Archives for the month of: May, 2014
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Good News from Philadelphia!

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2014 //
6

Helen Gym sent the following report. The parents at Steel Elementary School voted to remain a public school, despite an aggressive campaign to turn the school over to a charter chain. But the school’s advisory council voted 9-8 to hand the school over to privatization. The final decision will be made by the city’s School Reform Commission.

“Happy news for Monday morning!

“On May 1, 176 parents at Steel Elementary School – the last public school in Nicetown – voted on whether to remain a District public school or be turned over to the city’s largest charter operator, Mastery Charter Network. More than 70 percent of parents – 121 vs. 55 – voted to keep the school public. Mastery Charter Network did not even muster one-third of the popular parent vote, despite an aggressive year-long effort to claim Steel for itself. A botched School Advisory Council vote resulted in a split 9-8 vote in favor of the charter. At least two grievances have been filed against this vote. The School Reform Commission will make a final determination on the school May 29.

“Parents statements are below. A video about Steel is also below that:

“http://parentsunitedphila.com/2014/05/02/steel-parents-win-decisive-vote-to-keep-school-public/

“http://vimeo.com/92774451”

Categories Charter Schools, Parents, Philadelphia

Tennessee: “Parents Know Best”—–Help This Letter Go Viral

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2014 //
10

Today I came across a letter from a Tennessee parent that went viral. The theme, quite simply, is: Parents know best.

In it, this parent explains why she is opting her child out of state testing. Please click on the link so that Alicia Maynard and other Tennessee parents know you support them in their determination to end the testing madness.

****************************************************

“Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? Think of the last time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did you feel like cooperating or doing better?” – Jane Nelsen, author of the Positive Discipline Series

“Dear Gov. Haslam,

“I am writing to let you know that my fourth-grader will not be taking the TCAP test. This is unfortunate for her school because she scores in the advanced range every time.

“Auria is in fourth grade at Northfield elementary in Murfreesboro, TN. This is our fourth year at this school, and between her and her sister, I have fallen in love with numerous teachers there. Murfreesboro has the best school system in the state (according to Google), and I have been highly impressed with the people and their level of care for my children.

“Third grade changed, though. My highly-intelligent, confident kid became a wreck – early in the year – over the pressure associated with the TCAP. I was confused, as I took the TCAP every year as a child and have nothing but fond memories of bubbling in the little circles. I started to notice the growing intensity leading up to the test, and I became a little disgusted. That was last year. This year it was worse. The teachers I have had the pleasure of working with are so wound up that I feel sorry for them. The teachers, the staff, the administration…everybody.

“These are obviously brilliant and creative people, and this test has taken over like a life-sucking monster. Teaching isn’t an exact science, just like parenting. Every child is different, and this terrible system is stifling all the joy and creativity that is required to really make an impact.

“Now, if I love this school and staff so much, and I know her test scores would attribute to an average boost ($$$), why would I pull her from this? She wants to be a teacher when she grows up. These teachers are already being grossly underpaid for such an important role.

“Pearson is America’s largest corporate maker of standardized testing. It has a multiyear contract with our Department of Education: For creating and implementing the TCAP and the end-of-course tests for high schoolers, we pay more than $150 million. (That’s three times what it would have cost to give Tennessee teachers a 2 percent raise.) The deepest cut of all? Teachers aren’t able to preview the test. They are neither editor nor author of the single most influential test of the whole year. It’s the educational equivalent of a slap in the face.”

– David Cook (Times Free Press)

“Auria can already make better decisions than this.

“My child’s job is to learn. The teacher’s job is to teach. But my role as her parent is more complicated. I also have to teach her when standing up for something is necessary. This system is stupid and unfair. She will be accepting a 0 as 15% of her grade for the year. But she will also be standing up for teachers and students all over the state. She will be taking steps toward bettering her future right now, and I think that’s better than just a memory of all those bubbles.

“Thank you for your time reviewing this matter,

Alicia Maynard
Murfreesboro, TN”

The above letter has been shared on Facebook over 1,140 times in the past 48 hours. Here are some of the many comments on it:

“Amen!

“As a teacher in metro, I love you!

“Wow! Seems I’m not alone about my TCAP feelings! Kuddos to this mom!!!

“The pressure for students, teachers, and parents is so unfair. It makes me so sad.

“This is so beautiful. It’s a must read for all parents and students.

“Maybe more parents should jump on this bandwagon!!! I would love to shake her hand and meet her in person!

“Incredible parent and letter! Hope someone listens! Something to think about where we are heading for the future of education for the little ones. Lets put Common Sense back in Education and worry bout the little ones not which pocket is getting thicker!!!!

“How many letters like this will it take to change things?

“Simply the truth. I am forbidden by law from seeing, asking or being told what is on the test my kids take. Ever. We never see the old tests. We cannot challenge bad questions…and trust me, the practice tests have bad questions. Parents can also never see the tests. Just try and ask, even after it is given. I have yet to have a teacher’s edition grammar book that did not have a wrong answer or horribly confusing practices. It happens, but now who is double checking? My kids will do well…they always do me proud in a pinch, but this is beyond ridiculous. Pearson controls education in Tennessee. Get over the outrage over the feds/Common Core (for now) and ask why in the Hell a private company gets to determine kids’ grades and teachers’ fates with ZERO oversight.

“May do this next year. Zac is flipped out about TCAP.

“This sums up my feelings on standardized testing word for word!!!!!!!

“I love how you just stand up for things that are unjust without ANY hesitation and I respect the heck out of that! TCAP tests and the like are the reasons why I did not complete my certification as a secondary educator. It’s an unfair system that pigeon-holes children into measurable data. You, Alicia Maynard, are a beautiful soul and a wonderful mother. Thank you for standing up for teachers and for teaching your children to stand up for their generation of learners.

“I applaud this mother and think it would be awesome to boycott this stupid standardized testing

“There are many, many more comments just like these above. Parents are fed up, waking up, and speaking out.”

Categories Parents, Pearson, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Tennessee

NYC Parents, Elected Officials To Protest Preferential Treatment for Charters on May 6

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2014 //
2

Another protest against the law sponsored by Governor Cuomo to give preferential treatment to the billionaire-sponsored charter schools. the Cuomo law was enacted at the same time that New York City’s public schools are overcrowded, with class sizes at their highest point in fifteen years. The Cuomo law guarantees that privately-managed charters get free public space; that the city must pay for their rental of private space; that they can expand wherever they are currently co-located, even if it means pushing public school children out of their school. Just recently, supporters of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain held a fund-raising dinner and raised $7.5 million in one night; but Success Academy will not be required to pay rent for the public space it usurps:

##################

PRESS ADVISORY

WHAT: Press conference to protest new state law requiring New York City to give charter schools preference for space and resources, while schools in community school districts need space and resources to properly serve public school students.

WHO: NYC public school parents, City Council members, elected parent leaders, public education advocates and allies

WHEN: Tuesday, May 6, 9AM

WHERE: Steps of Tweed; 52 Chambers Street in lower Manhattan

City Council hearing on charter schools to follow at 10AM.

Victoria (Tory) Frye
vicnyc@me.com
646-418-6435

Categories Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, New York City

Warning Alarms at Camp Phalos! Infiltrators Within!

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2014 //
23

I usually don’t worry about the hedge fund managers when they are hanging out with VIPs like Andrew Cuomo, but I just received inside information that the Camp has been infiltrated!

 

Hedge fund managers! Watch what you say! Trust no one!

 

There is a public school teacher—more than one, actually–who has entered the sacred grounds of Camp Phalos.

 

I know you have security. But they slipped up and let in a real public school person. Or more than one.

 

Be careful. Look over your shoulder.

 

Be alert! You never know who might be listening or if the person you are talking to really is who he says he is.

 

Danger around every corner.

Categories Education Reform

Jonathan Pelto Reports on Wendy Lecker’s Critique of Governor Malloy’s Failed Teacher Evaluation System

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2014 //
5

Jonathan Pelto here reports on a great new piece by civil rights lawyer Wendy Lecker.

 

He writes:

“In her latest MUST READ commentary piece, fellow public education advocate, Wendy Lecker, lays out the facts about Governor Malloy’s unfair, inappropriate and fatally flawed teacher evaluation system. Like the junk bonds that helped take down Wall Street, Connecticut’s teacher evaluation system is based on junk science and false assumptions.

 

The question is not whether the state should have a comprehensive teacher evaluation system, but whether the corporate education reform industry will continue to stand in the way of developing one.

 

Lecker says that Governor Dannell Malloy’s teacher evaluation system is fundamentally flawed.

 

Lecker writes that the solution to failed tests is not more tests.

 

From her article:

 

Fact: Connecticut’s teacher evaluation plan, because it relies on student standardized test scores, is fundamentally flawed. Student test scores cannot measure a teacher’s contribution to student learning. In fact, the president of the Educational Testing Service recently called evaluation systems based on student test scores “bad science.”

 

Rather than admit failure, the Malloy administration is trying futilely to “fix” the fatal flaw. Last week, PEAC, the panel charged with developing Connecticut’s teacher evaluation system, working under the direction of Commissioner Stefan Pryor, approved a change which calls for more standardized tests to be included in a teacher’s evaluation.

 

The commissioner’s “solution” is to add interim tests to a teacher’s rating. Determining what tests will be used, how they will be aligned to the standardized tests, and how all the test scores will be rolled into one “score” for teachers, will likely render this change completely unworkable.

 

She adds:

 

A recent comprehensive study by Northwestern Professor Kirabo Jackson found that children with teachers who help them develop non-cognitive skills have much better outcomes than those who have teachers who may help them raise test scores. Jackson found that every standard deviation increase in non-cognitive skills corresponds to a significant decrease in the drop-out risk and increased rates of high school graduation. By contrast, one standard deviation increase in standardized test scores has a very weak, often non-existent, relationship to these outcomes. Test scores also predict less than 2 percent of the variability in absences and suspensions, and under 10 percent of the variability in on-time grade progression, for example.

Increases in non-cognitive abilities are also strongly correlated with other adult outcomes, such as a lower likelihood of arrest, a higher rate of employment and higher earnings. Increased test scores are not.

In short, focusing on non-cognitive abilities, those not measured by test scores, are more important in predicting success in high school and beyond.

 

Why are the corporate reformers so wedded to standardized tests that they themselves probably could not pass? They love data. They want Big Data. They believe that every problem can be solved by measurement and manipulation of Big Data. They also believe that they can create the appearance of “failing public schools” by generating data showing how many kids are not meeting an artificial benchmark. This enables them to argue for more charter schools that are free to exclude the children who did not meet the artificial bench mark. Big Data is now part of the tool kit of privatization. It is not about helping kids or improving education, but finding a rationale for turning public dollars over to private managers. If we really wanted to help kids and improve education, we would take the billions now going into testing and use it to reduce class sizes, to increase the arts, and to provide every child the medical care they need.

 

Categories Connecticut, Education Reform, Teacher Evaluations

Obama Selects Robert Gordon, Early Proponent of VAM, for Top Policy Post in Department of Education

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2014 //
89

President Obama chose Robert Gordon, who served in key roles in the first Obama administration, as assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development in the U.S. Department of Education. This is a very important position in the Education Department; he will be the person in charge of the agency that basically decides what is working, what is not, and which way to go next with policy.

 

When he worked in the Office of Management and Budget, Gordon helped to develop the priorities for the controversial Race to the Top program. Before joining the Obama administration, he worked for Joel Klein in the New York City Department of Education.

 

An economist, Gordon was lead author of an influential paper in 2006 that helped to put value-added-measurement at the top of the “reformers” policy agenda. That paper, called “Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job,” was co-authored by Thomas J. Kane and Douglas O. Staiger. Kane became the lead adviser to the Gates Foundation in developing its “Measures of Effective Teaching,” which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to develop the formula for the teacher who can raise test scores consistently. Gordon went on to Obama’s Office of Management and Budget, which is the U.S. government’s lead agency for determining budget priorities.

 

The paper co-authored by this triumvirate championed VAM (value-added measurement, i.e., the use of student test scores to judge teacher “effectiveness”) as one of the key policy levers of reform. Here is the abstract:

 

Traditionally, policymakers have attempted to improve the quality of the teaching force by raising minimum credentials for entering teachers. Recent research, however, suggests that such paper qualifications have little predictive power in identifying effective teachers. We propose federal support to help states measure the effectiveness of individual teachers—based on their impact on student achievement, subjective evaluations by principals and peers, and parental evaluations. States would be given considerable discretion to develop their own measures, as long as student achieve- ment impacts (using so-called “value-added” measures) are a key component. The federal government would pay for bonuses to highly rated teachers willing to teach in high-poverty schools. In return for federal support, schools would not be able to offer tenure to new teachers who receive poor evaluations during their first two years on the job without obtaining district approval and informing parents in the schools. States would open further the door to teaching for those who lack traditional certification but can demonstrate success on the job. This approach would facilitate entry into teaching by those pursuing other careers. The new measures of teacher performance would also provide key data for teachers and schools to use in their efforts to improve their performance.

 

This paper, based on economists’ speculation about what works, became a justification often cited for the importance of minimizing teacher certification (“paper qualifications”) and factoring student test scores into teachers’ evaluations, which are a major–if not THE major–component of Race to the Top. The papers’ advocacy of opening the door to uncertified teachers has become a government priority, as shown by Arne Duncan’s award of $50 million to Teach for America (Gordon’s wife worked for TFA), although there is no evidence that TFA can replace the nation’s 3 million teachers and a growing body of evidence that TFA teachers are not more effective than other new teachers or veteran teachers. And since they are usually gone in two years, they have little lasting impact except to increase churn in the teaching staff.

 

Much has happened since Gordon, Kane, and Staiger speculated about how to identify effective teachers by performance measures such as student test scores. We now have evidence that these measures are fraught with error and instability. We now have numerous examples where teachers are evaluated based on the scores of students they never taught. We have numerous examples of teachers rated highly effective one year, but ineffective the next year, showing that what mattered most was the composition of their class, not their quality or effectiveness. Just recently, the American Statistical Association said: “Most VAM studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions. Ranking teachers by their VAM scores can have unintended consequences that reduce quality.”). In a joint statement, the National Academy of Education and the American Educational Research Association warned about the defects and limitations of VAM and showed that most of the factors that determine test scores are beyond the control of teachers.  Numerous individual scholars have taken issue with the naive belief that teacher quality can be established by the test scores of their students, even when the computer matches as many variables as it can find.

 

 

What we don’t know is this: Has Robert Gordon changed his mind in light of evidence undermining his belief in VAM?

 

Or will the Obama administration continue on its now well-established course, demoralizing veteran teachers, lowering standards for entry-level teachers, dismissing the professional preparation of teachers, and creating new opportunities for the inexperienced, ill-trained recruits of TFA?

 

Having met Robert Gordon and knowing him to be a very smart person, I am betting that he will help the Obama administration change course and inject the wisdom of experience into its policies. That’s my hope.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Obama, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations

Lloyd Lofthouse: Obama ‘s Mindless Education Reforms

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2014 //
9

Reader Lloyd Lofthouse finds President Obama’s education reforms to be as unrealistic as those of George W. Bush. The basic theory of action is to set I reachable goals and to punish those who can’t reach them.

He writes:

“The Common Core high stakes testing that judges teachers, gets them fired and public schools closed took public education systems that operated based on individual state legislation with minimum or no standards and demanded the highest possible standards that have never been achieved anywhere on earth at any time in history without building a new system and implementing it over at least an entire generation—and maybe several generations.

“Instead, what Obama did with his Race to the Top and Common Core Standards was the same as expecting a 1908 Model T Ford that’s rated at a top speed of 45 mph to suddenly hit moon rocket velocity or face failure and behind sent to the dump. And to achieve this federally UN-Constitutional mandate, Obama did nothing to replace the Model T’s engine. Nothing!”

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Obama, Race to the Top, Testing

Happy Birthday, Horace Mann!

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2014 //
29

Thanks to Bertis Downs of Athens, Georgia, a public school parent and a director of the Network for Public Education, for sharing this nugget of inspiration about one of the primary founders of public education:

“From Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac daily email:

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

It’s the birthday of the man who said, “Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark, all is deluge.” The father of American public education, Horace Mann, was born on this day in Franklin, Massachusetts, in 1796. He grew up without much money or schooling, and what he did learn, he learned on his own at his local library, which had been founded by Benjamin Franklin. He was accepted into Brown University and graduated in three years, valedictorian of his class.

“He was elected to the state legislature in 1827, and 10 years later, when Massachusetts created the first board of education in the country, he was appointed secretary. Up to this point, he hadn’t had any particular interest in education, but when he took the post he dedicated himself to it wholeheartedly. He personally inspected every school in the state, gave numerous lectures, and published annual reports advocating the benefits of a common school education for both the student and the state. He spearheaded the Common School Movement, which ensured all children could receive a basic education funded by taxes.

“He was elected to the United States Congress in 1848 after the death of John Quincy Adams, and in his first speech, he spoke out against slavery. He wrote in a letter later that year: “I think the country is to experience serious times. Interference with slavery will excite civil commotion in the South. But it is best to interfere. Now is the time to see whether the Union is a rope of sand or a band of steel.”

“When he left politics, he moved to Ohio to accept a position as president of Antioch College. “I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these my parting words,” he told one graduating class: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

Categories Education Reform

Teachers United Against TFA

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2014 //
12

The resistance to teach for America continues to grow. Here is another organization bringing together teachers against TFA.

Here is their Facebook page.

The leading group of college students organized to resist TFA and to foght for professional teachers is SUPE: Students United for Public Educatuon.

SUPE has a mission:

“Students United for Public Education (SUPE) evolved out of the work of college students involved in defending public education from its attackers. In particular, SUPE was founded to fill a void in the movement for public education — before SUPE, there was no national student organization devoted solely to this cause. Under the guise of “closing the achievement gap” and “school choice,” for-profit corporations and their political representatives have sought to privatize and sell off public education. SUPE understands that a profit motive cannot guarantee a good education. Instead, only a robust and well-supported public education system — along with the courage and will to directly confront problems of racial and economic inequality — can provide a quality education for all.

“SUPE is a community based organization because we believe that public schools are the heart of every community. We understand that in order for our goals to be reached, we must work with not only K-12 students, but parents, teachers, and community members as a whole. We are not here to tell any community or students what to do. Rather, we want to work with communities to find what their needs are, and have them lead the way in the struggle as we work as equals to organize the change they believe is best.”

Categories Resistance, Students, Teach for America

If You Love Dogs As I Do, This Video Is for You

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2014 //
8

This is the Ultimate Dog Tease. It will make you smile.

Categories Humor
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