Showing posts with label Charles Payne. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charles Payne. Show all posts

Monday, June 6, 2011

Plagiarism in the charter school world

Merriam-Webster’s definition of PLAGIARIZE 
  • to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
  • use (another's production) without crediting the source
  • to commit literary theft
  • present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
Multiple connections between schools can be found by scanning web pages and documents of charter schools for likely phrasing, and then inserting the phrases into Google’s Search bar. It was this technique which uncovered how a group of supposedly-unconnected charter schools (Gulen movement-operated) repeatedly make use of text written by the other schools in their underground network, as well as that of other charter schools and private schools.*

The exercise is time consuming, but nearly always fruitful. Here are just a few other outstanding examples of copying and plagiarism in the charter school world. There are dozens and dozens more, and it is anyone’s guess as to how widespread this activity is. Do the charter schools permit their students to do the same?

MIX-AND-MATCH-MIX-AND-MATCH-MIX-AND-MATCH-MIX-AND-MATCH

1. The discovery that the Gulen movement-operated Horizon Science Academy schools (operated by the 25-school, Ohio-based Concept Schools) had copied KIPP’s famous Five Pillars was first made by C.A.S.I.L.I.P.S. However, this is not the only case where the showcase elements of KIPP's educational philosophy have been used without attribution. St. HOPE Public Schools, the three-school CMO founded by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson (Michelle Rhee's fiancé) also has Five Pillars which are near-identical to KIPP’s. Click on the images at the very bottom to see for yourself. 

Q: In this world where business model-like competition is the whole point, don't these people copyright their intellectual material?

2. The Horizon Science Academy – Cleveland High School has been highly acclaimed, even winning a U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon School of Excellence Award in 2009. In addition to containing the KIPP-originated Five Essentials which were noted above, the school’s Annual Report 2008-2009 contains more phrasing which has been copied from other schools, and/or from which other charter schools have copied. For instance,

==>  A phrase in Our Guiding Principals (“belief that each child has an inherent curiosity and love of learning; and that each child has a unique intelligence, level of capability, and learning style”) is used by
==>  A phrase in Our Mission (“construct a program, which engages and motivates students to  invest  their  talents, energy, and enthusiasm  in completing  their  schoolwork  in an exemplary manner”) is also used for at least seven other Gulen charter schools
==>  A phrase in Choice in Education (“availability of  choice  is  an  important element in educational accountability and promotes higher standards throughout the system”) is used by
3. The phrase “prepare students for optimal best academic success in their future education, enable students to have a broad spectrum of options for their future endeavors, and prepare them to be effective, responsible and productive citizens” is used by
 4. The phrase "success of students is dependent upon the school’s ability to create a culture that fosters meaningful, sustained relationships between teachers, students, and parents and holds all stakeholders responsible for outcomes" is used by schools operated by the Ohio-based Concept Schools, Inc. PLUS a Gulen movement-operated school in South Africa.
  • Horizon Science Academy (multiple schools in OH)
  • Gateway Math and Science Academy (St. Louis, MO)
  • Milwaukee Math and Science Academy (WI)
  • Michigan Math and Science Academy (Hazel Park, MI)
  • Indiana Math and Science Academy - West (Indianapolis, IN)
  • Quest Charter Academy (Peoria, IL)
  • Moonlight International School (South Africa) 
5. The phrase, or near-identical variations of, “emphasis of the entire instructional program is aimed at meeting the individual needs of each student in order to allow children to develop to their fullest potential” is used by

6. A large number of schools which are Gulen movement-affiliated use a phrase which is identical or near-identical to “carry the torch of knowledge, freedom, and prosperity that has been passed from one generation to another in this great country”
 
PLAGIARISTS-CAN'T-BE-TRUSTED-CAN'T-BE-TRUSTED-CAN'T-BE-TRUSTED
Neither can schools which emphatically deny affiliations which are easily demonstrated.


Accessed 6/6/2002

Accessed 6/6/2002

Horizon Science Academy – Cleveland High School Annual Report 2008-2009
 

* For more, see the following pages
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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

On “So Much Reform, So Little Change”

“After spending more than thirty years working in urban education, I have finally found a lucid description of many of the things I experienced as a classroom teacher and administrator. Hopefully the education community will use Dr. Payne's observations and insights in their efforts to improve urban education.” (Amazon reviewer, T. Tenny on "So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools" by Charles Payne)

In an effort to promote this book, I offer you a few excerpts from the first chapter. The bolds are mine.

Chapter 1: Dimensions of Demoralization

If we take organizational morale to be “the enthusiasm and persistence with which a member of a group engages in the prescribed activities of that group” (Manning 1991), the fact that an institution needs to squelch and marginalize its most energetic, most enthusiastic, or best-prepared members tells us these are demoralized institutions…

All this stands behind clocks that don’t get fixed and broken windows that don’t get repaired. Failed institutions make the simplest things difficult. The problems manifest themselves in so many ways that they may obscure the fact that many of the discrete problems are either generated by or reinforced by the sheer lack of connectedness among people. Giving up on the institutional mission goes hand in glove with giving up on one’s colleagues. The denizens of demoralized social spaces do what they have to but without little heart or hope. (p. 23)

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Whenever we talk about the social climate in inner-city schools, we need to make a special effort to remember that what we are seeing has structural roots. It is all too easy to see grown people acting like fools and assume that’s all they are. Take a decently functioning suburban school, take away 40 percent of its funding, most of its better teachers, and the top-performing 50 percent of its students, and see how much fun faculty meetings would be after that. If we give people an enormously challenging task and only a fraction of the resources they need to accomplish it, sooner or later they start to turn on one another, making the job more difficult still. If we are not mindful of the inadequacy of the resource base, it always seems as if the problem is just those nutty people teaching in urban schools, as opposed to the conditions under which we expect them to teach. (p. 24)

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About the manifestation of weak social webbing and the Principle of Negative Interpretation:

Whatever other people do is interpreted in the most negative way possible. If parents don’t show up at school, what does it mean? That they don’t care. If a colleague fails to make hall duty, what does it mean? That she’s blowing off her responsibility. If a principal fails to observe classes? She doesn’t care about the kids. But if parents do show up? They’re just coming to stick their noses in our business. If the colleague shows up for hall duty? Sucking up to the principal. If the principal does start doing observations? She’s just trying to impress the people downtown—and why is she just starting now? If a teacher is really nice to students, they may take that as proof she thinks they’re dumb and won’t hold them to any standards. If she’s mean? Racist bitch. Ambiguous evidence is consistently interpreted in the most negative way possible; no one gets the benefit of the doubt. (p. 25)

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A negative climate is fertile ground for the development of factions—older teachers versus younger ones; primary-grade teachers versus upper grade; third-floor teachers against first-floor teachers; constructivist, inquiry-oriented teachers versus traditional ones; teachers in the annex against teachers in the main building; Spanish-speaking teachers against English-speaking ones; U.S.-born Spanish-speaking teachers against Spanish-speaking teachers born elsewhere. Race and ethnicity are powerfully implicated in these divisions—as well as in most aspects of school interpersonal dynamics—but rarely acknowledges the 800-pound gorilla that everyone pretends not to see. (p. 27)

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It bears repeating that climates of pervasive distrust mean that schools cannot make use of financial and technical resources even when they become available. Inner-city schools are criminally under-resourced; still, in demoralized schools, making resources available hardly means they will ever be brought to bear. Expensive teaching materials sit on a shelf because teachers don’t believe they will make any difference, or they wind up in the room of a teacher who has political pull but no notion of how to use them. Those conservatives who say urban school systems waste substantial resources are exactly right, however little they understand the context. (p. 30)

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The weak social webbing of bottom-tier schools makes it difficult for the schools to use resources from the outside, but is also degrades the human resources already there. In the toughest schools, change agents would be well advised to proceed as if operating in a place suffering from collective depression. (p. 31)

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An excerpt from a study done by the Consortium on Chicago School Research:

Social trust is a highly significant factor. In fact, it may well be that social trust is the key factor associated with improving schools. Teachers in the top 30 schools generally sense a great deal of respect from other teachers, indicating that they respect other teachers who take the lead in school improvement efforts and feel comfortable expressing their worries and concerns with colleagues. In contrast, in the bottom 30 schools, teachers explicitly state that they do not trust each other. They believe that only half of the teachers in the school really care about each other and they perceive limited respect from their colleagues.

There were similar patterns in terms of parent-teacher trust: “In the bottom 30 schools… teachers perceive much less respect from parents and report that only about half of their colleagues really care about the local community and feel supported by parents.” (p. 34)

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It goes without saying that the schools with the weakest social webbing are likely to be concentrated in the neighborhood with the weakest social capital… neighborhoods with strong social capital are four or five times as likely to have high-functioning schools as neighborhoods where the residents feel disconnected from one another. At the neighborhood level and at the school level, our most vulnerable students are vulnerable precisely because they are surrounded by adults who cannot cooperate with one another. (p. 38)

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The theme of the next two chapters is that demoralized environments lead to people being invested in the failure of those around them. My failure gives me reason to hope for yours. The more plausibly parents can point the finger at teachers, the less they need to worry about how good a job they are doing as parents. The more teachers can point to the inadequacies of principals, the less reason for scrutinizing their own behavior. At the same time, principals have to answer to the people downtown, and as chapter 5 will argue, that has meant answering to people who are collectively incompetent and technically irresponsible. There has not been much connection between the things that animate them and the lives of children and parent and teachers. Yet if principals want to keep their jobs, they have to keep these people happy. This, then, is the terrain against which inner-city principals must lead, with the legitimacy of their position up for questioning from the very beginning, with the people around them predisposed to being critical and carping and the people above them capable of doing little more than posing new problems. Small wonder that the micropolitics of many failing schools becomes particularly contentious or that many principals can’t find a better way to negotiate their situation than by becoming petty autocrats. (p. 41)

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I suspect that one of the reasons we have such persistent difficulty appreciating how damnably hard it is to change urban schools is the lack of respect we have for the people who work in them, which then predisposes us to simplistic answers. It is useful to be reminded that it is not, fundamentally, a problem that can be reduced to just the people in schools. The people in inner-city schools are reacting to sustained failure much as people in other failed institutions do. (p. 45)

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The fundamentally ahistorical, nonsociological, and decontextualized thinking that dominated this discourse makes it hard to appreciate the overdetermined nature of failure in the inner city. If we did appreciate it, we wouldn’t have so many proposals that assume that if we just had more accountability, if we just had better teachers, if the teachers just cared more about children, if we just paid them more, if we could just operate schools under free-market principles, if we could just operate them more democratically, if we just put a computer on every desk, if we could just get schools to make decisions based on data, if we could just make lifelong learners of teachers, if we just put teachers in professional learning communities, if we just guaranteed every child a college education, everything wourd be all right. There is a mammoth disconnect between what we know about the complex, self-reinforcing character of failure in bottom-tier schools and the ultimately simplistic thinking behind many of the most popular reform proposals. What this seems to imply is not an argument for this or that program, but rather, for a style of work, a more intensive and robust way of intervening. (p. 45)

The PP says:

One of the things that bugs me the most is the cruel and insulting speech that accompanies the current reform movement. It is usually spoken by people who have never personally experienced these schools, and, therefore, it comes from a place that has no understanding of the dynamics. This harmful speech is the exact opposite of what those schools need, because it only produces more demoralization. That is just one reason why I don't trust the reformers or their motives.
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Friday, June 12, 2009

Wanted: A Leader for My Daughter's School

Late last night I completed my duty as a parent member of the principal selection committee for my daughter’s high school. Fully aware there was a strong possibility that this was just a “phony committee” (a wise warning from my mother who worked as a medical school administrator for many years), I gave it my best anyway.

The candidates were discouragingly inadequate, both in number and in scope of experience. Despite months of lead time that this position would need to be filled; the district had only been able to scrounge up three people for us to interview, two had been held for a few weeks and one was slipped in at the very last minute that very same day; we barely had time to read the resume. These three are the only ones who had supposedly passed downtown's screening test and who would be willing to work at our 2000-student, comprehensive high school, a school which holds nearly 16% of OUSD’s high school student body.

Of these three candidates, only one had substantial high school administrative experience. One had a few years of administrative experience at a 260-student charter middle school in central California. The other was just slightly more experienced than that, and was the only one who had ever worked for our district.

Along the way it was admitted to us that OUSD is in crisis because it can’t get people to apply as principals for its schools. The district can’t attract people to apply for other types of administrative positions either, according to a friend who is working for the district as a teacher support person.

In regard to the lack of interested applicants willing to work at the high school level, the number is further reduced because only some are open to working at comprehensive high schools, preferring instead the small high schools. From what I've been told, the pay differential at the large schools isn’t enough to compensate for the increased responsibility and workload. I'm sure some principals would prefer comprehensive high schools, with all the interesting activities which accompany them, so perhaps part of the problem is that the district has passive headhunters. And I can’t help but think that an additional reason for the dearth is because the state-run leadership neglected the identification and proper fostering of its future leaders during its stay here. Now the rooster has come home to roost.

So when an already weak school district has been intentionally and heavily destabilized for six straight years by the manipulations and mismanagement conducted by a sequence of Broad-trained, disruptive-force minded state administrators, what would the appeal to working in that district be, especially since principals can make more money in every single neighboring district? It makes me especially sad to recall three great administrators I knew who were essentially driven away by the "new" mentality brought in by the state, and ended up taking early retirement. Believe me when I tell you they were not only skilled, but dedicated to Oakland's kids.

Before we concluded last night, we were compelled by the district rep to take a final vote to reflect our "choice." He said he was required to do this by his superiors. There was a short discussion about possibly developing a Plan B; some members accepted that as an option and others were strongly opposed. On my scrap of paper I wrote “abstain” and scrawled the message, “I don’t want any of these cars and am willing to keep taking the bus for now.”

Oh...sigh...

I occasionally envy oblivious parents; what people don't know can't hurt them. When I explained what had happened at this meeting to my OUSD teacher friend, she advised, “I say just go to Paris, drink absinthe and make art for awhile to get it out of your system.” Right now that sounds about right.

At any rate, in preparation for the above process, I did a little research about NewLeaders for New Schools.

NewLeaders for New Schools

NewLeaders for New Schools is a relatively new principal training program located in a handful of U.S. cities, including the Bay Area. Founded in 2000 by a team who had attended Harvard Business School and Harvard's Graduate School of Education, it was launched in 2001 in Chicago by the Broad Foundation and the Chicago Public Education Fund, Arne Duncan’s home stomping ground.

Among the goals NLFNS is working to achieve by 2014 is to create a “world-class, scalable, sustainable, data-driven organization that has created an essential knowledge base that is actively used by education policy and decision-makers to drive educational excellence at scale. This innovative "action tank" will blend the power of a think tank with the results of and lessons learned from highly successful schools and principals at increasing scale.”

Also: “By 2014, a critical mass of schools in most of our current partner cities--and a critical mass of principal vacancies--will be filled by high-quality New Leaders principals selected and trained by New Leaders with the knowledge, skills, beliefs, and frameworks needed to ensure 90-100% student success rates in their schools.”

Billionaire Eli Broad’s 990’s reveal that he gave NLFNS a total of $7,994,000 in the years 2001 through 2007. His early contributions were identified for use as start-up and first year implementation. He donated $1,056,000 in 2001, $1,218,000 in 2002, $2,250,000 in 2003, $2,000,000 in 2004, $720,000 in 2005, $375,000 in 2006, and $375,000 in 2007.

Lynda Tredway, of UC Berkeley’s Principal Leadership Institute, reported to me that half of the program's curriculum is designed by NLFNS, and the other half is from the administrative training program at Cal State East Bay.

Potential applicants are tempted away from traditional, academic-based principal training programs, like the one at UC Berkeley, because they can't offer the advantages that NLFNS can. For instance, the NLFNS program does not charge tuition. Participants also receive a salary and an automatic administrative residency position (paid for by both OUSD and NLFNS) while they undergo their training. Undoubtedly, the benefits underwritten by the philanthropic funding which NLFNS receives work to entice people into the program, and to create an uneven playing field.

The overwhelming destinations for those who have graduated from the NLFNS Bay Area training program are both the charter and non-charter schools of OUSD. Of the 45 graduates listed in the Winter 2008 issue of the NLFNS Bay Area Community Newsletter, 32 are in the traditional and small schools of OUSD, 10 are at OUSD charter schools, and 13 are at other Bay Area and Central Valley schools, primarily charters.

One point to consider is that for the past several years, NLFNS graduates have been given special, automatic preference and access to leadership positions in OUSD schools by special arrangements made between NLFNS and the Broad-trained state administrators. So the program provides OUSD with candidates for principal positions while blocking good potential candidates from other programs at the same time.

Eli Broad (rhymes with toad) is a 76 year-old accountant by training, and a businessman by experience. He made his initial fortune in real estate and homebuilding (KB Home), then went on to become the founder and CEO of SunAmerica, a subsidiary of AIG (American International Group).*

Broad has no personal experience or training in the field of public education, or in the management of urban public schools or school districts. His massive wealth $6.7 billion (48th richest American) has permitted him to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on education reform projects which he personally launches, including alternative training programs such as NLFNS. His base of operations is the Broad Education Foundation, an organization which is working toward “transforming urban K-12 public education through better governance, management, labor relations and competition."

*This is an insurance corporation heavily involved with the recent financial collapse, and recently listed as eighth of 655 on a list of bad-faith insurers.

Reform, reform, reform.

Here’s what John Thompson has to say.

Hopefully, Arne Duncan will listen closely to John Easton, Charles Payne, and others who have studied reform efforts in Chicago (and elsewhere). Payne calls for "Standards of Implementation" or guidelines for minimum prerequisites required for reforms to be successful. Just as teachers tend to be isolated from each other, "reformers are isolated - by ideology, attitude, ... and tribalisms." Just as teachers need learning "Standards," reformers need Standards or a guide as to whether a minimum amount of professional development, follow-up support, on-going assessment, and capacity for addressing disengagement are available. To borrow Payne's analysis of a previous systemic reform, "one need not spend a decade and $130 million dollars to find out that one doesn't have a theory of action connected to the real world."

In 1971, Seymour Sarason explained the failure of reformers to understand schools as social organizations and their cultures. For another 15 years, he kept a file of letters from people who led failed reform efforts and learned "that reformers ‘had vastly underestimated the force of existing power relationships and had vastly overestimated the willingness of school personnel to confront the implication of those relationships.’"

And above all, "when people who have led a reform effort are asked what they would do differently," writes Payne, "perhaps the single most common answer is "take more time.”

That sensible advice has arrived here too late to be of any help.
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