Archives for the month of: January, 2014
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Nashville School Board Member Blocks Pearson “Nonsense Word” Test

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2014 //
71

Jill Speering, a retired teacher and reading specialist, is a member of the Metro Nashville school board and its most outspoken critic of high-stakes testing. She led a successful effort to block a Pearson contract to test reading by use of nonsense words. The test was intended to test decoding skills without the need for understanding. Speering pointed out that the committee that approved the contract contained no classroom teachers.

“In outlining her disapproval, Speering said a panel of 23 administrators used to recommend the assessment included no classroom teachers. “That’s one more reason why we have low teacher morale, ” she said. “When we ask teachers to administer an assessment we give them no voice in choosing the assessment.”

“She also took aim at the assessment’s definition of fluency — which emphasizes reading with speed — and its use of what are known as “nonsense words.” Those call on students to identify the phonetics and sounds of words not found in the dictionary. Speering believes employing them is a poor way to evaluate how well a child is understanding what he or she reads.”

The contract was deferred, not defeated. It is worth $357,200 to Pearson.

Categories Pearson, Tennessee, Testing

Red Queen in L.A.: Where Is the Outrage?

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2014 //
17

Blogger redqueeninla takes a hard look at what is happening to the schools and the children and asks the inevitable question: “Where’s the outrage?”

Why do parents tolerate classes with 50 students? Teachers can’t teach such large classes. Does anyone care?

Why does the media report calmly about self-enriching deals for corporate interests without treating it as a scandal?

Why do we ignore segregation of our most vulnerable children when we know it’s wrong?

She writes:

“And yet therein lies the irony. Reported anger does not register; only blandishments do. The means to move change are so hampered by our unwillingness to hear unpleasantness. We wrap up the old year and hope for betterment in the next, but we school ourselves to ignore what ought to be infuriating. Bad things – injustice, poverty, denied opportunities — are being meted out upon our very own children. As a parent, I see the structure of our society as intended to support this next generation. Why do we do any of what we do if not to provide opportunity for them? Opting for disengagement equates to sanctioning inequity. The most important accounting this new year could bring is an acknowledgement of the harm our complacency catalyzes. Let these lists infuriate you. Hear the anger and do not just shut it off. Demand an accounting with accountability.”

What should we do this new year?

Get angry. Demand an accounting.

Get active. Reject complacency.

Find allies. Make noise.

Defend the children. Defend their teachers. Defend their schools.

United, we have the power to make a difference.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, Poverty, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Students

What Educators in North Carolina Say About Recent Legislative Changes

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2014 //
57

This last year, the legislature and governor in North Carolina enacted legislation affecting the teaching profession in North Carolina.

Scott Imig and Robert Smith at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington decided that it was important to hear how the legislation affected those in the state’s schools:

They wrote:

In the summer of 2013, the North Carolina legislature passed broad educational reforms. Among these were the abolishment of tenure, the end of additional compensation for teachers who earn a graduate degree, removal of class size caps, and implementation of a voucher program. As professors who interact daily with current K-12 educators, we heard numerous anecdotes this fall about declining support for public education, increased teacher attrition, deteriorating morale, and concerns about pursuing advanced degrees. While the anecdotes were fairly consistent, there was not, to our knowledge, available data that captured the immediate and potential long-term effects of the policy changes. 

Imig and Smith surveyed more than 600 educators in the state to get their perspective on the changes. Their report is titled “Listening to Those on the Front Lines.”

Here is what they found.

• Over 96% of the educators who participated think public education in North Carolina is headed in the wrong direction.

• Two-thirds of teachers and administrators indicated that recent legislative changes have negatively impacted the quality of teaching and learning in their own school.

• Over 74% of respondents indicated that, as a result of the legislative changes, they were less likely to continue working as a teacher/administrator in NC.

• 97% of respondents think the legislative changes have had a negative effect on teacher morale.

• 98% of teachers and administrators surveyed believe that the removal of financial incentives for pursuing advanced degrees will have a negative effect on the quality of teaching and learning in North Carolina’s schools.

• Nearly all respondents indicated that the failure to give teachers a raise in pay will have a negative impact on the quality of public education.

• Ninety percent of teachers and administrators indicated that the removal of tenure, with all teachers placed on 1-, 2-, or 4-year contracts by 2018, will have a negative effect on the quality of public education in NC.

• In regard to the legislature’s plan to eliminate tenure and identify the top 25% of teachers for annual pay raises, approximately 7% of teachers indicated they would give up tenure in exchange for the supplement (64% would not give up tenure and 28% are uncertain).

• 38% of respondents believe the Read to Achieve Program will have a positive impact on the quality of education in the state. Among elementary teachers, this figure is just 20%.

• A significant portion of teacher and administrator comments described working harder to protect students from the perceived effects of the recent legislative changes.

• Nearly 87% of respondents think the voucher plan, providing eligible families with a $4,200 annual voucher to allow a child to go to a private school, will have a negative impact on the state’s public schools. 

What are the chances that the governor and the legislature will care what teachers and administrators think about their legislation?

Categories North Carolina, Teachers and Teaching

Breaking News: Weingarten Rejects VAM!

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2014 //
173

Randi Weingarten has come out in opposition to value-added modeling (VAM), the statistical measure that judges teacher quality based on the test scores of their students. This is great news! As I have often written here, VAM is Junk Science. It also is the centerpiece of Race to the Top, which makes the absurd assumption that good teachers produce higher test scores. Researchers have shown again and again that test scores–including their rise or fall–says more about who is in the class than teacher quality, and they reflect many other factors, including class size, peers, school leadership, prior teachers, curriculum, etc. Furthermore, VAM places too much emphasis on testing and leads to a narrowed curriculum, teaching to the test, gaming the system, and cheating. Teaching cannot be reduced to an algorithm.

To those tempted to chastise her for changing her mind, I say we should welcome and salute anyone with the courage and insight to give up a previously held position in the face of evidence. A few years ago, I changed my mind about things I once believed, like the value of school choice and high-stakes testing. Now, let us hope that others who support VAM see the light.

This morning’s Politico Education says:

“NEW TACTIC ON TEACHER EVALUATIONS: Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, is launching a campaign against using value-added metrics to evaluate teacher effectiveness. Her mantra: “VAM is a sham.� That’s a notable shift for the AFT and its affiliates, which have previously ratified contracts and endorsed evaluation systems that rely on VAM. Weingarten tells Morning Education that she has always been leery of value-added “but we rolled up our sleeves, acted in good faith and tried to make it work.� Now, she says, she’s disillusioned.

“– What changed her mind?Weingarten points to a standoff in Pittsburgh over the implementation of a VAM-based evaluation system the union had endorsed. She says the algorithms and cut scores used to rate teachers were arbitrary. And she found the process corrosive: The VAM score was just a number that didn’t show teachers their strengths or weaknesses or suggest ways to improve. Weingarten said the final straw was the news that the contractor calculating VAM scores for D.C. teachers made a typo in the algorithm, resulting in 44 teachers receiving incorrect scores — including one who was unjustly fired for poor performance.

“– What’s next? The AFT’s newly militant stance against VAM will likely affect contract negotiations in local districts, and the union also plans to lobby the Education Department.”

Categories Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Unions

Jersey Jazzman: Why Urban Districts in New Jersey Can’t Be Trusted to Run Their Own Schools

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2014 //
10

In an astonishing piece of journalism, Jersey Jazzman nails the Star-Ledger of New Jersey for its arrogant editorial putdown of local residents and elected officials in Newark who dare to disagree with Cami Anderson, their Broad-trained and unelected education leader. Why, they are being “shrill and unreasonable” for resisting corporate-style reforms. The subtext: the locals are black, and the idea that they might actually govern their own schools is unthinkable.

In a tour de force, JJ quotes former Star-Ledger columnist Bob Braun, who takes his former employer to task.

He writes:

Luckily for us, Santa brought an early present: a response to this idiotic editorial in the form of a post from former S-L journalist Bob Braun:

Those who criticize the plan are “shrill” and they “shriek”–how is that for subtly racist comments? Not unlike calling ambitious women “pushy.” These were elected officials who spoke out Friday–members of the council, a member and the speaker of the New Jersey Assembly. That they were men and women of color, representing a predominantly minority community, doesn’t make their passion “shrill” or “shrieking.” It means they care about the city where few editorial employees live.
How dare a newspaper that has put its Newark property up for sale tell city residents how to live? When is the last time it told the residents of Millburn and Westfield they have enough income and should volunteer to pay higher income taxes? When is the last time it told communities in Somerset and Hunterdon counties that they should change their zoning practices to allow low- and middle-income residents? When is the last time it told Essex County and Union County that they have too many school districts and should consolidate into income-and racially–integrated unified systems?

Ooo, pick me, pick me! The answer: never.

Read Braun’s entire post, which is dead-on. The truth is that the “reforms” Anderson proposes have never worked and will not work. They are, in reality, an abdication of responsibility on the part of the state, which has utterly failed to do its job over the last two decades of state control and provide Newark’s beautiful, deserving children with schools that are worthy of them.

Categories New Jersey

Why Common Core Tests Cause Scores to Collapse

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2014 //
57

Just as the holidays began, Education Week published a very important article explaining why Common Core testing causes a collapse of test scores.

Since most people were preoccupied with preparations for the holidays, it probably didn’t get much attention. But it should have because it unlocks the mystery if why state after state is experiencing a 30 point drop in passing rates on Common Core tests.

As Catherine Gewertz wrote:

“It’s one thing for all but a few states to agree on one shared set of academic standards. It’s quite another for them to agree on when students are “college ready” and to set that test score at a dauntingly high place. Yet that’s what two state assessment groups are doing.

“The two common-assessment consortia are taking early steps to align the “college readiness” achievement levels on their tests with the rigorous proficiency standard of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a move that is expected to set many states up for a steep drop in scores.

“After all, fewer than four in 10 children reached the “proficient” level on the 2013 NAEP in reading and math.”

I served on the NAEP governing board for seven years. NAEP “proficient” was never considered a passing mark; it signifies excellent academic performance. Only one state in the nation, Massachusetts, has 50% of its students at NAEP proficient.

It is absurd to set such a high bar for “passing.” It is a guarantee that most students will fail.

Why do we want an education system that stigmatizes 60-70% of all students as “failures?”

Is the purpose of education to develop citizens and healthy human beings or is it to sort and rank the population for selective colleges and the workplace?

Categories Common Core, NAEP, Testing

Explosive Reaction to Schneider Post on Data-Mining and Student Privacy

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2014 //
98

Mercedes Schneider posted a critique of a webinar hosted by the Education Writers Association on the subject of data-mining and student privacy.

She was upset that the panel of three included two cheerleaders for data mining and the third produced research funded by Microsoft.

The post was strong, but the letters that followed are amazing. She got responses from the CEO of inBloom, defending it, from privacy experts, from the researcher whose viewpoint she challenged, and from parent advocates.

This is the best, most free-wheeling discussion, including all points of view, that I have seen on this vital subject.

Categories Privacy and Privacy Rights

English Teacher: Why I Had to Leave a Profession I Loved

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2014 //
79

In this post, a veteran teacher with 30 years of experience explains why she had to retire. She didn’t want to. But the obsession with data-based decision-making finally broke her spirit.

She recounts incidents where she was able to help students, where students gave her their trust, where classes learned to love literature as she did. She remembers staff meetings devoted to lessons and students, not to data analysis. As all the rewarding parts of her work were eliminated, she realized that the reforms made it I possible to do what she loved est: to teach.

She writes:

“I remember a time when department meetings, faculty meetings, and in-service days revolved around reading, sharing ideas, learning about our subjects—and not around the only topics that seem to matter today: lesson plan format, testing, rubrics, teacher evaluations and technological gimmicks. Watch your back! If you don’t conform it will be held against you!

“I remember AP students who told me their lives were changed after reading Hamlet, or Beloved, or Middlemarch. Is there a metric for that, or is a score on the AP exam the only thing that counts? Yes, we did lots of close reading, but is that what students will remember?

“Mostly I remember a time when I could be creative, do lots of research, veer off in different but related directions, have discussions, allow students to talk about how they feel (yes, David Coleman), and even lecture occasionally, without worrying if I covered every one of the myriad points in the Danielson model in EVERY lesson.

“I am so sad when I read that students, teachers, and schools are labeled “failures.” I am bewildered when I read statements from “reformers” with no background in child development writing standards, arbitrarily setting cut scores, misinterpreting test results, making flawed comparisons with other countries, giving only lip service to parents, and blaming teachers for every ill in society. I am angry when I think of people with no background in education (i.e. politicians from BOTH parties and businesspeople) condescending to, insulting, and even vilifying teachers, whose job is more difficult, challenging, and complex than anyone who has never tried it can imagine.”

Read it all. Get angry. Take action. Find allies. Join your state or local group to resist these terrible trends that destroy the love of teaching and learning. Join the Network for Public Education.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Paul Thomas: An Educators’ Agenda for 2014

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2014 //
16

Paul Thomas proposes that educators must set goals for other crucial sectors of our society.

After all, there is such low confidence in other institutions, and it is our joint responsibility to do what we can to restore confidence for the good of society.

If we do not solve the crisis of our times, we will lose the global competition to other nations that are not only catching up with us but surpassing us on many dimensions.

First, we must reorganize the timely delivery of packages. Thomas proposes the funding of Deliver for America, a pool of temporary drivers to replace the professional drivers at Fedex.

Second–and this is critical–he proposes a nationwide evaluation of political leaders based on their value added, measuring “their positive impact on the people they represent.” Every elected official would take a standardized test and the bottom 25% would be fired every year.

Third–also of national importance–a nationwide evaluation of the media, especially editorial boards and opinion writers, based on standardized measures of the relationship between the research base and their writings. The bottom 25% would be fired every year, depending on the accuracy of their proposals.

We can’t delay. Our national security depends on setting goals and acting promptly without delay to review and evaluate these–and other-sectors of our economy.

Categories Accountability

Why G.F. Brandenburg Objects to Common Core

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2014 //
14

Blogger and former teacher G.F. Brandenburg has written an important and thoughtful post explaining his objections to Common Core or any other national standards that are overly prescriptive.

He writes:

“…. It’s utterly false to say that SOMEBODY knows all the answers to the questions about how to educate our youth, our younger generation. Whenever I have a serious or even frivolous conversation in any forum whatsoever about education, I am struck by the degree to which perfectly serious, reasonable people, of all walks of life, disagree on the ultimate goals of education.

“Heck, people can’t even agree on what are the most important questions!!

“Of course, I have my own opinions, but as facts and situations change, my own opinions about education and many other aspects of society have been shifting a lot over my lifetime — and I’m willing to bet that this is also true of any of you who read this sentence, however old or young you might be.

“So the idea that all lessons conducted in school need to follow a script that was written by somebody else, and that the teacher’s job is simply to follow that script — damn, that’s scary. Especially since the scripted stuff I see most of the time is clever but ultimately utterly dishonest advertising that is trying, for the most part, to get me to do things that are bad for me and my friends and former students but profitable for some small group of very powerful people.”

He adds:

“Of course, the people organizing the government to require and to tax us to pay to concoct and implement these plans wouldn’t possibly allow their own kids to grow up in schools like that. Billionaire and millionaire kids go to schools like Lakeside in Seattle, or Sidwell or St. Albans in DC, or Chicago Lab School or Andover or Choate or whatever, and each teacher challenges kids to think for themselves, and there are music lessons and glee clubs and handicrafts and outdoor activities and other sports and drama clubs and so on and so on.

“I’m of the opinion that that sort of structure, where the working-class kids get a stultifying school regime and the children of the rich get a whole lot of indulgences and individual attention, is just plain wrong, and it’s sick.”

And he writes much more that you would find interesting.

Categories Common Core
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