2016 Presidential Campaign

It’s Time To Talk To Your Superdelegates

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 3 Comments

If you are concerned about education in this country, the fate of the nation, or the survival of the planet, here is a sample letter that you may use to send to your superdelegates. The list of 2016 Democratic superdelegates is included.  Please use this sample letter or write your own letter or call your superdelegates. It’s all we can do now.

It just might be up to us. 

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Dear Superdelegate:

We cannot have Donald Trump as our President. You are one of the only people in the country who can keep that from happening. Please change your vote to the Democrat who can win.

I know that a year ago you decided to cast your vote for Hillary Clinton at the Convention, but so much has happened in that year. You could not have foreseen then where we, as a country, would be now. No one could have.

Hillary looked then like the only game in town. She didn’t appear to have a substantial Democratic opponent, and Donald Trump wasn’t being taken seriously as a possible Republican nominee. All that has changed. Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee, and Hillary Clinton has become unelectable.

Hillary is unelectable because she is associated deeply with all that most voters find distasteful in a presidential candidate: courting big money donors, a sense of entitlement within the privileged establishment, and an inability to inspire and call us to greatness. The more the electorate has come to know Hillary in the past year, the less they like her. Hillary had approval ratings of 64% as Secretary of State, and earlier this month had approval ratings of just 34%. And that was before the Inspector General’s report.

The report of the Inspector General of the U.S. State Department charged Hillary with breaking the rules of the U.S. State Department in how she used emails as Secretary of State. She did not ask permission to use a private server in her home for government business, and if she had, it would have been denied. She did not preserve and turn over her emails when she left office as required by the Federal Records Act. All prior secretaries of state, as well as John Kerry, were interviewed by the Inspector General for the State Department investigation, but Hillary Clinton refused to be interviewed and would not permit her staff to be interviewed either. She put herself above the law in so many ways. As TV political commentator Chuck Todd said, Hillary could not now be confirmed for a cabinet position with those actions as part of her history. All the more, she cannot be President.

Worse yet for her, she lied about her actions after the State Department report was made public. If she had told the truth at that time, perhaps her candidacy could have been saved. The public will not forgive her for looking straight at the camera and lying. It makes fools of anyone who tries to defend her. And no one wants to be thought of as a fool.

Even the Hillary-supporting MSNBC reporters were appalled at Hillary’s flagrant disregard of the rules of the State Department and her lies in covering it up. The Republicans and Donald Trump will be much more critical and more savage than the now skeptical MSNBC reporters.

For the sake of all that is good about us as a country and for the sake of the world that needs us to be our best selves as a nation, we cannot elect Donald Trump as President. Please prevent that disaster by casting your vote in Philadelphia for Bernie Sanders who will continue Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and work to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream come true. Because he has traditional Democratic values, Bernie Sanders inspires people. And Bernie Sanders can win in November.

Sincerely,

 

 

 

Connecticut Will Not Vote For Hillary For President

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ Leave a comment

Why?

We do not like being used, especially being used about a tragedy that broke our hearts: Sandy Hook.

Hillary Clinton recently said on MSNBC that it was “unimaginable” but true that Bernie Sanders was against the grieving Sandy Hook families. Hillary is also running ads featuring the daughter of the valiant principal who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School as she tried to protect the children in her school. The ad brings tears to our eyes as the daughter describes the devastating loss of her mother whom she describes as her “rock” and her “best friend”, right before she endorses Hillary as being just like her mother.

How are we being used by Hillary and her campaign?

  1. We are being told untruths. Hillary is making statements about her own positions and Bernie Sanders’ positions that are false.
  1. We are being given an emotional appeal about the one thing all residents in Connecticut agree: We mourn the loss of the little children and heroic educators of Sandy Hook.

Hillary knows the range of her own changing positions on gun control. In her 2008 bid for the Presidency, her opponent, Senator Obama, said that Hillary was such an advocate for the right of American citizens to own and use guns that she sounded like someone “packing a six shooter” and that she was portraying herself as Annie Oakley. At that time, Hillary criticized Barak Obama for being against gun owners and gun manufacturers. Now the political winds have changed, particularly in Connecticut, so Hillary is on the other side of the issue.

The ad says that Bernie is “in the pocket of the NRA”, but it is Hillary, not Bernie, who took money from NRA lobbyists who hosted a fundraiser for her during this 2016 campaign. Hillary knows very well that Bernie has a D- rating from the NRA and that he decries the gun violence at Sandy Hook and elsewhere. Hillary knows that Bernie voted for expanding federal background checks on gun purchases in order to prevent guns from being in the hands of criminals and the mentally unstable. Hillary also knows that Bernie voted for federal legislation banning assault weapons. Once, he even lost a Vermont election because of his staunch opposition to assault weapons like those that killed the children and educators at Sandy Hook.

Hillary has now changed her 2008 position on the side of gun manufacturers and, in this campaign, is saying that gun manufacturers should be held liable when someone does harm with the weapons they manufactured. Bernie maintains that the gun manufacturers do not bear the responsibility for that harm because the government says it is legal for the manufacturers to make the guns. The question is a complex legal one and will be settled in court in 2018.

Hillary’s untruths about the record of Bernie Sanders and the distortion of her own history are bad enough, but for Hillary to communicate that message by playing on the grief in this state about the deaths at Sandy Hook is heartless and self-serving.

Those in the media are now asking if Bernie will tone down his criticism of Hillary in order to unify the Democratic Party. Fostering unity, however, is the primary responsibility of the frontrunner, the person getting ready to head the party. Those in the media are asking the wrong question. They should be asking why Hillary, at this time in the campaign, is taking the low road by impugning the character of Bernie Sanders. It is the responsibility of a frontrunner to take charge, end the attacks on an opponent, and lead by taking the high road in the name of party unity.

Connecticut wants a President who has deep and consistent integrity. Connecticut wants a leader who will inspire us as a nation to be our best selves – honest, compassionate, and smart.

That person is Bernie Sanders.

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Senator Sanders speaking in Hartford on the day before the Connecticut primary: No attacks on the character of his opponent.  No distortions of the facts.  Clearly addressing the real issues: financial fraud on Wall Street, climate change, the minimum wage, immigration, education, and economic inequities .  A leader.

Another Endorsement for Bernie Sanders

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ Leave a comment

I recently posted my endorsement of Bernie Sanders  and then read Steven Singer’s explanation of why he too is voting for Bernie. He focuses brilliantly on the destruction that would be caused by the privatization of education if Bernie Sanders is not elected President. What the other candidates for President advocate for education is the same thing they advocate for our society at large:  Let those with money be in charge. Privatize. Do not rely on the will of the citizens.

In education, privatization has meant: Let those with money decide what is to be taught in our public schools by controlling the content of the national standards. Let those with money mandate how all children learn, except their own because they send their children to private schools which would never follow  the Common Core mandates.  Let those with money run public schools without taxpayer accountability. Let those with money control what the the media says about the worth of the standards and the schools. Let those with money decide who succeeds and fails in those schools. Let those  with money circumvent social progress, such as racial integration. Let those with money train teachers and school administrators. Let those with money financially support  educator publications and associations, including  the teachers’ unions.

Bernie Sanders is the only candidate to suggest another way for our government and our society to function. Only Bernie Sanders stands against the control of big money.

We are moving, as a country, either to affirming and updating FDR’s New Deal or to  having the institutions of our society, such as public education,  be based  on competition  and profit through privatization. Steven Singer beautifully states the case against privatization.

Here is Steven Singer’s article. Read on…………….

https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2016/03/22/the-one-reason-bernie-sanders-is-the-best-mainstream-candidate-for-parents-and-teachers/

 

 

 

 

 

In The Name Of The Kids: Endorsing Bernie Sanders

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 2 Comments

I believe that how we educate our children in this country will influence greatly the scope and breadth of each child’s life and also will determine our fate as a nation. But, on the campaign trail, the candidates for President have not said much at all about K-12 education. So I decided to investigate their positions on it.

After fact checking the Republican and Democratic candidates for President to find out what they have said and what they have not said about K-12 education, I have reached a conclusion: The only candidate who exhibits any understanding of K-12 education and offers any hope for K-12 education being a building block for the future of our nation is Bernie Sanders.  

Bernie Sanders is the only candidate, Democratic or Republican, who has commented at all about the complexity of educating the economically diverse population in our country. According to differing definitions of poverty, either 1 in 5 or 1 in 3 children in the United States live in poverty. Bernie Sanders recognized that the country has a large disparity between the haves and the have-nots when he voted against No Child Left Behind in 2001. He said he objected to No Child Left Behind because it relied on standardized tests as the way to increase student achievement and “ignored other factors, such as the impact of poverty, the access to adequate health care, mental health, nutrition, and a wide variety of supports that children in poverty should have access to”. As a senator, Hillary Clinton voted for No Child Left Behind and continues to list on her website and to comment publicly that voting for No Child Left Behind was a noteworthy accomplishment of hers.

We need a President who recognizes that no standards and no tests can raise achievement without the addressing of the physical, mental, and emotional effects of living in poverty.

Bernie Sanders also is the only candidate, Republican or Democratic, who has demonstrated an understanding of what real student achievement is. When No Child Left Behind came under review in 2015, he once again objected to standardized tests being the sole measure of achievement and authored a proposal to expand how achievement is measured. He recognized that “our 21st century economy requires skills that standardized tests cannot measure, such as problem-solving, critical thinking, and teamwork”.

To assess those skills that students require for their future, Senator Sanders suggested “evaluating students based on their understanding of the curriculum and their ability to use what they have learned creatively”. He proposed innovative assessments that do not rely on standardized tests, such as students presenting a portfolio of their work or students demonstrating their skills through projects that they present to panels of reviewers. His proposal was adopted as part of the new bill that replaced No Child Left Behind called the Every Student Succeeds Act. Seven states are piloting the kind of authentic assessments that Senator Sanders wrote into the bill.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has said that she thinks that standardized tests should continue as the way to assess students. She has said, “A testing system, based on a core curriculum, helps you to organize your whole education system.” She advocates, therefore, that standardized tests drive what is taught.  

We need a President who will look at how to engage students in meaningful learning and how to assess that meaningful learning instead of a President wedded to the unsuccessful test-and-punish regimen of NCLB. That person is Bernie Sanders.

Moving beyond the classroom and into issues of school structure, Bernie Sanders is the only candidate, Democratic or Republican, who supports publicly run and publicly accountable schools for all and is opposed to charter schools that call themselves “public” because they take taxpayer money but are privately managed.  At a CNN town hall meeting in Cleveland on March 13, 2016, he stated that he would not support public charter schools that are privately managed. All the other candidates support the privatization of education in which charter schools are run for the profit of private individuals or corporations. Under existing laws, these charter schools are funded with taxpayer dollars but have little or no transparency or accountability over the use of those taxpayer dollars. Those charter schools take money from the traditional public schools with funding appropriated though state budgets to start and expand them and through the per pupil allotments from traditional public schools, which go with students to the charter schools. Hillary Clinton has let her major contributors, who are also proponents of charter schools, know she would continue to support the charter school industry as President.  

The money that is being made by those investing in the charter school industry points to the larger issue of whether private enterprise and competition will be the foundation of education in the United States or whether public K-12 education be democratically run with oversight by local school boards and state agencies.  All of the Republican candidates advocate for private enterprise and competition. Hillary Clinton has deep ties to the billionaires who are currently usurping the functions of public education in this country. For example, Bill and Melinda Gates who are the sole funders of the writing, promoting, and implementing of the Common Core Standards, which were not written not by educators and written without a research base, are major contributors to the Clinton Foundation. Also, Eli Broad, a major funder of the charter school industry, is a big contributor to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. In addition, Hillary Clinton has been a highly paid speaker at events of those championing the privatization of education.

A particularly troubling aspect of charter schools is their racial segregation. According to the UCLA Civil Rights Project, black students in charter schools are “far more likely than their traditional public school counterparts to be educated in intensely segregated settings”, and “some charter schools enrolled populations where 99% of the students were from underrepresented minority backgrounds”. Sixty-two years after Brown vs. the Board of Education, we have racial segregation returning in an intentional way due to the charter school movement. Among the candidates for President, Republican and Democratic, only Bernie Sanders has said, in that same March 16, 2016 televised town hall meeting, that he will not support charter schools that lack diversity.

Only Bernie Sanders stands separate from the private individuals and corporations that work to impose their will, instead of the will of citizens, parents, and educators, on public education in this country. Only Bernie Sanders has demonstrated that he knows that what kids learn and how they will be assessed on that learning needs to be improved. Only Bernie Sanders says that how schools are structured in this democratic society should be not be decided by billionaires whose only credential is that they have the deepest pockets. Only Bernie Sanders, among Democratic and Republican candidates, has gotten anything done to improve K-12 education in this country.

Therefore, Bernie Sanders has my vote.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fact Checking Candidate Cruz, Candidate Kasich, and Candidate Trump about K-12 Education

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ Leave a comment

There has been no substantive conversation about K-12 education in the Republican debates, town hall meetings, or candidate rallies. Attention has been on other issues, but education is crucial both for the individual future of each of our children and for the future of our nation. We voters deserve to know what the candidates will do as President about K-12 education. What follows are key topics about K-12 education and what the candidates have said about them so far.

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

No Child Left Behind was federal legislation that controlled K-12 education in the United States from 2001 to its replacement by the Every Child Succeeds Act in December 2015. With it, students’ scores on standardized tests were the only means of measuring student achievement and the worth of a school. It punished schools, based on test scores. All schools in the United States were required to reach 100% proficiency by 2014 or receive sanctions from the federal government, which meant the withholding of federal funds. Given the wide range of student abilities, including students with special education needs and students whose primary language is not English, 100% proficiency was out of range for almost all schools.

None of the Republican candidates were in Congress when the Congress passed NCLB in 2001. All three Republican candidates oppose federal government mandates about education and favor local control. They have reservations about the replacement for NCLB, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which was signed into law in December 2015.

Ted Cruz voted against the initial draft of ESSA in July. He was not present for the final vote but opposed a cloture motion to advance the bill on the day before the vote. In a press conference, Ted Cruz commented, “The ESSA, unfortunately, continues to propagate the large and ever-growing role of the federal government in our education system.”  Ted Cruz also said, “If I’m elected president, I will direct the U.S. Department of Education — which should be abolished — I will direct the Department of Education that Common Core ends today. Instead, I will restore power back to the states and to the local governments and ultimately back to the parents — those closest to our kids who have direct responsibility for raising our children, each and every one of us moms and dads.”

Donald Trump has said, “I’m a tremendous believer in education, but education has to be at a local level. We cannot have the bureaucrats in Washington telling you how to manage your child’s education.” At another point, Donald Trump said, “I may cut the Department of Education.”

John Kasich is criticized by other Republicans because he does not reject the federally supported Common Core, which is integral to the federal program Race to the Top. He does not reject the role of the federal government in education as much as Mr. Trump and Senator Cruz do. As a member of Congress, he sponsored a bill to reinstate prayer in public schools and voted YES to giving federal aid only to schools which allowed voluntary prayer.

Questions to ask the candidates are:

  1. Do you think that states or local should create their own standards, as ESSA permits, rather than use the Common Core Standards which are recommended by the federal government?
  1. What are the immediate changes you will make to the U.S. Department of Education?

PUBLICLY FUNDED AND PRIVATELY MANAGED CHARTER SCHOOLS

Publicly funded and privately managed charter schools are funded with taxpayer money but are privately managed without transparency or accountability for how the tax dollars are spent and without the same oversight as traditional public schools. All three of the Republican candidates are avid advocates of publicly funded and privately managed charter schools.

Donald Trump claims that K-12 education would benefit from competition and enthusiastically embraces the competition with public schools that he thinks charter schools offer. Ted Cruz said at a CNN-hosted debate at the University of Miami, “The most important reform we can do in education, after getting the federal government out of it, is to expand school choice.” He called for the expansion of charter schools, and home schooling. He often says school choice is the “civil rights issue of the 21st century”.

John Kasich seems to have a mess on his hands with scandal- ridden charter schools in Ohio and is now trying to strengthen oversight of charter schools in the state. According to The Washington Post, Ohio state auditors discovered that, since 2001, $27.3 million has been improperly spent by charter schools. Also in February 2016, it was discovered that charter schools had falsified their records regarding student achievement. Ten times more Ohio charter schools are failing than had been previously reported. In addition to those scandals, John Kasich made budget cuts in traditional public schools while at the same time increasing taxpayer funding of charter schools and vouchers. Since John Kasich took office in 2011, traditional public schools, which educate 90% of Ohio’s kids, are receiving $515 million less in state funding while charter schools have an increase of 27% in taxpayer funding. Charters also receive more state money per pupil than traditional public schools.

Questions to ask the candidates:

  1. With shrinking state and local budgets, do you favor taking taxpayer money from the traditional public schools, which educate most of the students, in order to support charter schools, which educate a select population?
  2. What regulations would you put in place for charter schools in order to enforce transparency in terms of the use of taxpayer money and to insure the delivery of student services, such as special education?

COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS

The Common Core State Standards were written in secret by employees of testing companies, not by educators. They are not research-based, not internationally benchmarked, and not outcome-validated. States were coerced into adopting them in exchange for being released from sanctions imposed on them for not meeting the NCLB mandate of 100% proficiency. The National Governors Association approved the standards,  before they had even been written, in order to not lose federal money. Educators criticize the content and pedagogy. Five hundred prominent early childhood professionals, psychologists, and researchers issued a public statement that the Common Core Standards are harmful to young children, and the National Council of Teachers of English did not endorse them. The more teachers work with the Common Core Standards, the more they oppose them. 

John Kasich doesn’t seem to understand that the Common Core Standards claim to be a product of the states but really are not. On Fox News, he said, “The Common Core was written by state education superintendents and local principals.”  In reality, Bill Gates, a private citizen, funded the writing of the Common Core Standards and then the federal government appropriated them as part of the conditions given to the states to avoid reduction in state aid from the federal government. Bill Gates’s money allowed the federal government to skirt the law which prohibits the federal government from funding and establishing a national curriculum or national standards but, at the same time, use those standards to give or withhold federal money from the states.

Ted Cruz has said that on his first day in office, he will “repeal every single word of the Common Core in order to get the federal government out of the business of dictating educational standards”. At the Heritage Foundation Conservative Policy Summit in January 2015, he said that education is too important to be governed by unelected bureaucrats in Washington.

Donald Trump repeatedly calls The Common Core a “disaster” but has not explained specifically how the content and the accompanying pedagogy of the Common Core are a disaster. He also has said that education should be “local and locally managed”.

The Republican candidates have not addressed in any way why the standards that they oppose (Ted Cruz and Donald Trump) or support (John Kasich) are bad or good education. They have not discussed if the learning students receive with those standards is meritorious and developmentally appropriate or if it is not.

Some questions to ask the candidates are:

  1. Do you think it is developmentally appropriate for kindergarten to be “the new first grade” in order for children to meet Common Core Standards?
  1. Do you think it is good that we are the only nation that limits the amount of literature read and asks students to read excerpts of great literature instead of whole books?
  1. Do you think it is good for students to read without connecting the ideas they are reading to their own life experiences or to the historical and cultural background of the text?

 HIGH STAKES STANDARDIZED TESTS

Paul Thomas, a professor of education at Furman University recently wrote:  “In addressing education issues candidates are likely to remain trapped inside the failed accountability mindset for reforming schools — one that privileges ‘standards’ and ‘tests’ as the central means of closing the infamous achievement gap. But there are better ways to approach what plagues us. Instead of focusing merely on ‘accountability’, presidential candidates should be challenged first to confront and then address the tremendous social and educational inequities that plague our public schools.”

Ted Cruz voted in favor of a Senate bill (S.AMDT 2162), which addressed the right of parents to opt their children out of standardized tests. Although John Kasich has been a strong supporter of Common Core, he withdrew Ohio from PARCC, the Common Core-aligned testing consortium, due to pressure from teachers and administrators who complained that the tests took up to much class time and the online exams had too many computer glitches. The state, instead, awarded the contract to the American Institutes of Research, which currently administers Ohio’s social studies and science exams.

Neither Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, nor John Kasich addresses the question of whether standardized tests assess skills that students need for their future or whether the tests should be used to make judgments about students, teachers, and schools or whether standardized tests are helpful in closing the achievement gap.

Questions to ask the candidates:

  1. Scores on all standardized tests correlate with family income so how will standardized tests help students in impoverished areas?
  1. Do you feel that there are problems with teaching to the standardized test?
  1. How will standardized tests assess the skills needed in the 21st century, such as asking probing questions, collaboration, problem-solving, critical thinking, and effective written and oral communication?

RACIAL INEQUITIES

The Civil Rights Project reported in 2010: “While segregation for blacks among all public schools has been increasing for nearly two decades, black students in charter schools are far more likely than their traditional public school counterparts to be educated in intensely segregated settings. At the national level, seventy percent of black charter school students attend intensely segregated minority charter schools or twice as many as the share of intensely segregated back students in traditional public schools. Some charter schools enrolled populations where 99% of the students were from under-represented minority backgrounds.”

With the increase in charter schools since 2010, the percentage of students in segregated schools also increased.

There is a large body of relevant research showing that charter schools, on average, don’t have an academic advantage over traditional public schools, but they do have a significant risk of leading to increased segregation. Sixty-two years after Brown vs. the Board of Education, here we are in 2016 with segregated schools in our large cities.

The Republican candidates for President, all of whom are strong advocates for charter schools, have not publicly addressed the racial and economic segregation of charter schools.

Questions to ask the candidates:

  1. What steps would you take to increase diversity in public schools?
  1. How will you address the pervasive racial and economic segregation in charter schools?

PRIVATE MONEY IN PUBLIC EDUCATION

Private money is currently affecting public education in three ways. 1) Private citizens are funding policy and practice for all U.S. schools. Bill and Melinda Gates paid hundreds of millions of dollars for the Common Core Standards, including money to the media to promote the standards as “rigorous” and “cutting edge and money to professional organizations to implement the standards. 2) Rupert Murdoch has pointed out: “Public education is a $500 billion dollar sector” so there are countless efforts to privatize public education in order to make financial profit for venture capitalists and marketers. 3) Wealthy philanthropists, such as the Walton family (Walmart) and Eli Broad, are using their money to establish charter schools that drain money from traditional public schools.

Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Donald Trump all favor the privatization of pubic education. They regard competition as healthy and public education as wasteful and inadequate.

In his book, The America We Deserve, Donald Trump advocated for school choice, charter schools, and vouchers. He argues that together they create a competitive system that improves education and offers an alternative to a public education model which “would set off every antitrust alarm bell at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission if it were a traditional business”.

John Kasich has greatly expanded Ohio’s investment in privately run education, despite existing problems with it. On August 8, 2015, Innovation Ohio, an Ohio think tank, reported that “Ohio’s charter sector is a national joke, while spending on school vouchers has more than doubled. The ‘Youngstown Takeover’ is Kasich’s latest effort to “reform” an urban school district, which typically means more school privatization.”

The future of education as either a public institution established for the common good or a private enterprise established with competition and profit at its roots is the underlying question to all of the current educational issues.

Questions to ask the candidates:

  1. What steps will you take to further privatize public education?
  1. What steps will you take to strengthen traditional public schools?

K-12 education is too important for silence on the campaign trail. Candidates must address K-12 education in the public forum and answer pivotal questions. Voters are asking. And the children are waiting.

 

Fact Checking Candidate Clinton and Candidate Sanders on K-12 Education

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 2 Comments

There has been no substantive conversation about K-12 education in the Democratic debates, town hall meetings, or candidate rallies. Perhaps that’s because Democrats want to walk away from the contentious education policies and practices of the Obama administration and focus, instead, on the many other noteworthy accomplishments of Barack Obama’s presidency. Perhaps, it’s because the leadership of the two national teachers’ unions endorsed Hillary Clinton in the summer of 2015 so the votes of those concerned with education are assumed to be “in the bag”. Whatever the back story, we voters deserve to know what the candidates will do as President about the education of our children. What follows are key topics about K-12 education and what the candidates have said about them so far.

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

No Child Left Behind was federal legislation that controlled K-12 education in the United Sates from 2001 to its replacement by the Every Child Succeeds Act in December 2015. With it, students’ scores on standardized tests were the only means of measuring student achievement and the worth of a school. It punished schools, based on test scores. All schools in the United States were required to reach 100% proficiency by 2014 or receive sanctions from the federal government, which meant the withholding of federal funds. Given the wide range of student abilities, including students with special education needs and students whose primary language is not English, 100% proficiency was out of range for almost all schools.

Bernie Sanders voted against No Child Left Behind. He explained,

I voted against No Child Left Behind in 2001 and continue to oppose the bill’s reliance on high-stakes standardized testing to direct draconian interventions. In my view, NCLB ignores several important factors in a student’s academic performance – specifically, the impact of poverty, access to adequate health care, mental health, nutrition, and a wide variety of supports that children in poverty should have access to. By placing so much emphasis on standardized testing, NCLB ignores many of the skills and qualities that are vitally important in our 21st century economy, like problem-solving, critical thinking, and teamwork, in favor of test preparation that provides no benefit to students after they leave school.

Bernie Sanders underscored his objections to NCLB by stating, “In my home state of Vermont, almost every school is identified as “failing” under the requirements of NCLB, despite that we have one of the highest graduation rates in the country, and students from Vermont continually score among the highest in the country on annual NAEP assessments.”

As a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Bernie Sanders worked to reform NCLB. He advocated reducing the high stakes nature of standardized tests by basing accountability on multiple measures of a school’s effectiveness. He recently championed a pilot program that allows states to implement innovative systems of assessment that do not rely on standardized tests. This pilot program, which he championed, became part of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the replacement for No Child Left Behind.

Hillary Clinton voted for No Child Left Behind in 2001 and cites that vote as an accomplishment on her website. It praises her for being “a key member shaping the No Child Left Behind Act”.  In recent years, Hillary Clinton has commented that the problem with NCLB was with its implementation and advocated for continued reliance on standardized tests as a measure of student achievement.

Questions to ask the candidates are:

  1. What kinds of assessments do you think truly measure student achievement?
  1. Should standardized test scores be used in evaluating students, teachers, and schools?

PUBLICLY FUNDED AND PRIVATELY MANAGED CHARTER SCHOOLS

Publicly funded and privately managed charter schools are funded with taxpayer money but are privately managed without transparency or accountability for how the tax dollars are spent and without the same oversight as traditional public schools.

Hillary Clinton voiced her support of publicly funded and privately managed charter schools many times over the years, including in Forbes Magazine in April 2015 when she said, “I actually do believe in charter schools.”

Then, in November 2015 at a South Carolina town hall meeting, perhaps due to pressure from the teachers’ unions, Hillary Clinton criticized charter schools when she said:

Most charter schools – I don’t want to say every one – but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them. And so the public schools are often in a no-win situation because they do, thankfully, take everybody, and then don’t get the resources or the help they need to take care of every child’s education.

At which point, Eli Broad, who had been a large contributor of hers, and Whitney Tilson, managing partner of Kase Capital and another large contributor, withheld their contributions  to her campaign and to her super PAC. Bill Clinton and Hillary’s campaign manager met with Eli Broad and assured him that Hillary will support the expansion of charter schools. Broad then agreed to continue to contribute to her campaign.

Bernie Sanders voted for the Charter School Expansion Act of 1998. His position on charter schools has been difficult to figure out. In his response to the American Federation of Teachers questionnaire to candidates, he wrote:

I am strongly opposed to any voucher system that would re-direct public education dollars to private schools, including through the use of tax credits. In addition, I believe charter schools should be held to the same standards of transparency as public schools, and that these standards should also apply to the non-profit and for-profit entities that organize charter schools.

In that response, he leaves out the fact that charter schools, along with vouchers, take money from public schools.

During a televised town hall meeting in Cleveland, Ohio on March 13, 2016, Bernie Sanders clarified his position somewhat. He was emphatic about his support of public schools. He also said he supports public charter schools that offer innovation, insure diversity in the student body, and are not privately managed. But he either did not recognize or did not explain that all charter schools, even if they are run for profit or are part of a corporate chain, call themselves “public schools” because they take public money. Bernie Sanders needs to articulate his position about the corporate financing of “public” charter schools. Perhaps, he did not acknowledge that “public” charters are privately managed because, in his home state of Vermont, there are no privately managed, publicly funded charter schools; school choice is among traditional public schools.

A difference between the two candidates seems to be that Hillary Clinton is involved with the corporate and philanthropic money that controls much of public education, and Bernie Sanders has not yet addressed in a public forum how corporate and philanthropic money is connected to public education. Both candidates need to discuss the influence of private money in public education with the voters.

Questions to ask the candidates:

  1. With shrinking state and local budgets, do you favor taking taxpayer money from the traditional public schools, which educate most of the students, in order to support charter schools, which educate a select population?
  1. What regulations would you put in place for charter schools in order to enforce transparency in terms of the use of taxpayer money and to insure the delivery of student services, such as special education?

COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS

The Common Core State Standards were written in secret by employees of testing companies, not by educators. They are not research-based, not internationally benchmarked, and not outcome-validated. States were coerced into adopting them in exchange for being released from sanctions imposed on them for not meeting the NCLB mandate of 100% proficiency. The National Governors Association approved the standards, which were not yet written, in order to not lose federal money. Educators criticize the content and pedagogy. Five hundred prominent early childhood professionals, psychologists, and researchers issued a public statement that the Common Core Standards are harmful to young children, and the National Council of Teachers of English did not endorse them. The more teachers work with the Common Core Standards, the more they oppose them.

However, speaking in Iowa in 2016, Hillary Clinton said that the “Common Core started out as a bi-partisan effort. It was actually non-partisan. It wasn’t politicized.”  She either didn’t recognize or chose not to talk about the political bribery that led states to adopt the Common Core. She also said, “A testing system, based on a core curriculum, helps you organize your whole education system.” What she advocated is illegal; the federal government is prohibited from establishing a national curriculum.

Hillary Clinton went on to say, “ With Common Core, there wouldn’t be two tiers of education.” However, that is precisely what the Common Core produces. The first tier is for the children in elite private schools (such as the ones the children of Arne Duncan and Bill Gates attend) and for the children in affluent school districts. Elite private prep schools do not follow the Common Core, and affluent districts pay it lip service because teachers and administrators know their students will score well on standardized tests without test prep. Both elite private schools and schools in affluent districts provide a curriculum of inquiry, critical thinking, and collaboration, which are skills needed for the 21st century. The second tier is for the children in impoverished school districts whose curriculum is reduced to test prep with the inadequate, outdated Common Core Standards because teachers and administrators fear repercussions from low test scores.

Bernie Sanders has neither endorsed nor opposed the Common Core. He voted in early 2015 against an anti-Common Core amendment that would prohibit the federal government from mandating or incentivizing states into adopting Common Core. This indicates that Bernie opposes a repeal of the Common Core Standards.

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders has demonstrated knowledge of the content of the Common Core Standards. A full discussion of the Common Core Standards for Early Childhood, Language Arts, and Mathematics should be demanded of the candidates.

They should be asked questions such as:

1. Do you think it is developmentally appropriate for kindergarten to be “the new first grade” in order for children to meet Common Core Standards?

2. Do you think it is good that we are the only nation that limits the amount of literature read and asks students to read excerpts of great literature instead of whole books?

3. Do you think it is good for students to read without connecting the ideas they are reading to their own life experiences or to the historical and cultural background of the text?

4. Do you think that it is good that the Math Common Core Standards prepare students for community college but not for STEM careers?

 

 HIGH STAKES STANDARDIZED TESTS

Paul Thomas, a professor of education at Furman University recently wrote:

In addressing education issues candidates are likely to remain trapped inside the failed accountability mindset for reforming schools — one that privileges ‘standards’ and ‘tests’ as the central means of closing the infamous achievement gap. But there are better ways to approach what plagues us. Instead of focusing merely on ‘accountability’, presidential candidates should be challenged first to confront and then address the tremendous social and educational inequities that plague our public schools.

Although Hillary Clinton supports President Obama’s call for defined time limits for actually administering standardized tests, she still speaks of standardized tests as a way to end the achievement gap between the affluent and the poor. She has said, “It is important to remember that testing provides communities with full information about how our low-income students and students of color are doing in comparison to other groups so that we can continue to improve our educational system.” Hillary Clinton must still think that mandating standardized testing will close the achievement  gap although 14 years of testing with NCLB has done nothing to close that gap.

Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, calls for alternate kinds of assessment and for improvement in professional development of teachers. He has said that he wants to promote creative learning by doing away with “fill-in-the-bubble” standardized tests, and, instead, evaluate students based on their understanding of the curriculum and their ability to use it creatively. He further said, ” I think it is wrong to judge schools solely on the basis of standardized tests. We have to work on what criteria we really need…….We also want schools held accountable for factors other than test scores, including how they meet the challenges of students from low income families.

Questions to ask the candidates:

  1. Scores on all standardized tests correlate with family income so how will standardized tests help students in impoverished areas?
  2. Do you feel that there are problems with teaching to the standardized test?
  3. How will standardized tests assess the skills needed in the 21st century such as asking probing questions, collaboration, problem-solving, critical thinking, and effective written and oral communication?

RACIAL INEQUITIES

Both candidates have commented on fixing the school-to-prison pipeline, but neither candidate has addressed the increasing segregation due to the lack of racial and economic diversity in charter schools. As the Civil Rights Project reported in 2010:

While segregation for blacks among all public schools has been increasing for nearly two decades, black students in charter schools are far more likely than their traditional public school counterparts to be educated in intensely segregated settings. At the national level, seventy percent of black charter school students attend intensely segregated minority charter schools or twice as many as the share of intensely segregated back students in traditional public schools. Some charter schools enrolled populations where 99% of the students were from under-represented minority backgrounds.

With the increase in charter schools since 2010, the percentage of students in segregated schools also has increased.

There is a large body of relevant research showing that charter schools, on average, don’t have an academic advantage over traditional public schools, but they do have a significant risk of leading to increased segregation. Sixty-two  years after Brown vs. the Board of Education, here we are in 2016 with segregated schools in our large cities.

Questions to ask the candidates:

1. What steps would you take to increase diversity in public schools?

2. How will you address the pervasive racial and economic segregation in charter schools?

PRIVATE MONEY IN PUBLIC EDUCATION

Private money is currently affecting public education in three ways. 1) Private citizens are funding policy and practice for all U.S. schools. Bill and Melinda Gates paid hundreds of millions of dollars for the Common Core Standards, including money to the media to promote the standards as rigorous and cutting edge and money to professional organizations to implement the standards. 2) Rupert Murdoch has pointed out: “Public education is a $500 billion dollar sector”so there are countless efforts to privatize public education in order to make financial profit for venture capitalists and marketers. 3) Wealthy philanthropists, such as the Walton family (Walmart) and Eli Broad, are using their money to establish charter schools that drain money from traditional public schools.

Hillary Clinton has ties to many of the funders of the Common Core and charter schools. Bill and Melinda Gates are the largest contributors  to the Clinton Foundation and have been major contributors to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns.  Hillary Clinton also has collected hefty speakers fees from groups which are involved in privatizing education. For example, she was paid a quarter of a million dollars in 2014 to speak at Academic Partnerships, a for-profit education company in which Jeb Bush held an ownership stake.

Bernie Sanders is running for President in order to prevent the influence of big money in politics and government. The oligarchy, which he opposes in government, is also in control of public education. Missing from the public conversation is his explaining the similarity of Wall St. money influencing candidates for public office and the private money controlling what should be the democratic institution of America’s public schools.

Questions to ask the candidates:

  1. How can our public schools remain a democratic institution?
  2. What will happen to our democracy if education is privatized and the public school system ceases to exist?

K-12 education is too important for silence. Candidates must address the topics and answer the questions. Voters are asking. And the children are waiting.

Bernie Sanders: Good for K-12 Education

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 2 Comments

On February 23rd, I wrote an open letter to the Presidential candidates and asked them their positions on K-12 education. I also asked readers to begin the conversation on this blog about who would be the best choice for our kids and for our country.  I received the following statement in support of Bernie Sanders. It informs us about Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sander’s positions on charter schools and the financing of public education. Note the specific details in the WSJ link. 

What are your thoughts about who would be best for K-12 education? Send your statement to annpcronin@gmail.com or comment below. 

Read on:   

Teachers and Parents Should Endorse Bernie Sanders Over Hillary Clinton. 

One has to wonder whether the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) made a mistake in their early endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the presidency.Thus far, according to a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has given reassurances to her wealthy campaign financiers that she will not deviate from the education policies of Barack Obama in the support of charter schools and high-stakes standardized testing as a means of measuring schools and teacher effectiveness.

On the other hand, Bernie Sanders in a speech in New Hampshire on January 3, 2016 stated that, “I am not in favor of privately run charter schools…..I went to public schools my whole life, so I think rather than to give tax breaks to billionaires, I think we invest in teachers and we invest in public education.” Needless to say, this statement by Bernie Sanders is “earth-shaking” and is in opposition to what the Clinton campaign is advocating which is the continuation of the billionaires’ and corporate America’s influence on K-12 public education.

Also highly innovative and unique among main-stream politicians are Bernie Sanders’ recent comments on school districts’ dependency on property taxes. He believes this dependency on local property taxes is the cause of inequality among the affluent school districts and school districts which are largely impoverished. He cites the fact that schools in the more affluent suburbs have “great schools” whereas schools in the poorer, inner-cities of the nation are substandard. Moreover, he advocates that the federal government needs to play an active role in order to  “make sure that those schools who need it the most get the funds that they deserve.” Needless to say, this type of forward thinking is unheard of in modern-day politics.

One of the concerns of teachers and parents regarding Hillary Clinton’s K-12 positions is her close affiliation with the “millionaire” donors who are helping to fund her presidential campaign. If elected president, will Clinton continue the education policies of her predecessor, Barack Obama, by espousing the use of standardized tests as a measurement of school and teacher effectiveness? Thus far, Hillary Clinton has said very little on the campaign trail to indicate that she plans to change what Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has supported during his nearly eight years in this cabinet position. Will Hillary follow in the footsteps of Duncan in his support of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), along with its flawed standardized tests created by non-educators which have proven to be developmentally inappropriate for young children?

 If Hillary Clinton should be elected in 2016, it will not take very long for the NEA and UFT to know whether they had made a wise decision in their early endorsement. The appointment of the new Secretary of Education will determine whether it will be “business as usual “ and someone who will adhere to the “testocracy” agenda along with the continued privatization movement. Or will it be someone who will move education in a new direction, an Education Secretary who will restore the dignity of the teaching profession and someone who is a true advocate of public education? Shouldn’t Hillary Clinton be indicating her views concerning K-12 education on the campaign trail in order that teachers and parents can make an informed decision whether to vote for her or Bernie Sanders in the upcoming primaries?

Joseph A. Ricciotti, Ed.D.

For Our Kids: Crucial Questions About Education Each Presidential Candidate Must Answer

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 2 Comments

Dear Dr. Carson, Secretary Clinton, Senator Cruz, Governor Kasich, Senator Rubio, Senator Sanders, and Mr. Trump:

An issue that you have barely touched on in the televised debates and town hall meetings is K-12 education. Yet the education policies of the next President will affect every child and adolescent in the United States and will determine the future of our nation. Therefore, I am writing to ask you some crucial questions about K-12 education. I will post your responses on my blog, which has more than a quarter of a million readers who are concerned about education in this country.

The questions for you are:

  1. More than 500 experts in early childhood education, including the most respected professionals in the country, issued a public statement opposing the Common Core Standards for Early Childhood Education because those standards are developmentally inappropriate and cause harm to young children. The National Council of Teachers of English, comprised of elementary, middle, and high school teachers as well as college professors, did not endorse the Common Core Standards. In their analysis of the Common Core Standards, they noted that they are not internationally benchmarked and are lacking vital elements of literacy education that countries with which we compete have. No experts in the field of teaching reading and writing and no early childhood professionals were asked to participate in the writing of the  Common Core Standards. The Common Core Standards were not written by educators who know how to teach and how students learn best; they were written by people who produce standardized tests and analyze student data. What do you think the federal government or state governments should do about these standards, which are neither based on a reliable foundation nor have any evidence that they make students “college and career ready”?
  1.  Private foundations have funded and mandated what and how all students in the country will be taught and have been a strong force in determining how teachers and administrators will be trained. The leading funders are Bill and Melinda Gates who have spent billions to create and implement the Common Core. Bill and Melinda Gates also control the discussion of the Common Core in the media and promote the Common Core by giving grants to organizations, ranging from the national teachers unions to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the League of Women Voters. Do you think such control over public education by billionaires is true to the nature of a democracy? Or does it make the United States an oligarchy with major decisions made by the wealthy few?
  1. Rupert Murdoch has said that the public education sector in this country is a $500 billion market. We have seen the privatization of public education as charter schools proliferate. Charter schools use public money but are not publicly accountable and operate for the profit of their investors. What is your position on privatizing public education? Do you think it acceptable to provide taxpayer dollars to charter schools that are not accountable to the public for the use of that public money?
  1. States fund charter schools for a relatively small number of students and, thereby, deny those funds to traditional public schools, which have the responsibility to educate all of the students. What is your opinion of that use of public funds?
  1. Charter schools, on the whole, do not perform better than public schools, even though their students are more select due to their family background and come from less impoverished homes than students in traditional public schools. Charter schools also have students with fewer special needs and and fewer students who are English language learners, and charter schools control what students they keep and  what students they dismiss. What, then, is your justification for supporting charter schools if you do and your reasons for not supporting them if you don’t?
  1. According to Valuing Public Education: A 50 State Report Card, only five states, Alabama, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, and Vermont, earn the mark of A for rejecting  high stakes tests as a way for determining if students are promoted to the next grade and graduate from high school and for evaluating teachers. What is your opinion about the test-and-punish practices of the other states?
  1. Valuing Public Education: A 50 State Report Card also discusses and provides data about racial segregation in our schools. It states:  “To a large extent, residential segregation is responsible for school segregation. However, state policies that promote school choice typically exacerbate segregation and charters often isolate students by race and class. Therefore, even beyond housing policies, the education policies and incentives that states put in place influence the degree of segregation in their public schools. In some schools, segregation is so extreme that the UCLA Civil Rights Project describes them as apartheid schools.” What would you, as President, do to reduce or eliminate the segregation caused by school choice programs and publicly funded but privately managed charter schools?
  1. Affluent students in our country receive a far different education than less privileged students do. School officials in affluent school districts are confident that their students’ standardized test scores will be fine so do not limit education to the totally inadequate Common Core. They provide their students with an education rich in inquiry and independent thinking. However, in poorer school districts officials are concerned with their history of low test scores. Therefore, students in those lower income districts often have their school days filled with test prep instead of authentic learning experiences. How do we, as a nation, make sure that we do not have two separate and unequal educational systems determined by class, one for the haves and one for the have-nots?
  1. Perhaps it is not the curricula or the teachers but rather the poverty of a large portion of our population that creates problems in student achievement.  Depending on how poverty is defined, either  1 in 5 children  or 1 in 3 children are living below the poverty level in the United States. Either statistic is shameful. We, the richest nation in the world, have staggering amounts of child poverty compared with other industrialized nations. How will you address the issue of poverty? Do you have plans for making  resources and opportunities more equitable for students in affluent, middle class, and impoverished school districts?
  1.  It is abundantly clear that standardized tests cannot measure the quality of an educational system or the capabilities students will need for their future. They will need to know how to ask good questions, collaborate with diverse people, be innovative, have strategies for learning how to learn as they solve new problems and address issues that we can’t yet imagine. How will you, as President, ascertain if our educational system is working well so that students are learning what they need to learn in order to live satisfying lives, have productive careers, and be contributing citizens of a democracy? How will you measure the quality of American education?

Dr. Carson, Secretary Clinton, Senator Cruz, Governor Kasich, Senator Rubio, Senator Sanders, and Mr. Trump, thank you for your time. I will post your responses as soon as I receive them. Your answers will be of great interest to the many readers of this blog.

Sincerely,

Ann Policelli Cronin

Note to readers: While we wait for responses from the candidates, let’s start the conversation. I encourage you to write in support of a candidate for President of the United States, based on that candidate’s positions on education.  You may post your comments below, or if you wish to write a longer piece, send it to me at annpcronin@gmail.com. I will post as many statements as feasible.