Archives for the month of: October, 2013
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Sandra Korn, Harvard ’14, Says No to TFA

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2013 //
13

Sandra Korn, class of 2014 at Harvard, was invited to join TFA. She said no. She explains why here.

“For one, I am far from ready to enter a classroom on my own. Indeed, in my experience Harvard students have increasingly acknowledged that TFA drastically underprepares its recruits for the reality of teaching. But more importantly, TFA is not only sending young, idealistic, and inexperienced college grads into schools in neighborhoods different from where they’re from — it’s also working to destroy the American public education system. As a hopeful future teacher, that is not something I could ever conscionably put my name behind.”

Not only are young college graduates unprepared to teach, she writes, but they are being used to take jobs away from experienced teachers.

TFA’s association with privatization and standardized testing, she writes, is wrong. “In doing so, TFA is working directly against the interests of teachers, students, and communities alike. Neoliberal school reform is the true “educational injustice” here.”

Categories Teach for America TFA

As Poverty Grows, the Claims of “School Reform” Fade

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2013 //
34

Remember all the times that “reformers” like Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Wendy Kopp, and Joel Klein have said that the answer to poverty is to “fix” schools first? Remember their claims that school reform (more testing, more charters, more inexperienced teachers, larger classes, more technology) would vanquish poverty? For the past decade, our society has followed their advice, pouring billions into the pockets of the testing industry, consultants, and technology companies, as well as Teach for America, the over-hyped charter industry, and the multi-billion search for a surefire metric to evaluate teachers.

But what if they are wrong? What if all those billions were wasted on their pet projects, ambitions, and hunches, while child poverty kept growing?

The latest study, reported by Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post, shows a staggering increase in child poverty across the nation. The majority of public school students in the South and the West now qualify for free or reduced price lunch. By federal standards, that means they are poor.

The United States has a greater proportion of children living in poverty than any other advanced nation in the world. We are #1 in child poverty. This is shameful.

The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once remarked on the phenomenon of “feeding the horses to feed the sparrows.” In this case, the horses are the educational industrial complex. They are gobbling up federal, state, and local funding while children and families go hungry, lacking the medical care, economic security, and essential services they need. Instead of helping their families to become self-sufficient, we are fattening the testing industry. Instead of assuring that their schools have the guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists, and librarians the children need, our states are stripping their schools to the bare walls. Instead of supplying the arts and physical education that children need to nourish body and soul, we let them eat tests.

Every dollar that fattens the educational industrial complex–not only the testing industry and the inexperienced, ill-trained Teach for America but the corporations now collecting hundreds of millions of dollars to tell schools what to do–is a dollar diverted from what should be done now to address directly the pressing needs of our nation’s most vulnerable children, whose numbers continue to escalate, demonstrating the utter futility and self-serving nature of what is currently and deceptively called “reform.”

Once these futile programs have collapsed, once they have been exposed as hollow (though lucrative) gestures, we will look back with sorrow at the lives wasted, the billions squandered, the incalculable damage to our children and our society.

Someday we will say, as we should be saying now, that we cannot tolerate the loss of so many young lives. We cannot continue to blame teachers, principals, and schools for our collective abandonment of so many children. We cannot allow, and should no longer permit, the income inequality that protects the billionaires while neglecting the growth of a massive underclass. The age of the Robber Barons has returned. Good for them, but bad, very bad, for America.

Categories Poverty, Students, Teach for America TFA, Testing

Linda Darling-Hammond on the Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2013 //
54

Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University is a highly respected figure in American education. She was Barack Obama’s spokesperson during the 2008 campaign, and many educators expected and hoped that she would be selected as Secretary of Education. How different the scene would be if that had happened!

I have been trying to persuade Linda to learn how to tweet (I say, there is nothing to it, if I can do it, anyone can do it), but she doesn’t have time. I want her to blog, but she is engaged in major multi-year studies. When I think of the people with the knowledge, the presence, and the stature to lead the battle against the bad policies that are now stifling our nation’s children, her name comes to mind.

She did write a blog and gave me permission to post. It was in response to a question about her views on the Common Core. Linda has played a role in developing the Smarter Balanced assessment, which is supposed to be more attuned to student thinking and performance than the other one (PARCC).

This was her answer:

My view about what we should be doing re: curriculum and assessments can be found in the last chapter of my book, The Flat World and Education, where I describe how many other countries create thoughtful curriculum guidance as part of an integrated teaching and learning system. In short, what I would prefer and what other more deliberative countries do is a careful process by which educators are regularly convened over several years to revise the national or state curriculum expectations (typically national in smaller countries like Finland and Singapore, and state or provincial in large ones like Canada and China). Then there is an equally careful process of developing curriculum materials and assessments (managed by the Ministry or Department of Education with the participation of educators) and organizing intensive professional development. The development process takes at least 3 years and the initial implementation process takes about the same amount of time and deeply involves educators all along the way. Unfortunately, this was not the process that was used to develop and roll out the CCSS.

But the CCSS is what we have now, so what do we do about it? I think there are some elements of the CCSS documents that are potentially useful in setting our sights on higher order thinking and performance skills, and those are important. However, I am fearful that they will be badly implemented in many states. What we should do is take time – at least the next 3 years – to develop curriculum resources that teachers can select, adapt, try out, and refine together in collegial professional development settings within and across their schools. We should use the standards as guideposts and not straitjackets. And we should develop robust performance-based assessments of the kind I describe in my book that provide exciting opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning and for teachers to be engaged in development and scoring – used for information and improvement, not for sanctions and punishments.

I continue to try to work on this agenda with one of the two assessment consortia (Smarter Balanced) and with the Innovation Lab Network states, because I want to try to make what is happening as productive as it can be, and perhaps more instructionally helpful than it might otherwise be. There are some states that are working hard to bring such a vision into practice, but the current federal insistence on implementing sanctions for teachers and schools associated with tests (through requirements in Race to the Top and ESEA waivers) could create incentives that will both narrow the tests and distort their use.

Diane anticipates these problems in her blog, and she could well be right about many of them.

Categories Common Core, Testing

America’s Political Powerhouse: Teach for America

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2013 //
11

Jersey Jazzman has been following the money. He made an amazing discovery. The four candidates for the Atlanta school board who are alumni of Teach for America are collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in out of state contributions. Although maybe this massive outpouring of money to fund these candidates is not quite so amazing because we see the same thing happening in school board races across the nation.

What becomes increasingly clear is that TFA makes common cause with the hedge fund managers (“Democrats for Education Reform”), the fake civil rights group called Stand on Children, and a host of similar groups whose singular purpose is to privatize public education in the nation’s cities.

Teach for America is one of the nation’s most powerful political machines. Its alumni are honeycombed throughout the federal government, both in the executive offices, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Congress. The last budget deal included a provision declaring that TFA–whose members have a mere five weeks of training–are “highly qualified teachers,” thus gutting the plain meaning of the language in No Child Left Behind, which promised that poor children would be taught by experienced teachers, not neophytes like TFA.

Its latest 990 form filed with the IRS shows that TFA has over $400 million in assets. Wendy Kopp is paid over $400,000; she has never been a teacher, but she is filling the nation’s classrooms with ill-trained teachers and preparing them to take their place in the halls of power. Kopp likes to say that TFA’s mission is not just to send teachers into needy schools but to prepare future leaders.

Consider the leaders prepared by TFA:

Michelle Rhee, who has raised tens of millions of dollars to strip teachers of any rights, due process, or collective bargaining and to advocate for privatization of public education.

John White, state commissioner of Louisiana, who has used his position to advocate for vouchers, so that students can attend schools that teach creationism and lack any certified teachers.

Kevin Huffman, state commissioner of Tennessee, who is using his position to advocate for privatization of public education through charters run by his friends, while stripping teachers of any due process rights and any extra pay for earning a master’s degree.

Eric Guckian, senior education advisor to Governor Pat McCrory of North Carolina, where the attack on teachers is relentless, stripping them of anything that the Governor and Legislature can dream up while assuring that they are close to the worst paid teachers in the U.S.

Michael Johnston, a state senator in Colorado, who advocated and enacted one of the most extreme test-based accountability systems in the U.S., with student test scores counting for 50% of teacher’s evaluations, despite research showing that such programs do not work.

If this is leadership, our nation is in big trouble. More “leaders” like these, and no one will want to teach. TFA is doing more to destroy the teaching profession than any other political organization in the nation. Its very existence leads to churn, which is not good for schools or for children.

At the very least, it should not be tax exempt. It is enacting a poisonous political program that is hurting children and damaging public education.

Idealistic young people join TFA on the assumption that they are doing good work of social value. They are being hoodwinked. They are lending their time and their idealism to an organization that has an agenda that destroys the profession, demoralizes real teachers, and harms the children it claims to serve.

 

Categories Education Reform

The Lessons of L.A.’s iPad Fiasco: Is Anyone Listening? Does Anyone Care?

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2013 //
7

So Los Angeles spent $1 billion on iPads, promising grand outcomes, closing the digital divide between rich and poor, the “civil rights issue of our time,” yada, yada, yada.

But as this blogger points out, this move was made without the most elementary planning or forethought.

Should anyone have been consulted before spending 25-year school construction bond money on iPads? Will voters ever again approve such a bond knowing that it may be diverted to an administrator’s pet project?

She asks questions that apparently never occurred to the administrators who bought the iPads:

“If the ipads stay in the classroom, how is their distribution to be managed in any way efficiently?

If in the classroom, is the physical integrity of the building sufficient to ensure everyone’s and everything’s safety?

If staying in the classroom, does that forfeit the device’s biggest potential, as substitutes for heavy, expensive, resource-intensive textbooks?

If not to stay in the classroom, how will internet access be managed among “not-wired”, very poor or chaotic homes?

How are electronics to be harnessed for education alone and not hijacked by its social, interactive component?

If not in the classroom, how to reconcile bond construction monies targeted to long-term infrastructure support, with transient instruction delivery tied to non-durable goods?

If not in the classroom, how to manage the high turnover (purportedly up to one-third) among students of some high-poverty communities? What is the implication for device-specific instruction? For physical disappearance of the devices?

When was the imperative of Common Core testing agreed upon, as it underlies the drive behind implementing the
ipad program precipitously?

When were teachers presented an honest cost:benefit analysis toward soliciting professional input regarding utility and efficacy in educating their students???

And:

“When were parents presented an honest cost:benefit analysis toward soliciting parental input regarding utility and efficacy in educating their child???

“The bottom line is: the people such massive programs with gargantuan implications affect, need to be asked first. A program of such eclipsing size and existential implications needs at the least to be tested, to be piloted and then: to be evaluated before approving or denying subsequent phases.”

“It is an incredibly uncomfortable position to feel patronized and exploited by in-house imperialists. How do these detached, possibly ulteriorly-motivated administrators know what is best in the classroom, without going into the classroom? Ask the denizens there what they need, and for some sense of the fallout.”

From California to New York, the same questions arise: why don’t the people making decisions about children and education listen to parents and educators?

In a democracy, consultation is necessary and wise. Great leaders know how to listen and are wiling to learn from their errors.

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, For-Profit, Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

What Do International Test Score Comparisons Mean?

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2013 //
29

Uh-oh! Another study has appeared warning that we are falling behind other nations on international standardized tests.

The National Assessment Governing Board released the results of a study comparing the performance of U.S. states to nations that participated in the 2011 TIMSS.

Students in most US states were above the international average but the nations known for their test-taking culture dominated the results. That is, the top performing nations were Singapore, Korea, Chinese Taipei, and Japan.

The usual hand-wringers were wringing their hands about how awful we were, how terribly we compare to those at the top.

The reporters from the New York Times and the Washington Post tried to reach me but I was at an all-day event in Vermont-New Hampshire and did not see their messages.

If I had responded, I would have said this: International test scores do not predict the economic future. Once a nation is above a basic threshold of literacy, the numbers reflect how good that nation is at test-taking. They are meaningless as economic predictors.

In 1964, when the first international test was offered in two grades to twelve nations, we came in last and next to last in the two grades but went on to have a stronger economy in the next half century than the other 11 nations that were tested.

In 1983, a federal report called “A Nation at Risk” warned that our international test scores were a symbol of a “rising tide of mediocrity” and that we were losing our major industries to Japan and Germany because of our terrible schools. As it happened, we lost our automobile industry to Japan not because of our schools or test scores but because of our short-sighted auto executives, who did not anticipate the demand for fuel-efficient cars.

Meanwhile, despite those test scores, our country continued to grow its economy, to be the most militarily powerful and technologically innovative nation in the world, and Japan went into a prolonged period of economic stagnation.

In the latest round of international test scores, Japan outscored us. So what? Singapore, Korea, and the other Asian tigers have cultures that put incredible pressure on young people to get high test scores.

The Washington Post had a sensible comment by someone who studies labor markets:

“Hal Salzman, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University, said hand-wringing over international tests is misguided.

“What’s really peculiar about the whole test-score hysteria is that they use it as a proxy for the U.S. ‘competitiveness and innovation’ as though we don’t have actual measurements,” said Salzman, an expert in science and engineering labor markets and the globalization of innovation. “The country continues to lead on innovation, economic performance and all the results that these things are supposed to indicate.”

There are more than enough strong math and science students in U.S. classrooms to fill future jobs in this country, he said.

“It doesn’t mean we don’t want to improve education,” Salzman said. “But the fear that’s driving it is unfounded. The problem we have is not at the top or at the middle. It’s at the bottom. That’s what gets lost in averages and rankings.”

Professor Salzman is right.

The international test scores are poor economic barometers.

What matters most in the decades ahead is the extent to which we cultivate creativity, ingenuity, curiosity, innovation, and thinking differently. These qualities have been the genius of American culture. These traits are not measured by standardized tests.

The students who learn to select the correct box on a multiple-choice question are not the inventors and innovators of the future. They are the clerks of the future.

Categories Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International

Explanation of Strange “Password Protected” Post

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2013 //
5

A few minutes ago, you received a post from me with no content. It said it was “password protected.”

I was puzzled and wondered if someone had hacked into my blog.

But then I remembered that I had asked a friend to post a blog for me that contains a lot of graphs. I don’t know how to import graphics (sorry). I asked him to date it November 1, leaving me time to write the introduction and review contents.

He dated it November 1, 2012, and thought no one would see it.

Lots of people did see it.

Sorry for the techno-foul up.

I hope to have the post up in a few days, no password protection.

Categories Ravitch, Diane

Aaron Barlow on “Reign of Error” and Higher Education

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2013 //
18

Aaron Barlow considers the implications of Reign of Error for higher education.

After a full decade of the testing mania of No Child Left Behind, professors are seeing students less well prepared for college courses that in the recent past.

After a decade of guessing the right answer to every question, it is not surprising that students are ill-prepared to think about complex issues with more than one answer or which no answer at all.

Barlow writes:

“Though the impact has been strongest on American k-12 schools (No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top), the impact is felt in colleges and universities, too. “Learning outcomes” are one of the results, attempts to quantify just about everything and to justify specific learning activities rather than seeing a student as a whole being and an education as something that prepares students for their own explorations, for development of their own ‘learning outcomes.’ This is the factory model of education and, frankly, it has no place in a democracy, where education is supposed to produce participants in the public square who can examine evidence and make decisions on their own. That this ability also makes for better workers is critical to the success of both education and the United States, but the primary focus is on creating good citizens.

We college professors, with problems enough of our own–with changes in governance heading toward a corporate model of top-down decision making, with academic freedom becoming a narrower and narrower aspect of our lives, with more and more of us living and working as contingent and part-time hires, keeping us barely on the fringes of the middle class (if there at all)–haven’t been paying enough attention, as a group, to what has been happening to the schools that feed students to us. Yes, many of us have noticed that our students (especially at non-elite public institutions) are coming to us less and less prepared for college work each ensuing year, but we haven’t put in the time to really explore why. It is hard enough trying to make up for the lacks our students are coming in with. How, furthermore, can we have the time to advocate for changes in k-12 curricula when our own are under fire?”

He says it is time for college professors to inform themselves and become involved. If they do not, they too will be judged by the rise or fall of their students’ test scores on standardized tests.

 

 

 

Categories Reign of Error

A Test Writer Comments on New York’s Common Core Tests

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2013 //
25

This comment was posted yesterday:

I am a former, part time item writer for a private testing company; I wrote for many different state standards under NCLB. I must say that poorly constructed, confusing, or developmentally inappropriate items undermine the validity of standardized scores and subsequent use in teacher evaluation. When standardized tests are properly constructed, such items which might make it to a field test will almost certainly be vetted during what is typically a two year process. Many items on the Pearson math and ELA administered last April here in NY were written, in my opinion, in an intentionally confusing style using obtuse or arcane vocabulary. The ELA test in particular included confusing item stems and distractors that were not clearly wrong. There were far too many items that turned subjective opinions (most likely; best; author’s intent; etc.) into a “one right, three wrong” format. Many teachers were unsure of the correct answers on a number of vague and fuzzy items.
The math test included many items that were ridiculously convoluted. Although there may be other compelling arguments against VAM teacher evaluations, corrupt test writing, norm referencing (instead of criterion referenced scoring), and manipulating cut scores add up to a rather important set of reasons to invalidate the entire process.

Categories Testing

#2 at U.S. Department of Education Loves”No-Excuses” Charter Schools, Not Public Schools

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2013 //
53

A reader has done research on the new Undersecretary of Education. The “no-excuses” charters are known for their emphasis on strict discipline, conformity, and obedience to all rules. They typically have high rates of suspension and attrition.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nicoleperlroth/2011/09/19/newschools-ceo-ted-mitchell-my-best-idea-for-k-12-education/2/

Public school parents should know who Arne Duncan and President Obama chose to run the nation’s public school system.

This is an interview with Ted Mitchell. Like all ed reformers, he makes no mention of the actual, existing public schools 90% of your kids attend. Instead, he tells of us his dream to turn all public schools into no excuses charter chains:

FORBES: What is your best idea for K-12 education reform?

“Ted Mitchell: Well, we think of education reform in two parts. There’s education reform—that is who has maximized the current production function of education–who is doing schooling as well as it can be done given the constraints we have today. And then there’s what schools should look like in the not too distant future. What are we really aiming at? We call those education 1.0 and education 2.0.

Let’s start with education 1.0 then. Which teachers or schools would you say are doing the best job of reforming the current system? I would highlight not all charter schools but the high performing, no excuses charter schools like KIPP and Aspire. Then there are a
few that are doing the very hardest work of all, which is turning around existing schools. Those are Mastery in Philadelphia and Unlocking Potential in Boston.

They have very high expectations for everyone in the building, kids and adults. They have a culture that supports achievement and they understand that traditionally under-served kids come to school with a set of issues that aren’t their fault—they come to school hungry, they come from broken homes—and these schools take them in whatever circumstances and characteristics they arrive and say: ‘Those are things we can deal with, but they’re not excuses for underachieving.’ The results are that these schools have pretty much eliminated the drop out rate, doubled the graduation rate and doubled the college-going rate of traditionally under-served kids.”

There’s no mention of existing public schools in the entire piece. Mr. Mitchell can’t find a single US public school that merits praise or meets his requirements.

These are not the words of an “agnostic”.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, U.S. Department of Education
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