A teacher describes a new start up–open the link and see if you can find a teacher in the lineup of leaders–funded by Rupert Murdoch and aligned with the Common Core. Thar’s gold in them thar hills!
She writes:
“You probably know about this outfit already, but take a look at the team members of Teach Boost. Quite telling. I am enraged.
(By the way, we are not K-12 educators. We teach at-risk youth between 17-21 with the goal being passing the Test Assessing Secondary Completion (TASC) and college and career readiness. Of course, the test is Common Core-aligned, ensuring significant failure and dropout rates as we go forward.
Note in particular the connections to corporations, particularly Wireless Generation/Amplify:
https://teachboost.com/company/team
The TASC:
Diane Ravitch's blog 
All lost souls.
There is a picture of some students
waiting to throw themselves in front of a train.
Not good marketing.
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Tech Boost is another money grabbing tech company. La Verne Srinivasan is the only one of their “experts” that pretends to have experience in education, not as a teacher but as manager. Her linked-in profile says she is a Harvard-educated lawyer, had a chancellor role in NY. She is a job hopper with the exception of 10 years as legal eagle for BMG entertainment. Most are young numbercruchers from Wall Street and accounting firms.
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I’m amazed at how many people find ways to line up at the trough.
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Pigs are better and more humane.
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“TeachBoost is developed in full by a small and very dedicated team of former educators, programmers, and lifelong students, with love from New York, Philadelphia, and Seattle.”
I must have missed the “former educators” in the list of hip young experts. I may have missed something, but it didn’t appear they actually educate anyone. They are some sort of facilitators to make education more efficient. Such arrogance.
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Wondering why anyone would share their work on this site, as the company claims ownership of all work product. A bad deal for teachers.
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It is a bad deal.
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This is being promoted as a way to enhance communication between supervisors and teachers. What happened to talking? Oh, and the best part: Supervisors submit teachers’ observations, so you can log in to see if you measure up. Supposedly, it is only for your eyes . . . but a mere skimming of the past week’s news tells us just how flimsy that statement is.
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I can’t stand how these “educational tools” are marketed…ugh!
“TASC Test Assessing Secondary Completion™ is a state-of-the-art, affordable national high school equivalency assessment that assesses five subject areas including Reading, Writing, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies. It measures examinees’ levels of achievement relative to that of graduating high school seniors, and career and college readiness, as outlined by the Common Core State Standards.”
Let’s see…how should I market the tests I design for my own students?
“These classroom tests are instructionally driven. They ask students to respond based on what they have been directly taught in the classroom, by a real-live teacher. Painstakingly designed by an experienced teacher, the results yield specific information about what the students actually learned and what they still need to master. Test results can be obtained immediately and shared with students and parents. The cost of these tests will not pull educational funds away from other areas of critical need. In fact, they are included in the price of a teacher’s salary. If your public school district will retain experienced teachers, all your students can easily have access to these quality tests immediately. Visit the nearest classroom for more information.”
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It is exactly THIS kind of PR that needs to be done, by every teacher in the country! I would have thought it was included in the job requirements of the US Secretary of Education, but I would be VERY wrong! He absolutely HATES regular public school teachers.
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Anyone notice the SPIN? Tech Boost will just boost profits for Tech Boost. Yuck.
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Yes … Yucky … Icky … Disgusting!
So tried of this drain on public education!!!!
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Amplify pre-k assessment program:
“Brief tasks are automatically timed and scored to measure this child’s development in math, literacy and science.”
I can’t imagine how they measure pre-k “science”. Don’t tell me. I don’t wanna know 🙂
http://www.amplify.com/assessment/mclass-circle
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SENT THIS EMAIL TO ‘TEACHBOOST’ TODAY:
Just viewed your observational and teacher feedback/contact forms. I was not impressed. This is not collaboration but simple, old-fashioned, top-down management. How do I know this? I’m a former Special Forces NCO with combat experience, 20 years of teaching in a Title I district, and a doctorate in education leadership.
Collaboration is a team effort where the best opinion, by any team member, determines the method. There are no levels in collaboration; you don’t need three buttons (teacher, building admin, district admin)–you need one button for every faculty/admin member. When you divide people, you don’t value people.
Good luck. I’d be interested in what you, or your staff, has to say in response.
Dr. Charles Bickenheuser
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“. . . a doctorate in education leadership.”
Isn’t there an oxymoron (or two) in that phrase???
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Hi Duane . . . Two thoughts: (a) My doctoral study was in how students, teachers, and administrators dialogue in Title I schools in the bottom five percent of public schools in Washington State. What I discovered were wonderful, hard working students and faculty who, many times, did manage to learn in spite of the crazy NCLB demands. (b) If you are a teacher or a concerned parent it is an uncommon experience to make fun of another educator’s learning. To answer your question, No, ‘education leadership’ is not an oxymoron; educators do lead. My best advice is to say what you mean directly and then always be kind. While I was critical of the format of TeachBoost, I did not ‘put down’ the members of the TeachBoost team.
All the best . . .
Dr. B.
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Chas, Chuck or Charles (not sure which one you prefer),
My comments weren’t directed at you specifically and were/are not meant to be a personal “put down”. I haven’t read your dissertation so I can’t comment one way or another on its merits or lack thereof. Is there a link to your dissertation? I would be interested in reading it.
I just have a general beef with “educational leasership.” I started to notice back in the late 90s and early 00s that that term was being used more and more and the concept of a shared and collaborative approach to the running of schools was being denigrated. The concept of the “leader” “taking charge” of his/her (sic) school was and still is the hot new thing. I find that style of top down hierarchical governing of schools to be more than lacking, harmful actually, in attempting to improve the teaching and learning processes that occur on a daily basis in every school. I found administrators manipulating school improvement committees to do their bidding and shutting out true democratic notions of dialogue and cooperation.
My experiences with the vast majority of administrators leave a lot to be desired, especially those who fancy themselves to be “leaders”. It’s quite hard to say many “kind” things about that type of “leader” other than the teaching and learning process would be improved if they got out of the way and allowed the experts, the teachers, to do what is right by the students in the teaching and learning process.
Again, do not take my comments personally as they are not meant to be a personal attack. If they were, I think you would know.
And again if you have a link to your dissertation I would like to read it.
Take care,
Duane
.
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My husband was on the local school board for 12 years and also on the county vocational/technical school. He found that the conceptvod “leading from behind” produced the best results. That was the vo/tech philosophy. And it worked, providing high morale and cooperation amongst teachers and a highly successful vocational school.
Our local district has been successful, also. However, the 2 elementaries, middle and high schools have different “leadership” styles. Of course, the implementation of CCSS, the jump to inflict test based teacher evaluations, and the misguided use if VAM have all caused horrific morale problems and teachers have retired as quickly as possible.
This stress has wrecked the health of many. The young teachers have had no real voice and the union reps at one building have resigned due to lack of support from the teachers when the teachers stood up against a principal who is frightening, hateful, and unfair. The reps were her lap dogs and have long been a source of discontent.
When teachers have worked hard, produced great results, and are disrespected and abused by a non-leader, it is pathetic at best.
We teachers have always held our heads high to do the best for the kids , but trying to please the perpetrators of these inappropriate demands has been a knife in our hearts.
Testing for diagnostic and intervention needs is useful. Testing students on things they haven’t yet absorbed, reading instructions that are unfamiliar, being pressured to do well knowing they are facing ambiguity…it is simply child abuse.
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Hi Deb . . . Your comments match my experiences, and I agree with you about teachers leaving. This year a second year teacher in my building was worn out from the constant grading of “test prep” SBAC and PARCC practice tests. Some PLC teams have given, essentially, nothing but practice tests for the SBAC field tests since November. Six of eleven grade level teachers in my building have taught one to three years. In my district the turn-over rate is one of the highest in the state (and that data is from a state report).
All the best to you . . .
Charles
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Hi Duane . . . I’ve read your wordpress site, thefwordedu. Please tell me about you: Are you a teacher, and administrtator, an active or former ed student?
By the way, I’m a 20 year teacher in Title I schools; I’m only and wonderfully a teacher. I applied, twice, for an administrative internship but I was not even selected for an interview. From two combat tours with Special Forces, a unit with the best leadership/collaboration on the planet, I was hoping that my school district might see me a having leadership experience. Didn’t happen.
In combat units in general, from any of the services, the men and women are so well trained today and work so well together, that what passes for “leadership” in many school buildings and districts would be immediately seen as a joke.
My dissertation is a long read at about 244 pages; if you do read it, please let me know your thoughts on my inquiry.
And I go by Charles to my friends. So please call me Charles. All the best . . .
Here is the cite and ProQuest link to my dissertation:
Bickenheuser, C. (2013). The Lived Experience of Teachers and Administrators in Persistently Low Achieving Schools. n.p.: ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing.
ProQuest link > http://bit.ly/1lYri6B
And here is the abstract:
In 2010 Washington State’s persistently lowest performing public schools were identified and published by the superintendent of public instruction. However, no research has described the lived experiences of teachers and administrators who work in those schools. Guided by the combined frameworks of Van Manen and Moustakas, this qualitative study examined the lived experiences of 5 teachers and 5 administrators in the identified schools. Open-ended interviews with these staff were transcribed, reduced, coded, and analyzed for common thematic structures and essences to understand their lived experiences. Five thematic elements were identified in the data analysis: resiliency and agency; reflective teacher-student dialogue; lexical and neurological triggers; physical and emotional stress; and a continued effort to understand the impact of political, economic, social, and cultural values on teaching, learning, and testing. These key results of the study are significant for teachers, administrators, and policy-makers who want to support professional staff in low performing schools. The project, an online Journal of Title I Schools, facilitates positive social change through peer-reviewed papers, news stories and commentaries, and real-time social media collaboration which includes a student perspective. These outcomes will deepen the public’s knowledge of the challenges inherent in these educators’ experiences, and in turn, will further the support these educators need to enhance the learning of their students.
(end)
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Charles,
First congrats on your relatively new accomplishment of earning a doctorate!
I’m no stranger to long dissertations as the one I tout by Noel Wilson is about the same length, however I could not access yours as I have no access to the SFSU (San Fransisco/Fernando, Santa Fe State University???) library system. Is there another way to access it?
As far as your other questions I’ll answer in response to your other response so as to not “string bean” this response.
Duane
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Hi again Duane . . . Please forgive my typos in my last reply; and do let me know how you are connected to teaching.
Charles
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Charles,
We come to teaching from two very different life courses and, perhaps, perspectives.
I am in my 20th year of teaching also-high school Spanish 1-5 levels first 12 years in a suburban/rural district on the outskirts of St. Louis and now for the past 8 years in a rural poverty district (although most here wouldn’t consider it as a “poor” district-we get a good bang for our bucks overall-we spend around $8,000 per student which puts us right in the bottom 25% in Missouri-and needless to say our test scores are right at the 25 percentile which as far as the powers to be are concerned is not good). I didn’t start teaching until I was 38 so I have a fair amount of outside of education experiences including a little management experience. I am also a master upholsterer along with having a Masters in Education Administration and being a “Master Fisherman”-ha ha, at least for trout as defined, either a 24 incher or 6 pounder, by the Missouri Department of Conservation-one of the best in the world).
I too, attempted to get an administrative position-back in the late 90s and early 00s-but couldn’t get my “nose in the tent” mainly because I’m not one to “say what they want to hear”. About halfway through my doctoral program the university pulled my funding (earned through teaching Advanced Credit courses for them, should have hired a lawyer) and at that point I knew that I didn’t want to be a part of administering that new law NCLB and preferred to stay in the classroom working with the students. Of all the different jobs I’ve had I tell folks “teaching is the best job I’ve ever had, I really enjoy working with the kids.”
So there is brief “how I am connected to teaching”. If you would like to know more please feel free to email me at: dswacker@centurytel.net so as to not clog up Diane’s site with my particular life story of how I came to teaching Spanish and how I have come to my views and thoughts of the education realm. I don’t always check my email as often as I should, sometimes days going onto a week so if I don’t answer promptly don’t be surprised but I will respond eventually.
Duane
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Bring the joy back to education.
http://www.racetonowhere.com/replacing-race-irvington-high-school
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Obama Administration continues to push and promote charter schools:
http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/oii/2014/04/update-on-oiis-2014-grant-competitions/
I’m gonna start calling it the US Department of Privatization. It’s more accurate.
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US Dept of Fascism expansion
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All folks from the oligarchical class finishing schools–the big consulting firms
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So THAT is what “finishing” means…;-)
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LOL
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This is the crap our district spent 200K on.
http://www.goteachpoint.com/wordpress/
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I just started this at Petition2Congress. It is very easy to sign, copies are automatically sent to President Obama, and your own senators and your representatives. Please take the time to read and the petition entitled: STOP COMMON CORE TESTING. Thank you.
http://www.petition2congress.com/15080/stop-common-core-testing/?m=5265435
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I am a veteran New Jersey teacher, highly dedicated, with four children who graduated from North Hunterdon Regional, and who were accomplished students and athletes, with my youngest daughter Rebecca starring as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, the best high school production I have ever heard. My youngest son is a Lt. Col. in NJ Army National Guard, full time, and my oldest son is Vice-President of Hamburg, PA Teachers’ Association, a veteran teacher who has taught in Clinton Twp., NJ, Central Bucks, PA, Hellertown,PA, Nazareth, PA, and now Hamburg. I am well acquainted with public education, having taught 35 years at Somerville High and 4 more years at Emmaus High in Pennsylvania as a substitute teacher. I am supportive of good pay, good benefits, and good working conditions for our students and teachers. I am not supportive of politicizing education and brainwashing children with any ideology, whether right, center, or left. Rather I believe in students learning to read, write, communicate, think, work together and apart, study, etc. etc. Stop the brainwashing of children with leftwing ideology. Stop the federal, top-down control of our schools and our teachers, whose hands are tied and who are required to teach scripted lessons that preclude their innovative talent and creativity in the classroom. Please read my attached letter which addresses my concerns, and describes a recent conversation with NJEA President Wendell Steinhauer, who had the temerity and un-civility to hang up on me because he was unwilling and unable to answer my questions and discuss my concerns.
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12 April 2014
As a retired English teacher from Somerville, New Jersey, I must express my concerns about NJEA’s leadership. Over the years I have communicated with Presidents Barb Keshishian, Editors Steve Wollmer and Pat Rumaker, NJREA past President Roe Jankowski, and current President Wendell Steinhauer, who called me on Friday, 11 April 2014 (by coincidence my 50th wedding anniversary), some two weeks after I had attempted to receive a response from him via email or phone. Neither he nor anyone else had responded to my requests. Not liking my questions or my conservative ideas, and obviously not willing to listen, on Friday he hung up on me for absolutely no legitimate reason. Immediately I emailed him, explaining that in my 35 years of teaching at Somerville High, I had never hung up on a parent, even the most unreasonable, illogical, or angry parent. President Steinhauer maintains that NJEA’s publications are not designed for debate or discussion of issues, but rather exclusively for positing the views and policies of NJEA’s administration and delegate assembly representatives. No room is allowed for dissent. NJEA has become a de facto arm and voice of the Democratic Party. It sends out to NJREA member letters requesting donations so that NJEA reps can meet with candidates and “ask them the tough questions and decide which candidates’ positions and values earn them the support of NJEA’s 200,000 members.” Then those candidates, almost all of them Democrats, with token small distributions to people such as Thomas Kean, Jr., receive the PAC money.
The major fallacy is that an erroneous assumption is made that all 200,000 members share the same values, same moral principles, same educational philosophies, and same political persuasion. NJEA President Steinhauer and NJREA President Pat Provnick say in their PAC request, “… we need to be heard on issues that matter to you.” Really? Issues that matter to me? Then why, Mr. Steinhauer, do you hang up on me when I attempt to identify such “issues”? The latest issue of NJEA Review, in an article entitled “Demanding Course Correction,” cites case after case of New Jersey teachers who feel their voices are not being heard, teachers who proclaim that some of the best among them are leaving education because of the federal bureaucracy (much of it associated with federal programs like “No Child Left Behind,” “Race to the Top,” and now “Common Core,” which is permeated with liberal concepts and scripted lessons that water down standards, encourage mediocrity, and stifle teacher creativity and imagination). How absurd and how contradictory to everything education is supposed to be – a free investigation into all points of view, an allowance for and a forum for dissent and discussion, not a monolithic, unilateral, single-minded point of view such as endorsed by NJEA.
As an English teacher I never attempted to impose any point of view on my students. I provided them with editorials written by excellent writers of all political persuasions, from Cal Thomas to Ellen Goodman to William Raspberry et al. They could read what was written and discuss ideas among themselves and make their own judgments. NJEA and its President, Wendell Steinhauer, have the idea that being “united” as teachers means that all teachers should share the same mindset and same political persuasion and ideology (i.e. liberal, leftwing). To object to that ideology is viewed contemptuously by Steinhauer and virtually everyone in the NJEA administrative hierarchy. NJEA has a special provision for Ethnic Minorities, devoting many pages in their publications to their concerns. But what about other “minorities,” those who are Christians or conservatives or who have values totally contrary to the NJEA mainline, liberal position? No opportunity exists for their voices to be heard.
NJEA supports just about everything that the Democratic Party supports: gay marriage, facilitating citizenship for illegals, pro-choice and abortion rights, Obamacare and all its complexity and confusion and uncertainty, and apparently the repeated lies of Obama, Clinton, Lerner, Sibelius, Holder et al regarding Benghazi, Fast and Furious, illegal IRS probes, NSA invasion of privacy, and Obamacare itself. I had asked NJEA to publish a two-page spread explaining thoroughly why it supports Obamacare. NJREA made a feeble attempt to do so, offering two main reasons: (1) eliminating the lifetime cap on total insurance payout (a logical item), and (2) providing young people with the opportunity to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26 (counterintuitive to getting young people to sign up as a way of funding the program). Other than that, few if any arguments were made. Nothing was shown as to how Obamacare ultimately will be beneficial to teachers. NJEA, I believe, is afraid to really delve into Obamacare (Obama’s signature piece of legislation) and provide for their member all the pros and cons of this massive, unread, misunderstood law that nobody read before they passed it, and which has already been altered by executive decree more than thirty times by our power-obsessed President who says he can and will circumvent Congress, that he does not need Congress, that he has a pen and a phone and that is all he needs to issue executive orders. How ironic that NJEA, in an article published 24 March 2014, says that Governor Christie “takes a back seat to nobody” when it comes to breaking promises and breaking the law. I agree that Christie has done both, but he takes a seat way back from President Barack Obama, who has lied repeatedly to America’s citizens, who has broken the law far more often than Christie, and who has broken promises in a way that dwarfs Christie’s prevarication. But Obama is NJEA’s beloved and virtually infallible President who was endorsed for re-election a year before Republicans even had a candidate emerge from the primaries. Pretty revealing about where NJEA stands politically!
I am very unhappy with NJEA and its leaders, who are single-mindedly Democratic in their views, and expect their members, ALL of them, to be of the same mind. For a President of NJEA to hang up on a dues-paying member who is challenging him and expressing views contrary to his views, is rude, unprofessional, and shameful. He may have been a good math teacher (don’t know), and I would like to believe is well-intentioned, but I find him lacking in the character and open-mindedness I would expect from a professed “educator.” It is no wonder that well over half of New Jersey retired teachers choose not to belong to the union. I suggest that all union members, both active and retired, hold their leadership to the fire and ask what they are really getting for the almost $1,000 a year in NJEA, NEA, and county dues.
Sincerely,
David R. Bryan
2238 Haystack Way
Myrtle Beach, SC 29579
843-333-7676 (cell)
843-236-4335 (home)
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Ny Teacher: Your fine petition is signed, Tweeted, blogged, and posted on Facebook, on my page, and to two Stop The Common Core groups.
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