Yesterday I called for John King’s resignation.
This teacher says John King should be fired.
Here are her reasons:
“A New York Teachers Letter on the Failed Leadership of John King
I am dismayed by the leadership provided by John King, Education Commissioner of the State of New York. He is deliberately creating a testing and curriculum that penalizes children – especially children with emotional illnesses and learning disabilities. I have spent my summer working with students who cannot graduate because they have not passed one of the five required Regents or RCT exams. These students have met all other local requirements and have passed the other four required Regents/RCTs – and would have passed the last remaining exam had the cut scores not been raised recently.
“Certainly, it is a lofty goal to want all HS graduates in NY State to achieve superior academic performance at the A+ level. I have been teaching HS English for 30 years and each year I hope that this will be the year that each of my students achieves an A in my course. It has never happened. Until we can eliminate emotional illness, learning disabilities, poverty, and other sources of family strife, this is unrealistic.
“I am dismayed by the changes made to the current HS Regents exams and the proposed Common Core Regents exams. Labeling 70% of our elementary students as failing is atrocious. BUT, preventing students from earning a HS diploma is shameful. This spring, the cut scores were raised on the Comprehensive English Regents. This shift resulted in failing grades for a number of students who would have passed the exam a year earlier.
“Simultaneously, the questions were more difficult and the readings were more complex than on previous exams. This shift was unannounced and therefore unfairly penalized hundreds of children and also prevented many of them from earning a diploma. In addition, the US History and Global Studies readings have also increased in difficulty. I might not object if the tests were more difficult in Social Studies content, but the tests are more difficult in reading complexity. The result is that students who have passed the English Regents or RCTs are failing the US History and/or Global Studies Regents or RCTs because they do not read well enough – not because they don’t understand Social Studies concepts. One of the first things I learned in my education courses is to determine what it is I am trying to assess and then to create a question that assess the appropriate learning. My students are weak in vocabulary and reading comprehension – yet they have all passed the Regents and/or RCTs in HS English. Why must their score on the US History exams be based on their documented disability in reading?
“The newest proposed version of the English Comprehensive Regents will be given in June of 2014. John King proudly announced that this exam is modeled after the AP exam in English Language and Composition. Really? The AP test is our new benchmark for college and career readiness? The AP test is the bar for our graduation requirements? Why?
“I used to believe in the integrity of the Regents exams. I no longer believe that the NY State exams are valuable, worthwhile, or educationally appropriate. The new Common Core curriculum – along with the modules and activities crafted by Odell Learning (promised – but not delivered) – is not a curricular improvement. None of this is best practice. None of it relies on current research. None of it has been field tested. None of it is proven. It is all snake oil. I am ashamed to be part of this sham. Commissioner King is not only overseeing this disaster; he is proud of the fact that 70% of our students will be labeled failures.
“I am no longer interested in “building a plane in mid-air.” I want to teach children. I want to expose them to fiction. I want them to be creative and engaged. I want them to fall in love with learning (preferably through literature) the way that I love learning. I, however, do not love this new way of learning (and teaching.) I do not love watching kids cry. I do not love hearing them as they call themselves stupid after failing a Regents for the third time. I will not love making the phone calls later today that inform children and parents that they have failed a Regents – again”
Susan Murphy Oneonta, NY
We should be calling John King to tell him he failed!
We should be calling him to tell him he was a fraud.
He most certainly has failed the children, their parents and the teachers of New York. He needs to go. If he could be gotten rid of, maybe some of he others would take notice.
This is what John King really thinks of
parents who “opt out”, or even complain
about his “education reform.”
http://www.southbronxschool.com/2013/10/fine-dining-with-new-york-state.html
King draws an asinine analogy between
parents bitching about Common Core, or
excessive or inappropriate-for-grade-level
testing or whatever…
to…
the lack of restraint to a customer
would show at a restaurant when that
customer has a problem with
the wine or food served to him:
http://www.southbronxschool.com/2013/10/fine-dining-with-new-york-state.html
He puts himself in a higher order of class
than those belly-aching parents because
when a waiter brings him substandard
food or wine… well… in such a situation,
he doesn’t complain, or send it back. He
sits there and eats it whether he likes it
or not…
(*** actual quote… no joke***)
JOHN KING: “When I’m in a restaurant,
and the waiter opens the bottle of wine for
me to taste, I never say ‘No,’ send it back,
even if it’s horrible. The same with my
meal; if I don’t like it I’ll eat it anyway.”
AND DAMN IT!!! THAT’S WHAT THE
PARENTS AND STUDENTS IN NEW
YORK STATE SHOULD DO AS WELL!!!
The author’s discussion of the increased cut scores preventing students who have “earned a HS diploma” suggests that there is some standard for high school graduation that is independent of the rules and regulations of the school system. What is this standard? Is there a level of literacy and numeracy that must be achieved for a student to have earned a HS diploma?
This is an excellent and important question, TE. But I suggest a slight recasting: Are there levels of literacy and numeracy that must be achieved for students to earn HS diplomas? Literacy and numeracy are both extraordinarily various, and there should be varied means for demonstrating varieties of literacy and numeracy acceptable for HS graduation. A student seeking a PhD has to pass certain classes, has to take written and oral exams, and has to prepare a dissertation that is a major contribution to his or her field. It’s understood that no two PhDs are going to be identically educated or come out of school with an identical set of skills.
Perhaps one kid can write a press release in standard form. Another can write a short story with a conventional Freytag pyramid-style plot and that follows the three unities. Perhaps another can give a well-argued speech that uses a reductio form. Perhaps another can prove that she has read and understood some set of related works in popular science or history. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about this, here, but you get where I am headed with this.
We received a high school diploma if we managed to maintain a passing average. We were required to take a certain number of credits in math, English, science, and history and receive passing grades in order to graduate. There were other requirements for fine arts, P.E., and foreign language and those who planned to go to college generally took more academic courses. If someone was interested in pursuing technical or vocational track, they would take more courses appropriate to their plans, but everyone needed a basic core. That was it. I’m not sure why we need another hoop.
@2old2tch
Obtaining a phasing average is the interesting question. Would a student who passed at one high school have passed at another?
@Robert
What I had in mind is nothing as nuanced as what you discussed. In another post a high school teacher spoke of many many high school students who read at the first to fourth grade levels. What I am wondering is if passing the courses required to get high school diploma would require that a student be able to read at some grade level.
“Obtaining a phasing average is the interesting question. Would a student who passed at one high school have passed at another?”
For the most part, yes. A passing average does not generally require a lot of effort for the average student if there is such a person. That is not to say the quality of education across the country is equal, but is trying to establish national standards by fiat the answer? I don’t think the current crop of reformers are waving a magic wand. I rather suspect that the answers we seek are much more complex and diverse than we are being led to believe.
It was Commissioner Mills who instituted the 5 Regent’s rule. Some smart students were taking non-Regents classes so they would get a higher grade point average and be more competitive for acceptance into the top colleges, therefore, EVERYONE was expected to get a Regent’s Diploma to discourage this practice. There are now a lot of students who are not High School graduates. I pulled my own son out of high school and had him pass the GED when we saw that there was no way he could be successful on the Regent’s track. He’s a smart young man, but not “book smart”. We celebrated his success as the GED is not a “piece of cake” to pass. Mills is proud of his “accomplishment”, but totally unaware of the pain he has caused so many. Now we have King. Who thought up the philosophy that if the students weren’t doing well, then make the test more “rigorous”, since the challenge would make them work harder? Not everyone is an A student, let alone an AP student (lots of kids take the AP exams, but very few get an acceptable score). We are going to end up with a generation of undereducated, frustrated young adults who could have done well in school, but just gave up. Thanks King!
What type of pressure can be put on him other than calling him out on public blogs?
Seeing as he is accountable to the Regents, and they’re complicit in this, I don’t think we can get the Regents to force him to step down on the basis of the lowered test scores because they’re singing the same tune as he is.
I agree, he failed. He may be trying to achieve higher standards, but, he did no one any favors by unilaterally changing the exams overnight to both be more difficult and have cut scores that were inappropriate.
However, there needs to be a path of action here – what kinds of pressure do the Regents respond to so that we can force them to ask for his resignation – because until he feels some pressure from them, or possibly the governor, I don’t see how unless there’s some major impropriety in his back closet that he can be shamed into choosing to leave. He’s proud of what he has done and sees people protesting it as some vindication that he is breaking the “status quo” that protects the “adults” through the combination of tougher tests and the new evaluation system.
He is setting up tests that will label practically every student, teacher, and school community as failures. He is doing so at a time that it will enable him to fire as many as possible (even though he promised that we could not “fire our way to success”). If teachers don’t get enough “growth” on students’ exams (through formulas that are still not yet public), then these same tests will automatically fail teachers under the 40% of your grade that can lead to termination even over the objections of your school’s leader who knows you ARE effective and good with students.
He is proud of this, he needs to be stopped. How?
This is NOT a new way of teaching and learning.
It is important to stay on message and give King and his jesters absolutely not one ounce of street credibility. It is our street after all and we declare that an imposter is marching up and down the avenue, wearing No Clothes!
Oh, and get this, I just saw this…after finally phasing out the IEP diploma that so many saw as evil for years (they were getting rid of it when I went to High School over a dozen years ago) – now they come with ANOTHER alternative diploma,
Bear in mind that I have no objection to IEP diplomas – I think they’re fine. However, a lot of political hay was made over how EVERY student needed a Regents diploma.
Now they’re doing this – http://www.uft.org/news/regents-adopt-new-credential-students-disabilities – why?
Did anyone else see the four-page supplement put out by the NYCDOE and published in yesterday’s New York Daily News? Chancellor Wolcott wrote: “Overall, the Department of Education has spent $133 million on resources and professional development for the switch to Common Core.” That is less than 1% of the DOE’s current operating budget of $19.8 billion. If budgets are a quantitative expression of an organization’s priorities, I guess “resources and professional development for the switch to Common Core” aren’t a very high priority.
FIRE KING.
HE IS USURPING DEMOCRACY.
http://www.wgrz.com/rss/article/223033/37/Education-Commissioner-Seeks-Ability-To-Replace-Buffalo-School-Board
He wants to take our school boards. I say NO! This is over the line – RESIGN NOW JOHN KING.
I went back and looked up Gordon Ambach as Commissioner ; he said he tried to share the ideas for Regent testing with CA and one other state and the workings just fell apart ; quote: “Gordon Ambach states: “as soon as the stakes are raised for NAEP (for example by using NAEP for individual testing instead of sampling), there will be all kinds of political pressures on NAEP that could destroy the impor-tance of NAEP trend lines and its integrity.”
In fairness, I would like to say that I was asked to comment on the new English regents, and they are not modeled on the AP Language exams (which I have scored). I don’t think standardized tests for all students is a good idea*, but the Regents draft I saw was reasonable and showed that someone was thinking about real students.
*I also participated in setting the cut scores for the 3-5 ELA. They kept saying, “Think about every third grade student in NYS. What should they be able to do?” and I kept thinking, “I wouldn’t even answer that about MA, where I lived for 30 years, and which is much smaller and much less diverse. Are you seriously saying that a student in the Bronx, in Westchester County, and in a small town in the Adirondacks should all perform exactly the same?