Archives for the month of: July, 2013
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Cory Booker: Champion of Privatization

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2013 //
31

Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, is heavily favored to win the race to replace the late Senator Frank Lautenberg.

Booker doesn’t like public education. He is an avid proponent of charters and vouchers. He is active in Democrats for Education Reform, the Wall Street hedge fund managers’ advocacy group for privatization.

As Jersey Jazzman points out, there is a credible alternative: Rush Holt, a member of Congress.

Holt is a physicist. He would bring deep knowledge of science and education to the Senate.

Booker would bring a determination to privatize public education.

Categories Democrats for Education Reform, New Jersey, Privatization, Vouchers

Find Contact Info for Your Congressman

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2013 //
4

Here is the contact information for your Congressman or Congresswoman.

http://www.congressmerge.com/onlinedb/

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

Heilig: Feds Want to Reduce Collection of Data That Affect Civil Rights

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2013 //
14

This is an astonishing post by Julian Vasquez Heilig. He has a passion for equity, and he bridles when reformers lower the standards for becoming a teacher and claim they are doing it “for the kids.”

He asks, Would you rather fly with an experienced pilot or fly with one who had only five weeks’ training? Or how about one with 30 hours of training? If the answer seems obvious, and if you prefer that your children have teachers who are well prepared and highly qualified, wait until you see the chart in the middle of his post, showing the explosive growth in teachers with alternate certification.

Then consider that the U.S. Department of Education wants to STOP collecting this data. And that’s not all. In the Department’s single-minded commitment to something-or-other (not equity), this is what they propose to stop reporting:

“That brings us to the federal governments request to no longer keep track of this huge influx of teachers with a modicum of training to “pilot” our classrooms. The Department of Education is seeking public comments on the Civil Rights Data Collection process for 2013-2016. The feds have decided that it is no longer necessary to keep track of the FTE of teachers meeting all state licensing/certification requirements. The feds have also decided these data points are also no longer important for Civil Rights:

“Number of students awaiting special education evaluation (LEA)

“Whether students are ability grouped for English/Math

“Harassment and bullying policies (LEA)

“Number of students enrolled in AP foreign language(disaggregated by race, sex, disability, LEP)

“Number of students who took AP exams for all AP courses enrolled in (disaggregated by race, sex, disability, LEP)

“Number of students who passed AP exams for all AP courses enrolled in (disaggregated by race, sex, disability, LEP

“Total personnel salaries”

Categories Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Race to the Top, Teach for America TFA, Teachers and Teaching, U.S. Department of Education

The Failure of Market-Based “Reform”

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2013 //
15

The Broader Bolder Approach to Education has steadfastly opposed the high-stakes testing and privatization “reforms” that have done so much to undermine public education.

Now it has published a major analysis of the failure of these reforms.

Here in clear, graphic images is a report card on districts like New York City and the District of Columbia.

These are not models for other urban districts or for American education in general.

The market approach fails kids and demoralizes educators.

Here are a few of the findings:

* Test scores increased less, and achievement gaps grew more, in “reform” cities

than in other urban districts.
*Reported successes for targeted students evaporated upon closer examination.

*Test-based accountability prompted churn that thinned the ranks of experienced teachers, but not necessarily bad teachers.

*School closures did not send students to better schools or save school districts
money.

* Charter schools further disrupted the districts while providing mixed benefits,
particularly for the highest-needs students.

The market reformers’ rhetoric far outpaced the reality. For example, Mayor Bloomberg claimed that his reforms had cut the black-white achievement gap by 50%. The reality: the gap declined by 1%.

Categories Education Reform

Call Your Representative Today! And Tomorrow Too!

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2013 //
22

Friends of Education!

Congress debating the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is the basic legal framework for federal aid to education. In 2001, in response to the proposal by the new President George W. Bush, Congress added high-stakes testing as a requirement for federal aid. Congress wrongly believed that high-stakes testing had produced a miracle in Texas. We have had a dozen years of NCLB, and it has failed to improve education or to increase equality of educational opportunity.

NCLB has been a disaster for children, who are subjected to endless hours of testing; to teachers and principals, who are scapegoated for low scores; for schools, which are cruelly closed if their students don’t reach an unrealistic goal of 100% proficiency, and for communities, which are losing their beloved neighborhood schools.

TELL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS: STOP HIGH-STAKES TESTING NOW!

Here is a message from the Network for Public Education. Please join us!

Call Your Representatives About ESEA
A bill on NCLB is coming to the floor and we can impact its destiny

Call your representatives about the new NCLB proposal

For the first time in 12 years, a bill is expected to come to the floor of Congress to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as NCLB. The Student Success Act, introduced by Rep. Kline, may be voted on in the House as soon as this week. All parents, teachers and concerned citizens need to weigh in and call their House member as soon as possible. Try calling Monday or Tuesday; detailed instructions and a script is below. Two thirds of the House weren’t even in office when the last ESEA vote occurred; they need to hear from you about what your priorities are for the federal role in public education.

This is what we suggest: please tell your House member that the bill should de-emphasize high-stakes testing — by eliminating the NCLB requirement that states must test students annually in every grade from 3-8th. The federal government should also get out of the oppressive business of mandating how teachers are evaluated; and stop the linking teacher evaluation to test scores, which is unreliable, unfair and damaging to the quality of education.

Instead, they should refocus on the historic role of the federal government to increase equity in our public schools. How? First, Congress should require that states submit plans on how they will improve equitable funding of their schools. Second, they must remove the unconscionable provision in the Kline bill that limits to only 10% the amount of Title II funds that districts can spend on class size reduction.

Title II funds are primarily used to provide teacher training and lower class size. Districts spend about 40% of these funds currently on reducing class size. Ensuring that all kids have access to reasonable class sizes – especially poor kids in urban districts who are often disadvantaged with the largest classes — is one of the best ways to ensure equity and narrow the opportunity gap.

A script is below; a handy chart comparing the provisions of the version of the ESEA bill submitted by Senator Harkin and Representative Klineis here. (The Senate bill hasn’t yet reached the floor; we’ll let you know when it does; but you’re welcome to call your Senators after you call your House member.)

Call the DC office of your Representatives, (you can find their contact info here) and ask to speak to their education staffer or legislative director.

Then say: I am a (parent, teacher, concerned constituent).

I want Rep. ____ to push to eliminate the federal requirement for yearly standardized testing in the ESEA bill; and eliminate the federal role in prescribing how teachers should be evaluated.

Instead, the bill should focus on equity: by requiring that states submit plans showing how they will improve equitable funding in their schools, and by omitting ANY restriction on the amount of Title II funds that can be spent on class size reduction. Smaller classes are a proven strategy to increase equity, and there is no better way to give all children a better chance to learn.

Thanks!

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

The Zimmerman Verdict

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2013 //
228

When I heard the news last night that the jury in Florida found George Zimmerman innocent of any crime and that he was free to walk away, I felt literally ill.

As an American who respects the rule of law and the jury system, I felt disillusioned.

This verdict seemed to manifestly unfair that I found it hard to bear.

This burly guy Zimmerman is a neighborhood watch volunteer, under instructions to report what he sees, but not to get involved. Yet he followed an unarmed teenager. Zimmerman and the teen had an altercation. Zimmerman killed the boy.

There is no doubt that Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin.

There is no doubt that the guy with the gun shot the boy without one.

Zimmerman is a killer.

How does he walk away a free man?

I don’t get it.

I think it has to do with the ALEC “stand your ground” law that allowed Zimmerman to claim self-defense.

That’s wrong.

Justice was not done.

 

Categories Education Reform

The Selling of the Common Core

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2013 //
65

This post by Peter Smagorinsky is spot on.

He is a professor at the University of Georgia, and he is amazed at the shrewd marketing of the Common Core.

Think of it.

Schools and teachers are overwhelmed by budget cuts, still reeling from the economic crisis of 2008, and are now trying to absorb new and flawed systems of teacher evaluation. In many states, teachers have lost all job security. At the same time, the proportion of students who live in poverty is one of the highest in the postindustrial world, and many children don’t speak English or have disabilities. These are real problems, and the answer is: the Common Core.

How did David Coleman manage to sell the business and government leaders on the idea that the very thing needed to address the nation’s social and economic problems was a set of national standards? Not voluntary national standards, but mandatory ones. Adopt these standards, spend billions implementing it, and all children will be ready to compete in a global economy; all children will be college-and career-ready; our very survival as a nation depends on these standards.

You have to admire a man who displays a genius for marketing.

Categories Common Core

The NY Times Tires of Testing

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2013 //
21

For the past dozen years, there has been no louder cheerleader for No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and their demand for test-based accountability than the Néw York Times’ editorial board.

Despite the fact that greater test score gains were recorded before the implementation of NCLB than since; despite the finding of the National Research Council that test-based accountability was ineffectual; despite numerous examples of cheating, gaming the system, narrowing the curriculum, and other negative consequences of high-stakes testing, the Times’ editorial board has stubbornly defended this regime of carrots and sticks based on standardized tests.

Even now, in an editorial saying that testing had gone too far and had turned into a “mania,” the Times can’t resist referring to the passage of George W. Bush’s NCLB (based on the non-existent “Texas miracle”), as “a sensible decision.”

It was not. NCLB was a disaster for the quality of education in the United States. Furthermore, it sent the privatization movement into high gear, since “failing” public schools could, under the law, be closed, privatized, handed over to charter operators. We now know that none of these remedies actually works unless low-performing kids are excluded or kicked out, and we know that the overwhelming majority of so-called “failing” schools are schools that enroll mostly black and Hispanic students, many of whom are poor, have disabilities, or don’t speak English. Schools are being closed and privatized because they enroll the neediest students, not because they are “failing.”

Now the Times looks forward to the Common Core and the computerized testing it requires to bring the wonderful progress promised by NCLB.

It is good to see that even the Néw York Times and its education editorial writer Brent Staples recognize that enough is enough. If only they had said so five years ago, before so many schools were unfairly closed based on test scores. If only they would acknowledge that standardized tests mirror advantage and disadvantage. If only they would ask questions about how more rigorous testing will affect the kids who are now struggling with the current tests.

But let us be grateful that after 12 years of NCLB and four years of Race to the Top, the Times’ ardor for high-stakes testing has cooled.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing

Lewis Carroll: Professional Development for the Common Core

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2013 //
18

This poem was suggested to me by a friend who does professional development for the Common Core in New York City.

This past week, by coincidence, Jason Griffiths, the founder of the Brooklyn Latin School quit  his job and went to work for a controversial charter school, because he was tired of being compelled to go to professional development for Common Core when his school already was the top ranked school in the state and used the International Baccalaureate program. He was tired of dealing with Bloomberg’s bureaucratic Department of Education.

“Over time I wasn’t able to lead the school in the way I wanted,” said Griffiths, noting that he was often stuck in full-day meetings with the Department of Education over the city’s new Common Core standards, which he said Brooklyn Latin’s curriculum already met and exceeded. “We’re working 12-hour and 16-hour days, and if you’re taking a full day out of a week [for a meeting] that’s a lot of time…It had a detrimental effect on me personally, on my ability to connect with teachers and with students.”

My friend, the professional development expert, suggested this poem as a metaphor for the work she does:

 

 

Jabberwocky

By Lewis Carroll

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Categories Common Core

Crooks & Liars Asks: Why Is StudentsFirst Nonprofit?

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2013 //
13

Blogger Crooks & Liars asks why Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst is a nonprofit.

He writes: “If ever there was an organization that stands out as one that should never have been granted nonprofit status and doesn’t deserve to continue having it, it’s StudentsFirst. One look at their 2011 tax disclosures reveals a fat, political, ideological organization. StudentsFirst not only crosses the line, they stomp on it and erase it for their own benefit.”

Nonprofits are allowed to do some advocacy, but as I understand the tax law (let me be the first to say that only tax lawyers understand the tax law and even they sometimes need help figuring it out), nonprofits are not supposed to lobby directly for legislation. Or, maybe do it just a little bit. Or maybe pretend they are advocating but not lobbying.

The tax laws and tax code make no sense. if you view the universe of nonprofits actively lobbying for vouchers, charters, tax breaks, or seeking appropriations and earmarks for entrepreneurs, it makes no sense that they are classified as nonprofits. Some nonprofits lobby on behalf of for-profit corporations, which make handsome donations to the nonprofits.

In some quarters, what is called “reform” is driven by big money, not what is best for students. Yes, Virginia, there is an education industry, and it is like any other industry: it wants a return on its investments.

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, StudentsFirst
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