The BBC reports that growing numbers of Chinese children enroll in private schools to escape the testing pressures and to experience creative learning.
Archives for the month of: February, 2016
A reader who comments as Gitapik writes about life in the classroom:
“I’ve been teaching kids with severe disabilities for 22 years.
“The concept of spending valuable classroom time teaching a curriculum based on a set of standards that is also meant for high achieving kids in general education to a 6 year old with severe autism who isn’t even aware of his or her own name is absurd. Or to a classroom of severely emotionally disturbed children who can’t even make it through a period without at least 2 or 3 physical fights. The practice of it is a waste of time and cruel. Holding teachers responsible for it with the possibility of losing their job goes beyond the pale.
“We used to have Home Economics rooms where the kids could take orders, help prepare and deliver food, wash the dishes, clean up, etc. Not all day…but a period a day. Honest, practical life skills. We used to be allowed a period in the morning for class meetings during which we could teach basic social skills. The kids enjoyed and profited from these classes as part of the curriculum.
“Gone. No time for it. Got to meet the standards, now. Everybody. The same standards.
“All in the name of standardization which is supposed to create a system of accountability on the parts of the teachers. It’s like someone put a machine in charge and we’re being fed into the grinder.”
DeRay McKesson has the distinction of being a candidate for mayor of Baltimore and an alumnus of Teach for America. He has gained considerable celebrity for his role in Black Lives Matter and protests in Baltimore and Ferguson.
The media has fastened on him, and the TFA PR machine has amplified his role.
“But for all the attention he’s received in the last year-and-a-half, Mckesson’s ties to Teach For America (TFA) have largely escaped scrutiny. Mckesson is an alumnus of the 501(c)3 nonprofit founded by Wendy Kopp in 1990, which education policy experts today regard as the vanguard of the school privatization movement. It is also a media juggernaut in its own right, known for deploying a remarkably sophisticated public relations arsenal to advance an agenda focused on crushing teachers’ unions and privatizing public school systems.
“TFA’s funders—including the Waltons, Bill and Melinda Gates, and top Fortune 500 corporations—all have plenty to gain from the commodification of public goods and the destruction of public service unions, and its 11,000 corps members provide a valuable service to that end.
“There are plenty of examples in TFA’s 25-year history to draw from. When 7,500 (overwhelmingly black) New Orleans teachers were illegally fired in the desperate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, TFA marshalled its ranks to fill the void. The fired teachers had belonged to a union, which might have resisted later campaigns to privatize the city’s schools.
“The same applies to the mass firings and school closures that have taken place in other cities, including New York, Chicago, D.C., and Baltimore. Wherever there’s a teachers’ union that needs busting, TFA is ready to supply its army of freshly-groomed recruits to serve as scabs.
“DeRay’s decision to run for mayor of Baltimore therefore demands a closer look at his relationship with TFA. His platform contains some good proposals, such as a $15 minimum wage and loan forgiveness for low-income college students. But not only is the rest consistent with the regressive policies advocated by the network of foundations and policymakers associated with it, some of the people linked to his campaign hail from that same background—like his treasurer, Nakeia Drummond, who previously worked as a public school administrator in Baltimore. Her LinkedIn profile identifies her as an “education reform strategist.”
“What’s more, there is even some evidence that TFA utilized its PR apparatus to fuel Mckesson’s meteoric rise to national prominence in the first place.
“Accountability and Transparency”
“The first sign of Teach For America’s agenda finding expression in Mckesson’s platform was his online campaign announcement. The text is rife with neoliberal buzzwords like “accountability” and “transparency”—not bad concepts by themselves, until you remember what TFA’s brand of accountability means for public school teachers, and then apply it to Mckesson’s proposals.
“We deserve to know where our city services — from housing and sanitation, to schools and police — are doing well and falling short,” Mckesson declared in his campaign announcement. “To this end, we must invest in a broad range of systems and structures of accountability and transparency, including the release of the internal audits of the Baltimore City Public School System along with annual and timely audits of all city agencies.”
TFA is ambitious. Why not take control of Baltimore?
Amanda Koonlaba, who teaches young children in Mississippi and advocates for equitable funding, shared this news item.
Governor Phil Bryant declared April to be “Confederate Heritage Month.” The photo shows him dedicating the new civil rights museum as the State flag flies next to him, bearing a Conderate battle flag on it.
Amanda commented that the good news is that the voucher bill died.
Amy Frogge is a member of the Metro Nashville school board. She was elected despite being outspent 5-1 by the corporate reformers who are trying to take over local and state school boards. Amy didn’t know anything about corporate reform when she decided to run for school board. She is a mom of children in Nashville public schools, and she is a lawyer. She went door to door and won her race.
Once she became a school board member, she realized that much was wrong. The charter industry was targeting Nashville, threatening to skim off the students they wanted and to reduce the funding for public schools. State-mandated testing, she discovered, was completely out of hand, a time-wasting burden to children and an unnecessary financial drain on the district’s schools.
This post has been widely shared on Facebook. Here, she explains why parents must get involved and act to defend their children from the unnecessary and excessive standardized testing to which they are subjected.
She writes:
So to clarify the problem, let’s consider some facts:
1. The average school in Nashville will lose 6-8 weeks of valuable instructional time to standardized testing this year.
2. My 9-year-old third grader will spend more time taking standardized tests this year than I spent taking the LSAT to get into law school.
3. This year, children in grades 3-5 will be expected to sit still for two and a half hours on one day alone to fill in bubble tests.
4. This year, third graders will be expected to type multi-paragraph responses to essay questions and perform sophisticated manipulations on the computer screen in order to even complete the tests.
I have to pause here to ask: Do the people who developed these policies have children- or have they even spent any time around real children? I don’t know about you, but my third grader does not yet have proficient typing skills, and he’s among the lucky MNPS students who use a computer at home. Over half of MNPS students do not have home computers, and because of ongoing funding deficits, public schools do not have all of the technology they need to allow every child time to practice as necessary.
Furthermore, as for all the so-called “accountability” generated by standardized testing, here are a few more facts:
1. The results of this year’s standardized tests will not be available until NEXT YEAR, when the students who took the tests have moved along to the next teacher and grade level- and sometimes the next school.
2. Test questions and responses are not available for review by teachers, parents, or students. In other words, the standardized tests upon which we are basing EVERYTHING are like a black box. How do we know the tests are even correct or appropriate when only the testing company has access to the information contained in them? (Luckily, a new bill is pending that might change this.)
3. About 70% of Tennessee teachers will be evaluated using test scores of children they have NEVER taught. (Stop and read that one again. Yes, it’s true.)
4. There’s plenty of research questioning the validity of using standardized test scores to evaluate teachers. Research demonstrates that test scores are primarily influenced by out-of-school factors; only 7-13% of variance in test scores is due to teachers. (Haertel, 2013)
Why do I know all of this is wrong? Is it because I am a lawyer? Is it because I am a sitting board member who has spent years now considering education policy? Is it because I’m a genius?
No, it’s because I’m a mom. Also, I would like to think I have some common sense.
Those who say the tests help teachers help children are wrong. The results are not reported until the student moves on to another class. Furthermore, the results tell how children rank, but that does give the teacher useful information. Those who want to rank teachers by test scores don’t know that 70% of the teachers don’t have annual test scores and will be judged by the scores of students they never taught.
What can parents do?
OPT OUT. Refuse the tests. Tell the school that you will not allow your child to take the tests. They do not help your child. They do not improve teaching and learning. They make big money for testing companies, and they label most children as failures.
JUST SAY NO!
Mayor de Blasio of NYC vastly expanded pre-kindergarten across the city. Thirteen charter schools provide pre-K programs. Twelve of them signed contracts with the city. Only one, the Success Academy charter chain, refused to sign a contract with the city on grounds that the city has no authority to supervise charters. Eva Moskowitz threatened to close her pre-K programs rather than signing a contract.
Moskowitz appealed to MaryEllen Elia, the state commissioner of education. Elia rejected Eva’s appeal.
“In her decision, Ms. Elia noted that the city’s request for proposals to run prekindergarten programs clearly stated “no payments will be made by the D.O.E. until the contract is registered with the N.Y.C. comptroller’s office.”
“She also ruled that there was nothing contrary to state education law in the city’s oversight of the program.
“Taking Success’s argument “to its logical conclusion,” Ms. Elia wrote, “would mean that D.O.E. would be required to provide charter schools’ prekindergarten programs with public funding without any mechanism to ensure” that they were meeting quality requirements, and that “public funds are being spent in accordance with the requirements.”
Eva Moskowitz promised to go to state court to appeal Elia’s decision.
The governor and legislature have been deadlocked for months over the state budget. The schools will run out of money in a few weeks or months.
Mark Miller, president of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association and board member of the Network for Public Education, sent the following message:
“PA’s budget crisis has reached a new low. PSBA surveyed 500 school districts. 192 responded and 52 of those (more than 25%) provided dates ranging from March 1st to May 26th as the date they would need to suspend operations.”
How can it be possible that the leaders of the state would allow schools to close their doors in the middle of the semester?
Go to this link to learn more: http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.org/
EduShyster attended a school board meeting in Brockton, Massachusetts. That town is home to Brickton High School, which has received national attention for its dramatic, teacher-led turnaround.
State officials came to the board meeting, and EduShyster briefly dreamed that they were there to learn how Brockton High achieved success.
But no, they were there to announce that the state was opening a charter high school to compete with the much acclaimed community high school.
She notes that charters in Massachusetts have shown no innovation, no breakthroughs. And she wonders: What’s the point?
Peter Greene supports John King as Secretary of Education.
King believes in Obama’s policies. Just like Duncan.
Greene reviews his signal accomplishments.
John King was greeted warmly by the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) committee. He answered softball questions and apparently breezed through, with no discussion of his rocky tenure in New York as state commissioner.
Diane Ravitch's blog 