NYC's Diane Ravitch calls Joshua Starr a Hero Superintendent, Credits Him with Actions that were actually Jerry Weast's

New York City's Diane Ravitch has written about Joshua Starr's failure to gain a majority of supporters on the Board of Education. Ms. Ravitch describes herself as a "historian of education."

 http://dianeravitch.net/2015/01/28/josh-starr-may-lose-post-in-montgomery-county/comment-page-1/#comment-2283700

Ms. Ravitch's readers are upset with this news because Ms. Ravitch has previously labeled Joshua Starr a "hero superintendent."

However, when Ms. Ravitch assigned Joshua Starr the title of "hero" she cited actions taken by the previous Superintendent, Jerry Weast!

http://dianeravitch.net/2012/09/01/the-hero-superintendent-from-maryland/

Apparently the MCPS Public Information Office did not contact Ms. Ravitch to get her to correct her misinformation.

Have you had a lunch meeting with Joshua Starr? Here are some of the people he met with in 2013. #lunchbunch

This is the second in our series of credit card bills for Superintendent Joshua Starr.  The document below covers the time period from January through April of 2013 and shows when Superintendent Starr charged a meal, parking, air fare, train travel, gasoline, or hotels on his MCPS American Express card.

Here is the list of people and groups that Superintendent Starr met with during this time period as recorded in his American Express credit card receipts.

Gazette Editorial Board
LaVerne Kimball
Dr. Edelstein
Dr. Pollard
Dist Mgmt Council
Wireless Generation
Larry Leverett
George Perry
Gallup, Inc.
Leadership Montgomery
Dan Brown
Rebecca Thessin
Laura Steinberg
Christopher Barclay
Myra Smith
Dr. Lillian Lowery
Chuck Short
Elaine ____
Larry Leverett (again)
Diane Ravitch
Larry Leverett (again)
A. Zuckerman
Kim Statham
Dr. Christopher Garran

  2013 Starr January through April by Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland

Get to know Diane Ravitch, Joshua Starr's NYC connection

Now that we know Superintendent Joshua Starr has been to New York City to meet with Diane Ravitch, MCPS teachers and parents might like to get to know more about Joshua Starr's NYC supporter.  Here's a City Paper article from 2011.

“Diane and Richard Ravitch divorced in 1986. Today, she lives in a gracious brownstone in Brooklyn Heights, one of the borough’s poshest neighborhoods. Her longtime companion is Mary Butz, a former New York City public school principal who ran a progressive principal-training program that was shut down by former schools chancellor Klein in 2005.
Sporting an electric-blue turtleneck, leggings, and neat silver bowl-cut as she knocks around a living room lined with bookshelves and decorated in eagles, roosters, and red, white, and blue Americana, Ravitch says she enjoys the education-policy pugilism, Twitter fights and all. “If I’m on Twitter it means I’m not writing. But you know, I think fast, and when I see somebody say, ‘this is right, this is wrong,’ then I want to get into an exchange!” But she says her speaking schedule is so exhausting that she plans to make more of her future appearances via video-conferencing.A grandmother of three, Ravitch is also excited about her youngest grandson enrolling, this September, at P.S. 321 in Park Slope, one of New York’s most coveted neighborhood schools. Some 65 percent of the kids are white; 80 percent meet or exceed state standards in math, English, science, and social studies. The PTA fundraises, via PayPal and employer matching, to support supplemental programs. At P.S. 167 in Crown Heights, less than three miles away, 99 percent of students are black and Hispanic; fewer than half perform at grade-level in math and reading. There is a PTA, but it doesn’t have a PayPal-enabled website”

 http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/41083/diane-ravitch-the-anti-rhee/full/

Diane Ravitch receives "disturbing news" on Joshua Starr

http://dianeravitch.net/2014/01/01/at-de-blasio-inauguration/

Starr met with Ravitch, Ravitch now on De Blasio Inaugural Committee

Education expert Diane Ravitch — a critic of Mayor Bloomberg’s policies — was appointed to the committee, alongside a retired principal and a parent activist.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/blaz-making-a-list-party-article-1.1533871#ixzz2nklrrDEy

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MCPS Superintendent Joshua Starr's receipt showing his meeting with Diane Ravitch in New York City. 

NYT: Wanted: Schools Chief Who Has Never Crossed de Blasio on Education [.@mcpssuper]

...Mr. de Blasio has been consulting with education figures, like the education historian Diane Ravitch, but he, too, is conducting his search largely in private...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/nyregion/wanted-schools-chief-who-has-never-crossed-de-blasio-on-education.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp


See previous post on Diane Ravitch and Joshua Starr meeting.

Historian of education unable to remember meeting with Superintendent Starr

Professor Diane Ravitch, a former Assistant Secretary of Education and self-described "historian of education" is apparently having some problems remembering recent history.

In a series of tweets this week, Professor Ravitch initially denied meeting with Superintendent Starr. But after the Parents' Coalition shared one of Starr's travel expense receipts with Ravitch, she suddenly recalled her coffee date with the Superintendent.

Why was Professor Ravitch unable to remember the meeting until she was confronted with the taxi receipt?  Is the nearly seven foot tall superintendent really not that memorable?

Superitendent Starr's taxi receipt provided courtesy of the MCPS Public Information Office

NYPost: Schools Chancellor Candidate [Joshua Starr] Under Fire

One of the candidates being eyed by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio to become the city’s next schools chancellor is under fire from Maryland parents for failing to aggressively crack down on teachers accused of molesting students.
Montgomery County Superintendent Joshua Starr faces questions over his school district’s handling of a music teacher who was charged in August with sexually abusing 14 female students in a kindergarten-to-second-grade elementary school over an eight year period...

continues at link:

http://nypost.com/2013/12/09/schools-chancellor-candidate-under-fire/

Diane Ravitch blogs Joshua Starr

Here's what Diane Ravitch blogged:

Joshua Starr is the superintendent of Montgomery County’s public school system, the 17th largest district in the nation. He says that the “country needs a three-year moratorium on standardized testing and needs to ‘stop the insanity’ of evaluating teachers according to student test scores because it is based on ‘bad science.’He also said that the best education reform the country has had is actually health-care reform.”
He said that evaluating teachers by test scores is a very bad idea.
Starr said that “a good way to create assessments for Common Core-aligned curriculum would be to crowd-source the development and let teachers design them rather than have corporations do it. He criticized policies that help make public education ‘a private commodity.’”...

 http://dianeravitch.net/2012/12/11/joshua-starr-stop-the-insanity/#comment-69516


Here is my response which was posted in the comments on Ms. Ravitch's blog:

Starr said that “a good way to create assessments for Common Core-aligned curriculum would be to crowd-source the development and let teachers design them rather than have corporations do it. He criticized policies that help make public education ‘a private commodity.’”
—-
Ms. Ravitch: Seriously? You are well aware that Mr. Starr’s school system SOLD their curriculum to PEARSON. The MCPS curriculum is now under contract with PEARSON and PEARSON is writing all of the assessments and teacher training that will be used in MCPS.
http://parentscoalitionmc.blogspot.com/2010/06/weasts-tuesday-surprise-mcps-sold-to.htmlThe curriculum is being sold by Pearson as PEARSON FORWARD.
http://parentscoalitionmc.blogspot.com/2012/05/mcps-curriculum-20-to-be-sold-as.htmlFurther, the contract that MCPS signed with PEARSON was severely criticized by the Maryland State Board of Education.
http://parentscoalitionmc.blogspot.com/2010/09/state-board-of-ed-on-pearsonmcps.htmlJoshua Starr has not mentioned that contract once since he became Superintendent. Not a word. And, now you are quoting him as criticizing “policies that help make public education a private commodity” without referencing the PEARSON contract with his school district.
http://parentscoalitionmc.blogspot.com/2012/02/pearson-mcps-final-product-development.htmlhttp://parentscoalitionmc.blogspot.com/2012/01/exclusive-weast-cut-325-million-from.htmlPlease stop the cover up Ms. Ravitch. Let’s have some facts to go with the spin. MCPS parents are protesting the Pearson Curriculum and Mr. Joshua Starr is silent on the existence of this contractual relationship in his own school system.
http://parentscoalitionmc.blogspot.com/2012/12/parents-protest-pearson-mcps-curriculum.htmlThis is one of the biggest problems with public education in America. Superintendents who are become convention circuit speakers while ignoring what is going on in their own school districts.
It’s time to put an end to the public school funded convention circuit. Public school dollars need to stay in the classroom, and not be spent on hotels, airfare, restaurants and pricey convention registrations. ~ Janis Sartucci

MCPS teacher to Diane Ravitch, "all is far from idyllic in Montgomery County, Maryland"

The following comment is from Diane Ravitch's blog posting, "We Don't Have Time." 

October 12, 2012 at 10:04 pm
I have been a full time elementary school teacher in Montgomery County Public Schools for 26 years, and after my first year have always received strong evaluations i.e. have never been in danger of requiring PARS. That being said, however, in recent years my autonomy to work for my students’ best interests has been steadily eroded, and more and more time each school year gets used up for standardized assessments. Innovations I have created using puppets in the classroom have pretty much been necessarily set aside in order to keep up with the unwieldy Curriculum 2.0, which specifies what is to be covered every week, yet with almost no guidance as to how several content areas are to be integrated into a lesson plan simultaneously. Which curriculum I have read that Pearson is trying to sell under the name Pearson Forward in other parts of the country. This, at the same time I have recently been receiving emails from students I had 8, 10, even twenty years ago, telling of work becoming doctors, entering an international baccaulaureate program, and training to become a combination special education and ESOL (my specialty) teacher, among others. They have all thanked me for my unusual approach, which they said has stayed in their memory, and they all ask if I am still using my pet dinosaur Din-Din in the classroom. I am feeling the same demoralization of colleagues who tell me they are feeling the joy and creativity getting sucked out of what they do in the classroom. Yes, there are several wonderful caring administrators and teachers in MCPS, but all is far from well here. To understand this, just listen to a third grade teacher on the verge of tears because she’s afraid she accidentally committed a violation in the complicated administration of a standardized test. Or watch a kindergartner literally trembling with fear as she is asked to read nonsense words on a palm pilot reading skill assessment for which instruction has to be halted for at least a week at a time three times a year. These are among my grim experiences over the past decade.
I originally entered this profession because it was something I could do with a clear conscience, but what I am expected to do in recent years often leaves me feeling very troubled, that I may very well be doing more harm than good. Am presently considering an early retirement that back in the mid nineties I would not have imagined.
Dr. Ravitch, thank you so much for your courageous documentation of what has been happening to public schools nationally. Reading your work has been a source of great comfort both for me and for other colleagues whose attention I have drawn to your blog, your previous dialogue in Education Weekly, and your book. But please understand that for me and several of my colleagues, both veterans and newcomers, all is far from idyllic in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Muckraking Lawyer Dee Alpert Dies at Age 65

This is a great tribute to an incredible New York advocate for children who even reached out to help parents in Montgomery County, Maryland.  


Thank you, Ms. Alpert for all you did to advocate for the best interests of children.  


You will be missed.  


The Wall Street Journal
By Jacob Gershman

Dee Alpert, a bespectacled, muckraking lawyer who helped guide parents and others through the often-murky corridors of special education, died last week at age 65. Her family said the cause of death was related to a cerebral aneurysm. 

Within the city’s education world, Ms. Alpert was something of an unofficial inspector general. She had a rare grasp of the arcana of school regulations, audits and budgets, and volunteered her services to parents and advocates. 

She probed the city’s methods for determining drop-out rates of students and detailed the roadblocks in front of parents who seek information about the progress of their disabled children.. She scoured financial statements of school districts, such as Roosevelt on Long Island, blowing the whistle on risky borrowing schemes. 

In blasts of thousands of words, she posted her findings on her personal website, Special Education Muckraker, which then circulated around the parent-advocacy arena. Her style had a touch of the conspiratorial, but commanded the attention of major policy experts, like Diane Ravitch, who praised Ms. Alpert for her “fierce integrity” and “keen intellect.” 

She wrote about how abuse cases are treated differently when a victim is a special education student. One of Ms. Alpert’s most high-profile exposes was titled “Abu Ghraib on the Hudson,” in which she untangled proposed state regulations for allowing schools to lock students with disabilities inside “seclusion rooms.” State officials said they wanted to help schools better manage behavioral problems. But Ms. Alpert pointed to loopholes that she said opened the door to corporal punishment. Her piece found its way to the inboxes of advocates in other states and stirred more national opposition to such policies.

article continues here.