Johnson Academy receives charter renewal
Hypocrisy at work.
The constant barrage of disdain against public schools by the legislature and the governor has led to an increase in the investment in privatization and the contrasting defunding of public education. "Public schools are 'failing'" the refrain goes, "so we need to divert tax money from the public schools to vouchers and charters."
Then we read something like this...
from The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette
Education One, a public charter school-authorizing entity based at Trine University, granted the Timothy L. Johnson Academy a two-year charter renewal.
The academy on Werling Drive in Fort Wayne now has a two-year charter effective June 30 through June 30, 2018.
The school was rated an “F” school in the A-F state accountability rating system for 2014. The two previous years, the school received a “D.”
The school, founded in 2002, lost its charter with Ball State University in 2013.
THIS DOESN'T EITHER...
Unqualified, Uncertified Teachers: Where is the Outrage?
How "reformers" have worked to destroy the teaching profession – Indiana version.
Problem: Career professional teachers, supported by professional teachers unions, demand higher wages and benefits. This stands in the way of privatization in two ways; 1) higher personnel costs results in lower corporate profits, and 2) education professionals support increased resources for their students thereby further reducing profits.
Answer: Destroy the teaching profession (and public schools along with it) through the following steps:
1. Claim that public schools are "failing" and blame it on "bad teachers."
2. Evaluate teachers using test scores and restrict salary increases for teachers whose students score high. This reinforces the "bad teachers" myth and allows the destruction of the salary structure for all teachers. [Odd how "bad teachers" seem to congregate in schools with high levels of poverty. Oh, and deny that poverty is relevant to achievement.]
3. Threaten the livelihoods of teachers who work with hard-to-educate students, ESL students, students who live in poverty, and students with special needs, through punishments for teaching students with low test scores.
3. Attack and threaten teacher training institutions for turning out all those "bad teachers."
4. Divert funding from public education to vouchers and charter schools providing less funding for "failing" schools. Budgets are cut. Class sizes rise. Test scores suffer. Continue to blame "bad teachers."
5. Deny that experience matters. End seniority, salary schedules, and incentives for increased education or advanced degrees.
6. Once all these are in place and a teacher shortage develops, lower qualifications for teaching through state board of education policies.
7. Ignore all research about poverty and achievement, the effectiveness of experienced teachers, and the importance of investment in public education.
Success: Using non-professional, non-career teachers, with higher turnover rates, results in lower personnel costs and higher profits.
from Russ Walsh
I would like to see the business model of any successful company that says, "Let's forget trying to make the job more attractive to top candidates, we can just hire someone who is unqualified for the job."
NOR DOES THIS...
The Disconnect Between Changing Test Scores and Changing Later Life Outcomes Strikes Again
A child is more than a test score.
from Jay Greene
If we think we can know which schools of choice are good and ought to be expanded and which are bad and ought to be closed based primarily on annual test score gains, we are sadly mistaken.
WHAT WE SHOULD BE DOING
Report Demonstrates that Greater Investment, Well Distributed, Raises School Achievement
Mind the Gap: 20 Years of Progress and Retrenchment in School Funding, Staffing Resources, and Achievement Gaps
Instead of diverting funds away from public education we ought to be investing in our local public schools.
from Jan Resseger
“(A)cross states, over the past decade and a half in particular, states with lower pupil-to-teacher ratios and fairer distribution of staffing tend to have both higher outcomes among children from low-income families and smaller (economic) achievement gaps…. We also have evidence that states in which teacher wages are more competitive have smaller achievement gaps and higher scores for children from lower income families."
Her conclusion...
...you get what you pay for, and if you want to close achievement gaps between poor children and their privileged peers, you should spend what you need to to ensure that the children living in the poorest communities get the added attention they need from highly qualified teachers.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Across the Nation, Education is Getting Short Shrift
Tax dollars earmarked for public education are being diverted to privatization schemes such as vouchers and charters. Americans, through their legislators, bought and paid for by corporate donors, are neglecting their future.
From Jeff Bryant at The Progressive
You can place blame for the country's education funding crisis squarely at the feet of state lawmakers and policy leaders who simply refuse to fund schools.
STUDENT DREAMS
Second graders imagine their dream school. It isn’t what you might think.
What would you have wished for when you were in second grade?
Second graders at a Boston elementary school said they wish for a school with
- "...pencils, markers, and glue sticks..."
- "...a shiny and new school..."
- "...a room with soft things and people to talk to..."
- "...a better playground..."
- "...a class pet and field trips to far-away places..."
- "...a whole library..."
from Lily Holland via Valerie Strauss
I think I’ve changed my mind. When I introduced this activity, I originally said I dreamed of a school with an outdoor garden that my students and I could use to grow healthy food. Now I think I dream of a school where 7-year-olds don’t have to just dream about the schools they deserve.
WHY TEACHERS LEAVE
Teaching, GOP lose frustrated Hoosier
Professional, career teachers are leaving education. The loss will be felt in years to come when our leaders only come from the elites who could afford quality education and our voting population consists of adults whose education was damaged by greed and shortsightedness.
From Brenda Yoder in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette
Establishment Republicans don’t seem to care about these students or others who need caring teachers more than they need six weeks of ISTEP+. They don’t care about the rural communities where schools are fighting just to stay alive. They don’t care about excellent teachers who do their best for the students they love.
They care about the money they can get from ALEC, Pearson and from being elected by the “voucher” bandwagon. Seriously, vouchers aren’t the issue anymore. Integrity, real needs, and change are.
CHOICE HAS BRED CHAOS
We Can Recover From The School Choice Movement
The "choice" in education has always been available for those who were wealthy. "Choice" now means that privatized schools can choose their students. Parents who are confused and without a well-staffed, well funded neighborhood school to rely on, are left to struggle with the system.
from Ed Berger, Ed.D
“Choice” is a marketplace idea wrongly applied to education. The assumption that most parents have the information they need to make intelligent decisions about the education their children need, and the education children need to be effective citizens, has been proven wrong. School choice has failed to improve our schools. In fact, choice has created a chaos of confusion for parents who have risked (gambled) on moving their children out of comprehensive education programs to place them in partial education programs. The costs of these misguided experiments is evident in high dropout rates, incomplete educations, and damaged children.
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