Great discussion about Jaime Escalante, Michelle Rhee and possible cheating

Thanks, folks, for such a vigorous response to yesterday’s post about Jaime Escalante, Michelle Rhee and USA Today’s recent investigation into possible cheating in Washington, DC.

These comments were so thorough and thoughtful they merit their own post.

Here you go.

Please keep the conversation going.  It’s an important one.

From Dany Fleming:

A while back, I was part of an effort that turned a large, failing South Side Chicago high school into 4 separate small schools. The principal of the failing school was an inept, controlling blowhard and he was despised by the stronger teachers at the school.

As we began the planning, one day one of those stronger teachers walked me into what was commonly referred to as the “Eraser Party.” This was an “invitation only” event from the principal (a very persuasive invitation) that included some of his crony teachers and staff. The better teachers refused to join the party and this marked the battle lines in the school. Additionally, everyone knew that being a whistle-blower to this party was not as straight forward as it might seem for those teachers as they were taking on an experienced “player” with decades of building political and community allies. This was clearly not the only school with an eraser party.

The good news is that the principal was fired, though for reasons other than test cheating. There were plenty of other corruptions and ineptitudes to choose from to justify the firing. The group of stronger teachers did a solid job of taking on the task of turning the culture and school around

Like we’re finding out from the faux Texas turnaround, we may start finding more evidence of gaming the system in D.C. Without a doubt, an incentive for many administrators is to rocket-boost their short-term portfolio by any means necessary, cash their bonus check and get out of dodge before the skeletons fall out of the closet. Kind of like being an NCAA DI football or basketball coach.

The many teachers and administrators who fight that temptation deserve much more credit than they often get. Unfortunately, they are often left with the option of turning their classrooms into massive test prep operations during test time.

As a parent, I spend much of my time trying to figure out which teachers best balance that tedious test prep work, which bore my kids to tears, with some of their own unique teaching hooks to otherwise engage the kids. It’s a tall order for teachers and hard work as a parent in discerning the teachers that can best ensure my kids develop a love of learning.

Given our backgrounds, Carol and I are probably better equipped than many parents in figuring this out. More precise, our goal is really to make sure our kids get advanced and gifted curriculum placements. This is where teachers have more leeway in curriculum and, usually, where some of the strongest teachers are. We work hard on this front.

For many parents, this is the sad gaming of the system for which we spend spend so much time and energy – it should not be this difficult. Of course, you need to have access to a sufficient school or system to make this happen. As they say, there is already “choice” in education, it’s called your mortgage.

These thoughts are from Titus Flavius Vespasianus, who taught in our nation’s capital during Michelle Rhee’s tenure:

I’m one of those she fired. Nine great years in Calfiornia teaching, where I missed only one day of work in all of that time. Credentialed. Tenured. Had my work published in a national magazine. Came to DC to be closer to my mom, who’s by herself and getting on in years. Deepest social dysfunction I have ever seen was in those schools. Several fights a day. Parents visibly in the heroin nod. Kids dirty, with ringworms and other communicable diseases, and often homeless, rotting in big government programs and social engineering. My idiot principal obsessed over raising test scores because his job depended on it, but we couldn’t cheat because our school was heavily monitored during testing. Why? So we wouldn’t improve much. Why didn’t she want us to improve much? Because she had already handed our school over to a charter outfit from Philly over Christmas break. My principal was fighting for his life when he was already dead! I was fired along with the entire staff in June 2010. I had been with DCPS for 18 months. I worked at Stanton Elementary, and that episode taught me all I need to know about the nature of this country, it’s leadership, and it’s character.Now I tell any poor black kid I meet that it’s best to sell drugs in a smart way and arm themselves to defend themselves against a hostile government and economic system. Look to the cartels in Mexico, I say. I would never tell a kid to get an education and work hard and play by the rules.

By the way, I’m a black male and hold a Master’s degree in my field, and passed the Praxis II with ahigh score on the first attempt to obtain a clear teaching license. My mother was a hospital adminstrator, and holds a Master’s, and my father has an MBA. Nobody in my family has ever received public assistance, we worked. I don’t have illegitimate children, I have no children. And I was penalized because others have different priorities, and now the lazy and the irresponsible get to laugh at me because I believed in the big lie. Well I’ve learned. From Wall Street to the projects to Michelle Rhee, it’s all about scheming and scamming and living off the government. Believe me, I get it.

From mentor, former fourth grade teacher and friend Paul Tamburello:

Just read the hot link “a compelling and remarkably thorough investigation by USA Today” on your RSS feed, which doesnt show up as hot link in your story above.
The USA Today story seems to be a combination of what I’m beginning to understand as the use of “computer assisted reporting” and “The Document Cloud” you refer to in your post.
What I liked about the USA Today story is that it showers us with relevant data and, even though their data presents damaging evidence, makes us connect the dots re the ultimate question of cheating or no cheating.

And a link from friend and educator Trisha Boyce:

Jeff, just watched this…Krashen makes some really good points in the era of tests, tests and more tests, and the billions that are spent on them. Maybe we use the money to buy books for all children…what a concept!

http://informania.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/dr-stephen-krashen-education-is-not-broken-the-problem-is-poverty/

On Jaime Escalante, Michelle Rhee and USA Today’s Erasure Investigation

Test gains at one of Michelle Rhee's favorite schools may have been accomplished by cheating.

Of all the memorable scenes in Stand and Deliver, the feel-good biopic of the late, great Jaime Escalante, one of the most compelling was when his students were accused of cheating on the Advanced Placement Calculus exam.

The position of the Educational Testing Service, or ETS, was that the students got the same answers wrong, raising suspicions of cheating.  Escalante countered that his particular method meant that students would approach the problems in a consistent fashion.

An outraged Escalante offers a stirring defense of his students, making the point to ETS officials, one of whom is Latino, that the skepticism about the high scores was happening in large part because of his students’ brown skin and poor backgrounds.

As moviegoers know, the students had to retake the exam, and, while not all did as well the second time as the first, enough passed again to appear to resolve the testing conundrum.

I use the word “appear” deliberately.  In his biography of Escalante, Jay Mathews, who since has gone on to become a cheerleader for charter schools and bring a U.S. News and World Report mentality to high school with his annual rankings, wrote that some of the students admitted to having cheated, then recanted and said they were joking.

Mathews does not offer a conclusive opinion in the book, and this reader sensed strongly that he believed something amiss had happened, even as he obviously held great admiration for Escalante and his ability to motivate and instruct his students.

I thought of Escalante today while reading a compelling and remarkably thorough investigation by USA Today about the number of students in schools throughout the country, but largely in the nation’s capital, that had a higher than average erasure of incorrect to correct answers than the district average.

Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello’s investigation is worth reading for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its well-organized use of the Document Cloud tool.

And, for the purposes of this post, the work is most intriguing because of the light it shines on the role cheating might have played in test score gains accomplished during the brief and stormy tenure of former schools chief Michelle Rhee.

RIP, Geraldine Ferraro

Geraldine Ferraro died yesterday at age 75.

Trailblazing vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro died yesterday at age 75 after a lengthy battle with cancer.

I remember vividly the Time Magazine cover showing the two-term congresswoman from New York who Walter Mondale, before losing by an historic margin, selected her to be his running mate.

I met her once,  at the Villa Il Salviatino in Florence, where I studied my sophomore year at Stanford.  She spoke to us and answered our questions.

I asked one of them.

I don’t remember the exact words, but I do believe I asked her about how she kept things going with her family while she was working so hard campaigning. She smiled that I mentioned talking with my mother, and, afterward, when I went up to shake her hand, told me she was glad that I did so.

It’s more than a quarter century later, and, though Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin came close in 2008, a woman still has not won either of the top two spots.

But the former prosecutor nudged open the door for those two and all other women, including Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann, who is making noises about a presidential run, are the beneficiaries of her actions.

We wish her family peace and calm during this painful time.

Anniversary of Marty Kelly’s Death.

In many ways, it’s hard to believe that a full year has passed since my father-in-law Marty Kelly took his last breath.

The events starting that Friday, when Dunreith called me as Aidan and I were taking a cab on the way to the airport to let me know of her father’s death, and continuing with Mom being released from the hospital, Dunreith getting into a serious car accident, our niece Lucy being born, and Marty’s memorial service, all feel so vivid that they are difficult to reconcile with the knowledge that indeed a year has come and gone since then.

Marty treated me with generosity and kindness throughout the dozen years I was privileged to know him, and for the nine-and-a-half years I was honored to be his son-in-law.

He loved Dunreith and Aidan with a simple and unapologetic ferocity that told them they were Kellys and that that meant a lot.

He lived for his passions-family, friends and golf-and touched many people’s lives.

One of my more vivid memories of being in the reception line at the memorial service was the unending stream of people, many of whom I had never met, who came up, shook my hand and said things like, “He was really one of the great ones.”

“A fixture at the club.”

“They don’t make them like him anymore.”

They were right.

In my head, I know that a lot has occurred since last March.

In May, after much difficulty, Mom got a pacemaker installed, and, in December, she had a hip replacement.

In July my stepmother Diane Lowenstein died.

In August, Aidan got his driver’s license.  In January, he turned 18 and gained admission into three fine universities.

In just over two short months, he will graduate from high school.

In November, I went to Italy as a participant in the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma after being named the vice president of the Dart Society.

In January, I was elected to serve as president after the person in that position resigned.

And, two weeks ago, I started working for Hoy, the Chicago Tribune’s Spanish-language newspaper.

Yet, as I get older, the factual reconstruction and listing of these events does not make the event feel any more distant.  Rather, I have come to understand, in a way that I did and perhaps could not while I was a sophomore at Stanford, what Marcel Proust was describing when he wrote about the flood of memories that were triggered by his eating a madeleine.

I was not there during the last days of Marty’s life, and, in some ways, it saddens me that I did not get to say goodbye to him in person.

But I do know that he lives close within me, springing up when I start to speed read in Spanish. Or when I think about telling him of my plans last year to run the Marathon in his honor and could feel his gratitude, even as his language faltered.

Or when I picture him sitting in his chair in the living room of the Wilbraham home he and Helen shared, one long leg crossed over the other, a glass of Dewar’s in his right hand, eyes glinting with satisfaction and love as he looked at the family he had helped create.

I miss him, and I’m grateful for, and enriched by, the times we had together.

Love.

Last building at Cabrini-Green, public housing resources.

The last building of the Cabrini Green housing project will demolished Monday.

Karl Klockars has a touching piece in today’s Chicagoist with an accompanying striking picture of Cabrini Green suffused in light in which he discusses the final building at the housing project being demolished on Monday and a public art installation that will honor it.

Race in The Good Wife, Harold Washington and Rahm Emanuel

Dunreith and I spend most Wednesday evenings watching CBS’ hit drama, The Good Wife.

Julianna Margulies, who rose to stardom in the early years of ER, where she played George Clooney’s paramour and later appeared often in The Sopranos, is the protagonist  Alicia Florrick, a Georgetown-educated lawyer who is married to Peter, played by Chris Noth, Carrie Bradshaw’s Mr. Big on television and the big screen.

In a plot line that closely resembled Elliot Spitzer’s downfall, the show opens with Noth, the Cook County State’s Attorney, being stripped of his office and going to prison after being caught sleeping with prostitutes.

One of the major strands of the second is Noth’s quest for political redemption as he seeks to regain the office he once held.

The campaign is coming down to its final weeks, and Florrick, after trailing for most of the race, finds himself neck and neck with a black woman for the lead.

The Democratic Council leader urges him to get the suburban soccer moms and blue collar workers-enter here white people-to get him over the top.

Florrick’s campaign manager Eli Gold-maybe it’s just me, and a number of these conniving characters seem to be Jewish-agrees with the strategy, and has the black faces removed from Florrick’s campaign web site, inserted language about bringing back the old Chicago, and cancelled  his spiritual counseling sessions with Paster Isaiah, played by one of several alums from MacArthur Award Winner David Simon’s The Wire.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s happened before.

It’s been close to 30 years since Republican Bernard Epton nearly won one of the most bitterly contested mayoral races in one of the nation’s most Democratic cities against then U.S. Rep. Harold Washington.

Overt racial animosity permeated the race, which saw Washington, whose campaign was spearheaded by a young David Axelrod, narrowly defeat the Republican opponent and usher in the era comedian Aaron Freeman called “The Council Wars.”

Of all the books that I’ve read about Washington, Gary Rivlin’s Fire on the Prairie captures in most compelling fashion the energy and excitement triggered by Washington’s campaign and ultimate victory.

One of the people Washington defeated was a far younger Richard M. Daley, who, as anyone living within 2,000 miles of Chicago knows, will be leaving his post in May after having served a record 22 years-a figure that surpassed his father’s tenure last year.

Rahm Emanuel is Daley’s successor, and, despite predictions to the contrary, he trounced the other candidates not only in predominantly white wards, but in black ones as well.

Friend and ace blogger Megan Cottrell wrote about trend for The Chicago Reporter, as did a number of other writers around town.

Some heralded it as an example of Chicago’s moving past its old racial divisions, while others were less swift to proclaim the end of race mattering in the city, chalking Emanuel’s margins in black communities up in large part to the poor quality of his black opponents.

As a candidate seeking a second act, Peter Florrick’s future is less certain, though it’s hard to imagine the show ending differently.  In the meantime, people of all racial backgrounds continue to grapple with what W.E.B. DuBois called the problem of the 20th century that still has some legs in this one, too.

Dunreith and Aidan visit Tulane, Katrina resources

Dunreith and Aidan returned tonight from New Orleans, where Aidan has gained admission to Tulane University.

The food, weather, culture and academic environment all impressed Aidan-a sense that was only strengthened by returning to the raw weather we are calling “spring” here in the Chicago area.

The two of them spent most of their time in the Garden District, at Tulane’s attractive campus and in the French Quarter.  Dunreith took a picture of Aidan chowing down on a beignet, just one of the city’s culinary treats.

Unfortunately, they did not connect this time with friend, Dart Society member and New Orleans native John McCusker, who, among many other projects, gives people tours of his beloved city.

McCusker was part of the Times-Picayune photographic staff that won a Pulitzer Prize for their heroic efforts to document the devastation visited upon the city in late August 2005, when Hurricane Katrina broke the levees and lashed the entire Gulf region with a merciless fury.

Dunreith said the parts of the city they visited do not bear visible scars from Katrina.

From what I have heard, the same is not true throughout the city.

Those looking to learn more about the moment of the hurricane and its aftermath have plenty of choices to choose from.

Times-Picayune editor Jed Horne’s Breach of Faith gives a panoptic view of those who left, those who tried to leave and those who decided to stay during the hurricane.  His ever shifting point of view allows the reader to feel both the helplessness many New Orleanians went through as well as their bone-deep love for their home.

Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun tells the story of a Lebanese immigrant and businessman who decided to stay in New Orleans while his wife left to go to comparative safety in Houston.  While riding around helping people in a canoe, Zeitoun, despite being a citizen, got caught up in the post-September 11 aggressive and indiscriminate enforcement of immigration policy.

The results are unsurprisingly disastrous.  A painful book to read, Zeitoun illuminates a lesser-known dimension of the hurricane’s fallout.

Spike Lee’s When The Levees Broke gives a more straightforward recap of the callous indifference demonstrated by the second George W. Bush Administration after the hurricane hit shore.

Finally, Harold Platt’s Shock Cities, while not about New Orleans, tells a similarly dark tale of wealthy policy makers in London living in safety, commissioning studies about their poorer neighbors who live in harm’s way, finding that the disasters can be avoided, ignoring the conclusions and then attributing the ensuing wreckage to divine will.

These dark thoughts aside, Aidan may very find himself attending school in The Big Easy.

Wearing a t-shirt as he got off the plane, his reintroduction to Chicago weather reminded him that Michigan and Wesleyan, two of his other possibilities after hearing from the Connecticut school, have climates far more similar to here than there.

His final decision must be made by May.

To be continued.

More Spanish learning: A Man of Success

This Cuban film tells the story of two brothers over the course of nearly 30 years.

In addition to bedeviling American attempts to dislodge him for more than half a century, Fidel Castro has ruled over a period of significant Cuban films.

A Man of Success, which snared the top prize at the Havana Film Festival in 1986, is one of them.

The movie tells the story of two brothers, Dario and Javier, as they make their choices about how they live, and, ultimately, how one of them dies during close to 30 years starting in 1932 and ending with Castro’s triumphant arrival in Havana in 1959.

Both men initially share an opposition to the ruling regime, but rapidly veer in dramatically different directions.  Dario fiercely opposes the decadent and oppressive regimes that started with Gerardo Machado and culminated in Fulgencio Batista, whom Castro and his other revolutionaries toppled.

Dario’s actions eventually force him to leave the country.  But, rather than going to America as his family would have him do, he instead goes to Spain to back the Republican insurgents in their battle against the Fascist forces of General Franco.

If Dario has the courage of his convictions, Javier is the successful protagonist referred to in the title.  He trades in his ideals for a Gromyko-like ability to gather political power and riches while hewing to the line advocated by the latest leader-a development that is symbolized by his removing from his office wall the portrait of the outgoing leader and putting up a picture of the newest boss.

In other woods, in the immortal words of The Who, “Meet the new boss/same as the old boss.”

Javier even marries Darios’s old lover, showering her with material comfort and access to the finer things available to members of the upper echelons of Cuban society.  However, in love and in life, the truth will out.

In this case, the truth is that Javier’s life is a hollow man, and that the success he has accumulated predictably comes tumbling down as the Batista regime heads toward its final weeks.

In addition to the story it traces, A Man of Success provides ample examples of the indulgent life of the Cuban elite in settings of classical and intact architecture, replete with fine clothes and finer wine.

The brothers are born into these privileged environments, a background that serves to illustrate the moral dimensions of the brothers’ choices and that is illustrated by the mother’s changing responses to them (I won’t be giving the ending away by saying that her situation does not end happily.).

The unsurprising ending does not mean the film is not worth watching for reasons that extend beyond its contribution to my burgeoning understanding of the Spanish language.  I doubt if I’d give A Man of Success the grand prize as the Cuban judges when it premiered a quarter century ago, but I am glad that I spent the time to watch it over the past couple of days.

Desmond Tutu still speaking up for his beliefs.

Desmond Tutu keeps on voicing his opinions.

He’s getting older, his body frailer after a battle with cancer, his energy dimmed, but not completely faded.

But Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu still does not shy away from voicing his opinions and saying what he believes is right.

Tutu spoke out about the need for African leaders and nations to hold Muammar Gaddafi accountable-something they have not done during his 40-year despotic reign in Libya.

According to an Associated Press article,

U.S. and European allies are conducting the widest international military effort in Libya since the Iraq war. But an African Union panel said late Saturday it was opposed to a foreign military intervention.

Tutu says there would be no need for a military interventions in Libya if Africa’s leaders had held their peers to account.

Learning more Spanish through Destilando Amor and Innocent Voices

Destilando Amor has been one of several sources of learning Spanish for me.

I’ve got one week at Hoy under my belt and still have a lot of Spanish to learn.

On the reading front, I’ve made my way through a grammar book and am reading the paper and circling vocabulary words each day.  Dunreith got me a copy of a book in Spanish about undocumented immigrants from Dave Eggers’ Voice of Witness series that I plan to crack soon.

I also continue to have a terrific time watching Spanish-language films, and, in a return to how I first learned the language, taking in episodes of televovela Destilando Amor.