Presidential Magical Misery Tour

Man, do I not look forward to the upcoming Presidential race. Or the already-started race. Whatever you want to call it.

On the GOP side, we've already got Ted Cruz deciding to distinguish himself by getting out ahead of the Silly Pack. That's fine. The sooner he burns out, the better for America.

But the Jebster's irony-drenched and self-awareness-parched campaign has been chugging along for a while, including his nifty Super-PAC, the Right to Rise. This PAC is established to "support candidates who want to restore the promise of America with a positive, conservative vision of reform and renewal." Apparently those candidates are all wrapped up in just one guy-- the Jebbinator, Bush III, the Littlest Shrub of All. What do they absolutely and unironically believe?

We believe passionately that the Right to Rise — to move up the income ladder based on merit, hard work and earned success — is the central moral promise of American economic life. 

Because if there's anything that the Bush story tells us, it's that anybody born into riches and power can climb the ladder of ivy league connections to a position of even more wealth and power. Jeb's staff the completely independent operators of Right to Rise do acknowledge that the playing field no longer seems to be level and that the recovery did not raise all boats.

We believe the income gap is real, but that only conservative principles can solve it by removing the barriers to upward mobility. We will celebrate success and risk-taking, protect liberty, cherish free enterprise, strengthen our national defense, embrace the energy revolution, fix our broken and obsolete immigration system, and give all children a better future by transforming our education system through choice, high standards and accountability. We will strive to put our fiscal house back in order, re-limit government and ensure that America is a welcoming society.

So there's Jebby's plan, comfortingly vague except for the doubling down on reformster principles. But Jeb is stuck between two wings of the GOP-- the GOP well-paid-bv-corporate-interests wing and the still-attached-to-conservative-values wing. As a teacher, I'm not excited.

I am no more excited about the Democratic side. We're saying that the nomination is in Hillary Clinton's bag (hmmm... have I heard this before??) and the press is trying hard to shape a narrative in which she represents a struggle between the wings of the Democratic party- the Democratic well-paid-for-by-corporate-interests wing and the still-attached-to-liberal-values wing. You see how this is shaping up. The New York Times portrays her as torn between teachers and Democratic hedge fund guys and Democrats for Education Reform, a group the New York Times describes as "left-leaning" and which I would describe as about as Democratic as the Harvard Boat Club.

Leonie Haimson (of Class Size Matters) pulled up this quote from DFER honcho Whitney Tilson's film manifesto, "A Right Denied," and it should be pulled out every time DFER appears. It explains how DFER decided to be Democrats.

“The real problem, politically, was not the Republican party, it was the Democratic party. So it dawned on us, over the course of six months or a year, that it had to be an inside job. The main obstacle to education reform was moving the Democratic party, and it had to be Democrats who did it, it had to be an inside job. So that was the thesis behind the organization. And the name – and the name was critical – we get a lot of flack for the name. You know, “Why are you Democrats for education reform? That’s very exclusionary. I mean, certainly there are Republicans in favor of education reform.” And we said, “We agree.” In fact, our natural allies, in many cases, are Republicans on this crusade, but the problem is not Republicans. We don’t need to convert the Republican party to our point of view…”

I'm not looking for Hillary to align herself with teachers. Maybe with the national teachers union, but of course we're still trying to get NEA and AFT to align more tightly with teachers, so that's an issue.

It was Hillary Clinton who way back in the day received the infamous Mark Tucker letter outlining how public education could be retooled into a cradle-to-career pipeline, managed by the government and devoted to tracking and training children for their proper place in society. Now, if we held everyone accountable for every letter they ever received, I'd be a sweepstake winner many times over. But that was in 1998, and neither Clinton has exactly stepped up to say, "No, that's just crazy talk and wrong." Clinton's support for traditional US public education has been pretty much invisible.

That may seem like picking at the nits, but here's the thing-- the last guy I voted for said all sorts of wonderful things about public education and about schools and teachers, and that all turned out to be baloney. I vote for Barrack Obama once with enthusiasm and once while holding my nose, and nothing that happened after either vote convinced me that I would have been any worse off somehow putting George Bush II in the White House.

My distrust of Democrats at this point is huge, enormous, massive, a yawning chasm into which we could dump every beanie baby ever manufactured sealed in its own Iowa-sized vacuum container. The Democrat slogan has become, "You probably figure the GOP will be absolutely terrible, so we're banking that you'll vote for us because we're only horrible."

I've never not voted in an election (any election) and I hate the idea of throwing away a symbolic vote, but I have truly had it. I will never again vote for a national candidate who can't convince me that s/he will support public education. And it's already looking as if I'll have to do a lot of searching for 2016.

The Biggest Ed Win of 2014

As the battle for the heart, soul, and future of US public education has heated up this year, there have been wins for the Resistance this year. Because it's the time of year in which we all Make Lists and Declare Winners, I'm going to go ahead and sort through public education victories this year and declare the greatest.

Political

It's now quaint to remember a time when education was the easy choice for pols who wanted a win. Coming out for better schools was like announcing your support of cute puppies and apple pie, a political stance with only an up side and no possible downside.

No longer. No longer can politicians just say, "Let's make schools better" and not have to explain what they mean and not suffer consequences for those specifics. Sure, the new opposition to Common Core from guys like Bobby Jindal is strictly political, but then, the support was strictly political in the first place. The good news is that politicians must now do some sort of homework instead of just making platitudinous mouth noises about education.

And while the fall elections left reformster politicians largely untouched, the brutal shellacking of incumbent PA governor Tom Corbett is a clear signal that voters will put up with only so much gutting of public education.

Corporate

I hope Leonie Haimson is having a great New Year's celebration tonight, because this year she was the most visible face of a movement that took down inBloom, the data collecting giant. It would be a mistake to thing our Data Overlords have given up their dreams of hoovering up every speck of data on every sentient being on the planet (it is still fundamental to Pearson's world domination business plan). But their flagship corporate initiative got its ass handed to it in 2014.

Conversational

This was the year for reformsters to talk about the Conversation. Changing the Conversation. Renewing the Conversation. Improving the Conversation. Reformsters talk about the Conversation uniformly ignored one uncomfortable truth-- the Conversation they were talking about changing was the same one they had refused to have. Common Core was rolled out quickly and in a manner deliberately designed to keep national standards, test, and (let's be honest) curriculum from being derailed by any conversation about how (or even if) these things should be done.

So 2014 was the year that reformsters, mostly, acknowledged that simply rolling over the entire country was no longer working as a strategy. Some, like Peter Cunningham at Education Post, still worked on the theory that the public just needed to be rolled over more artfully, but even that was a backhanded acknowledgement that people who disagree with the reform agenda exist and have voices and can't just be ignored. That means there's a possibility that in 2015 we might actually begin the national conversation we should have had in 2009.

The Biggest Public Education Win of 2014

None of these victories, or the many other victories for public ed this year, were the biggest win. Because the biggest win was also the quietest one. Let me tell you what it was, in case you missed it.

In the midst of a staggering assault on public education, with their integrity, judgment, reputation, and ability under attack by everyone from corporate stooges to the US Secretary of Education, and, in many areas, with their job security under direct assault by people who don't know what the hell they're talking about, while powerful forces worked to dismantle the very institutions and ideals that they have devoted their lives to-- in the middle of all that, millions of teachers went to work and did their jobs.

In environments ranging from openly hostile to merely unsupportive, teachers went into their classrooms and did their best to meet the needs of their students. Teachers helped millions of young human become smarter, wiser, more capable, more confident, and better educated. Millions of teachers went to school, met students where they were, and helped those students move forward, helped them grasp what it meant to be fully human, to be the most that they could be. Teachers helped millions of students learn to read and write and figure and draw and make music and play games and know history and understand science and a list of things so varied and rich that I have no room here for them all.

When so many groups were slandering us and our own political leaders were giving us a giant middle finger, we squared our shoulders and said, "Well, dammit, I've got a job to do, and if even if I've got to go in there and do it with my bare hands in a hailstorm, I'm going to do it." And we did.

Yes, some of us finally ran out of fight this year. There's no shame in that; despite what our detractors say, this is not a job that just anybody can do for a lifetime, particularly not under today's conditions. The people who had to leave the classroom are just our measure of how hard it is to stay these days.

And yet, this year, millions of us stayed and fought and taught and did our best this year. While powerful forces lined up to make us fail, or at least make us look as if we were failing, we went into our classrooms armed with professional skills and knowledge and experience and judgment and hours of outside preparation and work, and we didn't fail. We stood up for our students, stood up for the education, their future, their value as human beings. We didn't fail.

So, if you want the biggest public education win of 2014, there it is. Millions of teachers, caught in a storm not of their own making, under fire, under pressure, under the thumb of people with far more money and power still stood up and did their job. The powers that be tried to make us fail, and we got the job done anyway. Celebrate that.

More on Rochester Charter Wunderkind (Or: How Hard Is It To Do Your Job, Anyway?)

It has only been a day since the story of Ted Morris, Jr., Rochester's 22-year-old charter school phenom and new holder of a NY State charter school authorization, began to unravel.

I did some quick research and wrote about it. Mercedes Schneider turned her research mojo loose. Leonie Haimson turned up some inconsistencies in his CV. And Diane Ravitch covered the story as well, drawing out a note from his alleged former principal shooting more holes in his story.

The Democrat & Chronicle has... well, "updated" would be an understatement and "finally did the legwork they should have done the first time" might be too mean. At any rate, a whole new version of the story appears here.

Turns out that young "Dr." Morris might have overstated his resume a bit.

Elaine Comarella, the [Hickock] center's CEO, said his title was actually administrative assistant, and that the responsibilities he listed in the resume were "a little overshot."

His high school administrators remember him as someone who was a great talker and very sociable, but not real big on attending classes. Morris allows as he just wasn't challenged enough. And at this point it's not really clear where he did or did not get his college degrees. It does seem that none of his diplomas involved interacting directly with humans.

My favorite new detail may be that he found his board of trustees mostly through LinkedIn, Craigslist and a website for nonprofits.

You can find even more here at Mercedes Schneider's update from today. The information just keeps rolling in. 

Justin Murphy, the reporter covering the story, clearly did some real legwork and talked to many of the parties involved (though some have yet to return his calls), and it's great that he did. But here's what I want to underline.

Twenty four hours.

It took a handful of bloggers and one reporter twenty-four hours to find the holes from which the fishlike smell emanates from this story. I don't know how much time Mercedes, Leonie and Diane spent following up on this, but I used the twenty-five minutes left over after I finished my cafeteria sub on Monday. A computer, some search terms, google, and twenty-five minutes.

The New York Board of Regents has had considerably more than that. The guy has been sending in letters of intent for this charter since January of 2010! Did nobody at the Board of Regents do even a cursory background check? If I take care of filling out the paperwork carefully for him, can my dog get authorization to run a charter school in New York?!!

I mean, I want to do a small tsk tsk to reporter Murphy, but I know that sometimes a nice press release lands on your desk and a quick seemingly harmless feel-good story writes itself without you having to exert much effort, and that's kind of irresistible. Also, it's becoming clear that Morris got a PhD in shmoozing from somewhere. But Murphy at least went back, did his job, and made things right.

Will the New York Board of Regents do the same?

[Update-- because this story just never stops-- My hat is off to Murphy-- I was hard on him above but he has been on this story like a boos all day--

Breaking: Ted Morris, he of suspicious resume, resigns from board of trustees of Greater Works Charter School. #ROC
— Justin Murphy (@CitizenMurphy) November 26, 2014

Morris submitted his resignation shortly after this story was published: http://t.co/nUwNTgo6rD #ROC
— Justin Murphy (@CitizenMurphy) November 26, 2014

School trustee Peter Kozik, a Keuka College prof, takes over. "It was too much of a distraction." School will still open.
— Justin Murphy (@CitizenMurphy) November 26, 2014

What will that mean in terms of his total involvement with "his" school? Stay tuned, campers!

Still unrolling-- Dr. Kozik apparently has a specialty in adapting CCSS for students with disabilities. Here's his presentation-- from EngageNY.

And here's his LinkedIn recommendation for Dr. Ted

Ted has done an outstanding job as the Executive Director of the Greater Works Charter School where I serve on the Founding Board of Directors. He listens exceptionally well, is extremely detail oriented, and has balanced many complex tasks in developing an application for the charter school successfully. He is bright, gracious, and works well beyond what's required to ensure the success of the group. He is a talented team builder as well as a "team player." I recommend him unequivocally for any position for which he is qualified.

So the whole thing should be in great hands now. Holy smokes-- is this any way to run a school??