Archives for the month of: February, 2014
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Hillsborough County, Fla; Where Testing Trumps All

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2014 //
8

Michael Weston reports that Hillsborough County is field testing the PARCC tests, despite previous declarations by the Governor that PARCC was not wanted.

According to Weston, the local superintendent has never seen a test she didn’t love. She insists that teachers want and need more tests. Weston says, “Huh?”

“PARCC will replace the Stanford Achievement Test the district normally uses. The district can double-check FCAT results against the nationally-normed Stanford exam to see if scores match up. PARCC can serve the same purpose. In Hillsborough County, our children are special enough to be given extra exams. Our superintendent administers the Stanford test in addition to the standardized exams (FCAT) required by the state. Should the FCAT show a failing on the superintendent’s part, she has the Stanford results to slice, dice, parse and farce until she can show a favorable result. It’s for the kids.

“But wait! FCAT is going away. Common-core is coming. Common-core test XYZ will replace FCAT. PARCC will replace Stanford. Do I have that right? Yes.”

In Hillsborough County, you can never test kids too much or too often!

Categories Common Core, Florida, Testing

Another Valentine’s Day Gift for You (4)

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2014 //
11

One of William Shakespeare’s most beautiful love poems is Sonnet 18:

 

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Categories Education Reform

A Beautiful Poem for You Today (3)

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2014 //
9

Another much loved poem is Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” Marlowe lived from 1564-1593.

 

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.

There will we sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

There I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepared each day for thee and me.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

Categories Education Reform

Good News for Mississippi! ALEC Bill Stalls

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2014 //
7

An effort to create a special statewide district for low-performing schools in Mississippi was defeated by legislators in the House by a vote of 60-55.

The issue now advances to the State Senate.

The far-right American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has made a priority of creating statewide entities and eviscerating local control.

These statewide districts are hallmarks of states bent on privatization, like Michigan, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

There is no evidence that the state does a better job with low-performing students than the local district.

Typically what the students in these schools need is smaller classes, specialized staff, the arts, bilingual teachers, and specific programs that help the students progress.

Fresh thinking is needed that empowers communities and teachers to address the needs of their students.

The status quo of state takeovers (which has been tried and failed for 20 years in New Jersey) doesn’t work.

Categories Accountability, ALEC

Another Valentine’s Day Gift for You (2)

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2014 //
9

W. H. Auden is one of my favorite poets. This is a sad poem, but it is nonetheless one of the most beautiful expressions of love in poetry.

W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Categories Personal

Breaking News: David Sirota Exposes Financing Behind PBS Series on Pension Reform

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2014 //
21

David Sirota, a crack investigative journalist, has written an expose of the financing behind the PBS series on pension reform.

Sirota calls it:” The Wolf of Sesame Street: Revealing the secret corruption inside PBS’s news division.”

You may be surprised to learn the secret. You may be disturbed to learn who is paying the bills.

Sirota’s hard-hitting article prompted an immediate response from the PR firm for “the Wolf of Sesame Street.” Read it.

In today’s world, language often means the opposite of what it says. We must deconstruct everything we read.

A “reformer” is someone who wants not to “reform” public schools but to replace them with privately managed schools, sometimes operated for-profit or by non-educators making exorbitant salaries.

“Pension reform” these days means someone has a plan to get rid of your pension if you are a public-sector worker.

“Turnaround” means that someone in D.C. decided that everyone in your school should be fired.

If someone wants to eliminate your job, you can be sure they will describe it as “reform.”

Categories Pensions

Leaving on a Jet Plane….

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2014 //
23

Yes! I am taking a vacation. Can’t wait to leave the snow, ice, slush behind. We were supposed to fly yesterday, but were so sure the flight from NYC would be canceled that we changed flights to today. Bad move. JetBlue flew yesterday to our destination in Caribbean (Turks-Caicos).

The flight is dominated by parents and little children.

As I sit here blogging, a very pretty young woman stops and asks if I am me. When I say yes, she says proudly, “I’m opting my children out this spring.” She is from Garden City, the epicenter of the anti-testing movement in New York.

Thumbs up!

Can’t wait to see sun, sea, sand, and rest.

JetBlue is amazing. Neither ice, nor snow, nor wind, nor…

Categories Personal

Happy Valentine’s Day! A Gift for You (1)

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2014 //
18

I decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day by sharing some of my favorite poems with you.

I love some of you, I like some of you, I tolerate some of you, I grit my teeth with a very few of you. That’s how I show “grit.”

But the poems I post today are for all of you. For today, I love you all. You read what I write, you share your frustrations and your victories. We are a community of people who care about education, care about children, care about the future of our society.

So, please indulge me while I share what I love on this day.

Feel free to send your favorite poem as a gift to others.

Here is the fabulous, unforgettable, all-time best love poem:

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from Sonnets from the Portuguese

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Categories Personal

Bill Gates: Why the United States Really Needs Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2014 //
270

The Gates Foundation spent nearly $200 million to pay for the writing, review, evaluation, dissemination, and promotion of the Common Core standards.

It is difficult to find a D.C.-based education organization that has not received millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation to promote the standards.

Bill Gates believes in the Common Core standards.

That is why he wrote this article to explain that they really were developed by parents, teachers, local governments, and others, not by four D.C.-based organizations that he funded.

He also wants you to know that Common Core will not mean more testing. He said so, so it must be so. It does not concern him that almost all testing will be done online by two federally-funded consortia, and the questions will be written by people who work for those organizations, not by the teachers who know the students best.

And he is not at all concerned that the standards were never field-tested, even though Microsoft would never launch a new product line without extensive field-testing.

Nor does it bother him that whenever the standards have been tested, passing rates drop by 30% or so, and most kids are told they have failed.

Nor does he comment on the unusually high failure rate of English learners, students with disabilities, and students of color. Consistency matters!

Do you agree with Bill Gates?

Will common standards produce more or less creativity?

 

Categories Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Ed Berger: One of Our Champions is “Going Dark”

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2014 //
13

Ed Berger, one of social media’s eloquent voices and a champion of free public education, has decided to sign off…at least for now.

As he explains in this post, he is “going dark.”

He and his wife are going to Mexico for a few weeks, and he is at least temporarily dropping out of the blogosphere, perhaps to write a book of historical fiction.

This is what Ed Berger believes:

I believe in free education for all. I do not believe in schools for profit. I am dead-set against public tax dollars going to religions for inculcation. I abhor the takeover of our schools to push political ideologies. The awful idea that corporations can run schools is ludicrous. I believe that if democratically elected school boards are bypassed, or fail to function well, children are deprived of access to the American Dream.

I spent over 5 years researching and writing, Vital Lies: The Irrelevance Of Our Schools In The Information Age. It is about where we are, how we got this way, and where we need to go. I have focused on the pulse of America and find that the so-called education reform movement does not represent the interests or the needs of students or our society. The primary drive that motivates “education reform” is access to the education tax dollars citizens pay. They are for profit, not for kids.

We need Ed Berger, and he knows it. Something tells me he won’t be silent for long.

Fighting for what is right is in his blood. I predict he will be back.

Take a break, Ed. Rest up. We look forward to hearing your voice again.

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »