Archives for the month of: March, 2015
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Pawtucket Teacher Reinstated After Stern Reprimand by Administrators

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2015 //
16

Bill Ashton, a teacher in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, was suspended for discussing opting out with his students. They launched a campaign to “Bring Back Ashton,” and he was reinstated.

 

But the leaders of the school and the district made it clear that he had violated district policy and was on thin ice. They accused him of editing anti-testing fliers that ridiculed the Rhode Island Department io Education. They were especially angry that his son was leading an anti-testing protest.

 

“Ashton was sent home on paid leave last Friday after telling students at the Jacqueline M. Walsh School for the Performing and Visual Arts that the school would not lose funding if they did not take the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exam, according to a letter written that same day by JMW Principal Elizabeth Fasteson. Ashton was back to work on Tuesday morning, according to school.”

Categories Opt Out, Resistance, Rhode Island, Standardized Testing, Students

The Nation: Nine Billionaires Who Want to Control Public Education

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2015 //
38

George Joseph in The Nation has written a sharply researched article about the nine billionaires who have been planning to impose their ideas on New York state since at least 2010.

 

They are, as you might expect, hedge fund billionaires. They have given millions of dollars to Andrew Cuomo in both his election campaigns. They have also given millions to a group called New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany that campaigned to maintain Republican control of the State Senate. Their handiwork can be seen in organizations such as Families for Excellent Schools (no, these are not families of children in the public schools, they are the families of hedge-fund billionaires), StudentsFirst, Education Reform Now, and Democrats for Education Reform. Their goal: More privately-managed charter schools.

 

Joseph has done a stunning job of connecting the dots, showing the collaboration among the billionaires, Joel Klein (then chancellor of the New York City public schools), and John White (then an employee of New York City public schools, now state superintendent of Louisiana).

 

Why do they want more charter schools? Well, you could say, as some do, that they care deeply about the poor children of New York City and want each and every one of them to be in an excellent charter school (although most charters are not willing to take certain children, like those with severe disabilities, those who don’t read and speak English, and those with behavioral problems).

 

But Joseph thinks there is another reason for Wall Street’s passion for charter schools. They claim that charter schools are the best way to end poverty. It is certainly cheaper to open more charter schools with state money than to pay the billions that the state owes to New York City as a result of a court decision in a case called the Campaign for Fiscal Equity.

 

Cuomo has said that he is tired of spending more money on the schools. We tried that, he says, and it didn’t work. But a parent advocate does not agree: “Zakiyah Ansari, a parent and public schools advocate with the labor-backed Alliance for Quality Education, called such reasoning shameful, “Why do Cuomo and these hedge funders say money doesn’t matter? I’m sure it matters in Scarsdale. I’m sure it matters where the Waltons send their kids. They don’t send their kids to schools with overcrowded classrooms, over-testing, no art, no music, no sports programs, etc. Does money only ‘not matter’ when it comes to black and brown kids?”

 

Joseph explores the question of why the New York hedge fund leaders are passionate about charter schools, test-based teacher evaluation, and ending teacher tenure.

 

He writes:

 

Their policy prescriptions—basing 50 percent of teacher evaluations on student test scores, for instance—are not in any way grounded in mainstream education research.

 

“The problem is that Cuomo’s backers aren’t paying much attention to the people who actually understand how Value-Added Modeling works,” explains Professor Julian Vasquez Heilig, an education policy researcher at California State University. “Education statisticians have come out many times saying these models are being used inappropriately and are unstable because other things happen in students’ lives outside of the teachers they encounter. When a kids’ parents in a high needs district are deported, and their achievement plummets, this actually has nothing to do with the teacher.”

 

Vasquez Heilig added that the reform proposals seem founded on a desire to destroy the development of long-term professional educators, rather than any empirical analysis: “We know 70 percent of teachers will bounce between high performing and low performing from year to year. So this is creating an impossible high stakes testing gauntlet between a young excited teacher and their path to quality, veteran expertise. If you’re looking for a cheap churn-and-burn teaching force, this is your policy, but if you want experienced, qualified teachers, committed to a schools’ long-term success, this is a disaster.”

 

From a purely business standpoint, however, such cost-effective education reform proposals do make sense for the hedge-fund community, especially given the alternative education reform option: the legally required equitable funding of New York public schools, as mandated by the state’s highest court in 2007. Low-income New York school districts haven’t received their legally mandated funding since 2009 and the state owes its schools a whopping $5.9 billion, according to a recent study by the labor-backed group Alliance for Quality Education. Yet somehow in this prolonged period of economic necessity, billionaire hedge-fund managers continue to enjoy lower tax rates than the bottom 20 percent of taxpayers.

 

As a recent Hedge Clippers report pointed out, the hedge-fund community has achieved these gains over the last decade and a half by buying political influence and carving out absurd breaks and loopholes in the New York state tax code. Since 2000, 570 hedge fund managers and top executives have poured $39.6 million into the campaign coffers of New York state politicians. Thus, despite New York’s progressive reputation, its school-district funding-distribution system is actually one of the most regressive nationwide, similar to that of states like Texas, North Carolina and Missouri.

 

According to Michael Kink, an advocate of fair share taxes with the labor-backed Strong Economy For All Coalition, “We could fund the court order completely with fair share taxes.” This would include closing the carried interest loophole that allows hedge funds to pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than, according to Hedge Clippers, “their limousine drivers, dry cleaners, servants, helicopter pilots, and doormen.” Taxing hedge fund fees and profits fairly would bring New York hundreds of millions of dollars that could go straight to local schools. A recent Hedge Clippers analysis found that fair-share taxes and fees targeting hedge funds, billionaires, high-income LLCs and major corporations could raise between $3.1 and $4.2 billion dollars per year—well over the annual minimum required by state law’s school funding formula. But Cuomo’s hedge fund–backed proposals fail to even approach these standards, instead parroting the convenient logic of corporate education reformers that the problem is not the lack of school funding, but the way in which it is spent.

 

“It was outrageous when the governor said the lack of school funding was not an issue,” explains New York State Senator Liz Krueger (D). “And it’s consistent with his attempts to fail to make good on the CFE lawsuit commitment, somehow ignoring the fact that the poorest-achieving schools are also the most underfunded.” Commenting on the hedge fund forces backing such proposals, Krueger continued, “I can never know what people’s actual intentions are. But it does seem that there is a pattern of spending enormous lobbying money in lobbying and attempting to influence campaigns…. Hedge funds seem in particular to have made a fine art of not paying their taxes, allowing fundamental public services to be inadequately funded.”

 

Putting it more explicitly, Jonathan Westin of the labor-backed New York Communities for Change, argues the main point of the hedge fund–backed education reform push is thus “about shaping and controlling the public school system so that they will continue to get away with not paying hundreds of millions in taxes.”

 

In this light, the hedge-fund community’s fervent advocacy of the charter-school movement reflects its neoliberal social vision for the state and society. Charter schools are imagined as institutions where students can be reshaped to prevail against structural barriers like racism and poverty. As hedge-fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones II claimed, contrary to decades of empirical evidence, “We proved with the charter school that the achievement gap was a myth, that with the right schools, kids from the poorest neighborhoods could do every bit as well as kids from the richest ones.”

 

To “make up for” pervasive inequality, in lieu of correcting it, hedge-fund billionaires like Daniel Loeb of Success Academy and Larry Robbins of KIPP have promoted charter schools that envelop students in hyper-disciplined and surveilled school environments in which their every decision, down to their most minute physical movement, can be measured, assessed and addressed. This “no excuses” pedagogical approach signals to students that the only barrier to their success is their character. In other words, as Cuomo put in his the State of the State address, students under the charter school paradigm should understand their educational opportunity as “the great equalizer.”

 

Read the article to see the links. Everything is carefully researched and sourced. It confirms what many of us have long known about the role of Wall Street in financing privatization and other policies that hurt teachers and public schools. And it is still scary. And anti-democratic.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York, Poverty, Privatization

Do Teachers Have Free Speech Rights?

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2015 //
49

Rick Bobrick, who comments on the blog as NY Teacher, is a conscientious objector to high-stakes testing. He has done the research on teachers’ free speech rights and offers it here to other readers.

 

 

Free Speech Rights of Teachers?
The following are a series of excerpts from various articles concerning the free speech rights of teachers as public employees. This information is intended to shed some light on the general sense of fear that many teachers are feeling in regards to speaking out against the federal test-and-punish reform movement. I am a teacher, not a lawyer, but perhaps this information will help some teachers of conscience make a more informed decision about voicing their concerns about what many of us perceive as the harmful effects of the federally coerced Common Core standards and the required companion assessments, as well as linking said scores to teacher evaluations. In the opinion of many educators, this toxic mix of bad educational policies are undermining classroom environments and often constraining the professional judgment of teachers and limiting or use of best practices.

 

From the ACLU: https://aclu-wa.org/news/free-speech-rights-public-school-teachers

 

Teachers do not forfeit the right to comment publicly on matters of public importance simply because they accept a public school teaching position. Teachers cannot be fired or disciplined for statements about matters of public importance unless it can be demonstrated that the teacher’s speech created a substantial adverse impact on school functioning.

 

A teacher appears to speak for the school district when he or she teaches, so the district administration has a strong interest in determining the content of the message its teachers will deliver. Washington courts have upheld the authority of school districts to prescribe both course content and teaching methods. Courts in other jurisdictions have ruled that teachers have no free speech rights to include unapproved materials on reading lists.

 

Depending on the precise form of message displayed on the teachers’ clothing, a school may have legitimate concern that a teacher’s display of a political message is more likely than a student’s to disrupt the school’s intended educational message. This right may be limited only if there is good reason to believe that the speech would cause a substantial and material disruption to education or violate the rights of others. Washington courts have not considered the question, but courts in other jurisdictions have differed over whether teachers have the same right as students to display personal political messages on their clothing. In one case, a court upheld a dress code that prevented teachers from wearing political buttons in the classroom because school districts have legitimate authority to “dissociate themselves from matters of political controversy.”

 

From the New York State Association of School Attorneys:
http://www.guerciolaw.com/school-employees-right-to-free-speech-appears-limited-when-job-related/

 

School employees’ right to free speech appears limited when job-related.

 

Does a school employee’s right to free speech stop at the schoolhouse door? While the outcomes of employee disciplinary cases and other cases involving adverse job actions always depend on the facts, court rulings suggest that there has been a deterioration of public employees’ rights to free speech in the workplace. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2006 ruling in Garcetti v. Ceballos, courts have been taking a different approach when public employees claim to be protected by the First Amendment in connection with an adverse job action. All such lawsuits now involve an examination of whether the employee was speaking pursuant to his or her job duties. According to Garcetti, if speech was made as a result of an employee’s job duties, no First Amendment protection applies (see sidebar below). For school districts, the change raises a question that is not always easily answered: What do the “job duties” of a specific school employee entail? Some New York courts have closely examined the employee’s “actual duties” as opposed to the employee’s job description in an effort to afford the most First Amendment protection. Nevertheless, the Garcetti decision appears to have made it harder for public employees to successfully assert First Amendment protection.

 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which has jurisdiction over all of New York State, made this ruling about free speech rights: “The general principle … is that, when a public employee airs a complaint or grievance, or expresses concern about misconduct, to his or her immediate supervisor or pursuant to a clear duty to report imposed by law or employer policy, he or she is speaking as an employee and not as a citizen.” In light of Garcetti, “the First Amendment does not protect the employee’s speech from discipline or retaliation by the employer,” the court said. The court continued: In such circumstances, the employer is free to “discipline” the employee without violating the employee’s First Amendment rights. If, however, the employee goes outside of the established institutional channels in order to express a complaint or concern, the employee is speaking as a citizen, and the speech is protected by the First Amendment.

 

For instance, the Second Circuit ruled that statements by a special education counselor to administrators about the lack of physical education and art classes at a satellite BOCES facility were made within the scope of employment and were not protected by the First Amendment. On the other hand, conversations with other teachers about the same issues were not part of any official duty. Therefore, a teacher might be able to prevail in a free-speech defense against any alleged retaliation for critical comments about the school made to colleagues but not if the adverse job action stemmed from similar comments made in the line of duty.
From Joshana Jones, Esq. Atlanta, GA:
http://theeducatorsroom.com/2012/12/teachers-freedom-of-speech-rights/

 

Public school teachers are in a unique position. They are employees of the state and therefore school districts have an interest in making sure that messages from teachers are in line with the goals and vision of the district.

 

The following factors will help a teacher understand if their free speech is protected:
1) The speech must touch on a matter of public concern
2) The teacher’s speech must outweigh the district’s interest in efficiency. The courts may consider any of the following:
a) The effect of the speech on the harmony of the staff
b) Whether the speech has a detrimental impact on working relationships
c) Whether the speech interferes with the normal operation of the employer’s business

 

The Pickering Balance Test: http://publicpersonnellaw.blogspot.com/2010/01/essentials-of-pickering-balancing-test.html

 

Essentials of the “Pickering Balancing Test”
Pickering v Board of Education, 391 US 563
The so-called Pickering Test is applied in balancing the interests of a public employer with its employees’ right to Free Speech and requires the court’s consideration of the following:

 

1. Did the individual demonstrate that his or her speech address a matter or matters of public interest and concern?
2. Did the individual demonstrate that his or her speech was a significant or motivating factor in the employer’s decision?
3. Did the court balance the interests of the individual commenting on matters of public concern as a citizen and the public employer’s interest in “promoting the efficiency of public service?”

 

From Sherrod v, School Board of Palm Beach County, FL
http://www.leagle.com/decision/In%20FDCO%2020101012611

 

Protected Speech
In determining the threshold issue of whether a public employee has engaged in speech entitled to constitutional protection, the court first asks “whether the employee spoke as a citizen on a matter of public concern. If the answer is “no,” the employee’s speech is not entitled to First Amendment protection. If the answer is “yes,” “the question becomes whether the relevant government entity had an adequate justification for treating the employee differently from any other member of the general public.”

 

In Abdur-Rahman v. Walker, 567 F.3d 1278 (11th Cir.2009), the Eleventh Circuit discussed the rationale behind the requirement that a public employee speak “as a citizen” to receive constitutional protection for his speech: First, because “government offices could not function if every employment decision became a constitutional matter,” “Supreme Court precedents do not support the existence of a constitutional cause of action behind every statement a public employee makes in the course of doing his or her job.” Second, government employers, like private employers, need a significant degree of control over their employee’s words and actions; without it, there would be little chance of the efficient provision of public services. Because of the unique trusted position that public employees occupy, they ought not to receive constitutional protection for speech that “expresses views that contravene governmental policies or impairs the proper performance of governmental functions. Third, when complaints under the First Amendment are limited to instances in which a public employee proves that he “spoke as a citizen on a matter of public concern,” courts avoid “judicial oversight” of workplace communications and “permanent judicial intervention in the conduct of governmental operations to a degree inconsistent with sound principles of federalism and the separation of powers.”

 

Garcetti v. Ceballos (Wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garcetti_v._Ceballos

 

Opinion of the Court
The Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit, ruling in a 5-4 decision delivered by Justice Anthony Kennedy that the First Amendment does not prevent employees from being disciplined for expressions they make pursuant to their professional duties.

 

Kennedy’s majority opinion
The Court wrote that its “precedents do not support the existence of a constitutional cause of action behind every statement a public employee makes in the course of doing his or her job.” Instead, public employees are not speaking as citizens when they are speaking to fulfill a responsibility of their job.
Though the speech at issue concerned the subject matter of his employment, and was expressed within his office rather than publicly, the Court did not consider either fact dispositive, and noted that employees in either context may receive First Amendment protection. The “controlling factor” was instead that his statements were made pursuant to his duties as a deputy district attorney. Restricting such speech, which “owes its existence to a public employee’s professional responsibilities,” did not in the Court’s view violate any rights that the employee had as a private citizen. Instead, the restrictions were simply the control an employer exercised “over what the employer itself has commissioned or created.”

 

NYSUT “Free Speech” lawsuit:
http://www.nysut.org/news/2014/october/lawsuit-charges-state-education-department-ban-on-discussing-tests-violates-free-speech

 

ALBANY, N.Y. Oct. 9, 2014 – New York State United Teachers has filed suit in federal court seeking to invalidate confidentiality agreements the State Education Department requires teachers to sign before scoring state tests, saying the prohibition – with its accompanying threats of discipline, including dismissal, license revocation and criminal prosecution – is an unconstitutional prior restraint on teachers’ free speech rights.
The suit, filed Wednesday by NYSUT’s Office of General Counsel on behalf of five teachers, charges the State Education Department with violating teachers’ First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights by preventing them from speaking out on matters of public concern. The suit charges SED’s rules unconstitutionally make teachers’ speech conditional on government approval while establishing a “system to police the free exchange of ideas and opinions regarding its compulsory and costly testing regime.”

 

Bobby Jindal’s Executive Order: http://eagnews.org/bobby-jindal-issues-executive-order-protecting-anti-common-core-teachers/

 

BATON ROUGE, La. – Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has issued an executive order to protect teachers who are critics of Common Core national standards. Teachers statewide are feeling pressure from all sides, saying they are overworked and students are over-tested, and now many are saying they aren’t allowed to voice concerns or dissenting opinions.

 

The newspaper reports today, “Jindal issued an Executive Order to protect freedom of speech and the rights of teachers.”
The order reads, in part:

 

FREEDOM OF SPEECH PROTECTIONS FOR LOUISIANA TEACHERS

 

NOW THEREFORE, I, BOBBY JINDAL, Governor of the State of Louisiana, by virtue of the authority vested by the Constitution and the laws of the State of Louisiana, do hereby order and direct as follows:
SECTION 1: As part of the ongoing discussion among state and local education officials, teachers, parents, and stakeholders regarding classroom curriculum and testing, and as part of the larger discussion of the quality of Louisiana’s educational system, legal guarantees afforded to all citizens shall be maintained and provided to teachers;
SECTION 2: State and local school administration officials are not authorized under the existing laws of this state to deny a teacher’s constitutional freedom of speech in order to stifle the discussion and debate surrounding curriculum and standardized assessments by teachers.

Categories Teachers, Testing

Parents Concerned About Pearson Far-Reaching Control of Schooling

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2015 //
35

It is crucial that the public understand the concerns that are frequently shared on this blog among readers about the corporate takeover of public schooling, in its many forms.

 

One version of this takeover is the close collaboration between the White House and the mega-corporations that sell software and hardware and testing to the schools, that is, the needs created by the politicians are satisfied by the marketplace. In education, the marketplace is dominated by one giant, referred to in this article as Goliath: Pearson. Parents are beginning to understand that Pearson owns the tests, the textbooks, and the curriculum, and it is all aligned with the Common Core. They also own the GED, in case students can’t finish high school (having failed the Pearson tests). Probably they will also fail the GED, because Pearson has aligned the GED with the Common Core and passing rates plummeted by 90%. Maybe Pearson will create a new service for young people and adults who failed high school and failed the GED. But will it too be aligned with the Common Core? Or will we have a permanent army of the unemployed and unemployable who can’t pass Pearson tests?

Categories Common Core, Pearson, Testing

My Report from Milwaukee: Ground Zero of School Reform

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2015 //
9

I spoke last night to educators, parents, and some school board members in Milwaukee. I was sponsored by the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association. I am in awe of their courage. They keep on going despite the attacks by Governor Scott Walker, who boasted recently that if he could beat the unions, he could beat ISIS. I looked around for kindergarten teachers with Uzis or librarians with bazookas, but I didn’t see any.

This week Governor Walker plans to sign right-to-work legislation, the Golden Fleece of the far right. Can’t allow workers to have a voice in working conditions or collectively bargaining for higher wages, can we?

His budget is also a subject of heated discussion. He wants to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin system, one of the narion’s finest higher education systems. He wants to cut public education by $127 million, of which $12 million will come from Milwaukee’s beleaguered public schools.

According to this article, some campuses are planning to lay off 1/4 of their staff, and others will close entire departments, if the cuts are enacted.

Walker wants more vouchers, even though the last independent evaluation showed that voucher schools do not get better results than public schools, and many are abysmal failures. Walker wants more charters, even though the charters do not surpass public schools in test scores, and many are failing.

The reformers promised that choice and competition would save Milwaukee’s children, especially its African American children, from “failing public schools.” They said that competition would improve the public schools, because they would be compelled to compete for students.

After 25 years as the Petri dish of school choice, we now know that those promises were hollow. Milwaukee started participating in the urban district portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)–the federal testing program–in 2009. It is one of the lowest performing of the 21 districts tested, slightly ahead of Cleveland and Detroit. (Cleveland also has vouchers and charters, and Detroit has been the setting for an endless parade of failed reforms.) today, the black children of Milwaukee perform on the federal tests about the same as black children in the poorest states of the Deep South. Choice and competition splintered community support and divided the schools into three sectors, none of which succeeded.

So who will save the children now trapped in failing voucher schools and failing charter schools?

Walker wants to adopt Jeb Bush’s A-F school grading program, which sets schools up for closure. He wants to make it easier for the state to takeover public schools and privatize them.

He wants alternate licensure to allow anyone with a bachelor’s degree and “life experience” who can pass a test to be eligible to teach grades 6-12.

Teachers, parents, and the community are organizing to push back against Walker’s assault on public education and the teaching profession. There is a silver lining: his budget cuts will affect all parents and families in Wisconsin, including those who voted for him. He may discover that families–Republicans, Democrats, and independents–would rather have a good neighborhood school and a great and affordable university system than property tax relief.

We now know that “reform” is empty and deceptive rhetoric, an excuse for ignoring poverty and segregation, a distraction from the growing income inequality and wealth inequality in our society.

There must be many legislators on both sides of the aisle who graduated from Wisconsin’s public schools and its renowned state university. Will they let Walker cripple the state’s education system?

Categories Charter Schools, Milwaukee, Testing, Unions, Vouchers, Walker, Scott

Troy LaRaviere Writes an Open Letter to CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2015 //
14

Troy LaRaviere, principal of Blaine Elementary School in Chicago, recently wrote an electrifying letter urging parents in his school, in his state, and in the nation to OPT OUT!

 

Now he has written an open letter to Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the Superintendent of Chicago Public Schools, reprimanding her for pressuring students not to opt out.

 

He writes:

 

Ms. Byrd-Bennett,

 

In response to parent and teacher support for opting children out of the PARCC Test, you sent a message to all CPS principals. It states:

 

“Please be advised that ISBE does not recognize a parent’s right to opt a child out of required student assessments, as there is no law in Illinois allowing this. While a parent cannot “opt a child out,” there may be students who refuse to participate in required state assessments.”

 

There are numerous faults and inconsistencies in your letter. I attempt to address a few of them here.

 

“Choice” Hypocrisy

 

It is pitifully ironic that you, Mr. Emanuel, and ISBE Chairman James Meeks—self-professed proponents of what you call “parental school choice”—would fight so vigorously to deny parents the choice of opting their children out of testing.

 

Posturing, Bullying and Wasting Learning Time

 

Your letter states that even if the parent states, in writing, not to test the child, school officials still must present each child with each one of the five sections of the PARCC tests and force the child to refuse each section separately. In April—when the second half of the PARCC is administered—you have directed us to repeat this process with up to 3 sessions. In total we have been directed to force students to verbally or physically refuse the PARCC on up to eight distinct occasions.

 

Your letter goes on to state:

 

“It is unfortunate that ISBE’s limited guidance on this matter has placed the burden of refusing the test on students. I believe this is unfair to our students, families, principals and staff. However, we are obligated to follow ISBE’s limited direction to avoid sanctions that would have a devastating impact on our district.”

 

If you believe it is “unfortunate,” and “unfair” then why are CPS officials forcing children in some schools to refuse not only to the teacher, but to the principal and the network chief? If you believe it’s “unfair,” why was a network chief sent to Mollison School—my elementary alma mater—where the chief forced each student to refuse directly to her; in one case allegedly forcing a fourth grade autistic child to articulate his desire to opt out despite the fact that he’d already made his desire clear when he himself submitted a signed note from his mother?

 

Then there’s what is alleged to have happened at Taylor school on the far southeast side, where a teacher reported an administrator, “got within a few inches of the face of one young man in the [opt-out] line, and asked him loudly, “DID SHE PUT A TICKET IN YOUR HAND?!!!”, then ordered the teacher to “PUT A TESTING TICKET IN EVERY STUDENT’S HAND AND PUT THEM IN FRONT OF A COMPUTER!”

 

Although the facts behind both of the above incidents are in dispute, it is noteworthy that the people making the above claims are all parents of low-income minority children—the children our mayor said would “never amount to anything”; the children whose schools he shut down; and the children who he funnels to charter schools where they experience less academic growth than in the public system they came from. Why has CPS added PARCC bullying to the long list of offenses it has committed against these children and their families?…..

 

CPS has exhibited intense hypocrisy in regard to parental choice. It has bullied children and their families, been deceptive in its repressive framing of the law in regard to opt out rights, and parroted dubious claims about losing funds in relationship to opting out.

 

As a result, I will be taking the following course of action and call on you to advise all CPS principals to do the same:

 

Our school will meet its responsibility to administer the PARCC to all students who want to take it. Nearly 80% of our students have already expressed their decision to refuse the PARCC by submitting letters from their parents opting them out of the test. When students handed that opt-out letter to their teachers, that act was an expression of their refusal to take the test. That is enough for me, and it should be enough for CPS and ISBE. No child under my watch, who has expressed his or her decision to refuse the PARCC, will be sat in front of any computer to take it, nor presented with any materials. We will not waste even more learning time by subjecting our students to ISBE’s deceptive fear-mongering and CPS’s hypocritical test-driven political theater.

 

Respectfully,

 

Troy LaRaviere

 

CPS Graduate
Former CPS Teacher
CPS Parent
CPS Principal
Email: TroyLaRaviere@gmail.com
Twitter: @TroyLaRaviere

Categories Chicago, Opt Out, Students, Testing

G.F. Brandenburg on the SBAC Math

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2015 //
26

G.F. Brandenburg, a retired math teacher and outstanding blogger,here revisits Steven Rasmussen’s critique of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium’s math tests. Rasmussen was co-founder and publisher of Key Curriculum Press for many years and is a mathematics specialist. (I posted on Rasmussen’s critique here, but unlike Brandenburg, I am not a math educator.)

Here is a sample from Brandenburg:

““…the Smarter Balanced tests are lemons. They fail to meet acceptable standards of quality and performance, especially with respect to their technology-enhanced items. They should be withdrawn from the market before they precipitate a national catastrophe.”

[Brandenburg:] Here is some of the rest of his critique:

“Flaws in the Smarter Balanced Test Items

“What happened? Despite elaborate evidence-centered design frameworks touted by Smarter Balanced as our assurance that their tests would measure up, the implementation of the tests is egregiously flawed. I wish I could say the flaws in the Smarter Balanced tests are isolated.

“Unfortunately, they are not. While the shortcomings are omnipresent and varied, they fall into categories, all illustrated multiple times by the examples in this critique:

• Poorly worded and ambiguous mathematical language and non-mathematical instructions;

• Incorrect and unconventional mathematical graphical representations;

• Inconsistent mathematical representations and user interfaces from problem to problem;

• Shoddy and illogical user interface design, especially with respect to the dynamic aspects of the mathematical representations; • Consistent violations and lack of attention to the Common Core State Standards;

• Failure to take advantage of available technologies in problem design….

“The result? Untold numbers of students and teachers in 17 Smarter Balanced states will be traumatized, stigmatized and unfairly penalized. And the quagmire of poor technological design, poor interaction design, and poor mathematics will hopelessly cloud the insights the tests might have given us into students’ understanding of mathematics.”

Rasmussen then analyzes sample SBAC test questions.

Categories Common Core, Testing

Bob Braun: The Surprising Ties Between Pearson and Néw Jersey DOE

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2015 //
29

The connections between Pearson and the Néw Jersey State Department of Education are close, reports Bob Braun:

“Bari Anhalt Erlichson, an assistant New Jersey education commissioner and chief testing officer who supervises PARCC testing throughout the state, has a personal connection of sorts to PARCC’s developer, the British publishing giant Pearson. Anhalt Erlichson is married to Andrew Erlichson, a vice president of a company named MongoDB. MongoDB (the name comes from humongous database) is a subcontractor to Pearson, developing its national student database that provides the larger company with access to student records in New Jersey and the nation.

“Anhalt Erlichson wrote a memorandum to New Jersey educators March 17 defending the actions of her department and Pearson in monitoring the social media of New Jersey students while they took the PARCC tests. She blamed the uproar caused by the revelation of the cyber-spying on the failure of parents and educators to understand social media.

“She did not mention her personal ties to a company that profits from the business relationship to Pearson–and the state education department….

“State education department spokesmen declined to answer inquiries about Erlichson’s connections to MongoDB.”

Categories Data and Data Mining, New Jersey, Pearson, Testing

Breaking: Rochester Teachers Oppose High-Stakes Testing, Support Opt Out

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2015 //
30

This resolution should be a model for the AFT and the NEA and for their affiliates. Teachers do not oppose testing; they oppose the misuse of testing. Teachers do not oppose accountability; they oppose accountability that is contrary to research and experience, whose purpose is not to improve instruction but to punish teachers for low scores.

The Rochester (NY) Teachers Association adopted the following resolution, unanimously:

RESOLUTION OF RTA REPRESENTATIVE ASSEMBLY

WHEREAS, the volume of mandated summative standardized testing to which students are subjected in the Rochester City School District (“RCSD”) has increased many times over in recent years, and

WHEREAS, a very large amount of learning time is lost through the administration of such tests, while the results of such tests cannot be used for diagnostics or remediation or other educational purposes, and

WHEREAS, such testing generates results that are used for high-stakes decision-making regarding both students (e.g., grade promotion and graduation) and their teachers (e.g., evaluation scores, tenure, retention), and

WHEREAS, the attachment of high stakes to test results necessarily makes such tests the focus of classes in schools, and

WHEREAS, such tests fail to measure the most important qualities schools should seek to develop in students, such as relationship, character, ethical development, critical thinking, persistence, imagination, insight, and collaboration, amongst others, and

WHEREAS, as a result, many students who in fact develop these valued but unmeasured qualities, but who have extreme difficulty with standardized and other paper-and-pencil tests, experience these tests as stressful to the point of abuse, and

WHEREAS, the increasing focus on such testing thus causes severe distortions of schooling, both inflicting trauma on many students and changing schools into test-prep factories that prepare students for little but further testing and lives of resigned obedience, and

WHEREAS, the commitment of substantial resources to testing and evaluation diverts those same resources from the educational needs of students, including the arts, music, other non-tested subjects, the challenges of special needs students and English language learners, moral and ethical development, social and emotional development, internships, practical and workplace skills, project-based, authentic learning opportunities, attention to contemporary cultural and social concerns, deep exploration of subject matters, and many others, and

WHEREAS, such commitment of resources also diverts resources from the professional development needs of teachers, who wish to align their skills to the real needs of students, and

WHEREAS, parents and guardians frequently express dismay that students are subjected to so much testing, and they express confusion about the rights and obligations of children and families
with respect to such testing, as well as about the rationales for the various tests, and

WHEREAS, parents, students, families, teachers, and some districts throughout the state have expressed forceful opposition to the current testing regime, and

WHEREAS, the Rochester Teachers Association (“RTA”) wishes to clarify its stance on the various issues involved with the current testing regime,

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT
RESOLVED, that the Rochester Teachers Association declares its opposition to the use of state- or federal-mandated standardized tests for the purposes of making grade promotion, graduation, or other high-stakes decisions regarding students or teachers, and

RESOLVED, that RTA supports the right of parents and guardians to choose to absent their children from any or all state- or federal-mandated testing, and supports the right of teachers to discuss freely with parents and guardians their rights and responsibilities with respect to such testing, all without any negative consequences from RCSD, and

RESOLVED, that RTA will, to the best of its ability, support and protect members and others who may suffer any negative consequences as a result of speaking about their views of such testing or about the rights and obligations of parents and guardians with respect to such testing, and

RESOLVED, that RTA calls upon the RCSD Board of Education to direct RCSD administration to provide parents and guardians, in a timely manner, with an explanation of the rationale, intended use, and costs associated with any state- or federal-mandated tests intended to be administered to students, and to provide an explanation, in a timely manner, of the steps parents and guardians would need to take should they choose to absent their children from such testing, and

RESOLVED, that RTA calls upon the RCSD Board of Education to make a determination as to whether such testing operates in the best interests of RCSD students, and, if they conclude that it does not, to give serious consideration to deciding not to administer any or all such tests, in consultation and alliance with other districts throughout Monroe County and the State of New York, and

RESOLVED, that RTA declares its support for the professional freedom of teachers to design, administer, score and use such testing as they deem necessary or appropriate for students in their classes, in their sole professional judgment, and

RESOLVED, that RTA appoint an Ad Hoc Committee to develop proposals for new, research-based, educationally sound measures to be used for accountability purposes, that will support, rather than undermine, the RCSD’s educational mission, and that such committee shall be free to work independently or in collaboration with RCSD to such ends, and

RESOLVED, that RTA, through its officers and staff, communicate these resolutions to anyone to whom they deem it fit and proper.

Adopted unanimously on March 17, 2015 by RTA Representative Assembly

Categories New York, Opt Out, Teachers, Texas

Citizen Coalition Beat Privatization in Arkansas

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2015 //
5

This is what happens when citizens stand together to oppose corporate takeovers of public institutions. Allies of the Walton family proposed a state takeover of the Little Rock School District, because 6 of 48 schools were low-performing. Advocates for the takeover wanted to turn the district into an all-charter district, like Néw Orleans. But community resistance was strong and the proposed legislation was withdrawn:

Education Advocates Applaud the Halt of School Privatization Bill

Little Rock, AR — The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS), a national community/labor table that fights for the public school system, has responded to the success of an Arkansas coalition in stopping a proposed bill there that would have privatized whole school districts across the state.

Statement issued by Karran Harper Royal, an advocate and New Orleans parent:

“Public education activists beat the Waltons in their own backyard. The Waltons were touting so-called ‘success’ in New Orleans, so AROS asked me to weigh in with the facts.”

Karran Harper Royal helped the Arkansas coalition with information about the New Orleans School Recover District, a long-term privatization failure. A letter from Ms. Harper Royal and a parent in Chicago were published in the Arkansas Times this week.

Statement issued by Mark Robertson, co-chair of the Citizens First Congress and a Little Rock parent:

“We are proud that Arkansans recognized that privatizing public schools is a failed strategy across the country and we rejected it here. We need to keep our focus on research proven reforms that we know will boost the learning of every student in Arkansas.”

Citizens First Congress and eight other organizations across Arkansas mounted a campaign to stop the late-session bill, HB 1733, which proposed to turn over whole school districts in Arkansas to private entities if one school within them was deemed “distressed.”

Walton Family Foundation staff members were personally lobbying for the bill.

Statement issued by Jitu Brown, Executive Director of the National Journey for Justice and a leader of AROS:

“We think we can learn a lot from the Arkansas fight. And we were proud to be able to connect parents in New Orleans and Chicago with parents in Arkansas. From now on, we want the great organizations and coalitions who are fighting to save public education to have connections with their brothers and sisters across the country who have learned from the battles.”

The Alliance announced that it would be inviting partner coalitions across the south to come to Arkansas in May to hear from the groups who fought the legislation and to share their own strategies.

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The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) is a national community/labor table of organizations of parents, students, teachers and community members who are fighting for the public schools our children deserve.

Categories Arkansas, Privatization, Resistance, Walton Foundation
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