Archives for the month of: September, 2013
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Art as Part of Protest Against Mass High-Stakes Testing

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2013 //
4

Art teacher Jen Scott entered a painting in a contest.

It shows New York State Commissioner looming happily over children who are answering multiple-choice questions.

If you like the painting, please vote for her here.  See her piece here.

The contest ends tonight at midnight.

 

 

A Medina High School art teacher is seeking online votes in the second annual Vision Art Awards, in which she has entered a painting protesting the state-mandated standardized testing.
 
Vision Art Awards, sponsored by 464 Gallery at 464 Amherst St., Buffalo, seeks to support, encourage and celebrate the work of local and regional artists through a format that levels the playing field between emerging and established artists, said art teacher Jen Scott.
 
Scott’s oil painting titled “An Educational Experiment Engineered for Failure” shows the New York State Education Commissioner John King smiling through a classroom’s windows, while students are struggling with the influx of standardized testing.
 
“This painting really protests the over-reliance on standardized tests and how these tests focus so narrowly on reading and math skills,” Scott said. “Non-standard thinkers, like my son Matt, are penalized through these tests.”
Soon most states, including New York, will mandate so-called high-stakes tests in many subjects at several grade levels, Scott said.
 
She shared a statement from Howard Gardner, professor of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education: “We must proceed cautiously before we place students’ minds and hearts at risk with tests of dubious quality, whose meaning can be over interpreted and whose consequences can be devastating. Yes, we need more rigorous academic standards, but we must also give youngsters models when it comes to developing the most crucial skills: love of learning, respect for peers and good citizenship. That is what they will need most to pass the test of life.”
 
Scott is asking people to vote for her painting by “liking” the 464 Gallery fan page on Facebook; clicking on the Vision Art Awards photo album; and clicking “like” on the painting.
 
Voting will be open until midnight on Friday.
An opening reception for the art show is scheduled from 6 to 10 p.m. Sept. 13. At this event, the winners of the People’s Choice Awards will be revealed, as well as the juried selections. In addition, some other works of note will be featured, as selected by 464 Gallery owner, Marcus Wise.
Leonie Haimson
Categories Accountability, Testing

Turn Out for Hearings in New York About State “Reform” Policies

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2013 //
11

If you live in New York state, this is your chance to make
your views known about the destructive policies mistakenly called
“reform” by State Commissioner John King and the Board of Regents.
Senator John Flanagan will be
holding four hearings across the state to hear your
concerns. Granted, a hearing from 10 am-2 pm is not
teacher-friendly, but certainly retired teachers should turn out.
If you want change, now is your chance. Here is the schedule:

Tuesday, September 17th from 10:00 am to
2:00 pm

Suffolk Community College, Health,
Sports and Education Center, Grant Campus

1001 Crooked Hill Road,
Brentwood


Tuesday, October 1st from
11:00 am to 3:00
pm

Syracuse City Hall, Common Council
Chambers, 3rd Floor

233 East Washington Street,
Syracuse


Wednesday, October 16th from 10:00 am to
2:00 pm

Buffalo City Hall, Common Council
Chambers, 13th Floor

65 Niagara Square,
Buffalo


Tuesday, October 29th from 10:00 am to 2:00
pm

Senate Hearing Room, 19th
Floor

250 Broadway, New York
City

Categories Education Reform

Can Teachers Be Trained Like Navy Seals?

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2013 //
21

EduShyster has written a hilarious column about an interesting proposal.

According to EduShyster, some very important hedge fund manager was upset by Motoko Rich’s article in the New York Times about the short (two-to-three year) “career” of charter teachers. He suggested that teachers should be as ready and as tough as Navy Seals: the best of the best! They turn over often, and who cares?

EduShyster finds humor in the comparison, as you would expect.

The biggest drawback, it seems, is the difference between Teach for America training (five weeks) and the Seals’ training. Read on and enjoy.

Categories Education Reform

Ohio: Charters No Better Than Public Schools

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2013 //
66

The accountability hawks thought that tests and report cards would help to display the failure of urban public schools and pave the way for more privatization via charters. What they didn’t anticipate, however, was that the charter schools would do no better than the public schools–and by their own measures, far worse.

Test case, Ohio.

On the A-F report cards (a favorite of the reformers), nearly 90% of the charters were graded either D or F. These were supposed to be schools that produced spectacular results by dint of freedom from regulation and unions. They didn’t. Embarrassingly, the Ohio charters had a lower graduation rate.

The charter experiment is not working on Ohio, although it is making a few people very rich.

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio

Parent: My Son Suffered Psychological Abuse

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2013 //
90

This is a story written by a mother who enrolled her son in Democracy Prep in Harlem. She is a Nigerian-born journalist. She contends that the school’s rigid discipline was excessive and that her son spent hours every day in detention.

It is a harrowing story. No doubt, Democracy Prep has another version. I welcome its response to this article. I will post it.

She writes:

“On my first visit to observe class I was struck by the robotic and monotonous style of teaching whereby teachers are programmed to literally clock every second of the class through a count down, while simultaneously monitoring every movement and body language of the young students.

“The students are supposed to respond in non-verbal coded signals called : spirit fingers – a twirling of all ten fingers in the direction of the scholar being supported – means a ‘show of support,’ brain match – is the simultaneous waving of the thumb and the pinkie – it means ‘I agree with you,’ track your speaker means ‘focusing on who’s speaking,’ pound it out – a chorus of pounding on the desks – means ‘the question is answered correctly’; and so on.

“So now I understand fully well why my 12 year old who is very creative and loves to be in motion would feel like he’s in prison; having to endure ten hours of monotonous class sessions daily without any sports activities or recess. Scholars have to eat their lunch in their respective classroom/homeroom and are only given fifteen to twenty minutes.”

And more:

“The endless list of reasons for which students can get railroaded into detention and ultimately suspension include: “not spontaneous on queue,” “clapping three times instead of twice as prompted,” “slouching over the desk,” “looking back at another student,” “talking,” “mumbling to yourself,” “fake coughing or sneezing,” “asking to go to the rest room,” “raising your hands too long,” “clearing your throat” or “breathing too hard.”

“I found this preposterous.

“So the process of suspension usually starts as follows. A teacher would declare “that’s one,” meaning a deduction, then if a student interjects “what did I do,”? The teacher would respond: “that’s two.”

“The third deduction automatically sends a student to “COLUMBIA,” the detention room managed by two African-America male coaches.

“All the Advisory/home rooms are named after a University. My son is in UCONN. I’m not sure why the detention room is called COLUMBIA. And by the way all the teachers at this charter school are white and from out of state. The school’s administrators did manage to get two coaches that are African-American from the New York City area. They are the two in charge of the detention room.”

Read the article and think about this:

The US Department of Education was so impressed by Democracy Prep that it have the charter chain $9.1 million to expand.

Question: With measures that demand total compliance, is Democracy Prep educating for democracy?

Categories Charter Schools, New York City, U.S. Department of Education

Rich Néw Yorkers Offended by de Blasio Plan to Fund Pre-K Education

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2013 //
51

Bloomberg News reports that the city’s corporate leaders and super-wealthy are offended by mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio’s plan to raise taxes on those earning over $500,000 a year to fund universal pre-K and after school programs for middle school kids.

The head of the business leaders’ group was astonished by de Blasio’s indifference to the needs of corporate executives. ““It shows lack of sensitivity to the city’s biggest revenue providers and job creators,” said Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a network of 200 chief executive officers, including co-Chairman Laurence Fink of BlackRock Inc. (BLK), the world’s biggest money manager.”

Some predicted an exodus of rich people from the city.

What has de Blasio proposed?

“De Blasio’s plan would raise the marginal tax rate on incomes above $500,000 to 4.4 percent from almost 3.9 percent. For the 27,300 city taxpayers earning $500,000 to $1 million, the average increase would be $973 a year, according to the Independent Budget Office, a municipal agency.

“For those making $1 million to $5 million, the average extra bite would rise to $7,793, the budget office said. At incomes of $5 million to $10 million, it would climb to $33,518, and for those earning more than $10 million, it would mean paying $182,893 more.”

Here is the reaction of one hedge fund manager: “E.E. “Buzzy” Geduld, who runs the hedge fund Cougar Capital LLC in the city and is a trustee of Manhattan’s Dalton School, where annual tuition tops $40,000, said de Blasio’s plan “is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard” and “not a smart thing to do.”

Think of the billions that Bloomberg squandered on technology projects that fizzled (like the $600 million Citytime project), the failed merit pay plan ($53 million wasted), the failed plan to pay students to get higher test scores, etc.

The business executives said nothing because no one suggested that they would be taxed to pay for it.

De Blasio is proposing research-based programs. Those who care about education and kids should be cheering and should gladly pay an extra $973 (or more if their income is higher) to do what is right for kids.

Oh, and one more thing. The article says:

“The city’s richest 1 percent took home 39 percent of all earnings in 2012, up from 12 percent in 1980, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonprofit research group in New York.”

Don’t cry for me, Argentina.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Economy, New York City

Crazy Crawfish Says CREDO New Orleans Study Is Not Credible

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2013 //
1

Jason France, aka Crazy Crawfish, used to work for the
Louisiana Department of Education.,he worked in research and
statistics. He helped to assemble the data on New Orleans charter
schools before he left. He has concluded
that CREDO is not credible. First, he realized that
CREDONis a pro-charter organization. Then, he looked at the
methodology, and was disturbed to see that the NOLA charters were
compare to the Recovery School District, the state’s lowest
performing districts. And he was chagrined when he saw that some of
the “successful” charters had selective admissions.

Categories Charter Schools, New Orleans

Charter Advocates Try to Buy Bridgeport Election

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2013 //
10

Jonathan Pelto reports that charter advocates have dumped at least $50,000 into the Bridgeport school board elections in hopes of maintaining a board that will create more charters and defend Paul Vallas.

Expenditures of this magnitude are still fairly rare in school board elections, except in cases where the privatization movement has decided that they want control, like the Louisiana, Indiana, Idaho, and Los Angeles school board races, as well as the charter referenda in Washington State and Georgia.

Where is the money coming from?

Pelto writes:

In this case, A Better Connecticut is claiming that their five largest funders were Education Reform Now Advocacy of New York City, 50CAN Action Fund, Inc. of New York City, Real Reform Now Network, Inc. of Loudonville, New York, Families for Excellent Schools – Advocacy Inc. of New York City and Students for Education Reform (SFER- Action Network Inc.) of New York City.

A Better Connecticut was created at the beginning of this year by ConnCAN, which was created by the original funders behind Achievement First, Inc.

As readers know, Achievement First, Inc. is the large charter school management company that was co-founded by Stefan Pryor who served on Achievement First’s Board of Directors until he resigned to become Governor Malloy’s Commissioner of Education.

Note how many of these groups are not based in Connecticut. Families for Excellent Schools in NYC is funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and other corporate reform activists.

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Schneider vs. Hirsch: Is Core Knowledge Free…or Not?

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2013 //
91

Mercedes Schneider, who teaches in a public high school in Louisiana and holds a Ph.D. in research methods, wrote a post about the transaction in which Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify bought the rights to Core Knowledge ELA for 20 years.

She wrote:

A quick summary: A 2012 American Educator article notes that CK materials are free for teachers both in New York and across the nation to download. The CK website has some (but not all) CK ELA free materials, but only to read, and these have been recently “updated” (according to the CK site record) but are amazingly outdated. So, for usable, truly updated CK ELA K3 materials, one can go to the CK website, but one is redirected to Murdoch’s Amplify, where one must purchase these now-certainly-not-free CK ELA K3 materials.

When she went to the Amplify website, “The cheapest item by far is $650 for a CK ELA kit to serve 25 children. That’s $26 per student– just a few dollars shy of the cost per student for a Jeb-Bush-promoted PARCC assessment.”

“As a teacher, I realize the importance of schools’ purchasing teaching materials that are reproducible. Most schools do not have the funds for substantial annual curricular purchases for all subjects. And yet, the Amplify CK ELA materials are not reproducible, which means that a school would have to pay some serious money each year in order to use materials that are deceptively publicized as “free.”

E.D. (Don) Hirsch, Jr., has never profited from the Core Knowledge materials or program. He has placed every dollar from the royalties of his books into the Core Knowledge Foundation, which exists to disseminate his ideas about the importance of content. Let me repeat: Hirsch has not profited from the selling of any CK materials.

I asked Hirsch to respond to Mercedes Schneider’s blog post above. This is his response:

Dear Mercedes Schneider:

I noticed from the latest update of your blog that you have found the site where you can download all the latest files and materials from Core Knowledge Language Arts pre-K-3, — available to all under a creative commons license, which means that anyone can print, amend or use in any other way for their school or personal use, so long as they don’t try to sell it. If you were a first grade teacher you could print up copies for yourself and any number of students, You would not be charged a penny by anyone, and Amplify would not earn a penny.

In your update you complain that this web address is hard to find. I’m not great on computers, but here’s the way I found it. I went to the Core Knowledge web site, which appears when you google “Core Knowledge.” Then I wrote “CKLA download” which brings you to a web page that has a “free download manager.”

One of the reasons we put this site up is our dissatisfaction with the New York State website. As you note it still has the old 2010 pilot version of the materials when they were first sites being worked on, and did not want them downloaded yet. The NY site also has the up to date current version . You are right that those old sites old are still live, and we have urged that they be taken down. Those old sites have all the “still under construction” warnings that discourage distribution. We continue to try to get those out of date sites taken down. But we have no control over the bureaucracy of NY state.

The only way Amplify can make money from CK Pre-K-through 3 is if a school or district doesn’t want to bother with printing, and therefore orders from them. But this also means that Amplify would need to offer the materials at an attractive price.

And there’s another twist you could not have known about. We were pretty good bargainers on behalf of the public in this deal. Amplfify helped pay for the development of grade 3. But we insisted grade 3 also got put up for free.

You need to consult with Amplify where they expect to make money from all this. They are underwriting the development costs of grades 4 and 5, and our contract with them is a regular 20 year publisher’s contract with royalties to CKF. They probably hope that having the whole pre-K 5 package, with pre-k 3 available for free will make 4 and 5 attractive. You’ll have to ask them. Our view is: we want the get these coherent, knowledge-based materials available to as many schools as possible. And for as many grades as possible for free.

Don Hirsch

Categories Curriculum, Education Industry

A Brave Superintendent in Long Island

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2013 //
10

Steven Cohen is superintendent of the Shoreham-Wading River
Central School district on Long Island in Néw York. At a time when
others quietly acquiesce, Superintendent Cohen spoke out in
“Newsday.”

He wrote that the schools are being swamped by a
tsunami of untested “reforms,” at the same time that their budgets
are restricted by Governor Cuomo’s 2% tax cap, which voters may
override only by winning 60% of the local vote. Costs don’t stop
rising, so many district will be forced to cut teachers and
essential services to students. He bravely calls out the state
Regents for forcing a “reform agenda” on public schools that may
yet hurt children.

For his courage, insight, and willingness to
speak against an unjust status quo, Steven Cohen is a hero of
public education.

“By Steven Cohen Shoreham-Wading River Central
School District

“Shoreham-Wading River’s greatest challenges in the
2013-14 school year are the same as those of sister districts
throughout Long Island and the rest of NYS. Will we find ways to
preserve, and where possible improve, valued educational programs
without having sufficient resources to cover increasing costs? Will
NYSED’s demands to implement untested — and very controversial —
changes in curriculum standards and assessment, called for in the
Regents Reform Agenda, help or hurt children?

“We do not control increasing pension costs. We have little control over increases in
the cost of medical benefits. We have little control over costs
associated with state mandates. We are bound by the new tax levy
limit. What we do control is the size of our teaching and support
staffs. So if we do not get help to meet increases in pension
costs, health costs and mandate costs, either we must ask our
communities to provide greater resources by a supermajority vote
(while the economy continues to sputter), or we must increase class
size, eliminate valuable programs, or do both. And while we
confront these difficult fiscal problems, we are required to train
new teachers and retrain veteran teachers to instruct students
according to new, untested, curriculum standards, and assess both
students and teachers by methods whose reliability is highly
uncertain.

“Our public schools are being told to do things that no
private schools are forced to do. Private schools have not embraced
the so-called benefits of the Regents Reform Agenda (why not?). An
entire generation of children is being put at risk of receiving a
defective — and perhaps damaging — education should these
untested “reforms” prove to be what many of us fear: false gods.
Will the Regents, many of whom send their own children to private
schools that are not hobbled by insufficient resources, or subject
to their own “reforms,” insist that all children — whether they
learn in public, private or parochial schools — be forced to
benefit from their recommended improvements? “These are the
challenges we face in 2013-14.”

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Budget Cuts, Honor Roll, New York, Students, Teachers
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