A reader said that public school parents in Athens, Georgia, created this ad and put it in the local newspaper. Would your parents do this for your school?
Now, that’s parent support!
Archives for the month of: August, 2012
Last week we saw a report from Reuters about the conference for equity investors held at the posh University Club in Manhattan.
And we learned there about the many new frontiers for making a buck by jumping into the public education marketplace.
Here is another article from the same conference, this one in Education Week, reporting with a straight face that the equity investors see new opportunities to make money when the new national tests inevitably produce low scores.
Message: Never let an opportunity to make money off other people’s misery go to waste!
A bonanza, to be sure!
If we let this happen, shame on us.
Shame on state education departments.
Shame on the U.S. Department of Education.
Shame on Arne Duncan and President Obama.
And shame on the investors who want to take a cut of the dollars intended to educate America’s children.
Are they part of the reform movement too?
This administrator calls for greater accountability —at the top.
| Yes, there are many of us in administration who stand with our teachers. The shame is that the people who are causing the real damage are never held accountable. We continue to allow elected officials to erode public education while conveniently blaming teachers. They allow public education to be taken over for profit. When will we hold them accountable for their failure of overseeing the public school systems they are charged with protecting? NCLB has failed and RTTT is no better. Instead of parents blaming teachers, and teachers blaming administrators, everyone should look at the people creating the policies at the top. Let’s evaluate our politicians, governors, and state Ed superintendents by using statewide test scores as their VAM scores for accountability. Their jobs should be tied to test scores just like teachers. |
This one takes the cake.
John White has approved the Light City Church School of the Prophets to get vouchers, nearly $700,000 a year.
The man who runs it describes himself as an apostle or a prophet.
Whatever. People can call themselves whatever they like.
Please read the linked article to see how low the bar is for getting taxpayer dollars from the state of Louisiana.
The state will have no standards for voucher schools. There will be no accountability for voucher schools.
A few months ago, John White told a Reuters reporter: “To me, it’s a moral outrage that the government would say, ‘We know what’s best for your child,’” White said. “Who are we to tell parents we know better?”
Well, he is the state commissioner of education, and he is the one who is supposed to know better. If he doesn’t, why is he in that job?
But John White has no problem setting standards for public schools and holding their teachers accountable.
He thinks that once you leave the public system, no standards or accountability are necessary.
In Bobby Jindal’s world, that’s called reform.
This reader has some good ideas for StudentsFirst’s next campaign, now that the Olympics is over:
| It really disgusted me how Rhee compares education in the US to being in the Olympics and how we wouldn’t want countries like Luxembourg and Hungary to get more gold medals than us, yet they are beating us in education. I mean, seriously? Luxembourg? Luxembourg has a $80,119 GDP and is one of the most wealthy of countries. Their children learn 3 mandatory languages in school, and they only have a 4.5% child poverty rate. Of course, those students are going to be more successful. Hungary, on the other hand, only has a $19,591 GDP. However, when I looked at comparisons in literacy and math, the U.S. and Hungary were close in many areas, usually with the U.S. edging Hungary out a little. Hungary has a 10.3% child poverty rate. The United States has a $48,386 GDP. Much higher than Hungary, but much lower than Luxembourg. The U.S. also has a 22.4% child poverty rate, second only to Mexico, which has 26.2. (I got these statistics from NationMaster.com) To me, one of the greatest factors in education is poverty! It’s kind of like the little dirty secret that keeps getting swept under the rug. The U.S. needs to start addressing this. The school I teach at has a 75% free and reduced lunch population. These kids are more worried about the next meal than the next test. According to the US Census Bureau, “more than one in five children in the United States (15.75 million) lived in poverty in 2010. 2010. More than 1.1 million children were added to the poverty population between the 2009 ACS and the 2010 ACS. The 2010 ACS child poverty rate (21.6 percent) is the highest since the survey began in 2001.” If StudentsFirst really cared about putting their students first, they would put their money into addressing the poverty issue instead of making insulting advertisements like the one with the out of shape Olympian. |
A reader comments, with more wisdom than anything now coming from the U.S. Department of Education. He also explains how to end the reign of error:
The flawed testing approach continues to be pushed without debate because open honest discussion, involving true experts in the fields of child development, education (and ed-research), and valid data gathering/application would reveal painful truths for those behind the brand of reform we are seeing.
Truth1: Increasing the amount of tests as a means of finding and firing bad teachers is a perversion of assessment in education. Assessments are tools for teachers to use in shaping instruction for their students’ individual needs, which vary between students and can change year to year. Once well-funded and empowered, schools identified and addressed these varying needs. Schools have been attacked and de-funded over time, leaving them less able to address the range of needs students have. As the economy has further crippled average families, students come to school with more challenges, the attack on schools and the teaching profession has intensified.The intention of “reformers” to use assessment to attack the profession instead of inform it is undeniable as teacher evals are based mostly on the test results-despite the fact that the brand new CCL standards haven’t been fully integrated with curriculum and the tests being used haven’t even reached final phase of development. Yet the identifying “bad” teachers using this amorphous data has been priority. Truth number one is that reform isn’t really about valid improvements to the education of children. It’s about: 1) control and redirection of public funds, 2) profits for a testing/charter industry that dominates the reform narrative, 3) intimidation of a profession with a long history of middle class empowerment and political activism.
Truth 2: The focus on schools and teachers as the source of educational ills is treating a symptom, not curing the disease. This isn’t a result of misguided naivete or ignorance, it is intentional. There is plenty of data linking economic hardship to family insecurity and disruption to lack of “school readiness” to final educational outcomes. Schools and teachers can work hard to maximize potential and help students surpass obstacles that might otherwise hold them back, but what if policymakers continue creating more obstacles? Well, they ARE creating those obstacles, and they know it. Unfortunately, as policymakers they currently have the power to not only create the obstacles-they also have the power to divert attention and shift the blame.
Truth number 3 is we need to take back our democracy. We can no longer be afraid to be politically active within our schools if we have to protect our students. We need to be heard, we need to vote, and we need as many doing it as we can possibly get.
Anthony Cody, the exemplary science teacher-mentor (NBCT), from Oakland, California, has engaged the Gates Foundation in a dialogue about its agenda.
Anthony was concerned that the foundation has propelled the frenzy to test more, to blame teachers for low scores, and to ignore poverty.
Vicki Phillips of the foundation responded here to his challenge.
And on the same page, you will see Anthony’s response to Phillips.
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On another site, for which there is no link, I saw the following comment on the foundation’s statement to Anthony Cody:
- Right off the bat Phillips presents us with an argumentative frame that does
- not exist — that there are people who “defend all teachers at all costs” —
- and uses that erroneous frame to claim a vaunted “middle ground” where, of
- course, all the “serious work” is being done, implying that anyone who
- disagrees with her agenda is not engaged in “serious work.”
- Then there’s this:
- “The notion that student learning should play no part in teacher evaluation
- systems, or that test scores should be the only measure of teaching
- performance, represent two extreme but unproductive camps.”
- Again, a made-up polarity. No one I know of maintains that “student learning
- should play no part.” She uses this false frame to conflate test scores with
- “student learning” and again imply that her point of view is the only
- “serious” and legitimate perspective.
- The whole emphasis on “multiple measures” is yet another erroneous
- construct. The crux of the matter isn’t whether to use multiple measures but
- whether to include erroneous measures and give them undue emphasis that is
- harmful to teachers and by connection students.
- Finally, she does nothing to contradict the now conventional wisdom that
- evaluation is something done TO teachers rather than WITH them because
- public school teachers can’t be trusted. That’s just my quick-and-dirty assessment of this PR blather.
- Another commenter on the same site wondered why Phillips did not acknowledge the foundation’s role in creating astroturf groups of young teachers who can be counted on to speak publicly against tenure and seniority and in favor of using test scores to evaluate teachers.
A principal sent this comment. TNTP used to be called The New Teacher Project; it was founded by Michelle Rhee. They released a report last week saying that the average first-year teacher is more effective than 40% of teachers with seven or more years of experience:
| In my school and district we are losing some really great educators who take with them a wealth of experience. They are not the tired old teachers who “need to go”. They are the ones who know how to manage a class and how to achieve results. They are the leaders who have taught us how to be better teachers. They are the role models. Experience does count. They don’t worry about test scores, yet they have the best results. Go figure. We can all learn something from them. Sometimes young teachers don’t understand, but those of us who have been here a while recognize their worth. There is a lot of turmoil in education right now. Lots of great teachers, both young and old, are leaving because they are tired of being disrespected by adults in high places. It’s hard to believe this is happening. We have to keep speaking up until the truth is finally heard. |
This post had a hilarious excerpt from a film. It showed a scantily clad man and woman, living in what presumably was prehistoric times. They were hiding and running as to huge dinosaurs fought one another. A reader sent the clip as “proof that dinosaurs ad humans co-existed,” thus proving that evolution never happened. He was joking, of course.
I posted it, readers thought it was funny,p. but now the YouTube video of this segment from the 1950s has been taken down.
Too bad. It was really funny!
Here is the original post. If you ever find the clip, send it to me and I will post it again.
Here is proof that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time.
This could help to support Louisiana’s voucher plan and could even be useful for revisions of the state curriculum.
Be sure to send this to John White, Bobby Jindal and Mitt Romney.
Coach Bob Sikes put together a blog about the corporate supporters of Jeb Bush’s crusade for digital learning.
If you go back and read the report of the “Ten Elements of Digital Learning,” I suggest you scan the acknowledgments and you will find a representative of almost every corporation trying to sell hardware or software to the schools.
The other thing you need to know about the report is that it is based on zero evidence. It cites a US Department of Education study of evidence-based policy for online instruction, and that is supposed to impress the casual reader and make him/her think there is evidence to put every child online as much as possible. But I read that study and it says (p. 53) we don’t know enough about online instruction to make decisions in the K-12 area. There have been only five studies, not enough, the report says.
The accumulating evidence from places like Ohio and Pennsylvania is that online virtual schools are driven more by profit than by a desire to produce better education.
I just finished a chapter on this subject, and feel incensed that so much effort is being expended to spread the gospel on virtual schooling in the absence of evidence about where, where, and to whom. Certainly online instruction is important and necessary, but there is no support in research to have millions of chlldren home schooled in front of a computer, with the virtual school collecting millions of dollars while teachers have classes of 60:1, 100:1, even 200:1, at low pay.
Diane Ravitch's blog 