Chang diaz

Sonia Chang Diaz recently voted for a bill that will significantly shift the resources and power from public schools to the private sector.

I was taken by the promise of the Chang-Diaz campaign, liked the idea of a legislator with a teacher's perspective. I talked to her, contributed to her campaign and encouraged fellow teachers to consider voting for her. It seems that I made a mistake.

On January 26 of this year I received a form <a href="http://sitebuilt.net/files/Gmail%20-%20RE_%20Education%20Reform%20Legislation.pdf">response</a> from senator Sonia Chang Diaz, on the <a href="http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/senate/186/st02pdf/st02247.pdf">AN ACT RELATIVE TO THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP</a> legislation. In it Ms. Chang Diaz claims to "sit firmly on both sides of many of the debates" on education yet her words and her vote belie her. In looking at the bill I find little evidence to support her claim that the bill will "systematically improve student success". Chang Diaz further states that the bill will "increase accountability in school administration" yet it seems the administrations of these targeted urban school districts get a free pass in this legislation. There is no consideration or recognition of the mounting evidence that shows that the administration of the BPS is the true culprit in the delivery of a poor product to our students. Chang Diaz elucidates her position by listing her four core goals in education: a sense of urgency, equality of service, fairness and teacher participation. I could not help but respond to her misguided core values.

I wrote her this email weeks ago. Her original explanation-of-vote-email referred her constituents to her 'legal counsel' . I guess I should have had my lawyer talk to her lawyer. Problem is, I don't have a lawyer. My response to her four core goals and to the bill continues as follows:

A sense of urgency the bill looks rushed, sloppy, repetitive and ill considered.

Equality of service "delivered by charter schools to high-need populations, such as special education students, English language learners, and students with less engaged parents." The law fails to do what you claim to want to do. This is a toothless law. It boils down to the claim that it will be more equal if we trade our mailing lists. The charters get the addresses of all the public school students for marketing purposes and they give back a list of the zip codes of their selected students. How does that create equality? Charters are to make a good faith recruiting effort because in 5 years maybe somebody will ask them about it when the charter is up for renewal.

We could call this the Cherry Picking Assistance Act. If you, as a state senator actually want to work in the interest of "high-need populations, such as special education students, English language learners, and students with less engaged parents" and (can I add disruptive students here), I challenge you to help me place some of those students from my school into the charter schools. Just giving 3 or 4 students from each of my classes that opportunity could make an enormous positive difference in what gets accomplished in my classes and in my school. In meetings with students and parents I could give out charter school promotional material and then hand the family off to your staff "in conjunction with other community supports and service" to ensure that they are given equal consideration for enrollment.

Fairness in the funding mechanisms The part at the end of the act seems to be some minor fiddling with the formula. The give-away of public resources and power listed in the bill as "Education Collaborative Trust Funds" seems both irresponsible and ill-considered. Let's see: each charter school gets its own school committee representative AND the power to go after the Federal and State money that the city of Boston kids are eligible for. That is evidently not the case for each of the BPS public schools. Fairness would demand that each BPS school get a board and school committee representation to ensure that it gets a share of that money. You have given the green light for private companies to siphon off taxpayer money earmarked for Boston kids. One could interpret the recent history of Boston Public Schools as the same kind of dis-empowerment in letting organizations like the Boston Plan For Excellence siphon off grant and taxpayer money intended for Boston kids and using it to hire consultants to develop an endless array of programs to be sold back to the schools. The corporate-ization of education is complete on your watch. I fear the concentration of power and the giveaway to charters. In a state among the most corrupt in the nation, where our disgrace of a government has had its last three House Speakers removed for corruption, and, the top leaders in the Department of Education have been implicated in the improper awarding of charters for new privatized schools, and, given that you campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, one would think you would be more cautious than to allow these 'trust' funds.

Teacher participation You often claim the former teacher mantle and I guess there is nothing wrong with that. Many people try teaching for a couple of years and then decide that they want to move on to something else. So I can see how you would relate to the charter school model where young people teach for a few years, add it to their resume and then go on to law school or education administration or senator. What bothers me is your calculus. You compare seeing [some] district victories to knowing charters improved thousands of lives. There are 14 charter schools, many with very mixed records. There are 135 Boston Public Schools. How do you know thousands? By reading charter school press releases? By MCAS score comparisons? Have you corrected for selection method, disability, factored in those who drop out to public schools? Who wrote the study you base your knowledge on? What you "know" as a former teacher doesn't count as teacher participation. There is nothing in this bill for teachers or for the vast majority of students in Boston. It is as top down as it can be. It is a sellout that you could never get away with in a rich suburban community.

Charters were originally these incubators of new ideas, ideas that would be shared with the rest of the schools. That rhetoric continues in your bill. As someone who has actively tried to find out the best practices in other schools, I have discovered that charters make little to none of that information available. The only mechanism that you put in place in your bill are these "Collaborative Boards of Directors" of corporate representatives and administrators who talk to each other. You create a mechanism that couldn't be farther from the classroom if you located the boards on Wall Street.

I suppose legislation can be seen as top down too; something you do to the people. You make your deals and we pay. The bill reads more like a corporate charter than a education document. You are pandering to the private sector in order to get your piece of the $4.4 billion that the kids of America must share. Meanwhile that same corporate America just divided $143 billion in yearly bonuses between 38 banks.

In this bill, you end up in bed with an administration in Boston that may have far more responsibility for the problems in educating our kids than do the teachers they so much want to put in check. The problems in teaching may stem from a long term effort to tell them what to do rather than listen to what they can have to offer based upon their experience with the students in the classrooms. Teachers have been damaged and are losing their ability to assess what is up with their students, and are losing their ability to communicate with each other. Most of the 'bad' teachers in Boston can be found in those who comply with and cater to the whims and directives of the administration and take little interest in thinking about how what they are told to do is working. They will be the ones getting the 'merit' pay. I am a teacher and a student of teaching. In these 5 years of teaching I have learned a lot, mostly from my students. Second on the list of my effective mentors are my fellow teachers who are still teaching and are good at it. My third positive influence has been the historians and writers at the top of my field in our universities in Boston. I have learned little from former teachers who are advancing themselves outside of the classroom and almost nothing from the myriad of consultants that the central administration has brought in to replace their own duties. The bill is all about top down and nothing about what we can learn from our students and the teachers who spend 6 hours a day with them. The bill is a dismal failure no matter what crumbs we get from Washington. By your vote I know where 'you sit'.