Archives for the month of: November, 2013
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Indiana: GOP Plan to Privatizatize Public Schools Revealed

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2013 //
33

There is a pattern on the rug.

First, you silence the teachers’ unions.

Then, you strip teachers of tenure, ie, any job protection, to keep them fearful.

Along the way, you keep saying that the public schools are broken, failing, obsolete.

Keep demonizing teachers.

Destroy public confidence in public schools.

That clears the way to hand public money to private corporations. That opens the door to for- profit schools.

As Randi says in this article, “Follow the Money.”

Here is how it happened in Indiana.

There was a snag in the plan when the voters turned out privatizer-in-chief Tony Bennett and elected Glenda Ritz, who polled more votes than the governor.

Since then, Tony Bennett was hired by Florida but resigned because of a grade-fixing scandal back home in Indiana. And Governor Mike Pence has set out to strip the job of Commissioner of Education of all its powers, to sneer at the voters and keep the destruction of public education on track.

Categories Charter Schools, Indiana, Privatization, Unions

Bill Gates’ Utopian Vision for Your Child

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2013 //
115

Bill Gates has plans for your child. He wants to know everything he can about your child so he can customize and personalize the deliverables.

A teacher in California told me that his principal enthusiastically signed up for the Gates plan. Here is the survey that every teacher was asked to complete. Where do you think this is going? Is this utopia or dystopia?

**********************HERE IS THE CONTENTS WHEN CLICKING THE LINK:

ORIGINAL Survey Option E: Teacher Survey

We believe in the promise of personalization to dramatically improve student learning. In the future, each student’s learning experience – what she learns, and how, when, and where she learns it – will be tailored to her individual developmental needs, skills, and interests. This is a fundamental shift from the way that students learn today, and as such, we believe that for personalization to truly transform student learning, schools will likely look dramatically different than they do today. Our current efforts support districts and partner organizations in building system-level capacity to design, launch and scale school models that embrace this bold vision of personalized learning.

The purpose of this survey is to understand the teacher perspective on the personalized learning activities happening in schools, including current instructional practices, PD, supports, etc. Further, this survey aims to gauge the level of interest for teachers to implement personalized learning in their classrooms. For this survey, personalized learning is defined as follows: Learning experiences for all students are tailored to their individual developmental needs, skills and interest. Personalized learning can, and should, include the following supporting elements: learner profiles, personal learning paths, individual mastery, and flexible learning environment. These attributes can be further defined as follows:

• Learner profiles: Captures individual skills, gaps, strengths, weaknesses, interests & aspirations of each student

• Personal learning paths: Each student has learning goals & objectives. Learning experiences are diverse and matched to the individual needs of students

• Individual mastery: Continually assesses student progress against clearly defined standards & goals. Students advance based on demonstrated mastery

• Flexible learning environments: Multiple instructional delivery approaches that continuously optimize available resources in support of student learning

While we believe that true personalized learning requires much more than the mere adoption and use of new technologies, we are optimistic about blended instruction – instructional design and delivery that incorporates the use of new technologies alongside traditional instruction – as a means of personalizing learning. As such, we are interested in hearing about your use of technology as part of your personalized learning efforts and implementation.

***************HERE IS THE FIRST PART OF THE SURVEY************

1. What is the name of your school?

*

2. What level is your school? Elementary School

Middle School

Grades K-8

Grades 6-12

High School

Other (please specify)

*

3. What grade level(s) do you teach?
K

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Other (please specify)

Categories Common Core, Data and Data Mining, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privacy and Privacy Rights

Seth Sandronsky Reviews “Reign of Error”

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2013 //
0

Seth Sandronsky is a Sacramento-based writer whose work has appeared in many journals. Here he reviews “Reign of Error.”

He writes:

“With verve, she demystifies the corporate reform language, with its heavy reliance upon shibboleths about test scores (domestic and global), achievement gaps, high school and college graduation rates. Ravitch deconstructs the reformers’ education solutions such as merit pay, teacher seniority and tenure; charter and cyber schools that can bewilder and confuse.

“The K-12 public school reform trend in the US has of course gained steam since the 1970s, the end of a postwar economic model. What many see began with President Ronald Reagan, the upper class attack on labor unions, New Deal and Great Society policies, paved the path for the incremental assault on public education.

“Today we see corporate-funded advocacy groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council leading the charge in statehouses across the U.S. They are where the education money is for local school districts, Ravitch writes. Federally, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and Race to the Top Fund (part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009), call the policy shots.

“My minor quibble with Ravitch is in exposing think tanks such as The Heartland Institute, whose website proclaims its work supports “free-market solutions to social and economic problems” is knee-deep in lobbying states to privatize K-12 public schools. Such a strategy is less “free-market” than the politics of government intervention, hardly the work of competitive entrepreneurs.

“Ravitch’s solutions to what ails K-12 public schools are straightforward. She supports redistributive policies to benefit the poor and working classes.

“What is not to like? Ravitch’s Reign of Error is a must-read for Americans in and out of public schools.”

Categories Reign of Error

St.Tammany Parish in Louisiana Drops Out of CCSS

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2013 //
74

St. Tammany Parish is one of the state of Louisiana’s high-performing districts. Its board passed a far-reaching resolution declaring that it was dropping out of the Common Core standards and would not administer the PARCC assessments. Its resolution explained why it was not willing to participate in this disruption to its schools:

It objects to federal control of its curriculum;

The CCSS were written and implemented too quickly, without due deliberation;

Compliance with CCSS and PARCC involves huge expenses, in relation to equipment, upgrades, time, and effort;

It objects to the data-sharing agreements that are associated with CCSS;

It sees CCSS and PARCC as an unfunded mandate.

For these and other reasons, the school board said “no thanks.”

 

 

 

Categories Common Core

A True Story Told as a Fairy Tale

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2013 //
11

A principal in New York City wrote this story, borrowing from the story of the wolf and the Three Little Pigs. The wolf wants to eat the pigs. Who will save them?

The moral of the story: The only way to defeat evil is to speak truth to power.

Read on:

 

 

On Wednesday afternoon a principal stricken with worry about her increasing complicity in miseducative school deform policy stops by the New York Public Library to browse through the exhibit of the History of Children’s Literature, before travelling home for Rosh Hashanah dinner. While kvelling about the gorgeous manuscripts and kvetching about the current state of the schools with the exhibit curator, the curator guides the principal into an archive room and unwraps a most unusual artifact. It was program notes for an opera that the Metropolitan Opera House wanted to present but the libretto, score and stage design, while imagined, were never completed.

 

THE THREE PIGGIESTEINS

A Fracked Folktale Operetta for the Jewish New Year

 

Libretto: Tony Kushner*

Visual Design: Maurice Sendak * *Played by Meryl Streep

Music: Leonard Bernstein*

 

Big Brother Pigs: Tweedies (DOE Central)

Principal Pig: Principals/CSA

Teacher Pig: Teachers/UFT

Kid Pig: Kids/Parents

Wolf: The State

 

 

SYNOPSIS

 

Prologue: Once upon a dystopic time, an uber wolf runs rampant through the state threatening to raze every weak school in order to feed its appetite for economic and mind control and fueling itself by eating the weakest and tenderest flesh it could find.

 

Scene One: The Wolf knocked on the door of Tweed Court House and demanded that Big Brother Pigs supply access (“let me come in”) to the data-bases of all of the schools in New York City. Big Brother Pigs made claim to protest and protect the schools, but when the Wolf threatened to raze Tweed (“then I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll fire your asses”) the Big Brother Pigs complied. The Wolf retreated to plot the data and plan strategic strikes.

 

Scene Two: Big Brother Pigs gathered the Principal Pigs and provided them with a suite of robust building materials and sent them off to fortify the foundations of their schools so that Wolf would find them too strong and tough to eat.

The Principal Pigs complied and placed surveillance cameras around the schools, and entered all teacher and child data into ARIS. Of course the surveillance cameras and data entry did nothing to improve the quality of teaching and learning at the schools and instead ate away at their cores.

The Wolf came and knocked on the schoolhouse doors and demanded access to the classrooms (“let me come in”). The Principal Pigs tried to protest and protect the teachers and students, but the Wolf threatened to raze the schoolhouses (“then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and the Big Brother Pigs will fire your asses”). The Principal Pigs agreed to give the Wolf access to the teacher and student data and told the Wolf to come back after the State tests were administered. The Wolf retreated to analyze the prior data in order to predict what would be the tastiest and tenderest targets, and licked its chops in anticipation of the Spring results.

 

Scene Three: The Principal Pigs gathered the Teacher Pigs and provided them with a visibility cloak (multiple measure evaluations) declaring that this would protect them from the salivating jaws of the Wolf. The Teacher Pigs went back to the classroom and awaited the Wolf, trembling because the visibility cloak was awfully sheer for a New York City winter. The month before the State tests the Wolf came and banged on the door demanding access. The Teacher Pigs didn’t want the Wolf to come eat all of the tasty and tender young children and refused. The Wolf threatened that if the Teacher Pigs did not comply it would raze the school (“then I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and the Principal Pigs will fire your asses”). And so the Teacher Pigs complied and scheduled a date to send the new State test scores to the Wolf. Wolf retreated with the data to consider the tastiest and tenderest morsels to pursue.

 

Scene 4: Meanwhile throughout New York City, parents realized that the schools were not protecting their children from the Wolf and took matters into their own hands. Parent Pigs gathered Kid Pigs and gave the Kid Pigs a magically strong piece of paper that would shield Kid Pig from harm (opt out letters). When Wolf did not receive the test scores as promised, it went back to the classrooms looking for the Kid Pigs’ data. The Kid Pigs showed Wolf the magical opt out letters. Wolf huffed and puffed and puffed and huffed and raged that it would the fire Kid Pigs’ asses. The Kid Pigs stuck out their tongues and scoffed, “You’re not the boss of me.”

 

Epilogue: Kid and Parent Pigs saved themselves, and the schools by speaking truth to power. That is a lesson in civic and life readiness, without which there can be no college and career readiness.

Categories Accountability, Testing

Why Are Swedish Schools Falling Behind?

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2013 //
71

Among the nations of Europe, Sweden has taken the lead in imposing choice, competition, and high-stakes testing. Sweden has vouchers, so students can take their public money to any public or private school they want. Sweden also adopted a national curriculum.

The result: a falling quality of education, lower results on international tests, and increased social stratification. This is an example of what Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg calls GERM (the Global Education Reform Movement), characterized by choice, competition, and testing.

Swedish educators await the release of the next PISA exam with trepidation, but the education minister of the conservative government is already prepared with excuses, ready to blame the Social Democrats, who were in power until 2006, or to blame teachers, whose profession has fallen into low esteem as a consequence of government policies.

Note that Sweden is demographically similar to Finland, yet its schools continue to decline as Finland attracts the admiration of the world.

What is Finland doing right? What is Sweden doing wrong? Should the Swedish people accept the minister’s assurances and wait “several more years” to see the promised success of vouchers, choice, competition, and other GERM policies?

Categories Education Reform, International, Vouchers

Academic Standards and a Boy with Autism

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2013 //
40

This is a letter written by a mother in Louisiana. She sent it out widely.

“Academic Standards and Individualized Education Programs”

How are schools supposed to get every student to meet the same academic standards and meet the individualized education programs (IEP) for children with disabilities — both are required by federal law?

The following is a letter written from the heart of a mom with a son with autism.
It is not meant to expose any teacher or district. On the contrary, both are working hard to support the student. It is simply written to express an opinion of the situation we are all in at this time.

Dear “Is Anybody Listening?,”

Several weeks ago I sat down with my son’s teacher and listened to her tell me what her priorities are for him for this year. She revealed that she is largely focused on reading comprehension and, to a lesser extent, writing. It is indisputable that those are areas of high need for him. But what she had forgotten and said very little about, until I mentioned it, was language and social interaction. I could see a light bulb go off in her head. Suddenly she understood. Yes, of course, I must work on those too. Then I saw something else. It was something I can only describe as concern, although an insufficient descriptor. She started talking about all of the third grade standards. She handed me copies of the standards which she had already printed out, tucked safely inside page protectors. The teacher began to ponder, how will I address the core deficits of his disability in the midst of teaching the standards? Oh, maybe there would be a few minutes during group work or perhaps during a pull out session, but there’s so much to work on academically…

We are over half way through the first nine weeks and, although every member of his team is working hard, Jackson is so lost. He’s lost in a sea of standards and expectations for him to think critically and explain every answer. It takes much more than raising the bar or saying you believe students with disabilities can achieve for them to actually achieve. You see, he has only answered a why question a handful of times in his life. Now he’s asked why, how and explain your answer all day long. What do you think is going to happen when you test and assess him? He is going to fail. It will look as though he cannot and has not achieved.

Let me tell you what he has done, though. Jackson had been permitted to isolate himself from all the children on the school playground for the last 2 years. We were less than one week into the school year and Jackson was no longer standing next to the wall, far away from his peers. He was under a tree next to the playground. Fast forward a few more weeks and he has played on the equipment a few times, but more spectacularly, he is engaging and playing a game of “I see you” with a little girl in his class. She enjoys him. She likes him. He likes her. They play together for a few minutes every day. No standardized assessment he will take this year or any year will reflect that progress. No teacher or related service provider will be rewarded for their role in facilitating this achievement. After all, it’s not one of the standards. It’s not on “the test.”

As an advocate, some days are very challenging when both working and living in the disability world. There are no breaks. There is no escape. I sit in rooms with educational leaders who make statements about the 43% (of students with disabilities who passed the tests last year) and then I come home to the sweetest little boy who falls in the 57%. A boy who has an amazing ability to tolerate the world around him, but who no longer wants to go to school. How will it get any better? When will it get any better? It only seems like we’re heading in the opposite direction of improving outcomes for kids like Jackson.

Rebecca Ellis
Mandeville, Louisiana
504-261-342
ellis.rebecca@gmail.com”

Categories Common Core, Special Education

NC Teachers, Among the Best in Nation, Under Fire

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2013 //
90

Imagine this weird scenario: a state that has more Nationally Board Certified Teachers than any other state in the nation; a state where 96% of the teachers are rated proficient; a state where the legislature is coming up with every trick in the book to demoralize and harass their excellent teachers.

That is North Carolina.

As Yevonne Brannan, chairman of Public Schools First NC, explains it, North Carolina once ranked 21st in the nation in teacher pay, but is now 46th. The legislature ignores the fact that more than half the children in the state live in poverty and blames the teachers. So the legislature enacts law after law to drive teachers away, losing many great teachers in the meanwhile.

To make sure that any bad teacher could be immediately fired, the legislature abolished tenure, putting every teacher on a year-to-year contract. The legislature eliminated extra pay for additional degrees, thus letting teachers know how little the legislators care for education itself (imagine a teacher wanting to learn more!). The legislature instituted merit pay, assuming that the promise of a bonus would improve student test scores; the fact that merit pay has never worked anywhere was no problem for this legislature, which seems to know nothing about education or teaching or children or 21st century psychology (quick, give the legislators a copy of Daniel Pink’s “Drive,” which explains what motivate people).

The good news is that the public in North Carolina does not agree with their elected officials. Brannon writes: Thankfully, N.C. residents overwhelmingly support teachers getting a pay increase for completing a master’s degree (83 percent). Moreover, 76 percent of North Carolinians agree that public school teachers are paid too little, and 71 percent agree we cannot keep the best and most qualified teachers with the current pay scale.

Now it is time for parent, grandparents, neighbors, civic leaders, business leaders, and everyone who cares about the future of North Carolina to let their legislators know that they must respect and honor their hard-working teachers and take action to retain them.

Categories Education Reform

Link ADDED: LI Superintendent Says NO to inBloom

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2013 //
23

David Gamberg, the enlightened and thoughtful superintendent of the Southold school district in Long Island, New York, wrote a letter to the president of inBloom and asked that the corporation remove any data pertaining to the students of his district.

For his willingness to say “no, not with our students,” David Gamberg is hereby added to the honor roll as a champion of American education. He has done the honorable thing. He has defended his students against commercial exploitation and defended their right to privacy and their right to be left alone by a government and a private sector that believes that privacy is dead. Not in Southold!

New York is one of the few states in the nation that has agreed to hand over all personal, confidential student information to inBloom.

inBloom is the corporation funded by the Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation ($100 million from Gates) to collect personal, identifiable student data. The software was created by Wireless Generation, part of Joel Klein’s Amplify, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. The data will be stored on a “cloud” managed by amazon.com.

Gamberg does not want the personal data of the students in his district on that cloud. Good for him!

What’s is in the data set? 400 data points about every student. Personal, confidential, identifiable.

How is this legally possible? In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education changed the regulations for the federal privacy act, known as FERPA. As a result, this data may now be released to third parties without parental consent.

Why was all that data collected? In some cases it was necessary for the schools and the districts, but the sudden creation of huge data warehouses was mandated for those states that received funds from Race to the Top or waivers from NCLB.

In other words, friends, the Gates Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education worked together to assure that every piece of data about the children of America would be assembled in one place. inBloom makes no guarantees that the data cloud cannot be hacked.

Please read Superintendent Gamberg’s letter to the president of inBlooom, Mr. Iwan Streichenberger. It is attached to the link above. Ever superintendent and school board should use this letter as a model to protect the privacy of their students and families.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Honor Roll, Privacy and Privacy Rights

Long Island Superintendent: No to inBloom

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2013 //
11

David Gamberg, the enlightened and thoughtful superintendent of the Southold school district in Long Island, New York, wrote a letter to the president of inBloom and asked that the corporation remove any data pertaining to the students of his district.

For his willingness to say “no, not with our students,” David Gamberg is hereby added to the honor roll as a champion of American education. He has done the honorable thing. He has defended his students against commercial exploitation and defended their right to privacy and their right to be left alone by a government and a private sector that believes that privacy is dead. Not in Southold!

New York is one of the few states in the nation that has agreed to hand over all personal, confidential student information to inBloom.

inBloom is the corporation funded by the Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation ($100 million from Gates) to collect personal, identifiable student data. The software was created by Wireless Generation, part of Joel Klein’s Amplify, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. The data will be stored on a “cloud” managed by amazon.com.

Gamberg does not want the personal data of the students in his district on that cloud. Good for him!

What’s is in the data set? 400 data points about every student. Personal, confidential, identifiable.

How is this legally possible? In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education changed the regulations for the federal privacy act, known as FERPA. As a result, this data may now be released to third parties without parental consent.

Why was all that data collected? In some cases it was necessary for the schools and the districts, but the sudden creation of huge data warehouses was mandated for those states that received funds from Race to the Top or waivers from NCLB.

In other words, friends, the Gates Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education worked together to assure that every piece of data about the children of America would be assembled in one place. inBloom makes no guarantees that the data cloud cannot be hacked.

Please read Superintendent Gamberg’s letter to the president of inBlooom, Mr. Iwan Streichenberger. It is attached to the link above. Ever superintendent and school board should use this letter as a model to protect the privacy of their students and families.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Education Industry, Education Reform
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