Archives for the month of: March, 2015

In this post, Jonathan Pelto prints the statement of a teacher who defends parents who choose to opt out, despite efforts by the State Education Department to intimidate them. The state takes the position that there is no law allowing opt-out. On the other hand, there is no law prohibiting opt-out. In the upside-down world of corporate reform, the absence of a law prohibiting opt-out means no one may opt out. Just imagine all the other activities that may be prohibited because there is no law on the books specifically permitting them!

Martin Walsh of Weathersfield teaches U.S. history. He writes:

This year, after several commentators across the state noted that parents had the right to opt out of the SBAC, Connecticut interim Commissioner of Education Dianna Wentzell sent a memo to superintendents stating that “These [CT] laws do not provide a provision for parents to ‘opt-out’ their children from taking state tests.” And that, “These mandates have been in effect for many years…”

Several superintendents used this memo to inform parents that they had no right to opt their children out of testing. That was wrong. Fortunately, Joseph Cirasuolo, Executive Director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS) has now acknowledged parental opt-out rights.

The statutes themselves are silent on parental rights. True, there is no opt-out provision, but neither is there a non-opt out provision nor any parental penalty for opting out. Additionally, many parents have opted out of testing over the life of this “mandate” without government interference.

The state may be denied Title I funding if the statewide participation rate falls below 95 percent, but no state has ever been punished in that manner. Government officials should provide citizens with facts, not misleading information designed to deprive them of their rights…..

Enter Pearson Education and American Institutes for Research (A.I.R.), the corporations responsible for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and SBAC respectively. Already free to use their tests for the purpose of data mining thanks to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s unilateral amendment of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), these companies demand more.

They are monitoring student use of social media in order to determine what is being said about them and their tests and attempting to punish students who run afoul of their rules. That’s right; Pearson and A.I.R. are spying on school children. Wow. Are we living in the United States or North Korea? What about First Amendment Rights?

If the state board of education and local school officials support this policy, I will no longer have to refer to the Pentagon Papers case to explain prior restraint; I will merely have to read students the SBAC test rules. These rules and practices constitute a “clear and present danger” to our children.

Who knew so many Constitutional rights would have to be trampled upon in order to accommodate the corporate for-profit testing juggernaut? But data collection and tracking are more than worth the trade-off, right?

Life in the PARCC police state or under SBAC (curiously similar to SAVAK, Iran’s secret police under the Shah) will be fine, as long as no one criticizes the regime. Sounds like totalitarianism to me.

I propose a better solution. The best and most effective way to protect the proprietary interests of these corporations, and more importantly our liberty, is to tell Pearson and A.I.R that they can keep their damned tests and opt our children out…..

Categories Connecticut, Opt Out, Parents, Privacy and Privacy Rights

Vasquez Heilig: How Does the Public Feel About “Choice”?

By dianeravitch

March 25, 2015 //

Julian Vasquez Heilig analyzes a new poll about choice. Choice is alluring but what are people concerned about most?

Lack of parental involvement in the schools, class size, too much testing, budget cuts.

What do they think about charters? They don’t object to them so long as
they don’t take funding from their public school. They think charter board meetings should be open to the public. Most want to limit their expansion.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Parents, Testing

Ohio: Open Enrollment Leads to Increased Racial and Economic Segregation

By dianeravitch

March 25, 2015 //

A post yesterday reported that Florida is considering eliminating district lines so that students may choose to attend any public school, so long as there is space available and parents provide transportation. Michigan has such a system, and districts spend millions of dollars advertising to “poach” students from other districts because every new student means additional money.

As reader Chiara points out, Ohio has the same system, and it has intensified racial and economic segregation.

Open enrollment, which allows children to transfer from one school district to another, leads to widespread racial segregation and concentrates poverty in many of Ohio’s urban school districts, including Cleveland and Akron.
That’s one finding of a Beacon Journal study of more than 8,000 Ohio students who left city schools last year for an education in wealthier suburban communities.
The majority of students who participated in Ohio’s oldest school choice program are disproportionately white and middle class. Students attending the schools they left, however, are nearly twice as likely to be minority and seven times more likely to be poor.
The program gives parents the option to enroll children in nearby school districts without changing their home address. By doing so, parents must find their own transportation — an act that in itself narrows who is able to make the change.

Where is the NAACP, the Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU? If a state adopts a policy that demonstrably promotes segregation, shouldn’t someone sue them for knowingly enacting a program to segregate children by race and income?

Categories Florida, Ohio, Poverty, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Stephanie Rivera: Future Teachers Band Together: We Will Not Quit

By dianeravitch

March 25, 2015 //

Despite the challenges, despite the toxic policies, despite the outpouring of “I Quit” letters, young future teachers are taking a stand.

Stephanie Rivera describes a new organization called the Young Teachers Collective. They will plow ahead. They will stick with their chosen profession. They are not afraid. They want to teach. They want to have a voice in the national debate about teaching. They want to give each other hope.

Stephanie started a resistance movement as an undergraduate, inspiring other young teachers to persist. Now she is a graduate student at Rutgers, and she believes in teaching and wants to work with others who have the same aspirations.

Here is the website for the Young Teachers Collective.

They say:

The current climate of the education system is not inviting. We constantly see poor reforms implemented by people the most distant from the classroom. We constantly hear “don’t go into teaching.” Regardless, we see the profession as something worth fighting for. In order to win this struggle, we understand the importance of coming together to support each other and lift each other up–even if it’s only through an online community. By creating this collective, we hope to:

Develop political consciousness among our peers that will be entering the education profession.

Develop the tools/skills necessary for young people to organize themselves.

Create a network of support while in college and during the first years of teaching

Provide young teachers with both a sense of hope and tools on how to fight for a better education system.

Advocate and work towards a common vision for the future of education

Strengthen our presence in discussions about education

Create a space to share\suggest resources to build consciousness as well as materials to use in the classroom

In order to do this we plan to engage in the following:

Weekly blog posts by members of YTC discussing an issue of their choice

Host monthly Twitter Chats. Our past chat includes improving teacher education.

Host monthly Google Hangouts

Host webinar workshops

Host workshops and\or discussions on our campuses\in community when possible

IMPORTANCE OF YOUNG AND FUTURE TEACHERS’ VOICES

“While many of us have been inspired by teacher-activists currently in the field, we have come to recognize the importance of creating our own collective voice. The voices of young and future teachers are largely ignored in the education movement. We are often dismissed because we are viewed as not having the experience to truly understand the issues facing public education. However, there is no doubt that our voices are valuable and even necessary in this struggle. We are in the unique position of simultaneously facing issues affecting both students and teachers. At the same time, this position presents different challenges that students and experienced teachers are not aware of. Young and future teachers are the only ones who can really speak to these challenges, which is why it is so important that we speak out and have our voices amplified.”

While it is heartening to see Stephanie Rivera and other future teachers taking action to save the profession they want to enter, there is something terribly sad about the fact that future teachers feel they must act to do so. In what other profession would future professionals feel they must try to save the profession before it is destroyed by malignant outside forces?

Categories Resistance, Teachers and Teaching

The Secret of the “Missing” Questions on NY’s Common Core Exam

By dianeravitch

March 25, 2015 //

Testing expert Fred Smith first called attention to the mysterious disappearance of three questions from New York state’s Common Core tests last year. Then the New York Post published an article confirming the unexplained elimination of questions, but determined that four questions were dropped, not just three. When the scores were announced last fall, then-State Commissioner John King boasted that the scores were rising, confirming his belief that raising the bar would lead to higher achievement every year until one day all children would be proficient. Now we know that there was no score increase in ELA, that the reported “gains” resulted from the deletion of four questions that most students found confusing and either skipped or answered incorrectly. I spoke this morning to a high-level official in Albany, who told me that the scores last year did not increase, contrary to the Commissioner’s assertion. Now we know why. Had those missing questions been counted, my informant said, the scores would have declined or remained flat.

King now works directly for Arne Duncan at the U.S. Department of Education. One of Duncan’s favorite refrains is that “we have been lying to our children,” by telling them they are meeting grade-level expectations, when in reality, their performance is rotten. Why does he want parents to believe that their children are doing terribly and their public schools are no good? Why does he defend standards and tests that fail 70% of students? Well, he has made clear by his words and deeds that he prefers charter schools to public schools, and that he admires the policy of closing public schools and firing the entire staff to “turn around” schools, so the “failure” narrative serves his policy goals. Given the revelations about Common Core testing in New York, who is lying to our children?

At some point, the public will get wise and realize that the passing marks on standardized tests are arbitrary, the scoring on written responses is graded by temps hired from Craigs List, and government officials can spin the data to achieve rising scores or falling scores, whatever serves their political interest best.

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

Peter Greene: See This Film. It is Free. It is a Stunning Portrait of the “Reform” Hoax

By dianeravitch

March 25, 2015 //

Peter Greene watched “Defies Measurement,” and he urges you to see it too. It was made by a teacher, Shannon Puckett. You can see it free here.

Greene writes:

Let me cut to the chase– I cannot recommend enough that you watch Defies Measurement, a new film by Shannon Puckett.

The film is a clear-eyed, well-sourced look at the business of test-driven corporate-managed profiteer-promoted education reform, and it has several strengths that make it excellent viewing both for those of us who have been staring at these issues for a while and for teachers and civilians who are just now starting to understand that something is going wrong.

The film is anchored by the story of Chipman Middle School in Alemeda, a school that up until ten years ago was an educational pioneer, using the solid research about brains and learning (and where Shannon Puckett once taught). They were a vibrant, exciting, hands-on school that defied expectations about what could be done with middle schools students in a poor urban setting. And then came No Child Left Behind, and we see a focus on test scores and canned programs replace programs centered on creating strong independent thinkers, even as Laura Bush comes to visit to draw attention to the school’s embrace of testing culture. It is heartbreaking to watch some of the teachers from the school reflect on their experience a decade later; one sadly admits that she sold out, while another says she still feels remorse, but that she didn’t sell out– she was duped, making the mistaken assumption that the important people making edicts from on high knew something that she did not. She no longer thinks so.

The story of Chipman is a backdrop for considering the various elements that have played out in the reformosphere over the last decade. The film looks at the flow of reform-pushing money, the smoke-and-mirrors rise of charters and how that has failed in the Charter Dreamland of New Orleans, the misunderstanding of how kids learn (if you’re not a Howard Gardner fan you’ll have to grit your teeth for a minute), the history of standardized testing, the false narrative of US testing failure, the rise of resegregation, the corrosive effects of reform on the teaching profession, the destructiveness of Race to the Top, and how teaching the whole child in a safe and nurturing environment is great for humans, even if it doesn’t help with testing.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Testing

Privatization on the March in Oklahoma

By dianeravitch

March 25, 2015 //

Historian and teacher John Thompson reports on the progress of privatization in Oklahoma.

The state naively accepted the Gates compact, which obliged districts to welcome charter schools.

Thompson writes:

“The previous blockbuster discovery for Oklahoma City and Tulsa schools was S.B. 68, the “under-the-radar” bill to authorize cities to compete with school systems in sponsoring charter schools. The Tulsa World’s Andrea Eger, in “Change in State Law Sought for Tulsa Public Schools Would Allow Outsourcing of Instruction,” reports that another charter bill, H.B. 1691, “has flown largely beneath the public’s radar during a legislative session that has seen high-profile clashes over bills seeking private school vouchers and the expansion of charter schools into rural areas.”

“Eger reports that the Tulsa Public School System is moving ahead with plans to locate its three newest charters inside traditional public school facilities. Lunch and bus service would be provided for students. All three contract charters would be run by an out-of-state charter-management organization.

“Linda Hampton, the president of the Oklahoma Education Association, opposes H.B. 1691 “[b]ecause the bill is so broad in scope, it could open the door to total privatization of public schools.” She adds, “We also want to be sure we are not turning over our public school students to organizations that are looking to make a profit.”

Tulsa’s next superintendent is Deborah Gist, previously state superintendent of Rhode Island and a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change.

Watch for a full-blown drive for privatization in Oklahoma.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Oklahoma, Privatization, Unions

Cuomo Spends Nearly $1.7 Million to Fight Fair Funding Case for Schools

By dianeravitch

March 25, 2015 //

Eight small city districts in New York are suing the state for more funding. The state of New York is spending $1.7 million on fees to experts who testify that the districts do not need more money. This has been one of Governor Cuomo’s favorite lines: “We spend too much on schools already.”

The highest paid witness for the state in Maisto v. New York will receive $208,500, and the taxpayers’ total bill for the expert testimony is $966,950, according to a Capital analysis of state records. The state is also contracted to pay $700,320 to a private firm for the services of attorneys who have expertise in school funding cases.

In the lawsuit, filed in 2008, eight small city districts allege the state is underfunding schools and therefore not fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide students with a “sound, basic education.” The eight districts are Jamestown, Kingston, Mount Vernon, Newburgh, Niagara Falls, Port Jervis, Poughkeepsie and Utica.

The state hired retired superintendents from affluent districts to prepare reports saying that the small city districts do not need more money. In addition, the state hired conservative academics who could be counted on to say that more money doesn’t matter.

Categories Funding, New York

Whitehurst Fired at Brookings

By dianeravitch

March 24, 2015 //

Grover “Russ” Whitehurst was ousted from his job as head of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. Whitehurst had previously been research director of the Institute of Education Sciences in the George W. Bush administration. He was, of course, a big supporter of testing and choice. He even created an annual ranking of the districts with the most school choice. He gave Brookings, once known as a liberal think tank, a rightwing gloss.

In 2012, Whitehurst fired me as a Senior Fellow at Brookings, an unpaid position. I had been at Brookings since 1993. From 1993-95, I was in residence and wrote a book there on national standards. I had originally been offered the Brown Chair at Brookings but turned it down because I wanted to return to Néw York City.

Whitehurst said he was removing me from my unpaid position because I was “inactive.” At the time, my book “Death and Life of the Great American School System” was ranked as the #1 social policy book on amazon. Inactive? Hardly.

The day I was terminated, I posted on the Néw York Review of Books blog a piece that was highly critical of Mitt Romney. Whitehurst was a Romney adviser. A few hours later, I received an email from Whitehurst saying I was no longer a Senior Fellow due to my inactivity. He later said there was no connection between my anti-Romney post and his decision to drop me from a post I had held for many years, without any notice or conversation.

It will be interesting to see who replaces Whitehurst, whether liberal, conservative, neoliberal, neoconservative.

Categories Research

David Sirota and Naomi Klein Win Izzy Award

By dianeravitch

March 24, 2015 //

This just in:

http://davidsirota.com/

** March 24, 2015
————————————————————

FYI:

I just wanted to share the good news – International Business Times’s investigative work has this morning been named the winner (http://www.ithaca.edu/news/releases/independent-journalists-naomi-klein-and-david-sirota-share-annual-izzy-award-39431/#.VRGM-VwxF5j) of this year’s Izzy Award, given out by Ithaca College’s Park Center for Independent Media. The award honors IBTimes’ pension-themed reporting about, among others, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner and Social Security Commission chair Erskine Bowles.

The award judges named myself and journalist Naomi Klein the winners of the annual award this morning in a press release, which you can read here (http://www.ithaca.edu/news/releases/independent-journalists-naomi-klein-and-david-sirota-share-annual-izzy-award-39431/#.VRF03Ye9KrX) .

This prestigious award is named for investigative journalist I.F. Stone. Past winners include Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and other investigative journalism icons. This is an amazing honor specifically for IBTimes and also generally for the kind of difficult, time-consuming and labor-intensive investigative work that too often goes unrecognized in today’s media environment.

Thanks to so many of you for doing that kind of work – and to those who have been so supportive of our work over this last year. As you well know, this kind of reporting often engenders hostility – and my hope is that this award offers some encouragement to everyone working in the trenches of investigative journalism.

P.S. To follow IBTimes growing newsroom and investigative unit, I encourage you to follow these folks on Twitter: @PeterSGoodman (https://twitter.com/petersgoodman) ,

@NancyCooperNYC (http://www.twitter.com/nancycoopernyc) ,

@MarkFBonner (https://twitter.com/markfbonner) ,

@ThinkSimons (http://www.twitter.com/thinksimons )

, @MattCunninghamC (http://www.twitter.com/mattcunninghamc) ,

@AndrewPerezDC (https://twitter.com/andrewperezdc) ,

@ChristopherZara (http://www.twitter.com/ChristopherZara) ,

@of_davis (http://www.twitter.com/of_davis) ,

@GingerGibson (http://www.twitter.com/gingergibson) ,

@ColeStangler (http://www.twitter.com/colestangler) ,

@Learmonth (http://www.twitter.com/learmonth)

Categories Pensions