One of the few certainties to emerge from the intense effort to privatize public education is that giving A-F letter grades to schools is incoherent, punitive, and does nothing to help schools. Former superintendent Tony Bennett, a hard-right ideologue out to destroy public education in Indiana, imported the A-F grading system from his mentor Jeb Bush. No matter where it came from, it is useless.
Bennett resigned his job as state commissioner in Florida after the news broke that he toyed with the A-F to help a charter school founded by a major campaign contributor.
Instead of throwing out this tainted system, the State Board handed responsibilty for it over to the legislature, to further dilute the authority of State Commissioner Glenda Ritz, who beat Tony Bennett.
What a civics lesson for the students I’d Indiana: if you don’t like the winner of the election, carve her job away.
Whatever you do, the reformers believe, pay no attention to research, evidence, experience or election results.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Are all these Bennetts in education related? NY Regent Robert, William (former K-12), Tony
LikeLike
I asked that, too, some time ago on this blog & received no answer.
Does anyone know?
LikeLike
Sounds like Indiana needs some teachers to run for some other offices besides just
State Commissioner.
LikeLike
… if you can find teachers who haven’t already been beat up by the system…
LikeLike
The main reason why all schools are failing and all teachers are dying from stress and no student is winning is quite simple.
POLITICS + EDUCATION = ONE BIG GAME OF GREED and SELF INTEREST
LikeLike
I used “and” and “and” on purpose here
LikeLike
I feel so much better about the entire CCSS situation after listening to the politicians during the last 15 days of our Government Chaos.
I learned so very much from the Political Fiasco
It is all about Power, Money, Elections, and Greed…….
Either you accept this nonsense or you fight them with all of your power..
THE CCSS is ONE BIG JOKE…It is POLITICS…IT IS MONEY..IT IS GREED…
Top Down management of our Children
They need to stay out of education and leave it to the experts..
I know now that I am fighting with some very ignorant people…
People who do not believe in evolution or the constitution.
People who can not even use correct grammar.
People who twists all of the facts to make Political Gains..
It is Plastic..It is Political..
We want our schools back from these Greedy-Money-Hungry- People who use Tests as an Election Tool and Teachers as their Pawns
LikeLike
“People who do not believe in evolution or the constitution.
People who can not even use correct grammar.
People who twists all of the facts to make Political Gains..”
neanderthalish morphology, I guess.
LikeLike
The Ritz victory was a victory for democracy. Pence subverting Ritz and flouting the people who voted her in is another attempt to secure ALEC’s plutocratic agenda.
LikeLike
A little history of Indiana’s November 2012 election might be worth remembering (for those non-Hoosiers reading this blog); Glenda Ritz got more votes than even Governor Pence. By trying to dilute her influence, he is going against the will of the people. Pence is ignoring voters’ voices at his own peril.
Indiana is such a red state that if you are on the republican ticket and you lose, then there’s something seriously wrong with (1) your policies, (2) your message, or (3) just “you.” Bennett richly deserved this defeat, yet even after losing, he tried to spin it to sound as if he still did some good for the state. Bennett’s puppet-master, outgoing Governor Mitch Daniels (term-limited), was in such a froth about Bennett’s loss that he accused teachers of using school time to gin up opposition to Bennett. He even claimed he had proof, but never produced it:
(http://www.indystar.com/article/20121130/NEWS05/121130014/Gov-Mitch-Daniels-claims-teachers-used-illegaltactics-
defeat-GOP-state-education-chief-Tony-Bennett)
Joining Bennett in the losers’ column in Indiana was Richard Mourdoch, a tea-party candidate for US Senate whose message angered women voters because it sounded like Todd “legitimate rape” Akin. Bennett had big problems because of his overweening attitude to teachers, but he got thumped fair-and-square, even though he outspent Ritz 10 to 1. (Most of his funding came from big name reformers outside of Indiana who would never cast a vote in the state. Funny how that works…a rich reformer doesn’t vote in a state, but wishes they could…)
It is also worth remembering that Glenda Ritz is/was a registered Republican, switching parties only to run against Bennett. She did not caucus with the rest of the Democrats, and it was such a well-kept secret that I wasn’t even aware of it until election day.
I have been teaching in Indiana schools for 29 years.
LikeLike
At the risk of inserting some common sense into school reform, it looks like the reason they’re having trouble getting the latest gimmick launched is because the online testing in Indiana was a disaster:
“Indiana uses scores on state standardized tests to assign the letter grades to schools. But this year computer glitches that halted the administration of spring ISTEP+ exams also delayed the reporting of scores to schools.”
http://indianapublicmedia.org/stateimpact/2013/10/18/state-board-legislative-agency-calculate-af-grades-department-education/
Indiana was one of the states that rushed out the computerized tests, at the insistence of the “accountability” obsessives.
The kids wasted days on it. In a further trip down lunacy lane, public schools ran into problems because the ISTEP tests took so long to administer they ran into yet another mandated testing deadline, for a different standardized test.
“Donna Sink says her 9-year-old son saw what was a common sight in Indiana schools during online ISTEP+ testing Monday and Tuesday:
The dreaded “globe screen.”
“Suddenly there was an image on everyone’s screen of a computer with a line connecting it to the globe,” Sink wrote on our Facebook page, “which I assume means connection to server/internet lost… They had to restart all the computers, but after several tries the principal told them they’d have to stop and do the test another time.”
As Indiana schools enter their third day of testing, state education officials hope they’ve seen the last of the ‘Please Wait’ screens. They’ve given the go-ahead for testing to resume Wednesday, but are asking schools to cut their testing loads in half, a request that could extend ISTEP+ testing through the month of May.
But the directive also deepens the logistical challenge for local educators in setting up online exams — we reported on that on Monday — with many districts’ school years coming to a close and other students needing to take exams other than ISTEP+.”
Sounds like kids in Indiana spend most of last spring either obsessing over tests or attempting to take tests that were rushed out and didn’t work. Can you imagine? “Extend ISTEP testing through May”. They wasted a month on testing.
My guess is the reform crew who allocated millions of dollars and hundreds of hours to the tests are looking for a scapegoat to hide the failure of the data collection that underlies the school grades, and she’s a convenient political target.
LikeLike
Are the ISTEP scores on which the school grades are based even valid at this point? The adults in state ed reform leadership positions screwed up the testing by rushing it out. Kids as young as 9 were plopped in front of screens to take three days of tests, and the program didn’t work. This lunacy went on for a month, according to the news article. I assume the kids were cycled in and out of testing until they managed to complete the tests.
Must be very stressful for 9 year olds. If they cared about “data” they’d throw out this years scores and treat the children who took the tests fairly, by making sure the testing program works before they’re dumped in front of a computer screen. If it were my 9 year old I wouldn’t consider a test taken under these chaotic conditions valid.
LikeLike
Since so many in ed reform circles are “high achievers” (or believe they are) and they probably measure their own value based on test scores, I’d like to issue a challenge to them: take a high stakes test under the same chaotic conditions they insisted 9 year olds in Indiana take the ISTEP test.
I’ve taken a three day high stakes test, the bar exam. I think I would have done poorly on it had I been forced to work under the conditions these kids were stuck with, due to the poor planning, recklessness and politically-motivated ass-covering of the reform “data crew” in Indiana.
Tests are supposed to be fair, or they’re not valid. It isn’t fair to ask a 9 year old to deal with problems that were created by adults in rushing the tests out. How is this data even valid? The testing conditions weren’t even remotely uniform from school to school.
If the inputted data is garbage, the school grades will be garbage too. They know this.
LikeLike
They also think they are “brilliant” by virtue of what school they attended (example, Ivy League schools) and know what’s best for the rest of us peons. They are nothing but idiots.
LikeLike
They’re NOT valid!… but “experts” were “hired” to determine which tests were valid or not… and supposedly most “ARE” considered valid…. WHAT A CROCK OF EXCREMENT!
LikeLike
In Nevada and a few other states, they use the “five-star” rating system, which is utter garbage, since Title I schools will NEVER score better than three.
LikeLike
I am in Nevada, too, and I am deeply opposed to the five star system. I was asked in a meeting the other day to help figure out a way to get more points in this system, and one of my sarcastic replies was to ban recruiters to magnet schools and college high schools from our campus and the campus of our feeder middle schools. These stars are becoming self-fulfilling prophecies as more students see neighborhood schools as unattractive and go for our increasing magnet system, in which some kids have to get up at 4 a.m. to get on a bus at 5 since our high schools start so early, and bus rides can approach two hours. A lot of our most motivated students want this option, and I guess that is fine, but I want to preserve the option of a good neighborhood school that doesn’t get unfairly labeled as “ghetto” because it has a disproportionate number of ELL students. Our school is focusing on 31 special ed kids who brought down our scores, but many of these are in self-contained classrooms, and most of us are not equipped to help them, help which to my mind doesn’t mean making them take tests they will never pass. Our other option to get more points is to increase AP numbers, but this is almost impossible as now many of our juniors do the college high school route where they are guaranteed free college credit if they pass their classes rather than taking a chance with an expensive AP test.
LikeLike
Reg, I am in Clark County. Our brilliant leadership has decided that our resource kids need to split their time between the resource room and the regular classroom. This violates their IEP and will not do them any good. The justification from downtown was that “they need exposure to their grade level core subjects. A learning disabled kid does not need to spend half his day trying to do things that are two grades above his ability level. These young (5th grade and below) kids are now developing nervous tics, showing signs of stress, and cry when they are given more “grade level” work to allegedly remediate their disability. They are being subjected to ridicule in front of their peers. No one is being well served by this stupidity. I objected and was reprimanded. I am giving some parents some names of lawyers. 5 star rating systems just mean how exclusive can you be.
LikeLike