Archives for the month of: August, 2012
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Shocking: Common Sense in Iowa

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
5

The Des Moines Register published an important and wise editorial. It shows that someone in the mainstream press is still thoughtful and wise.

It seems that Governor Terry Branstad wants to see a much healthier Iowa. So he is urging people to lead healthier lifestyles.

Funny, he didn’t blame the medical profession of Iowa. He didn’t set standards for their daily practice. He didn’t pledge to fire the bottom 5-10% of doctors.

The editorial begins:

Gov. Terry Branstad has talked repeatedly about making Iowa the healthiest state in the nation. To accomplish this, he wants residents to eat better, exercise and “take responsibility” for their lifestyles. He has not suggested Iowa doctors do a better job. There have been no proposals to pay physicians in a different way or require a minimum grade-point average for incoming medical students.

Why not? Because such proposals are obviously ridiculous. No one would lay the responsibility for the complicated task of improving the health of an entire state on the professionals working in health care.

So why is the governor fixated on teachers when it comes to the complicated task of improving education in Iowa?

The governor blames teachers for student achievement or lack thereof and has a raft of proposals on what teachers should do to shape up.

He doesn’t say that poor health is the doctors’ fault. But low test scores are the teachers’ fault.

Let’s hope that Governor Branstad sees the illogic of his views and begins to treat teachers as professionals, for all the reason laid out in Iowa’s leading newspaper.

Categories Accountability, Teachers and Teaching

Test Scores Drop in Pittsburgh, But Why? UPDATE!

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
12

Test scores dipped in Pittsburgh for the first time in five years, and the graduation rate is flat.

Here are some possible reasons.

Budget cuts.

Teacher layoffs.

Budget cuts and layoffs mean larger class sizes.

Schools will be closed, and teachers are uncertain about where they will be assigned.

One thought: budget cuts and turmoil do not enhance learning.

Both cause anxiety among teachers and undoubtedly among students as well.

Time for leaders in Pittsburgh to think some more.

Newsflash! This tweet just arrived:

More to it than turmoil & budget. Gates driven reforms not working. Community misinformed. Teachers blamed.

I forgot that Pittsburgh is one of the districts that received a big grant from the Gates Foundation ($40 million) and adopted the Gates’ approach: data-driven instruction, Gates-style teacher evaluation, etc. Pittsburgh was one of the Gates’ prize districts. We will wait to hear what Bill Gates says about this.

It seems clear by now that the Gates Foundation has never reformed any district, but has no hesitation telling districts what to do so that every teacher is in the top quintile.

Their constant meddling makes you long for the days when all they wanted to do was create small schools, not tell everyone what to do all day.
Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teachers and Teaching, Testing

This is the Point of Test Prep: Not to Think

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
0

A reader realizes something important:

I feel like a pawn piece on a 30 year old chess set, who has just been awarded sel-awareness and now undstands he has been manipulated by an agenda far bigger then himself his entire life. I remember over 20 years ago in high school studying each year for the Regents exam, and buying the red Barron’s book for each subject so I could take practice exams that would clue me in to the type of questions I should expect- and more importantly the strategy behind the questions, so that I would not have to think as hard about the content, answer the questions faster, and finish the test on time. That was the beginning for the educational landscape that exists today. The same went for SAT prep, and later GRE prep. Companies making money on showing us how we could beat the test by thinking like the test maker instead of fully being able to process and synthesize the knowledge. Higher ordered thinking requires more time and manpower to assess, and therefore more costly to test developers, so we get sold tests that that do not measure what they claim to measure, and individuals spend hundreds to thousands of dollars for test prep to cheat themselves out of learning the material in the first place. This begs the question, why do we need to learn the material in the first place, if the commercial industry is encouraging us to cheat on the assessment, for a price, in the first place?
Categories Testing

The Most Important Book for Our Age: Update!

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
25

Reader Duane Swacker reminds me to tell you that the most important book for our age was written fifty years ago.

It is Raymond Callahan’s Education and the Cult of Efficiency. It was published in 1962.

It may be hard to find. Get it from the library.

It describes the “efficiency movement” of the early twentieth century, when administrators developed check lists for everything that teachers do.

The university efficiency experts swarmed the schools. That was also the time when standardized testing was adopted by many school systems and tracking became a popular feature. Businessmen wanted the schools to be more efficient. Many commissions reported on how schools should use time more efficiently. Many commissions recommended ways to cut the budget of schools.

Read this book.

A tweeter sent this scan of chapter 5: https://webspace.utexas.edu/hcleaver/www/330T/350kPEECallahanCh5ExpertsTable.pdf

Categories Accountability, Education Reform

Another Chance to Sell Stuff

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
2

A very interesting report by Maureen Downey on her blog in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about a school in Washington D.C.  that will try to raise its low test scores–fast–by turning the kids over to online instruction for half the day. The discussion about the glories of online learning was marred by technical glitches and miscommunication, but no matter.

The best line in the story came from a D.C. public school teacher who knows the school in question well and writes:

Kramer has some students with severe and unaddressed behavioral problems, a significant group (four classes and 1 Emotionally Disturbed) of Intellectually Challenged students, along with a high percent of special needs students (about 35%) that have been formally identified.

I’m willing to venture 10-15% of unidentified students would also qualify. Too bad the class sizes for these kids were larger than what should have been under DCPS guidelines, Blackmon consent, and the WTU contract. With that said, these kids need individual and human instruction and interaction, not a computer.

But, hey, why ask teachers what kids need? What do they know?

Categories Education Reform, On-Line Education

Will Fitzhugh Believes in Student Accountability

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
5

Will Fitzhugh created a publication called The Concord Review many years ago. It publishes excellent student historical research. If you read these history papers, you would think that some of them had been written by scholars with many degrees. It is amazing the quality of work that students can write when they have the motive and the opportunity.

Over the years, Will has written often about the importance of encouraging students to work hard and to take academics seriously. He created a “National Writing Board” to promote student research and writing. He speaks about “varsity academics.” He knows that when students have the chance to see their work published, they are inspired to do their best.

One other thing about Will. He quit his regular job as a history teacher to create and produce The Concord Review. This is a publication created and sustained by his passion. He has tried repeatedly to get money from foundations and has been turned down again and again. He has sought government grants, but no interest there.

Here is a fine sample of his work as a writer and thinker. Will reminds us that if students don’t do their best, teachers can’t make them.

Teachers know this. Parents used to know it. Only our nation’s policynakers think that teachers are solely responsible for what students do or don’t do.

 

Categories Accountability, Curriculum, Students

Grassroots Effort in Chicago for Elected Board

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
2

After nearly two decades of mayoral control in Chicago, it is clear that it doesn’t improve schools.

The board is appointed by the mayor,  and the public has nothing to say about who sits on the board and no way to contest its actions.

As in New York City, mayoral control means that the public has no role in public education.

Under this system, Mayor Daley started Renaissance 2010 (run by one Arne Duncan) and the results have been barely noticeable.

One thing for sure: Renaissance 2010 did not produce a renaissance; 2010 has come and gone.

Chicago is still in trouble.

People are beginning to wonder whether an elected board could be any worse than one-man rule.

They wonder whether an elected board might be willing to listen to parents and community members.

And they are gathering petitions to put the question on the ballot.

This must frighten the mayor. Can he rally the public to disenfranchise themselves again?

Can he persuade the public to believe that all these years of stagnation is progress?

Categories Chicago, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Emanuel, Rahm

A World Without Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
22

This article was published in 2007. David Gelernter, a brilliant computer scientist at Yale with strong conservative views, asked why we could not have a world without public schools.

Imagine every school run by private entrepreneurs, private managers, religious groups, whoever, whatever.

Or every student with a voucher.

Why have public education at all?

Sometimes it seems that this is the true goal of faux reformers today: a world of privatized schools, perhaps with a few public schools remaining as repositories for the students that no one wants. Sort of like New Orleans today.

I read this article when it appeared in 2007 and remember being astonished by its audacity. It basically suggests that democratic control of education is a failure, and that the private sector is superior.

Of course, this was before the collapse of the economy in 2008, caused entirely by deregulated private banks and greedy individuals. It takes a vigorous public sector to rein in the predatory greed of some institutions and individuals. Not every private institution is greedy or predatory, but why should we trust our children to the whim and competence of the private sector?

We now see private equity investors looking at the schools as opportunities to make money. This is alarming, because whatever profit they extract is money taken away from the education of children. And we know that they will aim to cut costs by increasing class sizes or using technology to reduce the number of teachers.

It bears mentioning that every nation with a high-performing education system has a strong public school system.

Public institutions are committed to equity. Private institutions seek excellence, but they operate in a market that is guaranteed to produce winners and losers, not equity. If markets produced equity, no one would ever lose money in the stock market and the market would only go up, never down.

Our challenge is to pursue the changes that strengthen our public schools and nurture both equity and excellence.

As it happens, we have ample evidence that neither charters nor vouchers have produced either equity or excellence.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, US Education

Rhee Supports Republican Candidates in Florida

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
25

I can’t understand Arne Duncan and President Obama’s infatuation with Michelle Rhee.

Rhee says she is raising $1 billion, and we know that she is spending in state after state–to support Republican candidates.

In Wisconsin, a swing state, she gave to Republicans.

She gives to Republicans because they are likeliest to support her anti-union, anti-teacher, anti-public education agenda.

She just gave money to some Republicans in Florida, which is a swing state for President Obama.

Can anyone explain the President’s and Secretary’s fondness for this woman who is supporting those who will fight Obama?

 

 

Categories Duncan, Arne, Obama, Rhee, Michelle

How NCLB Redefined Teachers

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
8

From an article in Salon (to which I linked yesterday). This is the passage that many people identified as most relevant to their own lives:

“Since 2001, when, for the first time in the history of federal education policy, George Bush’s No Child Left Behind linked school and teacher assessment — and cash rewards — directly to children’s standardized test performance, teachers have been, too often, nothing more than the getters of the scores. What matters in this calculation isn’t the person in front of the class, what his expertise is, what he thinks, about anything. Teachers are no longer the scholars. They are not wise or trusted. They are not valued for their knowledge or ingenuity, but for their ability to abide, to “buy in,” to “manage” a classroom, punch the biometric clock and agree to all things. They are the middlemen, only, the vehicle through which pre-set processed information is handed along. The vehicle that would rarely question an administrator, let alone carry a sign. The vehicle that can be replaced, as I was, when my principal ‘released me from my assignment.'”

Categories Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teachers and Teaching
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