Starbase demographics

February 11, 2010 by Steve Rawley

Demographic information readily available from the district does not provide a fine-grained detail of fourth- and fifth-grade students targeted by the military’s STARBASE recruiting program, but it is clear that poor and minority students are over-represented.

Of the 18 schools participating this year, all but four are Title 1 schools. All but three have higher percentages of minority students than the district-wide minority enrollment (46%). All but four have higher poverty than the district at large (45%).

The schools participating average 11 percentage points more minority and 17 percentage points more poor than the district as a whole, even when factoring in the four wealthy schools that participate.

While many participating staff and families may swear there is no recruiting going on, the program is funded from the US Department of Defense recruiting budget. The military is clear about their need to target potential recruits early.

Student information is shared with the military with little or no notice to parents (or opt-out opportunities), and the program is explicit in its goals of improving the image of the military with young children.

Here are the schools participating this year, with their demographic information.

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

1 Comment

Starbase questions the school board should ask

February 10, 2010 by Steve Rawley

I know we’ve got a couple of peaceniks (term used respectfully and admiringly) on the school board right now, one who hasn’t voted on Starbase before (Gonzalez) and the other who is now co-chair (Adkins).  It’s safe to say they had  a lot to do with pulling the vote on next year’s Starbase contract from the board agenda Monday night. It would be a great opportunity for them to pull together the two other votes needed to scrap this program.

Here’s what I sent to the whole board about this opportunity:

Word is that Deputy Superintendent Charles Hopson, who has been outspoken about the PPS high school system as “a civil rights violation of the worst kind,” will answer board questions before you vote on continuing Starbase.

Here are some questions the board — and Hopson — should be asking:

• Is it not also a civil rights violation that black, brown and poor children are specifically targeted for military recruiting at extremely young ages?
• What is the precise demographic breakdown (ethnicity and poverty level) of students participating in Starbase? Why are Title I schools over-represented?
• What student information is shared with the military?
• Is it legal to share information about pre-teens with the military without explicit parental permission?
• If parents choose to pull their children from this program, is their information still shared with the military?
• How are families notified of this program?
• Can families opt out of both the program and the information sharing? How are parents informed of these options?
• Do counter-recruiters have equal access to participating students?
• Assuming the curriculum is great (and non-military), why can’t it be incorporated into the normal classroom science and math curriculum and taught by existing classroom teachers? (In other words: Why does it need to be taught on a military base, and what’s the advantage of having the extra staff to teach it when it doesn’t free up classroom teachers to work with other students? )
• How does exposing students to large-scale, highly advanced weapons square with the district’s zero tolerance policy on weapons?

Once we’re satisfied with the answers to these questions, it might be interesting to find out more about the curriculum.

Thank you.

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

44 Comments

Board set to approve $320,000 military recruiting contract

February 8, 2010 by Steve Rawley

The Portland Public Schools board of education is set to approve a contract with the U.S. military to take $320,000 in exchange for access to elementary school children.

The Starbase program, funded from the US Department of Defense recruiting budget, has been raising parent hackles since at least 2006. It is up for re-authorization at tonight’s school board meeting, in the midst of two shooting wars and the “Global War on Terror.”

Parents opposed to the program issued a press release this morning urging the board to vote down this contract. They are also calling on parents to contact the school board about this program.

“We oppose the militarization of our children through a science curriculum,” said Jessica Applegate, mother of two PPS students.

“Students of color are disproportionately represented in their program,” writes parent Carrie Adams on her blog, Cheating in Class.

Nancy Rawley, PPS Equity co-publisher, notes that the $320,000 could pay for “a whole lot of microscopes and science supplies.” She wrote about Starbase here last month.

Update, 3:45 pm: sources tell PPS Equity that the resolution has been pulled from the agenda for today’s meeting, and will appear again soon.

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

7 Comments

Chalkboard on the Wrong Road

February 1, 2010 by Steve Buel

Someone ought to tell the leaders of the Chalkboard Project that no one uses a chalkboard anymore.

And someone should also tell them that schools are about educating kids not teachers. There is a great confusion in educational circles that the major problems in the schools can be solved by better educating or evaluating teachers. Yep, we need more realistic education in our university teacher-training programs, and mentoring young teachers is a good idea. But spending millions of dollars and stealing time from children’s education in the form of half days and stealing hours and hours of time from teacher classroom preparation to do in-service to make teachers incrementally better, and sometimes worse is an educational travesty.

Most education takes place in the classroom and within schools. Improving education should focus on these two things. How do we make the school run better? How do we make the classroom work better so kids can learn more? These are not questions which will be solved in Washington D.C. with Race to the Top bribes or by school reform based on suspect, supposed educational research.

School problems need to be directly addressed by the staff in that school working together in an open manner which focuses on the problems particular to that school. Sure, the staff can ask for help upstairs in the administration office (which might include such requests as we need a librarian), and sure this can include training the staff thinks they might need. But, training in the latest educational trends, mostly designed to cover the backsides of administrators, is not particularly helpful. (This doesn’t mean an administrator can’t write down ideas and give them to his or her teachers to consider.)

Same goes in the classroom. Each classroom is different. Each is a little world unto itself with an infinite number of interactions and nuances. Spending hours on imparting national trendy reforms isn’t really much help. But that is what we do. Instead we should create an atmosphere which allows real communication between staff, including administrators, about ideas which teachers might find useful, including ideas specific to that particular classroom or the teaching of that subject. This doesn’t mean evaluating more, it means encouraging and supporting more.

My fervent hope is that PPS and the State of Oregon will figure it out. The Chalkboard project isn’t helping.

Steve Buel has taught in public schools for 41 years. He served on the PPS school board (1979-1983) and co-authored the 1980 School Desegregation Plan. He has followed PPS politics since 1975.

25 Comments

Run, Run as Fast as You Can

February 1, 2010 by Sheila Wilcox

Recently, The Oregonian has published a few articles about the new “Race to the Top” grant that Portland Public Schools has signed on for, along with many other Oregon school districts.  The grant stipulates that a student’s test scores will follow teachers, and be part of a teacher’s professional file.  Indeed, a teacher will be evaluated based on a student’s standardized test scores. The state’s willingness to sign on smacks of desperation and ignorance.

Besides the obvious, that “one test does not a good teacher make”, there are numerous other reasons why this clause in the grant is ludicrous.  One is that not all grade levels are tested.  Indeed 3^rd-8^th and 10th grades are tested consistently in math and reading.  If you teach K-2^nd grade, or 9^th, 11^th, or 12^th grades, you just may have dodged a bullet.  In addition, if a teacher teaches subjects such as art, P.E., or social studies, which are not currently tested, then the testing does not apply to them. I would hesitate to bring this up to the state, however, as their answer might very well be to test in every single subject, every, single, year.

I know fabulous teachers who teach at schools that have not traditionally done well on standardized tests.  I happen to teach in a cluster in PPS that typically has low test scores.  I could teach in another cluster, but I choose not to.  Does a teacher magically become a better teacher if he or she moves to a school with higher test scores?  Apparently the state of Oregon thinks so.  I  cut one of the Oregonian articles out to pass around to the staff at my school.  Many teachers said that they would like to consider withholding their dues to the OEA, as our state teacher’s union has signed on with this as well.

There are many, many influences in a child’s life.  A teacher is just one of them.  This heinous grant asserts that a teacher’s sole purpose is to get a child to pass some contrived, intrusive test that has little to do with what he or she does on a daily basis, while also asserting that a teacher is the only one responsible if said child passes or fails.   I’m sorry, but “No Child Left Behind” is starting to look like a picnic.  We need to run far away from “Race to the Top.”

Sheila Wilcox is a PPS parent and K8 teacher.

6 Comments

Why is PPS Partnering with the Department of Defense to Racially Profile Kindergarten to 5th Grade Students?

January 31, 2010 by Carrie Adams

It’s simple.  The  kindergarten to 5th graders are expected to be the Department of Defense’s (DoD) future workforce.  PPS has a contract with the DoD Starbase supplying them with mini recruits.  In 2008 Congress appropriated $20,203,000 for the program which is available in 34 states.  This year PPS received $350,000 of it.

The DoD Starbase website states: “DoD STARBASE students participate in  challenging ‘hands-on, mind-on’ activities in aviation, science, technology, engineering, math, and space exploration.  They interact with military personnel to explore careers and make connections with the real world.  The program provides students with 20-25 hours of stimulating experiences at National Guard, Navy, Marine, Air Force Reserve and Air Force bases across the nation.”

The real world includes white kids but you won’t find too many of them in the Department of Defense marketing materials.

Starbase targets “at-risk youth” which they define as “students at risk are those who have characteristics that increase their chances of dropping out or falling behind in school.  These characteristics may include being from a single parent household, having an older sibling who dropped out of high school, changing schools two or more times other than the normal progression, having C’s or lower grades, being from a low socioeconomic status family, or repeating an earlier grade.”

I’d love to see the data that PPS used to help Starbase identify those students.  First of all, aren’t a lot of military kids living in single parent households while one or sometimes both parents are fighting in the war?

Does PPS track dropout siblings?  Changing schools two or more times?  Does it count when it’s PPS that keeps closing schools in poor schools then reassigning kids?  Does that put those students at risk?  Do kids even repeat classes anymore?

Starbase and PPS aren’t identifying individual students based on the characteristics mentioned above.  Schools are being identified through socioeconomic status and race.  PPS tracks both of those.

Check out the presentation on the DoD’s plan for the future and you’ll see that students of color are disproportionately represented in their program.  The Portland schools participating in Starbase are schools with high percentages of minority students.

One of the stated goals of Starbase is about increasing drug awareness and prevention.  If PPS is serious about supporting at-risk youth, administrators might try looking across the river.  It’s widely known that students on the west side are struggling with drugs and mental health problems.  Why aren’t they being enrolled in Starbase classes?  Is it because they are wealthier white kids?

One look through the DoD Starbase 2008 Annual Report makes it clear that Starbase is a recruitment program.  The report also talks about the need to engage kids early because they lose interest as they near middle school age.  Here are some items from their post-program assessment:

• Military bases are fun.
• I am enjoying coming to a military base.
• The military base is a good place to work.
• Military people do lots of different things.

What do any of those questions have to do with math and science skills?  But then that’s not the real goal of the program.

Just when I think PPS can’t do anything more despicable to poor kids, I learn about something new. The most appalling thing is that Starbase isn’t new to PPS.  The superintendent and board have known about this for years.

Years ago the Education Crisis Team brought a coffin to a protest before the school board.  Protesters carried signs saying that the district was handing poor kids a death sentence.  People thought it was extreme.  Maybe it wasn’t extreme enough.

At the time Education Crisis Team leader Ron Herndon was quoted as saying   “This may not be the kind of parental involvement you want us to have, but this is the kind of involvement we need to have”.  Amen.

Take action: Call or write PPS Board members to demand that PPS terminate the contract with the Department of Defense immediately.

Sourced from: Cheating in Class. Used by permission.

Carrie Adams blogs at Cheating in Class.

1 Comment

Title I: Did You Know….

January 6, 2010 by Carrie Adams

The No Child Left Behind act requires public school districts to provide Title I services to eligible public and private school students.

Title I Overview

This is the part of No Child Left Behind that supports programs in schools and school districts to improve the learning of children from low-income families. The U.S. Department of Education provides Title I funds to states to give to school districts based on the number of children from low-income families in each district.

US Department of Education Audit of ODE

The US Department of Education audit on Oregon’s Title I program in 2008 produced many findings centered on accountability.  Among other things, there was an almost complete absence of oversight in how some Oregon districts handle services to private school children.  The findings listed below are taken directly from the Title I report (emphasis mine).

Finding (1): The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) has not ensured that its LEAs (school districts) maintain control of the Title I program for eligible private school children and their families and teachers. For example:

• As part of the process for selecting a third-party provider in PPS, private school officials meet with potential providers without district officials present.
• PPS provides its third-party providers with a list of possible criteria to use to select students for services, but leaves it to the third-party provider and private school officials to decide which criteria are actually used.
• PPS gives the third-party provider and the private schools the responsibility of deciding the types of services (i.e., reading or math) that students selected for services receive and how the services will be evaluated.
• In Woodburn School District (WSD) the private school officials develop the plan for services, the selection criteria, and how the services will be evaluated.

Finding (2): The ODE has not ensured that its districts have consistently met the requirements for consultation with private school officials regarding: (1) the method or sources of data the district will use to determine the number of private school children from low-income families residing in participating public school attendance areas; and (2) the evaluation of the Title I program for private school children.  PPS tells interested private school officials to report free and reduced priced lunch data in October without first consulting with them concerning the different options that may be used to obtain data on low-income students.  PPS’s affirmation form does not include this topic.  In both PPS and WSD the third-party contractor designs the evaluation of the Title I program for private school children.  Neither LEA has determined in consultation with private school officials how the Title I program for private school children will be evaluated, what the agreed upon standards are, and how annual progress will be measured.

Finding (3): The ODE has not ensured that its LEAs have consistently exercised proper oversight in awarding contracts for the provision of Title I services to participating private school children.  A contract that PPS has with a third-party vendor to provide services to participating private school children did not have enough detail to enable PPS to determine that the Title I statutory and regulatory requirements are being met.  The contract has not broken out the specific amount for administration, instruction, family involvement, and professional development that the vendor is charging.

PPS’ handling of Title I services to private school children is the equivalent of handing private schools a check and walking away.  Where is the accountability for that?  Unfortunately, this is typical of how PPS manages its money.  District staff consistently argue that questioned expenses are just a small portion of their budget.  They don’t get it that the pennies add up.

The PPS 2009/10 budget includes $20.2 million in Title I funds PLUS $14.5 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds.  PPS reports that the ARRA funds will be targeted towards: standards and assessment; data systems; teacher effectiveness; and support for lowest performing schools.

Schools need the money but they need to use it effectively.  Don’t let the district piss the money away.

Parents:

TAKE ACTION – You have a right to know how your child’s school is spending their money.  Find out if your child’s school is a Title I school.  If so, here are some questions (ask any or all) that you should ask your school principal:

1. How much has the school been allocated in Title I funding?
2. How much in funds did the school carryover from last year?
3. Who was involved in completing the School Improvement Plan (SIP)?
4. Request a copy of the School Improvement Plan or schedule a time to review it.
5. Is the school required to provide supplemental services (individualized help for struggling students)?  If so, who is the provider?  What services are provided?
6. Is the School Improvement Plan and budget aligned?
7. What parent involvement activities are included in the School Improvement Plan?

Don’t worry about whether you’ll understand all of it.  Most parents don’t understand it.  You’ll get it over time.  The important thing is to ask questions and always follow-up.

If you need help with any of the information you collect, you can email me by going to the About page or you can post questions on this blog.  There’s a very supportive online community of parents with tons of expertise and various perspectives.

Sourced from: Cheating in Class

Carrie Adams blogs at Cheating in Class.

2 Comments

What do Oregon Educators Want?

November 15, 2009 by Kenneth Libby

Susan Nielsen had a pretty decent article in today’s Oregonian (even a blind squirrel stumbles upon a nut!). Teachers, Nielsen finally realized, aren’t a bunch of lazy, incompetent, know-nothing idiots – they’re actually hard workers, pretty sharp, and — get this — really like kids! What did these teachers list as problems?

1. Class sizes too big to manage.
2. Lack of backup during the school day.
3. Parents who can’t or won’t help.

Small class sizes. Adequate staffing (so teachers can, say, have a 5 minute bathroom break). And let’s get parents involved. Some parents are too busy to visit the classroom regularly – but the school-home partnership is absolutely essential in education.

Now, oh dear Oregonian reporters and editorial board writers, go back and review your fawning over Race to the Top and NCLB-like reform proposals. Do they address ANY of those three problems teachers are currently facing in the classroom?

Nope. And that’s why you have a shitty newspaper.

Sourced from: Our Global Education

Kenneth Libby is an independent education researcher and a recent graduate of Lewis and Clark's Graduate School of Education and Counseling. He writes about national education issues, testing and philanthropy on Schools Matter and Global Ideologies in Education.

1 Comment

Money Talks, Bulls**t Walks. But Money + Bulls**t = Bulldozer

November 6, 2009 by Kenneth Libby

Much has been written, at least of late, about the Gates Foundation’s influence on public education. From donating money to Race to the Top applicants to the multiple Gates officials serving in the DOE (and all the billions of dollars flowing in between), there’s no doubt the foundation has a great impact on public education. One of my big concerns is this: Bill picked former PPS superintendent Vicki Phillips to head his domestic education program. Why’d he pick her? She’s a hammer (or, as she was known here, a “hurricane“). She’ll say all the right things, deliver her bit about just bein’ a humble Kentucky girl, and repeat a litany of education catch-phrases – just like Duncan (he’s not a Kentucky girl, but he has his own scripted story about his path to education stardom). It’s scary to think of what those two could accomplish (or demolish). Oh – and Vicki’s assistant, Margot Rogers is now Duncan’s chief of staff. Neat. For a nice taste of Vicki’s dog and pony show, check out Willamette Week writer Beth Slovic’s summary of Vicki’s recent speech to the Council on Great City Schools. Here are a few highlights:

Phillips’ audience was a mix of about 200 to 300 superintendents from large, urban school districts and school board members from around the country. Perhaps that might explain why Phillips opened with a statement that might have angered teachers (had there been any in the room.)

“What’s the toughest job in education?” Phillips asked. “Urban superintendents and school boards.”

…

It’s what’s happening inside the classroom, Phillips said, that really mattered. “Structure is not enough,” Phillips added, before dropping a line that sounds kinda funny when repeated outside the room. “High school is not high enough,” she said.

…

She then jumped to the controversial topic of merit pay, though when I spoke with her after the talk she said “merit pay” wasn’t the right phrase for what she was promoting. “This has been the third rail,” she said, but “we can do this the right way.” She then introduced the Gates Foundation’s “Measures of Effective Teaching” project, which involves videotaping teachers to find out what makes the great ones tick.

…

PPS attendees at the lunch included Superintendent Carole Smith; Zeke Smith, chief of staff; Robb Cowie, communications; Jollee Patterson, general counsel; Sara Allan, system planning; Mark Davalos, deputy superintendent; Sarah Singer, high school redesign; Cameron Vaughn Tyler, partnership manager; Dave Fajer, procurement; Judy Brennan, student enrollment; Cynthia Harris, Jefferson High School principal; plus School Board Members Dilafruz Williams, Ruth Adkins, Pam Knowles, Bobbie Regan, Trudy Sargent, Martín González and — for old time’s sake — Cathy Mincberg, formerly chief operating officer for Portland Public Schools.

Note: PPS Superintendent Carole Smith was Vicki’s chief of staff; Zeke Smith worked for the Portland Schools Foundation, a big Gates recipient and believer in all things Gates; Sara Allan is a former Broad Resident and is now in and executive director in charge of systems planning and performance management; Sarah Singer is not only a Broad Resident, but also in charge of Portland’s high school redesign process; Cathy Mincberg – a former HISD board president, well-known Broad lover, and partner of both Don McAdams and Rod Paige – is now working for a company owned by Michael Milken’s Knowledge Universe, KC Distance Learning. Fitting.

The reform proposals of Vicki, Bill, Arne, Eli, and their pals is “the light at the end of the education tunnel” the late Gerald Bracey referenced in a July 5th twitter posting. Bracey said it was a “standards freight train,” but it’s driven by a hurricane, a former Chicago education chief, and their philanthocapitalists backers.

 Sourced from: Our Global Education

Kenneth Libby is an independent education researcher and a recent graduate of Lewis and Clark's Graduate School of Education and Counseling. He writes about national education issues, testing and philanthropy on Schools Matter and Global Ideologies in Education.

1 Comment

Great schools conference: sorry about small schools, let’s try merit pay

November 2, 2009 by Steve Rawley

As Portland teachers approach 500 days without a contract, and as discontent bubbles to the surface over a failing experiment in K8 schools and an ill-conceived “surplus” auction, senior management of Portland Public Schools spent last week at the downtown Hilton, enjoying seminars and speakers, not to mention complimentary breakfast and lunch.

They were there as hosts of the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) fall conference, with a headlining keynote address by former PPS superintendent Vicki Philips. Philips, now director of education for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was the architect of Portland’s devastating experiments in K8s and “small schools” high schools.

She openly acknowledges that small schools were a failure (as does PPS, at least as implied by the proposed high school redesign). The latest trend being pushed by Gates — not to mention the Obama administration — is merit pay. Only we can’t call it that. “This has been the third rail,” Philips told Willamette Week‘s Beth Slovic.

Instead, much as fundamentalists have re-clothed creationism as “intelligent design,” Philips and other merit-pay proponents dress up their union-busting with terms like “performance” and talk about ways of measuring it, like videotaping teachers, sampling student work and surveying students.

According to Oregonian education blogger Betsy Hammond, Gates “will award millions to several pioneering urban districts that agree to hire, place, train and pay teachers differently…..”

So while bargaining team members from the teachers’ union report intransigence on the part of the school district in resolving their contract dispute, while a second generation of middle graders begins a middle school career in contained classrooms, and while parents report no homework due to a paper shortage even as the district auctions “surplus” paper, our superintendent and at least ten administrators spent last week taking tips from the very person responsible for a great deal of the morass our district faces today.

Portland Public Schools spends $35,000 a year in dues to the CGCS, and it spent at least $1,750 on conference fees (the superintendent and board members attend at no additional fee), not to mention the much greater cost of 11 person-weeks spent away from the district’s business of (ahem) educating our children. On Facebook, a senior PPS administrator defended attendance at the conference as a “relative bargain.”

But what’s the value to our students in sending so many senior administrators to a week-long conference (at a luxury hotel) touting the latest corporate foundation-driven trends in urban education? Under Carole Smith, our district has taken a welcome turn away from trend-hopping, instead proposing a bold, homegrown vision for our high schools, firmly repudiating the bad Gates medicine we swallowed under Philips.

Why should we blow good money to listen to Philips now?

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

8 Comments