Archives for the year of: 2013
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

How the NYC DOE Dumped Low-Performing Kids into Struggling Schools

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2013 //
27

The New York Annenberg Institute for School Reform compiled. Shocking report on the Bloomberg administration’s policy of dumping “over-the-counter” students into struggling schools or schools already set for closure. This as a terrible disservice to the students. For the already struggling schools, it was like throwing a concrete weight to a drowning man. Instead of support, the schools got the neediest students. It was a charade. Neither the students nor the schools got the help they needed. Was there no one at Tweed with a conscience? Or was it all a cynical numbers game, with students as the victims?

Here is the New York Post story, written by the fine reporter Yoav Gonen:

METRO NEW YORK POST

Dept. of Ed. ‘dumping’ tough students in struggling schools

By Yoav Gonen

October 10, 2013 | 3:56am

The city Department of Education has been harming rather than helping poor-performing public schools by assigning them many of the most challenging kids, according to a new analysis of enrollment data.

The study by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, relying on data secured from the city by The Post, is the first to confirm complaints that struggling schools have been unfairly burdened with high-needs kids who enroll in the school system late.

The students who don’t participate in the regular high-school selection process — known as “over the counter,” or OTC, students — are likelier to be new immigrants, have special needs, be homeless or have a prior history of behavioral issues.

Yet the DOE knowingly assigned huge numbers of them to dozens of schools that were either already being shuttered for poor performance or that were subsequently approved for closure, the study found.

“Compelling evidence suggests that the DOE’s inequitable assignment of OTC students to struggling high schools reduces the opportunities for success for both the students and their schools,” said Norm Fruchter, an Annenberg associate and one of the study’s authors.

At Sheepshead Bay HS in Brooklyn, the percentage of OTC kids assigned each year grew from 18 percent in 2008 to 25 percent in 2011 — well above the average for large high schools. After the school’s performance began to suffer, it was approved for closure earlier this year.

In The Bronx, Christopher Columbus HS took in between 32 and 40 percent of its population over the counter each year from 2008 to 2010. Despite being approved for closure in 2011, it was still assigned 37 percent of its enrollment through OTC placements that year.
“We reconfigured our academic and support programs to meet the needs of our very sizable annual percentage of OTC students,” said Christine Rowland, a teacher at Columbus.

“But without sufficient resources, the burden on the school staff was enormous.”

DOE officials said that during the annual spring-enrollment process, the best high schools “tend to have the fewest seats available for students who enroll on the first day or midyear.”

Yet it wasn’t until state education officials expressed concern about the over-concentration of high-needs kids in struggling schools that the DOE began setting aside additional seats in the best schools last year.

Categories Education Reform

Philadelphia Child Dies, No School Nurse Available

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2013 //
29

Governor Tom Corbett’s budget cuts may have claimed their first victim.

Daniel Denvir writes:

“Sixth-grader Laporshia Massey died from asthma complications, according to her father, who says he rushed her to the emergency room soon after she got home from school on the afternoon of Sept. 25. He says Laporshia had begun to feel ill earlier that day at Bryant Elementary School, where a nurse is on staff only two days a week. This day was not one of those days.

“Daniel Burch, Laporshia’s father, is angry and wants to know whether Philadelphia’s resource-starved school district failed to save his daughter’s life.”

Every school should have a school nurse on duty every day, but Philadelphia has a $300 million deficit. The district has been under state control for a dozen years. The State Constitution says that maintenance of education is a state responsibility but Corbett does not agree with the state constitution.

Categories Budget Cuts, Philadelphia

Mark NAISON: Test-Related Stress for Students and Teachers

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2013 //
37

Professor Mark NAISON reports on the conclusions of a social worker who is getting large numbers of referrals of students who are sick with test-anxiety and teachers who,now find they work in a hostile environment due to the stress of high-stakes testing.

Here is an excerpt:

“In the fall of 2012, I started to receive an inordinate number of student referrals from several different school districts. I was being referred a large number of honors students—mostly 8th graders.The kids were self-mutilating—cutting themselves with sharp objects and burning themselves with cigarettes. My phone never stopped ringing.

What was prompting this increase in self-mutilating behavior? Why now?

The answer I received from every single teenager was the same. “I can’t handle the pressure. It’s too much work.”

I also started to receive more calls referring elementary school students who were refusing to go to school. They said they felt “stupid” and school was “too hard.” They were throwing tantrums, begging to stay home, and upset even to the point of vomiting.

I was also hearing from parents about kids bringing home homework that the parents didn’t understand and they couldn’t help their children to complete. I was alarmed to hear that in some cases there were no textbooks for the parents to peruse and they had no idea what their children were learning.

My teachers were reporting a startling level of anxiety and depression. For the first time, I heard the term “Common Core” and I became awakened to a new set of standards that all schools were to adhere to—standards that we now say “set the bar so high, anyone can walk right under them.”

Everyone was talking about “The Tests.” As the school year progressed and “The Tests” loomed, my patients began to report increased self-mutilating behaviors, insomnia, panic attacks, loss of appetite, depressed mood, and in one case, suicidal thoughts that resulted in a 2-week hospital stay for an adolescent.

I do not know of any formal studies that connect these symptoms directly to the Common Core, but I do not think we need to sacrifice an entire generation of children just so we can find a correlation.

The Common Core and high stakes testing create a hostile working environment for teachers, thus becoming a hostile learning environment for students. The level of anxiety I am seeing in teachers can only trickle down to the students. Everyone I see is describing a palpable level of tension in the schools.”

Categories Testing

Great News from Toledo

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2013 //
8

A new grassroots group has formed, created by suburban parents in Ohio who recognize that Governor Kasich’s “reform” agenda is destroying their community schools.

Here is a report from a regular reader:

Great news from Toledo:

http://www.ourtownsylvania.com/Education/2013/10/02/shrinking-school-budgets-reviewed.html

“Toledo area school district treasurers Wednesday participated in a panel discussion reviewing the shrinking budgets of public school funding, coupled with increasing state-mandated programs.
Hosted by the newly formed organization, Northwest Ohio Friends of Public Education, four treasurers from the Sylvania, Perrysburg, Washington Local, and Springfield Local school districts presented figures at the discussion at Southview High School in Sylvania, and discussed how the state mandates are negatively affecting the Ohio public education system and its bottom line.


“This is a critical time in the education of the community about these issues … Our state superintendent has said he hopes to live to see the day where every student in Ohio has money to go anyplace they want to go,” Perrysburg Superintendent Tom Hosler said before the panel discussion began. He said the results of that philosophy, providing money for charter or private schools, can be seen in the public school system.”

These are districts that are outside Toledo. They’re strong public schools with a real individual and unique community identity, each district.

I’m not surprised they’re finally pushing back on the damage being done to their existing public schools by “reform”, because that is the issue in my rural district: reform is damaging our existing public schools. We’re being sacrificed to reform.

What’s amusing is this is where Michelle Rhee is from, what is called “suburban Toledo” by national media but what are actually individual towns that aren’t really “suburbs”. Rhee of course attended the pricey and exclusive Maumee Valley private school rather than attending the public schools she derides, but this is her backyard.

This is the Northwest Ohio Friends of Public Education Facebook page. It looks like they’re allied with the group in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Ft Wayne is about 2 hours from Toledo.

https://www.facebook.com/NWOFPE?filter=1
Categories Education Reform

The Public Educator Reviews “Reign of Error”

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2013 //
9

The Public Educator is a Néw York City public school teacher. In this review, this blogger expresses chagrin to hear another teacher echoing pseudo-reformer claims. The other teacher disapproved of candidate de Blasio’s plans to alleviate poverty.

“Without success, I tried to change her mind by referring to Diane’s book and some of the information contained within it. She did not believe me when I said that the goal of Bloomberg and others were to privatize education. Instead of looking at profiteers who have used or (stolen) millions in public money to set up for-profit charter schools, her focus was on the weakest within this society. If she lived in the 19th century, her focus would be on the waif that stole a loaf of bread rather than a robber baron that paid slave wages to his factory workers and forced these same workers to buy goods for exorbitant prices at a company store insuring their indebtedness forever.”

She was, sorry to say, absorbing the message of the mainstream media. And planning to vote for a candidate who will close her school, not give her a raise, and destroy her profession and her pension.

How effective these “reformers” are if they can convince teachers to vote against their own self-interest as well as that of their students.!.

Categories Reign of Error

Gary Rubinstein Analyzes Rhee’s Teacher Town Hall Meeting

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2013 //
26

Few of us attended one of Michelle Rhee’s “teacher town hall” meetings in Los Angeles, Birmingham, and Philadelphia. Fortunately, the meeting in Los Angeles was videotaped and released.

Gary Rubinstein, ex-TFA and current math teacher at Stuyvesant High School, watched the videotape closely and analyzed the exchanges. He shows how carefully stage-managed the event was, and his commentary is both sharp and fair.

The one bright shining moment in the “town hall” occurred near the end, when a young student stood up and broke all the rules. She spoke for two minutes, she didn’t get cut off, she had her say.

Gary’s analysis is priceless. Please read it.

Categories Education Reform

Cynthia Liu Urges President Obama to Read “Reign of Error”

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2013 //
18

Cynthia Liu, the founder of the K-12 News Network and a public school parent in California, urges President Obama to read “Reign of Error.”

Liu warns him that he won’t like it, but that is exactly why he must read it. He must listen to views other than the ones he gets from his staff and the Department of Education, which no doubt gives him a rosy picture of the great success of Race to the Top.

Liu writes:

“Those babies and toddlers you kissed grew up some, and are now entering kindergarten and first grade. In some states, children as young as first grade might be taking tests on art instead of actually creating art, or doing worksheets for “homework”. Under such age-inappropriate instruction, the joy and curiosity most children are born with seeps from their spirits like air from a balloon, the sparkle of excitement in their eyes and important questions like “why?” and “how?” stop. And their parents are MAD. Not at teachers, but at unending tests, one-size-fits-all data-driven instruction, forty and fifty kids per classroom, and important things still missing from the school day like art, music, physical education, science, history, and more. You see, that’s what Gen X parents grew up with — orchestra, marching band, jazz band, choir, three school plays a year, wood shop/industrial arts, school librarians and school nurses. ALL THAT IS GONE IN MANY SCHOOLS. Parents are mad because those who went to American public school decades ago know that our children are getting less now than we had then. That’s wrong. President Obama, parents, and teachers, are increasingly mad at YOU.

Liu admires President Obama. She thinks there is still time to get it right.

Categories Reign of Error

Privatizers in Louisiana, Worried That They Are Failing

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2013 //
10

The blogger Louisiana Educator describes a meeting in Baton Rouge where leaders of the corporate reform movement worried about the progress of their plans to privatize education in the state. Time is running out.

This is a chilling post.

I hope that its author, experienced educator Mike Deshotels, won’t mind if I excerpt this long introduction. You should read it all.

A small private meeting was held in Baton Rouge a couple of weeks ago including representatives of several highly influential power brokers who are dedicated to a major overhaul and privatization of our K-12 education system. These groups were very concerned that much of the Jindal reform legislation has either been declared unconstitutional by the courts or is still tied up in litigation. They are frustrated that the supporters of our public education system are fighting back against their sweeping “reforms”. They figure that they have only the rest of the Jindal administration in which to push through revisions of the law that will keep their reforms intact.

They are concerned that only a relatively small number of teachers are on a pathway to being fired as a result of the sloppy implementation of the new VAM evaluation by Superintendent John White. They believe also that the new laws should be identifying many principals and even local superintendents who should be fired. The firings are not happening quickly enough!

They are concerned that the privatization of our K-12 educational system is not happening fast enough. They are frustrated that many of the new voucher schools have turned out to be run by small time swindlers who knew almost nothing about education and who had no business running schools. They feel their cause has received bad publicity when it was revealed that some voucher schools were teaching about dinosaurs and humans existing at the same time.

This is a mighty hoax being perpetrated on the people of the state. Let them know. Stop the privatization movement now.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Louisiana, Privatization

Child Abuse in New York: Bubble Tests for Kindergarten

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2013 //
93

The mighty machine that Leaves No Child Untested has now arrived in kindergarten, as tots in New York City encounter their first standardized tests.

Children are now learning what matters most in school and getting ready for the Common Core tests, which will place them on a sure path to college- and career-readiness. No more nonsense about sharing and caring. Our nation is falling behind other nations because we have not started cracking the whip when they started school. It is never too soon to start test prep!

According to the story,

“Administering the exams is a complete headache, teachers said. “They don’t know how to hold pencils,” said a Bronx kindergarten teacher whose class recently took the Pearson exam. “They don’t know letters, and you have answers that say A, B, C or D and you’re asking them to bubble in . . . They break down; they cry.”

“Because the little test-takers don’t know their numbers, teachers direct them to find each question by an image printed next to the answers.

“Education Department officials insist that the 32 early elementary schools don’t have to give the kindergarten test yet — though they are required to administer it by this spring. But officials also acknowledged schools may not realize they can wait a few months.

“At the same time, officials defended the use of multiple choice as an an easy way for even kindergarten teachers to learn how much their students know at the beginning of the year.

“Teachers should have access to multiple tools that they can use in a variety of ways to diagnose what students already know and what they need help with,” said Nancy Gannon, executive director of academic quality for the Education Department.

“But teachers said testing this way is slow and traumatic. Trying to get a proper answer was next to impossible. “We said to color it in with a pencil, so they were taking out crayons,” said a veteran teacher on Staten Island. “I can tell when a student needs help. I don’t have to give them a test.”

When Bill de Blasio is elected mayor, he must clean house at Tweed and hire people with classroom experience who value children more than test scores.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K

Why the Sacramento Bee Did Not Mention My Visit

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2013 //
27

When I spoke in Sacramento last week about today’s failed fads in education, the town’s leading newspaper ignored my appearance. They ignored it even though I was introduced by Tom Torlakson, the state superintendent of education, and even though 1,000 people filled historic Memorial Hall.

Now I know why.

They published five stories about Shaq O’Neill!

I have nothing against Shaq. He is great. When I was in Argentina two years ago, the grand hotel Alvear Palace put us in a suite with a bed custom made for Shaq. No other rooms were available. Wow! Thanks, Shaq.

But some debate about where we are heading in education would not be a bad idea in Sacramento. None at all is a very bad idea.

Categories California
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »