PR at PPS

Anonymous wrote:

"PR hire-- may be new topic--
Prior to 2006, the district (not the board) took care of its own PR--schools were encouraged to have a web site and showcase the positive. As a district, the spokesperson for the district made sure the media got the good news. 
With 2006 the era of consultants came in-- and the goal became to be "like MacDonalds" ( told this by a PR person at the board) this is when we got the "Pittsburgh_________" branding- costly and by most people's thinking, kinda dumb.
Yes, they need to put a positive spin on the superintendent debate. But the massaging of the data to make things look good, the branding of schools with positive PR aren't new ideas. Again hiring consultants to "manage the story"-- and Ira did the hiring therefore, Ira's decision to bring in the investigator will look like a grand idea. Far far from education in Pittsburgh "

Dialogue should be civil

Anonymous wrote:

"New post please.

Just when I thought I'd heard it all, Amanda Godley from A+ schools wrote a letter to the PG as a "concerned parent" comparing the Hamlet supporters to Donald Trump. Also, she does not disclose her affiliation with A+ schools in the letter. Ridiculous. The only upside of this is the notion that maybe they're getting scared they won't get their way on this one. Here is the link.


http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/letters/2016/06/22/Dialogue-about-the-Pittsburgh-schools-superintendent-should-be-civil/stories/201606220041 "

NOW is the time to "stay the course"

Testimony from Pam Harbin at yesterday's Public Hearing:

"Pittsburgh Public School students are in desperate need of a superintendent who is an experienced educator with a solid background in school transformation and who, like this board, rejects the status quo in our schools.  This elected school board hired Dr. Hamlet and I believe he is the right educator to lead our district and build the schools we know our children deserve.  #just #equitable  

Immediately after Dr. Hamlet was voted in unanimously by this board, I personally spoke to some of you.  You explained that Dr. Hamlet was the top candidate because he stood out as someone who understands that education is built on relationships and respect, not business transactions.  I couldn’t agree more.

Shortly after Dr. Hamlet was announced, the usual suspects, those in favor of corporate style reforms like Teach for America, school closings, and other disruptive reforms that have failed our students, came out to say that the search should start over.  

Don’t do it.  You selected a qualified educator with impressive gains in the areas identified and prioritized by students, parents, teachers and community members.  You are a democratically elected school board who is accountable to us and Dr. Hamlet is accountable to you.  Outside interests believe that their money and influence should give them power over our public school system. But they are not educators so they must stop dictating education policy, interfering with democracy, and giving money only when it’s accepted with strings attached.

 

Stay the course.  We have serious problems that need to be addressed before the start of the school year.  For one, we don’t have a Director of Special Education, a critical position that has been vacant since Jan 30, 2016 - there are more than 4,000 students with disabilities in the district.  There is work to do!

The stakes are high.  When people ask me why I am so adamant about my support for the school board and Dr. Hamlet, I tell them that a minority of students will be fine with any superintendent--they were fine under Roosevelt and Lane and they will be fine under Hamlet or someone else.  But, my son and many other students were NOT fine under Roosevelt and Lane.

Special education was severely neglected in the past 2 administrations.  To get my son a proper education, I had to take legal action.  You chose Dr. Hamlet because he understands these challenges and has the background to address them.

A few months ago a Pittsburgh influencer told me that the “17 most powerful and influential people in Pittsburgh” disagreed with the communities vision of school improvement.  

Who are these powerful outside interests? All I know is they DO NOT have the right to take democratic control of our schools away from us!  They DO NOT have the right to say that we shouldn’t have community schools where students, parents and teachers will finally have the power to influence policy and practice in their school.  

We have community wisdom! We know what is stopping our children from learning!  And, this elected board is willing to work with us, and willing to hold Dr. Hamlet accountable to create the schools all of our children deserve!  Let’s do this!"

Big philanthropy and the education industrial complex

Testimony submitted by Kathy Fine for yesterday's public hearing:

"While we anticipate the appointment of a new superintendent to head the Pittsburgh Public Schools, it is an apropos time to take an unvarnished look at the education reforms of the last decade; “A People’s History” of the Pittsburgh Public Schools, in the tradition of the progressive author and activist, Howard Zinn.

Big Philanthropy first introduced their education “reforms” to Pittsburgh in 2005. The Bill and Melinda Gates and Broad Foundations chose the Pittsburgh Public School district as one of the testing grounds for their agenda, which includes privatizing public schools, using “non-traditional” educators and busting teachers’ unions.  Over the next ten years, our district implemented Big Philanthropy's reforms, including closing schools, using unproven school structure reform, creating a controversial teacher evaluation, and hiring expensive consultants, none of which addressed the primary cause of low academic achievement; the effects of poverty.  The biggest winner is the “educational industrial complex” (charter and testing companies, educational consultants) that reaps millions in profits.

To cut spending in 2006, the district closed 24 schools through the administration’s “Right-Sizing Plan”.  However, many experts hold that school closings result in education deserts in the affected (mostly low-income) communities, disenfranchise families and cost more in the long run.  Much of the savings are lost when PPS families leave the district and enroll in the charter school that inevitably opens in the void, taking PPS funding with them.  In addition, as repeatedly reported, charter schools, on average, have the same success and failure rates as traditional public schools.

During the same period, the district embraced the Gates promoted “small schools” movement and, despite it operating at capacity, closed Schenley High School, using false claims of asbestos danger and inflated construction costs. Further testing in 2010 proved that there was never any asbestos danger.  But these students were needed for three newly created small high schools.  Sports and other extracurricular activities were decimated. Minority students landed in an inadequate middle school building, where they continue to languish. The students at Sci-Tech and Obama are doing well, but they were doing well at Schenley.  Before the school even closed, Gates abandoned his own reform, stating that small schools do not improve academic outcomes.

The next reform promoted by the Gates Foundation, teacher effectiveness, came in 2009 with a whopping $80M price tag. “Empowering Effective Teachers” has, as its core principals, the controversial and unproven practices of merit pay and using test scores for teacher evaluations.  Six years later, the PPS reports that 97% of teachers are rated proficient or advanced, a 1% increase from 2005. Some ineffective teachers were dismissed, but at what cost? Keep in mind that the PPS already had an adequate but underutilized process for eliminating low performing teachers.  Social workers, psychologists, paraprofessionals, and librarians were eliminated (in 2012, PPS employed one social worker/1200 students); class sizes increased and teachers’ morale plummeted.  And recently the Rand corporation reported that parents are 4-5 times more important than effective teaching in increasing student achievement.

Westinghouse High School closed in 2012 and reopened as two single-gender academies (another education policy interest of Mr. and Mrs. Gates), despite that the data on the benefits of single gender education in non-charter, non-magnet public schools are inconclusive at best. In addition, the ACLU warned that the academies would trigger a lawsuit stating, “Our findings demonstrate that single-sex education programs in coeducational, public schools are widely out of compliance with the stringent legal requirements of Title IX”.  The result was a disaster by anyone’s account. The program was scrapped.

In 2013, the district hired consultants FSG and Bellwether Education, whose founders hold the same privatization philosophy of Big Philanthropy, in an effort to address budget shortfalls (largely created by PPS’s fiscal mismanagement and continued enrollment decline of the previous five years). $2.4M of foundation money produced "Envisioning Educational Excellence: A Plan for All of Pittsburgh's Children" and its recommendations of closing more schools, creating larger classes and slashing student services."

Pittsburgh Public Schools "lifted" its educational philosophy (or, if Dr. Hamlet plagiarized then so did PPS)

Annette Werner wrote,

"Here is an updated version of my testimony from yesterday's Public Hearing.

Good evening. I support Dr. Hamlet, and in support of him I would like to share some materials I found online.  I will send each of you a copy by email.

First, you will find some Pittsburgh Public Schools documents, including District Beliefs, PPS Shared Goals, and something called the Pittsburgh Pledge.  The content will be very familiar, including statements such as “All children can learn at high levels” and “Teachers have a profound impact on student development.”  They note the need for a “safe and orderly work environment,” a goal of “efficient and equitable distribution of resources,” and a pledge to be accountable for achieving “Excellence for All.”

Next are pages from the handbook of a charter school in Rhode Island, the “RINI Middle College”
http://www.rinimc.org/uploads/3/9/6/4/39648435/parent_and_family_engagement.pdf .  It declares that “All children can learn at high levels,” and that “Teachers have a profound impact on student development” and notes the goals of a “safe and orderly work environment” and “efficient and equitable distribution of resources.”

A little closer to home, the website of the Grove City Area School district states that “All children can learn at high levels,” observes that “Teachers have a profound impact on student development,” and pledges to be accountable for achieving “Excellence for All.”  http://www.grovecity.k12.pa.us/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&ModuleInstanceID=511&ViewID=7b97f7ed-8e5e-4120-848f-a8b4987d588f&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=102&PageID=334

And, even across the country in Compton, a page from the website of their Unified School District states that their Board wants “a safe and orderly environment” and “efficient and equitable distribution of resources.”   http://web.compton.k12.ca.us/Components/UserControls/ResourceMgr/rsrcView.aspx?rsrc=mN8i8qKPd%2FYwxXlQigjFhA%3D%3D As these examples show,  the websites of various other schools and school districts echo verbatim much of the language found on our PPS website.

Based on the dates of the documents I would guess that these districts copied from PPS rather than vice versa.  But we aren’t home free- investigate the components of the PPS materials and you will find relevant sources published prior to our website but not cited by PPS, such as a book written in 2005 (excerpt attached), which asserts that “all students can learn at high levels” and explains the reasoning that led to this conclusion. https://books.google.com/books?id=Z1rN1Ivlmn4C&pg=PT292&lpg=PT292&dq=%22all+children+can+learn+at+high+levels%22&source=bl&ots=IMEJyAem7Y&sig=C4MpM-fy86gG84BXxeU4_cNNius&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwirzor1ornNAhUKaD4KHdUbDcIQ6AEIXDAN#v=onepage&q=%22all%20children%20can%20learn%20at%20high%20levels%22&f=false

So what to make of all this borrowing- is it plagiarism?  My sense is that it is not.  Statements of philosophy, values, mission, goals and belief are simply not treated the same as articles in newspapers or scholarly journals.  What is the sense of making 20 different districts come up with 20 different ways to say “Excellence for All,” or clutter their posters, handbooks and other communications with academic citations? 

I would like to see observers step away from misguided charges of plagiarism, offer Dr. Hamlet a warm welcome, and allow him to do the job he was hired to do."

"The conspiracies theories..."

James Fogarty of A Plus schools is quoted as saying, "The conspiracy theories, they sometimes become a bit much for me."

Voice of experience:  when your investigation is met with accusations of conspiracy theories, you are probably on to something and this is the best response/defense they can come up with.  Do not be deterred.

Sign up by noon to speak at tonight's public hearing

Call 412 529-3868.

There are already a couple of hours' worth of speakers signed up, so there is no need to arrive right at 6:00.

However, there is a rally in support of Dr. Hamlet at 5:00.  A Plus Schools is holding a competing rally.  One possibility- attend the rally, take a dinner break on Craig and then return to speak.  If you miss your turn, they will give you another chance at the end.