Jonathan Pelto reacts with dismay to the new state superintendent in Connecticut. Diana R. Wentzell has been interim commissioner since Stefan Pryor departed after a series of charter school scandals.
Wentzell has been a major booster of Common Core and the SBAC tests. If Connecticut follows the pattern of other states, parents will be shocked when they learn their child has failed the test. Connecticut regularly scores second or third in the nation on NAEP.
Late last night, I put up a post that congratulated TIME for its “fair and balanced” coverage of the Opt Out movement. I almost called it favorable. I contrasted the article with TIME’s infamous cover stories about teacher-bashing Rhee and “Rotten Apples,” which made the absurd claim that it is nearly impossible to fire teachers but Silicon Valley millionaires were riding to the rescue with a strategy to eliminate tenure.
However, a reader pointed out that the opt-out story was printed earlier on another website. I don’t think we will ever see this article in the print edition of TIME. As I noted in the original post, it was written by an Associated Press writer, not TIME staff.
Until we see a cover story in TIME honoring America’s dedicated, underpaid teachers or a story revealing the investment, involvement and motives of the billionaires in league to privatize public education and destroy the teaching profession, we will continue to see it as an ally and handmaiden of corporate reform. As a mass circulation magazine, TIME should remember that there are many millions of teachers and parents of public school students, and fewer than 500 billionaires.
One of the biggest challenges to those of us who oppose privatization, school closings, high-stakes testing, and the rest of the failed ideas mistakenly called “reform” have a big job to do. We must educate the public. The public hears the word “reform,” and they think it means progress and improvement. They don’t know it means chaos and disruption of their local public schools. They hear about testing, and they think, “I took tests, what’s so bad about that?”
Here is a fine example of educating the public. It appeared in my local newspaper, the Suffolk Times-Review (recently recognized as the best weekly in New York state). It was written by Gregory Wallace, a former “educator of the year.”
Wallace explains in plain language for non-educators why the Common Core testing will harm public education.
He writes:
As a seasoned educator, I strongly believe that well-designed tests are a valuable educational tool. When used properly, tests provide timely feedback about student progress. Rather than adding to the diagnostic value of tests, however, the NYS Common Core assessments are used solely to rank students, evaluate teachers and label schools as “failing,” slating them for takeover by privately run charters.
One need only understand that the results of these tests are released months after students have moved to the next grade. Parents cannot see an itemized breakdown of how their children performed, because the content of the test remains a closely guarded secret. There is no transparency. Thus, unlike traditional tests, the information generated is completely useless to the parent and child. Without the ability to analyze how students answered the questions, educators are not able to use them to drive instruction or shape pedagogy.
Although testing companies work hard to make sure the content of exams remains embargoed, some information that has been gleaned is cause for great concern. Questions are ambiguous; there are often questions with multiple correct answers and others with no correct answer. The readability of the tests is often two or three grade levels higher than a student’s typical development. The passing rates are set after the test is taken. (That’s how former education commissioner John King was able to accurately predict that 70 percent of students would fail the exam months before they were administered.) These reports, if accurate, underscore the limited (if any) value that these tests provide to the educational system…
I am proud of the education I received in Greenport public schools and I am also proud that my children reside in this district. What takes place in the halls of our community’s school cannot be quantified by a test. Yet as a result of the demographic makeup, our school, its teachers and the district itself will have a far greater risk of sanctions than a school that is wealthier.
Since the NYS Common Core tests provide none of the valuable feedback of a proper test and seemingly disregard all the unique factors that contribute to the complexity of a particular district or region, I have concluded that if my children took these tests I would be complicit in the loss of local control leading to the possible erosion of public education here in Greenport.
My children are vessels to be filled; they are not commodities and will not be used as pawns to create market share for charter schools.
Thus, after much consideration, the only recourse left is to withhold consent. My children will be refusing these exams.
The fifteen comments posted on the newspaper’s website thanked Wallace, and several said their children too would refuse the tests. This is the kind of information that helps people understand how pointless the tests are, except as a way to label students. They do not provide any information about student progress other than a score. There is nothing in the report to help teachers know where they need support. Like the parent group called “Long Island Opt Out,” Wallace educated the public, which helps to explain the large numbers of opt outs on Long Island.
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The burgeoning of the for-profit college industry has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, sent many thousands of students out into the world with shoddy educations, and made a few people very rich.
One of the organizations that should have been closed down by the U.S. Department of Education is Corinthian Colleges. Here, Peter Greene reviews its sordid history, including the fact that the U.S. Department of Education bailed it out when it needed money, and Corinthian sold off many of its campuses to be run by a DEBT COLLECTION AGENCY. I put that in caps because it is incredible but true.
Greene writes:
“Folks who find themselves in debt for Corinthian educations, but without any marketable skills that would allow them to make money– those folks got in this mess by driving past a dozen corners where there should have been big bright neon red flags. But there were no flags there, because the gatekeepers had taken the flags down and stuffed them in their back pockets.
“Corinthian has a repeatedly gotten in trouble for lying, false advertising, misrepresenting itself, and promising what it could not deliver. But the feds did not shut them down, did not demand they put a warning label on their applications, did not publicly chastise them in a manner that might have given applicants pause. And when Corinthian actually started to suffer the free-market consequences of bad behavior, the feds stepped in to protect not the students, but the investors and operators. They actually crafted a plan to allow Corinthian to draw in more students!
“And the loans? If I go to buy a house, and I visit the bank for a mortgage loan, generally speaking the bank (excepting the years between, say, 2002-2008) will make sure that they don’t lend me more than I can pay, and they will also demand an assessment of the house so that they know I’m getting their money’s worth in my purchase. Who was exercising such oversight of these college loans? Apparently, nobody.”
Robert Reich wrote a good post about how big money captures opinion-makers, stifles dissent, and buys off potential critics. All of this is terrible for democracy, because the news we get is filtered through the eyes of corporate money, to protect their privileged status. Even philanthropy is now a conduit for shaping public policy to suit their fancy or their pocketbook. Reich says we are back to the Gilded Age. We are also back to the age of the Robber Barons. Money is power.
He writes:
Not long ago I was asked to speak to a religious congregation about widening inequality. Shortly before I began, the head of the congregation asked that I not advocate raising taxes on the wealthy.
He said he didn’t want to antagonize certain wealthy congregants on whose generosity the congregation depended.
I had a similar exchange last year with the president of a small college who had invited me to give a lecture that his board of trustees would be attending. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t criticize Wall Street,” he said, explaining that several of the trustees were investment bankers.
It seems to be happening all over.
A non-profit group devoted to voting rights decides it won’t launch a campaign against big money in politics for fear of alienating wealthy donors.
A Washington think-tank releases a study on inequality that fails to mention the role big corporations and Wall Street have played in weakening the nation’s labor and antitrust laws, presumably because the think tank doesn’t want to antagonize its corporate and Wall Street donors.
A major university shapes research and courses around economic topics of interest to its biggest donors, notably avoiding any mention of the increasing power of large corporations and Wall Street on the economy.
It’s bad enough big money is buying off politicians. It’s also buying off nonprofits that used to be sources of investigation, information, and social change, from criticizing big money.
Other sources of funding are drying up. Research grants are waning. Funds for social services of churches and community groups are growing scarce. Legislatures are cutting back university funding. Appropriations for public television, the arts, museums, and libraries are being slashed….
Our democracy is directly threatened when the rich buy off politicians.
But no less dangerous is the quieter and more insidious buy-off of institutions democracy depends on to research, investigate, expose, and mobilize action against what is occurring.
This is a threat to our democracy, when investigative reports are squashed or never written, when the public is not informed of the forces shaping their lives.
I have been asked why I don’t find a way to “monetize” my blog. Why no advertising? Why no fees? Inquirers have said, “Nineteen million hits. Surely you can find a way to make it pay.” But the point of this blog is that no money changes hands. What I write is what I believe. I post what you believe. I post what interests me and what I think will interest you. I am free to criticize the wealthy and powerful because they don’t take out advertising. I have no foundation grants. Fortunately for me, I don’t need funding. That allows me to write what I want. I have a mission, and I won’t let it be compromised by money.
TIME magazine lost the confidence of many (or most) public school teachers with two cover stories in recent years. One was the cover story in 2007 portraying newly appointed D.C Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who allegedly knew “How to Fix America’s Schools” and was battling “bad teachers” so she could “transform American education.” The cover showed Rhee with a broomstick, looking stern and grim, about to sweep out the Augean stables of the school system. Then there was the recent “Rotten Apples” cover story about the Vergara trial and American teachers, asserting that it is “nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher,” because of tenure (i.e., due process).
So, what a surprise to discover an article in the same magazine that favorably explains the opt out movement. It is not perfect, for sure. It attributes the powerful opt out movement in New York to the unions, which is untrue. Nearly 200,000 parents opted out, and they were organized by parents like Jeanette Deutermann of Long Island, Lisa Rudley of Westchester County, Bianca Tanis of Ulster County, and Anna Shah of Dutchess County. Parent groups like New York State Allies for Public Education have been working on opt out for three years. In fact, the unions were not on the same page about the opt out movement. Karen Magee, the president of the state union (New York State United Teachers) supported opting out, as did some locals; but other locals remained silent.
The real story, which critics of opting out want to obscure, is that the movement is a grassroots, parent-led rebellion against a tsunami of testing and against tests that provide no information whatever to help their children. The test results provide no individual information other than a numerical score and ranking, not any description of what the student got right or wrong. Defenders repeatedly misinform by claiming that these tests are useful to teachers; they are not.
Christina A. Cassidy (AP, not TIME staff) writes:
In deep-blue New York, resistance has been encouraged by the unions in response to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s efforts to make the test results count more in teacher evaluations.
In Rockville Centre on Long Island, Superintendent William H. Johnson said 60 percent of his district’s third-through-eighth graders opted out. In the Buffalo suburb of West Seneca, nearly 70 percent didn’t take the state exam, Superintendent Mark Crawford said.
“That tells me parents are deeply concerned about the use of the standardized tests their children are taking,” Crawford said. “If the opt-outs are great enough, at what point does somebody say this is absurd?”
Nearly 15 percent of high school juniors in New Jersey opted out this year, while fewer than 5 percent of students in grades three through eight refused the tests, state education officials said. One reason: Juniors may be focusing instead on the SAT and AP tests that could determine their college futures.
Much of the criticism focuses on the sheer number of tests now being applied in public schools: From pre-kindergarten through grade 12, students take an average of 113 standardized tests, according to a survey by the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents large urban districts.
Of these, only 17 are mandated by the federal government, but the backlash that began when No Child Left Behind started to hold teachers, schools and districts strictly accountable for their students’ progress has only grown stronger since “Common Core” gave the criticism a common rallying cry.
“There is a widespread sentiment among parents, students, teachers, administrators and local elected officials that enough is enough, that government mandated testing has taken over our schools,” Schaeffer said.
Teachers now devote 30 percent of their work time on testing-related tasks, including preparing students, proctoring, and reviewing the results of standardized tests, the National Education Association says.
The pressure to improve results year after year can be demoralizing and even criminalizing, say critics who point to the Atlanta test-cheating scandal, which led to the convictions 35 educators charged with altering exams to boost scores.
In response to an article that showed the intense, competitive, and abusive practices at Success Academy charter schools that produce high test scores, the New York Times printed a series of statements by parents about their experiences with the schools. The letters, with their sharply divided opinions, actually reinforced the findings of the original article: the schools get high test scores, but they get those high scores in ways that many parents can’t abide. Another point: SA schools are not a good place for students with disabilities or emotional fragility.
Chicago elementary school principal Troy LaRaviere is fearless. He speaks out against injustice. He speaks for the children of Chicago, who have gotten a raw deal from the city and the state.
In this post (which I am late posting), he speaks directly to the chair of the State Board of Education, Reverend James Meeks.
With Governor Bruce Rauner at the helm, public schools in Illinois are in deep trouble. The governor doesn’t like them. He loves charters.
Principal LaRaviere asks a direct question of the State Board:
Why do you now take a strong stand against opting out when you stood by silently as our kids were harmed again and again?
He writes:
When the Emanuel administration artificially boosted its graduation rates by giving high school diplomas to alternative programs that ISBE itself does not recognize as high school diplomas, ISBE stood idly by as CPS and the mayor instituted this practice aimed at creating a false mayoral campaign talking point. ISBE issued no threats. ISBE took no stand.
When Rahm Emanuel entered CPS into a financial arrangement with three of his campaign donors to give them $17 million in public funds that would have otherwise funded pre-kindergarten, ISBE issued no threats. ISBE took no stand.
When CPS announced it would pilot an initiative to extend its so-called “School-Based Budgeting” into the staffing of teachers serving special education students, and risk violating the rights of these students by understaffing their special education program—in violation of federal law and ISBE policy—ISBE issued no threats. ISBE took no stand.
When CPS expanded poor performing charter schools and marketed them to low-income communities, the achievement gap between those students and their middle income peers widened. Yet ISBE issued no threats and took no stand.
When CPS manipulated the test score data of those same charter schools, ISBE issued no threats and took no stand.
ISBE has stood idly by over the past two decades as CPS has made one policy decision after another that has been detrimental to the educational future of Chicago’s children. You made no threats, and you took no stand.
While ISBE is neglecting its responsibility to act on behalf of our children, testing technology companies and venture capitalists have publicly declared their intent to “disrupt” public education and use test scores to label it as “failing” in order to make way for parasitic market forces that waste our tax dollars on “solutions” to the problems that they themselves have manufactured. Billions of dollars have been siphoned from state and municipal education budgets to fund their failed strategies—accountability based testing being one of their most popular, but least effective and most disastrous strategies.
Now, when parents, teachers, and administrators across the state are moving to address this threat by opting their children out of testing–now you decide to act. You did not take a stand when student learning was at-risk, but you’ve decided to take a stand now that the profits of testing companies are at risk.
Now you’ve decided to act.
Now you’ve decided to take a stand.
Principal LaRaviere is a voice of conscience for the children of Chicago.
This is a one-hour video of a great panel discussion at Fairfield University in Connecticut. The panelists are Wendy Lecker, Yohuru Willians, Jonathan Pelto, and Tom Scarice. You have read their writing on this blog.
It is a Sunday. Kick back and enjoy!
I received this from a principal in New York City. It was written by one of his teachers.
From a 3rd Grade Teacher
“I love teaching!! It fills my heart when my students make connections and get that light in their eyes when they become excited by what they’ve learned. I have some of the brightest bunch of kids this year. They come to school enthusiastic about the day, prepared to learn something new. They challenge me and my thinking, my pedagogy and I reciprocate. Today I saw some of the light in many of my students completely disappear and it broke my heart.
It’s been a grueling three days of testing. Their anxieties manifested themselves in tears, trips to the bathroom because of nausea and complete shutdown. Their self-confidence was stripped from them today and I felt them questioning their intelligence. I believe my 3rd graders were asked to think in ways that many of them are not developmentally ready for. When I could not decide between ‘a’ or ‘d’ and had to critically think and rethink how I would go about answering the questions being asked, I know that what was given to them today was not fair.
So now I will spend the next few days building my kids back up. Help them to forget the trauma of these past few days and remind them that it’s ok to be a kid and to think the way they do. I cannot find the words to express my disgust for this system and for the people in power who continue to allow this to happen.
We have to STAND UP PEOPLE!! We need to remind those test makers that we teach children, little humans who learn in different ways and who can demonstrate their learning in different ways. We need to change the face of assessment in this country. I’m ready… Are you??! “
Diane Ravitch's blog 