Archives for the month of: July, 2012
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Judge Rules City May Not Close 24 NYC Schools

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2012 //
11

The city and the teachers’ union went to court to battle over the city’s plan to “turnaround” 24 schools by firing thousands of teachers.

The judge listened to the arguments, retired to her chambers, and returned seven minutes later to say that she was sustaining the arbitrator’s decision. The city may not lay off the teachers. It violates their contract.

This battle involves more than 3,000 teachers and 30,000 students. No one is sure how the schools will be staffed when schools opens in a few weeks. No one knows which teachers have found other jobs and which will return.

The schools, having been labeled as “failures,” have suffered enormous blows to their reputation in the community. If past experience is any guide, parents will be reluctant to enroll their children in a school that has been targeted for closure and that is now on life support for another year.

Just keep saying to yourself, that is reform, this is not reform, this is reform, this is not reform.

Or just call it chaos.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, NYC, Unions

Astonishing News from Philadelphia

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2012 //
11

As readers of this blog know, the School Reform Commission of Philadelphia has recommended a vast expansion of charter schools.

It is acting on the recommendation of the Boston Consulting Group, business management consultants with no deep knowledge of education but a deep love of privatization.

The business leaders of Philadelphia are pushing hard for the privatization plan.

But today, the U.S. Attorney for Philadelphia charged a major charter school leader in Philadelphia with multiple violations of the law:

A charter school mogul was charged today in a multimillion dollar fraud case by the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Dorothy June Hairston Brown, who received accolades for students’ test scores and gained notoriety for collecting large salaries and suing parents who questioned her actions was indicted on multiple counts of wire fraud, obstruction of justice and witness tampering.

Brown, a former Philadelphia school district principal, founded three small charter schools in Philadelphia: the Laboratory which has campuses in Northern Liberties, Overbrook and Wynnefield; Ad Prima in Overbrook and Planet Abacus in Tacony.

In addition, in 2005 she helped create the Agora Cyber Charter School, which provides online instruction to students from across the state in their homes.

An article in another paper says that $6.5 million was misappropriated.

Really, in light of the latest charter school scandal in Philadelphia, can the city’s leaders continue to demand the creation of even more unregulated, privately-managed schools? 

Categories Accountability, Boston Consulting Group, Philadelphia, Privatization

ALEC in Salt Lake City This Week

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2012 //
13

I just learned that ALEC is holding a meeting this week in Salt Lake City.

One block away, ALEC critics will meet to discuss privatization, school vouchers, and other ALEC activities that undermine the public sector.

If you are in SLC, consider stopping by.

Categories ALEC, Privatization

Are We Addicted to Our Blinking Screens?

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2012 //
15

Guess who is warning that we have become too addicted to computers, cell phones, and all those other devices?

Read here.

I may be addicted but I don’t think it is the usual kind of screen-addiction.

I love to communicate and exchange ideas.

Before I started this blog, I would tweet about 50-80 times daily.

It wasn’t for the joy of tweeting. I never tweeted to say “I am now at the corner of Broadway and 30th street,” or “I am sitting down to dinner.”

I communicated stories I had read that I wanted to share.

Other people share with me, and that’s how I am able to write about what is happening in other cities and states and occasionally other nations.

I read Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows. He worries that computer addiction is ruining the brains and sensibilities of all of us, especially the young.

He described a period of time–maybe it was a week–when he shut down everything and lived without the Web. It sounded idyllic.

But I noticed that he soon was right back, doing all the same things.

Where do you think this is heading? How is it affecting younger people? What does it mean for our future?

Categories Technology, Computers

Proof that Campbell’s Law Works

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2012 //
5

A reader in Florida saw that the school grades were phony, as noted in an earlier post. But no matter how many times the grades were shown to be meaningless, everyone accepted them, organized their schools to get them, changed their instruction to raise those grades. worked to get the bonuses, worked to avoid the sanctions, on and on.

And still the grades tell us which schools enroll poor kids and which kids don’t.

There is a lesson here. Something about adjusting to absurd demands and therefore making them seem reasonable.

But if you step back, they are still absurd.

Giving a school–a complex organization with many moving parts–a single letter grade is insulting, demeaning, and stupid. It is the product of people who know how to count but don’t care what they are counting.

Having spoken out against Florida’s school grades since they were detected by my ears so many years ago, I took my concern further and created non statistician produced data about their failures and circulated it. Sadly, these failures were buried just as professor’s findings that indicated the system was a bomb. I listened to comments such as well, you may not like it but Tallahassee does or appreciation of the money it brings to Florida’s poorly funded schools. Very few persons of power had much to say and those that did, seemed to embarassingly acknowledge that my concerns were valid.Occasionally, I would hear a reference from a board member which alluded to my concerns. I watched the paper for years try to educate the public as to the bogus nature of these farcical indicators. Mostly, I heard the empty boasts of nothngness ring on and on. I wondered why and I hypothesized that Donald Campbell’s Law was in action. After all, the state’s school grades are high stakes. Districts scramble to earn meaningless boasts and a bonus money flow. Districts scramble to avoid unfair sanctions. Gaming the system becomes a solution. Looking good became the goal rather than doing good. Children are pawns and parents provided information of a poor nature, This is called an accountability system. Although such a system is to be fair, valid, and reliable, Florida’s system is not and thus seems to be unfit for the terms of both A+ Plan and accountability system. We see a lack of reliability in the most interesting jump from 80 to 30 % in proficiency rates in the three grade levels tested being changed in the course of a phone call to be no longer 30% but near the 80% level after all.This change did not necessitate a change in answers thus the results had remained the same and the outcome oh so different..so much for reliability. (Certainly somethng seems amiss when the state allowed comparison of two different tests with variations in administration, weighting factors, scoring, and cutoff scores.) Skewing by SES reveals an unflattering picture on fairness and interferes with validity as well since instructional quality is not the indicator being measured.
Florida’s schools and students have always deserved better.
Categories Accountability, Campbell's Law, Florida

Teachers Must Educate Their Legislators

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2012 //
13

A reader in Wisconsin has an excellent suggestion. What do teachers do best? They educate. Time to educate your legislators:

I just passed this information along to my state representative here in Wisconsin.  She’s a Republican who leans to the choice, accountability, measuring aspects of school…not to mention voted to end collective bargaining with Scott Walker’s Act 10.  Instead of writing her off as the enemy, I’ve instead developed a working relationship with her where we’ve exchanged ideas and she is working with me to try to bring about some change in Wisconsin’s education reform movement which is pretty typical of the reform movement in other parts of the country.  I would highly recommend to the readers of your blog to do the same, especially if their state legislators are advocates of the Neo-Reform movement.  After all we are teachers, and it is the difficult ones that we should be trying the hardest to reach and to help them discover for themselves knowledge and enlightenment.   Also, I recently gave her a copy of the “Death and LIfe of the Great American School System” and assigned homework to read pages 1-14 in one week (2 pages per day).  Also, I told her there would be an assessment.  I’m going to let her choose between a multiple choice test I will offer to design that will require her to recall facts, information, dates, names, policies, etc…or an assessment we will make together consisting of dialogue, maybe answers to questions we ask of one another, perhaps questions to which we have no answers but lead to other questions, etc,,,you know, the good stuff.  If anyone is interested, I’ll keep you posted through this blog if that’s OK with you Dr. Ravitch.  LIkewise I’d like to hear if anyone tries out my suggestion.

Categories Teachers and Teaching

Stop the Lies about U.S. Education (Reading)

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2012 //
17

I get so tired of reading about the “decline” and “failure” of American education.

It is not true.

A reader wrote the other day to say that NAEP scores in reading have been flat since 1971. She read it somewhere.

I went to the NAEP reports, the ones produced by the federal government, and here are the facts about NAEP reading.

Sources:” The Nation’s Report Card Reading 2011″; “The Nation’s Report Card Mathematics 2011”; both printed in Washington, D.C., by U.S. Department of Education. Also “The Nation’s Report Card: Trends in Academic Progress, Reading 1971-2008, Mathematics 1973-2008”

Share them:

On the long-term trend NAEP, which goes from 1971-2008:
White students age 17 gained 4 points from 1971-2008
Black students age 17 gained 28 points from 1971-2008
Hispanic students age 17 gained 17 points from 1971-20082008 is last date that long-term NAEP was given.

There is also Main NAEP, which has been given since 1992.

Only given to 4th and 8th grade, not to 17-year olds.
Improvement for all groups in this 20 year period, from 1992-2011.
Whites in 4th grade: % below basic dropped from 29% to 22%
Blacks in 4th grade: % below basic dropped from 68% to 51%
Hispanics: 4th grade: % below basic dropped from 62% to 49%.

Don’t believe everything you read. I am quoting from government documents.

The gains on NAEP reading are incremental but significant.

The gains on NAEP math are dramatic.

Reading changes more slowly than math, because math is taught in school, and reading reflects both home and school.
Categories Accountability, NAEP

Michelle Rhee Is Shameless

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2012 //
76

I have resisted watching the ad that Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst created and played on NBC.

A reader sent it to me, and I relented.

It is disgusting.

It is a lie.

It smears America.

It smears our teachers and our students.

It makes fun of obesity.

It is homophobic (the flabby man in the ad is portrayed as effete and engaged in rhythmic gymnastics, an Olympic sport open only to women)

A few facts:

1) the US was never first on international tests. When the first test was given in 1964 (a test of math), our students came in 11th out of 12.

2) On the latest international tests, students in American schools with low poverty (10% or less) came in FIRST in the world

3) As poverty goes up in American schools, test scores go down.

4) The U.S. has the highest child poverty rate–23%– of any advanced nation in the world.

Michelle Rhee says nothing about poverty, which is the most direct correlate of low test scores.

She is shameless.

Categories Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle

One School’s Secrets of Success

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2012 //
23

A  high school in the Bronx has figured out how to be high performing.

It’s not hard.

It pushes out kids with low test scores.

It expels them.

It works!

107 students started as freshmen, but only 58 graduated.

The Bronx Health Sciences High School has a 95% graduation rate.

Studies will  point to it as an example of how an inner city school can succeed.

Who knows, maybe a special on 60 Minutes or Fox News is not far behind.

 

 

Categories Accountability, NYC

A Dialogue with the Gates Foundation

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2012 //
15

Anthony Cody has emerged, in the eyes of many people, as a voice on behalf of the teaching profession.

This is quite amazing in itself because he is an experienced middle school science teacher in a high-poverty district, Oakland, California. He does not lead an organization. No one elected him. He has a regular blog that is hosted by Education Week. Last year, he was recognized by all as the driving force behind the Save Our School march in Washington. He is a leader because he speaks to the issues that concern teachers, and he is eloquent.

Anthony has just opened what he says will be a constructive dialogue with the Gates Foundation. Like many others, he has been disturbed by the foundation’s promotion of testing, by programs that imply that teachers are at fault for low test scores and that the right evaluation system will fix the problems, and by its support for Teach for America, which sends in a steady stream of novices to schools serving the neediest children.

What is especially valuable about his post is that he has a clear description of a school that is doing the right thing, where teachers are reflecting on their work, talking together about how to do it better, and where they are able to have small classes. They are treated as professionals, and they invest themselves in doing their work better. Professional autonomy makes them better professionals and better teachers.

The link above will take you to the opening part of this dialogue.

Feel free to raise questions and I will make sure that Anthony sees them.

 

 

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teachers and Teaching
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