So many articulate letters. This one has sound suggestions.
Dear Mr. President:
I strongly supported you in last election because Linda Darling-Hammond was your education adviser. I really believed you would be going in a direction that supported public school students and not privatization and increasing the profits of testing and charter companies.
I suspect you are receiving many letters and emails regarding the failure of your Race to the Top policy. Instead, I would like to take a different route and outline a realistic course of action.
Teachers:
Teachers need ownership in the school system. When teachers are part of the hiring and firing process, teachers become part of the solution. Teachers and parents alike should be used in a collaborative manner. Yet they are totally disregarded. Under your leadership, teachers have become the problem, and that’s not fair! Secretary Duncan has made it very clear he does not respect public school teachers. And if you disagree, read his statements. The undertone is extremely clear. With all due respect, business leaders and politicians are stripping teachers of their dignity each and every day. They strip us of our ability to assess our students and judge a student’s progress. With all due respect, a high-stakes test cannot do that. Nor can putting a student on some mandated curriculum pacing calendar increase outcomes. Learning is a journey, not a race.
Teacher evaluations should never be tied to test scores. Peer Review on the other hand offers assistance to struggling teachers and is proving to be a more successful route to building a successful teaching force that leads to strong academic achievement. Teachers retain their due process rights as well. The results are as follows: Teachers improve and become successful. Teachers are fired, or decide this is not the right career path. The program is very successful in Montgomery County, Maryland and should be replicated around the country.
Students:
States like Florida are changing rules and making race an indicator of success. African-Americans will have a lower threshold to meet in order to pass. This in my opinion is what RTTT has become. By solely making one high-stakes test the only indicator of a student’s success, we are going backwards. And I find this new ruling to be racist. It’s time we rethink schools by age placement and instead group students by ability. This will give remedial students a chance to grow without being judged by an unrealistic benchmark they are not ready to reach.. Teachers not having to teach to the test can instead use creative and interesting lessons to help their students achieve success. In turn these students will develop life-long learning skills. They will be able to think outside the box, solve problems and become better citizens. Yet, reformers are forcing teachers to follow a one-size-fits-all method of teaching. Lessons must be geared towards the needs of the student and the content of the lesson. Lesson rubrics like “Danielson” will not give teachers the freedom to create, and the best teachers create marvelous lessons.
Schools:
A school’s condition is indicative of how much importance we place on our children. Right now inner-city schools are overcrowded and in disrepair. Class sizes are too large. New schools with modern facilities are needed in each neighborhood. If a school is run down, the student will never feel valued. RTTT funding would be better spent on building new schools that fit the 21st Century model or upgrading older schools. Our students cannot be in over-sized classes using old texts, materials, and supplies. Yet, you expect teachers to carry this load as well. We already pay out-of pocket to supplement the lack of supplies and subject materials. Yet schools are investing in test-prep materials. This is not how your own children are treated.
Community:
You of all people know the importance of parental involvement. Yet, community schools offer no incentives to help parents out of poverty. A local school can provide evening and weekend classes for adults looking to learn English or new “employable” skills. This could be tied into your use of community colleges. But having these services in the neighborhood would have more reach. Many schools are cutting their school psychologists and guidance counselors, and that unacceptable!! When I was young, my public school had a doctor and dentist who visited the school once a week. Imagine if RTTT funds were instead re-invested it in providing much needed services? As a former community organizer, you must see the value in building up our schools to serve not only our students, but their families as well.
I know a Romney plan is not the answer either, but I cannot be forced to vote the lesser of two evils. RTTT has made it possible for Republicans to use tax-payer dollars for private charters and religious schools. And as a tax payer, I cannot accept this course of action.
You have the ability to make major corrections to your education plan if re-elected. And part of that is bringing back people like Linda Darling-Hammond. She has an excellent record of turning schools into professional learning communities. However, if you choose to continue a path that will lead to privatization of our public schools, we will have generations of students who can’t read or write, but somehow learned the tools to pass a standardized test. This cannot be your legacy!!
Thank you for taking the time to read my concerns.
Where can I find the Florida study mentioned in the students section of this letter?
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/topstories/article/277607/483/Race-as-an-indicator-of-student-success
Students in Florida will NOT have a lower threshold to meet in order to pass according to their race. They just set different goals for passing RATES based on the subgroups targeted in No Child Left Behind.
I’ve been pretty critical of things in Florida, but I think people are misunderstanding this. First of all, NCLB made everything about race, and these waivers are a clear indication that this policy is a failed one. Secondly, goals are based on where the subgroups are now. (If you hate the idea of students being grouped by race, blame NCLB.) Thirdly, just because you have a goal doesn’t mean that you are limited to that goal. You can always beat it. I can set a goal to lose 20 pounds, but that doesn’t mean I therefore cannot lose 30.
It would have been better to classify this through socioeconomic information, but then that would destroy the “reformers'” argument that poverty doesn’t matter.
You are correct that students as individuals will not have a lower threshold to pass based on race, but students as groups will. This will impact the amount of schools judged to be failing based on race. Let’s say you have a school filled with Cambodian refugee children. Because their race is Asian that school will have to meet the 92% proficiency criteria? Let’s not forget about all of the poor white communities in Florida as well. I don’t have a problem with them using income or ESL status, but using race in and of itself to establish different criteria for judging schools will create perverse incentives. Like it or not, the state is saying they expect Asian students as a whole to perform at a higher level than African American students. There is no solely genetic component in determining test scores but by classifying and judging based on race you are saying there is.
I couldn’t disagree with you more. In fact, many charters are getting away with this so they can show great scores.
That’s why I call for not using test scores because they are unrealistic benchmarks and instead call for allowing students to progress until they meet or exceed the standards at their own pace. This ruling on the other hand doesn’t call for reaching proficiency, and that is wrong.
As a teacher, I can see where using this ruling might save my job, but that still doesn’t make any of this right. No student should graduate on a different scale because if these students decide to go to college or get a job, they will be met with expectations beyond their capabilities. This is so similar to social promotion.
Florida parents are fighting so hard to get rid of high-stakes testing. And in many districts, they are succeeding. Even your state’s commissioner resigned over this flap and your governor now sees he is caught between a rock and a hard place with these voters.
I would hope someone from any teacher organization in Florida would speak out against this and call it what it is: The failure of both NCLB and RTTT. Obama supported NCLB and I would either like to see him supporting this measure of vilifying it–but if he vilifies it, he has to admit that RTTT is also a failure.
Diane — I am sending my letter directly to the President (and have forwarded the letter to Anthony Cody via e-mail). Here is my letter:
Dear President Obama:
I am writing to you as a fellow magna cum laude Harvard Law grad (’73) and fellow Democrat.
Please reconsider two of your Administration’s Race-to-the-Top education policies – 1) high-stakes testing, and 2) charter schools. Under superficial analysis, these policies appear sensible; under in-depth analysis, they are destructive.
In developing school reform policies, the first step is to identify the problems. In the US, most suburban schools are doing OK. The problems exist in the low-SES schools, particularly in the inner-cities. Veteran teachers and principals in the low-SES schools – writing in first-person books, on education blogs, and newspaper websites – routinely cite two main problems – students reading far below grade level and classroom misconduct – and two additional problems – chronic absenteeism and chronic tardiness. In the low-SES schools, these problems are endemic; in the suburban schools, these problems exist, but they are occasional rather than endemic.
Rational school reform should, therefore, focus on these problems that are endemic in the poorly-performing low-SES schools but exist only occasionally in the well-performing suburban schools. Such rational school reform would directly address the problems that plague the low-SES schools. We should be testing and implementing reforms in the low-SES schools regarding reading skills, student behavior, and attendance. Unfortunately, Race-to-the-Top largely ignores these problems.
High-stakes testing (and the resulting teacher discharge) address a different problem – that is, the problem posed by bad teachers. However, bad teachers are not responsible for the poor performance of the low-SES schools. The suburban schools are doing OK and there is no reason to believe that teacher quality in the suburban schools is uniformly stronger than in the low-SES schools (particularly given the flood of hyper-talented Teach for America grads into the low-SES schools during the past 15 years). If bad teachers was a major problem, we’d see the low-performing schools distributed roughly evenly between the suburbs and the low-SES areas.
Moreover, assuming arguendo that identifying/discharging bad teachers would significantly improve low-SES schools, high-stakes testing is an awful way to identify/discharge bad teachers. First, high-stakes testing is unreliable – it yields too many false positives and too many false negatives. There are many non-teacher-controlled variables that impact a teacher’s student test scores under even the most sophisticated value-added model – i.e., the number of “difficult” students who disrupt the class and require extra attention, the class size and the teacher’s total pupil load, the number of different preparation the teacher has, whether the teacher has taught the course/grade before, whether the teacher is teaching within his/her core expertise, the amount of classroom support (aides), and the amount of central office support (regarding discipline, etc.). Second, high-stakes testing has major adverse side effects. It encourages teaching to the test, encourages narrowing the curriculum, encourages cheating, discourages teacher-teacher cooperation, and, most importantly, discourages teachers from teaching “difficult”/high-risk students.
And, there are more productive ways to identify/discharge bad teachers. For example, Montgomery County, MD (a large mostly suburban school system near Washington, DC) has successfully used a peer-review approach (called “PAR”) for over 10 years. PAR has resulted in the discharge or resignation-in-lieu-of-review of over 500 teachers; the teachers union supports PAR; the teachers view the system as fair; few of the discharges have been challenged; and there is no high-stakes testing with its adverse side effects.
Charter schools, like high-stakes testing/teacher discharge, fail to address the problems that plague the low-SES schools. Instead of solving the problems, charters simply remove some of the children – the children of the parents who are functional enough to investigate charters, complete the application process, and provide the daily transportation usually required for charter students – from low-SES neighborhood schools. By enrolling only the children of the more functional parents, the charters largely avoid – rather than solve – the low-SES school problems of students reading far below grade level, classroom misconduct, absenteeism, and tardiness. And, by siphoning off the children of the more functional parents, the charters increase the concentration in the neighborhood schools of children of the less functional parents – thereby exacerbating the problems that plague the low-SES schools.
The charter approach – protecting the children of functional parents by sacrificing the children of the dysfunctional parents – will ultimately impose huge social costs on society as the children of the dysfunctional parents become drop-outs, teenage mothers, barely-literate unskilled workers, welfare recipients, and criminals. A far better approach would be to abandon the charters and instead implement school reforms directly targeting the problems that plague the low-SES schools.
Please stop the high-stakes-testing/teacher-discharge and charter reforms that are damaging, rather than improving, our low-SES schools. Please encourage the low-SES schools to implement reforms directly addressing the problems that plague the low-SES schools.
Sincerely,
Thank you for including PAR in your letter. Very few people, including those trying to fight these reforms, are aware of the program. It seems a fair and balanced method compared to using test scores. But reformers don’t make money off of it like they do with tests. Pearson now controls teacher certification in many states.
Dear Diane,
I am so honored that you would re-print my letter. My sentiments were only possible because I have been following your articles and speeches.
Unfortunately, I do not believe Obama understands the pulse of the country–especailly parents and teachers. The proof is the result of the mid-term elections that gave rise to the Tea Party. Obama and his advisers didn’t believe they would get elected. Not only did they get elected, they took over the Republican Party and many Democrats and moderate Republicans are losing elections.
Then I see this from DFER and it sickens me:
Click to access DFER_on_Obama.pdf
My only recourse will be to change my political party affiliation from Democrat to Independent. I plan to do this after the NYC primary, but my gut tells me it will go to Quinn, a Bloomberg protege, and someone who gladly accepted money from Rhee.
I will send a copy of my letter to our Senators but decided against sending it to Cuomo mainly due to his arrogance.
Thank you again for this honor.
Schoolgal
Regarding that link: I hope that people saying that we must elect Obama understand that that *is* the real Obama. I understand the argument that Romney is worse, but please don’t elect Obama thinking you can change him later. You only have to read any advice column to figure out how well it works to change someone after you get married.
Once again, I’ll say it, this letter writing campaign is the best opportunity we have to reach Obama and force him to change course before he’s firmly settled in another four years, but we can only do that if he believes his re-election is in jeopardy. Even if you know to the bottom of your boots that you plan to vote for him, please, please don’t include that in your letter. Make him work for us, for once.
I was so hoping you wouldn’t comment on my piece because this is not the first time you were unable to get my point. I never included that I am voting for him in my letter. In fact I said “if” re-elected not “when”. Obama and his campaign have received emails from me informing them I will not be supporting Obama again.
Dienne,
I have been calling for people not to support Obama well before Diane started this blog. I have over 5000 supporters on my education FB page that know where I stand, and I am sure the government knows that as well.
Sorry, didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers. I would point out, however, that I didn’t say that you are saying to support Obama. You’ll note that I began my response by addressing the people who *are* saying that we must elect Obama. I’m sorry if that’s confusing. I simply want to make it clear to everyone that the Obama portrayed in your link is the real Obama. Perhaps you understand that (and I’m glad you do), but many people don’t. Over and over again we hear how Obama doesn’t “get it” or how he’s “out of touch” or how we can “make him understand” after he’s safely elected, all of which is delusional at best.
Anyway, I think we agree, but perhaps we’re talking past each other.
I understood you perfectly. There was NO link in my letter. However my letter clearly stated I would not vote the lesser of 2 evils and even if that flew by you. It won’t with the person who this letter is addressed to and his advisers. It’s just not polite to tell people that their letters are “lacking” after they worked very hard on the wording. I believe since I am addressing the president, I would keep my tone polite. But the fact I will not vote for him is inherent in my letter.
It was up to the NEA and AFT to make sure endorsements were not made unless changes were made with RTTT. But both leaderships are supporting it. And that’s a big problem.
I once wrote another comment where your reply was off base and it took another commenter to tell you I was being sarcastic which you didn’t seem to get. Not everything has to be literal. Even with Obama.
For pity’s sake, your hostility is overwhelming and without cause – we are on the same side. No, your letter does not include a link. Your 2:45 a.m. post, to which I was responding, DOES – the link to DFER. That is the link I’m talking about.
Hopefully we can agree to disagree without comment or hostility.
I don’t understand why any district would want to exclude teacher input from the hiring process. Our district tries to create a panel with a mix of staff and parents, and for some positions, a high school student. I don’t know why that wouldn’t be the standard.
I wrote a satirical blog post about Florida’s new race based annual yearly progress expectations passed to comply with the NCLB waiver called “Brave New School” that you can read at http://kafkateach.wordpress.com. The state is expecting only 8% of Asians to be “left behind” by 2018 but 30% of African Americans may be left behind. I must have been misinterpreting the race part of “Race to the Top” all along.
Love the blog post!!