Lance Hill points out that his state has a double standard when it evaluates teachers by test scores. Some who teach high-scoring students were rated “ineffective” because their students showed no growth. Their ratings were set aside for review. They were treated differently from those who teach high-needs students.
The Louisiana formula:
Excuses for the teachers of the high-performing. No excuses for those who take on the biggest challenges.
Blogger and educator and parent Rachel Levy sends out an SOS:
The bipartisan coalition determined to privatize American public education has a large tent indeed. It includes ALEC, President Obama, Secretary Duncan, Governor Bobby Jindal, former Governor Jeb Bush, Governor Scott Walker, and many more.
Not to be missed is Betsy DeVos, who founded the American Federation for Children and advocates tirelessly for vouchers. In 2012, AFS honored Scott Walker and Michelle Rhee. Here is an interview with Betsy DeVos.
A new website called Cheats for Change has been created in the wake of the Tony Bennett scandal.
Please take a look. It is very funny.
For those of you who do not follow education politics closely, Cheats for Change is a parody of Jeb Bush’s group called Chiefs for Change.
Bush and his Foundation for Educational Excellence (FEE) created Chiefs for Change to advance the Jeb Bush agenda of charter schools, vouchers, testing, competition, accountability, removing teacher tenure, and replacing teachers with technology.
There are eight “chiefs for change” a la Jeb Bush and the Florida miracle.
Tony Bennett, who previously served as chair of Chiefs for Change.
The current chair is Hanna Skandera of New Mexico.
The other members of Chiefs for Change are:
John White of Louisiana
Stephen Bowen of Maine (he had a little problem about pushing online learning in Maine)
Deborah Gist of Rhode Island
Chris Cerf of New Jersey
Kevin Huffman of Tennessee
Janet Barresi of Oklahoma
These are the leading lights of the testing, choice, and privatization crowd. Two (White and Huffman) are TFA alumni. Three (Cerf , White, and Gist) are Broad Academy alumni.
This reader shared her experience with online courses:
“Several years ago I was required to get an admin certification and one of the courses I had to take was an on-line course. It was dreadful. We were all supposed to be graduate students but the on-line discussions were silly and superficial. I think the instructor could have deepened the discussion but he didn’t. It was one of the biggest wastes of time I’ve ever had to endure.
“In my district we began an on-line component for our high school students and all students had to take at least one course on-line before graduation. Again, it was horrible. Ours is a poor district so many of our students don’t reliably have electricity much less internet access at home. Schools were put in the position of having to set aside time during the school day to provide access for students. I wasn’t able to examine the on-line instruction but I know that there were constant problems with access. Even students who did have internet access at home had problems logging on and gaining access to the content.
“Any on-line course requires a certainly level of hardware and software so no older computers can be used. In addition to requirements for accessing the on-line software the computer that the student is using to access will need certain supporting programs for the on-line access to work properly. For students who are not computer savy and don’t have parents who are computer savy, the whole operation can turn into a nightmare. I interviewed a teacher who taught one of the on-line courses and she was very impressed with some of the videos involved. However, when I asked her about the long term retention of the material, there was a very awkward silence and she sheepishly admitted that she doubted that kids retained much.”
In reflecting on the sordid Anthony Weiner story, I wrote that civilization depends to some extent on the survival of a sense of shame. Shame makes people regretful of bad behavior and minimizes such behavior. Too much shame might be a bad thing, but none at all leaves us at the mercy of the whims and desires of others.
This reader thinks we are losing any sense of shame:
“We are witnessing the death of shame in this country (and maybe globally). Name anything reprehensible that someone in power has done and I’ll find a line of people vociferously defending it. Kill an unarmed teenager? Flash your junk to unknown women? Lie to Congress? Drone bomb civilians (even American citizens)? Bankrupt the country with toxic mortgage swaps? Not a problem. Now, of course, if you’re an ordinary citizen who doesn’t get off the street fast enough during a protest, well, it’s off to jail with you!”
This teacher is tired of getting instructions from inexperienced policymakers and politicians.
He writes:
“Really! We always seem to pay the price for self proclaimed “know-it-alls” when it comes to Schools. Why is it those who have never stepped foot in a school since the day they (dropped out) or graduated seem to think they can do better than those who have invested in a higher education as well as time, blood/sweat/tears working to change the tide?
“I agree, we should focus on other BAD people. How about BAD Politicians, BAD Doctors, BAD Nurses BAD (fill in the blank). For example lets make Doctors accountable for their patients recovery rate! Surely, there are lots of tests and measures to determine “adequate yearly progress” for Doctors! But, lets be fair… why don’t we pay everyone based on the “test scores” of the recipients of goods and services they provide?”
Michelle Malkin is known for her strong conservative opinions, strongly expressed.
In this article in the National Review, titled “Jeb’s Education Racket,” Malkin eviscerates Tony Bennett and Jeb Bush. She writes:
[Bennett’s] disgraceful grade-fixing scandal is the perfect symbol of all that’s wrong with the federal education schemes peddled by Bennett and his mentor, former GOP governor Jeb Bush: phony academic standards, crony contracts, and big-government and big-business collusion masquerading as “reform.”
She adds:
“Cronyism and corruption come in all political stripes and colors. As a conservative parent of children educated at public charter schools, I am especially appalled by these pocket-lining GOP elites who are giving grassroots education reformers a bad name and cashing in on their betrayal of limited-government principles.”
Whether you are liberal or conservative or libertarian or anything else, you should be offended by the grade-fixing, by the cronyism, and by the cozy financial arrangements that now dominate what is called “reform.”
At some point, a light goes on and you realize that this so-called “reform” has nothing to do with children, nothing to do with education as such, and everything to do with politics, power, and money.
Frank Breslin, retired teacher of German, Latin, and social studies in New Jersey, shared this treat with me. I now give it to you for a few minutes of unalloyed beauty.
The corporate reform movement is built on a series of suppositions, hunches, and unfortunately, fraud. The innocent reformers impose their will on teachers who know more than they do and say it’s “for the kids.” But others are in it for money, control, and power. The problem for the reform movement is that they ARE the status quo. They rail against it, but in doing so they have to pretend that No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are not federal policy. While the reformers demand more budget cuts, more testing, more standardization, they have precious little to show for the 12 years they have been in charge of education in America. Teachers are angry and demoralized, the latest NAEP Long-Term Trend shows stagnation from 2008-12, privatization is proliferating, public schools are under siege.
Anthony Cody writes here that the Tony Bennett scandal is the beginning of the end. The game is nearing an end. The reformers’ have pulled the wool over the eyes of the public and the media. They are flush with cash, but at some point the foundations and Wall Street will realize they are doing harm, not good. It will not benefit society to privatize public education. Those who lead this campaign are not heroes. They will one day look back and wonder how they were duped into supporting so many bad ideas. They might even wonder why they insisted on one kind of education for their children, and something far less for other people’s children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 