Kevin Huffman, state commissioner of education in Tennessee, has resigned.
Archives for the year of: 2014
American Radio Works is producing a four-part series on NPR about Common Core. Here is one segment. The program suggests a new turn in the reformer narrative: The Common Core is wonderful but the high stakes tests are horrendous.
I don’t mean to be cynical but I understand the idea behind Common Core and all the moving parts attached to it. In the 1990s, it was referred to as “systemic school reform.” The idea was that all the parts of the education system had to work in tandem, not separately. The standards, the curriculum, the tests, teacher education, teacher evaluation, textbooks, and every other part of the education system had to be seen as a synergistic whole. When that happened, scores would go up, and the system would achieve maximum efficiency and equity.
That is why–try as we might–the Common Core standards will not stay separated from the Common Core testing. Arne Duncan gave out $360 million to create the tests, and he knew exactly what he was doing. He pretended that the tests would not influence curriculum or instruction, but that is a transparent fiction. Tests drive curriculum and instruction, not the reverse.
Tom Hoffman, a blogger in Rhode Island, took up the challenge to explain what is wrong with the Common Core ELA standards. He does it here. He goes through them in the spirit of “close reading,” and they read like a nineteenth century approach known as “parsing,” whereby the student analyzed a sentence or a paragraph or a story in minute detail, identifying its grammatical and syntactical features. Today, promoters of the Common Core call it “critical thinking,” but if you go through Hoffman’s analysis, it sure looks like parsing, in which students are expected to read not for the joy of ideas, words, and stories, but for the interpretation and interaction of minute (and dubious) details and (possible) literary devices.
After going through exemplar texts and the questions based on them, Hoffman writes:
I am not seeking out edge cases; I’m just trying to apply the standard as written to the exemplar texts provided. Try it yourself.
And I am not reading pedantic detail into the standard — pedantic detail was explicitly put there by the authors. They chose each word with specific intention (or with careless indifference, take your pick). The unambiguous message is that in third grade, precisely, teachers, textbook authors and testing companies should focus students on explaining how key details support the main idea.
Would you ever, while reading a book on dinosaurs with your child, pause to ask how a detail supports the “main idea” of the book? Could you blame her if she looked at you as if you were an idiot? What is the opportunity cost of steering 3rd grade teachers all over the country to spend time with their students not discussing the wonders of dinosaurs, medieval feasts, sprouting seeds and soap bubbles, but instead dragging their students through inane pseudo textual analysis? Does anyone really believe this is necessary to get them ready for college courses a decade in the students’ future?
In seeking more information about the author, Tom Hoffman, I found that he writes a blog and has a lot to say on subjects that interest me. His blog is called TuttleSVC. Here is a post about the issue of whether kindergartners should be expected to count to 100 (part of the Common Core). Frankly, I don’t see why it matters whether 5-year-olds learn to count to 100 or whether they learn when they are six, even seven. Hoffman seals the deal by posting the kindergarten expectations in Singapore, where students are expected to count to 10!
Jeanette Deuterman is a parent in Long Island, New York, who started a group called Long Island Opt Out. It now has 22,000 members. Long Island is the center of the anti-testing, anti-Common Core movement in New York State (with the Lower Hudson Valley a close second). Deuterman recently attended a forum composed of local superintendents to explain the virtues of the Common Core, and she was ready.
She wrote about the event:
There was a forum last night called “Common Core: Uncommon Challenges”. Panelists included Lydia Bellino, Assistant Superintendent for Cold Spring Harbor, Lorna Lewis, Superintendent Plainview Old Bethpage, Lydia Begley, Asst Superintendent Nassau BOCES, and moderated by Thomas Rogers, Superintendent for Syosset. Knowing who the speakers were, we knew that this would be a CC cheerleading forum. We rounded up our own experts – teachers, BATS, liaisons, and myself, and attended the event. For the first hour we heard how great it was that our second graders can use difficult advanced words in everyday language. We heard about 4 and 5 year olds learning how to write sentences. We were told that although it’s a plane being built in the air with our children on board, in a few years it will be great! Then it was our turn. One by one OUR experts approached the mike, and gave the true picture of CC and testing. We talked about privatizing, inappropriate grade level material, money, special needs and ELL children being broken and left behind, 5th graders who, being the first CC regents class, may not graduate, and 9th graders getting the brunt. We talked about those that DO stand with us to protect public education, and asked the panel “WHERE DO YOU STAND??” The response was that letters have been written, and some signed onto [Rep. Steven] Israel’s Bill…..Oh, and here I thought they might be part of the problem.
As often happens, when it was my turn at the mike, it was time to wrap it up. So I will write my response to the panel here instead.
Do you want to know why we are so upset? Do you want to know why we are now directing that anger at this panel? Because what we have heard is all the small benefits you see of CC. We didn’t hear you complain of testing. We didn’t hear you say the testing time is inappropriate and abusive. We didn’t hear you acknowledge that you understand why we as parents, choose to opt our children out. We didn’t hear you acknowledge the very real and very dangerous side of CC. We didn’t hear you say you understand that this is a means to privatize public education and make ungodly amounts of money. You are school leaders. You have a responsibility to inform the public. You have a responsibility to educate your parents in you district of the absolute crisis we are in, rather than trying to sell a CC package. CC is paying millions to PR firms to sell CC. They don’t need you. WE need you. We need you to be upstanders. We need you to be loud. We need you to protect our children. The next time you speak to parents or the community, PLEASE…..give them the whole picture. Educate them on what is really happening. Tell them what you talk about amongst yourselves behind closed doors. Be truthful. Be brave. Stand up.
Peter Greene noticed that the CEO of Green Dot Charters, Marco Petruzzi, has started a new blog. This provided Greene with the opportunity to take a look at Green Dot and its leadership. First, he pulled up a three-year-old article about the munificent salaries paid to Green Dot executives. But, really, this can’t be surprising since Petruzzi was formerly a partner at Bain Consulting (Mitt Romney’s old firm), and he didn’t go into education to get a lowly teacher’s salary. After Greene read Petruzzi’s first post, he concluded that he inhabits an alternate universe from real public schools.
“Say hello to Marc Petruzzi, CEO of Green Dot Public Schools. Today he made his first blog entry at Green Dot’s Website of Bloggy Goodness.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Green Dot charter chain, I can tell you that it’s one more fine example of the modern charter movement, depending on student skimming, political connections, and the pushing aside of public schools, as well as demonstrating the ways in which a non-profit can be used to generate profits. Petruzzi himself came to the charter world from a partnership at Bain, and makes sure that he himself is well paid for his great-hearted work for the poor. If you want a long, hard look at Green Dot from an insider, try this piece which notes both their liberal use of TFA staffing and their spectacularly bad teacher retention issues. Read here for a discussion of their “issues” with students with special needs.
So the fact that he bills himself as the CEO of a “public” school lets us know right off the bat that we have entered some sort of alternate universe. I must be sure to let my superintendent know that she is missing out by not calling herself “CEO” and setting her own ginormous salary.
Petruzzi, contemplating his entry into blogland, decides that he will tackle some Big Questions. So let’s see how these Big Questions are answered in Petruzzi’s alternate universe….
Can’t we all just get along. Petruzzi thinks we should stop saying that union members only care about their jobs and reformsters only want to make a buck. It is not clear whether he is trying to argue that both those things are true.
Aren’t we all “reformers” to some degree? Don’t we all want to improve the system for the benefit of students? Can’t the continuing debate about methodology be one of honesty and mutual respect?
These are good questions. Unfortunately, in this universe it certainly appears that the answer to the second question is, “no.” When you’re using political connections to smash public schools and doing your best to turn teaching inside your own schools into a low-paying low-skills temp job, it’s hard to feel the waves of love and respect.
I agree that an atmosphere of mutual respect is a good thing, and there are reformsters I actually respect even as I believe they’re wrong about almost anything. But too many reformsters have displayed an attitude of zero respect for teachers from the first moment they showed up on the scene, shouldering aside teachers with accusations that public schools sucked and teachers were the problem. And Green Dot’s record of love and respect for public education and the teachers who woirk there is not great. So pardon me for being standoffish until I have reason not to be.
The Challenges of Reform
Oh, boy. In the Petruzziverse, reform “has unleashed a wave of innovations that have jolted the current system and forced it to confront some hard truths.” Um, name one. Charters were billed as laboratories of educational innovation, like a scholastic space program. But as yet, we cannot point to a single solitary development, not so much as a jar of Tang, that made the rest of the education world sit up and say, “Wow! Slice us off a piece of that.” Nothing.
There have also been, apparently, “talented and passionate individuals,” and I think it’s just as well he didn’t name names. Petruzzi admits that some ideas didn’t pan out (in his universe “some” and “all” are apparently synonyms). And here’s a fun quote: “Some talented individuals have failed to make the announced progress with students.” I bet back at Bain, when corporate bosses of companies they were invested in “failed to make the announced progress,” that was an occasion for laughter and parties.
It is a cinch that Peter Greene will not continue to patronize this alternate universe.
Jan Resseger remembers a film made in a school in Ohio about 20 years ago, by Bill Moyers, before testing became our national obsession.
She writes:
In one of the film’s memorable scenes, a stalwart music teacher leads a school orchestra rehearsal—string instruments and classical music, I think—in a rural high school where the music room is directly under the gymnasium and where the basketball team is practicing at the same time. The cameraman stood somehow on the stairway and let the camera catch both activities happening simultaneously. As we hear the music, we watch the ceiling of the band room shake and feel the blows as the athletes’ feet hit the floor and the basketball bounces. Today here in Ohio the facilities would be better, but the school would likely not have a music program. Cuts in state funding in recent years would likely have left the district without elementary school instrumental music, which means that even if the high school tried to have a complete band or orchestra, not enough children would have learned to play the instruments needed to make up a full ensemble. And the pressure to raise test scores in the required language arts and math would likely have reduced the time for music and art.
Broward County, which already has 99 charter schools, approved an additional 13 new charters. Some of the charters are designed specifically for children with disabilities. Five of the new charters are sponsored by the for-profit, politically connected Charter Schools USA.
Of the 12 new charters that opened this fall, three shuttered within the first month of school. Another closed for earning back-to-back failing grades on the state assessment.
It is the new world of publicly-funded education in Florida. Charters open, charters close. Some get high scores, some get low scores. Parents go shopping for schools the way they shop for shoes or milk.
Tim Slekar, dean of education at Edgewood College in Wisconsin, has been a relentless fighter against high-stakes testing and privatization for years. Here he explains what the recent election meant for children and public schools in Wisconsin, what might be called politely a fist in the face or a hard blow to the gut.
There can be no doubt that re-elected Scott Walker will push for more vouchers, more charters, more high-stakes testing and call himself a “reformer.”
The Assembly speaker said that it was time for a new accountability bill, despite decades of failed accountability demands from Washington, D.C. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting better results is the definition of insanity, isn’t it?
Some local school boards plan to “hunker down” and wait for the next election.
Tim shouts “NO!” as loud as he can:
“Hunkering down” has to be one of the most damaging strategies for anybody or any organization that has the democratic and constitutional responsibility to do what is best for children. Just the idea that the new found power elite are proposing educational “accountability” after 30 years of failed accountability should motivate all that care about children and public schools to regroup, organize, strategize, and then counter attack.
Winning an election does not give permission to anti-intellectual, political hacks to prescribe abusive accountability schemes that only hurt children, teachers, and communities and funnel tax dollars to political donors.
Hunker down? No! My daughter and son don’t need spineless adults unwilling to protect the only chance they have at a critical and powerful democratic education. My children deserve (and so do all Wisconsin children) advocacy and action! Vos and all the other accountability hawks hellbent on killing childhood are the ones that need to be held accountable. For 30 years they have defunded and redirected precious resources to an accountability scam designed to enrich test and data companies and dismantle OUR public schools. NO MORE! Test and punish accountability has been a disaster!
It’s time for an accountability system that holds legislators accountable for making sure all children come to school well fed, well clothed, warm, healthy, and protected from the trauma of living in a state of perpetual uncertainty—poverty. If this new set of power pawns fail to pry our most vulnerable from the trappings of generational racism and destroy the economic system that only rewards their campaign funders then they must be the ones held accountable, judged “legislatively inadequate” and stripped of all legislative power. We must get rid of “failing” legislators.
Nancy F. Chewning, an assistant principal in Roanoke, Virginia, eviscerated TIME magazine for its cover story about teachers who are allegedly “Rotten Apples.” This impassioned article went viral.
“Have you characterized doctors or nurses on your cover as Rotten Apples? You have not. Is the government setting impossible benchmarks for doctors and nurses to make to correct this problem? No, they are not. Why? Because money talks in this country. The American Medical Association spent $18,250,000 in 2013 and $15,070,000 so far in 2014 lobbying our government; in fact, they rank number 8 in terms of organizations lobbying our government for influence. The NEA isn’t even in the ball park with the AMA, as they rank 221st.
“As Senator Elizabeth Warren has so aptly stated, “The system is rigged,” and it is definitely rigged against public education. In the latest Gallup poll, 75% of American parents said they were satisfied with the quality of education their child was receiving in public schools. However, the latest Gallup poll showed that only 14% of Americans approve of the way Congress is handling its job. Have you done a cover calling Congress Rotten Apples? Why no, you have not. In fact, I checked your covers for the last two years and not once have you said a disparaging word about Congress on your cover. Yet, the approval rating for teachers is 75%, and you have chosen to go after them. Why is that? Is it because as Gawker revealed earlier this year that your writers and editorial staff are required to “produce content that is beneficial to advertiser relationship”? So, was this attack on teachers really about pleasing advertisers and perhaps a billionaire from Silicon Valley with deep pockets as well?”
She notes that no teachers were interviewed for the story.
Jose Luis Vilson is a math teacher. Not just any math teacher. He is also a poet, a blogger, an activist, an outspoken professional. His blog, thejosevilson.com, is immensely popular. I am writing about Vilson today because I hope you will read his book. This Is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education.
The book is an autobiography, but it is also—as the subtitle says—a reflection on race, class, and education. As you read it, you have the opportunity to walk in Vilson’s shoes. To understand where he came from and how he became a teacher. He grew up in a mixed-race family (a Haitian father and Dominican mother), so he is both black and Hispanic. He was raised by a single mother; when a new stepfather moved in, he was often beaten for little or no reason. The family moved to the Lower East Side when he was a child, and he became accustomed to seeing rats and roaches as part of everyday life. And yet, despite all adversities, despite a deck that was decidedly stacked against him, he exuded confidence, confidence in himself and in his ability to succeed. His mother was determined that he would get a good education, and Jose took to education naturally. He loved learning, and he excelled in school. He went to PS 140, a neighborhood public elementary school, where his teachers encouraged him, then to an independent Catholic middle school (Nativity Mission School on the Lower East Side, where he had a strong mentor), and to Xavier, a Jesuit high school, where he was one of a small number of students of color. There, the issue of race became important in discussions of who would be included, who would participate, who would be slighted. In each of his schools, he remembers the teachers who touched his life and changed it.
Vilson went to Syracuse University, where he intended to become a computer scientist. Even as he studied his major field, he had some concern about spending the rest of his life staring at computer code. After he graduated, he decided to try teaching. He applied to Teach for America, but was rejected. Then he applied to the New York City Teaching Fellows, another alternate program but one that (unlike TFA) prepares teachers who are likely to make a career in the classroom. He was accepted, worked with a cohort, and eventually earned a degree from City College of New York.
The balance of the book describes Vilson’s experiences in the classroom. He is assigned to a middle school where most students are black, Hispanic, and poor. He identifies with them. But beyond identifying with them, he must teach them, get their attention, persuade them about the importance of mathematics, deal with angry and belligerent students, figure out how to respond to students who challenge him with humor or ridicule or hostility. If you want to know what it is like to teach in an urban school, read this book. Vilson does not spare himself. He is honest about his mistakes and celebrates small victories. He has no great love or respect for “the system,” but it is just one more obstacle to overcome as he concentrates on teaching the students in his care.
Through the book runs references to rap music, to Hip-Hop, to other cultural references that flow naturally among those a generation far younger than mine and in a culture that is not mine. And yet, of course, it works for Vilson, because it is his generation and his culture. These references help to illustrate one of his central themes: that teachers must be able to identify with their students to understand them, to get below their surface, to make connections beyond academics, in order to reach them and teach them. He cares deeply what his students think and feel.
He admires Jaime Escalante, the math teacher who inspired Hispanic students in Los Angeles to excel in math. When he gets word that the administration of his school is planning to give him a U (unsatisfactory) rating (which is likely to end his career as an untenured teacher) because his bulletin board was ordinary, he hangs a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last speech (“I’ve Been to the Mountain Top”) on his classroom desk, reminding him to feel no fear. He did not get that U rating.
As Vilson becomes a more confident teacher, he becomes a more outspoken activist. He is not shy. He advocates for more teachers of color in the classrooms where children are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic. When he attends conferences, he often finds himself the only person who is black (or Hispanic), and he makes sure to make enough noise so that next year’s conference will include more teachers of color, so that the issue of diversity becomes important to the conference organizers. He becomes an advocate for “teacher voice,” aware that most decisions about how and what to teach are all too often made by people who never set foot in a classroom or did so years ago.
He offers tips to other teachers: Get your students’ respect; “don’t try to change them, try to know them”; show up to student activities, like basketball games, talent shows, to show your support; talk to them; humble yourself; “celebrate and accentuate the positive”: most of your students are trying hard and want to succeed; celebrate their achievements.
When Jose Luis Vilson starts his blog, he gains a national following and finds himself invited to national conferences. He uses his new-found acclaim to advocate for kids and other teachers.
Yes, he has written a new narrative on race, class, and education. But he has also written an inspiring account of what it means to teach. He loves teaching. It defines him. He writes:
“Teaching grasps the soul like a finger probing, not clenching, the heart. It begs you to advocate on behalf of the children, even when you least expect to. Teachers learn to be selfless, to deliver sincerely no matter what’s happening in their personal lives. Despite my difficulties with my homeroom, my administration, or other teachers, when I walk into my classroom I’m given another reason to love what I do. I rarely ever have two bad days in a row (or else!). I love walking into school knowing that it’s not going to be the same exact job it was a day, a month, or a year ago. A student always finds a way to inspire me or crack me the hell up. The only real feedback I need is from the students in front of me.
“Teaching has given me no choice but to activate my best inner qualities and to accept and embrace that I will never stop being a student myself. I love that every day there’s a new set of problems for me to solve. Even as I’m teaching my kids math, I’m learning along with them…..
“I hope that becoming a key player in the lives of hundreds of students a year will fuel your fire—knowing that it’s not enough to simply do, but that you must leave a legacy of doing. As a teacher you will play such an important part in your students’ lives that even when they forget the specifics of what you taught them, they’ll remember the feelings and life lessons you left them with, the impression that someone other than their parents (if applicable) cared enough to spur them toward their own success.
“You can make the difference.”
Jose Luis Vilson gives his readers a heavy dose of honesty, self-reflection, and insight. He cares passionately about his students. He fights for them (and occasionally spars with them). He loves his work. How many people can say, as Vilson, does, that they love what they do? That is what the detractors of teachers never understand; it is a joy that they will not experience. Vilson shares his joy and his experience.
Diane Ravitch's blog 