Archives for the month of: January, 2015
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Governor Cuomo Wants to Cut Teachers’ Pensions

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2015 //
55

Governor Andrew Cuomo complained recently that legislators were too concerned with protecting teachers’ pensions and unconcerned with protecting children in “failing schools.”

Station WGRZ says that the average pension for retired school employees is $41,000 and change. Cuomo thinks teachers will produce higher test scores if he threatens their pensions. Apparently he wants more test prep, more teaching to the test, more narrowing of the curriculum to eliminate the arts and physical education so there is more time for testing.

Please, someone, tell the governor that threats don’t improve teaching and learning. Tell him that carrots and sticks do not get “results.”

Tell him to read Daniel Pink’s “Drive” or the research of Edward Deci and Dan Ariely on motivation. What teachers need is not threats but support, encouragement, and the resources to do their job.

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Pensions, Teachers

Haimson: When Klein and Sharpton Were Allies

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2015 //
20

Recently the Néw York Post ran an article about Al Sharpton, saying that he received money from corporations in return for not campaigning against them as racist. The story said that the firm of former Chancellor Harold Levy paid Sharpton $500,000 to help a client who was competing to manage a gambling franchise.

Leonie Haimson, CEO of Néw Tork City’s most activist group Class Size Matters, writes that the NY Post left out the key details of that transaction.

She writes:

“Left out of this account is the most interesting part of the story. It’s not just that the money for Sharpton was ostensibly for “equity” and funneled through Education Reform Now, the non-profit arm of Joe William’s pro-charter Democrats for Education Reform. The larger context is that ERN was merely a pass-through, and the money was directed to Sharpton through the Education Equity Project, founded by then-Chancellor Joel Klein, in exchange for Sharpton agreeing to co-chair the group and adopt Klein’s aggressive anti-teacher, pro-charter stance.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry

Alan Singer: How the NCSS Sold Out History and Social Studies

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2015 //
17

Alan Singer no longer belongs to the National Council for the Social Studies. He explains why here.

History and social studies were marginalized by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, which focus only on reading and math as make-or-break testing subjects. Now Common Core calls for “close reading,” analyzing text without context. It is impossible to understand history or social studies without context.

Singer writes:

“My problem is that in an effort to survive, the NCSS has largely abandoned its commitment to these ideas, twisting itself into a pretzel to adapt to national Common Core standards and to satisfy influential conservative organizations that they are not radical, or even liberal. I suspect, but cannot document, that the organization’s membership has precipitously declined during the past two decades and it has increasingly depended financial support for its conferences and publications from deep-pocketed traditional and rightwing groups who advertise and have display booths.

“According to a NCSS position paper, “The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) is increasingly alarmed by the erosion of the importance of social studies in the United States. This erosion, in large part, is a consequence of the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Since the introduction of NCLB, there has been a steady reduction in the amount of time spent in the teaching of social studies, with the most profound decline noticed in the elementary grades.”

“In an effort to counter the Common Core push for detextualized skill-based instruction and assessment that has further marginalized social studies education, the NCSS is promoting what it calls “College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework,” a campaign I initially supported. It recently distributed Teaching the College, Career and Civic Life (C3) Framework: Exploring Inquiry-based Instruction in Social Studies (NCSS Bulletin 114) edited by Kathy Swan and John Lee. However, through its choice of partners, its rigid adherence to Common Core lesson guidelines, and the sample material it is promoting, the NCSS has virtually abandoned not just meaningful social studies education, but education for democracy and citizenship as well.

Categories Common Core, Curriculum

Join the Network for Public Education in Chicago!

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2015 //
7

The Second Annual Network for Public Education Conference Registration is Now Open!

Here is the master information page for all conference information:

http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/2015/01/npe-2015-annual-conference-chicago-early-bird-special-registration-open/

Early-bird discounted Registration for the Network for Public Education’s Second Annual Conference is now available at this address:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/network-for-public-education-2015-annual-conference-tickets-15118560020

These low rates will last for the month of January.

The event is being held at the Drake Hotel in downtown Chicago, and there is a link on the registration page for special hotel registration rates. Here are some of the event details.

There will be a welcoming social event 7 pm Friday night, April 24, at or near the Drake Hotel — details coming soon.

Featured speakers will be:

Jitu Brown, National Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, the NPE Board of Directors, and the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization.
Tanaisa Brown, High School Senior, Newark Student Union

Yong Zhao, Author, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?”

Diane Ravitch in Conversation with Lily Eskelsen Garcia and Randi Weingarten
Karen Lewis, President, Chicago Teachers Union

There will be a special optional luncheon on Saturday that will feature a conversation between Edushyster and surprise guests.

There will be dozens of workshops and panels offered by activists from coast to coast. Proposals for these sessions are being solicited by the NPE, and can be submitted here until the Jan. 20 deadline.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NPEChicagoSession

The organizers worked to make the conference as affordable as possible. Please be aware that the room reservations and food costs offset the use of the hotel space. This conference is priced as cheaply as possible so that the maximum number of people can attend. We are hoping to raise money to provide a limited amount of scholarships. Here is the link for the scholarship application: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NPEScholarship

If you would like to make a donation to allow others to attend who otherwise could not afford participating, please go here, and indicate that this is for the “NPE Conference Scholarship Fund” http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/about-npe/become-a-member/

Categories Chicago, Network for Public Education

Mike Rose on the Failure of “School Reform”

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2015 //
32

Mike Rose has written a thoughtful critique of “school reform” in The American Scholar. The title of the article is “School Reform Fails the Test.” The subtitle hits a bullseye: “How can our schools get better when we’ve made our teachers the problem and not the solution?”

Think about that question. If “teachers are the problem,” the problem will never be solved. It will not be solved by Teach for America, which accounts for less than 1% of all teachers. It will not be solved by putting former TFA into positions of leadership, as we can see by the disruptive and demoralizing experiences of John White in Louisiana and Kevin Huffman in Tennessee. No one, with the possible exceptions of Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan, would point to these states as models for the nation. For five years now, since the introduction of Race to the Top and the release of “Waiting for Superman,” the “reformers” have been obsessed with the hunt for bad teachers. They have been persuaded by Eric Hanushek’s views that our economy will soar by trillions if we regularly fire the bottom 5-10% of teachers, bottom meaning those whose students don’t increase their test scores.

Here is a taste of Mike Rose’s long and pensive essay:

Organizing schools and creating curricula based on an assumption of wholesale failure make going to school a regimented and punitive experience. If we determine success primarily by a test score, we miss those considerable intellectual achievements that aren’t easily quantifiable. If we think about education largely in relation to economic competitiveness, then we ignore the social, moral, and aesthetic dimensions of teaching and learning. You will be hard pressed to find in federal education policy discussions of achievement that include curiosity, reflection, creativity, aesthetics, pleasure, or a willingness to take a chance, to blunder. Our understanding of teaching and learning, and of the intellectual and social development of children, becomes terribly narrow in the process.

School reform is hardly a new phenomenon, and the harshest criticism of schools tends to coincide with periods of social change or economic transformation. The early decades of the 20th century—a time of rapid industrialization and mass immigration from central and southern Europe—saw a blistering attack, reminiscent of our own time. The Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 triggered another assault, with particular concern over math and science education. And during the 1980s, as postwar American global economic preeminence was being challenged, we saw a flurry of reports on the sorry state of education, the most notable of which, A Nation at Risk (1983), warned of “a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

Public education, a vast, ambitious, loosely coupled system of schools, is one of our country’s defining institutions. It is also flawed, in some respects deeply so. Unequal funding, fractious school politics, bureaucratic inertia, uneven curricula, uninspired pedagogy, and the social ills that seep into the classroom all limit the potential of our schools. The critics are right to be worried. The problem is that the criticism, fueled as it is by broader cultural anxieties, is often sweeping and indiscriminate. Critics blame the schools for problems that have many causes. And some remedies themselves create difficulties. Policymakers and educators face a challenge: how to target the problems without diminishing the achievements in our schools or undermining their purpose. The current school reform movement fails this challenge.

Categories Education Reform, Students, Teachers and Teaching

Connecticut Teacher: Jumoke Academy Was No Model

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2015 //
6

A letter from Mary G., a teacher in Connecticut, about the “Jumoke model” promoted by state officials–until it was engulfed by scandals:

 

Many concerned people–parents, bloggers, writers–have been asking questions about Michael Sharpe and FUSE–see the numerous posts on Jonathan Pelto’s blog, for a start.
When Stefan Pryor, the (thankfully) out-going CT State ed commissioner, was ramping up his reform initiatives, such as the state Turnaround Office and the Commissioner’s Network, he showcased Michael Sharpe and the “Jumoke” model. This emboldened Sharpe to create his FUSE corporation–along with the Northeast Charter School Network. Pryor had Michael Sharpe present his “Jumoke model” to all the schools forced into the Commissioner’s Network, such as Windham, CT and Bridgeport. Thus, at the roll-out workshop for participating districts, Michael Sharpe was the star, along with his employee, Andrea Comer–who was immediately nominated to be placed on the State Board of Education. Could there be any more blatant proof that not only Pryor, but the State Board of Education, the legislature, and the governor, threw their full support behind Michael Sharpe and Jumoke, a man they called doctor and a “model” they hailed as exemplary?
Stefan Pryor has a nerve pretending to scold Sharpe. No one enabled Michael Sharpe more than the Commissioner, the SBE, and Stephen Adamowski, the ex-Superintendent/CEO of Hartford schools who allotted Sharpe so much autonomy.

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut

“Change the Stakes” Speaks Out Against VAM

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2015 //
14

This is an excellent letter to the U.S. Department of Education, which patiently explains the harm caused by value-added modeling (VAM). It was submitted by a Néw York group called “Change the Stakes,” which opposes high-stakes testing. The letter was written by psychologist Dr. Rosalie Friend, a member of Change the Stakes. It is a good source for parents and educators who want to explain why testing is being overused and misused.

USDOE’s Proposed Regs for Teacher Education Programs

Change the Stakes submitted these comments in response to the U.S. Department of Education’s proposal to impose new accountability measures on teacher education programs, https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/12/03/2014-28218/teacher-preparation-issues.

The U.S. Department of Education has proposed that teacher education programs be rated by the employment, placement, and performance of their graduates. Ratings of the performance of graduates would include the test scores of the students who are taught by graduates of those programs.

Change the Stakes (changethestakes.org), an organization of New York City parents and educators promoting alternatives to high-stakes testing, opposes this proposal.

Rating teacher education programs by what teachers do after they leave the programs is unrealistic. The decisions made by graduates and their employers are not determined by the teacher education programs. Teacher education programs are already assessed by professional accrediting boards that understand the nuances of teaching and learning.

The accountability procedures imposed on K-12 schools have diverted astounding amounts of money and time from teaching and learning. The accountability procedures have not led to any measurable improvement in student achievement. Extending these ill-conceived procedures to teacher education programs is counter-productive. Attaching high stakes to evaluation leads to the distortion of the processes that are being evaluated, as documented by Dr. Donald Campbell, the pre-eminent social scientist.

Teaching is a difficult profession. Industrial-type accountability procedures distract from the focus on teaching and learning. We want teachers to learn how to engage children in learning new ideas and using those ideas to reason and solve problems. At the same time, teachers must be able to assist children with developing socially and emotionally. This requires dealing with enormous differences among children’s backgrounds and personalities. Of course, teachers must also be expert in the skills and materials they teach. Teacher education programs must prepare teachers to think on their feet and respond to the ever changing conditions under which they labor, not to drill children for shallow, regimented tests.

Teachers’ working conditions are a major factor in their professional achievement. Social conditions, school culture, school leadership, class assignments, and relationships among colleagues are all important in determining both students’ and teachers’ success. Management expert, W. Edwards Deming, said, “It is the structure of the organization rather than the employees, alone, which holds the key to improving the quality of output.” All these factors are independent of teacher education programs.

Perhaps the most wrong-headed part of the proposal is the use of student test scores in assessing the teachers who graduated from the programs. Using student scores to evaluate teachers and then to use that “so-called” data to rate their teacher education programs is unsound and unacceptable for the following reasons.

Low Reliability of Standardized Test Results

Value-added modeling (VAM) cannot be accurately used for a small sample such as a single class. The aggregation of student test scores to derive a score for an individual teacher has been demonstrated to be wildly unstable, especially while assigning scores to a given teacher from year to year or even from class to class. The American Statistical Association has warned against the use of VAM for teacher evaluation. Using these unreliable figures to draw conclusions about the programs that educated teachers is folly.

Low Validity of Standardized Test Results

Tests cannot adequately account for every factor outside of a teacher’s instruction that impacts how students perform on a test because there are far too many other factors affecting students’ scores. Research shows that whatever teachers’ impact is, it accounts for only 1-14% of student variability in standardized test scores. If the teacher’s score is based on factors other than the teacher’s influence, it is not valid.

Studies since the 1966 Coleman report continue to show that nothing affects student achievement as much as the student’s home. Parents in poor families cannot provide their children with the same social and learning supports and enrichment that affluent and middle-class parents can provide. Furthermore, well-funded schools in prosperous communities consistently get higher test scores than cash starved schools in poverty-stricken neighborhoods.

A teacher’s effectiveness is directly affected by the composition of the class assigned to that teacher even within the same school. What kind of academic background do the children have? Are their goals aligned with the school’s goals? How cooperative are they? How well behaved or self-regulated are they?

Conclusion

The entire process of professional training of an educator is exceptionally complex. While a school of education affects the resulting quality of the professional educator, so much more goes into their success. Any evaluation of such an institution should be developed to be inclusive of all the contributing factors, not simply the ones for which quantitative data (however invalid and unreliable) are available.

Ignoring these additional factors and the research supporting them is an injustice not only to the programs the Education Department plans to rate but also to students, teachers, parents, and communities alike.

Sources

American Statistical Association. (2014). ASA Statement on Using Value-Added Models for Educational Assessment. http://www.amstat.org/policy/pdfs/ASA_VAM_Statement.pdf

Baker, E. L., Barton, P. E., Darling-Hammond, L. D., Haertel, E., Ladd, H. F., Linn, R. L., Ravitch, D., Rothstein, R., Shavelson, R. J., & Shepard, L.A. (2010). Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers: Briefing Paper 278. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute.

Campbell, D.T. (1976). Assessing the Impact of Planned Social Change. Dartmouth College, Occasional Paper Series, #8.

Greene, D. (2013). Doing the Right Thing: A Teacher Speaks. Victoria, Canada: Friesen Press.

Haertel, E.H. (2013) Reliability and validity of inferences about teachers based on student test scores. William H. Angoff Memorial Lecture Series. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.

Johnson, S.M., Kraft, M.A., & Papay, J.P. (2012). How Context Matters in High-Need Schools: The Effects of Teachers’ Working Conditions on Their Professional Satisfaction and Their Students’ Achievement, Teachers College Record, 114:1-39.

Viadero, D. (2006). Race Report’s Influence Felt 40 Years Later: Legacy of Coleman study was new view of equity. EdWeek [Online] Available http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2006/06/21/41coleman.h25.html

These comments were written by Dr. Rosalie Friend, Educational Psychologist and a member of Change the Stakes.

Categories Standardized Testing, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, U.S. Department of Education

New York Daily News Endorses Punitive Use of VAM

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2015 //
66

New York, beware. Governor Cuomo and State Board of Regents Merryl Tisch are both very dissatisfied, having learned that only 1% of the state’s teachers were rated ineffective. They assume that if a child gets low scores on the state tests, the teacher must be an ineffective teacher. With the new Common Core tests, the state “proficiency” rate plummeted to only 30%, so the state must be full of “bad” teachers. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that the “cut score” or “passing score” on the tests was set absurdly high. Nor do they know that the use of VAM (value-added modeling) has been criticized by the American Statistical Association, the American Education Research Association, and the National Academy of Education.

 

Now the New York Daily News, owned by billionaire Mortimer Zuckerman (who also owns US News and World Report), has written an editorial calling on legislators to “Listen to Mrs. Tisch.” That is, be prepared to fire up to 10% of teachers every year. No questions asked about where new teachers will come from; no questions about why these new teachers will be better qualified than those who were fired using a dubious method; no questions about the VAM methodology, which is now being challenged in court in New York as arbitrary; no awareness of the extensive research and experience showing that the methodology is unstable and inaccurate. Just fire teachers, do it again and again, and the scores will go up. This is faith-based ideology, not an expression of thoughtfulness not a display of knowledge about teacher evaluation.

Categories New York, Teacher Evaluations

Jesse Hagopian: 2014 Was a Great Year for the Anti-Testing Movement

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2015 //
20

Jesse Hagopian, a leader of the test boycott by teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle, lists the reasons why 2014 was a momentous year for the movement against high-stakes testing, as well as the overuse and misuse of testing.

Jesse writes:

“For too long so-called education reformers, mostly billionaires, politicians, and others with little or no background in teaching, have gotten away with using standardized testing to punish our nation’s youth and educators. They have used these tests to deny students promotion or graduation, close schools, and fire teachers—all while deflecting attention away from the need to fund the services the would dramatically improve our schools.

The year 2014 marked the greatest year of revolt against high-stakes testing in U.S. history. Across the country, students are walking out, parents are opting their children out, and teachers are refusing to administer these detrimental exams—often taking great personal and professional risk to defy the corporate education reformers. The impact of this movement can be seen in the poll released in August 2014 by Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup, which found that 54 percent of the general public said standardized tests are not helpful–the rate for public school parents was even higher, at 68 percent. To gain a full appreciation of the size and scope of this mass rebellion, check out the “Testing Reform Victories Report” from Fair Test. To gain insight into to the motivations and strategies of the leaders in this movement, order the newly released book, More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing.”

He then lists the Top Ten Events that galvanized the anti-testing movement, starting with the walkout of 5,000 students in Colorado in protest of state testing.

Categories Resistance, Testing

Laura H. Chapman: Why Ruinous Policies Won’t Go Away

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2015 //
39

Laura H. Chapman, in a comment on the blog, writes that overly prescriptive standards and overused standardized tests will be locked into place by bipartisan support (I add that what she describes is the Democratic embrace of the traditional Republican agenda of testing, competition, and choice.

In my view, these policies will not be rethought until politicians see a genuine uprising by students, parents, and educators. They listen to their constituents if the constituents make enough noise. We are not prisoners, we are citizens. We should make our voices heard.

Laura H. Chapmam writes:

In the near term, I think it unlikely that policies from this administration will go away soon, primarily because so many policies overlap those favored by Republicans who control Congress and state houses and state legislatures. Many who have political power endorse the “kill-public-education” policies of the current administration.

Reversals will require federal and state legislative action. My guess is that Republicans will favor the continued use of VAM and SLOs to rate teachers, and funding for charter expansion. Many state legislatures are in the midst of re-branding the common core or reverting to prior state standards, but standards and testing for hard-nosed “accountability” are not likely to vanish soon.

Many Republicans rely on ALEC-designed free-market legislation. Many foundations active in education support those views and have created a huge network of subsidized communications. In these networks, experts refine the arguments for private and for-profit education and hammer on the major themes of “getting the most bang for the taxpayer’s buck” and “parent choice.”

An example of this effort to control policy (in addition to ALEC) can be seen at the National Council of State Legislatures website where the agenda for policy on “education” includes a discussion of funding options for charter school facilities. The Walton Foundation paid for the report, which takes a swipe at public school districts for not “sharing” facilities, especially with out-of-district charters.

The Walton Foundation is among many others paying the cost for professionals in the media to deliver the “surround sound” for the public and policy-makers–with the failures of public schools providing the justification for alternatives. EdWeek journalism has been co-opted by 17 foundations who pay for coverage of topics they wish to forward as legitimate and newsworthy.

Republicans do not all think alike, including the common core and associated tests, but so far, the indications are that many current policies will just be rebranded and tweaked, with more block grants to states, and more tricks of the trade to cut spending for education.

An example of using the ruse of cutting costs is the promotion of “social impact bonds” (also known as “pay-for-success bonds”). These “innovative finance tools” for privatizing education have been given credibility by a $100 million kitty from the Obama administration. If you liked the “innovative financing tools” that tanked the economy, you will love these bonds–high profits if you invest in techniques of reducing the cost of public services, including education.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/school-choice-and-charters.aspx

Click to access fact-sheet-pdf.pdf

Categories Common Core, Standardized Testing, Walton Foundation
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