Although the Internet and my email box was ablaze within announcements that Los Angeles Superintendent John Deasy had announced his resignation, and that it was reported by the Los Angeles Times, the resignation was less certain and more conditional by this morning.
Did he resign or just threaten to resign or just suggest that he might resign? Or was it part of a negotiation?
Stay tuned.
Yesterday, it was my pleasure to visit Vermont and New Hampshire, and to experience that wonderful bracing feeling of New England in the fall. It brought back long ago memories, when I was a naive young Texan, freshly arrived from the Houston public schools, and got my first sight of giant trees turning gorgeous shades of red, yellow, and orange, and breathed in the cool, crisp smell of fall.
My sponsor yesterday was the Vermont School Boards Association, but I stayed across the state line in Hanover and spoke at Dartmouth College, which provided a large lecture hall (thanks to the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth). I met with students and school board members. I was introduced by Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, who spoke movingly of his school days. He was dyslexic, he said, and the principal told him and his parents that the school would do its best, but he would probably never learn to read and would never qualify for a profession. But one teacher, he said, took an interest in him, and she patiently taught him how to read. The lesson he drew from his experience is that we should never give up on any child.
At first, I thought that if every governor had had to overcome a learning obstacle as Governor Shumlin had, it would make them more appreciative of our public education system and the importance of dedicated teachers. But a local school board member reminded me of another sitting governor in a nearby state who also had a learning disability, yet is demoralizing teachers and destabilizing his state’s great public education system by favoring charter schools.
What’s so great about Vermont? Aside from gorgeous scenery, a beautiful climate, and friendly people, it is a state where people have a powerful sense of community. They care about their local community, about their children, about their state. They don’t brag, though they could: Vermont has the nation’s highest graduation rate (91.4%). Instead, they write and talk and think about how to do better. They want more parental involvement, more early childhood education, more technology in every classroom. They want to support their principals and teachers, and they want everyone to remember that the whole community must work together on behalf of its youngest members.
Vermont is smart. They did not apply for Race to the Top. They did not want all those federal strings attached to their local schools. They refused the NCLB waiver because Vermont was smart enough to see that meant more federal strings without any money. Vermont did not want to evaluate its teachers by the test scores of their students. They did not want charter schools to divide their communities. Vermont wants the big decisions made by the local community, not by Washington, D.C.
To show you how unusual Vermont is, Governor Shumlin picked Rebecca Holcombe, the director of teacher education at Dartmouth, to be state commissioner of education.
The state wants to strengthen communities and families. Yes, they still have to give tests, but they don’t talk all that much about test scores. NCLB requires that they do it, but it is clear that the state wants to strike the right balance between what schools must do, what families must do, what students must do, and how the legislature can help without domineering.
I didn’t hear any teacher-bashing.
The Mean Party is in charge in many states, and Congress can’t break free of its NCLB mindset.
But things are different in Vermont. It’s a beautiful state in many ways.
A new study hails the success of Mayor Bloomberg’s small schools initiative. The mayor closed hundreds of schools and opened hundreds of schools.
This study follows soon after the release of a study by the Annenberg Institute of School Reform showing the Bloomberg small schools excluded large numbers of the “over the counter” students, the late arrivals who often have the highest needs, such as new immigrants. These students were diverted away from the mayor’s signature schools and sent to struggling schools that were slated for closure. They were tossed aside. Collateral damage.
That’s one way of creating a success story: keep out the kids with the highest needs. Fund researchers. Declare victory. Forget about the OTC kids.
A reader with knowledge of testing says:
“If the opt-out movement wants to stop the testing they should focus on getting people to boycott the field tests. If the field tests don’t get enough student responses then there will be no questions for the operational tests.”
Report from Howard Blume of the LA Times
John Deasy, superintendent of schools in Los Angeles, announced he was resigning as of February.
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I’ve posted my review for Anton Community Newspapers, a chain of 18 weeklies covering New York’s Nassau County and the Gold Coast of Long Island.
http://www.antonnews.com/features.html
Stop The Educational Insanity
Diane Ravitch’s new book combines heart with the ultimate fact-check
If you want to do one thing this year for our children, our nation and our future, buy a copy of Diane Ravitch’s brilliant and engaging new book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (Knopf, $27.95).
It is a best-seller that is destined to change the course of American education everywhere, suburban, urban and rural schools alike. When I started reading it, I was humbled, excited and sad.
Humbled by the depth of her commitment to the nation’s children. Excited that she put everything into one volume. And sad that her book is necessary—because what that says about our elected leaders and their perspective on children and education is distasteful and victimizes too many children.
Ravitch wrote this book to document, with the research of a scholar (charts and statistics — she is a distinguished Ph.D.), why our nation is taking the wrong path in education.
As she puts it, “school reformers are putting the nation’s children on a train that is headed for a cliff. This is the right time to stand on the tracks, wave the lanterns and say, ‘Wait, this won’t work!’… But the reformers say, ‘Full speed ahead!’ aiming right for the cliff.”
Her thoroughly documented position, attested to by millions of parents, teachers and taxpayers across the county, is that “what began as a movement for testing and accountability has turned into a privatization movement.”
Elected and self-appointed education reformers have lost sight of the diagnostic purpose of tests, and use test results to claim that our public education system is broken. Now, that mantra of “broken schools” has become an excuse to turn public education into schools run for profit.
The headlines we read about how bad schools are, how bad teachers are, how important charter schools are, don’t have a factual basis. These notions are propaganda underwritten by some of the nation’s wealthiest businesspeople who believe that education should be run like a business, with efficiency, spreadsheets and bottom-line profits as the driving forces. Are the kids learning? Only the spreadsheet knows.
The corruption and malfeasance behind this are rank—and all documented in Reign of Error.
As she says, her premise is straightforward: “You can’t do the right things until you stop doing the wrong things. If you insist on driving that train right over the cliff, you will never reach your hoped-for destination: excellence for all. Instead, you will inflict harm on millions of children and reduce the quality of the education.”
Ravitch provides solutions in the very first chapter, admittedly so that you don’t have to wait to the end to start making a difference. Her advice is to take better care of our children. Treat them like children, love them and guide them. Giggling is allowed. Kids need to be healthy, and poverty is the number one enemy of education.
Chapter by chapter her book refutes the nonsense that reformers disperse—she provides summary facts, claims versus reality statements, and solutions, at the head of each chapter. And enough charts for the most data-obsessed reader.
Facts:
High school dropouts are at an all-time low, and high school graduation rates are at an all-time high.
Charter schools run the gamut from excellent to awful and are, on average, no more innovative or successful than public schools.
Virtual schools are cash cows for their owners, but poor substitutes for real teachers and real schools.
Poverty is highly correlated with low academic achievement.
Solutions:
Reduce class sizes to improve student achievement and behavior.
Eliminate high-stakes standardized testing and rely instead on assessments that allow students to demonstrate what they know and can do.
Devise actionable strategies and specific goals to reduce segregation and poverty.
Recognize the public education is a public responsibility, not a consumer good.
I can’t convey her eloquence, dignity, and compassion. This erudite scholar is also very accessible. She is called Wonder Woman, Hercules, a national hero—and Mom and Grandma.
Her book is an act of defiance, protest and revolution. And love.
Diane Ravitch is right, her cause is, indeed, “the civil rights issue of our time.”
John Owens is editor in chief of Anton Community Newspapers, and author of Confessions of a Bad Teacher: The Shocking Truth from the Front Lines of American Public Education (Sourcebooks, $13.99).
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John Owens, author
CONFESSIONS OF A BAD Teacher
The Shocking Truth From The
Front Lines of American Public Education
Published by Sourcebooks
Available at Amazon and wherever books are sold
Mercedes Schneider here analyzes the tax returns submitted by Michelle Rhee for her two organizations. One engages in political activities, and the other is an advocacy group.
Rhee gives generous contributions to those who seek the privatization of public education.
Schneider notes the close connection between Rhee and the creators of Common Core.
She concludes her review with these thoughts:
“In reading these tax documents, I cannot help but wonder if our democracy is such a farce that it will crumble beneath the weight of the wallets of the wealthy removed. I wonder what it will take for them to realize that they are foolishly destroying the foundation upon which they themselves stand. In their arrogant fiscal elevation they forget that even they require the foundational institutions that form our democracy– public education being one such institution…..
“Here’s a hint: When you hear that a candidate in a local election is being outspent by 10- or 20-to-1, vote for that candidate.”
This teacher read about the student in Philadelphia who died of an asthma attack; there was no school nurse because of Governor Tom Corbett’s massive budget cuts.
“I currently teach middle school in the South Bronx. These children raised in and in the shadows of dystopian housing projects and buffered by the emotional and societal detritus of poverty have seen the organizing and “purifying” fires of reform take away their library, classroom space, increase class size, excess teachers to the point of understaffing due to budget limitations, ending after school enrichment and extra curricular activities and even the ability to pay a complete staff of educators. However, it was two years ago when our school-based clinic was closed ( the only medical care many of our students experience) that I understood and allowed myself to believe fully the truth. In the Huxleyian landscape of reform, my wise-beyond-their-years, empathetic, thoughtful students are officially Epsilons.”
What we have learned after thirty years or more of standardized testing, is that the tests mirror family income education: they measure gaps but do nothing to close them; our kids spend (waste) too much time preparing to take the tests; the test results are massively misused for rewards and punishments instead of for diagnostic purposes; the testing industry is rich and powerful and hires lobbyists to protect its hegemony.
Make 2014 the year we opt out. Do not let your child take the state tests: do not let your child take field tests; do not let your child take practice tests.
Seek out information about your state’s laws by writing Peg Robertson of United Opt Out.
Here is a recent post by education activist Angela Engel of Colorado:
In the sixteen years since I first administered the CSAP test to my fourth grade students at Rock Ridge Elementary School, here’s what we’ve learned:
Wealth and poverty are the greatest indicators of test performance
High-stakes testing correlates to segregation
High-stakes testing increases inequities in opportunities and resources and further harms low-income children and youth
Test scores are not an accurate indicator of a student’s knowledge or potential
Emphasis on standardized testing kills creativity, imagination, and innovation
Commercial tests are more expensive and are far less informative than classroom assessments collected over time and evaluated by professional teachers
High-stakes testing does not improve schools, teachers or students
High-stakes testing has cost billions of dollars with no return on those investments
Standardized tests and the stakes and labels associated with these tests are destructive to children and youth and fail to honor their unique ways of thinking and learning
Over these many years, I have worked to challenge high-stakes standardized testing. I have published a book and articles, written legislation, lobbied on behalf of kids, spoken to audiences, organized and educated. I’ve come to understand that the public’s collective will and their intolerance for injustice is the greatest agent of change. We can still try and change the laws, we can continue to inform the people, and we can also refuse to conform. We can live by a different set of rules; standards that respect our children; choices that are responsible to our spending; and decisions that heal the opportunity divide and lead to cooperation.
The Coalition for Better Education is beginning their annual Colorado campaign to educate parents and students about their rights to refuse the test and OPT OUT. All money goes directly to billboards. In the words of Don Perl, “no amount is too small.”
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Dear Colleagues:
I have randomly gone through the names of those who have been strong activists in the past for our billboard campaign to inform parents of their rights to exempt their children from the fraud of high stakes standardized testing. As most of you know, we have advertised on Colorado highways since 2005 to raise awareness of the boondoggle of CSAP (now TCAP) and each year more and more parents have opted their children out of the tests.
This is a critical year for voices raised against the corporate takeover. They are more forceful than ever. Consider the latest publications – Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error, Jim Horn’s The Mismeasure of Education. The Progressive has a new website exposing the corporatization of public education, http://www.publicschoolshakedown.org. The strike of the Chicago Teachers’ Union a year ago had much to do with raising awareness of the privatization of what is a public trust – public education. Our mission has also been included in the wonderful collection of stories in Educational Courage: Resisting the Ambush of Public Education by Professors Nancy Schniedewind and Mara Sapon-Shevin.
I have just signed a contract with Mile High Outdoor Advertising to put two billboards up on the Eastern Slope. We will have these boards from January through March and I am attaching two photos of last year’s boards. Those two boards will cost us $2,200. We have a bank account in the Weld Schools Credit Union which now has about $500 in it. So, we need to raise something like $1,700 to cover the cost of the boards. We have no administrative costs whatsoever. So, however you could spread the word, however you could contribute to this campaign will be very much appreciated. Any contribution at all will help move us toward our goal.
Checks go to:
The Coalition for Better Education, Inc.
2424 22nd Avenue
Greeley, Colorado 80631
In appreciation and solidarity,
Don Perl
The Coalition for Better Education, Inc.
http://www.thecbe.org
Please forward this newsletter to your friends and ask them to visit http://www.AngelaEngel.com.
Angela Engel, 8131 S. Marion Ct., Centennial, CO 80122
Diane Ravitch's blog 