The Atlanta cheating scandal has caused some reflection on the system that incentivizes unethical behavior.
It is important to say again and again that cheating is wrong. Those who cheat should be punished.
But who will correct the system that cheats children of education?
This reflection by TeacherKen on a column by Eugene Robinson raises important questions about the misdirection of education by the unrelenting demand for ever higher scores.
A reader sent these late-night reflections to me:
“I drifted off to sleep last night, the phrase “No Child Left Behind” kept ringing in my ears. It sounds so noble… No – Child – Left – Behind – surely that is good for our country. Yet, at the same time my eyes were closing, the disturbing aparthied maps that Jersey Jazzman posted were flashing before my eyes.
In the corners of my mind, memories of 1984, by George Orwell churn. Newspeak (the removal of negative terms from language) reappears today. “Newspeak is engineered to remove even the possibility of rebellious thoughts—the words by which such thoughts might be articulated have been eliminated from the language.”
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/section11.rhtml
Samples: Newspeak Reform Dictionary and Guide to Phraseology:
“No Child Left Behind”
Phrase meaning: self-explanatory
Reality: Yes, there are many children left behind. Can we find them in these maps?
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/03/school-closings-new-apartheid.html
“AchieveNJ”
Word meaning: Achieve – attain; realize; accomplish
Reality: “AchieveNJ doesn’t even make the attempt to correct SGPs for poverty!”
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/03/nj-ed-commish-cerf-wrong-on-poverty.html
“Community Engagement”
Word meaning: Oh… forget about the real word meaning… what difference does this section make?
Reality: “DONT allow the opposition to frame the standards or the new tests negatively: In particular, get in front of any opposition that seeks to characterize the new standards and assessments as a “one-size-fits-all” approach…”
http://www.achieve.org/
“Education Reform Toolkit”
Reality: School Closure Guide by the Broad Foundation
“Privacy”
Reality: “States must collect, coordinate, and use K-12 and postsecondary data to track and improve the readiness of graduates to succeed in college and the workplace…follow students through K–12 into postsecondary AND THE WORKFORCE and establish feedback loops to the relevant stakeholders…” (emphasis mine)
http://www.achieve.org/P-20-data-systems
What would George Orwell have to say about this today?”
The Tennessee legislation to cut welfare benefits for families if kids don’t raise their test scores was passed by the committee and now goes to the House Government Operations Committee. It is scheduled for a vote in the State Senate on April 4.
If adopted, Tennessee will let the starving begin.
Will President Obama denounce this dreadful legislation? Will Secretary Duncan? Will DFER? Will Bill Gates?
Where are the reformers who put students first?
LG, a longtime reader, wrote a letter to Senator Stacey Campfield (R) in Tennessee, who sponsored the legislation to cut the welfare benefits of poor families by as much as 30% if their children don’t raise their test scores. The legislation is inherently discriminatory, she writes, because it singles out poor families for punishment.
This raises interesting questions. How about increasing taxes on wealthy families whose children don’t raise their test scores? Senator Campfield would get way more letters from them! And people would begin asking who made the tests so important. And whether they should be used to mete out punishments and rewards. That would be a boon for the anti-testing movement.
LG writes:
Dear Senator Campfield,
Thank you for your reply.
This is a radical solution for a very important issue. How can anyone reconcile this same targeting strategy for middle and higher income families whose children are in the same academic position?
What is proposed in this bill is discriminatory in that it does not solve academic performance issues by making some rules for some of the people to follow while leaving the others to continually fail in schools. Where is the incentive for middle or upper level income families?
A large concern is for the children at lower income levels who have not yet been identified as having learning disabilities. As you said, no system is 100% perfect, including child study services. Some children may not be identified as learning disabled for years–should their families be punished by this?
I would think a better bill would target the inequality in our economic infrastructure. Apply more oversight to the assistance programs to help people get out of situations of poverty. Provide opportunities for employment, and offer health care for families who struggle. Stop discriminating against the poor and provide solutions to aid in their upward mobility.
If this is about holding parents accountable, why hasn’t this bill been piggy-backed with parental accountability for all income levels? To make any solution about money on all levels is also flawed because people with access to money may try to “buy” results or intimidate those reporting grades. The poor do not have the luxury of “buying” their way out of anything. What your bill proposes is segregating the population into haves and have-nots and then creating different rules for the have-nots. This solves nothing in the way of making positive changes in academic progress.
Instead, hold parents accountable for communicating with schools or attending parent sessions by other means. If a parent is abusive toward a child, there are laws protecting the child. It is difficult to prove if a parent is uninterested in the academic well-being of a child, but perhaps there could be requirements for ALL parents of academically-struggling children by law that do not involve financial burdens.
This bill is anti-American, and should not be pursued. As a public servant, it is your responsibility to find another way to reach these students. Singling out low income families is discrimination, no matter how good the intentions behind the act.
Just received this:
“Dear Department of Education,
You should be proud of your Administrators and your principals. They are acting in full support of your harmful programs. They are choking out the words “these tests are very useful to your children”, and they “will not be able to determine the academic needs of your child” without them, while giving up countless hours of sleep for acting against their conscience. They sign their names to memos that state little white lies, perversions of the truth, and sometimes flat out falsities, while their stomachs turn and their palms sweat. They are even changing entire school policies that have worked well for years, just so that you can believe they are in full compliance. You should be proud of them. They are acting like good little soldiers and going against their own best interests and the best interests of the students. They are willing to turn on the very parents that are trying to save them and their schools. You should be very,very proud.”
“Jeanette Brunelle Deutermann”
I read this article “by Bill Gates” with a growing sense of incredulity.
I kept hearing echoes of many things I and others have written since Gates decided to make teacher evaluation the biggest crisis in American education. In 2008, he dropped the small schools movement and determined that teachers are our biggest problem. If we had a better way to evaluate them, schools could fire the bad ones and have only good ones.
No one did more to push the idea that teachers should be judged by the test scores of their students. No one had more influence on Race to the Top.
Now he says that test scores are not the only way to identify great teachers. They might not even be the best way.
Now he is worried that there is a growing backlash against standardized testing and he says he gets it.
He even concedes that tying pay to test scores is offensive.
Let us take him at his word. Let us take yes for an answer.
Please, Fairtest, invite him to speak at your next event.
Now if the day comes that he admits that the search for the right metric to measure teacher quality was a waste of time; and if the day comes that he realizes that many great teachers work selflessly in schools with low test scores; if he can begin to focus on the conditions that affect both teaching and learning rather than the fruitless search for the perfect evaluation system; when that day comes, we will all celebrate the painful metamorphosis of Bill Gates.
Recently, the Foundation for Educational Excellence (FEE), created by Jeb Bush, has come under fire for mixing its programming with the financial interests of its backers while serving as a vehicle for Bush’s 2016 presidential ambitions.
The Tampa Tribune ran a scathing article that pointed out problematic practices:
“Lobbyists are not allowed to finance perks like trips for state officials, but those at the Foundation for Excellence in Education get around that ban by being registered to another foundation run by Jeb Bush.
The foundation sponsors conferences where the top stars of the corporate reform movement appear to praise the virtues of vouchers, charters, and online learning. For example, last years’ summit in Washington, D.C.”
“….included “strategy sessions” on such topics as “Reaching more students with vouchers and tax-credit scholarships” and banquets with speeches by Bush, Condoleeza Rice and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Ed Johnson writes:
“Noted business consultant Peter Drucker famously said, ‘That which can be measured, can be managed.’”
And W. Edwards Deming, Drucker’s contemporary, said: “The most important figures needed for management of any organization are unknown and unknowable.”
Gotham Schools ran a story that questioned why the city’s leading advocate for public schools had enrolled her son in a private high school after many years as a public school parent. The story subtly implied that she may have lost her right to advocate for public schools because she was no longer a parent of a public school student.
Leonie Haimson founded Class Size Matters and is a co-founder of Parents Across America. She is a fearless critic of high-stakes testing and of the Bloomberg administration. She has been the most articulate and persistent supporter of class size reduction. She currently is waging war against the titans who are invading student privacy. She works out of her home with no pay and a shoestring budget.
You can see why powerful people would want to discredit her. She is a force, she has a large following, and she threatens them.
Consider the premise of the article: only public school parents may advocate for public schools.
This is classic corporate reform ideology. Corporate reformers use this specious ideology to argue for the parent trigger, claiming that the school belongs to the parents and they should be “empowered” to seize control and give it to a charter corporation.
This is as wrong as the attack on Haimson.
The public schools belong to the public. They are a public responsibility. Everyone has the right to advocate for them as well as to criticize them.
You don’t have to be a public school parent to care about our public schools. You don’t even have to be a parent. You just need to care about children and the future of our society.
Full disclosure: I am on the board of Class Size Matters. I know Leonie as a woman of intellect, principle, and integrity. Her courage inspires me and many others in the struggle for better schools.
Also, FYI, I am a product of the Houston public schools, K-12. My two grown sons went to private schools in NYC. I have three grandsons. The older two attended religious schools. The youngest is a public school student in Brooklyn. I support public education. That is my right as a citizen, regardless of where my offspring went to school.
Mercedes Schneider here recounts how Teach for America alumni manage to rise to six-figure salaries at a tender age, and her paradigmatic TFA graduate is John White.
White, now the Commissioner of Education in Louisiana, arrived to do Bobby Jindal’s handiwork, that is, demolishing public education and dismantling the teaching profession.
Quite a task for a young man, but he is up to it.
