Yesterday, Rawlings Repeated What He's Said All Along: Charter Schools Need to Expand

The video says students are chosen by a lottery. Does this mean kids who do not live in Dallas will be able to attend?

Just saw the video where Mayor Mike is upset that people are asking questions?  We have only begun to ask questions about this private non-profit organization, called UpLift. The State Fair of Texas is a non-profit and so is KERA, however, they are private non-profits, just like Komen. Excuse us for being just a little bit suspicious.

If we want to help poor children, create choices where people can live and what kind of school they can attend. As a sociological professional, the reality is, not everyone is college material. Not everyone will succeed in college - not even the white kids.

I would like to see bond money used for the following

A.  Build technical schools!!!!  We need plumbers, electricians, computer programmers and other licensed working men and women, that are free.  Did you know 70% of licensed plumbers are over the age of 60?  We need working folks and we need them to live in the city.  What is wrong with having technical high schools?

B.  Use bond money to build low income housing so families can afford to buy or earn a home.  As a volunteer in DISD for more than 20 years, transient student population was the biggest contribution, behind income (see A) to poor test scores.  The availability of low income homes to purchase, will lead to stabilized  neighborhoods, thereby stabilizing the schools and our tax base.  Ownership in a neighborhood is key!

C.  Use bond money to do job training for the parents, of DISD students, at the school where their child goes!!!!  Let the parents have lunch break at the same times as their kids so they can eat together.  The children will take pride that their Mother is bettering herself.  At the end of the day, the children will have been better behaved, while at school, and the parents will learn a skill. 

This problem is bigger than just adding more schools.....

I asked the Dallas City Council to VISIT their schools, to meet with teachers.... Anybody seen any of them on your campuses so far---7 months later?

I spoke before the council, unlike 98% of my fellow teachers, because I saw this coming. Until teachers take ownership of their careers and campuses, the rich of this city will continue to use local tax dollars to enrich their friends, nothing will change. Nothing will ever change.

But since most teachers don't live in Dallas, they stupidly think this does not apply to them. So they don't pay attention. But I predict the 11 campuses that are being closed will be rented out to charters---you wanna bet?

NO money, NONE, not even a dollar, should be spent by MY city to help a non-public school with funding. They have admitted they could do it on their own, so let them. But the charters are stacked with board members from the rich white North. Duh,

Before anyone decides that Charter Schools should expand they need to read these facts from  Diane Ravitch (Author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education and nationally known education expert.)1.     Both Republican candidates and President Obama are enamored of charter schools—that is, schools that are privately managed and deregulated. Are you aware that studies consistently show that charter schools don’t get better results than regular public schools? Are you aware that studies show that, like any deregulated sector, some charter schools get high test scores, many more get low scores, but most are no different from regular public schools? Do you recognize the danger in handing public schools and public monies over to private entities with weak oversight? Didn’t we learn some lessons from the stock collapse of 2008 about the risk of deregulation? 2.    Both Republican candidates and President Obama are enamored of merit pay for teachers based on test scores. Are you aware that merit pay has been tried in the schools again and again since the 1920s and it has never worked? Are you aware of the exhaustive study of merit pay in the Nashville schools, conducted by the National Center for Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt, which found that a bonus of $15,000 per teacher for higher test scores made no difference?  3.     Are you aware that Milwaukee has had vouchers for low-income students since 1990, and now state scores in Wisconsin show that low-income students in voucher schools get no better test scores than low-income students in the Milwaukee public schools? Are you aware that the federal test (the National Assessment of Educational Progress) shows that—after 21 years of vouchers in Milwaukee—black students in the Milwaukee public schools score on par with black students in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana? 4.     Does it concern you that cyber charters and virtual academies make millions for their sponsors yet get terrible results for their students? 5.     Are you concerned that charters will skim off the best-performing students and weaken our nation’s public education system? 6.     Are you aware that there is a large body of research by testing experts warning that it is wrong to judge teacher quality by student test scores? Are you aware that these measures are considered inaccurate and unstable, that a teacher may be labeled effective one year, then ineffective the next one? Are you aware that these measures may be strongly influenced by the composition of a teacher’s classroom, over which she or he has no control? Do you think there is a long line of excellent teachers waiting to replace those who are (in many cases, wrongly) fired? 7.     Although elected officials like to complain about our standing on international tests, did you know that students in the United States have never done well on those tests? Did you know that when the first international test was given in the mid-1960s, the United States came in 12th out of 12? Did you know that over the past half-century, our students have typically scored no better than average and often in the bottom quartile on international tests? Have you ever wondered how our nation developed the world’s most successful economy when we scored so poorly over the decades on those tests?  8.     Did you know that American schools where less than 10% of the students were poor scored above those of Finland, Japan and Korea in the last international assessment? Did you know that American schools where 25% of the students were poor scored the same as the international leaders Finland, Japan and Korea? Did you know that the U.S. is #1 among advanced nations in child poverty? Did you know that more than 20% of our children live in poverty and that this is far greater than in the nations to which we compare ourselves? 9.     Did you know that family income is the single most reliable predictor of student test scores? Did you know that every testing program—the SAT, the ACT, the NAEP, state tests and international tests—shows the same tight correlation between family income and test scores? Affluence helps—children in affluent homes have educated parents, more books in the home, more vocabulary spoken around them, better medical care, more access to travel and libraries, more economic security—as compared to students who live in poverty, who are more likely to have poor medical care, poor nutrition, uneducated parents, more instability in their lives. Do you think these things matter?10. Are you concerned that closing schools in low-income neighborhoods will further weaken fragile communities?   11. Are you worried that annual firings of teachers will cause demoralization and loss of prestige for teachers? Any ideas about who will replace those fired because they taught too many low-scoring students? 12.  Why is it that politicians don’t pay attention to research and studies?Add end And another question that came to mind after the initial posting of this article:  13.  Do you know of any high-performing nation in the world that got that way by privatizing public schools, closing those with low test scores, and firing teachers? The answer: none. 

Lew Blackburns salary from Texas Can is $115,000. How is he part of both Can and DISD?

I hear a lot from the Uplift cheerleaders about 100% college acceptance.  Does that percentage of college entries really mean anything?  What are the percentages of Uplift students, entering college and coming out with a degree vs percentage of DISD students entering college and coming out with a degree?  I could take any school that draws it's student population exclusively from Dallas County and get 100% college acceptance.  Just make them fill out the application to DCCCD.

So what happens to the 88% that dont go to college?  they are just turned out into our streets after graduation with no real skills or education, not really fit for any job.  Why doesnt DISD offer a jobs training program in their schools?  i came from another state and at the end of 10th grade you had to make a decision if you wanted to take the college-prep curriculum or the VO-Tech program for 11th and 12th grade.  Most kids stuck around even if they went the vo-tech route becuase they were trained to be certified mechanics, nurse assistants, hairdressers, admin assist etc.  AND most of them got jobs.  I know we want everyone to aim for the sky but not eveyone is capable of or interested in navigating college.  I am sure mechanic doesnt sound like a worthy job but they are a necessary part of society.

So what happens to the 88% that dont go to college?  they are just turned out into our streets after graduation with no real skills or education, not really fit for any job.  Why doesnt DISD offer a jobs training program in their schools?  i came from another state and at the end of 10th grade you had to make a decision if you wanted to take the college-prep curriculum or the VO-Tech program for 11th and 12th grade.  Most kids stuck around even if they went the vo-tech route becuase they were trained to be certified mechanics, nurse assistants, hairdressers, admin assist etc.  AND most of them got jobs.  I know we want everyone to aim for the sky but not eveyone is capable of or interested in navigating college.  I am sure mechanic doesnt sound like a worthy job but they are a necessary part of society.

First of all, why is Mayor Mike even mentioning the graduation rate of DISD students? That's outside his purview, and he promised he'd keep his nose out of stuff that wasn't part of his official duties.

Secondly: As I've learned from the state, the way to fix education is to:

- Design an incentive program for teachers and then take it away after it's implemented (studies have shown that lowering a person's pay greatly impacts their productivity).- Take away local control by mandating statewide standards that are often influenced by political opinions rather than true educational goals.- Require a lot of standardized testing- Require districts to cut their property taxes, telling them that the difference will be made up with a statewide business income tax.- Don't actually generate enough money to make up the difference, require large cuts in all districts, including the ones that are successfully educating students.- Blame the unions even though districts don't negotiate contracts with teachers unions.

Mayor is a clown and  an idiot or he thinks everyone else is.

Q: Are charters nonprofit, so they make no profit?A: Is the mayor an idiot? Does he think nonprofits don't have a surplus of cash? Look at DallasCan, for example. Look at the salaries being paid Lew Blackburn and Marquez. Komen Foundation isn't running over with dough?

100% college acceptance = enrollment in DCCCD. Which part of that does the Mayor not understand?

Kids accepted by lottery and removed for failure and behavior issues. Give DISD the right to do the same and there will be a different school district. Don't provide transportation and make motivated parents drive across town and adhere to the rules and there will be a different district.

Whether DISD the organization does well does not matter. The only metric is whether any program moves the metric upward for the city's students. If we somehow get all the good students in some other organization, all the other students in another organization called DISD, sufficient room exists if you are a good student, the good students thrive, and the other students plod along filling out time as they now do, then what is wrong? We will have moved the metric higher and made the city a better place to live.

Charter schools are lifeboats sailing back to the Titanic to rescue the strong swimmers. They are not providing best practices to DISD. DISD has no intention of following best practices. We have a need to get our hands on the students that care beyond the tiny expensive lifeboats called magnets. Charter schools by definition use the same amount of funds as the regular schools. That means we should be able to expand them by simply dividing the pie.

Shorter version of the Citizens' Council Mayor:

"The only way to save DISD is to:

-provide less funding;-help DISD's top students leave the system for charter schools;-segregate the schools with de facto segregated charter schools;-subsidize charter schools that exclude high risk kids;-promote charter schools even though there's not one study that demonstrates they do any better than public schools, when adjusting for students background."

Yeah, that should work real well.

Another Park Cities Right Winger wet dream of killing public education.

Foolish question: If the Mayor is soooo committed to educating kids in Dallas, why is he letting the Dallas library system die a slow death via reduction in hours, services, and less funding?

It's not that he doesn't love kids, he just loves Far Right Wing sophistry more.

Wow.  Very impressive performance by Rawlings!