Archives for the month of: June, 2012
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More re: GAO Report on Charters and Special Education

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2012 //
2

Matthew DiCarlo at the Shanker Blog is a careful social scientist who does thoughtful analysis of education issues.

His blog today reviewed the GAO report on special education enrollments in charter schools.

The report got lots of attention for finding that about 11% of students in the nation are special education, but charters enroll only 8%.

James Shelton at the U.S. Department of Education was unimpressed by the disparity and basically brushed it off as “a fine point”  and “a relatively small difference” that he would look into one of these days. Of course, given Shelton’s role at the Gates Foundation and Race to the Top, one would not expect him to be exercised about issues in the charter sector. His job is apparently to expand them, not to hold them accountable.

Matthew DiCarlo took a closer look and pointed out that it was misleading to compare national data on special education enrollments to charter data, because so many charters are located in urban districts, where the proportion of special education students is higher than it is nationally.

He takes the example of Ohio, which seems to have the same proportion of special education students in charter schools and in public schools, but this is misleading. When DiCarlo looked at the charter enrollments in the state’s cities, he found wide disparities.

I noticed the same phenomena yesterday when I read about the report and its findings. Last fall, I spoke at an education summit in the Bronx, which is the poorest borough in the city of New York. Most of the borough’s 35 charter schools are clustered in the South Bronx, which is the poorest neighborhood of the poorest borough. The enrollment of special education students in the South Bronx public schools is 19%; in the charter schools in the same area, it is 11%. That is not a small or insignificant difference. Similarly, when I looked at the enrollment of English-language learners, there were nearly twice as many ELLs in the publics as in the charters in an area with many Hispanic families.

There is yet another issue that should be considered when comparing the presence of students with special needs in different sectors, and that is the degree of the students’  disability. Some charter schools take children with mild learning disabilities, but not the children who have severe disabilities. The students who are autistic or need feeding tubes or have other high needs are over-represented in the public schools and under-represented in the charters. That helps the charters show higher test scores and greater gains.

The disparity underlies an important point: Comparing the test scores of public schools and charter schools is an apples and oranges comparison. If they don’t enroll the same children, and they have different challenges, then the comparison is inherently unfair. But there is a larger issue that we should think about. Long-term, what will it mean to education in big cities when the children with the greatest needs are concentrated in the public schools, and those who are most motivated, are the least costly to educate, and have the lowest level of need are clustered in charter schools? Will it mean dual systems, both publicly funded but serving different populations?

Diane

Categories Education Reform

Why Assess the Arts?

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2012 //
10

Nancy Flanagan is one of the nation’s premier teachers and bloggers. Unlike many who opine about education (I include myself in that category), Nancy knows teaching inside and out. She was a music teacher for thirty years and was deeply involved in creating National Board Certification for teachers. Now she blogs for Education Week and she is always informative.

When a Washington, D.C., think-tank person suggested that students of the arts should be assessed by standardized, multiple-choice tests, Nancy was properly incensed. (And so were many of the teachers of the arts who commented on this blog.)

In her commentary, Nancy posed a basic question:

Why would we deliberately advance a worthless (and expensive-to-develop) mode of assessment for something as crucial to kids’ well-being and our own economic vitality as the arts? The humanities are a creative wellspring for individual and social innovation. They cannot–and should never be–reduced to rote, bubbled-in recitation of dry facts. What standardized testing in music and the arts yields is mere quantification of students’ ability to memorize. The tests tell us nothing about how students will apply artistic skill and expression to their real lives and careers. Further–they tell us nothing about the instructional quality of their teachers.

Nancy quite rightly criticizes the view that the only way to “save” the arts is to make sure that they are tested by bubble tests. I have heard the same argument from history teachers, and I think it is self-defeating. If you want to save your subject, don’t sacrifice it on the altar of standardized testing. There is no surer way to discourage students of the arts and students of history than to expect them to be judged by bubble tests. There are certainly far more rigorous and appropriate means to assess skills and knowledge than the cheap and easy computer-based and computer-scored questions.

As I read Nancy’s article, I found myself remembering a segment I saw several weeks ago on 60 Minutes. It was about a ragtag symphony orchestra in Africa. One man who loved orchestral music recruited the musicians (none of whom knew how to play anything), found or begged or made instruments, and taught them to play. The musicians left their daily work to study and practice and play together. The segment concluded with a large number of very joyful men and women–living in a desperately poor nation–playing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”

What a triumph of the human spirit!

Why would anyone give them a standardized test?

Diane

Categories Accountability, Arts Education, Education Reform, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Oh No! I Am a Member of StudentsFirst

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2012 //
23

After I blogged about Change.org dropping Michelle Rhee and Jonah Edelman, I got an email from a representative of Change.org asking me to explain its policy on my blog. I told him my concern was not with its policy, but with the deception involved in signing people up as members of an organization they did not wish to join. On our third exchange of emails, he informed me that I was a member of Students First. He said his records showed that I had signed one of its petitions a year ago. He gave me a website where I could view my member profile, but I was unwilling to click on the link for fear that doing so would reconfirm my “membership.” Maybe the second click would put me in a category of “active” membership.

This is horrifying. I never knowingly signed to join Michelle Rhee’s Students First.

When Rhee boasts of her huge membership, she is counting people like me who were snared without their knowledge. She is using my name to inflate her numbers.

This is deceptive practice. It is fraudulent. There ought to be a way to bring a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission or some other watchdog agency to protest the deceptive capture and misuse of my name and that of many others.

I choose the organizations I join with care and forethought. I didn’t choose to belong to Students First.

Michelle Rhee, take my name off your membership list!

How can I do it without clicking the website of the organization that entrapped me? Is there a place to click that says “remove my name?”

On a happier note, a reader informed me that a Chicago teacher named Jen Johnson started the ball rolling with a campaign called “Change.org: Stop Supporting Union-Busters” Petition.”

We must celebrate every small victory. We must remember that lone individuals can make a difference.

Change begins with one person.

Sometimes change begins with one writer, like Thomas Paine, or one speaker, like Martin Luther King Jr.

Change begins with one and then multiplies. Many people signed the petition, others wrote. I mentioned Aaron Krager in the earlier post. Another post may have played a part in changing Change.org.

Diane

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle, Stand for Children, StudentsFirst

Is Vermont the Best State?

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2012 //
20

I have received many comments from readers nominating their state as the worst in the nation for having enacted legislations that removes due process from teachers or reduces their status or connects their evaluation to student test scores or defunds public education or harms professional educators and the public weal in other ways.

Vermont is different. Vermont still has leadership that wants to improve its schools and support teachers. Vermont decided to turn down the NCLB waiver when it realized that it provided no flexibility, just another bunch of mandates that would be bad for the schools and for children. Vermont doesn’t want to test its students every single year. Vermont realized that NCLB and Race to the Top are not good for students or education.

Are there other states that refuse the enticements offered by Washington, D.C., to create more market-style competition for public schools and to reduce the status of professional educators?

If your state has had the wisdom and foresight of Vermont, please let me know.

The question we must ask is, why is Vermont different? Why has it stood outside the destructive mainstream of education “deform” that has swept the nation?

We can all take heart in knowing that one beacon of sanity remains. And yet how discouraging to know that of our fifty states, there is only one that still wants children to have a childhood and for education to be a time to learn rather than a time to be ranked, rated, and numbered by instruments of limited value.

A reader sent this comment:

Vermont is one of the only states in the country that refuses to get on the bandwagon for corporate ed. reform. The state has a law against charter schools and they refused Race to the top funds. Vermont did try to get a NCLB waiver, but was rejected by Sec. Duncan because their proposal did not include tying student test scores to teacher evaluations or charter schools. Their proposal did include focusing more on creativity, a rich curriculum, and less on testing, but I guess that was not good enough. I’m getting certification in both Mass. and NY, but I may consider going to teach in Vermont. Burlington is beginning to focus more on equity and creating a system similar to what they have in Finland. If it is successful, then maybe people will begin to pay more attention to what actually works.
Please sign this petition to get rid of Arne Duncan:http://dumpduncan.org/

Categories Education Reform, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Death Watch for Public Schools in Michigan

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2012 //
55

Governor Rick Snyder’s administration is closing down public schools in two districts in Michigan and turning the schools over to charter operators.

Michigan has a draconian law that permits the governor to appoint an emergency manager whenever a municipality or school district or other governmental entity is in financial distress. All democratically elected officials are superseded by the emergency manager. Democracy comes to an end. The emergency manager has a free hand to do as he or she wishes. Decisions are made by diktat, with no need to consult with the community whose children are involved. So much for choice.

As context, bear in mind that the governor cut the budget for public schools while giving big tax breaks to corporations. Under its present leadership, Michigan lacks the political will to support public education in every school district. As Erik Kain of Forbes pointed out last year, Governor Snyder cut support for public schools as the same time that he cut business taxes–costing the state nearly $2 billion–by 86 percent.

In Muskegon Heights and in Highland Park, the emergency managers decided that the best way to pay down the debt in the school district was to hand the public schools off to charter companies. The district remains as a shell whose only purpose is to use property taxes to pay off the debt.

That’s how public education will die in two districts. There will surely be more. Fifty school districts in the state are running deficits, and emergency managers have been appointed in three of them–these two and in Detroit.

Meanwhile, two for-profit charter companies have applied to run the schools in Muskegon Heights. According to a local article, they don’t have a very impressive record in Michigan:

Only two charter school operators have applied to take over the schools — the Leona Group, which operates 19 schools in Michigan, and Mosaica Education, which operates six schools in Michigan.

That has some educators concerned.

Only one school among the two charter operators is ranked above the 50th percentile on the state’s top-to-bottom list, which is based primarily on state test scores. Nineteen of the schools are ranked below the 30th percentile, and 14 are ranked below the 20th percentile.

No worry, the state says the goal here is educational excellence and eliminating the debt.

“This is about providing an excellent educational opportunity for students in Muskegon Heights. That’s what the parents are looking for. This allows that to continue while at the same time addressing the crippling financial situation,” said Terry Stanton, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Treasury.

The emergency manager in Muskegon Heights laid off every employee, and the union was dissolved. Teachers in the district had an average annual salary of almost $50,000. They can reapply for their jobs with the charter operators, but may not have the same salary or benefits.

The Detroit Free Press saw this maneuver for what it is: a gamble with the future of 2,000 children and a clever way to suspend democracy and privatize the schools.

A recent study found that Highland Park, Michigan, is one of least fairly funded districts in the United States. The emergency manager plans to select a charter operator by September. No private operator has been named yet.

As I write this story together, I have this unpleasant sensation. I think my blood is boiling.

Diane

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Michigan

This Bridgeport Teacher Remembers His Elite Schooling, Wistfully

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2012 //
10

In response to my letter to Jill Biden, this teacher remembers the school he attended with one of the Biden’s children. He laments that current “reforms” make it impossible to maintain the standards of excellence that he experienced when he was lucky enough to attend a private Friends school as a youth.

I attended a Friends school — one of the Biden’s kids was a few years behind me.

At Friends we received a character building education of topical breadth and intellectual depth.

Our teachers were trusted to design and implement instruction and their assessments of our achievement was held in high regard by top selective universities.

Now I am a mid-career teacher in Bridgeport, Conn. at a school that faces every struggle my own high school did not.  My endeavor is to bring to my students the same kind of educational excellence I got as a lucky scholarship kid at a Friends school. My reputation among my school’s community is that of someone who is bringing this high standard to the classroom.

Race To The Top and Bridgeport’s Chicago-based education reformers will severely hamper if not entirely end this personal endeavor of bringing a Friends caliber education to disadvantaged students.

The best educators in my building and city — those who teach with verve, dedication, and skill– they will be hobbled by RTTT.  The only benefits I foresee will be for the corporations who will deliver the consultants, texts, testing, and charter schools.

One side note about places like a Friends school.  They were $20k/yr when I attended (again, on scholarship)  And I imagine must now run $30k /yr in addition to what a family is paying in property taxes for the public schools their kids are not attending.

Public schools do it for under $10k/yr.  Where do people get the idea that public education spending is bloated?  That idea is pushed by those who will profit by privatization.

Categories Education Reform

Why Do Doctors Make Excuses?

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2012 //
36

A reader sent in a comment about holding teachers accountable for test scores.

He attended a “question and answer” luncheon hosted by the Lafayette, Louisiana, Chamber of Commerce, where Governor Bobby Jindal was the speaker. Jindal came late, spoke fast, and left without answering any questions.

The reader, possibly the only educator in the audience, turned to the CEO of a hospital sitting next to him and asked “if he ever pondered posting his hospital’s mortality rate outside its door.” The reader was “a little surprised at how firmly his ‘no’ response was—-it was as if I asked him to jump off of a bridge.   I was merely trying to make a comparison to cohort grad rates and letter grading systems in our state to the business community.” The reader concluded that “accountability as educators know it will  never be applied to any other type of profession much less within the business community despite their unwavering support of accountability for public schools.    That CEO’s firm ‘no’ response was all the proof I needed that accountability the way we know it will not make anything better….and the business world knows this.”

Another reader liked that comment and added: “had the CEO offered more than his terse response, I suspect his explanation would include that although doctors play a role in a patient’s health, there are a number of other factors that doctors have no control over–patient’s genetics, prior medical history, willingness to follow the doctor’s prescriptions, environment, how far an illness has progressed before the doctor sees the patient, etc. And, of course, his explanation is perfectly valid. For some reason, though, when teachers make the same point regarding students’ test scores, corporate ed reformers are quick to accuse them of making excuses.”

Why do doctors refuse to post their results on their front door? When you visit a cardiac surgeon, ask him or her how many of their patients survived their surgery?

When you go to the dentist, ask how many of their patients continued to get cavities?

Why do they make excuses and tell us that if patients don’t follow orders, don’t blame them? Or if patients arrive with pre-existing conditions, don’t blame them?

Diane

Categories Education Reform, Jindal, Bobby, Teacher Evaluations

Debating Cuomo Plan for Teacher Ratings

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2012 //
22

Governor Andrew Cuomo has come up with a compromise on the issue of releasing teacher data rankings. He wants only parents to see the rankings and data reports for their children’s teachers, but to make public the data for individual classes and schools. This is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t go far enough.

It doesn’t satisfy the tabloids, who want every teacher’s name and ranking to be published online and in print. Like Mayor Bloomberg, they believe that the rankings are an accurate reflection of teacher quality and should be freely displayed, perhaps on “wanted” posters in the post-office.

It doesn’t satisfy me either because I know based on research and experience that the rankings are inaccurate, unstable and will sully the reputation of good teachers. How are parents helped by seeing inaccurate ratings? How are teachers helped to improve, as Bill Gates pointed out in an article in the New York Times earlier this year, if their job evaluations are showed to anyone other than their supervisors?

The rankings, derived from the rise or fall of student test scores, are demonstrably inaccurate. When New York City released its teacher data reports in January and they were published in the media with the names and rankings of teachers, it warned the public to take them with more than a grain of salt because the margin of errors in both reading and math were so large–35 points in reading and 53 points in math. That means that a teacher of math who was labeled a 50 (on a 100 point scale) might actually be at the 15th percentile or the 85th percentile. In reading, the margin of error was so large as to make the numbers utterly meaningless. Statistical analyses showed that there was no correlation between the scores that a teacher “produced” from year to year, and that a teacher who taught both subjects got different grades. All that data, all those rankings were so flawed as to be pointless other than to provide fodder for the tabloids to attack teachers.

Why aren’t the tabloids howling for the release of the evaluations of police officers and firefighters? Why are their evaluations shielded (by law) from public view? Shouldn’t the public have a right to know about their performance?

What about the job evaluations of the top officials at the New York City Department of Education? When will their job evaluations be released? They are public employees and they are paid six figures. What value do they add? How many schools have they improved? What are they doing to strengthen public education? How can the public hold them accountable? Here’s one suggestion: Every time a public school closes, the top officials should lose points on their evaluation because a school closing represents a failure of leadership.

Diane

Categories Education Reform, New York, Teacher Evaluations

The Perils of Teaching in California

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2012 //
6

A reader writes from California about the churn and instability caused by the toxic combination of annual budget cuts and an open door for unregulated charters. I met a teacher in Los Angeles recently who told me he had been “pink slipped” six years in a row, called back each time, then pink-slipped again. What does that do for morale? I think that is called the collateral damage of reform. The glimmer of hope at the end of the letter refers to the fact that Governor Brown is trying to restore a portion of the funding that was cut, and State Superintendent Tom Torlakson–who taught science–is a champion for public education.

And one other notable development in California: the teachers in San  Diego reached a tentative agreement with the district to defer any wage increases in an effort to save the jobs of 1,500 of their colleagues. It would be impressive if some of the technology billionaires in California offered to pay higher taxes to save the jobs of teachers and other public sector employees.

 I am a public school teacher in California and I have watched with horror the past several years as our budgets have been slashed. I have seen good, decent, hard-working teachers laid off every single year and then brought back because, after all, you can’t lay off 50% of a school’s faculty and have 30+ empty classrooms! I am not joking when I say 50%, either. In the current round of layoffs, my school (which has @ 65 teachers – counting counselors, and other certificated staff) saw a layoff list of 25 people. My school district, which serves a huge population of native Spanish-speaking students has lost 60 million from its budget in the past 3 years alone.

When Governor Terminator was in office, it was a sheer disaster! I was pleased and continue to remain pleased at Governor Brown. This tax proposal is almost a last ditch effort. If it fails, it will literally be armageddon in some/most of our schools.

Speaking of charter schools, my former principal left to go open a new charter school (she was the first administrator – not the person actually funding it). The charter school was open for @ 5 months before closing because, in a typical lack of oversight, the charter founder had embezzled millions from the school. Every single teacher who left tenured positions (including my former principal) lost their jobs when the school district took over the failed charter school. 10 years ago, this wouldn’t have been a total disaster as there were plenty of teaching jobs. Today, there are thousands of out of work teachers – including those from this charter school.

California is truly a paradox, but I believe it may be on the right path.

Categories Budget Cuts, California, Education Reform, Los Angeles

Is Tennessee the Worst State?

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2012 //
8

A reader in Tennessee nominates his state as the worst in the nation in terms of implementing the usual stale ideas to “reform” the schools.

How could it not be in contention to win the race to the bottom when it was one of the first states (Delaware was the other) to win the Race to the Top? That guaranteed that Tennessee would adopt every untested and harmful policy idea that Arne Duncan’s team could think up.

Conservative Republicans control the state, and they like the Obama agenda. Go figure. Could it be because Obama’s agenda is a more muscular version of NCLB? Republicans love the tough accountability, they like cracking the whip on the teachers, and they love privatization of public services.

Where other people (like parents and teachers) look at schools and see children, the reformers in Tennessee (and elsewhere) look at schools and see entrepreneurial prospects and a steady stream of government revenue.

So naturally the state is committed to evaluating teachers based on student test scores, and those who don’t teach tested subjects get evaluated by some other teachers’ work. Makes sense, no? And surely there will be lots of new charters in Tennessee to “save” the children.

Then, to add to that state’s woes, the new state commissioner of education, Kevin Huffman, is not only Michelle Rhee’s -ex, but was formerly the PR director for TFA. That guarantees a very big foot in the door for the ill-trained novices who only Teach For Awhile. Huffman hired a charter school leader from Houston to take over the state’s lowest performing schools. Tennessee will soon be charter school paradise, or at least paradise for TFA.

And then there is all that Gates money in Tennessee, now deployed to figure out how to have an effective teacher in every single classroom in the state. Watch Tennessee overtake Massachusetts on NAEP rankings. Wait a minute, isn’t Tennessee the birthplace of value-added assessment under William Sanders, the agricultural statistician? Didn’t Tennessee start measuring value-added by teachers in the 1980s? Why aren’t they already number one?

Yes, Tennessee is a contender.

Last year, TN and our TfA commissioner of ed and Michelle Rhee’s ex, Kevin Huffman, rushed into use a similar teacher evaluation system purchased from the Milken Foundation (the same Michael Milken of securities fraud fame) that measures teacher competence on a 1 – 5 Likert scale, aptly named TEAM. 1-5 is the same crude metric I used to rate my hotel stay and my car dealership. Sensitive to the effects of nuanced teaching practices, it’s not. If scored according to the TEAM trainer, on 15% of all teachers will gain or keep tenure protection. 85% will be subject to firing.
Tied into the teacher’s average TEAM score is 40% VAM scores from the TCAP state assessments in reading in math. Teachers who do not teach reading and math were forced to use the VAMs of the school TCAP average or arbitrarily assigned either the school reading or math average score. Recommendations by an “independent” committee to improve the system suggested adding more tests to include all subject areas.
With the republicans well in control of all branches of government in TN, teachers here have lost their collective voices. In 2010, Ramsey with the help of ALEC ended tenure, collective bargaining, auto deductions for TEA dues, and kicked all teacher reps off of the state retirement board. Three of the largest school systems in the state have Broad trained superintendents. The day after Walker in WI survived his recall, TN’s Lt Gov Ron Ramsey announced he’d propose vouchers in the 2013 legislative session.
For profit, online teacher education is proliferating. Requirements for certification to teach are being dumbed down at the same time requirements to raise achievement are increased to levels nearly impossible. Further, state university teacher education programs are being evaluated according to their graduate’s VAM scores. Huffman posted the VAM scores on the TN website and guess which teacher ed program scored the best? Teach for America! The results were so skewed and improbable that several schools requested the raw data, only to be rebuffed, with great umbrage, by the state.
TN politicians in collusion with wealthy privatizers in both the Democratic and Republican parties are using the full force of state power to crush involvement of teachers and parents in decisions about our children’s schools. God help us all in TN.
Categories Education Reform, Race to the Top, Teach for America TFA, Teacher Evaluations, Tennessee
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