Archives for the month of: January, 2014
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Do International Test Scores Matter?

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2014 //
54

Readers of this blog know that I have repeatedly argued that standardized scores on international tests predict nothing about the future.

Now comes an article in Forbes–Forbes!–saying that the international scores don’t mean much.

Scott Gillum quotes sources such as Sir Ken Robinson, Carol Dweck, and Yong Zhao to argue that what matters most–creativity, originality, initiative–is not captured by standardized tests.

He concludes:

“The U.S. has had a long tradition (and culture) of producing rule-breakers, game-changers and out-of-the-box thinkers — not easily measured in the form of test scores, but better captured in optimism, perseverance and innovation. Perhaps being “average” is the right result to ensure that we are not, as Robinson would say, “educating people out of their creativity.”

Anyone who seriously believes that the test scores of 15-year-old students in Estonia, Latvia, and other small countries puts our nation at risk cannot be taken seriously. Our competitive edge has always been those who think differently, outside the box, not inside it.

Categories International, Testing

Reader: Memories of a Better Time in Education

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2014 //
48

This reader shares memories of a different time. I can vouch for what he or she writes. I remember those days too. The time after school was spent riding bikes or playing pick-up games of baseball or playing in someone’s backyard. Homework was for after dinner. There was always time for play with friends. The family ate dinner together. I went to a high school with about 1,200 students. None of the girls got pregnant. There were no drugs (but some alcohol and lots of fast driving). All teachers were Mr. or Mrs. or Miss. Were they the good old days? In some ways, yes, in some ways, no. But there was not the same degree of pressure on students to perform that there is today. No one committed suicide; the only deaths among youth were the result of reckless driving. We had childhoods.

What is sad is kids are no longer kids but little carbon copies of adults. When I grew up after dinner everyone went outdoors to play all kinds of games. It was all, clean good fun. We’d come home exhausted, sweaty and sleep like logs.
Drive down any residential street and no kids playing outdoors. Each having computers, texting, little islands unto themselves, and families not eating together. So sad.
I cannot remember anything I learned in first or second grade. Cursive writing in third only. Some Viking history in 4th. Frankly, what I would have liked to learn throughout school was about finances, saving money, investing, balancing a check book, raising kids, and more about communicating my needs to my mate.
I am 77 and I have a young friend who has been a second grade teacher for 23 years. I was absolutely APPALLED at the strict learning program for her second graders this year.
I am appalled also at these programs teaching babies to read at some ridiculous age, 13 months is it?
the whole world is upside down and so is the purpose of kids going to school. To learn social graces, share, abide by rules, respect self and others. All of life is about rules and that what we learn in school, but kids are meant to have fun, create, play,and not be stressed to the max and suffer anxiety.
When I was in high school, NO ONE became pregnant. NO drugs. Girls wore skirts, boys pants. If you were sick you were sent home. teachers were called Mr.or Mrs. etc. You wrote 5,000 essays if you talked back, or marred your desk. Later homework was neat
and thrown away to do over if messy.
No one freaked out. We loved our years at highschool.
Gee, Ben Franklin left school at second grade. Many great writers, people left early.
No one had died in my high school.
When my sons were in high school they were pall bearers 6x by the time they graduated.
And, even when younger, I told my sons, as you get older you will see more and more
suicides amongst your peers. This came to pass.
We must begin to see that something is radically wrong in education for so many deaths, suicides, pills, meds, etc. Something is TERRIBLY wrong.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Testing

Peter Greene Reviews Fordham’s Wacky Video

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2014 //
21

Peter Greene, an English teacher and blogger in Pennsylvania, reviewed the wild and wacky video made by the staff at the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Apparently the kids there wanted the world to see them as fun-loving buddies who can laugh at themselves, but Greene thinks it didn’t work. Despite the high production values, there is something unfunny about Fordham’s policy ideas (no to smaller classes, yes to Common Core).

Greene, you will note, updated his post at a time when he was teaching William Faulkner’s Light in August to high school students, a task we may assume is as valuable (more valuable?) to society than having a desk job in Washington and telling the nation’s teachers what they ought to be doing.

He writes:

“Final effect? People making wacky shenanigans out of policy ideas that are being used to destroy public education? It’s a hard thing to parse– how would “Springtime for Hitler” have come across if it had been staged by the Nazis themselves? I am not meaning to suggest that Fordham = Nazis, but I do wonder what we’re to make of people making themselves look more ridiculous that we could make them look on purpose.

“It is part of the tone deafness problem. I want to shake them and say, “Did you not see this? Do you not know how you look, both awkward and opposite-of-cool, while making jokes about policies being used to destroy peoples’ careers?” Somehow while shooting for cool and relaxed and with it, they’ve hit uncool and callous, thereby suggesting that they are imbued with so much hubris and arrogance that they either can’t see or don’t care (because only unimportant people will be bothered, and they don’t matter). This is the education industry equivalent of those bankers’ videos of obscenely wealthy parties, the Christmas cards from wealthy apartments, the total lack of understanding of what things are like out there on the street, because the street is just for the commoners who don’t matter.

“It’s an oddly fascinating train wreck. Is it awesomely funny because it’s so awful, or is it too awful to be funny. Whatever the case, it gives a strong 2:20 feel for what sort of attitude permeates Fordham, and it is just as bad as we ever imagined. maybe worse.”

Categories Class size, Common Core, Corporate Reformers

Caleb Rossiter on KIPP and the Challenge of Educating All

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2014 //
29

When we talk about educating all, we usually mean educating all. But as Caleb Rossiter points out, educating all is a mighty challenge when so many children are so woefully unprepared and unmotivated. Caleb quit his job in a charter school because he was asked to raise scores that were undeserved. But now he has a habit of speaking with candor about kids who have no interest in what is happening in the classroom.

In this post, he writes about his experience with KIPP, and he has much to say about the misuse of standardized testing and gaming the system.

But what bothers him most is that our society has no real plans for the kids who don’t do homework, don’t do classwork, and don’t care much about learning in school.

KIPP is part of the national turning away from vocational high schools and a boosting of watered-down college prep for students who lack the interest or skills to be successful.  From presidents down to principals there is a silly insistence that college is the holy grail in a country with probably a 75 percent true high school graduation rate, 50 percent drop-out rates in poor areas, and most poor students so far behind by 9th grade that success in college is extremely unlikely until later in their lives.  Many kids would benefit from having a real choice for a high school education, like the one we provide in upstate New York through the BOCES vocational half-day schools, that graduated them to be successful electricians, plumbers, cosmetologists, computer technicians, nurse’s aides, and carpenters.        

KIPP also is part of the bleeding of the public schools of money and talent by charters, which Diane Ravitch points out, en bloc, at the macro level of system change, have no better record than public schools when properly compared on the education of the same families and kids.  But I know that charters, good and bad, fraudulent and purposeful, are here to stay, and more are coming all the time.  

Reading Jay’s book right after Diane’s new book on the Privatization movement was unsettling.  She focuses on showing how income and education level of parents is still the primary driver of outcomes in schools — and for me, she still misses the special challenges of Post-traumatic Slave Syndrome and Currently-traumatized Segregation Syndrome that are peculiar to the progeny of the peculiar institution.  Jay focuses on how better achievement can be coaxed out of the situation.  I’d like to see the two of them get together to make some joint proposals!

I am not so sure about the “Post-traumatic Slave Syndrome and Currently-traumatized Segregation Syndrome.” But maybe Caleb knows more than I do from his experiences in the schools of D.C.

I share Caleb’s distrust of standardized testing; it has become part of the problem, rather than an answer or even a reliable measure. Somehow I think that if we expect to solve our biggest social problems, we have to come up with better answers for those kids who don’t care. They are the kids who fail and fail and fail. Kicking them out of charter schools and magnet schools may feel right to the schools that exclude them, but it doesn’t answer the larger questions. What will happen to them? What will happen to our society if we continue to ignore their fate? What kind of society are we if we think we can forget them?

 

Categories Charter Schools, Poverty, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Testing

Jersey Jazzman on Governor Chris Christie

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2014 //
10

Those of us who care about public education and who respect teachers have known for a long time that New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie was a bully. We have seen him bullying teachers since he took office. Now he has this mess on his hands because his closest staff–with or without his knowledge–bullied a Democratic mayor who failed to endorse Christie in his re-election campaign. So the governor’s aides closed off all but one lane leading to the nation’s busiest toll bridge, causing a massive disruption of Fort Le.

Here is the fascinating story, as reported in the New York Times. The story contains the string of emails that show this was political bullying.

I wonder whose name was redacted from the emails. Surely the NSA knows.

But what does this have to do with education?

Jersey Jazzman tells us. In his State of the State address, Christie tries to change the subject by attacking schools and teachers again, saying that what is needed (in one of the nation’s highest performing states) is longer school days.

JJ asks in another post whether politicians should be let off the hook if the foul deeds were committed by their closest aides but there is no proof that they did it under orders. If Christie didn’t know, what kind of people does he choose as his closest associates? What do their actions say about him? If he did know, he should be impeached.

In this post, JJ points out that Christie has committed far worse sins than Bridgegate because they cause even greater damage to the state.

Categories New Jersey

Maryland: Common Core Testing Will Cost $100 Million

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2014 //
32

According to a report by Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post, Maryland will spend at least $100 million for Common Core testing.

The testing is wreaking havoc in states like Néw York, where absurd failure rates have outraged parents across the states. Now we learn that the cost of all-online testing are likely to cause fiscal strain, larger classes, and cuts to necessary programs and courses. Los Angeles alone has committed $1 billion to buy iPads for Common Core testing even though class sizes are growing and the arts programs have been decimated by previous budget cuts.

Who had the brilliant idea that all testing had to be online? The vendors? Ka-Ching.

This may turn out to be the innovation that ate American education.

Categories Common Core

My Speech about Common Core to MLA

By garyrubinstein
January 18, 2014 //
36

On January 11, I spoke to the annual meeting in Chicago of the Modern Language Association about the Common Core. My talk was titled “Common Core: Past, Present, Future.”

I think readers of this blog will find it of interest.

It is about 17 pages long, so sit down.

I explain the background of the standards and explain why they have become so controversial, with critics and supporters on all points of the political spectrum–right, left, and middle.

I recommend decoupling the standards from the testing. And I recommend that the standards be reviewed, corrected, and updated on a regular basis by panels of teachers and scholars. No set of standards should be considered so sacrosanct that they can never be revised. These arrived encased in concrete.

To open the speech, click here.

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Testing

Governor Corbett Runs Away from Visit to Philly High School

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2014 //
16

There was much buzz on the Internet yesterday because Governor Tom Corbett announced his intention to visit a public school in Philadelphia! Imagine that!

But today, after hearing that protestors might show up, he canceled the visit and retreated to the local Chamber of Commerce.
He boldly announced that he never runs away from anything as he ran away.

Jake Blumgart reports:

““I don’t run from anything,” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett said on Friday, after running away from a planned event at Central High School in North Philadelphia. Speaking at a press conference several miles to the south, held at the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce’s headquarters in The Bellevue, a swanky Center City office building, Corbett insisted, “I make decisions head on, but I was not going to be a distraction to the school day or the school students.” The students may well have been distracted by the fact that they had waited for a speaker who cancelled at the last minute.

“Education has dogged Corbett since the early days of his administration, when he proposed a $1.2 billion cut to public school funding in his first budget. A crippling reduction exceeding $865 million made it through the legislature, with the poorest school districts bearing the brunt thanks to the elimination of a mechanism that provided more money for schools with greater needs. (As the Education Law Center put it, “the cuts have been up to 10 times larger in poor districts on a per-student basis.”) Now, in a difficult election year, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that his budget address early next month will contain between $100 million and $200 million in restored education dollars, funded by pension reforms.

“Friday’s event at Central could have been another aspect of Corbett’s attempt to improve his image on public education. At the planned presentation ceremony, he would have given the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Academics to three high schools: Central, Masterman, and George Washington Carver. This comes during a school year where the Philadelphia School District faced a budgetary gap of more than $300 million, forcing deep cuts. Now many schools are forced to share nurses, counselors and other essential support staff. Funding for most extracurricular activities has been zeroed out, while arts, music and physical education have been decimated.”

Parents might understandably be unhappy with Corbett since his budget cuts have stripped the Philly schools of basic staff and resources. Last fall, a 12-year-old student died of an asthma attack because her school lost funding for a full-time nurse.

Corbett’s poll numbers are very low, giving one hope that voters across the state want a change.

Categories Budget Cuts, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Mercedes Schneider on Duncan: Why Does He Blame Everyone But the DOE?

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2014 //
41

Mercedes Schneider has a terrific post in which she reviews Arne Duncan’s interview with U.S. News, in which he claims that American teachers “often come from the bottom of the academic barrel.”

His ideal of academic excellence? Examination hell in South Korea.

Schneider explains what Duncan finds so admirable. For one hing, his only way to think of education is test scores. Nothing else matters.

She wonders why Duncan is quick to blame everyone for what he sees as failing schools but never thinks about the ineffectiveness of the Bush-Obama policies. If they were graded, they would certainly be graded Ineffective. A dozen years of failed policy is enough!

Categories Duncan, Arne, International, Testing

Who Funded Campbell Brown’s Campaign Against Pervy Teachers?

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2014 //
16

During the mayoral campaign in New York City, former CNN anchor Campbell Brown led a campaign against what she portrayed as a serious number of sexual perverts and deviants among the city’s teaching force. Mother Jones decided to investigate what was happening, who was behind the campaign, and here are its findings.

“Shortly after it was launched in June, PTP [Parent Transparency Project] trained its sights on the New York mayoral race, asking the candidates to pledge to change the firing process for school employees accused of sexual misconduct. When several Democratic candidates declined, perhaps fearing they’d upset organized labor, PTP spent $100,000 on a television attack ad questioning whether six candidates, including Republican Joe Lhota and Democrats Bill de Blasio and Anthony Weiner, had “the guts to stand up to the teachers’ unions.” The spot stated that there had been 128 cases of sexual misconduct by school employees in the past five years, suggesting that nothing had been done in response. “It’s a scandal,” the ad’s narrator intoned. “And the candidates are silent.”

“Before founding PTP, Brown raised this issue in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in July 2012. But what she failed to disclose was that her husband, Dan Senor, sits on the board of the New York affiliate of StudentsFirst, an education lobbying group founded by Michelle Rhee, the controversial former Washington, DC, chancellor. Rhee made a name for herself as public enemy No. 1 of the teachers’ unions and has become the torchbearer of the charter school movement. In 2012, her “bipartisan grassroots organization” backed 105 candidates in state races, 88 percent of them Republicans. (Senor was also the spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority following the invasion of Iraq and served as a foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney in 2012.)…

“But there is much more about PTP that is less than transparent, including its sources of funding and its overall agenda. As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, PTP may keep its donors’ identities secret and spend money in electoral campaigns, so long as political activity doesn’t consume the majority of its time and money.

“Despite its nonpartisan billing, Brown’s nonprofit used Revolution Agency, a Republican consulting firm, to produce the mayoral attack ad. Its partners include Mike Murphy, a well-known pundit and former Romney strategist; Mark Dion, former chief of staff to Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.); and Evan Kozlow, former deputy director of the National Republican Congressional Committee. The domain name for PTP’s website was registered by two Revolution employees: Jeff Bechdel, Mitt Romney’s former Florida spokesman, and Matt Leonardo, who describes himself as “happily in self-imposed exile from advising Republican candidates.”

“Another consulting firm working with Brown’s group is Tusk Strategies, which helped launch Rhee’s StudentsFirst. Advertising disclosure forms filed by PTP list Tusk’s phone number, and a copy of PTP’s sexual-misconduct pledge—since scrubbed from its website—identified its author as a Tusk employee. (Tusk and Revolution declined to comment. Brown referred all questions to her PR firm—the same one used by StudentsFirst.)….

“Brown’s group paints the unions as the main obstacles to a crackdown on predators. Yet Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, says that the union’s New York City chapter already has a zero-tolerance policy in its contract, and that AFT only protects its members against “false allegations.” New York state law also mandates that any teacher convicted of a sex crime be automatically fired. It is the law, not union contracts, that requires that an independent arbitrator hear and mete out punishment in cases of sexual misconduct that fall outside criminal law. The quickest route to changing that policy may be lobbying lawmakers in Albany, not hammering teachers and their unions.”

Categories New York City, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Unions
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