Archives for the year of: 2013
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High-Stakes Testing of Students in Special Education

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2013 //
46

Louise Marr sent this from her book:

**********£*******
“Every spring, the Philadelphia public school students take the standardized tests, or PSSAs. (Starting in 2013, the district has switched to a different test called the Keystone Exams.) These tests are a huge part of how schools are evaluated and rated. It is from these scores that Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) is determined. There is a big push to prepare the eleventh graders for the tests from the beginning of the year to test day, usually after the first of the year. This particular year at Vaux, the students took the test over a course of several days. They were divided into several different classrooms for three to four hours in the morning, with two teacher proctors per room. All eleventh graders take the test, even the SPED students. Schools across the country take statewide tests very seriously, because of the implications that they present. In the five high schools where I have taught, there has been a common atmosphere at test time: the school is quiet and rules must be strictly enforced. In the classroom that I proctored at Vaux, it was sometimes a challenge to maintain the serious atmosphere.

There were five students in the room I proctored. Four were SPED students. One was MMR, and read at first grade level. He was given the same test. After a few minutes, he put his head down, because he did not understand the reading. Teachers are not allowed to help, only to say, “Do the best you can.” He didn’t even bother to ask.

Takierrah and Courtney were working on their tests, until Courtney looked up and caught Takierrah looking at her.

“Stop looking at me!”

“You’re ugly, I will f*** you up.” “I can’t stand your black ass.” “You’re black too!”

“No, I’m light-skinned.”

“You’re still ugly.”

“I’m cuter than you.”

“Get outta my face.”

“I’m not in your face, because if I was, I would f*** you up.”

They did manage to settle down without a physical confrontation,
but this scene made a huge impression on me. These tests would be used to evaluate the progress of our school. They were obviously way above the comprehension level of the Special Education students, yet the students were not given any accommodations at all. When I asked an administrator about this, she just shrugged, “That’s just the way it is.”

From the book, “Passed On: Public School Children in Failing American Schools”
by Louise Marr. Chapter 3: No Longer a Special Education

Categories Closing schools, Special Education, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Yes, Too Good to Be True

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2013 //
12

Earlier I posted a story about an elementary school in Massachusetts where the principal fired the security guards and expanded the arts program….and, voila! The school miraculously improved.

The title was, “Could This Be True?”

Sadly, it was not true.

According to our friends in Massachusetts, the principal fired most of the teachers and the enrollment of the school changed, raising its socioeconomic profile.

No miracle.

Here is a comment from EduShyster:

“Barack Obama visited this school just last year–although the principal’s decision to bulk up the arts budget was not the lesson that BO was there to promote. Before Principal Bott got rid of the security guards he got rid of 80% of the teachers. And unlike other schools in Massachusetts where slash-and-burn turnaround efforts have produced very little, test scores at the school have risen, making Orchard Gardens what Arne Duncan might call a SIG-sess story.”

ChemTeacher added this comment:

“Let’s ask Deborah Meier. She has some understanding of the pilot schools in Boston. According to the video, the school originally opened as an empty promise, and the art and music equipment was left in storage.

That was for the old Orchard Garden Children. After those children were replaced with higher socioeconomic children, somebody finally thought of hiring art teachers.

“The new Orchard Gardens replaced a failed, dysfunctional public housing development with a mixed income community of over 200 units of affordable family housing in an inner city neighborhood. ”
http://www.dhkinc.com/Housing/public_housing/9606A.asp

The moral might be that we need integrated, mixed income communities, or maybe we can just hire art teachers right away. I’m worried about where the old Orchard Park children are, and do they have art and music there?”

ChemTeacher added:

“This is not necessarily a heart-warming story. Please read the link I posted above. The scores rose because they moved out the old, low-scoring population. Firing teachers didn’t raise the scores. The only way corporate reformers know to dramatically raise average scores is to cheat, or to raise average socioeconomic status. Art and music will save children’s lives and souls, and eventually pay off for their community and nation, but it won’t necessarily work standardized-test-score miracles.

“My guess is that the school was prepared and equipped specifically for the new affordable housing development, and that’s why the arts and music curriculum wasn’t launched until after the old community was gutted.

“Affordable housing” doesn’t mean low-income.”

Another Massachusetts reader sent this story, of a school that got $4 million in federal grants, extended the day from 7:30 to 5:30 pm, and hired a new staff of data-driven teachers. If Arne Duncan wants to give $4 million to every low-performing school, maybe he will see big change. If they all fire 80% of their teachers, where will we find new teachers? And how destructive is that to the teaching profession? Or is that what he wants?

Categories Arts Education, Duncan, Arne

Why We Need School Libraries

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2013 //
17

This was written by a parent in Los Angeles, who blogs as the Red Queen in LA:

Disarticulating Public Schools

It was a bad day 30 years ago when some business management-type decided to restructure academic departments to be fiscally self-sustaining, economically independent. In this scenario university libraries, a service-providing unit with no inherent money-generating capacity, would be held to the same standard as, say, microbiology with all its grant-overhead revenue generating potential.

Faddish ideas are hard to stop, even bad ones and so this conundrum has trickled down to our primary and secondary level of schooling too. But the model there remains inherently inappropriate; it can never be made to work. Nevertheless in insisting on the impossible, that such departments “pull their own weight”, the standing of libraries has devolved to that of ‘frivolous luxury’, akin to nail-art salons or a car wash.

This is a really bad paradigm. Libraries may be service-oriented, but the service they provide is fundamental support for the essentially solitary activity of learning. While teachers may broker the ingredients necessary for learning, at the end of the day each and every pupil must do their very own hard work of incorporating new material into their understanding. This requires nurturing the intellectual space of the pupil, to provide the support and safety necessary for that process of learning, the rearranging of one’s existing canon of knowledge into a novel set of explanatory connections.

And this is the true function of a library: it provides an atmosphere where ideas can be suspended long enough to permit rearrangement. Libraries are the petrie dish of intellect and the information stored there provides the agar of learning. But students themselves muster the work necessary to grow understanding.

Until it is clear that a library is the portal of learning, students will be without the means to accomplish their essential, lonely task. Libraries are the common intellectual meeting ground of individualized learners.

Now infuse that scenario with the isolation of the immigrant’s experience. That library becomes the embodiment of the hard task they face bootstrapping knowledge and understanding. That library provides the means for their unbelievably difficult task, just literally and physically in the form of electronic equipment and other tools, but also spiritually in the form of language and information, there for those able to invest their hard work in the effort. That library is the very key to dispelling the immigrant’s disenfranchisement. That library is a dream, sustaining the dream of Dreamers.

When we defund a school’s library, we dismantle the very capacity of the school to conduct its mission. Exterminating librarians defeats the purpose of school itself. When the librarian leaves and the library is starved, we lose our very access to the sustenance of learning and knowledge.

Categories Budget Cuts, Support for public schools

Teacher: No One Escapes High-Stakes Testing, Not Even My Child

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2013 //
15

This teacher was accustomed to teaching poor minority kids how to pass the tests. She was really good at it.

But she was shocked to discover that her own children’s school–in an affluent neighborhood in Brooklyn–had succumbed to the same pressures.

Testing, as she realized, had found her and her children. There was no escape. She concluded:

“As I reflect on why I was (am?) so shocked that testing had found me, I recognize that I honestly believed that my children were immune to high-stakes testing given our race and class privilege, and as much as I consider myself an educator for social justice, I was completely okay with that. That makes me feel dirty and ashamed. But we are not immune and our privilege can’t save us. It is here, it is everywhere, and if your kids are in the public schools, it seems you can’t hide from it. We can only fight back.”

Categories New York City, Testing

Teaching or Testing?

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2013 //
45

Michael Weston shares the news from his school, where testing takes precedence over teaching.

He writes:

May 3, 2013. It actually happened at Freedom High School today. The Unthinkable. Beyond the Pale. This afternoon, 7th period, we had an AP Testing pep rally. Yes, a testing pep rally. I had heard rumors of such things, but had a hard time believing them. Today I saw.

Hillsborough County Florida is one of those districts that has stuffed AP classes full with any student who a) wants to take one, b) can be cajoled to take one, c) is involuntarily signed up for one, or d) is placed under extreme pressure to take one.

This is all in the name of increased rigor of course. Apparently “increased rigor” is “New English” for Superintendent bonus. Yes, the number of AP tests taken is in her contract as a bonus provision.

Students lose instructional time taking these tests.
Students lose instructional time when their teachers have to proctor these tests.
Students lose instructional time when classes are under half full because OTHER kids are taking tests.

The list goes on.

For the last 4 weeks we have been FCATing. Two weeks ago started Florida End of Course Exams (they continue for some weeks) and Monday begins AP testing season.

Now – students lose learning time to a TESTING PEP RALLY??? REALLY?

Florida teachers should file a class action law suit or union grievances that this level of attention to testing creates a hostile environment for teaching.

Parents should likewise take action, as this level of attention to testing creates a hostile environment to learning.

Categories Florida, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Online Testing Broke Down in Several States

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2013 //
26

State testing was disrupted by major computer breakdowns in Indiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Minnesota.

All 46 states and D.C. are supposed to administer Common Core assessments online by 2014-15.

Maybe the corporations will solve the technological problems by then. Maybe states will come up with the money to pay for enough computers by then. Maybe students will figure out how to hack into the assessments by then.

All sorts of surprising and unpredictable things happen when big business and big government decide to take the work of humans out of human hands.

Categories Common Core, Technology, Computers, Testing

Could This Be True?

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2013 //
17

Beware, this might be a hoax.

I hope it is true.

If it is true, please share at once with your legislators. Send it to Arne Duncan. Share it with corporate leaders.

A principal of an elementary school in Massachusetts fired the security guards and expanded the school’s arts programs. Everyone and everything got better.

Call Ripley. Tell “Believe It or Not.”

Categories Arts Education, Massachusetts

Mentor: How to Fix Teach for America

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2013 //
27

David Greene mentored many Teach for America teachers. He knows how poorly prepared most of them were for the job of teaching in New York City’s toughest schools. He tried to help them cope.

Here he offers good advice to TFA.

Categories Teach for America TFA, Teachers and Teaching

Will Common Core Make Kids Smarter?

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2013 //
84

Arthur Goldstein teaches high school in Queens, New York. Many of his students are English language learners. He blogs at NYC Educator. His blog is one of the best in the nation.

He wrote the following for readers of this blog:

How Smart Will Common Core Make Our Kids?

Judging from the editorials in the papers, you’d think Common Core was the best thing since sliced bread. Actually, sliced bread is highly overrated, as anyone with fresh artisan bread and a good knife can attest.

The Daily News predicts over 60% of our kids could fail Common Core tests, and appears to see this as a good thing. Yet, as a public school teacher, if 60% of my students were to suddenly fail, I highly doubt my principal’s first instinct would be to compliment me on my high standards.

I’m also willing to bet anything my students would not appreciate it very much. They’d be particularly upset, vocally upset, if I’d given them tests for which I had not prepared them at all. I could certainly explain to 34 teenagers that it was urgent I raise standards, that it was an emergency, and that there was, therefore, no time to prepare or test my methods. Nonetheless, I would not wish to have to face them on a daily basis afterward.

Their parents would not be happy either. And yet, when NYS Education Commisioner John King advocates much the same thing, the Daily News says he’s “fighting the good fight.” It’s not much of a fight when he’s facing down a press corps that cheers each and every untested reformy notion that comes down the pike. It would be tougher to explain huge failure rates to a group of public school parents (like me).

One of the most remarkable statements I’ve seen was from the Daily News editorial, which asserted our kids were “nowhere near as smart as they need to be.” Can they seriously believe Common Core tests measure intelligence?

I don’t give tests to see how smart kids are. I give them primarily to see how well students have mastered material I’ve introduced. I’ve tested kids who barely speak English, kids who live with broken or improvised families, kids who work nights helping their parents deliver papers, kids who travel hours just to get to school, and kids in situations I cannot even publicly describe. Here’s something I know for sure—very smart students fail tests.

I keep hearing about how Common Core measures reading comprehension. One good way to to improve that is via tricking kids into loving what they read. If you can get them to do that (and I’m not at all persuaded any new tests will), they’ll be better equipped to plod through The History of Cement, or whatever delights Common Core has in store for them. Other tests will certainly continue to reflect student preparation, or how well they can select A, B, C, or D. None of this tells us how smart kids are.

I’m just a lowly teacher, but I don’t see it as our job to make kids smarter. It’s our job to inform and prepare them, and for far more than test-taking. It’s our job to awaken or inspire their passions. It’s our job to make them love this great gift that is their lives.

And frankly, John King, who sends his kid to a Montessori school where none of these tests are applicable, has an awful lot of gall to tell us they’re what our kids need. Why on earth doesn’t he want our kids to have what his kid has?

Categories Common Core

Rahm and the Madness of Mayoral Control

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2013 //
19

Suppose you were mayor of Chicago and had complete control of the public schools.

Suppose one of your high schools had an outstanding record by any measure.

Suppose it had an excellent IB program.

Would it occur to you to make the entire school an IB school?

Would it occur to you to get rid of some of the veteran teachers, just to shake things up?

Probably not.

But it did occur to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and today there was a mass student walkout to protest the mayor’s autocratic effort to break what was working.

Thanks to Ben Joravsky for a great article, and to Fred Klonsky for blogging Ben’s article, and to Chaya R for bringing it to my attention.

Ben J. proves that great journalism is alive and well.

Categories Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm
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