Archives for the month of: August, 2013
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New NY Scores Prompt Increased Interest in Opting Out of Next State Tests

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2013 //
37

Long Island’s Newsday has a story about growing interest by parents in opting out of state testing.

It says that the terrible scores will increase the number of parents who don’t let the schools test their children.

William Johnson, the superintendent of Rockville Center district, says the scores are essentially useless.

They dropped so far for so many students that he can’t make any sense of them.

Meanwhile a spokesman for the New York State Education Department expresses surprise that some parents will not care to find out whether their children are on a path to being “college and career ready.”

I read that line and I thought about my grandson, now entering second grade.

I hope his parents opt him out next year. He will be 8. I don’t care if he is college-ready. Neither do they.

He is a great little guy.

So far, he loves school.

The state should keep its hands off him and let him learn with the natural joy that he brings to everything he does.

We have reached a point where it is time to say no. And mean it.

Categories Common Core, New York, Parents, Testing

Gates Foundations Spends More Millions on Corporate Reforms: Link ADDED

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2013 //
51

The Gates Foundation just showered more millions on allies prepared to spread Bill Gates’ gospel of testing, test-based teacher evaluation, and Common Core.

Millions for the young inexperienced teachers who fight tenure and demand testing (Educators4Excellence); millions for Jefferson County, Colorado, where the school board and superintendent believe in testing and privatization; millions to buy off the NEA; and more. Read the link to learn who else won Gates’ money this time.

The hundreds of millions that Gates has poured into teacher evaluation by test scores has thus far produced nothing but massive demoralization.

Will anyone tell Bill & Melinda?

Categories Corporate Reformers, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Jeb Bush Criticizes Our Hero Matt Damon

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2013 //
50

Jeb Bush attacked superstar Matt Damon because he put his kids in private school in Los Angeles.

Bush sent his own children to private school.

He went after Matt because Matt spoke up for public schools in 2011. Matt went to public school in Cambridge.

But everyone should support public education, no matter where their children go to school. Everyone pays for them. They benefit all of society.

Corporate reformers love to criticize private school parents who support public schools. They feel justified in sending their kids to elite schools because they believe in choice.

But they try to silence those who act on the principle that public schools are a public responsibility, and you are free to pay for private or religious education with your own money.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Florida, Indiana, Los Angeles

Stand Up for North Carolina Schools

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2013 //
10

ACTION ALERT!
Public Schools Matter –
Get Your Facts Straight!
publicschoolsfirstnc.org

Get Your Facts Straight!
Education Rallies Across the State

Join Public Schools First NC, Progress NC and the NCAE as we head across the state to rally in support of our public schools.

We need to set the record straight and hold lawmakers accountable for what they did to public education this year. The public needs the facts, not misleading talking points designed to side step the harmful cuts to public education.

They have set our public schools on a path to destruction. Let your fellow North Carolinians know the truth! Attend one of the events below and please wear red in solidarity with NC’s amazing public school teachers!

​Monday, August 12 – Charlotte – 10:30am
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Complex
600 East Fourth Street

Tuesday, August 13 – Wilmington – 10:30am
Riverfront Park
5 North Water Street

Wednesday, August 14 – Greensboro – 10:30am
Government Plaza
110 S. Greene Street

Wednesday, August 14 – Winston-Salem – 1:30pm

Grace Court Park
931 West 4th Street

Thursday, August 15 – Asheville – noon
Pack Square Park
McGuire Greene

Friday, August 16 – Greenville – 10:30am

Greenville Town Commons
West 1st Street

Rallies across the state are getting the attention of the media and are helping to educate citizens about what’s happening to public education. Please help us spread the word.
Invite your friends, family, and neighbors!

Also on Thursday, August 15th,10:30am:

Get Your Facts Straight Education
Press Conference – Raleigh

NC State Capital (southside ground near Fayetteville Street)

Join Bob Etheridge and the Old North State Caucus. Please show your support for public education by attending!

Finally, on the first day of school, we are asking everyone to wear red in solidarity with our public school teachers!

Public Schools First NC
(919) 576-0655
info@publicschoolsfirstnc.org

Public Schools First NC | PO BOX 6484 | Raleigh, NC 27628

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, North Carolina, Vouchers

Paul Horton: Why Gatopia Will Never Work

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2013 //
18

Paul Horton teaches history at the University of Chicago lab School. He has been writing brilliant critiques of corporate reform. In this post, he reviews the history of efforts to make education rational, predictable, and measurable.

A few nuggets:

“Have you ever read Dr. Seuss’, The Butter-Battle Book? It made perfect sense to me, a Cold War military brat. The “boys in the backroom” were very smart. They were data whizzes and they invented computers that made them a lot smarter than everybody else. Both the “Yooks” and the “Zooks” believed that those “boys in the back room” could figure out solutions to every problem. But the biggest problem was that only human beings who could effectively communicate, not computers or data, could solve the world’s problems. “The boys in the backroom” were only doing what they were told: they were the smartest, but not the best communicators in town. None of those “boys” said, “making more weapons that can kill more people might not be the best way to go.” But everybody believed in them, almost religiously, to the brink of nuclear war. Slim Pickins didn’t bat an eye when he decided to ride his big A-bomb to victory.

“This might seem strange to you, but, from my very humble perspective, we might need another Dr. Seuss to write a book with a similar theme, but in a different setting. The question has become, what happens when the “boys in the backroom” take over after the “Yooks” and the “Zooks” have stopped threatening each other? What happens when one of the “boys in the backroom” becomes the richest guy in the world and decides that he wants to build “Gatopia”? What happens if he convinces many of the other richest guys that our country is doomed unless we completely tear down and rebuild the way that we teach our kids? And what happens when he and many of his very wealthy friends tell the red and blue politicians that he and his friends can make sure that they will not get campaign funding if they don’t support “Gatopia”?”

Gatopia “seeks to turn human beings into computers that are efficient and well behaved. Most importantly, computers do not ask questions or demand accountability: they do what they are told.”

Horton describes how he fell in love with learning and recognizes that Gatopia has no room for the experiences he had:

“Learning for me was about connecting with a human being. Learning was reflected in my ability to write something. I wanted to please my very demanding teachers, I wanted to conform to their expectations of excellence. I dreaded the conference to go over a paper that fell hopelessly below those standards, but respected my teachers for holding me to them.

I want my son to have teachers like I had, and I want the same for his kids. I do not want “the boys in the back room” telling me how my kid and grandkids should be educated. Sometimes the smartest people can’t think up the most important questions. Democracy requires citizens, and computers cannot produce citizens. Computers often mask deficits that we most need to develop. Data is not knowledge. We are in grave danger if we are tempted to believe that it is.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Curriculum, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, On-Line Education

Lace to the Top on Trial by Test

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2013 //
14

From a reader:

The media reported 31% of students passing, but seemed to miss the story. The story is not the result, but what happened along the way.

Students became ill during tests and pushed themselves to the point of vomiting. They broke down and cried. They sought refuge in bathrooms. They went through countless pencils as they erased answers and any trace of self -esteem. They lost sleep and gave themselves nightmares. Their education was sacrificed for test prep. Several raced to the top, but few made it.

Parents spent countless hours at the dinner tables going over homework to the point of frustration. They had legendary battles with their children only to learn you can’t turn a 5th grader into an 8th grader. Ultimately, they were told their efforts were not good enough.

Teachers never stopped trying to craft that perfect lesson. They came in early and stayed late. They collaborated and often cried with their colleagues. Teachers gave it their all, but in the end it simply was not enough.

Students, parents and teachers are entering this year bruised and battered. First day jitters has quickly become testing paranoia.

The mission of Lace to the Top is to tie together those pieces. We will not let test scores define us as students, teachers or parents. We will empower and support each other. Rather than destroying education to obtain an increase in scores that is already predetermined, let’s focus on all that quality education should be!

Lace to the Top
https://www.facebook.com/groups/362783697181185/

Categories New York, Testing

What Jeb Bush Said to ALEC

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2013 //
14

ALEC has established its reputation as the organization funded by major corporations to promote deregulation, privatization, and whatever else benefits the big corporations.

In this speech, Jeb Bush spells out his agenda, which closely aligns with that of ALEC: Vouchers, charters, deregulation of teaching, virtual charter schools, for-profit charters, and Common Core.

The only particular where ALEC and Jeb diverge is Common Core.

Some ALEC members surely see Common Core as an initiative of the Obama administration and a federal takeover of education.

Others, like Jeb, see Common Core as an opportunity to make public schools look bad and to see hardware, software, and other stuff to schools and tap into that rich market.

Of course, Jeb didn’t mention that charter schools and voucher schools don’t post higher test scores than public schools, nor did he have time to acknowledge that virtual charter schools have lower test scores and lower graduation rates than public schools.

And he spoke before the New York state scores on Common Core were released, showing that the charter sector as a whole did far worse than the public sector.

But note the care he takes to couch the argument for privatization in terms of protecting minorities and advancing the needs of those at the bottom.

That must have appealed to ALEC members, who are not famous for their interest in civil rights but are busily trying to get rid of public education in their respective states.

Categories ALEC, Bush, Jeb

Peter DeWitt Is Outraged by New York State Tests

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2013 //
105

Peter DeWitt is a wonderful elementary school principal in upstate New York.

He is sensitive, caring, kind, and devoted to his students.

He is outraged by what the State Education Department has done to his students and their teachers.

You can feel his barely contained rage in these words:

I don’t want to sound arrogant but most school leaders know more than the state education department does…where teachers and students are concerned. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t find professional development and learning opportunities for myself and for the teachers I am honored to work with every day.

Unlike state education commissioners who lack real educational experience, I have spent eighteen years in public education as both a teacher and a principal. On top of that I taught graduate education courses and do a lot of professional writing, but to the state education department I will probably be seen as ineffective or developing.

You know what?

I’m honored to take the title. If ineffective or developing means that I focus on the whole child and don’t push test prep, than I would rather be where my scores take me. I will stand beside my teachers who get low scores based on assessments that were flawed long before they were ever given. Better yet, I’ll make a wager that my teachers are better educators than any state education commissioner ever was. Why? Because I believe in their ability.

Imagine that! A school leader who believes in his teachers.

That must really be news to the people at the State Education Department. They don’t believe in the teachers of their state, nor the principals, nor for that matter, the children.

It wasn’t always that way, DeWitt writes:

“Former state education commissioners had the strength to give us the results so we could do item analysis. We had the opportunity to see where we could improve. Perhaps some teachers could improve how they taught reading comprehension to students or getting their students to find the main details. We don’t know that information any longer, because we aren’t allowed to see where we went wrong…or fathom that we could possibly have gone right somewhere.

And why the wait for these results? Our students took the test in April. They weren’t given a break between ELA and math. They weren’t afforded the same lapse in time that the state education took to deliver the results. Apparently the state education department can take a break. They can take four months to correct the tests and release the results…all during the summer when teachers aren’t working. They wait for school districts to make a plan so that they can completely turn schools on their heads and make them come up with a new plan. They release the results just before the new school year to negatively affect the school climate.

Why the wait? Because they want us to look like we fail.”

And he concludes by identifying who really failed: Not the kids, not the teachers:

Let me ask you…as a human being would you ever force children to take a test that is much too difficult for them? It’s over 80 minutes long…three days one week and three days the next, and then have the gull to make the excuse that this was just merely a new baseline? A new baseline that also happened to be tied to teacher and administrator evaluation for the first time?

In the End
I’m angry. I’m angry that we can work hard to innovate by flipping our classrooms, faculty meetings and parent communication and none of that matters. I’m angry that I continue to have teachers step outside of the box…very brave teachers, and get pummeled because their children did not do well on state tests…that they were never supposed to do well on in the first place.

I’m angry that we share professional articles and buy into what the most brilliant minds in education tell us to do and our professions and the education of our children have been undermined for someone’s political gain.

I am tired of people who expose our students to accountability and mandates that they would never expose their own children to all because they are out to prove that somehow we are failing. It’s not our public education system that failed us this week…it’s our state education department that failed us.

Is this not institutionalized child abuse? Is the abuse of power by officials in Albany less reprehensible than Tony Bennett’s grade-fixing?

 

 

Categories Accountability, Common Core, New York, Testing

Anthony Cody: Accountability Is Designed to Set Schools Up to Fail

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2013 //
33

In a hard-hitting essay, Anthony Cody describes how accountability has been turned into a weapon to create demoralization, failure, and privatization of public schools.

He reviews the recent fiascos involving Tony Bennett and New York’s Common Core testing.

He notes that both the AFT and the NEA are trying hard to meet the demands of the corporate reformers. Both are trying to help teachers prepare for the Common Core sledge hammer, but Cody says it is a fruitless enterprise. The game is rigged. The reformers’ goal is to generate failure so they can advance privatization.

Cody writes:

“Our response must be, as members of the teaching profession, and as members of the unions that represent educators, to reject as baseless these phony, politically-driven accountability systems. These systems to rate schools based on proficiency rates are really much more accurately reflecting levels of poverty, rather than the quality of teaching in effect. Many of those advocating them are, like Tony Bennett, attempting to promote their own favored competitors, in a race in which they have made themselves the rule-makers and referees.

“When someone sets up a competition that is rigged from the start, our response cannot be to ask for more time to prepare. The answer is to expose the machinery at work behind the scenes, and demand that our schools be accountable not to some state or federal bureaucrat, but to the students and parents of their communities. We will not overcome poverty by firing those who have chosen to work with the poor. Our schools and students need support, not more means by which they can be ranked and rejected. Real support from our unions means educating and organizing members to respond with vigor and pride about our students, our schools, and our work as professionals. Teachers cannot “succeed” under these systems because that is not their design. So rather than trying to prepare for tests many of our schools were never meant to pass, we need to prepare teachers to defend and reclaim their schools, and reject the accountability scam.

Categories Accountability, Florida, Indiana, New York, Testing, Unions

NY Parent: The Kids Didn’t Fail, the System Did

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2013 //
21

Tim Farley and his wife opted their children out of the state testing.

They don’t care to know whether their young children are college-and-career-ready.

They know their children are doing well in school. They think the system is sick.

They know the tests will inflict unnecessary pain on children who have disabilities and children whose native language is not English.

They are doing what they can to break the system.

They are conscientious citizens.

May their numbers grow.

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing
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