Archives for the month of: December, 2014
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I Applaud President Obama’s Decision to Open Relations with Cuba

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2014 //
36

As readers know, I often criticize President Obama’s education policies, which are even worse than those of President George W. Bush.

 

But I am glad for his Supreme Court nominees, and now I am very happy that he has begun the process of normalizing relations with Cuba.

 

I visited Cuba as a tourist in February 2013 (yes, you can visit as a tourist if you call a tourist agent authorized to make arrangements by the U.S. State Department). Of the many people I spoke to, all were eager to see a new relationship between our countries. The people are eager for a new day. The embargo has impoverished Cuba. I flew with my friends on a charter flight from Miami to Havana. There are several every day. Once our nations have a normal relationship, it will be easier for us to travel in both directions. Cuba is a beautiful island with wonderful food, vibrant art and music, environmental treasures, and beautiful beaches.There are many tourists there from all over Europe and the Americas. We should be there too, engaging in commerce and tourism, enjoying our neighbors and their culture.

Categories Education Reform

Republican Leader Wants to Reduce Federal Role

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2014 //
32

For years, Democrats wanted a larger role for the federal government in education for two reasons: equitable resources and civil rights.

Arne Duncan has managed to sour many Democrats on an expanded role for the federal government by abandoning those two goals and instead pushing an agenda of federal control over curriculum, instruction, testing, and teacher evaluation. Functions that once belonged to states and districts have been taken over by Arne’s wishes, not even by federal law. States lose Arne’s waiver from NCLB’s impossible mandate for 100% proficiency if they don’t do what Arne wants. His preference for charter schools and TFA and high-stakes testing is clear. His dictatorial style has ignored equity and civil rights.

John Kline, leader of the House Education Committee, said in an interview that his top priority was revising NCLB and reducing the federal role. Ten years ago, Democrats and educators would have objected. No more.

Categories Race to the Top, Republicans, U.S. Department of Education

Paul Karrer: Accountability Begins with the Generals, not the Foot Soldiers

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2014 //
25

Paul Karrer, who teaches in California, says it is time for accountability. Taxpayers need it. The public demands it. And they are right!

Unfortunately, the search for accountability is upside-down. True accountability rests with those who design and lead the big systems, not with the front-line workers trying to make muddled ideas work.

“Accountability needs to be placed on the shoulders of those who created the education programs foisted on the education system. It is the programs which ultimately have the greatest impact. It is not just or even hardly ever the soldiers themselves fighting street-to-street, city-to-city, state-to-state, who win or lose wars. It is the plan. The education plans need to be evaluated and field-tested before they are implemented.

“For example — it was the plan to invade Iraq which was faulty and resulted in the war being lost. It was not the poor patriotic, highly motivated, well-equipped, well-trained folks who kicked in doors, ate desert dust for years, and lost life, limb, and mental health.

“And so it is with education. Teachers are the front-liners. They are in the trenches. They are fighting house-to-house, street-to-street, city-to-city.

“But the plan, well, the plan keeps on changing. First it was No Child Left Behind, like the invasion of Iraq, based on false information. In Iraq it was weapons of mass destruction, with NCLB it was fraudulent data manipulation in the bogus inception of its success in Texas. (High graduation rates actually were a product of massive numbers of low performing kids quitting school in ninth and 10th grade. Then the remaining higher-performing kids who stayed were pointed to as successful due to NCLB).

“Then President Barack Obama inflicted his Race To The Top on the foot soldiers in the teaching trenches. The plan: Evaluate teachers according to tests. Reward good ones based on testing. Hammer schools which couldn’t do this. Privatize, charterize, dissect the now-failing schools. Problem is, teachers don’t take the tests, kids with a zillion influences take the tests.

“Currently, teachers are fighting the war with a brand-new shiny plan. It is called Common Core. This plan requires massive computer use, new standards, and of course more testing of teachers, standardization and lots of untested optimistic bravado.”

In wartime, battles are lost by the planners, not the men and women in the trenches following the plan.

If you want to know what’s wrong with No Child left Behind, Race to the Top, and Common Core, do some serious evaluation, not just political preening. When big educational ideas fail, don’t blame the teachers, blame the politicians and honchos who imposed their plans on the schools without full investigation of their feasibility.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

Common Sense NY Blogger: How Can State Officials Know So Little About Teacher Evaluation?

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2014 //
7

CommonSenseNY blogger is appalled at how little state officials understand about the defects of the state evaluation system.

He or she writes:

“Chancellor Tisch made an astonishing and appalling statement quoted in this Democrat and Chronicle article about 95% of New York teachers being rated ‘effective’ or ‘highly effective’ under Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) process. While it is true the entire process is bogus, she is wrong about the reason. A link to a Carol Burris summary of the problems with APPR can be found here. She is an award-winning principal.

“Here is what is appalling about Ms. Tisch’s understanding of the current evaluation process. She states, “The ratings show there’s much more work to do to strengthen the evaluation system. There’s a real contrast between how our students are performing and how their teachers and principals are evaluated.”

“Chancellor Tisch continues to either misrepresent, misunderstand or demonstrate little knowledge about the connection between student achievement and socio-economic and other education factors. Let’s take a quick look at the Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) since it illustrates the point well and creates a similar context.

“If you believe the critics of American public education, our students perform miserably on PISA assessments. We’ll use math as an example. The claim is “we’ are 35th for so in the world in math. Not too good. However, when controlling for poverty – we happen to have a lot of concentrated poverty in comparison to other developed nations – we move up to sixth.

“The problem with student achievement in New York is high concentrations of poverty, particularly in urban areas. Blaming a bogus and poorly implemented (similar to the implementation of the Common Core) evaluation system for student achievement issues is just wrong.”

It seems that the most “effective” teachers work where the affluent kids live. If they cane to work in one of the state’s big cities, they would probably turn into an “ineffective” teacher.

The lawsuit of a veteran fourth grade teacher in Great Neck was postponed while the state tries to figure out how to explain the rating system. She went from effective to ineffective in one year even though nearly 70% of her students passed the new state tests (more than double the state average) in both years. Something is wrong here.

Categories New York, Poverty, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Leonine Haimson on NYC Teacher Ratings

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2014 //
10

Leonie Haimson, leader of Class Size Matters and Student Privacy Matters, maintains a terrific, informative blog for Néw York City and state issues called nyceducationnews@yahoogroups.com. Here she comments on the release of NYC teacher ratings based on state test scores. The bottom line in some of the reports shown below is that low test scores are caused by bad teachers, who are obviously ineffective. If every school had only “great” teachers, every student would have high scores. If only.

Leonie writes:

“8.2% of NYC teachers rated ineffective or developing, compared to 2.4% in the rest of state; meanwhile only 9.2% rated highly effective in NYC compared to 58.2% statewide.

“Tisch [chair of state Board of Regents] etc. say rest of state figures should be more like NYC, and call for re-design of system.

“Meanwhile Daily News editors — as dumb as ever — say NYC’s results don’t find enough ineffective teachers, considering “The results are absurd when roughly a third of city students pass state English and math tests.”

“They want the state to take away power of districts to design their own systems, fire teachers who are rated ineffective for 2 years in a row, and take more power away from principals to rate teachers highly whose students don’t score well on tests.

The New York Daily News editorial recommends:

One: Empower state, not local, officials to set the grades that will label teachers ineffective, developing, effective or highly effective.

Two: Get local districts out of the business of rating teachers using measures that are designed to boost subpar performers.

Three: Put teachers who are rated ineffective for two consecutive years in fire-at-will probationary status, rather than giving them access to hopelessly bureaucratic hearings.

Four: Ensure that a teacher whose students bomb tests cannot vault into a top rating because, for example, a principal gives a high mark for lesson planning.

Speaking of tests, improving education in New York will be one of the biggest Cuomo faces.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/editorial-cuomo-big-teacher-test-article-1.2047673

[My note:] What the Daily News wants is to eliminate due process (“hopelessly bureaucratic hearings”) so that teachers can be swiftly fired if scores don’t go up.

More reporting on the evaluations:

Chalkbeat,
New York Post,
New York Times,
New York Daily News,
Capital New York (Pro),
Wall Street Journal,
NY1

Summary here:

by Jessica Bakeman, Eliza Shapiro and Conor Skelding

EVALS AS EVIDENCE—Education leaders use NYC scores as grist for statewide changes—Capital’s Jessica Bakeman and Eliza Shapiro: New York City’s evaluation of its teachers’ performance, which resulted in only 9 percent earning the highest scores under the state-mandated rating system, is more reliable than other districts’ and underscores the need for changes to ensure results aren’t artificially high, education leaders argued on Tuesday. In the rest of the state, 58 percent of teachers were rated “highly effective,” according to preliminary data released on Tuesday. That statistic is considered suspect, especially given students’ low scores on state exams, according to Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch, outgoing education commissioner John King and education groups that have supported strict accountability measures for teachers and schools.

“There’s a real contrast between how our students are performing and how their teachers and principals are evaluated,” Tisch said in a statement. “The ratings from districts aren’t differentiating performance. We look forward to working with the Governor, Legislature, NYSUT, and other education stakeholders to strengthen the evaluation law in the coming legislative session.”

The education department report includes recommendations for how to improve the system. For example, if more than 75 percent of teachers or principals are rated “highly effective” or fewer than 5 percent are rated “ineffective” on the component of the evaluation system that is based on observations, the lead evaluators in that district should be retrained and an independent audit might be appropriate, the department recommended. [PRO] http://bit.ly/1sByLgW

—Despite the overall high scores, New York State United Teachers is calling into question the validity of the results. “On the whole, they may be spot on,” NYSUT president Karen Magee told Gannett’s Jon Campbell. “But for individual teachers, they can be spectacularly wrong—and that undermines confidence in the whole system.” http://bit.ly/1BTUPTW

—At least 100 educators in Buffalo were erroneously rated “effective” or “highly effective” when their scores should have been lower, prompting a state probe. Buffalo News’ Sandra Tan: http://bit.ly/1sCuKZD

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Categories New York City, Teacher Evaluations

ProPublica: When Charters are Nonprofit in Name Only

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2014 //
44

Marian Wang of ProPublica reports on a curious phenomenon in the charter sector: “nonprofit” charters that are run by for-profit corporations.

“A couple of years ago, auditors looked at the books of a charter school in Buffalo, New York, and were taken aback by what they found. Like all charter schools, Buffalo United Charter School is funded with taxpayer dollars.

“The school is also a nonprofit. But as the New York State auditors wrote, Buffalo United was sending ” virtually all of the School’s revenues” directly to a for-profit company hired to handle its day-to-day operations.

“Charter schools often hire companies to handle their accounting and management functions. Sometimes the companies even take the lead in hiring teachers, finding a school building, and handling school finances.

“In the case of Buffalo United, the auditors found that the school board had little idea about exactly how the company – a large management firm called National Heritage Academies – was spending the school’s money. The school’s board still had to approve overall budgets, but it appeared to accept the company’s numbers with few questions. The signoff was “essentially meaningless,” the auditors wrote.

“In the charter-school sector, this arrangement is known as a “sweeps” contract because nearly all of a school’s public dollars – anywhere from 95 to 100 percent – is “swept” into a charter-management company.

“The contracts are an example of how the charter schools sometimes cede control of public dollars to private companies that have no legal obligation to act in the best interests of the schools or taxpayers. When the agreement is with a for-profit firm like National Heritage Academies, it’s also a chance for such firms to turn taxpayer money into tidy profits.

“It’s really just a pass-through for for-profit entities,” said Eric Hall, an attorney in Colorado Springs who specializes in work with charter schools and has come across many sweeps contracts. “In what sense is that a nonprofit endeavor? It’s not….”

“In Michigan, where NHA is the largest charter-school operator, state education regulators have voiced similar frustrations about the degree to which these private firms are shielded from having to answer to the public about how money is spent.

“I can’t FOIA National Heritage Academies,” said Casandra Ulbrich, Vice President of the Michigan State Board of Education, referring to the right to request public documents from public agencies. “I don’t know who they’re subcontracting with, I don’t know if they’re bid out. I don’t know if there are any conflicts of interest. This is information we as taxpayers don’t have a right to.”

“Last year, Ulbrich and the State Board of Education had called for more transparency to be brought to the financial dealings of charter-management firms. They specifically asked the legislature to outlaw sweeps contracts. “Unfortunately,” Ulbrich said, “it fell on deaf ears.”

Do taxpayers know that they are funding for-profit corporations that are not subject to public audit?

“If you have information about charter schools and their profits or oversight — or any other tips — email us at charters@propublica.org.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit

Julian Vasquez Heilig: The Backlash Against TFA

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2014 //
21

Julian Vasquez Heilig has probably fine more research on Trach for Amertica than any other scholar. In this post, he describes the growing backlash against TFA, much of it emanating from TFA alums who became discouraged when they realized that their five weeks of training were inadequate preparation for the rigors of teaching.

Categories Resistance, Teach for America

BATS: We Object to Harmful Testing

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2014 //
45

The Badass Teachers Assiciation declares that as a matter of conscience, they reject standardized tests because they harm and discourage students.

These BATS say:

“We know that we are in the middle of a war, fighting for our schools and our students. One of the tolls in this war is the implementation of high stakes testing. These tests are like weapons, based upon the knowledge that these tests do not accurately measure educational achievement, but are more truly a measurement of the economic characteristics of the student. Today, decisions are being made to divert funds from numerous programs and appropriate staffing levels as districts are rushing to meet technology requirements and implement test practice programs. This money could be better used to increase staffing levels to allow for better student to teacher ratios, implement new programs that increase cultural and global awareness, create services that support the needs of the whole child, and renovate existing school structures that are in desperate need of repair.
“The amount of stress that our students are under has become overwhelming and our schools are becoming less able to help that. As educators it is our moral responsibility to become a shield for our children and protect them from the people that seek to manipulate their education to personally profit at their expense. We have the moral obligation to become conscientious objectors as we remember our responsibility to our students.”

Categories BATS, Resistance, Standardized Testing

Christine Langhoff: How Can We Tell Which Is Arne’s Worst Idea?

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2014 //
20

Christine Langhoff, a regular commenter on the blog, left this response in reaction to the post about “Arne’s Worst Idea” (evaluating colleges of education by the test scores of students taught by their graduates):

 

Two reasons this qualifies as Arne’s worst idea:

 

1. NCTQ
2. RELAY

 

Arne’s recommendations legitimize these faux organizations. Relay purports to be a graduate school of education, when it is better described as a training program not unlike McDonald’s hamburger university. And NCTQ (run by the Fordham Institute) has published a “ranking” of teacher prep programs whose methodology can be summed up this way (from Peter Greene): “this is a report in which some people collected some graduation brochures and course syllabi and close read their way to an indictment of all college teacher training programs”. See Linda Darling Hammond’s more scholarly indictment of NCTQ here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/06/18/why-the-nctq-teacher-prep-ratings-are-nonsense/

 

During Duncan’s tenure, up has become down and not through legislation, but stealthily, through regulation changes behind closed doors.

 

TFA’s = highly qualified teachers
Relay= graduate school of education
FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act) = conduit to give away private information to for-profit entities
NCTQ – “ratings” of teacher prep institutions = research
Charter schools = the answer to life’s persistent questions

 

Looks like our former pro basketball player has become a water boy, carrying water for the dismantlers of our public school systems.

 

We are left with only one real question: Why was Arne Duncan appointed Secretary of Education?

Categories Education Reform

Valerie Strauss on TFA’s Sharp Decline in Recruits

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2014 //
33

Valerie Strauss here analyzes the sharp drop in Teach for America recruits. The numbers of new corps members are down by as much as 25%.

Why? Teachers’ morale has declined precipitously from 2008-2012 (will Arne Duncan be held accountable?) and the teaching profession has lost its allure. Strauss points out that TFA may be a causal factor in the loss of respect for the profession, since it claims that brand néw college graduates are better than veteran teachers. By doing so, TFA has encouraged the belief that 5 weeks of training is good enough. This destroys the profession as such. Veteran teachers have been replaced by TFA kids. This can contribute to instability and demoralization.

Categories Teach for America, Teachers and Teaching
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