A teacher describes the incessant arrival and departure of vendors, each with a different program and remedies:
“From what I noticed as a teacher, the extra money given to the low performing schools was used to pay VENDORS. Our school district paid some company to come in and “help” the teachers. The guy walked around a lot, then hired people from all over the US. My “helper” came to MI all the way from Vermont. She probably made more than me and her plane fare and hotel was paid.
We got a new Algebra program called Carnegie. I went to training for 2 weeks and then once a month. After two years, all the trained teachers were gone. I was the only one left. Then that was abandoned and we got the TI-inspire calculators. I was trained on that and loved it. After all the training, they sent me to an elementary school. I noticed the teacher had the calculators but not the laptop and router that is part of it.
“Now they had me teaching reading and we had 2-3 reading programs going on at once and vendors running all over the schools having meetings. We bought thousands of books and then the school was taken over by the EAA. (Check that state school takeover out).
“My point is that the vendors are making promises and they get money and the kids are the guinea pigs.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Too many chiefs and not enough indians.
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Yes, this is true. The RttT moneyvwr got was for training. We had all these presentations, often with really inadequate materials, excuses, and partial info. We had limited time. We had promises of follow up. It never happened. And professional development was self taught except for a local teacher who retired and returned to train us in CORE for ELA. She really gave us insights and reading assignments to digest. She provided so much good information that we couldn’t grasp all of it in the few meeting we had. And…we didn’t even know at the time what “core” meant. It was before we’d seen the standards at all. Back in 2007. But in any case we are sure those “trainers” made more than we did and we never learned any thing we didn’t teach ourselves.
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When it comes to these vendors, it always seems like we got TROUBLE!!! Right here in River City!
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Ron,
Which River City?
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I teach third grade in NC. We have mClass assessing (Amplify) to do on K-3 students. We also have those dreaded passages to give to third graders. We have the Read to Achieve Law that says students need to pass the EOG. If they don’t pass, they must go to summer school, though the legislators are calling it summer camp to make it more appealing I suppose? I don’t know why I was surprised to receive an email from Amplify last week telling me to “make the most of my NC Summer Reading Camp with Amplify.” They have “designed a program specifically to make the most of my NC Summer Reading Camp, with products and services that provide assessment, tailored instruction, intervention and learning experiences that challenge and engage!” With them I can “identify high-risk students, intervene with instruction they need and boost all students’ NC standards-based (ie, Common Core) summer portfolios!” I wanted to throw up!!! NC accepted RttT money which is how the RtA law got started and it has snowballed from there!!! My colleagues and I just want to teach!
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Attended 4 days of Readers Workshop last summer for clock hours only. The district person at the registration table claimed that we teachers could not be paid because of the great expense of bringing out the trainers. Her attitude seemed to convey that we teachers should be grateful that the district shipped those people out all the way from the east to provide this training for us and we were to get clock hours, too. You know we had to pay for the clock hours ourselves.
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Yes. Same here. They “get more bang for the few bucks” when they pay trainers..who don’t know what they are doing.
Do you know we had training on programs that were for PCs aith nothing yet available for Macs. Our district has Macs. They said they were “working” on the Mac version.
Throw up your hands and scream!!!
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Reblogged this on 21st Century Theater.
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I think you make a good point about ‘vendors.’ I actually call them consultants, but they are also vendors in terms of how they get paid. State-level education planning groups want to improve the education at the classroom level, so they authorize funding for reforms; superintendents and principals translate these authorizations into reforms like EAA. The individual teachers who receive the training have to integrate their prior knowledge about what works with the new training formats. Sometimes, this works. You mentioned that after a short while the trained teachers left the school. I wonder if they were able to find better positions because of their training, or whether they left because they could not implement the new expectations. Here in NYC, we experience reforms every year and each school implements new reform programs regularly. One of the problems with vendors-consultants is the underlying understanding that a few teachers will receive the training and “turnkey” the training for the rest of the faculty. This does not work. The expectations for implementation are not the same for the trained teachers as for the teachers exposed to the trained teachers during the turnkey experience. Then, the result is that, if the program works, it only works for a few teachers and not for all. The students pick up on this inconsistency immediately and notice the inequality in teaching skills.
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Here in NYC under Bloomberg, we had consultants from Australia, of all places. Their company’s acronym was wittily named AUSSIE.
This is already a few years ago, and at the time they were said to be getting a thousand dollars a day, plus expenses. The woman who came to our school was utterly clueless, and an object of much head-shaking and eye-rolling, obtaining the professional respect of nobody.
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Yes we have had the Aussie consultants here in our mid-Hudson Valley (NY) District for the past three years. This is the last year of their contract. Most teachers that I have talked to think that the district is wasting its money and that being pulled out of their classrooms to meet with these ‘consultants’ is a waste of precious instructional time with their students. Unfortunately there is a rumor that the district may extend the contract for another year. The district would be wise to listen to the teachers before deciding to spend additional district monies on a resource that many teachers feel is waste of time and money.
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Many of them are modern-day snake oil salesmen. Vending slickly packaged “cures” that don’t work, they prey upon credulous school districts.
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In the Montessori community, people continue to question why Montessori education hasn’t been considered by the reformers, including John King who sends his children to Montessori school. The reason is because it is not profitable to vendors.
The Montessori curriculum is resistant to impulsive change from outside vendors/consultants selling their wares. Many materials are made by the teachers and the lessons are often based on group activities and experiments. We assess through observation and interaction with the students. There is no data to collect by anyone outside of the classroom or school. None of this creates a marketplace for companies looking for large, long-term profits.
If there was no profit to be made by large companies driving these “reforms,” Common Core would never have been created. The desire for profits created it and fuel it.
Children are being used to create data which is creating profits for these companies. If they did not produce data, wouldn’t it reduce the profits for many of these companies? Are these companies acting as the owners of education and the children, the unwilling and unpaid workers?
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I have found that when teachers care left with their own choices as to the art and craft and science of teaching, they build confidence in their teaching skills.
I agree that the motivation is to find a “program” that is divided to suit all students at call levels and to make profit for the vendors. Teachers are perpetually bombarded with pie: n the sky solutions …that never work.
We have our own backgrounds and personalities as well as skills beyond teaching math and science that we WANT to share with the kids. When we are limited by the expectation that “no matter where a student goes to school he/she should be able to walk in equally prepared”…we are limited in our creativity and in helping them with theirs.
I think this almost lockstep version of teaching/learning is what turns off traditional teachers.
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Deb, I like your post. There are limitations to the expectations of vendors or professional development. In 30 years of teaching science, I have never met a student who transferred in from another school or class in the middle of the year and could not discuss me what they learned in the other school/class. I know that curriculum is shared by all teachers. However, teaching methods are not commonly shared. I expect students to take notes and if they act shocked at my expectations because “I am the only teacher who…” I know something is wrong. Students should be taking notes in all of their classes. There are differences between teachers – each person has a personality and a style that is different. But there needs to be certain similarities and commonalities between teachers, for example, all teachers should assign homework everyday. There is a large disparity with this expectation, er, chancellor regulation, many teachers do not assign homework. The lack of consensus on simple factors like note-taking and homework gets magnified with other more serious expectations, like comprehension and the rate of comprehension or the asking of questions of peers during Think-Pair-Share.
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Amen. Same with Waldorf curriculum. Sad thing is that these curriculums are tried and true.
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That is what is frustrating. Just because deep pockets can falsely advertise that Pearson and CCSS and related products are “best for students” it doesn’t make it SO!!!
Tried and true isn’t profitable for public schools because to actually implement Montessori or Waldorph or Individually Guided Education would not be for a profit to these companies.
What all kids need is an education that actually fits their own needs. They need smaller class sizes, time to explore, time to observe, time to write down their thoughts, time to fly, and time to rest. They do not need time to test. It is a waste…
Or is it? If all corporations want is peons and yes men and women, then they can’t achieve that with free thinkers. If all some parents want is for their kids to hate science, then they had better home school. If all education is happens to be a set of standards aimed so high that most children won’t ever achieve, then maybe the CCSS and testing is the way to go.
After all, the goal seems to be short term employment then move on because they will make the pace so rapid that they will kill off the truly dedicated but aging practitioners.
I think their goal is profits, not true education.
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I would be interesting in hearing why Montessori and Waldorf are tried and true. Just a brief statement would be enough.
However, I absolutely disagree with statements that CCLS is too difficult. I would like to hear just one of the CCLS standards that is impossible.
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CCSS are grade inappropriate for elementary students.
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Please, can you cite just one standard that is inappropriate?
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Here is a Kindergarten standard:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.K.8 With prompting and support, identify the reasons an author gives to support points in a text.
If you know any 5 year olds you will know that this conversation will require A LOT of prompting and support from the teacher. Five year olds should be listening to beautiful fiction stories read to them by their teachers. They will pick up vocabulary and grammar just by listening –not dissecting the story, not discussing the author’s reasons for making a point in the informational text.
The standards require that elementary schools replace their great fiction stories with “informational texts” …..50% of the literature students are exposed to must be non-fiction. That in itself is a travesty. And at the high school level, the percentage of informational text must increase to 70%. So the great novels that deal with truth, beauty and goodness are removed from school. Our students are left with reports from the Federal Reserve or manuals to read as if someone who can read and understand Shakespeare would not be able to perform any boring career task that Bill Gates could come up with.
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Believe it or not, way back in the 80’s I was a Director of Childcare in a Homeless Shelter. I conducted a very simple lesson with a storybook and paint stands. After reading a story to the children with a bog book, I asked the children what it was about. I listened to their replies. Then I told them to paint it! After the painting, I asked them what it was and they told me. So I wrote what they told me on their painting. They did hundreds of paintings over the year.
When I taught a group of 6th graders, in the 1980’s, in a Special Education class who were assessed at the PPK reading and comprehension level with the Brigance Diagnostic Reading Assessment (an assesssment required for every SPED student pre and post). I had to utilize standards for beginning readers because my students were ELL and LD. I again did a similar exercise, among many other techniques to move them up to 2nd and 3rd grade levels, at a time when guided reading and phonics was overshadowed by whole language learning approach. Today, shared reading, guided reading and phonics are all combined with the whole language approach.
The focus on specific words and phrases and helping children to visualize by drawing their ideas and then labeling seems quite applicable to the standard you mentioned. Everyone recognizes that the CCLS is ambitious and requires knowledge and planning.
Everyday I ask myself before the students walk in, “How can I be more ambitious today.”
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What are you talking about? The child is supposed to identify the reasons an author chose to include certain points in an “informational text.” Inappropriate.
You are talking about reading a story and letting the child paint as a response which is appropriate.
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What is a reason? You seem to have a pre-determined notion of what is required. If you implement and practice by trial-and-error for a while, I think it is quite possible. You have taken the text out of context, informational text means that the student has to give a reason “from the text” so maybe you ask, “was that in the story?” or in the paragraph, or whatever text you are using. I simply gave an example from 40 years ago. Even then like today the distinction between decontextualized and contextualized was common parlance. What is your problem, are you unable to understand the gist. You have complicated the problem out of proportion.
The final point is simply that humans can understand whether or not their comprehension of text is reflected in words from that text or not. Can teachers with Masters Degrees do that? We are all wondering!
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You are misinformed. The requirement is that teachers must expose their students 50% of the time to non-fiction at the elementary level. That means reading books about the life cycle of a frog instead of “The Amazing Bone” by William Steig. There is nothing wrong with the frog book but to replace all that great fiction with it is a travesty. They will have plenty of time to research frogs when they are older….after they learn about what it means to be human.
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You said, “The standards require that elementary schools replace their great fiction stories with “informational texts” …..50% of the literature students are exposed to must be non-fiction. That in itself is a travesty. And at the high school level, the percentage of informational text must increase to 70%. So the great novels that deal with truth, beauty and goodness are removed from school.”
You are correct: the CCLS is a change from fiction to non-fiction. We disagree about this being a travesty. There is a world-wide change away from fiction, namely, literature, to the non-fiction article or essay form which includes biography. The complex text of the non-fiction treatise has to be addressed before the students reach college or they are overwhelmed. The key number one problem is that the students do not read and they do not read because the text is too complicated for them. The drop out rate for freshmen in college is sick. Therefore, the curriculum change is necessitated because our world has changed and we must prepare the student for it. The narrative structure of fiction is the problem. Our thinking must become more flexible to historical and scientific concepts which do not follow the narrative format.
Teachers of English, the “dominant” department in most schools are literally acting out against the CCLS for this very reason but state standards have long stipulated that English teachers or Communication Arts teachers were to address reading across the content areas. Literature is not eliminated, instead, the ‘denied’ standard has become prominent: teach to the content areas. The CCLS is not going away; it is a way to equalize education across the United States. The teachers have to adapt. Those who insist on teaching literature should teach it as an elective or teach it in college as an adjunct lecturer.
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Baloney.
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Sorry, I did not say that. Go back and reread whatever you read and restate, please!
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The real problem here is widespread misconception about what the CCSS actually SAY about the ratio of fiction to nonfiction.
Anyone who actually does a close reading of the CCSS will notice a footnote that explicitly states that the 70% nonfiction requirement outlined in the standards is for ALL subjects COMBINED.
Think about that. Almost every text read in a high school math, science, and history class will be non-fiction. I’m not sure how you’d factor in what was read in a foreign language class, to be honest. That leaves a few electives and English.
Assuming that a typical high school schedule includes one math, one science, one history, one foreign language, one elective, and one English course, it would be entirely possible for a high school English teacher to teach NOTHING BUT fiction in his/her class and for the CCSS mandate about 75% non-fiction texts to be met.
This should be a non-issue, and it would be if textbook publishers, administrators, and teachers actually read the CCSS. Unfortunately, what has happened is that too many in all three of these groups have failed to do so, and made terrible decisions about curriculum because of it.
I include my own school in this mess, because we have made such egregious decisions as eliminating American Literature as a course. It has been replaced by what I call McEnglish II — a course featuring almost nothing but non-fiction, which seems to be focused on business writing. Given that I have certification in ESL, I have retreated to teaching ESL courses in an effort to avoid this mess until some sense is regained.
Part of the problem is the top-down power structure that has been imposed over the years since NCLB, part is from the fact that many of the people who have been ensconced in power roles are not experienced educators (and, frankly, not particularly bright), and part (as I have already said) is that too many people have failed to actually read the CCSS thoroughly.
Even those who do actually read the standards and are able to point out what I explained above find themselves dealing with an unstoppable policy juggernaut that formed early on as a result of textbook publishers failing to read the CCSS and creating “CCSS compatible” textbooks with little to no fiction in them, administrators who also failed to read the CCSS buying these books and writing policy abolishing the bulk of fiction from the English classroom (even though the CCSS don’t actually mandate that), etc. What is an English teacher to do when given a crappy textbook with no fiction in it and told to stick to the curriculum, which includes little to no fiction? Even if you can get the young administrators in power to read the CCSS with you and understand what it actually mandates, policy has already been set, textbooks have already been bought, and it’s just too late.
Now as a parent of children in public school, this makes me really angry. I don’t want to see my own children denied the opportunity to experience classic American literature because a number of boneheads in power misread the standards. But that’s the situation I’m in — the situation my kids are in. And that really is tragic.
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Ron
The Pearson/PARCC/SBAC tests will ony evaluate the English teachers. Pardon them for trying to protect their careers. Math, science, SS, at this point have no accountability for teaching informational textx. Thats the ut of it.
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Please tell us more about how the English teachers will be evaluated. No other teachers will be evaluated?
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Every teacher is evaluated every year, hold on to your shirt. However, since the Common Core standards have only been created for English and Math so far those are the only subjects that have a corresponding test to go with the subject. Other teachers have formal observations of their own lessons in their own subject area which is part of what makes up the annual evaluation score. However, there are many cockamamie scenarios as to how the other portion of the score is arrived at. Some special teachers for instance teach art or music but how the students do on the English and/or math tests is also factored into their evaluation even if they don’t teach those subjects at all. Fair? Sensible? Accountability? Hardly.
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I have long felt that Foreign Language, Art, and Physical Education should dovetail with the standards of the other subjects. For example, Writing across the Curriculum, vocabulary development, test-based grading, homework etc. should be followed in some way by all teachers. I also believe that interdisciplinary courses, course alignments, and interconnected units are relevant especially if the teachers can agree on performance objectives. I would agree that this requires administrative acceptance or acknowledgement.
I understood that all Regents Exams in June 2014 were scheduled to include CCLS items; it has been rescheduled for June 2017. There are CCLS Standards for Science and Social Studies as well, I have been implementing them for 3 years as I belonged to a Pilot School.
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NYS Teacher, if the English teachers are actually being evaluated based on how close they came to teaching 70% nonfiction text, then (as I said) people didn’t properly read the CCSS.
I’m not defending the CCSS — I don’t like them and don’t want them for my kids — but one of the big REASONS I don’t like them is the fact that so many things have gone pear-shaped because we have set up a very top-down power structure and so many of the people at the top have been negligent in reading the actual standards. Some will use this fact to defend the CCSS — “It’s not the CCSS, it the way they’ve been implemented!” — but I think the botched implementation is an unavoidable result of the system we have set up.
In any event, my children deserve better. CCSS proponents are finding themselves up against parents more and more these days, and they are finding it much harder to demonize parents than it is to do the same to teachers.
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Ron
Just trying to explain why ELA has gone overboard on informational text material. They can’t count on math, science, and SS following the CCSS carefully enough. If I taught ELA and my job depended on Pearson test scores I would probably resign myself to do whatever it takes to prepare students for the tests. APPR/VAM has warped the whole system but the leverage that the reformers have is quite powerful.
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Isn’t the claim that the other teachers will fail to implement CCLS unsubstantiated? Why would you say this?
Typically, the English Dept teachers are the “dominant” teachers of a school and this is because English is the first part of a school that is looked at by observers and evaluators, e.g. reading scores. Also, English teachers seem to think they are the dominant teachers or department in their school and they often act that way. So one might come to think that they could influence the rest of the faculty to address CCLS since students’ scores will reflect the efforts of everyone. But, if the English teachers are rejecting the CCLS then they would have no relevant influence on the rest of the faculty which may lead to their own poor evaluations!
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In addition to this, the textbook companies have already aligned to that proportion whether it is a misunderstanding or not.
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Fred
The more you write the clearer it becomes that you have no idea how CCSS/RTTT/Pearson testing and associated APPR is being implemented. You are quite confused and it shows. Time to do your HW. And as long as you want to talk about unsubstantiated claims, why don’t you stop making so many. English is the dominant department in a school. Seriously?
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My condolences to your misunderstanding. But, thanks for revealing your depth of research. I am quite well informed of the CCLS but I will grant that I can always learn more and would love to hear your wisdom. I have deeply researched the research base for the CCLS; you may want to look as Resnick, McNeill, or Kuhn to understand the long historical trek these standards took to reach us.
But, your query goes the issue of departmental hierarchy. In education there are two key hierarchies: schools or institutions are ranked in a prestige hierarchy. For example, most people would recognize Yale or Harvard as near the top of the University hierarchy just as some people might rank Bronx HS of Science as near the top of NYC High School hierarchy. Of course this hierarchy changes from year to year similar to sport teams. The other more universal hierarchy that has longer lasting or stable hierarchical status is the departmental or subject matter hierarchy. Typically, it has been English, Math, Social Studies, and then Science. This is absolutely an arguable claim (there are probably some who will argue strenously that Phys-Ed is at the top!) but since the famous book by CP Snow, ‘Two Cultures,’ where English, (he used the term Humanities), was contrasted to Science and let out a torrent of commentary, the issue was set. The CCLS is arguably taking up this 55 year old issue by positing the predominance of Science over English, that is, the predominance of non-fiction over fiction. Perhaps you are aware that in the popular culture, fiction is still more interesting than non-fiction! Please keep in mind that math is a science, it is called Pure Science. Also, social studies or history and biography is clearly non-fiction. So, English teachers are now required to adapt to this policy change, no longer merely an arguable issue. This has in effect challenged the prestige of the English department or Literature or fiction and what we are feeling is their reaction but only as one part of the general reaction to the implementation of the CCLS. If you want to get philosophical, it is the change away from hermeneutics or interpretion towards causal explanation and the openness to argumentation. This means that one’s values are no longer one’s own but are matters of objectivity and evidence to which the modern citizen is expected to update, that is, change their ‘belief’ upon receipt of evidence. So now you will take up the torch and argue, won’t you, pleeese?
Surely, you must have a real explanation for the “reaction” to the CCLS.
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Are the students who opt out of testing given any alternative test or type of assessment to replace the standardized test? No. Does the student who opts out still have to participate in test prep lessons? Yes. Isn’t this proof that the intent of Common Core and the testing is not to help the students but to create a profitable marketplace?
If the schools are to be run as businesses, following best business practices, then shouldn’t the students have rights as workers? The students are producing data but not receiving a service in return for their work. Shouldn’t students be compensated for the data that they produce that create profits for certain companies?
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@MarianneGiannis… great points!
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I believe there are a number of charter schools that are Montessori schools
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There are only about 400 public Montessori schools (not sure how many of these are early childhood), but I’m really not talking about Montessori education or availability in this discussion. There have been discussions in the Montessori community about why Montessori hasn’t been considered as part of the “reforms.” My answer is that it is not profitable as I stated in the previous comments.
The bottom line is that these reforms are about creating a profitable marketplace for selling their products and support services and collecting data. You could argue that the companies selling products and services are being rightly compensated. Data is a product that is being produced by the students and is creating profits for certain companies. The students are not receiving services in return for their data. Shouldn’t the students be financially compensated for their product?
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It seems to me that if these public schools are Montessori charter schools, a Montessori education is very much part of the reform movement.
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You are still missing my point. The sole purpose of these reforms is profits and to create opportunities in a marketplace, at the expense of students. The profits are dependent upon the students producing a product: data. Never before in education have students created a product that has been used for profits by companies.
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Which “reforms ” are you speaking about? Usually they are all piled up together here.
If you count charter schools as part of reform, it seems to me hard to deny that Montessori schools are part of reform. You can do a search for Montessori charter schools if you are so inspired. These Montessori schools are all about profits?
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As far as the purpose of this blog, the charter schools to which people are objecting are those that take public dollars to funnel into a private corporation, giving perks to owners, avoiding CCSS and Pearson tests. They are advocating that non-charter public schools jump through hoops and prefer that they are run without accountability.
If this is what goes on in ant school, it is objectionable. If students aren’t allowed into a learning environment that is provided by tax dollars, and if the owners aren’t accountable, it is a for profit venture for the owners – with no apparent dedication to the noble cause of educating children. They pop up and close down. They answer to no one.
I do not believe that the Montessori or Waldorf schools are part if this heinous movement to undermine public education.
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Agree!
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I have rarely if ever seen posters here distinguish between “good” charter schools and “bad” charter schools. All, including Montessori, are condemned by the orthodox poster here.
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If you haven’t noticed that the discussion is about the current, new, and disruptive charter schooks taking public money for private profit, you must have been reading a different blog than the rest of us.
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Once again deb, what I have not seen is a distinction made between “good” charter schools and “bad” charter schools. The orthodox opinion here is that all charter schools are bad. I think that poster Doug Garnett’s statement that there is not enough of a difference between traditional zoned public schools and Montessori schools as being relatively insignificant sums up the orthodox view.
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I disagree. That is NOT the “orthodox opinion” here.
The reason this bligvexists is NOT to condemn or even criticize Montessori or Waldorf schools. Attend them to your heart’s content. No one cares.
The outcry is against the concerted efforts to undermine public schools, teachers, university courses, and traditional curricula, supplanting it with computerized learning, TFA trained “teachers”, taking public money away from public schools. That is not the role of M & W schools.
I don’t undestand why you insist on continuous clarification and steering the blog in some direction it never intends to go. There is a problem. It has nothing to do with the questionscypu continue to ask. That is for another blog.
I suggest you start a blog promoting your interests and concerns.
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Please point to a post or two by Dr. Ravitch that distinguishes between “good” and “bad” charter schools as alternatives for students to traditional public schools. How about a half dozen comments drawing a distinction between good and bad charters (my posts don’t count).
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You are welcome to reread them all. I haven’t the time. You can do this yourself. It is as obvious as the nose on your face. If you can’t distinguish, oh, well.
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I have been trying to get folks here to draw distinctions for over two years. I would have noticed some success if it existed.
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Hello. That is because you are trying to argue about something that is not going on. No one is CONCERNED about the takeover of public schools by M & W schools.
It isn’t the ISSUE. No one but you seems to get this scrambled in their minds.
Don’t create a problem that isn’t there!!!
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Marianne, we have gone around in circles trying to clarify that to which we ate objecting. For some reason, we are continuing, after all this time, to have to define the schools that are causing the undermining of public education even though most of us are quite aware of the longevity and success of Montessori and Waldorf schools. I don’t comprehend why the same questions are always surfacing.
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Teachingeconomist is often disingenuous in his remarks which makes one wonder about the purpose of his comments. Ignore them. They are meant to distract and derail the real conversation.
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I know. Been there. Done that.
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They are meant to point out poor arguments and inconsistencies, among other things. In the two+ years of reading and posting here! this is the first evidence of a Montessori exception to the all charter schools must be closed position. I take it as progress, but to claim it has always been the case is a revisionist history that simply can not work in these days of digital record keeping.
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Perhaps a regulation that required all charter schools to be Montessori, Waldorf, progressive, or some other officially recognized specialized approach to education.
Would such a regulation change the orthodox opinion on the blog to support charter schools as a legitimate public school or would the majority still object at this “siphoning” of resources from traditional zoned public schools?
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Possibly. IF they were not selective. If they had all types of students. If they did not take public money for private profit. If they had the same accountability. If they didn’t aim to remove experienced teachers to replace them with TFA inexperienced teachers. If they weren’t funded by Gates and beholden to Pearson. And these schools don’t do those things.
However, if a private corporation took them over with the intent of siphoning off public money for private profits, even they would not be a good thing.
If their methods and ideas were used in public schools as part of the routine pedagogy, fine. But not everyone has that training. Ifvot were to be spread widely and embraced, it wouldn’t be a BAD thing.
I think that traditional education itself has been caught up in a competitive game that has touted certain expectations for grading, etc, in order to feed into the university scholarship and academic programs. Funny thing, though, colleges and universities have never gotten all impressed with the Ohio Academic Assessment.
It is like Big Deal. Who and what are we wasting this money on? Why are teachers so stressed? Why is morale so low?
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It is good to see this support for a variety of schools. If this position gains some traction here, the families involved in the good charters might make common cause with the activists on this blog. So far, the rhetoric here has condemned all charter schools.
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No. It has not.
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The morale is low because the administrators are pressuring teachers to improve student performance and achievement and students are resisting. The system is supposed to work when administrators and teachers and parents cooperate to address the students’ resistance, but for some odd reason the stakeholders are at each other’s throats, AND teachers have failed to form faculty-wide coalitions to keep each other informed and to watch each other’s back in relation to student “snipers.” Teachers have splintered interests often forming up into either departmental groups or ethnic and gender groups, or sexual orientation groupings which vie against each other for teacher identity politics. It also does not help when several teachers in any given faculty fail to address curricula, or free ride on the hard work of others. Getting student Regents ready is parallel to getting recruits combat ready, no easy feat especially when you know that many will fail! But, getting Regents ready in the inevitable CCLS expectable environment is necessary to getting into college and that is the real nub of the CCLS curriculum – make students college ready – all students!
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I only know what happens in elementary schools. And we didn’t have those circumstances. We just had an administration straight from Hades.
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Here is what I find objectionable: I can’t stand it when administrators are not clear about their expectations. But, if I make a mistake, and I do, I simply try to correct it as quickly as possible. For the most part, I got along with my administrators, but they are administrators so I always had to be deferent, it was a question of levels of authority to me. I always resent unauthorized commands, especially from colleagues who should treat each other as equals in that no colleague has any right to give orders to another colleague. So, my experience was that colleagues were unprofessional and engaged in harassment. I have had belligerent administrators and gotten down to business with them.
So, when you say, administrators from Hades, I wonder what you really mean.
I have been union rep and I have been aware of teachers who were hounded by administrators, but these were cases in which the teacher was egregiously derelict in their teaching duties. In fact, I am surprised that some teachers have yet to be drummed out because they are absolutely incompetent and unprofessional. I think this is one of the major complaints today about educators is that the rotten apples and bad eggs have not been removed when cause has been demonstrated!!
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Montessori and Waldorf hardly constitute the bane of the Public School system. There are very many private schools which all easily surpass most urban public schools. The problem with public schools may be the unions, the charter schools, or the quality of the school. The problem could be race but private schools (charter schools are still public schools) do not seem to have that problem.
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The problem is: public money paying for privately owned and operated charter schools.
This blog has never been referring you private schools operated with private money.
That is not the issue.
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This is exactly my point . Montessori charter schools ARE getting “public money paying for privately owned and operated charter schools.”
You include them as part of the problem with your post.
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Please try to understand this: charter schools are all public schools paid for with public funds, some receive grant money from private corporations, similarly to magnet schools which receive money from the Federal government. If a school does not receive public money, it is a private school. No private schools receive public funding. The whopping difference between a public school and a charter school is not its publicness, they both get funds from their state, it is the organizational structure. Charter schools are Union Free which does not mean that the teachers are unionless, it means that of they want to join a union they must do it individually, the administration does not have to recognize union requisitions of union dues. But, principals are hiring on the basis of whether the teacher agrees to the obligations stipulated by the charter, not by the Union agreement. So in a 3012 arbitration hearing, a teacher can certainly request a union rep as advisor, or their own lawyer, or whoever, but the charter school administration did not sign any bargain with a union.
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Perhaps you could point to the nuanced arguments that distinguish between good and bad charters.
The bad charters skim by requiring students to register for lotteries in cities like New York. The good Montessori charters do something else when more students want to attend than there are seats available. The bad charters are funded by money stolen from public schools. The good Montessori charters are funded some other way, perhaps bake sales. The bad charter schools are not responsible to the locally elected school boards. The good Montessori charter schools are…..
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Okay…we know that.
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So point me to the arguments here that distinguish between good and bad charter schools. I will be the first to support that position.
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You can read through all the comments and all the posts from Diane. If you don’t comprehend the intent here, I haven’t the time to assist you. You have been around here as long as ant of us have. Enjoy your search.
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Charter schools are accountable to the student’s parents. And, charter schools do so have to take CCSS tests, even though none have been administered yet.
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Charter schools are NOT accountable to student’s parents. They do not hold board meetings to which parents are invited. They do not take parent input into account for any decisions that they make. Even if they are so called non-profit, they pay their administrators huge amounts of money and they have all kinds of extra administrative positions to pay out “legitimate” expenses to maintain non-profit status.
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Apparently, you think accountable is related to a budgetary concern. Parents elect to send their students to the charter and they can easily rescind this choice. That means that the school is accountable or they will leave.
As a side not, consider the high rate of transience from school to school by parents who are constantly changing schools. I hardly recognize the freshman class in the senior class, in fact, I see no similarlity because the senior class is mostly students who have transferred in?
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Some.
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The reforms that I am referring to is the Common Core curriculum, support services, testing and data companies. Montessori education is not owned by anyone or any company unlike the for-profit charter schools. I am not sure why public Montessori schools are sometimes charter schools while others are not. Because of the curriculum, practices, and philosophy of Montessori, it is less likely to create profits for big companies.
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I, for one, do oppose all charter schools. There are some that do well. But..
1. In general charters hurt the education of the masses so that the few can get the charter experience.
2. Those that offer good things don’t offer anything dramatically enough better to justify the educational system resources distracted from critical areas.
It’s a pragmatic opinion: Ed resources are so scarce we should only put them where they deliver the most societal value…and that’s not charters (nor is it Common Core).
My opinion.
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I think your opposition to all charter schools is the orthodox opinion here.
Most of the reasons given to oppose charter schools apply with equal if not greater force to magnet schools, especially qualified admission magnet schools. Schools like Thomas Jefferson High in Fairfax County also take funds from the many and pile them on the few. Do you also oppose those schools?
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Doug, You seem to acknowledge that charter schools are effective but you fail to mention why they are more effective. If charter schools and the CCLS ‘eat up scarce resources’ would you please tell us why and also where the resources should be committed?
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I think you misunderstand. There are a few that return good results. And there are many public schools that return good results. The money is better used focused where it has the best result – in public schools…to control class size, offer opportunity, and support the teachers who are the critical link to our kids’ education.
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I agree, absolutely.
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I might be wrong, but one of the key factors substantiating charter schools is the smaller class size. Some people seem to think that the only way to get to smaller class size is through the charter route, but the hit is in the TIME that teachers must expend teaching and preparing and developing their profession.
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Primarily, from what I read, charter numbers are often better because they recruit the better test taking students. Without giving a better education, they create the appearance of exceptionalism. What CEO and marketing guy wouldn’t leap at that opportunity?
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Yes. We have magnets in our district. And watching the results, the community would be better served without those schools. In fact, kids in mainstream schools are getting the better education.
BTW, while this may be orthodox opinion here, it is the radical opinion in society at large where acceptance of mythology like charter and magnet schools has reached nearly religious reverence.
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As the parent of two children with IEPs, I can see value in magnet programs, especially for my gifted child. He would have had a much better time had he been able to take appropriate courses in the high school building with some peers.
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I also have a child on an IEP. In our district, there are superb programs within the mainstream schools. They are nonexistent in the magnets which pander to the theory that kids should specialize at age 13. Yikes.
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My middle son began taking graduate courses at 16. The daughter of a friend was admitted to the graduate math program at Stanford straight from high school (she had nearly a half dozen graduate math classes under her belt by the time she graduated from high school). Would the programs in your high school have been appropriate for these two students? That’s two students in ten years from our little 10,000 student school district. How many more must there be in a district like LA Unified with its nearly 700,000 students?
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Sounds to me like that’s what colleges are for – and I have no problem with students taking college courses early. In LA unified under your suggestion? A total of 70 kids out of a population of 10 million. Why spend school resources to create a unique scool when college already exists?
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Correct!
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The two students where the ones taking graduate mathematics classes. There are many more taking undergraduate classes while still in high school. Here is the math offerings at Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax Virginia, a magnet school:
Advanced Geometry w/Discrete Math
Advanced Algebra 2 w/Trig & Data Analysis
Advanced Precalculus
AP Calculus AB
AP Calculus BC
Advanced Topics in Calculus
Multivariable Calculus (fall)
Complex Variables (fall, odd years)
Numerical Analysis (fall, even years)
Advanced Mathematical Techniques (spring)
Linear Algebra (spring)
Differential Equations (spring)
AP Statistics
Mathematics of Finance
Is it sensible to replicate this curriculum at every high school in a district?
In my college town, it probably make sense to send these students to the university rather than offer them those classes at the high school. It is helpful that the high school graduation requirements are minimal, as the university courses do not count towards high school graduation. That will not be the case everywhere, however. I suppose you might just send students to college early, but having 15 year olds in residence at a college creates its own problems.
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As a society, we have to decide how important each situation is. In general, I have not found that intellectual brilliance connects to success in life. But that crosses us into such new territory I don’t think this is the place to discuss.
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Agreed.
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If you are going to use likely success in life as your criteria to allocate educational resources, I think that gifted eduction is the wrong end of the academic ability spectrum to start with. This is an interesting but very controversial approach . I hope you will flesh it out a bit more.
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???? To whom are you speaking???
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deb,
I am replying to Doug Garnett post on March 3, 2014 at 1:00 am. Had I replied directly to his post, my response would have appeared between his post and your one word post “Agreed.” My concern was that it would appear you were agreeing with my post, not his, so I chose to put my post below yours.
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When that happens it is helpful to simply address the person by name to help with confusion.
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I agree. That is why I was careful not to place my post above yours so it would not appear that you were agreeing with my post, but agreeing to Doug Garnett’s post.
To the degree that you were agreeing with his post, however, my comment applies both to Doug Garnett’s post and to yours.
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And, so, business now brings to schools the Curse of the Consultant – where management has wasted for a couple of decades vast sums on highly paid outsiders who return exceptionally little value.
These consultants claim to have all the answers…just like educational reform edupreneurs.
And, just as in business, it turns out most don’t offer anything although some are quite helpful. Unfortunately the parasites far outnumber the valuable consultants – yet just enough good ones exist that we can’t stop using them.
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TeachingEconomist-
The problem with the Charter Movement is not any individual charter school. The problem is the system of charter schools. So while anyone on this blog would be happy to agree that a Montessori Charter School could be effective, that individual school is not really the issue.
It is important to think of all policy debates on a systems and national level. The differentiation between “good” and “bad” charter schools doesn’t really matter. The overall national/statewide trends that come from charter school implementation is what people on this blog oppose.
I am sure you can grasp this concept, as an “economist.” I am not sure why you continue to use individual anecdotal evidence to try to disprove claims made about a system.
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Excellent point, GS. And it makes the charter issue tricky. A policy should never be evaluated based on anecdote. Anecdotes offer interesting insight, but policy can only be evaluated on research looking at large sets.
The net our on charters seems to be that a few are really good, a lot are entirely mediocre, and a few are absolutely horrid.
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I am curious about how you evaluate the distribution of traditional public schools after working at that system for the last 100 years or so (I put 100 years, but I am not sure that is the right time frame given the massive change to public education with increased inclusion of students of color and accommodation of students with a variety of learning challenges. Feel free to substitute a different number of years if you think it appropriate)
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TeachingEconomist… Fair question. But let’s remember that the charters are the one’s claiming amazing educational miracles at a fraction of the cost. And they are doing that to profiteer from government spending – just like war profiteering.
From what I can see, traditional public schools are pretty damn good at doing the job they are asked to do. And they do it quite cost effectively – there’s been no magic pill of cost savings found in all this hoo-hah about educational reform.
Does each public school continue to need to evaluate itself, be challenged by parents, and continue to evolve with society (including technology)? Absolutely. And they are doing it (despite all the protestations claiming they aren’t) — even the vast majority those “horrible union people” care deeply about getting better. They deserve that respect.
So my sense on public schools is that some are outstanding, most are excellent at doing the job we ask of them, and there are probably a few that are weak. But we don’t find the horrors that are found in charters.
The variation in public schools seems to be on the teacher by teacher & principal by principal level. We’ve had some teachers for our kids that were real losers. But they also surrounded by a district support network so that when we sorted out how bad they were we got action to deliver what our kids needed.
That support network is exceptionally weak at private and charter schools – a major educational loss.
You mention 100 years. But this is what strikes me as absurd among educational deformers is that they don’tt get that the search in education is thousands of years old. And the huge jumps occurred with people like Socrates. Education is so thoroughly considered that there is NO REASON we should expect a “magic pill” that will solve everything. Tech? It’s just a way to automate some things that can be helpful. No magic pill.
Education has been so well understood and developed that we’re tweaking – not re-inventing. Sadly, each generation has to rediscover this reality after the enthusiasm of young professionals decides everybody before them must have done it all wrong. Eventually, the wise educators discover the wisdom of past generations…but not before some of them have screwed up some kids with gimmicky theories like what charters have become.
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When the first charters began, as I recall, the fear was that the unions would be dissolved and teacher seniority, tenure, and pensions among many other union benefits would also be dissolved. I think this is still the case. The key issue is between public charters and private charters. If public charters are permitted, then the State is in effect denying teachers tenure and dissolving the unions. The State could of course simply privatize education and get out of the business of educating, but this would contradict the State Constitutions, which btw in NYS there is a State Constitutional Convention in 2017. So, if the State continues to provide education, the teachers would have the right to organize into Unions. It could be that public charter school teachers will organize into Unions and reject their ‘agreements’ not to unionize, which is how they are hired. Somewhere down the line is a legal fight over academic freedom which was covered by tenure.
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GS. If you figure out how to communicate well with TE, let us know. Most of us have been exhausted by answering anecdotal questions and thinking a topic was sufficiently covered and ready to move forward to the collective goal here. No such luck. The more one answers, the more questions ensue, taking away from the true needs of students throughout the nation. It seems so futile.
If we say the sky is blue, we must define the precise shade of blue and how many clouds are in the sky. Then we must identify the clouds and how much sun has been filtered through them for every possible situation. No answer is ever enough. Questions keep popping up. He should research the answers for himself. You know??
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I am sure that Pearson made a pretty penny when my Archdiocese adopted Pearson’s Scott Foresman Common Core Reading Street series this year and then brought in Pearson reps. to train us in using the series at the beginning of this school year.
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Please remember that the ultimate goal is to turn teaching into online learning with nothing more than a computer, a facilitator (to keep the computer working and the student in front of it) and a data input system. The Common Core’s purpose is the fail students and fail teachers and fail school districts which will close and become charter schools. Wall Street investors are counting on this. Read the excerpt from the great article Diane posted by Paul Horton:
“It has become increasingly clear to me that the Common Core is not about the Common Core and that CBS is not a news network, but a new mindset created by corporate honchos who want to exploit Computer Business Systems to deskill white collar professions to break unions and lower wages.
To the extent that teaching and the medical professions, for example, can be scripted and digitized in measurable units, efficiency targets can demand less human interaction and “time theft.”
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2014/02/paul_horton_why_the_common_cor.html
And Bill Gates has already turned his attention to turning college into an online experience as well. Notice the number of online programs now available at any college. It will be increasing soon. Teachers? Professors? Who needs them?
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I get sick when I look at all the CC material in our bldg.–from teacher eval PD to curriculum. What a waste of money.
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What a waste of opportunities missed.
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Check out White Hat Charters in Ohio. Check Gulen Charter schools.
They open and close. They don’t perform well. People get wealrhy. The kids don’t always stay. It is a racket. They deplete public school resources. They keep kids there until “count day” and then after that is over, kids return to public schools far far behind.
I don’t know where you live but it isn’t a good situation in Ohio. Or NYC. Or Chicago. Or NC. Etc.
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To justify and embrace the removal of great literature from our schools demonstrates incredible ignorance or a disingenuous attempt to steer the conversation towards the inane. Check out “Story Killers” if you truly do not understand the issue.
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Nice, this addresses a lot of the problems I have with CCSS as an English teacher.
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The dividing up of the public school carcass.
I understand that the application to “win” RttT funds was so peppered with contracts when submitted, that the $433 million barely made it out of the state capital cities but for all the vendor contracts to be honored.
That’s how it works. How can we fix that? These type practices are the ones that then influence what is happening to children in the classroom while companies make lots of money on the backs of children.
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Reblogged this on Middletown Voice.
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hahaha… I can laugh now, but, until I retired, I taught in a portable classroom, where termites would fly from the walls and I had to get rid of the smell of cat urine when I moved in.Yet, I had a smartboard, responders, laptop along with desk computer (T1 line plus wifi), and other electronic devices. However, once a device had problems (or needed batteries), well, things might not get fixed (I never did get a replacement hub for the one device I actually found extremely useful).
I was better off than my colleagues, one whose portable had mold, another whose portable had rotten flooring ready to cave in at the doorway, and then the ones who had no heat or cooling for much of the year (teachers complained, but it was only when a parent group complained, that the heat/cooler system was finally fixed). But, hey, we all had these electronics that were going to give us more points on tests!
At the last workshop I attended, the presenter certainly gave us some useful information, but when we asked her to help us with some specific problems, she drew a blank, not knowing how to respond. We told her, that we had 15 feeder schools, only three of which were in our district. She lowered her voice and informed us, “Oh, then I’m sorry, I cannot help you.” Then she quickly gathered up her materials and left. (I wondered why she couldn’t help us, until I discovered she was from an area with no out-of-district feeder schools.)
Yep. Lots of money out there to “fix” those poverty area schools.
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