Archives for the month of: August, 2013
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Gesell Institute: The Common Core Standards are Wrong for Young Children

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2013 //
32

The Gesell Institute of Human Development issued a statement in 2010 that was completely ignored, but its warning bears hearing.

In March 2010, the Gesell Institute released this statement. It fell on deaf ears.

 

The core standards being proposed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers are off the mark for our youngest learners. We at Gesell Institute call for a new set of standards for Kindergarten through Grade 3 that adhere to solid principles of child development based on what research says about how and what young children learn during the early years, birth to age eight. The proposed standards for Kindergarten through grade 3 are inappropriate and unrealistic. Policy must be set based on hard data and not on unrealistic goals surrounding test scores.

If the achievement gap is to be closed, child development must be respected and scientific research surrounding how children learn must be taken into account. Research clearly shows that early readers do not have an advantage over later readers at the end of third grade, and attempts at closing the achievement gap should not be measured in Kindergarten based on inappropriate standards.

The work of Gesell Institute has long been focused on research and best practice in child development and education – our legacy is based on the ground-breaking work of Dr. Arnold Gesell, a pioneer in the field of child development who observed and documented stages of development with normative data reflecting what children typically do at each age and stage. Currently, our national study collecting developmental information on over 1400 children across the country is in its final stages of data collection. This data, to be released in Fall 2010, is expected to further support what we know about how children develop and what they know at various ages, as well as the importance of focusing on appropriate methods for teaching young children.

We urge the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to respect the individual developmental differences of children and revise the K-3 standards based on research and the advice of experts in the field of early childhood. Having endorsed The Alliance for Childhood’s Joint Statement of Early Childhood Health and Education Professionals on the Common Core Standards Initiative, we support the call to withdraw the early childhood standards and create a consortium of experts “to develop comprehensive guidelines for effective early care and teaching that recognize the right of every child to a healthy start in life and a developmentally appropriate education.” (http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/) 

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Common Core

Any Antoinette Tuffs Left in Philadelphia Schools?

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2013 //
16

The story of Antoinette Tuff is a testament to the courage, the kindness, the decency, and the heart of a young woman who worked as a bookkeeper in an elementary school in Georgia.

As the whole world must know by now, a gunman came into the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, Georgia, with an AK-47 and 500 rounds of ammunition. He had a shootout with the police. He was obviously prepared for mass slaughter.

But Ms. Tuff spoke to him with love and kindness. She calmed him down. She persuaded him to give himself up. She told him she loved him.

She is not a teacher or principal, she is a bookkeeper.

She holds one of those non-essential jobs that was eliminated in Philadelphia due to draconian budget cuts.

How many other schools across the nation have lost their Antoinette Tuffs because of budget cuts?

Her quick thinking and kind heart prevented a terrible tragedy.

She reminds us, by her example, that there are more important things in life than test scores.

 

Categories Education Reform

Virginia School Boards Fight State Takeovers

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2013 //
11

It is a curious fact that there has never been a
successful,state takeover of a local school district. Correct me if
I am wrong. Maybe there is one somewhere but I don’t know of any.
Pennsylvania took control of Philadelphia in 2001, and Philadelphia
is near bankruptcy. New York took control of the Roosevelt school
district and increased its debt. New Jersey controls several of the
state’s lowest performing districts, some for decades, which have
remained troubled. State takeover, it may be said, has no track
record of success. That’s why I applaud the Virginia School Boards Association and
the Norfolk schools for suing the state to block
legislation intended to void local control. When schools are
floundering, they need help, and the state should provide it
without delay. But academic trouble should not be a rationale for
short-circuiting democracy. Message to states: Work with the people
in the community, not against them.

Categories Supporting public schools

Her Last Day of Teaching First Grade

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2013 //
62

This came in my private email:

 

As many of you know, I just retired from teaching, having spent most of my career in first grade. Over the last few years, my teaching had become gradually more restricted. Instead of running a center-based day, I was required to run scheduled periods of Fundations, Writing Workshop, Reading Workshop, and (this year) of Envision math. To encourage me to retire, my district had made a financial offer that was difficult to refuse. Almost simultaneously, my daughter had announced that she was pregnant with twins. The decision became easier and easier. As the pressures in New York State increased,  I decided what I wanted to do after retire: support families, fight the tests, tutor children to learn DESPITE the tests. That would mean running workshops for parents about curriculum. But that’s not what I want to write about tonight. I want to tell you about my last few weeks of teaching, and about my last good lesson.  

The district isn’t replacing me next year due to shrinking numbers. Once I announced my retirement, the vultures began to circle – teachers  seeking furniture, leveled books, left over supplies. (All of a sudden, my hoarding had value!) Gradually, my room became emptier and emptier. You’d have thought that my teaching would have suffered, but — I LOVED IT, AND SO DID THE KIDS!!! Painting, gluing, research, math projects; WE ALL RELISHED THE CHANGE! It was a very special time – though teary, for some. I’m not sure why my retiring should result in so many sad children (since I wouldn’t have been their teacher the following year), but there you have it. 

Driving to school on my last full day, I thought about what I could teach that day in my empty classroom. All I had was art paper, scotch tape, and crayons. The kids had already taken home their markers. I thought about how I could say good-bye. I wanted to help them gain some perspective. I wanted them to know they had each other. (I’d already told them they could email.)  I thought about how our paths had crossed and come together so arbitrarily, but how being together in this class had changed all our lives. And then I knew what I’d do! 

I gave each child one piece of 12″ x18″ paper. I told them that each child was to draw a path across the paper. It could be straight across or curved or jagged – whatever. We agreed that the paths would be about a fist wide, and had to be drawn in purple. The rest of the paper was to be decorated with whatever else they thought might have been on their paths this year. 

Everyone did as I requested after a few false starts. Some of the drawings were quite thoughtful and charming.  I then told the kids that we were now going to connect our paths together. I was having a small get together that night, and I told the children we needed something on the wall. Immediately, some of the kids became excited, and tried to put their papers together. I suggested that the kids get on the floor and connect their paths like a puzzle, assemble their work on the floor, and that we’d move it to the wall later. I’d never done this activity before, and had no idea how it would turn out. Over the coarse of the next half hour, I kept telling myself: Remember, it’s process over product.  

As the kids worked, I gradually stepped back. The children were making decisions about which paths connected, which looked best together, which should be moved to a different spot. There were no arguments, even though there were differences of opinion. I handed the kids scotch tape dispensers as needed. I mentioned to one little boy that it was great that there were no fights. He said to me, “Well, remember when I invented a game for the playground and then we all had a fight because I wanted to make all the rules? Remember how you explained to me how a true leader doesn’t make all the rules, but helps others to join in? Well – maybe that’s what we’ve all been doing.” 

I was absolutely floored. 

That’s when I knew how much I’d miss teaching. That feeling of molding a group and helping them become better together than singly – that’s amazing.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Teachers and Teaching

Breaking News: Founder of Pennsylvania Cyber Charter Indicted

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2013 //
22

Nicholas Trombetta, founder of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, has been indicted by federal authorities on 11 fraud and tax charges.

Trombetta’s school is the largest cyber charter in the state and possibly the nation, with 10,000 students and annual revenues in excess of $100 million.

Prosecutors said that Trombetta had stolen nearly $1 million. He “is accused of creating entity after entity, ultimately controlling what prosecutors said was an intricate web of interlocking businesses whose purpose was to enrich himself, his sister and various associates.”

Trombetta’s attorney said he will plead not guilty.

“The indictment alleges that the former wrestling coach and school superintendent formed businesses that billed for doing no work; masked his control of a corporation by naming straw owners; hid income from the IRS; took $550,000 in kickbacks on a laptop computer contract with Virginia-based NCS Technologies Inc.; and even “caused” employees to make $40,000 in individual payments to his favored political candidates before reimbursing them through one of his companies.

Although no such charges have been filed, there is a federal statute that prohibits making campaign contributions in the name of another person, or what are referred to as “conduit political contributions.”

Prosecutors insisted they were not making any judgments about cyber charters, just about Mr. Trombetta’s financial dealings.

As we have learned from studies like the one conducted by CREDO and another by NEPC, cyber charters provide an inferior quality of education–high attrition rates, low graduation rates, low test scores.

But the money is really good for those who run the schools, so long as they don’t break the law.

Categories Charter Schools, On-Line Education, Pennsylvania

The Biggest Fallacy of the Common Core Standards: No Evidence

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2013 //
100

Lately, I have noticed that defenders of the Common Core are smearing critics as Tea Party fanatics and extremists. That is what Arne Duncan said to the nation’s newspaper editors last month, when he claimed that opponents of the Common Core are members of “fringe groups,” people who don’t care about poor kids, and people who falsely accuse the federal government of having something to do with the Common Core. When interviewed on PBS, New York State Commissioner John King also said that the Tea Party was behind the criticism of the new standards.

They would like the public to believe that there is no responsible, non-political, non-ideological opposition to the Common Core standards.

This is not true, and I wrote this piece to explain why reasonable people have good reason to be concerned about the overhyping of the Common Core.

I understand that there are good elements to the standards.

In many states, they may be better than existing standards. In others, they may not.

But I don’t see why they are being rushed into production without a fair trial of their strengths and weaknesses.

No set of standards, no new product, emerges straight from the minds of its creators without seeing how it works in the real world of fallible human beings.

Until we see what happens to real children in real classrooms, the “standards” are words on paper without meaning.

It is only when they are tried out by real teachers in real classrooms with real children, when they are improved through trial and error, that we will know how they work and whether they can be called “standards.”

I cross-posted this piece on Huffington Post so it would reach many more readers.

I print it here for your reaction and comment.

I invite you to open the link and leave comments on Huffington Post.

Testing

Boosters of the Common Core national standards have acclaimed them as the most revolutionary advance in the history of American education.

As a historian of American education, I do not agree.

Forty-five states have adopted the Common Core national standards, and they are being implemented this year.

Why did 45 states agree to do this? Because the Obama administration had $4.35 billion of Race to the Top federal funds, and states had to adopt “college-and-career ready standards” if they wanted to be eligible to compete for those funds. Some states, like Massachusetts, dropped their own well-tested and successful standards and replaced them with the Common Core, in order to win millions in new federal funds.

Is this a good development or not?

If you listen to the promoters of the Common Core standards, you will hear them say that the Common Core is absolutely necessary to prepare students for careers and college.

They say, if we don’t have the Common Core, students won’t be college-ready or career-ready.

Major corporations have published full-page advertisements in the New York Times and paid for television commercials, warning that our economy will be in serious trouble unless every school and every district and every state adopts the Common Core standards.

A report from the Council on Foreign Relations last year (chaired by Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice) warned that our national security was at risk unless we adopt the Common Core standards.

The Common Core standards, its boosters insist, are all that stand between us and economic and military catastrophe.

All of this is simply nonsense.

How does anyone know that the Common Core standards will prepare everyone for college and careers since they are now being adopted for the very first time?

How can anyone predict that they will do what their boosters claim?

There is no evidence for any of these claims.

There is no evidence that the Common Core standards will enhance equity. Indeed, the Common Core tests in New York caused a collapse in test scores, causing test scores across the state to plummet. Only 31 percent “passed” the Common Core tests. The failure rates were dramatic among the neediest students. Only 3.2 percent of English language learned were able to pass the new tests, along with only 5 percent of students with disabilities, and 17 percent of black students. Faced with tests that are so far beyond their reach, many of these students may give up instead of trying harder.

There is no evidence that those who study these standards will be prepared for careers, because there is nothing in them that bears any relationship to careers.

There is no evidence that the Common Core standards will enhance our national security.

How do we know that it will cause many more students to study math and science? With the collapse in test scores that Common Core brings, maybe students will doubt their ability and opt for less demanding courses.

Why so many promises and ungrounded predictions? It is a mystery.

Even more mysterious is why the nation’s major corporations and chambers of commerce now swear by standards that they have very likely never read.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for high standards. I am opposed to standards that are beyond reach. They discourage, they do not encourage.

But the odd thing about these standards is that they seem to be written in stone. Who is in charge of revising them? No one knows.

When I testified by Skype to the Michigan legislative committee debating the Common Core a couple of weeks ago, I told them to listen to their teachers and be prepared to revise the standards to make them better. Someone asked if states were “allowed” to change the standards. I asked, why not? Michigan is a sovereign state. If they rewrite the standards to fit the needs of their students, who can stop them? The federal government says it doesn’t “own” the standards. And that is true. The federal government is forbidden by law from interfering with curriculum and instruction.

States should do what works best for them. I also urged Michigan legislators to delay any Common Core testing until they were confident that teachers had the professional development and resources to teach them and students had had adequate time to learn what would be tested.

Do we need national standards to compare the performance of children in Mississippi to children in New York and Iowa? We already have the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which has been making these comparisons for 20 years.

Maybe I am missing something. Can anyone explain how the nation can adopt national standards without any evidence whatever that they will improve achievement, enrich education, and actually help to prepare young people — not for the jobs of the future, which are unknown and unknowable — but for the challenges of citizenship and life? Thebiggest fallacy of the Common Core standards is that they have been sold to the nation without any evidence that they will accomplish what their boosters claim.

Across the nation, our schools are suffering from budget cuts.

Because of budget cuts, there are larger class sizes and fewer guidance counselors, social workers, teachers’ assistants, and librarians.

Because of budget cuts, many schools have less time and resources for the arts, physical education, foreign languages, and other subjects crucial for a real education.

As more money is allocated to testing and accountability, less money is available for the essential programs and services that all schools should provide.

Our priorities are confused.

Categories Budget Cuts, Class size, Common Core, Education Reform

What Is Happening in Muskegon Heights?

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2013 //
11

This reader reports on the for-profit charter chain that took control of the students in Muskegon Height, Michigan:

“I have a close friend who works in this very charter school in Muskegon Heights.

“If Mosaica isn’t the worst charter operation in America, it’s in the top ten.

“A few observations from my friend:

“1. They instituted a homeroom period at the start of the day. Students were ASSIGNED to a classroom and were supposed to show up for assistance / tutoring. My friend said that one student showed up. Administration did nothing to address the fact that kids weren’t coming to school.

“2. His building administrator locked the office doors and told teachers that she would only speak to them via e-mail.

“3. In April of last year, he was told that he must purchase paper because the school would no longer provide any.

“4. When MLIVE (The Grand Rapids Press), reported that nearly a third of the teaching staff had quit halfway through the year, the school responded by calling all the teachers in for a meeting. At the meeting, they had the teachers write down areas of improvement / complaints they had about the way Mosaica was running the school. After collecting all of the complaints, they threw them in the garbage. They then berated the remaining teachers and told them to quit because they have “loads of qualified applicants” dying to teach there.

“I could go on and on and on. This despicable company has stolen millions of dollars from Michigan taxpayers. On top of that, they’ve eliminated 50+ middle class jobs (former public school employees) and have created more paycheck to paycheck, barely getting by jobs. My friend makes $31,000 a year. He is better paid than several other staff members because he had previous years of experience.

“I am a FORMER REPUBLICAN. I voted for GW Bush twice. Knowing what NCLB and Republican efforts have done to public schools and to public education (the narrowing of education, total focus on standardized tests, elimination of liberal arts programs, loss of rigor or accountability for students, destruction of the teaching profession), I have left the party and have helped convince many of my friends to leave as well. I’m also a married white male (the backbone of the GOP). Lose guys like me, and you’re screwed.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Michigan

Chicago Parents Say: Follow the Money

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2013 //
15

Chicago Public Schools say they are out of money, but look where they are spending money freely.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Representatives available for print or broadcast media interviews

Contact:
Amy Smolensky, 312-485-0053

Parent Group, Raise Your Hand Blasts CPS for Budget Priorities –

Cuts Disproportionately Hit District Run Schools while Charter and Central Office Spending Increases

CHICAGO, AUGUST 21 2013 — With just days left until school starts, parent group Raise Your Hand is calling on the city and CPS to stop the attack on district-run schools and restore funding so that children can start school with a dignified school day.

After reviewing the budget, Raise Your Hand is alarmed to find many areas of increased and spending to Central Office including:

· $8.8 million for Family and Community Engagement Department – increased from last year
· $50.4 million for Office of Innovation and Incubation – $22.2 million increase
· $41 million for new school development (after CPS closed 50 schools due to a “utilization crisis”)
· $68 million for Talent office – $22 million increase
· $20 million for no-bid SUPES contract
· $19 million Strategy Management Office – $10 million increase
· $14 million Accountability Office –same as last year despite claims that CPS is making significant reductions in standardized testing

Cuts to traditional district run schools are at $162 million while charters got an overall increase of $85 million dollars.

“CPS says they have no alternatives but to make these school-based cuts,” says parent Jeff Karova of Darwin Elementary. “Clearly CPS has chosen to increase spending in certain areas very far away from the classroom while cutting essential programs critical to the development and learning of our children.”

*Raise Your Hand has analyzed cuts to programs across the district and has found:
At the elementary level:
· 68 schools lost an art position
· 47 schools lost a music position
· 19 schools lost a performing arts position
· 51 schools lost a librarian position
· 22 schools lost a technology position
· 77 schools lost a reduced class size position

At the High School Level, cuts include:
· 90 English positions
· 28 Music positions
· 14 Art positions
· 37 History positions
· 28 Librarian positions
· 22 Social Studies positions
· 21 Biology positions
· 6 Chemistry positions
· 3 Physics positions
· 50 Math positions

130 bilingual positions at the elementary and high school level and 530 special education positions.

*The above is not a comprehensive list. There are other program areas impacted by budget cuts. RYH found these cuts on the cps budget site under “Budget by Program/Instruction/School”

“The ‘full’ school day is full of rhetoric,” says Wendy Katten, Executive Director of Raise Your Hand. “It is unclear how CPS and the mayor plan to have the children of Chicago college and career ready, let alone fully engaged in school with these kinds of devastating cuts. We have called on the mayor to restore some of the TIF surplus all summer but after seeing the amount of money spent in extraneous areas, we feel the mayor has more than one option for restoring these cuts.”

Raise Your Hand recognizes that a long term solution for revenue is critical and the pension holiday that CPS took for 3 years has impacted the deficit, yet the group insists that the problem can and must be minimized for the 2013-14 School Year and can be addressed before school starts.

The following parent/Raise Your Hand Representatives are available for interviews:
Wendy Katten -773-704-0336
Dwayne Truss – 773-879-5216
Jeff Karova – 312-316-8054
Cassie Creswell – 716-536-9313

About Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education: Raise Your Hand is a growing coalition of Chicago and Illinois public school parents, teachers and concerned citizens advocating for equitable and sustainable education funding, quality programs and instruction for all students and an increased parent voice in policy-making around education. http://www.ilraiseyourhand.org.

Amy Smolensky
amysmolensky@comcast.net
312-485-0053

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools

Is Tennessee’s Charter Law Unconstitutional?

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2013 //
16

A lawyer representing the Metro Nashville school board contends that Tennessee’s charter school law is unconstitutional. 

John Borkowski, of the Washington. D.C., law firm of Hogan Lovells maintains that the 2002 law

“seems to impose increased costs on local governments with no offsetting subsidy from the state,” which he said violates the Tennessee Constitution.

Borkowski concluded that the state was requiring the districts to pay the full costs of charters without sharing the financial burden, thus draining the district schools of resources, which is unconstitutional:

The school board sought his advice in April to consider possible legal challenges to a state bill that would have given the state new power to approve charter schools that local boards of the state’s four largest counties, as well as Hardeman County, had denied.

The bill, supported by Mayor Karl Dean, Republican House Speaker Beth Harwell and other charter advocates, died on the final day of the legislative session. In his memo, Borkowski cites three “colorable legal arguments” against the bill, which is expected to be introduced again next year.

Yet he goes much further by questioning the constitutionality of the landmark law that established the funding mechanism for publicly financed, privately led charters in Tennessee.

A section of the Tennessee Constitution says that no law shall impose “increased expenditure requirements on cities or counties” unless the Tennessee General Assembly ensures the state shares those costs.

Under the state’s charter school funding formula, the combined state and local per-pupil dollar amount follows students to their new schools. This equates to about $9,200 per student in Nashville.

“The charter school receives all of the state and local per-pupil expenses, while the [local districts] still must cover existing fixed costs,” Borkowski wrote, adding: “There does not appear to be any state subsidy to share in these increased costs.”

The legal opinion provides fuel for an argument Metro school officials are making routinely of late: that the increase of charters in Nashville comes with a sizable financial toll. Twenty-one are set to operate in Metro by 2014-15, which officials say will cost $61.3 million.

Metro officials have argued the exit of students from traditional schools to charters hasn’t reduced the costs of maintaining schools they leave.

Keep an eye on this one. If the judges agree with Borkowski, Tennessee will have to find another source of funding for charters and stop bankrupting local school districts.

This could be a national issue.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Tennessee

Anthony Cody: What Do Prisons, Post Offices, and Schools Have in Common?

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2013 //
14

Anthony Cody explains
here the sustained assault on the commons, the effort to
privatize institutions that were long considered public.

He considers what happens when prisons
are privatized, creating profits by reducing the quality of service
and care. He shows why the post office is being privatized and who stands to gain.

And he summarizes the ongoing effort to privatize public schools and turn them over to corporate control.

He writes:

“It has
been decided in the halls of power, governmental and corporate,
that the way to improve schools is to unleash the power of the
marketplace. We are undergoing a transformation of huge proportions
in order to allow this to occur. Through the Common Core State
(sic) Standards, we are creating a single national marketplace for
tests, technology and curriculum – all three of which are
increasingly intertwined and removed from the control of teachers
and local communities….

“Meanwhile, our leaders
have unleashed “austerity” on the public sector, schools included.
In Chicago, the bulldozers destroyed a community reading center
treasured by local parents, capping off the closing of more than 50
public schools by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. In Philadelphia, the mayor
has been working to abandon public schools in favor of charters,
and the underfunding of the city’s schools has clergy there calling
for a student boycott.”

He concludes:

“Our schools are part of a public
heritage passed down to us. They were built in our communities with
a vision of bringing all children under the same roof to learn
together. Privatization replaces this model of the commons with one
ruled by marketplace “choices.” As we know, some people always wind
up with many more choices than others. Interviews with parents
reveal that their first choice is almost always a high quality
local public school for their children. If we shifted our public
policies away from attempting to discredit and replace these
schools, and towards supporting and strengthening them, we would be
far better off.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »