Archives for the month of: May, 2012
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Who Is Reading My New Blog?

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2012 //
11

For the past couple of years I thought about having my own blog, but I didn’t know how to do it. Then I read someone’s blog on WordPress.com, and there was a button saying something like “press here and start your own blog.” And I did it a few weeks ago, and thousands of people have logged on since then.

This is what is so great. Aside from my main readership, which is in the U.S., the blog has readers in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the U.K., Japan, Russia, Nepal, Turkey, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Sweden, India, and elsewhere.

That is pretty wonderful. We are all concerned about the future of education. And whether education will create a better world or a world of test-taking robots and corporate profits. I vote for the former. I will continue to speak out and write against the latter.

Diane

Categories Ravitch, Diane

To My Critics

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2012 //
10

I enjoy give and take with people who disagree. I have always believed in freedom to speak, freedom to disagree, freedom to teach and freedom to learn.

I block three kinds of things on Twitter:

1) porn

2) ads

3) insults

I believe it is possible to have a discussion without insulting the other person. I don’t do it (I try not to, anyway), and I won’t stand for others insulting me. Well, I can’t stop them but I don’t have to listen to insults. That wastes too much of whatever time I have left on this earth.

The other thing you should know is that I have reached this very wonderful time in my life where I am of an age (nearly 74) where I feel free to express my views without worrying if everyone will approve. I don’t want a job, I can’t be fired, I don’t want a grant.

I have spent forty years studying and writing about education. I know a lot of things because I lived through them. I want to share what I know. If I am wrong, I’m sure that people will correct me and I’ll correct myself.

So please feel free to tell me that I’m wrong, if you think so. But be civil. As I try to be.

Diane

Categories Personal

How Does Rhee Sleep at Night?

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2012 //
3

The latest report on Michelle Rhee shows her collecting millions of dollars from Wall Street financiers, assorted billionaires, and mega-foundations, all to redesign American education as she sees fit. www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-education-rheebre84e1oa-20120515,0,7834441.story

She has become a convenient vessel for the most rightwing governors who want to dismantle public education and reduce the teaching profession to at-will employees.

How can she sleep at night knowing that through her efforts, millions of teachers will live in fear and insecurity, knowing that their job depends on their students’ scores on lousy tests? That’s quite a legacy.

How can she sleep at night, knowing that she is promoting for-profit entrepreneurs whose first interest is profit, not children?

What exactly is her credibility for redesigning American education? She left behind a school district with the largest black-white achievement gap of any city tested by the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress. The average black-white achievement gap for big cities is about 30 points; in the District of Columbia, after Rhee’s tenure, it was over 60 points.

Her IMPACT program is discredited by the day. Scores went flat after it was imposed by Rhee.

We have not heard the last of the massive cheating scandal that occurred on her watch.

In my one encounter with her, last summer in a panel discussion on Martha’s Vineyard, I found that she just repeated the same stale slogans about teachers and poor performance. She seemed woefully unaware of current research. She looks for applause by bashing teachers. She has chosen to be a tool for those who want to privatize public education and undermine the teaching profession.

It’s really a shame. She could have used her moment in the sun to improve public education and to help those who work in our nation’s classrooms. She has chosen not to.

Diane

Categories NAEP, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

Is Memphis Next to Go?

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2012 //
2

I just got a great comment on an earlier post this morning. It is a great comment because it proves to me that the corporate reform movement is on the move and must be stopped before it wipes out public education. Here we see the nefarious hand of Boston Consulting, already at work dismantling  public education in Philadelphia, now bringing their corporate wizardry to Memphis. Why don’t these guys fix American business? Have they forgotten the catastrophic collapse of the stock market in 2008, brought on by excessive deregulation? What makes them believe that add any value to education?

I have been reading your blog for some time. Whether it is Philadelphia, New York, Camden or other system being “reformed”, Memphis is a twin. We just received our teacher evaluation scores that unfortunately include the ridiculous “stakeholder perceptions” as 5% of our score. What you said in this post is exactly what we are experiencing. To make things even more ridiculous, our teachers were given their ratings with last year’s value added data even though it is this year’s data that actually counts. We will all get new scores sometime this summer when the beloved Pearson and Randa Corp. get the data reports finished. Teachers are being threatened, intimidated and maligned in the media here based on evaluation ratings that are completely trumped up. Through all of this Boston Consulting is advising a planning commission charged with “unifying” our city and county school systems. This is of course a front for dismantling our urban system and turning it over to charters and other entities including those associated with the Gulen movement. I read my life everyday in your posts.
Categories Boston Consulting Group, Philadelphia, Tennessee

The Worst 8th Grade Math Teacher in NYC?

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2012 //
5

Aaron Pallas is one of the most insightful commentators on education in the nation. He teaches at Teachers College and if I were a student there, I would want to study with him. Not only is he smart, he is fearless. His regular columns in the Hechinger Report are “must” reading. His latest is about a teacher who was identified by New York City’s “teacher data reports” as the absolutely worst eighth grade teacher of math in the city. (http://eyeoned.org/content/the-worst-eighth-grade-math-teacher-in-new-york-city_326/).

Pallas shows how her rating has nothing to do with her performance as a teacher. She teaches gifted students and was a victim of her own success. Her students did so well last year that they did not meet the scores that the city’s computers predicted for them this year. But every one of them took and passed the state’s Regents exams.

The teacher, Carolyn Abbott, makes the interesting point in the article that the tests are high-stakes for the teacher, but not for the students. These students are so far advanced beyond the expectations of the state tests that the tests are almost a joke for them. But not for her. She is leaving teaching and going to work on a doctorate and then probably into college teaching.

Pallas writes, quoting Abbott: “I love to teach,” she says. And she loves mathematics. Ultimately, she decided, the mathematics was more important than the teaching, although she envisions teaching mathematics at the college level in the future. “It’s too hard to be a teacher in New York City,” she says. “Everything is stacked against you. You can’t just measure what teachers do and slap a number on it.”

When will the authorities in New York City and Albany and Washington, D.C., and in state education departments across the nation recognize that they have created a monstrous, counterproductive and utterly harmful means of evaluating teachers? Are they wise enough to recognize the errors of their ways?

Diane

Categories New York, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Charters Stopped Here

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2012 //
0

This year, a strong push for charter legislation was turned back in Alabama, Mississippi, Washington, and Kentucky. It was interesting to read the bold claims made by charter advocates, promising that charters would solve the education problems of the state. No doubt the proponents will be back next time, especially in states with conservative Republican governors, who seem determined to introduce school choice regardless of evidence from other states.

Here is an example of the misleading and frankly untruthful propaganda that failed in Kentucky: http://www.freedomkentucky.org/index.php?title=Charter_schools. Here was one Kentucky response: http://www.keepkentuckylearning.com/sites/www/Uploads/Files/2012Session/charterSchools12110.pdf.

Why anyone believes that opening charter schools for 5-10% of a state’s children will solve its problems is puzzling. Why anyone thinks it is a good idea to bring in for-profit organizations to skim off the best kids in the poorest communities is puzzling. Why anyone thinks that charter schools will not damage small communities is puzzling. Why anyone thinks it is a good idea to create a dual system of schools, both drawing down the same funds for public schools, is puzzling.

It is surprising, in light of the accumulation of studies and findings that charter schools typically do not get different results unless they spend more, that the same claims are repeated again and again.

Despite the claims of ideologues, competition does not make public schools stronger. When public schools and charter schools compete for the same limited dollars, public schools lose because they don’t get the extra funding that philanthropists, rightwingers, and financiers pump into the competition, nor are they able to choose their students as charters do, nor may they push out the ones that don’t get good enough test scores, nor can they limit the numbers of students with disabilities or those who don’t speak English. The costs of running public schools don’t go down when students leave for charters, so public schools end up laying off teachers and cutting programs.

What does this phony competition have to do with improving education?

Diane

Categories Charter Schools

Anti-Testing Movement Gains Momentum

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2012 //
7

The movement to slow down or stop or reverse high-stakes testing is moving forward at a rapid pace. This past week, the Houston Independent School Board endorsed a resolution opposing the overuse and misuse of standardized tests (http://blog.chron.com/k12zone/2012/05/hisd-joins-anti-testing-movement/). The resolution has now been endorsed by about 450 school boards in Texas, representing nearly half the state’s students.

The Texas resolution picked up steam after Robert Scott, the state commissioner of education, blasted the misuse of tests earlier this year. He said that testing had grown into the “be-all, end-all” of education and had become “the heart of the vampire.”(http://goo.gl/Az246)

Scott stepped down recently but it turns out that he spoke for vast numbers of Texans who are sick and tired of the tests that now control education and children’s lives.

Parents in Florida are now on board the anti-testing train, as are parents in New York.(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577406603829668714.html?mod=WSJ_hp)

New parent organizations opposed to high-stakes testing seem to be forming in many cities and states.

I recently posed a question on Twitter that is relevant to this development. I asked, what happens in your district if children vomit while taking the test? I got many answers from teachers about the policy in their district. In some, the test must be placed in a plastic baggie and preserved. In others, the child must immediately retake the test. There were all sorts of variations on what to do when test anxiety causes a child to lose his or her breakfast.

Test anxiety is only part of the problem. Pineapplegate opened a national discussion about the quality of the tests and why they  are used to decide the fate of children and their teachers.

Diane

Categories Florida, New York, Parent Groups, Testing

The Most Idiotic Reform of the Week

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2012 //
10

Can you believe this? A story in the Washington Post reports that kindergarten students in Georgia will be asked to evaluate their teacher’s performance. The five-year-olds’ judgments will help to determine whether their teachers get a bonus or get fired http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/student-surveys-may-help-rate-teachers/2012/05/11/gIQAN78uMU_story.html.

Have we lost our minds in this country? At long last, are we totally insane on the subject of teacher evaluation? I know that the Gates Foundation has encouraged the idea that student surveys should be used to judge teachers, along with test scores and other so-called measures. For what it’s worth, I think it is not a good idea. In college, in high school and in middle school, teachers will be wary of asking too much of their students, for fear of losing their favor. If they assign too much reading or if they are tough graders or disciplinarians, their students might retaliate by giving them a low mark.

If teachers must seek their students’ approval, how does that make school better?

To rely on kindergarten students to judge their teachers brings this idea to its lowest possible level. At what point does a bad idea get revealed as sheer idiocy?

Diane

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Georgia, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

How to Get Rich Quick in Education

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2012 //
3

Most people who go into education don’t expect to make a lot of money. If they had that expectation, they would be demented, since teaching is not known as a profession that is high-paying.

But yes, there is a way to get rich in education, and it is not by becoming a teacher.

Become a bill collector of college debt! That’s the ticket! John Hechinger discovered that one collection agent made $454,000 last year by dunning students to pay back their loans. His boss made over $1 million. Several other debt collectors in the same agency made more than $300,000 annually. How cool is that? (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-15/taxpayers-fund-454-000-pay-for-collector-chasing-student-loans.html)

It’s a well-known fact, documented again recently in the New York Times, that student loans now exceed one trillion dollars. Pursuing hapless students and collecting what they owe turns out to be a way to fast riches.

Why struggle to get your students to learn when you can pursue them to pay back their debts?

In a sane world with sane and smart education policies, the federal government would assume a larger portion of the cost of higher education, so that those who want to learn more were not crushed by student loans.

But our government decided some years back that education was a consumer good, not a basic human right, so the consumer should shoulder most of the burden.

This is short-sighted. I now encounter many college graduates waiting on tables, clerking in stores, delivering rental cars, and doing all sorts of make-work, just trying to pay back their student loans.

Why should anyone get rich on the financial misery created by bad government policy?

Diane

Categories Higher Education, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt

The Failure of Corporate Reform (2)

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2012 //
2

It turns about that Houston has been awarding test-based bonuses for years. It turns about that tying test scores to scores has not been good for teachers or students. It turns out that the ratings jump around from year to year. They are inaccurate, unreliable, and unstable. Value-added assessment, as everyone recognizes, creates massive pressure to raise scores on standardized tests of questionable value. The more pressure, the less reliable the scores. The more pressure, the more teaching to the test and the more cheating.  (http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/houston-you-have-problem)

Value-added assessment is inherently incapable of producing better education because it does not measure better education. It only measures test scores. Higher test scores are a byproduct of better education. If you aim for the scores, you miss the target. The target is deeper understanding, greater knowledge, more thoughtful writing, more careful observation, a greater love of learning. The very act of measuring destroys the target instead of bringing it closer.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Houston, Testing, Texas
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