Archives for the year of: 2013
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How Can Parents Fight School Closings?

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2013 //
14

Jersey Jazzman explains what is now obvious: School closings have a disparate impact on children and communities of color. Community schools are closed, destabilizing the neighborhood. Charter schools open, which choose and reject those they want or don’t want. Most charters don’t want the kids with the greatest needs.

A new parent group has formed in Newark, which has been a playground for the rich and famous, who move around Other People’s Children like pieces on a chess board. It has lodged a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

Will OCR find policies supported by the U.S. Secretary of Education discriminatory?

Let’s watch and see.

If that doesn’t happen, the parents should go to court. We still have an independent judiciary.

Categories Chicago, Closing schools, Detroit, New Jersey, New York City, Parents

Kasich Pulls a Fast One

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2013 //
15

A reader sent this notice of a major change in teacher evaluation in Ohio, slipped into legislation at the last minute, with little discussion. The governor is determined to follow the Rhee script and bombard teachers with test-based accountability, despite evidence to the contrary. I have a suggestion for Governor Kasich: How about if you take the students’ end of course exams and publish your test scores?

The bottom line:

If you’re not familiar with legislative language, here’s the summary 

HB 555 radically changes the method of calculating evaluations for about 1/3 of Ohio’s teachers. If a teacher’s schedule is comprised only of courses or subjects for which the value-added progress dimension is applicable – then only their value-add score can now be used as part of the 50% of an evaluation based on student growth. Gone is the ability to use multiple measures of student growth – ie Student Learning Objectives or SLO’s.

Teachers and school districts have spent countless months collaborating on the development and implementation of an evaluation system originally detailed in HB153 – only to now find the rules of the game changed at the 11th hour. Furthermore, the change is regressive. We have detailed the growing list of research that demonstrates the very real and serious problems with heavy reliance on value-add, and the need to offset these problems by using multiple measures of student growth.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Ohio, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Equity Investors See Big Profit$$ in Education

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2013 //
14

This is the end game of the current reform movement: financializing public spending on education.

Education is now seen as an emerging market, ripe for the picking.

Time to get in on the ground floor.

You don’t need to know anything about education.

What an opportunity!

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Listen to this Radio Show Tonight

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2013 //
8

Tim Slekar is a battler for public education.

He has made videos, written articles, testified before every committee that will listen, and runs a weekly radio program.

He is dedicated to stopping the corporate reform assault on public education.

Listen to this program tonight (and browse his archives, because he has interviewed so many of the teachers, principals, superintendents, parent activists and others engaged in our struggle).

@ the chalk face internet radio. Tonight at 5pm EST. Talking with Mercedes Schneider and the looming Louisiana teacher evaluation disaster. Where is the media coverage of Garfield, Ballard, Hamburg? Right here of course! Listen:http://www.blogtalkradio.com/chalkface/2013/01/13/at-the-chalk-face-progressive-edreform-talk

Categories Education Reform

A Math Teacher on Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2013 //
146

Stephanie Sawyer gives her view of the flaws of the Common Core math standards:

I don’t think the common core math standards are good for most kids, not just the Title I students. While they are certainly more focused than the previous NCTM-inspired state standards, which were a horrifying hodge-podge of material, they still basically put the intellectual cart before the horse. They pay lip service to actually practicing standard algorithms. Seriously, students don’t have to be fluent in addition and subtraction with the standard algorithms until 4th grade?

I teach high school math. I took a break to work in the private sector from 2002 to 2009. Since my return, I have been stunned by my students’ lack of basic skills. How can I teach algebra 2 students about rational expressions when they can’t even deal with fractions with numbers?

Please don’t tell me this is a result of the rote learning that goes on in grade- and middle-school math classes, because I’m pretty sure that’s not what is happening at all. If that were true, I would have a room full of students who could divide fractions. But for some reason, most of them can’t, and don’t even know where to start.

I find it fascinating that students who have been looking at fractions from 3rd grade through 8th grade still can’t actually do anything with them. Yet I can ask adults over 35 how to add fractions and most can tell me. And do it. And I’m fairly certain they get the concept. There is something to be said for “traditional” methods and curriculum when looked at from this perspective.

Grade schools have been using Everyday Math and other incarnations for a good 5 to 10 years now, even more in some parts of the country. These are kids who have been taught the concept way before the algorithm, which is basically what the Common Core seems to promote. I have a 4th grade son who attends a school using Everyday Math. Luckily, he’s sharp enough to overcome the deficits inherent in the program. When asked to convert 568 inches to feet, he told me he needed to divide by 12, since he had to split the 568 into groups of 12. Yippee. He gets the concept. So I said to him, well, do it already! He explained that he couldn’t, since he only knew up to 12 times 12. But he did, after 7 agonizing minutes of developing his own iterated-subtraction-while-tallying system, tell me that 568 inches was 47 feet, 4 inches. Well, he got it right. But to be honest, I was mad; he could’ve done in a minute what ended up taking 7. And he already got the concept, since he knew he had to divide; he just needed to know how to actually do it. From my reading of the common core, that’s a great story. I can’t say I feel the same.

If Everyday Math and similar programs are what is in store for implementing the common core standards for math, then I think we will continue to see an increase in remedial math instruction in high schools and colleges. Or at least an increase in the clientele of the private tutoring centers, which do teach basic math skills.

Categories Common Core, Curriculum

Who Is SFER?

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2013 //
9

An organization called Students for Education Reform is popping up on various campuses to advocate for corporate reforms.

This article by George Joseph in The Nation explores who they are and who funds them.

It is hard to understand why students would demand more standardized testing and why they would support a movement that attacks teachers and wants teachers to be held accountable for what students do. Shouldn’t students be held accountable for what students do?

All around the nation, brave students are saying “no” to the corporate reform movement that wants to turn them into standardized data points.

But not SFER, which is an offshoot of the Wall Street hedge fund managers’ group called DFER. They want to be standardized. They want to be data points. They want more tests. Please, won’t someone test them and publish their scores?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Students

D.C. Teacher: The Return of a Dual School System in D.C.

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2013 //
6

Washington, D.C. has an articulate new education blogger. She knows more than the policy wonks at Brookings, AEI, Education Sector, Thomas B.Fordham Institute, the Center for American Progress, and the other guru shops. She teaches in the D.C. schools.

Florence realizes that the city now has a dual school system, one for the winners, another for the losers.

Some historians think that it is very hard, if not impossible, to break free of deeply ingrained patterns. Washington, D.C. seems to be reverting to a familiar format.

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization

Sage Advice From Adam Urbanski, Rochester Teachers Union

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2013 //
22

Adam Urbanski, head of the Rochester (NY) Teachers Union, offers this advice:

“In his letter from the Birmingham jail, Martin Luther King wrote, ‘There are just laws and unjust laws. And we are obligated to disobey the unjust laws.’ A nationwide movement of creative insubordination may be the only way to put a stop to the injustice now imposed on America’s public schools, teachers and especially students.”

Categories Unions

Washington Post Reviews Rhee

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2013 //
23

Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post has written a comprehensive review of Michelle Rhee’s moment on the national stage, presenting a balanced portrait.

Rhee is still pretending to be a liberal Democrat, even though–as Layton points out–she has allied herself with the nation’s most rightwing governors and advocates for the privatization of public education.

The only thing I read that I had not seen before is that StudentsFirst has raised only $7.6 million, despite the claim by Rhee that she would raise $1 billion.

Otherwise, there is nothing new. Nothing new about the cheating scandal. Somehow I think the public is going to tire of her routine. The only unanswered question is whether, when, and how the D.C. cheating scandal will finally be cracked open. What did she know, when did she know it, or was she totally in the dark?

Apparently, she is now promoting her book but the question I have as a writer is whether she wrote any of it since she has been traveling nonstop promoting the full ALEC package of charters, vouchers, anti-union, and anti-teacher legislation. The minimal requirement for writing a book is a sustained period of time in which you can write. She has not had that time in the past two years. Why didn’t she just say, “as told to,” as other celebrity authors do?

Categories Michelle Rhee

Seattle Writer Challenges Bill Gates to Be Consistent

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2013 //
26

A reader sent the following observation:

Here’s a devastating article that points up Bill Gates’ hypocrisy when it comes to the variation between what he demands for his own children, and what he subjects children from lower income communities:

THE SEATTLE TIMES’ Danny Westneat takes Gates to task for promoting policy all over the country that jacks class size sky high, with Gates using the common-sense-defying logic that kids will fare better in larger classes.

Well, Westneat sends his own kids to public schools, and will eventually attend Garfield High School (in the news of late). These are the schools that—once Gates has his way—will have obscenely large class sizes… A bit fed up, Weastneat did what perhaps no other writer has yet dared to do:

he investigated the two rich kids’ private school where Gates sends his own children and—doncha know it? —these schools major selling point is that they have… wait for it… EXTREMELY SMALL CLASS SIZES:

WESTNEAT: “I bet (Gates) senses deep down as a parent that pushing more kids into classes isn’t what’s best for students. His kids’ private-sector grade school has 17 kids in each room. His daughter’s high school has 15. These intimate settings are the selling point, the chief reason tuition is $25,000 a year — more than double what Seattle schools spends per student.”

Calling out Gates’ hypocrisy, Weastneat ends the article with a knockout finish:

WEASTNEAT: “Bill, here’s an experiment. You and I both have an 8-year-old. Let’s take your school and double its class sizes, from 16 to 32. We’ll use the extra money generated by that — a whopping $400,000 more per year per classroom — to halve the class sizes, from 32 to 16, at my public high school, Garfield.

“In 2020, when our kids are graduating, we’ll compare what effect it all had. On student achievement. On teaching quality. On morale. Or that best thing of all, the “environment that promotes relationships between teachers and students.”

“Deal? Probably not. Nobody would take that trade. Which says more than all the studies ever will.”

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Testing, Washington State
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