parents, teachers, students, and concerned community members who are fighting on the front lines for our schools. Our governor has used your policies – which label our public schools as “failures” – as convenient cover to slash $1 billion from public education.

Given the choice between you and Mitt Romney, who seems to view public education with contempt, we want to help you win back the hearts and minds of the grassroots in this country. Here are ways to do that.

Please, Mr. President, stop encouraging the privatization of public education. Many studies demonstrate that charters don’t get better results than public schools unless they exclude low-performing children. Public schools educate all children. The proliferation of charter and cyber charter schools will lead to a dual system in many of our big-city districts and tear our communities apart. Please support public education.

Please speak out against the spread of for-profit schools. These for-profit schools steal precious tax dollars to pay off investors. Those resources belong in the classroom. The for-profit virtual schools get uniformly bad reviews from everyone but Wall Street.

Please stop talking about rewarding and punishing teachers. Teachers are professionals, not toddlers. Teachers don’t work harder for bonuses. The teachers I know want to teach, they’re not expecting to win a prize for producing higher scores.

Please withdraw your support from the failed effort to evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students. The American Educational Research Association and the National Academy of Education issued a joint paper saying that such methods are inaccurate and unstable. Teachers get high ratings if they teach the easiest students, and low ratings if they teach the most challenging students.

Please stop closing schools and firing staffs because of low scores. Low scores are a reflection of high poverty, not an indicator of bad schools or bad teachers. Insist that schools enrolling large numbers of poor and minority students get the resources they need to succeed.

Please, President Obama, recognize that your policies are demoralizing teachers and undermining the public’s confidence in our schools. President Obama, we want to support you on November 6. Please give us reason to believe in you again.

I am a public school parent.

/signed,

Dear Mr. Rodriguez …

An Open Letter to Roberto Rodriguez, Special Assistant to the President for Education Policy

Dear Mr. Rodriguez:

As you will no doubt recall, last week when I was invited to the White House as one of 40 education leaders from Pennsylvania I stood before you and pleaded for an end to the national narrative of “failing public schools.” I am writing to let you know about the national conversation that that meeting has sparked – and the overwhelming sense of disappointment, despair and frustration it has evoked. You asked for a dialogue and feedback, so please allow me to tell you what people are saying.

First, many people want to know how it is that the White House, the Department of Education, Democratic leaders, and many on the political left have bought hook, line and sinker into this rhetoric about public education – once a pillar of our democracy – overlooking the actual experience of education professionals and despite mountains of educational research. (This is exactly what “At the Chalkface,” a national talk radio program, spoke with me about this past weekend.) The toxic failing-public-schools narrative is not only based on a false notion that American students are falling farther and farther behind our international peers, but it blames supposedly overpaid, uncaring teachers and bureaucratic school administrators for the very real problems that do exist in our country.

Yet we know that middle class students from well-funded schools perform at the top on international tests. We know that student achievement has actually gone up, not down over the past thirty-five years. And we know that the trenchant problem of racial disparity in our schools has far more to do with poverty and inequitable funding at the local and state level than with bad teaching or unions.

People want to know why, then, this administration seems blind to the consequences of adopting President Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy, which set schools up to fail, stigmatized them, and then undermined public confidence in public education. They ask why our national leaders ignore the clear evidence that NCLB has wrecked havoc on our schools, creating a culture of high-stakes testing, teaching to the test, cheating scandals, drastically narrowed focus to just reading and math, all the while preventing desperately needed debate about real issues such as meaningful curriculum reform.

The piece I wrote about our conversation last week, “The Elephant at the White House,” was picked up and re-published nationally by AlterNet.org, the Horace Mann League, and Diane Ravitch, among others. Ravitch wrote a response piece, “About that Meeting at the White House,” in which she asked pointedly, “will they do anything differently? What signal, if any, will the White House give to show that they understand that Race to the Top is an extension of NCLB? It is NCLB on steroids.” Here are some comments from people across the country:

• “Empty chair for PRESIDENT! Because no other choice measures up”
• “…the Dems [are] hellbent on pushing [Race to the Top] during Obama’s re-election. From a purely political perspective, it has got to be the worst strategy the Dems have ever had. The race is very close and it is possible Obama will lose. I wonder why he has abandoned teachers and parents.”
• “I guess [the election] wouldn’t be so close right now if he hadn’t forgotten all of us. I am disgusted, completely and totally disgusted with Obama, Duncan and the whole lot of them. Obama should spend a morning at Sidwell Friends and then follow up with an unannounced visit to a test prep charter. Then he should hang his head in shame.”
• “…[throw] the profiteers and consultants out of the meeting; [abandon] Race to the Top; [say] that Mr. Duncan would not be part of the next administration; [promise] to phase out testing and to remove test scores from teachers evaluations. When they do the above, I will trust them.”
• “USDoE spokespeople seemed to be brave in this meeting — and then what? And now how is the Obama administration going to respond to the brave teacher/parent/community alliance in Chicago, where teachers are being forced to strike…to defend and protect their students and schools?”
• “Alas, the [NCLB] waiver is not a waiver, just a commitment to do other harmful things!”
• “…of the 40+ educators who attended, only 2 were teachers. Teachers have professional expertise that needs to be acknowledged, cultivated, and sustained.”
• “Race to the Top is more of the same un-researched, unreliable, and feckless education policy that further demeans the profession and those of us who are steeped in the research of effective practice.”

Last week we talked about the new Hollywood movie, “Won’t Back Down,” which blames coldhearted teachers, unions, and school districts and was made by the same people who released “Waiting for Superman” two years ago. I practically begged you not to use the movie as a promotion for market-based corporate “reformers” and their agenda of school privatization. This piece of fiction claims to be “inspired by real events” and is set right here in Pittsburgh, though there is absolutely no evidence that anything like it ever happened here. What is clear, however, is that the film was bankrolled by the ultra-right and attempts to introduce the notion of parent-trigger laws, another policy darling of those supposed reformers. I was appalled to learn that the Democratic National Convention chose to show the movie this week (following in the footsteps of the Republicans who showed it at their convention last week).

I’ve been invited by President Obama’s campaign here in Pittsburgh to speak tonight at a party celebrating his acceptance speech. I’ve been asked to speak about my trip to the White House. What am I supposed to tell them? On this issue, Mr. Rodriguez – your issue of education – President Obama is no different from his opposition. To say we are disappointed is an understatement.

I hope you and all of the President’s advisors will give serious attention to Diane Ravitch’s most excellent advice in, “How President Obama Could Win the Election.” She has proposed an amazing, short speech that could win back educators, parents, and public school advocates.

I plead with you once again from here on the ground in the grassroots of a key state in this election: let’s talk equity, let’s talk about poverty, let’s talk about real education reform, and let’s talk about public education as a public good.

Respectfully yours,

Jessie Ramey
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Jessie B. Ramey, Ph.D.
ACLS New Faculty Fellow, Women’s Studies and History
University of Pittsburgh
Yinzer Nation + Education = Yinzercation

The Elephant at the White House

So there we were at the White House. Forty “education leaders” from Pennsylvania invited to meet with President Obama’s senior policy advisors as well as top staff at the U.S. Department of Education (USDE). The room contained district superintendents, school board members, principals, college presidents, education professors, representatives from a host of education associations, a super-PAC school privatizer, educational consultants, and various non-profit directors. And one elephant.

This elephant in the room fittingly started as a Republican beast, but has gained so much traction with Democrats over the past decade that it could just as well have been a donkey lurking there in the corner. Whatever its animal form, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was casting a pretty big shadow and it was time to talk about the consequences of labeling our public schools as failures, high stakes testing, and the demonization of teachers.

And so during the first discussion session, I stood to address Roberto Rodriguez, the President’s senior policy advisor on education. I reminded him of what I had told him back in March, when I implored the White House to stop participating in the national narrative of failing public schools. (See “What I Told the White House.”) And then I gave him the view from the ground here in Pennsylvania where our grassroots movement has been fighting massive budget cuts, to let him know what it looks like when our country stops believing that public education is a public good. When it chooses to cut teachers, tutoring programs, nurses, special ed, school buses, music, art, foreign languages, and even Kindergarten.

NCLB has created a culture of punishment and fear, with student “achievement” measured by highly problematic standardized tests that don’t begin to assess real learning, and teachers evaluated on those test scores and little else. It has narrowed the focus in our schools to reading and math, jettisoned real education in favor of high stakes testing resulting in a plague of cheating scandals, and nurtured a system of “teaching to the test” on top of weeks of school time spent on test taking and nothing else. NCLB set a pie in the sky target of 100% proficiency for all U.S. students by 2014, and as that deadline has approached and the proficiency bar has moved ever higher, more schools have “failed” and more teachers have been blamed.

All this supposed failure and blaming has served as convenient cover to gut public education in states like Pennsylvania, where Governor Corbett and the Republican controlled legislature acted as fast as they could to slash $1 billion from public schools, install voucher-like tax credit programs, and privatize struggling districts, handing their schools over to corporations run by their largest campaign donors. But they had plenty of help from the other side of the aisle, because faced with the relentless media barrage of the failing-narrative, far too many people have lost confidence in public education as a pillar of our democracy.

And this has been happening all across the United States, with the backing of mountains of ultra-right superPAC money and ALEC-inspired legislation as well as major new foundation players including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation. This is truly a national battle, and we can’t win this fight isolated in our trenches. We need tone-changing leadership from the top.

My report from the grassroots met with a rousing round of applause from attendees and was followed by a series of equally urgent remarks. Larry Feinberg of the Keystone State Education Coalition warned that President Obama’s policies have looked nearly identical to Republicans on education (with the exception of vouchers, which he does not support) and that he may backfire at the polls with teachers and educators. Feinberg sits on the Haverford school board, a wealthy district near Philadelphia, and reminded the President’s staff that middle-class students in well-resourced schools actually score at the top on international tests. We are ignoring poverty while adding ever more testing, which will drastically expand yet again this year in his district and many others. Similarly, Susan Gobreski of Education Voters PA argued that we ought to have a new national narrative of equity, and that we have choices and need to help the public see that we can make different ones.

For their part, the White House advisors and senior USDE staff seemed to agree. Roberto Rodriguez emphasized that we “need more investment in public education, not less” with a focus on early childhood education, curriculum, wrap around programs, and parent engagement. He reported on the 300,000 teaching jobs lost in recent years, noting the economic implications for the U.S. and warned that sequestration – which will happen if congress does not head off looming mandatory budget cuts this fall – will mean billions of dollars cut to Title I, special ed, higher ed, and other student programs.

Massie Ritsch, Deputy Assistant Secretary at the USDE, talked about the fact that NCLB will be up for renewal next year, and that we here at the community level need to keep talking about “the lunacy that this law has allowed to perpetuate.” Yes, those were his actual words. Think about that. Of those Americans who say they are very familiar with NCLB, nearly half now say that the law has made things worse in this country (and only 28% say it’s better). (See “What the Polls Say.”) And here was the top brass at the USDE agreeing, calling the fallout from this federal law “lunacy.”

Deborah Delisle, USDE Assistant Secretary noted that 30 states have now applied for NCLB waivers to gain some flexibility in dealing with its ever more stringent requirements. However, Pennsylvania is not one of them. Many in the room expressed serious frustration with Governor Corbett’s apparent preference to have our schools labeled failures and refusal to seek relief through the waiver program. And it was readily apparent that the PA Department of Education declined to send anyone to this White House forum, which was hardly a meeting of Corbett’s political foes (after all, Students First PA was there: that’s the group that funnels superPAC millions to the campaigns of legislators who promise to deliver vouchers and give away public funds to private and religious schools through tax credit schemes.)

Delisle also commented on the polarizing effect that NCLB has had on our nation. It has created a climate in which those who embrace the corporate-marketplace-inspired reform mantra of choice, competition, and test-based accountability smear professional educators and public school advocates as “defenders of the status quo” who only care about union perks and not children. But this educational “reform” movement of the past decade has been a bit like the king’s new clothes. A wide swath of America has lined the parade route – Republican and Democrat alike – loudly cheering for the king’s beautiful new royal robes of privatization, but there’s nothing there covering his privates.

This “reform” movement is premised on a false idea that American schools have been in steady decline for the past forty years, which is not supported by the evidence. Despite ample data to the contrary, these reformers continue to insist that our students are falling further and further behind their international peers and promote the NCLB inspired narrative of failing public education. (For an excellent analysis of the data, see Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System.) What’s more, they accuse those who point out the obvious – that privatization is not working, that charter schools and tax credits are draining our public coffers of desperately needed resources, that we have to address the astonishing high rate of child poverty – of being satisfied with the persistent racial achievement gap and using poverty as an excuse.

We are at a cross-roads with public education in our country. If we are going to get serious about making sure that every student has the opportunity to attend a great public school – “A school,” as Assistant Secretary Deborah Delisle said, “that every one of us would send our child to” – then we have to get serious about restoring this country’s belief in the public good of public education. It’s time to name the elephant in the room, have a serious conversation about overhauling NCLB, and make the choice to adequately and equitably fund our public schools.

Jessie Ramey of Yinzercation and Sherry Hazuda, President, Board of Directors of the Pittsburgh Public Schools, at the White House, 8-30-12

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White House policy advisors and USDE senior staff participants:

Kyle Lierman, White House Office of Public Engagement
Roberto Rodriguez, Special Assistant to the President for Education Policy
David Bergeron, Acting Assistant Secretary, USDE
Miriam Calderon, Senior Advisor, White House Domestic Policy Council
Lexi Barret, Senior Policy Advisor, White House Domestic Policy Council
Massie Ritsch, Deputy Assistant Secretary for External Affairs and Outreach, USDE
Deborah Delisle, Assistant Secretary, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, USDE
Brenda Girton-Mitchell, Office of the Secretary, Director, Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, USDE
Brenda Dann-Messier, Assistant Secretary, Office of Vocational and Adult Education, USDE
Steven Hicks, Special Assistant for Early Learning, USDE
Betsy Shelton, Director of Public Engagement, USDE

Back to School, Back to the White House

It’s that time of year again – many of us are sending kids back to school this week. And Yinzercation has been invited back to the White House! This Thursday the White House and the U.S. Department of Education will host an “Education Forum with Pennsylvania Leaders.” The group will meet with President Obama’s senior administration officials to discuss “education programs and initiatives, including specific conversations about K-12, higher education and other focus areas.”

Last time I was there, I shook my metaphorical finger at some of the President’s policy advisors and implored them to stop participating in the national narrative of “failing public schools.” Return this nation instead, I pleaded, to its long standing belief in public education as a public good. This time, I intend to share the consequences of what happens when we lose sight of the common good served by our schools.

I will have to tell the White House about the many hundreds of teachers who will not be heading back into the classroom here in Southwest Pennsylvania, and what that will be like for our students, those out-of-work education professionals and their families, and our local economy. I will tell them about larger classrooms, lost librarians and nurses, cancelled special ed and tutoring programs, gutted arts and foreign language curricula, slashed school bus services, and even reduced course offerings in core subjects like reading and math. And I will tell them about the ultra-right billionaires that have pumped mountains of money into superPACs funding politicians who promise to send our taxpayer dollars to private corporations and religious institutions while over a third of our local school districts have been forced to raise property taxes to pay for schools. [Post-Gazette, 7-15-12]

I will try to explain how families are bombarded with expensive ads and billboards on our highways from those superPACs and private charter schools promising to “rescue” their children. How great swaths of people in our region of every stripe and political persuasion have become convinced that there is something horribly wrong with public education, even though they have great faith in the actual schools in their own neighborhoods. [See “What the Polls Say“] And how the rhetoric of failing schools has served as cover to cut $1 billion from public education in Pennsylvania, to pass laws making it impossible to see what is going on inside charters and scholarship organizations, to set up new tax credit programs draining hundreds of millions more from the public coffers that could have been used for our schools.

But I will also tell the White House about our incredible grassroots movement. How quickly it has grown and how effective we have been. How ordinary people care passionately about their public schools and how we’ve fought the rhetoric of failure with the simple truth and a commitment to the social good served by our public goods. It’s back to school time. And it’s time for the White House to commit to sending all our students back to a great school, with adequate, equitable, and sustainable public funding for public education.