NC school district that won 2011 Eli Broad Prize...failed to meet standards.

[madfloridian]

There is a lot of media attention given to the Broad Foundation prize. I am not sure who decided it was among the most prestigious awards, but those listed among the other 4 finalists tell a lot about our direction in education. Miami Dade and Broward county schools were near the top. Their main accomplishments have been to strip public schools of students by starting more charter schools.

Those charter schools are taking much needed tax money and resources from public education.

From September:

Arne Duncan announces 2011 Broad Prize for Urban Education


Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools representatives, with Eli Broad, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and John Legend (Photo by Broad Foundation)

Calling the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools “a model for innovation in urban education,” U.S. Secretary of Arne Duncan announced the North Carolina district today as the 2011 winner of the Broad Prize for Urban Education.

..."But Charlotte-Mecklenburg has had its share of struggles between the April announcement of the four finalists, which included Broward and Miami-Dade Counties in Florida and the Ysleta District in El Paso, and today’s prize.

Reports in July said that Charlotte-Mecklenburg failed dismally in meeting its academic targets for the 2010-2011 school year. Emily Dalesio of the Associated Press wrote on July 21 that “preliminary schoolhouse data show fewer than three of 10 Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools met the targets set for them in the academic year that concluded in June.”

And in June, Newsweek’s list of America’s Best High Schools had only two Charlotte schools on it, down from 13 last year. (Newsweek used stricter criteria this year, which might help explain the drop.) This all came shortly after Charlotte-Mecklenburg superintendent Peter Gorman — who oversaw the district’s upward climb – left for a position in the News Corp.’s newly minted Education Division.

News Corp again. Just like Joel Klein of NYC, Gorman heads to News Corp. Wonder if Murdoch has been playing a role in "reform" like Broad, Gates, and Walmart?

Fewer than 3 of 10 of their schools met the standards....yet Arne awarded them the Broad Prize.

Schools Matter shows the picture above and asks "Why is everyone smiling except the two school officials?"

Well, here's why. The district is facing more testing.

Blogger Jim Horn also has a very irreverent take on the situation.

The Broad Prize for Corporate Domination Goes to Charlotte-Mecklenburg

That photogenic charlatan and former superintendent, Peter Gorman (Broad Class of '04) caused all sorts of grief for Charlotte educators, parents, and students before he was scooped up by Rupert Murdoch (Aaaargh!) to serve as one of Murdoch's chief edu-lackeys. Just in time, too, as Charlotte parents and teachers were ready last Spring to tar and feather Broad's man, Gorman, for introducing 52 new tests to enable a new teacher evaluation scheme based on, what else, test scores:

"Skeptical parents and adamant administrators are squaring off over a surge of new testing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, as teachers watch warily and brace for hours of new work.

Next week CMS will launch trial versions of 52 new tests, including an exam for kids as young as kindergarteners who must be tested one-on-one. The tests will be used to evaluate teachers, as the budget shrinks and officials prepare to lay off faculty."

Those are the schools that won Eli Broad's prize. Can you imagine what is going on in the others?

The education blogger Accountable Talk has some stuff to say about this failed prize as well.

The Best Data Money Can't Buy

As Anthony Cody of EdWeek reported, the study actually supports the status quo that the deformers are attacking. Student who were moved from lower quality to higher quality schools showed almost no difference in performance. It turns out that you can't change student performance just by changing schools and testing, testing, testing. You can, however, improve student performance by starting schooling early and getting kids off to a good start in reading (gee, who'd have thunk it?)

Cody's blog post also points out that the Charlotte-Mecklenberg school system, winner of this year's Broad Prize, actually stunk up the joint. The system, much touted by Arne Duncan and his ilk, "...failed dismally in meeting its academic targets for the 2010-2011 school year. Emily Dalesio of the Associated Press wrote on July 21 that “preliminary schoolhouse data show fewer than three of 10 Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools met the targets set for them in the academic year that concluded in June.”"

A Raleigh/Durham News channel had more about these schools back in July. So they knew when Eli Broad gave the award. Arne had to have known when he announced it.

NC parents see school annual progress data slide

North Carolina parents digging into the latest data about their child's school may have found a disquieting surprise Thursday -- many of the state's 2,500 public schools failed to meet the grade for adequate yearly progress.

The state’s 115 local school districts released information required by the decade-old federal No Child Left Behind law to measure the reading and mathematics abilities of students every year.

Statewide totals won’t be available for two weeks, but the preliminary schoolhouse data show fewer than three of 10 Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools met the targets set for them in the academic year that concluded in June. Fewer than one in seven Wake County schools met their mark. More than half of the state’s 99 charter schools missed targets, double the number who failed to meet them last year.

The reasons behind the failing grades have generated pressure for change in state capitols across the country. The Obama Administration has said that unless Congress acts soon, Education Secretary Arne Duncan would act to avert a “slow-motion train wreck” for U.S. schools.

Unfortunately for this administration after almost 3 years it is now their train wreck. I find that sad. But the teacher in me hasn't forgotten what a satisfying career I had, and I will keep speaking out about the wrong direction.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. More proof that NCLB will soon be gone

I'm not sure that what we will get instead will be better (probably not) but there's no doubt that NCLB is in its last days.

[madfloridian]

5. Gone soon, but leaving a train wreck behind in many cases.

:shrug:

[Jakes Progress]

7. I think not. Just a new name for the same game.

Bust unions. Fire teachers. Steal the future of our children for money.

[The Midway Rebel]

2. K&r

Once these pricks finish wrecking the Amercian free and public education system this country is finished.

[salin]

3. That's not just egg on the face, that's rotten egg on the face. eom

[madfloridian]

4. Yep, they are using a "corporate" strategy called Strategic Staffing

Schools are just not corporations when done as they should be done.

http://theeducationstandard.wordpress.com/tag/strategic-staffing-initiative/

"A report from the Aspen Institute promoted their recent efforts at improving the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. The strategy was simple: take proven principals and place them in under-performing schools with enough autonomy to make changes necessary for turning them around. This included being able to take five teachers, an assistant principal, a literacy specialist, and a behavior management technician (sounds like a repairman for malfunctioning brains)."

[Gabi Hayes]

8. this is EXACTLY what they did to our school this year. I'm surprised we haven't

required uniforms yet.....for the teachers

the regimentation at all levels, from PLC meeting agendas, to identical lesson plans by grade level, identical PBIS/check-in-check out/DPR data entry on a microscopic level (not to mention the allowing of children with SEVERE behavior/disruption problems to literally run wild through the school), has turned our building into a morass of depressed, demoralized, and disgusted professionals, whose heads are collectively spinning over what the district has wrought in the name of 'reform'

then there's the de riguer concentration on testing assessments of all kinds, especially the yearly ISATS, and the tri-annual computerized MAP tests, which purport to measure a child's academic growth and performance:

Ignoring what today is vast research showing the invalidity of standardized testing as an accurate measure of student learning, the Seattle School District is quickly moving to remake our schools in the image of a production line where simple input-values are used to measure the workers’ (teachers) efficiency at producing commodities (students). Under the former Seattle Schools superintendent, Maria Goodloe-Johnson, the District adopted a test called the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP). After the District’s adoption of the test—with a $4.3 million price tag—it was revealed that Goodloe-Johnson sat on the board of the company that produced the test, a conflict of interest that should disqualify the use of the test in Seattle. Taking a bold step against the MAP test, the Seattle Education Association recently passed the following resolution:

Whereas testing is not the primary purpose of education…Whereas the MAP was brought into Seattle Schools under suspicious circumstances and conflicts of interest…Whereas the SEA has always had the position of calling for funding to go to classroom and student needs first…Be it Resolved that…the MAP test should be scrapped and/or phased out and the resources saved be returned to the classroom.

Teachers, parents, and students know a holistic education includes teaching children creativity, civic courage, leadership, teamwork and social responsibility—skills that can’t be neatly quantified by standardized tests and will cease to be taught if educators’ jobs are tied to high-stakes tests. Moreover, in this era of economic recession and ongoing war, it would seem all the more urgent to develop students who can think beyond filling-in-the-bubble to come up with innovative ideas to big societal problems.

As teachers, union members, parents and civil rights advocates we offer an opposing plan to provide a quality education for all and to close the opportunity gap: fully fund and equalize school resources, reinstate the recently abolished “Department of Race and Equity” to help ensure culturally relevant pedagogy and assessment, lower class size to provide the individualized attention that students deserve, and support the most effective form of assessment that has yet to be devised—one that can adjust to every child, evaluate results quickly, and make appropriate changes in instruction—the human educator.

http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/race-and-the-mismeasures-of-academic-progress/

btw, my school is part of a 27 school elementary/jr. high district in the Norhtwest Chicago suburbs, existing within an unusual demographic, consisting of low income housing, along with wide ethnic diversity (about 20% white, 30% hispanic, 30% african american, with a hodgepodge of various other ethnic backgrounds--over 20 different languages spoken at our school).

that's why I included the article linked above, as it very closely approximates the situation that exists in our school WRT high stakes testing.

one of the results is to refuse to gives IEPs to students who desperately need the extra attention they'd get, because it would cause the creation of a large enough group of poorly testing students, one which would cause our school to once again drop back into the failure to meet AYP limbo (which we escaped only by fudging the test group size two years ago)

[truedelphi]

9. Ah but think about the one positive benefit you overlook

Any Corporation that seeks to receive huge allotments of public monies for its oversight of the "educational; assembly lines" is very well served by these policies. These policies allow for the "charter schools" to come about and private "non-profits" will be sweeping in like vultures.

That being said - your account of all this rings true and really frightens me. It is so sad to read about a public school system that for years and years loyally served the kids. Yes, it was flawed, and sometimes deeply so, but usually that meant that a child had one bad teacher who taught according to one bad philosophy in that child's 8 years of grammar school.

Now it means that any child whose parents cannot afford private schools must buck up and attempt to withstand this nonsense.

[madfloridian]

10. Bill Gates big funder of the MAP tests.

From another article at your Seattle Ed link:

"UPDATE: We have heard that the Gates “gift” is funding the new computerized, standardized “MAP” tests the district is administering this year to all students, from as young as kindergarten to grade 9. MAP stands for “Measures of Academic Progress™” (yes, it is a trademarked product) and will be administered to the kids three times during the school year. The test can take as much as two hours each session, according to the district’s official announcement letter."

http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/seattle/map-test/

Thanks for your interesting thorough post. :hi:

[chervilant]

12. Fudging...

That's an apt description for what Arne and his Broad minions are doing.

I find it disheartening that so few parents are aware of this ongoing assault on public education. Where are their voices? Why aren't they protesting?

Our school children do not have the power to protest this degradation of their educational opportunities. It's no wonder the majority of these children spend their days surreptitiously texting each other, and thinking up new ways to irritate their teachers. Passive-aggressive responses are common among the disenfranchised...

[bertman]

6. REC by a very concerned and angry Tarheel. nt

[madfloridian]

11. I bet you are. Me, too, in Florida.

So much harm being done so quickly. :hi:

[mmonk]

13. Posted to my Facebook wall.

Thanks.

[madfloridian]

14. ....

Thanks.

:hi: