Politicians continue to fret about scores on tests and to ignore the causes of poor academic performance. They have this strange belief that more testing will raise test scores and that they need not address the underlying causes of low scores.
Consider this report from politico.com:
“THE CONSEQUENCES OF CHILDHOOD TRAUMA: Nearly half of U.S. children have gone through a traumatic experience like exposure to violence, economic hardship, family discord or mental health and substance abuse. And for the one in five children who’ve been through at least two traumatic experiences, the consequences can be dire, a study in this month’s issue of Health Affairs says. Those kids were twice as likely as their peers to have a chronic condition and special health needs. And they were 2.5 times more likely to repeat grades in school. The study: http://bit.ly/1stwY81
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you for sharing this. I experienced at least three of those in my childhood. School was hard for me and I never felt I was good at school work. If we can learn to be compassionate towards all children…and perhaps more importantly, fight for economic and social justice…then we can make a difference in their lives.
I only read the abstract. Is there evidence that rates of trauma have increased among kids or are we seeing higher rates because we’re paying better attention?
Or are we seeing more kids from traumatic situations in our classes when previously they kids just didn’t end up or left school?
Based on data, is society worse?
They fret about test scores because that’s what the billionaire-boys-club, hedge fund managers, etc demand they do if they want their campaign donations. Anything to distract from the bigger issue that is destroying the social fabric of our society: The unconscionable extreme distribution of income and wealth that is occurring since the late seventies. During the 1960’s the highest income earners paid an EFFECTIVE income tax rate of about 47% of total income, not at the margin. Today the effective tax rate on the top earners is less than of the average citizen. (As reported by Warren Buffet.) I recall Romney paid an effective rate of about 14% as reported during his campaign.
Politicians are NOT constantly & visibly worried or anxious about school test scores.
They simply promote the numbers that numb the public to the complex and costly remedies that would focus our minds and hearts on the grinding trauma of poverty, unemployment, violent neighborhoods, TFA classrooms, and woefully inadequate health/nutrition/recreation.
Test score elevation as a sufficient federal response is based on a belief system that it is acceptable to further terrorize and de-skill our children via deliberately engineered schedules of tests that emaciate rich and relevant approaches to academics that might actually lift and liberate entire communities out of pathology and onto the path of powerful participation.
Bill Gates and his bribed puppets all think that they can test this challenge away with the rank and yank testing agenda, make a lot money while doing it and then forget the kids who were left behind. The own the media so we will probably not hear much about those kids there. But we will see where they ended up in increased prison populations and increased profits for private corporate prisons.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Never fear, Bill Gates is here, and he will fix these children with his rank and yank CCSS testing agenda. If test scores don’t improve, those traumatized children will be shot down the school to prison pipeline to a private sector, for profit, corporate prisons—a win win for corporations, because they will profit off these children in corporate Charters and then, as adults, corporate prisons.
Let’s look at the schools of poor children that are achieving and do what they’re doing. I hear there is research that says learning is more of an interactive activity. For years we have been blaming the teacher alone with questions like, “If you taught it and they didn’t get it, can you say that you have taught it?” This along with “Nothing Matters but the Scores”–said to me over and over–is badgering. Not all school cultures do this, but some do.
Define “achieving”.
Well, not all achievement can or should be replicated under different conditions.
There were plenty of opportunities to experiment with charters for the good of all, but that was tossed away to fraud and competition.
Let’s look at the schools of well-educated, affluent parents and do what they’re doing–for all students. For early childhood: quality active learning (not the Trickle Down CCore nonsense that’s probably worse than DISTAR, w Less Research). Plus wrap-around services for language, after-school/tutoring, counseling for student populations who need it.
Think I read a while back on DR blog that 80% of families w. $200K+ income send their children to public school. That’s very positive. Let’s emulate their schools. Chris Christie’s Mendham neighbors can attain an International Baccalaureate degree in Mendham public district. Maggie Doyne, founder BlinkNow Foundation and Kopila Valley orphanage/school/women’s center did so before CCSS, PARCC.
Misguided people like John White and Eric Nadlestern are convinced that the only way out is to improve education first. What they really know about education itself, the human mind, the human condition or the state of modern industry, technology and jobs is hugely debatable but not Common Core worthy as they live and breathe their own fictions.
And those who have not experienced trauma consider it their business to instruct everyone who has in grit.
The company I work for sponsors a few high school kids at a charter school each year. In “repayment” for the sponsorship, the kids “work” at the company. Generally that “work” is following a mail clerk making deliveries. Once in a while, you’ll see one of the kids doing some filing, or cleaning a desk. Its really sad they have to come and be indentured once a week when they should be at school, learning. Were I their parents, I’d be angry they have to “repay the debt” (of gratitude) by “working” at the company. It is just an exercise in tit for tat, and its a shame. These kids don’t need time away from school parroting/shadowing a mail clerk. It isn’t like it is giving them real world experience – but then again, maybe it is training them for a Walmart (or prison) job in the future.
The company sponsors them to go to the charter school? Or sponsors them for a college scholarship or something? If the former, I’m baffled, as I thought charter schools were supposed to be “public schools” which are supposed to be free.
Therlo, For the astute, observant students, there is real world experience as they note how various “higher ups” interact w mail clerk. Whether a person eventually works for Fortune 500 company or small business, those mail room folk can facilitate (or not) one’s projects.
An influential superintendent in my state has been described as “tone deaf.” Shadowing a mail clerk might have helped her more than sitting in an anthropology class (but maybe not).
When I first came to our town, Highland, IN, to teach in 1958 I taught at the high school and jr high level but also had all the 6th grades and half the 5th grades. Highland was a small town at that time. 6th grade classes were around 40 students but in that 40 there might be 3 or 4, maybe 5 students with “difficult” home situations. Now at least half the children come from broken homes, parents divorced etc and half the children at least have real problems. And school boards make it difficult to discipline. THEY want to look good. In the inner cities of Gary and East Chicago, I can only imagine what it must be like.
Still, it is the teacher’s fault when children do not learn – according to the Einsteins in our Indianapolis government.
Add to this article the fact that the United States has a scandalous 24% child poverty rate in general.
Finland has 3%.
The United States is a reprehensible nation in far too many regards, I’m afraid.
We don’t have single payer healthcare. Still.
Last year, more of my students had experienced some type of trauma than those who had not. It was my hardest year ever of being in the classroom.
“Politicians continue to fret about scores on tests and to ignore the causes of poor academic performance. ”
Huh? That is like saying “Professor Ravitch continues to fret about the percentage of children who have experienced trauma and to ignore the causes of high rates of childhood trauma.”
>“Professor Ravitch continues to fret about the percentage of children who have experienced trauma and to ignore the causes of high rates of childhood trauma.”
Huh? Sorry. I couldn’t see any analogy.
The POLITICO summary didn’t bury the lede; it omitted it entirely.
These sobering figures were taken from a study of the considerable impact that resilence (“defined in the survey as ‘staying calm and in control when faced with a challenge'”) can have on blunting the effects of trauma. The study’s findings suggest that resilience and coping skills can be taught to parents and children, with enormous public policy implications.
“Bethell says that parents and children can be taught to recognize and reduce the biologic, emotional and psychological impact of traumatic stress, bounce back when faced with a challenge, and to develop a habit of hope instead of despair. Some of the most promising methods involve simple breathing techniques as well as so-called “trauma-informed” care and community approaches growing in popularity all across the country.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141208105318.htm
I can’t access the full study, unfortunately. It would be very interesting to see what the study proposes to teach kids about resilence, and how closely it resembles what we call “grit” or character education (I know that KIPP does a lot of work with yoga/mindful breathing, e.g.).
I found the larger section you’re quoting from alarming. This is a huge and complex subject; Bethell’s public health study represents a snippet of what is known, compared to ongoing studies of resilience in human biology. Yet they blithely propose the gov ‘fill in the gaps’ of what is known and incorporate it into policy, specifically mentioning ed reform.
The grit thing, also called persistence, is surfacing as one of the themes in funding early childhood education, with research by Duckworth et.al. cited as if interventions to enhance grit will have huge economic payoffs.
This hypothesis is part of the reasoning and definition for a high quality preschool program now embedded in an investment package recently sold to Chicago schools by Goldman Sachs, the Pritzker Foundation, and others pushing social impact bonds, notably USDE, Harvard, and the Rockefeller foundation.
The marketers of the bonds think investors will be attracted to the promised economic benefits of fronting the cost for preschool in exchange for receiving “the savings” that the government would have enjoyed as a benefit, had the government invested in the program.
The preferred programs are those wrapped in an aura of economic sophistication. In Chicago, that comes from a Pritzker funded researcher and Nobel laureate in economics. By his calculations, a half-day program is more cost effective than a full day program. In Chicago, the bond program requires a control group of children to guarantee that the preschool program works to improve academic and social outcomes as children move through the grades. That means, of course the denial of preschool to children in the control group.
In Utah, a similar bond package is tied to a program of research in special education at the University of Utah.
These bond programs, also known as pay for success bonds, are proliferating as if a better solution to social problems caused by ” high cost individuals” such as children with special needs, teens in trouble with the law, teen mothers, older adults in nursing homes, and so on.
In addition monetizing the worth of individuals, promoters of this idea believe that there are effective programs, but not scaled up for lack of government funding and political will. So they are ready to come to the rescue by gathering the resources of the super rich who want to do good and make money.
The social impact bonds allow them to invest in programs that have little risk. The marketers argue that there is risk, but also BIG the financial rewards. These rewards are calculated by economists who figure out the “savings” that could have been available to tapayers if the government had the political will and savvy to support the same proven-to-work policies.
The underlying view is that social services are a drain on the economy, and also a source of profit…including, of course, public education.
Principal says she was fired for reporting teacher’s ‘fake’ internship
By Susan EdelmanDecember 20, 2014 | 11:33pm
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.
Having experienced all those traumas, having lived below the poverty line, I could have become the potential prison inmate mentioned by many commenters here. Determined to build a good life for myself, I saw school as a means to a bright future. Testing was never my forte and indeed, the SAT predicted 30 years ago that I would be a C or B student in college. I chose to ignore the label and graduated cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa….with scholarships, extra graduate stipends and so on. I went on to teach and have an international career connected to higher education. Though my teachers for the most part did not know about the enormous stress I was under, many of them invested in me. I believe my personal attitude and great teachers got me to where I wanted to be. I made an effort to track down all the best ones, including my kindergarten teacher and say thank you. As a teacher, I have a motto: you do not know what these young people in front of you are dealing with…..do not assume anything.
With a topic like this, I felt like a little positivity and praise for good instruction was apropos. We all know who the bad guys are. I am saying thank you to all the good folks who dedicate their lives to helping young people make it in the world.
Kkobis, you raise a great point. At what point does knowing about the conditions surrounding a kid lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy?
I’d rather not know kids’ previous grades when they enter my class. So what about the traumas that have shaped their lives?
I don’t think this is an easy question..
I would sadly say that 100 percent of all title one children have experience trauma (and this is not even counting any trauma related to impoverished home-life). The net effect of NCLB/RTTT and now common core/PARCC policies on our nation’s neediest children is nothing short of TRAUMATIZING and many a teacher has used the word ABUSIVE. I cannot even look at a photo of Bill Gates and company without feeling disgust and revulsion because I know how their “self-centered, arrogant directives” are inflicting a life-time of adverse effects on the poorest children in our nation. There should be truth to the phrase, “The buck stops here…” So when can public school teachers (the ones who have not been “indoctrinated” start the real teaching????? When will all the heaps of money wasted on testing be actually spent in ways that help people escape from poverty????? When, when and when?????
There is a difference between acute trauma and chronic traumatic stress. If compared to the physical earth, acute trauma would be like a hurricane and could cause great destruction, but chronic traumatic stress is like the gradual erosion that wears away mountains. An environment of chronic traumatic stress is so destructive for children because it changes brain chemistry during their developmental years and can lead to a lifetime of mental illness from anxiety and depression, as well as other related physical and mental disorders that will impact them for a lifetime.
Research of Dr Marsha Linehan, University of Washington and a national expert on personality disorders, has shown that “An invalidating environment in childhood leads to Borderline Personality Disorder in young adulthood”.
Another expert on child trauma, Dr Bruce Perry, founder of the Child Trauma Academy of Houston, has continued to speak out about the invalidating environment of high stakes testing and the culture of Common Core. However, few politicians seem to be interested, or else they are too detracted by their own self absorbed greed and mind blindness.
The environment in childhood will shape behavior for a lifetime, and that includes both family and school environment.
The culture of Common Core uses the same methods of Behaviorism for “training” children that are used for “obedience training” for dogs and circus animals. If we treat children like animals, they will behave like animals. Dr Perry once wrote a book about one of his patients called “The Boy Who was Raised Like a Dog”. I recently wrote him in response to that one incident and explained how “all” children now in the culture of Common Core are being raised as dogs. They may not have the physical bars of a cage as did the subject of his book, but a psychological cage can be just as damanging as a physical one. Many of us who have observed elementary children with increasing signs of traumatic stress as a result of this toxic school environment, and recognize that the signs of HFA and traumatic stress are the same (regression, dissociation, constriction/anxiety) now think it is this toxic school environment that is causing the soaring rates of High Functioning Autism. The culture of Common Core is producing a growing society of sociopaths. How much more of a police state will that require? Here are some related articles from other child advocates that some may find helpful. We all need to recognize the impact the CCSS school environment is having on children, and ultimately on society:
http://www.naturalchild.org/james_kimmel/sociopathic_parenting.html
http://www.naturalchild.org/articles/child_advocacy.html
There is an interesting article in the Harvard Law Bulletin on this very subject of trauma and its impact on learning written by a Boston author, Jonathan Marcus – worth a read…
today.law.harvard.edu/feature/for-the-children-who-fell-through-the-cracks/
In addition to the trauma discussed in this article, I do think it merits most serious consideration the added trauma of the public school environment itself feeling VERY UNSAFE these days for these students… and this is in addition to bullying … all the testing, the constant push, push, push to perform in accordance with unachievable top down directives… learning totally taken out of control of teachers and students. This is no doubt traumatizing for our young learners. Kindergarten students being expected to read and having nightmares about it, pre k’s being tested, English language learners wading through ever more complex wording in math problems on these standardized tests… year after year students feeling like a failure thanks to Pearson… ughh!!! This is assuredly traumatizing.
Half is understated. 99% is more like it. Except for the wealthy 1% who can shield their children in a life of isolated fantasy, all the other children in the US suffer chronic traumatic stress from just living in this dysfunctional society. The culture of US society is now a psychological ghetto, with Adullt Children of insatiable greed controlling all the power and wealth. Children are the helpless victims of this collective madness now, but soon they too will be become perpetrators. The US has become a sociopathic nation, and we are all on that spectrum.
LOL
I can not argue with that.
My god, people need to take the hysteria down a notch. I suffered traumatic stress from just reading this comment.
I have triple traumatic stress.
First, I grew up as a child in a home with an alcoholic father who was a gambler, and all the fallout that comes from that lifestyle—we even lost a home and almost ended up on the streets homeless.
Second, I joined the Marines in 1965 and ended up in Vietnam in 1966 to come home with a serious case of combat induced PTSD
Third, I was a public school teacher for thirty years and not only lived through but witnessed the war on public education that exploded after A Nation at Risk came out. It wasn’t until a few months ago that I even heard of the Sandia report—it was so buried by every president that followed Reagan.
I think it is arguable that America has a very dysfunctional culture—-thanks to the likes of Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, the Tea Party people, etc—-and we are living through the beginning of the collapse of Western civilization as we know it.
I think it’s worth an effort to be aware of the tendency people have, as we get older, to be nostalgic about the past and terrified of the future, and to protect our anxieties onto our children.
Yes, we all have these terrible stories to get over. But there are good stories out there, too.
Have you read “The Bully Pulpit” by Doris Kearns Goodwin?
Before 1900, the oligarchs pretty much controlled most of the federal and state governments, and poverty in 1900 was 40% with a high school graduation rate of about 6-7%.
Then Teddy Roosevelt launched the Progressive era that lasted about forty years until Reagan became president.
A lot was accomplished during these forty years. The child labor laws were passed and women earned the right to vote and control most of their own lives and bodies—depending on what state they live in.
If there was ever a golden era in the United States it started in 1900 and slowly improved until the decline seriously started under Reagan.
The middle class share of income was highest in the late1960s and since then labor union membership has declines and so has that share of middle class income—-dramatically.
The middle 60 percent of households earned 53.2 percent of national income in 1968. That number has fallen to just 45.7 percent. During that same period, nationwide union membership fell from 28.3 percent to a record-low 11.3 percent of all workers.
Yes, “there are good stories out there”—little victories during the long slide down but those little victories are almost excursively individual victories and some of them don’t last. For instance, when my father stopped drinking in his 50s and never drank booze again. By then I was in my twenties and my life of boozing had already started and lasted from 1966 to 1981.
Another small victory was the day I retired from teaching in August 2005 at the end of teaching summer school.
The war against the democratic public schools is a war against progressivism and before the progressive era, in the U.S., women were the chattel of husbands, fathers or brothers, and children could be sold into a form of slavery known as servitude as young as five to coal mines, factories and bordello’s. Half of the work force in many factories were between age 7 to 12 because teens were too difficult to control and adults expected to earn too much. Workdays could run 16 hours for 6 days a week. Paid sick days = NONE. Paid vacations = NONE. Retirement plans = NONE.
Did you know that today, Houston, a bastion of the GOP, is the gateway for about 17,000 annually trafficked humans into the Untied States. More than 80% are women and children and they are destined for the sex trade. Houston has more illegal bordellos than all of Nevada.
In fact, there are more illegal salves in the world today than when slavery was legal and most of them work in the sex industry.
If we do not stop the oligarchs, the progressive era will be erased and what was will return with a vengeance.
Lloyd, all this and more. But even with the middle class and the progress in some areas, the link between wealth, class, and power has always been here. One could even argue that the middle class and progressive reforms added to the oligarch wealth.
Very compelling information and sad to consider how many children are dealing with the difficult ramifications of trauma every day.