I am often asked whether there are any districts that have managed to do the right thing despite all the federal mandates.
Are there any districts that have managed to minimize the harmful consequences of high-stakes testing?
Are there districts that have managed to protect the arts, physical education, recess, history, civics, foreign languages and necessary services to students?
Are there districts that do not waste money on test prep but expend their resources on good instruction?
Are there districts that recognize that teamwork matters, not merit pay?
Are there districts that address the needs of children instead of opening privately managed charters?
Please send me your thoughts.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m no expert, but my guess is that wealthy districts have managed to do all of that. I live in a low rent suburb of Chicago which has definitely not done any of that, but it’s right across the street from a high rent suburb (Oak Park) which still has arts, P.E., civics, history and languages. I know quite few people who live there and they are all happy with the teachers and the level of instruction. I don’t know how much test prep they do or how many standardized tests they administer per year, but I do know there are no charters. The district has a very strict system of proof of identity and residence because people from neighboring Chicago, Cicero and Berwyn are always trying to sneak their kids in, it’s that good.
My guess is that Oak Park looks a lot like Arlington, VA where Duncan sends his kids and probably every other affluent town and suburb. If there were still such things as journalists, I would love for some of them to investigate how rheeform is playing out in affluent areas vs. poorer areas.
LikeLike
Sure there are. In small rural districts in the middle of America, we pray before school, before games, and at graduation. We wink at the federal “hoops” and then teach with our community’s needs in mind. Our elementary schools still teach cursive, and our high schools offer a battery of courses that challenge the future leaders of our county, our state, and our nation. Our graduates flourish, not because of outside expectations but in spite of them.
Of course, I don’t dare tell you where we are. You won’t find us in a newspaper, and there isn’t a TV station within two hours’ drive. Send us your kids, though, and you’ll be pleased with the results. Not necessarily test results, mind you, but the lifelong ones that really count.
LikeLike
Good to know that school lead religious events are alive and well in public schools. Some who have posted here insist that it does not happen.
LikeLike
Why is that good to know?
LikeLike
@ Dienne
A couple of months back LG and I had a discussion about the role religion plays in public schools, especially rural public schools. LG argued that religious practices like prayers before every school day did not happen, while I took the position that it does. DG is confirming that religious practice is alive and well in these public school systems.
LikeLike
Dienne,
It’s good to know so we can sic the ACLU on them!-HA HA!
LikeLike
TE – I’m still asking why that’s a good thing. Why should religion be part of publicly-funded education? Are you assuming that all children in rural public schools are Christian? Or are you okay with Ang’s scenario of letting it be a free-for-all for all religions?
Mind, I don’t have a problem with students being taught *about* religion. Religion is a very important part of history and many very important texts are religious documents. But school led prayer goes way beyond learning about religion and well into sanctioning certain religious practices, which have no business being sanctioned/led by a public school.
LikeLike
@ Dienne,
I did not say it was a good thing, I said it was good to know that it is happening in public schools.
LikeLike
You are right. I am so bummed that they took religion out of public schools.
I used to really enjoy leading my students in Wiccan blessings every day. And my neighbor would pull out his prayer rug several times a day and get the kids to join in! And don’t get me started on the Jewish teachers teaching Talmud every day (epic to say the least!).
It was so awesome.
But then someone complained. (Can you believe it?)
We had to go back to teaching our subjects and allowing the parents and religious leaders (chosen by the parents) to instruct the children in religion.
Bummer, dudes.
LikeLike
The other day I mentioned the fact that many people still believe religion should be in public schools. A woman responded with this point: “Some people don’t even realize there are other religions.”
So I would like to ask those of you who believe that religion belongs in the schools: Do you know that there are religions besides Christianity? Do you understand that once religion is allowed in the schools, there will be Buddlist and Muslim prayers? Would you support this? If not, why not?
In today’s paper there was a story that stated that for the first time in its history, the United States does not have a Protestant majority. Should the non-Protestant children have freedom of religion at school?
I know there are many poorly educated people in our country but there is really no excuse for an educated citizen to fail to understand the reasons behind “separation of church and state.”
LikeLike
Since behavior is the most honest form of communication, the message is clear: children of the affluent are to be educated; children of the poor and working class are to be trained.
LikeLike
Yes–most important point, and let’s NEVER lose sight of this immoral intent. Look back at Diane’s “23 Texas…” post. Superintendents and school boards attempting to throw off the yokes while the business
people still insist on having their way. And then look back at the NOLA post–communication between the lawyer and the profiteer.
Despicable.
LikeLike
This is clearly true and will remain true as long as local property taxes are the primary source of school funds. The other point is that students in wealthy districts come from wealthy homes, which are almost always the homes of the well-educated. The kids don’t need drill and kill test preparation (for their schools to avoid the axe) because they have been read to since birth, taken on European vacations rich in museum visits, and enjoyed parental involvement in their schooling from pre-K beginnings. (Of course, with VAM coming to all schools, even the rich, suburban districts have to strive to make their high scores ever higher.) I teach high school English in a very wealthy suburban district. The arts flourish, recess is still sacred in the elementary schools, and test prep is brief and aimed simply at familiarizing kids with the format. And oh, yes…The kids all have tutors.
LikeLike
I can not find the reference right now, but local property taxes are typically not the largest source of school funds. More important are state revenues. This varies a lot by state.
LikeLike
Sure there are. In California, there are over 1,000 separate school districts. Each reflects a different community. Districts that have access to wealthy constituents have been successful at raising new money to hire staff and maintain programs. Small districts have exercised substantial creativity and leveraged the occasional windfall into other wonderful things.
You’ve never heard of most of these schools.
In Humboldt County on California’s north coast, several elementary schools have maintained a program where every child can learn to play the violin.
Anderson Valley High School in Boonville, CA, has its own space program.
Public school kids from all over Northern California go to a week-long Outdoor Science School at Mendocino Woodlands State Park. http://www.mendocinowoodlands.org/ross.html
Others attend an overnight Living History at Fort Ross State Park, living the life of a native Kashaya, an Aleut, or a Russian officer. http://www.fortrossstatepark.org/elp.htm
There is Living History on the tall ship Balclutha in San Francisco Bay. http://www.nps.gov/safr/forteachers/index.htm
If you go through the Donors Choose site, you’ll see teachers putting together all kinds of interesting and innovative projects on their own time.
There are wonderful things happening in American schools – even Title 1 schools. It’s just that the staff and parents are too busy doing them to tell the world about them.
LikeLike
In my school district all sixth graders choose a band or orchestral instrument and spend the year learning to play it in the elementary school band or orchestra.
LikeLike
Yes, but get Donors Choose to stop donating money from the donations to TFA.
LikeLike
We need to continue to resist the push to reductionist practices. I am sending a link to a couple of posts I made in my district which have received responses far and wide. The response humbles me, but also makes me realize that we cannot stop opting for reason in unreasonable times.
http://vcsdk12.org/superintendent/superintendent.htm
LikeLike
Teresa,
Good links. However if the problems are as you have written (and they are actually worse, especially from a logical/rational point of view and worse in educational justice issues), when does it become time to resist?
The problem that I see is that too many educators just acquiesce to what is thrust upon them even when they know the policies/practices are harmful to the students. When does one stand up and fight instead of acquiescing to the bullying demands of state and federal educrats/deformers????
Duane
LikeLike
Districts serving children of affluent, college educated parents don’t care about test scores…. and already pay a premium so they don’t worry about merit pay. This article I had published a couple of years ago explains the de facto merit pay we already have:
LikeLike
Yes–just look at the top rated New Trier High School in Illinois. Some of the highest income suburbs in the state (Glencoe, Winnetka, etc.)…and yet, hasn’t made AYP for 2 or 3 years (due to special ed. subgroup, which STILL had some of the greatest &age in the state making close to the cut-off score). No one I know of has chosen to
take his/her kids out of the school–I think everyone in the community laughs about this idiocy. And–to boot–New Trier consistently has the highest scores in the state on the ACTs.
What does that say about the lunacy of the “standardized” tests?!
LikeLike
In Tacoma Public Schools, some schools do better than others, but overall I think we’ve done as best we can to follow the laws while also ensuring that the students are well-served. We are innovative. We have a high school extended day program modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone program. We have a School of the Arts, a Science and Math Academy, and two Montessori programs (1 that’s K-8 and 1 that’s K-5). We have an arts focused elementary school, IB high school and middle school, and AP options in all 5 high schools. We have middle and high school sports programs and after school clubs in all levels. We do what charter schools propose but we include ALL students – SpEd, ESL, 504, everyone.
We still give the tests mandated by the state and it does take a great deal of instructional time, but rather than teach to the test, we focus on AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) strategies throughout the district so that students learn both the skills to succeed in any subject area and the subject area content necessary to progress to higher level.
Our state is fighting a charter school initiative for the fourth time. I suspect (strongly hope?) that it won’t pass. Kevin Johnson came to speak and while the Tacoma mayor was there to support him, only about 100 people showed up and many of them just came to see a former NBA player and didn’t even stay for the whole show. Our district has proven we can be innovative, get results, keep kids in school and do it all without charter schools as an option.
LikeLike
I live in California near many affluent districts such as Los Alamitos, Beverly Hills, Palos Verdes and San Marino. Visit any of these schools and you will see a rich and balanced curriculum that will compete nicely with those in private schools. Parents at these schools often have “Foundations” that raise thousands of dollars each year to support art, music and P.E. Highly educated parents often volunteer in classrooms, essentially bringing down the student/teacher ratio to 10:1, at least in the primary grades. And of course there are no Teach for America people in these schools because they only hire fully qualified, mostly experienced teachers.
As for test scores, although they are certainly taken seriously, there is no test-prep from September to May because teachers know that almost everyone will score high.
The inequity that exists in our educational system is a national disgrace. Let’s hope we get some authentic reform soon.
LikeLike
There’s a very clear picture here. Poverty does matter. The curriculum offerings that are available seem to be from those areas with a higher economic status.
LikeLike
Absolutely there is a vast difference between affluent schools and schools in poverty when it comes to test emphasis. My own kids attended an “exemplary” campus where tests happened, but were not freaked out about, because the kids were all going to do fine. They had the background knowledge and schema to perform well. They were read to as toddlers. The test was considered a starting line, not a finish line.
I teach in a vastly different environment, where 96 percent of our campus is economically disadvantaged. These students are in survival mode. It will take an act of God for some of them to even approach passing because kids don’t learn well when their basic human needs are not met. So we are stressed about the tests all the time.
LikeLike
I guess you need to teach harder. Maybe a little merit pay will sweeten the deal…
(Sarcasm, obviously)
LikeLike
I think the small rural (and definitely not rich) district my daughter attends is making good strides towards those things. They definitely have a long way to go but they don’t talk about tests and are innovative in design despite some real financial limitations. http://www.kentuckyteacher.org/features/2012/10/eminence-on-fire-after-changes/
LikeLike
When I came into teaching 26 years ago we were asking the question “How can we turn our students onto learning?” Because we asked that question and had more freedom I had the opportunity to co-teach a science fiction course with an English teacher and taught Genetics through the lens of reading Octavia Butler’s novel “Dawn”. The at risk students loved it so much they wanted to read the other 2 books in the trilogy. I had time to build spaghetti bridges where kids acted like engineers to build bridges out of spaghetti and glue…some of which held over 50 kilograms.
Today unfortunately the question has changed. Today I hear “How can I get them to pass the test?” While we still can be creative at times, the project based learning that made education real to our students is no longer feasible within the confines of the test. I have to cover so much in a year there is little time available. Depth has been replaced with breadth…and teaching and learning has suffered because of it.
LikeLike
The state of Vermont withdrew their NCLB waiver request because the state refused to compromise its beliefs about what is best for children. This statement came from the Commissioner’s office at the time:
****
“However as the Vermont Department of Education has continued to negotiate for the flexibility that was promised since we started in August, it has become clear that the USED is interested in simply replacing one punitive, prescriptive model of accountability with another.
The term “flexibility” is a misnomer. Two of the more heavy handed methods the USED is still insisting on are using a single test to determine accountability, and using that test to represent a majority of a teacher’s evaluation.
We cannot continue to expend energy requesting a detailed accountability system that looks less and less like what we want for Vermont. We do not have confidence that the requirements we are being asked to meet is the formula for success. We want to move forward towards a system that is better for our schools, our educators, and most importantly, our students.”
****
The state consistently has some of the best scores on the NAEP exam, but over 70% of its schools are not meeting AYP standards now, in part because they never lowered the cutoff on the test as other states have. With such a high percentage of schools not making AYP, it might have made sense to some to jump through all of the Feds’ hoops and proceed with the waiver process. But the state board of education saw what was being demanded, and saw how harmful it would be, and ultimately (and unanimously) said no.
In addition, the state’s high-stakes test is given during the first week of October, which means that test prep and cramming are kept to a minimum, and what is emphasized is actual knowledge that can be retained over the summer.
LikeLike
Montgomery County, MD (a large mostly suburban unified county-wide school system outside Washington, DC) has at least largely solved the problem of identifying/removing poorly-performing teachers and has done this without high-states testing or the adverse side effects of high-stakes testing.
MCPS uses a kind of peer-evaluation system, called “PAR”. The principal identifies a teacher as possibly performing poorly; a consulting teacher works extensively with the teacher over a period of time; the consulting teacher submits a report recommending retention, further training, or discharge; a joint committee of principals and consulting teachers makes the final decision; the originating principal has no role in the selection of the consulting teacher, has no authority over the consulting teacher, and does not participate in the joint committee.
PAR has been in operation for over 10 years; during that time, more than 500 teachers have been discharged or resigned in lieu of PAR evaluation; the teachers union supports PAR and was involved in setting it up; few of the discharges have been challenged; the teachers generally view PAR as fair; and, unlike the traditional principal-evaluates-and-discharges model, PAR protects good teachers from a biased/hostile principal.
MCPS’ PAR has received some publicity — mostly via an article a year ago in the NY Times. However, it deserves much more publicity. At a minimum, the NEA and the AFT should be pushing PAR — or something like it — as a proven, effective alternative to high-stakes testing.
LikeLike
I wrote two posts on this blog about PAR. I talk about it wherever I speak.
LikeLike
Thanks Diane. I did not mean to slight your blog; I was talking about mass media coverage — even the Washington Post (the hometown paper for Montgomery County) has mentioned PAR only briefly notwithstanding doing literally hundreds of column-inches on high-stakes testing issues.
Do you know why the state/national teachers unions and state/national school management organizations (principals, school boards) have not pushed something like PAR as an alternative to the high-stakes testing/teacher-discharge corporate school reform? Or, have they been pushing PAR and no one’s talking about it in the media or in the ed blogs?
LikeLike
The Capitol Region Education Council, a non-traditional district in the greater Hartford, CT area that serves primarily undeserved youth through its public (NOT charter)themed magnet schools that accept students through an open lottery have done a remarkable job of providing students with great opportunities aligned with their magnet themes(arts, aerospace global &international studies, etc. ) in spite of over emphasis on testing. But both the teachers and the school and district administration recognize the need to provide well rounded education and to close the ’opportunity gap ’ that is the real cause of educational inequity .
LikeLike
I teach in the St. Louis, MO metro area in a 1000-student high school. We have the lowest tax rate in the region and spend roughly $6400 per student. We have not reduced our course offerings; maintaining music, art, p.e., electives in every subject, business and career ed., social studies, and foreign languages in our high school. We test the core subjects each year in our state end of course testing and our scores are the highest in our county, and near the top in both the region and state. We offer AP courses in science, math, ELA, and history, and courses for college credit. Our ACT scores are higher than both state and national averages. We are continually looking at how we can help students achieve, not score higher on the state tests. I have never once been told my job was on the line if my scores fell. Our students do not even understand “test pressure.” Our administrators, faculty, parents, students, and community understand that our school is one of the best because we don’t bow to the pressure. We are encouraged to be innovative, creative, and tough teachers who focus on higher level thinking, 21st century skills. Our students are ready for the worlds of college and career, and will not be bubble-filling robots.
LikeLike
I teach first grade in an affluent suburb in southern Westchester NY and we have reduced our curriculum to reading, writing, and math. Our daily schedule is no longer up to us. It was created by the administration. There is no time for science or social studies in our day. and this IS an Affluent district.
LikeLike