Can or Con

It must be all the spring rain – new corporate-style reform groups are popping up like weeds. The latest one just appeared in Pittsburgh on Tuesday with an Op Ed piece in the Post-Gazette promoting teacher evaluation. [Post-Gazette, 5-21-13] Called PennCAN, this group is an off-shoot of the Connecticut based ConnCAN, which has started a national effort known as 50CAN. So who are these “cans” and what are they saying?

ConnCAN was founded by investment manager Jonathan Sackler, who is also on the board of an oil and gas production company, a real estate investment company, and several pharmaceutical companies. He is also a trustee for Achievement First, which operates charter schools in four cities, as well as on the board of New Schools Venture Fund, which raises money to “invest” in “education entrepreneurs,” with a long history of funding charter schools and charter management organizations (CMOs).

Ten of the eleven members of ConnCAN’s board are hedge fund managers. In other words, these are not educators thinking about what is best for students: these are financiers who know about making money for their portfolios. Not surprisingly, ConnCAN promotes charter schools, vouchers (“money that follows the student”), teacher evaluation systems that eliminate union protections, and school turnaround (shorthand for firing teachers and principals, or even closing “under achieving” schools). ConnCAN makes bold claims about its work, though Rutgers School of Education scholar Dr. Bruce Baker recently shredded their assertion that their reforms are working in Connecticut. [School Finance 101, 3-7-13.]

Last fall, Mr. Sackler wrote a check for $50,000 to a superPAC (it’s largest donation) that is trying to eliminate the local, democratically elected school board in Bridgeport, Connecticut and replace it with a politically appointed board under the supervision of a corporate-reform mayor. Sackler’s ConnCAN has spawned a national effort, 50CAN, which is working to do the same thing in other states: for instance, in Minnesota, they supported the campaign of a pro-charter, Teach for America alumnus. (Unfortunately, Teach for America seems to be in the corporate-reform camp: a topic for a future blog post, but for starters, see educator and TFA alumnus Gary Rubinstein’s analysis of TFA’s biggest claims.) The chairman of 50CAN’s board is Mathew Kramer, the President of Teach for America, which also put money into that Minnesota race. [DianeRavitch 2-2-13] Other 50CAN board members include the presidents of two charter school chain operators and a representative from DFER (Democrats for Education Reform).

Jonathan Pelto, a former Connecticut state legislator, writes about ConnCAN and related groups explaining, “The charter school industry is spending record amounts to lobby government officials and buy local boards of education.” And he warns, “Backing up their lobbying effort is a broader strategy to change the rules and change the players as a way of ensuring they can build their charter schools and further privatize America’s public education system.” [Guest post on DianeRavitch 2-2-13; also see his alarming 12-2-12 analysis of the group’s teacher evaluation and explicitly anti-union work in Connecticut.]

So is this what we’re seeing here in Pittsburgh with the arrival of ConnCAN’s sister, PennCAN? The group actually started working last year and is just now moving into our part of the state (they’ve been advertising for a public affairs manager who lives in or has connections to Pittsburgh), but their agenda is clear. They want to expand charter schools and advocate for “systems that authorize schools,” which I take to mean a state-authorizer bill that would eliminate local control. (We already defeated this once last fall: see “Where are the Real Republicans?”) They also promote vouchers, which they call “scholarships to attend high-performing schools of [the student’s] choice, whether they be district, charter, private or parochial.” And, of course, PennCAN wants a “statewide evaluation system that incorporates student achievement” – in other words, using high-stakes-testing to evaluate our teachers. The only point of agreement it appears our grassroots movement has with this group is that we ought to preserve funding for early childhood education. [PennCAN 2012 Policy Agenda]

PennCAN’s opening salvo here in Pittsburgh focused on teacher evaluation, an issue that already has some traction given the district’s $40 million Gates Foundation grant for just that. And we’ve seen other local Gates-funded organizations promoting teacher evaluation, including A+Schools and Shepherding the Next Generation, giving the idea additional legs. [See “Big $” and “Astroturf”] Now guess who is funding the national 50CAN? You guessed it: the Gates Foundation. And the Waltons. And Google and Jonathan Sackler, to name a few.

Here in Pennsylvania, the operation is being funded by a Catholic group (the Catholic church in Philadelphia has been lobbying hard for vouchers and tax credits to help keep religious private schools afloat: See “2-4-6-8 Who Do We Appreciate?”). PennCAN donors also include the William Penn Foundation, now being sued by our sister-grassroots organization in Philadelphia for illegal lobbying efforts aimed at promoting more charter schools in that district. [See “When Foundations Go Bad”] And don’t forget Janine and Jeff Yass – that would be the Jeff Yass who made Pennsylvania’s top campaign donor list in the fall. He and two other of the top political donors in our entire state – Joel Greenberg and Arthur Dantchik – went to college together and then founded a Philadelphia hedge fund company. Then they founded the Students First superPAC to funnel millions of their dollars, plus those from out of state donors, into the races of pro-voucher candidates. [See “Charters are Cash Cows”]

So that’s who we’re dealing with. Nice bunch of corporate-style reformers bent on privatization. We’ll look at their claims more closely in a future piece, but for now, we’re calling this can a con.

A Rolling Rally

The wheels on the bus go round and round … Yesterday over 100 parents, students, teachers, and community members got on yellow buses for a tour of Pittsburgh. We drove through neighborhoods impacted by four rounds of school closures during the past ten years. Along the way we heard from students who told us about the effects of displacement from multiple school relocations and their disrupted education. And we got pledges from elected officials as well as candidates for school board, city council, and mayor, who agreed to three specific points in our grassroots call to action:

1. No school closings before neighborhood impact studies are conducted.
2. Make everyone pay their fair share: Explore and advocate for enhanced and additional sources of revenue before considering cuts or closings.
3. Keep public schools public: Reject any plan to give any control of our schools to the private sector.

Our new coalition, Great Public Schools (GPS) Pittsburgh, developed this three-point pledge and it truly represents the work of the grassroots: with many, many meetings and email conversations, dozens of people participated in this process from Action United, AFSCME, the Hill District Education Council, One Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Interfaith Impact Network, Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, SEIU Healthcare PA, and Yinzercation.

It is far more specific about education issues than anything our legislators or candidates have been asked to sign before. As a result, both the pledge and the Rolling Rally brought out some key distinctions among our elected officials and would-be representatives. It’s now clear who is willing to hold the bus for Pittsburgh students, and who might throw our children under that bus.

Sitting school board member Regina Holley agreed to all three points and spoke briefly at the final Rally in front of the now-closed Schenley High School. Board member Mark Brentley arrived from another school event just at the end of the event to show his support, though he missed the chance to speak. Significantly, mayoral candidates Jack Wagner and Jake Wheatley committed to coming but never showed up. This was especially telling on a day when the Post-Gazette once again promoted Wagner as their candidate, yet he broke his own promise and failed to come support Pittsburgh students and their families. [Post-Gazette, 5-19-13]

However, Bill Peduto was there and spoke very movingly about the importance of great public schools for great communities. In fact, Bill Peduto has been at every single town-hall meeting, rally, community conversation, press conference, and education-related event our grassroots movement has sponsored. Where was Wagner? He seriously missed the bus on this one. There’s a reason Yinzercation strongly endorsed Bill Peduto. [See “Pittsburgh is Lucky”]

City council candidate Dan Gilman also came and spoke quite powerfully about the role of community schools in Pittsburgh’s future.

In the three contested school board races, six of the seven candidates hopped on the bus and rolled with us around the city. In District 9, both Carolyn Klug and Dave Schuilenburg agreed to the pledge (candidate Lorraine Burton Eberhard did not attend). Similarly, in District 1 both Lucille Prater-Holliday and Sylvia Wilson committed to the three point agenda. The real surprise came in District 5, where Terry Kennedy readily made the pledge, but Steve DeFlitch refused to commit to the second and third points (about advocating for state resources and not handing our public schools over to private corporations).

The Rolling Rally highlighted the serious subject of school closure now looming before our city once again. By getting pledges from our candidates, our grassroots movement is getting out in front on this issue and helping to promote a deep community conversation. And we’ve demonstrated who is literally willing to get on the bus for public education. Now it’s your turn: make sure you don’t miss your stop and get out to vote tomorrow!

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Sea to Shining Sea

Did you know that we organized Sunday’s Rolling Rally here in Pittsburgh to coincide with public education actions all over the United States? Starting tomorrow with an information picket line and student walkout in Philadelphia and running for six straight days there will be major actions in cities from coast to coast. Local organizers designed these events to show solidarity with the terrible situation in Chicago, where students are facing a tidal wave of 54 school closings. At all of these rallies you will likely see banners proclaiming:

Our City. Our Schools. Our Voice.
We Stand with Chicago!

Here’s how Pittsburgh fits into the national scene:

1. San Francisco (May 20^th at12 noon, City College of San Francisco (CCSF) Mission campus, 1125 Valencia Street). A rally and press conference will link the school closings in Chicago with the threatened closure of CCSF. Action will include street theater (“Chicago comes to San Francisco”), speakers (students, faculty, community organization rep), and a call to action.
2. New York City (May 18^th from 10am -4pm, PS 28 at 560 West 169^th Street). Mirabal Sisters, a member of the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice, is holding a Parent Convention and plans to organize a Skype session with Chicago parents to link school closings in both cities.
3. New York City (May 21^st from 5:30 8:00pm, Brooklyn Borough Hall). Training for approximately 75 parent leaders on the national school reform landscape, with a particular focus on the corporate school reform agenda. The link will be drawn between the school closing struggle in Chicago and the NYC 2013 parent-led education justice organizing led by the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice and the Urban Youth Collaborative.
4. Philadelphia (May 17^th, Philadelphia School District Building). Hundreds of teachers will organize a citywide informational picket in support of full funding for public schools as students arrive in the morning. A citywide student walkout & press conference at City Hall is being organized in the afternoon to call on local politicians to fund Philadelphia public schools with the supports students need.
5. Pittsburgh (May 19^th, buses pick up at Weil, Obama, Burgwin; end at Schenley). Bus tour with parents, students, educators and community activists of schools that have been closed or converted to charter schools. At each school, the bus will pick up more people, and speakers will talk about the impact of the school closing on the local neighborhood.
6. Houston (May 19^th, Harris County AFL-CIO located at 2506 Sutherland Street). Community Voices for Public Education, the Texas Organizing Project, and the Houston Federation of Teachers are organizing a teach-in to explain the corporate agenda for public education, with an emphasis on school privatization, charter expansion, and testing.
7. Kansas City (May 22^nd at 6pm, Kansas City Public Library located at 4801 Main Street where Michelle Rhee will be speaking). Community members from MORE2 will be leafleting outside the event linking Michelle Rhee to the national corporate agenda for public education and what is happening in Kansas City and Chicago. Teachers will be inside the event sitting in silent protest.
8. Boston (May 18^th, English High School at 144 McBride Street). Educators for Social Justice Conference with parents, students and educators, with a focus on “creating the schools we deserve” and exposing the corporate agenda.
9. Newark (May 22^nd, Roseville Avenue School located at 70 Roseville Avenue). Activists will hold a large press conference calling on the Mayor and Governor to halt school closings, end the State takeover of Newark Public Schools, and express solidarity with the struggle in Chicago.
10. Hillsborough County, Tampa, Florida (May 18^th, 9:30am-12:00pm, University Area Community Development Center, 14013 N. 22^nd ST, Tampa, FL). Public education advocates will hold a second Town Hall, with a partial focus on the national context.
11. New Orleans (May 20^th at 5pm, John Mcdonogh Senior High School, 2426 Esplanade Ave, New Orleans). A large press conference, followed by a town hall meeting, will highlight the national and local context of school closures and to end the state takeover of public schools.
12. New Orleans (May 21^st at 5pm, McDonogh 35 High School, 1331 Kerlerec Street, New Orleans). Another press conference will demand that the Orleans Parish School Board expands seats available in successful public schools so that parents and students have a real choice.
13. New Britain, CT (May 22^nd at 6pm, Central Park of New Britain). “Education is a Civil Right” is the message of this broad rally and march in support of funding for the public schools.
14. Cleveland (May 20^th, CASTLE Charter School located in downtown Cleveland). This action will draw the link between school closings and charter expansion, highlighting the lack of charter accountability.
15. Cincinnati (May 20^th, Cincinnati Public Schools headquarters). Testimony by union and community leaders at the School Board meeting will declare that Cincinnati must not adopt the school closing policy being proposed for Chicago, and that Cincinnati teachers and parents stand in solidarity with the Chicago Teachers Union and community.
16. St. Paul (May 20^th, Como Park at 1225 Eastbrook Drive). The St. Paul Federation of Teachers will express solidarity with teachers and parents in Chicago

Pretty exciting, eh? We here in Pittsburgh are not alone. We have grassroots colleagues from sea to shining sea working on the very same issues. And when we work together we are powerful.

Please plan to come to the Rolling Rally on Sunday to learn more about school closures – and take a tour of our Steel City. Yinzercation is co-sponsoring this Get on the Bus event with our partners: the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, PIIN, Action United, One Pittsburgh, AFSCME, SEIU Healthcare PA, and the Hill District Education Council. The school buses will make several pickups, so hop on at a stop near you:

• Weil School – 3PM
• Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (across from Obama School) – 3:30PM
• Manchester School – 3:45PM
• Burgwin School – 4:15PM

We will end the tour with a big action at the former Schenley High School in Oakland at 5PM. More information and RSVP on our Facebook event page. Come ride the bus in solidarity with Chicago, and come because we need to talk about school closure in Pittsburgh, too.

School Spacing

We’re digging into the issues behind potential new school closures in Pittsburgh. So far we’ve talked about school size and school utilization. Another key issue we need to understand is school spacing: where schools are located, in which neighborhoods, how far students must travel to get to a school, and population density.

Here is the current map of Pittsburgh schools (click to open a separate window where you can navigate the map):

You can see that we still have a pretty broad distribution of schools in all grade bands. Yet with the last four rounds of closures, some neighborhoods have lost all of their schools. Activists in places like Hazelwood have told us how losing every single school in the area has had a terrible impact on families. Researchers who study nutrition and urban planning call communities without grocery stores “food deserts.” After Hazelwood’s schools closed it also lost its last grocery store, making it both a food desert and a school desert.

Of course we understand that not every neighborhood in Pittsburgh will have its own school. We are way past those days. In fact, because of our unique topography and history, Pittsburgh has 90 recognized neighborhoods, some quite tiny. So I don’t think any of us is arguing that every student in Pittsburgh should literally have a neighborhood school right up the street.

But a comment from a Facebook reader got me thinking about the difference between “neighborhood schools,” and what we might start calling “community schools.” This reader suggested that we shouldn’t be so fixated on the idea of old-fashioned neighborhood schools, saying, “Students in low density suburbs like Fox Chapel don’t have ‘neighborhood’ schools and yet no one seems to complain about the quality of education there.”

This is a valid argument, but the point is that Fox Chapel residents still have community schools. In fact, they have six of them (a high school, a middle school, and four elementary schools). Compare that to our example of Hazelwood, which has a population of 6,407 people, about a thousand more people than Fox Chapel with a population of 5,388, but without a single school. And Hazelwood residents are much less wealthy than Fox Chapel residents: so, for example, fewer people are likely to own cars to drive across the city to be engaged with their children’s education at a distant school.

At the Envisioning Educational Excellence advisory meeting on Monday, our break-out group discussed the idea of “equity and choice” in our schools. The community members at our table were adamant that all families should have a great school in their area. No one thought it must be at the end of the street, but everyone agreed that there is no such thing as “choice” unless there is a reasonably nearby school that offers a full, rich curriculum for every kid. No student should have to go all the way across the city just to receive world language instruction. In fact, rather than putting more resources into creating additional magnet programs spread around the city, our group was fairly vocal about its belief that families want great community schools.

Superintendent Dr. Linda Lane told the Post-Gazette “she was struck by how one small discussion group noted that equity is more important than choice.” That is exactly what we said. Except that our community schools must be both equitable and excellent. She noted, “That’s pretty powerful.” I couldn’t agree more. Dr. Lane also acknowledged our group’s “concerns for communities that feel disenfranchised because they don’t have a school” and recognized that we “spoke of a need for stability and consistency, not only in keeping schools open but also in keeping the same principal.” [Post-Gazette, 5-14-13]

So as we continue to think about potential school closings in Pittsburgh, I suggest we think more expansively about community schools. These will necessarily be spaced farther apart than the neighborhood schools of yore, but as we look at our maps and plan, we need to consider what happens to our communities when we create school deserts.

To see this process up close, please Get on the Bus! Yinzercation is co-sponsoring a Rolling Rally through Pittsburgh this Sunday to highlight this conversation about school closure. It will be fun, educational, and productive – so please plan to join us. (Really! Have you been to Hazelwood? This is your chance to see some important parts of Pittsburgh with a tour guide.) The school buses will make several pickups, so hop on at a stop near you:

• Weil School – 3PM
• Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (across from Obama School) – 3:30PM
• Manchester School – 3:45PM
• Burgwin School (now closed) – 4:15PM

We will end the tour with a big action at the former Schenley High School in Oakland at 5PM. More  information and RSVP on our Facebook event page. This is a new group of partners working together called the Pittsburgh Great Schools Coalition, and includes the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, PIIN, Action United, One Pittsburgh, AFSCME, Yinzercation, SEIU Healthcare PA, and the Hill District Education Council. Come be a part of the conversation about school closure and community schools.

School Utilization

Last week we talked about school size – a key issue in the debate over whether to close schools, which ones, and how many. I made the argument that we should probably not fear somewhat larger schools, simply on the basis of size, if they come with adequate resources for the students in every building. [See “School Size”]

But school size alone doesn’t tell us much. We need to know how each building is being utilized. Last night, the Pittsburgh Public School administration shared some new data with the Envisioning Educational Excellence advisory group that sheds some light on this very issue. Here’s what I learned. [All data from PPS Envisioning Update]

To see how we stack up against other school districts, PPS compared itself to several other Pennsylvania cities that it considers comparable in terms of racial composition, poverty rates, and other factors. In the following graph, the administration makes the case that our school size average is “far below” those peer districts.

I have a couple issues with this data. First, I am uncomfortable comparing Pittsburgh to the towns PPS selected as “peers”: Allentown, Erie, Hazleton, Lancaster, Reading, and Scranton. While the demographics might be similar, it strikes me as foolish to benchmark ourselves against a place like Reading, for instance, now rated the second poorest city in the entire country. If they have enormous schools, that might not necessarily be what I want for our children in the Steel City.

Why not compare Pittsburgh, as I did last week, to the Upper St. Clairs and Fox Chapels of the world? In fact, let’s make our comparisons local – since this is how the public views things. The comment I hear all the time is, “If Mt. Lebanon can do it, why can’t Pittsburgh … ?” I would love to see some local data that illustrates how PPS is doing in comparison to those districts around here – both great and struggling. I was far more convinced that larger school sizes might be OK for our kids when looking at our own wealthy suburbs and seeing how we stack up (and we do appear small, at least compared to the two districts I analyzed).

Furthermore, the PPS graph above compares all schools together – elementary, middle, high schools, K-8s, everything. This is not a useful metric, since we know that elementary schools tend to be much smaller than high schools. Though it can be difficult to compare apples to apples – since, for instance, some districts do not have K-8 schools or 6-12 schools – we need to see that data broken out by grade band.

Next, the district shared a graph on school utilization. This is more illuminating, but not without problems.

According to this graphic, the majority of our schools are in the 60-80% or over 80% full range. In fact, three times as many schools (35) are in this range as those in the 40-60% or less than 40% full range (15 schools). Yet, the graph is titled, “Pittsburgh has Under-Utilized School Space throughout the City.” Of course, this chart does not provide geographic data, so we can’t see how this actually maps onto the city (though the district did provide the raw data, see below). I also don’t feel separating schools by type (magnet vs. feeder) tells us anything, but the district is clearly trying to determine what parent preferences are based on building utilization.

Perhaps the most significant thing we have learned is the way that PPS defines adequate utilization. With increased “target class sizes” for this year, the administration is now calling anything under 30 students at the 6-12 and 9-12 level under-enrolled. Parents in the grassroots movement have been very clear that they would like to see smaller class sizes, not larger. In fact, looking at the average class sizes for our various school types, it seems to me that only our 6-12 and high schools might be considered on the small side:

However, the district suggests in another slide that, “the under-capacity issue is most pronounced at the 6-8 and 6-12 level,” where 5 of the 12 schools are enrolled at less than 50%:

Right now, using those increased “target” class sizes, the district is arguing that a quarter of our schools are at less than half capacity. I just want to caution again that this “half empty” school narrative is a seductive one that goes over quite well with those ready to slash school budgets and implement privatization plans, as we have seen all too clearly in Chicago. So far, I have not heard our administration officials using this line and I am grateful.

But it does appear they are ready to argue that our average school is a third-empty. By their measurement, the average school is at 67% capacity (or just over two-thirds full). My own children’s school is rated at 69% capacity – which would probably come as a surprise to any parent who has ever walked in the building and found it nearly bursting at the seams with students. I don’t see classrooms with a third of the desks empty. In fact, this is the school where my sixth-grader has 39 students in his math class. And using the district’s numbers, we would need 1,036 students to fill the school to capacity. Are you kidding? Colfax with over 1,000 kids?

I leave you with the raw data from the district to mull over. One note here: the right-hand column lists the percentage of students from a school’s feeder pattern who attend the school. This is not the percentage of students at the school who are from the feeder, but rather a measurement of what we might call the “catchment rate” (there’s probably a technical term for this) – the percentage of all eligible students who live in the catchment area who choose to attend that school. This is not a terribly useful number without a sense of why parents are choosing the schools that they do. A public school with a low catchment rate may be in an area with a large proportion of private schools yet still be great; or a school with a low catchment rate might indicate that families are high-tailing it out when given the option. This data doesn’t tell us.

What do you think about school utilization in Pittsburgh?

Come out Sunday to a Rolling Rally to talk about school closure and the impact on our neighborhoods. Learn more and RSVP on Facebook. Help us spread the word!

School Size

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the problems associated with closing neighborhood schools. As you’ll recall, we have lots of data coming out of places like Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia suggesting that school closure has serious consequences for students and communities, and often does not save districts nearly as much money as they predict. [See “Again and Again”] But a Facebook response to that piece from a Yinzercation reader got me thinking about two key issues that we have to deal with here in Pittsburgh: school size and spacing. Today let’s talk about school size.

This reader suggested essentially what our district administration has been saying for a while now, too: that Pittsburgh’s average school size is just too small to support all the classes and programs we might wish to have in each building. He wrote, “With less than 500 students per school [on average in PPS] we’re not talking about megaschools where students feel lost. If we still had 93 schools, we would only have 283 students per school–hardly enough to support a variety of classes and facilities such as libraries and a gym, as well as central staff such as a principal, librarian or school nurse.” I actually agree with the premise of this argument, but I have some concerns, too.

Here’s some data to put this into perspective. This academic year, the mean (average) size of our 20 K-5 schools is 352 students. (See the table below.) Now a school with 350+ kids is hardly an “empty” school building – and it’s probably nowhere near “half empty” either, which is the common rhetoric you will hear around school closures. At the Occupy the D.O.E. event last month, Chicago teacher’s union Karen Lewis gave an inspiring talk explaining how this very narrative of “half empty” buildings had been used to justify mass school closures there. (Chicago is calling any classroom with fewer than 30 kids “under-utilized”!) So I’ve been very sensitive to this phrase and the power it has to convey an unrealistic picture of what it looks like inside our schools.

That said, we have a bit of a spread in terms of school size at the K-5 level. The smallest school in the district is Pittsburgh Woolslair at 175 students (which appears to be quite an outlier), then we have several in the mid-200 range, and the largest is Pittsburgh Faison with 534 students. We have to remember that these are student enrollment figures, and don’t take into account actual school building size. So a building designed for 400 students is nearly full with 350 kids; but in a larger building, we have the problem of extra seats. It’s that excess capacity that is costing us real money in the city, so this is a non-trivial issue.

The other issue to pay attention to when talking about school size is the difference in student needs. A teacher pointed out to me that some of our lower-enrolled schools are serving high populations of children with special needs, where you necessarily want a much lower student-to-teacher ratio.

That said, our K-5 schools do appear to be on the small side when compared to some of the highest performing school districts. For example – the Pittsburgh suburb of Upper St. Clair where I grew up and recently named the best school district in the state – has an average elementary school size of 491 students. Fox Chapel is 466. These numbers suggest that we should not fear slightly larger schools if – and this is the big if – if they come with the additional resources so that every building can have those full-time librarians, art and music programs, nurses, guidance counselors, and the rest. In a conversation with me, one district official called this the “Cadillac plan” and explained that we just can’t have all things in all schools when they are this size.

Just to finish looking at that data: our K-8 schools average just over 500 students, with a range from 251 at Pittsburgh Manchester to well over 700 at Pittsburgh Colfax. Our middle schools seem small compared to our suburban peers, averaging 357 students, whereas Upper St. Clair has two middle schools with an average student population of 658 and Fox Chapel has one large middle school with 1,019 students. And our 6-12 schools appear quite small in comparison, averaging just 688 students, when you consider these are both a middle school and high school combined.

Pittsburgh has four high schools remaining: Perry (951 students), Brashear (1,461 students), Carrick (830 students), and Allderdice (1,351 students). Again to put this in perspective, USC has 1,357 and Fox Chapel 1,432 students in their high schools. This is not to suggest that Pittsburgh should necessarily try to match these suburban peers which are quite wealthy and white and different in many other ways. But just seeing these numbers has helped me feel better about the thought of somewhat larger schools. Again, if the resources are there to support the full, rich curricula we want in each building.

Ah, but there’s the rub. Evidence from school closures in six urban districts – including Pittsburgh – over the past decade reveals that “the average annual savings, at least in the short run, were well under $1 million per school.” School districts really only save money when they couple mass teacher layoffs with building closures. [PEW Charitable Trust, October 2011] And even then, districts have often been disappointed to get only pennies on the dollar for shuttered schools when they prove difficult to sell and are surprised by how much it costs to maintain mothballed buildings. [Post-Gazette, 4-15-13]

The limited “savings” from school closure have not been enough to plug the overall budget hole, let alone increase resources to remaining buildings. After each of the last four “right sizing” plans, Pittsburgh did not see dramatic improvements to the remaining schools. Just the opposite: in the past few years we’ve seen crippling cuts to everything from tutoring programs to the arts. Yet we’re still spending over $20,000 per student. In other words, we’ve been through four rounds of school closure and are paying Cadillac prices without ever getting that Cadillac plan for our kids. So while I am not afraid of larger schools per se, I worry that additional school closures in the city will just yield more of the same.

What do you think about school size in Pittsburgh?

Get to Know ‘Em

The city-wide school board candidate forum is tonight! With elections just two weeks away and the majority of our school board members turning over this year, now is the time to get to know who is running for these incredibly important positions. Pittsburgh is lucky that we don’t yet have giant amounts of outside money pouring into our school board races, like other cities are seeing this year. [See “School Boards Matter”] As a handful of ultra-wealthy folks try to buy school boards friendly to their ideological agenda of corporate-style reform, the only way we here in the grassroots can fight back and preserve the democratic process is to do our part and get to know the local candidates – and then vote.

Tonight is your chance to ask questions and learn where your future school board members stand on issues such as school closures, charter reform, privatization, and high-stakes-testing. Are they willing to lobby Harrisburg for adequate, equitable, and sustainable state funding? Will they be champions of policies that keep the public in public education? Come find out from 6 – 8PM tonight at the lovely new Hillman Auditorium, Kaufmann Center in the Hill District (1835 Centre Ave., Pittsburgh PA 15219).

Here’s what you need to know:

• The primary elections are Tuesday, May 21^st. This is when the school board races will be decided (though the winners will appear on the fall ballot, the primary is where the real race happens).
• Find your voting place here.
• The school board districts have been re-drawn this year (for instance, my entire Point Breeze neighborhood got moved!). Find your district here.
• Check out this handy school board candidate voter’s guide that A+ Schools compiled.

The forum will be moderated by Dynae Shaw, a senior at Pittsburgh Obama, and is co-hosted by A+ Schools, the League of Women Voters, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. We are co-sponsoring the event, along with a broad coalition of community partners:

100 Black Men of Western PA
Advocates for African American Students in PPS
Amachi Pittsburgh
Big Brothers Big Sisters  of Greater PGH
BPEP/Coalition Against Violence
Carrick Community Council
Communities in Schools
Coro Center for Civic Leadership
Future Champs Organization
Hill District Education Council
Homewood Children’s Village
Know the Joys of Love and Respect
MGR – Youth Empowerment
NAACP Pittsburgh Unit
NorthShore Community Alliance
North Side Leadership Conference
One Pittsburgh
Overbrook Community Council
PCTV 21 Community Television
Pennsylvania Interfaith Impact Network
Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers
Pittsburgh Project
Pittsburgh Promise
Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh
Yinzercation

Still need a reason to get involved in the school board elections? Check out this video made by local students:

Big $

The way some of them throw around the green stuff, you’d think corporate-style education reformers were made of money. Oh wait. Some of them are. As Big Money plays a bigger and bigger role in shaping public education, it can be hard to keep all the players straight – from wealthy individuals, to foundations, superPACs, astroturf groups and corporations. Here’s a handy reference guide.

1.  Individuals
Some of the wealthiest people on the planet are pouring their money into corporate-style education reform. Some are doing this through foundations (see below) and others are happy to invest their millions in politics to shape policy or directly into charter schools as money-making investments. Some have a profit motive and others seem more ideologically driven (to privatize public goods, oppose union rights, etc.) One thing all of these folks have in common? Not one is an educator or education researcher. And none of their ideas is based on evidence of what actually works for kids.

• Start here in Pennsylvania with charter school operators like Van Gureghian, Governor Corbett’s largest campaign donor. He makes so much money that he and his wife bought beach front property in Florida worth $28.9million, while he’s been fighting for years to keep his salary a secret. [See “Soaking the Public”]
• Recall that 4 of the top contributors to all political races last fall in our state had ties to charter school operators. Wealth advisors are on record recommending that people add charter schools to their investment portfolios, especially in places like Pennsylvania. [See “Charters are Cash Cows”] Cyber charter schools are particularly lucrative investments, as the public taxpayers are currently over-paying them by $1million every single day. [See “One Million Per Day”]
• How about folks like Philip Anschutz? He’s the oil billionaire with ultra-right politics who owns Walden Media, which made the anti-public school films, “Waiting for Superman” and “Won’t Back Down.” He funds groups that teach creationism in our schools and oppose gay rights, environmental regulations, and union rights. [See “We Won’t Back Down Either”]
• Then there’s New York Mayor Bloomberg, who likes the idea of privatizing schools so much that he put $1million into the Los Angeles school board races last month to try to maintain a corporate-reform minded majority there. Too bad his horse didn’t win. [See “School Boards Matter”]

2.  Foundations
The “big three” foundation are Gates, Broad, and Walton. Education historian Diane Ravitch calls them the “billionaire boys club,” though each has a slightly different emphasis. And there are others.

• The Gates Foundation is currently funding teacher evaluation systems throughout the country. As I have argued before, not only does this focus on the wrong thing, by avoiding the issue of poverty (or even early childhood education where many agree we might most effectively concentrate our resources), it starts with the faulty assumption that we have a plague of bad teachers. Though the foundation itself has warned that teacher evaluation should not be based solely on high-stakes-testing, this is exactly what is happening all over the country (or in many places, student testing is being used for a large portion of teacher evaluation). The Gates Foundation is so large and distributes so much money that it can essentially set policy through its grant making. And combined with the Great Recession, school districts and other beneficiaries have not been able to say no to the money nor been willing to point out that the emperor is not wearing any clothes (i.e. that his “reforms” don’t work). Gates has also launched a clever campaign to shift public opinion, by strategically targeting grants to community organizations (for example, over a half-million to A+Schools this year) and astroturf groups (see below) in communities where they are working.
• The Eli and Edythe Broad (rhymes with “road”) Foundation runs a non-accredited superintendents training program premised on the idea that business executives with no education experience will improve urban school districts. Both the current and former Pittsburgh superintendents are Broad Academy graduates (though Dr. Linda Lane is an educator). The Foundation promotes teacher effectiveness and competition (i.e. charter schools), and drafted President Obama’s current reform strategy. They also literally wrote the book on how to close schools, using Pittsburgh as an example. Eli Broad also continues to spend his personal millions on corporate-reform, putting a half-million into the LA school board races this spring alone. [Los Angeles Times, 4-24-13]
• The Walton Family Foundation derives its money from Wal-Mart and gave $158 million in K-12 education grants last year to promote charter schools and voucher programs. Its current top grantees include Teach for America, which has come under increased scrutiny for its method of placing young college graduates with only a few weeks of training in urban schools with the neediest students, where they stay only two years. (Teach for America, by the way, is looking to set up shop in Pittsburgh and has been making inquiries about hiring a local executive director. Stay tuned.) Here in our state the Walton Family Foundation is also funding the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools. And they fund Bellwether Education Partners, the group hired by Pittsburgh Public Schools (through subcontract with FSG) to craft its education plan. [Walton Family Foundation 2012 Grant Report]
• Let’s not overlook the role that other foundations play in education reform. Remember a decade ago when the Pittsburgh Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, and Grable Foundation (the big three education philanthropies in Pittsburgh) yanked their funding from the school district, forcing them to introduce new reforms? [Post-Gazette, 7-10-02] The history books have yet to finish writing that episode – and there were no doubt both positive and negative long-term outcomes – but it illustrates the power that foundations can wield over a school district.
• What about when a venerable old foundation starts behaving badly? Our big sister grassroots group in Philadelphia, Parents United, recently filed a legal complaint against the William Penn Foundation “based on the fact that they had solicited millions of dollars in donations for an exclusive contract” with a consulting group, with an agreed “set of ‘deliverables’ such as identifying 60 schools for closure, mass charter expansion, and unprecedented input into labor and contract negotiations – without the School District of Philadelphia being a party to the contract.” After a legal analysis by the Public Interest Law Center that concluded the foundation was essentially engaging in illegal lobbying and funneling private donations for the purpose, Parents United joined the Philadelphia Home & School Council, and the Philadelphia branch of the NAACP in bringing the complaint. [Parents United, 2-14-13]

3.  SuperPACS
The Citizens United ruling opened the door to massive spending by corporations in politics and ushered in the era of superPACS. Without spending limits, now we are seeing just how much influence money can buy in politics (where education policy is set).

• Students First PA PAC (not to be confused with Michelle Rhee’s national organization, see below), started in 2010 by three Philadelphia investment brokers to funnel millions into the state races of pro-voucher candidates. Co-founder Joel Greenberg is on the board of the American Federation for Children, a national group run by Betsy DeVos with mega-wealthy (and ultra-right) backers including the Koch brothers, who have used the super PAC to channel their out of state dollars into Pennsylvania politics. [See “It’s All About the Money, Money, Money”] And Gov. Corbett tapped Joe Watkins, the chairman of Students First PA, to be the Chief Recovery Officer for the struggling Chester Uplands school district last year – a bit like putting the fox in charge of the hen house, since he now has the power to hand those public schools over to charter operators. [See “Taking the Public out of Public Education”]
• Fighting Chance PA PAC shares a name with a campaign launched by the “Pennsylvania Catholic Coalition” last spring, an effort associated with the Philadelphia Archdiocese, which has been lobbying hard for voucher legislation to fund its struggling schools. The new PAC was entirely financed by three wealthy Philadelphia hedge-fund founders who started the Students First PA PAC, because apparently one super PAC on your resume is just not enough. And their largest contribution? To Rep. Jim Christiana, a Republican from Beaver County (site of the proposed Dutch Royal Shell cracker plant) who introduced last year’s voucher-in-disguise EITC tax credit bill. Rep. Christiana also received money from the Walmart PAC. [See “2-4-6-8 Who Do We Appreciate?”]

4.  Astroturf groups
Astroturf groups are fake grassroots organizations. They are funded by deep pockets, manipulated to look like local efforts to give the impression that they represent real community opinion. But they are as authentic as a field of plastic grass.

• Operating at the national level are groups such as Michelle Rhee’s Students First. Rhee is best known as the former Chancellor of the D.C. school district where she publicly fired a principal on film as part of her massive school closure effort there. She became well known for supposedly increasing student test scores, but there are now serious questions of large-scale cheating (by adults). Students First promotes her privatization agenda of charters and vouchers as well as merit pay and teacher evaluation systems based on high-stakes-testing. The Walton Family Foundation just gave the organization $8 million. [Washington Post, 5-1-13] At the same time, Rhee has been caught inflating the number of members in her organization to make it appear that it has a much broader base of support by using deceptive petitions (for un-objectionable issues such as anti-bullying) on the progressive change.org site to capture the names of unsuspecting new “members.” [DianeRavitch, 8-3-12]
• Parent Revolution practically wrote the book on how to create an astroturf organization. Founded in California by a charter school operator – with major backing from Gates, Broad, and Walton – the group got a “parent trigger law” passed and then hired agents to convince two towns to turn their schools over to the them. But many parents later said they had been purposefully misled and filed lawsuits to try to stop the conversion of their schools to charters. [See “Won’t Be Silent”]
• Closer to home, we learned just last week that the Gates Foundation is backing a new astroturf group here in Pittsburgh. Called Shepherding the Next Generation, the Washington D.C. based organization has been trying to recruit churches – especially in our African American communities – to preach the Gates agenda of teacher evaluation. [See “Astroturf”] Having one of the wealthiest people on the planet funding outside organizations like this to come into a community and shift the public conversation seriously erodes democracy. This is not about promoting an authentic community dialogue, but about promoting a specific ideology of school reform.

5.  Corporations
Perhaps not surprising, corporations control some of the big money at stake in corporate-style education reform. Here are a few to keep your eye on.

• Testing companies have significantly benefitted from the dramatic expansion of testing under No Child Left Behind. Nationally, we are spending $1.7 BILLION a year testing our kids. [Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings, report Nov. 2012] And corporations like Pearson Education, Inc. and McGraw Hill spend millions lobbying state legislatures to keep their products in favor. [Republic Report, 5-4-12] The new national Common Core Standards are also creating a bonanza for companies that make textbooks and assessment materials.
• Pennsylvania has a contract with Data Recognition Corporation. Taxpayers in the Keystone state are footing the bill for average spending of $32.2 million a year on testing students. [Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings, report Nov. 2012] That’s a lot of money that is not getting spent on actually educating children.
• Struggling school districts are increasingly turning to hybrid or “blended” learning models to deliver content at least partially on-line as a cost-savings measure. A major 2010 Department of Education review of the literature found that blended-learning does not offer better learning outcomes for students, but it will surely be good for corporate bottom lines. Pearson is promoting its Connections Learning as the solution to schools looking to close their achievement gap and reduce the cost of teachers.
• Finally, don’t forget about ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council where corporate members write business-friendly laws and have them introduced word-for-word into state legislatures. In education reform, ALEC promotes the unregulated expansion of charters and vouchers, keeping both unaccountable to the public while taking away control from local democratically elected school board officials. In Pennsylvania, ALEC issued a guide helpfully pointing out how legislators could get around our troublesome constitution, which prevents public money from being spent on religious schools. The Gates Foundation granted $375,000 to ALEC from 2010-2013, before cutting all ties with the organization last spring after becoming the target of an online petition that gathered over 23,000 signatures in just a few hours. [See “There’s Nothing Smart About ALEC”]

Now that’s a lot of money coming from a lot of sources. It’s helpful to think about the “big tent” metaphor here: there are many Big Money players in this tent, with multiple motivations. Clearly some are driven by profit motive and stand to make a lot of money. Some share ultra-right interests in de-unionization and de-regulation and are happy to push those interests in the field of education. Many others are driven by an ideological agenda of corporate-style education reform. One thing is for sure: all that Big Money under one big tent is having an enormous impact on our public schools.

Astroturf

They’re heeeeeere! Yes, we’ve been watching the astroturf groups set up shop in Pennsylvania, and now they are here in Pittsburgh. Astroturf groups are fake grassroots organizations. They are funded by deep pockets, manipulated to look like local efforts to give the impression that they represent real community opinion. But they are as authentic as a field of plastic grass. (For a great example, see this explanation of Parent Revolution, an astroturf group in California funded by venture capitalists interested in charterizing public schools through parent trigger laws.)

The first astroturf group popped up here like a weed last month just as the weather started to warm. Called “Shepherding the Next Generation,” this Washington D.C. based group received money from the Gates Foundation to start working in Pittsburgh. They’re not hiding that fact – it’s right there in small print at the bottom of the flyer they are passing out to local churches in an effort to recruit them (though it’s not on their web site). They call themselves an “alliance of Pittsburgh religious leaders who strongly support community efforts to make sure our children have the best chance at succeeding in school and later in life.” So far, sounds good, right?

Well, first of all, there is no alliance. The group just hired an organizer who has been approaching churches – especially those in our African American communities – to try to encourage them to join. Want a real alliance of religious leaders who have been actively working on public education for the past three years? Try PIIN, the Pennsylvania Interfaith Impact Network, with over 50 area congregational members (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Unitarian, and everything in between).

What Shepherding the Next Generation is really up to is promoting the Gates agenda of teacher evaluation: “We work to educate our clergy members about the critical elements for improving our schools, focusing on teaching effectiveness and helping kids to succeed. The clergy then, in turn, help educate their congregations and the public. … while also encouraging  Pittsburgh Schools to adopt the most effective ways to hire, retain and train good teachers.” [SNG flyer]

As we know, the Gates Foundation has been pouring its money into teacher evaluation programs around the country, including $40 million to the Pittsburgh Public School district for teacher evaluation. [See “The VAM Sham”] The problem with this is twofold. First, it focuses on the wrong thing. Gates and the corporate-style reformers who promote teacher evaluation will always say that teachers are the most important “in school” factor affecting learning — but really, this comes out to about 15-20% at most of measurable factors. By far the biggest influence on student learning is out-of-school factors.

And this is where poverty is the real story. So while Gates and others are pumping money into teacher evaluation and trying get “better” teachers, they refuse to acknowledge (or at least downplay) the very real role of poverty and its impact on our kids and learning. A favorite line of the corporate-reformers is that “poverty is no excuse” for student performance. But this is a huge equity issue. What if those organizations put all that money into real poverty programs? It pains me to think about our clergy here in Pittsburgh being urged to talk about fixing education by making teachers better, while ignoring poverty — the issue that should be near and dear to the hearts of all our faith leaders.

Second, even among in-school factors, we have to ask why the corporate-reformers are so focused on teachers. This starts with the assumption that we have a plague of bad teaching. And this is just not what I am seeing. Of course we want good teachers in front of every child. And of course we need to make sure that poor teachers are shown the door. (Though remember the definition of “bad” is a moving target – a “bad” teacher this year might have been great last year, and may be good next year – and much of what we really value in teaching, such as inspiring kids, cannot be measured on a high-stakes-test.) What I am seeing are teachers struggling with massive budget cuts, years of inequitable resource distribution, a drastic narrowing of the curriculum due to high-stakes-testing, and teachers battling a tidal wave of de-professionalization and vilification.

What if Shepherding the Next Generation put its time and resources into fighting for adequate, equitable, and sustainable state funding for our schools? Or lobbied Harrisburg for charter reform that would save our districts millions of desperately needed dollars? What if it helped us have a conversation about the impact of mass school closure on communities of color? What if it worked to help us build local schools into community centers, filled with vibrant resources for the entire neighborhood? Or helped us find creative business partners to fill unused school space?

Even those who are still fans of Gates and his agenda ought to be wary of this astroturf phenomenon. Having one of the wealthiest people on the planet funding outside organizations like this to come into a community and shift the public conversation seriously erodes democracy.

Now how about this group: the “Center for Public Justice” is another Washington D.C. based organization that just waltzed into town. In a Facebook invite that went up last week, the Center says it “has embarked on a new pilot program in the city of Pittsburgh called Christians Investing in Public Education.” What that investment will be is not clear. What is clear, however, is the Center’s evangelical religious mission. The group calls homosexuality “abnormal and immoral” and an “unhealthy form of human relationship.” [CPJ website] They oppose gay marriage and don’t believe in reproductive rights.

They do believe in our public taxpayer dollars being used to fund private religious schools, despite the fact that it’s against our state constitution. (See discussion of the Blaine Amendment, under “There’s Nothing Smart About ALEC”.) The Center believes that “public funding should be offered without regard to the religious, philosophical, or pedagogical differences among the variety of certified schools parents choose.” To this end, the group explicitly promotes vouchers and religious charter schools.

The Center also wants to de-regulate what is taught in school. They argue, “Schools receiving public support, whether via vouchers or directly, should be free to hire staff and to design curricula that reflect their distinctive educational, philosophical, and religious missions.” What this really means, of course, is that teachers ought to be able to teach creationism in science class. Never mind that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that this violates the establishment clause of the U.S. constitution (the separation of church and state). There is even a 2005 federal decision that came out of a Pennsylvania court case ruling that “intelligent design” and creationism are the same thing and may not be taught in public schools.

This is a hot topic right now, as a Post-Gazette report this past weekend revealed. Almost 20% of science teachers believe in creationism. And a Penn State survey found that despite the law, between 17-21% of teachers bring the concept into their classrooms. [Post-Gazette, 4-28-13] Have you seen the 4^th grade “science” quiz making the rounds on Facebook this past month? It shows the astonishing way in which “young earth” creationists (who take the Bible literally and believe the Earth is only 10,000 years old despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary) are teaching school children that people and dinosaurs lived together on the planet.

Unfortunately, this Center for Public Justice group planned to host three sessions this week – using Pittsburgh Public School space – to meet with parents, teachers, and school administrators. The Education Law Center verified that the school district has a facility use policy allowing all groups to request space. This is obviously a good thing as far as free speech is concerned. But it also means that our own public schools might be forced to host bigoted groups like this one bent on privatizing them right out of existence. So we have to stay vigilant about organizations that pop into town and ask lots of questions.

Fortunately, after we started doing just that last week, the Center announced that it is “postponing” its sessions. Who knows if their decision is related or if they will be back? But we better be on the lookout, because these groups with clear privatization agendas and astroturf organizations have found the road to Pittsburgh. They might be surprised to learn that Yinzer Nation is no fan of the fake stuff – even Heinz Field has real green grass for our beloved Steelers. And PNC Park sports the real stuff for our Pirates, too. Astroturf us? Git’aht!

Two Steps Forward, One Back

This is how you make progress. One step at a time. Last week, we saw two steps forward, and one giant step back for public education. The good news first:

On Thursday, Governor Corbett signed a much-needed new law that will help to fix the state’s special education funding formula. Sponsored by Republicans Rep. Bernie O’Neill and Sen. Pat Browne with strong bi-partisan support in both the House and Senate, House Bill 2 creates a new commission that will develop a formula taking into account actual numbers of special education students and their needs. Rhonda Brownstein, Executive Director of the Education Law Center, called the legislation “historic.” [Education Law Center, 4-26-13]

The Education Policy and Leadership Center explains, “The current formula assumes that the average daily enrollment of each district includes 16% of students with special needs.  A new formula will aim to reflect actual costs incurred by districts and distribute the money accordingly.” The new commission will also make sure that school districts don’t over-identify the number of eligible students, and will take into account geographic variations in costs. The commission must make its report by September, and any formula they develop will not go into effect unless the General Assembly acts on it – and even then, the formula will only apply to the distribution of any increased funding. [EPLC, 4-26-13]

In another step forward, the House Education Committee last week held a public hearing on bullying and suicide prevention. [EPLC, 4-26-13] This is a significant issue that needs to be addressed as part of a larger conversation about school climate issues, with a particular focus on equity.

But just as we saw these forward steps, the House took a giant step back, approving a suite of corporate tax cuts proposed by Governor Corbett. Once in place, the tax breaks will cost us taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars – that’s hundreds of millions in lost revenue for the state and money that won’t be available to fund our public goods, including schools. While these tax cuts are defended by the Governor as necessary for creating future revenues, according to the EPLC some estimate “that there will only be $1 dollar of new revenue generated for every $7 of tax cuts for some businesses.” [EPLC, 4-26-13]

Speaking of revenue, the state took in slightly less than they projected in March, but the Pennsylvania School Funding Campaign tells us that overall, “for the year total revenues remain slightly ahead of what was projected for the first nine months.” We haven’t heard much from legislators about the budget because, “Most lawmakers are anxiously awaiting the end-of-April report before deciding to move forward with legislative budget proposals.” [PA School Funding Campaign, 4-22-13]

The school funding campaign – a coalition of 30 education groups – will be holding a press conference in the capitol rotunda tomorrow morning at 10AM, telling legislators and Governor Corbett that they need to prioritize funding for public education. The proposed plan addresses the nearly $1billion cut in 2011 (and locked in again in 2012), by restoring $270 million each of the next three years. Now that would be a huge step forward.