Anti-Teacher Union “Reformers” Hoisted on Own Petard

Recent data shows anti-union school “reformers” hoisted on their own petard. After insisting that test scores should be the chief measure of schools, a flurry of recent test results has refuted claims that non-union charter schools exceed unionized public ones. First, last July saw the Atlanta schools testing scandal explode, over five years after the local teachers union raised alarm bells the district ignored. Second, a Los Angeles Times analysis revealed last week that “struggling schools under district control saw test scores rise more than most operated by the mayor, a charter organization and others.” This is after Mayor Villaraigosa repeatedly attacked public schools and tried to take control of the system. Third, in Washington, DC, USA TODAY exposed doctored test results under the former regime of anti-union zealot Michelle Rhee; according to the New York Times, Rhee, who normally never passes up a media shot, is refusing to discuss the controversy with reporters. And then we have Court TV founder Steven Brill, whose new book on public education is primarily an attack on teachers unions. Brill’s work got the coveted front page New York Times Sunday Book Review on August 21, but even a private school teacher reviewer who admits problems with teachers unions (a typical Sunday Book Review choice) found that Brill’s core claims lack a factual basis.

After years of teachers union bashing and corporate-led school “reform” efforts, anti-public school forces are now on the defensive. And the main reason is that the statistical measurements do not support their arguments, and even show a pattern of falsification.


Former DC Superintendent Michelle Rhee became a leading symbol of anti-teachers union attacks, gaining national media status. Now it is revealed that researchers found that for the past three school years most of the classrooms in Rhee’s most favored district “had extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones.”

How much did Rhee’s prized school (Noyes) cheat? According to USA TODAY, “on the 2009 reading test, for example, seventh-graders in one Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on answer sheets; the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than 1. The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance, according to statisticians.”

more . . . http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Anti_Teacher_Union_Reformers_Hoisted_on_Own_Petard_9455.html

The conservanazis and their union busters usually are lying when promoting their product. They will be saying that their product costs less and puts out better students when it's all just another conservanazi lie.

>>>>“Yet Brill wants us to believe that unions are the primary – even sole – cause of failing public schools. But hard evidence for this is scarce. Many of the nation’s worst-performing schools (according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress) are concentrated in Southern and Western right-to-work states, where public sector unions are weakest and collective bargaining enjoys little or no protection. Also, if unions are the primary cause of bad schools, why isn’t labor’s pernicious effect similarly felt in many middle-class suburbs, like Pelham, N.Y., or Montclair, N.J., which have good schools – and strong unions?>>>>>


Let me check the mirror. OK. Still blue.


BTW, shout out to Pelham, NY..... one of my hometowns ....and where my sister's g-kids currently attend UNIONIZED, HIGH-PERFORMING public schools.

Which they DO NOT want "REFORMED."

I realize the NYT and USA Today have run similar articles, at least about the cheating on standardized tests, but it would be nice to see this getting as much media attention as Michelle Rhee got when she was the "savior" of public education.

A couple months early, but I'll take it!

yet obama decided to make his best b-ball buddy the sec of ed.

i find it ironic that neither one of them went to a public school.

It would probably make a good OP, but I'm off to work, and expect I won't have much time to spend on DU now that the official work year has started.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/education/29winerip.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=education

On edit, that's been taken care of. ;)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1836931&mesg_id=1836931

It was no contest.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/StevenB


After Words: Steven Brill, "Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools," hosted by Diane Ravitch, NYU

About the Program
The founder of The American Lawyer magazine and Court TV tells the story of a coalition of unlikely allies in the fight to change a school system that many parents believe is failing the nation's children. He debates education solutions with former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch.