Frank Breslin: Standardized Tests Reflect Family Income, not Teacher Quality

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1. Lloyd Lofthouse says:

   June 29, 2014 at 3:39 pm

   California ranks its public schools with an Academic Performance Index that is available on-line for every public school in the state, and if you study the school report cards for the lowest ranked schools in the state, you will discover schools with a large ratio of students on reduced or free breakfast and/or lunch.

   The school report cards go into great detail way beyond a standardized test score and provide all of that information and more.

   Dig a little deeper, and research the community where these low performing schools are through the crime reports that most police departments make available online and you will usually find a large minority popularization, street gangs, barrios, ghettos, street violence, drugs, prostitution, etc.

   For instance, explore the public schools in Oakland, Richmond and Pittsburgh in the SF bay area and you will quickly discover what I mean.

   Having worked as a classroom teacher in low API schools for 30 years, I didn’t want to live in the same type of community—because of the street gang violence and drugs—and I used the Internet and researched public high schools around the Bay Area in San Francisco to find a community to move to that would offer a safer haven to raise our daughter. To me, the ranking of the schools has nothing to do with the quality of the school, but the quality of the community, the parents, and the children.

   Until the United Stated adopts and launches a high quality, early childhood education program that reaches 100% of children starting as early as age three, these bubbles of violence and poverty will fester and grow like a cancer that will eat America from within.

   As poverty grows, so does gang membership and the violent crimes that come with those gangs.

   And if the U.S. adopts a national, high quality, early childhood education program, it will take several generations, decades, to enjoy the benefits from reduced poverty that will come from it. It will not happen in a few years because idiots in Washington or some state capital pass a law that mandates it will happen or else we will punish you. The process is organic and takes time to break the cycle of vicious poverty that traps so many.

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2. Harlan Underhill says:

   June 29, 2014 at 3:49 pm

   Quite right about the flaws in CCSS, but then in proposing remedies he drifts off in to the usual drivel with which many public school defenders and teachers so often ruin their reputation with the general public. It’s still only staff room solidarity. If he really believes every word he says, he’s as misguided as they get. Yet I don’t doubt he was a fine classroom teacher. Privatization will continue if his understanding of what the essence of America is prevails in its opponents.

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   • Duane Swacker says:

     July 2, 2014 at 8:20 pm

     HU,

     Please expand on what you see as the “usual drivel”.

     Thanks,
     Duane

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     • Harlan Underhill says:

       July 3, 2014 at 3:03 am

       Thank you, Duane, for the opening. When you feed a troll he speaks, you know. But before I roar, let me say Wilson is looking more and more sensible to me every time I pick him up again to try to get through him.

       Here’s Breslin’s drivel.

       “As if America were really about social justice and insuring that every American had food, clothing, shelter, employment or even health care. America is about one thing and one thing only: tax breaks for the wealthy, and everyone else can go to the wall.”

       Is the former what America SHOULD be about? Is the latter what America really is about?

       Imagine being a teacher that long, a whole lifetime, and not knowing that America was the antithesis of a Marxist country. And yet he still hopes to make it one, along with the President, the Republicans, and the especially the Democrats. All part of a boardwalk empire.

       As I keep saying, America should stand for only one thing and that is individual freedom. A century of progressivism has all but extinguished the memory. The only ones trying to save America are in the tea party movement, and even they can be amusingly kookie.

       But, “Remember Mississippi” where the Republicans spent money paying black Democrats to cross over in the run off, and eliminate the tea party guy. THAT’s what the country’s come to, Republicrat rule.

       Tammany Hall, Daley’s Chicago, DeBlasio’s New York, and the Mississippi Republicans: interchangeable. You can fulminate against the tea party as if they were Republicans, but they are not.

       Democrats are one face of Janus and Republicans the other. When you scream at Republicans, they are you, just looking out the other side of your skull.

       And you’ll probably vote in Hillary too—Obama in a pant suit—because you can’t swallow Cruz and Carson.

       Seek freedom not bigger government and more government spending, and there’s just a chance that public education can be saved. Rhee and Jeb Bush are Arne and Barack. You’ll die by one or the other unless you seek no subsidies, even for the Guatamalan, Costa Rican, and Honduran kids in your classes this fall.

       Opposition to the CCSS gives you good cover, but teachers have sold their souls to Gates or Gov.com. No effective difference. You and the charters. Two ugly little squealers sucking off the same one- teat federal sow, fighting for the same government tax stream. That’s all you and the charter menace are. The only way to keep giant mama from rolling over and crushing you both is to snuffle truffle for yourself.

       Or at least so it seems to me. Remember I am not an official spokesman for any organization, or pseudo organization, or political movement. I speak only for myself with the memory of a pre-progressive time when merit mattered, tenure was not unionized, and fathers took care of their own babies, and if they didn’t their grandfathers did, because there was no other way.

     • Duane Swacker says:

       July 3, 2014 at 12:27 pm

       HU,

       Glad to see that you are working your way through Wilson. No, it’s not the easiest read but the more I read it the more I get from it. There is a lot in that dissertation. If you have any questions about a particular chapter/part feel free to email me at dswacker@centurytel.net and I’ll be glad to discuss it with you.

       If I may focus on your last statement: ” I speak only for myself with the memory of a pre-progressive time when merit mattered, tenure was not unionized, and fathers took care of their own babies, and if they didn’t their grandfathers did, because there was no other way.”

       Like you I speak only for myself, a free thinker-however one likes to define that term. But when you say “pre-progressive times” can I assume pre-FDR? If so, then many times merit didn’t mean squat as the preferred political and business methods were patronage and who one knew not what one knew (really not much different than today as human nature really doesn’t change that much that quickly) and certainly not “merit” whatever that means.

       I’m not sure what you mean by “tenure was not unionized” as I have due process protection and I am not part of any union (and by the way I don’t consider the NEA to be a union as they have administrators as part of their membership). And those supposed due process rights are really not much more than a kangaroo court in Missouri as the district admin picks a district administrator to be the “arbiter”. Right, and ol Joe Stalin picked his arbiters.

       “. . . and fathers took care of their own babies”

       Tell that to my dad who’s dad left the family at the beginning of the depression (pre-FDR) resulting in my father not finishing grade school and working as a young boy to support his father’s family. And that was not unusual for families at that time.

       HU, your complete focus on “individualism” belies the fact that all of us are completely interconnected in so many ways that the vaunted “individual” cannot and does not exist in the way that you suggest. Having just driven through the vast expanses of rugged landscape between Missouri and the Seattle and having the time to ponder how the hell those “individual” mountain men were able to traverse such rugged, harsh and unforgiving terrain, I realized that in reality they really were not alone as they relied heavily on what the Native Americans had already known and carved out of the “wilderness” (at least to the Europeans, “home” to the Native Americans) so that those hallowed “individualists” actually were not quite as isolated as it may seem.

       Duane

3. Laura H. Chapman says:

   June 29, 2014 at 3:51 pm

   Frank Breslin retired from the public school system, where he taught English, German, Latin and social studies for 40 years. Articulate. This opinion piece is not the work of an amateur. Beslin knows how to write, cut to the chase, and make the case.

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4. Bridget says:

   June 29, 2014 at 4:49 pm

   Do a graph comparing school performance and SES of student population in any state, in any school district, and the results will be undeniable. The only outliers will be those who have entrance criteria or any of the sorting typically seen in many charter schools.
   The deniers don’t want this information out in the mainstream media.
   See the graphic for Louisiana linked below.
   http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com

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