"Just Smell the Money"

Meet the new kleptocracy:

With the Obama administration pouring billions into its nationwide campaign to overhaul failing schools, dozens of companies with little or no experience are portraying themselves as school-turnaround experts as they compete for the money.... 

Many of the new companies seem unprepared for the challenge of making over a public school, yet neither the federal government nor many state governments are organized to offer effective oversight, said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, a nonprofit group in Washington.

“Many of these companies clearly just smell the money,” Mr. Jennings said. 

Anyone noticing a trend here? Charter schools and turn-around consultants are poised to become the defense contractors of the 21st century; get ready for the equivalent of $500 toilet seats soon in our schools.

And what will those consultants give us for our money?

Bob and Megan Tschannen-Moran run one of the new groups. Their company, LifeTrek Inc., based in their home in Virginia, markets life and career coaching sessions to companies, churches and schools.

Ms. Tschannen-Moran is an education professor at the College of William & Mary, but the couple have never led a school overhaul, Mr. Tschannen-Moran said — although LifeTrek has been hired by a few school districts for strategic planning.

The couple recently founded a Center for Evocative Coaching, and this spring, Ohio put the center on a list of approved school turnaround specialists. In July, the couple changed the name of the center’s Web site to schooltransformation.com. The center can help schools by “facilitating new conversations through story listening, expressing empathy, appreciative inquiry and design thinking,” its Web site says. Much of the training can be done via conference call, Mr. Tschannen-Moran said. [emphasis mine]

Stay in teaching long enough, and you'll start to recognize this BS. There is a cottage industry of people who dress up bromides in "six-sigma"-like business claptrap and sell it to schools as "professional development." It's largely nonsense and a waste of money.

A perfect way to hustle up some scratch in this brave new world.

Just Smell The Money - Murdoch Style!

Because my commenters rock, jcg makes a connection (scroll down) I completely missed:

Wireless Generation is Murdoch's Education Corp. Note the location of their next planning session on opportunities and risks in our latest edu-reform: 

http://us2.campaign-archive.com/?u=cfb5b3dae0d0b7da2e949d8d1&id=078f7efb22&e=2e4c6c94e1

A snippet from the flier:

"Last year, a group of about a dozen education reformers, entrepreneurs and investors met in snowy Sun Valley for a series of discussions on the progress of education reform and the opportunities and risks associated with private sector investment in the space. The result was three days of creative thinking and camaraderie, collaboration and planning. And of course, skiing."

Well, of course there was skiing. It's for the kids...

Wait a minute: Wireless Generation - the company that screwed up NJ's Race To The Top application - is owned by Rupert Murdoch? Of Fox News?

The same Rupert Murdoch who hired ex-NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to run his new education division?

The same Joel Klein who is Acting NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf's former boss?

Yep:

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NWS) just purchased Wireless Generation for $360 million. Technically it's $360 million for 90% of the company, but either way it's a lot of money.

When a company in your general space gets bought for a huge amount by an unnatural acquirer, it merits some attention. But before I go on, I want to congratulate the Wireless Generation team on the acquisition. Good for all of you!

As Audrey notes, this is on the heels of News Corp appointing NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. So with that hire, and the WG acquisition, it looks like News Corp is getting into education technology in a big way. [emphasis mine]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, WHOA! I can't keep this straight any more! How about we diagram it?

OK, I think I got it. Except... where are the teachers?

I don't know nuthin' 'bout no fancy stock deals, but there are some who can't figure out why Murdoch bought Wireless Generation:

But so much of the above just doesn't make sense. Here's why:

• A high revenue multiple for a business with tough sales cycles: As of this summer, Wireless Generation was on a $60 million revenue run rate. Given that the News Corp purchase essentially values the company around $400 million, that means News Corp bought the company at a +6.5x revenue multiple. That's crazy. Just one more point of context, Wireless Generation has been around roughly 10 years.
• Where are the profits? Wireless Generation isn't a wildly profitable company. In 2007, the last year I have detailed financial data on them, they were not profitable and they had about 250 employees. Now they are up to about 400 folks, and perhaps they might be investing in people ahead of growth, but even then I'm not sure that a wildly profitable business will ever be there.
• Was anyone else at the altar? I had to get on the phone and chat with a private equity guy about this. He agrees with my arguments in this post, and was actually at one of the shops that looked at their business at one point. Let's just say he choked when he saw the purchase price.
• No unique advantages for News Corp: when an acquirer is looking to make a deal of this size, usually they enjoy some unique advantage. For example, if you are Google and you purchase DoubleClick or YouTube, it fits in very nicely with your core business model. News Corp is a media company. That's film, cable programming, TV, satellite broadcasting, newspapers, magazines, and a small publishing business. Actually, if you dig into their annual reports, education or anything related to education is not one of their core eight operating segments. So where does Wireless Generation fit within their core competencies?

Look at my diagram above if you want an answer. Wireless Generation doesn't have to really produce anything; its value is in its connections.

I'm very happy for the Wireless Generation team — they pulled a rabbit out of their hat and were a ~10 year overnight success. They sold a non-attractive business at a high revenue multiple. But they just got bought by a company, News Corp, that likely has no clue what to do with them. And just because News Corp has Joel Klein now, it doesn't mean they will know how to manage this kind of business, let alone figure out a way to justify the purchase price.

It's going to be a tough road ahead for the new Wireless Generation entity.

Oh, my naive little friend; do you really think Rupert Murdoch is looking at the medium-term profits of a company that will provide consulting for school districts?

This is not about winning the game; it's about changing the game. We are on the cusp of the most significant transformation of American society since Ike warned us of the military-industrial complex.

The privatization of the American military continues apace and will be completed very soon. A select privileged few have become very, very rich on the selling out of our national security. Smacking their chops, our corporate titans are looking for the next piece of our society to devour. And education is looking mighty, mighty tasty.

So Fox News, NBC, and the rest of the corporate media are ginning up a phony crisis in education. Billionaires have installed phony experts who have convinced bought-and-paid-for politicians that the only solution to the low academic achievement of the children of the permanent American underclass is to privatize the entire system.

Now, using a fiscal crisis created by those very same corrupt overlords as an excuse, they are transforming the greatest education system in the world into a tawdry bazaar, where dubious "solutions" are sold to the public using gobs of money that should be flowing into classrooms.

Make no mistake: the breaking of the public sector unions is not primarily about keeping taxes low on the wealthy (although, again, that's a nice bonus). No, public unions must be destroyed because they are the last bulwark against the corporate takeover of the very civic institutions that guarantee our freedoms.

When the last high school is turned over to Halliburton, the public will have given over a vast amount of our economy to a select few aristocrats who have absolutely no interest in a well-educated populace capable of critical thought. And they won't stop at schools. Law enforcement and public safety is sure to be on the agenda.

I know - I'm crazy. There's just no way this could happen. There's no way the public will stand for privatizing an entire sector of the economy when every other nation has significantly involved the government and kept costs far lower.

The schools will be fine; you'll see. Everything is going to be just fine...

@GovChristie's Pension Mess: Fat Wall St. Firms, Screwed Public Employees

David Sirota of the IBT has been doing stellar work on the conflicts of interest that have become a staple of the Christie administration. And no where is the skirting of ethics more brazen than in New Jersey's management of public employee pensions:

During today's meeting of the New Jersey State Investment Council, private equity executive Robert Grady announced he is stepping down from the chairmanship of the panel. Christie has called Grady a "friend of mine for nearly 40 years" whom he relies on for political advice.

In recent months, campaign finance documents revealed that under Grady’s leadership, the state has awarded lucrative pension management contracts to hedge fund, private equity, venture capital and other so-called “alternative investment” firms whose executives made campaign contributions to Christie's campaign, his state party, the Christie-led Republican Governors Association and the Republican National Committee. The donations included a $10,000 contribution from Massachusetts Republican Gov.-elect Charlie Baker to the New Jersey Republican State Committee just months before Baker’s firm was given a New Jersey pension investment. 

The donations were made despite New Jersey and federal rules aiming to restrict contributions to state officials like Christie who oversee pension investment decisions. Documents uncovered by International Business Times showed that Grady, a former Carlyle Group executive, was in regular communication with Christie’s campaign officials at the time the campaign was raising money and he was overseeing the state's pension investments. Grady pushed New Jersey to move pension money into an investment in which his private financial firm was also investing, documents revealed. New Jersey also invested in Carlyle Group funds during Grady's tenure, though he recused himself from final votes on those investments. 

New Jersey's largest union has filed a complaint with the state ethics commission about the donations, and New Jersey lawmakers are currently considering legislation to strengthen existing restrictions on campaign donations to state officials from firms managing state pension money.

Good luck with that one, guys: you can't even get Christie to agree to keep his promise to partially fund the pension according to a timetable he agreed to back in 2011.

As in so many areas of policy, Christie is nothing more than a tumbleweed of contradictions, blowing wherever the political winds take him. He rails against the pensions being far too generous, even though that is demonstrably untrue. But he has never come out and said he wants to shut them down; in fact, his plan so far has been to get public workers to pump in more money, against our wills, into the system.

There are two reasons for this. First, and most obviously, is that the system would collapse far faster if public employees are ever given the option to opt out of the system. I've made this offer a bunch of times, and I'll make it again: give me back my money and I'll get out of the pension. All the state has to do is pay me back what I put into the pension funds, with interest, and include what they were supposed to put in, with interest.

I'll renegotiate with my district to make up the lost compensation (the taxpayers of my district can take up with the state whether they want to continue to subside a pension that doesn't accrue to their employees). Then I'll manage my own retirement in cooperation with my district. Isn't that fair?

The problem, of course, is that the current retirees, to whom the state has a contractual obligation, need to be paid. No court in the land will ever allow an entire state to go bankrupt; in fact, the courts have even said Christie's attempt to take away the cost of living adjustments for current retirees is unconstitutional. If you can't even mess with COLAs, how can you cut payments themselves?

You can't. The truth is this state could easily raise taxes -- particularly on the wealthy and corporations, although that most likely won't do it all. But that would kill Chris Christie's presidential ambitions, and nothing comes before that, including rational and honest governance.

Which brings us to the contradiction on Christie's pension policy, and the second reason he won't call for phasing out the pensions. Because as much as Christie doesn't want to raise taxes, he and his Wall Street pals just love, love, love that great big pile of pension money, ripe for the plucking.

They just don't want to put in their share -- they'd rather have us teachers and cops and firefighters and state workers and municipal employees pony up more and more, all while they shave off larger and larger slices for themselves.

Which is why anyone who has been paying attention shouldn't be the slightest bit surprised by this:

When the New Jersey pension system terminated a $150 million investment in a fund called Angelo, Gordon & Co. in 2011, that did not close the books on the deal. In the three years since state officials ordered the withdrawal of that state money, New Jersey taxpayers have forked over hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to the firm. As those fees kept flowing, Angelo Gordon made a prominent hire: Mary Pat Christie, wife of Gov. Chris Christie, who joined the company in 2012 as a managing director and now earns $475,000 annually, according to the governor's most recent tax return.

The disclosure that New Jersey taxpayers have been paying substantial fees to a firm that employs the governor's spouse -- years after state officials said the investment was terminated -- emerged in documents released by the Christie administration to International Business Times through a public records request.

A spokesman for the New Jersey Treasury Department, Christopher Santarelli, said via email that while New Jersey “ended its investment” with Angelo Gordon in 2011, the payments were legitimate because the state continues to hold an “illiquid” investment in the firm. Christie officials declined to disclose details of what exactly that illiquid investment is and the justification for continuing to pay fees to Angelo Gordon. The governor, Mary Pat Christie and executives at Angelo Gordon all declined to comment. [emphasis mine]

Now that is a conflict of interest so outrageous that even the Star-Ledger's Editorial Board took notice -- even if their response is, as always, to make excuses for the governor:

Only some perspective is needed here, starting with the fact that the original $150 million investment with Angelo, Gordon & Co. – a monolithic hedge fund, with tentacles that reach every corner of the investment world – was made in 2006 and closed in 2011. 

The reason the fees keep coming is that a vestige of the original investment (about $6.5 million) is illiquid, which means it cannot be sold because there are no interested buyers. And while it may be suspicious that Mary Pat Christie’s firm won’t disclose details of the deal in question, industry experts will tell you that Angelo Gordon either has no obligation to reveal it, or it has a contract that mandates as much. [emphasis mine]

Oh, yes, let's take lessons in ethics and disclosure from the very industry that is screwing the taxpayers of New Jersey! Way to stand up for your readers, Star-Ledger!

Jersey Jazzman reads the Star-Ledger's editorials (artist's conception)

I want to acknowledge one thing before continuing: many times, when the press reports on the business dealings of wives of powerful politicians, there is more than a little air of sexism surrounding the story. Back in the day, Hillary Clinton took heat for being a successful lawyer in her own right while her husband was governor of Arkansas; most of that was unfair (some, however, was rightfully questioned, in my opinion). 

It's quite legitimate to question Mary Pat Christie's critics as to whether they are suggesting that she is not allowed to have a career separate from her husband's simply because he holds public office. That said: this case is so clearly tied to New Jersey's pensions and Chris Christie's policies that, at the very least, the deal should have been disclosed in real time the moment Mary Pat Christie took the job. Even the S-L agrees with that: 

Yes, in an ideal world, disclosure is a tenet of good governance, and transparency is the best disinfectant.

Here comes the "but...":

But [see? -- JJ] while New Jersey is governed by someone who often thinks differently – check out his administration’s record on OPRA requests sometime – it’s hard to find the fire beneath the smoke in this case. 

For starters, the fund was purchased by the State Investment Council three years before Christie was elected.

Which actually makes Mary Pat Christie's hiring even more suspicious. Why didn't the state just walk away from paying fees on the investment if it's "illiquid"? Because that would be "illegal"? It's no more illegal than reneging on promises made in statute to fund pensions, isn't it?

The a real question here is whether the hiring of Mary Pat Christie was a way to ensure the money kept flowing to her firm, even though the investment is now illiquid. It's a question Sirota asks -- because he is a real journalist -- in his article:

Spokesman Santarelli told IBTimes that while “New Jersey redeemed its interest in the AG fund and ended its investment [in 2011] we still have a remaining market value of $6.6 million invested related to illiquid investments, which have been winding down slowly over the last few years.” 

That explanation “does not pass the smell test,” financial analyst Susan Webber, who covers alternative investments at the website Naked Capitalism, said.

“Either they don't want to accept a market price and recognize a big loss, or the investment is something so complex and exotic they can’t sell it at all,” she told IBTimes. 

In all since 2006, state documents show New Jersey has paid more than $11.8 million in fees to Angelo Gordon -- more than the amount the state currently says it is projected to make on its investment in the firm. Former hedge fund manager Marshall Auerback told IBTimes that the outstanding illiquid investment is unusual. 

"The obvious question here is, why is the Christie administration allowing fees to be paid to a financial firm for three years after the state terminated its investment?" Auerback, who is now an executive at the economic policy group Institute for New Economic Thinking, said. "This seems like a very one-sided deal for the manager. After three years, there doesn’t seem to be a time frame for selling the illiquid parts of the investment, and yet the manager gets to keep collecting fees. It's a great deal for Mary Pat Christie's firm, but a terrible deal for taxpayers and for the public employees whose pension money is being used to pay the fees."

Thomas Byrne, the Christie-appointed acting chairman of the New Jersey State Investment Council, countered that argument. "This is standard; we are not doing something different here that is outside the norms of the financial industry and the world of private partnerships," he said. [emphasis mine]

And that, of course, is exactly the problem.

One other point the Star-Ledger conveniently forgets: Chris Christie is chairman of the Republican Governor's Association, which means he now has influence over many state pension plans. What are Angelo, Gordon's interests in pensions located in states in which Christie was directly involved in gubernatorial elections?

This entire thing stinks on ice, even leaving Mary Pat Christie's part in it aside. Under Chris Christie, Wall Street firms are getting fat off of the mandatory contributions of public employees, all while our pensions continue to degrade in value. There is no transparency and no accountability in these investments, yet the state continues to take our money while attempting to slash our earned compensations.

This is perhaps the best reason for the NJ Legislature to insist that the wealthy start kicking in more to the pensions. Because maybe if these plutocrats started having to put their own money on the line, they wouldn't allow these sort of shenanigans to occur. Maybe if the wealthy had as much skin in the game as we public employees do, these sort of outrageous practices would cease.

In any case, it's well past time for public employees to start standing up and demanding that our money be managed responsibly and with full transparency. Chris Christie shouldn't be allowed to use our compensation to enrich his cronies without any safeguards in place to protect our interests.

But, but, but... JOB CREATORS! Or something...

His Masters' Voices

Thank the lord NJ got rid of Jon Corzine, a Wall Street insider, and replaced him with Chris Christie, a Wall Street insider:

Bob McCann, the head of UBS Asset Management, and who held a fundraiser for Christie at his house, introduced him to the audience and happily disclosed his love of the Gov:

"I had a fundraiser for Christie at my home and yes, I did vote for him. Now that I've gotten that out there, let me say that events like this are very important to the kind of company that we want to be at UBS... and that is a company that takes the very best thinkers in the world and makes them available to our clients and our partners. And that's what today is about."

Then Christie got up to speak. During the course speech, Christie got two full standing ovations and a third from some guy up front who enthusiastically jumped up as soon as Christie took the stage.

Because NJ has deferred paying into the pension for so long, there is a slew of money scheduled to start flowing into the funds. Christie also wants to jack up teacher contributions into the pension fund by another 60% after a 10% increase in 2007 (from 5% to 8.5% of base pay). His cap allowed for exemptions of pension payments, and his toolkit clearly suggests he will pay for that by making it easier to lay off workers and capping the salaries and benefits of those who remain (whether he will actually get substantial savings from that is another matter).

In other words: he wants to feed the pension funds by jacking up public employee contributions, slashing benefits, and paying employer contributions with money hopefully saved by gutting services and destroying employee protections.

If I were a soulless Wall Street stooge, I'd be jumping up and applauding too. All that tasty money flowing into TriBeCa; all those fees. And fewer worries about actual performance, because the fund won't have to pay out as much to retirees. It's enough to bring a tear to the eye of any Master of the Universe.

But not only that (thanks to Crazy Uncle Paul):

This problem was obvious last year when Christie was a candidate. Then, he called the borrowing by past governors "unconscionable" and he promised not to do it if elected. He told the voters that he knew how to refill the trust fund without raising the gas tax.

"We should go pay-as-you-go with current budget funds," said that candidate in a debate last year.

Christie won the election. And the state is now funding road construction on a pay-as-you-go basis out of current budget funds.

So what’s the problem? The problem is that last week the governor asked the Democrats who control the Legislature for permission to borrow another billion bucks to fill the fund. The Democrats promptly threw his campaign promises back in his face and said they wouldn’t let him borrow the money. Christie responded by shutting down highway construction. [emphasis mine]

And don't forget about the Wall St. connection to charter schools, Christie's new pet project: "Just Smell the Money!"

This guy is a bankster's wet dream: bashes taxpayers, makes taxes more regressive, borrows when he said he won't, and forces public employees to shove more money into a pension fund that will have to pay out less than was promised. He's everything they ever wanted in a leader.

Lovey and I give Christie another standing O!

Seriously: What Is Wrong With Chris Christie?

You have to trust me when I say that this isn't just snark: something is really, really wrong with the Governor of New Jersey:

At a documentary screening before the event, Christie had stern words for groups that have called the partnership between he and Booker potentially illegal, and threatened to sue the state.

“I have a message for politicians who think their careers are more important than our children – I’m coming,” Christie said. “I have a message to the lawyers who have made a lifetime out of suing us into failure — I’m coming.”

Is he the governor or Steven Seagal? "I'm coming"?!? Are you kidding me?

For those who don't follow the minutia of this, Christie's threat is clearly directed at David Sciarra of the Education Law Center. I'm no expert on the Abbott decision (I wasn't even a teacher at the time), but ELC was pretty much the major driving force behind the 1997 suit that changed how money flowed to the poorest districts in the state.

Sciarra makes the point that the Newark schools are under the control of the Education Commissioner, not the governor. He's clearly right, although the notion that it matters is, frankly, a little quaint: the Ed Commish office has been so politicized that it's practically the same as being run by the guv himself, and that's clearly not changing anytime soon (especially when Andy Smarick weasels his way in).

But I really don't think Christie cares all that much about that. Granted, he'd like to install Cory Booker as another Michael Bloomberg and bask in the reflected glory of claiming that the schools have made huge gains when they actually did no such thing. Sure, he'd like to open the floodgates to charter schools and prepare for the coming of a new generation of Chris Whittles who would each love to become the Haliburtons of education ("Just smell the money!"). Yes, he loves him his TV time and is glad to push this stuff if he gets to pal around with Oprah.

But it's becoming clear that none of that is what really drives him.

Folks, I'm normally against armchair psychoanalysis. But this one is so clear, I'd be obtuse not to bring it up:

Chris Christie is a truly weird person. He loves - he relishes - smacking down opponents; not because he believes in principles, but because he loves humiliating those who question him. It's probably what put him on a fast track at the Justice Department, but it's a character flaw that is making his governorship a train wreck.

"I'm coming." In what bizarre world is this the way to build consensus around your ideas? Does he really think he's going to pull this off without getting interested parties to buy in? Or does he just not care whether it happens or not, because all this is - to him - just another chance to stick it to the teachers union and others who refuse to bow before his awesomeness?

"I'm coming." What the hell does that mean? You're going to sic the power of your office on a guy because he dares to disagree with the decrees of the Prince of Mendham? You're an officer of the court - do you think people should demand that the laws of this state be followed or not? Do you think it's appropriate for you to use your office to threaten those who question you?

"I'm coming." You're coming? Is this all about you? You saving Meg Whitman? You addicted to the spotlight? You putting uppity teachers women in their place? You causing those who knew you when you were young to wonder what ever happened to you?

This is, I'm afraid, classic bullying behavior, and all decent people in the State of New Jersey, no matter their political affiliations, need to demand that Governor Christie get a grip on himself and stop this once and for all. His tone is demeaning and demoralizing. He is ripping this state apart, destroying morale among all public workers, and pushing unproven and damaging policies simply because he is scared little man who has no grasp of the complexities of governance, yet hides his incompetence in bluster.

His tone, his demeanor, and his actions are beneath the high office he occupies. We simply can not afford, at this critical time, to indulge a governor who plays out his adolescent fantasies on the public stage. He needs to drop this childish behavior and actually lead this state.

And if he doesn't understand that this kind intimidation is unethical (and maybe even illegal), and he continues to engage in it...

Then he needs to be removed from office - immediately.

Throwing Newark's Children in the Front of the Bus

Laura, Laura, Laura...

But ed reformers are nothing if not hip, and they are beginning to understand that change won’t happen without a “Rosa Parks moment,” a widespread, grassroots, community-driven demand for a paradigm shift in our poorest neighborhoods. You can practically hear Pete Seeger hollering, “Come on up to the front of the bus, I’ll be sitting right there!”

Well, we need more than a folksinger.

Isn’t there a sense in which those who bristle at reform initiatives are telling Rosa Parks to stay in the back of the bus? Where else are Newark’s schoolchildren sitting but right there? Aren’t those who defend the status quo in chronically failing districts like Newark advocating for maintaining the current segregated and unequal paradigm?

I continue to admire Laura's genuine commitment to the kids this state and this nation have left behind. But sorry - you are offering a completely false choice.

No one thinks the status quo for our urban students is at all acceptable. Everyone knows that Newark and Camden and Trenton and Passaic have got to change. But let's be very clear about what's happening here:

A multi-billionaire is coming in at the cost of a small part of his fortune and sprinkling some seed money around. For this, he gets to set the agenda for education by allying himself with powerful politicians who have demonstrated time and again their primary objective is to slash teacher compensation and consolidate their own power.

The charter school movement they all espouse already has powerful, wealthy patrons who "just smell the money" that will flow their way when these schools are established. It doesn't matter if the charters themselves haven't been proven to work; what matters is that piles of money will flow to them while they cut teacher pay, destroy civil service protections, end collective bargaining, and demean the teaching profession.

Further, these same reformers will put in place a system of teacher evaluation that every reputable expert in the field admits is deeply flawed.

Braun, if fact, gets this whole thing exactly right: beating up teachers is a distraction from the fact that we have a rigged system that makes wealth flow to the rich and away from the working- and middle-classes.

The real alternative for our children, Laura, is to give poor kids what rich kids already have: real economic opportunities for their parents, safe neighborhoods, solid public infrastructure, high-quality health care, and great schools staffed by well-paid, well-regarded faculty.

This will cost money - REAL money. $100 million is nothing compared to what we have to invest in our kids. But as long as we continue to allow people like Chris Christie to set the agenda, the interests of the rich will always be served first, and the poor will be thrown crumbs that look like KIPP schools.

Rosa Parks did not settle for a jitney that ran on a different route. She got on the same bus that white people took. She demanded equality, not gimmicks. So should we.

Testing Nation

To paraphrase Bob Dylan: "Everybody must get tested!"

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. 

Superintendent Peter Gorman acknowledged Wednesday that the tests put a burden on teachers and volunteers, especially in elementary schools. But he said they ensure that kids get the best possible instruction: "We can see who's a great teacher, who's a good teacher and who's a teacher that needs improvement."

You know, you could have principal and peer evaluations determine that. But I guess it's better to have strangers test kindergartners TWICE - because you'd have to do a pre- and post-test to find teacher effect, right?

All testing is to be monitored by another adult so teachers don't cheat on tests that rate their effectiveness.

For a standard class of 22 students, that's up to 44 hours of adult time spent on testing. 

"It's crazy at a time like this," said Mary McCray, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators. 

Gorman said it's considered "best practice" for teachers to test their own students, because young children respond best to someone they know. But he said assistants, administrators and other faculty could also do testing. 

However, his 2011 budget plan calls for eliminating assistants in grades one and two. [emphasis mine]

Did this guy graduate from the Broad Institute? Because he's as dumb as a bundle of fill-in-the-bubble sheets.

What's finally going to stop this are parents who care about their kids' education enough to stand up and demand that these corporate tools stop implementing their unproven, nonsensical plans:

Parent protests

Katie Catron, a former teacher and member of the Cotswold PTA board, said she learned of the new tests last week, when the school issued a call for volunteers to cover classrooms for four days while teachers give a trial version of the new exams. 

She wrote Gorman and the school board, saying she won't let her kids participate. 

"You are overburdening a system that is at a breaking point," she wrote. "I give full support to the staff at my children's school. This is one area that I must stand up for my children and other CMS students to say enough testing is enough. Find another way to evaluate your staff." 

Gorman and Chris Cobitz, who oversees the new program, say they've gotten several requests for kids to be pulled out of the testing. But CMS won't allow that, they said. 

Catron says that's not CMS' decision to make: "If I have to take my kids out of school next week, I will do it."

Good for her. Maybe if more parents take this attitude, districts can avoid the inevitable lawsuits that are coming from good teachers who were fired on the basis of bad testing.

Until then, follow the money:

Gorman says the $1.9 million for test development came from money left from the 2009-10 budget. Ongoing costs are estimated at $300,000 a year - the equivalent of about six teacher salaries. 

Gorman said that cost is justified by the benefit to students across CMS. Even before results are used for performance pay in 2014, they'll help identify areas where students are struggling. CMS can identify successful teachers in those topics and design training to help others reach students more effectively, he said.

You can design the training now with tons of unnecessary standardized tests, you idiot. And I guarantee you'll be spending much, much more on testing; the security alone will cost you plenty.

Not that the costs of creating and administering bad tests is prohibitive: just get a bunch of $10 an hour temps to plow through them. But the pockets of the testing company owners must be lined.

By the way: when this guy retires, how much do you want to bet he takes a job at one of those companies? The career path of military officer to defense contractor is coming to education, folks: just smell the money.

ADDING: micaela in the comments rightly takes me to task for not following through on my own snark:

micaela said...

yes, OF COURSE he's a Broad alumnus. I'm a CMS parent and I feel sick every time I see/hear him on the evening news.

It's true: Gorman is a Broad Academy grad.

I'm really speechless. I swear to you, I was joking when I made the comment about Gorman being a Broad alumnus.

Lord help us all...

Just Smell the Money!

Delaware has that delicious aroma for education contractors!

The state Department of Education awarded an $8.3 million contract to a New York company to help teachers in public schools learn how to use data from math and reading assessments to guide classroom instruction.

The data coaches are a key component of the state's $119 million Race to the Top education reform plan.

The state selected Wireless Generation to help hire, train and deploy its data coaches.

The company faced criticism last year for its work in New Jersey, which lost its bid for a Race to the Top grant because of a technicality.

Wireless Generation has worked with schools in many states, but is best known for its efforts to foster data-driven instruction in New York City schools.

The company faced a firestorm after it worked with New Jersey on its failed Race to the Top grant application. The application was found to have a clerical error in it -- information for the wrong budget year was included.

Some politicians blamed Wireless Generation for not catching the error and asked the company to return the $500,000 fee paid for technical assistance on the application. 

[...]

The Delaware Department of Education did not look at the New Jersey situation when it selected Wireless Generation for the data-coach grant, said Dan Cruce, the state's deputy secretary of education. Cruce said even if the state had been aware of the controversy, it would not have been an issue because the state was hiring the company for a different function.

Data coaches are educators who use data to help teachers figure out ways to boost struggling learners or fine-tune schools that already excel. The first five data coaches will be in classrooms as soon as next month, and the state plans to eventually have 29 of these experts in Delaware's districts and charter schools.

Yeah, you wouldn't want to put that money into the classroom or anything.

Funny how the same players keep showing up in this twisted little school reform drama.

Bambi vs Godzilla

The battle starts with this op-ed from Laura Waters, aka NJ Left Behind:

Here’s one way to get through the rational albeit provincial resistance from leaders of high-performing districts. Let’s just say, we have schools that are among “the very best in the nation.” But we also have schools that are among the nation’s worst. We’ve made this distinction for years, primarily through the State Supreme Court Abbott decisions, which mandate that we fund our poorest districts (recently revised to poorest students) at the same rate as our wealthiest. Why not take this acknowledgement of inequity to its logical conclusion and implement reform efforts -- charter school expansion, school choice, higher compensation for great teachers, data-driven instruction -- in our chronically failing districts?

Surely school leaders, legislators, New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) executives and the DOE can coalesce around charter school expansion in Pleasantville and Trenton; merit pay in Camden and Plainfield; or tying student growth to teacher evaluations in Newark and Asbury Park. While state-wide school reform will eventually come to New Jersey, our poorest students can’t wait. Targeting progressive educational strategies to failing schools may be politically distasteful, but it’s the only way to get those kids under that big white tent where they belong.

Bruce Baker responded:

In short, the author is explaining in the first part of the editorial that many wealthy, successful New Jersey school districts haven’t supported aggressive statewide “reformy” strategies because they want no part in those strategies in their own districts. The same districts have been tentative about expanded choice for inter-district transfers. But, as this editorial argues, these districts should band together… should coalesce, to RAM DESTRUCTIVE, ILL-CONCEIVED POLICIES DOWN THE THROATS OF THEIR POOR URBAN NEIGHBORS. That’ll fix ‘em! And without comparable adverse effects on their own districts!

I must say that this is about the most offensive call to arms I believe I’ve read in recent months. Yes, I’ve read some absurd arguments, like the argument that the “upper half of charters is better than average” or the argument that if current teacher evaluations are flawed, then the only answer is to replace them with student test scores (and other absurd false dichotomies).

The present NJ Spotlight argument begins with a deeply distorted, selective “factiness” about the failures of New Jersey’s urban districts (some of the nation’s worst! evidence?) and reasons for them (not enough charters, and no merit pay for teachers) and then jumps quickly to the most extreme and dreadfully oversimplified representation of the solutions (solutions, mind you, that may be far worse than the “disease”) to all of our – excuse me – their problems.

All when I thought that I might be getting too tough on the overly simplistic, bombastic and misguided logic of reform.

Waters came back with this:

It’s an old argument. There is no perfect value-added method of teacher valuation; therefore, all value-added teacher evaluation is worthless. (For a more nuanced view, see this great report from The New Teacher Project, “Teacher Evaluation 2.0.”) The success record for charter schools is mixed; therefore, expansion of charters is otiose. (See this report from Jay P. Greene: “Measuring test score improvements in eleven states over a one-year period, this study finds that charter schools serving the general student population outperformed nearby regular public schools on math tests by 0.08 standard deviations, equivalent to a benefit of 3 percentile points for a student starting at the 50th percentile.”)

The point isn’t whether there is a perfect solution out there. Newsflash: there’s not. The point is that across America there’s a growing recognition that our public education system needs to change. (Heck: even Randi Weingarten, President of The American Federation of Teachers, supports Race To The Top.) Teacher evaluations will include value-added data. School choice will expand. Teacher unions will eventually move past industrial labor models and treat members like professionals. Pay will be differentiated. Technology will transform classrooms.

Defending the status quo from misguided reformy types may be fun, but it's sort of like arguing that our agrarian school calendar, holidays coinciding with harvesting time, is relevant to the 21st century, or that the only useful model for education is one teacher in front of a desk-lined room of 25 kids.

Truly, Bruce, I respect your work. But do you really think that the NJ's traditional educational system is working well for kids in Camden, Newark, and Trenton? If not, what should we do now?

Suppose I go to the doctor with a headache. He says, "Here, take this experimental antacid, but be careful, it may cause stomach bleeding."

"But, doc, how's that going help my headache? And why put me on something dangerous that doesn't solve the problem anyway?"

"Listen, you said you have a headache - we have to do SOMETHING. Just sitting around doing nothing is not acceptable."

This is Laura's - and pretty much the whole 'former world's - argument. The urban schools are not getting the same results as the 'burbs; therefore, we must implement solutions that all the best evidence says will not work because it's better than nothing.

Let's leave aside the fact that there is plenty of evidence to contradict the notion that NJ's schools completely fail poor kids:

No one - ESPECIALLY Bruce Baker - is "defending the status quo." What some of us are saying, Laura, is that maybe the diagnosis is wrong, and, therefore, the proposed cure makes no sense.

Let's go back to Laura's original op-ed:

Example: a student in Moorestown, a wealthy Burlington County district, attends a public high school that offers 22 AP courses. Just about every student passes the state assessments.

Nine miles down the road in Willingboro, also in Burlington, a student attends a high school where in 2009 exactly one student successfully completed an AP course. Only half the kids passed the standard state assessment. Same state. Same DOE. Completely different set of educational opportunities. Separate but equal would be an improvement for Willingboro’s kids.

Laura, are you going to look at us with a straight face and claim that only one kid passed an AP in Willingboro because the kids there have a "completely different set of educational OPPORTUNITIES"? That, somehow, the school is the primary difference in the lives of kids from Willingboro versus Moorestown?

Those kids in Willingboro deserve better than that. They deserve better than the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" garbage that conservatives love to dish out daily. (And, may I add: I really, really hate it when that one kid in Willingboro who passed an AP is held up as some kind of "proof" that we don't have huge systemic problems outside of our schools)

I've never doubted the commitment of people like Laura Waters to the kids in Abbott districts. But rhetoric like this only serves to empower charlatans like Chris Christie, who tout "solutions" like merit pay and charter schools that are really designed only to break the backs of teachers unions.

Anybody who's watched this debate carefully knows that "merit pay" is a code word for "less pay." The undeniable goal is to bring down the average teacher salary across the state; same with charters (although the aristocrats who fund his campaign are also happy to "smell the money" coming off of the charter movement and are licking their chops at the thought of the Haliburtonization of our schools).

So, Laura quite rightly asks, if not Christie's schemes, what should we do? Off the top of my head:

- Stop funding education through regressive property taxes and start funding it through progressive income and corporate taxes.

- Demand the Fed fulfill its mandate for full employment so we can stop much of the economic uncertainty these children face every day.

- Implement living wage laws.

- Implement nationwide health care like every other industrialized nation in the world.

- Take a good part of the savings from that and use it to pay teachers more so the labor pool grows and competition to enter the profession intensifies.

I can hear the response now: "You live in a dream word, Jazzman! Don't you see the polls? This will never happen."

Well, it will never happen as long as decent people who care about kids continue to empower hucksters like Christie by buying into his false premises and false choices. We have another choice besides doing nothing or doing the wrong thing:

Let's do the right thing.


ADDING: In case you're not old enough to get the joke:

Just Smell the Money!

Mmm, mmm! What IS that wonderful smell?

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.

But many of those same schools are now straining to pay escalating rents, which are going toward the debt service that Brighter Choice incurred during construction. 

[...]  

No wonder JPMorgan Chase announced this week it was creating a new $325 million pool to invest in charter schools and take advantage of the New Markets Tax Credit.

I'm just waiting for the day Haliburton starts building charter schools...

Seriously: the charter "movement" is based on very flimsy results. And yet we're getting ready to give untold sums of money to Wall Street to finance them. I seem to recall the financial sector having some problems recently...

Isn't anyone the least little bit pissed off by this? Anyone?

Oprah, Christie, Zuckerman: "Astrology Will Save Our Schools!"

Dateline - Chicago: 

On Friday, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook will appear on Oprah Winfrey's show, along with NJ Governor Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, to announce a program to build a new charter school system in Newark based on the principles of astrology.

Students will be assigned to one of twelve new schools according to their zodiac signs. Zuckerberg will donate $100 million to help facilitate the design of the schools; vouchers will ensure that state funds are used to implement the exciting new curriculum design.

"It just makes sense," said Christie. "Our schools have been failing our kids for years. We need to give the parents more choice. And studies have shown that astrology has roughly the same influence on student learning as putting the kids in charter schools, which we all know are the bestest things ever."

Winfrey was even more glowing in her praise: "This is the first time that a billionaire CEO, a billionaire TV host, a multi-millionaire governor, and a Twitter-addicted mayor have ever come together to solve such a big problem. It was clear nothing would ever be done about this if the people who actually study this stuff and teach our kids didn't finally get out of the way."

"We all love charters," agreed Booker. "Listen, we're politicians, celebrities, and CEOs. We all made our fortunes on charisma. Schools should be run the same way. If only every school had a telegenic principal, we wouldn't be hearing all of this bad news about schools, because personal magnetism would cancel out logical thinking and research. We just need to get happy-talking educators in our schools and continue to make movies about them."

Zuckerman agrees that charters continue to be the future of education: "The CEOs I yacht with all agree: you can just smell the money! We want to get in on the ground floor so we have a chance to become the Haliburton of education."

If six of the 12 schools do better than the average school, the program will be declared a smashing success, paving the way for expansion. Future charters could be based on Scientology, multi-level marketing (with Amway as a corporate sponsor), or creationism.

"Anything is possible," adds Christie, "as long as the teachers don't collectively bargain, request health insurance, or expect to have a retirement. 'Cause I love them!"

No teachers, union officials, or education researchers were interviewed for this story, 'cause they're not rich or famous, so what's the point?

Just Smell the Money!

Like the aroma of ripe peaches in July!

Senator Charles E. Grassley is examining whether Education Department officials disclosed confidential government information to hedge fund managers, including the well-known stock picker Steve Eisman. 

The inquiry stems from the agency’s recent efforts to overhaul the for-profit collegeindustry, which has been accused of saddling students with huge piles of debt. Expecting tough new rules in the wake of the controversy, Mr. Eisman and other hedge fund traders placed huge bets against the industry. In a letter this week, Mr. Grassley questioned the education secretary, Arne Duncan, about the agency’s ties to the hedge fund world and the lack of policies restricting contact with Wall Street players.

“If it is indeed the case that Department of Education employees were on familiar terms with hedge fund short-sellers, this raises serious questions regarding the internal controls,” Mr. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said in the letter. “My concerns center on the possibility that senior Department of Education staffers may have provided information to short-sellers during the time leading up to the public release” of new regulations. 

[...] 

The Education Department’s internal watchdog is already looking into whether certain traders influenced the for-profit college rules. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, wrote to Mr. Duncan in April to request an update on the outcome of that investigation.

Mr. Eisman — the former manager at FrontPoint Partners who made a fortune betting against subprime mortgages — was one of several investors to lobby the agency about the potential regulations. In an e-mail sent to agency officials in May 2010, he pushed for tough new restrictions on the colleges, according to agency documents reviewed by The New York Times.

Last month, a report by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group, raised questions about Wall Street’s influence over the agency. The group obtained several e-mail chains between agency officials and hedge fund traders who discussed the for-profit college rules.

Hey, look, Grassley's a Republican, OK? Obviously, there's nothing here. Hedge fund managers are interested in eduction out of altruism, right?

Uh, right?

Hello?