Archives for the year of: 2014
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Jeffrey Aaron Snyder: The Trouble with Grit

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2014 //
88

Other writers have criticized the concept of “grit” on grounds that it seems to suggest that poor kids are poor because they don’t try hard enough, and that this shifts the responsibility for poverty for the economic system to the individuals. So many privileged kids seem to float through life on a soft pillow that it is hard to credit their success in school or life to grit, since their families smooth their paths for them as much as possible.

Jeffrey Aaron Snyder has other objections to grit. He signed up for an online course on grit education taught by David Levin of KIPP and the more he learned, the less impressed he was.

What is grit? He explains:

“Inspired by the field of positive psychology, character education at KIPP focuses on seven character strengths—grit, zest, self-control, optimism, gratitude, social intelligence, and curiosity. These seven strengths are presented as positive predictors of success in “college and life.” Grit, for example—a term Angela Duckworth used to mean “perseverance and passion for long-term goals”—has been shown to correlate with grade point averages and graduation rates. Levin envisions that character education will be woven into “the DNA” of KIPP’s classrooms and schools, especially via “dual purpose” instruction that is intended to explicitly teach both academic and character aims.”

But Snyder found three reasons to doubt what he was taught.

“There are three major problems with the new character education. The first is that we do not know how to teach character. The second is that character-based education is untethered from any conception of morality. And lastly, this mode of education drastically constricts the overall purpose of education.

“There may be an increasingly cogent “science of character,” as Levin says in the introductory video to his online class, but there is no science of teaching character. “Do we even know for sure that you can teach it?” Duckworth asks about grit in the same online video. Her answer: “No, we don’t.” We may discover that the most “desirable” character traits are largely inherited; stubbornly resistant to educational interventions; or both. We already know that grit is strongly correlated with “conscientiousness,” one of the Big Five personality traits that psychologists view as stable and hereditary. A recent report emphasizes that simply “knowing that noncognitive factors matter is not the same as knowing how to develop them in students.” The report concludes that “clear, actionable strategies for classroom practice” are few and far between. Consider the fact that the world’s “grittiest” students, including Chinese students who log some of the longest hours on their homework, have never been exposed to a formal curriculum that teaches perseverance.”

Snyder finds grit detached from any moral values. He writes:

“The second problem with the new character education is that it unwittingly promotes an amoral and careerist “looking out for number one” point-of-view. Never before has character education been so completely untethered from morals, values, and ethics. From the inception of our public school system in the 1840s and 1850s, character education has revolved around religious and civic virtues. Steeped in Protestantism and republicanism, the key virtues taught during the nineteenth-century were piety, industry, kindness, honesty, thrift, and patriotism. During the Progressive era, character education concentrated on the twin ideas of citizenship and the “common good.” As an influential 1918 report on “moral values” put it, character education “makes for a better America by helping its pupils to make themselves better persons.” In the 1960s and 1970s, meanwhile, character education focused on justice and working through thorny moral dilemmas.

“Today’s grit and self-control are basically industry and temperance in the guise of psychological constructs rather than moral imperatives. Why is this distinction important? While it takes grit and self-control to be a successful heart surgeon, the same could be said about a suicide bomber. When your character education scheme fails to distinguish between doctors and terrorists, heroes and villains, it would appear to have a basic flaw. Following the KIPP growth card protocol, Bernie Madoff’s character point average, for instance, would be stellar. He was, by most accounts, an extremely hard working, charming, wildly optimistic man.”

It could be that grit is the same thing as character, in which case it is nothing new.

Funny, when I was in elementary school in the 1940s, we had one long row of grades for academics and another long row for behavior. Today it would be called grit.

Categories KIPP Charter Schools, Students

Ted Mitchell, Leader in Privatization Movement, Confirmed as Undersecretary of Education

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2014 //
44

One of the nation’s leaders of the privatization movement, Ted Mitchell, has been confirmed by the. u.S. Senate as Undersecretary of Education, the second most powerful job in the U.S. Department of Education.

Mitchell most recently was CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund, which collects millions from philanthropies and venture funds and invests the money in creating charter chains and for-profit ventures.

Among his many other accomplishments, Mitchell served as chairman of the State Board of Education for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegegger, a time of unprecedented expansion of charter schools and deep budget cuts for both K-12 piblic schools and public higher education.

Lee Fang

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education

NYC: A Teacher Explains the Utter Uselessness of High-Stakes Testing

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2014 //
19

At a rally against high-stakes testing in New York City, high school teacher Rosie Frascella explains the uselessness of high-stakes tests. The students get no feedback about what they did well and where they need to improve. As their teacher, she learns nothing about how well or poorly they did and why. The tests are useless other than for data for bureaucrats nd for the bottom line at Pearson. The interview was conducted by a local television station in New York City but never broadcast. Fortunately it was also taped by retired teacher and videographer Norm Scott.

Share it with your friends and colleagues, with parents and students.

Categories Teachers and Teaching, Testing

North Carolina: A Legislator Expressing Contempt for Teachers

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2014 //
44

The following comment came from Bridget in North Carolina. That state has been taken over by an extremist legislature and governor who are intent on driving experienced teachers out of the state and replacing them with Teach for America or other low-wage workers.

 

When Jim Hunt was Governor of the state, he raised teachers’ salaries to meet the national average. Today, NC teachers rank 46th in the nation. They have not had a raise since 2008.

**************************************************************

The latest from North Carolina – State Senator Warren Daniel replies to a parent’s letter expressing concerns about cuts in teacher pay by comparing teachers to corrections employees, and says they should teach for love, not fair wages:

Ms. Greene,

Do teachers teach because they love teaching, & they love children, or
because they are paid at some national average? Are you considering that
in addition to the State salary, teachers also make approximately 14
thousand dollars in taxpayer paid benefits, and most counties have salary
supplements? In addition, compared to similarly situated state
employees, a teacher’s work year is approximately two months shorter.
While a department of corrections employee or a highway patrolman may
have to work on Christmas and Thanksgiving, teachers receive vacations
for every major holiday and are with their families. These are factors
that are almost never mentioned in this discussion. Noone believes that
a teacher’s job is easy, but neither are the jobs of many of our state
employees.

I hope that we are able to give all of our state employees a raise the
session, but as you mentioned we do have serious budget issues to contend with. And sometimes the only solution to that, is to gore someone
else’s ox in the form of cuts to other departments.

Thank you for your comments, and for recognizing that we have serious
government challenges in this economic downturn.

Sincerely,

Senator Warren Daniel
NC Senate District 46
Burke, Cleveland

Source: http://payourteachersfirst.com/in-the-news/
Email a response to Senator Daniel: Warren.Daniel@ncleg.net

Please share widely!

Categories Education Reform

Will Bunch: They Will Never Catch the Real Culprits in Philadelphia

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2014 //
10

Authorities are closing in on educators who cheated on tests in Philadelphia. But columnists Will Bunch predicts they will never touch the real culprits, the people who designed the system of high-stakes testing. He favors punishing those who cheated, and he agrees tat cheating should never be tolerated.

But the true malefactors of test cheating will walk away scot-free:

“Let’s be clear: While their higher-ups placed these teachers and principal between a rock and hard place — commanded to improve test scores in schools that are starved of resources, in poverty-stricken neighborhoods where kids cope with hunger and crime just to make it to class — the appropriate response was not cheating…it never is. Some punishment should be meted out, although from what’s happened to so-called justice in America it’s pretty safe to assume the punishment — certainly the proposed punishment, anyway — will greatly exceed the actual crimes.

“What’s worse, it’s guaranteed that the real moral offenders will get off scot-free, since the biggest crime here is the system, the whole rotten-to-core standardized testing racket in this country. I’m talking about the pompous education commissioners (and the governors who appoint them) who think it’s a great idea to replace days and days that could be dedicated to actual learning with the mindless rote memorization of “teaching to the test,” the politicians who refuse to acknowledge a connection between well-prepared urban students and the anti-poverty programs they are decimating, the charlatans making millions of dollars off the testing racket, and the school administrators who pressured teachers to cheat and who then touted the results knowing full well that many of them were bogus.

“Jail for them? Are you kidding? Their punishment will be high-priced consulting gigs and foundation posts. Is this a great country or what?”

If you created a jail for the test pushers, you would have to open cells for some of the biggest names in Congress, as well as high-level officials in the Bush and Obama administrations.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Theyll-never-catch-the-real-culprits.html#SMumx0jGyE2YcC6i.99

Categories Philadelphia

Julian Vasquez Heilig: Uncovering Lies in Arne Duncan’s Graduation Rate Miracle Story

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2014 //
9

Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor at the University of Texas, deconstructs another one of those miracle stories that turns out to be too good to be true.

 

Secretary Arne Duncan is collecting high-fives for a solid leap upwards in the high-school graduation rate, but Heilig says that what he is reporting is manipulation of graduation rate data.

 

Heilig uses Texas as an example. He shows how state officials played with the data, so that Texas went from 29th in the nation to 4th in the nation in only three years.

 

That’s a miracle, but as Heilig shows, the data don’t support the claim.

 

Categories Graduation rates, Texas

Carol Burris on the Slow, Noisy Death of Common Core

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2014 //
57

Carol Burris says that Common Core is dying “the death of a thousand cuts.” Its supporters claim that the critics represent the extreme right, notably the Tea Party. Of course, the Tea Party is vociferous against the Common Core, but they are not alone.

In Néw York, the Tea Party does not have a large presence, yet opposition is strong, coming mainly from suburban parents. The Chicago Teachers Union voted unanimously to oppose Common Core, and they don’t have many Tea Party members.

Common Core has plenty of friends in the Obama administration and major corporations. For the tech industry and the testing and textbook industry, the Common Core is a huge multi-billion dollar industry.

Burris responds to those who say there is no alternative to the Common Core. New York had a new set of standards in reading developed by educators. It was swept away by Common Core.

Can Common Core survive the intense controversy it ignited? Speaking as a historian, having seen great theories sweep in and out, I would say that the rushed creation and implementation of the standards doomed them. This was a time for deliberate speed, not a hurried and untested plan. Buying the support of education interest groups in D.C. is not the same as winning the support of the American public.

Categories Common Core, New York

Laura Chapman: “Student Growth” is Lipstick on a Pig

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2014 //
44

Laura Chapman says it is no improvement to substitute student growth in test scores for plain old test scores. Both reduce teaching and learning to multiple choice test questions.

She writes, in response to this post:

“Instead of judging schools solely by test scores, they might be judged–at least in part–by student growth.”
This is not an improvement of any kind, but the precise language from Race to the Top Legislation (see reference below).

In federal and state policy “student growth” is just a euphemism for a gain score from pre-test to post-test, or year-to-year. In other words, the term “growth” has been thoroughly corrupted to mean just another score, and preferably a score with properties that can be processed to produce a VAM–value added score. (See reference below on the new grammar…)

Do not be mislead. The marketeers of “growth” as if this is some gold standard or “fair” measure for judging educational activity are engaging in a propaganda campaign. Participants include USDE and its hired hands who know that this term “growth” has a rich and elaborate semantic reach in education. They are cynically trying to cut away understandings of growth and development as teachers understand it for individual students–multifaceted and asynchronous (e.g. bright but socially awkward; coordinated dancer, but not an athlete; enchanted with calligraphy but has terrible handwriting). To be sure, there are normative patterns for a large number of students, but so-called “developmental levels” also mask all of the wondrous variability in students. Forget all that, the new meaning of “growth” is a gain or increase in a metric derived from a test.

A perfect example of the marketing effort on behalf of redefining “human growth” (as a difference in metrics) is the infamous “Oak Tree Analogy” (see reference below)–that conveniently ignores that fact that students, unlike trees, have minds of their own.

I call this a cynical move because the oak tree analogy is framed to place teachers in the role of workers in a nursery in charge of providing the “nutrients” that are needed for trees to thrive. This frame, as Lakoff and Johnson remind us, taps a “nurturing parent” metaphor for teachers, and also the traditional role for women. The campaign to portray teachers as bad nurturers, lay, soft, uncaring is nowhere more evident that in the excessive use of “rigor” and “rigorous” as obligatory adjectives for almost everything bearing on “improvements” in education. See Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2008). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago press.

Repeat. Federal and state policy documents define “growth” as a gain in pre-test to post test scores, and a gain in year-to-year scores. Such scores are used to radically simplify judgments about districts, schools, teachers, and students. The distorted views of education produced by aggrandizing tests and “metrics” as if these refer to the actual complexities of human growth and development–perceptual, intellectual, social, physical, creative, aesthetic–is a fraud.

For federal language for “growth” see: Final Definitions 559751-52 Federal Register / Vol. 74, No. 221 / Wednesday, November 18, 2009 / Rules and Regulations DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 34 CFR Subtitle B, Chapter II [Docket ID ED–2009–OESE–0006]

RIN 1810–AB07 Race to the Top Fund AGENCY: Department of Education.Retrieved from http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2009-11-18/pdf/E9-27426.pdf

For the false comparison of human development and oak tree “growth” see:

Value-Added Research Center. (2012). Teacher effectiveness initiative value-added training oak tree analogy. Madison: University of Wisconsin. Retrieved from Retrieved from http://varc.wceruw.org/tutorials/oak/index.htm

For the cynical promotion of a preferred “grammar” for education see:
Reform Support Network. (2012, December). Engaging educators, Toward a New grammar and framework for educator engagement. Author. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/implementation-support-unit/tech-assist/engaging-educators.pdf

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Salon Notices Charter School $100 Million Scam

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2014 //
23

Did you think that the mainstream media would completely ignore major report on $100 million in charter school fraud, corruption, and abuse?

I did not see coverage in the Néw York Times or any other print publication. I did not see coverage on the networks or cable news stations. But Salon picked it up.

Salon recognized this as a story of white collar crime. A story of entrepreneurs ripping off taxpayers to the time of $100 million. That’s not penny ante stuff. That’s criminal.
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/07/charter_schools_are_cheating_your_kids_new_report_reveals_massive_fraud_mismanagement_abuse/

Categories Charter Schools

Peter Dreier Interviews Bill Moyers

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2014 //
12

This is a great interview. How I wish there were hundreds more journalists like Bill Moyers.

Here Peter Dreier of Occidental College interviews Bill Moyers, who is our greatest living journalist.

Here is a small sample of a fascinating exchange:

“Q: We’ve always had an upper class in America. What’s different now?

“Moyers: The rich today are richer, there are more of them, they have round-the-clock propaganda factories in Rupert Murdoch’s empire and rightwing talk radio, and corporate media have their back. The massive upward distribution of wealth engineered by our political class over the last few decades has solidified the plutocratic control of the rule-making machinery in Washington and state capitals. The Supreme Court consistently favors organized money and the political privileges of the corporate class. We have a Senate that is more responsive to affluent constituents than to middle-class constituents, while the opinions of constituents in the bottom third of income distribution have no apparent effect at all on the Senate’s roll call votes.

“One of our two major parties is dominated by extremists dedicated to destroying the social contract, and the other party has been so enfeebled by two decades of collaboration with the donor class it can offer only feeble resistance to the forces that are devastating everyday people. Our economy is a plantation run for the aristocrats—the CEOs, hedge funds, private equity firms—while the field hands are left with the scraps. Go see Robert Reich’s documentary Inequality for All. It’s all right there.”

Categories Education Reform
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