Archives for the year of: 2014
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How to Spin the Charter Message and What Subjects to Avoid

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2014 //
21

Someone sent EduShyster a copy of a pamphlet about how to put a positive message on privately managed charter schools.

The message is, of course, upbeat and positive. But it is not honest.

There is no confronting the number of charter schools that are low-performing or the number that close.

Nothing is said about charter schools that are run for-profit, squeezing out dollars from the classroom to pay off investors.

Nothing is said about the ineffectual virtual charter schools that make a lot of money but whose students have a high attrition rate, low scores, and a low graduation rate.

Nothing is said about the charters that get high scores by excluding students who are English language learners or have disabilities or misbehave.

And there is absolute silence about the charter schools that are corrupt and that have been closed because of embezzlement, conflicts of interest, and self-dealing. Nor will the reader learn about the states where private corporations are exempt from the laws banning conflicts of interest and nepotism.

It is possible to write a book about the good things charters can do by serving children who are ill-served in public schools, but those schools must be balanced against the charters that exist to get public money without public accountability.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit

Paul Horton Writes a Letter to President Obama

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2014 //
57

The following letter appeared as a guest post on Anthony Cody’s blog:

Paul Horton’s Open Letter to President Obama: Listen to Committed

Dear Mr. President,

Like thousands of experienced classroom teachers throughout our great country, I am very concerned about how you decided to go the way that you did with your Education policies. I was recently told by a close friend of the yours that “Arne’s Team looked at all of the options” and decided to go with its current policies because “they would get us where we needed to go more quickly than any other set of alternatives.” I was also told, “that not everybody could be in the room.”

The problem was that you and Mr. Duncan did not listen to experience. The blueprint for Arne’s plan for stimulus investment that morphed into the Race to the Top Mandates (RTTT) featured advisers from the Gates and Broad Foundations, analysts from McKinsey Consulting, and a couple of dozen superintendents who were connected, like Mr. Duncan, to the Broad Foundation. Most of those who were invited to advise you were committed supporters of heavy private investment in Education who favored high stakes testing tied to teacher evaluations. Most of these advisers also favored the scaling up of measurable data collection as a way to measure progress or lack of progress in American Education.

If you had listened to the leading experts on standardized testing and the achievement gap, you would have learned that your policies were bound to fail. Our former colleague here at the U of C, Professor James Coleman, was the first to establish this empirically. You should have taken the time to learn learn about Campbell’s Law, a concept that is taught in every graduate level statistics course here at the University of Chicago.

On a more personal level, Mr. President, you consulted many of your contacts in Democrats for Education Reform, an organization funded mostly by Democratic leaning Wall Street investment firms. And you were also very impressed by the ideas and passion of a Denver charter school principal and Democratic activist, Michael Johnston….

Thousands of teachers possess the experience, training, and commitment to advise you on Education matters. But you chose to listen to those who went to places like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford who have only two years of classroom experience. Commitment, I submit, is a very important word.

The true measure of one’s commitment to Education is one’s willingness to sacrifice one’s will to power and economic potential to be successful in the classroom. TFA kids who go back to grad school after two years in the classroom and buy into corporate education reform are embracing their will to power. Most of these kids tend to have every advantage to begin with, they get an Ivy League education, and they are ambitious young liberals. Rather than staying in the classroom and truly making a difference by developing their teaching skills over twenty or thirty years, they can achieve administrative positions in the charter world that have far more economic potential than teaching positions by buying into the mantra of data-driven corporate reform lingo.

You have left thousands of us behind and allowed inexperienced “experts” yellow-brick road access to take charge. You and your administration have encouraged a “Cultural Revolution” in American education. Your Education Secretary embraced and applauded the Madame Mao of this movement and allowed his Inspector General to whitewash an investigation of cheating in DC Schools. You promoted your basketball buddy and very close friend of your campaign finance manager to be Secretary of Education. You chose someone with a Broad Foundation background. The Broad Foundation has written a “toolkit” for the destruction of public schools that is being used in Chicago, Philly, and New Yorks and in many cities across the country.

Your policies represent a new elitism. You seem to think that: “if we can get these really smart Ivy League educated former TFA people in senior policy, superintendent, and administrative positions, then we can turn this whole thing around.”

This idea is arrogant beyond belief, the equivalent of the “best and the brightest” idea that drove us into the ground in Vietnam, only you have decided to do it in Education. Robert McNamara was brilliant, he had an analytical razor, but he lacked a moral compass and anything resembling empathy for the lives of those who were dying in a “winnable” war. Mr. Duncan has a great deal of empathy, however his policies are misguided. Indeed, in my humble opinion, his department’s policies are an inarticulate mess. If he were ever asked the tough questions under oath in senator Harkin’s committee, we could very well discover that his use of the authority of his office overstepped the legal parameters of the laws circumscribing federal involvement in the formulation of Education policy. Ms. Weiss and Mr. Sheldon III, two of Secretary Duncan’s advisors who worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation prior to serving under Secretary Duncan, articulated what Mr. Gates wanted on his terms in exchange for tacit support for your campaigns. Several Wall Street investing firms also made it clear to you and to Mr. Emanuel that they were willing to support you if your Education policies encouraged private investment in charter schools.

Much as McNamara destroyed the U.S. Army in Vietnam, your Education policies are destroying two or three generations of dedicated and excellent classroom teachers by allowing them to be humiliated by young people who have very little experience. The policies that you have endorsed will set the teaching profession back twenty years much as the Cultural Revolution set China back twenty years. While recent studies have indicated that only two to three percent of classroom teachers are ineffective, your policies vilify the 98% who are effective and exemplary. Your policy makers would have done well to examine the teacher assessment policies of Montgomery County, Maryland that are based on the AFT’s Toledo Plan to learn how to deal with ineffective teachers.

You have bought into a corporate model of Education Reform: you seek to create competition among public and private schools, you encourage the “creative destruction” that your University of Chicago Business School buddies and Judge Posner love, and you seem to be gung-ho about selling off the public commons of American Education that were built with the sweat and blood of American farmers and workers. Do your policies work for young people who need stability in their lives? Creative destruction might benefit some kids (I was a military brat), but it probably does not benefit most.

Your Education policies embrace the management tactics of McKinsey Consulting that call for the firing of twenty to twenty-five percent of the teacher workforce every two years. You have said that Education should not “all be about bubble tests,” but your policies measure progress by bubble tests and they narrow the curriculum when they require standardized testing in some subjects, but not in others.

Your campaign pledged to address income inequality, but you and many of the mayors that you support are actively working to destroy what is left of the American middle class. Your Education policies work actively to destroy teacher unions. Many of your mayors and governors are working to bust teacher, hospital, public employee, firemen’s, and police unions….

The questions that you need to examine more closely are:

How do we get and keep candidates who would be brilliant in any career into the classroom?

How do you increase the size of the quality teaching pool?

The answers are clear and they don’t have anything to do with charter schools.

If Mr. Gates were really serious about Education in this country, he could invest in creating a system like Finland’s. The problem is that he is more interested in selling product than investing in four well qualified and well trained teachers in every classroom.

Progress in Education is not about buildings, it is not about technology: It is about human investment, not the expansion of markets.

President Obama, I have great respect for you. I have taught many of the young people who work for you. Ask the young man who has cooked for you for many years what a hard ass teacher I was. Please find the time to talk to committed teachers who have given their entire professional careers to improving Education in this country. This would require you to step outside of your comfort zone inside of Democrats for Education Reform and Teach for America circles. It will also require you to look beyond the mess that Ms. Weiss, Mr. Shelton III, and Bill Gates have helped to create. It will require you to talk to exemplary, veteran teachers about teaching and schools rather than to Arne Duncan

Please encourage Senator Durbin and his committee to completely defund No Child Left Behind. Do you prefer to fund Pearson Education or allow thousands of teachers to be laid off? This is what it is coming down to. Will you allow the middle class to be further eroded? Or will you fight for the jobs of teachers? Will you reward Wall Street investors in Education and Bill Gates, or are you willing to fight for neighborhood schools and arts and humanities programs? Will you use Value Added Measures tied to standardized testing to further discredit teachers? Or will you begin to understand how complex real learning is, learning that can not be measured by “bubble tests.” These are your choices, Mr. President. Please look beyond your current Education advisors if you want to explore complex questions and solutions.

All best,

Paul Horton
History Instructor
University High School
The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Obama

Louisiana Circus Continues!

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2014 //
19

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed the agreement to adopt Common Core.

 

But when Common Core turned toxic among conservative voters, Jindal declared he would pull his state out of Common Core and the federal test.

 

State Commissioner of Education John White–who supports vouchers, charters, and Common Core– refused to go along. He and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education said they were sticking with Common Core. Jindal appointed most of the BESE members and urged them to appoint White.

 

BESE and White threatened to sue Jindal. But they need the Governor’s permission to sue the Governor.

 

Governor Jindal announced today that he would not permit BESE to hire outside lawyers to sue him. 

 

Jindal previously announced that he would not permit PARCC to be used as the state test because there was no proper procurement procedure used to contract for the test.

 

Teachers and schools are caught in the middle. They don’t know what test will be the state test this coming school year.

 

Guess they will just have to teach whatever they think they should teach. They won’t know what test to teach to.

Categories Common Core, Louisiana

John Merrow Writes About the $2 Million Plus Spent on PR by Michelle Rhee

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2014 //
40

This is a must-read column by John Merrow.

In it, he says that Michelle Rhee paid $2 million to a politically connected public relations firm (Anita Dunn and SKDKnickerbocker) in D.C. in a one-year period. (Anita Dunn was communications director for the Obama administration from April to November 2009.)

He writes:

“In just one year[1] Michelle Rhee spent about $2 million to buy the public relations services of Anita Dunn [2] and SKDKnickerbocker. It’s a continuing relationship that goes back to early in Rhee’s Chancellorship in Washington, and it’s probably the best money Rhee has ever spent (especially because it was contributed by her supporters).

“Just consider the challenge facing the PR team: The former Chancellor of the Washington, DC public schools ignored clear evidence [3] of cheating by adults [4] on the District’s standardized exams, as Linda Mathews, Jay Mathews, Jack Gillum, Michael Joseloff and I documented in “Michelle Rhee’s Reign of Error.”

“But Rhee went beyond covering up the misdeeds. Instead of making a sincere effort to root out the cheaters, Rhee stage-managed four ‘investigations’ so that they cleared her. All the while, a feckless Mayor and the local newspaper averted their eyes, in sharp contrast to the vigorous investigation of a comparable cheating scandal in Atlanta.

“With her test-based accountability schemes discredited and her reputation as a fearless, tough-minded leader severely damaged, Ms. Rhee might have been expected to disappear from the scene. However, that has not happened. Instead, she remains in the public eye, writing op-eds [5] and offering analysis of educational developments. This fall she will be a presenter in the annual “Schools of Tomorrow” education symposium sponsored by The New York Times–even though the subject is higher education.”

He wonders why the District of Columbia was not included in the New Yorker article about cheating scandals.

(Read the original to follow the links.)

Most interesting is his description of an effort to smear him while he was preparing a documentary about Rhee for PBS. Even for a veteran reporter like Merrow, it was intimidating to be confronted with a long list of accusations, intended to undermine his credibility as a journalist.

He deals also with Rhee’s efforts to call herself a Democrat even though her organization, StudentsFirst, funds many conservative Republicans. According to this article in Salon in 2012,

“Rhee makes a point of applauding “leaders in both parties and across the ideological spectrum” because her own political success — and the success of school reform — depends upon the bipartisan reputation she has fashioned. But 90 of the 105 candidates backed by StudentsFirst were Republicans, including Tea Party enthusiasts and staunch abortion opponents.”

Categories Rhee, Michelle

Los Angeles: Court Rules that Public Has No Right to Know Job Ratings of Individual Teachers

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2014 //
79

Remember that the Los Angeles Times released the value-added ratings (made up by their own consultant) with the names of teachers in 2010?

 

Recently, the paper sued to get the ratings for three years-=-2009-2012. The LAUSD said it would release the ratings but not the names attached to them.

 

Yesterday a three-judge panel said the district did not need to release the names of the teachers with their ratings.

 

The public has no right to know the names of Los Angeles Unified School District teachers in connection with their job performance ratings, according to a court ruling issued Wednesday. In denying a request for disclosure by The Times, a three-judge state appellate court panel found that keeping the names confidential served a stronger public interest than releasing them. The panel overturned a lower court ruling ordering disclosure and rejected The Times’ assertion that the public interest of parents and others in knowing the ratings of identifiable teachers outweighed the interest in confidentiality.

 

Instead, the panel accepted L.A. school Supt. John Deasy’s contention that releasing the names would lead to resentment and jealousy among teachers, spur “unhealthy” comparisons among staff, cause some instructors to leave the nation’s second-largest school system, and interfere with teacher recruitment.

 

The judges said the specter of parents battling to place their children with the highest-performing teachers was of “particular concern.”

 

Is the rating based on test scores? Is it valid? Has anyone asked for the ratings of police or firefighters or other public employees?

 

Jim Ewert, general counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., said the ruling was “unbelievable” and that accepting “conjecture” as evidence to deny public disclosure was “without precedent.”

“How a speculative declaration can rise to the level of clearly outweighing the public interest in disclosure is a mystery to me,” he said.

The Times sought three years of district data, from 2009 through 2012, that show whether individual teachers helped or hurt students’ academic achievement, as measured by state standardized test scores. L.A. Unified has provided the data but without the teacher names or their schools.

Using a complex mathematical formula, the district aims to isolate a teacher’s effect on student growth by controlling for such outside factors as poverty and prior test scores. The district sought to use the analysis in teacher evaluations but was resisted by the teachers union, which called it unreliable.

The court did not rule on the validity of the analysis, known in L.A. Unified as Academic Growth Over Time.

The judges did find that the public might have a right to know the schools where the anonymous teachers worked. They sent that issue back to the lower court for consideration.

 

Think about it. The LA Times published the names and ratings of individual teachers in 2010. Can anyone honestly assert that this data release improved the schools? Did it mean that the schools hired better teachers or that parents chose better teachers?

 

This is a thicket into which Race to the Top has led us, as districts and states across the nation use “value-added assessment” to measure the unmeasurable. No one has figured out how to make it work, but people continue to believe in it as if it were a magic talisman.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Los Angeles, Teacher Evaluations

FAIRTEST: The Weekly Round-Up on Resistance to Testing

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2014 //
15

Parents, educators, students and activists in many communities are using the “quiet” summer months to plan campaigns that will build the assessment reform movement’s power once schools reopen. Across the country, more and more media outlets are reporting on the impact grassroots organizing already has made on policy-makers.

Remember that archived issues of these weekly updates are online at http://fairtest.org/news — a quick review of the clips demonstrates how much progress Testing Resistance & Reform Spring made this year.

How California Can Drive Reform With Better Instruction Not More Testing
blogs.edweek.org/edweek/on_california/2014/07/how_to_drive_reform_with_instruction_rather_than_testing.html

Connecticut Professor: We’re Teaching to the Test, Not for Students’ Futures
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-op-barreca-were-teaching-to-test-notstudents-fu-20140722,0,7046183.column

Florida Schools Need “Recess” From Test-Driven Evaluation
http://www.newsherald.com/opinions/editorials/our-view-they-can-t-live-on-tests-alone-1.346996

FairTest Challenges New Florida Test-Based Scholarship Program as Race, Gender Biased
http://news.wfsu.org/post/group-plans-federal-challenge-new-florida-scholarship-program

Louisiana Schools Stare Into Common Core Testing Abyss
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/state_edwatch/2014/07/common-core_fight_in_louisiana_.html

A “Test” for New Jersey Governor’s Standardized Exam Study Commission
http://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-a-test-for-the-governor-s-study-commission-1.1053970

New Mexicans Test Legislators About Flawed Teacher Evaluation System
http://www.daily-times.com/four_corners-news/ci_26155309/educators-share-evaluation-system-frustrations-state-legislators

New York Teachers Continue “No Confidence” Vote in State Education Commissioner
http://wamc.org/post/nysut-not-ready-reverse-no-confidence-vote

North Carolina Grade Retention Test Policy Revisions Confuse Parents and Children
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/07/18/5050767/read-or-flunk-changing-nc-law.html#.U8lDVGOTHZc

Ohio State Auditor to Investigate Charter School Cheating
http://wdtn.com/2014/07/17/state-auditor-to-investigate-horizon-academy-accusations/

Oklahoma PTA Plans to Challenge High-Stakes Testing
http://www.newson6.com/story/26057102/oklahoma-state-pta-poised-to-take-school-testing-to-task

Repeal of South Carolina Graduation Test Creates Opportunities for Young People
http://www.thestate.com/2014/07/19/3573446/abolition-in-sc-of-high-school.html?sp=/99/132/

What Can Utah Learn from Finland?
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58166744-78/finland-teachers-students-utah.html.csp

Virginia Educators Appointed to Committee Reviewing State Assessments

Local Educators To Serve on SOL Reform Committee

Feds Require Washington State to Mislead Parents With Notice That All Schools Are “Failing”
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2014/07/no-relief-for-washington-schools-under-no-child-left-behind-law/

Wisconsin Schools Concerned About Impacts of Common Core Linked Tests
http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/next-phase-of-common-core-worries-revolve-around-test-b99309190z1-267243161.html

AFT Convention Adopts Resolution Blasting edTPA Teacher Licensing Test
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2014/07/aft_passes_resolution_knocking.html

Jeb Bush’s Reading Test Grade Promotion Strategy Loses Ground Nationally
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/jeb-bush-florida-education-reading-rule-108958.html

Half of All Kindergarteners Start Off Far Behind Due to Poverty
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2014/07/nearly_half_of_kindergarteners.html

Movie Review: Stop Standardizing Students for Profit
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/my_view/reader-view-stop-standardizing-students-for-profit/article_d96717bf-878f-5738-9bd7-fb228a0dbc48.html

British Headmaster’s Letter to Students Puts Exam Scores in Context
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jul/15/headteacher-note-pupils-viral-lancashire-primary-school-barrowford-nelson

Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director
FairTest: National Center for Fair & Open Testing
office- (239) 395-6773 fax- (239) 395-6779
mobile- (239) 696-0468
web- http://www.fairtest.org

Categories Resistance, Testing

Slate: Sweden’s School Choice Disaster

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2014 //
70

Read this fascinating article in Slate by Ray Fisman, an economist at the Columbia Business School.

In the early 1990s, the Swedish government fell for Milton Friedman’s ideas about school choice. More students in Sweden go to privately-run and for-profit schools than any other developed nation in the world. “Swedish school reforms did incorporate the essential features of the voucher system advocated by Friedman. The hope was that schools would have clear financial incentives to provide a better education and could be more responsive to customer (i.e., parental) needs and wants when freed from the burden imposed by a centralized bureaucracy. And the Swedish market for education was open to all, meaning any entrepreneur, whether motivated by religious beliefs, social concern, or the almighty dollar, could launch a school as long as he could maintain its accreditation and attract “paying” customers.”

For a time, things looked promising. But no more.

“Advocates for choice-based solutions should take a look at what’s happened to schools in Sweden, where parents and educators would be thrilled to trade their country’s steep drop in PISA scores over the past 10 years for America’s middling but consistent results. What’s caused the recent crisis in Swedish education? Researchers and policy analysts are increasingly pointing the finger at many of the choice-oriented reforms that are being championed as the way forward for American schools. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that adding more accountability and discipline to American schools would be a bad thing, it does hint at the many headaches that can come from trying to do so by aggressively introducing marketlike competition to education.”

He concludes, quoting a charter founder:

“Maybe the overall message is, as Norman Atkins of Relay GSE put it to me, “there are no panaceas” in public education. We tend to look for the silver bullet—whether it’s the glories of the market or the techno-utopian aspirations of education technology—when in fact improving educational outcomes is a hard, messy, complicated process. It’s a lesson that Swedish parents and students have learned all too well: Simply opening the floodgates to more education entrepreneurs doesn’t disrupt education. It’s just plain disruptive.”

Categories International, Vouchers

The Network for Public Education Does a Victory Dance

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2014 //
9

Friends, when a small group of parents and educators formed the Network for Public Education in 2013, we had a singular goal: to mobilize the allies of public education against the powerful forces supporting privatization and high-stakes testing. To advance that goal, we hoped to create a force to counter the large amounts of money that were being dumped into state and local school board races to undermine public education, to demoralize teachers, and to promote an agenda of choice, testing, and sanctions.

We knew we were up against some of the wealthiest people in the nation. We knew they included a bunch of billionaires, and we could never match their spending.

But we put our faith in democracy. We put our faith in the simple idea that we are many, and they are few. We believed–and continue to believe–that an informed public will not give away its public schools to amateurs, hedge fund managers, rock stars, for-profit corporations, athletes, fly-by-night entrepreneurs, and religious groups. Our goal is to inform the public, assuming that they would not willingly abandon or give away what rightfully belongs to the entire community.

We believed that we could exert influence if we established our credibility as genuine supporters of children, parents, teachers, administrators, and real education, as opposed to the data-driven, high-stakes testing policies that degrade education and to the consumer-oriented choice programs that divide communities and harm public schools.

Our budget can’t match the budgets of those who want to turn our schools into profit centers. But we believe in the power of our message. During our short existence, we have proven on several occasions that our message can beat Big Money. We have seen candidates in state and local races triumph over well-funded adversaries. We think that our support gave them added visibility and contributed to their astonishing victories.

We supported Sue Peters for the school board in Seattle, and she won. We supported Monica Ratliff in a race for the Los Angeles school board, and she won. We supported Ras Baraka in his race for Mayor of Newark, and he won. This past week, we supported Valarie Wilson in the runoff for the Democratic nomination for state superintendent in Georgia, and she won. All of these candidates were outspent, sometimes by multiples of numbers.

Some candidates we endorsed lost their races. But our message has been consistent and powerful. All credit goes to the candidates themselves, of course, but we are proud that we gave them support and hope when they needed it most, and that our endorsement may have helped their fundraising and campaigning.

We urge you to join us as we promote the principles that will improve our public schools and repel those who seek to monetize them. We want our children to have a childhood. We want our teachers and principals to be highly respected professionals. We want parents and educators to stand together on behalf of their children and their community.

We oppose the status quo. We seek better schools for all children. We will work diligently with like-minded allies until we can turn the tide, turn it away from those who seek silver bullets or profits, and turn the tide towards those who work to restore public education as the public institution dedicated to spreading knowledge and skills, advancing equality of educational opportunity, and improving the lives of children and communities, while encouraging collaboration and a commitment to democratic values.

Join us! With your help, we will build better schools and better communities for all children.

Diane Ravitch, President, The Network for Public Education
Anthony Cody, Treasurer, The Network for Public Education
Robin Hiller, executive director, The Network for Public Education

Categories Corporate Reformers, Network for Public Education

Marion Brady: We Need the Right Kind of Standards, Not CCSS

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2014 //
21

Marion Brady is a retired teacher and administrator and prolific author.

He writes:

“In a commentary in the July 21, 2014 issue of Time magazine, columnist Joe Klein takes aim at one of the usual targets of today’s education reformers—unions. In a dig at New York City mayor de Blasio, he says, “A mayor who actually cared about education would be seeking longer school days, longer school years, more charter schools…and the elimination of tenure and seniority rules…”

“Like just about every other mainstream media pundit, Klein thinks he knows enough about educating to diagnose its ills and prescribe a cure. That he’ll be taken seriously testifies to the power of what’s become the conventional wisdom, that if America’s schools aren’t performing as they should it’s because teachers aren’t getting the job done.

“What’s the teacher’s job? Raising standardized tests scores.

“What’s the key to high test scores? Rigor.

“What does rigor look like? No-excuses teachers doing their thing for as long as it takes to get the job done.

“What’s “their thing”? Teaching to demanding standards—the Common Core State Standards.

“The market-force-education-reform juggernaut set in motion by business leaders and politicians about a quarter-century ago is simple and easily summarized. (1) Adopt tough performance standards for school subjects. (2) Use high-stakes tests to measure performance. (3) Reward high-scorers; punish low scorers.

“Which, when you think about it, is off the mark. School subjects are just tools—means to an end. We don’t tell surgeons which scalpels and clamps to use; what we want to know is their kill/cure rate. We don’t check the toolbox of the plumber we’ve called to see if he (or she) brought a basin wrench and propane torch; we want to know that when the job’s done the stuff goes down when we flush. We don’t kick the tires of the airliner we’re about to board; we trust the judgment of the people on the flight deck.

“School subjects are tools. Kids show up for kindergarten enormously curious and creative. What we need to know is how well schooling is enhancing that curiosity and creativity. Kids learn an incredible amount on their own long before they walk through school doors. What we need to know is how much improvement there’s been in self-directed learning. Kids appear to begin life with an innate sense of what’s right and fair. What we need to know is how successfully that sense is being nurtured.

“We’re on a wrong track. Standards? Of course! But not standards for school subjects. What’s needed are standards for the qualities of mind, emotion, character, and spirit the young must be helped to develop if they’re to cope with the world they’re inheriting.
The Common Core Standards, says the CCSS website, “provide clear signposts along the way to the goal of college and career readiness.” Just stick to the CCSS script to be prepared for college and career.

“College? Years ago, the Association of American Colleges’s Project on Redefining the Meaning and Purpose of Baccalaureate Degrees said, “We do not believe that the road to a coherent education can be constructed from a set of required subjects or academic disciplines.” I’ve seen no evidence that the thoughtful among them have changed their minds.

“Careers? We have no idea how the interactions of globalization, automation, climate change, clashing societal
worldviews, and trends not yet evident will effect careers. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that nobody knows what careers are going to be available when today’s elementary school kids are looking for work.

“Back in the 70s, in his book Reflections on the Human Condition, Eric Hoffer, philosopher, writer, and longshoreman, wrote something that the Common Core Standards don’t adequately reflect: “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”

“Standards? Sure. But not standards for solving quadratic equations, or for recalling the chemical formulas for salt, sand, baking soda, and chalk, or for interpreting Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail as some self-appointed “expert” thinks it should be interpreted.
And not standards that make it easy to create machine-scored tests that perpetuate the destructive myth that quality can be quantified and turned into data to drive education reform.

“Standards—proper standards—could work wonders. Consider, for example, the effect just one standard could have on teachers, on teaching materials, on kids, on the citizenry, on America:

“Schools will be held accountable for sending learners on their way with a deep-seated love of learning and a willingness and ability to follow where that love leads.”

Categories Common Core, Data and Data Mining, Education Reform, Joy

Indiana: State Takeover and Privatization of 5 Schools Is Not Working

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2014 //
9

Under former State Superintendent Tony Bennett, five schools–four in Indianapolis and one in Gary–were taken over by the state and given to private operators. Students are leaving, there’s not enough money, and there is acrimony between the private operators and the schools.

The new State Superintendent Glenda Ritz prefers improving schools rather than taking them over, but she is working with a hostile state board of education, appointed by a hostile governor. After two years of privatization, all five schools are still F-rated.

The losers? The children.

Categories Indiana, Privatization
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