Paul Thomas reacts here to Randi Weingarten’s call for a one-year moratorium on high-stakes testing associated with the Common Core and to Jennifer Jennings’ apology to Secretary Duncan for being booed at AERA.
He warns that moderation and civility are not appropriate responses to extreme conditions.
You think it can’t happen here?
You think your state is immune?
Read about the war on public education in Texas and think again.
Some part of this radical agenda is being promoted in almost every state.
Yours too.
This comment was written by Bonnie Lesley of “Texas Kids Can’t Wait”:
“I worry a lot whether public schools will continue to exist in some states. Our organization, Texas Kids Cant Wait, has felt overwhelmed at times this legislative session about the sheer number of privatization bills, all either sponsored by Sen. Dan Patrick or by someone close to him. We have been battling a big charter (what is in reality the gateway drug to privatization) expansion bill, a parent-trigger bill, opportunity scholarships, taxpayer savings grants, achievement district, “FamiliesFirstSchools”, home-rule districts, vouchers for kids with disabilities, online course expansion, numerous bills to close public schools and turn them over to private charter companies, and on and on. A friend said it is as if they threw a whole bowl full of spaghetti at the wall, believing something would stick.
Every one of the ALEC bills we have seen introduced in other states has been introduced in Texas this year.
The privatizers have also held hostage the very popular bills such as HB 5 to reduce testing significantly unless their privatization bills advanced, and advance they have. So lots of folks are playing poker with kids’s lives and futures.
What keeps many of us fighting 20 hours a day and digging into our own pockets to fund the work is our understanding that these bills are not the end game. We’ve read the web sites, beginning with Milton Freidman’s epistle on the Cato Institute’s website, that lay out the insidious plan we are seeing played out. We have also read Naomi Klein’s brilliant book, Shock Doctrine.
First, impose ridiculous standards and assessments on every school.
Second, create cut points on the assessments to guarantee high rates of failure. (I was in the room when it was done in the State of Delaware, protesting all the way, but losing).
Third, implement draconian accountability systems designed to close as many schools as possible. Then W took the plan national with NCLB.
Fourth, use the accountability system to undermine the credibility and trust that almost everyone gave to public schools. increase the difficulty of reaching goals annually.
Fifth, de-professionalize educators with alternative certification, merit pay, evaluations tied to test scores, scripted curriculum, attacks on professional organizations, phony research that tries to make the case that credentials and experience don’t matter, etc.
Sixth, start privatization with public funded charters with a promise that they will be laboratories of innovation. Many of us fell for that falsehood. Apply pressure each legislative session to implement more and more of them. Then Arne Duncan did so on steroids.
Seventh, use Madison Avenue messaging to name bills to further trick people into acceptance, if not support, of every conceivable voucher scheme. The big push now as states implement Freidman austerity budgets to create a crisis is to portray vouchers as a cheaper way to “save” schools. The bills that would force local boards to sell off publicly owned facilities for $1 each is also part of the overall scheme not only to destroy our schools, but also to make it fiscally impossible for us to recover them if we ever again elect a sane government. Too, districts had to make cuts in their budgets in precisely the areas that research says matter most: quality teachers, preschool, small classes, interventions for struggling students, and rigorous expectations and curriculum. See our report: http://www.equitycenter.org. Click on book, Money STILL Matters in bottom right corner.
Eighth, totally destroy public education with so-called universal vouchers. They have literally already published the handbook. You can find it numerous places on the web.
Ninth, start eliminating the vouchers and charters, little by little.
And, tenth, totally eliminate the costs of education from local, state, and national budgets, thereby providing another huge transfer of wealth through huge tax cuts to the already-billionaire class.
And then only the wealthy will have schools for their kids.
Aw, you may say. They can’t do that! My response is that yes, they most certainly will unless you and I stop it!”
John Merrow deserves enormous praise for his dogged investigative journalism in pursuing the allegations of widespread cheating in the DC public schools during the tenure of Michelle Rhee.
Perhaps even more impressive is that he recognized his own error in his past coverage, which had presented Rhee in a heroic light. Merrow, by his account, ran a dozen PBS segments on Rhee, which were very positive. It was only towards the end of his last story that he began to dig deeper, especially after he heard the story of Adell Cothorne. Cothorne was the principal at Noyes campus who says she walked in on a grade-changing meeting of staff; she reported it at once to central headquarters. In no time, she was a pariah. Merrow wanted to know why.
Kudos to John Merrow.
Here is a compilation of his reports: REPORTING ABOUT MICHELLE RHEE.
The curious part of this story is that no one cares. No one is investigating. Even after Merrow’s exposé, even after he reported that the DC schools are worse off now than before Rhee and her protege Kaya Henderson started, Rhee goes on unscathed. She is still claiming dramatic gains on her watch. In one of his documentaries, Merrow showed Rhee confronting principals and demanding higher scores–or else. Beverly Hall used the same tactics to pressure principals in Atlanta and is facing serious jail time. But Rhee is doing well indeed. The far-right, anti-public education Walton Foundation just gifted her organization with $8 million to promote her failed policies across the nation.
John, please keep following the story. It is not over.
In one of his characteristically thoughtful and provocative essays, Anthony Cody ponders Randi Weingarten’s call for a one-year moratorium on the high stakes associated with Common Core testing. Randi praised the Common Core standards lavishly but warned that they would fail if high stakes are attached to them before teachers and students are prepared to master them.
Cody does not agree. He maintains that the Common Core testing will have even higher stakes than NCLB. Not only will there be more testing, but teachers and principals will be fired, schools will close, communities will be harmed–as Common Core raises the bar and failure rates grow.
How does raising the bar help those who can’t clear the bar now?
As Cody writes:
“We have this entire project based on the premise that raising the bar will bring up those on the bottom, and make them better able to compete. In fact, when you raise that bar, you create huge obstacles for those at the bottom, and in effect, rationalize and reinforce their own sense of worthlessness, and society’s judgment that they are subpar. You further stigmatize these students, their teachers and their schools, based on their performance in this rigged race.”
He concludes that a moratorium on high stakes test is insufficient:
“We must move beyond not only the bubble tests, but beyond the era of punitive high stakes tests. Only then will we be able to use standards in the way they ought to be used – as focal points for our creative work as educators. I would be glad to have a year’s delay for the consequences of these tests, but I think we need to actively oppose the entire high stakes testing paradigm. The Common Core standards should not be supported as long as they are embedded in this system.”
Bruce Baker of Rutgers is one of my favorite education analysts. He is adept at sorting through claims and demanding evidence.
In this post, he gives Jeanne Allen a civics lesson.
Jeanne Allen founded the Center for Education Reform twenty years ago to advocate for charters and vouchers, anything but public schools. She was formerly the education aide at the Heritage Foundation. The media often call her for quotes, thinking that the center is nonpartisan and independent.
Allen reacted with fury to the decision by the court in Louisiana to declare unconstitutional the funding of vouchers with dedicated public school monies. She thinks that Jindal should appeal the state court’s decision to the U. S. Supreme Court.
Bruce Baker explains that Jeanne Allen doesn’t understand basic principles of federalism and may not have read or understood the Supeme Court’s 2002 decision permitting Cleveland’s voucher program.
A post well worth reading.
This teacher realized that she could not be free to think for herself until she stopped internalizing and accepting the reproaches of the corporate reformers. She was free when she realized that her training and experience as an educator mattered. She was free when she realized that when she did not attain perfection every day, it was not her fault.
She wrote:
“Can’t speak for everyone, but the way it worked for me was this way… initially, there was this vague sense of confusion when the NCLB legislation went through. “How can we defy the Bell Curve?” I asked myself. I chuckled thinking, “Ha, just wait ’til ‘they’ figure out that it can’t be done!” I was teaching special education at the time.
“Over the next couple of years… as the pressure mounted, I moved to a state that I felt would better suit me for the rest of my career. The first slap in the face was that I couldn’t get a job in a public school… my degree and years of experience made me “too expensive.” A charter school was willing to hire me though… they liked having someone w/ a sp.ed. background. Especially since the school is working in an area with kids from low SES backgrounds… they wanted and were willing to pay someone with my education and experience. At the time, I didn’t know or understand the difference between a charter school and public school. All I knew was that I had a job!
“Fast forward… more and more “accountability” was heaped on… and the rhetoric that the teachers heard placed more and more “accountability” onto them. If the scores aren’t high enough, then we’re not working hard enough. THAT was the proverbial Kool-Aid… because most teachers are overly responsible, they bought into the idea that “if we only work harder…”. Then they (whoever “they” are) tried to close our school by revoking the charter due to low test scores. Unlike many charter schools, we take ALL of the kids! Many of our children are challenging. Many of our children struggle with learning. The school’s charter has been picked up, so it will not close this year. In the meantime, I’ve educated myself on the difference between charter, public, and private schools. I discovered that this “angst” that had been growing over the years in me was being experienced by other teachers all over the country. And what has happened… is that teachers are REALIZING that it’s NOT their fault! Hence, all the grassroots organizations that Diane is trying to link through NPE.
“Teachers have “allowed” it, because most of us “drank the Kool-Aid” of believing that it really was our fault… and now many of us are saying, “NO! It’s NOT our fault!” Like the character “Boxer” from Animal Farm… we kept working harder, working harder… but instead of us all collapsing and being sent to the “glue factory,” we’re getting off the farm. I’m leaving my school. I “know” too much now about the school reform movement… and I can’t support it. I don’t know where I will go. But I do know, that as soon as I figured out that it was NOT all my fault is when I started saying, “There’s something wrong with the system, and it needs to be changed.” THIS is probably what your seeing with many teachers. They believe that they only need to work harder… work harder… work harder… . But when they realize it’s not them, it’s the system… that’s when the change starts to happen. I “allowed” these policies, because I’m “hyper-responsible”… I’m the kind of teacher that kids need in school… I do what needs to be done…. but, the downside is… I was taking responsibility for things that were not my fault… and I didn’t realize it until I heard Diane Ravitch speak about it on the youtube upload “Diane Ravitch defends teachers” here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAivikFLJvU
“I’m grateful to Diane for this. In some ethereal way, she saved my life by helping me voice my experience and realize that the current state of education is NOT MY FAULT. I will NOT kill myself through the stress of working in an untenable situation.
“I’ve said it before, and I say it again, “THANK YOU DIANE!”
After the Louisiana State Supreme Court ruled that the public school fund could not be used to pay for vouchers for religious and private schools, both sides–the winners and the loser–called the decision a victory.
The court ruled 6-1 against the funding of the vouchers and “course choice,” which would use public funds to pay private providers for a variety of courses.
The National School Boards Association hailed the decision as a victory for the LSBA and public schools, which won the case:
“Scott Richard, Executive Director of the Louisiana School Boards Association, issued this statement today following the ruling today by a Louisiana Supreme Court that the state’s school voucher scheme is unconstitutional. Louisiana School Boards Association (LSBA), the state’s main teachers’ organizations, and 44 traditional public school districts had filed a lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of a Louisiana’s voucher law. Richard is available for press interviews to discuss the ruling and impact.
“We are pleased that the Louisiana Supreme Court has reaffirmed a basic tenet of the state Constitution–that taxpayer money should go to public schools that are open to all students. We hope all state residents can understand the dangerous precedent that a voucher scheme has set and how such a program undermines our local community schools. LSBA will continue to work towards its mission of service, support and leadership for local school boards and to ensure a quality public education for all students.”
“The 6-1 decision upholds a state district court ruling that the Louisiana Constitution forbids using money earmarked for public schools to instead fund private school tuition.”
State Superintendent John White, who lost the decision, also issued a press release declaring victory. It says:
“BATON ROUGE, La. – State Superintendent of Education John White issued a statement today concerning the Louisiana Supreme Court ruling on Act 2:
“On the most important aspect of the law, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of families. The Scholarship Program will continue, and thousands of Louisiana families will continue to have the final say in where to send their children to school. Nearly 93 percent of Scholarship families report that they love their school, and we will work with the Legislature to find another funding source to keep parents and kids in these schools.”
Many of the voucher schools teach creationism and use textbooks published specifically for religious schools. John White is sure that whatever they teach is far superior to the schools for which he is responsible.
An earlier post on the blog reported that Girl Scouts was now offering a badge or badges for meeting Common Core objectives. Some readers insisted that was not true. According to this reader, who provides a link, it is true. The question for me is why Girl Scouts is tying its merit badges to school work and why it is endorsing an initiative that is not yet proven or established. Isn’t scouting about scouting and hands-on experience and service?
The reader comments:
“I am a longtime Girl Scout and have been a leaders for several years and I cannot for the life of me understand why GSUSA is attempting to show a connection between Girl Scout Badges and Journeys, and Common Core objectives. As a Brownie leader, I just clicked on the link you posted to see what Common Core objectives my Brownies “accomplished” when they recently earned their “Snacks”, “Painter” and “hiker” badges. The page that came up was this one:
Click to access CommonCore_brownies_Badges.pdf
It states that when earning badges the following standards applied (list of basic reading literature and informational text standards — main idea and detail, learning vocabulary, etc.)
My Brownies didn’t do any reading to earn the badges. For the Hiker badge — they read maps, learned how to dress for the weather, and hiked! No main idea, no detail. For the Painter badge — they painted! No character, setting, problem or solution. And for the Snacks badge — they washed, peeled, sliced, cut, mixed, measured, cooked (with adult supervision) tasted and ate.
The probably did acquire some new vocabulary along the way.
As I said, I cannot for the life of me understand why GSUSA thinks anyone would want to know that Girl Scout badges have any alignment with any state or Common Core curriculum! Why should they? Scouting isn’t school! Kids get enough of school… at school! And clearly they do NOT actually correlate with math or language arts standards.
So why try to make it look as if they do? The only thing I can think of is that GSUSA and local councils might be trying to get grant funding to put on GS programs, and the people issuing the grants are asking whether Girl Scouting is an education program in some way? It’s a long shot, but it is all I can think of.”
Louisiana deserves our attention because it is an extreme example of the corporate reform agenda at work.
As Reuters put it, the “reform” agenda targets the very existence of public education. The radical goal of Governor Bobby Jindal is privatization. Wiping out the teaching profession is a strategy to turn teachers into a compliant workforce, unable to challenge the privatization plan.
Testifying before the state senate education committee, a researcher pointed out another prong of the governor’s strategy: the distortion of data to bloat claims of success. Many researchers have
complained that the state scrubbed the data from its website that was once available to analyze test scores. Herb Bassett testified:
“My subsequent research revealed deceit, distortion, manipulation of scores and data suppression.”
Hiding, distorting, and suppressing data. Not good. Not good at all.
Sorry, I erroneously posted that the Louisiana State Supreme Court ruled the funding of vouchers unconstitutional by 2-1.
The vote was 6-1.
Diane Ravitch's blog 