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Ken Futernick: What California Needs Most After Vergara

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2014 //
9

Ken Futernick, a wise educator who has written about the improvement of the teaching profession for many years, has a brilliant article in the Los Angeles Times about “grand bargain” post-Vergara. Futernick testified for the state in the Vergara trial. He has long understood that schools in urban districts with low scores often have poor working conditions, inadequate resources, and high teacher turnover.

The term “grand bargain” typically refers to compromises by warring parties. In this case, he has laid out a program that all states can learn from.

He writes:

“Unless it’s overturned on appeal, the Los Angeles Superior Court’s June decision in Vergara vs. California making it much easier to fire teachers will hurt students if lawmakers, unions and other state education leaders don’t move beyond its limited focus and address the many factors that adversely affect student learning and teacher performance.

“Stakeholders must come together around a “grand bargain” that would address not only teacher incompetence but all the obstacles educators face that, in the end, prevent many students from learning.”

Making it easier to fire “bad teachers” won’t make it easier to hire good ones.

“To be sure, many of those who teach in poor neighborhoods don’t have the same effect on test scores as those who teach in wealthier schools. But most schools that serve poor and minority students — those with high concentrations of English learners, transient students, students with health problems and so on — have fewer resources to meet students’ many needs, larger class sizes and inadequate materials and facilities. In addition, they are staffed with many beginning teachers who turn over at high rates. Not surprisingly, student achievement suffers.

“Also, schools that serve poor students routinely assign teachers to subjects in which they have no expertise. For instance, a 2008 study showed that 27% of math courses in schools serving poor students were taught by teachers who were not qualified to teach math.

“Why are schools that serve poor and minority students overstaffed with inexperienced and out-of-field teachers? Most teachers seek to make a difference and are eager to teach disadvantaged students. But many don’t want to teach in such schools because most of them are extraordinarily difficult, dysfunctional places to work. The teachers there suffer from poor professional support, low morale, run-down facilities, a revolving door of principals and unrelenting accountability pressures.

“Ineffectiveness in the classroom often does not derive from incompetence.

“Consequently, administrators in these schools can’t attract and keep enough well-qualified, experienced teachers. That, in turn, highlights another critical flaw in the judge’s decision — the assumption that these schools can find suitable replacements for fired teachers. Quite the contrary, and administrators’ power to fire teachers without real due process will only exacerbate the teacher recruitment problem….

“For starters, the state should develop a new teacher dismissal process that is fair and efficient. It should not take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to fire an ineffective teacher if he or she has been given a reasonable chance to improve, has been carefully evaluated and hasn’t done better.

“[Governor Jerry] Brown signed legislation this year that provides a fair and efficient way to adjudicate cases of gross teacher misconduct. Education leaders should develop a similar way to handle cases of teacher incompetence. They also should develop solutions for the other statutes that the court struck down, such as the one that allowed teachers with more seniority to keep their jobs during layoffs. California could do what other states have done, recognize experience along with other factors in making layoff decisions.

“But California must have a solid due process system for teachers, and contrary to popular belief, that’s all that tenure provides. Without a reliable way to determine whether a teacher is truly incompetent, the state will return to an era when employment decisions were fraught with abuse that included higher-salaried, experienced teachers replaced with less-expensive beginners and competent teachers fired because of their political or religious views.”

“Here is the framework Futernick suggests for a “grand bargain”:

“*The state must develop a robust teacher evaluation framework designed to help all teachers improve, not just to identify low performers. Such systems would ensure that principals and other evaluators have the time and training needed to conduct meaningful evaluations.

“*The state should build on the successful peer assistance and review programs that exist in places such as Poway Unified and San Juan Unified. These programs provide high-quality support to struggling teachers. Most participating teachers improve; those who don’t either leave voluntarily or are dismissed without grievances and expensive lawsuits.

“*The state and school districts must improve the conditions in hard-to-staff schools to attract and retain the best teaching candidates and the strongest principals. Among other things, these schools need high-quality professional development, time for teachers to plan and collaborate, and the authority to make professional decisions.”

Without adequate resources, changes in the law will be a hollow promise.

Categories California, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching

Washington State Should Not Lose Its NCLB Waiver

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2014 //
13

In 2001, Congress passed a law called No Child Left Behind. It was signed into law by President George W. Bush in January 2002. It is the worst federal education legislation ever passed. It required that 100% of children in grades 3-8 must be proficient by 2014 or their schools are failing and subject to harsh sanctions. In no nation in the world are 100% of children proficient. This is an impossible goal. Yet many schools have been closed, many educators fired, because they could not do the impossible.

Although NCLB should have been re authorized in 2007, Congress has been unable to agree on how to change it. It should have been scrapped. Accountability should be the job of the states, not the federal government.

Into the stalemate over NCLB stepped our present Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who offered waivers from the 2014 deadline to states that agreed to evaluate their teachers based on their students’ test scores. States lined up to seek waivers. Washington State, however, asked for a waiver but the Legislature refused to evaluate teachers by test scores. Many studies have shown that this a fundamentally flawed way of evaluating teachers. But Duncan stuck to his guns, oblivious to the research. He decreed that Washington State would lose its waiver. That men’s that every school in the state is a failing school and must inform parents that their child attends a failing school.

:

Educators in Washington State have written a plea to Arne Duncan not to rescind the state’s waiver from what is, in fact, a ridiculous law. They have a petition and invite you to support them by signing it.

Here is their press release:

This year, most school districts across Washington state were forced by Secretary Arne Duncan’s selective enforcement of the No Child Left Behind Act to send letters to all parents that labeled our schools as failures. We are parents, teachers, students and community members who reject this label that has been placed on our schools.

We know that our schools are not failures. In fact, their accomplishments have been remarkable, especially given the deeply flawed policy imposed on them by the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). While there are certainly changes needed for our schools – many due to the legacy of racism, class inequality, and lack of equitable funding for our schools – we believe that those changes should be directed by communities that make up local school districts, not by top-down mandates. This website will share stories and testimonials about the great things that are happening in our schools that should be supported and connect our communities so that we can organize opposition to Arne Duncan’s policies and No Child Left Behind.

According to NCLB, our schools should have had 100% of students test at proficient levels in reading and math by 2014. No county, no state, and no school district has ever achieved 100% proficiency on standardized tests and, in fact, the way the tests are designed make it statistically impossible to achieve that goal. Washington, like many other states, originally had a waiver in place that would have exempted it from this absurd NCLB mandate. However, when the state legislature refused to pass bills tying teacher evaluations to test scores (following overwhelming evidence that this would not improve teaching or learning), Arne Duncan chose to punish Washington state by revoking the waiver. With the waiver gone, nearly all of Washington’s schools have been labeled failures, we may lose control of millions of dollars in federal money, and some schools will be at risk of state takeovers and mass layoffs of teachers.

This kind of political game-playing has no place in our schools. Our schools and teachers should not be labeled as failures simply because we have rejected extremely flawed education policies. In August 2014, 28 school superintendents from around the state authored a letter, where they declared that their schools’ successes are not reflected in these ratings and criticized No Child Left Behind. We agree. It’s time for the voices of parents, teachers and students to be heard and respected.

If you have a story to share about why your school is not a failure, tell us here.

Also, sign our petition to reinstate the NCLB waiver for Washington state.

Endorsed by:

Parents Across America (PAA)
Seattle Education Website
Social Equality Educators (SEE)
Wayne Au, PhD, Associate Professor of Education at the University of Washington Bothell*
Jesse Hagopian, Teacher, Garfield High School*
Kshama Sawant, Seattle City Council member*
Sue Peters, Seattle School Board Director*
Melissa Westbrook, Seattle Schools Community Forum

*For identification purposes only

Categories Duncan, Arne, Federal Waiver, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Washington State

Laura H. Chapman: More on the Corruption of Education by Econometric Language

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2014 //
57

Laura H. Chapman gives more examples of the distortion and corruption of education practice amd policy by econometric language.

Students are performing on grade level if their scores on a standardized test are at or above the median on a percentile scale (1-99). On a large-scale test, a score at or near the 50th percentile (the median) will usually classify a student as proficient in the skills and subject matter on the test.

Expected growth means that gain-scores of students (on tests in a single subject, such as math or art) are staying in about the same location in a distribution from year to year—below average, average, or above average. For a large number of students, the distribution is likely to resemble a bell or normal curve.

Predicted growth is an inference about a student’s future gain-score, derived from a linear regression analysis of two or more years of that student’s gain-scores. This analysis assumes that past performance will predict future performance. Perhaps, but in education, this is a dismal assumption. It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The assumption is so risky that almost every corporate report begins with this caveat: Past performance does not predict future performance.

A student is said to have achieved a year’s worth of growth if his or her gain-score on a test of proficiency is equal to, or greater than, the gain-score made by a 50th percentile student. The same measure is applied to teachers. Teachers in some districts are rated highly effective only if all or most of their students have gain-scores of more than a year’s worth of growth.

References to a year’s worth of growth are fundamentally misleading because the common mental picture of a calendar year is different from a school year (typically 180 days); an instructional year (typically 172 days); and a typical accountability year (130 days from pre-test to post-test).

Academic peers are students whose test scores in a given year are the same or nearly the same. This concept permits comparisons of their gain-scores from the prior year to the current year. Students who make greater gains than their academic peers have an accelerated growth trajectory. Students who fall behind their academic peers need remedial work to keep up. The average of the gain-scores for academic peers in a teacher’s classes is typically used as a measure of the teacher’s productivity and effectiveness. This use requires a studied indifference to other influences on test scores.

A growth trajectory needs a target. Targets for learning need to be set using baseline data so the instruction offered to each student, during a known interval of time, is efficient and has a measurable impact on student learning. Meeting targets for learning is analogous to meeting a sales target or a production quota by a date certain.

Teachers and others who say they are “impacting the growth of their students” are not think-ing about the meaning of words. They are parroting econometric jargon.

Experts associated with Metametrics hope to set growth velocity standards. They describe their theoretical mapping of “aspirational trajectories toward graduation targets” in reading skills as analogous to “modifying the height, velocity, or acceleration respec-tively of a projectile launched in the physical world.” They seek greater precision in setting targets and cut scores for grade-to-grade progress in meeting the CCSS. (Williamson, G. L., Fitzgerald, J., & Stenner, A. J. (2013). The Common Core State Standards’ quanti-tative text complexity trajectory figuring out how much complexity is enough. Educational Researcher, 42(2), 59-69.).

Calibration refers to the quest for precision and consistency in measurement in the context of just-in-time delivery of a result, especially manufacturing.. In education, the term means that evaluators and other monitors have followed specifications in rating performances, presentations, processes, and products. Calibration events are training sessions intended to standardize how raters use or interpret language and to verify that rules for making judgments have been followed with fidelity. Such events are also called trainings or calibrations.

Audits are conducted to verify that calibrations are not needed, that rules have been followed, that data are free of ambiguity, and that low-inference definitions of performances and metrics are used consistently. Questions about the validity of the metrics may be ignored.

Bring to scale means that an educational policy, practice, or product is believed to merit replication in multiple locations, as in manufacturing and franchise systems for a mass market.

Categories Accountability

Laura H. Chapman: When Economic Language Corrupts Educational Practice

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2014 //
71

Many years ago, I first heard the term “semantic infiltration.” It was used to refer to the way that words, when used often enough, can become reality, even when we don’t agree with the “reality.” LauraChapman describes the way that technocratic language has corrupted education by inserting its language into the ways we think about children and learning.

She writes:

An economic concept of growth as a “measurable gain” has migrated into federal policies for education. The policy impulse is to simplify the multifaceted character of education and treat the enterprise of teaching and learning as a business in need of proper management to get results. The desired results are defined by forms of learning that can be measured and with a calculation of the rate of learning within a year and year-to-year, comparable to knowing whether profits are increasing—on a trajectory of growth or not.

This economic concept of growth as a “rate of increase” now overrides the educational meanings of human growth and learning—as a multifaceted, dynamic, and interactive process with daily surprises and influences from many sources.

Federal policies treat the economic meaning of growth as a virtue and as an imperative for accountability. This “accountability imperative” is evident in key definitions within RttT regulations and other grant programs. Federal Register. (2009, November 18). Rules and regulations Department of Education: Final Definitions. 74 (221-34), 559751-52.

“Student achievement means (a) For tested grades and subjects: (1) A student’s score on the State’s assessments under the ESEA; and, as appropriate, (2) other measures of student learning, such as those described in paragraph (b) of this definition, provided they are rigorous and comparable across classrooms. (b) For non-tested grades and subjects: Alternative measures of student learning and performance such as student scores on pre-tests and end-of-course tests; student performance on English language proficiency assessments; and other measures of student achievement that are rigorous and comparable across classrooms.”

“Student growth means the change in student achievement for an individual student between two or more points in time.”

“Rigorous” means “statistically rigorous.” Federal Register. (2009, July, 29). Notices 74(144), 37803-37. Retrieved from the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr29jy09-148]

The federal definition of an “effective” teacher requires attention to the rates at which student’s scores increase.

“Effective teacher means a teacher whose students achieve acceptable rates (e.g., at least one grade level in an academic year) of student growth (as defined in this notice).

“Highly effective teacher means a teacher whose students achieve high rates (e.g., one and one-half grade levels in an academic year) of student growth (as defined in this notice.”

If should be obvious that calculations to determine “rates” of growth depend on a data system that matches the test scores of individual students and the “teacher of record” for a given student and test. Gates and USDE have poured millions into getting data systems linked and free of crud that will compromise the metrics for accounting.

These integrity of data in these records serve as “baselines” for estimates of the “value-added” by a teacher to the scores of their students and various sub-groups. VAM produce these estimates. SLOs (student learning objectives) are a proxy for VAM until statewide tests for nontested subjects are developed.

Federal definitions mandate “comparable” ratings of teachers regardless of the grade or subject. Learning a foreign language, or math, or learning in dance must be made to look comparable. The bean counters, and bookeepers, and accountants, and statisticians can’t deal with qualitative differences.

Federal policy makers have sought to “normalize” the idea that economic growth is the same as “student growth’ and just an extension of the longstanding metaphor of teaching as nurture, cultivation, gardening (kindergarten)—a child’s garden.

Today, almost every teacher who uses the phrase “student growth” in connection with evaluation has been infected with the federal definition.

Some value-added experts love this easy conflating of the meanings of growth because it makes the convoluted metrics for VAM and SLOs easier to sell… And the silly oak tree analogy one means of doing so. See. http://www.varc.wceruw.org/tutorials/Oak/index.htm

Categories Real Education

The First Day of School on an Island in Maine

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2014 //
17

A friend who moved to Maine sent me this lovely post about the first day of school at the two-room Ashley Bryan school, where children from two neighboring islands join to form a tiny school. It is an exciting day for everyone, children, parents, and community members. Even Ashley Bryan, Maine artist, was there to greet the children.

“It has become a tradition for parents and townspeople to gather in the schoolyard as students arrive for their first day at the two room Ashley Bryan School. Everyone is there to wish them well, to see who the new students are, and to feel good about our special island school and its community support.

“The crew from Great Cranberry arrives by boat and begins the short walk up from the dock. There are 6 students from Great Cranberry and one teacher and one aide who travel by boat every morning. This morning there were also all of the teachers for Art, Music, Phys. Ed and French. The principal was there too. It made for a solid group of educational energy surrounding the school. The inter island students were all happy to reconnect after a busy summer. All around the school yard parents of students, and other community members want to celebrate what a unique school we have.”

There are 16 students in grades K-8, representing every grade but 7. The pictures evoke a foggy island day.

“Teachers Lauren and Audrey asked people to exuberantly make suggestions of goals for the year and then Ashley Bryan read them out and worried that the students will have to work too hard to learn all of these things! I don’t know if you can zoom in on the list, but the suggestions are things like: Laughter, building, discovery, adventure, wonder, fun, awesomeness, cooperation and friendship.”

The children gathered for a group photograph. Then everyone gathered for a community photograph.

Think of it. Somewhere in our great nation, there are remote communities like this where no one worries about VAM and all the other nonsense now raining down on teachers and children. Arne won’t be closing Ashley Bryan. Nice goals for the year.

Categories Joy, Real Education

Yong Zhao: Why Marc Tucker Is Wrong: The Case Against High-Stakes Testing

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2014 //
8

Marc Tucker recently published a position paper arguing that our current system of test-based accountability, testing every student every year in grades 3-8, has failed and that we need a new approach. His approach, as Anthony Cody argued, would test at transition points but would still have high stakes and would test more subjects. Tucker wrote a post criticizing Cody and me and arguing that high-stakes testing is necessary to raise test scores and improve education.

Yong Zhao here weighs in with a brilliant response to Tucker, sharply disagreeing with him on the value of high-stakes testing.

Zhao points to Tucker’s inconsistency thus:

“Why does one who condemns test-based accountability system so much want more test-based accountability? The inconsistency exemplified by Marc Tucker does not make sense to me at all. Yet it is widespread so it must make sense in some way. I try to put myself in the shoes of Tucker and other similarly minded people and learned the chain of reasoning underlying their inconsistency:

“Premise #1: Education quality matters to individual and national prosperity.

“Premise #2: Education is a top-down process through which students are instilled the prescribed content and skills (curriculum) deemed universally valuable by some sort of authority.

“Premise #3: Teachers and schools are responsible for the quality of education, i.e., instilling in students the prescribed knowledge and skills.

“Premise #4: How well students master the prescribed knowledge and content is measured by tests.

“Conclusion #1: Thus test scores measure the quality of education, and thus the capacity for individuals and nations to be economically prosperous.

“Conclusion #2: American students have lower test scores on some international tests, thus American schools offer a lower quality education than countries with higher test scores.

“Conclusion #3: Therefore, American teachers must be less effective than their counterparts in other countries.

“Conclusion #4: Therefore, to prepare Americans to succeed in the global economy, American teachers and schools must be held accountable for improving the quality of education, which is to raise test scores (Tucker’s goal: “the only acceptable target for the United States is to be among the top ten performers in the world” [I assume top 10 on the PISA league table]).

“Conclusion #5: Hence we must improve the test-based accountability system, which then leads to higher quality education, which then leads to economic prosperity.

“Bait and Switch

“Marc Tucker’s objection to Anthony Cody’s questioning his assertion that “the economic future of our students will only be guaranteed if we educate them better” is a standard bait-and-switch tactic, playing with the afore-mentioned logic. It starts with the premises. Education is a term that has a positive connotation, but in practice it has many different, sometimes, contradictory, incarnations, in the same way the word “democracy” is used in reality. For example, some of the worst dictatorial countries claim to be democratic. Thus whether education matters to the prosperity of individuals and nations depends entirely on what it means.

He concludes:

“When economies change, as Tucker notes, so fast and on a global scale, it has become even more difficult to predict the skills and knowledge that matters in the future. But one thing seems to be clear. Even if Americans are equipped with the same skills and knowledge as Chinese and Indians, America’s favorite competitors, Americans won’t have an economic advantage simply because it costs much less for these countries to develop the same skills. So more of the same skills and knowledge won’t work, neither will the same education. America does not need a quantitatively better education, it needs a different kind of education.

“There are of course other problems with Tucker’s chain of reasoning; for example, are American teachers truly worse educators than their counterparts in other countries? Again it depends on the definition of education. Is education about test scores? Or is it about cultivating diverse, creative, passionate, and curious innovators and entrepreneurs?

“Tucker has much faith in this plan. “We know this form of accountability will work because it is already working at a national scale in the countries that are outperforming us.” Even if Tucker were right, America will at best outperform the top performing country—China. But is that what we want? My answer is NO and my reasons are in my book ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon: Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World.'”

Categories Accountability, Economy, Education Reform, Testing

Charters Will Blitz Philadelphia with PR Campaign

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2014 //
8

It is not bad enough that Governor Tom Corbett and the Pennsylvania legislature are starving the Philadelphia public schools of basic necessities. Here comes the charter lobby to launch an expensive media campaign to persuade parents to pull their kids out of the public schools and put them into charters.

Politico reports:

“SCHOOL CHOICE HITS THE AIRWAVES: Proponents of school choice have launched a major PR blitz in Philadelphia. For the next four weeks, they’ll saturate both morning TV and the evening news, on all four major channels, with 30-second spots featuring parents talking about why their kids are thriving in charter schools. Similar messages will pop up on Twitter and in web ads, and organizers are considering adding radio, too. The goal: Prod civic leaders and school officials to open up the system by making it easier for students to transfer among district-run schools – and, above all, by authorizing more privately-run charters. The campaign is organized by Choice Media, a nonprofit news service that focuses heavily on school choice. Executive director Bob Bowdon won’t name his funders; he told Morning Education that he wants to keep the focus on parents and students, not the money behind the (decidedly pricey) campaign. Watch the ads:http://bit.ly/1s9H2rw and http://bit.ly/1pkXhKG”

Bob Bowdon is a choice zealot. in 2009, he produced a movie called “The Cartel,” mostly about public education in New Jersey. He portrayed the teachers’ union as akin to a mafia-type organization and the public schools as rife with corruption. His solution: vouchers and charters. He surely won’t mention the 18 Philadelphia charter schools that were the subject of federal investigation for financial mis dealing.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Philadelphia

New Educator-Parent Group in Colorado Speaks Up

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2014 //
4

A new group called Voices for Public Education has organized in Douglas County, Colorado. This is a district whose elected board favors market reforms and hired Bill Bennett to speak before the last election ($50,000), as well as paying Rick Hess to write a laudatory paper about its policies.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Innovation Schools Do Not Mean Less Testing

Highlands Ranch, Colorado -September 15, 2014 – Voices For Public Education (Voices) opposes the Douglas County Board of Education (BoE) resolution authorizing the submission of innovation waivers to the Colorado Board of Education and the BoE’s use of the Innovation Schools Act of 2008 to waive state assessments. The resolution passed at the September 2nd board meeting.

This resolution authorizes schools to submit waivers from testing required by the READ act to the Colorado Board of Education. These waivers will be submitted under provisions from the Innovation Schools Act. Voices for Public Education supports fewer high-stakes, state and district-mandated tests, but they do not support this resolution.

Amy DeValk, co-founder of Voices for Public Education, believes this resolution will not result in less testing. State-mandated tests will be replaced by district-mandated tests.

“Passing this resolution has nothing to do with standardized testing. The board is using testing as a distraction to the real intent of submitting Innovation Waivers. These waivers will allow the BoE to get out of state requirements they do not agree with, ultimately giving them the ability to implement their own agenda and testing with little to no oversight from the state. Teachers and parents need to learn what this really means for their school.”

Voices urges parents to demand community meetings regarding this resolution and to oppose its implementation. Voices also encourages parents to oppose all standardized testing, whether it is mandated by the state or the district. Parents should demand testing that supports learning and helps teachers to guide instruction.

About Voices for Public Education:

Voices for Public Education is dedicated to educating the community to empower individuals to act and take back our public schools.

We educate by:

• Bringing in national education experts to discuss education reform and offer alternatives

• Building personal relationships to tell our story

• Supporting other community groups fighting education reform

We empower by:

• Working with our school communities to develop actions to take back our schools

• Giving teachers, parents, students and community members a voice in decision-making

We act by:

• Creating actions for both quick “wins” and long term goals

• Providing the resources and information for people to take individual actions

• Partnering with and supporting other grassroots organizations

https://www.facebook.com/VoicesForPublicEducation

Contact:

Amy DeValk, Voices for Public Education co-founder
wasnoyes@comcast.net
303-350-7206
Stefanie Fuhr, Voices for Public Education co-founder
tutucker@comcast.net
303-483-1196

Categories Colorado, Parents, Standardized Testing, Teachers

Parents in Douglas County, Colorado, Oppose Latest Local Board Policies

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2014 //
2

Another Douglas County group–the Douglas County Parents– objects to the local school board’s proposals.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

++++++++++++++++

September 15, 2014

Today, Douglas County Parents (DCP) announced their concerns regarding the resolution passed by the Board of Education (BOE) on September 2, 2014, authorizing the submission of Innovation Waiver requests to the State Board of Education (SBE).

Grounded in the Innovation Schools Act of 2008, which gives local schools the ability to apply for a waiver from the SBE to opt out of state mandated standardized tests, this resolution could also transform the Douglas County School District into a “District of Innovation.”

Harmful consequences of becoming a “District of Innovation” include:

The Douglas County BOE would have the power to terminate non-core teachers and staff at will, and to waive teacher licensing requirements.

The Douglas County BOE would have the ability to dictate curriculum.

Innovation schools would have the same autonomies as charter schools, without the full responsibilities for operations and human resources that charter schools have. This would drive the demand for charter school enrollment down, potentially hurting the charter school communities in Douglas County.

DCSD would join “turnaround” districts such as Denver, Pueblo and Kit Carson, whose innovation schools have failed to achieve the intended goals of the program. DCSD would no longer be compared with districts such as Cherry Creek, Boulder, Littleton and JeffCo.

High schools would no longer be eligible to compete for “top lists” which are measured by state standardized tests.

Millions of public tax dollars would be spent to create yet another new system to comply with state and federal accountability measures.

As mandated by the Innovation Schools Act, “it is required that the prospective innovation school receives majority support from teachers, administrators and School Accountability Committee (SAC) members; as well as a statement of the level of support from classified school staff, parents, students and the surrounding community.” Because this resolution was passed without public community input, DCP believes that this majority of support was not sought, received, or proven.

“We firmly believe that the parents, teachers, staff and community of Douglas County have the right to choose whether or not they want this designation for our district,” said Cristin Patterson, spokesperson for DCP. “There are grave, irreversible consequences for choosing this path, and we implore the district to hold a public discussion on what this would mean for our schools and community. Upcoming state legislation may provide changes in state testing procedures, so we do not understand why district leaders would risk so much when the state is already pursuing a viable solution.”

About Douglas County Parents:

DCP is a growing local advocacy group made up of over 1,350 parent, teacher, student, and community member volunteers of all political affiliations, ages and professions who are concerned about the policies that the Douglas County Board of Education and district administration have forced upon our community. DCP’s community outreach efforts include sharing facts backed by documentation garnered through the school district and Colorado Department of Education websites and publications, Colorado Open Record Requests, and attending a variety of meetings. Please contact spokesperson, Cristin Patterson, at cristin@douglascountyparents.com for updates and statements relating to DCSD issues. You may also find more information at DouglasCountyParents.com.

Thank you for your time,

~ Cristin Patterson ~
Douglas County Parents
Spokesperson/Media Contact
cristin@douglascountyparents.com
http://www.DouglasCountyParents.com

Categories Charter Schools, Colorado, Testing

Anthony Cody: Reformers Want Happy Talk Now

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2014 //
40

Anthony Cody writes that the corporate reformers have decided that it’s time to shift the narrative. Having spent the past few years ginning up a crisis climate about our “failing schools” and the need to fire “bad” teachers, the reformers realize the public is tuning them out. There’s an old line about npt wanting to listen to a broken record but there aren’t too many people left who remember what a record is (you know, the vinyl discs that were either 78, 45, or 33 rpm; if they got a scratch, the needle would get stuck in a groove, and the same notes would play over and over, to the point of tedium).

Cody says that Gates is now funding “success” stories. We all love success stories. But what we really need is honest, objective reporting about how testing and choice are working and how they affect children and the quality of education.

Cody writes:

“In 2010, a stark image was broadcast around the nation. It showed a child seated at a school desk surrounded by absolute devastation and ruin. That image was used promote the movie, “Waiting For Superman.” The movie was boosted with a $2 million advertising grant from the Gates Foundation, and was further promoted on Oprah and NBC’s Education Nation – also underwritten by the Gates Foundation. The clarion call was “public schools are broken and bad teachers cannot be fired

“But that is not what we hear now, for some reason. Now, we have stories of success popping up in the media – strangely sponsored by some of the same people who were shouting warnings of calamity just a few years ago.

“How and why has the prevailing story advanced by sponsors of education reform shifted over the past four years from one of failure and doom to one of success? And how is our media cooperating with the crafting of these dominant narratives?”

Well, it is not all happy talk. We still have the Vergara attack on teachers’ due process; we still have loopy efforts to judge teachers by test scores; we still have Pearson buying up every organization that measures American education; we still have Arne Duncan with his snide comments about parents, students, and schools.

I would settle for objective reporting about our schools, better informed and more of it.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates
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