Joy Resmovits

Schools Face Tough Choices As A Tornado Nears

2013-05-21T19:29:02-04:00

After the educators at Plaza Towers Elementary School learned that a raging tornado was headed their way Monday, they had few options. The decades-old building -- one of five schools hit in the area -- didn't have a "safe room," or a shelter deemed safe for storms of that size.

All hell broke loose. The roof caved in. Teachers carried students out. "They literally were lifting walls up and kids were coming out," Oklahoma State Police Sergeant Jeremy Lewis said, according to Reuters. "They pulled kids out from under cinder blocks without a scratch on them." Tornado drills in Oklahoma traditionally train kids to leave their classrooms, head to the hallways, and duck for cover in fetal position.

According to the latest counts, seven children were found dead at the school -- drowned in water.

As the tornado hit, the Moore, Okla., school evacuated fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders to a nearby church, but left the children in kindergarten through third grade in place. As rescue workers dug through the rubble Tuesday, and a community searched for answers, no word had yet emerged on the reason for the split. Moore's school officials could not be reached for comment, and its website was still offline at press time.

"There might be a valid reason why they would disperse some students but not others," said Mayer Nudell, an adjunct professor of security management at Webster University in Missouri. "Perhaps they have some reason. But nothing occurs to me."

The uncertainty surrounding the events at Plaza Towers left observers with broader questions. When schools are warned that danger is near, administrators have a choice to make: Evacuate? Or stay?

The answer, sources say, isn't as clear-cut as most schools would like. "When to evacuate and when to shelter in place are based on a situational analysis, good communication with first responders," said Victoria Calder, director of the Texas School Safety Center. "Each situation has to be taken on a case-by-case basis." On Sept. 11, 2001, she said, the principal of a small elementary school near the World Trade Center was told to remain in the school as Tower 1 fell. But she trusted her instincts, and evacuated instead -- a move that saved both the teacher and her students, since the school was obliterated when Tower 2 fell.

Calder consults with school districts across Texas for disaster preparedness. "Everyone wants to know, 'tell me exactly what to do so no one can say I didn't do exactly the right thing,' but we simply can't do that," she said. "You can never account for every eventuality. The main thing is to have a plan."

The federal government advises school districts to coordinate with other local agencies, and administration officials agree that it's hard to plan for any specific scenario. "Any particular threat or hazard in combination with other factors will determine the proper response, whether it's sheltering in place or lockdown or evacuation, or some combination of the three," David Esquith, the director for the U.S. Education Department's Office of Safe and Healthy Schools, said in an interview. "You can have the same natural hazard where under different circumstances it might be the safest thing to evacuate, or the right thing to shelter in place. There's generally no straight line between a particular hazard or threat, and the nature of the response."

Especially for tornadoes, there's precious little time between the warning and the brunt of the hit, Nudell said. "With a tornado, it's rare that you get enough warning to go anywhere," Nudell said. "Even if you got what might be a sufficient amount of warning, you couldn't be sure that you weren't sending people in harm's way because the tornado could take a turn."

U.S. Rep. Tom Cole (R), a Moore resident, put it this way in an interview with MSNBC-TV. "If you're in front of an F4 or an F5 [referring to tornado severity], there is no good thing to do if you're above ground," he said. "It's just tragic."

Moore's schools were planning to let their students out for summer on Thursday. Now, they're simply focused on recovery. "The school district lost all of their servers. They don't have email," said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the union whose affiliate serves Oklahoma's teachers. "People are just kind of numb."

Oklahoma Schools Lacked Consistent Tornado Shelter Rules

2013-05-21T19:12:26-04:00

The two elementary schools leveled by the deadly tornado that swept through the Oklahoma City area Monday lacked designated safe rooms designed to protect children and teachers, despite state warnings that the absence of such facilities imperils lives.

At least two other schools in Moore -- the epicenter of the disaster -- did have safe rooms. So far no fatalities have been tied to those schools, whose buildings were fortified after a devastating twister hit the area in 1999.

These disparities in structural standards speak to the seeming randomness of who lived and who died in a natural disaster now blamed for taking the lives of at least 24 people, including nine children. Requirements for safe rooms in public schools vary from community to community across the swath of Midwestern and Southern states so accustomed to lethal twisters that it is known as Tornado Alley.

In Oklahoma and in bordering states, land-use regulations are often derided as unnecessary government intrusions. State building codes do not require that schools provide safe rooms, leaving the decision to individual school districts.

State emergency managers in Oklahoma do not track which schools maintain adequate storm shelters -- a fact state authorities highlighted as a worrisome deficiency in their most recent disaster plan submitted to the federal government.

"This presents a substantial life safety and injury risk to children as well as school staff and visitors," reads the 2011 plan, which every state must periodically submit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a condition of eligibility for disaster assistance.

Albert Ashwood, director of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, told reporters at a news conference Tuesday that the two schools in Moore that were destroyed Monday did not have safe rooms.

The deaths of at least seven children inside the city's flattened Plaza Towers Elementary School has already prompted calls for greater protection in public schools.

"Why are there not safe rooms in these schools?" asked Moore resident Randall Thurman, whose son goes to another nearby school that is outfitted with a safe room. "I'm really upset talking about that elementary school."

"It's unconscionable that we don't have a place where the parents feel that it's safe for their kids during the day," said Oklahoma state Rep. Joe Dorman (D), who pushed Tuesday for legislative leaders to propose a $500 million bond issue to pay for safe rooms in schools and near homes. "If those kids are going to be there from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., they need to have that sense of security, and the structure needs to be safer. It's a no-brainer."

Since the 1990s, experts have advocated for the increased use of FEMA-approved safe houses and safe rooms -- generally built to withstand winds of up to 250 miles per hour. Some school districts have built gyms that double as safe rooms, whereas others incorporate the designs into other interior rooms.

Emergency-management experts say the shelters are particularly crucial for buildings with hundreds of potentially captive people inside -- like schools, nursing homes and day-care centers -- and structurally unsound areas such as mobile-home parks.

"Those are vulnerable populations that need protection, and yet many of them are unprotected," said Ernst Kiesling, a professor of civil engineering at Texas Tech University who founded the National Storm Shelter Association to push for a uniform set of construction standards.

Getting the sufficient resources to build such structures has been a challenge. FEMA distributes grant money to states after major disasters to give communities an incentive to rebuild smarter and to avoid costlier disasters in the future. But support is limited, and local school districts still must come up with around a quarter of the costs for storm improvements.

In Oklahoma, districts have a mixed record of requiring tornado upgrades. After more than than 70 tornadoes tore through Oklahoma and parts of Kansas in May 1999 -- one of the costliest such outbreaks in U.S. history -- public schools in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and other cities across the state tapped into FEMA grant money to incorporate safe rooms into new school construction projects.

In Moore, which prior to Monday's storm was struck by tornadoes in 1999 and again in 2003, school board officials applied for FEMA funds to rebuild an elementary school and a high school damaged during the May 1999 storms. Both those buildings incorporated much stronger shelter designs in hallways and interior rooms, and one of the schools -- Kelley Elementary -- is featured as a prominent case study in FEMA's literature on tornado protection.

But the vast majority of older schools across the state, including the devastated Briarwood and Plaza Towers elementary schools in Moore, lack such upgrades.

The problem stems in part from the way the federal government doles out disaster funding. A major pot of money for building storm shelters is set aside in a FEMA program for hazard mitigation, which is designed to lower the costs of future disasters by adding improved building codes and structural designs.

Generally, homeowners or government bodies such as school districts put up 25 percent of the costs, and the federal government pitches in the rest. After the 1999 tornadoes, federal money paid for nearly 10,000 new safe rooms across Oklahoma, mostly for private homeowners.

But the money dries up over time, and there are usually far more applicants than available grants. Federal funding to guard against future disasters is distributed based on the cost of the prior disaster, meaning the money eventually runs out if there haven't been major disasters in an area in recent years.

"I think we've lost the momentum," said Ann Patton, a Tulsa writer and disaster consultant who worked with Project Impact, a group involved in Oklahoma's first push for safe houses.

The state had a lottery system for private homeowners who were interested in building safe rooms. But the rebate programs in Oklahoma City and other towns across the state are currently on hold due to insufficient funding.

The lack of resources also makes it difficult for the state to mandate construction of safe rooms in schools.

"If it were to happen at the state level, there would need to be funding behind it," said Amber England, government affairs director with the Oklahoma chapter of Stand for Children, an education advocacy group.

Alabama is one of the only states that requires new schools to be built with FEMA-approved safe rooms. After a tornado in 2007 killed eight students at the state's Enterprise High School, the legislature passed a requirement that new schools provide safe areas for students.

Leading construction experts have recognized the importance of including safe rooms in schools. An upcoming version of the International Building Code, a model code used to govern construction standards across the world, will recommend that new schools in high-risk tornado areas install safe rooms. But it could take 15 to 20 years for those standards to be adopted widely across the United States.

Experts say this week's tornadoes could offer a wake-up call for improving school safety.

"I will admit that the probability of being hit at a given location by a tornado is relatively small," said Kiesling, the Texas Tech engineering professor. "But that's not very comforting when you hear the sirens go off and you hear the weather warnings. I think the peace of mind is what you're buying, and it's worth a significant investment."

Ben Hallman reported from Moore, Okla., and Chris Kirkham and Joy Resmovits reported from New York.

Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign Escalates At Swarthmore

2013-05-17T17:52:01-04:00

A group of Swarthmore College students wants action.

They're willing to interrupt meetings. They're willing to piss off their peers. And, in some cases, they're willing to go to jail.

That was the guiding thought behind a protest earlier this month, in which students commandeered a Group of Managers meeting, a move that led the right-leaning National Review to declare "Swarthmore Spinning Out Of Control."

The demonstrators were organized by Mountain Justice, an advocacy group campaigning for Swarthmore to divest from companies that produce fossil fuels. But the students interrupting the meeting also included those roiled from recent campus controversies surrounding sexual assault and urination outside the school's Intercultural Center.

After several meetings with the administration, Swarthmore agreed to hold an open meeting in which its Board of Managers would present on divestment. Because the other campus controversies also left students feeling uneasy about the administration's responsiveness, Mountain Justice decided to change the format entirely.

A large group of students walked into the meeting with signs. They clapped, chanted, and grabbed the microphone. Students then lined up at the microphone to question the managers.

Kate Aronoff, a student who works with Mountain Justice, said the group saw their actions as a way to "open up the space" and change the format of the meeting into a way for the board "to be accountable" to students. "This idea that we have the luxury to sit back and have long, drawn-out conversations is false to me. We want to start getting these changes made," she said.

But the group's actions and impatient attitude didn't sit so well with other students. A video of the meeting shows Danielle Charette and Preston Cooper, members of the Student Conservative Society, contesting the interruption -- before being shouted and clapped down.

"The way that the meeting was overthrown was disrespectful and hypocritical in the way that they silenced anyone with a dissenting opinion," Cooper said in an interview. "It took a little while to get my head screwed on again."

Aronoff, on the other hand, claims students "were able to voice their concerns" during the meeting, and that anyone could line up to grab the microphone.

The protest didn't exactly surprise Rebecca Chopp, Swarthmore's president. "College campuses have long histories, not just Swarthmore, of robust civic discourse. We want our students to be engaged," she told The Huffington Post. "The board has a firm policy of not trying to shout down students. So long as it's fairly orderly -- and this one was fairly orderly -- we know that it's just one point."

The movement to divest from fossil fuels is lighting up college campuses across the country, as The New York Times has reported. According to Bill McKibben, a prominent environmentalist whose organization has spawned many divestment campaigns, most universities invest in companies that produce materials that are harmful to the environment. While McKibben was not personally involved in Mountain Justice's protest, "I think they're doing a great job -- and shame on Swarthmore, with its long Quaker tradition, for not having divested ages ago," he told HuffPost in an email.

McKibben has said that some students will need to go to jail for the cause. It's a risk Mountain Justice takes into consideration when it plans its protests, Swarthmore Gazette Editorial Editor Aaron Dockser told HuffPost. ("I doubt many students will be imprisoned," McKibben told HuffPost.)

The research on the financial effects of divestment isn't definitive, since other entities can pick up stocks of targeted companies. "You don't bankrupt companies, but you do place them under extreme pressure, and eventually it tells," McKibben said.

Harvard students have also been pushing divestment, but Harvard's divestment protests haven't escalated to the same level as Swarthmore's, said Hannah Borowsky, a Harvard student involved with divestment efforts. "We're still in dialogue with the administration," she said.

A few weeks ago, Borowsky's group held a rally, and an administrator walked outside to accept a copy of a divestment petition. "Our campaign hasn't escalated to that [Swarthmore's] level yet -- that doesn't mean that it wouldn't ever," she said.

Buena Vista School District Officially Closes For Year, Offers 'Skills Camp'

2013-05-13T19:05:39-04:00

It's official.

For the 400 or so students in Buena Vista, Mich., school is over, even though the academic year isn't supposed to end until the middle of June.

Instead, they will likely attend "skills camp." If the school board approves the advancement of students -- despite not finishing out the year -- students will be able to attend "skills camp," a voluntary substitute for school, the district announced Monday at a press conference with Superintendent Deborah Hunter-Harvill, Saginaw Intermediate School District Superintendent Richard Syrek, and Michigan Department of Education chief Michael Flanagan.

Last week, the Buena Vista School District fired all of its teachers and closed its schools because it had run out of money. Because the district accepted money from the state for a program it was no longer providing, the state is withholding the district's school aid for at least three months.

Skills camp would be paid for by federal Title I and Title 31 A grants, although Syrek told The Huffington Post it is unclear how much money is available. Teachers will have to interview for positions, and camp will last six hours per day. Syrek didn't know whether the program could provide for students with special needs.

Beatrice Avery's son, Miquel, was supposed to start in Buena Vista High School in the fall. Miquel has special needs, and benefited from the district's special education program, Avery said. But she's not sure skills camp is a good enough substitute -- especially since it might not cater to her son's needs. "I think they just gave up on Buena Vista," she said. "I don't think the camp is going to be geared toward my child. I don't know what to do. I'm tired of fighting."

One-third of her friends are transferring their children into surrounding district or charter schools. "They're worried about school next year ..., " Avery said.

While the case in Buena Vista is confined to a tiny township, school districts across Michigan -- and the country -- might have cause for concern. Mounting pension costs and cuts to state aid have forced school districts to make cuts in recent years. The Michigan Department of Education found that as of February, 49 schools were running deficits described in a report as "almost insurmountable," as MSNBC noted. One such district, Pontiac, came close to missing its payroll -- but over the weekend, the state approved its deficit reduction plan, and said it would advance the district money so that its schools could finish the school year.

The difference between how the problems in Buena Vista and Pontiac were resolved caused some to ask whether tax-paying families are having their constitutional right to an education fulfilled.

“The students of Buena Vista have a constitutional right to an education and deserve the same educational opportunities as other Michigan children, and that means being in a classroom full-time to complete their school year," said Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democratic congressman who represents Buena Vista, on Monday. "I do not believe that a voluntary camp amounts to a proper education for the children of Buena Vista."

He called the solution a "dangerous precedent."

Joe Ann Nash, a third-grade teacher and president of the Buena Vista Education Association, expressed similar doubts. "This is [the district's] fault, but they tell us we have to reinterview for our own jobs?" she asked. "How are they going to explain to parents that this is what they're doing to provide an education? Our superintendent talks about education as a civil right, but now we're going to have camp?"

Syrek thinks the camp will satisfy the constitutional requirement. "Whether they've met the educational requirements, that's a local decision. In all probability, they're going to get more education than they would have otherwise gotten," he said, because skills camp is slated to last for up to six weeks.

Flanagan, Hunter-Harvill and local superintendents developed the plan. "The goal was always to keep the youngsters in their own building," Syrek said. "I don't know how much money it will cost."

Rep. Stacey Erwin Oakes (D), a state legislator who represents Buena Vista, is incensed. "I just don't understand why anyone would suggest anything other than open the doors of the schools for the last few weeks," she said. "We know from past history that students have been treated differently, going back to Brown v. Board of Education."

She said she thought the state should tap into rainy day or school aid funds to just make sure the students can finish the year in school. "But they're choosing not to make that loan based on the superficial reason that a deficit elimination is not in place, but it can be in the next week or so," she said.

"The path of least resistance would be to put them back in school," she said. "This leaves more questions than answers."

Students in Buena Vista said they are used to being treated differently. Lorenzo Caldwell is graduating from Buena Vista High School this year, after the school board last week voted to approve the seniors' graduation despite not finishing school.

Over the last few months, memes on Facebook have popped up, making fun of Buena Vista for its poverty, he said. He remembers a picture of a homeless man captioned with the name of his district. More recently, there was a picture of his school, with the phrase "ride up to the scene and my teacher's missing," a spoof of popular song lyrics.

After he graduates, Caldwell says he doesn't think he'll have a school to return to. "I feel like I got cheated on by someone I really love," he said. "It hurts."

Because of the recent problems, Cassandra Frazier's daughter is starting at a local charter school on Tuesday. "I just don't have time for public schools anymore," she said. "They have too much money problems. I was raised here. I wanted at least one of my daughters to graduate from my high school. But I don't think it will exist next year."

UPDATE: At a Tuesday morning meeting, Flanagan said Buena Vista schools could actually reopen and avoid skills camp -- if the school board approves a deficit reduction plan Tuesday night. Flanagan said late Monday, following the skills camp announcement, that the school district submitted an acceptable plan for the first time. "We think we can approve that tomorrow," Flanagan said, according to the Detroit News.

Education Department Furloughs Averted Despite Sequester

2013-05-10T17:37:20-04:00

As some federal workers face furloughs because of sequestration budget cuts, the U.S. Education Department's approximately 4,700 employees can breathe easy, according to an internal memo sent Friday.

"ED will not need to furlough any employees this fiscal year," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrote to his staff.

The Education Department joins the Government Accountability Office and the departments of agriculture, commerce, justice, and state in avoiding employee furloughs,
according to Government Executive. Thousands of employees at the departments of defense, labor and homeland security will have to take unpaid leave, as will workers at the IRS and Environmental Protection Agency.

Sequestration's mandatory cuts will affect the Education Department in other ways. Employees will avoid furloughs because the department "pared back spending through significant reductions in hiring, contracts, travel, printing, supplies, and conferences," Duncan wrote. The department cut about $2.5 billion in spending and has left about 43 percent of 773 job vacancies unfilled, according to Education Week.

"These administrative cuts have not been easy for some of you, and we had to consider the option of furloughs," Duncan wrote. "Beyond the obvious impact on each of you, multiple furlough days in the final months of the fiscal year could delay or prevent grants or loans; increase the risk of fraud, waste, and abuse; and make it difficult to carry out the Department’s mission." Duncan said he decided against furloughs because it "would not be in the best interest of the taxpayers, states, schools, and students who benefit from the Department’s programs."

Duncan said in February that he expected to furlough workers. In earlier communications to his staff, he wrote that the sequester would "likely require the department to furlough many of its own employees for multiple days."

Duncan's full memo:

Greetings, ED Team:

It is fitting that we end this Public Service Recognition Week on a high note. What better way to reiterate my appreciation than to say: ED will not need to furlough any employees this fiscal year.

Over the past 2 years, we have thoughtfully examined our administrative accounts and pared back spending through significant reductions in hiring, contracts, travel, printing, supplies, and conferences.

Additionally, we had to make cuts because of the March 1 sequester order and another cut in the continuing resolution. These administrative cuts have not been easy for some of you, and we had to consider the option of furloughs. Beyond the obvious impact on each of you, multiple furlough days in the final months of the fiscal year could delay or prevent grants or loans; increase the risk of fraud, waste, and abuse; and make it difficult to carry out the Department’s mission. Therefore, cutting back on employees’ work days at this time would not be in the best interest of the taxpayers, states, schools, and students who benefit from the Department’s programs.

Instead of furlough days, we have now found a way to cut contract spending even more than expected, achieving all of the required savings in administrative funds. The lack of furlough days should enable us to be as responsive as possible to our program grantees who are bearing the greater sequester burden.

Once again, I thank you for being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. You deserve thanks and support for your hard work, not cuts to your pay, so I am pleased to be able to ease your minds on this issue.

Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst Influence Targeted In Report By New York Group

2013-05-10T09:02:53-04:00

Since Michelle Rhee's first days as Washington, D.C., schools chancellor, she has evoked intense reactions. Both presidential candidates in 2008 gave her glowing praise in a debate. In the last few months, her loudest critics have called her everything from an "Asian b**ch" to a "dickhead."

Which is to say that much criticism of Rhee, the most visible member of the so-called education reform movement, has been based on ideology. In Washington, Rhee fired teachers and administrators, upsetting the city. Union heads attack her motives, saying that she's out to bust them, or that she's part of a "corporate reform" movement to funnel public school money into private entities.

Now, Rhee's critics are trying a new tactic. They're questioning her effectiveness. They're holding Rhee, a staunch believer in teacher ratings based in part on student test scores, accountable to what they describe as her own metrics.

A group called New Yorkers for Great Public Schools, a union-backed parent coalition, released a report Friday called "Rhee-ality Check" that calls into question Rhee's success. It mostly relies on news clippings to assert that Rhee's StudentsFirst reform advocacy group is ineffective in fundraising and legislative efforts.

"This is the first report of its kind to examine whether this education advocacy group founded by Michelle Rhee has made progress toward its key goals," the report said. "A national education advocacy group with such a track record of ineffectiveness is not what Rhee’s investors signed up for."

In recent days, as the report's release neared, a few allies of Rhee and her associates -- some contacted by HuffPost, some not -- have sprung to her defense, offering accounts of her success. "National unions and other union front groups like NYGPS sure spend a lot of time, money, and attention on an organization they say is ineffective. The union bosses funding these groups are underestimating the public's intelligence," Erin Shaw, a StudentsFirst spokesperson, said in an email. "In the meantime, we are focused on passing laws and policies state by state … that put kids’ interests above all else." Recently, Shaw noted, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) signed a teacher evaluation bill.

The report, and the back-and-forth in advance of its publication, touches on a squishy question at a time when philanthropies wield significant power over public policy: How can advocacy efforts be measured? What information can philanthropic groups use to guide their investments?

"It's not just what they could point to in terms of legislative wins or publications, but it's partly about the energy or visibility they give to a point of view," said Rick Hess, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute often brought in to help education foundations make spending decisions. While big foundations have their own metrics, Hess said, true impact -- like the legacy expressed in, say, Margaret Thatcher's obituaries or the impact of the gay rights movement -- can't really be known in the short term.

That that's not stopping New Yorkers for Great Public Schools from trying. "This report shows their education agenda's a failure," said Billy Easton, the campaign's director. "As an organization, they are not successful."

Rhee often talks about boosting America's performance on international exams. According to a former staffer, a broader, long-term goal was to move the U.S. from the bottom third to the top third of student performance by 2021. Shaw said StudentsFirst's mission includes advocating for teacher-related policies, access to better schools and to encourage "effective use of public dollars."

"Has it moved the needle enough to be on that trajectory?" asked the former staffer, who declined to be named in order to preserve relationships. "The answer is no."

Hess was more favorable. "They've built a large apparatus around" Rhee, he said. "The fact that they've got that name and that face gives a visibility to the stuff that they push that most advocacy groups simply can't count on."

The New Yorkers for Great Public Schools report calls StudentsFirst a bad investment, saying it has failed to live up to its own fundraising goals. When Rhee first launched StudentsFirst on Oprah in 2010, she aimed to raise $1 billion within the first year. She soon changed that to $1 billion within five years. According to the report, StudentsFirst's leaders have been quoted as saying they have $100 million to $150 million in commitments. "Whatever the real figures are, it appears that StudentsFirst has not been able to raise the funds they anticipated raising at their launch," the report said.

StudentsFirst rejected the criticism. The group's tax return for fiscal 2012, to be made public next month, "will demonstrate that StudentsFirst in its second year has sustained its fundraising momentum -- tripling its operating budget to nearly $30 million," Shaw said. (The budget of 50CAN, another education advocacy organization, was $4,045,097 according to its 2011 filings).

The report also questions StudentsFirst's grassroots organizing. "They claim they're a grassroots organization, but can't get anyone to show up," Easton said. (StudentsFirst said members have sent more than 450,000 letters to 5,000 legislators across the country.) The report also asserts that StudentsFirst's electoral wins record "is largely a result of the organization's backing of safe Republican incumbents."

Easton said New Yorkers for Great Public Schools is a group of parents "focused on changing the direction of education reform under the next mayor of New York City." The group issued a previous report criticizing Rhee for her ties to Republicans and recently, tried to organize a protest against her book tour.

A group Easton leads, the Alliance for Quality Education, is a partner of New Yorkers for Great Public Schools and has accepted significant donations from the teachers' union. In response to StudentsFirst's allegation that his group is a "union front," Easton said the union is one of New Yorkers for Great Public Schools's partners. He called the assertion "disrespectful to real parents."

UPDATE: 1:46 p.m. -- In response to the report, StudentsFirst representatives released a graded markup of the NYGPS report. Rhee's group gives it an F. Note: The markup was done to an earlier, uncorrected draft of the report that was later revised by NYGPS; StudentsFirst's markup catches errors that didn't make it into the final draft.

See below for the original report, followed by StudentsFirst's markup:

Rhee-Ality Report Final 5-8-13

Rheeality Check Markup FINAL

Buena Vista Graduation In Question As Michigan School District Remains Shuttered

2013-05-09T19:01:54-04:00

When high school seniors worry about whether they can graduate, it's usually because they're failing a class or two.

Not in Buena Vista.

The tiny Michigan township's school district of about 400 mostly black, mostly poor students is broke. Schools are shuttered indefinitely. Seniors don't know if there will be a graduation or a prom. Or even a diploma. The district had students pay a fee for their graduation caps, gowns, hoods and diplomas -- but appears to have already spent the money.

Now that Buena Vista has burned through its funds, the state is deciding whether it wants to set a precedent of bailing out the school district. It's a question that will likely become more relevant in other states, as pension and insurance costs soar and school districts face bleaker fiscal futures.

"It's tragic," said Rae’Onna Barabino, 17, the valedictorian of Buena Vista High School. "We have to worry about prom and graduation and ending our year. It's very confusing, upsetting. It's heartbreaking." Barabino is enrolled in Eastern Michigan University, and wants to study nursing -- but if she doesn't get her diploma, that route may be imperiled. "I can't even think about it," she said.

Her friend Miya Traylor, 18, also worries about her future. She's supposed to serve in the Army after high school, but as her mother, Beatrice Avery, notes, the Army no longer accepts enlistees with GEDs. "I came to BVHS as a childish girl, but now I'm a young lady," Traylor said. "I don't care too much about prom. I just want to graduate with my class, in Buena Vista."

Students like Traylor and Barabino are frustrated because their educational futures are now out of their control. After teachers voted to work for free for at least a week, the school district shut down Monday night, opting to lay off all but a few administrative employees. Students haven't been in school since Friday. Teachers were asked to clear their supplies from school, and don't know when they'll see their next paycheck. Some are already filing for unemployment.

So far, no one is taking responsibility.

Several sources have told The Huffington Post that one option was to have students finish out the year in another local district in Saginaw County. But on Thursday, that plan ran into a hitch, setting back efforts to find a solution, said Richard Syrek, superintendent of the Saginaw County Intermediate School District, the agency that services school districts within the county. "The legal parts have kept us from doing some of the things we wanted to do," Syrek told HuffPost. His legal counsel said one school district cannot pay for its students to be educated in a different one, making it too expensive for the would-be receiving districts to accept Buena Vista's kids. "We've hit a dead end," he said.

So far, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has been silent on the issue. Representatives from the Michigan Department of Education have said they are in touch with the district to work on a fix, but maintained that the problem is a local responsibility, and that they legally cannot help Buena Vista financially when the district owes the state money.

While Buena Vista has been on a downward financial spiral as enrollment declined over the past decade, the immediate cause of its latest trouble boils down to an accounting error. Buena Vista accepted money for running the Wolverine Secure Treatment Center, an alternative school, even though the district was no longer working with the center -- then spent it. Now, the state is freezing school funding for at least three months to recoup about $402,000.

Rep. Dan Kildee, the Democratic U.S. congressman who represents Buena Vista, is dissatisfied with this logic -- and he says there's a way to send the kids back to school. “Gov. Snyder can -- and should -- immediately act to keep these kids in their classrooms for the remainder of the school year,” Kildee said.

In fact, he notes, the state has bailed out at least one school district before. In February of last year, when the schools in Highland Park faced a financial crisis, the state legislature acted by nudging by Snyder to give the district $4 million in emergency aid. At the time, Snyder called it a way to “keep ... children in the classroom, where they deserve and need to be.”

There has been no indication of such a legislative groundswell to help Buena Vista. Snyder's office did not immediately return requests for comment Thursday, but sources say his staff is concerned that bailing out another school district would set a dangerous precedent.

"This worked much quicker with Highland Park," said Syrek, the Saginaw superintendent. "Our lobbyists are saying that the legislature and governor's office are concerned that other districts [that] are in financial problems would expect the state to bail out everyone. My concern is, let's get these kids educated; worry about the rest later."

Parents are frustrated. One mother is threatening to mount her own graduation, MLive reports. Avery, the parent of the high school senior, has watched the district's decline, and the problems run deeper than money, she said. "Buena Vista has been a failing district for the last five years. We've always been on the watch. Our kids ain't really learning like they used to," she said. "When they go to college, it's hard. The math, they don't get. Their reading levels are low. They're just passing them along. Them being out of school this early is going to hurt them a lot."

Teachers are also incensed. The shutdown has forced them to file for unemployment, some for the first time.

Alexis Ervin has been teaching in Buena Vista for 16 years. Her fourth graders asked her what was going to happen. "They were asking some pretty interesting questions for fourth graders," she said. "When I got my layoff letter, it's a signal that this is the end. ... I have to pay my mortgage, my car, I have insurance, I have credit cards, I have student loans."

Ervin's voice cracked as she started tearing up. She never thought Buena Vista would end up like this. "It's truly unbelievable that we cannot educate our children," she said. "So many people have fought and died in this country for the right for all children to go to school together. We've gone backwards in time."

Laticia Whitehead, a Buena Vista native, has been teaching high school English and drama for six years. She takes pride in her roots, and blames the district's problems on "funding cuts, mismanagement, and high turnover," she said. Services like after-school activities, she said, have been privatized. "We knew we would have to take concessions to survive," she said, "but we never foresaw this happening -- school just being cut off in the middle. It was a big shock when everything came to a halt and suddenly no one in the district has a job." Her students cried when they heard the news, she said. The seniors are worried about accessing their transcripts and completing enough credits to graduate.

School board representatives did not return requests for comment. The school board plans to meet publicly Thursday night -- but it's unclear what parents will glean, since a previous meeting left parents with more questions than answers, WNEM's Andrew Keller reported.

"Save yourself gas, because that meeting was useless," Avery said.

UPDATE: 8:18 p.m. -- At a school board meeting Thursday night, the district passed a resolution approving the class of 2013 for graduation -- including a special vote to approve a student who didn't take pre-calculus. The board also voted to approve a deficit-elimination plan and consolidate high school buildings to save about $600,000.

Buena Vista School District Closed For Third Day; Fired Teachers File For Unemployment

2013-05-08T19:14:55-04:00

The deathwatch over a tiny school district in Michigan continues as its schools remain closed.

Despite teachers' offers to work for free for at least a week, schools in the Buena Vista School District will remain closed for the third consecutive day Thursday because the district has run out of money. On Monday, the first day of Teacher Appreciation Week, the district laid off everyone except for three staffers, and has stopped paying health benefit claims.

On Wednesday, chaos continued to envelop Buena Vista, a 432-student impoverished, mostly black school district. The school board said it plans to declare a financial emergency. The state and county remained in contact, but still had no plans to help the district.

Meanwhile, Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democratic U.S. House of Representatives member whose district includes Buena Vista, begged the state to step in.

After a school board meeting Tuesday night left parents with more questions than answers, the district posted a series of questions and answers on its website. The district explained that it chose to lay off the teachers because it is illegal to employ people without paying them. "We must follow the law," the notice states.

Buena Vista can't assure parents that there will be classes before the year ends -- or in the 2013-2014 school year. "Under the current circumstances, there is no plan to rehire staff to complete the current school year," the district wrote. "It is impossible for us to predict whether the District will be in a position to enroll students next year."

While the Buena Vista district is visibly bleeding, its problems mirror those of struggling districts across the state and country. Buena Vista is located in Saginaw County, a generally rural area, where residents previously worked for big auto companies, such as General Motors. But during the Recession, as these companies imploded, parents became unemployed and families moved away. Student enrollment shrunk from 4,000 to 400 in Buena Vista and from 15,000 to 8,000 countywide.

School districts in the United States have been consolidating. The mobility that diminishes populations in places like Buena Vista makes it hard for school districts to be staffed at proper capacity -- administrators at Chicago Public Schools cite this as one justification for shuttering more than 50 schools, a move that has evoked uproar.

Popular rhetoric about the state of education tends to lay blame on teachers and their unions. But in Buena Vista's case, the union tried to fix the school district's extensive problems. While unions usually argue to keep schools open, in Buena Vista the union has pushed for the opposite. For two years, the Buena Vista Education Association union has called for a consolidation of the district, according to its president and third-grade teacher Joe Ann Nash.

"We've been trying to get them to look at closing buildings," said Sue Rutherford, who works for the Michigan Education Association union. "It's too small of a district to have as many schools as we do."

Buena Vista's financial problems have been longstanding, sources say. Within one year, its deficit grew from $55,000 to $1 million. Its latest financial crisis was sparked by an accounting issue: For years, Buena Vista ran the Wolverine Secure Treatment Center, an alternative school that brought in extra state revenue. This summer, Wolverine severed its contract with Buena Vista, but the district did not report this to the state and continued collecting state money for the program. State representatives learned in February that it was no longer running Wolverine and that the district had spent the money the state provided for the program. The state says because it has a legal obligation to recoup the $401,000 that the district owes, it will freeze state aid for at least three months.

Wolverine's president said the reason the program pulled out of Buena Vista was the district's financial strife. "We sought an alternative because we were dissatisfied," Wolverine Vice President Derrick McCree told The Huffington Post.

Wolverine has been working with Buena Vista for 15 years, but in 2009, McCree said the school district stopped paying for things like summer school, psychological evaluations and computer lab upgrades. The funding stream for the program, Title I, is legally supposed to follow the students it serves, but according to McCree that wasn't happening. Representatives from the district did not return requests for comment on Wolverine.

There was also a leadership vacuum. "There were nine new superintendents in a 10-year stretch," he said. "Every time we addressed an issue we had a new superintendent. It was difficult to get our needs met, and they threatened to take everything away."

As a result of the district's saga, some teachers are filing for unemployment, according to MI NBC News. “The reason why I came back to teach in my district was because I wanted the children of Buena Vista to be educated,” teacher Alexis Ervin told the station.

Saginaw County Intermediate School District, the municipal body that serves school districts within the county, is figuring out ways to continue the school year so seniors can graduate and students can be promoted.

"We're trying to come up with a plan to get them in school," Saginaw superintendent Richard Syrek told HuffPost. "We don't have a plan as yet. We've got lots of things out there. We're hoping that within the next two days, we'll have something."

Some don't want to wait that long. Kildee wrote a letter to Gov. Rick Snyder (R) demanding a solution for at least the remainder of the school year. Snyder's office did not immediately return requests for comment.

"I implore you to use any means necessary to work with the local school district to swiftly reopen the Buena Vista schools,” Kildee wrote. “If the local school district is unable to reopen its schools on its own, the state of Michigan must act to ensure that the students in Buena Vista can finish out the remaining days of the school year.”

Buena Vista Public Schools Closed Despite Teachers' Offer To Work For Free

2013-05-07T14:37:10-04:00

The teachers agreed to work for free, but apparently that wasn't enough -- so school's out.

That's the latest in Buena Vista, Mich., a school district of less than 500 students that closed its schools Tuesday because it is broke. At an emergency meeting Monday evening, hours after teachers voted to work for free for at least a week since the district determined it could not pay them, the school board opted to shut down schools.

Although the school year doesn't officially end until June 23, on Tuesday morning, the school district posted a notice on its website: "School will be closed Tuesday."

Tuesday also happens to be Teacher Appreciation Day. There will be a meeting for parents that evening.

Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat who represents Buena Vista in the U.S. House of Representatives, told The Huffington Post Tuesday that he's been hearing from furious constituents. "They're frustrated and they're angry. Having served on a school board, I understand. When parents are advocating for their own children it's the most … meaningful interaction with government they'll have."

If schools stay shuttered for the remainder of the year, some seniors might be prevented from graduating. "The solution there ought not include simply calling it a year and ending the school year at this point," Kildee said. "I can't understand it."

In the long run, he said, the school district should be consolidated -- but in the meantime the state and district should ensure students have a school.

"Every Michigan resident who pays their taxes ... has a right to have their kids go to school and not be subject to mismanagement such as this," he said. "There's a month left in school. They just need to make sure that the school district can operate and finish the school year … and use whatever authority the state has to rectify the situation."

Kildee said the teachers' offer to work for free was a "gesture of professionalism," and that he didn't understand why the district didn't take them up on their offer.

Sources say Gov. Rick Snyder (R-Mich.) is working with the Michigan Department of Education to find a solution, but Snyder's representatives did not immediately return request for comment.

While teachers voted to teach for free before the layoff notice, Joe Ann Nash, the Buena Vista Education Assoc. president, told MLive that "everything's uncertain" and that there's no plan for Wednesday.

Buena Vista has been operating on a $1 million deficit, but the most immediate cause of its financial desperation is an accounting problem. Buena Vista accepted money for running the Wolverine Secure Treatment Center even though the district was no longer working with the center -- then spent it. Now, the state is freezing school funding for at least three months to recoup about $402,000. Buena Vista also owes the state treasury and pension funds.

The state maintains that recouping the money is a legal obligation. "This is a district-created financial situation that has resulted in a hardship for students and teachers, and the community," said Jan Ellis, a spokesperson for the MDOE. "Buena Vista needs to operate under the same laws and rules of every other school district."

Ellis said that two things are preventing the state from paying Buena Vista: its lack of a viable deficit reduction plan and the advance money it spent for services it wasn't providing. "There's no way legally for us to provide funding," Ellis said.

It is unclear whether there is any way for the state legislature to fill in the gap.

The Michigan Education Association union is still considering legal action. "Last night, we yet again saw proof that politicians, administrators and other so-called 'leaders' consistently put money first and our kids last," Steve Cook, president of the MEA, said in a statement.

"Faced with a selfless offer of help from their employees to continue working, without the guarantee of a paycheck next payday, Buena Vista's school board and administration gave up on their students and employees and laid everyone off."

Representatives from the school district did not return request for comment on Tuesday. On Monday afternoon, before the emergency meeting, Superintendent Deborah Hunter-Harvill told HuffPost she urged everyone to "pray for our children" as the district seeks a solution.

UPDATE: 8:35 p.m. -- According to reports from local media, the school board told community members at Tuesday night's meeting that schools will remain closed until further notice. School board members indicated that Monday's vote for the closures was unanimous.

Emotions ran high at the meeting. The superintendent said she was "95 percent sure" the high school would still hold its prom and graduation, reported NBC 25's Walter Smith-Randolph. But she added that the dates of those events might change, saying she would have more information Thursday.

One valedictorian burst into tears, reports ABC12's Jennifer Profitt. The top student added, "something needs to be done."

Buena Vista Michigan Teachers Agree To Work For Free As District Goes Broke (UPDATE)

2013-05-06T18:51:59-04:00

A small school district in Michigan has run out of money to pay its teachers. But the school year isn't over until June 23.

The Buena Vista Education Association convened most of its 27 teachers on Monday for what some described as an emotional meeting. They voted to continue teaching, despite learning on Friday that the school district would be unable to pay their salaries starting in mid-May -- because it had run out of money.

What a way to ring in Teacher Appreciation Week.

The teachers voted to continue teaching because, as Joe Ann Nash, president of the teachers' union, put it: "We stick together." Nash teaches third grade. On Friday, her students asked her if she'd been fired. "I told them, look, the district doesn't have any money to pay us," she recalled. "They told me, wherever we go, they're going to go with me. They're sweet."

Like other teachers losing their pay, Nash has her own financial concerns: her 17-year-old son is supposed to go off to college, but she's worried she won't be able to pay for it.

Since the start of the recession, school districts across the country have been cut to the bone. Class sizes are rising, teachers are fired, extracurriculars are slashed and school security guards laid off.

So how did the Buena Vista school district get to this point?

Michael Podgursky, an economics professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia who specializes in school finance, said Buena Vista is a particularly nasty example of the consolidation of small school districts, aggravated by the recession and burgeoning teacher pension costs.

"They're down to 471 students. They're at least not harming too many," Podgursky said. "It's a solvable problem."

Solvable, he said, by consolidation. "We've been consolidating districts for the past 100 years," Podgursky said. "It's going on constantly," especially in states like Wyoming, with many rural districts. American had 117,108 school districts in the 1939-1940 school year, according to federal data. By 2010-2011, that number was down to 13,588 (though federal researchers said survey changes may account for some of that difference).

School districts across the country are feeling the squeeze. Last year, the Chester Upland School District in suburban Philadelphia stopped paying its teachers. As in Buena Vista, teachers continued working for free. In November, the state proposed that the district close three schools and sell buildings to get out of the hole. York, Pa., was in such financial desperation that it considered converting to full charter school district before ultimately choosing a state-mandated financial recovery process last week, according to the York Dispatch.

This process is likely accelerated by the recession. "There were a lot of teacher layoffs. state and local governments got hit badly on the revenue side," Podgursky said. "It got postponed by the stimulus, but now it's letting loose."

Buena Vista is a tiny, mostly black township located within Saginaw County, Mich. By most measures, the Buena Vista school district is failing. Over the last few years, the district has lost about 600 students, according to a Michigan Department of Education representative, and half of its teaching staff. As MLive reports, none of its students were deemed proficient on eight iterations of state standardized tests, the Michigan Educational Assessment Program.

Even its own teachers know this. "We've said for two years now that we need to consolidate," Nash said. "We have less than 500 students and two of our buildings can hold more. It's a tough decision, but it should have been made long before now. We've been cut to the bone."

In June 2011, the district went into deficit for about $55,000. By last summer, that deficit had grown to $1 million. The district has submitted a deficit elimination plan to the state, but the state didn't approve it.

The most immediate cause of Buena Vista's financial strife is an accounting problem. For years, Buena Vista ran the Wolverine Secure Treatment Center, an alternative school that brought in extra state revenue. The district is supposed to report any program changes to the state, but failed to say until February that Wolverine left the district last summer. The state had paid Buena Vista for running the program, and the district spent the money. According to state records, the district now owes the state nearly $402,000 To recoup those funds, the state froze the district's funding for at least three months.

"The department believes this is a very difficult situation for everyone, especially the students and the teachers," Jan Ellis, a Michigan Department of Education spokeswoman, told The Huffington Post. "We have a legal obligation to recover funds allocated for a program that wasn't being serviced out of a district. We are trying to fulfill our financial obligation. The overall responsibility, financial health and educational responsibility for the children lies within that local district. They ultimately have to be held responsible."

The Buena Vista School Board will hold an emergency meeting Monday night. Consolidation, massive layoffs and a request for an emergency manager -- as the district previously indicated -- are on the table. The Michigan Education Association is considering legal action against the district, MLive reported.

Superintendent Deborah Hunter-Harvill told HuffPost she is going to wait until after the meeting before answering specific questions. "The board of education will continue its deliberations and discussions regarding the future of our district," she said. "I don't know what our configuration will look like, but .. when I arrived here in August of 2012, I came to ensure a quality education for all students. The board will advise the public of its progress as soon as that's possible." For the time being, she said, "pray for our children."

UPDATE: May 7 -- At the emergency meeting Monday night, Buena Vista's school board voted to lay off all its employees by the end of the month, despite the teachers' vote to work for at least this week without pay. On Tuesday morning, the school district posted an update to its website with a notice in big letters: "school will be closed Tuesday." There will be a meeting for parents this evening.

"Last night, we yet again saw proof that politicians, administrators and other so-called 'leaders' consistently put money first and our kids last," Steve Cook, president of the Michigan Education Association, said in a statement. "Faced with a selfless offer of help from their employees to continue working, without the guarantee of a paycheck next payday, Buena Vista's school board and administration gave up on their students and employees and laid everyone off."

Common Core Stakes Moratorium Proposed By Unions As National Standards Face Backlash

2013-04-30T16:30:22-04:00

Dennis Van Roekel, the president of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union, came out in favor of a two-year moratorium on adverse consequences for schools and teachers that have been proposed in connection with the Common Core State Standards in an interview with The Huffington Post Tuesday.

"If I had a magic wand, I would make a moratorium for two years," he said, referring to the stakes associated with the new Common Core tests, primarily linking teacher evaluations to student performance. "It's a steep learning curve -- the more you take off the onus of the measures, the better off you are. Seventy percent of teachers aren't covered by this and yet they'll be impacted right away ... We've got to have some temporary flexibility so that we can get this right."

The Common Core State Standards is a set of learning standards in mathematics and reading that has been adopted by about 45 states and Washington, D.C. The standards have come in response to what U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan often calls "dummied-down standards" that states set in order to show high pass rates on standardized tests.

The Common Core standards focus on depth rather than breadth and are billed as a way to get students "college and career ready" in a global economy. The standards have been in development for over a decade by governors from both parties, with support from the federal government, the National Governors Association and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The rubber will hit the road in 2014, when most states will begin taking tests aligned with the core -- which sets higher standards, for the most part, than previous tests -- developed by two testing consortia sponsored by the federal government. At that point, states are expected to see huge declines in test scores, because the exams will generally test on tougher material.

The unions are objecting primarily to proposals by state and federal governments to link teacher evaluations to student performance on the new tests, and to the prospect of underperforming local districts losing funding.

In a speech delivered Tuesday to the Association for a Better New York, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, publicly called for at least a year-long moratorium on such accountability "until the standards are properly implemented and field-tested," according to an AFT statement.

In an impassioned call with reporters, Weingarten derided states like New York that have moved ahead with teacher evaluations based on Common Core-based assessments during the standards' early phases. "Give the test. We just want to decouple the stakes," she said. "The tests right now are disconnected to teaching ... I don't want [the standards] abandoned to the dustbin of history." She blasted out a message about the moratorium to supporters and members, urging them to flood Duncan's inbox with their concerns.

The NEA has been preparing its own plan, according to documents provided to HuffPost, that emphasizes the importance of Common Core implementation while expressing disdain for multiple choice tests.

"Randi's exactly right," Van Roekel said.

The call for a moratorium places both unions, which together represent a majority of the nation's public school teachers, in a precarious position at a pivotal point in the implementation of the standards. While both union leaders say they support the core, they also argue that more time and resources are needed to implement it with integrity.

Yet some see the moratorium effort as a retrenchment.

"It's a walking back from support for the standards. If this is what support looks like, I'd hate to see what opposition looks like," said Tim Daly, president of TNTP, the organization formerly known as The New Teacher Project, a research group that favors reforms such as linking teacher evaluations to student test scores. "It's eroding public confidence in [the core] and eroding the support of the public officials. It's hanging them out to dry. It suggests that the support for the standards is fair weather and not durable since it appears to be conditional."

The announcements come as the Common Core faces major backlash from some teachers and critics on the far right and the left, such as New York University historian Diane Ravitch. Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote a letter asking the federal government to defund the core standards. This week, eight other senators, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) joined him. Though the core has had support from prominent Republicans such as Jeb Bush and Idaho schools chief Tom Luna, the Republican National Committee recently passed a resolution in opposition to the standards, calling them an overreach.

At the state level, Indiana's legislature recently passed a measure that would "pause" the Common Core -- that bill awaits signature from Republican Gov. Mike Pence. In Alabama, an anti-Common Core bill died after discussion surfaced spurious claims about the standards, such as an alleged plan to "indoctrinate" children and use facial recognition on exams -- but another bill was recently introduced. And last Wednesday, Michigan's legislature passed a measure that prohibits funding the Common Core.

In New York State, teachers are protesting after only one year of teaching the standards, because students were administered a core-aligned test developed by Pearson -- while the consortia exams are still in development. Administrators throughout the state have described cases of their brightest students crying during the test because the questions were too hard, and there wasn't enough time to finish. Last year, a passage on a Pearson-generated test about a pineapple was derided for not having a clear answer; this year, critics have pointed to what they see as "corporate" influences on the test material and the repetition of study questions on the exam.

In a statement responding to Weingarten's moratorium proposal, John King, New York state's education commissioner, said that she is right about the need for additional resources but argued that New York is already providing them.

Van Roekel said he intends to prioritize collaboration with Weingarten to advocate for "increased flexibility" while educating members about the Core. The NEA's Common Core Working Group is planning to help affiliates educate teachers on the core and to develop tests, and is planning to develop criteria to evaluate tools and products designed around the core. It will also create "Standard Institutes" and "Teacher Leadership Institutes" to engage teachers on the standards and evaluations.

"You can't put something this big in front of teachers and say, 'We're not going to give you any time, resources and possibilities to help you prepare how to use these,'" he said.

No Child Left Behind District Waivers Derided By Civil Rights, Disabilities Groups

2013-04-29T19:20:09-04:00

As droves of states wiggle out from some of the toughest components of the much-maligned federal No Child Left Behind Act, school districts in states that were denied waivers from the law's strictures want a piece of the action. Not so fast, says a coalition of eight civil rights groups.

In a letter these groups wrote to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan -- and forwarded to The Huffington Post Monday morning -- they argue that the price of giving school districts that kind of flexibility is too high, espeically when it comes to student achievement.

"We're asking you to hold the line now," the groups wrote. "Moving away from a system of statewide accountability ... will result in different expectations for students from one district to the next. Considerable experience tells us that ... [for minority groups], different expectations far too often means lowered expectations."

The letter was signed by the Education Trust, the National Center for Learning Disabilities, Democrats for Education Reform, the National Indian Education Association, the National Women' Law Center, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Easter Seals and the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, Inc.

"We are very very worried about the precedent that this waiver would send," EdTrust's Daria Hall said in a phone interview. "We'd be in this new era [where] every district can define their own accountability systems, their own expectations for what ... improvement and gap-closing is."

Hall is concerned that having districts set their own accountability systems would leave "expectations blurred across district lines," making it hard for parents and students to move between districts.

President Barack Obama campaigned in 2008 on the idea of overturning NCLB, the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that mandated annual standardized testing for students across the country. The law also required schools to make "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) on these exams. While many lauded NCLB for exposing score gaps among different groups of students, even its initial cheerleaders now agree that it was meant to be refreshed. Some critics say it was too punitive in punishing schools that failed to make AYP, a measure often deemed arbitrary.

Obama gave Congress a Fall 2011 deadline to rewrite the then long-since-expired law, but that didn't happen. So he and Duncan moved ahead with a plan to help states move out from under NCLB's strictures without legislative action: The U.S. Education Department gave states waivers from AYP if they agreed to adopt elements of the administration's education agenda, such as teacher evaluations based, in part, on student test scores.

California didn't exactly comply with everything the administration asked for, so its NCLB waiver request was denied. Now, a group of school districts in the state -- known as the California Office to Reform Education, or CORE -- wants to go over the state's head to get its own waiver. CORE includes school districts in San Francisco, Sanger, Oakland, Sacramento, Long Beach, Clovis, Fresno, Los Angeles, Garden Grove and Santa Ana. Their waiver request is now under peer review at the Education Department.

But some disabilities advocates are worried about the precedent the CORE waiver could set if approved, since it doesn't address testing for students with disabilities.

Until now, states have created modified assessments for students with disabilities -- and in some states, these exams rely on different standards, cutting students off from obtaining a diploma. California is one such state.

"They're putting too many students off track to get a regular diploma to make it look like most students are passing tests," explained Laura Kaloi, the policy director for the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

The state NCLB waivers only allow students with the most severe disabilities to take modified exams. But since California was denied that waiver, and since the CORE waiver application doesn't address the issue, Kaloi remains concerned that some students with disabilities in both CORE and other California districts will continue to be denied diplomas.

"By virtue of the CORE application being silent, and the Education Department not answering the question of whether the district [that receives a waiver] would follow the state waiver guidelines or state policy ... you're creating two standards within the same state," she said.

Representatives for the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Department of Education did not return requests for comment on the letter.

Preschool Funding Reached 'State Of Emergency' In 2012: NIEER Report

2013-04-29T00:03:06-04:00

States are drastically underfunding programs for their youngest learners now more than ever, according to a report released Monday, even as researchers and policymakers increasingly point to pre-school as a ladder to the middle class.

Funding per student for state pre-school programs has reached its lowest point in a decade, according to "The State of Preschool 2012," the annual yearbook released by Rutgers University's National Institute for Early Education Research. "The 2011-2012 school year was the worst in a decade for progress in access to high-quality pre-K for America’s children," the authors wrote. After a decade of increasing enrollment, that growth stalled, according to the report. Though the 2011-2012 school year marks the first time pre-K enrollment didn't increase along with the rate of population change.

"The state of preschool was a state of emergency" in 2012, said Steve Barnett, NIEER's director. Between the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 school years, pre-K spending on state programs dropped by more than $548 million overall, and $442 per student (to $3,841) when adjusted for inflation, according to the report.

This means state pre-K funding per child has fallen more than $1,100 in real dollars from 2001-2002. "That's the lowest since we've been tracking pre-K," Barnett said. He called the cuts "severe" and "unprecedented." This is the first time NIEER has seen average, per-student spending slip below $4,000.

The data shows a situation so dire that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and American Federation of Teachers union president Randi Weingarten are expected to discuss NIEER's findings at a Monday event. "Our youngest learners will not be college- and career-ready if we slash preschool dollars," Duncan has said of the cuts.

Early childhood education has been tied to better life outcomes. In 2012, several police chiefs highlighted the need for more and better preschool as a tool for long-term crime reduction. University of Chicago professor James Heckman, a Nobel prize-winning economist, has demonstrated that every dollar spent on quality early childhood education yields a 7 to 10 percent return on investment as students graduate and begin contributing to the economy.

And the NIEER report comes as President Barack Obama tries his hand at a dramatic expansion of preschool programs, as first reported by HuffPost in January. In Obama's 2014 budget, the administration proposed "Preschool for All," a plan that would incentivize state spending on "high-quality" pre-K slots for 4-year-olds living below 200 percent of the poverty line by providing matching federal funds, paid for in part by an increase in the tobacco tax.

But insiders expect the proposal to have little political momentum: Already, the tobacco industry is rebelling against the proposed tax hike. And the program comes with a hefty price tag of $75 billion over 10 years -- without the tobacco money, it's unlikely that a snip-happy and polarized Congress would fund it.

While some governors, both Democrats and Republicans, have expressed support for raising pre-school dollars, the NIEER numbers show that it will take a big boost to dig out of the current funding gap.

"States need to right the balance in terms of the tradeoffs they make between enrollment and providing enough money to make a preschool experience really meaningful," Barnett said.

In 2012, according to the report, state preschool programs served 1.1 million children at age 4, or just 28 percent of all 4-year-olds. Enrollment did not keep up with population growth, and 16 states reduced pre-K enrollment.

Meanwhile, funding declined in 27 of the 40 states with pre-K programs; in 13 states, it fell by 10 percent or more. States that cut the most money per student between 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 include Rhode Island, which cut $2,419 per pupil; Connecticut, which cut $1,268; California, which cut $1,009; and Maryland and Georgia, which both cut around $945. In Florida, funding levels have "fallen so low as to bring into question the effectiveness of their programs by any reasonable standard," the report's authors wrote. "While much of the economy is now recovering from the Great Recession, the nation’s youngest learners are still bearing the brunt of budget cuts."

Only 12 states and Washington, D.C. increased pre-K funding per child, and only 15 states and Washington, D.C. met NIEER's preschool quality standards. Low funding, Barnett said, affects quality since states have been shown to skimp on things like visits to monitor preschool programs.

"Five states lost out in site visits, which is important," Barnett said. "That really puts quality in jeopardy."

National Assessment Of Educational Progress In Economics Finds Less Than Half Of 12th Graders 'Proficient'

2013-04-24T11:00:22-04:00

Fewer than half of high school seniors are proficient in economics, according to the results of the 2012 National Assessment of Educational Progress exam released Wednesday. This statistic is causing alarm among educators and advocates, especially in an era marked by economic crisis.

"I was shocked," said Edward Alvarez, an assistant principal at Thomas A. Edison Technical Education High School in Queens, in New York City. "We're not even proficient in some areas. The breakdown between ethnic groups, between urban and suburban, I was shocked."

Last year marked the second administration of the NAEP economics test, following the first one in 2006, and average performance stagnated. Between 2006 and 2012, the average score increased by two points from 150 to 152 out of 300 -- a change that is not statistically significant, according to the test's administrators. The test was administered by the research arm of the U.S. Education Department, and assessed 11,000 students in 480 public and private schools.

Forty-two percent of students performed at or above proficient, 3 percent performed at advanced, 82 percent performed between basic and proficient, and 18 percent performed below basic. The only real movement was at the tail end: fewer students performed in the lowest category in 2012 than they did in 2006.

"It illustrates that we are barely adequate in our overall understanding," said Terry Mazany, who heads the Chicago Community Trust and sits on the National Assessment Governing Board. "Of particular concern is the gap between races because we know that the majority of the workforce in decades to come will be African American and Latino."

Mazany spoke to The Huffington Post by phone from a conference about pensions, and said that context in particular worries him in light of the scores. "In Illinois, a state that has an underfunded pension, there's a tendency to point the finger: is it the greedy employees … or irresponsible elected officials?" he said. "That's the world that most young people are going to grow up in … with very real economic consequences."

The release of the test results coincides with a Wednesday Senate hearing on financial literacy on financial literacy held by Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.). Annamaria Lusardi, global director for financial literacy at George Washington University, will testify there. Men outscored women by an average of six points on the NAEP in 2012, revealing a significant gender gap in economics. "Women answer in the same way to financial literacy questions," she said, referring to her own research. "And their answer is usually, 'I don't know.' Women aren't confident. ... Men might be more likely to guess, but if you force women to give you an answer, they are pretty much similar to the men."

While gaps in performance on the NAEP in economics remained stagnant from 2006 to 2012 between most ethnic groups, Hispanic students' scores increased from 133 to 138, a statistically significant difference that decreases the gap in scores between white and Hispanic students from 25 to 22. Jack Buckley, commissioner for the National Center for Education Statistics, guessed that's because "these students are arriving in 12th grade better equipped to comprehend this area through their reading." Students whose parents did not graduate from high school also saw a score increase from 129 in 2006 to 134 in 2012.

(Of course, the results are not longitudinal -- NAEP tests different groups of students, so it could possibly be measuring changes in population between then and now, since there are only two data points available.)

Students were expected to answer questions about markets and the national and international economies. One question included: "Suppose the price of green grapes increases by a large amount. What will happen in the short term to the quantity of grapes demanded? Explain why." Only nine percent of students answered the question entirely correct, but 70 percent got it partially correct.

Nan Morrison, who leads the Council for Economic Education, said her group has found more states are educating students in economics, but fewer are testing them in the subject. "There's been a flattening or watering down to make sure it gets taken," she said. "But enrollment is up."

Boston Schools Reopen After Vacation Marked By Marathon Bombing, Manhunt

2013-04-22T09:14:22-04:00

After a week of April vacation bookended by a tragic marathon bombing and a manhunt that killed one suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and brought the other, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, into custody, Monday marks a return to class for students of Boston Public Schools.

While the district is focused on helping students cope and carry on, some teachers wonder if and how students in Boston's tougher neighborhoods will distinguish the bombing from what they see as the regular thrum of gun violence in their neighborhoods.

Across the 55,000-student school district, BPS spokesperson Lee McGuire said, schools are prepared to help students cope. "We have 60 … staff who are school psychologists and social workers," he said in an email. "Additionally we will have the support of 250 community mental health clinicians." Schools were entirely shut down Friday as law enforcement searched for the second suspect and Boston remained on lockdown.

Superintendent Carol Johnson told families on a conference call Sunday evening that some schools might mark the one-week anniversary with a moment of silence. "We are all proud of the Boston Police and the so many others who worked to keep us safe," she said. "We look forward to seeing you back in school tomorrow."

But at the classroom level, teachers have been anticipating different reactions to the violence, and struggling to find solutions to get children engaged in their classwork after such a harsh week. "They're just going to have a million questions for me, and anxiety and curiosity," said Ted Chambers, a sociology teacher at Edwards Middle School in Charlestown. "I'm going to reassure them they're safe in school, that they're not targets … The challenge is going to be getting them focused and keeping them on task, getting their minds off of the trauma of the last 10 days."

One tactic is getting away. Audrey Jackson teaches fifth grade at Manning Elementary School, which is specifically designed for students who have faced trauma, violence and instability. As of Friday, the school planned to proceed with a scheduled five-day trip to live and work on a farm. "I think it will be good," she said. "They'll be away from the city, away from the media, and they'll have time to process." She plans to talk to her students about how courage doesn't mean the absence of fear.

Boston students were already shaken this year by the December shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Irischa Valentin, a third grade Spanish teacher in Dorchester, had her students do yoga and visual meditation after the event. Andrew Vega, an English language arts teacher in Orchard Gardens K-8 school, remembers having kids write down their thoughts and share them. Kids had "what if" questions, he remembers, as if they were inventing the worst case scenarios and pushing him to say they were not ultimately 100 percent safe. "A lot of it is assuring them that they are safe, then assuring them that these incidents are all very isolated and the good outweighs the bad," he said.

But that's getting harder. "It's exhausting," Vega said. "Things keep adding up." Now, the city is recovering from an explosion that injured many and killed three people, including 8-year-old student Martin Richard, and a manhunt that turned its streets into a virtual war zone with tanks and rifles.

While these two violent events made international news, some teachers said students in Boston's less tony neighborhoods -- particularly Roxbury and Dorchester -- are accustomed to the background noise of gunshots. Gene Roundtree, a sociology and biology teacher at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, spent the week teaching at an acceleration academy at Higginson/Lewis K-8 School, a special tutoring program that went on during break for about 1,500 BPS students. The students, he said, didn't seem particularly affected by the bombing after they observed a moment of silence. Then, on Wednesday, there was a shooting at a park across the street from the school, Higginson/Lewis K-8 School, in Roxbury. The school went on lockdown for three hours, and teachers just continued class -- a drill, Roundtree said, that felt all too familiar to the students there.

"One thing in Boston that isn't well discussed is that there is a pretty big divide between what goes on downtown and what goes on in Roxbury and Dorchester. It's almost two different worlds," Roundtree said. "There's a reality of violence in one community and rarely acts of shooting violence in the downtown areas of Boston."

Roundtree said one of his former students was murdered in the beginning of the school year. The case remains unsolved. "I'd love to say she's my only former student who's been murdered, but she's not," he said. "I have another who sustained gun wounds and not fatally. The perception of violence in Roxbury and Dorchester is different from the perception of violence on Boylston Street."

While Roundtree plans to facilitate discussion about the bombings, he says he feels "our kids are extremely resilient, largely because the idea of random violence unfortunately is not novel to them. So they come into the school with a lot of coping mechanisms."

The manhunt, said Ethna Riley, who teaches social studies at Dorchester's Dever-McCormack Middle School, sent a confusing message about the value of human life. She said that while many of her students have been directly affected by violence, it's generally familiar to the entire school. "They feel it and they know it and they're hurting," she said. "[This] is certainly a heartbreaking tragedy particularly with a little boy involved, and yet every single one of these students has experienced a similar loss in their own life. The response to that loss is utter silence."

Riley expects her students to ask where the response was when their relatives were killed. "I don't have a good answer to that, as to why a murder is a run-of-the-mill, day-to-day event in their communities," she said. "When people die in a different way, in a different part of town, it's this event where the eyes of the world are upon them. This is the challenge. We're living in a society that is struggling with empathy."