Edison Schools was publicly traded on the NASDAQ for several years, during which time its quarterly and annual reports were available. But then its stock was all purchased back and it was "taken private" (people confuse this with "private school," but it's a whole different use, as in "privately held"). So now that info is not available and we have no idea how it survives. In the years when I was following the company closely (before it was completely irrelevant), it was moving quietly away from managing schools and into contracting to provide supplemental services -- consulting, tutoring, child-care and so forth. That business model is neither unusual nor newsworthy.
Nadelstern, whoever he is, is either terribly misinformed or just knowingly giving a dishonest description. If he's just making **** up, of course, he doesn't really "believe" at all. Almost all past Edison Schools cheerleaders now pretend they never heard of it -- it's unusual nowadays to actually try to describe it as a success because that's so flamingly untrue that it destroys the speaker's credibility.
Here is the brief summary of Edison Schools' history from our research-and-
http://www.pasasf.
Speaking of Edison, their fingerprints are all over the failed management philosophy of DOE in the person of the now-departed but not forgotten Chris Cerf.
Cerf’s management philosophy: Put lots of money into PR and implement a lot of crazy management theories because you know nothing and care less about what actually works in education.
Meanwhile, this week, in a very rare move, the SUNY charter school institute finally closed a failing charter school in Albany that had been run by Edison called New Covenant. This had been recommended by their advisory board for years but they had rejected their counsel up to now.
What’s surprising to me is how Peter Murphy from the NY Charter School Association, the chief lobbying group for charter schools in the state, then wrote a post disassociating themselves from the school, saying that the mistakes SUNY made in approving it no longer occur, and implying that its failure was expected given its association with Edison!
Excerpt: “Back in 1999, the mistakes made in the approval and opening of New Covenant--that is, it opened too quickly and too large--were subsequently corrected.
After 2000, SUNY never again allowed for either mistake to be made with charter school proposals. In addition, for years, Edison Schools, Inc. managed New Covenant and several other charters in New York. Today, Edison manages only one school, Harriet Tubman in the Bronx, and has no prospects for more charters in New York any time soon.’
Guess NYCSA is no longer getting any money from Edison and/or Chris whittle!
How does Edison survive, Caroline? On its profit-making tutoring companies, the proliferation of which was engineered by NCLB? They are also appear to be trying to move into the next generation of moneymaking enterprises promoted by the Obama/Duncan administration: online learning.
What’s also surprising is how DOE’s Eric Nadelstern, widely believed to be the heir-apparent to Joel Klein if Klein ever gets sick of the job and/or gets a better offer, vehemently commented on Peter Goodman’s blog recently against the efforts of the UFT and ACORN to organize against the takeover of several public schools by Edison that Harold Levy had agreed to, years ago.
Unfortunately for Levy, the state law said that a conversion to a charter school requires a vote of the parents at the school, and Edison decisively lost these votes. Just as charters would lose a vote in NYC communities today, and lost the parent advisory votes in LA recently.
How based on Edison’s failing record elsewhere in running public schools, Nadelstern should bring this sad story up now is beyond me:
Eric Nadelstern: The most cynical event in my 38 years with the NYC Public Schools occured [sic] a few years back when the UFT and ACORN prevented Harold Levy, the previous Chancellor, from engaging Edison to manage 5 of the worst performing elementary schools in the City. Then, as now, charges of privatization and racism drowned out a more rationale debate about the future of low performing schools that persistently fail all children, but mostly children of color. In that struggle, the union and advocates prevailed and Edison was denied the contract; and, when the dust settled, those who opposed the Edison take-over walked away from those schools, which remained among the worst performing elementary schools in the City failing cohort after cohort of our children.
Never again!
Read his post yourself and the responses by many on this list serv here: http://mets2006.
Isn’t it ironic that Nadelstern still believes in Edison when even the state charter school association has disowned them? Shows you how out of touch the educrats who inhabit the protected bubble at Tweed are.
The full NYCSA post is below.
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320
classsizematters@gmail.com
www.classsizematter
http://nycpublicsch
http://www.huffingt
Make a tax-deductible contribution to Class Size Matters now!
Subscribe to Class Size Matters news by emailing classsizematters-
Subscribe to the NYC education news by emailing nyceducationnews-
http://www.nycsa.
New Covenant Charter School Likely Closure - "Symbolic" Indeed
The Albany Times Union today reported (here) on yesterday's vote by the SUNY Charter Schools Committee to close New Covenant Charter School at school year's end. This is likely to be reaffirmed and made final by the full SUNY Board next month.
TU education reporter, Scott Waldman, has done excellent, fair-minded reporting on the situation surrounding New Covenant, including capturing the personal and emotional impact of its pending closure on the families connected to the school.
Waldman also characterized New Covenant's likely closure as a "symbolic hit to the state's entire charter school movement." On this point, he is not only way off; in fact, the opposite is more the truth.
The closure of a low-performing charter school--or any public school--after sufficient opportunity and time for self-correction, is a symbol of accountability and a display that high standards are taken seriously. Failure to hold public schools accountable for quality education symbolizes a lack of seriousness and a tolerance for shoddiness and low expectations by adults toward children who deserve better.
Notwithstanding New Covenant's recent success and climb from its previous depths, this school for most of its 11 years has, in fact, been a test case of what a charter school should not be. The SUNY Board of Trustees gave this school too many chances and too many admonitions that were not followed through - until yesterday.
Lessons Learned from New Covenant
The persistent problems for New Covenant have been lessons learned for SUNY as an authorizer and for charter school operators throughout Albany and statewide. Though SUNY couldn't bring itself for years to hold New Covenant properly accountable for what can only be described as a blind spot, it has held other schools accountable. Back in 1999, the mistakes made in the approval and opening of New Covenant--that is, it opened too quickly and too large--were subequently corrected.
After 2000, SUNY never again allowed for either mistake to be made with charter school proposals. In addition, for years, Edison Schools, Inc. managed New Covenant and several other charters in New York. Today, Edison manages only one school, Harriet Tubman in the Bronx, and has no prospects for more charters in New York any time soon.
There is no joy in witnessing or implementing a school closure. But they must occur not for symbolic reasons, but to enforce real accountability and ensure that quality education and higher student achievement are met and sustained by the adults entrusted with this sacred responsibility.
Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard
(see me Twitter @ PeterMurphy26 &
get "Chalkboard Nycsa" on Facebook)
posted by Peter Murphy at PermaLink 7:32 PM
From: nyceducationnews@
Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 12:33 PM
To: nyceducationnews@
Subject: Re: [nyceducationnews] LA Times review: 'The Death and Life of the Great American School System' by Diane Ravitch
It happens that my oldest started kindergarten the year class size reduction (CSR) kicked in in California, 1996-97, and since we're in a fairly large urban district (San Francisco Unified), I had the opportunity to observe trends in teacher mobility. I would disagree with Schrag. CSR opened up many new teaching jobs, but I didn't see that pattern of migration.
Peter Schrag also wrote a big feature for (of all publications) the Nation PROMOTING now-failed for-profit Edison Schools as a solution for education, around early '01. As Roseann Roseannadanna would say, "Nev-er mind!" That said, Schrag has made some valuable, excellent points too, in high-profile forums, and I don't disrespect someone for not being in lockstep with my every opinion. Though he should publicly admit that he was wrong about Edison, IMHO, to earn my true respect, a la Diane Ravitch. (Schrag is relatively local to me -- a Sacramento Bee columnist who I believe lives in the Bay Area.)
leonie@att.net> wrote:
Schrag continues to propound the neo-con myth that class size reduction in California led to experienced teachers fleeing high needs schools to go elsewhere; when the actual research shows the reverse.
He is not to be trusted.
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320
classsizematters@gmail.com
www.classsizematter
http://nycpublicsch
http://www.huffingt
Make a tax-deductible contribution to Class Size Matters now!
Subscribe to Class Size Matters news by emailing classsizematters-
Subscribe to the NYC education news by emailing nyceducationnews-
From: nyceducationnews@
Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 10:36 AM
To: nyceducationnews@
Subject: Re: [nyceducationnews] LA Times review: 'The Death and Life of the Great American School System' by Diane Ravitch
I mostly admire Peter Schrag, who has been a forceful critic of Prop. 13, the anti-tax initiative that has wrought near-total destruction on California. However, I bitterly disagree with his clear indication that two out of three or three out of four teachers are "stultifying drones." IMHO this reveals the fact that (like the think-tankers and policymakers) he never goes near an actual classroom and has no contact with actual children or teachers.
leonie@att.net> wrote:
Diane and her book are all over the place today; enjoy! If you dont yet have a copy, go buy it or order it online! we now feature her book and steve's on the right hand side of the blog.
http://www.latimes.
com/entertainmen t/news/la- ca-diane- ravitch28- 2010feb28, 0,2889453. story BOOK REVIEW
'The Death and Life of the Great American School System' by Diane Ravitch
The educational conservative decries the 'hijacking' of testing, accountability and markets.
By Peter Schrag
February 28, 2010
The Death and Life of the Great American School System
How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Diane Ravitch
Basic Books: 284 pp., $26.95
Diane Ravitch, probably this nation's most respected historian of education and long one of our most thoughtful educational conservatives, has changed her mind -- and changed it big time. Ravitch's critical guns are still firing, but now they're aimed at the forces of testing, accountability and educational markets, forces for which she was once a leading proponent and strategist. As President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, embrace charter schools and testing, picking up just where, in her opinion, the George W. Bush administration left off, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" may yet inspire a lot of high-level rethinking. The book, titled to echo Jane Jacobs' 1961 demolition of grandiose urban planning schemes, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," has similarly dark warnings and equally grand ambitions.
Ravitch -- the author of "Left Back" and other critiques of liberal school reforms, an assistant secretary of education in the first Bush administration and a committed advocate of rigorous national academic standards -- here tells the story of what she calls the "wrenching transformation in my perspective on school reform." The educational ideas she had long been enthusiastic about -- testing, accountability, choice and markets -- have been "hijacked," she writes, by the privatizers, particularly the charter school movement. With their strong backing from government and deep-pocketed foundations, she argues, charters are gradually sucking the best students and most committed parents both from the public system and the good parochial schools (which, in their dependency on tuition, can't compete with tax-supported charters) and killing both. Ravitch became increasingly concerned "that accountability, now a shibboleth that everyone applauds, had become mechanistic and even antithetical to good education." Like the liberals she once criticized, "in this case, I too had fallen for the latest panaceas and miracle cures."
Many of those miracle cures have been written into both the state and federal school reform laws of the last generation, and most notably into George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind policy, which required schools receiving a large share of federal funds to be staffed by "highly qualified" teachers by 2006 and to bring all students -- including those with learning disabilities and English learners -- to "proficiency" in reading and math by 2014. As many pointed out, both were impossible goals and, since each state could set its own standards and definition of proficiency, the policy invited states both to cheat and to dumb down standards to avoid the loss of funds. When No Child Left Behind was first proposed, Ravitch writes, she was "excited and optimistic." But after five years, she concluded it was a "failure" because it "ignored the importance of knowledge. It promoted a cramped, mechanistic profoundly anti-intellectual definition of education." Although Obama intends to revise the law (and change the name), he plans to keep the tilt to charters, testing and the threat to close failing schools.
Ravitch is equally worried about the power of big foundations -- backed by the likes of Bill and Melinda Gates, the Walton family, Eli and Edythe Broad -- whose multimillion-dollar grants to school districts and charter school associations deeply influence policy, sometimes on the basis of little more than the whims of their funders and directors. A few years ago, after spending some $2 billion on a program to break up large high schools into smaller ones and establish new schools able to give students more personalized attention, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation realized that small high schools couldn't provide all the opportunities and resources of larger ones and abandoned it. "With so much money and power aligned against the neighborhood public school and against education as a profession," Ravitch writes of deep-pocketed school reformers, "public education itself is placed at risk."
Skeptics, most on the pedagogic left, have been complaining for years about the obsession with bubble tests and the neglect of liberal arts disciplines that can't be reduced to simple test scores. What is new is that Ravitch is saying these things, and saying them in terms as tough and with a bill of particulars as persuasive as in her dissections of progressive education.
She excoriates the statistical misreading that led to the illusory achievement gains in New York City's once-celebrated District 2 and slams what she describes as former San Diego Superintendent Alan Bersin's morale-destroying coercion of teachers and principals to follow liberal departures from direct instruction. Her argument -- that teachers can't successfully educate if they're "not treated as professionals who think for themselves" -- is reinforced by the model of Ruby Ratliff, one of her high school English teachers a half-century ago in Houston, who, in being tough, "did nothing for our self-esteem" but would have never been able to inspire her students' love of great literature if she'd been constantly forced to teach to a test. What Ravitch doesn't acknowledge is that for every Mrs. Ratliff there were (and probably are) two or three stultifying drones who cared little for great books (or math or science) and killed curiosity as readily as the test-bound.
Ravitch has obviously learned not only from the shortcomings of testing and accountability but also from the union members and liberals who have been saying some of the same things for years. Still, she remains fiercely committed to high standards, including the teaching of good behavior, but particularly to the Western cultural canon, the common vocabulary essential to all good education and the capable, dedicated teachers who can impart it. But beware of panaceas and magic bullets. They're as likely to kill as to cure.
Schrag, a columnist and former editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee, is the author, most recently, of " California: America's High Stakes Experiment."
--
Wag more, bark less.
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Wag more, bark less.
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