Archives for the month of: February, 2013
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Florida: Not Enough Money to Pay for Common Core

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2013 //
15

Not many people in the U.S. are as enthusiastic about the Common Core as Jeb Bush and his far-right Chiefs for Change.

One of his chiefs is Tony Bennett, who lost his superintendency in Indiana because of a popular revolt against the Common Core.

No problem, Bennett landed on his feet in Florida (thanks, Jeb!) where he could continue the battle for Common Core. Why is Jeb Bush so excited about Comon Core? He told business leaders last year hat he expects the new standards and tests will show just how dreadful public schools are. This opens new opportunities for new products, charters, and vouchers.

But Florida has a problem. It doesn’t have the money to pay what the Comon Core will cost. What to do?

Education leaders worry schools won’t be ready for new standards

By Leslie Postal, Orlando Sentinel
6:00 PM EST, February 18, 2013

Florida schools are scrambling to be ready for new Common Core academic
standards – and the new computer-based tests that go with them – by 2015.

At their meeting Monday in Orlando, some members of the State Board of
Education questioned if schools had made enough progress training teachers
on the language arts and math standards and on preparing for a new batch of
online tests.

“It’s now February. We have be ready to roll the next calendar year,” said
board member Kathleen Shanahan.

The state’s new “readiness gauge” shows more progress on the standards than
the technology, as many schools still don’t have the computers, bandwidth or
high-speed Internet access needed for the tests and the state’s overall
“digital learning” push.

The State Board requested more than $400 million for new school technology
in the next year, but Gov. Rick Scott has proposed a smaller hike of $100
million.

“One hundred million won’t get done everything we need to get done,” Barbara
Jenkins, superintendent of Orange County schools, told the board.

Education Commissioner Tony Bennett praised the new standards, which 45
states have adopted, as academic guidelines that “will transform the way our
students learn.” The new tests, he said, were key to making sure they are
well taught.

But he said there are “complexities” to implementing both, among them the
“technology readiness” of the 22 states, Florida included, that plan to use
the new tests from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College
and Career. They are to replace FCAT math, reading and writing exams.

He said within the next few months his staff will devise a “Plan B” in case
implementation cannot proceed as planned by 2015.

orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-schools-common-core-technology-201
30218,0,5142892.story=

Categories Bush, Jeb, Chiefs for Change, Common Core, Florida

Forget the Oscars, Here Are the Bunkum Awards

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2013 //
11

Each year, the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado presents its annual Bunkum awards.

These are awards that acknowledge the very worst think tank reports of the year.

Be sure to review previous winners of this not exactly coveted dishonor.

Drum roll, please!

The “Three’s a Harm” award goes to…(open the envelope)…the Friedman Foundation!

Here is a quote from the ceremony itself:

“After being shut out of the 2010 and 2011 Bunkum Awards, four-time winner Friedman has returned in spectacular fashion. Seldom does a report hit the “trifecta:”

  • Erroneous information
  • Faulty reasoning
  • Inspired chutzpah

The problems begin with the report’s claims that test scores and dropouts have not shown any visible improvement between 1992 and 2009, during which time school staffing increased 2.3 times. Even setting aside problems with the staffing claim itself, our reviewer points out that the report’s fundamental premises asserting no improvements in test scores and an increase in the drop-out rate are flat wrong. In reality, there has been clear improvement in NAEP scores for all student subgroups, particularly students of color and younger students. And despite the change to a more stringent definition of drop-outs, graduation rates have increased, helping to raise college attendance to historic highs.

Soaring on the wings of flawed reasoning, with a strong updraft of chutzpah, the report’s author jumps from his platform of sham evidence to deliver three unsupported recommendations: a call for class size increases, a call for cuts in administrative and teaching staff and a call for increased school choice. As our reviewer points out, US public school class sizes are larger than those in our “competitor” OECD countries and are, in fact, larger than the idealized and attractive small classes in the private schools the Friedman Foundation touts. Small class sizes are apparently only bad and wasteful when they are in public schools. Similarly, there is the inconvenience that charter schools divert a higher proportion of their spending into administrative largesse.”

Accordingly, not only does the report’s call for increased school choice have no visible relation to the data, it undermines two other recommendations from the same report. It uses bogus information to draw ungrounded causal conclusions that in turn lead to an unsupported series of recommendations that are in conflict with one another. Our judges were amazed.”

 

The second Bunkum award is titled: “The ‘Trust Us, There’s a Pro-Voucher Result Hiding in Here Somewhere.”

Another drum roll! Among many contenders, the winner is: The Brookings Institution and Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance for “The Effects of School Vouchers on College Enrollment: Experimental Evidence from New York City.”

Again, to quote from the citation for the award:

“These authors wander aimlessly around a data wilderness, searching for positive evidence about school vouchers. Their report attempts to make the case that New York City partial vouchers of $1,400 per year to attend private elementary schools for three years had later positive impacts on college attendance, full-time college enrollment and attendance at selective colleges for African American students. It received lavish media attention, including a foot-stomping commentary by the report’s authors in the Wall Street Journal that scolds President Obama for what they regard as his outrageous failure to line up behind voucher policies.

To help understand the problems with this report, let’s all mentally travel to Sunnyside, Nevada, which hit a high temperature of only 14°F on January 17, 2012. Even while the world was experiencing record heat, Sunnyside posted a record cold for that date. If we wanted to distract attention from overall warming trends, we might lead with this and other cherry-picked data. It’s an old trick that often works, if nobody pays attention to the overall trends and if nobody questions the cherry-picking.

Yet this is essentially the approach used by the Bunkum-winning Brookings report, which finds positive college-related impacts for African American students (but not for other students) who had received vouchers back in elementary school. The researchers, of course, had no a priori reason to think that African Americans would benefit in this way from vouchers, when other students do not. They simply explored the data, found lots of results showing no voucher benefits and then found this one (akin to Sunnyside, Nevada) that helped support their advocacy of vouchers…Buried on p. 12 of the report is the statement that for the total sample, there was “a tiny insignificant impact.” As for the claims of a positive effect on college attendance of African Americans, there were no statistical differences between ethnic groups. Yet the authors chose to trumpet a positive effect for African Americans.”

The third award–the “Noblesse Oblige” award– went to the Public Agenda Foundation for its report “What’s Trust Got to Do With It?”

In this bizarre report, Public Agenda recognized that parents don’t like it when their local public schools are closed, but they need to be “educated” to what is best for them. Or as the award committee wrote:

“Reading this report, one learns about a problem that few of us knew existed. Apparently, there is a great deal of confusion in disadvantaged communities where wealthy strangers have arrived laden with school-turnaround gifts. The patrons of these communities are inexplicably and unjustifiably seen as patronizing—or even as destructive intruders. Fortunately, the Public Agenda Foundation has stepped up with this report which outlines ways to help members of these communities to get their minds right.

The report examines why citizens have proprietary attitudes toward their community school and why they resist external “change agents” who are intent on improving those schools for the citizens’ own good.

In the view of this report, these uninformed and parochial parent attitudes are obstacles to the re-making and improvement of community schools. According to its authors, “Many parents do not realize how brutally inadequate local schools are.” As a result of their ignorance, parents have raised irrational and unwise objections to firing teachers due to low test scores or to their school being closed, privatized, broken-up.”

The “Scary Black Straw Man” Award goes to: The Center of the American Experiment for “Our Immense Achievement Gap: Embracing Proven Remedies While Avoiding a Race-Based Recipe for Disaster.”

The Awards Committee wrote:

“The nature of this irredeemably awful report is betrayed in the title, which seeks to alert readers to the evidently toxic combination of policy ingredients that, in the fevered imagination of the authors, amounts to a “race-based recipe for disaster.” Moreover, the imagined carnage would not be confined to the kitchen. In the apocalyptic metaphorical landscape of this report, aspects of our transportation system are also at risk: A “train wreck” resulting in massive “liabilities” of “billions of dollars” is the likely result of state policymakers colluding, in their promotion of race-based school reform policies, with advocates for busing and school funding. Our judges quickly checked the acknowledgements section to see if Chicken Little was listed as an advisor.

This exercise in hysteria was precipitated by a Minnesota Department of Education report on concentrated poverty and segregation, along with three other reports published by equity-focused organizations. These reports suggest policies such as a continuation of existing pro-diversity efforts, establishment of state standards for when equity could be considered achieved, a sharper focus on existing programs, and the encouragement of voluntary fair housing and magnet school programs.”

There you have it, folks. More evidence of advocacy disguised as research.

My one disappointment in the awards ceremony was that I was hoping that the Brookings Institution would win special recognition for firing me last June because I was “inactive.” As it happened, on the same day I was fired, my latest book was #1 in social policy on amazon.com, a statistic that often shows a high level of activity.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers

Heckuva Job, Reformers!

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2013 //
28

There is this motley group of people and organizations in the U.S. who call themselves “reformers.” Few of them are educators. Most are corporate leaders, pundits, think tank thinkers, or rightwing politicos.

They say they want to “fix” education but their main goals seem to be to belittle the people who actually work in schools and to close down public schools in high-poverty districts.

These self-named reformers (did GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz write their playbook?) have been in charge of federal policy since the passage of No Child Left Behind. President Barack Obama built his Race to the Top program right on top of the NCLB approach.

And what’s the result?

The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher 2013 says the troops are stressed out, demoralized, and doing their best to survive. What kind of general would go into a crucial battle with his heavy artillery pointed at his own troops?

Actually, the survey includes both teachers and principals. Both are beaten down by the Bush-Obama reforms. It seems that the non-educators and entrepreneurs decided that to impose their ideas without bothering the people who do the daily work.

Three-quarters of principals say their job has become far too complex. Half of them feel stressed out lost daily. Their job satisfaction has declined, and about one-third of them are thinking of quitting.

Despite the constant reformer sniping and whining about “bad” teachers, 98% of principals–the ones with boots on the ground–have a positive view of their teachers.

But we have all seen those Hollywood movies that tell us teachers suck, and teachers have seen them too.

The reformers’ nasty portrayal of our nation’s teachers has had the following result:

“Teacher satisfaction has declined to its lowest point in 25 years and has dropped five percentage points in the past year alone, from 44% to 39% very satisfied. This marks a continuation of a substantial decline noted in the 2011 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher; teacher satisfaction has now dropped 23 percentage points since 2008.”

Principals and teachers think they can implement the Common Core standards but only one out of five educators (or fewer) feel “very confident that the new standards will raise achievement or better prepare their students for college and careers.

Among high school principals and teachers, only 11-15% of principals and teachers are very confident that the Common Core will help their students.

Bottom line: a workforce in the schools that is increasingly demoralized, stressed out because of the demands imposed on them by politicians, and worried that they and their students are being set up to fail by clueless reformers.

When will the CEOs of the “reform” movement be held accountable for the harm they are inflicting on students, teachers, and principals?

Categories Accountability, Arts Education, Common Core, Principals, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Illinois: No Class Size Limits for Special Education?

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2013 //
86

Please don’t say this is school “reform.”

The state superintendent of education in Illinois wants to remove class size limits for special education.

Time to ask why the richest nation on earth can’t afford to provide a free and appropriate education for children with the greatest needs.

Categories Illinois, Special Education

Today! Three Million Page Views!

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2013 //
48

Today, this blog passed the three million page view marks.

That represents the number of times someone has read a post here.

The blog started April 24, 2012.

Thank you, readers.

We will continue to learn from one another.

We will continue to stand strong for a high-quality education for all.

We will continue to advocate equality of opportunity.

Thank you!

Categories Ravitch, Diane

How Kasich’s Budget for Ohio Hurts All Schools But Especially Poorest

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2013 //
9

Governor John Kasich has made clear that he wants to privatize the schools of Ohio as much as possible with vouchers, charters, and online schools. His new budget reflects his attitude toward public education.

This report came from Jan Resseger in Cleveland. Jan works tirelessly on behalf of equity and social justice.

It is likely you have been getting mixed messages about Ohio’s proposed school funding plan. The political rhetoric is designed to confuse you. How to sort out the facts and how to consider the moral implications of the plan that will allocate opportunity among Ohio’s children?

First, forwarded below is an alert from the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding. You’ll remember them as the DeRolph plaintiff group. The point being made here is clear and simple. Of course poor districts will get more from the state than the wealthiest districts, even though the proposed formula for this biennium rewards rich districts more than poor districts. All of Ohio’s school funding plans going back over a century deliver more money to poor districts. That is a primary function of a state funding formula… to make up at least to a tiny degree for disparate property taxing capacity across local school districts. Back in the 1990s, the Supreme Court of Ohio found four times that Ohio’s formula did not do a good enough job of equalizing access to opportunity.

The problem with this year’s budget proposal is that it doesn’t deliver anywhere what is needed to make up for vast disparities in local property taxing capacity. This means that school districts in wealthy communities will continue to have plenty while the poorest rural and urban districts won’t have nearly enough. This means, for example, that despite passage of a 15 mill levy last November, Cleveland probably still won’t be able to afford to reduce class size enough or hire back all the social workers who were laid off two years ago.

It is appropriate here to remember the words of political philosopher Benjamin Barber: “Equality is not achieved by restricting the fastest, but by assuring the less advantaged a comparable opportunity. Comparable in this matter does not mean identical. The disadvantaged usually require more assistance to compete. Adequate schooling allows those born disadvantaged to compete with those advantaged.”

Here also is a link to an analysis of the proposed state budget by an alternative newspaper in Cincinnati. It is a fair and balanced analysis.

In a constitutional, thorough and efficient system of public common schools, all students and all districts should be winners when a state budget bill is crafted. The state has the constitutional responsibility to secure a thorough and efficient system of public common schools for the benefit of all of Ohio’s school children. So why should there be any losers?

State administration officials, in regard to their state budget, had said such things as:

Students in every zip code deserve a quality education
If you are poor you will get more, if you are rich you will get less
The district-by-district spreadsheet revealed that poor districts typically will not receive more state aid than the current amount. The administration officials then said:

We were not looking for a specific per pupil funding number-there is no magical number
We are not attempting to arrive at a cost amount per pupil
Poor school districts receive more total state money per pupil
A historical perspective is warranted. Poor districts have received more state money per pupil than rich districts since at least 1906. SB 103, enacted April 2, 1906, provided state funds to poor districts on top of the state subsidy of $1.85 per pupil for all districts. In May 1908, HB 1302 appropriated $45,000 “to assist with the maintenance of weak school districts.” A $50,000 appropriation, via HB 561, was enacted in May 1910-again, to put more state money in poor school districts.

The state’s first foundation program (Ohio Foundation Program) was enacted in 1935. The Foundation Program Act provided additional funding to poor districts in addition to the state “flat rate” per pupil amount to all districts. The legislature revised the foundation law in 1947 but the result remained the same-more state aid to poor districts.

In August 1975 the legislature enacted SB 170 which included the equal yield formula. The premise was to yield more state funds to poor districts. Equal yield was repealed in the early 1980s in favor of a return to the foundation program. The equal yield formula failed because it was grossly underfunded.

The idea of more funds for low wealth districts is obviously not new. However, even with more state funding per pupil provided to low wealth districts, the total per pupil revenue available to low wealth districts is much less than high wealth districts. Since, in general, low wealth districts will receive no increase with the proposed state budget, the equity gap will widen.

The proposed budget for FY 14 & FY 15 is a loser for all districts. In general, most school districts will be receiving less state and federal money than they received in FY 11. K-12 public education will not benefit from an improved Ohio economy under the state budget proposal and thus a greater burden will be shifted to local revenue sources.FY 2014 and FY 2015 STATE BUDGET PROPOSAL:

Rich districts, poor districts, which are the winners?

Ms. Jan Resseger
Minister for Public Education and Witness
Justice and Witness Ministries
700 Prospect, Cleveland, Ohio 44115
216-736-3711
http://www.ucc.org/justice/public-education
“That all citizens will be given an equal start through a sound education is one of the most basic, promised rights of our democracy. Our chronic refusal as a nation to guarantee that right for all children…. is rooted in a kind of moral blindness, or at least a failure of moral imagination…. It is a failure which threatens our future as a nation of citizens called to a common purpose… tied to one another by a common bond.” —Senator Paul Wellstone, March 31, 2000

Categories Budget Cuts, Ohio

The Fundamental Flaw of the Common Core

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2013 //
34

Since I wrote that I could not support the Common Core, several readers have written to say that I criticized the process of its creation and implementation, not its content. My response to more than one reader was that means and ends both matter. You can’t do the right thing in the wrong way. You can’t suspend democratic process for what you think is the good of the people. Good things imposed by force tend not to stick. (See my thoughts–written in March 2014–about “The Fatal Flaw of the Common Core Standards“, which demonstrates that they violated every protocol of standard-setting and ignored due process, transparency, the right of appeal, etc.)

This reader explains her objections to the process:

My thoughts on the CC:

Subtexts: Close Reading of the Common Core

As ridiculous as it sounds, my resistance to the common core standards is disconnected from its content. The document, itself, is of far less concern to me than its genesis and its prospects. This past-future duality is where the perils of the common core lie; therefore, it is critical to consider where they emerged from and where they are leading.

The common core materialized as a tool of the political elite and the private sector. The common core was neither sought nor developed by educators or those who care about students or the future of the common good. The common core is meant for political gain and economic profit. This matters because the origin of a movement affects its implementation. Despite elevated rhetoric surrounding the common core, its underlying assumptions about what counts as knowledge, literacy, and culture will exacerbate – not ameliorate – inequality.

Although necessarily speculative, the future of the common core is also suspect. It is certain, however, that national assessments will follow this attempt to realize a national curriculum. While assessment is an essential component of the teaching-learning process, standardized assessments have limited utility and vast, destructive defects. The common core, as the basis for creating a national, profitable system of assessments that purport to measure student learning and teacher effectiveness, is revolting.

And, perhaps, this initiative will provoke a revolution among those with expertise about education. The common core is simply a tool. On paper, it is neither good nor evil. However, like any tool, it requires critical analysis before it is used. With respect to its creation, educators must ask: Who made this tool and why? Who paid for its design, construction, and distribution? How was it made (under conditions of brutality and oppression, or in a collaborative, participatory environment)? Looking forward, we must reflect on the negative effects of standardized assessments, particularly on marginalized students, and ensure that the common core does not fulfill its potential to do further damage to future generations of students.

I love to write, but I don’t want to use a pen that was made by imprisoned children. And, despite its sharp point, I do not intend to puncture someone’s eyeball with my pen. Like my pen, the common core is a tool. And, like my pen, its origins and its prospects matter.

Julie Gorlewski
State University of New York at New Paltz

Categories Common Core

Carol Burris: My Concerns about the Common Core

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2013 //
30

Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, New York, explains her concerns about the Common Core. She previously wrote a book about how to implement the standards and now wishes she could retract it.

She writes here:

Diane,

I am coming to the same conclusion regarding the CCSS despite the fact that I have advocated college readiness for students during my entire professional career. The CCSS, as they are being implemented, are not about college readiness for all–they are about a testing system that will sort students into different pathways. When I first saw the standards, I thought that they were full of promise. I thought that they could be used to gently guide instruction in a supportive and equitable way, as described in the book that I co-authored–Opening the Common Core. I now wish that I could rip that title off the book. The CCSS have morphed into a punitive testing system that has a narrow definition of what a student should demonstrate on a test in order to claim they are college ready. But college readiness is not, nor has it ever been, about testing. It is about giving students rich, challenging learning experiences. See Adelman’s Answers in the Toolbox (1999) to see the research that supports what true readiness is.

There are five skills in the CC ELA standards–reading, writing, speaking, listening and collaboration. All are important for college and career readiness. Yet, only the first two will be tested, and tested at a level so rigorous that no teacher will have time to spend on the other three. This does not have to be. The IB, for example, assesses all five. The difference is that the IB trusts teachers to score their students’ performance during the year and so those skills can be assessed. The tests of the CCSS are inextricably linked to evaluating teachers by test scores so they cannot trust teachers to assess students’ speaking skills or collaborative skills. I do not think this is coincidence. I think the architects of this reform realized that the tests were going to be so difficult that unless they tied teacher job security to test results, they would not get the narrow curriculum and the drill that would be needed to get the desired scores. This does a terrible disservice to all of our students.

I have looked closely at the 8th grade math test sampler for NYS. The questions on topics are more difficult than the questions on the same topics on the Algebra Regents given in high school for the graduation standard. Last year only 73% of NY’s students passed that Regents. This disjointed, out of sync testing program that is based on the ideals of David Coleman and others, rather than on the reality of developmental learning for a diverse body of NY students is wrongheaded and destructive.
Mr Coleman earned considerable fees for his consultation to the New York State Education Department ( over 60K in a few months). Last year, he went to the College Board for a starting package of 750K. The College Board is now selling CCSS prep curriculum through Springboard, and former employees are Regents Fellows developing the tests. Clearly the Common Core has been quite profitable for Mr. Coleman and others. However, that profit is being made at the expense of our students.

It is all very tragic, and it did not need to be this way at all.

Categories Common Core

An Inside-the-DOE View of the NYC CREDO Study

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2013 //
35

An insider in the New York City Department of Education was disturbed to read the New York Times’ editorial praising the CREDO study of charters in New York City. She knew that the data on the public website of the Department of Education does not support the CREDO analysis.

Here is her own analysis, based on DOE’s own data:

A New York Times editorial Saturday praised a new study claiming that through the 2010-11 school year New York City charter schools have produced better results for students than other public schools. Of course this study did not mention the investigative reporting by Reuters proving that charter schools have truckloads of schemes to turn away and kick out students who might bring down their numbers. See that story here.

Nonetheless we took the report on good faith and attempted to verify its claims using the New York City Department of Education’s own data sets that can be found here: http://schools.nyc.gov/Accountability/tools/report/default.htm In these data sets charter school outcomes are compared to those of similar schools. Similar schools are schools that educate comparable students based on incoming test scores and other criteria. We decided to spend some time examining these data sets for the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years. There are the years in which the NY Times claimed charter schools had “whopping” results. But is it true? Sadly the NY Times has been fooled.

Let’s start with elementary and middle charter schools during the 2009-10 school year. In that year the average student results on the English exam for charter schools in New York City placed them at the 32.5th percentile of similar schools. Looking at students who scored as “proficient” on the English exam charter schools were at the 31.4th percentile of similar schools. And when looking at how charter schools helped their students improve as compared to prior years (in other words: student growth) they performed dismally, ranking at the 20.1st percentile.

But how about math? Maybe charters don’t do such a good job with English but do a better job in math. Well they do, but still performed worse than about 60% of public schools with similar student populations: ranking at the 42.3rd percentile for average student test scores, the 37.9th percentile for students scoring “proficient” on math, and coming in at the 44.8th percentile for student improvement in math.

In 2010-11, the school year in which the study cited by the New York Times claimed the best performance by charter schools, the truth is that charter schools continued to do a much, much poorer job for students than other schools with similar students. In English they ranked at the 35.1st percentile for average student test scores, at the 36.7th percentile for students scoring “proficient” and at the lowly 28.6th percentile for student growth. Math was slightly better: 51.5th percentile for average student scores, 55.4th for student “proficiency,” and 52.2nd for student growth. And this is with the charter school practice of kicking out students right before testing time as shown in this expose http://www.edwize.org/middle-school-charters-show-alarming-student-attrition

So where does this leave us? Charter schools, in fact, did much, much worse than similar schools in NYC in English and about average in math. If you average the numbers for 2010-11 together, charter schools are doing 16.5% worse than the average similar school in English. And, using the same calculation, they do 3% better than the average similar school in Math. It would appear that much, much poorer performance in English and barely better performance in Math does not support the claim that charter schools in New York City give superior results, whatever the New York Times might say. It should also be pointed out that these comparisons are based on ACTUAL students unlike the study cited so approvingly by the New York Times, which invented virtual students to do their “comparisons.”

How about high schools? Maybe charter high schools in New York City are doing a “whopping” job there. Again, unfortunately for students, they do not. Using the data set available on the New York City Department of Education webpage here: http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/C8903442-BA48-4248-B4CE-156FAA2D8929/0/2010_2011_HS_PR_Results_2012_03_16.xlsx we find that in 2010-11, for the first time, schools were rated based on how well they were preparing students for college. And how did charter high schools do on those ratings? Only 14.9 percent of the charter high school students met the college ready standard as compared to a 32.3 percent average in similar high schools. Only 31.4 percent of charter high school students took and passed a college preparatory course as compared to a 42.8 percent average in similar high schools. And only 52.8 percent of students enrolled in college as compared to a 61.2 percent average in similar schools.

What does this all mean for education? We must start to evaluate the success and failures of initiatives such as charter schools truthfully without letting politics get in the way. We owe this to students. Unfortunately, the response from charter schools, their protectors and funders will probably be a redoubled effort to screen and selectively prune students at charter schools to make their numbers look better. They will continue, with the support of the editorial page of the New York Times, to bash public schools. Instead of committing to improving education for all students and giving all schools the resources to do what we know helps all kids (strong curriculum, small classes, a pleasant school environment, high quality after-school programs, embedded systems of social-emotional and health supports) they will continue to play politics with public education and the futures of our children.

Categories Charter Schools, New York City

How You Can Help the Garfield Teachers

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2013 //
6

The entire teaching staff at Garfield High School in Seattle voted to boycott the MAP test, on grounds that it is a waste of time and resources.

The superintendent will soon decide whether to dock their pay as a punishment. Meanwhile, the teachers have created a fund where allies can contribute to help them spread the word about their test boycott.

If the superintendent should fine the staff for their bravery, this fund will be used to help them survive whatever financial penalty he imposes. Please give whatever you can in solidarity. I did.

Categories Teachers and Teaching, Testing
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