Archives for the month of: September, 2012
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Who Gets to Pull the Trigger?

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2012 //
8

Rightwing think tanks, ALEC, and the big corporations are excited about the idea of parents “seizing control” of public schools and handing them over to private corporations. But this parent wonders who will be allowed to pull the trigger and who will be left behind:

….. who does and does not have “trigger rights”? My children went to the public schools but have since graduated. Do I still have trigger rights, or did I lose them when my youngest child graduated? Conversely, if your children are not yet school-age do you get a say because any decision will affect your children when they reach school-age? Do people with more children get more votes? Do parents who do not pay property taxes lose their trigger rights? It seems somewhat unfair to make this decision based on a single year, so maybe there should be a vote before each school year begins. Do teachers get a say? What about nurses, social workers, guidance counselors, custodians, and administrators? Do they only get a say if they live in town?

And, OMG, I almost forgot…we definitely need to enact stringent picture ID requirements before trigger voting. I have a driver’s license, but I know one young teacher who does not (she grew up in a big city). Should she apply for a hunting license? If that trigger is pulled, what does the new charter get to keep from our former public school? There are several murals painted by students in years past (my son helped with one). Do they have the right to paint over the murals? So many questions…

Categories Parent trigger, Parents

More Bad Reviews for Anti-Union Movie

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2012 //
20

I will see “Won’t Back Down” soon, I promise.

I don’t want to, but I will do it because I have to.

Meanwhile, movie reviewers are rendering their judgment.

They say it is a lousy movie.

The best lines so far are in the review in the Los Angeles Times:

That’s because unions turn out to be the most pernicious of all the obstacles to healthy schools, worse even than the stick-in-the-mud school board. While no one, not even unions themselves these days, denies that there are things that must be changed about how they operate, the notion of them as total evil only makes perfect sense to companies that believe in unionless, private charter schools that increase profits by paying teachers whatever they can get away with…

Though the film’s pernicious propagandistic bias is irritating and misleading, it can’t be overemphasized that what is really wrong with this film is how feeble it is dramatically. When Nora is trying to decide if she should work with Jamie, she remembers her mother’s question: “What are you going to do with your one and only life?” Anyone who values their one and only life would be well-advised not to spend two hours of it here.

Categories Parent trigger

Mr. Barnz, Please Read the New York Times Review

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2012 //
14

Daniel Barnz, the director of “Won’t Back Down,” continues to insist in various forums, most recently in an article he wrote for Huffington Post, that the movie is not anti-union. It’s just a good story. It has no political agenda. It has nothing to do with the rightwing sponsored “parent trigger” law that it celebrates. It is not a vehicle for union-bashing and privatization of public education. It is nothing like the anti-union documentary (“Waiting for ‘Superman'”) that his producer sponsored two years ago.

The review of the film in the New York Times, written by a regular movie reviewer, not a union shill or an angry parent, calls the movie for what it is:

…“Won’t Back Down” ultimately has no use for nuance, and its third act is a mighty cataract of speechifying and breathless plot turns that strip the narrative down to its Manichaean core. Once teachers give up job security and guaranteed benefits, learning disabilities will be cured, pencils will stop breaking and the gray skies of Pittsburgh will glow with sunshine.

A.O. Scott, the reviewer, says that this movie is evidence that Hollywood is not a “liberal propaganda factory.” The odd thing about the movie is that everyone in it belongs to a union, even as they portray the teachers’ union as the villain.

Did you read that, Mr. Barnz?

Categories For-Profit, Parent trigger, Privatization

How a Smart Tech Guy Got Duped

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2012 //
2

Gary Stager knows more about educational technology than almost anyone I can think of. He is one smart guy. Read this and learn how he got taken in by Amplify, the company run by Joel Klein and owned by Rupert Murdoch.

This is how he begins his article on Huffington Post:

Anyone the least bit familiar with my work over the past 30 years knows that I oppose standardized testing, Teach-for-America, school privatization, merit pay, Common Core Content Standards, mayoral control and get-rich-quick schemes promising to increase teacher accountability or raise achievement with the signing of a purchase order. (read here or here)I have dedicated my life to improving teacher quality by empowering educators to create productive learning environments that amplify the potential of each child. A large part of my work has involved the use of computers as intellectual laboratories and vehicles for self-expression that free learning from the top-down traditions of assembly line schooling.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Klein, Joel, On-Line Education, Technology, Computers

A Hero Principal: Every Principal Should Be This Honest

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2012 //
19

Several readers, including parents in this district, have sent me a copy of this letter written by Don Sternberg of Wantagh Elementary School in Long Island, New York.

Sternberg wrote a letter to the school’s parents at the start of the school year telling them about how the politicians and bureaucrats at Albany were messing up their child’s education.

He wrote:

What we will be teaching students is to be effective test takers; a skill that does not necessarily translate into critical thinking – a skill set that is necessary at the college level and beyond. This will inevitably conflict with authentic educational practice – true teaching.
Unfortunately, if educators want to survive in the new, Albany-created bureaucratic mess that is standardized assessments to measure teacher performance, paramount to anything else, we must focus on getting kids ready for the state assessments. This is what happens when non-educators like our governor and state legislators, textbook publishing companies (who create the assessments for our state and reap millions of our tax dollars by doing so), our NYS Board of Regents, and a state teachers’ union president get involved in creating what they perceive as desirable educational outcomes and decide how to achieve and measure them. Where were the opinions of teachers, principals, and superintendents? None were asked to participate in the establishment of our new state assessment parameters. Today, statisticians are making educational decisions in New York State that will impact your children for years to come.

Standardized assessment has grown exponentially. For example, last year New York State fourth graders, who are nine or ten years old, were subjected to roughly 675 minutes (over 11 hours) of state assessments which does not include state field testing. This year there will be a state mandated pre-test in September and a second mandated pre-test in January for all kindergarten through fifth grade students in school. In April, kindergarten through fifth grade students will take the last test [assessment] for the year.

Excessive testing is unhealthy. When I went to school I was never over-tested and subsequently labeled with an insidious number that ranked or placed me at a Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 or Level 4 as we do today. Do you want your child to know their assigned ‘Level’? What would the impact be on their self-esteem and self-worth at such a young age?

Inevitably, he said, teachers would look at students as more or less desirable because what the students do will affect the teachers’ evaluation scores.

He urged parents to do their part, but he laid the blame for this massive distortion of educational purpose where it belongs: on the State Commissioner of Education, the Governor, and the Legislature.

The new system is a mess. It is an outrage. It is a crime against education and against children. Parents need to know what the state (and federal government) is doing to their children. They need to know how good schools and good teachers are being demoralized.

Donald Sternberg is a hero of public education. He joins our honor roll.

If every principal explained to the parents what the state is doing to their children and the harm being inflicted on them, we would turn this nation’s failed corporate education policies around and let our educators educate.

Categories Accountability, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Reform, Honor Roll, New York, Parents, Principals, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, US Education

Waiver Madness

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2012 //
8

Washington, D.C., has announced that it will set different testing targets for children of different racial groups. According to a story in the Washington Post, this is now common practice among the states that have obtained waivers from No Child Left Behind.

The District and the states are acknowledging that children of color are so far behind their white and Asian peers that they will need more time to catch up. Actually, in D.C., black students will be expected to make more progress than white students so they can catch up with white students.

The story says:

Officials say the new targets account for differences in current performance and demand the fastest progress from students who are furthest behind. The goals vary across much of the country by race, family income and disability, and in Washington, they also vary by school.

At Anacostia High, which draws almost exclusively African Americans from one of the District’s most impoverished areas, officials aim to quadruple the proportion of students who are proficient in reading by 2017, but that would still mean that fewer than six out of 10 pass standardized reading tests. Across town at the School Without Walls in Northwest Washington, a diverse and high-performing magnet that enrolls students from across the city, the aim is higher: 99.6 percent.

Meanwhile, at Wilson Senior High, 67 percent of black students — and 88 percent of Asians and 95 percent of whites — are expected to pass standardized math tests five years from now.

Setting different aspirations for different groups of children represents a sea change in national education policy, which for years has prescribed blanket goals for all students. Some education experts see the new approach as a way to speed achievement for black, Latino and low-income students, but some parents can’t help but feel that less is being expected of their children.

The absurdity of this scenario is that D.C. and the states expect that all children will reach proficiency on normed tests. Normed tests have a bell curve. On a normed test, half will always be above and half below the mean. No matter how hard you try, a bell curve is still a bell curve. There is no district in the nation where 100% of the children are proficient. The children who are most advantaged cluster in the top half; those who are least advantaged cluster in the bottom half. This is true of the SAT, the ACT, state tests, federal tests, and international tests.

And, if you step back, you must wonder why the standardized tests–whose flaws, inaccuracies, and statistical vagaries are well known–have become the measure of all education.

No private school in the nation is subjecting its children to this mad scramble to live up to the demands of Pearson and McGraw Hill’s psychometricians.

Maybe all this seeming madness is just part of the larger scenario to declare US education a failure and find more schools ripe for privatization.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Federal Waiver, For-Profit, Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing, US Education

How Testing Reduces Instructional Time

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2012 //
12

A veteran teacher explains how the testing process affects kindergarten students:

I taught Kindergarten for 23 years. In addition to using imbedded assessment practices during instruction (listening, watching, asking, redirecting, challenging, etc.) I also conducted individual interviews with kids, when needed, to find out what they knew so that I could diagnose problems and plan individual instruction. In recent years my assessment practices became less and less valued by people in charge. Everyone wanted standardized test results that spawned digital graphs about kids. This did not bother me until I found out how much instructional time was lost.

Here’s the reality: You begin the year by testing to obtain baseline scores. One might think this is useful because by testing again at the end of the year you could have a nice graph showing growth. But unfortunately this is not how it is done. Local districts want to see data showing progress along the way so they want tests to be done in between. And most significantly, if a student does not meet the benchmark, you are asked to set up a program to test that child more often, perhaps every month or every two weeks.

When a teacher is testing, there is no instruction going on for that student or any students in the class. Keep in mind that real instruction involves the imbedded assessment practices I mentioned above and must be done by the teacher not a substitute. If someone simply shows kids or tells kids something that is to be learned, this is not teaching. A teacher has to engage with students in a way that will reveal to the teacher what the children are thinking or able to do. Then the instruction moves forward based on this information. Throughout instruction meaning is constantly being negotiated among participants.

Although no child learns anything while taking a test (because the teacher is not permitted to ask questions, challenge or give guidance in any way) the children who need the most instruction end up getting less. They not only lose instructional time when they are being tested, they also lose it when others in the class are being tested. In a typical year, my students lost about 9 weeks of instruction due to testing, perhaps more. Remember, classroom teachers do not test during lunch, recess, specials, special projects, assemblies and other events. We do not test children beyond the school day or year. We test during prime instructional time and therefore it takes days and weeks to complete.

It addition, top performing students who are able to read well beyond grade level take longer to test (passages were longer, responses more in-depth, etc.). So, while spending days and days to obtain scores for exactly how far above grade level these children are, the struggling readers receive no instruction. When struggling readers miss daily instruction their learning degrades rapidly. Also it is important to note that struggling students are absent from primary instruction more than other students for a multitude of reasons.

Teaching really does make a difference and instructional time should be our number one priority. Instead, we are constantly whittling away precious instructional time and then blaming teachers when learning does not happen. So it’s not just about the time spent “teaching to the test” that bothers me, it’s also about the actual time it takes to do the testing that concerns me. It’s a huge problem that should be studied and resolved.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Reform, Testing

Bugs in Tech Heaven

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2012 //
14

The Broad-trained superintendent decided to go all-digital in Huntsville, Alabama.

So he purchased 22,000 laptops and a Pearson online curriculum.

The going has been rough.

Students, teachers and parents are complaining about glitches. A student says that it takes her longer to do her homework because the computer loads slowly. When she saves, her answers disappear. A father complains his son watches pornography, despite the filters. Teachers say the Pearson curriculum is the problem.

Maybe schools will one day be all-digital. But first fix the bugs.

Categories Broad Foundation, Education Reform, On-Line Education

The Absurdity of the “Parent Trigger” Idea

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2012 //
6

The movie “Won’t Back Down” is being heavily promoted by its backers.

But there is lots of pushback from parents and teachers. And the reviews have been almost uniformly bad, including those from non-educational sources.

This article, by a retired teacher, cites many of those reviews and asks a fundamental question: If taxpayers support the school as a public benefit, why should parents have the power to privatize it?

Categories Parent trigger

More on Charters in Ohio

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2012 //
2

A reader writes in response to an earlier post about Ohio charters:

This is sooooooo true. One charter Academy in Toledo is a good example of this. It is run out of Lansing MI and is housed in a closed Catholic school building. There are little people cutouts hanging from a chart high in every classroom. Most are red. Red denotes did not pass the test. Yellow almost passed. Green passed. In the classroom I saw, the math people were all red. For reading, there were three yellow and one green; the rest were red. I think this was supposed to motivate the students, but it didn’t. The children stood at the beginning of the day and recited the school motto, which was about doing your best at all times. It sounded impressive. Once the day started, there was total chaos. Little to no learning happened. And no one seemed to care.

My niece taught at a charter in Cleveland for a year. Money was taken out of her paycheck for medical insurance, and when she needed medical care for a pregnancy, she found out that money was never given to the insurance company. When this was investigated, it was found that the head of this charter had had another charter shut down a year earlier. Yet he was allowed to open a second one. When a legislator was asked about this, his answer was that there was nothing that could be done. Really? If it were public rather than charter, a lot would have been done.

Ohio’s education system has gone to hell in a hand basket. Since our governor’s first unethical plan of action failed- SB5- he wrote things into his budget bill. Teachers are being evaluated according to student test scores and 15 minute walk-throughs, as a form of supervisor observations. They are scored in one of four categories, with only those in the top category getting any kind of a raise. Teachers in some districts have been told only 5% of teachers in the state will be allowed in the top category (the raise getting category), and none will be from their school. If this flies, I’m sure it will then eventually bleed into the private sector. To use their terms, when those of us in the public sector can no longer afford to buy the products made by the private sector, who do they think is going to buy their products?

Counting the days until we vote for governor again.
The scariest part is that Romney’s campaign looks a lot like Kasich’s did. If he gets in, what happened to Ohio will happen to the nation.

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »