David Wald died of throat and neck cancer on May 27th, after a 9-year battle with the disease.  He was only 61 years old.

One of the bravest people I’ve ever known, David was a wonderful colleague and friend. Gentle and smart, David mentored everyone in the Learning Matters office, leading by example and encouragement. Television is a team sport, and David always put the team first.  While he often came up with the best ideas for how to tell a particular story or figured out a solution to problems we were wrestling with, he never, ever took credit, preferring to see the team keep its eye on the ball.

Although David was 13 years younger than I am, he taught me so much about television, life, and human relationships.  For this, I will always be grateful.

When cancer struck, David expressed his determination to keep on contributing to Learning Matters and our work for the NewsHour.  And he did, often editing video and scripts from home.  He endured a number of regimens and trials, some of which worked for a while, but inevitably the cancer returned, usually in a new place in his body.  He never complained.

At one point about 18 months ago, David came into my office, smiling broadly.  His last three CAT scans had been completely clear, and his doctors were saying that his cancer was gone.  As his wife, Betsy, said, it was the first time in years that they had gone to sleep without the heavy rock of cancer on their chests, and awakened without that rock still pressing on them.  They had a blessed six months of stress-free life, and then the damn cancer returned, as he said “with a vengeance.”  

I hired David to help us produce a major film about higher education. Although he’d never dug deeply into education, what mattered was that he knew how to find stories. We had decided to spend a year on four college campuses: Amherst, the University of Arizona, the Community College of Denver, and Western Kentucky University.  David was in his element.  He found students and faculty eager to reveal their innermost thoughts, which they did on camera. Most remarkably, a senior at Arizona chose to tell–and show–a national audience how he was cheating and drinking his way through college.  A (tenured) faculty member admitted–on camera–that she and her students had an unspoken contract: if they didn’t expect too much from her (so she could do research), she would not expect much from them–and they’d get good grades.  

The film, Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk, caused a stir, to put it mildly.

David was full of energy, a Renaissance man who jumped from airplanes, ran marathons, went to Burning Man, and quoted Plato.  He also had a sly sense of humor.  Here’s David’s wit at work. He orchestrated this entire piece, under my nose no less. It was a complete surprise at our holiday party in December 2004.

His home town newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, ran this obituary about the Emmy-winning producer who was in many ways the heart and soul of Learning Matters. 

One more point about David.  This letter from Lisa Hannah, the assistant principal of a school in Belmar, NJ, arrived after David and our colleague John Tulenko produced a memorable piece about how the school and its staff responded after Hurricane Sandy hit the town of Belmar hard. The segment ran on the NewsHour.  In the piece, Ms. Hannah related her conversation with one child — “A little girl, when we opened up the school for lunch today, she’s walking in the dark because the lights were not on. She said, ‘oh, I’m so happy to be back at school. I feel so safe.”

I reprint the letter  because it demonstrates David’s commitment to reporting that makes a difference.  David wasn’t content to simply tell the story. He wanted to move our audience, and he often did.

In the wake of one of the most devastating natural disasters the small shore town of Belmar, New Jersey had suffered in decades, school administrators knew that the school community of 577 students would suffer tremendous challenges in recovering and restoring a sense of normalcy and order in school. The population of students included more than 50% from economically disadvantaged homes, many of whom hailed from non-native English speaking backgrounds. These families were financially fragile even prior to the storm, and the wrath wrought by Superstorm Sandy shifted the imbalance into even more dire circumstances for many families.

When approached by Learning Matters producers David Wald and John Tulenko about following school administrators during the early days after the storm in coordinating relief efforts for our families, we had no idea what to expect. The resulting piece, which featured the plight of our district in identifying and meeting the needs of our families without the the aid of electricity or phone communication, produced a powerful response from around the country.

Immediately following the airing of the segment on November 12th, we were inundated with phone calls, emails, and donations of school supplies, clothing, and financial gifts from other school districts, community members, businesses, and private citizens. These donations were immediately channeled to students, families, and staff members most in need, including 43 displaced students and several staff members unable to return to their destroyed homes.

Some of the most poignant outreach efforts included a school district from Olney, Maryland who traveled in caravan up to Belmar one cold Saturday afternoon with hundreds of new toys for the holidays, school supplies for students and teachers, and gift bags for school leaders who were working continually to meet the needs of the students. As the NewsHour piece gained momentum in social networking circles and the Internet, thousands of dollars in gift cards and donations arrived each day offering continual relief and support to families as they tried to provide a semblance of the holiday season for their families. Young students from other schools around the country traveled to the school to personally present checks resulting from the hard work of lemonade stands and other industrious efforts designed to raise funds for the students of our school.

The stories go on and on and on…..folks stopping by saying they had seen the segment and wished to anonymously drop off hundreds of warm blankets, book bags, or other helpful donations, warm words of encouragement received via email, phone messages and in the mail.

As a result of the response from the News Hour, we were invited to share our story with the local and national media, as well as to testify before the State Assembly Education Committee to describe the impact of the storm upon our district and in our community. And each time, the same thing would be heard…”We saw that incredible piece on PBS NewsHour and we were so moved….”

As we look toward the upcoming months of this challenging school year, we look forward to a very special day that will be a direct result of the generous donations to our school, much of which was in response to viewers seeing the segment…. a day of healing called “Belmar Strong” beach celebration. On this special day in May 2013, our students will walk in numbers the few blocks to the beach wearing Belmar Strong t-shirts to participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony with food and music that will mark the official opening of one of the most treasured and memorable landmarks in our town, the beach! The Mayor and Council will join us in welcoming not only the students of Belmar, but the many students and staff members of other schools who stood by us during this difficult time and provided hope, inspiration, and a bit of comfort and fellowship.

Thank you again for the beautiful piece you produced for our district and the dignified manner in which you portrayed our families and their plight. We have all benefited from the outpouring of generosity, compassion, and unity so many others have shown as a result of watching.

Lisa Hannah
Assistant Principal/Director of Curriculum
Belmar School District

Thank you, David, for sharing your gifts with us.  Rest in peace, my friend.

These test questions will help you understand why American students score lower in mathematics than their counterparts in most advanced nations.  I found these examples a few years ago while surfing the web.   The first sample problem was offered by the University of Wisconsin/Oshkosh to high school math teachers and was designed to help ‘Close the Math Achievement Gap.’

Jack shot a deer that weighed 321 pounds. Tom shot a deer that weighed 289 pounds.   How much more did Jack’s deer weigh than Tom’s deer?

Basic subtraction for high school students?   

My second example came from TeacherVision, part of Pearson, the giant testing company:

Linda is paddling upstream in a canoe. She can travel 2 miles upstream in 45 minutes. After this strenuous exercise she must rest for 15 minutes. While she is resting, the canoe floats downstream ½ mile. How long will it take Linda to travel 8 miles upstream in this manner?

This question’s premise is questionable.  Will some students be distracted by Linda’s cluelessness?  Won’t they ask themselves how long it will take her to figure out that she should grab hold of a branch while she’s resting in order to keep from floating back down the river?  What’s the not-so-subtle subtext? That girls don’t belong in canoes?  That girls are dumb?

I found my third sample question (I’m calling it “Snakes”) on a high school math test in Oregon:

There are 6 snakes in a certain valley.  The population doubles every year. In how many years will there be 96 snakes?

1. 2
2. 3
3. 4
4. 8

These three high school math problems require simple numeracy at most.  With enough practice, just about anyone can solve undemanding problems like that–and consequently feel confident of their ability.

School is supposed to be preparation for life, but spending time on problems like those three is like trying to become an excellent basketball player by shooting free throws all day long.  To be good at basketball, players must work on all aspects of the game: jump shots, dribbling, throwing chest and bounce passes, positioning for rebounds, running the pick-and-roll and—occasionally–practicing free throws.

Come to think of it, basketball and life are similar. Both are about rhythm and motion, teamwork and individual play, offense and defense.  Like life, it can slow down or become frenetic. Basketball requires thinking fast, shifting roles and having your teammates’ backs.  Successful players know when to shoot and when to pass. As in life, failure is part of the game.  Even the greatest players miss over half of their shots, and some (Michael Jordan!) are cut from their high school teams.  And life doesn’t give us many free throw opportunities.

But if school is supposed to be preparation for life, why are American high school students being asked to count on their fingers?  That mind-numbing and trivial work is the educational equivalent of shooting free throws.

My fourth example is a Common Core National Standards question for 8th graders in New York State. (Keep in mind that the Common Core is supposed to introduce much needed ‘rigor’ to the curriculum.)  

Triangle ABC was rotated 90° clockwise. Then it underwent a dilation centered at the origin with a scale factor of 4. Triangle A’B’C’ is the resulting image.  What parts of A’B’C’ are congruent to the corresponding parts of the original triangle?  Explain your reasoning.

This problem represents the brave new world of education’s Common Core, national standards adopted at one point by 45 states and the District of Columbia. This new approach exposes students to higher and more ‘rigorous’ standards. The hope is that the curriculum will challenge and engage students.   Reading that prose, are you feeling ‘engaged’?  Now imagine how 8th graders might feel.

If the first three problems are the educational equivalent of practicing free throws, then solving problems like this one is akin to spending basketball practice taking trick shots like hook shots from midcourt—another way not to become good at the sport.  

If schools stick with undemanding curricula and boring questions, our kids will be stuck at the free throw line, practicing something they will rarely be called upon to do in real life.  If (under the flag of ‘greater rigor’) we ditch those boring questions in favor of ‘Triangles’ and other lifeless questions, schools will turn off the very kids they are trying to reach, the 99% who are not destined to become mathematicians.

My fifth example is a question was given to 15-year-olds around the world on a test known as PISA (for Programme in International Student Assessment):

Mount Fuji is a famous dormant volcano in Japan.  The Gotemba walking trail up Mount Fuji is about 9 kilometres (km) long. Walkers need to return from the 18 km walk by 8 pm.  Toshi estimates that he can walk up the mountain at 1.5 kilometres per hour on average, and down at twice that speed. These speeds take into account meal breaks and rest times.  Using Toshi’s estimated speeds, what is the latest time he can begin his walk so that he can return by 8 pm?

Note that ‘Fuji’ is not a multiple-choice question.  To get the correct answer, students had to perform a number of calculations.  The correct answer was provided by 55% of the Shanghai 15-year-olds but just 9% of the US students.

Ironically, the PISA results revealed that American kids score high in ‘confidence in mathematical ability,’ despite underperforming their peers in most other countries.  Is their misplaced confidence the result of too many problems like ‘Snakes’?

(PS: A prize to the first reader who posts the correct answer!)

Education reporting has never been better than it is right now.  That said, there’s room for improvement.  That’s the conclusion I have come to after 41 years on the beat and after attending the annual meeting of the Education Writers Association in Boston last weekend.

When I got into the game in 1974, EWA was gasping for breath.  When I joined its Board in the late 70’s, I discovered that the executive director kept the organization’s financial records in a shoe box; moreover, there was no annual budget, just some numbers scribbled on a legal pad.  The education beat itself was, for most reporters, a way station, a stepping stone to something with prestige.  Only a handful of reporters like Mike Bowler, Anne Lewis, Ron Moskowitz and Fred Hechinger made a career out of reporting about schools.

When Lisa Walker became Executive Director of EWA, she and a revitalized Board brought EWA into the big leagues. Under current Executive Director Caroline Hendrie, the organization now stands alone as a model–and the education beat has become a beacon for reporters assigned to cover other issues. The EWA’s powerful ‘listserve’ allows reporters to stay connected and share insights and, when appropriate, sources.  

National coverage is strong: Chalkbeat (now in 4 states and expanding), The Hechinger Report, Pro Publica and Politico Education are providing outstanding national and local coverage. NPR (National Public Radio) has a strong education team, as does the PBS NewsHour (the latter team includes my former colleagues at Learning Matters).  Although Education Week is a trade publication, it remains a “must read” for anyone interested in the both the big picture and the weeds of the business.  (One of my regrets is that when we negotiated the merger into Ed Week, I did not ask for a lifetime subscription!)  There are more interesting education blogs than I could begin to count, and that’s a good thing.

When The Tampa Bay Times won a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, that clinched it: education had become THE cool and significant issue to cover!

However, troubles continue.  The reporting is generally better, but the audiences are smaller, particularly for the print reporting.  Is the news hole for education still shrinking because advertising is the largest determinant of the amount of space devoted to news? As far as I know, only NBC has a national correspondent assigned to cover education (the estimable Rehema Ellis), and, if you think about leaving public radio and searching elsewhere on the dial for education reporting, forget it.

There are important education stories waiting to be told, of course. My own list includes, in no particular order:

1) The ongoing reliance of high schools on ‘credit recovery’ to boost their graduation rates. Yes, graduation rates have climbed, but how much of the increase is due to quickie, computer-based ‘courses’ that students take in a week or two?

2) The widespread failure of online K-12 programs, particularly the on-line charter schools…and the continuing growth of same because politicians don’t seem to care. Here I think it’s worth following the money.

3) The reluctance of charter school leaders to weed out scammers and profiteers in the world of non-profit charter schools. I have written about this on my blog.

 4) The failure of the largely successful Opt-Out ‘Movement’ to say what it stands for (because we know what it’s opposed to).  If the ‘test-and-punish’ regime is going to be overthrown, how will schools assess student performance?  How should teachers be evaluated?  Who’s getting it right?

 5) How does it happen that school boards often are persuaded to spend lots of money on technology without a serious plan for using it? Los Angeles is the poster child, of course, but have other Boards learned their lesson?  Hardware and software are a $15-20 BILLION business in education.

 6) Why not look into intra-union power struggles between the national and state chapters and between state and local chapters? Chapters have been padlocked, and people have gone to prison.

7) Diane Ravitch against the billionaire funders of what she calls ‘corporate reform’ and others call ‘data-driven decision making’ is a superb feature story, in my opinion. She’s 76 years young….and she has Gates et alia on the ropes. How did this happen?

8) Speaking of Gates, perhaps a reporting team with an interest in history could dig into the connections between the Gates Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. The Foundation gave states big grants so they could hire McKinsey to help them write their ‘Race to the Top’ proposals.  How did requiring states to use student test scores to evaluate teachers become of of Race to the Top’s ‘four pillars,’ a requirement for getting the bailout money that schools so desperately needed?

You may have other suggestions, and, if I have missed some solid coverage of the issues I have listed, I apologize.

In sum, education reporters are getting it right.  Now keep on keeping on!

Remember those funny television commercials where two sports celebrities faux-argued about the benefits of Miller Lite beer?  One would shout and pound the table to make the point that Miller Lite “Tastes Great,” and the other would (supposedly) disagree by responding with equal fervor that it was “Less Filling.”

I’m suggesting an Education Reform version after a generation of high-stakes testing pressure brought on by No Child Left Behind and continued in the Obama Administration’s “Race to the Top” program.

If I were producing a series of ads, I would cast Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Kaya Henderson,  John King, Kati Haycock, Pearson Education President John Fallon, Eva Moskowitz, Campbell Brown and a few other prominent supporters of test-based reform.

One would pound the table and proclaim that our students “Test Great!”

Another would respond with equal fervor that our students are “Less Knowing!”

But yesterday I scrapped my plans for the campaign, because it turns out that, after years of test-based reform, our kids do NOT “Test Great,” although apparently they are “Less Knowing.”

Here’s what Jennifer Kerr reported for the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s not a promising picture for the nation’s high school seniors – they are slipping in math, not making strides in reading and only about one-third are prepared for the academic challenges of entry-level college courses.

Scores released Wednesday from the so-called Nation’s Report Card show one-quarter of 12th-graders taking the test performed proficiently or better in math. Only 37 percent of the students were proficient or above in reading.”

It turns out that scores are down five points over the last 23 years on the (poorly named) “National Assessment of Educational Progress.”  The newest NAEP scores also reveal a widening gap in math and reading between those who score well and those who do not. That has to be particularly disappointing to those reformers who go on and on about ‘Closing the Achievement Gap.’

Only 37% of students scored well enough in both reading and math to be deemed academically ready for college, roughly the same percentage as in 2013.

The executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which manages NAEP, told reporters, “We’re not making the academic progress that we need to so that there’s greater preparedness for post-secondary, for work, for military participation. These numbers aren’t going the way we want.”

Bill Bushaw did not try to explain why this is happening, nor did he blame the victim, but perhaps it’s time someone pointed out that test-based accountability, which has meant more drill and test prep and cuts in art, music, drama and all sorts of other courses that aren’t deemed ‘basic,’ has failed miserably–and there are victims.

Students have been the losers, sentenced to mind-numbing schooling. Teachers who care about their craft have been the losers. Craven administrators who couldn’t or didn’t stand up for what they know about learning have been the losers.  Add to the list of losers the general public, because the drumbeat of bad news has undercut faith in public education.

There are winners: The testing companies (particularly Pearson), the academics who’ve gotten big grants from major foundations, profiteers in the charter school industry, and ideologues and politicians who want to undermine public education.

As I see it, the underlying message of the newest NAEP results is that “The emperor has no clothes.” We’ve actually known this for some time, so isn’t it time to acknowledge the truth?

The always reliable Patrick Wall of Chalkbeat has been following an intriguing story, Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña’s efforts to roll back or close down many of the programs and projects begun when her predecessor, Joel Klein, was Chancellor.  She seem to have targeted for extinction what are known as ‘partnership support organizations’ like New Visions for Public Schools and the Center for Educational Innovation. As Chalkbeat’s Wall reported on February 13,

Bloomberg and his long-serving schools chief, Joel Klein, launched the partnership program in 2007 as part of their push to let schools choose the type of support they received. Nonprofit groups such as New Visions and the Urban Assembly — which had also opened new schools — joined the program, as did universities such as CUNY and Fordham.  Schools paid the groups up to $60,000 or so each year for their services, which include everything from help with hiring and budgeting to teacher training and data analysis.

Chancellor Fariña has also made clear that she does not support small high schools, which are central to the New Visions for Public Schools approach.  Again quoting Chalkbeat’s Wall:

The small schools it designed were essential to former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s policy of closing large, low-performing high schools — a tactic despised by many parents and educators, and condemned by de Blasio. De Blasio’s schools chief, Carmen Fariña, expressed skepticism about a multiyear study that found that students who enrolled at the small schools were more likely to graduate and attend college than peers who ended up at other high schools.

When Fariña was preparing to overhaul Bloomberg’s school-support system, New Visions board members grew so concerned that they met with a top official at City Hall to argue for a continuing role under the new structure.

“Met with a top official at City Hall” doesn’t quite capture what happened. My sources say that two of New York City’s major power brokers went to the Mayor and told him, point blank, that he wouldn’t get a dime from real estate, finance and law for his re-election effort if he didn’t tell Fariña to keep her hands off New Visions.  

The result: New Visions is doing better than ever. “It would have been a political nightmare for the mayor to pull the plug” on New Visions, said David Bloomfield, an education professor at the CUNY Grad Center and Brooklyn College, who has called for more scrutiny of the PSOs,” Wall reported.  

However, what is equally important here is that Mayor de Blasio did not order her to cease and desist with CEI, Fordham or any other non-governmental organizations connected with Bloomberg and Klein, and so she has continued to centralize authority and shut down programs begun during Michael Bloomberg’s 12-year Mayoralty.

What in the world is Chancellor Fariña doing?  Why?

Here are four theories:

1) Fariña, a veteran bureaucrat, is doing what comes naturally, consolidating her power;

2) Vindictiveness;

3) It’s a re-election strategy; and

4) Mayoral incompetence.

Theory #1: She is consolidating power in order to impose her vision on the system.  Chancellor Fariña often talks about “restoration,” but skeptical observers wonder what ‘good old days’ she harkens back to.  The New York City public school system has never worked for most Black and Hispanic students, and it has not done well by special needs kids either.  However, in those ‘good old days,’ power was concentrated at the top, and that’s what she’s doing.

Bloomberg and Klein believed in letting 100 flowers bloom (as long as school principals were the gardeners and unions were on the sidelines).  In contrast, supporting teachers is clearly central to Chancellor Fariña’s vision. In the two speeches I heard her deliver early in her tenure, she talked about elevating teachers, restoring respect for them and so on. But that was the extent of it, from what I heard. I didn’t detect any grand vision for the million+ students she’s responsible for.

Theory #2: Vindictiveness.  Could closing down Bloomberg/Klein initiatives (including successful ones) be nothing more than an effort to erase Bloomberg’s legacy?  Those who remember how the new Mayor allowed speaker after speaker at his inauguration to attack the departing Mayor (who was sitting in the front row) believe this is more of the same petty behavior.

As one non-fan of the current Mayor says, “It’s bad to be a sore loser, but it’s really unforgivable to be a sore winner.”

Is Chancellor Fariña vindictive?  I don’t have a clear reading. In public, she’s still seen as the “Sweet Grandmother Who Was Persuaded to Come out of Retirement to Serve,” but her critics describe her as controlling, small-minded and mean-spirited, adjectives that have also been employed to describe her boss.

Theory #3: It’s all about being re-elected, and that requires getting close to teachers. The lobbyist that Mayor de Blasio has met with most often happens to be Michael Mulgrew, the President of the UFT, the local teacher union.  

“The men usually chat weekly and sometimes daily. The mayor has become a regular at union parties, lunches and other events. Mr. Mulgrew says he often suggests education policy to City Hall,” Josh Dawsey reported in the Wall Street Journal on March 15th.  He continued:

The teachers union, which has about 200,000 members, didn’t originally warm to Mr. de Blasio. It endorsed Bill Thompson the 2013 Democratic primary for mayor. It went on to endorse Mr. de Blasio in the general election, making him the first winning candidate for mayor endorsed by the union since David Dinkins in 1989.

With an eye to the 2017 election, the mayor’s political team sees the union as an important ally. With polls showing that New Yorkers aren’t happy with the city’s public schools, the issue is a vulnerable one for the mayor.

So, erasing Bloomberg/Klein could be de Blasio’s way of cozying up to teachers and their union. Perhaps he’s gambling that putting his re-election eggs in the teacher union basket will be enough to win him another term.

Theory #4: Another Rookie Mistake:  This could be just another fumble by de Blasio.  He wanted Montgomery County (MD) Superintendent Josh Starr as his Schools Chancellor. Starr is a true progressive as well as a New Yorker. I have it on good authority that Education Secretary Arne Duncan called de Blasio to voice his disapproval, and it’s possible that the UFT made its objections known as well.  Rather than search for another progressive, de Blasio turned to Fariña, a conventional educator.

That isn’t the Mayor’s only fumble in the education arena. Although de Blasio campaigned on a promise to create universal free pre-kindergarten and had Governor Andrew Cuomo’s financial commitment, he did not move to close that deal on Day One. Instead, he chose to attack Eva Moskowitz over the issue of co-locating her Success Academy charter schools in traditional school buildings.  Enraged, the fiery former City Council Member went into full attack mode.  She enlisted the support of Daniel Loeb and other billionaire donors and bused hundreds of Success Academy children and parents to Albany for a rally that Governor Cuomo spoke at.  In sum, she gave de Blasio an old-fashioned schoolyard whupping.

After his ill-timed attack on Moskowitz, a desperate de Blasio tried an end run with the Legislature.  When that failed, our Mayor lost more credibility, and Governor Cuomo put the City’s ‘mayoral control of schools’ on a very short leash.  From that day forward, Governor Cuomo has gone out of his way to embarrass the rookie Mayor.

Whether the explanation for what Chancellor Fariña is doing is a classic bureaucratic power grab, vindictiveness, a re-election strategy, or incompetence–or some combination, two things seem clear to me: Good programs are being cancelled and much-needed supports for struggling students are being removed.  That’s a crying shame.

Retirement sucks!  Although I officially retired from the PBS NewsHour last August, it hasn’t worked. I am back, but not as an even-handed and scrupulously objective reporter. I’m now an activist supporting public education through “Stars for Schools,“my new not-for-profit organization

If you are wondering about the catchy, clever name, here’s the backstory:   With the help of focus groups, we chose “Stars for Schools” because of the double-entendre. ‘Stars’ can refer to outstanding public performers and the ‘gold stars’ that are often affixed to students’ work by their teachers, particularly in the early grades.

I’ve been reaching out to celebrities (stars!) to engage them in this work.  Among those who have already agreed to participate or have been invited but haven’t yet responded are Matt Damon, Claire Danes, Joe Biden, Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Mike Huckabee, Jane Pauley, Spike Lee, Charles Barkley, Billy Jean King, Steven Spielberg, Ryan Gosling, John Legend, Tina Fey, Steph Curry, Charlie Rose, Gwen Ifill, Judy Woodruff, Tony Bennett, Steven Colbert, Whoopi Goldberg, Marco Rubio, J.K. Rowling, Monica Lewinsky, LeBron James, Johnny Mathis, Peyton Manning, Jim Lehrer, Amy Schumer, Bill Clinton, Laura Bush, Justin Bieber, Mitt Romney, Samantha Bee, Chris Rock, Helen Mirren, Kim Kardashian, Will Ferrell, John Travolta, Jon Stewart, and Michelle Rhee.  The list goes on and on…..

If you are a big star, I urge you to sign yourself up.  Even if you aren’t a big enough star, you can still be involved by donating to contribution at starsforschools.org.  It’s tax-deductible!

Every year “Stars for Schools” will sponsor a Day of Action to call attention to the vital role that schools play in American life.

We’re calling the 2016 Day of Action “Celebrity Crossing Guard Day,” when some of America’s biggest stars will don the crossing guard’s bright yellow (orange in some states) uniforms and actually do the important work of making sure our children get across dangerous intersections and into their schools safely. That’s right: these dedicated men and women aren’t just sitting on the sidelines; they’re in the mix, in the arena.  Of course, this media event will attract hours of local and national television coverage and set the social media world of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram afire.

The 2017 “Day of Action“is going to be even more dramatic.   We intend to superimpose the faces of America’s best teachers on Mount Rushmore.  Over a 24-hour period, 5,760 teachers will replace Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt, each teacher’s image on all four faces for 15 seconds.  This event will be live-streamed, of course.  We will begin soliciting nominations later this year.

“Stars for Schools” is also going to change the public image of teachers, who for too long have been stereotyped as boring and unsexy.  In fact, in the latest Gallup/Phi Delta Kappan poll, teachers scored lower on the ‘Sexy’ scale than even dentists and accountants. That has to change, and I believe that these subtly suggestive T-shirts will turn that image on its head.

DRAMA TEACHERS DO IT BACKSTAGE!

BIOLOGY TEACHERS KNOW ALL YOUR BODY PARTS!

MUSIC TEACHERS DO IT RHYTHMICALLY!

BAND TEACHERS KNOW THE SCORE!

LET A COMPUTER TEACHER PUSH  YOUR BUTTONS!

GUIDANCE TEACHERS CAN SHOW YOU THE WAY

GEOMETRY TEACHERS KNOW THE ANGLES

CHEMISTRY TEACHERS DO IT PERIODICALLY

When they see their children’s teachers wearing these snappy slogans, parents will certainly see them in a new light.  Shirts are $39.95 and come in four sizes, S, M, L and XL.

Frankly, I had expected to work from ‘inside the machine’ to reform the system, by serving on the Board of Directors of either Pearson or McGraw-Hill.  After serving on the Pearson Board for a very short time a year ago, I fully expected the mega-company  to approach me again, but nary a word.

As for McGraw-Hill, it dumped me from the Committee that selects the winners of the McGraw Prize in Education.  I’d been serving on that Committee since 2012 and was awaiting word about the time and place of this year’s meeting—when, out of the blue, I saw a Twitter announcement of the winners.  So I guess this means no seat for me on the McGraw-Hill Board.   No big deal. I am better off working from outside the establishment, through “Stars for Schools.”

I urge you to support “starsforschools.org” today.   Contribute today if you can. Or wait until tomorrow, April 2, but please don’t delay…..

After many months of intense scrutiny and criticism, Dr. Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academies Charter School Network, has gone on the offensive.  In this effort, she has the help of an expensive PR firm, her traditional ally the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Club of New York, and–surprisingly–WNYC reporter Beth Fertig.

The recent criticism began last October, when the PBS NewsHour exposed her practice of multiple out of school suspensions of 5-, 6- and 7-year-olds. (My last piece for the NewsHour before I retired.)  Later in October Kate Taylor of the New York Times revealed that one of her schools had a ‘got to go’ list of students to be dropped. Moskowitz did not fire the principal.   In an electrifying report in February, Taylor wrote about a video of a Success Academy teacher humiliating a child.

Dr. Moskowitz has retained Mercury LLC, the same PR firm that is advising Michigan’s embattled Governor, Rick Snyder.   She emailed her staff accusing the New York Times of a ‘vendetta’ against her.  On Monday, March 14, the Wall Street Journal published her op-ed, “Orderliness in School: What a Concept”.  “Over the past year the Times’s principal education reporter has devoted 34% of the total word count for her education stories, including four of her seven longest articles, to unrelentingly negative coverage of Success,” Moskowitz wrote.

But her main point was that she and Success Academies represent the last line of defense against violent and disruptive behavior in our schools.  Did the PR firm suggest she tar her critics with the old reliable “commie-pinko” brush?   (Making it parenthetical was a nice touch.)

“The unstated premise is that parents are susceptible to being duped because they are poor and unsophisticated. (Once upon a time, this view was known as “false consciousness”—the Marxist critique of how the proletariat could be misled by capitalist society.)”

The Harvard Club of New York is, perhaps inadvertently, also helping Moskowitz.  It has scheduled an evening presentation on Monday, March 29th.  The blurb describing the event makes no mention of any criticism.  Here’s a sample:

Eva Moskowitz founded Success Academy Charter Schools in 2006 with the dual mission of building world-class schools for New York City children and serving as a catalyst and a national model for education reform to help change public policies that prevent so many children from having access to opportunity. Firmly believing that inner-city students deserve the same high-quality education as their more affluent peers, and convinced that all children, regardless of zip code or socioeconomic background, can achieve at the highest levels, she opened the first  Success Academy in Harlem and today operates 34 schools in some of the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Success Academy continues to grow at a rapid pace and will be hiring more than 900 teachers and other personnel before the next academic year.  

The event is open to Club members and their guests.  (I cannot attend because I will be out of the country.)

Moskowitz’s most surprising ally in her PR offensive is Beth Fertig of WNYC public radio here in New York. She and her colleague Jenny Ye reported on March 15 that NYC Charters Retain Students Better Than Traditional Schools.’   The lead sentence: “Citywide, across all grades, 10.6 percent of charter school students transferred out in 2013-14, compared to 13 percent of traditional public school students.”  They cite the KIPP charter network as having an especially low attrition rate, about 25% of the rate in neighboring traditional schools.

This is like comparing the kids who go to the playground to toss a ball around with the kids whose parents enroll them in the karate program at the Y, buy them uniforms and accompany them to practice and competitions.

Of course the departure rate from traditional urban public schools is higher. Families lose their homes and have to move. Parents change jobs and have to move.  The single parent gets sick and has to move in with relatives.  And generally the kids then move to the closest school.  I.E., they ‘transfer.’

On the other hand, getting into a charter school entails jumping through hoops, often a lot of them, and those parents–who have sought out what they hope to be better opportunities for their children–are not going to change schools just because of a job loss or an illness.   Some charter school students may ‘transfer’ because their school doesn’t provide the special education services they’re supposed to.  Some students may ‘transfer’ after being sent home multiple times for minor offenses.  That seems to happen quite often at Success Academies, which has a long laundry list of offenses that warrant out of school suspensions.

Therefore, comparing transfer rates is meaningless, a waste of the reporter’s time and public radio’s resources. Every well run charter school should have attrition rates as low as KIPP’s, or lower.

This silly and meaningless exercise in comparing unconnected numbers makes Success Academies look good.  Although SA had the second-worst attrition rate (57.4% of traditional schools), that’s not how WNYC presented it. Here’s what they wrote:

We found most of Success’s 18 schools in the 2013-14 school year had attrition rates that were lower than those of their local districts. The two schools that were slightly higher are in Bedford Stuyvesant and Cobble Hill (where the first grade teacher was caught on camera).Bed Stuy 2’s attrition rate was 13.4 percent versus 12.4 percent for traditional public schools in District 14. The Cobble Hill school’s attrition rate was 12.5 percent versus 10.8 percent in the regular District 15 schools.

“Our low attrition rates reflect what parents appreciate about our schools,” said Success founder Moskowitz. “That our classrooms are as joyful as they are rigorous.”

Allowing Success Academies to boast of a supposedly low attrition rate is beyond ironic, because the organization plays fast and loose with numbers.  The single most accurate way to calculate attrition is to list everyone who starts school on Day One and then count again 365 days later on the following Day One to determine who has left.  Then the school could figure out why students left and, where appropriate, make adjustments.  This is what KIPP does.  The resulting number is not necessarily flattering because it includes everyone who left: some families move out of town, some kids decide they don’t want to work that hard, other kids just want to be with their peers, and so on.  

A second way to count attrition would be from September 1 to June 25th or whenever school lets out. That leaves out summer loss, which actually is pretty significant.  Other charter networks I am aware of count attrition this way.

The third way produces the lowest and most impressive attrition number: That entails counting attrition from the official NYC attendance count day, known as  BEDS. That occurs fairly early in October.  So a school can count the number of students on October 10th and count again on June 25th.  Doing it this way means that whatever happens between the true opening of school (late August or early September) and BEDS does not show up on any records.  So if a charter network employs multiple out-of-school suspensions during that 6-week period, August-25-October 10, no one outside of the network would EVER know.

Approach #3 is the one taken by Success Academies, which is why Moskowitz boasts of low attrition.

The Eva Moskowitz mess is emblematic of a larger problem in charter world. Greg Richmond is the President and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers.  I suggest everyone read his recent speech about the state of the charter movement. Three paragraphs seem particularly relevant to this discussion of Success Academies.

We have created schools that will not enroll students in upper grade levels. We have some schools that believe it is appropriate to counsel children out mid-year. Some charters believe it is appropriate to tell families of students with disabilities that their charter school cannot serve them.

In short, charters have relied on the district schools to be a safety net for students not served by charter schools. That’s not right. If we believe that charter schools can provide a better education for children, we need to include all children.

Charter schools have also chosen to fight against school districts even when it was in the public interest to work together.

Eva Moskowitz is fighting  hard to maintain her position as the face and voice of the charter school movement here in New York City–and perhaps beyond.  In my private conversations with leaders of other charter networks here, they have told me that they wish this weren’t so, but so far they have not been willing to stand up and be counted.

Since retiring from the PBS NewsHour last year, I’ve been working on a book about my 41 years as a reporter.   To jog my memory, I’ve reread my blog and what others have written in response.  I’ve been struck by the thoughtfulness of many respondents, quite a few of whom are teachers.  

Forty-one years of reporting taught me how special teachers are, and this current project reinforces that view.  So many teachers routinely go the extra mile to connect with their students, and they do it without any expectation of recognition from their bosses. I believe it’s in the DNA of most of the men and women who make teaching their career.  Shouldn’t we be making it easier for them to do what they do best, which is help grow adults, instead of hounding them about test scores?

I use those three words,help grow adults, advisedly.

          “Help” conveys that teaching and learning are team sports.  

          “Grow” connotes a process of many steps (most forward, some not), which is why one test score–a snapshot–should never be used to make critical decisions.  It’s a movie, not a photo.

          “Adult” is the end-game of schooling, not ‘getting into college’ or ‘doing well on the SAT/ACT.’  What is it that we want children to be and be able to do when they are out on their own?  Never forget that ‘We are what we repeatedly do.’

That’s why I want to share something written by a teacher I’ve never met.  What Joe Beckman wrote in 2001 captures how teachers find ways to connect.  They understand that kids don’t care how much a teacher knows, not until they know how much that teacher cares:   

“I had a remarkable experience as a teacher last night, purely because of opportunity, setting and timing. One of the too-many disparate things I do is coach a bunch of kids in online credit recovery courses. A very bright but previously shy African American kid was struggling with a fairly basic history unit, not passing tests he obviously could have passed. So we talked. He had always hated history and was trying to work through what I’d call some “oppositional defiance disorder” with Abigail Adams. As he got up to take a break, he whispered that his real problem was that his mother made him homeless a few days before, and he’d been having problems with her for the past year.

We went into the hallway, talked a little, and he mellowed out a bit; he went to get a snack. On returning, I suggested we look at a movie rather than fight Abigail again. Just then he got a call from a girlfriend and rescheduled their date. While he was on the phone, I called up Bessie Smith’s short 1929 video, “St. Louis Blues.” She captured him. He kept muttering how the world has changed. Racism may continue, but not the way it was in 1929 in a Speak-Easy. When Bessie’s boyfriend stole her money from her stocking, the young man was shocked. I suggested he not show the movie to his girlfriend, and he giggled. We did a lot of history in a very, very short time.

When the movie was over, we talked about working through a learning contract that could build a view of US History from movies like that. He left in tears, and today I found him a place to live for the next six to twelve months.

Now, I’m not sure if that was art, media, literacy, history, music, compassion, social work, or merely a sense of peace and awareness that he knows he is not like Bessie’s boyfriend. Breaking those into such components really isn’t necessary – it’s more than our learning contract will include. Yet it most surely is teaching a kid some history that he may well remember a very long time.

Isn’t that the point?”

Amen, Joe Beckman, and thanks for the valuable reminder of what the best teachers do.

Here’s a thought: What if school administrators were paid on a per-pupil basis?  The salaries could be computed based on total enrollment, or, if you want to use VAM, a value-added measure, then the $$-per-pupil could be based on the number of students successfully completing the year.

For fun, let’s compare the pay pulled down by public school superintendents with the money paid to the CEO’s of some charter school networks.   Before you read on, write down your hunch: which school CEO/Superintendent is raking in the most on a per-student basis? And who’s the lowest paid on a per-student basis?

Let’s begin with Chicago, where the public school enrollment (including charter schools) has dipped to 392,000 students. The Chicago school leader (called the CEO) is paid $250,000.  That means he’s paid 64 cents per pupil.  Factor out the 61,000 students in charter schools, and Forrest Claypool’s wages per student go up to 76 cents per kid.

One of Chicago’s leading charter networks, the nationally recognized Noble Network of Charter Schools, paid its CEO and founder Michael Milkie a salary of $209,520 and a bonus of $20,000.  NNCS, which received the Broad Prize last year, enrolls 11,000 students, meaning that Mr. Milkie is paid $21.00 per student.

Let’s turn our attention to New York City. Chancellor Carmen Fariña presides over a school system with 1,1o0,000 students and is paid $227,727 per year.  That comes to $.20 per child.  But she also receives her retirement annuity of $208,506, so if we factor that in, she’s pulling down a whopping $.40 per child.

New York’s most prominent charter school operator is, of course, Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academies. She has received a significant pay raise and now makes $567,000 a year, as Ben Chapman reported in the New York Daily News.  Success Academies enrolls 11,000 students, the same number as in Chicago’s Noble Network.

Let’s do the math.  567,000 divided by 11,000 equals 51.35, meaning that Ms. Moskowitz is earning $51.35 per student, nearly two-and-one-half times what Mr. Milkie is paid per student.

If Carmen Fariña were running Success Academies instead of the nation’s largest school district, at her current pay rate of 40 cents per student she’d be earning $4400 a year!

Put another way, Eva Moskowitz is being paid about 128 times more per student than Chancellor Fariña.

(I was at a dinner last night with her predecessor, Dennis Walcott, who made essentially the same salary when he was Chancellor.  The look on his face when I told him the numbers was priceless!)

However, Eva Moskowitz doesn’t come close to claiming the crown for “Highest Paid Charter School CEO,” because New York City is home to a charter network that enrolls only 1400 students and pays its leader in the neighborhood of $525,000 per year.  (I write ‘in the neighborhood’ because the most recent salary isn’t available, so this number is based on recent years and the pattern of annual increases.)

You’ve done the math in your head, right?  $525,000 for 1400 students means this CEO is raking in $375 PER STUDENT. Just imagine if Chancellor Fariña had come out of retirement to take this job!  At her current pay scale, she would be bringing home $560 a year, not $425,000.

This charter network’s leader must not have a “pay for performance” contract.  The network is notorious for losing students, as the chart below indicates.  On the left, 126 students in full-day kindergarten; on the right, only 36 students in 12th grade.  Pretty clear what happens year after year.  In another school, 119 kindergarteners and 33 high school seniors.

The common argument for charter schools is that they are “life-changing,” but just ONE of that year’s graduates headed off to college, while the others reported ‘plans unknown.’ In another school, one was headed for a 4-year college, three to 2-year institutions, and 28 with ‘plans unknown.’

Like Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies, this network loses a lot of students, but, unlike Success Academies, the remaining students here perform poorly.  Here’s the percentage of students in one school who scored ‘proficient’ in English Language Arts, by grade: 5th-8%; 6th-12%; 7th-11%; and 8th-28%.  In another school, 4%, 20%, 17% and 30% .

In Math: 5th-6%; 6th-36%; 7th-52%; and 8th-48%.  In another school, 27%, 37%, 39% and 34%.  (And as the NAEP scores below suggest, those high-ish math scores may be illusory.)

Scores on the NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, were unimpressive.  In 4th grade, 36% scored ‘proficient’ in Reading and 35% in Math.  In 8th grade, 33% scored ‘proficient’ in Reading and 31% in Math.  In another of her schools the respective numbers are 36%, 35% 33% and 31%.

This same charter network has famously high turnover rates among teachers too.  In the most recent report, 38% of teachers departed, meaning that 4 out of every 10 teachers left. In another school, 31% left.  One thing that students in high-poverty schools need is continuity, which they apparently do not get in this network.

Oh, by the way, the CEO who makes all that money also has her own car and driver, according to Ben Chapman of the Daily News.

I am referring to Dr. Deborah Kenny, the founder of Harlem Village Academies, a network of just five schools and 1400 students.  Somehow, I suspect she’s happy to have Eva Moskowitz taking all the flack in the media about harsh discipline and high turnover rates, because that means her network’s performance is not being scrutinized.  It clearly should be.

In fairness, some traditional public school districts in New York State are paying their superintendents inflated amounts when computed on a per-student basis.  Brookhaven-Comsewogue Union Free District has about 3900 students and pays its superintendent $462,000 or $118 per student.  Mount Sinai Union Free District has about 2600 students and pays its leader $403,000, or $155 per student. And Tuckahoe Union Free District, with just 1100 students, pays its superintendent $388,000, or $353 per student.

But that doesn’t keep Deborah Kenny from taking home the Blue Ribbon in the “Earns Most, Does Least” competition.