Carol Burris carefully reviewed the NAEP scores. Listen to her interview on public radio. Unlike many commentators, she has the advantage of being an experienced educator and is also executive director of the Network for Public Education.
Archives for the year of: 2015
The Network for Public Education Action Fund is pleased to endorse Dr. Suzie Abajian for the South Pasadena School Board
Dr. Suzie Abajian is an educator, in every sense of the word. She has sixteen years of experience as a teacher, field supervisor, educational researcher, and professor, and holds a Ph.D. in Education from UCLA. Dr. Abajian taught Mathematics at Loyola Marymount University for four years, and is currently a professor of education at Occidental College. She has been a committed supporter of public education throughout her career, and will bring a profound understanding of education policy, effective teaching, and education research to the South Pasadena School Board.
NPE President Diane Ravitch has offered Dr. Abajian her unqualified endorsement, stating, “Dr Suzie Abajian is exactly the kind of person who should run for school board and be elected to serve. She is a well-informed advocate for students and for educational change. I hope that the people of South Pasadena turn out to elect her for their school board.”
Abajian has already demonstrated that she can successfully work within the system to bring about positive change for students. She was on the steering committee for the Save Adult Education campaign that kept the Adult Education Program in Los Angeles Unified School District open. She is also on the steering committee of the Ethnic Studies Now Coalition that made Ethnic Studies a graduation requirement in select school districts in California.
Teacher, El Rancho School Board Vice President, and fellow Ethnic Studies Now Coalition member Jose Lara has also endorsed Dr. Abajian, stating, “Dr. Abajian championed Ethnic Studies in our schools, which meant that having the literature and history of students of color, Latino, Black, Armenian etc. in the classroom is as essential as expanding STEAM programs.”
“She has been a champion for students and educators from many years now,” Lara continued. “She has been an advocate for equitable funding of public school and maintaining essential programs like Adult Education, music, arts, and expanded Pre-K education.”
A strong proponent of small class sizes, Dr. Abajian stated, ‘Class size definitely matters! Class size should be kept under 20. I will do whatever I can to support legislation and policy changes that reduce class size.”
Dr. Abajian immigrated to the United States from Syria with her family when she was 12 years old. “I can identify with the struggles of students who don’t quite fit into our school district. Our school board needs to have individuals from more diverse backgrounds that better represent the diversity of the city in which we live.”
NPE Action agrees that Dr. Abajian is an ideal candidate for the South Pasadena School Board. Please visit her website to learn more about her, and do what you can to support her campaign by donating or volunteering.
The Network for Public Education Action Fund endorses Kathleen Gebhardt for the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education in Boulder, Colorado.
Kathleen has an unparalleled combination of experience in education that makes her ideally suited to be a school board member. Not only is she is a graduate of the district, she has been a parent in the district for over 25 years, and has served on several school and district committees. She clearly has a deep and thorough understanding of the issues specific to the Boulder Valley School District.
In addition, Kathleen has spent over 20 years working professionally in education, and currently teaches education law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. She is the Executive Director of Children’s Voices, which is a “non-profit law firm of school advocates dedicated to achieving equal access to a high quality public education for all school-age children in Colorado.” Children’s Voices puts a special emphasis on working on behalf of special education students, English language learners, and children who live in poverty.
It is no surprise that Kathleen has received multiple endorsements, including the Boulder Valley Education Association and Boulder’s newspaper, the Daily Camera. The paper’s endorsement stated, “Kathy Gebhardt’s passion, experience and lifelong commitment to children make her the hands-down favorite and the candidate we endorse for the District C school board seat.”
Kevin Welner, professor at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education and director of the National Education Policy Center, has also endorsed Kathleen. He writes, “If school board members were hired through a normal application process, based on qualifications, Kathy would be hired immediately. No person in the state of Colorado is better qualified for such a position. She has worked tirelessly for two decades to get our children the supports and resources they need for their educations.”
NPE Action agrees that Kathleen’s qualifications are phenomenal, and we urge our members in Boulder to do everything they can to support Kathleen’s campaign. Please visit her website to learn more about her positions on the issues. We are sure you will agree that the Boulder Valley Schools will be well served by Kathleen, and hope you will donate or volunteer to help her win a seat on the school board.
The Network for Public Education Action Fund endorses Helen Gym, a fighter for public schools and children.
NPE Action is proud to join the growing list of organizations endorsing Helen Gym in the Primary Election for a City Council At-Large seat in the city of Philadelphia.
NPE President Diane Ravitch has lauded Helen as a hero of public education and an inspiration for us all. When asked about Helen’s candidacy, Diane said she is “a great advocate for children and education. Philadelphia needs her eloquent voice on the City Council.”
Helen is the mother of three Philadelphia public school students, a former public school teacher, and a fierce advocate for public education in Philadelphia and beyond. She has been a dedicated community activist for two decades; her work has touched on issues regarding taxation, civil rights, criminal justice, jobs, labor, and neighborhood development. She is a founding member of Parents Across America, and the co-founder of Parents United for Public Education, a nationally recognized group of public school parents advancing broad causes for social justice in the Philadelphia public schools. Helen also serves on the editorial board of Rethinking Schools, a social justice education journal.
Philadelphia principal Chris Lehmann, founder of the renowned Science Leadership Academy, said, “Helen Gym has been a champion for the children and the teachers of Philadelphia. She is a tireless advocate who will work to improve public education in our city, and therefore, help Philadelphia become the city we all know it can be.”
Not only has she been a fearless advocate for fair funding, bringing national attention to the dire underfunding situation in Philadelphia, she has developed a plan to ensure that going forward the city’s schools have the funds they need without over burdening homeowners. Please read more about her Fair-Share Plan, which will ensure that all Philadelphia students have access to the services such as nurses, counselors, libraries, music, and the arts.
Helen also supports less testing in our schools stating, “Tests should be one measure which informs practice. It should not be used as a major measure to evaluate teachers, determine pay, close schools or deny children a diploma or access to a quality education.”
And true to form, Helen has backed up her belief with action. When the city recently estimated that only 22% of students would graduate, Helen called for the end of the state’s Keystone exams, which are end of course exams used as a graduation requirement. Helen said, “The School District’s projection of a 22 percent graduation rate when the state and city have failed to adequately meet schools’ needs is an outrage and threatens the future of hundreds of thousands of students in this city.” She added, “No one wins with a testing system destined for failure.”
You can read more about Helen’s education policy positions here.
Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers said, “For Philadelphia’s educators, the choice to endorse Helen Gym for City Council At Large was an easy one. No other candidate possesses Helen’s combination of passion for quality public schools and deep knowledge of education issues.”
We urge you to do what you can to ensure Helen is elected to be the champion the children and teachers of Philadelphia so desperately need. Please visit her website to donate to her campaign and help spread the word about her candidacy.
Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced that Dr. Jere Hochman, the superintendent of the Bedford school district, will become his chief education advisor.
Jere Hochman is a wise and experienced educator. Maybe he can educate the governor. He often comments on this blog, and I have posted some of his newsletters to parents and staff.
According to the local newspaper:
A Westchester County school superintendent is joining Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s cabinet as his top education aide.
Jere Hochman, who has headed the Bedford Central School District since 2008, will leave to become Cuomo’s deputy secretary for education, Gannett’s Albany Bureau has learned.
Cuomo is set to announce the appointment Wednesday.
“Dr. Hochman brings tremendous experience and an in-depth knowledge of the public education system to his new role,” Cuomo said in a statement. “He has spent his career working to strengthen learning environments and make schools a better place for all, and he will be a valuable member of our policy team.”
A former English teacher and school principal, Hochman will become the Democratic governor’s top education adviser at a time when the state’s implementation of the Common Core education standards continues to receive criticism from parents and teachers.
Prior to his appointment, Hochman was also the president of the Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents, the organization representing school chiefs in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Dutchess counties. The region has become a hotbed for parent anger over the state’s standardized tests and the Common Core.
Good luck, Jere.
John Thompson, historian and teacher, says that he usually doesn’t worry about principals, but this piece demonstrates that he knows the stress they are under in the current context of fire first, aim later.
Principals and assistant principals give up the best job in the world, teaching, for one of the most stressful of careers. In my experience, they do it in order to help more students. Three excellent articles describe the additional pressure that is being placed on principals in an age of reform.
Clearly, these efforts will not be sustainable if we do not start treating school leaders as valuable resources that can’t be squandered.
My principals all had to claim to believe that better instruction, data, “High Expectations!,” and leadership were enough to turn around the highest-challenge schools. The few who really believed that systemic progress could be driven by instruction within the four walls of the classroom could be annoying, but they were sincere. For instance, one of those frustrating assistant principals faced down a student with a loaded gun rather than take the safe path and allow the police to handle it.
For over a decade, the prime method of turning around schools with the highest concentrations of generational poverty and kids who have survived extreme trauma has been to use up and throw away dedicated teachers and principals. Chalkbeat NY’s Geoff Decker, in “Q&A with Automotive High’s Principal: ‘There’s Always Pressure in This Building,’” featured one of those principals, Caterina Lafergola. She has fought the good fight at New York City’s Automotive High School since 2011.
Lafergola says, “You can’t do this work unless you love it because it will chew you up and spit you out. I love the work. I love the kids.”
The principal cites two huge problems, the “compliance issues” that a school leader must handle, and students’ trauma. Lafergola says of her students, “They’re traumatized. Last year, one of our babies was murdered. Died like a dog in the street.”
Automotive is no longer a “madhouse,” where it took 20 minutes to transition between classes and where there were rampant gang affiliations and drugs. If the standard school improvement model was working, by now Automotive would be creating some stability. But, of Lafergola’s 32 teachers, 14 are brand new. On the other hand, perhaps under Chancellor Carmen Farina and Mayor Bill de Blasio and with the implementation of Restorative Practices, more improvement will be possible.
In a second instructive article, the Hechinger Report’s Peg Tyre featured New Orleans charter school principal, Krystal Hardy. Significantly, it is entitled, “Why Do More than Half of Principals Quit after Five Years?”
When Hardy first took over, Tyre reports that her office “became something of a war room. Colorful line graphs affixed to the walls showed student progress on interim standardized tests.” The young principal “planned every school day around maximizing opportunities to provide guidance to her staff. She assigned daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals for teachers. All were written out in crisp detail and color-coded.”
Every day, the former TFA instructional coach “gave teachers a mini-lesson on instruction,” then “checked her teachers’ lesson plans, and once a week she issued a newsletter that “singled out teachers for ‘glows’ and ‘grows,’ and set goals for the coming week.
Despite the principal’s all-consuming dedication, test scores were disappointing, evaluations further stressed out teachers, and five of the 14 teachers in the kindergarten through fifth-grade classes left. The article ends with possibly good news; Hardy’s “tenor has softened.” Tyre describes the principal’s evolution as a lesson for reformers. She concludes, “In their zeal to create new models to help vulnerable children, mission-driven education reformers across the country have created schools where the days are demanding and the goals grueling. It’s why even the most gifted principals and teachers leave so quickly.”
Third, Stanford’s Professor Emeritus Larry Cuban published an excerpt from Kristina Rizga’s Mission High. This features San Francisco principal Eric Guthertz. Guthertz almost lost his job in 2009 due to School Improvement Grant regulations, but he was fortunate that the district has been supportive of his pedagogy – one that is a challenge to the S.I.G. norm.
Guthertz says that “most of the work that helps students develop as mature and compassionate adults happens in the classrooms,” but he and his team “spend at least half of their time building a healthy and inclusive school culture outside of the classrooms.”
Mission High’s administrative team also observes classrooms regularly, studies the data, especially referrals and suspensions and the number of Fs and Ds disaggregated by ethnicity and race. The purpose, though, is to support students and teachers. One-on-one teacher coaching is provided and teachers plan units together and analyze student work collectively. Consequently, “Mission High is the only school in the district that teaches high numbers of African American, Latino, and low-income students and is no longer considered a ‘hard-to-staff school’” The district’s chief communications officer says, “Mission High is famous at the district because it is known as a learning community and good, supportive place to work.”
Teaching in the inner city has always been tough, and being a principal even harder. After NCLB ramped up the pressure, my school rarely had year when a principal or an assistant principal did not require hospitalization in the spring. Most were hit by heart-related illnesses and probably all of their conditions were complicated by the stress of the job. Of course, many veteran teachers were also felled by the conditions in the inner city. For the life of me, I can’t understand why reformers have been so cavalier about using up and throwing out educators. But, maybe articles and books like these will make a difference and, to borrow Cuban’s phrase, we will stop disposing teachers and principals like worn-out tissue paper.
Kevin Welner, executive director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, has advice for the test-loving reformers: Stop making excuses!
For the past 15 years or more, a passel of organizations have pushed test-based accountability; they never met a test they didn’t like and they used test scores to bash teachers and American public education. They ARE the status quo. They own the U.S. Department of Education. Their views are backed by federal law, the No Child Left Behind Act, and by the billions handed out by the federal Race to the Top. They have had the admiration and financial support of Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, and dozens of other philanthropic (testophilic) foundations. Their theory was simple: More testing will produce higher achievement; test scores can be used to weed out bad teachers; test scores can be used to fire teachers and principals, and to close public schools. Test, test, test, test and one day all children will be proficient, everyone will go to college, and there will be no more poverty.
When NAEP 2013 scores were released, Arne Duncan boasted about the success of test-based accountability. See? The scores are up! The states that got Race to the Top funding are making higher scores! See! See!
Except: the 2015 NAEP scores didn’t go up. In fact, most were either flat or declined. Some of the scores declined the most in the Race to the Top winning states. The theory failed.
But, as Kevin Welner shows, the test-loving reformers now resort to excuses. Sometimes they even sound like those who disagree with them: It must be demography! It must be poverty! It must be the opt-out movement! It must be the lingering effects of the 2008 recession! It is an anomaly, a minor blip! Wait until 2025 before judging!
Kevin writes that it is a mistake to draw causal inferences from test scores, as is now so common. There are many reasons that scores go up or down, and not all of them are apparent. I would add that it is a mistake to use standardized tests as the Holy Grail of education because they have limitations and flaws; they are a social construct, not a scientific instrument. If nothing else, the 2015 scores should teach test-loving reformers not to make tests the measure of all things. Perhaps now they will agree that schools and education and students must be evaluated with far greater sophistication and understanding than simplistic standardized tests permit.
Kevin Welner writes:
This morning’s release of results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reports a dip in scores, according to multiple sources. These lower grades on the Nation’s Report Card are not good news for anyone, but they are particularly bad news for those who have been vigorously advocating for “no excuses” approaches — standards-based testing and accountability policies like No Child Left Behind. Such policies follow a predictable logic: (a) schools are failing; and (b) schools will quickly and somewhat miraculously improve if we implement a high-stakes regime that makes educators responsible for increasing students’ test scores.
To be sure, the sampling approach used by NAEP and the lack of student-level data prohibit direct causal inferences about specific policies. Although such causal claims are made all the time, they are not warranted. It is not legitimate to point to a favored policy in Massachusetts and validly claim that this policy caused that state to do well, or to a disfavored policy in West Virginia and claim that it caused that state to do poorly.
However, as Dr. Bill Mathis and I explained eight months ago in an NEPC Policy Memo, it is possible to validly assert, based in part on NAEP trends, that the promises of education’s test-driven reformers over the past couple decades have been unfulfilled. The potpourri of education “reform” policy has not moved the needle—even though reformers, from Bush to Duncan, repeatedly assured us that it would.
This is the tragedy. It has distracted policymakers’ attention away from the extensive research showing that, in a very meaningful way, achievement is caused by opportunities to learn. It has diverted them from the truth that the achievement gap is caused by the opportunity gap. Those advocating for today’s policies have pushed policymakers to disregard the reality that the opportunity gap arises more from out-of-school factors than inside-of-school factors.
Instead, they assured us that success was a simple matter of adults looking beyond crumbling buildings and looking away from the real-life challenges of living with racism or poverty. As a substitute, we were told to look toward a “no excuses” expectation for all children. This mantra has driven policy for an entire generation of students. The mantra was so powerful that we as a nation were able to ignore the facts and fail to provide our children with opportunities to learn.
His question: Will we now focus where we should have focused for the past 15 years, on opportunity to learn?
His wish: Would the reformers please reflect and stop making excuses?
Massachusetts is widely considered the state with the most successful public schools in the nation. Its students outperform the rest of the nation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The state has a strong tradition of local control. It also has great independent schools. But it is the state that launched public education, whether you trace them to their 17th century roots or to the common school revival led by the great Horace Mann in the 1830s and 1840s.
But now the cradle of public education is under pressure to remove the state cap on charter schools, the entering wedge of privatization. The usual privatizing groups have descended on the legislature, abetted by a Republican governor.
The privatizers, as usual, claim they have silver bullets or secret sauce that can save poor kids from failing schools. This is balderdash, but who will tell the legislators? They are impressed by the Walton-funded CREDO studies and by a study from Harvard’s Center in Education Policy, not only Gares-funded but including leading charter advocates as faculty members (Thomas Kane, Martin West, Marguerite Roza).
But now another set of voices has weighed in: the Massachusetts school committees, or local school boards. The school committees ask the basic question: Whose children are served? Charters have a well-established record of selecting their students to reduce or exclude students who might pull down their scores. Charters are also known for boasting about their scores. They were supposed to be innovative, but the no-excuses charter look like 19th century schools. This is not the kind of innovation that should be imposed or shared with public schools.
In state after state, the charter industry is under a cloud because of political and financial scandals.
Why doesn’t Massachusetts improve its public schools, using research-based strategies, instead of privatizing them?
Education is a profession that is supposed to be about nurturing, developing, helping, supporting, and building not only intellectual competence but affective qualities. Race to the Top, with its harsh and punitive approach to school reform, ruined the lives and careers of many dedicated educators. Many were harmed, not only children, who were tested endlessly, but teachers and principals who were unjustly fired.
What happened to the principals who were fired because their school had low test scores? Carole Meyer of Washington State was one of them. She was fired in 2010 because her school was among the lowest performing in the state. She decided to write a dissertation about what happened to her and others similarly placed. She interviewed six other principals who were fired in 2010. She earned her doctorate. She is now a principal in a middle school that she has led successfully for the past five years. Her dissertation can be found here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxkcmNhcm9sZWxtZXllcmVkZHxneDozNzc1OTI4Yjc1ODNiZTRi.
The title of her dissertation is “School Principals’ Reassignment Under Race to the Top Legislation: Washington State Principals’ Sense Making and Affective Experience”
She writes:
The purpose of this qualitative interview study was to explore how K-12 public school principals in Washington State “made sense” of the experience of being reassigned under the provisions of Washington State’s version of RTTT.
The research questions this study attempted to answer were:
(a) How do principals describe what happened when they were reassigned?
(b) How did principals work with staff, students, district, and community around the issue of being reassigned?
(c) How did reassignment impact principals emotionally, personally, and professionally?
(d) What are principals’ evaluations of this type of policy approach?
And (e) What were the human costs/benefits associated with reassignment?
Conceptual frames related to human costs (Rice & Malen, 2003), sensemaking (Weick, 1995, 2005, & 2007), and Kübler-Ross’s Grief Construct (1969) were used to guide the study. Extensive in-depth interviews were conducted with six selected principal participants to explore their experiences of reassignment.
The major themes that emerged from the data analysis were (a) costs of reassignment associated with RTTT policy implementation, (b) principal critique of this type of policy approach, and (c) the sensemaking journey of each principal impacted by reassignment. This study found that reassignment had substantial impacts on principals, their critiques of the policy included: (a) unintended consequences; (b) the number of years required to successfully turn around a low-performing school; (c) lack of alignment with good practice in schools; (d) SIG grants’ failure to demonstrate notable benefits to students; (e) the mistake of funding education through competitive means; and (f) the importance of political action and principal “voice” in shaping education policy.
However, over time, the participants were able to resume a sense of normalcy in their work.
The following four major conclusions from this study can be stated: (a) RTTT is a draconian approach to education reform and its costs outweigh the benefits; (b) RTTT policy’s restrictive requirements were seen as unfair and left little choice for districts; (c) principal “voice” is a critical component in education reform; and (d) conceptual frames of Rice and Malen (2003), Weick (1995, 2005, & 2007), and the Kübler-Ross Grief Construct (1969) describe participant’s experiences.
Carol Burris, experienced educator and executive director of the Network for Public Education, writes hereL about the 2015 NAEP scores.
She reminds us that Arne Duncan crowed about the scores in 2013. His Race to the Top states proved he was right. Now he says, it takes time to absorb the changes I have imposed on the nation’s schools. Wait until 2025 to judge.
As usual, a brilliant piece.
Diane Ravitch's blog 