Archives for the year of: 2015
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Ed Berger: Can We Save Our Public Schools in Arizona?

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2015 //
6

Ed Berger says that if schools are judged by who chooses them, the people of Arizona have spoken: 85% of the state’s children are in public schools. Yet the policymakers keep trying to find ways to funnel public money to private operators of charters and vouchers. The culprits are financed by the Koch brothers, encouraged by ALEC, and most are motivated by simple greed.

He writes:

Will our community be able to save our public schools? The election for a bond, and override funding is November 3. I could wait until the results are in, but here are the issues. Citizens be aware:

The overwhelming majority of parents want their children in public schools. Not charter schools, partial schools, religious schools, or schools which keep out parents, destroy the joys of childhood, and use force as motivation. Parents have choice and they have chosen. Over 85% of Arizona parents have chosen public schools.

The overwhelming majority of parents want their child exposed to many disciplines as well as math and reading. They want their children exposed to art, humanities, science, social studies, history , government, health, physical education, and languages. They want their child to love learning and love their learning community. Parents want their children prepared as interdisciplinary, self-directed learners ready for the future.

They want childhood’s magic honored with time to play and explore and do the things children must do to develop into healthy adults. They want pre-K through great K-12 programs.

Parents know that childhood is a critical developmental time for their child. They like and support the way public school classrooms and the curricula are developmentally appropriate. They know that foundation skills are acquired at different times for each child and that forcing learning to pass standardized tests or other inappropriate measurements damages children.

They want full services for their child. School safety. Safe transportation. A school nurse. Counselors and mentors. A good lunch program and breakfast and snacks for kids who would otherwise go hungry. They want school clubs, newspaper staff, annual staff, business clubs, science club and science fairs, and dance. They want field trips, assemblies, and Americanization.

They demand trained and certified teachers. Most parents know that today’s certified and experienced teachers are many times more effective than teachers in the past. The education profession is advancing and very effective. If there is a learning conflict, they have choice within the system.

The overwhelming number of parents and community members understand that the community has built and provided safe and well-maintained buildings – well-maintained that is until tax dollars they pay for schools have been taken away by a small handful of ideologues who are robbing our communities. In every community, these destructive people always vote NO to damage the opportunities of others.

If you agree with the list of things children need – and parents and citizens demand – note that few are provided by the charter or partial schools. For example, qualified, experienced certified faculty and administrators. Publicly elected school boards. Financial accountability and academic accountability. All of the above are an integral part of our public schools.

IF the great majority of citizens do not want their tax dollars directed away from our students and schools why are they ignored?

BECAUSE those who want to destroy public education or rob kids to profit from our tax dollars have used their power in the Legislature and government to create a system where every charter or other partial school supported by our tax dollars must duplicate what the citizens are already paying for in public schools. Charters must use state dollars that follow the child to duplicate facilities, accounting, utilities, support staffing, libraries, computes, classrooms and physical education resources. The citizens end up paying twice for the same services. The money that citizens intend for children is not there for the majority of kids, teachers, building maintenance, books and supplies or the things children need. The irony is that as few as 10% of the students are enrolled in these partial schools, but they wreak havoc and have the potential to destroy quality education for the majority of students. This is not an accidental consequence. It is being done intentionally.

Categories Arizona, Funding, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider Reviews TFA’s Tax Report and Concludes It Is a Strong Business

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2015 //
5

The title isn’t right. In this post, Mercedes Schneider refers to a post by Gary Rubinstein, in which Gary speculated whether Teach for America might evolve into a different kind of organization, something closer to its original idea of placing young teachers where there were shortages, rather than boasting that they are better than anyone else, including experienced teachers.

Mercedes says the likelihood of TFA abandoning its currently lucrative role is as likely as donkeys flying.

She writes:

Trying to extract “reform” from TFA is not possible. TFA is corporate reform, and TFA without corporate reform leaves only legitimately trained, career-intended, non-ladder-climbing, dedicated teachers.

Non-corporate-reform TFA would have to publicly admit that teaching is an actual profession and that the TFA product is at best a two-dimensional, cardboard cut-out of a substitute. Such an admission would be TFA’s undeniably-market-reform undoing.

Ironically, trying to conceal the inadequacy of her product is also leading to the undoing of TFA. However, one issue is clear about Wendy Kopp: She operates from a corporate mindset. She intends to make TFA ever-bigger, ever more influential.

She then reviews TFA’s 990 forms, which every nonprofit files with the IRS every year.

The goal of TFA became one of advancing the privatization of public education, of offering market-model-indoctrinated, rotating staffing to not only traditional districts, but to market-model charter schools– and of supplanting traditional public education administration with TFA alums zealous about advancing the TFA brand. I live in a state– Louisiana– in which a former TFAer-gone-TFA-exec was politically placed into the position of state superintendent– John White– and he and one TFA executive-as-state board-member– Kira Orange-Jones– have made it their business to feed TFA a million-dollar contract that includes paying TFA a temp fee of up to $9,000 per TFA recruit.

In 2013-14, TFA’s total assets were $494 million.

$32 million was from “service fees.”

$73.5 million was from “government grants.”

But TFA does not only operate via taxpayer money in the form of temp fees. TFA is a corporate-reform-advancing machine. TFA draws millions from the Waltons and Broad, among other obscenely-moneyed corporate reformers.

In 2013-14, TFA garnered $208 million in “other contributions.”

Without test-score-obsessed corporate reform, there is no TFA machine. But with the strategic, national push to replace the community school with the under-regulated, cheaply-staffed, non-union charter, TFA can continue to be a machine– so long as the corporate reform model retains a hold around the throat of American public education.

In addition, she reports on some hefty salaries.

It is a good business. But it is not at all good for the teaching profession since it promotes the idea that teachers don’t need professional preparation. Anyone with a high SAT score can do it. For two years anyway. Except that it is not true. And continuing to push this claim encourages legislatures to lower standards for entry into teaching. And encourages Congress to insert amendments that interns (TFA) can be counted as “highly qualified teachers.”

Categories Teach for America

John Thompson: The Administration’s Backtracking on VAM Is Good for a Belly Laugh

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2015 //
32

John Thompson, historian and teacher in Oklahoma, sees the bright side in the Obama administration’s apparent step-back from the testing regime it so loved.

He feels certain that the administration will go through some serious contortions to avoid admitting that the past seven years of test-and-punish was an outright mistake.

They might not want to be known as phase 2 of the Bush-Obama education program.

The most important opening that he sees is a ray of sunlight in the retreat from value-added-measurement, which educators despise.

Who knew that the administration praises Minnesota’s educator evaluation plan, which values test scores at 1% or less?

Of course, the overwhelming majority of the nation’s educators would completely strip the test score growth component out of any accountability framework for individuals. The best we could previously do, however, was help kick the value-added can down the road. This wasted money and educators’ energy, but it kept invalid and unreliable test score growth models from inflicting too much damage in the short run. It did so under the assumption that states would eventually tire of flushing those resources down the toilet in order to appease the federal government.

Now, the USDOE is basically inviting that delaying tactic. It endorses the District of Columbia’s backtracking. D.C. had once proclaimed its value-added evaluations as a great success but now it is seen as a model because it “has temporarily removed its value-added measures from its teacher and leader evaluation systems and continues to focus on providing quality feedback on its Teaching and Learning Framework/Leadership Framework.”

The Obama administration has not only demanded that student growth models be used as a part of “multiple measures,” it has insisted that these flawed and destructive metrics must count anywhere from 35 to 50% of teachers’ evaluations. Being realists, some educators have tried to water down test score growth metrics so that they become meaningless and thus harmless.

It could be argued that we need to give reformers a fig leaf, and accept a miniscule portion of an evaluation – say 1% – so that we don’t hurt corporate reformers’ feelings as we “monkey wrench” their scheme. If systems want to waste incredible amounts of money on testing and computer systems for keeping score in order to avoid admitting a mistake, that’s on them.

Guess what? The administration now supports Minnesota’s plan which allows “its districts to include state assessment based growth at any percent (even less than 1 percent).” The administration apparently agreed to this because Minnesota can pretend that it is gauging student learning growth measured by other factors.

And that suggests the obvious first step. Oklahoma and other states should immediately grab the low-hanging fruit and stop the indefensible policy of using test score growth guesti-mates for sanctioning individuals. I’d hate to have to continue to waste scarce resources on test-driven accountability, but I’d be willing to engage in a discussion of whether bubble-in growth should count as .01% of 1%, or .5% or even .99% of 1% of a teacher’s evaluation. It would be a process worthy of The Onion.

I hadn’t known enough about the Minnesota waiver the administration now claims to read in such a manner. So, I’d missed the humor of the situation. If the administration is willing to contort itself into such a pretzel in order to free us from the quantitative portion of teacher evaluations, we should enjoy the ride. If it will go through such contortions to avoid admitting a mistake and to not offend the Billionaires Boys Club who dumped this fiasco on us, it should prompt more than groans.

 

Thompson says we should not be too hard on the administration. Give them credit–or at least that fig leaf–to salute their symbolic retreat from the testing disaster. Please note that Thompson counts Colorado’s testing mania as one of the worst in the nation, based on a law written by ex-TFA State Senator Michael Johnston, who became the state’s leading advocate of high-stakes testing with his obnoxious S. 191. Johnston received some sort of commendation at Harvard a few months ago, for unknown reasons. For sure, no educator in Colorado is grateful for his foisting high-stakes testing on everyone else.

So, Thompson’s advice is to encourage the administration to keep backtracking while the rest of us enjoy an unexpected outburst of good sense and perhaps a good belly laugh.

Categories Colorado, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Krazy TA: Arne’s “Word Salad” on the Dangers and Benefits of High-Stakes Testing: Same Old Same Old

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2015 //
16

Our reader who calls himself Krazy TA often reminds us that Secretary Duncan was for testing before he was against it, and was against it after he was for it, but is still for it even as he is against it.

Krazy TA writes:

“Arne Duncan. April 30, 2013. His speech to the annual AERA meeting.

The current rebranding is no major shift. This is no minor shift. The words were already out there 2 1/2 years ago. And then, as now, the current administration takes very little responsibility for the consequences of its own policies, mandates and advocacy.

The main problem according to rheephormsters? Somebody, anybody, everybody else.”

😎

[start excerpt]

… I’d like to discuss the challenges I’ve highlighted about asking hard comparative questions and heeding those counterintuitive outcomes, but with special attention to standardized testing and assessment.

I think we can generally agree that standardized tests don’t have a good reputation today—and that some of the criticism is merited. Policymakers and researchers have to listen very carefully—and take very seriously the concerns of educators, parents, and students about assessment.

At its heart, the argument of the most zealous anti-testing advocates boils down to an argument for abandoning assessment with consequences for students, teachers, or schools.

The critics contend that today’s tests fail to measure students’ abilities to analyze and apply knowledge, that they narrow the curriculum, and that they create too many perverse incentives to cheat or teach to the test. These critics want students and teachers to opt out of all high-stakes testing.

The critics make a number of good points—and they express a lot of the frustration that many teachers feel about today’s standardized tests.

State assessments in mathematics and English often fail to capture the full spectrum of what students know and can do. Students, parents, and educators know there is much more to a sound education than picking the right answer on a multiple choice question.
Many current state assessments tend to focus on easy-to-measure concepts and fill-in-the-bubble answers. Results come back months later, usually after the end of the school year, when their instructional usefulness has expired.

And today’s assessments certainly don’t measures qualities of great teaching that we know make a difference—things like classroom management, teamwork, collaboration, and individualized instruction. They don’t measure the invaluable ability to inspire a love of learning.

Most of the assessment done in schools today is after the fact. Some schools have an almost obsessive culture around testing, and that hurts their most vulnerable learners and narrows the curriculum. It’s heartbreaking to hear a child identify himself as “below basic” or “I’m a one out of four.”

Not enough is being done at scale to assess students’ thinking as they learn to boost and enrich learning, and to track student growth. Not enough is being done to use high-quality formative assessments to inform instruction in the classroom on a daily basis.

Too often, teachers have been on their own to pull these tools together—and we’ve seen in the data that the quality of formative tools has been all over the place.

Schools today give lots of tests, sometimes too many. It’s a serious problem if students’ formative experiences and precious time are spent on assessments that aren’t supporting their journey to authentic college- and career-readiness.

[end excerpt]

Read the rest. It’s simply been recycled to serve the political needs du jour.

Link: http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/choosing-right-battles-remarks-and-conversation

😎

*AERA: American Educational Research Association.

Categories Testing

Mercedes Schneider: Billionaires Buy Louisiana State Board, But Not Likely Governor (CORRECTION)

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2015 //
2

Mercedes Schneider here reports the disappointing news from Louisiana.

More than $3.5 million of out-of-state money swamped the candidates for the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, who among them raised only about $50,000. Only two opponents of corporate reform survived the election, and both are in a run-off.*

Four billionaires put up more than a million dollars.

Democracy lost.

But the good news is that the likely next governor is John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who is not in sympathy with the mean-spirited policies of Governor Bobby Jindal and who has said that he will fire ex-TFA State Commissioner of Education John White, who is known for hiding and spinning data.

*THE ORIGINAL POST NOTED ONLY ONE CRITIC OF CORPORATE REFORM WHO SURVIVED THE BILLIONAIRES’ ONSLAUGHT, BUT THERE WERE TWO: DISTRICT 4 AND 6.

Categories Corporate Reform, Louisiana, Politics

Can You Help the Pastors for Texas Children?

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2015 //
0

One of the groups I have come to admire is called Pastors for Texas Children.

They regularly testify before the state legislature against vouchers because they believe in separation of church and state.

They have been especially effective in making the voices of rural communities and small town heard, places where people like their public schools.

They need your help to continue their battle for better public schools:

As many of you already know Pastors for Texas Children has received a matching grant from The Meadows Foundation! They will award us $30,000 on November 10, 2015. If we can raise that amount between now and then they will award us an additional $30,000 to benefit our children in Texas. Here is the amount we have raised and the amount we still need.

Amount Raised: $9,080.00

Amount Needed: $20, 920.00

Remember, we will need to raise the $20,920.00 by November 10, 2015 – counting today that’s just 19 days left.

Many of you have already generously donated, and we would like to express our sincere gratitude to you! If you haven’t given already, please donate $50,$100, $200 or any amount you would like to:

Pastors for Texas Children
PO Box 471155
Fort Worth, Texas 76147

You may also donate by credit card online at http://pastorsfortexaschildren.com/donate by clicking on the red Donate button.

Please give so we can receive these matching funds and help us make the local church and the local school a “dynamic duo” for God’s common good in every community in Texas!
God bless you, your family, your ministry, your school, and your district, and thank you for standing strong for our schoolchildren.
​

Categories Resistance, Vouchers

Educational Alchemy: The Hidden Game Plan Behind the “Testing Action Plan”

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2015 //
9

Blogger Educational Alchemy sees behind the Department of Education smokescreen. The goal of the Obama administration’s “Testing Action Plan” is not what it appears.

Now that almost every school is testing online, it is time to move on to the next stage of the education revolution. Outsourcing online testing to vendors.

The wave of the future: Competency-based assessments.

Here is an excerpt:

This is what the “Testing Action Plan” (TAP) says:

The new plan will “include competency-based assessments, innovative item types.” It states also “The Department will also share tools already available to do this work, including The Council of Chief State School Officers’ (CCSSO) Comprehensive Statewide Assessment Systems: A Framework for the Role of the State Education Agency in Improving Quality and Reducing Burden and Achieve’s Student Assessment Inventory for School Districts.”

This is what it means:

Remember CCSSO? They are the ones who crafted the Common Core State Standards. The standards were developed to create a “standardized” system that allows third-party companies to develop systems for outsourcing education. Now with a set of “national” standards as benchmarks, instruction can be metered out by online edu-tech companies who provide new “competency” based instruction and assessment. No teacher required.

In 2010, the Foundation for Excellence in Education (who supported Common Core) convened the Digital Learning Council, a diverse group of more than 100 leaders in education, government, philanthropy, business, technology and members of policy think tanks led by Co-Chairmen Jeb Bush, and Bob Wise (both integral in the creation and promotion of Common Core). It’s an ALEC model-endorsed comprehensive framework of state-level policies and actions “designed to advance the meaningful and thoughtful integration of technology into K12 public education.”

This idea is stated again toward the end of the Testing Action Plan (TAP): “Congress should continue to require the Department to work with external assessment experts to ensure states are using high-quality assessments that are aligned with state-developed standards and valid for the purposes for which they are used.”

TAP Says:

“…the Department granted a temporary waiver to New Hampshire to pilot a competency-based assessment system in four districts ….” as a way to set a national example. (and), “The Department will work with external assessment experts…”

What this means:

The department will outsource education curriculum and assessment to corporations just like it did in NH where they “…have adopted unique and innovative learning approaches, such as digital learning, that create a more flexible learning schedule that extends beyond the school day.”

The Alliance for Excellent Education (Bob Wise serves as president) in 2013 stated: “Competency-based advancement is an important part of New Hampshire’s strategy for implementing the Common Core State Standards.”

Read the post with care. Every element is there for a transition to the next stage of relinquishing control of curriculum and assessment to the vendors.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Testing

Tim Farley: How Much Testing Is Too Much?

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2015 //
27

Tim Farley, principal of an elementary/middle school in upstate New York and founding member of New York State Allies for Public Education, writes here that the new Obama testing policy might increase the time spent testing students.

Andrew Cuomo, governor of Néw York, was quick to applaud the Ibama plan and to note with pride that New York had already enacted a 2% cap on testing time.

Farley writes:

“In New York, as Cuomo has reminded us, we already have a 2% cap on time spent on standardized testing. What does that actually mean? In New York we have 180 school days and an average school day runs about 6.5 hours. If one does the math that’s 180 x 6.5 x 2% = 23.4 hours of testing. So, by law, we cannot exceed 23.4 hours of standardized testing in grades 3–8.

“This begs the question — How much time do kids in grades 3–8 spend on the state tests in English Language Arts and math? If you are a general education student, you will spend roughly nine hours in a testing room for both the ELA and math tests. If you are a student with a learning disability (SWD), and you have a testing accommodation of “double time,” you get to sit in a testing location for eighteen hours. As insane as that seems, it is still 5.4 hours short of the time allowed by law. A 2% cap isn’t a step forward, it’s a giant leap backward.

“How much testing is too much? I don’t know the magic number that will give the state education departments and the U.S. Department of Education the data they supposedly need in order to determine the effectiveness of the schools, but I do know that nine hours of testing is too much for a nine-year-old, eighteen hours is abusive for nine-year-olds with a learning disability, and 23.4 hours of testing for a child at any age is criminal.”

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, Duncan, Arne, Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Paul Thomas to US DOE: The Testing Disaster Is Yours, Own It

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2015 //
17

Paul Thomas writes a scathing indictment of the U.S. Department of Education’s blind faith in standardized testing. He might have included the U.S. Congress, as well as most governors and legislatures, and a large number of think tanks and foundations. Certainly, one of the primary malefactors of the testing obsession is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And let’s not forget George W. Bush, Margaret Spellings, and Sandy Kress (architect of NCLB and Pearson lobbyist.) Then there is the cluster of testing zealots attached to the Common Core.

I could devote an entire post to listing those who shaped the current regime of testophilia. I would include myelf for my sins, but at least I recanted my sins.

Thomas attributes a large part of the damage to non-educators put in positions of authority.

“And let’s not fail to acknowledge that such vapid bureaucratic nonsense is inevitably the result of know-nothings being appointed to positions of power (think never-taught Arne Duncan serving as Secretary of Education in the wake of Margaret Dishonest-or-Incompetent Spellings turning her hollow SOE gig into becoming president of the University of North Carolina, resulting in her bragging about having none of the background experiences typical of leading higher education).”

Thomas includes links to valuable articles and studies about the uselessness of high-stakes standardized testing. Does anyone at the U.S. Department of Education read research? Or has it been turned into a cheering squad for whatever administration is in charge?

Categories Campbell's Law, Standardized Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Peter Greene: Obama’s “Testing Action Plan” Is a Fraud

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2015 //
26

Peter Greene carefully reviewed the Obama administration’s “Testing Action Plan” and concluded it is phony, a duplicitous confirmation of the status quo.

Did you think the administration realizes that the billions of dollars spent on 13 years of standardized testing was a waste? Think again.

Did you think the administration really wants to reduce time spent on testing? Think again.

Did you think the administration understands that it is not fair to give exactly the same test to children who can’t read English, children with disabilities, and others of their age? Think again.

Have they lost faith in standardized testing? Not a bit.

Here is what they see as the problem that needs fixing, Greene writes:

“Before you get excited about the administration taking “some” blame for the testing mess, please notice what they think their mistake was– not telling states specifically enough what they were supposed to do. They provided states with flexibility when they should have provided hard and fast crystal clear commands directions for what they were supposed to do.

“Because yes– the problem with education reform has been not enough federal control of state education departments.”

Categories Duncan, Arne, Obama, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Standardized Testing
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