The University of Missouri system has been besieged with angry letters and phone calls, and top officials at its St. Louis campus have asked an adjunct faculty member to resign, as a result of the conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s posting videos this week that appear to show two labor-studies instructors advocating union violence.

The videos, however, were a “hatchet Job”.

Yet, “both Mr. Giljum and Ms. Ancel [the instructors] said they have been barraged with angry phone calls and letters, and Mr. Giljum said he has received explicit death threats over the phone.”

I assume the contradiction does not go unnoticed. The story continues:

If Mr. Breitbart’s Web site has broadcast a misleadingly edited video, it would hardly be the first time. The site is notorious for having put up the video that purported to show a Department of Agriculture official, Shirley Sherrod, saying she had discriminated against a white farmer, when a review of her comments in context show that she said no such thing. (Ms. Sherrod, who was forced to resign after the video came out, has sued Mr. Breitbart.)

Mr. Breitbart’s Web site also publicized the 2009 hidden-camera videos of employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, which appear to show the employees advising a pimp and prostitute on how to deceive the IRS about their activities and income. Law-enforcement officials who investigated the allegations have said the videos were edited to make it look as if the employees were actively engaged in wrongdoing when, in fact, they were not.

Mr. Breitbart had indicated in an April 18 interview on Hannity, Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, that he planned to “go after” educators and their union organizers.

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Let’s dissect two bold premises of Gates’ argument about US spending and student outcomes – how we’ve spent ourselves crazy for decades and how we’ve gotten nothing for it – how we spend so much more than other countries, but they kick our butts – his reasons for arguing that now is the time to flip the curve.

Read his entire post.

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First it was changes to pay, then evaluation systems, and then tenure laws. Now, lawmakers in several states are challenging collective bargaining, the foundation of teacher unionism.

In Idaho and Indiana, Republican leaders are proposing bills that would limit collective bargaining to wages and benefits, excluding education policy issues. And in Tennessee, a recently introduced bill would abolish altogether teachers’ ability to bargain collectively.

None of the proposals has yet passed its respective legislative chambers, but they are emerging in what may be a particularly favorable political climate, given the rightward shift in many state capitals as a result of the November elections…

At least three states have proposed bills to curtail or eliminate teacher bargaining. other states could follow suit.

IDAHO

SPONSORS: State Superintendent Tom Luna, a Republican, has proposed two bills. At press time, they awaited a sponsor and bill numbers.

One bill would limit negotiations to wages and compensation and require such negotiations to be held in open meetings. It would disallow “continuation clauses” in contracts—essentially clearing all previous policies for each negotiation. A second bill would require school districts to post copies of their current school district budgets and collective bargaining pacts on their websites.

INDIANA

SB 575: SPONSORS: Sens. Phil Boots, (R), Luke Kenley (R), Ed Charbonneau (R)

The bill would remove certain items from collective bargaining negotiations, including teacher-evaluation procedures, teacher-dismissal procedures, and school restructuring options, among others. it also would permit districts to impose certain employment terms if the teachers’ contract expires without a new one in place. contracts could not extend beyond two years.

STATUS: Passed Senate committee on Pensions and Labor, Jan. 27

HB 1337: SPONSORS: Reps. Robert Behning (R), David Frizzell (R)

Similar to the Senate bill, it also would alter the teacher-evaluation framework and allow for the dismissal of tenured teachers for performance reasons.

STATUS: Referred to house committee on Education, Jan. 13

TENNESSEE: HB 0130 — SPONSORS: Reps. Debra Maggart (R), Glen Casada (R)

The bill would prohibit teachers’ unions and other professional employees’ organizations from negotiating employment contracts with local school boards. Labor contracts signed before enactment of the bill would remain in force through their expiration.

STATUS: Filed for introduction, Jan. 18

SOURCE: Education Week

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From Teacher Blogs, Living in Dialogue

On Wednesday, listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR, I heard an expert on the auto industry, Paul Ingrassia, talk happily about the “tough love” the Obama administration had shown for auto workers. Using the device of bankruptcy to break contractual obligations to their employees, the US car makers have reduced their labor costs from 30% of the cost of a car to just 6%. Now, even though they are selling fewer cars, the car makers are raking in the billions again.

Ingrassia explained it this way:

So if we can, you know, at least address the problems of Detroit with promises, the promise of improvement, or even a cure, why can’t we apply the same tough-love methods to the federal budget deficit and the whole entitlement structure that we have in this country that has helped produce that deficit, and also to the public employee pension plans that are threatening to bankrupt many of our states? Those are huge problems that will swamp this country if they’re not addressed.

There was a very interesting op-ed piece a couple of days ago in The Wall Street Journal by a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania suggesting that Congress should pass a law that allows states to declare bankruptcy. And, you know, it’s not a bad thought. And there’s no way that GM and Chrysler would have made it through this restructuring without the ability to renounce contracts and, you know, to renounce their financial obligations that they have accumulated over the years that they could not afford to meet.

And the shoe dropped just a day later, when the New York Times reported that “Policy makers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states declare bankruptcy and get out from under crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers.”

It is interesting to note Ingrassia’s use of the phrase “tough love.” In Michelle Rhee’s plan to fix the schools she simplisticly declares are, she says we must “Ensure that the government exercises discipline in pension and benefit programs.” So there must be tough love and discipline – we are being treated as if we were children bingeing on ice cream.

We are not children. We are adults who have chosen to teach, a not very well-paid profession. And those of us who have chosen to make it a career look forward to the day when we can cease grading papers and calling parents, and enjoy a few years of hard-earned rest before we go off to the teacher’s lounge in the sky. Our pensions are a form of deferred compensation. That money has already been earned, and the obligation to us is very real.

This is one more step towards the destruction of our profession. We need people to choose teaching as a career because it is complex work that deepens year after year. The first or second year intern may have good test scores, but they have a great deal to learn – as most of them will tell you. But when we make everything about test scores, and base everything – pay, hiring, evaluations – on these scores, we have lost the foundation for our profession, and any intern with a repertoire of test prep techniques is as “effective” as a seasoned veteran. This crass definition of effectiveness allows the embrace of policies that devalue experience and seniority, and things like pensions that promote career longevity, in favor of cost-cutting measures. We need a profession that creates stability in our schools, not the constant churn that makes the veteran teacher a rarity, and robs us of the dynamic mix that results when novices and veterans collaborate together to learn how innovative practices can meld with traditional ones.

But take careful note, when Mr. Ingrassia talks about the “entitlement structure we have in this country,” these are code words for Social Security, the other target in the sights of the billionaires. So we are in good company. It is not just public employees that stand to lose our pensions – it is every person who does not have an independent means of supporting themselves when they retire. And this is both the greatest danger, and our greatest hope. We need to help our fellow Americans understand – they are coming for ALL of our pensions. Teachers and other public employees are taking some big hits, but the biggest pot of gold of all is Social Security, and that will affect every wage earner in the nation. We need some good old fashioned solidarity. And we need to get ourselves into the streets for some old fashioned protests. I am headed to Washington, DC, this summer, and it looks like I have some company.

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According the article, “The three rules challenged by the career college group have also generated their share of concern among some nonprofit college officials, since they apply broadly to all institutions whose students receive federal financial aid.”

The lawsuit asks the courts to block the federal agency from enforcing three regulations that it claims “go far beyond lawful regulatory efforts.”

Federal plans to require vocationally oriented colleges to prove that they prepare students for “gainful employment” will likely be opposed in future lawsuits when those rules are released.

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“Michigan’s MEAP test could undergo a radical change by the 2014-15 school year — becoming an online assessment given in schools across the country.”

“Michigan adopted the common core standards in June, a requirement to be part of the Smarter Balances Assessment Consortium, a group of states creating the new standardized test.”

This of course is based on the Race to the Top Assessment Program. “Creation of the new test is contingent upon $350 million in U.S. Department of Education grants expected to be handed out in September. Part of the Race to the Top money was set aside for two grants to develop assessments for common core standards.”

“Faster test results could make helping kids easier” — as if that were the main problem identified by teachers, students and parents. At least for lead poisoned families living in Detroit, this represents a violent aloofness of immense proportion.

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From Alan Singer’s July 2 piece in The Huffington Post, a few important trends are noted. For example:

But a closer look at the Locke [highschool] miracle, way down in the Times article, exposes what has actually taken place there. In 2007, a former principal complained that Locke was the Los Angles dumping ground for problem students. Only 15% of its students could pass the state standardized math test. The first thing Green Dot did was get rid of all the troubled students and bring in a fresh supply. It also dumped most of the teachers – keeping those prepared to work longer hours for less pay, what it defined as enthusiasm. Locke reopened in Fall 2008 with a new freshman class. Green Dot also fixed up the place to make it attractive for the photo ops.

The big problem was cost, although Green Dot is a non-profit company, its administrators do get paid. The four year turnaround at Locke was $15 million over budget. This does not include part of a $60 million grant from the Gates Foundation to support state development, which makes the actual cost of the turnaround much higher. Unfortunately, the federal government has set a $6 million cap for the reorganization of an individual school. Green Dot is now more than 150% over budget. The rest of the money, $9 million, was covered by donations from foundations, supposed charities, but often business groups hoping to make lucrative profits from the dismantling of public education.

Locke is actually a good model of what educational change will really cost. The school now has additional administrators, security, two psychologists, busing, and health services for students, in addition to staff development provided by the Gates Foundation. None of this has anything to do with being a charter school. This is just the real cost of educating inner city children.

I think that any school would show improvement wtih the extensive investment of those kinds of resources — except for the reportedly aggressive use of force.

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, New York questions have been raised about another miracle charter school, the Hebrew Language Academy. While 15% of the students in New York City are white, white children make up two-thirds of the students attending this school. This is essentially a private religious school for white Jewish families financed with government money. The parents have made this very clear, explaining in a New York Times article that if it were not the Hebrew Language Academy they would be paying $20,000 a year to send their children to private religious schools. Additionally, the curriculum is chauvinistically pro-Israel. There are Israeli flags all over the building and children sing songs about Israeli pioneers who built homes on empty land, the area’s Arab population conveniently ignored.

This school also receives outside money to operate, from a Jewish philanthropist named Michael Steinhardt who also happens to be a hedge fund manger and a big financial supporter of Israel. The school’s organizers, using Steinhardt’s money, plan to open a string of similar charter schools around the country.

So, not only are charters associated with increasing segregation by class and race, we here too see the ideological sifting and public support for religious instruction that will take place.

And finally, the last part is suggestive an all too common connection between charter operators, fraud and abuse.

This superhero principal actually grew up in this Bronx neighborhood and has an understanding of the life faced by these kids. However, he is in constant trouble with school authorities and has bounced from school to school. He is now under investigation by the Department of Education for three serious rule violations and was suspended at least once.

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This piece offers a good example of countering disinformation in thinking about education. Some highlights include:

“Accountability,” a term that has been with us, late and soon. Its six syllables trip by as the background white noise in the liturgy of higher education…You know what happens with liturgies: after so many repetitions, there is no recompense. We don’t really know what we are saying. In this case, the six-syllable perfect scan, “accountability,” simply floats by as what we assume to be a self-evident reality. Even definitions wind up in circles, e.g., “In education, accountability usually means holding colleges accountable for the learning outcomes produced.” One hopes Burck Smith, whose paper containing this sentence was delivered at an American Enterprise Institute conference last November, held a firm tongue-in-cheek with the core phrase.

The 2005 report of the National Commission on Accountability in Higher Education puts “accountability” in a pinball machine where “goals” become “objectives” become “priorities” become “goals” again. One wins points along the way, but has no idea of what they represent.

In fact, all levels of education are subjected to this confusion: standards are confused with goals such that the desired outcome is confused with the indicators of the outcome, leading to the dehumanizing act of teaching to the test. Instead of teaching being driven by goals — by philosophy and a broad sense of purpose — the indicators become the goals.  This process has now morphed into the mindless repeating of pet phrases of granting agencies and other “decision makers” to show “buy in”.  I suppose it is evidence of the irrationality of marketing “group think” in addition to the decline in rationale public discourse.

Adelman continues:

So what kind of creature is this species called “accountability”? Readers who recall Joseph Burke’s introductory chapter to his Achieving Accountability in Higher Education (Wiley, 2004) will agree that I am hardly the first nearsighted crazy person to ask the question. This essay will come at the word in a different way and from a different tradition than Burke’s political theory.

I am inviting readers to join in thinking about accountability together, with the guidance of some questions that are both metaphysical and practical. Our adventure through these questions is designed as a prodding to all who use the term to tell us what they are talking about before they otherwise simply echo the white noise.

And I hope people join in; as one last excerpt:

If accountability in higher education is a contractual relationship, we’ve got problems. The “goods” or “services” to be rendered by the offeror are usually indeterminate; there is no formal statement of obligations. The institution does not pledge to students that its efforts will produce specified learning, persistence and graduation, productive labor market entry, or a good life. We don’t put low persistence or graduation rates in a folder subject to educational malpractice suits. Nor does the institution pledge to public funding authorities that it will produce X number of graduates, Y dollars of economic benefits, or Z volume of specified community services, or be subject to litigation if it fails to reach these benchmarks.

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The data also show, for the first time in Detroit, a link between higher lead levels and poor academic performance. About 60% of DPS students who performed below their grade level on 2008 standardized tests had elevated lead levels.

The higher the lead levels, the lower the MEAP scores, though other factors also may play a role.

The research — the result of an unusual collaboration between the city’s Department of Health & Wellness Promotion and DPS — also reveals that children receiving special education were more likely to have lead poisoning.

The data, involving tens of thousands of city children, underscore the persistent and troubling legacy of lead, even as the overall number of lead cases continues to fall in Detroit and across the nation.

June Jackson didn’t realize until it was too late that her daughter Taylor, now 12, had high lead levels as a toddler. “I feel bad, like it’s my fault,” Jackson said. The girl receives special education and still struggles with reading and memory problems, which her mother attributes to lead.

“For years, we’ve blamed the schools and the teachers for kids failing,” said Brenda Gelman-Berkowitz, a school social worker for the district. These new findings, she said, show the answer may be more complicated. “We haven’t seen this connection with lead before. But I see evidence of it everywhere.”

Nightmare of lead a reality for many families in Detroit

Reggie Cureton doesn’t recall pulling bits of lead paint off the wall near his crib as a toddler and eating it. For a long time, his parents didn’t notice.

He was a bright baby who sat up early, walked early and recognized letters and colors early. But between the ages of 1 and 2, a blood test showed he had 21 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood — more than double the level of concern set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now 9, Reggie is great at building with Legos but struggles with reading, memory and paying attention.

Reggie’s challenges are familiar to his mother, Jeanine, who has her own history of lead contamination — and to generations of families living in Detroit. Despite significant declines in Detroit, thousands of children continue to be diagnosed with lead poisoning each year, a by-product of older homes with lead-based paint, pervasive poverty and an often unhealthy diet.

‘These numbers are scary’

Now, a landmark study by the city health department and Detroit Public Schools of lead data and test scores shows that the higher the lead level, the worse a student’s scores on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program exam, or MEAP.

Overall, 58% of roughly 39,000 DPS students tested — 22,755 children — had a history of lead poisoning, according to the study.

Perhaps more startling: Of the 39,199 students tested as young children, only 23 had no lead in their bodies.

“These numbers are scary,” said Lyke Thompson, a Wayne State University professor who has studied lead poisoning in Detroit for more than a decade.

The correlation between high lead levels and low test scores carries particular resonance in Detroit, where students have fared poorly on academic achievement tests.

DPS students ranked last in the nation in 2009 on the National Assessment of Education Progress math test for fourth- and eighth-graders. The city’s MEAP scores are consistently among the lowest in the state.

“This is a crisis,” said Carole Ann Beaman, disabilities coordinator for DPS. “There is a clear connection between lead poisoning and academic problems, which is relevant to understanding achievement gaps and why schools are failing.”

Other factors — including poverty and parents’ level of education — may play a role. But the impact of lead on test scores has lingered in the shadows. Until now.

DPS emergency financial manager Robert Bobb said lead exposure is one factor that leaves some kids poorly prepared for school.

“Schools can be partners by, among other things, emphasizing reading early, as we have done, ensuring healthy foods in the cafeteria and making certain that physical education is universal,” Bobb said. “Sadly, these results are not a surprise,” said Marie Lynn Miranda, a former Detroiter and director of the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative at Duke University.

Miranda led http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1940087/” target=”_blank”>studies in North Carolina and Connecticut that linked lead exposure to lower reading scores. “People have gotten complacent about lead.”

No level is safe

In 1991, the CDC set 10 micrograms as its level of concern for lead in children, but dozens of studies have shown brain damage at lower levels.

Many experts count kids with levels of 5 micrograms as lead-poisoned. The CDC said in 2005 that there is no safe level of lead for children. Although there are many ways children are exposed, most cases are from paint in homes.

Last year, more than 5,000 cases of lead poisoning were diagnosed in Detroit children younger than 6. More than 800 of those kids had lead levels of 10 micrograms or higher.

Exposure to lead in young children damages developing brains — and its effects are permanent, so once a child has high levels, the harm is done. Detroit has long led the state in lead poisoning, consistently accounting for more than 50% of Michigan’s cases.

“This is an educational crisis, and we should be doing something about it,” said Randall Raymond, geographic information specialist for DPS who helped analyze the data.

School and health officials compared lead levels in children with student test scores on the 2008 MEAP exam to determine whether lead affected academic performance.

Such studies are rare because medical records are confidential. Schools usually don’t know which kids are poisoned.

Analysts were able to find lead test results for nearly half the current students in DPS (not every child is tested) and determine the schools and areas of the cities most affected.

Results also showed that kids in special education had higher lead levels.

WSU nursing professor Lisa Chiodo studied a group of Detroit children from birth to age 20. The study showed that kids with higher lead levels had lower IQs — findings consistent with decades of research nationally.

Children with lead poisoning can become discouraged. One study found these students are seven times more likely to drop out than those with low levels.

Because of problems with learning and memory, these children tend to be easily frustrated, inattentive and withdrawn, Chiodo said. By adolescence, this frustration can turn to aggression or delinquency.

Chiodo said it’s time to do something to help. “We need curriculums for lead-exposed kids,” Chiodo said. “We need interventions.”

A family affected

The Cureton family is well aware of the damage lead causes.

Mom Jeanine Cureton, now 26, was 2 1/2 when she was diagnosed with lead poisoning so severe she needed chelation, injections of chemicals that draw lead from the body. Her lead level was 87 micrograms.

“They told my mom not to expect much from me as far as learning ability,” she said. “But I had a praying mom who worked with me.”

Cureton didn’t finish high school, reads at a grade-school level and struggles with memory problems, but she hopes to finish her education and dreams of being a nurse.

When their son Reggie was diagnosed as a toddler with lead poisoning, she and her husband, Reginald, thought they were doing all the right things, including frequently mopping floors and window sills to keep lead dust down.

But their second son, Maurice, now 7, also had high lead levels. The culprit was lead dust in the home’s carpet, an assessment found.

That was two houses ago.

The foreclosed house they bought in March has lead, too, tests show. The family hopes to remediate it with the help of ClearCorps, a nonprofit program that tests homes and helps families get rid of lead by stripping, sanding and repainting walls and trim.

In the meantime, the parents say they do everything they can to keep their youngest children from getting lead poisoning, and they work to stimulate the brains of the two oldest.

They also moved the older boys out of DPS — where Reggie had been having difficulties — to the private Detroit Merit Academy, where students get fruit and veggie snacks, journals to log how much they read at home and specialized learning plans.

“We work with our kids,” said Reginald Cureton. That means reading books with them, working on phonics and vocabulary, a computer program to teach them Spanish, trips to the Detroit Zoo, growing a garden and leaving motivation tips on the refrigerator.

“We want to do things with and for our kids that we didn’t have,” Jeanine Cureton said.

‘Gives me hope’

Experts say the Curetons are on the right track in working to minimize lead’s damage.

Tomas Guilarte, chairman of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, led a 2003 study, which found that a stimulating environment could improve the learning in lead-poisoned rats. Experts are excited by the research, which has not yet been done on humans.

“That study gives me hope,” said researcher Miranda of Duke.

Miranda led a 2009 study in North Carolina that found lead exposure helps explain the achievement gap between African-American and white students in reading tests.

Similar studies have produced similar results in Chicago, Massachusetts and Connecticut, Miranda said.

Kids need intervention at an early age to help them overcome some of the effects of lead poisoning, several experts said.

WSU’s Chiodo and Teresa Holtrop, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Michigan, said they hope to get a grant this year for a computer program called CogMed. Studies have shown that working with the program 30 minutes a day for five weeks can improve children’s memories, which in turn improves learning.

The Curetons are upbeat about the prospects for Reggie and Maurice. Lately, the kids have been doing origami projects, folding paper into complex figures and shapes.

“Our kids are very persistent and don’t give up,” said Reginald Cureton. “Lead is still affecting them, but not to the point they can’t move forward.”

Contact TINA LAM: 313-222-6421 or tlam@freepress.com

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And,

“In the case of the latter reform strategy of declaring the facts irrelevant, New Jersey’s (and the Business Roundtable’s) Education Commissioner, Bret Schundler, provides a prime example. Because the reality does not fit the “terrible teacher” narrative that Governor Christie has adopted, two days ago Schundler denounced New Jersey Public Schools as a “wretched system” and the state’s #1 national ranking on the NAEP in both 4th and 8th grade reading and math as “irrelevant.” Facts don’t fit the ideology? Just declare them meaningless.”

From  the NYDailynews: “”Wealthy investors and major banks have been making windfall profits by using a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction. The program, the New Markets Tax Credit, is so lucrative that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years. In Albany, which boasts the state’s highest percentage of charter school enrollments, a nonprofit called the Brighter Choice Foundation has employed the New Markets Tax Credit to arrange private financing for five of the city’s nine charter schools.”

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