Archives for the year of: 2013
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Kevin Drum: Another Bogus Ed Reform

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2013 //
6

Kevin Drum is a respected writer and blogger. He doesn’t usually write about education.

However, he has heard the claim that the best way to improve academic performance is to make school harder: higher standards, harder tests.

The San Jose school district tried this approach. It said that every student must take college prep classes. This is what Drum found:

“Do high schools with higher standards get better performance from their students? If you require everyone to take college prep classes, will more kids go to college? The San Jose school district has long been a poster child for this notion, but guess what? It turns out it was all a crock:

“San Jose Unified has quietly acknowledged that the district overstated its accomplishments. And a Times analysis of the district’s record shows that its progress has not, in fact, far outpaced many other school systems’….In 2000, before the college-prep program took effect, 40% of San Jose graduates fulfilled requirements for applying to University of California and Cal State University. In 2011, the number was 40.3%.”

Reality is a hard and pitiless teacher. Someday our policymakers will understand that saying something should happen will not make it happen. Like, for example, passing a law in 2001 declaring that all students would be proficient by 2014. Didn’t happen.

More on this story from Matt Di Carlo, who reminds us that it I’d always wise to be cautious and skeptical.

I would add that it is always wise to doubt miracle claims. They have an annoying habit of falling apart under scrutiny.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform

In Praise of Senator Lamar Alexander

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2013 //
31

Some 20 years ago, I worked as Assistant Secretary of Education in the administration of President George Herbert Walker Bush.

I was in charge of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement and also Counselor to the Secretary of Education, who was Lamar Alexander.

Secretary Alexander took a big risk with me because I was a Democrat with no prior experience in government.

I developed great admiration for him as a thinker and leader. He understood the limits of federalism and he was always careful not to use the power of the federal government to force states or localities to do what he or his party wanted.

Now he is a Senator and is the ranking Republican member of the Senate committee that oversees the Department of Education.

At hearings about the NCLB waivers last week, he expressed puzzlement that state officials want Washington to tie their hands and give them mandates.

This was the most interesting exchange, as reported in the New York Times:

At a Senate education committee hearing on Thursday to discusswaivers to states on some provisions of the law, Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, forcefully urged the federal government to get out of the way.

“We only give you 10 percent of your money,” said Mr. Alexander, pressing John B. King Jr., the education commissioner for New York State. “Why do I have to come from the mountains of Tennessee to tell New York that’s good for you?”

Dr. King argued that the federal government needed to set “a few clear, bright-line parameters” to protect students, especially vulnerable groups among the poor, minorities and the disabled.

“It’s important to set the right floor around accountability,” Dr. King said.

Now, here is the question: Why does New York State Commissioner John King fear that children who are poor, minorities, and the disabled will be neglected by his state if the federal government doesn’t demand higher test scores from them?

Does he fear that the New York Board of Regents will abandon these children?

Will Commissioner King abandon them if the federal government retreats from its unrealistic expectation that 100% of them must be proficient on state tests?

Why does he want a federal law to force him to do what he wants to do anyway?

Reading this exchange, I am reminded of Lamar Alexander’s down-home wisdom.

Please, Lamar, repeal the accountability provisions of NCLB. Restore federalism. Stop the assault on state and local control of education.

Compel the U.S. Department of Education to do what it is supposed to do by law: to protect the rights of children; to distribute federal funds where they are needed most; to collect information and conduct impartial research on the condition of American education.

And to stop imposing failed ideas on the nation’s public schools.

Categories Federal Waiver, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Superintendent: Race to the Top Costs His District

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2013 //
4

Superintendent Ken Mitchell took a close look at what his district is getting to comply with Race to the Top mandates and what it will cost his district to comply.

It is not a pretty picture.

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Reform, New York, Race to the Top

Jeb Bush: Change the Rules of the Game and Win

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2013 //
23

Matt Di Carlo of the Shanker Institute here dissects the claims of Jeb Bush about the success of the state letter grade system.

As he shows, the number of A-rated schools went up because the state changed the rules of the game.

You can always get more points on the basketball court if you drop the basket a foot or two.

You can get more home runs if you bring the fences closer.

Are people foolish enough to believe the boast that Florida is now a model for the nation?

I happen to think that letter grades for schools are a ridiculous idea. Schools are complex institutions that do some things well and some things not as well. One can come up with a rating system that is far more sophisticated than a grade of A-F.

No one would dream of sending a child home with a report card with only one letter on it. Why in the world would anyone label a school with a single letter?

This is the rankest sort of political interference in the functioning of education.

No state or district should use letter grades to reward or humiliate schools.

This is politics, not accountability.

And it has nothing to do with improving education.

When the National Association of Independent Schools starts handing out letter grades to its members, let me know.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Florida

Why Is Education Talk So Vacuous?

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2013 //
19

Jersey Jazzman deconstructs Michelle Rhee’s appearance on Jon Stewart’s show and wonders why interviewers allow her to avoid any real analysis of her policy recommendations. Instead of asking what is the evidence for her views, she is allowed to get away with glittering generalities about how much she loves teachers.

Jon Stewart is one of our very best interviewers, yet she spun her blather past him.

Jersey Jazzman writes:

“Our nation’s dialogue about education has been commandeered by a bunch of ill-informed, intellectually lazy, bought-and-paid-for edu-celebrities. Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Wendy Kopp, Ben Chavis, Steve Perry, Jeb Bush, Arne Duncan, and a few others are pushing an agenda that has little evidence to support it; worse, they are rarely questioned by well-informed journalists as to the specifics of their plans.”

Rhee has never been challenged directly. I wish some radio or TV host would invite us to debate the issues.

Categories Rhee, Michelle

Joel Klein, the Quintessential Corporate Reformer

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2013 //
2

Mercedes Schneider continues her review of the board of the National Council of Teacher Quality.

Earlier entries reviewed the bios of Wendy Kopp, Michelle Rhee, and other prominent figures whose lives intersect again and again on the boards of the groups seeking control of American education, with the full-throated support of Secretary Arne Duncan.

Here is Joel Klein, the quintessential corporate reformer. This is part 9 of Schneidr’s deconstruction of the corporate reform leadership team at NCTQ.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Klein, Joel, National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), New York City, Poverty, Privatization

Is There a Method Behind the Madness of “Calibrating” Principals?

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2013 //
16

Jersey Jazzman read Carol Burris’s account of her “training” sessions where she was being “calibrated” by people who know how to calibrate principals.

He saw behind the smokescreen.

The goal is to create a system so “objective” that principals have no room for judgment and teachers may be fired by those allegedly objective criteria.

We must have standards! We must stack and rank our employees! Where have we heard that before?

The answer is in the link.

Categories Accountability, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations

Vote for This Man for School Board!

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2013 //
29

I don’t know Michael Weston, but I love his comment below.

He is a teacher in Hillsborough County, Florida, which received many millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation to pilot a new teacher evaluation program.

Bill and Melinda visited the district and expressed great pleasure at the compliments directed their way. They don’t seem to realize that 1) educators are very polite (as a rule), and 2) people are starstruck in the presence of billionaires.

But Michael Weston knows the score.

He decided enough is enough, and look what he is doing:

 

I am the Union Rep at my high school (in Hillsborough County). Just two hours ago I was explaining to some members that there was absolutely nothing (except running for School Board) I could do about:
1. High school science teachers being evaluated by a former sixth grade teacher.
2. That no consideration is given to how long you have been teaching a particular class, nor how many different class preps you have.
3. That a sleeping child will count against you, but God forbid you touch the child’s desk or anything else that may call attention to a particular kid.
4. All of the teachers being fired this year for poor evaluations are over 40.
5. Since it is a totally subjective rating, they can kill you based on your style vs their style.
etc, etc. etc.
And why is there nothing I can do as their Union rep? The Hillsborough Teacher’s Union is a full participant and support of this nonsense.

So, I filed to run for School Board. Someone has to stop this.

Categories Florida, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations

The Onion Finds a New Reason to Worry about US Students

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2013 //
6

Watch this, get a good laugh, and go to sleep!

We see similar nonsense in the mainstream media every day, but this one is funny.

Categories Humor

Have You Been Calibrated Yet?

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2013 //
20

Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, New York, describes how New York is preparing principals and teachers for the new world order decreed by Arne Duncan and his Race to the Top.

She went to a training to learn how to evaluate teachers, something she had been doing successfully in her school for many years.

She learned which words were impermissible.

She was taught to think “out of the box” by conforming to the rules and regulations inside the box.

She was “calibrated.”

She thought she was trapped in a cheesy rendition of “Star Wars.”

She began hoping that Darth Vader would arrive and put everyone out of their misery.

And then she learned–read to the end of her piece–who started this insane process.

Categories Accountability, New York, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations
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