For the past 14 years, policymakers have sought the answer to a complex question: How can we make sure that every single child–regardless of race, gender, disability, poverty, or language–will achieve proficiency on standardized tests?
We tried No Child Left Behind, and that didn’t work. We tried Race to the Top, and that did’t work. We tried the Marzano method and the Danielson rubric, and still we struggle. We tried bonus pay and threats of firing staffs and closing school, and that did not suffice.
But now we know there is a sure-fire method. It comes from Tennessee, and it’s called “the ear-bud method.” Tennessee is a fertile place for reform: not only was it the state where Value-added Modeling was birthed nearly 30 years ago, but it was one of the first states to win a Race to the Top award.
It works for 100% of children. No one fails. It is, in fact, a silver bullet–or a magic earbud.
Merry Christmas!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Brilliant!
100% Mastery by 100% of America’s children.
Hail to the vision of CorpProfiteers, NCLB & RTTT, along with the never-give-up push by the thousands of Deformsters who believed in the American Ingenuity to solve this obsession and ultimate achievement…we will NEVER leave another child behind.
Brilliant!
We were about to paint ourselves in a dark corner by failing our dear children, firing their loving teachers, communicate genetic inferiority to parents, move further beyond the suburbs, leave the country, hire every fired teacher to homeschool our kidlets, study for the GED beginning in Kindergarten…but, now we don’t have to do any of these things. The ear-bud method saved the strongest country in the universe.
All is well!
Wait, how will the CorpProfiteer$ continue to make their $B off our children? We must think of something. We owe them gratetude for creating chaos & by not allowing us to sit on our fat a**es, thinking that our children were kind, caring, loving & brilliant children who needed GRIT to be 1st in the WORLD – where we belong. Always! At any cost!
I think all your questions are answered in the proposal, don’t they? For example, all existing teachers can be fired and the new ones will clearly do a great job even for minimum wage. The taxpayers don’t have to express their gratitude to, say, Microsoft, since their tax dollars will do the thanking as they get wired to Microsoft’s account in exchange for the ear buds. The possibilities for channeling tax $ to companies, charters seem limitless, don’t they?
Wouldn’t work because not all standardized tests are the same. Different kids have questions in different orders. Some questions are on some tests but not on others.
Nice idea, though. I’m in favor of anything that just cuts to the chase of getting the right scores and skips all that ridiculous test prep.
The CorpProfiteer$$$’s will make their next $Bs, no $Ts, by ensuring that every student that attends every community college, four year college/university is 100% successful and will be 100% successful in finding a job they WANT after graduation. Then we will have a 100% perfect nation of happy smiling people who cannot think,have initiative, and inventiveness. Isn’t that Duncan’s next goal? Take over the post-secondary schools? Then we will move on to the medical, dental, and vet schools. This country will be 100% perfect when the CorpProfiteer$$$s get through. What a utopia!!! What a fantastic dream — nightmare!!!!
If anyone believes in the PERFECT school system then I have some beach front property I can sell them in AZ and NM.
My OCEAN front property over at Lake of the Ozarks in Central Missouri has far better views and pristine beaches than those beach front properties in the deserts of AZ & NM.
Call now! Operators are standing by (no need to give the peons chairs) to take your money now!!! 888-555-3825
great now every child can learn smh
http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.fr/2014/12/bill-gates-is-ignorant.html
More wisdom from Teacher Tom . This time he focuses on Bill Gates
Bill Gates Is Ignorant
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Bill Gates is ignorant. The alternative is that he’s a cold-hearted money-grubber, but I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt.
He knows a lot about tipping the economy so as to fill his own pockets and I reckon he’s not entirely ignorant about computer technology (although if you judge by the inferior software his company Microsoft produces, one wonders). Gates is clearly not ignorant about business, in fact, he’s a business genius, but when it comes to education he’s demonstrably ignorant. He’s probably also ignorant about most of the other fields in which he’s involved via his foundation, but I can’t comment on those areas because I too am ignorant. I am not, however, ignorant about education. I live and work education, it is my profession, I study it, I do it, and when a cocksure dilettante starts knocking over the tables and chairs, making the kids cry, and bossing the professionals around by virtue of having been told he’s a business genius, I’ll call him out.
Bill Gates is ignorant.
To read the remainder of the post.
http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.fr/2014/12/bill-gates-is-ignorant.html
I love Teacher Tom !
Happy New Year Diane – your work is invaluable !
Sincerely,
Marjorie Israel
NY, NY
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I think Teacher Tom is refusing to look at his own conclusion. Gates is clearly not ignorant in business as he demonstrates. Why then would he assume that he’s “ignorant” about education rather than “a cold-hearted money-grubber”? I’m not seeing what doubt there is to give the benefit of.
Hahahaha…good one, Diane.
Gimmick.
That often describes the latest experiment in teaching and learning promoted and mandated by the self-styled “education reform” movement.
Or in the upside down way that the “thought leaders” of the “new civil rights movement of our time” view things, they take the following from Diane Ravitch, THE DEATH AND LIFE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM (2011 paperback edition, p. 3) as strong encouragement, not admonitory caution:
[start excerpt]
School reformers sometimes resemble the characters in Dr. Seuss’s Solla Sollew, who are always searching for that mythic land “where they never have troubles, at least very few.” Or like Dumbo, they are convinced they could fly if only they had a magic feather. In my writings, I have consistently warned that, in education, there are no shortcuts, no utopias, and no silver bullets. For certain, there are no magic feathers that enable elephants to fly.
[end excerpt]
On this last day of 2014 I remind all viewers of this blog and its threads, whether they find themselves in agreement or disagreement with what I write, that I am powerless to parody and caricature the leaders and enablers of the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement.
They do all the heavy lifting. I just point out what they say and do and let the chips fall where they may.
If some feel those chips are too negative, don’t complain about it to me. I’m not responsible or accountable for how the rheephormistas grievously wound themselves with their own words and deeds.
I just point out the end result. And remind one and all of a sage observation by a somewhat old but very dead and very French guy:
“Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.” [François de la Rochefoucauld]
Wonder what he would have said about self-ridicule?
😏
Happy New Year/Paz y Salud/Shin nen akemashite omedetoo gozaimasu.
😎
Yes AND it would make certain that EVERY child had received the “truths” of the corporate CEOS. THAT is progress!!!!
The ear-bud method is a good parody on the current state of affairs in education. It is sad time.
This is not really a parody! Read the post that inspired the author of the satire (which comes from that execrable organization – TNTP) :
http://tntp.org/blog/post/let-me-put-a-bug-in-your-ear
It’s not enough to make the kids conform to the clappin’, snappin’ SLANTIN’ way of life. Teachers gotta work in only one way too – with a voice inside their heads.
And this is what TNTP brags about on their website:
“Our Leadership
TNTP’s 17-person leadership team brings to the organization over 150 years of collective experience in education and organizational management. Their experience as education policy experts, as executives, and as public school teachers guides them in shaping the organization’s goals, services and strategy.”
150 divided by 17 = a whopping 8.8 years of experience each! No wonder they are positioned to “re-imagine teaching”. (Or is that imagine teaching – lacking experience at having done so?)
Yes, and by their own admission not all of that 8.8 years is in education (probably not even most) – probably most of it is in “management” of some sort.
This is how Pearson thinks science should be taught and children managed (mangled) almost 24/7/365. This was sent to me by one very savvy art teacher in Ohio who is teaching in a district that is expected to have these carry-around computer pads with loaded software soon
This starts slow, but has a lot to see. Notice how sterile the science classroom is, compared to the principal’s office which at least has some plants on the sill.
Also notice how zoned-out the teacher looks. This not intended as satire.
The kids are actually cleared to enter the school by a survelliance system linked to everything else, including photo IDs.
The system includes a chart indicating how “on track” the student is to being made college and career ready and which colleges are good candidates to match his career interest– all in the computer system long before high school.
This is advertized as personalized learning. It is not satire. The kids are studying scinece by looking a screens with highly stylized graphics and a full taxonomy representing everything they are supposed to study, be tested on, and “progress” through the totally planned course, nothing individualized other than the pace of learning and pictures of their classmates.
I took a look at that video and left a comment about the lack of any actual science materials or lab equipment.
If any of the kids in that video want to be scientists, they are going to be completely unprepared when they finally do get to step into a lab. They won’t have been introduced to the most basic and elementary procedures; they’ll be walking safety hazards. Someone will mention bench work and they’ll think they are doing carpentry.
We all already know that kids know how to use tablets, but for example, do they know how to prepare a slide for a microscope? That’s something they aren’t going to learn at home, but it is an experience that schools are uniquely positioned to provide.
Am I a scientist? No, I was an art major. Would really like to see how Pearson is going to teach visual art with a tablet — diagrams of how to throw a pot on a wheel, or mix colors on a palette?
Here is the pearson video link that I forgot. How to teach science NOT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpQCEgEfRyc
Yikes, Laura!
This makes the meme of the blue helmeted soldiers descending from the black helicopters look positively benign by comparison. Get kids and parents used to being continually surveilled via the education system while making $$$ for your investors. A win-win!
OMG that video was horrifying on so many levels I can hardly speak (not least of all that they actually produced this for marketing purposes with the idea that people would be sold on this kind of stuff (and still worse, the fact that many people actually are)), but I think the horror is best summed up at the 5:30 mark when the mother is looking at her parent portal and learns that her son (who’s, what? 14? tops?) is on track for his projected career of mechanical engineer.
My favorite part of the video is around the one minute mark when the mother points at her cheek, the kid gives her a peck and then she gets a look on her face like, wow, glad that’s over. I guess that’s what parenting in Pearson’s vision is all about – keeping track of your kid via tablet is great. Actually interacting with him? Not so much. Kind of yucky, really.
Oh Dianne thank you for the belly laugh. You are so deeply appreciated. Happy New Year.
Wow! I just looked at the TNTP Blog about the Earbud coaching and I saw a blonde white person standing at the head of the classroom (on the sidelines) directing a black woman give plays to a group of dark-skinned people (on the field). Now I know that in forums such as this any discussion of race can be incindiary, but as a teacher in Memphis I can’t help but see some of these things through such a lens and I see so many attitudes of technology and the “audit culture” as being instruments of colonialism.