Archives for the month of: December, 2013

Two New York City public school teachers have launched a terrific blog.

Jennifer Hogue and Adam Bergstein have a great sense of humor and irony.

Right on the face of it is a countdown clock showing how many weeks (1), days, hours, minutes, and seconds left until King Bloomie departs the office of mayor.

In the latest, written on December 16, Adam confesses:

My name is Adam C Bergstein; I’m 43 and I suffer from lexile dysfunction, as do many men my age. How many times has the woman in your life curled up to you in bed, book in hand, and whispered cooingly into your ear, be my stallion psychometrician and fully arouse my lexile framework? Yeah, sorry, all that means is that she wants to count word usage and sentence length. With that data in hand, one can then compute a book’s inherent literary value by comparing it to every other book ever written with the same type of word repetition and sentence length. Yup, that is exactly what the geniuses that espouse the merits of the Common Core have given us. Dang, if we ain’t breaking down educational barriers in this, the twilight of the 21^stcentury.

Jennifer wrote a poem, that starts like this:

There was an old lady who swallowed a bee
I don’t know why she swallowed a bee – perhaps she’s Michelle Rhee!
There was an old lady who swallowed a test,
With a bad taste, over-erased and hard to digest;
She swallowed the test to catch the bee;
I don’t know why she swallowed a bee – Perhaps she’s Michelle Rhee!
There was an old lady who swallowed a student;
How imprudent to swallow a student.
She swallowed the student to catch the test,
She swallowed the test to catch the bee;
I don’t know why she swallowed a bee – Perhaps she’s Michelle Rhee!

Read the rest on your own!

Enjoy!

Categories Humor

Teachers: Common Core in Kindergarten Class

By dianeravitch

December 22, 2013 //

These comments were posted by a kindergarten teacher in response to a post about the Common Core English language arts standards:

I teach kindergarden. The five-year olds have an incredibly tight schedule to keep in our county: an hour of math, hour of science, 2 hours of language arts, half hour of social studies. We kindergarten teachers have had to sneak in rest time and social centers (such as puppets, blocks, housekeeping, playdough) which are so critical to their development.

My class has 13 out of 16 ELL students (Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Arabic & a dialect from India are all represented). Ten of them are free or reduced lunch (aka low socio economics). Two of them never went to preschool at all, and two are on the spectrum, one severely so. All of them have to read by the end of the year. All of them have been required to participate in two close reading activities which required writing sentences.

Both of my formal observations were done during the first 60 days of school. I was criticized because my students don’t do “turn & talk” correctly (they didn’t respond to their peer by telling them why they either agree with or disagree with them). I was evaluated as “lacking in pedagogy” because I asked them to give me facts from a kindergarten level book on stars and they repeatedly tried to tell me what they knew/thought. I was told I require action in pedagogy because the book I used to sing and act out verbs also included several words (such as jump, paint, swing, march, & slide) that were also nouns and because my students could not do charades without my assistance (which I gladly gave but caused that part of the lesson to go on too long). Apparently, my pedagogy went mysteriously missing over the summer, as I’ve never been criticized for that in any of my previous 20 years of teaching experience.

They have been forced to sit through the two close readings that go on for three days each and require them to write notes and then sentences to explain what they learned. My poor babies turned in papers with sentences made of fragments from our fact chart we had made, but they hung their heads because they couldn’t read the sentences they’d managed to write. I hugged them, told them they were great, and gave them chocolate. Then I reported that only 4 of my students passed….another poor reflection on my teaching.

If this is happening in kindergarten, I can only imagine what is happening in later grades. My school is set in a high socio-economic neighborhood and has been an A school for 12 years now; I shudder to think how this affects the less fortunate schools!

This comment came from another kindergarten teacher, responding to the post about the treatment of students with special needs:

I am a kindergarten teacher, stressed to the nth degree from having to push 5 year olds in ways that make my blood boil from the wrongness of it. It is immoral to ask 5 year olds to write facts from a story they are listening to and to write sentences when they are only learning to read & write!!

For trying to show that this is too difficult for my students during observations, I have been given far lower scores that I’ve ever received in 20 years of teaching.

Then there is the matter of my own sweet son. He is 12 years old, has ADHD and feels like a failure. His teachers tell me that his thinking in math and science amaze them; that he comes up with solutions and ideas that they have never thought of….yet he is failing because he forgets to hand in homework or write his name on papers, which is clearly the executive functioning skills which he lacks. They tell me he is immature and needs to repeat the grade, yet stay in gifted because he is so obviously bright….how can these coincide? He is already stressed because his failing grades and bullying on the bus, but now they want to retain him????

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Common Core

Reader: Exxon Mobil and the Devaluing of AP Courses

By dianeravitch

December 22, 2013 //

Reader Christine Langhoff writes in response to a post wondering about Exxon Mobil’s fervent advocacy for the Common Core standards:

“Exxon Mobile came into the Boston Public Schools in about 2003, trying to destroy our contract by inserting merit pay through a project called the Massachusetts Math and Science Initiative (MMSI), a branch of the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI). And surprise! David Coleman is also a member of this board.

“Despite its official-sounding name, this was a private project begun by Tom Luce who served in Bush’s cabinet as an under secretrary of education. Failing to win the governor’s race in Texas in 1990, he was inspired to form “two nonprofit ventures that led public schools across the United States to measure performance based on standardized tests.” One of the first iterations was called “Just for Kids”. An early innovator (read NCLB) – all good ideas come from Texas! Currently, he is now a “reformer”on the board of the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE), Jeb!’s spawn.

“The Mass Math and Science Initiative set up shop in my school (89% of our students were minorities). We already had an outstanding track record of well-prepared kids diligently working their way toward scores of 4 and 5 in a host of AP classes. But the goal was not to have kids do well, the goal was simply to get more kids to take AP classes. Why? Follow the money.

“Although teachers had long taught AP courses successfully, no outsider consultants were involved. Suddenly, we were inundated with “verticle alignment” workshops, AP workbooks, CD’s, mandatory extra time for teacher AP training (including Saturdays) and cash payments to students taking the tests, as well as “merit pay” to AP teachers for high scores. In other words, what had been an in-house effort to take our most talented students a step forward toward distinguishing their academic records was co-opted to make bank for test fees, materials and consultants.

“In the same time period, the College Board began to require that AP teachers write up and submit an AP curriculum to them for approval (un-reimbursed, of course), and AP training courses began to be required of teachers so that they would be “qualified” to teach those “endorsed” classes. More “ka-ching” at the cash register.

“Remember that our faculty and students had a long track record of success in this arena. Under pressure from the school department, our numbers of students taking AP classes expanded exponentially, until nearly every student was enrolled in some AP class or another. So we met the goal of more kids, but of course our percentage of high scores fell off precipitously.

“It so happened that my own kids were applying for college during this time period. I noticed that though AP had been on the lips of admissions officers of “elite” schools four years earlier for my older child, now there was little interest. Every admissions person I asked about this at competitive liberal arts colleges had the same answer – that credential has been devalued.

“See:
http://www.nms.org/
http://www.nms.org/AboutNMSI/BoardofDirectors.aspx
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/columnists/robert-miller/20130402-odonnell-foundation-hires-tom-luce-dallas-attorney-and-education-advocate.ece
http://www.susanohanian.org/show_research.php?id=18”

Categories Common Core, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, Testing

Vicki Cobb: The Ultimate Handcrafted Item is a Child

By dianeravitch

December 22, 2013 //

Vicki Cobb, a prolific and successful writer of books for children, writes here about the replacement of handcrafted items by machine-made items.

And yet, even with all that is easily available made by machine, more than half of the population, she says, like to make things by hand.

She writes:

Unfortunately the factory mentality has invaded our educational system with the goal of mass producing children to be compliant, conformist, college and career-ready citizens as measured by their performance on standardized tests. It has sucked the passion and joy of learning from classrooms all over the country. This kind of conformity, controlled by fear, runs counter to the “inalienable” right to the “pursuit of happiness” in our Declaration of Independence — our definition of freedom. I would also maintain that this right is behind the United States as a cradle for innovation. Political leaders with an eye to the future say education needs to produce workers who are self-starters, able to independently process enormous amounts of material, sift through it and create new works with added value. In other words, we have to be able to reshuffle what exists, innovate and invent to fill new needs. We must also create people who can adapt to a fast-changing world and to be able to work with people globally, as well as locally. The classroom that can produce such students must allow for diverse interests and abilities, and be a safe place to practice skills and to fail.

I wish I could share her enthusiasm for the Common Core standards. I fear that their purpose and their goal is to mass-produce standardized children. She disagrees. Disagreement is healthy. Let’s keep talking about it.

Categories Common Core

Why Teachers Don’t Like the Common Core

By dianeravitch

December 21, 2013 //

Although Arne Duncan, Jeb Bush, the New York Times, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Exxon Mobil have done their best to create an air of inevitability about the Common Core (the train has left the station), parents and teachers continue to object to the imposition of these untested standards written mostly by non-educators.

In this article, which appeared in the Journal News in the Lower Hudson Valley of New York, Melissa Heckler and Nettie Webb–veteran educators– explain their objections to the Common Core.

They insist that what matters most in education is the interaction between teachers and students, not a scripted curriculum or higher standards.

They write:

Through the knowledge of subject content, teaching strategies, and brain research, teachers strive to reach and teach every child. The scripted modules undermine the essential teaching relationship by preventing the individualized exchange between teacher and student, the hallmark of active learning. Student interest should be a salient feature that helps develop and drive curriculum — something not possible with prescribed modules.

Good teachers embrace change but not change for the sake of change:

Veteran teachers recognize what we did yesterday is not necessarily good for today. Teachers embrace processes that produce meaningful, constructive change that moves education forward in our country. However, teachers recognize that Common Core is not research-based and there hasn’t been the opportunity to define and refine the standards in this chaotic collapsed time frame for implementation. Common Core is causing students to suffer. This is why teachers reject this change so vehemently. Stress has caused these reactions: students reporting they hate school, regressive behaviors like toileting mishaps, crying, increased aggression, sleeplessness and stomach upsets before and during the tests. This is what has occurred under Common Core. This is meaningless, destructive change.

Why do teachers resist the mandates of Common Core?

We suggest money spent on the development of these major unresearched and unfunded mandates to implement CCSS be used to alleviate the lack of resources — unequal staffing, support services, and restoration of school libraries, music and art classes, as well as enrichment programs in these schools. Research has shown that this is the way to help even the playing field for the districts in poverty.

Teachers are mind-molders. When they embrace, create and implement meaningful change with their students, they are helping every child reach his or her potential. Teachers embrace constructive, researched change that result in better, meaningful learning. Resistance to the Common Core standards should be understood in this context.

Categories Common Core

A Retired Teacher Reviews “Reign of Error”

By dianeravitch

December 21, 2013 //

This letter came to my mailbox. It says quite a lot about how teaching–and the perception of teachers–has changed in the past decade.

Dear Dr. Ravitch,

Finally, I thought, someone has come forth to tell the truth about the state of education in the United States today. Reign of Error is such an important book. I have been urging everyone I know to read it now. As a retired New Haven, Connecticut high school teacher, I recognized and agreed with all arguments made, but must admit that I was shocked to learn of the extent of the malfeasance in the funding of charter schools with public monies.

I taught in New Haven for twenty-eight years or so, and retired in 2006. Just in time, as it turns out, as I have learned that remaining colleagues are now plagued by endless testing and data paperwork overload. To make matters even more difficult, this is occurring in a school climate of fear and mistrust. Over the years we teachers used to note that every five years or so, someone outside of the classroom would come up with a new plan to “solve” all of the problems of education. Though always “top down” these edicts were often innocuous, and we were still afforded the freedom to create curriculum and plan our classes.

Many of us were able to take advantage of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute which offered a seminar program with senior Yale professors on a variety of subject topics. This was a Godsend for me personally for with a ten year affiliation with the Institute I would develop curriculum that ultimately led to an entire course and also an (unpublished ) book, The Eyes Have It: Exploring Literature and History through the Visual Arts. Most important was the opportunity to work in a collegial way with the likes of Jules Prown (Professor of Art History) and Robin Winks (Professor of History) in a seminar with teachers from various city school and of various subjects. The tentative teacher and writer would become more confident, able and ultimately find the joy of both subject and teaching in the process. Without the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, I’m quite sure I would have floundered and probably would have given up on teaching in New Haven.

As you well understand, teaching in a urban school setting in a place like New Haven is challenging. Teachers often feel that no matter what they do, there are failures and disappointments. We come to recognize that teaching is an on-going experience of learning and improving. In essence, the job is never done totally to our satisfaction. Therefore a teacher must constantly empower herself to believe in continued development both in a pedagogical sense and in our subject areas. A synergy occurs when teachers and students are both learning, and then there is excitement in the classroom. Once again, programs such as the Yale New Haven Teachers Institute replenish teachers in an environment where they find respect and professional status.

Toward the end of my career, I became very aware of the lessening of respect for teachers. Somehow we had become “the other” in the eyes of administrators, central office. It felt as though a two tier class system was at work with the lesser salaried viewed as less in every way. Many of us did not view teaching as a stepping stone to higher paid administrative jobs, but elected to stay in the classroom because we enjoyed our subject areas and the process of teaching. It was disappointing to be seen as less professional because of this choice.

I became a teacher because I was the beneficiary of wonderful teachers both in public and private schools. I was lucky enough to be introduced to Art History during high school and I also remember with great pleasure a middle school literature teacher who brought literature alive through student play adaptations. These were people we and the community respected for their love of subject area and their joy in providing a broadening cultural experience. In our eyes, they represented hope.

If teaching becomes less artful, less personal in an overwhelming climate of regimentation and mistrust, I fear much will be lost, and perhaps education as I knew it will be irrevocable.

Thank you very much for writing Reign of Error. Though we seem to be living in a era of glib sound bites and quick fixes based on very little reflection, I am hopeful that readers of your book will realize: (1) that the issues of education are large and connected to the state of society as a whole, and (2) take steps to convince our leaders to dig deeper and connect with a conscience that recognizes the common goal of equality in education and an abiding respect for all children.

Jane K. Marshall

Categories Education Reform

Leonie Haimson: The Woman Who Stopped Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, and the Ed Profiteers

By dianeravitch

December 21, 2013 //

Below is a letter from Leonie Haimson, who was previously added to the honor roll of this blog for fighting for students, parents, and public education.

Leonie almost singlehandedly stopped the effort to mine student data, whose sponsors wanted confidential and identifiable information about every child “for the children’s sake.” Leonie saw through that ruse and raised a national ruckus to fight for student privacy. Privacy of student records is supposedly protected by federal law (FERPA), but Arne Duncan weakened the regulations so that parents could not opt out of the data mining.

It is not over. The Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation put up $100 million to start inBloom, and Rupert Murdoch’s Wireless Generation got the contract to develop the software, and amazon.com plans to put it on a “cloud.” They will be back. We count on Haimson and the many parents she has inspired to remain vigilant on behalf of our children. As a grandparent of a child in second grade in a Brooklyn public school, I have a personal interest in keeping his information private.

Here is Leonie’s letter, written 12/20/13:

Dear folks,

I have good news to report! Yesterday, Sheldon Silver, Speaker of the NYS Assembly, along with Education Chair Cathy Nolan and fifty Democratic Assemblymembers sent a letter to Commissioner King, urging him to put a halt to inBloom.

“It is our job to protect New York’s children. In this case, that means protecting their personally identifiable information from falling into the wrong hands,” said Silver. “Until we are confident that this information can remain protected, the plan to share student data with InBloom must be put on hold.”

Why is this important? Because Speaker Silver and the Democrats in the Assembly appoint the Board of Regents, as the Daily News noted. The Regents control education policy in New York, and appoint the commissioner.

We have begun to make real headway in the past year against inBloom, but we need your support so we can continue the fight for student privacy and smaller classes in the public schools.

We count on donations from individuals like you as our main source of funding. If you appreciate our work and want it to continue and grow stronger, please give a tax-deductible contribution right now by clicking here: http://www.nycharities.org/donate/c_donate.asp?CharityCode=1757 or sending a check to the address below.

I am proud to have been called “the nation’s foremost parent expert on inBloom and the current threat to student data privacy.” We were the first advocacy group in the nation to sound the alarm about inBloom’s plan to create a multi-state database to be stored on a vulnerable data cloud run by Amazon.com with an operating system built by Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify. The explicit goal of inBloom was to package this information in an easily digestible form and offer it up to data-mining vendors without parental consent.

In February, inBloom formally launched as a separate corporation, and nine states were listed as “partners.” We worked hard to get the word out through blogging, personal outreach to parent activists and the mainstream media. After protests erupted in states throughout the country, inBloom’s “partners” pulled out. Now, eight out of these states have severed all ties with inBloom or put their data sharing plans on indefinite hold.

Sadly, as of yesterday, New York education officials were still intent on sharing with inBloom a complete statewide set of personal data for all public school students– including names, addresses, phone numbers, test scores and grades, disabilities, health conditions, disciplinary records and more. To stop this, we helped to organize a lawsuit on behalf of NYC parents which will be heard in state court on January 10 in Albany (note the new date), asking for an immediate injunction to block the state’s plan. (The state has delayed the hearing in order to gain more time to respond to our legal briefs.)

In addition, we will continue our work on the critical issue of class size. As a result of our reports, testimonies and public outreach, we have been able to shine a bright light on what many consider to be the most shameful aspect of Mayor Bloomberg’s education legacy: the fact that class sizes in NYC have increased sharply over the last six years and are now the largest in the early grades since 1998. More on this issue is in my Indypendent article just published, called Grading the Education Mayor

Class sizes have increased every year, despite the fact that the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case was supposedly “settled” by a state law in 2007 that required NYC to reduce class sizes in all grades. As a result, 86% of NYC principals say they are unable to provide a quality education because classes are too large. Parents say that smaller classes are their top priority according to the Department of Education’s own surveys. There is no more critical need than smaller classes if the city’s children are to have an equitable chance to learn.

But class size is not just a critical issue in NYC public schools. Because of budget cuts, class sizes have risen sharply throughout the state and the nation as a whole. In more than half of all states, per-pupil funding is lower than in 2008 and school districts have cut 324,000 jobs.

At the same time, more and more money is being spent by billionaires and venture philanthropists on bogus “studies” to try to convince states and districts that class size doesn’t matter and public funds should be spent instead on outsourcing education into private hands – despite much rigorous research showing the opposite to be true.

With vendors trying to grab your child’s data in the name of providing “personalized” instruction – a euphemism that really means instruction delivered via computers and data-mining software in place of real-life teachers giving meaningful feedback in a class small enough to make this possible — our efforts are more crucial than ever before.

Please make a donation so that our work can continue and be even more effective in 2014.

Thanks for your support and Happy New Year,

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320

Categories Arts Education, Class Size Matters Org, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privacy and Privacy Rights

Bruce Baker on Statistically Illiterate Pundits and NAEP

By dianeravitch

December 21, 2013 //

Bruce Baker has written an important post about the inability of pundits (and journalists) to read NAEP data.

Part of the misinterpretation is the fault of the National Assessment Governing Board, which supervises NAEP. It has a tight embargo on the scores, which are widely released to reporters. It holds a press conference, where board members and one or two carefully chosen outsiders characterize the scores.

He writes:

“Nothin’ brings out good ol’ American statistical ineptitude like the release of NAEP or PISA data. Even more disturbing is the fact that the short time window between the release of state level NAEP results and city level results for large urban districts permits the same mathematically and statistically inept pundits to reveal their complete lack of short term memory – memory regarding the relevant caveats and critiques of the meaning of NAEP data and NAEP gains in particular, that were addressed extensively only a few weeks back – a few weeks back when pundit after pundit offered wacky interpretations of how recently implemented policy changes affected previously occurring achievement gains on NAEP, and interpretations of how these policies implemented in DC and Tennessee were particularly effective (as evidenced by 2 year gains on NAEP) ignoring that states implementing similar policies did not experience such gains and that states not implementing similar policies in some cases experienced even greater gains after adjusting for starting point.

“Now that we have our NAEP TUDA results, and now that pundits can opine about how DC made greater gains than NYC because it allowed charter schools to grow faster, or teachers to be fired more readily by test scores… let’s take a look at where our big cities fit into the pictures I presented previously regarding NAEP gains and NAEP starting points.
The first huge caveat here is that any/all of these “gains” aren’t gains at all. They are cohort average score differences which reflect differences in the composition of the cohort as much as anything else. Two year gains are suspect for other reasons, perhaps relating to quirks in sampling, etc. Certainly anyone making a big deal about which districts did or did not show statistically significant differences in mean scale scores from 2011 to 2013, without considering longer term shifts is exhibiting the extremes of Mis-NAEP-ery!”

But if NAGB wanted intelligent reporting of the results, it would release them not just to reporters but to qualified experts in psychometric s and statistics. Because it refuses to do this, NAEP results are reported like a horse race. Scores are up, scores are down. But most journalists never get past the trend lines and cannot find experts who have had time to review the scores and put them into context.

I have a personal beef here because I was given access to the embargoed data when I blogged at Education Week and had 4,000 readers weekly. Now, as an independent blogger with 120,000-150,000 readers weekly, I am not qualified to gain access to the data until after they are released (because i do not work for a journal like Edweek.) I don’t claim to be a statistical expert like Bruce Baker, but surely the governing board of NAEP could release the data in advance to a diverse group of a dozen qualified experts to help journalists do a better job when the scores come out.

Categories NAEP

Why a D.C. Charter School Teacher Resigned

By dianeravitch

December 21, 2013 //

Caleb Rossiter resigned as a math teacher at Friendship Public Charter School in D.C.

He wrote an open letter to the Board of Trustees of the school explaining why.

Here is a selection from his brutally frank letter.

“I recently resigned from a position as a ninth grade Algebra 1 teacher at Technology Preparatory because of unremitting pressure from the administration to alter failing grades and the return to my classroom of two students whose actions threatened the safety of other students. These issues are related to a fundamental question about Tech Prep’s mission: can it successfully implement a college preparatory, let alone a STEM, curriculum for the ninth grade when a significant minority of that grade has math skills that are below the third grade level or consistently exhibits disruptive behaviors that keep both this minority and their peers from achieving?

“There appear to be strong institutional pressures on administrators to achieve high enrollment figures, pass rates, and scores on grade-level standardized tests. These pressures flow down to the classroom, where they collide with the reality of severe academic and behavioral deficits, creating the sort of situations that led to my resignation.

“The administration pressured me to raise failing grades for the first quarter to grades that students had not earned. I was told by a supervisor that my intention to report 30 percent of my students as having earned a failing grade — due to low rates of doing class work and homework, which led to poor performance on assessments – “cannot be.” I was told that this would be “bad for the school” because it would have to be reported to the Public Charter School Board as evidence that students “were not on track to graduate” and that it also would be “bad for me.” I was asked to raise grades, or to change the weighting of the different categories of grades listed in my syllabus that had been sent to parents so that the grades would rise.

“The pressure was not successful with me, but I know that it was with teachers of these same students in other courses who had similar provisional failure rates. This casts into doubt for me all the grades reported for the ninth grade. When the second quarter started, the supervisor met with me and continued to press me to raise grades, including suggesting that failing students who completed one homework assignment in a week of five of them be given credit for all of them…..”

Read the rest of the post.

Categories Charter Schools, District of Columbia