Jennifer Berkshire–aka EduShyster–here interviews Dale Russakoff, author of the new book about what happened to Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift to reform the public schools of Newark. I am working on my own review, so won’t say anything more other than to say it’s a fascinating read for education junkies.
Archives for the month of: September, 2015
This teacher teaches children with severe disabilities. She is a BAT. She is conscientious and devoted to her work. She was rated “developing,” which is one step above “ineffective.”
She writes:
“In my career (and this is every year), I am potty training, teaching self hygiene, teaching self regulation, executive functioning, how to SPEAK, for God’s sake.
“I teach children how to hold a pencil, write their name, the fundamentals that they need and more. On top of that, I teach a ridiculous curriculum, mandated by NYS, to a self-contained class of what has been Kindergarten through 3rd graders, sometimes all in one class. I have taught class sizes from 12 to 17, when there were only supposed to be 12. This past year, my class was a mix of children with autism, children who are emotionally disturbed and unmedicated, children with speech and language impairments, and children who are learning disabled. In the time they were with me, these children made progress beyond your wildest dreams and that is because of me and my team, not some ridiculous curriculum.
“According to my rating, my teaching was effective and the same went for my state measures. Where I apparently “fail” as a teacher is on my local measure. My children, as described above, were asked to take a writing exam in which they listened to and took notes on an informational text. From there they took their notes and were expected to write a paragraph or more relating to the topic. My children did as they were asked, to the best of their ability, when most came to me in the beginning unable to accurately write their name.
“I am not sharing this to garner sympathy or cry “poor me,” but rather to expose what this profession has become and how discombobulated this system is. I also want others to know that they are not alone when it comes to these ridiculous score adjustments.”
Read this Facebook page, created by Florida parents, and you will never believe another of Jeb Bush’s boasts about what he accomplished as governor.
When he boasts about job creation in Florida, think about this: Jeb’s “Jobs” – low-paid service industry jobs that left many Floridians without health insurance and scrambling for affordable housing amid a real estate boom that helped fuel business-friendly tax breaks.”
If he boasts about higher education, remember that he raised tuition by 48%.
This Facebook page will grow as parents add more entries.
Audrey Beardsley reports here on the trial of teacher evaluation in New Mexico.
She is testifying Monday so she keeps her views to herself, but she quotes others.
This is a quote from an article written by another observer at the trial:
“Joel Boyd, [a highly respected] superintendent of the Santa Fe Public Schools, testified that ‘glaring errors’ have marred the state’s ratings of teachers in his district.” He testified that “We should pause and get it right,” also testifying that “the state agency has not proven itself capable of identifying either effective or ineffective teachers.” Last year when Boyd challenged his district’s 1,000 or so teachers’ rankings, New Mexico’s Public Education Department (PED) “ultimately yielded and increased numerous individual teacher rankings…[which caused]..the district’s overall rating [to improve] by 17 percentage points.”
State Senator Bill Soules, who is also a recently retired teacher, testified that “his last evaluation included data from 18 students he did not teach. ‘Who are those 18 students who I am being evaluated on?’ he asked the judge.”
Jeff Bryant reports that the Seattle teachers’ strike is nearing an end. The teachers are very pleased with the gains they made on behalf of their students.
Was a pay increase part of the settlement? Yes. Seattle teachers live in one of the most expensive cities in the nation and have gone for years without a cost of living increase.
But what mattered most to teachers and what precipitated the strike were their concerns about conditions for their students.
Jesse Hagopian, a spokesman for teachers, said: “For the first time, our union was able to make social justice the center of the debate. We took a huge step forward.”
Also in the settlement terms, according to a local television news outlet, were student-centered demands including requests for guaranteed 30 minutes of recess for all elementary students, additional staff such as school counselors and therapists, a reduction in the over-testing of students, and the creation of new teams in 30 schools to ensure equitable learning opportunities and treatment of students regardless of race.
While recess may seem to be an unworthy demand to the reform-minded editors of the [Seattle] Times, classroom teachers understand it to be something critical to the health, development, and academic success of their students, as numerous research reports have found.
Having access to school counselors, therapists, and other specialists is critical to many students, but in inadequately funded school districts, such as Seattle, these are the positions that are routinely the first to be cut.
The demand for less testing is also, ultimately a student-centered demand. As Hagopian explains, this time to Erin Middlewood for The Progressive magazine, “’We oppose these tests because there are too many of them and they’re narrowing the curriculum and they’re making our kids feel bad, but they’re also part of maintaining institutional racism,’ says Hagopian, who serves as an adviser to Garfield’s Black Student Union.”
Hagopian sees the increasingly popular campaign to opt out of standardized tests as being connected to the Black Lives Matter movement because money that should be used to support and educate children and youth of color is being directed to punitive measures such as testing and incarceration.
When I posted the other day about Malala Yousafzai, I said that she had been shot in the head, survived, became an advocate for the education of girls, and won a Nobel Peace Prize.
But there is so much more to know about this remarkable young woman.
“Her family runs a chain of schools in the region. In early 2009, when she was 11–12, Yousafzai wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC detailing her life under Taliban occupation, their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls in the Swat Valley. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region. Yousafzai rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and she was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by South African activist Desmond Tutu.
On the afternoon of 9 October 2012, Yousafzai boarded her school bus in the northwest Pakistani district of Swat. A gunman asked for her by name, then pointed a pistol at her and fired three shots. One bullet hit the left side of Yousafzai’s forehead, travelled under her skin through the length of her face, and then went into her shoulder. In the days immediately following the attack, she remained unconscious and in critical condition, but later her condition improved enough for her to be sent to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, for intensive rehabilitation. On 12 October, a group of 50 Islamic clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwā against those who tried to kill her, but the Taliban reiterated their intent to kill Yousafzai and her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai.
The assassination attempt sparked a national and international outpouring of support for Yousafzai. Deutsche Welle wrote in January 2013 that Yousafzai may have become “the most famous teenager in the world.” United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown launched a UN petition in Yousafzai’s name, demanding that all children worldwide be in school by the end of 2015; it helped lead to the ratification of Pakistan’s first Right to Education Bill.
A 2013 issue of Time magazine featured Yousafzai as one of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World”. She was the winner of Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize, and the recipient of the 2013 Sakharov Prize. In July that year, she spoke at the headquarters of the United Nations to call for worldwide access to education, and in October the Government of Canada announced its intention that its parliament confer Honorary Canadian citizenship upon Yousafzai. Even though she is fighting for women’s and children’s rights, she did not describe herself as feminist when asked on Forbes Under 30 Summit. In February 2014, she was nominated for the World Children’s Prize in Sweden. In May, Yousafzai was granted an honorary doctorate by the University of King’s College in Halifax. Later in 2014, Yousafzai was announced as the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education. Aged 17 at the time, Yousafzai became the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate.”
Some readers have insisted that if she doesn’t take the SAT, she should be rejected by Stanford. I think that’s ridiculous. The admissions process for an elite college always involves a mix of priorities. Frankly, she honors Stanford by expressing an interest in becoming a student there.
Our readers have debated whether Stanford should insist that she take the SAT to prove her ability to enroll there. Some say, a rule’s a rule, no exceptions. Personally, I think that Stanford’s pig-headed insistence on subjecting this brilliant young woman to a standardized test aligned to the Common Core is absurd.
Our blog poet wrote a poem about Malala and this situation:
“”One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world. Education is the only solution.” — Malala Yousafzai, at her UN speech
“One student number , one ed-u-bot, one iPad, and one test can change the world. Testing is the only solution.” — Arne Duncan
Yesterday, I posted that the Network for Public Education had endorsed Lee Barrios for a seat on the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
This is an unusually important election. At the last election, corporate reformers from out of state flooded Louisiana with dollars to support a state board controlled by Governor Bobby Jindal. That board went on to endorse charters, vouchers, Common Core, high-stakes testing, and attacks on teachers’ rights.
Over the past few years, we have seen corporate reformers lose elections again and again, despite outspending the candidate who knows the community best. People power can beat money power, if the people are informed.
Lee is a retired teacher, who received National Board certification. She is dedicated to children and to public education.
Please help her if you can. Any contribution will be appreciated.
Lee, knock on as many doors as you can. Stand in front of the post office and the grocery stores. Go where the people are and tell them that out of state billionaires want to buy their public schools and privatize them.
Go, Lee, go!
Seth Sandronsky, a journalist in California, loves Mercedes Schneider’s new book, “Common Core Dilemma: “Who Owns Our Schools?”
In this review, he summarizes the main themes of the book.
He writes:
“Uncle Sam helped to spur the Common Core State Standards, the newest “big thing” in education reform that profits businesses. Mercedes K. Schneider names the actors and unveils their deeds and words in Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools? (Teachers College Press, 2015).
“A laser-like focus on a politically-connected class of edupreneurs propels her empirical case against education privatization’s bid to establish national test-driven assessments and standards for K-12 public schools. There is a vital history here, away from public view for years.
“Schneider clarifies such deliberate obscurity. In an Introduction, 11 chapters, Conclusion, Glossary, Notes and an Index, she investigates the relevant CCSS methods and motives.
“Schneider begins with a look at the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. It in part paved the path for the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 under GOP President George W. Bush that Sen. And Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders voted for, too.
“Central to the NCLB is high-stakes student testing. It fuels education privatization. Teachers’ livelihoods depend on their students’ test scores.
“Under this small carrot-and-big stick framework, the NCLB used state education standards to assess and punish disproportionately public schools in black and brown communities. Democratic Party politicians facilitated this process.
“Yet such a policy reliance upon state standards proved to limit the playing field of education reform. Such limits to capital accumulation generally require federal intervention, with Pres. Obama’s Race To The Top, the CCSS-friendly offspring of the NCLB, a case in point.
“The reformers nearly to a person are not teachers. That fact is striking, and runs a thread throughout Schneider’s book, outraging her and maybe readers, too.
“The CCSS solution to the limits of state standards propelled Achieve, Inc.’s grand plan to create a “common” set of K-12 standards in in English and math. Achieve is part of a triad that includes American College Testing and the College Board pushing the CCSS.
“Elected by nobody, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State Officers own the copyright for the CCSS. If that is not an attack on democracy, what is?
“And as Schneider shows, the plan for the CCSS slithered ahead in stealth for reasons, we read, of preparing US public schools for the intrusion of global monopoly corporations. Business knows best, according to wealthy interest such as Bill and Melinda Gates.
“For example, Schneider shines the light on Gates and luminaries such as IBM’s CEO Louis Gerstner, Jr. He drips arrogance in his ignorance of what classroom teachers and their pupils do on a daily basis, while positioning Achieve to suckle from the CCSS.
“Readers get to know the CCSS word salad of groups and terms. This language of edureform is a try to obfuscate the privatization of American public education.”
There is more, of course. The media writes about the Common Core by reading the press releases of its advocates. Schneider’s book might well be subtitled: The Secret History of the Common Core Standards.”.
A must for journalists, parents, and educators.
It is hard to remember that we once had stable schools in this country. That was before No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top went into full implementation. Now, schools in African American and Latino communities are routinely targeted for state takeovers, turnarounds, transformations, and transfer to chartering entities, without the consent of the people who live in the communities and the people whose children attend the schools. The billionaires pushing the “parent triggers” want parents to have the power to turn their school over to a charter corporation, but they are unwilling to grant them the power to say “no” to a takeover or a closure ordered by the Mayor, the Governor, or some bureaucrat.
Takeover goes in only one direction: privatization.
If this subject interests you, you will find this brief report of great value. It summarizes the “systematic disenfranchisement of African-American and Latino communities through school takeovers.” It describes the failure of all of these measures, from the takeover of New Orleans to the takeover of Detroit to the takeover of Newark to the takeover of public schools in Tennessee. One thing that all these schools have in common is that they enroll children of color. The powerful assume that African American and Latino parents lack the political power to stop them, and so far they have been correct.
The hunger strike at Dyett High School in Chicago demonstrates that there are ways for the “powerless” to take power. With the strength of their will, they can force those who hold the levers of power to back down.
That same fortitude is needed in all the threatened communities. The same local leadership can change the outcome.
Steven Singer has noticed some striking similarities among corporate reformers: they didn’t do well in school. Others have noted that most of them went to elite private schools.
Scott Walker dropped out of Marwuette University with only a year to go; no one knows why. His grades were mediocre.
Campbell Brown went to private schools and was kicked out of her high school.
Bill Gates, as is well known, dropped out of Harvard.
Singer wonders whether they are angry at teachers because of their personal failures.
He wonders:
“Are these former bad students more interested in fixing the perceived problems they see with the system? Or are they consciously or unconsciously seeking revenge against a system that found them to be inadequate?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 