Julian Vasquez Heilig has conducted peer-reviewed research on TFA over several years.
He is astonished that it has been converted into a political power machine, which makes it even more powerful.
Follow the money as TFA expands its base.
Archives for the month of: October, 2013
I feel as though I am reporting election returns. First, the candidate is up, then he is down, winning, then losing, then the absentee ballots came in….and…..
The latest report from Los Angeles is that John Deasy has been offered a new contract that runs through mid-2016. This may be true. It also may be false. This is an unfolding drama worthy of Hollywood, but unworthy of the more than 600,000 children in the Los Angeles public schools.
There will be time enough to figure out all of this later, but for now the district is a shambles and a national joke. A bad joke.
After days of turmoil–will he or won’t he?–the Los Angeles Times reports that Deasy and the board are negotiating the terms of his resignation.
Maybe.
If it happens, it will be a very soft landing.
Stay tuned.
Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, harshly criticized one of Mayor Bloomberg’s signature initiatives, the school support networks.
“Me, if I were going to take over the school system, I would look heavily to change the networks,” Tisch said during a panel discussion hosted by the nonprofit group, PENCIL.
“I think the networks have basically failed children who are [English-language learners],” added Tisch, who is due to defend the state’s education policies at a state senate hearing Tuesday. “They have failed children who have special needs.”
Under the $90 million network system, principals choose from about 55 Department of Education or nonprofit-run support providers, which assist schools with teacher training, budgeting and more.
This is important, as the Boston Consulting Group (a management consulting firm) advised the Philadelphia School Reform Commission to replicate the Bloomberg networks,
Why BCG was impressed by the geographically dispersed networks is anyone’s guess.
Thanks to the hardworking technical team at MSNBC, and thanks to your alerts, MSNBC now has all three links working again on the great show with Melissa Harris-Perry.
Don’t miss the good discussions with me, Pedro Noguera, and MSNBC’s Trymaine Lee.
As many of you have noticed, the link for the Melissa Harris-Perry Show was down for the past three days.
It was a technical glitch.
It is working again!
This segment was followed by a panel discussion and a third segment about poverty.
I will post them again too.
The parents of Castle Bridge Elementary School said no to state testing. They refused to allow their little children in grades K-2 to take a standardized test. The test was canceled.
The parents drafted the following statement, which was sent to me by a parent leader, Dao Tran:
Statement of Castle Bridge School Parents on New State-Mandated K–2 Testing
October 28, 2013
When we first heard in September that the New York State Education Department was requiring some schools to give high-stakes, multiple-choice (bubble-in) tests for kindergarten through second-grade students, many of us were stunned. Tellingly, the tests are only given in English and we are a dual-language (Spanish/English) school.
We discovered (although we received no communication from our school district) these tests have nothing to do with identifying areas in which our children need help and support and everything to do with measuring their teachers’ supposed “value added,” in order to evaluate them.
However, we already have a “data system” that is far superior to anything a commercial bubble-test provider can offer.
Our children’s teachers provide us with rich, insightful narratives telling us how our children are responding to their thoughtfully designed curriculum, what progress they are making, and what challenges they are working to meet. They might include a story about how a child helped a classmate, overcame a fear, or showed a passion for an activity or experience. This gives us a much better sense of the value their teachers are adding than knowing which quartile a child falls into on a standardized test.
In a school such as ours, where the sounds of happy children engaged in hands-on projects, serious problem- solving, play, and singing is often heard, the threat of a multiple-choice test—bringing with it fear, stress, and the testing protocols that penalize collaboration—could not go unchallenged. Our children are not data points!
We knew even if a few individuals opted their individual children out, if teachers were forced to administer these tests, class instruction time would nevertheless be impacted. We prefer teachers use school time to encourage children to be curious and love learning—teaching to the child, not to the tests.
Opting our children out in large numbers was the only way to protect them while sending a strong message to policymakers that excessive testing is not in our children’s—or school’s—best interests.
As of this writing, families have opted out 93 of the 97 students who would have been subject to the tests and we know of none who want their child tested. Our principal Julie Zuckerman, having a supportive approach to parental input, heard our concerns and canceled the test.
Over the last decade, there has been a shift in public school instruction to support test preparation and erodes the quality of education. Using the scores from exams to determine the effectiveness of teachers elevates the importance of these exams—which give only a snapshot of a student’s ability to perform—to a level of absurdity.
The K–2 high-stakes tests take excessive testing to its extreme: testing children as young as four serves no meaningful educative purpose and is developmentally destructive.
Imagine if all the resources spent on test development, administration, and scoring were allocated to fund enrichment programs, school infrastructure, and staffing, we would be closer to meeting the actual needs of school communities. By refusing these tests, the message we sent was threefold:
1. To the city and state Departments of Education: testing K–2 children is not acceptable and developmentally inappropriate, excessive, and destructive.
2. To our children’s teachers and principal: we know that you can evaluate our students and help them learn and grow better than any test and we want no part of punitive evaluations of your work.
3. To other families of children in the NYC public school system: Your voice matters and you have the power to prevent your children from having to prepare for and take these unsound tests.
We hope that by saying no to these standardized, high-stakes tests we will embolden others to do the same and that together, we can reverse the tide of excessive testing in our public schools. Schools should not resemble machines that seek to track and sort children or to surveil and punish teachers.
Rather they should be caring communities of joy and learning where teachers, administrators, and parents work together to ensure a high- quality education for all children—who to us mean much more than a score.
I have met the writer of this letter. I know he is real. He requested anonymity. In New York, it is not safe to question authority:
“It is time for parents to speak out against the Common Core standards. They are destroying the love of learning in our children. My eight-year old son is in the third grade. He is a very strong student, particularly in Mathematics. Despite that strength, he recently had a homework assignment from his Common Core Math workbook, that frustrated him to tears. The word problem involved many steps including reading and understanding the problem, interpreting what needs to be done to solve it, subtracting three digit numbers, estimating each number’s tenth place value before subtracting and then coming up with an answer that matched an estimated answer. The problem was far too complex for a third grader. Instead of being excited about doing Math homework like he used to be, he now frequently says, “I don’t get this. It doesn’t make sense.” He’s right. It doesn’t.
“My son is losing his love of learning as the drill for the spring tests begin. He was so excited by a project that he did on planets and one that he did on Walt Disney. Both projects required him to research, read, write and most importantly, be creative. He didn’t cry then, he laughed and smiled. It was at an appropriate level and made sense. The Common Core and teaching to the test is now replacing these projects in our schools. As an educator, I am disappointed in our leaders and puzzled by their allegiance to the Common Core. As a parent, I am saddened and extremely upset that a curriculum matched to State testing is having such a negative effect on my child’s learning. The inappropriate level of difficulty in the Common Core is quickly turning my son’s joy of learning into sadness. I know that I am far from alone in my feelings and experience with this.
” A fellow parent told me about the effect of the Common Core testing on her daughter. Last year her little girl took the New York State Mathematics exam in the fourth grade. Her performance level on the Common Core test was scored as a 2 (below proficiency), however, the year before she was a 4 (advanced) and has been a very strong student in Math. Unfortunately, this parent was told by her school that her daughter must be placed in an additional Math support class for academic intervention services because of her score. Upon hearing this, the student said, “Now I’m stupid. Now I’m a dumb kid,”. The parent told me that her daughter’s teacher told her that she really does not need AIS, but the State of New York mandates it because of her score on the exam. The student’s confidence has been unnecessarily crushed and the parent is outraged.
“Parents in my suburban community are sharing similar anecdotes and seeing similar effects on their children. They are angry and expect better. They have watched their older children successfully navigate our schools and be very well prepared for college. They know that the scores are not an accurate measure. Their children deserve a well-researched curriculum that is appropriate at every level and does not confuse or frustrate their children to tears. Our children are now experiencing heightened levels of stress, anxiety, confusion, lowered self-esteem and a lack of interest in school. It is frequently being called, “Common Core Disorder.” Many parents have told me that they do not understand what the questions are asking for, why the questions are being asked and even how to solve them. Because I am a school leader in another district, they have complained to me repeatedly that they do not understand why such difficult concepts and high level problems are being taught to children who do not understand, or have just learned, basic concepts. The Common Core is lacking common sense.
“Reformers will suggest that “Common Core Disorder” is due to the lack of quality teaching in prior years and that suddenly things have to change so that students become college and career ready. The children in my community, including my son, and the children in the school that I work in, would be college and career ready without the inclusion of the Common Core curriculum. How do I know this? It’s simple. They have dedicated parents and teachers in their lives that care about them and devote all their efforts and time to teaching them about academics, learning and life at the appropriate levels and in a healthy manner. They instill upon them the importance of school, community and being a good person with a quality character. At times I wonder if reformers have studied the true sources of problems in our schools and education system or implement changes such as the Common Core for other reasons.
“If the reason that the Common Core is being implemented is to increase the numbers of students who are not college and career ready coming out of high school, then why are schools with extremely high percentages of students going to college being subjected to this? If strong students are finding this curriculum to be confusing, how are students with special needs and English language learners going to understand it? If there are students who lack the basic skills to prepare them for college, shouldn’t we have a curriculum that stresses those skills, not one that makes it impossible for them to succeed? Many parents are questioning the motives behind the Common Core. Some have suggested that it is a way to help destroy public school education and for big businesses to profit off of poor results of State exams. I’m not entirely sure, but one thing is certain. The crying and frustration must end. We are raising a generation of students for whom education has become punishment.”
According to Valerie Strauss, about 30 of Virginia’s 130 local school boards have passed resolutions against excessive testing. The school boards say “there is “little research” that shows that students “will be better prepared to succeed in their careers and college” by taking the 34 standardized tests the state gives to each child between grades 3-11.
The resolutions in Virginia — where there are about 130 school districts — are part of a growing backlash around the country by academics, educators, parents and others against the use of standardized tests as the chief “accountability” metric to evaluate students, teachers, principals and schools for high-stakes purposes.
The Virginia Association of School Superintendents have spearheaded the drive to reduce dependence on high-stakes testing.
The movement is certain to grow, as it is growing across the country.
As more school boards pass the resolution, others get the courage to join them.
Following the allegations of widespread cheating, the Atlanta Board of Education needs new members and independent thinking. The person who fits the bill is Edward Johnson. I have never met him but I have read many of his emails in which he made sense. He understands that school closings are harmful to the community. He understands the necessity for collaboration, not competition.
Here is a good description of the man and what he believes in.
I urge you to vote for Edward Johnson for school board in Atlanta.
Diane Ravitch's blog 