A teacher in North Carolina left this comment:
NC has requested a waiver that even though we are now on the new evaluation system (which, interestingly, is continuously being reworked (Home Base) because Pearson is still getting kinks out—-possibly another one of those airplanes being built in the air)—anyway, the waiver would allow that even though the online evaluator system (which I assume factors in test scores) is up and running (sort of) that it not be used to make personnel decisions until 2016-2017.
It seems to be the era of mandates that are impossible, and then a series of waivers to get out of them. It seems like a parent making ridiculous parameters for children, but then constantly giving passes to work around them.
Most want to still blame everything on W. I cannot accept that. What is going on right now has nothing to do with W, directly speaking. There was an opportunity, I am assuming, to move away from NCLB and instead we are even deeper into that type of mandating and waivering (wavering).
Platitudes never seem viable. To me they just indicate posturing on the part of decision-makers.
While it may be wiser to vote for Democrats in NC in you are pro-public school, I am still waiting for Democrats to take ownership in some of the troubles we are seeing.
Add to that—while teachers can always improve, I will say that as an institution public school is far more sophisticated than any reformer would ever want to admit. I read over the stack of IEPs yesterday provided to me by the special ed teachers (because I am on the team of teachers who teach the children and therefore need to know about accommodations, modifications, behavior patterns etc) and I was thinking to myself that no matter what kind of undergraduate education a young graduate has had, a building full of inexperienced educators (such as a charter could be—not sure that they ever have been), could not possibly offer the services to special education students that a well-established public school can. The problem is right now there are ideas that want to treat everyone the same. And we are risking throwing out the baby with the bathwater in a big way. A big, expensive way. We gotta figure this out. And we can’t just blame it on W.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Obama is a right wing fascist in reality. Fascism as originally conceived is corporations running the government as in Italy in the 20’s and 30’s and in Austria since 1919. Read Hapsburgs to Hitler and you will see what they did and that that is the plan here now. This is exactly how it is here in the President, Congress and especially the Supreme Court. Just remember my friends grandfathers saying “I hear real good, but I see a whole lot better.”
It is a sign of real idiocy to look at an utterly failed policy and to say, “Gee, we need to do A WHOLE LOT MORE OF THAT.” No, one cannot simply blame W (The fellow who once said, “I solved the education problem in this country on my first day in office,” one of the most darkly amusing statements I’ve ever heard anyone make). Conversations about these reforms tend to degenerate very quickly into left-right sloganeering, unfortunately, but the mess that was NCLB was a bi-partisan one, and putting waders on the country to take us deeper into that muck–much, much deeper–is definitely a bi-partisan effort, spearheaded by a Democratic president who is, clearly, a zealous true believer in the reformy theology. The heedless of the administration in this regard makes W’s pack seem, by comparison, downright thoughtful, and that’s truly frightening.
Well said. Apparently, a lot of people have forgotten that Ted Kennedy was in on NCLB. And have ignored the Democrats behind the charter movement (we can thank Davis Guggenheim for “Waiting for Superman”). There’s plenty of blame to go around, and if we don’t stop fixating on labels and start focusing on actions, we’re going to be in some serious trouble.
I blame W, but I also blame B.O. for running with the ball that was handed to him. Instead of listening to the those in the trenches who are trying to teach our country’s children, we have people with no teaching experience taking the lead on “reform”. For that reason I did not vote for Obama last November. And I seriously doubt if I will vote for either major party at the national level again.
Anyone who is at all happy with either the Repugnicans or the Dimocrats isn’t paying attention.
I have a friend who refers to them as the Rethuglicans. Don’t know if he made it up or borrowed it, but it is catchy.
Replutocrats. Dems are as yet unworthy of an officially scornful attribution. Not coherent enough.
DEMONcrats.
Like the demoncrats!
DIMocrats and REPUGlicans. Two rival gangs looting the country.
Bush laid the groundwork for “reform” (actually Reagan did with the fradulent “A Nation at Risk”) but it took a “Democrat” to actually move to destroy public education in the United States.
Both political parties have been compromised by gangsterism.
N.C. Teacher–how right you are. The best statement you make, however, is “we gotta figure this out.” And, I add, DO something about it. At this point, it all boils down to Pear$on–yep–after all this time–still “building airplanes in the air.” Another publishing company taken over by them–Scott Foresman. The one & only solution: EVERYONE OPT OUT. Superintendents have begun to speak out–parents, listen. Retired teachers & educators–tell all your friends, neighbors, relatives. It CAN be done–remember the Garfield 12 & the Curie 12.
Yes, WE can. And we WILL.
Opting out will only work if everyone does it. Parents need to be told that (in NY) we can’t use the tests to remediate or enrich because Pearson/state DOE will NOT release them. They must also be assured that their child will have no consequence for opting out. (Such as not getting into an honors program.) So, how does this information get to the public? I believe it must come directly from the superintendents. They must locally join together and fight this. They have as much to lose as teachers if this train is not derailed. It will be the attack on suburbs that will (I say hopefully)turn the tide. That and Dr. Ravitch’s book. WHICH WE MUST MAKE A BESTSELLER!
Sadly, in Utah’s insane new grading system, if a school doesn’t have 95% participation, it automatically fails. I don’t dare opt my kids out again because I don’t want their schools to fail.
Yes, Puppy, EVERYONE needs to do it! What happened in the case of the Garfield 12? 97% OPTED OUT (the parents kept their kids home). Result: the school had NO viable data.
(Read chemtchr’s comment below!)
Does anyone know where it is stated that funding will be lost? I asked about opting out in my state and specifically asked about lost funding details if participation fell below 95%, but that part of my question was not answered. I was just told if the 95% target was not reached, parents would be informed and they would implement a plan to raise participation rates.
Actually, if 10% of students opt out, the mandate for 95% test participation is defeated. And Look at this ABC story that just hit the wires a few hours ago:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/parents-opting-kids-standardized-tests-20193807
It came up on my Google News, with a button to “Follow this story in real time”. There are iterations of it everywhere:
“Get your standardized tests off my kid.”
“But we have to test. It’s the law, or we lose our funding.”
“Then get your laws off my kid.”
“Superintendents have begun to speak out”
Only because these educational malpractices are finally starting to hit the middle to upper income districts. They didn’t give a shit about this for going on 10 years but now that it is finally getting to them they find the “cojones” (which they never had and still don’t) to “speak out”.
Give me an effin break!!
So true. We’ve said that here before: this whole crap storm will cease when the deformers go after suburbia.
“It seems to be the era of mandates that are impossible, and then a series of waivers to get out of them.”
Pay no attention to the smokescreen behind the curtain. Follow the money as it continues to pour out of our schools no matter what else is happening. Reformy illusions are a diversion from the seizure of wealth and from ideological warfare.
“While it may be wiser to vote for Democrats in NC in you are pro-public school, I am still waiting for Democrats to take ownership in some of the troubles we are seeing.”
Really??? Have Republicans taken ownership? I don’t think so.
As for voting in future elections, I plan to vote for the person who talks the talk on public schools and educators.
Gov. Pat Let-Them-Eat-Cookies McCrory is beginning to feel the pressure. He has miraculously found ten million dollars to pay salary increases to teachers getting their masters in the next year plus is now saying there will be a raise for teachers in the next budget. Sounds nice but we need to keep up the pressure.
We have a long way to go for our students and ourselves.
Cartwheel I do see your point. But if we don’t azalyze every action contributing to where we are (after NCLB) we will remain in partisan passion and no bridge building, and the kiddos and the public’s schools need bridge building the most. I hear so much about this legislation, but a lot of the corporate sell-out type stuff (CCSS and RttT) also needs to be factored into the equation. So whether or not Republicans take ownership for anything, Democrats will look and be stronger for honestly assessing some mis-steps and not just jumping on the budget cuts as a way to show that they are better.
Our state motto is Esse Quam Videri. To be rather than to seem.
When I grew up in NC and in public school I felt proud of that motto and saw it alive in our state. I don’t see that now. I don’t feel it. And it is in large part due to a continuation of one size fits all measure it til it’s better punish and posture ideas coming down the pipeline. And the ALEC guys in Raleigh did not make that happen. There is a gap between 2002 NCLB and this year’s budget. What was in that gap? What happened? Why? Who benefitted? When? Etc.
Resist the temptation to get defensive and hide behind party one upmanship. In fact, that is why we are in this mess to begin with (IMHO the only reason NCLB was bipartisan is because W was so convinced it was a good idea that Democrats got nervous that GOP would actually help education in the US so they signed on to not be shown up. Instead, they should have fought it. 100% by 2014? What were they thinking?). But again, a lot has happened since then besides just ALEC moving into Raleigh (which is huge, but not the only thing).
George W. Bush initiated education reform in this century with bipartisan approval under NCLB. Obama is simply following through with school reform; reform for students, primarily our most disadvantaged students, not reform for teachers or teacher unions. Education reform never has been and probably never will be about teachers. As soon as teachers come to accept this, then they can get to the business at hand of educating students, all our students.
1. I think some do want reform because of teachers.
2. Nothing in this post was about reform being about teachers, except observations about the new evaluation system which is about teachers.
I don’t understand your comment. I am guessing you are distancing yourself from any complication on a very complex situation? I think your comment is like saying that a fruit salad of bananas (schools), oranges (students) and apples (teachers) is not about apples.
Furthermore, as a parent I don’t see how the reforms are in the best interest of children in the ways I want for my child. So even if it really is about students, I don’t see actions occurring that make me happy or excited about the public’s schools.
Again, I don’t understand your comment at all. It seems more dismissive to me. Like if we were chatting at a bar it indicates you want to change the subject.
What is it you wish the subject to be?
If you want to see where Mr. Hoss is coming from: http://www.amazon.com/Common-Sense-Missing-Education-Reform/dp/1460900677
“reform for students, primarily our most disadvantaged students, not reform for teachers or teachers unions”
The claim is often made by people on this blog that the reformers are motivated only by money. I want to point the people who make that claim to this statement, which is clear evidence that are people of good will in the reform movement
who don’t understand that this testing is pseudoscience;
who still think that high-stakes testing using these junk standards and junk tests will improve outcomes for disadvantaged students;
who either haven’t read or haven’t understood the new standards [sic] in ELA;
who still think that our schools compare unfavorably, on international tests, to those of comparable countries–
people who still, after ten years of our spending billions to turn our schools into test prep mills at terrible cost to our students’ love of learning and to the overall quality of pedagogy and curricula;
people who, after all that, after the utter failure of this policy, still actually believe we should do a lot more of what has gone so terribly wrong.
This will seem surprising to those of you who have seen the terrible consequences of the testing mania up close, but there you are. There are people who still imagine that a totalitarian, top-down summative testing regime is some sort of magic cure for an imagined disease.
It’s important to be patient and to explain, and to explain again, why this is not so.
Thanks, Robert for the opening!
“who don’t understand that this testing is pseudoscience;”
Standardized testing = Psychometrics = IQ Testing = Phrenology = Eugenics = Medieval Blood Letting = Death
” As soon as teachers come to accept this, then they can get to the business at hand of educating students, all our students.”
What do you suppose we have been doing all this time?
Exactly, Lehrer!
It’s truly wonderful to see how teachers have managed to do their job IN SPITE OF these deforms and despite the grotesquely distorted curricula produced in response to the standards and tests. But it’s been taxing for them, and I fear that ratcheting all this up is going to strain their abilities to do valuable teaching, in spite of this crap, to the breaking point.
I tend to roll with the punches, but the new CCSS and CT teacher evaluation system have left me wondering how many years I can do this. Our new CCSS-aligned math program tells me that the “warm-up” portion of the lesson should take no more than 20 minutes. Well, last week the warm-ups took 45 minutes because the kids are being given material that is over their heads. I guess a new synonym of “rigor” is confusion. I refuse to just throw these concepts at kids, but in the process of helping those little lightbulbs turn on, I fall further behind in the math program.
“then they can get to the business at hand of educating students, all our students.”
What is that you think they’ve been doing?
Paul Hoss, reform is all about the money, not students first.
(The latter of which, BTW, has made Ms. Rhee one VERY wealthy woman. Not so much for the kids. )
Obama was a big fan of Chicago school of economics and DFER owned him early on which is big reason we have a know-nothing like Arne Duncan to reinforce the policies of Spellings and Paige… I think Diane and others have made that pretty clear.
Hello, I’m Arne Duncan. I’m not an educator, but I play one on TV.
The whole Bush family since at least Prescott has been a pox and scourge on this country since at least the 20’s. And now they want more with the ol Jebber and from what I understand one of the next generation Bushits.
Hmm, not sure where the concern about President Bush started but since it’s out there – please – the root cause of EVERY reform issue now is ANNUAL TESTING. Take away annual high-stakes testing and the pressure comes off individual teachers. Take away annual testing and curriculum isn’t driven solely by the test and test prep. No annual testing – no labels, no ratings, no rankings, no teacher scores.
Standardized testing has and always has had a place in norming curriculum, as a benchmark for a school’s progress, and to identify planning and teaching alignment and gaps with the curriculum for the purpose of improvement.
So quick history. Annual testing is rooted in NCLB that President Bush signed three months after 9/11 when no one was paying attention to anything. Guidelines and regulations followed when no one was paying attention (except a few of us who wrote columns complaining and AASA).
President Bush brought annual testing from his Texas TAAS annual testing – all of which is noted as the Texas Miracle that like current reform success stories – was corrupt.
So – however President Bush got brought into this discussion, he and Secretary Paige scripted our current mess. President Obama changed the stick to a carrot but didn’t change the root causes of why we are now test driven and a lot of corporations are getting rich.
The real problem with both NCLB and CCSS is not so much the testing – but the misuse of test scores to punish schools, school districts, administrators, and individual teachers. The punitive nature of these educational “reforms” has over-pressurized the system and created the “teach to the test – or else” syndrome.Schools are not, and never will be, clinical environments where student achievement automatically responds to teacher manipulations. Here in NY, many excellent math and ELA teachers who rang the bell (60/60) on their Marzano rubrics/formal observations were labeled ineffective because of the Pearson testing fiasco of ’13.
Jere is right, NY Teacher. It IS about the tests. Faulty, lousy tests–NOT “standardized”–neither valid nor reliable. Why is there even tighter security? Pear$on doesn’t want us to find any more “Pineapple” questions–&, as a special ed. teacher who has read the tests (&–because of this–I am certain–very soon, special ed. students will not even be allowed such accommodations, because we dare not find all the mistakes that Pear$on makes–more than one right answer, NO right answer, nonsensical questions, unanswerable questions, etc., etc., ad nauseum). No quality control–not before Todd Farley’s 2009 book, & not after. Computerized tests? Computer glitches (e.g., Indiana). Incorrect scoring? Juked scoring? Incompetent scorers (people who are not English speakers, let alone competently READ English!)
COMPUTERS that score WRITING?! Yes and yes! And then–using these faulty tests and incorrect test scores to judge schools & teachers’ performances–the poorly concocted icing on the cake!
YES, NY teacher–the tests THEMSELVES are the base of the problems–just having students actually TAKE them is the misuse of the test. A waste of precious trees, to be sure.
Better to use that paper for toilet paper–perhaps Pear$on could put Georgia Pacific (owned by the Koch bros.) out of business!