Archives for the month of: May, 2012
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Why L.A. Teachers Are Boycotting the L.A. Times

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2012 //
3

A reader wrote to tell me that public school teachers in Los Angeles are continuing a boycott of the Los Angeles Times. This boycott stems from the Times decisions to create value-added evaluations for thousands of LA teachers and to publish them online in 2010. The accuracy of the evaluations were hotly contested by teachers and disputed by scholars who disagreed with the methodology; the reporters at the Times defended their findings and their methodology.

A month after the Times’ series was published, along with the public release of the names and ratings of teachers, Roberto Riguelas committed suicide by jumping off a bridge. He was a fifth grade teacher whose rating had been published. The family said he was depressed by the ratings; the Times did not accept responsibility. And of course it is impossible to know who was responsible and whether there was some other cause.

Two important comments on the LA Times release of its own value-added ratings. When it happened, Secretary Arne Duncan was very pleased, but very few scholars of testing agreed. John Ewing, a mathematician wrote an excellent article called “Mathematical Intimidation,” in which he excoriated the misuse of value-added as well as the reporters’ actions in browbeating a National Board Certified teacher, whom they said was a bad teacher. http://www.ams.org/notices/201105/rtx110500667p.pdf

I wrote about all this in the new last chapter of the paperback edition of The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

An interesting footnote: When New York City followed LA’s example and released value-added ratings to the media (the media in NYC, unlike LA, did not create the ratings), Bill Gates wrote an opinion piece saying it was a bad idea; Secretary Duncan came out against the release, and so did Wendy Kopp. In fact, almost everyone came out against the public release of teacher ratings except Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

And the public school teachers of Los Angeles are still boycotting the Los Angeles Times. If Eli Broad should buy it, they will have good reason to continue their boycott.

Diane

Categories California, Duncan, Arne, Teachers and Teaching

Please Take the Tests & Publish Your Scores

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2012 //
10

We have a plethora of governors, legislators, and state commissioners of education who are gaga over standardized testing, They can’t imagine a child who is not taking a test today, tomorrow, and next week. They want to test everything: not only reading and math, but the arts, science, civics, history, foreign languages, physical education, you name it and they want to test it.

When the test-lovers see low scores, they want to find the teacher swho did it and fire them. They can’t see any reason for low scores other than those darn teachers. They want “great” teachers and they figure the way to get them is to keep teachers insecure and intimidated. That’s sure to attract the best and brightest!

When the test-lovers see low scores, they not only want to fire teachers, they want to close the schools where those kids are enrolled and hand them over to private managers. The private managers will kick out the kids with low scores and find some students who have a better shot at getting those better scores. That’s called progress. Nobody wants those kids with low scores. Send ’em back to the public schools that haven’t been closed yet.

I have a modest proposal for the officials–elected and appointed–who are so test-happy.

They should take the tests and publish their scores. If they aren’t willing to take the tests and publish their scores, they should pipe down.

Just a thought.

Diane

Categories Testing

Thank You, Governor Dayton

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2012 //
7

Public school teachers have endured three years of sustained attacks, since Race to the Top unleashed the nutty idea that student scores on standardized tests are the key to teacher quality. This was ammunition to set off a sustained attack on teachers, especially those with experience, and on their unions, which defend them. Yesterday, the anti-teacher juggernaut came to a screeching halt in Minnesota. Governor Dayton vetoed legislation to strip teachers of any job protections. http://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/150109845.html

The usual far-right forces mobilized with their deceptive message about wanting “great teachers.” They never explain how a state or district attracts great teachers by demonizing the ones they have now. Michelle Rhee’s Students First, a spin-off of ConnCAN called MinnCAN, the Republican party, and the Chamber of Commerce lobbied hard to remove teachers’ rights to due process. This is supposedly how you put “students first,” by making sure that their teachers live in fear of being fired after years of good service. Proposals of this sort are an intelligence test (or maybe just a test of the power of reactionary forces and adept lobbying): Do you really believe that students will learn more if their teachers have no right to due process? No one has ever explained the logic behind these absurd claims.

Governor Dayton showed what political intelligence and courage look like in a lean and mean season.

Diane

Categories Education Reform, Minnesota

How Far Will Some Authors Go to Get a Good Review?

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2012 //
3

I just read online that Eli Broad, the Los Angeles billionaire, might buy the Los Angeles Times. Broad’s book was published this week. My first thought, speaking just as an author, was: “Some people will do anything to get a good review in their hometown paper.” http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/02/local/la-me-broad-20120503

My second thought, after a slight period of reflection (five minutes), was that it would be unfortunate if this comes to pass. Eli Broad is not shy about using his billions to advance his political agenda. I don’t know where he stands on most issues, but in education, he has been a force for distorted priorities that are harming American education. He has used his fortune to train a generation of school leaders devoted to imposing the business model onto education. Business values belong in the business office of the schools, but they don’t belong on the instructional side. Broad once told me quite frankly that he knows nothing about education, but he knows the importance of good management. I am not so sure that the graduates of his Superintendents Academy are good managers. Many have been run out of town after alienating the public. Of course, he prefers mayoral control, where the public can be ignored.

His acolytes are known for the closing and demolition of public schools in district after district. He has had a large hand in Detroit, which is now on the verge of total collapse and/or privatization. In Louisiana, a Broad-trained superintendent is leading the charge for privatization via a vast expansion of vouchers and charters. It seems that wherever a Broad graduate goes, the district or state starts closing public schools and expanding opportunities for privatization and for-profit operators. Along with their emphasis on privatization comes a devotion to high-stakes testing. The combination is not only toxic to public education but results in an approach that betrays a naive faith in the value of standardized testing. These policies are ultimately anti-intellectual, anti-education, and anti-child.

I hope he decides not to buy the Los Angeles Times. It is one of the few remaining independent dailies. I hope it stays that way.

Diane

Categories Broad Foundation, California, Corporate Reformers

It’s Just Me.

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2012 //
9

I just answered a question from a reader. He/she wondered if it was really me writing this blog. He/she wondered if there would be a little line somewhere saying that I was funded by some foundation.

I answered the question but thought it was a good idea to answer it in a blog.

It is just me. Or, to be grammatically correct, it is I. And I alone.

No one writes for me, and I am not funded by any foundation.

I write every word of my books. I write every word of my articles. I write every word of my blogs. I write every word of my tweets.

I know that most if not all of the other voices in the national debate have a staff. Some have a large staff. Some have a “social media” person who writes their tweets and interacts with the public for them.

Last summer, when I debated Wendy Kopp at the Aspen Ideas Festival, I found myself in a three-way interchange, emailing with the moderator James Bennett’s secretary and Wendy Kopp’s secretary. I don’t have a secretary.

It is I and my pen, or to be more accurate, my computer and my iPad.

I write as I think, I write what I believe. I try to stick to the facts, as I know them. If I make an error, I’ll say so. I avoid ad hominem comments, and please let me know if I have not stood by that principle.

There’s lots more I could say on this subject, but the bottom line is this: It’s just me.

Diane

Categories Ravitch, Diane

Brave Principals

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2012 //
12

The principals of New York State are amazing. When the State Education Department began creating its “educator evaluation system,” it called together the principals and showed them what it was up to. It showed them a video of guys building a plane while it was flying. This was called, in self-congratulatory parlance, “building a plane in mid-air.” A few principals noticed that the guys building the exterior of the plane were wearing parachutes, but the passengers didn’t have parachutes. The principals realized that they, their staff, and their students were the passengers. The ones with the parachutes were the overseers at the New York State Education Department. For them, it was a lark, but the evaluation system they created was do-or-die for the hapless passengers.

The principals rose up in revolt, led by Carol Burris and Sean Feeney. They wrote a petition and circulated it to other principals. In a matter of weeks, they had the signatures of more than a third of the principals in the state. All objected to the test-score based evaluation, all objected to being the state’s guinea pigs, and all insisted that the state should do some pilots before imposing its best guess on the principals, teachers, and students of New York.

It took tremendous courage for principals to sign the petition. Sadly, they didn’t even get the support of the teachers’ unions of New York State. Indeed, NYSUT told its members not to sign. I can’t explain why. It made no sense to me. Why would teachers want to be judged by the arbitrary rise or fall of test scores.

The principals created a website, newyorkprincipals.org. Lots of people have signed their petition. I hope more do.

One of the brave principals wrote a letter to Commissioner John King yesterday. It was reported in the New York Times blog, Schoolbook. (http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/05/02/long-island-principal-decries-quality-of-state-exams/)

The principal, Sharon Fougner, said the following:

The tests contained:

Unfamiliar, untaught material

Deliberately misleading questions and answer choices

Ambiguous, poorly worded questions and answer choices

Inconsistent directions

Misplaced answer lines

Omitted directional cues

Multiple answers that could be correct

Inappropriately sized work spaces

Extended multiple steps (as many as 5 or 6) in single problems

Incomplete/missing information

Reading levels that are above grade

These errors by Pearson and the State Education Department have caused “confusion, anxiety, miscalculations, distraction, misuse of time, and fatigue.” The “inordinate length” of these exams, wrote the principal, is “beyond the stamina and attention span of eight to ten year olds.”

All of this together adds up to one single conclusion: The New York State Education Department is guilty of child abuse. Let me say it again, this time slowly: The New York State Education Department is guilty of child abuse. And incompetence.

Will anyone be accountable? Don’t hold your breath.

Diane

Categories New York, Principals, Teacher Evaluations

Pearsongate?

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2012 //
3

Teachers and principals discovered yet another error on one of New York state’s mandated tests. This one was on the fifth-grade math test and it required students to know mathematical processes that are not taught in fifth grade. See here:

http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/05/02/state-officials-throw-out-another-pearson-test-question/

Merryl H. Tisch, the chancellor of the New York Board of Regents said that she takes “full responsibility,” and that she  hopes Pearson too will take responsibility. Commissioner John King apparently was not reached for a comment, but he earlier deflected any responsibility for errors on the state tests.

So if those at the top are indeed responsible, will heads roll? Will anyone at Pearson or SED be held accountable? Apparently not. After all, when the State Education Department made an even bigger error and lowered the passing mark on state tests for several years (which SED admitted in 2010), no one took responsibility and no one was held accountable.

To paraphrase the very wealthy Leona Helmsley, who once said that “Taxes are for the little people,” when it comes to state testing snafus, “Accountability is for the little people.” If the scores are flat, teachers may lose their jobs. But no one at SED or Pearson will lose his or her job for what they are doing to a generation of children.

Diane

Categories Pearson, Testing

Was I Blocked?

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2012 //
10

Teachers in the New York City public schools are posting tweets saying that they cannot access this blog on their school computers. One posted a screen shot saying that the school’s filter denies access to this site.

I wonder why?

If anyone is in a New York City public school, pleases let me know whether you can read this blog or any others that I have posted at this location.

There is only one way to find out whether I have actually been blocked, and that’s if people in various schools try to get through.

I have not had the best of relations with the NYC DOE, but this seems way too petty.

Please don’t do anything  you are not supposed to do, like using school time to read blogs. But if you do have a free period, where your life is your own, check this rumor out and let me know if it is true.

Diane

Categories Personal, Ravitch, Diane

TFA and Other People’s Children

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2012 //
11

Mark Naison, professor of African-American Studies at Fordham University, asks whether Teach for America leaders are the Robert McNamaras of this generation?

Categories Education Reform

A Really Cool Event

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2012 //
1

Back when I was writing The Death and Life of the Great American School System, I was looking for a way to characterize Race to the Top. It sounded so familiar to me because its main ideas came direct from the conservative think-tanks from which I had recently resigned. How could I find a way to explain the contradiction: a new Democratic administration embracing GOP themes of testing, accountability, choice, competition?

And then I found a blog written by Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (where I had been a founding board member). Mike said of Race to the Top, “It’s as if a bunch of do-gooders sat together at the NewSchools Venture Fund summit and brainstormed a list of popular reform ideas, and are now going to force them upon the states. (Wait, I think that is how this list got developed.)”

NewSchools Venture Fund is an organization that funds charter schools and entrepreneurs. To cement his link to NSVF, Secretary Duncan named its CEO, Joanne Weiss, to design and manage the Race to the Top. She is now his chief of staff.

Well, that very powerful organization is holding the next summit on May 1-2 in conjunction with NBC’s Education Nation. (http://www.newschools.org/event/summit-2012)

If you want to see the face of education reform in the U.S. Today, this is it. It’s a merger of the charter sector with for-profit sponsors and big foundations. You will find the company that produced “Waiting for Superman,” as well as the new movie “Won’t Back Down,” a celebration of the thus far failed Parent Trigger scheme to persuade public school parents to turn their neighborhood school over to a charter operator.

Be sure to scan the list of donors and sponsors. You will see the elites who have a low opinion of public schools.

Pick your own favorite panel. I think my favorite line is the overall title of the event: “Fifteen million children in poverty: Education Entrepreneurship and America’s Most Urgent Challenge.” I would guess that charter schools and for-profit online programs are the very tools needed to get those fifteen million children out of poverty. But that’s just a guess.

If anyone should go to the summit, please let me know which entrepreneur comes up with the best AP to close the achievement gap.

Diane

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform
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