Advocacy groups have posted a petition on change.org calling for the removal of John King as state commissioner.
Parents and educators reject King’s blind faith in high-stakes testing and his determination to evaluate educators based on test scores, despite the absence of evidence for this approach and the certain negative consequences.
Arne Duncan announced that he plans to hold a national competition for a redesign of the high school. He wants to dangle $300 million (if Congress agrees) for those who come up with the best redesign of the American high school. He is thinking STEM, technology, and other such big ideas.
As I read of this idea, I couldn’t help but remember back to 1991 when the first President Bush assembled smart people like Lamar Alexander as secretary and David Kearns (CEO of Xerox) as deputy secretary. David Kearns created a national competition to design the school of the future. The prize was $50 million (raised in the private sector) for the best plan to create “Néw American Schools.”
A new non-governmental organization was created to oversee the competition. It was called the Néw American Schools Development Corporation. Ten or 12 teams won the money. Their ideas were all over the place. The money was duly awarded.
So far as I know, not a trace remains.
Corporate types love the idea of incentivizing bold innovations by holding out big money for the winners.
But it is not the way to change schools. Schools are embedded in their communities. They reflect their communities. Schools change and evolve as society and the economy change.
Someday our educational leaders will grow a sense of humility. We may someday have leaders who don’t try to treat schools like businesses. Schools are not part of the free market. They are community institutions, and their values, practices, and mores are not those of the market economy. They do not compete to win. They exist to nurture students and educate them, not to turn a profit.
In a huge victory for students, parents, educators, and local school boards, Governor Rick Perry signed HB5, a bill that reduces the quantity of state-mandated tests. Up until the last minute, activists were fearful he might veto it. But Perry deferred to the huge public outcry against high-stakes testing.
Here is a summary by Texas Association of School Boards.
Here is a statement by TAMSA, known popularly as Moms Against Drunk Testing:
Dear TAMSA members:
Today at 12:30pm, House Bill 5 became law with Governor Perry’s signature. Texas public schools can now begin to implement the positive changes including decreasing the required End-of-Course exams from 15 to 5* and increasing flexibility for high school graduation requirements. This new law also saves Texas taxpayers millions of dollars by limiting state-mandated standardized tests.
Thank YOU for all your time and support of HB 5 over the last few months. All of your calls, emails, testimony, and energy were critical to helping this bill ultimately become law.
We want to also thank the key leadership and staff in Austin for their work on behalf of public education students in Texas: the commitment of Speaker Joe Straus for declaring education a key issue of this legislative session on Day 1; the leadership of Chairman Dan Patrick and Chairman Jimmie Don Aycock for working tirelessly to create and shepherd HB5; to Lt. Governor Dewhurst for supporting HB 5 during this process; to staff members Brandy Marty and Julie Linn for their time fielding our calls and emails on behalf of the Governor, and finally to Governor Perry for listening to his constituents and signing HB 5 into law.
Please take a minute to send an email thanking these people for supporting all of the children in our public schools:
Speaker Joe Straus, Senator Dan Patrick, Representative Jimmie Don Aycock, and staffers Brandy Marty and Julie Linn: [easy cut and paste email list]
district121.straus@house.state.tx.us; Dan.Patrick@senate.state.tx.us; Jimmie.Aycock@house.state.tx.us; brandy.marty@governor.state.tx.us; julie.linn@governor.state.tx.us
Governor Perry: http://governor.state.tx.us/contact/
Lt. Gov. Dewhurst: http://www.ltgov.state.tx.us/contact.php
Again, thank you for all you did. Have a great summer!
TAMSA
* The five EOCs included in HB 5 are: English I & English II, (combined reading and writing) Algebra I, Biology, & U.S. History. Other EOCs (Geometry, Algebra II, World Geography, World History, Chemistry, & Physics) will no longer be required for graduation (including for students that have already taken them).
TAMSA’s mission is to improve public education in Texas through the use of meaningful and effective student assessments that allow for more productive classroom instruction and more efficient use of public funds.
(Forward this email to your family and friends – ask them to join too: http://www.tamsatx.org)
Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment
TAMSA Board of Directors:
Kim Cook Susan Schultz
Susan Kellner Theresa Trevino
Dineen Majcher
Laura Yeager
Joanne Salazar
Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment | 9337B Katy Freeway, #107 | Houston | TX | 77024
A high school teacher in Wisconsin looks at what Governor Scott Walker and the state legislature have in store for public schools. It bears mentioning that Wisconsin public schools have the highest graduation rate in the nation.
He writes:
I teach at a wonderful high school in La Crosse, WI. Here is what is coming for us as an early Christmas present, courtesy of Scott Walker and his Republican toadies in the legislature:
1. The (failed) Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) will be expanded to the entire state. There is no logic, other than “Choice must be good”.
2. There will be a new state charter board that will oversee all charters, including those already run by the school districts. There will be onerous new rules that will make compliance difficult, and that will remove any oversight, even of the charters that the districts themselves run. These changes will likely have the effect of killing many of the successful public charters. This should open the door for lots of private charters, given their rampant success in Louisiana, Florida, and New York.
3. Possible continued freeze on revenue, so that even when the governor says there will be more money for schools, it will really just be a tax refund, no actual money in the schools’ coffers.
4. Removal of many/all the already flimsy restraints on the current voucher program. This could mean, in just a few years, that every child currently enrolled in a private school could start receiving a voucher to attend that school. A child would not have to ever have attended a public school of any type, much less a “failing” public school. This money would come directly from the state aid a district receives. So, our district could end up losing money for students that have never attended our (successful) schools.
These things are being sold as “Every parent should have the constitutional right to choose the appropriate education for his/her child” or even more simply “This levels the playing field” or some other moronic statement that has no relevance to the decisions being made and the consequences of those decisions.
If you have any way to help get the word out, or if you have the ear of someone who is “in on” the decision-making, please help. These changes could start very small, very innocuously, and within 2-4 years our public school system would be decimated beyond repair.
Thanks
John Havlicek
Spanish Teacher Central HS
Dept. Chair WLD
La Crosse, WI 54601
handyman.coach@yahoo.com
David Brennan of White Hat Management operates a few dozen mostly low-performing charter schools for profit in Ohio. Since 1999, he has collected nearly $1 billion for his operations, which include virtual charters. Oh, yes, he is also a major contributor to Republicans, especially Governor John Kasich and legislative leaders. In budget negotiations, he was just rewarded with an additional payment of $4.2 million a year.
At the same time, Ohio legislators reduced poverty assistance across the state.
Say this for the Ohio legislature: they know what their priorities are. Reverse Robin Hood: take from the poor and give to the rich.
Jay Mathews writes a regular blog about education for the Washington Post. He has been writing about education for decades. His most recent book celebrates KIPP. He has been the guiding force behind the idea of ranking high schools by the number of students who take AP courses. One of the things I like best about him is that he changes his mind when the evidence changes. He gets enthusiastic about big ideas, but is willing to step back if he thinks he was wrong.
In this remarkable column, Mathews explains the allure of the Common Core, the idea that all children will be measured by the same yardstick. But then he interviews Tom Loveless of Brookings. Loveless is a Common Core skeptic. He analyzed performance in states with high standards and low standards and concluded that the standards–no matter how rigorous and uniform they are–won’t make much difference.
Mathews is persuaded that the Common Core will eventually fade away, as teachers and policymakers realize that they don’t live up to the hype.
“Two roads diverged in a wood,” begins one of Robert Frost’s most famous poems.
In 2011, Arthur Camins described the fateful choice confronting American education. In 2011, he wrote:
“U.S. education is at a transformational moment. The choices we make will determine whether our schools become collaborative and democratic or prescriptive and authoritarian. The policies proposed by the federal government for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act will create some good schools for some students while hurting many more and will do little to improve teaching or learning.”
Now, in 2013, he writes that our leaders are taking us down the wrong road:
“We have traveled much further down the latter road than I imagined even in my most pessimistic moments. Charter schools and school closings, value-added, metrics-based teacher evaluation and pay systems and prescriptive turnaround models have all gained momentum, while so-called reform–minded billionaires have influenced elections and administrative hiring around the nation. Perhaps, most disturbing is that this has proceeded despite persistent credible evidentiary challenges, while scholars from around the world have pointed out that no country has made accelerated improvement by relying on market-based policies.”
Here is a puzzlement (as the king said in “The King and I”).
Is there a right way to do something that is inherently wrong?
I think that it is wrong to judge “teacher quality” by student test scores.
Doing so undermines the quality of education.
It narrows the curriculum only to what is tested.
It encourages districts and states to attempt to test subjects that cannot be assessed by standardized tests.
It encourages teaching to the tests.
It incentivizes schools, districts, and states to game the system, and many have developed clever ways to inflate their scores.
No existing test was designed for this purpose, and test publishers always caution that tests should be used only for the purpose for which they were designed.
Some desperate or unscrupulous educators will cheat to get rewards or avoid sanctions.
Campbell’s Law holds true: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
Thus, the more we use high-stakes testing, the more we corrupt what is measured. Every teacher, every administrator focuses on the scores to the exclusion of more important issues, such as the engagement of students in the arts, the health and well-being of children, and the soundness of the curriculum. They do this because their job depends on doing it.
I am not opposed to testing, if the tests are used diagnostically, to help students and teachers. I am opposed to testing that has high stakes attached to it, that rewards and punishes teachers, principals, and schools based on test scores. What we now call “accountability” is a synonym for “punishment.” I think that is wrong. Such “accountability” warps education, and I oppose it.
As I read discussions about school improvement strategies, I am struck by the obsession with data, the imposition of rubrics and targets, etc. that has taken the place of conversations about students and curriculum, about the joy of learning and love of the subject for its own sake, not for a test score.
And yet intelligent people continue to slice and dice the methods for using data to judge teacher quality.
They think there is a right way to do it. I don’t.
I think that the truly great teachers awaken a love of learning in their students. The truly great teachers reach into their students hearts and souls and change their lives. Truly great teachers don’t think about test scores. They think about making a difference in the lives of children.
I don’t think there will ever be a test or a method that measures what matters most.
I believe that the current era of test obsession will eventually collapse. It will collapse because it demoralizes teachers and has other pernicious effects. Students know it. Teachers know it. many administrators know it but are afraid to say so (I honor those who do say so and defend principle). Parents are beginning to see it. Sooner or later, those who sit in legislative halls in states and nations will understand that they are squandering money, but even worse, they are harming students and ruining American education.
That day will come. It is inevitable. And when it does, we will have the large task of reconstructing American education in ways that make sense, that restore honor to the profession of teaching, and that are truly educative for all children.
Seamus McCarville knows it would be easier for him if he remained silent when faced with attacks on teachers and public schools. But he remembers the advice his teacher gave him in high school he the class bully went after him: Always leave a mark.
No cowering for him.
He fights because he wants to be honest with his students. How can he teach them critical thinking if he runs away?
He fights for his little girl, so she will be proud of him one day.
Seamus, stay strong.
We will win. Bullies fear us.
They rule by intimidation.
Be not afraid.
Mercedes Schneider summarizes what happened to education bills in the Louisiana legislature this session.
The good news is that the legislature is no longer rolling over for Jindal.
Some of the damage of last year was undone by the courts and the legislature.
Most surprising was the enactment of a “reverse parent trigger,” allowing charter parents to return their school to the district.
