Anyone who criticizes the current regime of test-based accountability is inevitably asked: What would you replace it with? Test-based accountability fails because it is based on a lack of trust in professionals. It fails because it confuses measurement with instruction. No doctor ever said to a sick patient, “Go home, take your temperature hourly, and call me in a month.” Measurement is not a treatment or a cure. It is measurement. It doesn’t close gaps: it measures them.
Here is a sound alternative approach to accountability, written by a group of teachers whose collective experience is 275 years in the classroom. Over 900 teachers contributed ideas to the plan. It is a new vision that holds all actors responsible for the full development and education of children, acknowledging that every child is a unique individual.
Its key features:
1. Shared responsibility, not blame
2. Educate the whole child
3. Full and adequate funding for all schools, with less emphasis on standardized testing
4. Teacher autonomy and professionalism
5. A shift from evaluation to support
6. Recognition that in education one size does not fit all
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hear. Hear. I just wrote something expressing very much the same points: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robinhoffman/raising-a-generation-of-d_b_6338174.html
Thank you, Diane, for all your work on this!
Absolutely love it. Sounds like common sense to me!
Very similar to the PAR model already being used in Montgomery County, Md. Joshua Starr is the 2nd superintendent to follow this program. This is what every teacher should be fighting for because due process rights are protected and staff development is a requirement for any teacher who shows promise but still needs professional guidance.
The concern I have with PAR is that it becomes a popularity contest. Administrators’ favorites get passes and everyone else is denigrated. I don’t like the idea of teachers pitted against teachers in any sense, including that one.
Due process rights aren’t protected at all in PAR. It’s 1984 out here.
Our administration has appointed its own Teacher Leader Board, which gets extra pay and meets during school hours. It is “tasked” to provide teacher input to implement district reform initiatives. Each board member leads a committee, and every teacher is assigned to professional development on one of the committees, which have an almost scripted “task” agenda to give positive input in support of whatever initiatives the district chooses..
The district has tasked the Leader Board to choose which PAR model teachers prefer. All the models have the administration appointing two members, then the union can appoint two, and the Teacher Leader Board chooses two. That way, teachers hold the majority and our due process rights are protected.
The recommendations are well thought out, and generally focus on appropriately and constructively supporting and impacing educators, students and public education. However, Rec #3 re funding isn’t necessarily practical or realistic, especially an Amendment to the Constitution, to either taxpayers or politicians. Those kinds of recommendations diminish the power of the rest.
And where is the new vision of accountability?
Accountability means teeth. This is the good-guy cop in the corporate centralized accountability hoax. Poke around a little, and you’ll see it snarl soon enough.
“Educators in every state need to develop education standards, benchmarks, and assessments in all content area due to an increasingly mobile and transient student population ”
You’re asking, how does it function to control individual teachers and children in the classroom? Please see my post below.
“1) Shift Away from Blame, Toward Shared Responsibility”
Yes, blame shifting! I’m sure that will help! Since everyone is responsible (this is subtly the same thing as saying that nobody is responsible), there can be no consequences for anyone. Everyone keeps their jobs, everyone is a good parent, there are no such thing as cultural problems.
“2) Educate the Whole Child”
Sounds good, but I wonder what this translates into in practice (political indoctrination of students?)
“3) Top Down Funding Without Top Down Control”
I like the lack of top down control. I’m not convinced that funding should be equitable.
“4) Teacher Autonomy and Professionalism”
I’m all for it, but we need to come up with other ways to increase the quality of people who enter into the teaching profession. Education as an undergraduate major has to go (its a bad, bad joke major). Maybe have a meaningfully difficult entrance exam? I’m not sure.
“5) Emerge from Evaluation to Support”
How about both? Bad teachers should be fired as quickly as possible. Firing requires evaluation. From their explanation: “Other professions such as doctors, lawyers, CEO’s are not observed, rated, or evaluated according to a checklist. ” Doctors, lawyers, and CEO’s will also get fired in a heartbeat if they are doing an egregiously bad job.
” 6) One Size Does Not Fit All”
Agreed. How does this fit in with the idea of each kid having only one school to choose from (if they aren’t rich enough to afford private school)?
No, educating the whole child has nothing to do with indroctrination of any kind! It has to do with recognizing a child may have emotional or social issues that should be addressed, it just can’t be solely about academics.
Like I said, I agree with the sentiment expressed by the statement “educate the whole child”, and I completely agree that it just can’t be solely about academics. You mention emotional and social issues, and I would also add personal responsibility and work ethic (can’t call it “grit” or else people here will have a fit).
What left me a tad worried was the statement in the post Prof Ravitch links: “Schools and districts must be given the freedom to work in collaboration with students, families, school counselors, and community members to define the human standards that are most important for students as unique individuals, active community members, and effective citizens in our democratic society. ”
I would worry that in certain places in the country, “the human standards that are most important for students as effective citizens in our democratic society” might end up meaning specific political commitments or social views, rather than general traits of civic engagement, critical thinking, etc.
I second your sentiments. My impression from these responses most of which appear to be from teachers gives me a sens why education is not working. The teachers on this forum seem to dwell entirely too much in the head and not in the heart. Whole child education is the future and that is why so many parents are opting for charters over public schools. Many charters have the freedom to integrate art, music and dance into the school day. We all learn differently. Some of us are visual learners. Others are audio learners and so on. Why can’t we take into consideration individual learning styles? Addressing the whole child is also about making time for physical activities that are not exclusively athletic but address physical expression needs. Dance and theatrical movement games provide children an outlet for physical creativity which we all possess. You know I’m a gen X-er and I seem to recall a lot of these programs when I was a very young child in the 70’s. How did we lose our way? We learn through the heart and not the brain. The brain instead helps us decide what to do with the lessons.
“The teachers on this forum seem to dwell entirely too much in the head and not in the heart.”
Okay, I’m baffled. I’ve been reading Diane’s blog for over two years now, and it seems to me that “the teachers on this forum” are the ones arguing in favor of art, music, whole child education, etc. It’s the rephormers and the charterites who are all into the drill-and-kill, non-stop test-prep, math and “literacy” only, “no excuses” style of education that is being forced on the public schools.
Could you cite a few teachers “on this forum” who have advocated what you claim they have?
Roxanne baffles me too. The reformists will tell you in no uncertain terms that the idea of ‘learning styles’ has been debunked and there is no research base to support the theory; it is popular and often cited but is not true. We’ve been told that over and over again in our professional indoctrination, err, development classes since the reforms took hold.
Charters in my neck of the woods do not embrace the warm fuzzy ideology that Roxanne seems to be advocating. They are all no-nonsense, rigor and recitation, behaviorist factories that spend all day long on test prep. The test scores and the state grade are everything to them. They do not have dance, art, music — too expensive and not necessary to get that A.
I, too, am surprised. The teachers on this forum have been advocating against “one size fits all” testing and political ideology in curriculum for as far back as you can scroll. Are you sure you have read posts? The knee-jerk reaction against teachers and the constant demonization undermines the classroom. The blaming of teachers for everything from lack of work ethic to national security might appease the limo-liberals and tricorner hat crowd, but it is counterproductive to learning. In a class of 40 kids in a high school math class, a teacher has allocated 1 minute per student in ideal situations to teach “grit”, apply rigor, and get everyone “college and career ready”. Outside of that minute, there certainly must be support from parents, administrators, community, business, government. Perhaps instead of our country indicting teachers with crimes against humanity in education, we should try to support education and value respect.
Shared responsibility is another name for teamwork and collaboration. It is very possible to structure organizations as teams. Not only is this approach more satisfying, it is highly effective.
Educate the whole child means avoiding a narrow focus or a rigid curriculum that fails to see students as individuals.
One way to increase the “quality” of teaching as a profession is to ensure both monetary and career-based rewards. Entrance and exit exams are meaningless. I have found excellent teachers are very common and they could teach a CEO a thing or two. But often, the system is counterproductive and demoralizing. You will not find many professions or companies where the leaders actively seek to dismantle and destroy any chance of success. Yet both Dems and Repubs constantly pursue destructive policies in education.
It is incredibly difficult to discipline doctors and lawyers. There is a long due process and often licenses are reinstated. CEOs are well protected by the board and enjoy generous golden parachutes. Even if a CEO is completely incompetent, they leave with an exit package set for life. CEOs never pay the price for ruining a company, that falls onto the workers. Besides, you assume 1) evaluations are impartial and accurate, 2) professionals are unable to improve with experience. Many an excellent teacher struggled their first years.
One school to choose from but a democratically elected school board. I do not understand why reformers hate the notion of communities coming together and working on a common goal. Democracy seems like something we would want to keep around in America. Corporations are not democracies, they are top-down dictatorships. Plus reformers confuse choice with physical location. A well designed, well funded school district can offer schools-within-schools, STEM and arts programs, immersion schools, vocational schools, alternative schools. This blind faith in market forces in education is misguided at best. To a free marketer with a hammer, every situation looks like a nail.
Why on earth would you equate educating the whole child with “indoctrination”? I think maybe you’ve been indoctrinated.
This group of teachers are currently working on turning these into more actionable items. One area that will be presented is the idea that teacher education programs need to strengthen rigor so teachers enter the profession ready to reach rather than being overwhelmed at the reality of teaching. Along with the higher standards should come appropriate compensation. Give teachers the appropriate compensation and respect, and the more strong teachers will enter the profession.
okteacher, some teachers in the group are now commenting they resisted when New Vision Strategies pressured them to include things they disagreed with. Are you one of the people who pressured them?
You say “This group of teachers are currently working on turning these into more actionable items. One area that will be presented is the idea that teacher education programs need to strengthen rigor…” That has nothing to do with the vision of the respondents to the NEA call, at all. So, I have to conclude that “New Vision Strategies” has other clients, whose work you are now doing in the name of my union.
The attack on experienced teacher preparation programs has nothing to do with this distorted “report” or with your supposed connection with the NEA. It’s a project of predators whose aim is the destruction and hostile take over of free public education. You’ve exposed your real goals, and contaminated the work of teachers who tried to participate in your sham.
“. . . that teacher education programs need to strengthen rigor. . . ”
It’s pretty hard to get beyond dead stiff rigor.
After five years of successfully teaching music for the DOE followed by three years of existential struggle, I found all six of these objectives already in practice. Sadly, I had to leave the city, state, country, and public sector to accomplish that – but I am happily using the skills American musicians taught me, to help children in Kiev, Ukraine. Please feel free to respond if interested.
Ahhh Daniel… I have no doubt you are having a most rewarding experience and applaud your passion – one that is strong enough that you found a position that honored your abilities and enabled you to share and impassion others without the “good graces” of Danielson and her “f”ing SLO nonsense.. without Pearson measuring you and your students’ every move and for what??? Sadly, there are so many knowledgeable teachers like you except that they are sacrificing their professional talents all under the noose of “corporate ed” reform. Freedom and democracy are sadly missing in the national education realm!
Many thanks for your compassion and insight, Art. Ironic that I found the freedom to practice my profession in the same region my grandparents fled in fear for their lives. (The locals nowadays are very helpful and kind, BTW.) But there are little pockets of progress to be found, if one looks hard enough. As to my colleagues, I’m sure many of the younger ones will outlast this madness. I just don’t have the time, patience, or opportunity to wait alongside them any longer, myself.
Daniel, very sorry you had to leave the US to use music and the six objectives. Here are two examples, the first a a district, the second a charter public school, where music is at the center for learning:
http://spmusicacademy.spps.org/
Here’s the second example, a charter in NYC:
http://spmusicacademy.spps.org/
Hope many more educators have the opportunity to carry out their ideas and use their skills in 2015.
Sorry, here’s the link to a NY Times story the NYC charter that uses music as a way to help “the whole child”
That is a very nice example of an exceptional charter school, Joe. Does it make up for the frauds and scams in Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Indiana, Arizona and elsewhere draining millions away from public schools and depositing them in the bank accounts of entrepreneurs?
Diane – I also cited an example of an outstanding district school. There are examples of outstanding district & charters.
Abuse, corruption, and mistreatment of youngsters are unacceptable, whether they are in district, charter, union or other organizations. I hope you will join in condemning all of these things, whether they occur.
Joe,
I don’t know of any district public schools operated for profit, do you?
There are plenty of examples of corruption within district public schools, and of organizations set up by district public schools. Here’s one of the most recent, here in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area
http://www.startribune.com/local/stpaul/284833901.html
a collaborative of 42 district systems where
* Instead of requiring payment by a bar for parking spots that the coop owened, the cooperative accepted thousands of dollars worth of credits the bar
* there was a lot of nepotism
* At least one person took a bag of money home allegedly containing more than $20,000
* A contract that was supposed to cost about $28,000 “ballooned into almost $1 million.
The board members who allowed this are all either district superintendents or district school board members.
Having acknowledged many of these problems happened on their watch, do you think they should continue to be board members, Diane?
For profits have done business with district schools for decades. Many operate pretty well. Some contracts are poorly carried out.
Joe Nathan writes: “For profits have done business with district schools for decades. Many operate pretty well. Some contracts are poorly carried out.:
This is so true. Private companies and organizations, including teacher unions, have operated in public schools for many years. That has not made them “private,” though, as I’ve stated before, the lobbyists for these private groups (some more powerful than others) can certainly take co-authorship for public laws impacting our public schools.
–peter meyer
Joe, many thanks for your comments, links, and sentiments. St. Paul warmed my dyed-in-the-wool Suzuki violin teacher heart. (Though thus far, weather along my stretch of the Dnipro has proven milder than along their stretch of the Mississippi – knock wood.)
As a City music teacher I had applied to Voice Charter. Those of us with two masters degrees and 10 years’ classroom experience know clearly that there are less expensive candidates available. I wish well, all concerned.
A challenge of expat life nowadays is to sustain existing ties of family and friendship, while immersing in new cultures and circles of friends. How my grandparents fled that very region a century before Skype and Gmail, never looking back – hard to imagine how they coped.
All in all, I have found a niche where I can teach freely, learn endlessly, and be treated like a human being. It’s real life and has its bumps and hassles in various (though different) places. But frankly and in short – I’m in a better place. Feeling sorry for the disruption is a kindness on your part. But no need to pity me personally; rather be glad.
Well said!!! And class size does matter!
Diane, there is no accountability to taxpayers in this. How are the citizens who pay the freight to judge teachers? Don’t taxpayers have that right? All this says is, “Leave us alone.”
It’s not up to tax payers to “judge” teachers. Do you feel it’s your god given right to “judge” all public servants? Or do you think that just maybe public servants, including teachers, have bosses whose job it is to “judge” them (typically, we say “evaluate” or “review”)?
Who the heck is arrogant enough to think that they personally are qualified to judge professionals just because those professionals happen to be public sector workers?
I would like to judge police officers, fire fighters and USDOE bureaucrats. I am fleshing out some rubrics to facilitate my observations.
Check out Peer Assistance Review PAR and you will see a program where parents and teachers are involved. It’s fair and balanced without using VAM which is an unreliable statistical measure.
I prefer “let us do our jobs”. How do you define accountability? All we have now is a rank and yank system that assumes all teachers are bad and they must prove competence through flawed measurements injected with ideology and politics. I currently am so “accountable” in this ridiculous system, I should be a CPA. Oh, and teachers pay taxes, too. Teachers are not strange mutants isolated from society. They are friends, neighbors, customers, voters. Reformers seek to make teachers second class citizens. Perhaps less “us v. them” and more towards working together to make America great(er)?
“Teachers are not strange mutants. . . ”
I’ll beg to differ with you on that!!!
Schools have done well for generations without all of this “accountability.” It’s not any different now. In fact, this “accountability” runs good teachers out of the profession, yet still manages to keep incompetent people, because they’re the nephew or niece of the superintendent, or they’re good looking. I’ve seen it many times.
Guess what, Einstein? Teachers are taxpaying citizens too! Incredible, isn’t it? Teachers are accountable to school boards, parents, students, colleagues, supervisors, district personnel, etc. and have been for a very long time.
The false meme that the alternative to the gross ‘accountability’ nonsense of today is ‘no accountability’ is patently false, insulting, and ignorant.
Prissy: what you said.
😎
Right on Prissy!
What yardstick with which to measure? How about comparisons in measuring tjese: when every nation under the sun sends their brightest students to our colleges to study with professors educated IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. How about measuring the number of Nobel prizes, the number of patents put out by our citizens? How about comparing apples with apples, oranges with oranges? How about evaluating our politicians and their success in ending poverty, ending gun violence, slums, in reducing our jailed inmates, the number of citizens in OUR country without health insurance compared with every other industrial nation, comparing where we stand with other nations in good health, discovering WHY our politicians have about a single digit approval rating and compare that number with the approval rate of our public schools, ad nauseum?
I believe you are on to something. I also believe that the new mind set towards accountability, as a verb needs to include a high level of sophistication if we are to get widespread support. The Japanese professional development model called lesson study incorporates all of the features you have listed in the article above. It is a bottom up, top down approach. Administrators and education officials in the Japanese government rely on the teachers to study lessons and report their findings. In turn, the findings are used to adjust national curriculum. Teachers are respected as researchers and drivers of reform. Additionally, the professional development model accommodates local needs and problems. It is not a one size fit all model. However, it is a sophisticated, systematic way of gathering authentic classroom data that is generated by students that is used to improve instruction. Lesson study was first created over one hundred years ago. It is not a fad. This approach to professional development can work in the United States. There are over 600 lesson study groups functioning in America at this time. The problem that we are facing as lesson study groups is how to fit this model into the existing structures in American schools. Grants have helped, but it is not enough. More time for collaboration is needed during the school day to improve our instruction. Further, all of the components of effective professional development are woven into the lesson study process. Dr. Doerr contends, ” The smartest people to solve the educational problems are already in the room.” She was referring to teachers and that means us! Accountability is not something that is done to us. As Dr. Fullane states that accountability should be an intrinsically motivating endeavor. Japanese teachers have rich professional lives. I want that here in America too!
I have been a leader in the Lesson Study approach in my public school. The approach demands that teachers look carefully at lesson design and practice. Observing how a classroom full of children respond to a lesson, and what they understand and can do at the end of the lesson, allows teachers to discuss, and then edit or refine the lesson to make sure that all of the children in a class benefit from the lesson.
I hope that this collaborative and professional approach to teaching becomes more wide-spread.
Betsy,
Where have you led lesson study? Are you still leading lesson study research teams? What are your thoughts on how to show teachers the personal and professional benefits of this approach?
Kevin
It sounds like what we were able to do before NCLB. Teachers were able to collaborate and design their own evaluation projects. We were subject to review from an administrator, and we had to meet our objectives.. Teachers did study groups in literacy, math, and science. Some teachers worked with the music or art teacher. Some teachers cross observed each other. I ran a multicultural fair one year that involved the entire school. It was a wonderful, creative, enriching experience for all!
This isn’t the work of an “NEA Idea Exchange”. Living in Dialog should have made the authorship of these documents transparent when it represented them as being the voices of NEA teachers. New Voice Strategies is an opinion-molding PR front, funded by corporate reform. Living in Dialog should also disclose that, since leading this “NEA partnership”, former Massachusetts Teachers Association president Paul Toner has gone on to take direct employment with the firm.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20141001006416/en/Paul-Toner-Announced-President-Voice-Strategies#.VJTAgsAKA
After failing in his bid to be elected to the NEA Board, “Paul Toner, New Voice Strategies – Viva Idea Exchange Cambridge” has now aligned himself with incoming Republican Governor-elect Charlie Baker.
http://eyeonearlyeducation.com/2014/12/18/governor-elect-baker-fills-the-ranks-of-his-transition-team-encourage-them-to-prioritize-early-education-and-care/
This information should be available to readers of this column. I was one of the 900 NEA educators whose input was sold out and distorted by Toner’s private interests. We are working hard to heal the damage his duplicity has caused among the honest union teachers and leaders who were duped in Massachusetts.
Let me quote the toxic punchline of this otherwise mealy-mouthed “report”:
“Educators in every state need to develop education standards, benchmarks, and assessments in all content area due to an increasingly mobile and transient student population ”
Corporate front-organizations come in to our classrooms now, training us to be held accountable to cloud-based templates. They demand that teachers help produce the multitudes of assessment instruments in every subject, and hand them over to be weaponized against our students. Assessments are being be pushed out to to the kids through their iPads. This accountability system will be integrated next year into the state’s Edwin student data dashboard, where Thinkgate inc plans to use proprietary algorithms in the cloud to process the results to assess teacher effectiveness, and personalize the student’s educational opportunities.
I have reposted this as two separate comments, because it contains two links.
This isn’t the work of an “NEA Idea Exchange”. Living in Dialog should have made the authorship of these documents transparent when it represented them as being the voices of NEA teachers. New Voice Strategies is an opinion-molding PR front, funded by corporate reform. Living in Dialog should also disclose that, since leading this “NEA partnership”, former Massachusetts Teachers Association president Paul Toner has gone on to take direct employment with the firm.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20141001006416/en/Paul-Toner-Announced-President-Voice-Strategies#.VJTAgsAKA
After failing in his bid to be elected to the NEA Board, “Paul Toner, New Voice Strategies – Viva Idea Exchange Cambridge” has now aligned himself with incoming Republican Governor-elect Charlie Baker.
http://eyeonearlyeducation.com/2014/12/18/governor-elect-baker-fills-the-ranks-of-his-transition-team-encourage-them-to-prioritize-early-education-and-care/
This information should be available to readers of this column. I was one of the 900 NEA educators whose input was sold out and distorted by Toner’s private interests. We are working hard to heal the damage his duplicity has caused among the honest union teachers and leaders who were duped in Massachusetts.
Let me quote the toxic punchline of this otherwise mealy-mouthed “report”:
“Educators in every state need to develop education standards, benchmarks, and assessments in all content area due to an increasingly mobile and transient student population ”
Corporate front-organizations come in to our classrooms now, training us to be held accountable to cloud-based templates. They demand that teachers help produce the multitudes of assessment instruments in every subject, and hand them over to be weaponized against our students. Assessments are being be pushed out to to the kids through their iPads. This accountability system will be integrated next year into the state’s Edwin student data dashboard, where Thinkgate inc plans to use proprietary algorithms in the cloud to process the results to assess teacher effectiveness, and personalize the student’s educational opportunities.
Chemtcher – I realize you see that single sentence as the fingerprint of some agenda by unelected corporate overlords, and I’m actually generally with you in the general sentiment that there can be no doubt about the school privatization effort that began in earnest with Milton Friedmen, The Heritage Foundation, Libertarianism, “school choice,” vouchers, the culture war, the Moral Majority, and Bill Bennet’s “A Nation at Risk.” I am generally with you in perceiving aspects of the development of Common Core State Standards (and more particularly the testing regimes SBAC and PARC, and connections to Pearson, et al) as iterations of that now four decade long war on public education that has long trumpeted our failure.
I’m in utter agreement with you about the farce of “school accountability,” especially given the absurdities of public education as a colleague due to the savagely unequal (to borrow Kozol’s words) playing field that relegate so many of our children to substandard educational opportunities.
I also really appreciate this insight into the Viva idea exchange and the connections of Paul Toner to corporate education reform (your framing of an opinion-making PR front) as I can vouch for the fact that *none* of the NEA members who were selected by their participation in the idea exchange as part of the writing collaborative were aware of those connections, and I can also tell you as I’m in dialogue with all of them that none of us knew who Paul Toner or Viva really was, or the connection of its founding CEO Elizabeth Evans to Arne Duncan (having grown up next door to him allegedly). I should tell you as one of the report authors who worked on the recommendation that I opposed President Barack Obama in the primaries because of his embrace of merit pay for teachers and charter schools ala Duncan. So learning the ideological affinity of these individuals to each other has been very enlightening and there is some story I’m sure some of us would be willing to share with you privately that seems to jive with your framing about “an opinion-making PR front.” I can tell you privately about things that happened at the eleventh hour that left many of us feeling our work and meaning had been partly compromised (and continues to be so), much to many of our chagrin. I hope you’ll drop me a note.
But what you see in the toxic punchline which is a distillation of what was once justified with paragraphs of writing and explained better in the first iterations IS NOT explicit endorsement of CCSS or NGSS, but merely recognition of the *need* for there to be multi-state standards. Let me explain.
I can also attest as someone who worked on this recommendation that there *was* evidence in the comments of NEA members who responded to NEA’s email inviting members to participate in the idea exchange that while many teachers were critical of CCSS because of their seemingly untoward minimally democratic development, the connections to corporate education reform (US Chamber of Commerce), the lack of a process for input and revision involving teachers from every state and for open dialogue about the same, and the immediate pitch for states to buy into either SBAC or PARCC (at the same time political campaigns on left and right encouraged students to ‘opt out’ with participation rates under state accountability laws designed to not recognize them and rate schools as failing at their lowest levels due to participation rate) for millions more, and the like, there were as many comments from teachers who spoke about a NEED for multistate standards and some level of congruence between districts and states about what gets taught when. In fact, this was why I chose to work on this recommendation which definitely was diluted and polluted during the revision process. Please don’t insult those of your colleagues who are with you on every other point or make the hasty generalization and logical fallacy that multistate standards really means school privatization scheme. You must understand that supporting multistate standards does not equate to destroying public education. It’s non sequitar. Although now that you’ve shared those links, I truly appreciate your mistrust. But as one of the report authors feel it *critical* to help you understand the thinking–thinking that was explained best in the first iteration but that was really whitewashed and scrubbed at the eleventh hour much to my own chagrin. I notice edits I made at the eleventh hour somehow got excised without my consent or knowledge and still don’t know who made those edits and by whom. And as I didn’t *own* the Google Doc, I can’t ‘revert’ changes to find out who. I’ve asked, and nobody as of yet has answered.
In my state and my district which is driven by a boom-bust minerals economy, we are inundated with oil, gas, and coalfield gypsies during booms and mass exodus of such families during busts. I can say as I shared in response to your comment at the livingindialogue blog that a fifth of the American population is mobile nationwide, and that where you might not see what many teachers and school systems experience nationwide (especially agricultural communities facing migrant farm workers and minerals communities with their boom and bust cycle), I work at an alternative at-risk credit recovery program serving high schoolers. It’s also where all transfer students begin their career in our district if they don’t enroll before a semester’s start, so I see a LOT of transfer students in high school. I also serve a lot of under-resourced learners from all over the country who have dropped out and are at our program to try to catch up in credits, and I can attest that most of my learners have stories of severe transiency (whether it’s being passed back and forth between states between divorced parents repeatedly, or in and out of foster care or living on the streets and in cars and homeless), I work with students every day who have moved literally dozens of times by the time they reach me in high school. My average reading level is the sixth grade in high school, and while not all of that is explained by transiency, transiency explains the same in *most* of my students. There is a vast body of educational research showing that mobility in grades K-8 adversely impacts students. You can ask any teacher in my building or most of the teachers throughout my entire state, and anyone with more than a few years teaching experience will attest to how adversely and drastically those moves are to a child’s education, especially when they’ve happened in the formative educational years. Hoping to fix that isn’t about destroying public schools. It’s the moral thing to do. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the fair thing to do. It’s about social justice.
Furthermore, in our district, we have “schools of choice” which has meant “curriculum of choice” too. While that’s been a laudable goal with plenty of merit in so many aspects, we’ve discovered that K-12 our in-district mobility rate is 46% of students. An educational professional studies professor at my state university looked at similarly sized city to the one in which I lived and found that if excluding low SES students (only looking at students self paying for lunch), proficiency on the state test was at 85% in the 5th grade for students who had not changed schools. He looked at only in-district transfers and found that students who changed schools three times (high SES students only) saw their proficiency scores drop to 45% of these students by their third year. Even within my own district, we are now in the midst of a standards-based reboot of our entire essential curriculum to reclaim some level of homogeneity to support transfer students because we can now prove very well that choice has disadvantaged half of the students in our district. We’ll still have schools of choice, but schools won’t have their curriculum of choice–and there is a fair amount of resistance and anxiety about the same as nobody likes losing any autonomy. However, I as a social justice and literacy focused educator who sees literacy as a social justice issue, truly believe it is the right thing to do, but can only be done when ALL of the voice are in the room and broad consensus is reached. We can’t exclude those voices that are inconvenient or even cantankerous–we especially need to listen to them.
I can share that my son was scoring two years ahead in math at one middle school; we moved schools at semester due to bullying (it was not also our first choice, and we were able to get in at semester), where an entirely different math curriculum was being used than the one he’d known throughout elementary and his first year of middle school, and he was completely lost. He used to love math and learned to quickly hate it because he felt so lost. I could fill this page with pages of examples such as my own son’s from anecdotes of the students I teach.
So, we were tasked with a very difficult task. How do you reconcile the recognized need for heterogeneity (surely we’d all cringe given the fight over AP US History in Jefferson County Colorado, or the TX State School Board adoption of history texts and coal states’ rejection of NGSS over their teaching of human-caused climate change as fact and the cultural irredentists who want to repeat Scopes in 2014) and local, state control over standards and curriculum with the need to provide better uniformity so as not to disadvantage students? That’s not such an easy task.
Our recommendation also called for recognition of education as a federal civil right given how Rodriguez vs. San Antonio left fiscal equity to the states in deciding that education was not a federal civil right warranting fourteenth amendment equal protection and spurred costly, redundant, and unnecessary litigation in most of the states with varying results that have only ensured that savage inequalities persist. And like Kozol says, those inequalities are deliberate and legislated. Suburbans don’t often want to help pay for the education of their relatively poorer urban neighbors in the same way rich oil communities don’t want to pay for the education of neighbors in counties without those resources. Economies of scale mean that smaller districts face higher per capita capital construction costs and special service costs and administrative costs as well, so even when money under funding formulas “follow the student” if one community has minerals development, they’re flush with resources because that’s where all the students live while those without languish and have the lowest paid teachers in the state. The only way to overrule Rodriguez is with another Supreme Court decision (and replacing enough justices on the high court to do so is difficult) or by amending the Constitution. We thought that would go over really well with the strict constitutionalists and judicial restraint crowds. Not. But it’s still the right and moral thing to do we reasoned.
But then concerns were raised about Vergara vs. CA and how education as a civil right became the basis for destroying teacher tenure and due process rights in California in the state’s superior court decision AND how making education a federal civil right might actually lead to more expansive federal control and be a disaster for education and so the report does try to address that the easiest and most efficient way to provide educational equity is by constitutional amendment as a utopic solution with the caveat that reaffirmation of state and local prerogative would HAVE to be a part of any such amendment and that we’d need to reframe the conversation about teacher tenure and due process so that it could not or would not be used to undermine either. But then more realistic solutions were offered in continued litigation and legislation at the state level to equalize funding, and then federal legislation to supplement inequitable funding of schools with equitable federal dollars–which again would go over with voters like a lead balloon with voters in this political climate.
BUT how else can we resolve the inequitable school funding issue? We HAVE to change the culture AND the conversation and reframe it so that all Americans agree that there is no freedom without economic freedom and economic freedom depends upon equitable educational opportunity and that anything less than equal educational opportunity is unlovely and makes a mockery of the constitutional principles of the radical equality of humans before the law and our natural right to pursue happiness mentioned in the Declaration. So that suburban voters and property owners see value in funding the education of their poorer urban neighbors and see anything less as un-American and un-democratic and morally wrong…
These were all radical, and controversial ideas, but they were ideas that I can assure you DID come from actual NEA members and actual teachers despite your assumptions to the contrary. However, at the eleventh hour, the message for succinctness and brevity erased much of this context from the report which I now sort of lay out here for you plainly.
And invite you to conversation and dialogue about the same…
I feel it is really important for you to hear me here and know that our intention was clearly *NOT* an implicit or explicit endorsement of CCSS or NGSS. The general solution and recommendation pushed for multi-state standards not because we think it is a good idea to let corporations privatize public education, but because local control disadvantages a growing number of students and we saw the need to both recognize the need for voluntary association of states and communities WHILE providing a framework of what is taught when involving educators from every state–whether that be in improvements and revisions to CCSS or NGSS or in some other visage. I can strongly vouch that there was evidence of the concerns you echo and an equal amount of concern about the lack of uniformity and how it disadvantages students.
And the more verbose version of the first iteration of the recommendation was to ensure that teachers from every involved state and district were involved in the creation of those standards, benchmarks, and assessments. We were told throughout the report that we were too loquacious and wordy (and made the inference that we were also a bit naive in being too frank), and the suggestion was that we were too idealistic or at least that was our interpretation of feedback, which gave rise to your perception of mealy-mouthed recommendations as there were last minute revisions at the eleventh hour that sort of diluted and polluted the first “final” iteration.
How would you fix the problem of inequitable education funding that leaves so many children, and especially minorities, to substandard educations that ill prepare them to compete, create a permanent underclass and in some cases amount to an institutionalized racial caste system? By all means, I’m very seriously interested in your thoughts as to how to fix this very real problem which I am certain you also recognize.
How would you fix the problem of disparate standards that disadvantage at least a fifth of the US population who is moving more than you seemingly experience if you don’t similarly recognize this need? Let me assure you again this was not just some stealth rationale for CCSS or NGSS or increased corporate control over education (if you read the full report, you’ll find corporate control as the rationale for the recommendation)–it was reflection of actual reality that many of your colleagues across this nation face–even if you don’t. AND was a legitimate part of the rationale that led the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) (that is state governors and state school chiefs) with Gates and US Chamber of Commerce funding to develop CCSS originally–not some sinister plot.
But please don’t take that single sentence out of this context. It was NOT and never an endorsement of the corporate education reform movement. To the contrary. I hope you will read the problem statement under this recommendation in the full report to see a different fingerprint rather than making such a logically fallacious hasty generalization.
This is not in the report, but as we argued, and argued, and argued more on endless phone calls late into the night after long days with kids in our classrooms, we had healthy and positive conversations. We agreed that in a perfect world, we’d not have standardized tests and instead would leave assessment up to the classroom experts–but included the “involve teachers from involved states whenever multiple state standards OR assessments are created, adopted, or revised” language because we wanted to preserve the need for teacher voice IF our calls to leave assessment to teachers and move away from standardized testing went unheeded because teachers from EVERY state should be able to influence SBAC and PARCC if that’s what we’re getting stuck with. Ideally, we’ll make sure that we aren’t. But realistically, pragmatically, for those states that might likely be, TEACHERS need to have the power to fix and improve them, and it should be TEACHERS who are creating and driving them, not Pearson or any other company.
Some of that meaning got excised from the report, and a lot of us are ambivalent and frustrated about it. But also excited because it gives us the chance to defend those ideas and also engage in dialogue with folks such as yourself who I can tell by the fiery passion in your words are every bit as passionate about giving kids the best chance at life they can have, non?
Josh, I was almost involved with the writing of a report for this group, commissioned by the MTA a few years ago when Paul Toner was still president. Like you, we were assigned a report moderator/organizer who worked for New Voice Strategies to help us write and “shape” our report. I was asked to help write a section about how school libraries and other support services could be used to help with student achievement in poor areas.
I wanted to talk about funding because I think it’s impossible to discuss increased access to school libraries without discussing funding, but I was told right off the bat that funding was not a topic that should be discussed because of the economic realities. I was prodded to “be realistic” about the economic realities. This set off alarms for me, so I started to look more deeply into the organization and discovered it received both Gates and Walton Foundation funding and that the founder had deep ties to the charter school movement. I quickly dropped out of working on writing for the project because I felt like we were being pushed to write something that was not really going to be our own. That’s why I’m not surprised that you found many of your group’s ideas were excised and that things were changed at the 11th hour.
If your experience was anything like mine, they had us on an extremely tight timeline for writing the report, and we were not going to be compensated for the incredible amount of work we were expected to do. I’d be curious to know how much the salaries of the CEO, president, and others who work for this organization are. And who exactly is paying their salaries? Gates? Waltons? CCSSO? NEA?
You would think the teachers writing these reports would qualify for at least a stipend for their work!
I think like you, most of the teachers who participate in writing these reports are well-meaning teachers who care and are duped into participation; I know I almost was.
These reports are put out as “teacher voice” but that voice is ultimately hijacked and shaped for some predetermined policy. This particular report also discusses teacher preparation, which is a huge initiative of the CCSSO right now. I don’t think the timing of this report is at all coincidental, nor is the focus on areas that the corporate reformers are currently pushing.
Fascinating and thoughtful post, Josh.
Josh, I appreciate your going into this mess more fully, and I have no intention of attacking the honest teachers who were duped into participation. However, I’m not willing to share in any insider information in private about the corporate front that hijacked and distorted your work. We need air and daylight. This particular entity is located only a few miles from my school, and it is coming into my classroom, and going after my students. I plead with you to publish a full account of what transpired, so teachers can understand the corruption you describe struggling with. You aren’t alone in fighting it, and there’s no reason to keep it quiet.
Understand that what we’re talking about is “ACCOUNTABILITY” of students and teachers to whatever entity controls the assessments described in that quote. How are statewide assessments supposed to solve the problems of student transience?
I would be interested in your answer to the comment 2old2teach wrote to you on the LID comment stream:
“Standards should be guidelines. As soon as you attach assessments to them, you turn them into mandates that drive instruction. Before the advent of test to death, our students showed steady growth on both national and international assessments. When disaggregated by racial and socioeconomic groups, everyone showed improvement. We know that our students from high socioeconomic backgrounds perform extremely well, and even our poor students outperform all other students from similar backgrounds. For the past several years of NCLB and RTTT, however, we have proven that raising standards and demanding that students perform at this higher level or else does not improve performance or, for that matter, learning. Standards/guidelines that suggest a focus based on both content knowledge and an understanding of child development should inform not drive instruction. The more rigid and far reaching a framework we set up, the fewer children we will serve well.” -2old2teach
I want to more about VIVA. Who else has experiences with or knows more about this group?
Did you see Sue Doherty’s comment?
Yes chemtchet, I did. That is what made me curious to hear from others.
What are teachers supposed to do? The teachers from this group are trying to make things better. I believe they are doing their best here. What are they supposed to do? How are they supposed to do it?
Thank you, Atltch, for saying what you did about the teachers in this Writing Collaborative trying to make things better. This is Lynn. I am one of the group. For me, right now, my goal is to make sure that teachers are able to express themselves and have their ideas heard and considered. We can have different thoughts about the Common Core and national standards or other educational issues. We don’t all have to agree. But we do need to make sure that the different points of view can be spoken and are considered. The problem we saw underlying all in the Idea Exchange is that teachers largely feel they have no voice. Which leads us all to rely on others to help give us voice. So what are teachers supposed to do? It has been said that one teacher, or one Writing Collaborative, will not likely make much of a difference. So maybe we need to look for ways, using existing institutions, but even beyond those, creating our own, to make ourselves be heard. Sorry, chemtchet, I do not know these answers, but maybe if we talk we can figure them out. What can we do together?
Lynn, the comment thread on Living in Dialog is still open, and nobody from your group has responded to any of my concerns, either here or there.
I referred to the effort of parent, teacher and community partnership, which you’re all free to join in:
“We are working every day to build that new vision now, with the parents and communities we serve.” I have no intention of allowing Paul Toner’s select group to claim equal standing with those initiatives.
I repudiated the presumption by okteacher that the “action steps” that your group is apparently still planning to foist off us represent a synthesis of teacher views. He wrote,
“Yes, they can be held accountable if students fail to come to school. But how do we hold them accountable to study with or oversee homework? How can we make them attend parent-teacher conferences?”
There is no common ground whatsoever on this truly repulsive position.
Democratic and creative shared responsibility is the OPPOSITE of this demand that parents and teachers be “held accountable” to some system of mandated rewards and punishments for compliance with dictated homework policy, or attendance at mandated parent events. You can see those policies in action already, at KIPP, White Hat, and Success Academy. This convinced me that this was a set-up all along, to insert their forced-compliance model into NEA discourse.
I’m interested if any member wants to speak as an individual teacher. It is no particular insult to any of you that I don’t recognize the legitimacy of a group of spokesmen who were selected by a “proprietary algorithm” by an enterprise affiliated with coercive corporate education reform. Since you put these reform proposals forward with no disclosure of the pressure you were under from this group, you have no standing to demand that other respondents to the visibly slanted prompts must nonetheless politely accept your assurances of impartiality.
chemtchr, you are so prolific that I am not sure that I could respond to everything you’ve written to this point, but I wanted to say this much. I do speak as an individual, not on behalf of a group, and I would say this about any idea put forth by any person or group. You are right in that we need to be aware of potential bias, but we should be skeptical of ALL speakers. So it’s okay if you don’t recognize the legitimacy of any group, because we should not be judging any recommendation by the speaker, but by the merits of the recommendation or idea, itself. As I tell my students when one of them shouts out an answer, it could be right or it could be wrong. You need to decide for yourself. (Those considered to be smart people can make mistakes and sometimes the best answers come from places that we don’t expect.)
Also, I do like what you are saying about parents, teachers, students, and the community working together. Some of the comments we read were about the unfairness of only holding teachers responsible for many of the problems with schools today, but i agree that the solutions will involve us all coming together. Merry Christmas.
You bring up an interesting point chemtchr. Rewards and punishments…parent accountability. How can that type of system serve parents and students? Merit pay is that type of system and it isn’t working. My point is that the reward/punish systems that are already in place aren’t working. So, do we really want that here?
However, I participated in the Idea Exchange. There was much discussion in there on parent and student accountability…and community accountability…and legislative accountability. The main issue was that teachers can’t be held solely accountable. That’s not working.
Yes , please pleas educate my whole child!!!! Please don’t just focus on his left brain. I would like a school that nurtures his creativity which he has in spades. I’d like a school that nurtures his heart and rewards him for showing compassion to his fellow classmates. And I would like a school that addresses his physical needs for expression through outdoor games and dance. There is so much lacking in our public schools due to the shifted focus on the test. We are withdrawing from our public school for this reason. We will home school until we find a learning environment that cares about my “whole child” and not just one half of his brain.
You would find few teachers who disagree with you. What you will find is a system where everyone except the teacher has control over the classroom. Teachers despise the constant testing and test prep imposed on them by clueless politicians and greedy billionaires. Remember this at the ballot box. Testing is a cancer and even home schoolers may eventually find they are not safe in their bunker.
Please take home schooling seriously. I have given up counting the number of kids entering high school math with below level math skills who’s parents tried to home school. The social adjustment is often a shock to them as well and an important part of their home schooling. If you notice any learning disabilities, get help immediately as these issues can overwhelm a parent-teacher and destroy a marriage. Many students break down in tears trying to pass the state tests yet the parents tell me they “got all A’s homeschooling!”. I admire parents who can homeschool, but it takes much work, sacrifice, and dedication. Good luck.
Hi roxanne:
How is about your tax that pays towards public education fund? Could you manage to deduct that portion? I guess that all parents who opt out Common Core Tests should get an excellent lawyer from some reputable legal firm to represent their interest to get what their tax dollars to work for its goal: “educate and cultivate a whole child physically (soccer, swim, tracks and fields, field trip), academically (stem), and spiritually (literature, drama, arts, and music).
We work hard to make corporate rich, then these rich corporate try to loot our tax (=public education fund). It is very unreal. This make us (=working class + middle class) to be completely foolish and to some degree of being ignorant about the future of our children.
Back2basic.
I am an educator in an Australian school and we are implementing a collaborative growth-based model. The focus in on formalised teacher-directed reflection on teacher-owned data. We are using the Danielson Framework and a Cognitive Coaching approach to conversations in our process.
A little more about it here: http://wp.me/p4TJTj-50 and here: http://wp.me/p4TJTj-1f .
Deb
This initiative is doomed from the get-go because of this line:
“3. Full and adequate funding for all schools, with less emphasis on standardized testing”
No! No! No! Not LESS emphasis on standardized testing but rather NO emphasis on standardized testing.
Unless and until they abandon this gateway for corporate reform into the classroom and block it with adamantine walls there will be no shift of any kind.
We must stop giving credence to the idea that standardized tests do anything of worth other than create huge profits for psycho-metricians and test publishers.
This kind of triangulation will lead to exactly no change whatsoever, a small group of teachers who authored it co-opted into and bought and paid for by the reform borg (see Paul Toner), and it gives the reformists the imprimatur of ‘teacher approval.’
NO! NO! NO!
Exactly!
No one wants accountability for teaching and schools more than do the teachers and parents of our children. We (and teachers unions) can not let others get away with saying we want “lower standards” for our teachers, because we do not. We want the schools our children deserve. The hype that MUST be exposed and opposed is that the current systems for judging teaching and learning are just. plain. wrong. Thanks to Diane Ravitch for publicizing this alternative.
What about parent/student accountability?
1) Attend school regularly
2) Pay attention in class
3) Civil behavior only
4) Complete all assignments on time
No teacher should have to bear ALL of the accountability!
This report does address parent responsibility but it is limited. In the original 945+ teacher voices much discussion focused on how to hold parents accountable. It can be difficult coming up with concrete actions to hold them responsible. Yes, they can be held accountable if students fail to come to school. But how do we hold them accountable to study with or oversee homework? How can we make them attend parent-teacher conferences? We all know the parents who tend to come are ones whose children are doing well. Sometimes parents with struggling students come hoping to find answers. But, especially in secondary school, when kids shut down, parents are lost as to handling the shutdown and tend to back off.
When I previously asked for concrete suggestions, Chentchr misunderstood my tone as being flippant. We all need suggestions on holding parents accountable. One suggestion was offering tax breaks to parents whose students have perfect attendance or some similar options.
Together, lets figure out how to hold them accountable.
“One suggestion was offering tax breaks to parents whose students have perfect attendance or some similar options.”
Regressive tax policy.
okteacher, who in god’s name is talking about “holding parents accountable”, and to whom?
Parents’ love and protection for their children is the primary asset humanity has on so many fronts. Parents are our allies in this struggle. If you have to ask, “But how do we hold them accountable to study with or oversee homework? How can we make them attend parent-teacher conferences?”, you need to take a hard look at what exactly you’re trying to shove down people’s throats.
Again, the Chicago Teachers Union and the MTA are showing the way to shared community voice and democratic power in our schools. Through our Reclaiming Public Education forums, we are working, instead, to unite with parents. Don’t you dare pretend to speak for me if you aren’t willing and able to demonstrate how much we share parents’ concern for their children’s future. If the parent conferences you envision are so mean and ugly you have to call for punitive measures to drag parents to them, it is you who need to look at your values.
This poisonous ideology exposes the “new accountability” narrative as another anti-democratic hoax. It can’t be allowed to short-circuit the genuine transformation that’s underway in both NEA and AFT unions.
Cross posted on Teacher Team Offers New Vision of Responsibility
okteacher,
Doesn’t it creep you out at all that you were “identified using a proprietary algorithm” to write up the input of teachers to reflect the agenda of VIVA Idea Exchange™? The teachers involved agree there was pressure from VIVA to insert extraneous formulations that didn’t reflect the 945 respondents at all. Several have stated that changes were made to your finished report, but you somehow felt you had to tolerate that. I have to wonder what the selection criteria were, that leave you so confident of your authority to talk down to people who question the resulting distortions: “Please offer something worth taking action on. I will pass it on.”
“Identified using a proprietary algorithm, a small group from the initial conversation is invited to form a Writing Collaborative to distill the ideas generated by the large group into an action plan.”
http://newvoicestrategies.org/idea-exchanges/
On Diane’s post regarding this “report”, you assert:
“This group of teachers are currently working on turning these into more actionable items. One area that will be presented is the idea that teacher education programs need to strengthen rigor… ”
Could you possibly point to any item in this report calls for the NEA to join in the Gates Foundation’s attacks on teacher preparation programs? Whose action plan are you articulating? Is it possible you were selected to be a sock puppet and not even notice it?
Principal says she was fired for reporting teacher’s ‘fake’ internship
By Susan EdelmanDecember 20, 2014 | 11:33pm
Photo: Getty Images
A scandal over a teacher who allegedly falsified documents to get a master’s degree has ensnared a state Board of Regents member and a principal who claims she was fired for blowing the whistle.
Lori Evanko, ex-principal of JHS 125 in The Bronx, accuses teacher Kandis Rivera — the daughter of a retired city principal — of faking paperwork for a Fordham University internship last year, records show.
Kandis Rivera, 35, an English-as-a-second-language teacher under Evanko’s supervision, faked 275 hours of an administrative internship at the Soundview school, Evanko charges.
“An internship is rigorous,” Evanko told The Post. “You have to work with a principal and assistant principals on things like budget, curriculum, instruction, and be assigned certain responsibilities. She did none of that with us.”
Under Evanko, JHS 125 improved from an “F” grade in 2012 to a “B” in 2013. But the Department of Education abruptly fired Evanko on June 27 — nine days after she and two of her then-
assistant principals met with agents of special schools investigator Richard Condon to report Rivera.
The SCI probe is ongoing, a spokewoman said.
Evanko has filed a claim against the city, saying she was fired in retaliation.
Rivera, a teacher since 2006, received a master’s degree in administration and leadership from Fordham’s school of education in May. The degree puts educators on track to become principals.
She has since gotten a big raise because teachers with Master’s degrees get bumped up the salary scale. She made $59,453 plus $9,138 in overtime for after-school tutoring in 2013.
Her salary is now $75,283.
Evanko’s complaint has entangled Kathleen Cashin, a member of the State Board of Regents, which oversees education statewide. Cashin, a former Queens school superintendent, is a Fordham professor and was Rivera’s internship instructor.
Evanko contends Rivera forged her signature on a document requiring the principal to agree to oversee the internship, but Fordham officials said that document is missing.
Another form stating that Rivera completed her internship was signed by PS 72 Principal Margarita Colon, described by Evanko as a “very good friend” of Rivera’s mom, retired principal Nilda Rivera. But Kandis Rivera never worked at PS 72, the DOE says. Colon would not explain when or how Rivera did the internship.
A DOE spokesman said Evanko’s termination was due to “school performance and her fit with JHS 125’s unique characteristics and needs,” and “in no way related” to her complaint against Rivera.
I am one of the teachers that worked on the Collaborative. The intent of the report was to represent the views of over 900 teachers who responded to an emailed question. It was never intended to be a researched document, though we cited some studies.
A recent book by Daniel Pink entitled “Drive, The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us” is something all those involved in educational reform need to read. He clearly shows , using empirical data, how the primary motivational tools which he calls the carrot and stick approach not only don’t work in having a more productive workforce, it creates an environment that is detrimental. His Seven deadly flaws reads like a list of educational ills.
Carrots and Stick: The Seven Deadly Flaws
1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation.
2. They can diminish performance.
3. They can crush creativity.
4. They can crowd out good behavior.
5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior.
6. They can become addictive.
7. They can foster short-term thinking.
From Daniel Pink’s Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
What needs to take place in educational reform is a shift in the paradigm. Yes, that sounds like eduspeak. How do we have students become more intrinsic learners, how to have them be more creative and productive and how to produce citizens with ethics, integrity and grit? There is an expression, “when you find you have dug yourself into a hole, the first thing is to stop digging.” We have to realize that what No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top tried to do doesn’t work. We don’t need more tests and more data and more accountability. We have created a hole with the effects that Mr. Pink succinctly listed.
We need to give teachers and students more autonomy. Yes standards in education are valuable but they should not be the goals. Again using Mr. Pink, there is a difference between studying French in order to get an A in the class and studying it to learn to speak the language. If anyone thinks they are simultaneous endeavors, send an American with three years of high school Spanish to Spain and watch the confusion. I say this from personal experience. Choice is essential to personal engagement which is essential to learning and growth.
We also need to bring our American values into education. Many school districts seem to have used the Soviet Union as their guide to structure. How can we expect our children to learn “American” values when they enter a totalitarian environment? They have no voice in schools, unless there is a benign dictator, and they witness the lack of influence teachers have. This environment of top down management, blame and intimidation is palpable. The overriding message is that teachers, and students do not want to do the right thing. And I would assert that is not an American value!
Ed, Do you notice that the actual proposal regarding “teacher accountability” called for in this document is the OPPOSITE of your stirring description?
Where did this exact wording come from?
” Educators in every state need to develop education standards, benchmarks, and assessments in all content area due to an increasingly mobile and transient student population – without dictating a specific curriculum.”
We urgently need people in your group to answer this specific question openly and honestly. I don’t believe the call standards-based statewide assessments and benchmarks in all subjects comes from teacher responses. It represents an Orwellian escalation of “data-driven” micro-accountability, which is already intruding relentlessly into the daily fabric of our teaching and our students’ lives. That isn’t your vision at all.
Several commenters have said there were eleventh hour changes inserted into the report, and that this wording was one of them. By circulating and endorsing the work of a Walton/Gates funded operation, whose employees have apparently promoted it for publication while requesting concealment from readers, your group takes on a responsibility for clarifying what actually transpired.
Chemtchr, That sentence came from teachers, no one else, who believe all students have a right to a quality education. Josh Thompson has already explained the purpose if that statement.
This is to clarify for you that the sentence you reference was not inserted by anyone from VIVA or NVS. They did not insert anything to my knowledge (except rephrasing which clarified points) into the report. They did remove things from the report. They have answered for that by saying they keep reports to 50 pages. However, the reason and results of these changes are still coming to light.
okteacher,
There is visibly a strategy at work at VIVA Idea Exchange™, in the service of other clients who are pumping money into the enterprise.
I was specifically asking if their “rephrasing for clarity” muddled the words “standards” and “assessments”. The interference you describe in indefensible, and leaves your assurances hollow. The service you could do for all our colleagues is to expose this charade.
I hope you aren’t implying that teachers who oppose enforcing compliance with a corporate front don’t “believe all students have a right to a quality education”.
chemtchr,
It might creep you out, to use your phrase, to hear from yet another teacher/writer from the VIVA group. You might think that we sold out to the NEA or that we are all puppets for some corporate giant, but the truth is we spent a significant amount of time and energy writing this report in an effort to make public education a better place for students, teachers, and the communities that they serve.
The solutions we came up with were not only our own, but those of the many other teachers who responded to the Idea Exchange question. My challenge to you is, could you stand WITH us as we try to bring this issues to light for the public? Most people do not understand public education other than, perhaps, that they attended a public school as a kid.
The Idea Exchange writers have all expressed concerns about how VIVA operates and its connection to other organizations. I know that I had never heard of them prior to my involvement, but, as I believe you know, there are some serious educational issues that need immediate action. Our voices as educators will be more effective if we can agree to disagree on some things, yet stand united and say that teachers don’t need more federal control (especially when it’s tied to financial support), but rather we need to have the ability to teach, assess, and nurture these children who are put into our classrooms. I don’t agree with absolutely everything in this report, but I am listed as a contributor because I can stand behind the spirit of what has been written even if I don’t personally support each word.
The to-do list is long and it isn’t going to be “fixed” today, but I decided to volunteer my time to help create this document so that more people, teachers, parents, cynics and supporters, would begin talking seriously about and questioning the corner that public schools are being force into–and to realize the long-term consequences it will have on today’s students.
I am determined to remain hopeful even as detractors focus to work against me. This report is only one tool. It is not perfect, but perhaps it will initiate some positive changes that even the most cynical among us can appreciate.
No, teachers don’t need to accept the false opportunity to be allowed to speak through corporate-approved groups. I’m not a cynic, I’m an engaged activist in my own state and local association. I’m trying to make it clear that your group has no authority to speak for me, or for my union.
Here’s a published example of a finished New Voice Strategies report on teacher voice, with their recommendations and action steps.
PDF]Voice Action Ideas Vision – Arizona Charter Schools …
https://azcharters.org/ckeditor_assets/…/viva_azreport_finalr_for_web.pd…
Jun 13, 2012 – The online VIVA Idea Exchange uses a combination of technology operated by New Voice … At New Voice Strategies, we believe in the inspiration that grows …… new contract with Pearson will develop open source tools.
chemtcher,
As another member of the group, I can say that what I wrote in the report were based on what the 900+ teacher voices said. I do not speak for a corporation, I speak for the teachers that I have worked with and still do. As the other members of my group have stated, I challenge you to stand with us. As an united group of teachers we can get our voice heard and changes will happen. We are one of the largest unions in the nation and we can get changes made.
There is the problem when a pre-selected group of teachers assumes it has the authority to challenge others to stand with them, instead of standing with the teachers who were not chosen by their corporate sponsor’s proprietary algorithm. How can you demand this, when you agree there is ongoing pressure form the private group to mold your action recommendations?
To see it more objectively, take a look at the finished “report” New Voice Strategies prepared for The Arizona Charter School Association:
“During Phase II, a group of seven teachers whose active participation in Phase 1 was clear in terms of both quantity and quality were invited to join The VIVA Arizona Charter Teachers Writing Collaborative. Their assignment: Take the ideas presented during Phase I and summarize and synthesize them into discrete, workable recommendations for implementing Common Core Standards in a way most likely to result in improved student learning.”
Click to access viva_azreport_finalr_for_web.pdf
It’s noteworthy that the selected Arizona charter teachers produce a recommendation remarkably similar to yours.
“RECOMMENDATION 8 Ease the Transition from AIMS to PARCC Standardized Tests. Proposed Solutions:
26. Appoint a committee of Arizona educational leaders and teachers to participate in designing the new standardized state tests”
Many of us who answered the New Voice survey prompt realized it was phrased to elicit supporting “evidence” for imposing a 360 degree version of accountability for compliance with undemocratic mandates, and we see that reflected in the discussion of action steps. okteacher asks for suggestions to compel parent compliance with homework and conference demands, for example.
Again, I invite members of the Viva Writers group to leave their non-representative, corporate-sponsored organization, and participate in our authentic effort to reclaim a vision of shared, democratic authority and responsibility with our communities and the families we serve.
Hi. I’m a brasilian teacher and we are living today those politics that failed in US. I’m read your book about that and I am crying all the time. But we are fighting! Thank you to show different way. (I am not so good to write, I hope you can read)
Thank you, Brazilian teacher! Your English is better than my Portuguese. Keep resisting failed ideas.