Plunderbund is a blogger in Ohio whose mission is to speak truth to power.
In this instance, he points out that Governor Kasich and the majority of the members of House Education Committee either have no children or send their children to non-public schools. Thus, they are quite willing to tie the public schools up in knots because it does not affect their own children.
“Currently, students in Ohio’s public schools are required to test a minimum of 20 times throughout their 13 years (K-12). Meanwhile, students in the private schools (including Catholic schools) are only required to take the Ohio Graduation Tests when they are in high school. The public schools have the burden of engaging children when they are 8 or 9 years old in third grade in the process of high-stakes testing when they take the 3rd grade reading test in October and again in April along with the math assessment. These children then take the reading and math tests again every year through 8th grade in addition to science tests in grades 5 and 8.
The results of these 15 standardized tests between grades 3 and 8 are used to grade and criticize the performance of the students, the schools, and the teachers in Ohio’s public schools while the private schools coast along unscathed by the watchful eye of the state and the media. In Ohio, there are currently over 440 nonpublic schools serving over 175,000 children that are completely exempt from Ohio’s rigid standardized testing program.
It’s not an accident — it’s precisely the way the laws are (and aren’t) being drawn up and passed by Ohio’s Republican majority.”
With the adoption of the Common Core, students in the public schools will take even more tests and the test scores will be even more consequential.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
On a related note, a very disturbing by the Kansas Regents to end academic freedom demonstrates the same creeping lust for control over our public educational institutions.
http://www.toledoblade.com/Featured-Editorial-Home/2013/12/19/Whose-guarantee.html
The Toledo Blade finally recognized that the Third Grade Reading gimmick backed by the feds and the state doesn’t come with any support for third graders in public schools:
“State officials say the new law forces school districts to intervene and address, rather than gloss over, their students’ reading deficiencies. But that duty should not fall exclusively on local districts, and the law shouldn’t merely shame and punish students who don’t test well.
Students with reading problems don’t suddenly develop them on the first day of third grade. They routinely start school behind their peers because they lack the opportunities for intellectual stimulation that are available to better-advantaged families. Districts in economically struggling communities, both urban and rural, face particular challenges.
Other states with similar reading guarantees have invested more than Ohio has in preschool education, teacher training, and related programs. To the contrary, Columbus too often has cut state aid to local schools in recent years, even as it has placed greater demands on them.”
“Columbus” hasn’t cut state aid to ALL schools, however. They’ve cut state aid to public schools. They’ve lavished state aid on charter and private schools.
If you hire politicians who are hostile to public schools to run public schools, this is what happens. Unsurprisingly, they support the schools they favor (charter and private schools) and abandon the schools they don’t favor (public schools).
My local rural public school has less funding and many more mandates. Ed reformers are responsible for lobbying for both the cuts in funding and the mandates.
They’re setting public schools up to fail.
I don’t know if you-all are familiar with Progress Ohio, but they’ve done a great job documenting how private schools and charter schools are promoted over public schools in Ohio by ed reformers on school boards and state government.
Don’t let ed reformers tell you it’s a level playing field here between public and privatized. It’s not. No one at the state level in government is working on behalf of the majority of children who attend public schools. Our kids lose every time. The one and only organized advocates we have are teachers unions, and thank goodness for them. Without labor advocating for public schools, the vast majority of kids in this state would have no advocates at all in Columbus for their public schools.
http://www.progressohio.org/
That is why so many of us retired. The stress wrecked our health. We did our best to participate in a system that we didn’t respect any longer. We miss the fun and creativity,the days before testing. In addition to those tests mentioned above, we gave students TerraNova and InView tests. We also gave them ProOhio Tests, forms A and B, practice tests from the ODE, and used other means of assuring that our students did well on “the test”. With the burden of AYP it is daily agonizing stress to everyone. I lost all joy. I miss the kids and the love. Nothing more.
My 5th grader is bringing home new branded test prep. It’s labeled “assessment” on every page. I assume it’s Common Core, although maybe 5% of Ohio public school parents could define “Common Core” so I’m not sure.
It’s sort of amusing how wide the disconnect is between what we’re told about Common Core and how it looks “on the ground”
We were told again and again by the US Secretary of Education it wasn’t about standardized tests. It sure looks like test prep, and it’s labeled as such. I guess I should ignore my lying eyes and listen to the hard sell.
I wonder when they’ll tell us where they’re setting the cut scores and how many public schools will “fail”. I’d sure like to know if my district is on the takeover list.
I teach in N.C. Our students undergo a plethora of testing and assessments annually. However, as a 5th grade science and social studies teacher (formerly taught K &2nd) I know those students are not getting the prescribed curriculum and are certainly not mastering the curriculum for their K-4 grades. Thus, my job is extremely stressful and overwhelming. I average 28 students per grade and am quite frankly (very often) burned out. The pressure of teaching “to the test” has literally (at times) made me emotionally sick. I have children, seeing them stress out and seeing the love of learn squeezed from them is so disheartening. Sad plight for education.
It feels like the goal is to drive parents away from the public schools because of all the testing.
deb, you may be on to something “It feels like the goal is to drive parents away from the public schools because of all the testing.”
It could boil down to “What” role the Parents choose in providing
“What’s Best” for their children.
The parents could take on the responsibility of determining
and, or, providing what is best for their children.
OR
The parents could allow a Public Yes or No vote, to determine and
provide what is best for their children.
I believe the goal is twofold (possibly more).
1. To take public school funding because the economy is presently in the trash heap and going nowhere fast. The greedy edu-business owners see how many tax dollars go to public schools and think they’d like a piece of that pie. These are people who already know how to make politics work for their pocket so why not? Who’s going to stop them?
2. Dismantle the teachers union. We all know the sort of folks who don’t like unions. Who try anything they can (since the 1954 Taft- Hartley act) to take power away from unions. How handy that these ALEC created laws write further union crippling wording right into these bills that have passed in so many states.
Well, my comment was more of an observation of the psychological manipulation and results of frustrating so many people that they might abandon public schools. When district leaders make teachers feel that their jobs are on the line, that the years they have sacrificed and the money and time they have put in are meaningless if some AYP isn’t met for all students, then it is driving the teachers to teach to the test to assure that they are not going to be penniless, even if they don’t like what they are doing. Parents get annoyed with all the test prep and wind up blaming the teachers. But, when you get a classful of students who aren’t all prepared to be in your grade level and couple that with “new” “standards” that don’t have the support system building up to make the kids ready to receive the new approach and the developmentally inappropriate approach to learning, teachers are left with nothing but trying their best to teach what “should have been learned” prior, plus what is normally taught, plus what has been “moved down from three grade levels above”. That is a tall order. But, that is what the changes have done.
To say that kids can’t or shouldn’t have more expectations laid on them is not the point. It is the tri-fold expectations placed on the kids, the teachers, the districts, the states, etc. and then it is the venomous way that this is covered in the news, acting as if teachers are “responsible” for all of these “failures” that sickens me.
I just wanted to (and did a couple of times) say STOP, STOP, STOP!!! Slow down. Take a look. But, our grade level couldn’t have a collaborative meeting if its collective life depended upon it. We couldn’t slow down. We couldn’t do a thing that made sense. So we plunged in, holding our noses, and hoped we wouldn’t drown.
So, what would we expect parents to think? They should want to run like the wind. But, they don’t know where to go. Transportation isn’t a given if they change or go to a private or charter school. If that would be mandated, then the taxes people complain about going to teacher salaries would go to paying for gasoline to run all kids to their parents’ “desired” escapes from public school insanity.
The sad thing is: The teachers are blamed. But the teachers are victims, just like the students. This entire mess is just a mess. Period.
“. . . it is driving the teachers to teach to the test to assure that they are not going to be penniless, even if they don’t like what they are doing.”
Sorry Deb, but that is the thinking of GAGAers. And it’s not a matter of “don’t like what they are doing” but actually knowing the inherent harm and not have the true heart and soul to stand up to educational malpractices. That is a sad commentary. May they broil in their own mental juices until they decide to do what is right and just!!
??? Dwayne???
No, not Dwayne, but, Deb, I’m not sure of what you are asking of me by ???Duane???
I thought I was quite clear in what I said. If not please let me know.
Thanks!
So you think all teachers should be insubordinate? I don’t know what a GAGAer is.
Deb,
If you knew how much I despise the concept of “insubordinate”. What that means is you have to kiss the ass of your supposed “superior”. It’s a term borrowed from the military and in my mind has absolutely no place in a democratic institution that should be the public schools.
And yes, they should be insubordinate. How can one live with oneself when one is told to institute unethical and unjust practices. If people don’t stand up to it you end up, oh effin no, with Nazi Germany, Stalin Russia, Mao’s China, etc. . . . And no one doesn’t have to fear for one’s life to stand up against such educational malpractices as in those examples but the evil results are the same.
From my incomplete Devil’s Dictionary of Educational Malpractices:
Going Along to Get Along (GAGA): Nefarious practice of most educators who implement the edudeformers agenda even though the educators know that those educational malpractices will cause harm to the students and defile the teaching and learning process. The members of the GAGA gang are destined to be greeted by the Karmic Gods of Retribution upon their passing from this realm.
Karmic Gods of Retribution: Those ethereal beings specifically evolved to construct the 21st level in Dante’s Hell. The 21st level signifies the combination of the 4th (greed), 8th (fraud) and 9th (treachery) levels into one mega level reserved especially for the edudeformers and those, who, knowing the negative consequences of the edudeformers agenda, willing implemented it so as to go along to get along. The Karmic Gods of Retribution also personally escort these poor souls, upon their physical death, to the 21st level unless they enlighten themselves, a la one D. Ravitch, to the evil and harm they have caused so many innocent children, and repent and fight against their former fellow deformers. There the edudeformers and GAGAers will lie down on a floor of smashed and broken ipads and ebooks curled in a fetal position alternately sucking their thumbs to the bones while listening to two words-Educational Excellence-repeated without pause for eternity.
Of you are independently wealthy you can do as you please. Mist teachers are not. We couldn’t say or do anything without retribution. Our principal is a little tyrant. She is as hateful as it gets. I went to the superintendent with best of intentions, not being condescending at all. We had this negotiator brought in. Meetings on neutral ground etc. We then had a meeting where she was told that we were not able to work under her conditions. Long story short, she is still there. The older ones have retired. This past fall the ones who are left there reached critical mass in their frustration. They went tobthe union about. Our rep actually wound up taking her side. She brought in the supt and he took her side. Nothing changes. So don’t tell me about standing up to anyone!
She got rid of everyone she could if they stood up to her unreasonable demands and inaccurate reviews and evaluations. She fired a woman who happened to remind the curriculum director that she had said something specific about leveled books.
I had tenure and there was nothing they could do but make my life miserable. I taught as best I could. I dreaded going in. I taught what I needed to meet all their demands and my own expectations, too. There is so much more but I won’t waste your time.
I was honest. Not insubordinate. No. One. Cares.
What did all this stress get for me? Bad health. No sleep. Hypertension. Depression. And it didn’t improve the situation for other teachers or the kids.
This is my 20th year of teaching..all in Ohio. If I could find find a new job tomorrow, out of education, I would take it. Love my students, love to teach, HATE what our politicians have done to public ed in our state. 😦
If I had a dollar for every teacher who feels the same way, we could all retire.
In what state is good to live where there is NO REPRESSIVE education policies? That’s where I want to live.
Vermont.
I get the point about hypocrisy on the part of the politicians in where they send their own children but not that they should have extended the public school mandates to private schools. Was that even legally possible?
Our private school gets no state, local or federal funds. True, as a non-profit organization, we can avoid some sales taxes and we don’t pay property taxes. (And don’t imagine some big estate, because you’d be wrong.) The tax exemptions are the same for TFA and any other non-profit you may love or hate. All the money to run the school comes from parents, alumni, fundraisers and the teachers/staff taking less of a salary than they would in a public school. The lack of any government funding is particularly hard for our lowest income students who, in a public school, could benefit from free breakfast, free or reduced lunch, subsidized or free after school care and other services that are channelled through the public schools. Instead, in order to make an economically diverse learning community, our school either does without or tries to make up for it by getting the wealthier parents to give money to the school.
The one thing we get for educating these children ourselves (beautifully, I might add) is that we are free from politicians sticking their noses where they don’t belong. Our teachers are in charge of the curriculum and when evaluations are needed, they decide what is needed and they design it. The stewardship of the school is lead by parents and teachers so that it can be most responsive to the children and families in the school.
I fully recognize that public schools are in a dire situation thanks to the John Kasichs of this country, but the answer is certainly not to harm the countries independent schools—schools that are already doing great work with such few resources.
country’s
All I know is: working in a district that has been in the top tier on the testing ever since it began in 1995, the pressure has been insurmountable. The subtle push for “excellence” at something we don’t even acknowledge is good teaching has been absolutely horrific. I am tired of typing much of the same thing, but this comes up on various threads of the blog. Instead of EVER being allowed to feel good about anything, we have to keep on pushing. More, more, more. It is insane. And in Ohio, with jobs being hard to find and attitudes about those looking for jobs being to blame the ones looking for the jobs … it is a depressing place to live.
I would NEVER recommend that anyone step into the field of teaching as it is today. But, all of this just plays right in to the big plan to get rid of public schools wherever possible. So much money is wasted on all this. And, if you think about it, if they design the plan to “get rid” of teachers with experience quickly then they can program the younger ones to do whatever they wish. And, it will become a job of mere “test monitoring” or IT specialists, not teachers.
Deb, you speak for all of us. I teach in a public school district in a suburb of NYC.
The only reason I speak at all is because I know what so many must be going through. If our teachers continue to go through the same stuff year after tear with no letting up, even though the kids are successful, it has to be beyond belief for schools that have kids and parents that don’t try or care. I know part of our administrative pressure is from the “unknown” changes that the RttT is bringing. Our supt will NOT tolerate losing face. He’d get rid of everyone. It is too much to deal with.
The leading charterites/privatizers take it as a given that they will “do unto OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN what they would not have done unto THEIR OWN CHILDREN.” They react with genuine fury and outrage when this is pointed out.
Chris Christie is a perfect example of the edufraud crowd that “talks the rheephorm talk but won’t walk the rheephorm walk.” [googling will get you many many hits]
So between a Chris Christie and a Diane Ravitch when it comes to public education,
“Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.” [Francois de La Rochefoucauld]
Especially when the payoff for hypocrisy is ginormous amounts of $tudent $ucce$$.
One of those old dead Greek guys nailed the rheephorm crowd to the wall over two thousand years ago:
“Hateful to me as are the gates of hell, Is he who, hiding one thing in his heart, Utters another.” [Homer]
Proves you don’t need to see to have perfect vision.
😎
I love the quotes you find. Keep them coming!
these members of House Education Committee remind me of the well paid, well fed, well insured “legislators” in Washington who decree that the people will have to make due with
lower wages, cuts in food stamps, reduced benefits and a generally more miserable life.
“In the past I have defended the right of the people to engage in armed struggle. I did so because there was no alternative for those who would not bend the knee, or turn a blind eye to oppression.”
Gerry Adams