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Duncan Proves That Common Core Is a Federal Mandate by Threatening to Punish Indiana for Backing Out

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
44

Over the past few years, as almost every state adopted the Common Core standards, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan insisted they did so voluntarily. He insisted that the creation of the standards was “state-led” and that the federal government had nothing to do with it. No part of these statements was true. The states adopted the CC because they would not be eligible to compete for a share of nearly $5 billion in Race to the Top funding unless they did so. “State-led” meant that the Gates Foundation, which enjoys a close relationship with the US Department of Education, paid more than $200 million to create and evaluate CCSS, and as much as $2 billion to aid in their promotion, advocacy, and implementation.

It would be illegal for the US Department of Education to direct, supervise, or control curriculum or instruction, so Duncan has pretended he was an arms-length observer.

But he was not and is not.

Mercedes Schneider tells the story here of Duncan’s efforts to force Indiana to stick with standards that were allegedly “state-led” and that were not as good as the standards that Indiana previously had. On what legal authority does he have the right or power to tell a state what its academic standards should be? None.

When Indiana recently threatened to drop the Common Core, the US Department promptly sent out a letter threatening to withdraw the state’s waiver from NCLB, on grounds that Indiana had promised to adhere to high academic standards as a condition of getting the waiver.

The irony here is that Indiana already had superior academic standards prior to adopting the Common Core. Even the conservative policy group, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, rated Indiana’s academic standards as at least equal to, perhaps superior to, the Common Core.

Duncan likes to tell the media that “we are lying to our children.” In this case, to put it euphemistically, he is prevaricating to the public.

Categories Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Indiana

Patrick Walsh on the Death of Philosophy in a World of Philistines

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
22

Many bloggers have commented on the pretentiousness and vacuousness of the gaggle of politicians, entrepreneurs, and hedge funders who have gathered in the Adirondacks of New York and audaciously dubbed themselves the “thought leaders” of our time. They called their meeting “Camp Philos,” to claim association with such intellectual giants as Ralph Waldo Emerson. Their goal, they said, was to discuss “education reform,” but it is now generally understood that this term refers to the privatization and monetization of public education. They no doubt spoke of getting the nation’s children workforce-ready, prepared for global competition, primed to ace the next round of standardized tests.

What would Ralph Waldo Emerson say? Would he write about the convergence of crass values, of minds trained for profit making, of souls so devoid of ideals that they confuse commerce with philosophy?

Of everything I have read, whether humorous or serious yet, the best is the musings of a teacher named Patrick Walsh who writes the RagingHorse blog. I can give you but a sample of his critique of this circus of self-celebration and vulgar commercialism.

He writes:

“Needless to say, anyone who can convince themselves that they could place the words “Philosopher’s Camp “ before the words, “education reform” in the same breath they are comparing themselves with the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson is well nigh in need of a good teacher, a course in philosophy 101, or at the very least, a dictionary.

“On the other hand the event – which achieves a kind of horrible sublimity in its sheer vulgarity — is perfectly consistent with the tactics of the long stealth campaign to privatize the school system that built America. Of the privatizers many repugnant tactics, none is more more consistent, intrinsic nor effective than the conscious manipulation of language and images. In the way does a half assed experiment, hatched up in secret by shills and testing companies and financed by a billionaire come to be known as the miraculous Common Core State Standards, the are the answer to all that ills us, the solution to all problems. In this way does the almost Biblical struggle for Civil Rights come to be employed by the privatizer’s public relations department, as a tool to strip teachers of the right to due process and undermine unions. In this way does the word “philosophy”, one of the most transcendent and spiritually charged words in any language, come to be used in Lake Placid, as a fig leaf for yet the latest episode in most rapacious campaign against a public system in American history. The privatizers know little or nothing of education but they do know, as Orwell knew ( see “Politics and the English Language” ) that those who control the language control reality.

“Cuomo, coming off orchestrating what is surely the most egregiously unfair education law in the history of New York state, is the “honorary chairman” of the philosophical retreat. It troubles the philosophical Chairman Governor not at all that no educator was invited to Camp Philos, nor even that those who attempted to attend were summarily rejected, one and all.

“Still, even as I find the privatizers among the most cynical, ignorant and narcissistic people on the face of the earth, I must admit there is one place in which I agree with them, even as I radically disagree with their methods and ends.”

Walsh agrees that American education has failed in its duty to teach generations of students to appreciate the meaning of philosophy.

He writes:

“I would define the failure as philosophical in both nature and cause. Allow me to elaborate. Education is, in its essence, a philosophical endeavor. Yes, of course we need to insure that our citizens acquire enough practical skills so that they can navigate the always unknown road ahead. Yes, of course, it means that schools must do all they can to insure our students have the requisite skills to gain employment in an ever more frighteningly competitive world in which jobs are now routinely “out-sourced” or mechanized out of existence altogether. That said, education is not job training. Job training is a wonderful thing and a necessity but education serves a much larger, deeper, and more vital role, and that is where the philosophical element, directly or indirectly, enters into the picture.

“Accordingly, in the front and center of our education system should be some variations of the following questions:

“What, as a society, do we value ?

What kind of a people are we ?

What do we really believe in ?

Do we live our beliefs ?

What kind of citizens do we wish to produce ?

What does it mean to be educated ?

What, if anything, are our responsibilities to each other ?

How are we to live together ?

“Were it within my power to do so, I would immediately and unapologetically do all I could do to introduce the study of philosophy on some level beginning in the third grade, the age of my daughter as of this writing. And I would make it an essential part of the curriculum in every grade until high school graduation. Implicit with this undertaking would be the understanding that some may not grasp the meaning of the study for years if at all but all would benefit from the exposure.

“Children would begin with a study of the word: “philo,” which means “love. “Sophia,” which means “wisdom.” Let them spend a week, a month, a year — whatever it takes – discussing and attempting to grasp those two words alone and the concept of those together, and you cannot help but have a child with an imagination larger because it is more unleashed than before. Help a child understand that this thing called “wisdom” exists and is real and has been honored and revered by the civilized since the beginning of civilization, that it has nothing to do with the accumulation of material wealth, nothing to do with power over others, nothing to do with competition or control, and you have opened the portals of the mind. And you have done something else: you have given a child a way of seeing that affords he or she some mode of mental protection against a corporate assault that, for many, begins at the moment of consciousness. Worse, the assault is designed to wed that struggling to be formed identity with a product, now and forevermore.”

He writes:

“The study of philosophy would not merely make our children “college and career ready” ( whatever those weasel words actually mean), it would help them to understand this mystery called Life in all of its paradoxical, tragic and wondrous nature.

“We now live in a nation where most citizens seem to believe that the word “philosophy” is synonymous with “opinion.” We have all heard vulgar examples in statements such as “My philosophy is to hit a guy before he hits you” or some such foolishness. It is, I would argue, the absence of philosophical knowledge that has contributed to much of America’s horrible and dangerous confusion of technology with science, data with knowledge and knowledge with wisdom. Most of all has led to the groutesques idea that knowedge is power rather than liberation from the need for power.

“This is worse than sad.. No decent society, never mind democracy, can exist in this kind of mass confusion.
And, yes, many of these same people are products of the public school system and yes, that school system failed them. And it continues to fail them.

“When I have asked my students why they go to school and why they study, overwhelmingly they reply with some variation of “ to do well on the test.” This is sick but it is hardly an accident. But why should they think differently? It is, however, a crime. It is the crime of starving the imaginations of millions of children by sheer neglect. And it is a crime that the miraculous Common Core will not only not correct but will, in fact, perpetuate.

“I do not believe in magical thinking. (I leave that for the proponents of the Common Core) I am well aware that the study of philosophy will not automatically and magically open the doors of the imagination. Pre-Nazi Germany had the most rigorous school curriculum but it did little to stop millions from embracing Hitler. Something more is needed. That said, I know this: the absence of something as immense as philosophy can only diminish this nation. As I see it, the problem is ecological. By this I mean if you deprive a child of philosophical awareness you do not get child minus philosophy. You get someone radically different and radically weaker. You get a person whose imagination, the key to all, has been severely diminished.

“The purpose of education is not to be found in the vulgar slogan, “knowledge is power” but the absence of philosophy is one reason why that slogan is so readily swallowed in our increasingly competitive, miserable, punitive land. As philosophers and artists and spiritual geniuses have known for thousands of years, education is the emacipation of the human imagination. The purpose of education is freedom.”

I will not lift all the words of this brilliant blog. I want you to open the link and read it all yourself. These are not the words of a college professor or an eminent theologian, but a classroom teacher in one of the toughest neighborhoods of New York City.

Patrick Walsh is a teacher. He can pass the tests the politicians mandate. Can we say the same of the politicians whose forte is self-promotion?

Categories Corporate Reformers, Cuomo, Andrew, Privatization, Real Education

Teachers of Conscience Speak Out Against Market-Based Reforms

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
26

A group of teachers in New York City wrote an impassioned plea against the market-based reforms of the Bush-Obama era. It has since been signed by parents and educators from across the nation. It takes a strong position against high-stakes testing and the standardization of the Common Core. Read this letter and consider signing it.
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This is the beginning:

“We have patiently taught under the policies of market-based education reforms and have long since concluded that they constitute a subversion of the democratic ideals of public education. Policymakers have adopted the reforms of business leaders and economists without consideration for the diverse stakeholders whose participation is necessary for true democratic reform. We have neglected an important debate on the purpose and promise of public education while students have been subjected to years of experimental and shifting high-stakes tests with no proven correlation between those tests and future academic success. The tests have been routinely flawed in design and scoring, and do not meaningfully inform classroom instruction. Test scores have also been misapplied to the evaluation of teachers and schools, creating a climate of sanctions that is misguided and unsupportive.

“In your first speech as Chancellor, you spoke of the importance of critical thinking, or a “thinking curriculum” in education. We know you to be a proponent of critical pedagogy, part of the progressive education tradition. As teachers, we hold critical thinking and critical literacies in highest regard. As professionals, we resolve to not be passive consumers of education marketing or unthinking implementers of unproven policy reforms. We believe critical thinking, artistry, and democracy to be among the cornerstones of public education. We want creative, “thinking” students who are equipped to be the problem solvers of today and tomorrow; equipped to tackle our most vexing public problems: racial and economic disparity, discrimination, homelessness, hunger, violence, environmental degradation, public health, and all other problems foreseen and unforeseen. We want students to love learning and to be insatiable in their inquiries. However, it is a basic truism of classroom life and sound pedagogy that institutional policies should reflect the values and habits of mind we intend to impart on our students. It becomes incongruous, therefore, to charge our students to think critically and question, while burdening our schools with policies that frustrate teachers’ efforts to implement a “thinking curriculum,” perpetuating historic inequalities in public education.

“The “Crisis of Education” and a Crisis of Pedagogy

“Business leaders and economists have used reductive arguments to identify a “crisis of education” while branding educational success words such as achievement, effectiveness, and performance as synonymous with standardized test scores. The majority of education policy decisions are now guided by test scores, making standardized tests an indispensable product. Market-based reforms have been an excellent model of corporate demand creation–branding the disease and selling the cure. Stanford education professor Linda-Darling Hammond described policymakers’ mistaken reliance on standardized tests when she wrote, “There is a saying that American students are the most tested, and the least examined, of any in the world. We test students in the U.S. far more than any other nation, in the mistaken belief that testing produces greater learning.”

“The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

“For-Profit Standardized Tests as Snake Oil

“The keystone of market-based reforms–highly dependent on the mining and misuse of quantifiable data–has been the outsourcing of standardized test production to for-profit education corporations. In New York State, a single British-based corporation, Pearson PLC, manages standardized testing for grades 3-8, gifted and talented testing, college-based exams for prospective teachers, and New York State teacher certification exams. Contracts currently held by Pearson include: $32.1 million five-year contract, which began in 2011, for the creation of English Language Arts and Math assessments; $6.2 million three-year contract in 2012 to create an online education data portal; $1 million five-year contract, which began in 2010, to create and administer field tests; $200,000 contract through the Office of General Services for books and materials.

“Pearson’s management of testing in New York has resulted in a series of high-profile errors. In 2012, questions pertaining to an 8th grade ELA passage about a pineapple and a hare had to be thrown out after they were found to be nonsensical. It was also discovered that test questions had been previously used by Pearson in other state exams. In total, 29 questions had to be eliminated from the tests that year, prompting New York State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch to comment, “The mistakes that have been revealed are really disturbing. What happens here as a result of these mistakes is that it makes the public at large question the efficacy of the state testing system.” That same year, 7,000 elementary and middle school students were banned from their graduation ceremonies after they were mistakenly recorded as having failed their state tests…….

Categories Corporate Reformers, Standardized Testing, Support for public schools, Teachers and Teaching, U.S. education

Gary Rubinstein Writes a Letter to Mike Petrilli

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
31

Gary Rubinsten has written a series of “reformers,” questioning their claims. In this letter, he writes to B list reformer Michael Petrilli. Understand that a reformer these days is someone who hates unions, views teachers with contempt as lazy and greedy, blames teachers if schools don’t achieve perfection, and welcomes school privatization. Mike is interesting to Gary, mainly because he occasionally deviates from the rightwing script. For example, it has fallen to Mike to defend the Common Core standards on behalf of his employer, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which is a recipient of generous Gates funding.

Gary was interested to see Mike break ranks with fellow reformers by asserting that college is not really for everyone. That was a break with reformist dogma, which believes passionately in the infinite perfectibility of all, a goal that will be attained presumably when every class is taught by a TFA teacher. Mike broke ranks, but it was only a minor deviation. He still hates unions and loves high-stakes testing and a Common Core.

Gary challenges Mike to answer this simple question: do you really believe that raising standards ever higher will produce big leaps in achievement?

Gary writes :

“But this isn’t the biggest problem I have with the Common Core and the defending of it by you and even by Randi Weingarten. The problem I have, and this is one that I have not heard you address specifically, is that it is based on several shaky premises. The weakest premise, and one I really hope you’ll address, is that “raising standards” — making them harder, you can call it ‘rigor’ if you want to use a euphemism will “raise achievement.” Do you have any basis for that belief? I even saw in a recent thing you wrote,

“For instance, the standards are clear that elementary-school teachers should assign texts that match a student’s grade level, rather than their current reading level. Yet the majority of teachers reported that they continue to assign such “leveled texts” to their charges.

“Have you found that when you try to learn something that starting with an advanced level book on that topic helps you learn? Maybe you like to run on the treadmill. Try this, double the speed that you usually run at. See how that works out for you. I’ve taught for 16 of the past 23 years and my goal is to teach just a little bit beyond the student’s comfort level. When you try to push kids too hard, they get discouraged. This does not maximize learning. Even with things that I try to learn, like Chess and piano, if I try to read too hard of a Chess book or try to play a piano piece that is way above my level — it just doesn’t work. And I’m an adult who is choosing to study this stuff in my spare time, not a child who is forced to sit through a math class. Come on. This is common sense. Yet the opposite, the idea that making it harder is surely going to raise achievement, is the main premise of the argument of the common core.

“Yes, I admit that there can be expectations that are too low, and that’s not good either. I see people at the gym on the treadmill and they’re reading the New Yorker at the same time, and I’m thinking if you’re able to comprehend ‘Shouts and Murmurs’ you’re not running fast enough. But I am not convinced that the old standards were too easy like that. In my experience with teachers and as a teacher, I find that it is to the teacher’s and to the student’s advantage for the teacher to teach at the appropriate level, not too hard, not too easy. This is because students get bored and misbehave when it is too easy and when it is too hard. The students, in a sense, train the teacher to teach to the proper level, and a federal mandate to teach faster and harder upsets this self-correcting feedback loop.

“Did Alabama and Mississippi really have such low standards that it required a federal intervention? I seriously doubt it. We all use the same textbooks and teach the same sorts of things. Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, reading books, writing essays. What do you think all the educators in Mississippi have been doing for all these years before the common core? Surely kids from those states had to take the SATs and they were not completely bewildered by them so much more than kids from other states. I think the argument that the standards were so different before the common core is incredibly exaggerated.

“The common core has been oversold as some necessary miracle cure. It isn’t a miracle. It isn’t going to cure anything. And it is very, very expensive. It was a waste of money, I think. Do you have some sort of estimate of the complete cost of the common core and the expected boost in achievement because of it. You, yourself, admit that schools are not able to perform miracles and get everyone ‘college ready’ so the expected boost can’t be so gigantic. Is it worth all that money?”

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers

North Carolina: The Negative Impact of “Read to Achieve” for Third Graders

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
15

North Carolina is a state where the Legislature have been actively revising education policy to promote privatization through vouchers and charters, while passing laws to make teaching more rule-bound and less rewarding. The state has experienced a large outflow of veteran teachers, from the profession and from the state. One of the more problematic legislative incursions into education is the new policy that third-graders must pass a reading test or be retained in grade. This policy was a carbon copy of Jeb Bush’s heavily promoted “Florida miracle.” It is also promoted by ALEC, which loves tough accountability for little children and for public school teachers (but not for teachers in charter schools and vouchers schools). This article explains why the third-grade retention plan is a very bad idea.

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Politics Driven Read to Achieve a Path to Failure for North Carolina

 

By Janna Siegel Robertson and Pamela Grundy

 

Across North Carolina, this has been the worst third-grade year in memory for teachers, students and families. The General Assembly’s requirement that third graders must pass the End of Grade (EOG) reading exam in order to be promoted has drained countless third grade classes of the excitement that comes with reading and learning, and turned the last months of third grade into a slog of worksheets, test practice and stress.

 

At the end of the school year, the Read to Achieve (RTA) legislation will force many North Carolina third-graders to repeat the grade, even though retention is enormously expensive and has been shown to harm students more often than it helps them.

 

The legislators who voted for this measure and the families enmeshed in its consequences should take heed. RTA is a perfect example of the problems that ensue when elected officials enact educational policies that fail to take into account the specific challenges that struggling students face, the solutions that have well-established track records of success, and the professional judgment of educators who know children as individuals, rather than simply as test scores.

 

For the well-being of North Carolina’s children, North Carolina’s citizens need to demand that their representatives either scrap or profoundly overhaul Read to Achieve. In addition, to avoid such negative consequences in the future, both legislators and citizens need to pay far closer attention to education legislation before it is enacted.

 

Few question the significance of third grade reading. Prominent education research organizations, most notably the Annie E. Casey Foundation, have made it clear that a child’s third-grade reading level is a useful predictor of later school achievement, graduation and adult success.

 

The challenge becomes how to help students reach proficiency.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation linked most of the reading problems it identified to the limited opportunities available to low-income children at early ages. It recommended actions that included supporting low-income parents, increasing access to high quality programs from birth to age eight and addressing the challenges of chronic absenteeism and summer learning loss.

 

North Carolina’s legislative leaders, in contrast, pushed through an underfunded mandate with punitive consequences. They required that the vast majority of North Carolina’s third graders pass the reading EOG or be retained (a handful of exceptions were allowed). They imposed these new requirements at the same time that they reduced prekindergarten opportunities, eliminated class size caps, and cut the ranks of teachers and teacher assistants. The only funding attached to the proposal was a small per-student fund to pay part of the cost of summer school for third-graders who did not pass the test.

 

The mandated solution – retention – flies in the face of decades of research which indicate that retention often sets a child on a path to dropping out of school. In addition, retention lacks a long-term track record of improving reading proficiency. In Florida – often touted as a model for North Carolina – third graders retained under a similar program showed initial reading gains over promoted peers. Those gains, however, faded by the time students reached seventh grade.

 

Read to Achieve thus:
1. Fails to address the problem at its source.
2. Imposes a solution that is enormously expensive, has clearly documented negative consequences, and has produced no long-term track record as an effective reading intervention.
3. Treats students as test scores, rather than individuals.
4. Further raises the stakes on standardized tests, which encourages teaching to the test at the expense of other, often more valuable learning activities.
5. Reduces many third graders’ interest in school and love of learning.
6. Places additional burdens on North Carolina teachers, who are already contending with low pay, larger classes, less support, rising expectations and shrinking resources.

 

These problems have emerged because Read to Achieve is a political, rather than an educational program. It is a superficial “high standards” measure that produces headlines but diverts money and attention from real solutions. It did not emerge from consultation with North Carolina educators, families, and education experts. Instead, legislative leaders copied it from a Florida program that has been heavily promoted by former Florida governor and potential presidential candidate Jeb Bush, as well as by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

 

If our legislators genuinely want to improve public education in North Carolina, they can do far better than following the lead of those who copy problematic policies from states whose students perform less well overall than North Carolina students. As the General Assembly reconvenes, voters need to let them know that we plan to hold them to legitimate higher standards, ones which draw on practices with strong evidence of effectiveness, respect the judgment of parents and educators, and support our children as precious individuals.

 

Janna Siegel Robertson is professor of Education at UNC-Wilmington, and co-coordinator of the UNCW Dropout Prevention Coalition. Pamela Grundy is co-chair of the Charlotte-based advocacy group MecklenburgACTS.org. They both have children in North Carolina public schools.

Categories Education Reform

Florida Judge: Teacher Evaluation Unfair but Not Unconstitutional

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2014 //
39

A federal judge in Florida dismissed a lawsuit against the state evaluation system, declaring that it was unfair to rate teachers based on the scores of students they never taught but not unconstitutional.

The evaluation system may be stupid; it may be irrational; it may be unfair; but it does not violate the Constitution. So says the judge.

An article in the Florida Education Association newsletter described the ruling:

“The federal lawsuit, known as Cook v. Stewart, was filed last year by the FEA, the National Education Association and seven accomplished teachers and the local education associations in Alachua, Escambia and Hernando counties. The lawsuit challenged the evaluation of teachers based on the standardized test scores of students they do not teach or from subjects they do not teach. They brought suit against the Florida commissioner of education, the State Board of Education and the school boards of those three counties, who have implemented the evaluation system to comply with 2011’s Senate Bill 736.

“On Tuesday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker dismissed FEA’s challenges to the portions of SB 736 that call for teachers to be evaluated based upon students and/or subjects the teachers do not teach, though he expressed reservations on the practice.

We are disheartened by the judge’s ruling. Judge Walker acknowledged the many problems with this evaluation system, but he ruled that they did not meet the standard to be declared unconstitutional. We are evaluating what further steps we might take in this legal process.

Judge Walker indicated his discomfort with the evaluation process in his order.

“The unfairness of the evaluation system as implemented is not lost on this Court,” he wrote. “We have a teacher evaluation system in Florida that is supposed to measure the individual effectiveness of each teacher. But as the Plaintiffs have shown, the standards for evaluation differ significantly. FCAT teachers are being evaluated using an FCAT VAM that provides an individual measurement of a teacher’s contribution to student improvement in the subjects they teach.” He noted that the FCAT VAM has been applied to teachers whose students are tested in a subject that teacher does not teach and to teachers who are measured on students they have never taught, writing that “the FCAT VAM has been applied as a school-wide composite score that is the same for every teacher in the school. It does not contain any measure of student learning growth of the … teacher’s own students.”

In his ruling, Judge Walker indicated there were other problems.

“To make matters worse, the Legislature has mandated that teacher ratings be used to make important employment decisions such as pay, promotion, assignment, and retention,” he wrote. “Ratings affect a teacher’s professional reputation as well because they are made public — they have even been printed in the newspaper. Needless to say, this Court would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would find this evaluation system fair to non-FCAT teachers, let alone be willing to submit to a similar evaluation system.”

“This case, however, is not about the fairness of the evaluation system,” Walker wrote. “The standard of review is not whether the evaluation policies are good or bad, wise or unwise; but whether the evaluation policies are rational within the meaning of the law. The legal standard for invalidating legislative acts on substantive due process and equal protection grounds looks only to whether there is a conceivable rational basis to support them,” even though this basis might be “unsupported by evidence or empirical data.”

Categories Florida, Teacher Evaluations

Governor Malloy Stops Bashing Teachers Long Enough to Wish Them “Happy Teachers’Day”

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2014 //
14

Jonathan Pelto notes the hypocrisy of Governor Dannell Malloy, one of the most anti-teacher governors in the nation, issuing a smarmy proclamation in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week.

The trick is to bash teachers day after day, but say really kind (if insincere) things this week and right before the election.

Categories Connecticut, Corporate Reformers

And Now a Word about Teacher Appreciation Week

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2014 //
42

Laurel Sturt, a teacher, sent this note, responding to an email from StudentsFirst founder Michelle Rhee. The teacher has Michelle wrong. Michelle doesn’t hate teachers. She just wants to see more of them fired, lose their teaching license, lose their mortgage, and suffer grievously unless they raise test scores every year. Let’s be clear. She appreciates some teachers. The winners. Don’t you get it? Life is a racetrack. Test scores are the metric.

“Michelle Rhee is providing a thank you card for people to give to teachers, with all sorts of glowing compliments to teachers. I just posted this on Facebook:

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, as well as Breathtaking Hypocrisy Week. Here Champion and Defender of Teachers Michelle Rhee encourages us to download a not-so-free card (in exchange for our personal contact info and sign up to volunteer for her). If we’re all she says we are, then why does she hate us so? http://www.studentsfirst.org/page/s/download-this-card-and-show-appreciation-to-a-teacher

You can’t make this stuff up!

Best,

Laurel”

Categories Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Teachers and Teaching

Ras Charges Secret Newark Slush Fund

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2014 //
14

Below is today’s press release. Representatives of Newark First showed up to this press conference to disrupt and agitate the Newark residents who attended. This is another indication that Shavar Jeffries and his backers lack positive ideas to change Newark, and so they have to rely on negativity and cynicism to cut into Baraka’s lead. With YOUR help, they will not succeed!

NEWS

For Release: Tuesday, May 6th, 2014
Contact Frank Baraff (914) 469-3775 fbaraff@optonline.net

Ras Baraka describes a complex scheme that has provided his opponent Shavar Jefferies with more than a million dollars in secret campaign contributions

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Statement by Ras Baraka

80% of the money spent on radio and television commercials in this campaign has been spent by one committee, Newark First, on behalf of Shavar Jeffries. Newark First has spent at least two million dollars, and the donors of most of that two million are secret.

In other words, a group behind Shavar Jeffries is trying to buy control of Newark’s government, and the people of Newark have no idea who they are, what they stand for, and what they ultimately seek to achieve.

At the last financial filing 20 days ago, Newark First had received $1.3 million in contributions. Of the $1.3 million, $850,000 came from Education Reform Now, a New York City group of Wall Street hedge fund operators behind Chris Christie and his appointed school superintendent, Cami Anderson. Today, Newark First has spent more than $2 million.

By putting their money through Education Reform Now, large contributors are able to hide from the people of Newark. There is nothing illegal about that kind of money laundering. It’s allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court. But the people of Newark must know who is trying to control our city.

The fact that people launder contributions through an education reform group does not necessarily mean that they are supporters of Chris Christie-style education reform. The money could just as well be coming from the South Jersey political boss, George Norcross, or big contractors seeking to avoid pay-to-play laws.

Let me be clear. The issue is not that Shavar Jeffries is outspending me. The issue is that he is keeping the source of his money secret. I call upon Shavar Jeffries to reveal his secret contributors. Jeffries will no doubt deny any connection to Newark First.

But there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The Shavar Jeffries campaign is deeply involved with Newark First and I have the evidence.

Connections Between Shavar Jeffries, his campaign, and the Newark First “Independent Expenditure” Committee

Under the law, communication between an independent expenditure group and a candidate or committee it is supporting is strictly illegal. That’s the meaning of independent expenditure.

1. After Jeffries met several times with George Norcross, the political boss of South Jersey, Norcross helped to establish Newark First. The media and mail consultants to Newark First are extensively involved with Norcross candidates.

2. Jeffries raised the most money of any candidate, $1,351,800, yet has only spent $82,000 on television and radio, barely enough to have any impact. No rational candidate would spend so little to communicate his message unless he knew that somebody else (Newark First) was going to spend $2 million or more for him on radio and tv.

3. The Jeffries campaign is run by Steve Adubato’s North Ward political organization. Members of that organization appear in commercials paid for by the so-called independent expenditure group.

4. The chairperson of the independent expenditure group is a leader in the Adubato North Ward political organization.

5. Congressman Payne a leader of the Shavar Jeffries campaign appeared in a television commercial paid for by Newark First. It stretches credulity to claim that the Congressman is unaware of who is paying for his tv spot.
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“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever does” Margaret Mead

Categories New Jersey

Amrein-Beardsley: Why the Houston Lawsuit Could Demolish VAM

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2014 //
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Audrey Amrein-Beardsley has been consulting with the seven Houston teachers who filed a lawsuit in federal court against the use of value-added metrics in their evaluations.

 

She has conducted extensive VAM research in Houston and concluded it was arbitrary and inaccurate. “Houston, the 7th largest urban district in the country, is widely recognized for its (inappropriate) using of the EVAAS for more consequential decision-making purposes (e.g., teacher merit pay and in the case of this article, teacher termination) more than anywhere else in the nation.”

 

She believes that this is the lawsuit that has the potential to bring down VAM as a valid way of measuring teacher quality.

 

Read here to learn why.

 

If VAM goes down, as it should, it would be yet one more piece of evidence that Race to the Top is a $5 billion flop, as if any more evidence were needed.

 

Of course, even a court victory against inappropriate teacher evaluation would not deter our Secretary of Education from claiming victory. If he were on the basketball court, he would claim victory if his team were beaten 152-18; we would never hear the end of those heroic, astonishing, incredible 18 points.

 

Categories Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations
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