Archives for the month of: September, 2014
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Ben Jatos: Why I Teach

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2014 //
6

Ben Jatos is a high school English teacher in a Portland, Oregon area high school. He has taught for 20 years. He just started his own blog, and he began by asking why he became a teacher and why he continues to teach.

He begins:

“As a new school year begins, I think it’s important for every teacher to answer the question: Why do I teach? This year, this is my answer.

“When I reflect on the circumstances that led me into teaching, there are three main things that happened to me prior to declaring as an education major in college.

“First, when I was 17, my father told me that when I went to college I should earn a degree that came with a title. For example, if I were to major in business I wouldn’t leave college as a businessman. But if I had a degree in education, I would exit as a teacher.

“Second, my senior year in high school I had an English teacher named Trece Greene who made her job seem important, fun, and honorable.

“And third, I took an intro to education class as a sophomore in college and I loved it immediately. Path set.

“The reasons I stay

“Now after 20 years in the classroom, I look at the reasons I stay.

“First, I want to provide for my family and after so many years, and an advanced degree, I can do so with the help of my wife’s fulltime office job. But I know that most people have it rougher than I do.

“Second, I love my job. I can sincerely say that I look forward to each and every day spent with students in the classroom.

“Third, it’s the light bulbs. When a person all of a sudden has an epiphany and figures something out, light bulbs appear over their head. I love seeing light bulbs in my class.

“Fourth, I teach because there is honor in my chosen profession. Serving 150 students in my classroom and the other 1,400 in my school is a task that I take seriously. When a parent releases their child – the most important thing in the world to them – to my school and also to me for guidance, instruction, mentoring, compassion, and a myriad of other roles which can pop up, I don’t want to let those parents or children down in any way. I still remember my sixth grade teacher who was mean to me in front of the class and would pick on most of the kids. She haunts me. I do not want to be that person and have no respect for any teacher that does the same. Conversely, I remember my fourth grade teacher who made me believe that I could accomplish anything. To this day, that man, Jon Snyder, is a huge inspiration.”

Read on to learn about the low points and also the incredible rewards of teaching.

Ben ends by saying:

“Twenty years down and twenty to go. Why do I teach? Because I woudln’t want to do anything else.”

As the saying on Twitter goes: #evaluatethat!

Categories Teachers and Teaching

Los Angeles Board Votes to Shred Staff Emails, Then Reconsiders

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2014 //
36

Talk about bad timing!

 

The Los Angeles Unified School Board voted 6-0 to adopt a policy to shred most internal emails after one year. The iPad scandal came to light only after reporters gained access to two-year-old internal emails.

 

As Annie Gilbertson of public radio station KPCC wrote:

 

The decision comes less than three weeks after KPCC published two-year-old internal emails that raised questions about whether Superintendent John Deasy’s meetings and discussions with Apple and textbook publisher Pearson influenced the school district’s historic $500 million technology contract.

Under the new system, L.A. Unified will be able to deny California Public Records Act requests for emails more than one year old, according to school district general counsel David Holmquist. KPCC had obtained the emails through the public records act.

The measure passed 6-0, with new school board member George McKenna abstaining from the vote.

 

There was something like a public uproar over the decision, and a day later, the LAUSD board voted to reconsider its decision. No emails will be deleted pending a final decision by the Board.

 

School board member Monica Ratliff called for changes to the school district’s policy for retaining those records.

“I believe the District should preserve any emails of Board members, the Superintendent, senior officers and their respective staffs,” Ratliff said in a written statement Wednesday.

“Often, older emails may have historical importance that cannot always be assessed until later,” she said. “The Board and District must come up with a timeline for email retention that makes sense and clearly serves the public’s interest.”

 

 

 

Categories Los Angeles

Frank Breslin: A Moral Vision of Schooling

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2014 //
24

These days we seem to have forgotten what schools are for. Our national leaders see them only as economic institutions, preparing students for careers and college. Business leaders see them as workplace training.

Frank Breslin, a retired high school teacher of German, Latin, and history, has a vision of schooling that is far broader than training to get a job or get ahead.

This is how he begins:

“A school is a sacred place. It reveres every child as a being of infinite worth and dignity, whatever his or her ability.

“A school is about teaching children the skills they need to prevail in a world that makes it difficult to keep one’s bearings.

“It is about helping them develop belief in themselves and instilling trust in their own judgment to think for themselves.”

Children are not just future workers. They are human beings, each deserving the best education we can provide.

Categories Real Education

Schneider: Gates Foundation Gives Grant to “Hardwire” the Common Core Curriculum

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2014 //
49

Mercedes Schneider wrote a book about the origins of the Common Core this past summer, and she continues to keep a close watch on Bill Gates’ investment in the purchase of American education. In this post, she recounts Bill’s infatuation with the idea of standardizing every classroom, because he believes in the glories of standardization. And if he believes in it, so should everyone else.

You know how Arne Duncan and his echo chamber say again and again that the Common Core is not a curriculum? Mercedes says that the Gates Foundation made a grant to “hardwire” the CCSS curriculum. Oops! They didn’t mean to use that word! Maybe by the time this post goes public, they will change the word and call it “standards,” not “curriculum.”

But what’s with the “hardwiring”? Does the Gates Foundation really believe they can hardwire every school to the standards or curriculum of their choosing? This is America. We believe that our states are “laboratories of innovation.” A top-down set of standards, written in D.C., imposed by the lure of federal dollars? Never gonna happen. Ten years from now, maybe sooner, some states will stick with them, others won’t. Whatever they are, they will not be national standards. Americans don’t like to take orders. We don’t want to be hard-wired. We dissent. We debate. We question authority. We march to our own drummers. Or at least enough of us do to make trouble for anyone who wants to standardize us and hardwire us. Bill Gates will have to find a new plaything.

Categories Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Wendy Lecker: Our Real National Standards

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2014 //
10

Wendy Lecker, senior attorney for the Education Law Center, writes here that our most important national standards are found in our obligation to provide a high-quality education, adequately funded, to all children.

She was reminded of this by the recent court decision in Texas, where Judge John Dietz ruled that the schools were inadequately funded.

“Dietz found that to prepare children for citizenship, every school must have a basic set of essential resources: pre-K, small class size, enough teachers, libraries, books, technology, support staff — including counselors, social workers and paraprofessionals — and extra services for children with extraordinary needs, adequate facilities and a suitable curriculum. After a lengthy trial, the judge ruled that Texas’ school-finance system failed to ensure schools had these basic resources and that, as a result, children in these schools were being denied their constitutional right to an education.”

“Across this nation, courts in school funding cases have found that these same resources are essential to a constitutionally adequate education in their states. Like Dietz, they heard evidence from national educational experts and local educational experts — superintendents and teachers who work with public school children every day. These judges heard what children need and what works best to help children learn. From Kansas, to Washington, to New Jersey and beyond, these far-flung courts ruled that their states are responsible for providing schools with this nearly identical basket of educational goods.

“So-called education “reformers” push a different and lesser vision of education — perhaps most honestly expressed by the Dayton, Ohio, Chamber of Commerce:

[whose spokesman said] “The business community is the consumer of the educational product. Students are the educational product. They are going through the educational system so they can be an attractive product for business to consume.”

“This diminishment of children as being in service to business is echoed by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who lamented that because of our public education system, “we are falling further behind our international competitors.”

“Not only is this vision offensive, it is wrongheaded. It has been proven over and over that U.S. students’ scores on national or international tests bear no relation to America’s economy or worker productivity.”

Our national standard ought to be, and until recently was: equality of educational opportunity. That standard cannot be met until all children have access to a good public school with experienced teachers and adequate resources. We must hold state governments accountable for supplying the schools that children need.

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, US Education

Palm Beach County Commission Allots $20 Million for New For-Profit Charter School

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2014 //
20

The Palm Beach County Commission allocated $20 million to enable a new charter school to borrow money for school construction. Some members of the commission opposed it, but the majority thought it was just another business that needed public funding.

 

The County Commission voted in favor of allowing Renaissance Charter School at Cypress on Okeechobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach to borrow money by accessing tax-exempt bonds. Those bonds can help the charter school pay for the cost of buying land, constructing the new building, adding equipment and other educational expenses.

While the money comes from private investors, those bonds are supposed to get paid back by school revenues. Those revenues include the portion of school tax dollars that go toward charter schools.

Palm Beach County shouldn’t be enabling charter school companies to profit from the bond deals, said County Commissioner Paulette Burdick.

“It’s not about educating children. It’s about making money,” said Burdick, a former school board member….

 

Charter schools are billed as a way to provide parents more educational alternatives for their children. Private companies, nonprofit groups and other organizations can use public funds to start charter schools, which can operate without many of the regulations of traditional schools.

But a proliferation of charter schools has sparked concerns that they are poorly regulated and too often fail to deliver on promised educational improvements. Critics say charter schools are taking too many tax dollars away from educational efforts at existing public schools.

The Palm Beach County League of Women Voters on Tuesday opposed approving a bond deal for the Renaissance Charter School.

Charter school companies are using public financing help to profit off land deals and the county shouldn’t help, according to Elaine Goodman, of the League of Women Voters.

“What is happening to our traditional public schools?” Goodman asked. “Where are our priorities?”

 

Despite the critics, the commission approved the deal by a vote of 5-2.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Laura H. Chapman on the Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2014 //
34

Reader Laura H. Chapman has read the CCSS, unlike many others who support or oppose them. She writes:

“Anyone who had READ the CCSS all the way to the footnotes, or looked at the website, and otherwise done due diligence before buying the spin would determine it is a fraud.

“Consider this: Between 2000 and 2002, Achieve conducted interviews with prospective employers and higher education officials in a few states to gather examples later cited as “evidence” to support various claims about college and career readiness.

“This work, undertaken, under the banner of American Diploma Project, is dated and limited in scope. For information about Achieve’s Research see http://www.achieve.org/Research.

“For the list of studies “consulted” in support of claims that the Standards are internationally benchmarked, see the CCSS for Mathematics (pp. 91-93). A high proportion of these studies are not peer reviewed publications, and some are not fully annotated. Comparable information on international benchmarking of the ELA Standards appears in Appendix A, p. 41.

“The benchmarking is entirely for show and to boost the “credibility” of we must do more to be globally competitive. However, during the roll-out of the CCSS, the World Economic Forum published The Global Competitiveness Report, its annual ranking of over 130 countries on 12 “pillars” in an economy. The pillars are: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health and primary education (pre-collegiate), higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labor market efficiency, financial market development, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication, and innovation. In the 2010-11 report, Switzerland topped the overall ranking, followed by Sweden, Singapore, and the United States. The United States fell two places to fourth position due to the failure of financial institutions, not educational performance. See http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-competitiveness

“I constructed a spreadsheet to map the major and subordinate categories in the CCSS and to place the quantity of the standards to be met at each grade level, in math and ELA, and the Literacy standards (including parts a-e).

“The result was a total of 1,620 standards to be met, with absolutely no rationale for their distribution by grade level.

“One of the examples for a grade 9/10 ELA standard was a direct lift from a community college assignment.

“Geometry is the only math topic treated in every grade.

“There is no explanation for labeling and grouping all studies in the arts under ” technical subjects”

“The average number of standards to be met verbatim in just two subjects is 91 for grades K-2; 109 for grades 3-5; and 147 for grades 6-8. In theory, one lesson, unit, or course can treat multiple standards–but these standards were written with no regard for the rollout of new standards in the sciences, or the arts, or the disciplines grouped under social studies, or the incessant calls for more standards bearing on tech savvy and financial savvy, and so on.

“Drowning the nation’s students and teachers in a sea of standards is not a solution to anything. We do not need more standards. We do not need the CCSS sucking up the time and resources for a complete education with a balanced program of studies in the arts, sciences, and humanities, including at least one foreign language still the gold standard for curriculum excellence.”

Categories Common Core

Seth Sandronsky on Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2014 //
23

Journalist Seth Sandronsky noted the progressive rhetoric of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson when he joined New York City Bill de Blasio at a national task force on turning cities into generators of opportunity.

““The purpose of cities is to lift up residents and build a community and economy that works for everyone,” said Mayor Johnson. “That means having a higher minimum wage, expanding the supply of affordable housing and ensuring every child has access to Pre-K.”

Sandronsky said it sounded good but is inconsistent with Mayor Johnson’s funding from the ultra-conservative Walton Family Foundation. The foundation gave the Mayor’s foundation $500,000 and gave $8 million to the Mayor’s wife, Michelle Rhee Johnson, for her anti-union organization StudentsFirst.

Walmart itself is hostile to unions and to raising the minimum wage. Sandronsky points out that every member of the Walton family is a billionaire while their workers get low wages.

Sandronsky concludes: “Mayors of US cities can better represent the 99% of their constituents by avoiding Mayor Johnson’s progressive words about raising the minimum wage while taking money from the Walton Family Foundation to undermine public education and union workers generally. Actions speak louder than words.”

Categories Rhee, Michelle

An Illinois Superintendent Writes about What Matters Most

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2014 //
16

Superintendent Mark Cross joins the honor roll for his willingness to stand up and be counted on the side of students.

Cross sent a letter home to parents in which he criticized high-stakes testing and Common Core. He spoke critically of federal and state initiatives whose purpose is to rank students rather than educate them. Many educators are fearful of saying what Mark Cross said because they are supposed to be docile and keep their professional ethics to themselves. A test score is like stepping on a bathroom scale, he said. It tells you something but not everything you need to know about your wellness. So, he told parents, we won’t be talking much about PARCC or Common Core. We will continue to focus on helping them become well-rounded people, with time to develop their creativity.

Read his letter. He makes clear that he and his staff take their responsibility to the children and the local community very seriously, and they will continue to do so.

If every school board, principal, and superintendent were equally willing to speak their convictions, there would be a genuine conversation about education, rather than the current top-down authoritarianism that typifies relationships between the federal government and everyone else.

The original letter can be seen here.

August 20th 2014

Dear Parents,

Today is the first day of the 2014-15 school year and I wanted to take the opportunity to share some personal thoughts regarding the current state of education at the national, state and, most importantly, local levels. I am very fortunate to serve as the superintendent of this great district and we are all very proud of the incredible progress we have made in recent years, building on previous years of excellence. At the end of the day, our kids and their safety and educational growth are all that matters to us. We work hard to keep anything from distracting us from these priorities.

Unfortunately, there are many federal and state education initiatives that can very much be a distraction from what matters most These initiatives are based on good intentions and are cloaked in the concept of accountability, but unfortunately most do little to actually improve teaching and teaming. Most are designed to assess, measure, rank and otherwise place some largely meaningless number on a child or a school or a teacher or a district. That is not to say that student growth data is not important, It is very critical, and it is exactly why we have our own local assessment system in place. It is what our principals and teachers use to help guide instruction and meet the needs of your kids on a daily basis. In other words, it is meaningful data to help us teach your child.

But no more than a number from a bathroom scale can give you a full assessment of your personal wetness, a test score cannot fully assess a student’s academic growth. Does stepping on the scale tell you something? Of course. But does it tell you everything? Absolutely not.

As one specific example, Peru Elementary District 124 puts great value on the fine arts. We believe that music and art enhances cognitive growth, creativity and problem solving. In fact we know this, and this is exactly why your children have access to an outstanding fine arts program with five music and art teachers from PreK through 8th grade. The state does not assess music or art or science or social studies for that matter. Only language arts and mathematics are assessed with the state’s new Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessment.

This is why I wanted to let you know that we will not be talking to you that much about the PARCC assessment or Common Core or other initiatives that have some importance, but they are not what matters most to us. YOUR CHILDREN are what matter most and we believe that kids should be well-rounded, with an emphasis on a solid foundation for learning across all subjects by the time they get to high school and later college. We believe that kids need to be creative and learn to solve problems. We believe that exposure to music and art science and social studies, physical education and technology and a wide variety of curricular and extracurricular activities will serve them very well as they grow into young adults.

We further believe that there is no replacement for high expectations, and we must expect our students to achieve to the best of their individual ability. We believe that all children can learn, but not all at the same pace or in the same way. We believe that reading and literacy are the foundations of learning. We believe that children are each unique and have a wide variety of talents and skills, very few of which can be measured on a state assessment

The state and federal government have failed epically in their misguided attempts at ‘reforming’ public education. Public education does not need reformed. It may need intervention in school districts that are not meeting the needs of students on a grand scale, but it needs to be accountable to and controlled by our citizens at the local level. And in Peru Schools, this will continue to be very much the case.

So, I wanted to let you know that we will not let these other things serve as a distraction from educating your children in Peru Schools. When appropriate, we will use these opportunities as a chance to improve but we will not let political nonsense distract us from our true mission, which is to keep your kids safe and to provide them with a world class education. One of my favorite quotes is,

*Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least’

And the ‘things- which matter most here are your kids and their education. Nothing you read or hear about will distract us from that effort.

Thank you for your support of our children and our schools and as always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns at all as we start the new school year!

Sincerely,

Mark R. Cross Superintendent

Categories Arts Education, Common Core, Honor Roll, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

Director of Nashville Schools Wants More Charters

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2014 //
12

Jesse Register, the Director of Metro Nashville public schools, proposes to close a number of low-performing schools and replace them with charter schools, despite the fact that the state’s all-charter Achievement School District has not outperformed public schools.

Parents, community members, and teachers are upset by his lurch to the corporate model. Where is the school board, whose majority supports public schools? Why did Jesse Register drink the privatization Kool-aid?

Just bear in mind that New Orleans Recovery School District is one of the lowest performing districts in the state.

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Tennessee
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