Archives for the month of: February, 2015
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Portland, Oregon, Teachers Oppose Common Core Test

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2015 //
15

Teachers in Portland, Oregon, voted in opposition to administering the Smarter Balanced Assessment. The best part of the resolution calls on the superintendent, the school board, and principals to take the test and publicly release their scores!

“About 70 Portland Association of Teachers representatives from schools across the district voted to approve the resolution Wednesday night, said PAT President Gwen Sullivan. The resolution was crafted by a union committee and references the Oregon Education Association’s vote last spring for a moratorium on administering the test.

“”It’s not just going against something, it’s about what we’re for,” she said. “It was even more of a symbol of (what) people honestly feel about this particular issue. Teachers do not support this test.”

“The resolution references multiple concerns with the test, such as predictions that approximately 65 percent of students will fail this year and that Smarter Balanced test scores have not yet been determined to be valid or reliable. The resolution also points out the millions of federal and state dollars that have been allocated for test design and implementation.

“The resolution calls for PAT members to speak and petition about the amount of time students will spend preparing and taking the test. Members are also encouraged to hold parent informational sessions about Smarter Balanced and opting out and practice sessions for parents and teachers to take the test.

“The PAT also asks for Portland Public Schools Superintendent Carole Smith, school board members and principals take the Smarter Balanced test and publicly release their scores. The school board is encouraged to quit using standardized test scores to make decisions, the resolution states.”

Here is a video clip of the President of the Portland Association of Teachers speaking out about teacher concerns regarding the Smarter Balanced Assessment at last week’s school board hearing:

Categories Common Core, Teachers, Testing

Michigan: An Eye-Opening Charter Scam

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2015 //
15

Over the past few years, we have seen countless charter scams and frauds. This should not be surprising. When you deregulate a public service and give public money to non-educators to run schools without supervision or accountability, this is what you get.

Here is a prime example, one which I wrote about recently. This post was written and sent to me by Dr. Mitchell Robinson.

An optometrist in Michigan decided he had a new method of learning, which he called “Integrative Visual Learning.”

Robinson writes:

“What’s lost here is any discussion of Dr. Ingersoll’s “innovative” approach to learning, “Integrated Visual Learning,” which has to do with rapid eye movements. Here’s a teacher’s account of IVL, and how it was used in Dr. Ingersoll’s school:

“His claims were/are at best a novelty in my opinion. If I recall correctly, students were initially given a screener to see how their eyes tracked on a page of text. This was done with a special machine and a pair of glasses hooked up to the machine. If their eyes didn’t track from left to right (as in how a person reads a page of text) and from one line to the next in the correct “zig zag” pattern during reading, then they were considered to need “therapy.” Therapy was expensive and rarely covered by insurance.”

“What’s missing here is any description of how children learn. How does this “test” help teachers adapt instruction? What happens when a child’s eyes don’t zig zag? Are they taught differently, or just not admitted to the school?

“Um, not so much…according to another teacher:

“There was NO room in the school specifically for IVL testing. There may have been equipment, but kids were never observed for vision. The IVL methods were taught to all kids, because Ingersoll made the staff do it; middle school and high school as well. Even the Special Education teachers had to teach it. which meant critical standards were not met.”
(http://www.upnorthprogressive.com/2015/01/13/teachers-speak-out-about-integrated-visual-learning-the-continuing-story-of-dr-steve-ingersoll/)

“So while we don’t know if Dr. Ingersoll knows anything about children, or learning, or schools, here’s what we do know:

“1. He stole our money.
2. He subjected our children to radical, untested teaching methods.
3. People like this should not be permitted to set foot in our schools, much less run them.”

Categories Charter Schools, Michigan

Children in Néw Jersey Will Have 10-11 Hours of Testing

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2015 //
31

Mercedes Schneider reviews what is in store for children in Néw Jersey when they take the PARCC test:

“PARCC testing in New Jersey is scheduled to begin March 2, 2015. The NJ PARCC testing “window” will not end in March, but will continue into April, May, and June, depending upon the grade level and whether the test is part of the PBA (performance-based assessment), which is given 75% of the way through a school year, or EOY (end of year), which comes 90% of the way into a school year.

“For third grade, New Jersey schools must schedule 4.75 hours for the English language arts (ELA) PBA and EOY PARCC and 5 hours for the math PBA and EOY PARCC.

“Just shy of 10 hours of schedules testing time for a third grader.

“For fourth and fifth graders it is a full 10 hours.

“For sixth through eighth graders, almost 11 hours.”

Why is it necessary to spend so much time to find out whether children can read and do math?

Some parent groups are urging opting out.

The opt out talk has grown so loud that DC-based Education Trust has sent opinion pieces to Néw Jersey papers urging parents not to opt out. Schneider points out that Education Trust is heavily funded by the Gates Foundation.

New Jersey parents: do not subject your children to 10 hours of testing. Opt out.

Categories Childhood, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, New Jersey, Opt Out, Resistance, Standardized Testing

A Letter from the Teachers at PS 321 in Brooklyn

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2015 //
82

I received a letter from the teachers at PS 321. I have a direct connection to the school, as a member of my family is a student there. He loves school. He is in third grade. He is working on an essay whose topc he chose. He is researching “the Silk Road.” Last year, in second grade, he wrote about bioluminescence (I had to look it up.) this obviously a wonderful public school.

References in the letter are to Liz Phillips, the principal.

Here is the link: http://ps321.org/letter-from-ps-321-teachers/

Letter from PS 321 Teachers

February 23, 2015

Dear PS 321 Families,

It is with heavy hearts that we, the teachers at 321, reach out to you to ask for your help.

Governor Cuomo has proposed major changes to teacher evaluations in New York State. We want to let you know, from a teacher’s perspective, the changes this law could bring to PS 321 – and to our profession – if it passes.

50% of a teacher’s rating would be based on state test scores. (Currently it is 20%).
35% of a teacher’s rating would be based on the findings of an outside “independent observer” who will conduct a one time visit to the classroom. (This has never been done before. Currently our principal and assistant principals’ observations count for 60%).
15% of a teacher’s rating would be based on observations by the principal or assistant principals. The very people who know our work best would have the least input into our evaluation.
50% + 35% = 85% of our evaluations would be removed from the hands of our community and placed in the hands of the state.
And then, using these numbers, any teacher who is rated ineffective two years in a row can be fired. Liz might have no say in this.

So what might that do to PS 321? Realistically, many of us could be fired. Every year. And many more of us would be pushed away from the profession we love.

Here’s something parents need to understand. Even though, when our students take the standardized tests, most of them do just fine… many PS 321 teachers do not. Teachers’ ratings are not based on their students’ raw scores for the year, but whether their students improved from one year to the next. If a student with a ‘3’ gets one fewer question correct in 4th grade than she did in 3rd, that student might not have demonstrated the “added value” their teacher is expected to have instilled. Even though the student has mastered that grade’s content. Even though it’s just one question. And that teacher might, therefore, be rated in the bottom percentile of teachers.

That may sound patently absurd. However, that has already happened here.

If Governor Cuomo’s evaluation proposals come to pass, it might start to happen more and more. And if we are rated ineffective as a result two years in a row, we might be fired.

That is why so many schools in NYC spend so much time prepping for the tests. One or two wrong answers can make or break a teacher’s rating.

Faced with these changes, we’ve already been hearing from so many of our colleagues from across the city and state who will be forced to do more test prep. Even when they know that the tests do not give an accurate picture of student learning, or of the effectiveness of teachers. Even though they know teaching to the test is bad teaching. Faced with the reality of the loss of a paycheck – the loss of the career they are building, have built, or want to build – these proposals will push them to teach in ways they know to be counterproductive.

That breaks our hearts. But the truth is, faced with the same reality, there are those of us here who would be feeling the very same pressure. Not because we’d want to. We would try to resist. But it is inevitable that if the governor’s proposals go through, all schools will narrow their curriculum to some extent.

And that’s scary. And it breaks our hearts even more. Because we know what we have here. We love what we have— in you, in our students, in all that the PS 321 community represents. The joy that is present— every day, in our school. The value that is placed on intellectual curiosity, on creativity, on the arts. The love of learning that is visible when you enter our building, when you go into classrooms, and when you talk to students and teachers.

The values present in Governor Cuomo’s proposals are antithetical to our own. And they place them at risk. The numbers are clear: 50% of our value will be six days of tests. 35% of our value will be one day with an independent observer. And 15% of our value will be in evaluation by Liz and the assistant principals, those who know us best as educators.

Those are their values.

Our joy, our love of learning, our desire to help students become deep thinkers and problem solvers, our community, our commitment to constantly improving our practice… those are ours.

PS 321 Families: don’t let them take our values away.

We need your help. And we need it now. The education law is folded into the state budget. It goes up for a vote before April 1st.

We need you to let your legislators know that you disagree with this plan:

Email Governor Cuomo right now at gov.cuomo@chamber.state.ny.us.

Visit http://www.nyteacherletter.org/ and sign the letter to let your legislator know you disapprove of the law.

Contact your assemblymember. Go to http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/ to find their contact information. Don’t stop there. Go to their offices and demand attention.

Post this issue on Facebook and tell your friends. Use social media to spread the word. Go to Albany. Make whatever noise you can.

And sign up today at ps321.org to receive information and updates from the Testing Task Force about what you can do to help support us.

What we have together is rare, especially today, when so many schools have succumbed to the pressures of testing. We must not take our school’s joyful community for granted. All that we have– all that we do together–is far too important and far too valuable to be taken away. Thank you, as always, for your energy, your support, and your inspiring, creative children.

Your Devoted Teachers

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Frank Breslin Advises Students: How to Read Shakespeare

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2015 //
9

Frank Breslin, retired teacher of literature and languages, explains to students how to read and enjoy Shakespeare. This is the beginning of a series.

Here is the beginning of his advice:

“The best way to read a play by Shakespeare is to bypass the editor’s introduction and start reading the play itself. Don’t let the editor or anyone else tell you what the play is about, but find out for yourself. “Trust your own judgment and think for yourself!” Let this be your Declaration of Independence. Anything else is building on sand in a world that tells you what to think, or to follow the crowd by not thinking at all.

“It’s important to be your own person when young, because if you routinely rely on the judgment of others, you’ll undermine your belief in yourself and cease to be a person at all. Don’t be dependent on the opinions of others, some of whom will be only too happy to take over your life. When you believe in yourself, you become transformed as a person, take control of your life, and your grades will begin to take care of themselves.

“Some Themes of Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s plays take you out of the comfort zone of a 21st-century American world and set you down in different places and times, where different problems, values, and worldviews prevail. This exposure gives you a broader sense of life’s possibilities and of various ways of being human, in addition to the accustomed American way. It also provides you with a more cosmopolitan frame of reference within which to evaluate the world and the human drama that takes place within it.

“Facing one’s demons, the healing power of art, insight through suffering, the redemptive and destructive power of love, meaninglessness and alienation as ways to finding yourself, the danger of fame, the loneliness of power, ambition and collateral damage, compassion and becoming human, the fragility of human existence, and life without morals are a few of the themes that make up the complex yet fascinating world of Shakespeare as his characters struggle to become who they are despite the setbacks that stand in their way.”

Categories Education Reform, Real Education

Connecticut: Ed School Deans Call for Common Sense and an End to Teacher-Bashing

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2015 //
27

Kevin G. Basmadjian, Dean of the School of Education at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, wrote a powerful article in the Hartford Courant in collaboration with other deans from across the state.

Connecticut’s students are among the highest on the NAEP, yet its policymakers insist that its schools and teachers are unsuccessful. The politicians want more charter schools and Teach for America.

He writes:

“As a nation and a state, we have clearly failed to address the inequalities that disproportionally impact many urban school districts where kids are poor and segregated. Sadly, for the first time in 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students now come from low-income families. But instead of addressing this crisis, we have demonized teachers for failing to solve problems our government cannot, or will not, solve. Poverty, homelessness and the dangerously high levels of emotional and psychological stress experienced by low-income students — these are the problems many of our nation’s public school teachers face every day.

“Our nation’s obsession with standardized test scores will not solve these problems, and they put our country at great risk intellectually as well as economically. As educational researcher Yong Zhao writes, countries with which we are often compared — such as Singapore, Japan and South Korea — are moving away from a focus on testing in their public schools. Why? Because they have learned from the history of the United States that a great education and nation is one that rewards creativity, originality, imagination and innovation….

“The most recent scapegoat for our nation’s shameful achievement gap is teacher preparation programs, for failing to produce a steady stream of what the U.S. Department of Education abstractly calls “great teachers” to work in our neediest public schools. By blaming teacher preparation programs, the department can yet again divert public attention from the most crucial barrier to achieving educational equality: poverty.

There is a need for more “great teachers” who will commit themselves to our state’s neediest public schools. But achieving this goal will take more than naive slogans or punitive measures levied against teacher preparation programs that do not successfully persuade graduates to teach in these schools. The U.S. Department of Education’s proposed regulations for teacher preparation — with its emphasis on standardized test scores — work against this goal because of the overly technical, anti-intellectual portrait of teaching they endorse. We in Connecticut need to make these jobs more attractive to prospective teachers through increased respect, support and autonomy rather than criticism, disdain and surveillance.”

Categories Connecticut, Standardized Testing, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Norm Scott: Time for a Real Civics Lesson

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2015 //
11

Retired teacher and blogger Norm Scott (EdNotes Online) has a creative idea, though time is short. Why not brings hundreds of thousands (or millions) of students to Albany on March 4 to get a “civics lesson” and to remind legislators that 97% of the state’s children attend public schools, not charters.

He writes:

Help this teacher sell this class trip.

“Norm, just stumbled upon you. I tried selling our BOE on the same idea that I just read on your blog (Time for Massive Civics Lesson on March 4). Super didn’t know if we could do that with our public school buses. I teach Elem.Spec.Ed.- do you know if there are any generic “field trip civics lesson plans” out there to expedite my push to make this legit? People won’t get off their asses and take action; all we get is “write your legislators”. Actions speak.”

Norm writes:

“I proposed this weeks ago right after Eva announced she was closing schools on UFT lobby day, March 4, to take them up to Albany. Why not get hundreds of NYC classes to take a field trip to Albany for a civics lesson on how public money can be misused to get away with just about anything. Note how the teacher gets it about the business as usual without imagination UFT plan. Even though March 4 is the day after my 70th birthday I would go along just to get video of a lone teacher making a stand.”

Categories Charter Schools, New York

David Knuffke: How Do Other Nations, States Evaluate Their Teachers?

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2015 //
15

A reader sent this excellent commentary on teacher evaluation, written by science teacher David Knuffke. It reviews the way that top-performing nations evaluate their teachers, as well as examples of how teacher evaluation is done in several states. He also briefly summarizes the views of scholarly and professional organizations. He does this to show how Governor Cuomo’s insistence that 50% of a teacher’s evaluation be based on test scores (and, though he doesn’t mention it, an additional 35% would be based on the judgment of an outside evaluator, someone who does not work in the school). He concludes:

 

Looking at the breadth of objection to the type of rating system that the Governor is proposing, and its absence from model educational systems at the national and international levels, one can only wonder why Governor Cuomo is pursuing such a policy. Attempts to make sense of these initiatives don’t lead to flattering conclusions: Either he is ignorant of the consensus that advocates against test-score centric teacher evaluation models, or he has decided that he knows better than a broad consensus of educators, researchers, and the entire educational systems of “high achieving” countries and states. We are not sure which of these possibilities is more troubling with regard to how the Governor thinks about the public education system of the state.

 

Given this analysis, it is clear that anyone who is actually concerned with the long-term health of the New York State public education system should be vocally, and stridently opposed to the education goals of its current Governor. This is not a partisan issue, or one that seeks to unfairly protect the jobs of the NYS teacher corps. There are ways to propose teacher evaluation systems that are in agreement with research and based on evidence from what is working in other places. This is not what the Governor has chosen to do. Rather than seeking to have a conversation with educators, students, parents, and all of the other stake-holders who value education in New York State, the Governor has chosen to propose an unsupported evaluation system with no track record of success in doing what he claims to want to do. And rather than attempt to build consensus on his proposals, Governor Cuomo has taken the position that he is not interested in perspectives other than his own on this issue. He is so strongly in favor of his education proposals that he is withholding state aid figures from districts until he understands just how eager the legislature is to support him in driving his education plan through without debate. It is difficult to believe that someone so vocally concerned with the future of NYS education would be willing to threaten the aid that districts need to provide for their most underserved student populations. It is similarly difficult to understand why he stands in opposition to reality itself on the matter of creating an effective teacher evaluation system. New York State residents should be very concerned about what their Governor seeks to do. We deserve better, and so do our children.

 

 

Categories International, Teacher Evaluations

Reader: Eva’s Trip to Albany Is Illegal

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2015 //
45

A reader says that Eva Moskowitz’s plan to close her Success Academy charter schools and take 9,000 students to a political rally in Albany is illegal. The question is whether her schools are public schools or private schools. If they are private schools, they are not subject to Chancellor’s Regulations. But, if they are private schools, why did the Legislature give them free space in public buildings and require the city to pay their rent in private buildings?

He writes:

“As stated in Chancellor’s Regulations: D-130

“Personnel may not be involved in any activities, including fundraising, on behalf of any candidate, candidates, slate of candidates or political organization/committee during working hours.”

“Families For Excellent Schools is a political organization. This is completely illegal.

“http://schools.nyc.gov/…/4A351970-792D-48E1…/0/D130.pdf”

Categories Charter Schools

Missouri Judge Blocks Payment to Common Core Connsortium

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2015 //
9

A judge in Missiuri blocked state payment to the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, agreeing with critics that SBAC is ““an unlawful interstate compact to which the U.S. Congress has never consented,”

Categories Common Core, Missouri, Testing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »