Archives for the month of: April, 2015
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Mercedes Schneider: Don’t Believe the Conspiracy Theories about ESEA

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2015 //
30

A reader named Anita Hoge has posted comments here and elsewhere claiming that the Senate committee proposal on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Act (aka NCLB) contains federal requirements for “medicalizing” children and other such assertions. When I disagreed, because I know that the bill reduces the federal authority rather than enlarging it, the writer asked me if I had read the entire bill, as Anita Hoge did. I had not; I had read summaries. It is typical of legislation these days that few people, even members of Congress, read huge bills. Sorry to say so, but it is true as legislative language is tedious and bills tend to be very long (NCLB was more than 1,000 when it passed in 2001). So I turned to someone who had read every single line of the bill, Mercedes Schneider, and asked her to review Ms. Hoge’s contentions.

Here is her response. Schneider checked and could not find evidence for Hoge’s claims.

There are good things in the bill (it shifts responsibility for the use of assessments to the states, it prohibits the Secretary of Education from interfering in which standards and assessments states adopt), and it allows states to try new ways of assessing students), and there are bad things in the bill (it continues to mandate annual assessments, which is my view is wrong, inasmuch as these assessments provide little useful information [other than test scores and rankings] and no high-performing nation tests every child every year). Whatever federal policymakers say they need to know can be learned from the NAEP assessments.

One of the few rules of this blog is: no conspiracy theories. So, I will no longer post comments that make claims about this bill or other bills that are not factual.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

Good News from York City, Pennsylvania: Court Rejects State Receiver!

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2015 //
4

Good news–no, great news–from York City, Pennsylvania! Because of the district’s fiscal problems, exacerbated by state budget cuts (a designed crisis), the state appointed a receiver who wanted to turn the entire district over to a for-profit charter chain. A lower court upheld the state’s decision. However, an appeals court overturned the state takeover. This fortunate event reflects the change at the top, as Governor Tom Corbett was defeated by Tom Wolf. Corbett was bent on budget-cutting and privatization. Wolf is not. Corbett and his receiver were set to hand all the schools in York City over to Florida-based Charter Schools USA. That won’t happen.

Ending almost five months of uncertainty about who will control the York City School District, an appeals court in Harrisburg on Wednesday put a stop to the state’s push to appoint a receiver, someone who would’ve had almost all of the school board’s powers.
The order filed in Commonwealth Court throws out a judge’s previous decision appointing David Meckley as the district’s receiver, along with the appeals of that ruling. That comes after the attorneys for the state, district and other sides met earlier this week after a hearing and filed an application asking the court to end the case.
On Dec. 1, the Pennsylvania Department of Education filed a petition in the York County Court of Common Pleas asking a judge to appoint Meckley as the district’s receiver. As receiver, Meckley, the district’s state-appointed chief recovery officer, would’ve had all of the school board’s powers – with the exception of levying taxes.
The state had argued that the York City School Board did not follow Meckley’s instructions, including his request to turn the district’s buildings into charters. The judge granted the state’s petition to appoint Meckley as receiver at the end of the December, which the district almost immediately appealed.
Meckley resigned as chief recovery officer on March 13, saying he could not move the district forward as Gov. Tom Wolf was opposed to turning its buildings into charters.
Carol Saylor, who previously worked as a superintendent of a school district in Lancaster County and has almost 40 years of experience in education, has since been appointed to replace Meckley as chief recovery officer.

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Categories Education Reform

Jon Stewart Explains the Harsh Punishments Handed Out to Atlanta Educators

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2015 //
50

Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” will be greatly missed when he steps down in August. He is the only national television figure who really gets what is happening in education, perhaps because his mother worked in the public schools of New Jersey.

In this segment, he contrasts the treatment of the Atlanta educators convicted of “racketeering” for changing answers on students’ tests with the treatment of Wall Street fraudsters. He is the best.

Categories Atlanta, Cheating

Minnesota Testing Halted Because of Technical Breakdown and Hack Attack

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2015 //
22

Minnesota testing was briefly halted when Pearson servers became overloaded–were they not expecting so many students?–and a “denial-of-service” hacker broke into the system.

“An overloaded processor and a “malicious denial-of-service attack” led to the shutdown Tuesday of Minnesota’s statewide student testing system, the state’s testing contractor said Wednesday.

“Pearson, the testing company, apologized for the problems and said the system had been repaired. By late morning, though, Minnesota Department of Education officials were not yet ready to give the all-clear.

“We still need to hear from Pearson exactly what the issue is, how they have resolved it, and receive an assurance that testing can resume smoothly,” department spokesman Josh Collins said.”

In an age when hackers can break into the computer systems of major corporations, can Pearson expect to remain immune?

Categories Minnesota, Pearson, Standardized Testing, Technology, Computers

NY Leaders of Opt Out Movement Issue Their Demands

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2015 //
43

This press release just arrived from Néw York State Allies for Public Education, a coalition of 50 parent and educator groups.

http://www.nysape.org/nysape-pr-ny-parents-have-spoken.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 23, 2015

More information contact:
Eric Mihelbergel (716) 553-1123; nys.allies@gmail.com
Lisa Rudley (917) 414-9190; nys.allies@gmail.com
NYS Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) – http://www.nysape.org

NY Parents Have Spoken, Now It’s Time to Fix Cuomo’s Education Budget Debacle & Establish New Leadership for the Board of Regents

For the past two years, New York State Allies for Public Education has warned elected and appointed officials about serious concerns related to excessive high-stakes state testing based on flawed and experimental learning standards, as well as the collection and sharing of private student data.

This past week, the national attention focused on the parent uprising taking place in New York State. Spurred to action by the refusal of both the Governor and the NYS Education Department’s failure to respond to legitimate concerns, thousands of parents fought back to protect their children.

At this time, estimates indicate parents of close to 200,000 students this year have refused New York State’s Common Core testing agenda and the final figures are expected to be even higher.

The educational program of the state is in chaos. Leadership is more important than ever. On Sunday, April 19th the Editorial Board of The Journal News declared, “The stunning success of the test-refusal movement in New York is a vote of no confidence in our state educational leadership” in calling for Chancellor Merryl Tisch to step aside.

New York State Allies for Public Education, a grassroots coalition of over fifty parent and educator advocacy organizations from all corners of the Empire State, stands with the Editorial Board of The Journal News.

Chancellor Tisch must step down. The only way for the Board of Regents, Assembly, and Senate to regain trust of their constituents is to call for the Regents to empower a new leader to fix within its authority, the Cuomo budget legislation fiasco and the misguided Regents Reform Agenda.

“Parents have been left with no choice. We will submit our refusal letters, which is our parental right, on day one of school, next year and every year and if those in power will not listen, we will free our children from a test driven, developmentally inappropriate education,” said Jeanette Deutermann, Nassau County public school parent and Long Island Opt Out founder.

“For the past two years Chancellor Tisch has repeatedly ignored parents at forums throughout the state. She is incapable of leading the state in a new direction because she believes what is happening is just fine and her latest plea for asking for more time is just a distraction from the real issues. Her repeated calls for critics to “calm down” indicates her unwillingness to change course.” said Lisa Rudley, Westchester County public school parent and NYSAPE founding member.

“On Chancellor Tisch’s watch, the work of the State Education Department has been outsourced to a privately funded ‘Regents Fellows’ think tank. It is not surprising that the reforms put forth by this think tank advance the agenda of the wealthy ‘yacht set’ and corporate-linked groups that fund the Regent Fellows: The Robin Hood Foundation, Gates Foundation, and even Chancellor Tisch herself. When you replace a public service with a private organization that advances corporate agendas, New Yorkers know that is corruption,” said Anna Shah, Dutchess County public school parent and Schools of Thought Hudson Valley, NY founder.

“While the Governor has demonstrated blatant disregard for the will of the people by doubling down on the use of high stakes testing, the State Education Department and Chancellor Tisch similarly ignored parent concerns regarding inappropriate test content by forcing children to read passages on last week’s ELA tests that were up to four years above grade level followed by vague and confusing questions,” said Jessica McNair, Oneida County public school parent, Central NY Opt Out co-founder, and educator.

Fred Smith, testing specialist, NYC public schools retired administrative analyst, and Change the Stakes member said, “Instead of transparency and disclosure of complete and timely test data that would open the quality of the ELA and math exams to independent review, Tisch has ruled over an unaccountable testing program that flies at near-zero visibility–in a fog of flawed field testing procedures, age-inappropriate poorly written items, the covert removal of test questions after they have been scored, arbitrarily drawn cut off scores, and the misapplication of the results to reach unsupportable conclusions about students, teachers, and schools.”

“As seen with the budget debacle earlier this month, New Yorkers know when the ‘Albany Fix’ is in,” Eric Mihelbergel, Erie County public school parent and NYSAPE founding member. Mihelbergel went on to say, “We know that the opt out movement will ultimately invalidate the data and render these test scores useless. When some schools have opt outs as high as 70%, we know that any claims that opt out is “random” and that only a small sampling of test scores will yield usable data is illogical.”

To ensure clarity for all, NYSAPE calls for the following from the NYS Legislature & Board of Regents and will release a more comprehensive list in the near future:

1. A dramatic reduction of testing in grades 3rd – 8th, along with reasserting New York State’s authority to determine the education of its children by calling on the US Congress to reduce testing requirements and return to grade span testing. As former President Bill Clinton said we don’t need annual testing, “I think doing one [test] in elementary school, one in the end of middle school and one before the end of high school is quite enough if you do it right.”

2. Chancellor Tisch must immediately step down.

3. An independent review of the NYS career and college ready standards to ensure that standards are research based and appropriate. Establish a taskforce including parents, educators, and stakeholders to study the Common Core Learning Standards and make recommendations to adjust and adopt NYS standards.

4. Adhere to a public and transparent process for selecting a new NYS Commissioner of Education.

5. Fix the Cuomo budget legislation debacle by passing legislation that decouples student test scores and restores local board of education control over teacher evaluations.

6. Pass legislation that REQUIRES parental consent to share ANY identifiable student data beyond school district administrators.

We want to restore our classrooms with a well-rounded education and drive testing compliance factory reforms out of our classrooms forever.

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– See more at: http://www.nysape.org/nysape-pr-ny-parents-have-spoken.html#sthash.WPxXvbWx.dpuf

Categories New York, Opt Out, Parents, Standardized Testing

Jonathan Pelto: Who Are “Educators 4 Excellence”?

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2015 //
28

Perhaps you have heard of Educators 4 Excellence, or their shorter name E4E.

The group started in New York City, led by young teachers who did not like the union. They seem to be Teach for America teachers, mostly with a year or two of experience. They have received millions from the Gates Foundation and other corporate reformers.

Now they are spreading to other states, to substitute wherever possible for the traditional teacher organizations as the “voice” of young teachers, those who want merit pay, like high-stakes testing, want to be evaluated by test scores, etc.

Jonathan Pelto tells their story here.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teachers

The BAT Who Cried

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2015 //
26

Robyn Brydalski is a third grade teacher. When she gathered up the Common Core tests at the end of three days of testing, she cried.

She cried for her students, who had spent hours and hours responding to questions that were often poorly written.

She cried for her profession, because the state had forced her to follow scripted modules, abandoning her own professional judgment.

“My blood boiled and anger seethed from the deepest parts of my heart when I saw the confusing passages and misleading questions. This test played on an eight year old mind taking advantage of these literal thinkers full knowing, on their own, very few students would be able to analyze, synthesize and evaluate an author’s message. The sheer volume of passages was exhausting. One of my brightest students was so confused by a question that she shut down and gave up. She looked at me and said, “I’m just stupid, I guess.” She is eight years old. No eight year old deserves to feel this way. I cried tears of pain when many of my students looked to me for guidance and clarification. I encouraged them but I knew without a teacher guiding them, they would not be successful with the expected question and my students knew this. How is this right? How is this just? How is this a true measure of good teaching? My students persevered through day one, toughed it out for day two but by day three could not demonstrate any evidence of learning. They were academically beat, physically exhausted and morally defeated.”

Categories Childhood, Real Education, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Nick Kristof: Corporate Reform Has Failed, Time to Focus on the Early Years

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2015 //
70

This is quite a remarkable admission. Nicholas Kristof writes today in the New York Times that the “reform” efforts have “peaked.” I read that and the rest of the column to mean that they have failed to make a difference. Think of it: Bill Gates, the Walton family, Eli Broad, Wendy Kopp, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, Florida Governor Rick Scott, Ohio Governor John Kasich, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama, Michelle Rhee, Campbell Brown, and a host of other luminaries have been singing the same song for the past 15 years: Our schools are broken, and we can fix them with charters, vouchers, high-stakes testing, merit pay, elimination of unions, elimination of tenure, and rigorous efforts to remove teachers who can’t produce ever-rising test scores.

Despite the billions of dollars that the federal government, the states, and philanthropies have poured into this formula, it hasn’t worked, says Kristof. It is time to admit it and to focus instead on the early years from birth to kindergarten.

He writes:

For the last dozen years, waves of idealistic Americans have campaigned to reform and improve K-12 education.

Armies of college graduates joined Teach for America. Zillionaires invested in charter schools. Liberals and conservatives, holding their noses and agreeing on nothing else, cooperated to proclaim education the civil rights issue of our time.

Yet I wonder if the education reform movement hasn’t peaked.

The zillionaires are bruised. The idealists are dispirited. The number of young people applying for Teach for America, after 15 years of growth, has droppedfor the last two years. The Common Core curriculum is now an orphan, with politicians vigorously denying paternity.

K-12 education is an exhausted, bloodsoaked battlefield. It’s Agincourt, the day after. So a suggestion: Refocus some reformist passions on early childhood.

Wow! That is exactly what I wrote in “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools,” along with recommendations for reduced class sizes, a full curriculum, a de-emphasis on high-stakes testing, a revival of public policies to reduce poverty and segregation, and a recommitment to the importance of public education.

When I look at the Tea Party legislature in North Carolina or the hard-right politicians in the Midwest or the new for-profit education industry, I don’t think of them as idealistic but as ideologues. Aside from that, I think that Kristof gives hope to all those parents and teachers who have been working for years to stop these ideologues from destroying public education. Yes, it should be improved, it must be improved. There should be a good public school in every neighborhood, regardless of zip code. But that won’t happen unless our leaders dedicate themselves to changing the conditions in which families and children live so that all may have equal opportunity in education and in life.

Categories Charter Schools, Childhood, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Poverty, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Standardized Testing, Vouchers

Russ Walsh Reviews Paul Thomas’s “Beware the Roadbuilders”

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2015 //
5

Russ Walsh, an expert on literacy who blogs regularly, here reviews Paul Thomas’s excellent new book Beware the Roadbuilders. I have often posted pieces by Paul Thomas, who is passionate about social and economic justice and literature. He often deftly weaves literature into his social critiques.

Paul Thomas was a high school teacher in South Carolina before he became a teacher educator at Furman University. He not only knows his subject, he knows young people, and he knows teaching. But more than that, he has a social conscience that shines through everything he writes.

Russ Walsh reads Thomas’s book with admiration. He writes:

I have often told my students that informational literature attempts to present what is factually true, but fiction attempts to shine a light on universal truth. In Beware the Roadbuilders: Literature as Resistance, P. L. Thomas invites us to look over his shoulder as he reads personally, feelingly and critically into literature, both canonical and contemporary, in an effort to illuminate the truth beneath issues of equity, social justice and public education. Thomas, a former high school English teacher and current associate professor of education at Furman University in South Carolina, also blogs at the becoming radical. If you are not familiar with his work on the blog I recommend you join me as a regular reader.

The “roadbuilders” of Thomas’ title are the education reformers, those plutocrats, pundits and politicians who have seized on urban education as the “civil rights issue of our time” and who, like the colonizing Europeans in Africa a century ago, seek to impose their own definitions of success and progress on the people and institutions they seek to reform. Thomas points to the current rage for “no excuses” charter schools as a prime example of the “roadbuilder” model. In “no excuses” schools students are subjected to a military like structure, rigid classroom rules and demeaning discipline practices in the name of getting “college and career ready.” For these reformers, Thomas says,”education is a tool of the elite to train the masses to conform to a world that maintains the current status quo.”

But I don’t want to give the impression that Beware the Roadbuilders is just another anti-education reform polemic, because it is much richer and much more interesting than that. This is a book for people who love books, who love reading and who love finding connections in literature that help us better understand our world. The book took me back to a reconsideration of some of my favorite authors from the past like James Baldwin, Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Barbara Kingsolver, Isaac Asimov and Adrienne Rich, but also exposed me to authors I had not previously read like Geoffrey Eugenides and George Saunders.

Thomas also includes examples of literature that I have studiously avoided. It is a credit to Thomas’ skills as a writer and an enthusiastic reader that he has piqued my interest in previously shunned (by me) works like zombie literature and super-hero fiction.

Who are the “roadbuilders” and why should we beware of them? Thomas tells the story of a village in Africa that is visited by a delegation of men who propose to build a road. The road builders tell the villagers of all the wonderful benefits that will come from improved transportation and commerce. To make a fascinating story short, the road cuts through the village, demolishing the community and the lives of the trusting villagers.

There are universal truths aplenty in Paul’s book, and Russ has done a wonderful job in reviewing it.

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Categories Education Reform

First Grade Teacher: How Common Core Tests Affect My Students

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2015 //
50

This letter was written by a first grade teacher in upstate Néw York:

She writes:

(Un)Intended Consequences

Today was the first day of the NYS ELA tests. I must state right from the outset that my students do not take these tests. Not yet. But in two short years, they will. And yet, these tests had an effect on my students today and will continue to do so in the days to come. You see, these tests have a ripple effect. The immediate effect is that my students who receive services such as reading and resource will not receive these services for the next TWO WEEKS since the teachers who provide these services are proctoring the state tests. They will also lose services when some of these same teachers are pulled out to score the tests in the subsequent weeks. (They will lose out again when we begin the SLO testing in May, but that is for another post). The longer term effects are more devastating. You see, their education has been hijacked by these tests. Although my “Firsties” are not taking these tests yet, they are preparing for them and will continue to do so throughout their Elementary years.

When I started teaching oh so many years ago, we focused on thematic instruction and integrating all subject areas so that our students had opportunities to make connections. We taught in ways that honored many learning styles, student’s individual differences and developmental stages, along with their individual needs. We understood (and still do) that each child has different intelligences and learning styles. My walls and windows of my classroom were covered with songs and poems, student artwork and artifacts of student learning. My little ones sang and read and played. We taught using literature with rich language and focused on building background knowledge. Children were encouraged to synthesize knowledge and draw conclusions using what they knew and what they were learning. We used a tremendous amount of glitter and paper and encouraged children to express themselves in ways that played to their strengths. We did projects and had lots of hands-on learning with manipulatives. I assessed through observation and working directly with students.

Over the years, we have had to move away from what we know is right for kids to what we are told we must do in order to prepare students for the tests.

At first, teachers knew that we could use those tests to help identify areas where students needed further instruction and where we could improve our teaching. We accepted that our 4th and 8th grade students would be tested and we knew how to prepare them. We focused on those areas and we saw growth. We didn’t like “No Child Left Behind” but we could work within it.

Fast forward to “Race To The Top” and Common Core and the use of the tests to evaluate teachers. Without going into all that is wrong with this, let me just say how it has affected my little ones:

My walls are no longer covered with songs and poems and artwork. That has been replaced with “anchor charts”, “I can statements” and “Learning targets”. We barely use construction paper and I have not purchased glitter in 3 years. There is no time for art projects or creative expression. Children can no longer choose their learning. They write to prompts and must write different genres at certain times. Math is done on paper and manipulatives are few and far between (except when I pull out the old stuff). Reading is “close reading” and answers to questions are to be solely based on the text, without synthesis of prior knowledge.

Assessment is daily and must be documented along with being scripted (because Big Brother is watching). Modules are scripted, teacher led and boring for little ones. We have to have 50% of text presented as informational text. Students have to write essays before they even have automaticity of letter formation. ALL THIS IS DONE SO THEY CAN PREP FOR THE TESTS. My students will take keyboarding in 3rd grade so they can take the tests online…BEFORE SOME OF THEM EVEN HAVE THE PHYSICAL HAND SPAN TO USE A KEYBOARD.

Our littlest learners are preparing for these tests as soon as they enter school. We know that. We know that our colleagues in grades 3-8 depend on us to lay the foundation. We know that our little ones are being used as weapons to help destroy public education. We know that they cannot possibly do well on these tests as they are written 2-3 grade levels above their current grade level and that an arbitrary “cut score” will be determined AFTER the tests are scored to manipulate the data. We know that we cannot discuss these tests and that they cannot be used to inform instruction nor to inform us of our students’ progress. These tests are solely being used to create false data about our students and our schools. They are being used to make our public schools look as though they are “failing” and that our teachers are incompetent. They are creating a pressure cooker atmosphere.

Our Bully of a governor wants to turn our public schools into For-profit Charter schools (which are little more than test prep factories that do NOT have transparency of finances). He is beholden to his hedge fund donors and his big $ donors. In addition, he has publicly stated that he wants to break the teacher’s union. Our children’s education has been hijacked. Our teachers are being abused by an agenda that puts money over what is right for kids. Our society’s future is being manipulated to create a country where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, both in terms of dollars and education and opportunities. The simple fact that the private schools where the children of the elite attend do not have to participate in these tests or this curriculum, is very telling.

Today’s refusal numbers are encouraging. This is a lesson in civil rights and civil disobedience. We are teaching our children that they have a way of changing what is wrong in our government and our society through nonviolent means. We are teaching them that they have a voice. We are showing them that we can all create change. We are also showing them how to stand up to Bullies. And THAT is a great lesson that no amount of test prep can compare to.

Categories Childhood, Common Core, Standardized Testing
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