Archives for the month of: January, 2014
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Sarah Darer Littman: What Will Connecticut Pay to Implement Common Core Testing?

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2014 //
3

Sarah Darer Littman, a journalist in Connecticut, read that Maryland will spend $100 million for Common Core testing.

This led her to wonder what the Common Core testing will cost in her own state.

She asked the State Education Department to fill in the blanks about costs and about what district will receive, and she was surprised by what she learned:

When I looked at the dollar grant per student on a district by district basis, some anomalies jumped out.

For example, the Interdistrict School for Arts and Communication charter in New London received $474 per pupil, whereas the New London School District received a mere $44 per pupil. I struggle to understand how this makes sense when New London is allegedly an Alliance District.

Similarly, the Park City Prep charter school in Bridgeport received $384 per pupil whereas Bridgeport District Schools received only $45 per pupil.

The Jumoke Academy Charter Schools network, which are operated by an organization called the Family Urban Schools of Excellence (FUSE), received a $260 per pupil grant whereas the districts in which its charters operate, Hartford and Bridgeport, received $30 and $45 respectively.

The Achievement First Charter Schools network in Connecticut received $82 per pupil compared to Hartford’s $30 and Bridgeport’s $45. New Haven, the other city in which Achievement First operates charter schools, did better at $130 per pupil.

Why did New Haven ($130 per pupil) receive almost three times the grant of Bridgeport ($45 per pupil) and more than four times that of Hartford ($30 per pupil)? All three are in District Reference Group I, representing the districts with the highest need in the state. Their Adjusted Equalized Net Grand List per Capita (AENGLC) Rank/Weighted ANGLC Ranks are 167, 166 and 169 respectively. Based on the Education Cost Sharing Town Wealth and Rank, New Haven ranks 165, Bridgeport ranks 164 and Hartford 169.

Donnelly explained that “project proposals were developed at the local level. Project proposals reflect their individual needs and local readiness as determined by the district or school. Every grant request submitted by an Local Education Authority (LEA) was honored in accordance with their respective town wealth measure.” What’s important to note here is that, as defined by federal law, school districts are an LEA, but public charter schools and interdistrict magnet schools are considered LEA’s unto themselves.

She adds:

I’m still struggling to understand why a charter school in New London requires 10 times the grant on the basis of the number of students served than the district schools there. One wonders what guidance was received from the Education Department regarding these grants.

It turns out that the Education Department has not produced, and is not in the process of producing, a report on the full costs of implementing the Common Core in the state. According to the department, on top of the previously announced technology grant for which we are borrowing the money, “the state is investing approximately $8 million this year and $6 million next year to support implementation efforts.” I’m not sure if this includes the $1 million CCSS marketing campaign announced by State Education Commission Stefan Pryor last December, or if that’s a separate line item.

I’m also still struggling to understand why we’re using school construction bonds to finance the purchase of iPads and computers. That controversial practice hasn’t worked so well in Los Angeles.

The bottom line in Connecticut is that no one has figured out–or no one is revealing–what it will cost to install the technology and bandwidth and IT specialists for the Common Core testing.

It would be nice to know.

Categories Common Core, Connecticut, Education Reform, Technology, Computers

Lamar Alexander Proposes Sweeping Voucher Legislation

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2014 //
32

Lamar Alexander, Republican Senator from Tennessee, will propose voucher legislation today in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute.

According to politico.com,

“The Tennessee Republican will roll out a school choice bill at the American Enterprise Institute today. It consolidates dozens of federal programs that make up about 41 percent of all federal education spending, with an incentive for states that use the money to expand school choice for low-income students. States could allow families to use their share of the federal funding – about $2,100 per student – for private school tuition, tutoring, extra-curricular enrichment, even homeschooling materials.”

Mark Miller, a Republican from Pennsylvania who is an officer of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association and a director of the Network for Public Education, described to me the Alexander proposal:

“He wants to give 11,000,000 students in poverty a voucher to go to “whatever accredited institution they want”. The $24 Billion package only gives $2,100 per student. Of course the rest of the tuition will come from the “School District of Record” meaning about $100 Billion will “follow the child”.”

Bottom line: the Alexander plan will destroy public education in the U.S.

Do not be fooled: this is not a conservative plan. This is a radical plan. It will send public dollars to backwoods churches and ambitious entrepreneurs.

No high-performing nation in the world has vouchers.

“When you wage war on the public schools, you’re attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.”

― Garrison Keillor, “Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America”

Categories Vouchers

Math Teacher Explains What Is Wrong with the Common Core

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2014 //
123

Roy Turrentine, an experienced teacher of mathematics in Tennessee, explains why the Common Core standards are misdirecting the teaching of his subject. The creators of the CCSS did a disservice to the standards and to American education by refusing the test the standards in real classrooms with real teachers and real students. By failing to field test the standards, there was no feedback from the world of reality and no opportunity to correct errors. Instead, the standards were sent forth with instructions that they were encased in concrete. Any business that released products that had never been tested in the real world, that had never been subject to make corrections based on experience, would soon be bankrupt. That is why I strongly recommend that every state and every district create committees of its best teachers to review and revise the standards to remove the bugs. Forget the “copyright.” What nonsense! How dare any private organizations assert the right to create national standards and then to exercise a copyright over them! Let them sue.

Roy Turrentine writes:

I would like to relate my experience with Common Core. I am a classroom teacher in Tennessee. I have advocated more rigor in education for over thirty years.

In Geometry,which is my main focus, Common Core seeks to unite the Cartesian approach and the traditional approach to the topics studied. The unfortunate aspect of this approach is twofold.

First, the development of the traditional Euclidian approach to Geometry goes back to Euclid himself. His uniting of these concepts created a body of knowledge that has remained intact for centuries. Common Core essentially rejects topics that may only be approached in a Euclidian fashion. Not that they say this. To read the standards you wouldn’t think so. But all the testing depends on the Cartesian approach.

Due to this approach, and due to the nature of the testing, only topics that may be approached in the Cartesian manner are treated. Teachers will surely be teaching less, not more. This brings us to the second point. High stakes testing will restrict teachers to practicing in a very specific way. In our training in Tennessee,the emphasis is more on technique in the classroom than it is on what is to be taught.

Those of us who teach in high schools across America have long desired rigor. To go to meetings where people seem to feel that this rigor is their idea is nothing short of insulting to those of us who have been trying to unite the disciplines for decades. Every good teacher knows what the ideal is. We have been trying to do this for all of our careers. Having Bill Gates give me his opinion does no one any good. Having his opinion become national policy will not serve anyone.

Roy Turrentine

Categories Common Core, Curriculum, Tennessee

Peter Greene: Do Choice Schools Need Testing?

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2014 //
16

Peter Greene, a teacher in Pennsylvania, has emerged as a favorite blogger of mine.

He is on top of the news with sage observations, and he is pithy.

In this post, he looks closely at University of Arkansas’ professor Jay Greene’s argument that schools of choice do not need testing. Jay Greene, a professor in the “department of education reform,” thinks that the marketplace provides accountability so why bother testing.

Peter Greene has an “I-told-you-so” moment, as he remembers all the times he warned his voucher-loving friends that public money never comes with no strings attached. With public money comes public accountability, which these days means standardized testing. The joke is that J. Greene ends up making (almost) the same case against high-stakes standardized testing as many–like P. Greene–who find those standardized tests to be worthless.

Categories Accountability, Testing, Vouchers

Paul Thomas Rebuts Jay Greene: No Escape Route from Testing for Choice Schools

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2014 //
11

Paul Thomas here critiques Jay Greene’s claim that schools of choice should not be subject to the same regime of standardized testing as public schools.

Thomas warns about the numerous academics and “think tanks” that are financed by interested parties and thus do not offer disinterested advice. Greene is a strong advocate of charters and vouchers; his “Department of Educational Reform” at the University of Arkansas is subsidized by the Walton Family Foundation, which promotes alternatives to public education.

Thomas concludes:

“If standardized test data are harmful for determining educational quality, student achievement, and teacher impact, let’s end the inordinate weight of standardized testing, period. And let’s acknowledge that the past thirty years of high-stakes accountability has misrepresented the quality of public schools and likely inaccurately increased public support for school choice.

“If charter schools are a compelling option because they allow schools relief from burdensome bureaucracy, just relieve all public schools from that bureaucracy and then no need for the charter school shuffle.

“Neither of the above will be embraced, however, by school choice advocates because they are not seeking education reform; they are seeking a privatized education system.”

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Whitehurst: Test More, Not Less

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2014 //
46

Grover (Russ) Whitehurst is worried that the public is turning against standardized testing. As George W. Bush’s director of education research, he was and is a true believer in testing. As head of the Brown Center at Brookings, once known as a bastion of liberal thought, Whitehurst wants to see the programs he tended under Bush’s NCLB survive.

Yet they are, as he puts it, “in a bit of trouble.”

He is upset to see that Néw York City elected a new mayor who does not share his love of testing, accountability, and choice. Bill de Blasio is a progressive Democrat.

He is not happy that the Texas legislature rolled back some of its testing requirements, responding to public protest.

But most of all, he is upset that Linda Darling-Hammond, who is senior advisor to one of the federally funded testing consortia, recommends testing in only a single grade in each of the three levels of schooling: elementary school, middle school, and high school.

He frets: What would that do to teacher assessment? How could growth scores be calculated?

Whitehurst’s recommendation: we should test more, not less!

I am not sure I follow the logic here.

How will more testing quell the growing rebellion against testing? There will be more angry moms and dads, more Bill de Blasio’s elected. Maybe he is on to something.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Yesterday, the Blog Readership Broke a Record

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2014 //
28

Yesterday, the blog recorded 69,817 page views.

This was a record for the blog.

The single most-read blog was the breaking news from Indiana, alerting readers that Governor Pence was trying again to strip the powers of Glenda Ritz. Over 30,000 people read that entry.

Information is power. Stay informed.

Categories Ravitch, Diane

Burris: Néw York’s Old Standards Better than Common Core

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2014 //
35

Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, NY, has read the Common Core standards. The 2005 Néw York standards, she concluded, were superior.

Parents and educators are outraged.

Does State Commissioner John King care?

Burris writes:

“”Hit the delay button.” That was the message New York’s senators sent to state Education Commissioner John King during last week’s hearing. Education Committee Chairman John Flanagan made it clear that if King did not act, senators on his panel would. Senator Maziarz observed that the only Common Core supporters remaining are “yourself (King) and the members of the Board of Regents.” To make his position crystal clear, Senator Latimer emphatically smacked the table while calling for a delay, likening the rollout of the Common Core to “steaming across the Atlantic” when there are icebergs in the water.

“The defiant King refused to acknowledge the icebergs, and remained insistent on full steam ahead. He let the senators know “you’re not the boss of me” by asserting that standards are controlled by the State Education Department and the Regents, not by the legislature.”

Categories Common Core, New York

Matt Di Carlo: New Data Show High Teacher Attrition in DC

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2014 //
17

Matthew Di Carlo of the Shanker Institute reports a new study of teacher attrition in the District of Columbia.

The numbers of teachers leaving the district are startling. Whether it is working conditions or policy, the District is not a good place to work.

DCPS has an attrition rate of 25%, far above the national average.

But it is far higher in the highest-poverty schools, as much as 40%.

Di Carlo notes:

“Now, it’s important to note, first of all, that this level of churn, overall and/or in how it varies by school poverty, may not be unusual for districts similar to DCPS (for example, the overall rate of 25 percent is probably roughly comparable to other big city districts). In other words, this may be less a DCPS problem than a large urban district problem (and the raw figures certainly cannot be chalked up to specific policies, in DC or elsewhere).

“Moreover, it’s unclear how much of the discrepancy in attrition/mobility by poverty rates is due to working conditions per se. For one thing, as seen in the DCPS document linked above (see page 36), teachers in higher-poverty schools receive lower ratings, on average, from DCPS’ teacher evaluation system than their counterparts in medium- and low-poverty schools, which means that some of the turnover may be involuntary (i.e., dismissals). Also, leavers and movers have lower evaluation scores, on average, than stayers (see the table above, and also that on page 32). Similarly, there are other variables, such as experience, that may mediate the association between school poverty and teacher turnover.

“In any case, while some turnover is inevitable and some of it (e.g., low-performing teachers) can be seen as beneficial, the situation in the highest-poverty DCPS schools, where around 40 percent leave every year, is at least a cause for concern. It’s difficult to comprehend how schools can function effectively under such conditions.”

Categories District of Columbia, Teachers

Teacher: Indiana Punishes Struggling Schools Instead of Helping Them

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2014 //
16

If you saw a person drowning, would you throw him a life preserver or would you tell him to swim harder? Or perhaps withdraw the lifeline that he was clinging to?

If you saw a visually impaired person trying to cross a busy street, would you help her or would you tell her she is on her own? Or, to make things worse, take away her cane?

This Indiana teacher responded to another reader to explain how Indiana is punishing schools where the scores are low by withdrawing funding that the school needs to help the children:

The state of Indiana has decided that if a school is struggling to bring test scores up, they LOSE money that might otherwise help provide the resources that low-SES schools lack. When school funding is cut because of scores, the first issue to suffer is the budget for materials. The second – pay for teachers and teachers’ positions. This makes it harder to attract and retain the best teachers, and that contributes to the problem you address.

So the state uses funding to punish schools who need the most help. It’s the proverbial vicious cycle! And this is why many suspect and vocally claim that school reformers are deliberately widening the gap between the haves and have-nots.

Categories Indiana
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