Archives for the month of: January, 2014
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Diana Senechal: How NOT to Read a Poem

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2014 //
60

Diana Senechal demonstrates how the Common Core standards may be misinterpreted. She gives the example of a video lesson purporting to teach students how to interpret a poem, in this instance William Wordworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” familiarly known as “The Daffodils.”

Students are supposed to summarize each stanza in their own words and write it on a sticky note, according to the instructor on the video. This almost makes Diana scream, “No!”

She writes:

“I question the premise that this is a helpful activity. The reason poetry is worth reading in the first place is that it makes singular use of language; it cannot be translated into prose. Restating a stanza in your own words takes you away from the language of the poem itself. Yes, some poems have complex constructions that need to be teased apart, but that does not have to involve restatement; or when it does, one can restate the specific construction, not an entire stanza. To restate a stanza is to stop it at the border and say, “You may not cross over into my mind with your own goods; you must exchange them for mine.”

And she explains that there are far better ways to teach poetry.

Is this a problem inherent in the Common Core standards or the implementation or something else? All three, she argues.

Categories Common Core, Curriculum

Louisiana Court Rules That 7,000 Teachers Were Wrongfully Terminated

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2014 //
30

It is always astonishing to be reminded that the rule of law still exists in Louisiana, despite the authoritarian command of Governor Bobby Jindal.

But it does! Louisiana courts found the funding of the voucher program, using money dedicated to public schools, to be unconstitutional. The courts found Jindal’s law stripping teachers of all legal rights and protections to be unconstitutional because it included too many subjects in one bill.

And now, miracle of miracles, the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal ruled that 7,000 teachers who were fired after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina were wrongfully terminated and entitled to back wages. The judgement could bankrupt the Orleans Parish Board.

“In a lawsuit that some say could bankrupt the Orleans Parish public school system, an appeals court has decided that the School Board wrongly terminated more than 7,000 teachers after Hurricane Katrina. Those teachers were not given due process, and many teachers had the right to be rehired as jobs opened up in the first years after the storm, the court said in a unanimous opinion.

“The state is partly responsible for damages, according to Wednesday’s ruling from Louisiana’s Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal. However, its five-judge panel did reduce the potential damages certified by the District Court: Instead of five years of back pay plus fringe benefits, the appeals court awarded the teachers two to three years of back pay, with benefits only for those employees who had participated in them when they were employed.

“During the appeal, lawyers said the damages could amount to $1.5 billion.

“The class-action case applies to all School Board employees who were tenured as of Aug. 29, 2005, the date that Katrina blasted up the Louisiana-Mississippi line and New Orleans levees failed, flooding much of the city. Many employees were members of the United Teachers of New Orleans, but the appeals court ruled that an earlier settlement with the union did not prevent this case from being tried.

“The decision validates the anger felt by former teachers who lost their jobs. It says they should have been given top consideration for jobs in the new education system that emerged in New Orleans in the years after the storm.”

But wait!

Didn’t Arne Duncan say that Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to the schools of New Orleans? Didn’t he celebrate the abrupt firing of all these teachers and their replacement by TFA? Well, yes.

The courts say he was wrong.

The law was upheld. You don’t wipe out the livelihoods of 7,000 people just because you want to. The court said that these men and women were entitled to due process. Justice prevails.

Categories Louisiana, New Orleans, Teachers

L.A. Needs Basic Maintenance More Than iPads

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2014 //
11

Ed Liebowitz is a parent of children on the Los Angeles public schools. He describes in this article what the district really needs: not an iPad for every student but basic and essential repairs to its schools and their infrastructure.

When he and other families complained about broken playground equipment, LAUSD didn’t have the money to make the repairs. When he and another family chipped in and bought the missing parts, no crews were available to install them.

Soon the iPads will be obsolete and the license on the Pearson curriculum will expire. What then?

Categories Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

Colorado Parents Say “NO!” to High-Stakes Testing!

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2014 //
6

The corporate types who hate teachers’ unions and public schools have been running a billboard and mass media campaign in New York and New Jersey.

But they are not the only ones who know how to frame a message.

Here is a fabulous billboard posted on a major highway in Colorado by critics of the nutty testing regime imposed by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

Categories Colorado, Education Industry, Education Reform, Parents, Supporting public schools, Testing

Paul Karrer: Why the Moon Is Made of Green Jade

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2014 //
5

Paul Karrer, who teaches in Castroville, California, wrote this article for the local newspaper, the Monterrey Herald. Many of the children he teaches are English learners and special education.

He told me he wanted to title his article “Moon Made Jade Not Cheese and We Can Thank Bill Gates,” but the newspaper changed it to “Education’s Race to the Bottom.”

He writes that the super-rich have imposed their ideas on the schools for over a decade and have nothing to show for it but damaged lives.

Paul writes:

America is now dearly paying for letting the uber-wealthy inject themselves into, upon, and throughout our public educational system. I’m speaking of those non-educators who believe that because they have been successful financially they know what is best for education. There can be no doubt Bill Gates has changed the world with his vision of computers. But twice now he has financially imposed his vision for education and twice he has been wrong. Twice he has left a bloodied battlefield of educational corpses. It costs us much. 

Microsoft dropped its harmful “stack ranking” system, but Gates imposed it on the schools, where it continues to demoralize teachers and warp educational priorities.

And he adds:

This month the Chinese landed a rover, Jade Rabbit, on the moon. It was the first such landing in over 40 years. The Iranians had a monkey in space with their Pajahesh (research) Mission and India launched its Mars Orbiter Mission (Mangalyaan), that is scheduled to land in September.
It is apparent to those of us in public education that the plutocrats have meddled where they have no knowledge. They have caused a decade of elementary school children to lack science, unlike their counterparts in China, Iran and India. Our children lack instruction in social studies, art and music. The education gap between the poor and the wealthy has increased, and the pockets of techies have been lined. Other nations have not become obsessed with testing. They teach their kids science — even their poor kids.
That’s why the moon is no longer made of cheese. It is now comprised of jade, Chinese jade. We can thank Bill Gates and other education reformers.
Categories Education Reform

Cami Anderson and the Unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2014 //
33

In an earlier post about the indefinite suspension of several principals in Newark, who had protested the closing of their schools at a public meeting, I wrote that state-appointed superintendent Cami Anderson was a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Academy.

Readers have informed me that she is not a graduate of said “academy,” but that she is associated with it through a fellow organization:

http://www.broadcenter.org/residency/join/partner-organizations1

This page says Anderson is a “Fellow of the second class of The Pahara – Aspen Education Fellowship.”
http://www.aspenactionforum.org/user/52

Some Pahara participants have done both.
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/news/2012/12/18/pahara-institute-announces-new-class-entrepreneurial-leaders-pahara-aspen-education

Apparently there is a connection between the Broad Foundation and the Pahara Institute and the Aspen Education Fellowship.

Other bloggers no doubt will connect the dots.

Categories Broad Foundation, New Jersey

Paul Horton: Why We Need to Tell Stories About Our Lives

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2014 //
40

Paul Horton, who teaches history at the University of Chicago Lab School, here ponders a famous remark by David Coleman, architect of the Common Core standards. Coleman said, while giving a speech in New York that was taped, that students need to learn that no one gives a s— about what you think or feel, which was his way of saying that your opinions and feelings matter little in the world, as compared to the ability to write or read a memo or informational text.

He writes:

Perhaps more studies are needed to determine whether there is a similar bundled connection between exposure to narrative stories and creative writing and the development of social and emotional intelligence, empathy, tolerance, and sensitivity to the needs of others. To take things a step further, our codes of ethics, morality, and connection to the spiritual dimensions of experience have always been intertwined with our reading and writing about sacred texts, great poetry, and great literature.

When we marginalize storytelling, literary fiction, and creative writing within K-12 language curricula in favor of nonfiction documents and the construction of analytical memos that might please Pearson Education, McKinsey consulting, and Bill Gates; we risk losing something more important than the ability to construct analytical memos.

To do so would be to risk severing our connection to the rest of humanity, to fall away into the cold, endless, zero gravitational space: the existential reality of the jackhammering of human connection that is the object of uninhibited capitalism.

Categories Common Core

Why VAM Is a Sham

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2014 //
50

The centerpiece–and the most destructive element–of Race to the Top is the insistence that teachers must be evaluated to a significant degree by the test scores of their students, whether they go up or down.

It is destructive because it makes standardized tests the purpose of education.

The tests cease to be a measure and become the aim.

That is wrong.

It leads to a narrowed curriculum, teaching to the test, and cheating.

And the measure itself is fraught with error. The teachers with high ratings one year may get low ratings the next year. Some with low ratings may get high ratings the next year. They did exactly the same things but their ratings shifted. One gets a bonus, the other gets fired. It is wrong to make the tests so consequential.

Here, if you have not read it, is an excellent summary of the VAM research, explaining why VAM is misused, by the distinguished psychometrician Edward Haertel, presented in a lecture to ETS.

You should also follow VAMboozled, which is testing expert Audrey Amrein-Beardsley’s blog. She will publish a book this spring, showing the invalidity of VAM. She points out that more than 90% of researchers in the related field agree that VAM is misused by federal policymakers.

Children are not data points; teachers do more than tests measure. Education is more than standardized tests can measure.

Neither children nor teachers nor education itself can be reduced to a metric or an algorithm.

VAM is Junk Science.

In a rational world, NCLB and the Race to the Top would be consigned–quickly–to the ash heap of history.

Hang on, friends. That day is coming.

Categories Education Reform, Research, Teacher Evaluations

Schneider: A History of inBloom and Its Cozy Nest

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2014 //
14

Mercedes Schneider has turned her investigative skills to unearthing the history of inBloom.

She explains what it is, why it matters, and why it is deeply embroiled in the controversy over the Common Core standards.

You may be astonished by the connections among the major players in inBloom, CCSS, and every other aspect of the current “reform” agenda.

Categories Education Reform

Breaking News: Outrage in Newark as Christie’s Superintendent Fires Principals for Opposing School Closings

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2014 //
157

On the very eve of the weekend celebrating the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Newark’s state-appointed superintendent showed the citizens of Newark that they have no votes and they have no voice when it comes to the fate of their schools.

The Newark public schools have been under state control since 1995.

Cami Anderson, the current Newark Superintendent is a former Teach for America teacher and a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Academy, which is known for advocating the closing of public schools and the handover of public schools to private management.

At a public hearing called by Newark Councilman Ras Baraka to discuss school closings,  the principals of several schools spoke against their closing.

Anderson fired them for daring to dissent.

Here Jersey Jazzman describes the situation. 

He quotes Councilman Baraka, who said:

“Today Cami Anderson indefinitely suspended four Newark principals: Tony Motley of Bragraw Avenue School, Grady James of Hawthorne Avenue School, Dorothy Handfield of Belmont-Runyon, and Deneen Washington of Maple Avenue. She suspended the four principals because they spoke at a public forum on Wednesday in opposition to Ms. Anderson’s widely criticized “One Newark” reorganization plan which includes closing or “repurposing” nearly one third of Newark’s public schools.

Ms. Anderson’s action in suspending the four principals is the last straw in a chain of inept, and horribly out-of-touch decisions. The people of Newark need to hear the views of those within the school system who disagree with Ms. Anderson. The four principals have a constitutional right to speak out. The Newark school district is not a military dictatorship, and Ms. Anderson is neither an army general nor a police chief. Her behavior must be governed by the principles of our democracy.

Whatever one thinks of Ms. Anderson’s political and educational ideology, she has proven time and again that she holds in contempt the opinions of the people of Newark. From the beginning, she has not consulted with Newark’s parents, community and political leaders, or professional educators on any significant decision. Most recently, she announced and began implementing her ” One Newark” reorganization plan on the people of Newark with no consultation and no advance notice. In doing this, she ignited a firestorm of opposition from outraged citizens.

Anthony Cody watched videos of the hearing and has extensive clips from the testimony of each of the principals.

He writes as follows:

New Jersey is making headlines this month as the bullying tactics of Governor Christie have gone beyond shouting down individual school teachers, which many in the media seemed to find amusing, and into the realm of political scandal as the “Bridgegate” emails came to light.

Now Newark, New Jersey, is exploding, thanks to the attempts at intimidation by Governor Christie’s hand-picked superintendent of schools, Cami Anderson. Anderson came to Newark after working in New York City schools. Before that, she was employed with New Leaders for New Schools and Teach For America. She was trained by the Broad Academy, which literally wrote the book on how to close schools.  

Journalist Bob Braun today carries a report on the decision by  Anderson to “indefinitely suspend”  five of Newark’s principals. Braun explains:

The “incident” was a community meeting at the Hopewell Baptist Church last Wednesday where (H.G. James) spoke, praising the efforts of his students, teachers and parents.

James was one of five principals indefinitely suspended in one day by Cami Anderson, Christie’s agent in Newark. The others were Tony Motley, Bragaw Avenue School; Dorothy Handfield, Belmont-Runyon School; Deneen Washington, Maple Avenue School, and Lisa Brown, Ivy Hill School.

Four of the principals…tried to answer questions from local residents  worried about what would happen to their children as Anderson moves toward a wholesale transfer of public school assets to the KIPP Schools, a charter organization that operates TEAM Academy Charter Schools. Questions Anderson wasn’t answering.

The plot thickens when we understand what these community forums were all about. These forums were convened by mayoral candidate Ras Baraka, to give the community a voice in response to planned school closures. A video shows the principals speaking to their community.

It is not clear whether four or five principals were indefinitely suspended. It is clear that Christie, Cerf, and Anderson intend to hand the children of Newark over to charter operators, regardless of the wishes of their parents and the community. And it is clear that any school employee who disagrees will be indefinitely suspended.

This is not the way democracy is supposed to work. Public schools belong to the public, not to state officials to use as their plaything. Public officials are supposed to serve the public, not dictate to them.

The state-controlled districts in New Jersey–all predominantly African-American–are being treated like subjugated territories, in which the residents have no say about the control or disposition of their schools.

I agree with Anthony Cody: The destruction of public education in New Jersey’s state-controlled districts–deliberate and knowing–is far worse than Bridgegate. One involved an abuse of political power, an act of spite on the part of Governor Christie’s closest staff. The other involves the deliberate destruction of democracy and public education. It should be an impeachable offense.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Closing schools, New Jersey, Teach for America
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