Report on New York City School District: “A Rotting Apple: Education Redlining in New York City”

Schott Foundation report April 2012

The New York City public school system is the largest in the country, with responsibility for educat­ing more than 1 million children.

The ability of the New York City public schools to meet that responsibility holds national signifi­cance. The high national profile of the city’s education reforms in recent years, and the much-echoed calls for replication in other cities, offer strong evidence of this.

Unfortunately, the city’s public school system is failing to meet its responsibilities for most of its stu­dents — particularly for Black and Latino students, and for students from low-income families. While New York will claim increases in graduation rates, yet less than 18 percent of black and brown students are proficient in reading on the National Assessment test and over two-thirds of those who graduate must pay thousands of dollars in higher education classes because they are need of remediation.

America’s urban hubs must ensure that all students have a fair and substantive opportunity to learn and achieve at high levels. In New York, few Black, Latino and impoverished students have that op­portunity.

The lack of opportunity that is at the root of this failure is tragic for hundreds of thousands of New York students and is a major contributor to the persistent failures of other school systems across the state and nation.

A Rotting Apple: Education Redlining in New York City is one of a series of Opportunity to Learn reports from the Schott Foundation. This report compiles and analyzes data for New York City and highlights existing intra-district inequities. It is useful to parents, youth, teachers, researchers, political leaders, media and other advocates interested in educational opportunity — specifically in New York City’s schools.

To view the executive summary go to:

NY Schools Redlining Report-exec-summary April 2012

Diane Revitch: How, and How Not, to Improve the Schools

Diane Ravitch  March 22, 2012 The New York Review of Books

The article by Ravitch refers to the following two books:

Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?
by Pasi Sahlberg
Teachers College Press, 167 pp., $34.95 (paper)

A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn’t in Providing an Excellent Education for All
by Wendy Kopp with Steven Farr
PublicAffairs, 229 pp., $25.99

David Donaldson, a high school teacher in the Teach for America program, with his students at the Maryland Academy of Technology and Health Sciences, Baltimore, December 2009

In his 2012 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama proposed that teachers should “stop teaching to the test” and that the nation should “reward the best ones” and “replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.” This all sounds sensible, but it is in fact a contradictory message. The president’s signature education program, called Race to the Top, encourages states to award bonuses to teachers whose students get higher test scores (they are, presumably “the best ones”) and to fire teachers if their students get lower test scores (presumably the teachers “who just aren’t helping kids”). If teachers want to stay employed, they must “teach to the test.” The president recommends that teachers stop doing what his own policies make necessary and prudent.

Like George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, Barack Obama’s Race to the Top program is part of what Pasi Sahlberg calls “the Global Education Reform Movement,” or GERM. GERM demands teaching to the test. GERM assumes that students must be constantly tested, and that the results of these tests are the most important measures and outcomes of education. The scores can be used not only to grade the quality of every school, but to punish or reward students, teachers, principals, and schools. Those at the top of the education system, the elected officials and leaders who make the rules, create the budgets, and allocate resources, are never accountable for the consequences of their decisions. GERM assumes that people who work in schools need carrots and sticks to persuade (or compel) them to do their best.

In Finland, the subject of the first part of this article,¹ teachers work collaboratively with other members of the school staff; they are not “held accountable” by standardized test scores because there are none. Teachers devise their own tests, to inform them about their students’ progress and needs. They do their best because it is their professional responsibility. Like other professionals, as Pasi Sahlberg shows in his book Finnish Lessons, Finnish teachers are driven by a sense of intrinsic motivation, not by the hope of a bonus or the fear of being fired. Intrinsic motivation is also what they seek to instill in their students. In the absence of standardized testing by which to compare their students and their schools, teachers must develop, appeal to, and rely on their students’ interest in learning.

SAGE Works in MPS

Congratulate kids, don’t belittle them

By Angela McManaman Dec. 3, 2011 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

I was insulted by the tone and startled by the inaccuracies in the Nov. 20 Crossroads op-ed on Wisconsin’s SAGE class-size reduction program.

Christian Schneider of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute called the program a “horror” for Wisconsin, asserting the only value of small class sizes is that teachers can better supervise kids who eat glue.

My husband and I chose Milwaukee Public Schools’ Fratney Street School for our three children because it offers smaller class sizes and an opportunity to learn Spanish. My younger son does not eat glue. In fact, he does not eat much food at all, due to a medical condition.

Fratney’s lower teacher-to-student ratio and school nurse mean that he receives some individual attention during snack and lunch time. When he eats very well, or not at all, I may receive a phone call from the school. I cannot imagine him receiving this kind of attention in the 35-student classrooms that Schneider favors.

When he states that Japan and South Korea are doing great with 35-kid classrooms, I’d ask him to compare their unemployment rates and cultural factors to Milwaukee: a city with one of the highest rates of childhood poverty in the United States. And when Schneider asserts that without the SAGE program, schools would see class sizes rise from 15 to 17 students, he is simply wrong.

Remaining SAGE programs in MPS have around 18 students in each class. Talk to the teachers at Milwaukee Spanish Immersion or Hartford Avenue schools, which lost SAGE this year. I can guarantee you they don’t average 17 kids per class without SAGE.

The academic benefits of smaller class sizes are evident. MPS has several SAGE-supported schools that achieved remarkable gains in test scores, including Rogers Street Academy and Browning School, which achieved double-digit increases in their math and reading scores. The hardworking scholars at 81st Street School realized a double-digit jump in reading scores. And reading scores also increased significantly at Fratney.

Schneider would have more credibility if he got his facts right and discussed schools without resorting to calling children in low-income schools glue-eaters or using bad data and bogus comparisons.

We all agree that all schools need to do better, including MPS, voucher and charter schools. But when reforms such as SAGE are working, and where kids and teachers are succeeding, let’s all congratulate and support them.

Angela McManaman lives in Milwaukee.

School: It’s way more boring than when you were there

Wednesday, Sep 14, 2011

New studies show that the disappearance of art, music and even recess is having a devastating effect on kids

By Daniel Denvir Salon.com

Forty-nine million or so American children have returned to public school classrooms that are, according to many critics, ever more boring. Preparation for increasingly high-stakes tests has reduced time for social studies and science. Austerity state and federal budgets are decimating already hobbled music, art, library and physical education budgets.

“When reading and math count and nothing else does, then less time and resources are devoted to non-tested subjects like the arts, science, history, civics and so on,” education historian Diane Ravitch, a well-known high-stakes testing critic and one-time proponent, writes in an email to Salon.

Supporters of the self-described “education reform” movement counter that evaluating teachers based on test scores is the only way to ensure good teaching, and that focused attention on reading and math is necessary to boost poor students’ achievement.

But the achievement gap is still wide, and there is (hotly disputed) evidence that students are afforded less time for creative inquiry. A 2007 Center on Education Policy study found that 44 percent of elementary schools had decreased instructional time spent on non-tested subjects since the 2002 implementation of No Child Left Behind, on average reducing time spent teaching the scorned subjects by 32 percent.

A study by the organization Common Core slated for release later this fall has found even more dramatic changes, particularly in elementary school where one teacher teaches all subjects and instructional change can take place more informally.

“We were surprised at the extremity of the narrowing indicated by the teachers who took our survey,” says Common Core executive director Lynne Munson, a deputy chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities during the Bush administration and former fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “We were particularly surprised to see that not only a narrowing across the grades, but in elementary it’s really been acute. It is overwhelming.”

Andy Rotherham, a researcher for Bellwether Education and a columnist at Time magazine, counters that while curriculum narrowing exists it is much smaller than the heated rhetoric would suggest, and that the blame lies not with testing but with poor instruction. He also questions the CEP study’s methodology, and points to a 2009 Government Accountability Office study that found only 7 percent of teachers reporting a decrease in art instruction between the 2004-05 and 2006-07 school years.

“The problem we have right now is arguing over measuring sticks, but the real problem is a capacity problem,” says Rotherham. “We’re asking schools to jump over bars that they’re not able to jump over.”

The push for a narrow curriculum dates to the 1990s, he says, and so cannot be pinned exclusively on No Child Left Behind. Indeed, the problem of poor schools lacking resources for arts and music is an old one.

Whatever the cause, bored students take notice and are not showing up to class — especially poor kids of color. A February 2011 report by Youth United for Change found that boredom was one of the greatest factors driving students in Philadelphia to drop out — just 63 percent of students graduate within six years. The students who conducted the survey use the term “pushed out” to highlight the forces driving young people out the door.

“It’s so much time put into the testing, and it gets boring,” says Romeo Rodriguez, a 21-year-old who left a number of Philadelphia schools and a study author. “To sit there and read constantly, the same questions that they ask every year.” Young people interviewed for the survey said there was too much test prep and too few extracurricular activities, arts and vocational training.

The change is coming from the top. No Child Left Behind was President George W. Bush’s signature education policy initiative, requiring schools to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) on reading and math tests or face tough penalties — including closure. President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top grant competition consolidated the focus on reading and math, and leveraged federal funds to push states to tie teacher evaluation to student test results.

Schools are now asked to do a lot more with a lot less. The 2009 federal Recovery Act (stimulus) saved an estimated 342,000 education jobs. With just $2 billion of $39 billion in funds remaining, catastrophic cuts are now in place — with more likely in coming years without a major boost in state and federal funding.

More than 290,000 school district jobs have been eliminated since August 2008, according to a study released last week by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. More than 190,000 of those jobs were eliminated over the past year. A majority of 24 states studied (representing two-thirds of the nation’s students) had cut funding — sometimes drastically: South Carolina, Arizona and California each cut more than 20 percent. And since state education budgets are generally allocated through formulas that prioritize aid to low-income students, districts with the bulk of such students often take the greatest hit. Once again, it seems likely that the poor are suffering from the most boredom.

At the “lowest-performing” schools, which also tend to be the poorest and least white, schoolwide pep rallies are common in the lead-up to test day, and schools hang large banners celebrating their AYP achievements. Poor schools are desperate to make AYP on standardized tests.

“We had rallies to try to hype up people for PSSAs [Pennsylvania System of School Assessment],” says Rodriguez. “To be honest, they didn’t work.”

Principals make it clear to teachers that test scores are paramount. From the president to the superintendent on down, math and reading tests are the only lens through which academic achievement and school success are interpreted. Adult jobs are on the line, and forced conversion to privately managed charter schools loom.

“The research is not clear,” writes Ravitch, “but a great deal of anecdotal evidence suggests that affluent districts are preserving a balanced curriculum, while poor and minority students are likely to have larger classes and a bare-bones curriculum.”

Supporters defend the predicament as a sad necessity.

“The bigger pressure, I think, is making sure that kids are ready to graduate high school and have the possibility to go on to college,” writes Kelly Centolella, a 7th grade math and science teacher at a Los Angeles charter school and Teach for America alumnus. “If the decision is between a seventh grader taking an extra math class to make him or her ready for algebra or taking an art elective, I would be hard-pressed to not pick the extra math class.”

Critics dispute that math and reading drills have closed the divide, and say recent cheating scandals in cities like Atlanta and Philadelphia indicate that some testing gains may be illusory. Rather than changing course, however, school districts are simply moving to tighten security measures — though monitoring is still weak.

Bob Peterson, a 30-year veteran teacher from Milwaukee, argues that poor kids are most in need of a well-rounded education.

“Those are the kids that most need a robust education because their parents don’t have the money to fund those things after school and in the summer,” says Peterson, a longtime activist who recently took office as president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association.

Ravitch says that when teachers get cut, arts and the humanities are the first people to go.

“When decisions are made about layoffs, decisions are made about which subjects are necessary — the tested ones — and which are expendable — those that don’t count on the federal scorecards. So librarians are cut; art and music teachers are cut; testing budgets are not touched,” she writes to Salon.

A 2010 study by the National Art Education Foundation found some improvements in arts curriculum development since 2002. But art teachers had an overwhelmingly negative attitude toward No Child Left Behind. They reported decreased staffing and funding, higher teaching loads, and students being pulled out of class for remedial work and test prep. A June 2011 study from the Center for Arts Education found that New York City lost 135 art teachers since the 2006-07 school year, and that about 23 percent of city schools have no licensed art teacher at all.

Even science, which President Obama heralded as the key to American prosperity during his 2011 State of the Union Address, is hurting. Science teachers complain they face reduced teaching time, and participation in science fairs nationwide has suffered.

“Less practical” subjects fare even worse, and the humanities are under increasing attack from higher education to elementary school.

“It looks like the only way humanist educators and their students are going to get to the top is by hanging on to the coattails of their scientist and engineering friends as they go racing by,” writes Stanley Fish, a defender of the beleaguered liberal arts.

Bored children can find little respite: Recess, the midday distraction long treasured by listless youth, has declined as principals try to squeeze every last minute of instructional time from the school day. A 2005 Department of Education study found that students averaged only 26 minutes of recess per day, with poor kids getting even less.

Even kindergarten has found itself on the losing end of a war against play. Instead of playing house, dressing up or drawing, 5-year olds now busy themselves with math worksheets. A 2009 study by the Alliance for Childhood found that kindergartners in Los Angeles and New York City spent six times as long on literacy and math (two to three hours daily) as playing (30 minutes).

“The importance of play to young children’s healthy development and learning has been documented beyond question by research,” write authors Edward Miller and Joan Almon. “Yet play is rapidly disappearing from kindergarten and early education as a whole. We believe that the stifling of play has dire consequences — not only for children but for the future of our nation.”

“Preschool,” they warn, “is rapidly following suit.”

• Daniel Denvir is a staff writer at Philadelphia City Paper and a contributing writer for Salon. You can follow him at Twitter @DanielDenvir. More: Daniel Denvir

Should the starting salary for a teacher be $60,000?

By Liz Goodwin | The Lookout – Thu, Sep 1, 2011

How would the nation’s school system be different if teachers were paid like engineers?

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan proposed last month that a significant boost in teacher salaries could transform public schools for the better by luring the country’s brightest college graduates into the profession.

Teachers should be paid a starting salary of $60,000, Duncan said, with the opportunity to make up to $150,000 a year. That’s higher than the salaries of most high school principals, who are generally paid much more than teachers.

The median salary among all middle school teachers, for example, not just those starting out in the profession, is around $52,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Would paying teachers 2 to 3 times more money mean that students would learn more? We don’t know. But smaller raises of 20 percent or less have been ineffective, and one New York City school that embraced much higher pay has so far underperformed on state tests.

Can Teachers Alone Overcome Poverty? Steven Brill Thinks So

By Dana Goldstein | The Nation – Wed, Aug 10, 2011 Steven Brill, the journalist and media entrepreneur, has come a long way since he helicoptered onto the education beat in 2009. That’s when The New Yorker published Brill’s exposé of the New York City “rubber rooms,” where the Department of Education parked the one-twentieth of 1 percent of the city’s 80,000 public school teachers—about forty people—who had been accused of gross negligence and removed from the classroom. As they awaited the due process hearings guaranteed in their union contracts, rubber room teachers received full pay and benefits, sometimes for up to three years. The article sparked outrage among readers, who were appalled that millions of tax dollars were spent annually paying the salaries and arbitrating the cases of teachers who came to work inebriated or practiced corporal punishment. Despite the fact that the Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers shared responsibility for creating the clumsy and cumbersome arbitration process, Brill laid the blame solely at the union’s doorstep. He followed up with his hyperbolically titled May 2010 New York Times Magazine feature “The Teachers’ Unions Last Stand,” which admired the Obama administration’s attempt to pressure states to tie teacher evaluation and pay to students’ standardized test scores. The article lavishly praised nonunionized charter schools while entirely blaming teachers unions for the achievement gap between poor and middle-class students. Together, the two pieces had the kind of impact most journalists can only dream of. Rubber room teachers were reassigned to desk jobs, and their arbitrations were sped up. More significant, Brill’s framing of the education debate, borrowed from reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee—teachers unions vs. poor kids—infiltrated the popular consciousness more deeply than it had before, presaging the September 2010 release of the pro–charter school, anti–teachers union documentary Waiting for Superman. Brill began to appear on panels with key figures in the education debate, including American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten and Harlem Children’s Zone President and CEO Geoffrey Canada. And he embarked on an ambitious book project: a comprehensive history and analysis of the standards-and-accountability school reform movement called Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools. Not surprisingly, given Brill’s history of interest in only the most controversial school reform issues, the book is filled with misleading discussions of complex education research, most notably a total elision of the fact that “nonschool” factors—family income, nutrition, health, English-language proficiency and the like—affect children’s academic performance, no matter how great their teachers are. (More on this later.) Class Warfare is also studded with easy-to-check errors, such as the claim that Newark schools spend more per student than New York City schools because of a more cumbersome teachers’ contract. In fact, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that the state must provide supplemental per-pupil funding to all high-poverty school districts, including Newark. As a result, New Jersey is considered a national leader in early childhood education, and Newark graduates more African-American boys from high school—75 percent—than any other major city. But here’s the thing: by the closing chapters of his breezy, 478-page tome, Brill sounds far less like an uncritical fan of charter school expansion, Teach for America (TFA) and unionbusting and far more like, well, a guy who has spent several years immersed in one of the thorniest policy conversations in America, thinking about a problem—educational inequality—that defies finger-pointing and simple solutions. Welcome to the beat, Brill!

Attempt by Republicans to Gut Title 1 Funding

Hurting Poor Students

Published: July 19, 2011 NYTimes

Extremists in Congress have long wanted to gut the spending restrictions in Title I, a federal law dating back to the 1960s that underwrites extra help for disadvantaged schoolchildren. A bill, approved by a House committee last week, would do just that, damaging one of most important civil rights programs in the country.

The State and Local Funding Flexibility Act would let school districts spend money earmarked for impoverished children on almost any educational purpose they chose. This would inevitably lead to money going from politically powerless poor schools to those without the same needs.

Title I was created during the Johnson administration in response to the failure of the states to offer access to equal education for all students as required by Brown v. Board of Education. The education law is based on a strict formula that drives federal aid to high-poverty districts, where large numbers of disadvantaged children often pose educational challenges. It is supposed to provide an added layer of federal money to high-poverty schools that already have budget allocations similar to those of other schools in the same district.

But because the districts kept gaming the system, moving the money from the Title I schools to more politically influential schools, Congress required more close accounting of how the money is spent.

Still, the districts that receive the money (about $14 billion this year) have enormous spending flexibility. For example, they can hire teachers, nurses or mental health workers or finance a longer school day. But ideologues in Congress believe the federal government should not be in the business of ensuring that the most vulnerable children are served. The bill would allow local officials to take money from schools that need it most. That’s a terrible idea. Sensible members of Congress should resist it.

U.S. Education Policy: “School Isn’t for Everyone”

How is it that we can afford to double our military budget since 9/11, can afford the carried-interest tax loophole for billionaires, can afford billions of dollars in givebacks to oil and gas companies, yet can’t afford to invest in our kids’ futures?

Our Broken Escalator

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: July 16, 2011 NYtimes

THE United States supports schools in Afghanistan because we know that education is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to build a country.

Alas, we’ve forgotten that lesson at home. All across America, school budgets are being cut, teachers laid off and education programs dismantled.

My beloved old high school in Yamhill, Ore. — a plain brick building that was my rocket ship — is emblematic of that trend. There were only 167 school days in the last school year here (180 was typical until the recession hit), and the staff has been reduced by 9 percent over five years.

This school was where I embraced sports, became a journalist, encountered intellectual worlds, and got in trouble. These days, the 430 students still have opportunities to get into trouble, but the rest is harder.

For the next school year, freshman and junior varsity sports teams are at risk, and all students will have to pay $125 to participate on a team. The school newspaper, which once doubled as a biweekly newspaper for the entire town, has been terminated.

Business classes are gone. A music teacher has been eliminated. Class size is growing, with more than 40 students in freshman Spanish. “It’s like a long, slow bleed, watching things disappear,” says the school district’s business manager, Michelle Morrison.

The school still has good teachers, but is that sustainable with a starting salary of $33,676?

In a rural, blue-collar area like Yamhill, traditionally dependent on farming and forestry, school has always been an escalator to opportunity. One of my buddies was Loren, a house painter’s son, who graduated as salutatorian and became a lawyer. That’s the role that education historically has played — but the escalator is now breaking down.

“Every year we say: ‘What can we cut? What can we reduce?’ ” said Steve Chiovaro, superintendent of Yamhill-Carlton schools. “We’ve gotten to the point where we can no longer ‘do no harm.’ We’re starting to eviscerate education.”

Yamhill is far from alone. The Center on Education Policy reports that 70 percent of school districts nationwide endured budget cuts in the school year that just ended, and 84 percent anticipate cuts this year.

In higher education, the same drama is unfolding. California’s superb public university system is being undermined by the biggest budget cuts in the state’s history. Tuition is set to rise about 20 percent this year, on top of a 26 percent increase last year, which means that college will become unaffordable for some.

The immediate losers are the students. In the long run, the loser is our country.

Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, two Harvard economists, argue in their book “The Race Between Education and Technology” that a prime factor in America’s rise over the last two centuries was its leadership in educating the masses.

On the eve of World War I, only 1 percent of Britain’s young people graduated from high school, compared with 9 percent of Americans. By 1950, a majority of American youths were graduating from high school, compared with only 10 percent of British youths.

American pre-eminence in mass education has eroded since the 1970s, and now a number of countries have leapfrogged us in high school graduation rates, in student performance, in college attendance. If you look for the classic American faith in the value of broad education to spread opportunity, you can still find it — in Asia.

When I report on poverty in Africa and poverty in America, the differences are vast. But there is a common thread: chipping away at poverty is difficult and uncertain work, but perhaps the anti-poverty program with the very best record is education — and that’s as true in New York as it is in Nigeria.

Granted, budget shortfalls are real, and schools need reforms as well as dollars. Pouring money into a broken system isn’t a solution, and we need more accountability. But it’s also true that blindly slashing budgets is making the problems worse. As Derek Bok, the former Harvard president, once observed, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

Still, we nation-build in Afghanistan and scrimp at home. How is it that we can afford to double our military budget since 9/11, can afford the carried-interest tax loophole for billionaires, can afford billions of dollars in givebacks to oil and gas companies, yet can’t afford to invest in our kids’ futures?

Sometimes I hear people endorse education cuts by arguing that “school isn’t for everybody,” which usually means something like “education isn’t for other people’s children” — or that farm kids in places like Yamhill really don’t need schools that double as rocket ships. I can’t think of any view that is more un-American.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.

Scholastic Under Fire From Rethinking Schools for Coal Curriculum

Rethinking Schools editor Bill Bigelow is quoted in article stating “ ‘The United States of Energy’ is designed to paste a smiley face on the dirtiest form of energy in the world. These materials teach children only the story the coal industry has paid Scholastic to tell.”

Coal Curriculum Called Unfit for 4th Graders

By TAMAR LEWIN Published: May 11, 2011

Three advocacy groups have started a letter-writing campaign asking Scholastic Inc. to stop distributing the fourth-grade curriculum materials that the American Coal Foundation paid the company to develop.

The three groups — Rethinking Schools, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and Friends of the Earth — say that Scholastic’s “United States of Energy” package gives children a one-sided view of coal, failing to mention its negative effects on the environment and human health.

Kyle Good, Scholastic’s vice president for corporate communications, was traveling for much of Wednesday and said she could not comment until she had all the “United States of Energy” materials in hand.

Others at the company said Ms. Good was the only one who could discuss the matter. The company would not comment on how much it was paid for its partnership with the coal foundation.

Scholastic’s InSchool Marketing division, which produced the coal curriculum in partnership with the coal foundation, often works with groups like the American Society of Hematology, the Federal Trade Commission and the Census Bureau to create curriculum materials.

The division’s programs are “designed to promote client objectives and meet the needs of target teachers, students, and parents” and “make a difference by influencing attitudes and behaviors,” according to the company Web site.

“Promoting ‘client objectives’ to a captive student audience isn’t education,” Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, said in a statement. “It’s predatory marketing. By selling its privileged access to children to the coal industry, Scholastic is commercializing classrooms and undermining education.”

The Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, a tiny group in Boston, has often been at odds with Scholastic, a $2 billion company whose books and other educational materials are in 9 of 10 American classrooms. Last year, the group criticized the company for its “SunnyD Book Spree,” featured in Scholastic’s Parent and Child magazine, in which teachers were encouraged to have classroom parties with, and collect labels from, Sunny Delight, a sugary juice beverage, to win free books. The campaign has also objected to Scholastic’s promotion of Children’s Claritin in materials it distributed on spring allergies.

And in 2005, the campaign tangled with the company over its “Tickle U” curriculum for the Cartoon Network, in which posters of cartoon characters were sent to preschools and promoted as helping young children develop a sense of humor.

None of the previous episodes led to any specific action.

The coal controversy seems to be the first time the campaign and its allies have challenged Scholastic lesson plans.

“ ‘The United States of Energy’ is designed to paste a smiley face on the dirtiest form of energy in the world,” said Bill Bigelow, an editor of Rethinking Schools magazine. “These materials teach children only the story the coal industry has paid Scholastic to tell.”

The Scholastic materials say that coal is produced in half of the 50 states, that America has 27 percent of the world’s coal resources, and that it is the source of half the electricity produced in the nation, with about 600 coal-powered plants operating around the clock to provide electricity.

What they do not mention are the negative effects of mining and burning coal: the removal of Appalachian mountaintops; the release of sulfur dioxide, mercury and arsenic; the toxic wastes; the mining accidents; the lung disease.

“The curriculum pretends that it’s going to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of different energy choices, to align with national learning standards, but it doesn’t,” Mr. Bigelow said.

“The fact that coal is the major source of greenhouse gases in the United States is entirely left out,” he said. “There’s no hint that coal has any disadvantages.”

In a statement, Ben Schreiber, a climate and energy tax analyst at Friends of the Earth, called the curriculum “the worst kind of corporate brainwashing.”

According to an article by Alma Hale Paty, the executive director of the American Coal Foundation, and posted on Coalblog, “The United States of Energy” went to 66,000 fourth-grade teachers in 2009.

There was no answer at the foundation Wednesday, and Ms. Paty did not return calls.

Walker Hosts Reading Task Force Meeting. Expect the Task Force to be Ideologically Driven.

The first meeting of the task force Read to Lead was held April 25^th at the Capitol in Madison.

Some observations:

Of the 14 attendees only one was a person of color, Representative Jason Fields.

There were no MPS teachers or reading specialists.

There were no bilingual specialists.

There was no one representing ESL students.

The committee appeared to be ideologically stacked.

There was no one representing balanced literacy.

Expect prescriptive, industry driven “solutions” to low achievement in reading.

Expect the “reading wars” to be resurrected with “scientifically-based reading instruction and intervention” to answer everything.

The second meeting of the Governor’s Read to Lead task force will be Tuesday, May 31st.

To view the April 25^th meeting go to:

http://www.wiseye.org/Programming/VideoArchive/EventDetail.aspx?evhdid=4126