After years of enacting reform after reform, and after years of defunding the public schools, Oklahoma legislators are stepping back and thinking twice what they have wrought.
It is not pretty.
They passed a law saying that third graders would be held back if they didn’t pass a test, but they are rethinking that.
They adopted the Common Core standards, but they are rethinking that.
They adopted A-F school grades, but they are rethinking that.
Imagine that.
A legislature wondering if they did the right thing and taking another look.
Let’s hope it is true.
Let’s hope they are asking themselves whether they are really qualified to tell educators how to do their jobs.
Maybe they should hire well-qualified teachers, set reasonable standards, and let the teachers teach.
And while they are at it, fund the schools so they can offer the arts, foreign languages, history, civics, science, physical education, libraries, a school nurse, a counselor, and the other services and programs that schools and students need.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Good luck, Oklahoma! Be the shining star example for the rest of the state legislatures in our country!
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I think it merely amounts to Obama being an easier and more publicized target than the unions. State’s rights, perhaps? No more big government? Wait for it.
Let’s see if they will replace or increase educational funding in their state budget and walk the talk.
I’m not holding my breath. Education is empowering and they don’t want that. They don’t want the poor or minorities thinking and bettering themselves half as bad as they want to take a cheap shot at the current administration.
They’ll naturally try to take credit for what the guerrilla fighters of this forum and the other women and men in the barbwire have been doing for years now.
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They are all clambering in the life raft of the sinking ‘Obamacare’ ship. Now they are sending out a flare for the U.S.S. C.C.S.S.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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Really courageous to buck the ed reform crowd and get rid of Jeb Bush’s dumb and reckless third grade reading guarantee idea:
“Thirteen states last year adopted laws that require schools to identify, intervene and, in many cases, retain students who fail a reading proficiency test by the end of third grade. Lawmakers in several other states and the District are debating similar measures.
“This is completely unsettling. I’m concerned about a number of those legislative initiatives,” said Shane Jimerson, a University of California at Santa Barbara professor who has studied retention for 20 years and found that, from a child’s perspective, being held back is as stressful as losing a parent.”
I didn’t know it was one of the main reasons Ritz beat Bennett:
“Tony Bennett, Indiana schools superintendent, lost his elected position in November to Glenda Ritz, a teacher who ran because she was angered by Bennett’s third-grade retention policy.
“It was the final straw,” said Ritz, adding that her state should emphasize reading as early as kindergarten and help struggling readers well before third grade. She wants to stop retaining children based on standardized test scores.
Bennett, meanwhile, became state education commissioner in Florida, where the third-grade retention policy has served as a model for other states.”
“The new approach began in earnest in 2002 in Florida under then-Gov. Jeb Bush (R), who promoted an education strategy that also featured private-school vouchers, data-based assessments for schools and teachers, charter schools and online learning.
After leaving office, Bush created the Foundation for Excellence in Education to promote his education policies across the country. The foundation, which reported more than $9 million in revenue and assets in 2011, has lobbied and provided technical and strategic help to state officials and lawmakers who want to adopt third-grade retention laws.”
Why is Jeb Bush’s lobby shop writing state law on third graders in 13 states? Ridiculous.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/more-states-requiring-third-graders-to-pass-reading-test-to-advance/2013/03/10/edcafb5e-76ec-11e2-aa12-e6cf1d31106b_print.html
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Jeb and GW are well…what can I say? They have NO CLUE, but still open their mouths, put feett in, and chew to knees.
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I spent some time in Oklahoma years ago. I met a lot of kind, thoughtful people who cared a lot about their kids. I hope this is so.
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Can someone wave a magic wand around NYS and make the same thing happen here???
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I wish!
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And Illinois. And Michigan. And Louisiana. And Florida. And Ohio. And North Carolina. And….
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Please, please let us restore common sense and get rid of the bs which is robbing our kids of a good, well rounded education and the fun of learning it!
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Having to primarily deal with the students “failing” the high stakes tests, the amount of pain and destruction our hapless, clueless, vindictive legislators of Ohio’s Caveman Caucas inflicts leaves me demoralized and seething each year. Now these politicians label me and other educators working with the most challenging students “ineffective”. Failures subjected to career blacklisting and public humiliation as some form of perverse retribution for their grievances against teachers and education. Dark times in the Buckeye State.
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horrible, MathVale. It’s always darkest. . . .
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Two large city districts (Rochester and Syracuse) have taken legal action regarding teacher evaluations. Court battles can be a slow go, but maybe you can get the same ball rolling in OH.
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Not sure how much rethinking is involved. In Indiana, pence is bloviating about our departure from common core and adoption of uncommonly high (non-defined) standards written, for the first time, by Hoosiers for Hoosiers (again, ignorance of history and prior process as Indiana has long had standards, rated by the raters of the right at fordham and achieve as the A standards, touted as benchmarks for other states, aligned and realigned with the tests, and aligned with NAEP and TIMSS and actually written by real teachers, parents, business, higher ed, teacher prep, etc etc) but his very own outside reviewers are now pouncing saying these are nothing but messed up and rebranded common core standards. He had to have his spokesman call the gov of Utah a liar cause that fellow said that the standards adopted after revision were the same rose by a different name. I suspect that is the case in Ok, just rebranding as their base got upset over the gubmint intervention from the white house and that man in their white house.
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The governor of Utah said that? Excellent! I may have to write him a letter. Of course, he knows whereof he speaks, since Utah has done the rebranding thing, too.
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They are all following the Reverend Mike Husterbee’s advice about that:
Lie about it. Call them by a different name. Call them the Over the Florida Skyway Sunny Side Up Standards, or whatever.
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cx: That would be the Reverend Mike Hucksterbee.
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Yes he did as reported in the Indianapolis Star.
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Dark times in the Buckeye state indeed. After 25 years of teaching I often feel like I am in the Twilight Zone as we implement OTES. I vacillate between anger and despair. The people on this blog keep me fighting for our kids.
So yes, please wave that magic wand over Ohio. In the meantime, Go Oklahoma!!!
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The promise of jobs, resulting from reformed schools, is the weakest link in the narrative. For each 1% increase in GDP, approximately one million jobs are created. The financial sector wasted 2% of GDP and continues to drag on the nation’s economy.
The legislatures should make the stakes interesting for Bill Gates and his cronies.
If hedge fund managers and Pearson/Microsoft want profits from redesigns, force them to guarantee jobs, with money in escrow. If they don’t deliver on the promise of a significant number of high paying jobs, they forfeit the money.
It’s convenient to gamble with taxpayers’ money, make the reformers gamble with their own money.
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Bound to happen, I hope. Anything else feels unAmerican.
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I mean fixing it. And realizing the errors.
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Perhaps their crying and miserable children have made an impression on them. And the multitude of parents complaining that their kids are unhappy at school. I harken back to Rabindranath Tagore, the great noble prize winning Indian poet who had a school in India where kids from 0-10 simply explored the natural beauty of the outside world and did projects around nature under the trees and only started reading and more academic pursuits around 10 when they really wanted to. They learned like lightening absorbing it naturally when ready and not turned off from years of unnatural pressure as they stared out the window of schoolroom longing to roam free. They roamed free and were the better off for it. I know this is ideal but pressure so early is what destroys a child’s love of learning and even his nervous system and faith in himself.. We who have taught all know kids blossom in their own time not to any standard set by an arbitrary governing body more interested in politics and money than kids.
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Our goal is to create intrinsically motivated, life-long, independent learners. Extrinsic punishment and reward (as via these tests) undermines that AND has been definitively shown to be demotivating for tasks involving even the slightest cognitive activity (as opposed to purely physical activity).
The whole theory on which Ed Deform is based is so terribly, terribly, tragically wrong.
Utter fools in charge.
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Your post is very moving, Julie, for it gets at the tragic cost of this Ed Deform approach. Many millions of kids will be seriously damaged by this. It’s a crime of epic proportions.
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Excellence in Ed @ExcelinEd 20h
“Early childhood literacy coupled with ending social promotion in 3rd grade if a child is functionally illiterate is critical” #edinnovation
Jeb Bush’s lobby shop continues to promote Third Grade Reading Guarantee gimmick. It goes by different names depending on the state but it’s the same law.
There should be a formal complaint a citizen can file when lawmakers in a statehouse copy and paste boilerplate legislation promoted by national ed reform celebrities and lobbyists
We can hold hearings: “Did you draft this, personally? Why? What does it say?”
If they quote Jeb Bush, Tom Friedman or the guy who owns Netflix they have to go back to work, re-draft and defend it again in their OWN words 🙂
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Excellence in Ed @ExcelinEd 20h
Interested in hearing more about A-F grading system @JebBush highlighted @asugsvsummit?
Every single one of these ideas comes from Jeb Bush’s national lobby shop. How is this “innovative”? They take this same set of “reforms” and plunk them down whole in every state in the country. Did people really sign to on to making every state Florida? I didn’t.
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Janet Barresi (one of Jeb’s Chief for Change) will probably lose at the polls this year. It’s going to be interesting to see how many Chiefs for Change will be left after November. Jeb’s whole edu-empire will probably collaspe before 2016. There will be No Bush Left Behind or No Bush Left to Hide Behind.
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Let’s hope Race to the Trough is also gone along with CCSS and high-stakes testing, which enrich the top 1% at the expense of the rest of us.
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“Race to the Trough.” Priceless.
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