There he goes again!
Arne Duncan loves, loves, loves to say that schools and teachers have been lying to our kids. They are really very dumb, and yet they have been getting promoted, going to college, and they are not prepared for college! Their teachers lied to them! Their schools lied to them! Now, as we see the collapse of test scores on the Common Core tests, we know the truth: Our kids are dumb!
I seem to recall that when President-elect Barack Obama named Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education, he pointed to the dramatic improvement in test scores in Chicago. Those test score gains were not true. They actually were a lie. So Arne Duncan knows something about dummying down standards and telling lies to parents.
But let Mercedes Schneider and Peter Greene tell the story of what Arne said in Pittsburgh, where he seem positively exuberant about the atrocious scores on the Common Core tests in Pennsylvania. You would think that after more than six years of his being Secretary of Education, he might be accountable for the decline of test scores. When will he be held accountable? Readers of this blog know, because I have written about it many times, that the scores fell because the two testing consortia (PARCC and SBAC) aligned their cut score (passing mark) with NAEP proficient, which is out of reach of most students. Since NAEP began testing in states in 1992, only in Massachusetts have 50% of students ever reached NAEP proficient.
Here is Mercedes. Mercedes points out that Arne has made a point of enrolling his own children in schools that don’t use the Common Core or its tests. So he will never ever know the truth about his own children.
Peter asks:
Could it be that the BS Tests do a lousy job of measuring a narrow slice of actual student achievement, and that the cut scores aren’t set in any way that would reflect meaningful educational information, and that none of this has anything to do with being ready for college or success, and that the whole process is so infected with politics (which is in turn infected with the moneyed interests of book publishers, test manufacturers, privatizers, and profiteers) that it has nothing to do with education at all.
Duncan thinks failing scores mean something because they support a conclusion he has already reached– that education is being ruined by terrible lying teachers, and that only his friends (who stand to make a mint from all this upheaval) can save the day. And Duncan isn’t smart enough to know the difference between a mountain of education excellence and a giant pile of bullshit.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Let Arne Duncan have his children take the test and see how they do. Maybe, just maybe, the private school teachers are “lying” about how well their paying customers are doing also. In fact, I’d like to see every member of Congress, state and national, take the ninth grade test.
LikeLike
If both Obama and Duncan feels the Common Core has so much to offer, then you should lead by example and withdraw your own children from their private school bubble and enroll them in public school where they can truly reap the benefits of the Common Core.
LikeLike
Sorry: feel
LikeLike
Likely they would perform well. They lead enriched lives (exposed to a variety of experiences, places, people, opportunity, have stability in their economics and living conditions…).
LikeLike
What if 80% of Congress couldn’t pass the ninth grade tests? Absolutely nothing. They would have so many excuses as to why the test was unfair, bad, not necessary, etc…..and yet they ignore the facts about testing from those professionals and parents who really do know. They should be fired, and Congress shut down (like so many schools have), and replaced with “better” individuals with higher test scores – who have no idea about being a Congressman!
LikeLike
Arne Duncan must be held accountable for all the trouble he has caused and how he spoke to parents. His arrogance is outrageous.
LikeLike
as is his ignorance. Actually they seem to be in perfect balance . . .
LikeLike
“Obviously, students aren’t going to be less smart than they were six months ago or a year ago,” Mr. Duncan said. “In far too many states, including Pennsylvania, politicians dummied down standards to make themselves look good.”
Oh, please. Ed reform is a massive political campaign complete with lobbyists, consultants, hundreds of millions in campaign donations and VERY slick marketing.
This idea that “movement” members like Duncan are somehow above “politics” is just pure baloney. The Common Core itself was heavily marketed with a ridiculously over-the-top political campaign where they sold this 100% on fear- up to and including playing the “national security threat” card.
Specifically, how does Duncan plan to support public schools so they have some shot at succeeding at this huge task he and his fellow “movement” members have dumped in their laps? They tested tens of millions of children. They got the low scores they wanted. They have the “data”. Now it’s time for the promised “support”. Let’s see if anyone in DC follows thru on the hard part, and “the hard part” isn’t yet another “public schools suck” national political campaign.
LikeLike
I don’t think you read the plan right. Next step is squeezing professional teachers from their field based on the low scores– to be replaced (via teacher shortage) by larger classes run by newbies or ‘alt-route’ TFA’s or whoever’s got a pulse. Presumably followed by scores low enough to close any under-enrolled &/or ‘failing’ schools left whose parents haven’t already sought alternatives.
LikeLike
You support schools and students by giving tests and collecting data geared to proving that not every student is an “A” student headed to a four year college and/or graduate degree, and then use results to shut down schools and fire teachers failing to make college students.
LikeLike
Well said. Kids learn in different ways at different rates. They are not robots
LikeLike
I also wish the Obama Administration would stop selling tech to schools. My God, it’s like they’re on the payroll of these companies. Public schools have limited funds and no one knows if this a good value for them or offers any real benefits. There is no reason they should rush into huge investments.
Is there some reason we need a federal sales force for these products? I’m confident this industry can sell their own product to schools.
Let’s put lots and lots of screens and tech product in the Chicago Lab School first. They can be the test case. If it has value they can tell ordinary public schools all about it and we’ll invest. No reason the most elite schools can’t go first.
http://www.ictforeducation.co.uk/news/ict-rise.html
LikeLike
What, Chiara?! You don’t feel that all children need to have their learning “personalized”? (snark alert) Are you denying the wonderfulness of plugging our children in to 24/7 tech support?
LikeLike
In a sense, many politicians and government officials are on the payroll of these companies. Campaign contributions now, and private sector jobs with these companies after leaving office. Obama and Duncan will be making a lot of money very soon.
LikeLike
I participated in SBAC standard setting in Dallas, Texas in 2014. Across all grades and subjects, only varying degrees of percents in the 40’s were expected to be proficient. No fellow educator I spoke to left satisfied with what became of our work.
LikeLike
I was there too, it definitely felt like we were just there as a ruse to tell people that teachers were consulted and agreed. In reality, they gently led us to set cut scores right where they wanted them.
LikeLike
Great – we suck – kudos Arne – how exactly are schools with profit takers and low paid teachers offering such a better education? When the organizations themselves aren’t outright frauds.
LikeLike
Arne may want the public to believe that the teachers are lying when he is culprit lying about the merits of the Common Core and its testing with rigged cut scores. If he finds the low scores entertaining, he should resign as he is not in office to be amused, he is there to serve all students in public schools. This testing serves no other purpose than to feed the “reformer” narrative about “failing” schools. Testing does not improve outcomes for students; it merely stacks and ranks them. Testing will not help poor students out of poverty and may; in fact, it may make them drop out earlier. Testing like charter schools offer no real solutions other than making money for corporations, narrowing the curriculum, destabilizing the fragile lives of poor students and the schools they attend and ending teachers’ careers.
LikeLike
Is it too undignified for this former lying teacher to dream about spitting on her hand before shaking his?
LikeLike
No!
LikeLike
Of course!
LikeLike
Diane,
I was disgusted by my IEA President, Cinda Klickna’s, response regarding the low scores soon to be released in Illinois. I sent her the following:
Dear Cinda Klickna,
I was very disturbed to read your recent response to the news that Illinois students’ recent PARCC score test release. You characterized it as something that will improve as teachers get better at the standards and students get more experienced with the test. You could not be more wrong.
First, I am a career Illinois teacher with more than 20 years of experience. I have a doctorate in developmental literacy and currently work as a reading specialist in Oregon, IL. I have been active in my union and am currently serving as OEA president. I vote democrat, and have always been a proud union member. However, now I am doubting whether IEA/NEA really has the best interests of children and teachers at heart. Your recent response has confirmed that.
Here is what you SHOULD have said:
The PARCC test is a capstone of corporate reform efforts to discredit hard-working teachers and school districts. It is a natural progression of developmentally inappropriate and unvalidated Common Core Standards that were written almost exclusively by test publishers whose intentions are to create a market for their “new and improved” curriculum materials, assessments, remedial programs and expensive consulting deals.
The test itself is written several years above the average student’s reading level, it is to be given on unfamiliar computer technology, contains intentionally vague and poorly designed questions with opaque directions, and is excessive in length. Additionally, cut scores were set outrageously high–ostensibly to align with NAEP proficiency levels and completely disregarding the fact that a rating of “proficient” on the NAEP means the equivalent of “A” level work in the classroom.
This is the new and impossible standard Illinois students have “failed” to reach. This is by design, it is absolutely the intention of companies like Pearson who stand to make billions off the misery the CCSS and PARCC are creating. Now politicians can “prove” teachers are lazy and incompetent and point to PARCC scores as evidence, then hand over public dollars to their business cronies and donors for charter schools. Your statement helps that process along by promoting the fantasy that it is possible to improve these test scores if only we numbskull public school teachers would just get up to speed on these dandy new standards.
Please, if you are going to take our money and purport to represent teachers collectively in Illinois, it is incumbent upon you to educate yourself about the reality of the monumental bamboozle that is corporate reform. I recommend Diane Ravitch’s book Reign of Error for starters, and her blog is a daily format for exposing the damaging effects of the move to privatize and profitize education. Todd Farley’s book Making the Grades is an insider’s expose of Pearson’s shoddy test design process and and standardized test-grading mills.
Additionally, I am requesting that IEA not accept funding from Bill Gates or Pearson or any other entity that seeks to destroy public education. Doing so ensures our demise as a profession, and will hasten the dismantling of democracy itself.
Democracy works best when we prepare students to be critical thinkers who are creative problem solvers and question authority–CCSS are preparing students to be obedient worker bees. Ask yourself why students at elite private schools aren’t being subjected to CCSS or PARCC testing? If these standards and tests are so essential to a great education, wealthy parents would be clamoring to have them for their own children. In fact, exactly the opposite is happening. CCSS and unfair, rigged exams like the PARCC are for the unwashed, undeserving poor and middle class.
Cinda, you disappoint me. I am beginning to believe my dues to the IEA and NEA are not money well spent. Please educate yourself and become an advocate for children and teachers in this state. Call out corporate reform for what it is: a blatant profit-making scheme. Stop falling for the slick marketing. Talk to real teachers about their struggles under this brutal and demoralizing test-and-punish regime. STOP looking to “have a seat at the table.” Don’t collaborate and cooperate with those who will destroy the education profession.
If you need real teachers to talk to, I volunteer myself and my colleagues. Thank you for your attention in this matter. It is critical teachers have the informed support of our biggest professional organization.
LikeLike
I can’t say that she ever has shown any indication that she even considers the rank and file as she makes her pronouncements. It must be a heady feeling to think/pretend that the high muckety-mucks actually pay attention to you. I applaud you for calling Klickna out.
LikeLike
Hey, Arne: Do unto others’ children what you’d have done to your own children. Reporters should ask Arne point blank why he opts his own kids out of Common Core. We Opt Outs are just doing what the reformers are doing.
LikeLike
In Iowa just a few days ago with Arne Duncan sitting right next to him, President Obama said this
“I can’t tell you who to vote for. But I can tell you who to vote against; and that is somebody who decides that somehow teachers don’t deserve the kind of respect, and decent pay, that they deserve.”
Is he saying that we should vote against Duncan if he ever runs for political office in the future?
LikeLike
Pathetic attempt to indirectly paint Duncan in those colors.
LikeLike
Serious question here, but can Duncan be charged with treason or similar high crime? Did he take an oath to uphold and defend the constitution etc..
The man is obviously hostile to position here supposed to be filling. There is plenty of evidence of his close ties to corperations and more stupid quits than George W. Seriously, the enemy is in charge and hostile to all parties he is supposed to be serving. If he took an oath for his position, I am certain he is breaking it.
LikeLike
I do not think technology is the only way to go, especially with some schools because not all students have internet access; hindering the entire purpose of the helpful technology.
LikeLike
In my school in Utah this year, because the tests are all online, classes will have no access to the library or any computer lab for the entirety of fourth term.
LikeLike
Computer tests are only are different way of bubbling in with some alternatives. Actual demonstrations of learning show the process kids go through as well as the results. Did Colombus really discover America? Did explorers actually come from the west coast first? We don’t know but we expect kids to know because we told them so. The process of determining the answer may come up with many answers. If we don’t know which is correct, and we don’t, why should they just puke out our false information?
LikeLike
FYI
Lee Swift, Chairman Charlotte County School Board District 1
“One voice, One Message, One Team” ________________________________
LikeLike
It is insane to think that the test scores are an accurate indicator of achievement thus allowing some to talk about lying. The reality is that when teachers talk to parents in parent conferences I believe good teachers tell the parents how they see their child in the classroom.
Having said that, teachers don’t lie, but letter grades do. If we want truth to education, one piece of the puzzle is to eliminate letter grades completely. And then eliminate the other lie, the standardized test. And that means even the chapter tests.
Saying that an artificial test score is an indicator of achievement is not only unethical, it is immoral. Saying that letter grades are an indicator of achievement is not only unethical, it is immoral.
Are we beginning to get the picture? Change the system of education that was designed in the 18th century and develop one that respects the intelligence and abilities of all kids
LikeLike
If you think Arne cares about students, you are delusional. Arne only cares about Arne. Let me repeat that: Arne only cares about Arne. The proof of this will come when Arne is forced to leave office at the end of the Obama reign and find another job. Watch where he lands.
LikeLike
I’m not sure I agree with you, Bob.
I think ol’ Arne cares a great, great deal about Bill Gates and Eli Broad, and would NEVER do anything to upset them.
LikeLike
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/social-promotion–lausds-prime-mover-for-continued-and-predictable-student-failure–do-they-really-w.html
here is Perdaily’s view on social promotion… and by the way… “they” (Deasy & company) took Lenny away in Handcuffs fro blowing the whistle on social promotion in LAUSD!
SOCIAL PROMOTION- LAUSD’S PRIME MOVER FOR CONTINUED AND PREDICTABLE STUDENT FAILURE- DID THEY EVER REALLY WANT THESE KIDS TO LEARN? by lenny isenberg; Perdaiy
I
know teachers didn’t create social promotion. They, like the students, are just victims of it, since students not being required to master prior grade-level standard precludes a subsequent single-subject credential teacher from doing their jobs- but not from being set up for the blame- which dovetails nicely into an argument for corporate privatization of public education, so that these crooks can get their hands on 40% of the $1 trillion at stake- think credit default swap and sub prime for comparable scams. Did you know Green Dot Charters is traded on the New York Stock Exchange?
I also know that self-esteem is only the historical cover story for allowing social promotion, but ingrained racist attitudes that have no expectation or belief that poor minority children can learn is really the justification in maintaining those in power that have always had it. George “W” Bush didn’t get into Yale and Harvard on his scintillating intellect, but rather his family’s pedigree, which just happens to belong to a group of people who will be in the minority in the not too distant future, unless they can stop the new majority from getting the education necessary, so we can all realize our future in a time when that future is not a sure thing- global warming?
Therefore, the only way for that short-sighted privileged minority to maintain power is to make sure that the minorities that are rapidly becoming the majority don’t have the educational formation necessary to assume their leadership roll in this putative democracy. Who’s going to mow the lawns or take care of the kids? You mean we might have to do that for ourselves? And then there are the crimes of 400 years against Blacks that doesn’t get the scrutiny it would get as long as Black children are allowed to continue underachieving, where even too many minority administrators still believe that asking more would be “culturally insensitive.” Think about that, if you were lucky enough to get the education necessary to do so.
And if you know that minorities can only reach their potential by holding them to a common standard of excellence, it is understandable why those not wanting these people to reach their potential continue to socially promote them into outright failure or, worse yet, being bad public school administrators. But if you question this, of course you’re labeled a racist.
The anti-Vietnam War movement for the first time saw alliances between progressives and minorities that never existed before advancing their common interests in focusing on addressing America’s real problems and not the endless wars that continue to serve the corporate ruling class interests. This scared the excrement out of those in power, who started then to dismantle the education system that had allowed these folks to meaningfully question authority and form alliances based on intelligent perception of common interest and not remain divided by class or race. Yes, good public education is the great equalizer and it is for this reason it must be stopped at any cost by those seeking to keep power or powerlessness, depending how you look at it.
The move to destroy the University of California system and price public post secondary education beyond the means of the average American family, while assuring that inner city American schools are now significantly more segregated than they were pre-Brown in 1954, all started with Reagan’s Republican version of “The New Deal.”
Gutting Brown vs. Board of Education by allowing Whites to escape the cities to suburbs without forced the busing issue or fixing and integrating the schools, sealed the reality we are presently finding it difficult, if not impossible to deal with. Isn’t that what Brown vs. Board of Education predicted?
Most Californians have forgotten that Edmund G. “Pat” Brown significantly subsidized public education in California, because he knew that the state investment would more than repay the investment and make it up by having a dynamic 21st century workforce that everything from aerospace to the computer industry could take advantage in creating a tax base that more than paid back the nominal cost of this idyllic system that has now been and continues to be cannibalized- see how City College of San Francisco et al are being destroyed for online corporate driven “education” that has given this country a $1 trillion student debt with diplomas that often aren’t worth the paper they are written on. And now for the first time in years in California there are good jobs that go wanting, because our workforce doesn’t have the education to fill them.
LikeLike
Essentially he put himself where he can slap himself on the back no matter what the test score results. Heads he wins. Tails we lose.
LikeLike
Love the concluding comment in the article… “And Duncan isn’t smart enough to know the difference between a mountain of education excellence and a giant pile of bullshit…” Sums up the life and career of Arne Duncan. And yes… HIS KIDS GO TO SCHOOL IN ARLINGTON VA and do not take common core high stakes tests or the common core curriculum. Rather telling isn’t it. That pile of BS is growing!
LikeLike
artseagal, when Duncan’s children to the U. of Chicago Lab School, they won’t take CC tests.
LikeLike
Diane,
Did you forget to let every one know that Duncan’s wife is employed by the U. of Chicago Lab School?
Did you also forget that Duncan does not have to live in Washington DC? It is not a requirement for the Secretary of Education as far as I know. Am I wrong?
Did you also forget that Duncan as a free citizen of these United States of America decided to live in Arlington County and sent his kids to Arlington public schools for many years?
Is it his fault that Arlington Public schools do not use Common Core?
Why do you tolerate statements such as “a giant pile of bullshit…”?
Please explain.
LikeLike
Raj,
You just sound like a clueless college kid who asks the same questions again and again because he/she cannot understand the assignments and due dates–despite the fact they are well written in the syllabus.
You are either 1) playing like a dumb kid in a college classroom; or 2) inherently obtuse like Arne the Duncanista.
It’s way beyond reprimand.
LikeLike
dianeravitch:
I am not being sarcastic or funny or snarky—the commenter in question is so bizarrely off topic that I am concerned about him.
That’s how I see it…
😧
LikeLike
A very impressive list of non sequiturs, as usual, Raj.
LikeLike
This is for “RAJ” … you state, “Did you also forget that Duncan as a free citizen of these United States of America decided to live in Arlington County and sent his kids to Arlington public schools for many years…”?
Oh Raj… if common core is SO WONDERFUL as Duncan emphatically suggests and… by the very fact that under his regime, common core is espoused as being the “latest and the greatest” … why ever would he not decided to move to an area where common core prevailed? Something does not seem right about this. I smell a pile of ____ (you can fill in the blank) 🙂 !
LikeLike
The Common Core standards are pretty good, actually. At least in mathematics. And they’re not that different from NCTM’s standards or many state standards that came before. It’s the tests that are awful. And the accountability measures attached to them.
LikeLike
Corey – Maybe. But consider CCSS-ELA.
Most pre-CCSS state standards have long broken language skills into listening, speaking, reading, writing (as does CCSS-ELA). You see the same thing in a good foreign language curriculum. There is considerable overlap; ability proceeds in an organic way rather than step by step. But the sequence underlies language acquisition. Assessing the four components separately helps the teacher adapt curriculum to student needs.
No one knows precisely how the brain acquires identifiable components of literacy. There are a number of pedagogical approches & teachers use and tweak as many as needed. Yet CCSS-ELA breaks those four learning-areas into a sequence of as many as 70 separately-testable ‘skills’ for each grade level– an exhaustive picking-apart of thought processes into their supposed component parts– as though each were teachable/ testable on a stand-alone basis. Do brains even follow such an instruction-manual paradigm?
This leads to implementation problems which are not separate from the standards, but inherent in them, long before we get to testing
LikeLike
This fracturing of skills into component parts goes way back. In trying to analyze what a student needed to do in order to “master” a certain skill, the final behavior was broken down/back engineered into a series of steps that were an orderly chain of successive approximations to the final behavior. While it worked more or less with teaching a child how to brush their teeth, as the tasks became more abstract writing those chains became more and more difficult and not very meaningful. We still hang onto it a bit on IEPs (or at least we did while I was teaching) in the requirement to develop a series of benchmarks that are meant to be steps on the way to mastery of some skill. We then were supposed to teach each subskill/task and guess a schedule for mastery as if learning was an assembly line of tasks to be accomplished. It was fairly easy to ignore these bureaucratic mandates since no one ever checked to see if the process was followed. With inclusion, how a general ed teacher might incorporate this nonsense into their class was never discussed. Perhaps it is easy to see why I have cringed when posters have suggested the wonderfulness of individual education plans for everyone. I know in my head that they are not thinking of the same type of plan that special educators have been mandated to produce, but my heart cringes at the micromanagement that is imposed through IEPs.
LikeLike
The horrific tests overshadow any merits the standards may have. This is because the tests are designed to fail about 60 to 70 per cent of the students. Beyond this many states have attached punitive actions attached to scores that will close schools and end careers.
LikeLike
Take a child from a stressful environment and sit them in a room for hours bubbling in the test. Immoral!
LikeLike
Unfortunately, in practice, you can’t separate the standards from the tests, so even if the standards are the greatest thing since the Big Bang, if the tests suck, so will education.
PARCChitect David Coleman has made it clear that “teachers will teach toward the test”
LikeLike
Maybe it’s time to separate the standards from the artificial test. Use the Collins Sanders amendment to implement innovative assessment
LikeLike
Common Core is copyrighted. The conferred property rights prevent changes, without the owner’s permission. Common Core curriculum, developed by Pearson and Microsoft, is guaranteed substantial profit if (a) the product can be standardized (b) its market is monopolistic or oligopolistic and (c) demand for the product is coerced or, mandated by federal and state government.
LikeLike
In her Oct. 13, 2013 post, “The Common Core Public License: Guess Who Wins”, Mercedes Schneider explained the difference between NCTM/NCTE and Common Core. Quoting, “NCTM and NCTE are voluntary, unconnected to federal funding. Neither must be adopted on a “by state” basis….”
LikeLike
Eight years of the Broad dept of ed. If Hillary of Bernie win, who do they appoint, Deasy? Would anything be different?
LikeLike
Informed and disgusted parents.
LikeLike
What he’s really saying is that our children living in poverty, our children who are English-learners, and our children with special needs are “dumb”. Because they are “dumb”, it follows that they do not deserve jobs with decent pay or benefits. Therefore, it is okay that we send so many jobs out of the country.
LikeLike
Did you ever wonder if these frauds didn’t have each other to appoint them to positions or bring them into the consulting fold or get them onto some board or lobbying company or reform-bent “non-profit” – what would they do for a living? Would they be employable? I know for sure, their nonsense and horrible performances at their jobs/positions would not be tolerated. They would not be considered successful employees.
LikeLike
What is interesting is that by him being the arbiter of “truth” it automatically assumes an air of power/knowledge/superiority to those whom are deigned to be inferior and must receive this knowledge and believe it.
Or it could just be his huge *bleeping* ego.
LikeLike
This old episode of This American Life will tell you all you need to know about Arne Duncan. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/275/two-steps-back
LikeLike
Well, I can think of at least one person whose teacher must have lied to him.
LikeLike
Gotcha!! 🙂
LikeLike
When in parent conferences teachers have a chance to explain in detail what the child is accomplishing. However, when forced to letter grades, the lies began because grades are a lie. Yet we keep giving them.
We are forced to make a decision to pass kids with a D-, without sufficient learning or fail them into oblivion. Isn’t it time to change the system to allow a viable alternative to that?
We are our own worst enemy
LikeLike
This is simply hyperbole as a means to an end. Arne Duncan is manipulating the public into believing the same ol’ stereotype of teachers as inept, incompetent, motivated by “huge” paychecks, with whole summer vacations off. It’s a ruse. And I watch people buy into from those who don’t believe their tax money should go to public schools and those who are enraged by all that has happened since NCLB and particularly RTtP. Duncan’s statement goes right to the heart of parent’s concerns for their child’s future and those enraged by the “money” being thrown at teachers (instead of rightly at corporate reform packages: Pearson curriculum materials, professional development by consultants, testing packages for SBAC, PARCC, lobbyists for corporate ed.). The simple, straight honest answer is that the end is privatization of public education. Look at stock portfolios and the rise in investing in corporate education co. stocks for a “well balanced portfolio”. We can be enraged all we want, but unless you know who the real enemy is, all the indignation you can must from a lifetime will not stop this steamroller from moving ahead.
LikeLike
They are running a scam on public schools but we are contributing by providing them the ammo. Letter grades are a lie, so he says teachers are lying. Yet we still insist on giving letter grades. More ammo for the scammers.
We use poverty as a blanket term. Yes poverty causes childhood stress and many other problems. But there are those children who have strong support systems and do well. One former student of mine invited me to her celebration of her masters degree. If we lump all in poverty under one umbrella, we feed into those who say poverty isn’t destiny. Yet we still use poverty without detail.
We fight, rightly so, against the test, but we provide no viable alternative to it. I don’t hear anyone talking about the Collins Sanders amendment to ESEA ( read at http://www.wholechildreform.com) that allows innovative assessment. Instead we just say opt out opt out. And that turns many civil rights groups against us. Again, feeding the opposition.
They say we pass students on without learning, however the alternative is often failing them into oblivion. Yet we don’t talk about a third alternative of taking kids from where they are.
We are our own worst enemy. We are forced to lie to parents by giving artificial letter grades, while others lie to parents by saying the test is an indicator of real achievement.
We are our own worst enemy and until we wake up and offer a viable alternative, our schools will continue to perish. And there replacements will offer nothing new.
It is time to stop trying to fit all kids into a small box full of word games and math riddles. It is time for the school to meet the needs of the students rather than the other way around
LikeLike
Wall Street cannibals attacking schools, aren’t influenced by what occurs or, doesn’t occur, in education. Over the past 3 decades, they bought companies, with the companies’ own assets, loading them with so much debt that they have no new products in the pipeline. In the past, R&D would have resulted in new products, spurring growth in new markets. Simultaneously, companies with the luxury of cash on hand, turned to buying back their stock, instead of expanding, because middle class demand is too soft to support market growth (due to concentrated wealth). The end result is hedge funds are desperate for investments that will return money to their clients. There are more mutual funds and hedge funds than there are companies in which to invest. Without viable alternatives, financial managers searched for victims to cannibalize. Cost analysis identified the greatest return/ least risk, for the smallest price, as the promotion of charter schools and the abolishment of Social Security, i.e. eating the young and old.
Silicon Valley is slightly different but, their goals and limitations are similar.
Performance of schools/students is, nothing more than a talking point for the sale of the Silicon Valley and the Wall Street product packages, which were designed to provide returns to their investors.
LikeLike
Do any of us think that the 70% failure wasn’t a goal of Duncan’s and every other reformer and reformish politician?? OF COURSE IT WAS!
Why do we expect Duncan and everyone to now somehow seem troubled? IT WAS THEIR GOAL!
They are trying to make current teachers look like the problem. This is that data manufacturing process designed to prove that.
LikeLike
Failure is still based on the artificial test with everyone learning at the same rate in the same way. Success is turning our kids into robots, The Stepford kids
LikeLike
All of this failure has happened after seven years on Arne Duncan’s watch. That’s the way I view it. Seven years of RttT and this is what we get. Seems like that’s a record to run away from rather than embrace.
LikeLike
Does this mean that Duncan was lying about the “Chicago Miracle” that supposedly occurred when he was Daley’s hand-picked school CEO here?
LikeLike
That is exactly what I was thinking Mike. Let’s see him own that lie since his “gains” evaporated. Smoke does dissipate rather quickly, and I doubt Arne has many mirrors around.
LikeLike
Terachers in the privacy of parent conferences, I believe, are truthful. However, letter grades that teachers are forced to give are lies. Teachers are forced to either pass slow achieving kids with a D- or fail them into oblivion. Unless we change course and offer a viable alternative to the test, letter grades and the ignorant fail system, we will perish.
Tell those who do conferences to have speakers who have a vision for the future, not ONLY opt out or how bad the reformers are. That message will not be complete without this alternative to the broken system of education.
CHANGE OR PERISH!.
LikeLike