This commentary, written two years ago, connects the dots.
The Atlanta school board was trained by the Broad Foundation.
Key officials were trained by Broad. Beverly Hall was not a graduate of Broad’s unaccredited training academy but she was sufficiently in step to speak at Broad training conferences, get Broad funding, and Broad-trained helpers. And she absorbed the Broad message that tests scores=performance, and nothing else matters.
The Broad philosophy, as best it can be deciphered from afar, is management by targets. Goal-setting. It is a business plan, not an educational vision for children. As Eli Broad once said, “I know nothing about curriculum and teaching, but I know management.”
With Broadies running many urban districts and placed strategically in key leadership positions, the Broad approach shows its flaws. It has nothing to do with understanding the needs of children, families, and communities. It has nothing to do with learning and knowledge. It is all about reaching the targets. Reach the targets and you get a bonus. Fail to reach your target and be fired or see your school closed.
Now schools across the nation are closing because they did not meet their targets. That too is part of Broad’s philosophy. If they don’t succeed, close them.
Who will hold Eli Broad accountable for the destruction of urban public education in the United States?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You’re aware that a successful business plan does not allow for cheating? That goals are set and met, in business, by focus and hard work?
As much as I agree with much of what you write, your pendulum is swinging too far and is creating a bias that is affecting your vision.
And sometimes those goals are met by cheating in business too. Isn’t that why our economy is the way it is?
Janet, I completely also agree with you. You stated it precisely. And Obama is the chief controller now in both areas and he is robbing us blind in both areas. He and his wife push privatization and corporatization in schools. He has also helped the “Banksters” to rob us and to continue to rob us. He, if he cared about the public and future, could have pushed to have the banking regulations put back into place. After all, they only worked quite well from 1933-36 until 1999-2000 when Bill Clinton, the original destroyer, signed the Banking Deregulation Acts. In 1996 he also ended a “Free Press” with the 1996 Telecommunication Act and the end of jobs and offshoring with the 1994 NAFTA and WTO. One thing you cannot say about Clinton and Obama and that is that they are not smart. In other words they know what they did and are doing. Clintons largest contribution to his foundation is also missing. Isn’t that interesting. After all this story was in both the Washington Post and N.Y. Times on the same Friday. All together from one source, Guasti, it was over $150 million. Go look and see yourself. Clinton got very rich selling us out. After all could a republican have pulled this off? Most do not think so, it takes bought and sold democrats to do this with the public sitting there like Zombies.
You’re aware that successful business plans do not allow for cheating, but lots of money gets made cooking books, fudging numbers, juking stats, manipulating data, etc. (pick your business-related euphemism). Oh, yeah, there’s cheating, too. Check the latest news on the likes of SAC Capital Advisers.
You’re aware that goals are set and met in all endeavors through focus, hard work AND an understanding of what is to be done.
Broad is the latest incarnation of guys who think because they’ve become wealthy in business and because they went to school in another time and place are somehow going to dispense their brand of wisdom and all be well. And his people will make a lot of money, too.
Input from business is important, but it is limited in its value and insight when it comes to kids. That deep understanding is not a bias.
Sorry, not going to reflexively genuflect when someone says “business.”
Jamie Vollmer got it: http://www.jamievollmer.com/blueberries.html
Think offshore accounts and no taxes. The “Broadfather” helped to cause the financial crisis. In Oct. 1998 the “Broadfather” sold Sun America to AIG for $18 billion and a seat on the board of AIG. In the same month J.P. Morgan sent their derivatives guy to London to talk the AIG derivatives guy into the CBO’s which crashed the finances of the planet. The board sets the direction of the corporation. The “Broadfather” was on the board and helped to direct it into financial collapse with his financial benefit. Is the “Broadfather” not doing the same in education?
Yes, and students are Widgets.
After all they are just clones. Will they revolt as the Cylons did?
I agree with you, Steve. Cheaters have only themselves to blame. She forced teachers to cheat, damaged kids, and took home a ton of money in bonuses. Teachers everywhere are being told that scores are what matter yet don’t resort to cheating.
Educators everywhere are cheating on some level. In my school district cheating is done by dropping less desirable students from accountability lists. Students who are not Black are pre-gridded as Black. And actual test erasing is done. No indictments have occurred. When tremendous pressure is placed on minority communities, what can be expected? Unfair disadvantages face educators in black, brown, and poverty communities, and they are expected to compete toe to toe. It becomes a breeding ground for malfeasance .
It depends on what you mean by “successful” and “cheating.” The goal of reporting continual increases in quarterly earnings so as to “enhance shareholder value” has caused all sorts of mayhem, partly because the goal encourages cheating. The horror stories of Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco come to mind, as do the recent track records of most big US banks (with their reckless lending and trading), Walmart (with its mindset of squeezing workers and suppliers–some would call this a form of cheating), GE (with its fire-the-“worst”-performers-and-make-everybody-fear-for-their-job-ethos), Microsoft (with its monopolistic history–again, cheating), not to mention the hated AT&T and Comcast (with their endless search for bad profits, also cheating: http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121009201046-7928939-is-your-company-hooked-on-bad-profits ).
As with business managers who set goals that undermine long term success, when school officials measure the wrong things and set the wrong goals (e.g., high student scores on horrible tests), they do all sorts of harm. When bad business practices, some of which do depend on cheating, are adapted to education policy (as in the case of NCLB and RTTT) the consequences are predictably dire. The first bad fallout has hit. Expect a lot more.
I don’t think any of the cheaters have a leg to stand on, but cheating scandals are among the highly predictable unintended consequence of high stakes testing. As for Mr. Broad, it’s conceivable that his overarching goal is a general lowering of property taxes, which would make it cheaper for builders to hold land for development. In any case, it’s a little ironic that a bigtime public arts patron is helping set policies that drive the arts out of public schools. (Among other predictably bad results.)
@Steve Mitchell: Successful business plan include peddling Credit Default Swaps knowing they would fail and then accepting tens of millions of TARP bailout funds for your preferred AIG shares. That’s the kid of hard work that Eli Broad does. The notion that business don’t cheat on a constant basis reveals your bias.
I call him in public the “BROADFATHER.” If you get my meaning as that is what he really is just like in the days of old only now it is with schools for easy money. Everything they are doing when you look at the organized crime law, RICO, is against that law. The problem is that Obama and his administration are a part of this cabal as they are with the “Banksters.” Their arrogance and “Overreach” is what is going to take them down as you can see with the reaction to closing lots of schools as a part of their corporate plan of destruction.
PERFECT response: the BROADFATHER.
You are right about O. Whenever I bring up his nefarious activity to my fellow Democrats they say that he means well, that his hands are tied, and then they change the subject to Bush and/or Clinton. What they fail to see is that O is a sell out who will be compensated for his deeds when he leaves office just like Clinton was. O’s job was to neutralize the Democratic base, and he has totally succeeded.
Susan, I am soooooo glad to hear from someone not lost in space and looking at “Real Behavior and Outcomes” not ideology because he is a democrat and black. When, before the last election, I was the only white with the black community with Obama’s people they also do not like what he is doing selling out his own community and others also. I, and they, voted for his as the least of the devils. Romney- Ryan were the super-devils. Just look at Barack and Michelles careers in Chicago before Barack running for the U.S. Senate. Both were involved in privatizing and corporatizing Chicago Schools and now they have put this on steroids for the U.S. for their corporate and hedge fund donors and controllers. Joke is on us, so to speak.
Apparently managing tract home construction and running schools don’t work the same.
in the “Broadfathers” warped mind they are the same. It is all about control and profit just as he did a double switch with the art building and his collection of art. He did not sign an agreement but led the politicians to believe that after the art building was built he would donate his art. When it was all done that was no longer the case. The “Broadfather” declared that it was “A new day in art wherein the trust maintains the ownership.” That means it stays personal property as trusts are a legal non taxable way to purchase and control all kinds of property. Just go look at how billionaires protect their assets. I have had an education in this by two people who do this daily. You would be surprised what is legal to do just like corporations with huge profits who get back money on their taxes instead of paying taxes. It is all the same.
Who says Broad is even trying to run schools anywhere except into the ground?
But it does make for a handsome real estate windfall to recycle all that prime public land into private hands, does it not?
This game is called “Gentrification.” Drive the area into the ground, buy up the property cheap, then build upscale and drive out the previous community. This also works the way that the MTA in L.A. County works. Drive out the existing business while constructing, buy up the property cheap, build nice and displace. Cute isn’t it.
What do you think will happen to the future of Educational Philosophy / Theory?
There is a current cogent Educational Philosophy/Theory behind the NCLB and RaTT???
Broad’s original fortune was earned building white-flight suburbs in the Sunbelt, but then grew as he expanded into insurance ( he is also notorious for using his art collection and museum “philanthropy” to anchor his real estate investments).
The true perversion, however, is that US taxpayers are subsidizing his attacks on public education. First, by providing him with a tax-free opportunity to fund those attacks through his foundation. Second, and most egregiously, we are subsidizing his attacks through the bailout of AIG in 2008-09: the foundation’s endowment is largely funded through AIG stock – obtained through selling his SunAmerica insurance company to AIG – that he donated to his personal malanthropy. (www.gothamschools.org/2009/03//11/Eli-broad-describes-close-ties-to-klein)
Thus, by bailing out AIG (and Goldman Sachs, which was the primary creditor for its CDS follies), US taxpayers are also indirectly funding the hostile takeover of the public schools.
I teach in a neighboring district to APS. Our Supt. is a Broad graduate. I am anonymous for a reason (thank you for the idea Stephen Krashen).
It has been a very long two years.
It is a shame that all these black folks face criminal charges while rich, white fat cats are laughing all the way to the bank, Broad being one such!!! Black folk, as well as all others, better wake up and face the reality of how black communities and black educators are being used and exploited -neo-colonialization and enslavement principles at their best! You have been had, you’ve been bamboozeled, you’ve been hoodwinked while the real criminal – Rhee – goes unscathed.
I, too, worked in a neighboring school district to APS. People were so impressed with Atlanta’s progress that other districts used them as a model and began emulating their approach. I never even really thought about it until now.
My first year teaching, I remember the older teachers saying that the paperwork in Atlanta wasn’t worth the extra money. By the time I got to my second year teaching I was hearing them say that our district was becoming more like Atlanta.
I don’t know if our superintendent was involved with this broad thing, but it seems that many struggling districts would have looked to Atlanta as a model for how to raise test scores and began implementing similar practices.
That makes this Broadfather’s reach further than just those who can be directly linked to him and his organization. There is no telling how far this ideology has spread which is a disturbing thought. Our children have been reduced to measurements and numbers.
Careful readers of “Death and Life” will recall that Diane Ravitch was impressed by Atlanta, too. She highlighted the district as an exemplar of “positive accountability, noting in particular the gains made in NAEP scores during Hall’s tenure.
They are doing this internationally. In England charters are called academies. Isn’t it strange we have the word academy here also? This is all “Orwellian Doublespeak.”
Superintendant Hall appeared on a forum at Broad’s Aspen Institute
prior to the scandal to tell everyone how she brought about the
miraculous growth in test scores in the Atlanta schools.
She’s up there with John Deasy, Randi Weingarten, and
Kati Haycock.
It’s all about “data”, you see… and “pay for performance”…
and to please her privatizer audience, she says that
the Atlanta miracle didn’t even cost “that much.” She
also talks about how “fired up” the teachers and administrators
are about her system of improving education.
Here’s the link:
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/video/nes08-session-three-matter-will-can-we-sustain-our-commitment-excellence-all-children
Here’s a transcription of some of what she said,
(starting at about 20:40)
BEVERLY HALL:
“We decided that we were going to look at
progress across a continuum by school.
looking at where that particular school was,
looking at where they needed to be—clearly
if they if they were farther
behind, they had to run much faster or
they’ll never catch up, and we would reward
everyone at the school, from the principal
to the teachers, to everyone, to the support staff
IF schools made specific targets, moving numbers
of kids from the bottom quartile to the middle,
from the middle to the top.
“This has very much been the catalyst, I think,
for the embracing of the accountability pieces
of the NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND Act.
The teachers at the schools are so fired up
to meet their targets. When they meet it,
everyone gets additional compensation.
everyone gets rewarded, so I want to underscore
that with penalties, there must also be some
rewards as well, and it must be very clear
and spelled out, and people must know that
they all have something in the game. I think
That’s the way to go with pay-for-performance.
“If you go into any school in Atlanta… one thing
That NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND certainly helped…
along with our own accountability systems…
people know the data, right down to the last
child, they can tell you what’s going on,
and while they know it, they know what they
need to do to meet their rigorous targets,
so that in the end, that entire school gets
a compensation that’s not even that much.
It’s just the notion that they have acheieved
and that they’re being recognized, and I
think that we shouldn’t let go of the fact that
we could reward everyone in a school, which
allows for everyone to have a vested interest
in improving their practice, because again,
we can’t say anymore it’s when you have
good teaching in a classroom, that you get
good learning, and how do we get people
To have the skills… “
“well, what we told our people when
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND came into
Existence, continue to focus on
Teaching well so you can meet your
Performance targets, and if you do that,
you will indeed make adequate yearly progress
“
When you can cheat with impunity what does AYP really mean?
She may have been able to act “with impunity” back when she said all this… not anymore.
Realistically, however, will she or the others indicted do any actual time?
Will they be wearing those goofy orange jumpsuits?
Will they be paraded around in front of news cameras with their wrists and ankles chained?
Will they be eating prison food?
If yes, then that sure would send a message, and serve as a disincentive to everyone else in education not to do what they (allegedly) have done.
One more thing: the current Atlanta superintendant and board changed the rules just last month—anticipating yesterdays events, no doubt—so that they district will not pay one cent for the defense of those indicted. The defendants will now have to foot their own legal bills.
“…people must know that they all have something in the game…” every last one of us, in fact. prescient of her to put it in those words.
From Jersey Jazzman at:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/03/reformy-praise-for-beverly-hall.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JerseyJazzman+%28Jersey+Jazzman%29
Jazzman quotes all the corporate reformers’ gushing praise of Ms. Hall
prior to the scandal, including this from Duncan.
– – – – – – –
ARNE DUNCAN: “However, it cannot be ignored that under Dr. Hall’s leadership,” Atlanta students have made double-digit gains on national exams known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, Duncan said.
“Whatever the outcome of the state investigation, these accomplishments should not go unrecognized,” he said.
– – – – – – – – –
“Whatever the outcome…”????!!!! Huh???
Even it’s proven in court that “these accomplishments” were all bogus, and the result of criminal conduct and conspiracy.
Methinks Secretary Duncan spoke to soon on this issue.
Just like Duncan to lie and cheat. After all he lied to the California Legislature with Senator Feinstein concerning the proposed unconstitutional in California “Mayoral Control” (AB 1381). Chicago did not have a $1.8 billion defecit when Daley took over in 1995 as Duncan and Feinstein stated but according to the 1994 budget there was a surplus. Daley, Vallas, Duncan and Emmanuel are the defecit makers. All they know what to do is lie. And Obama and his wife were in the middle of all this corporatization of Chicago Schools from the beginning. This is why you only hear the phrase “community organizer” not specifics. If they got specific the rest of the story comes into play.
The NAEP is administered by NAEP field staff, not school or district employees. It is considered to be the gold standard of educational measurement. In the hardcover edition of “Death and Life,” in fact, Diane held up Atlanta as a beacon of ‘positive accountability’ largely on the basis of its NAEP scores.
Nothing I’ve seen suggests Beverly Hall somehow influenced the outcome of Atlanta NAEP results — that would be a much larger and more disturbing scandal. As it is very difficult to ‘teach to the test’ with respect to NAEP, Duncan’s point, however clumsily phrased, is that real progress was made during the Hall era independently of criminal tampering with state tests.
That is a fact. Atlanta made real strides on its NAEP tests.
Whatever Beverly Hall did that was good was overshadowed by the cheating.
Test cheating is test cheating and that is all there is to it. It is illegal without any excuses. If it is illegal there should be prosecutions. Why is it that many want to give those in charge of the mess rope that make is OK and teachers are slimed for things they never did? I had LAUSD audited in 1997 for “Falsely Charging Teachers with Child Abuse for Whisleblowing.” This audit for you non believers is Oct. 1997, 96121. It is now much worse than then even though the district has an agreement with the State of California to cease and desist this activity. Presently, teachers are falsely charged by administrators who continuously break the regular law and the child abuse laws of this state. It is time for this to stop. No teacher evaluations until there is fairness in prosecution and termination of teachers. LAUSD typically does not follow the legally required Skelly Hearings and “Due Process.” The General Counsel’s office is at the head of this illegality. I even have the #2, Greg McNair, on audio and video stating that LAUSD can make up anything they want, do anything they want to and do not care about the law or U.S. Constitution. Now, would you rely on them for anything if you were rational. Another for instance is, buying I-Pads with school construction bond money. The Leroy Greene Act controls the expenditures of school construction bond money in California. The law states that no equipment shall be bought with bond money unless it can last 10 years. Does anyone really think that I-Pads in school will last more than 2-5 years? Their General Counsel’s Office said it was OK. Who are those people, can’t they read? Yes, but only what they want. This is called “Selective Reading.”
I would humbly submit that maybe it’s a little more complicated than that.
Cheating is bad and it should be punished. There are high stakes attached to these tests that are possibly affecting the natural inhibition to cheat. I understand all that.
But unless the gains on NAEP can be directly attributed to the criminal tampering on state tests — a connection that seems pretty unlikely to me — I don’t think the Hall era can be considered a complete wash.
On a related note: everyone at every point on the education spectrum thinks NAEP is great. How much would it cost compared to what we’re spending on testing now (time and money) to simply have every kid in America Grades 3-8 NAEP tests every year?
If you do not know where your students are at from the weekly or so tests what are you doing in this field?
NAEP suffers the same errors that results in the process and results being invalid the same as all other standardized tests. To understand why see Noel Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 .
NAEP is as bogus as the rest of them no matter how tight the testing “security” is.
Methinks Ducan is a moronic puppet for Broad and Gates…the man does not have an independent thought in his brain. Basketball buddy to O is his claim to fame.
Don’t forget, Eli Broad was also one of the powerhouses in AIG when the scandal broke.
It’s worth remembering here that the cheating is only a symptom. The underlying dynamic is that advocates of total test-based accountability believe that high-poverty schools can be improved simply by forcing teachers to work harder. The planted assumption is that poverty has no meaningful impact on the ability of children to take advantage of school, and that highly effective teaching is a simple skill to acquire and to implement. If poor urban and rural districts are not performing well, it must simply be because the teachers are not “incented” to work hard.
The real crime, as the NYTimes article notes, is that schools actually lost support for programs that really do make a difference. The cheating reinforced the idea that miracles were possible and simple to get. (Compare, for example, the lasting impact of the accounting frauds at firms like Enron and Worldcom on all the other firms in those industries which turned themselves inside out trying to emulate a mirage.) It is distracting us from doing what desperately needs doing in our most challenged schools.
Check this article of ours out – http://www.miparentsforschools.org/node/189 – and remember that every time someone says “poverty doesn’t matter.”
I remember watching the CNN report when the Atlanta cheating story
first broke (early July 2011, if memory serves.)
Incredibly, Duncan made the following response on camera
(this is from my memory):
“This shouldn’t be seen as a something that discredits the use
of testing, as testing is the key to improving education. It just
points out that there is an easy fix for this: better test
security.”
He said this with a non-chalance and finality that was ridiculous
Oh, I’m so glad that’s all settled…. I sarcastically thought at the time.
He’s reading the script his corporate masters
provided for him, for just this occasion.
Arne never worked as a teacher or administrator,
or in ANY educational capacity whatsoever…
his volunteering at his mother’s after-school
tutoring program was the sum total of his
experience.
The bottom line is, any superintendent worth his/her salt who is truly an educator will be the one who says NO loud and clear, as in, “NO, OUR district will NOT participate in “standardized” tests.” Don’t start commenting and whining about this–it’s beyond time that superintendents in every state, all over the country, did this. Instead of worrying about these “standardized” (they have been shown time & again NOT to be standardized–they are neither valid nor reliable–the questions are ridiculous, if not culturally biased {see “ski trip” above}, the scores are juked) tests and what purpose they are used for, recognize that they should not be used for ANY purpose, whatever, and STOP giving them, EVERYONE. And…parents give your children back their educations again (instead of–like the Atlanta mom {sorry, but put the blame where it needs to be placed–on Pear$on and the politicians and the state superintendents who make sure that Pear$on and other such venomous companies continue to make $$$ w/invalid tests that make our children and our society suffer}–blaming TEACHERS).–OPT THEM OUT of TESTS. Even older students are refusing to take tests–listen to your children, and give them back THEIR schools.
EXACTLY!!
The problem is broader than Broad: from Washington on down, policy is mostly set by the highest bidder, regardless of the consequences for the rest of us.
If Eli Broad, Bill Gates, and a bunch of hedge fund managers think our kids futures should be the target of their next pump and dump scam, it’s simply a matter of writing enough checks to enough politicians to get their wish.
I’m sorry–the “ski trip” question i referenced was mentioned in a comment on the post after this one.
“Who is Eli Broad and why does he want to destroy public education?”
http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/
“The Broadfather” was an owner of Kaufman-Broad Homebuilders which was and is huge still today only not like when he was an owner. He also owned Sun America Insurance which in Oct. 1998 was sold to AIG for $18 billion and the “Broadfather” also having a seat on the board of AIG. Therefore, the “Broadfather” also helped to bring down the banking sector of the entire planet as the board of directors are the ones who tell the company what to do and what direction to go in. Think housing financial worldwide collapse on phony ratings and loans. He is also one of the worlds largest collectors of modern art. His two largest foundations are the art foundation and the education foundation. He is the mastermind of this. He has the unaccredited academy to mind control his puppets that are placed nationwide in medium to large school districts and believe me then into every single one here and abroad. He also is said to run L.A. and has international influence. They have a long term plan for total conquest.
Remember the phrase “He who dies with the most toys WINS?” This is all it is about. We know when and where this was all planned, by the way.
That’s a great primer on the whole issue–I bookmarked it.
Eli Broad
see
Who is Eli Broad and why does he want to destroy public education?
http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/
February 24, 2013
Introduction The historically unprecedented explosion of wealth in recent decades for the top one percent of the American populace is leading to a reshaping of the American economy in the interests of this one percent. Having more wealth than they know what to do with, many of the corporate leaders, hedge fund managers, and bankers are putting their wealth into “venture philanthropies”. They hope to advance an unregulated, free market economy which requires the destruction of the advances towards social equality made in American society during the 20th century due to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the sixties and the labor movement in the thirties. Incubated in the economic Wild West days of the G. W. Bush administration until the financial crisis of 2008, these “venture philanthropies” continue to seek to bring the business practices of the banking, corporate, and hedge fund manager world to all sectors of the U.S. economy through privatization.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the full-scale assault on public education that has been escalating for the last ten years since the Bush administration instituted the No Child Left Behind law in 2001. Basing itself on rating schools by high stakes testing, combined with declining federal support for education, NCLB has led to wide scale vilification of public school teachers for social conditions over which they have no control. This is being used all over the country as a pretext for closing schools in mostly urban school districts with large numbers of low-income families. As a result, we once again are faced with an increasingly segregated educational system where the children of middle class and slightly better off working class families are transferred into charters which are given advantages in student selection and funding, while the children of low income families are increasingly being left behind in deteriorating public schools. These ever worsening urban public school systems which, already having been inequitably funded for decades compared to wealthy suburban school districts, are being systematically starved of funding.
For the rest, see
http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/
FCAT doesn’t serve students — or parents
BY FREDERICA S. WILSON
WILSON.HOUSE.GOV
As a former school principal I believe in accountability, but it must be transparent. As we digest the release of school grades from the Florida Department of Education, I want to say one thing — this is madness.
For 14 years I have fought against the FCAT. As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs? How ridiculous. This is nothing but hoodwinking parents and the community by putting grades on a school. No other state in America deceives their communities by devising formulas that no person or school can decipher. For far too long students have been treated as experiments in petri dishes, and life-altering decisions have been made with a callous disregard for children’s futures.
Unfortunately, I can think of no better example than the recent administration of the FCAT writing test.
The FCAT is obviously not “performance-based testing.” It has become an instrument through which administrators unilaterally deem children as passing or failing. This seriously jeopardizes the development of our students. I’m also waiting to see what impact this has on our state’s teachers. To connect their salaries to test scores is simply wrong. Fifth grade teachers are held accountable for the kindergarten through fourth grade teachers’ performances.
Whatever happened to pre-test and post-test? Are doctors’ salaries connected to how many patients they cure? Parts of the FCAT are administered on the computer. This is discriminatorily unfair to children who are victims of the digital divide. It is very difficult for any teacher to single-handedly level this playing field.
Tallahassee has changed the administration and scoring guidelines of the FCAT every single year.
• One year they include the scores of special needs students, the next year they don’t.
• One year they take into consideration the socioeconomic status of a child, the next year they don’t.
• ESOL is a factor today, and next year it isn’t.
When I served in the Florida Senate I demanded to see every version of the FCAT administered to third graders that year. There were 30. I spent an entire day ranking them in the order of their difficulty, and by dinner I had examined tests that ranged from one a first grader could pass all the way to one I don’t think a high school freshman could pass. I immediately demanded to know who decides which schools get which test. Nobody on the premises knew, and to this day I have never received an answer.
After years of complaining and pointing out missteps, and at times borderline criminal activity, I have reached the conclusion that the FCAT continues because it is a cash cow for adults who care absolutely nothing about our children.
I love children so much that to stand by any longer would betray who I am at my core. It’s time for parents, teachers and those of us who care to stand up and speak out against the injustices of the FCAT as if the lives of our children depend upon it — because they do. I tried to order an audit of the FCAT in Congress, but it is out of my federal jurisdiction. I call on Gov. Rick Scott and state legislators to demand that Florida’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability begin a forensic study of the FCAT now. There is too much at stake.
Every time a young black male commits murder in Miami, or even at times a lesser crime, I check their school records to see if they have a diploma. Most of them are casualties of the FCAT. I call them the FCAT kids. Whatever happened to career and vocational education?
Not everyone is going to college, period. But everyone needs a key to the next level of education. For goodness sakes, let’s stop this FCAT madness and allow these children to enjoy the music, arts, and sports that we enjoyed in school.
Teach them a trade; teach them life skills. Teach them how to write a check, save money, balance a check book, and manage a budget. If we are ever going to dismantle the cradle to prison pipeline and close the achievement gap in Florida, it is time that we as a state take back our children’s education from the hands of the FCAT. It is time to teach, teach, teach — not test, test, test.
U.S. Rep. Frederica S. Wilson, a Democrat, represents Florida’s 17th District, which includes parts of Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
The failures in K-12 = future involvement in the criminal justice system. I have looked into this and verified it through researchers and with L.A. County Sheriff, Leroy Baca. Sheriff Baca works with a nationwide sheriffs association looking into “School to Prison Pipeline.” They are also seeing that equation. The cycle must be broken. We cannot continue to throw away our youth in increasing numbers. At LAUSD in 2002 only 14,500 did not come to school everyday and enrollment was 156,000 more than in 2010-11. In 2011-12 over 112,000 did not come to school everyday. They are on the street. They are going to get into trouble. What else can happen? This cannot continue and have a properly operating society over time.
Where do Eli Broad’s kids (if he has any) go to school? For that matter, where do the children of these other powerful “reformer” children go to school? My guess is that the instructional programs at schools for these children do not include a steady diet of arbitrary, force-fed, curriculum-narrowing, one-dimensional, high-stakes tests designed by non-educators. Instead, these children probably enjoy a much different school environment. The savage push for testing by these “reformers”, therefore, is not about learning and student growth, but instead about bullwhipping poor communities into turning their schools into testing factories so these guys can hack off huge chunks tax-generated profits by ripping off students and unwitting public school districts through the sale and use of destructive testing schemes.