Archives for the month of: June, 2016
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Why is Connecticut Governor Malloy Protecting Insurance Industry from Scrutiny?

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
7

Investigative journalist David Sirota exposes Connecticut Governor Malloy’s protection of insurance giants. He signed a bill to shield them from Freedom of Information requests.

 

Is it because the giants of the industry are based in his state? Or was it their $360,000 contribution to the Democratic Governors’ Association, which Malloy chairs?

 

Sirota writes:

 

“Amid a burgeoning conflict-of-interest scandal over Connecticut’s national role regulating Cigna and Anthem’s proposed merger, International Business Times has just published a new report on Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy quietly signing insurance-industry-backed legislation exempting insurance industry information from his state’s open records law. Weeks after the Malloy-backed bill was introduced in the legislature, Anthem and Cigna pumped $360,000 into the Malloy-run Democratic Governors Association. The bill was later attached to unrelated legislation, passed in the middle of the night in the waning hours of Connecticut’s legislative session, and then signed by Malloy with no public statement.”

 

 

Categories Accountability, Connecticut, Education Reform

Paul Krugman: How Did the Republican Party Allow a Grifter to Become Its Nominee for President?

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
46

Paul Krugman asks in this column how the Republican Party could have allowed a con artist like Donald Trump to take over the party and become its nominee. Why didn’t other Republicans expose the scams and frauds that have generated profits for Trump? Why were reporters able to discover what was in plain sight but not the other candidates?

He says it is because a party that worships profit and insists that government is the problem is wide open for frauds, profiteers, and grifters. “Greed is good” is not a maxim to live by.

He writes:

Consider this: Even as the newspapers are filled with stories of defrauded students and stiffed contractors, Republicans in Congress are going all-out in efforts to repeal the so-called “fiduciary rule” for retirement advisers, a new rule requiring that they serve the interests of their clients, and not receive kickbacks for steering them into bad investments. Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, has even made repealing that rule part of his “anti-poverty plan.” So the G.O.P. is in effect defending the right of the financial industry to mislead its customers, which makes it hard to attack the likes of Donald Trump.

Finally, the con job that lies at the heart of so much Republican politics makes it hard to go after other, more commercial cons. It’s interesting to note that Marco Rubio actually did try to make Trump University an issue, but he did it too late, after he had already made himself a laughingstock with his broken-record routine. And here’s the thing: The groove Mr. Rubio got stuck in — innuendo that the president is deliberately weakening America — was a typical example of the political snake-oil the right sells along with free money and three-minute cures for high blood pressure.

The point is that Mr. Rubio was just as much a con artist as Mr. Trump – just not as good at it, which is why, under pressure, he kept repeating the same memorized words. So he, like all the G.O.P. contenders, didn’t have what it would have taken to make Mr. Trump’s grifting an issue. But at least so far it appears that Hillary Clinton and her allies won’t have the same problem.

In the months ahead Republicans will claim that there are equivalent scandals on the Democratic side, but nothing they’ve managed to come up with rises remotely to the level of even one of the many Trump scams in the news. They’ll also claim that Mr. Trump doesn’t reflect their party’s values. But the truth is that in a very deep sense he does. And that’s why they couldn’t stop him.

Categories Accountability, For-Profit, Politics, Trump

The Massacre That Changed Australia’s Gun Laws

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
25

Historian Joel Spring of Queens College and the City University of New York shared this important story, in the wake of the horrific massacre in Orlando:

Port Arthur Massacre: The Shooting Spree That Changed Australia’s Gun Laws

BY MATTHEW GRIMSON

In 1996, Martin Bryant entered a café at the site of a historic penal colony at Port Arthur, Tasmania.

The 28-year-old ate lunch before pulling a semi-automatic rifle from his bag and embarking on a killing spree. By the time he was apprehended the next morning, 35 people were dead and 23 had been wounded. Bryant had become the worst mass-murderer in Australia’s history.

The Australian government subsequently introduced the National Firearms Agreement — legislation that outlawed automatic and semi-automatic rifles, as well as pump-action shotguns. A nationwide gun buyback scheme also saw more than 640,000 weapons turned in to authorities.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/port-arthur-massacre-shooting-spree-changed-australia-gun-laws-n396476

If we really cared about human life, no civilian would ever own an assault rifle like the Bushmaster; Internet sales of these deadly weapons would be banned. Gun manufacturers would not be allowed to sell their guns to anyone but government agencies. Only single-shot hunting rifles would be available, and then only to buyers who passed a background check. Even with all these restrictions, the mass murderer in Orlando would still have had access to the weapons he used, because he was trained for security work. But Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter, would not have had a weapon; nor would most of the other mass murderers. The one thing we can’t afford to do is nothing at all. The next massacre might be in your city, your town, your village, your pizza parlor, your grocery store, your school, your train station, your airport. So long as unstable and hateful people can kill at will, the rest of us do not have a guarantee of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Categories Accountability

NEWSFLASH: Experience Matters!

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
13

Linda Darling-Hammond recently created a new institute to study teaching and learning, called the Learning Policy Institute. Given her scholarly background, you can be sure that anything LPI produces will be rigorously researched.

In one of its first research summaries, the LPI concluded that “Teachers Improve As They Gain Experience.”

This would seem to be common-sense, but the corporate reform movement has repeated again and again that teachers improve in the first three years, but then plateau and improve no more after the first three-five years. They use this claim to advocate for Teach for America and other fast-track programs and to ignore the exodus of highly experienced teachers. As a result of this counterintuitive and actually false belief, so-called “reformers” have advocated for and enacted state laws that encourage veteran teachers to leave the profession. For example, North Carolina raised entry salaries for teachers to $35,000 but capped salaries for experienced teachers at $50,000. Florida offers bonuses for new teachers who had high SAT scores in high school (!), but no bonuses to encourage the most experienced teachers to stay in the profession.

Thus, it is of the utmost importance that respected researchers have refuted the claim that teachers do not improve as they gain experience. This is one of the worst canards of the corporate reform movement, and one that is harming the teaching profession and the nation’s children.

Here is a summary of the research report.

Here is the report.

Here is the press release:


Teachers Improve as They Gain Experience

Comprehensive LPI review analyzes 30 studies on the effect of teaching experience on student achievement

Do teachers plateau early in their career or do they continue to grow and improve as they gain experience? It’s a critical question that has implications for local, state, and federal education leaders and policymakers. And it’s the subject of the latest report from the Learning Policy Institute (LPI), Does Teaching Experience Increase Teacher Effectiveness? A Review of the Research.

Based on their analysis of 30 recent, methodologically rigorous studies on the impact of teaching experience on student outcomes, authors Tara Kini and Anne Podolsky find that as teachers gain experience, they are more likely to positively impact student achievement and improve critical behaviors, including attendance. The steepest gains are in the first few years of teaching, but teachers gain in effectiveness throughout their careers, especially when they are in collegial work environments. Experienced teachers also have a positive impact on the performance of their peers.

“This report shows that what is widely accepted as true in the business world—that individuals improve their performance with experience—is also true in teaching,” says LPI Senior Policy Advisor Kini, who co-authored the report.

These findings come at an important time. Nationwide, we’re seeing a “greening” of the teacher workforce. But inexperienced teachers aren’t evenly distributed throughout schools. Black, Latino, American Indian, and Native-Alaskan students are three to four times more likely to attend schools with higher concentrations of first-year teachers than White students. New teachers are also more likely to be concentrated in high-poverty schools.

In addition to a detailed analysis of the research, the report includes recommendations to address these inequities—a requirement under the Every Student Succeeds Act—and offers program and investment strategies to attract, retain, and develop talented teachers who have opportunities to learn and grow throughout their careers.

Read the full report and the research brief, Does Teaching Experience Increase Teacher Effectiveness? A Review of the Research, both of which are available on our website.


###

About The Learning Policy Institute

The Learning Policy Institute conducts and communicates independent high-quality research to improve education. Working with policymakers, researchers, community groups, and others, we seek to advance evidence-based policies that support empowering and equitable learning for each and every child. For more information, please visit http://www.learningpolicyinstitute.org.

Learning Policy Institute
1530 Page Mill Road, Suite 200
Palo Alto, CA 94304

info@learningpolicyinstitute.org

Categories Accountability, Research, Teachers and Teaching

Paul Thomas: Closing Schools, Opening Schools: Why Not Look at the Evidence?

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
6

Paul Thomas reacts to an editorial in the Charleston (S.C.) “Post and Courier,” which recommended closing a high-poverty school with low test scores and turning it over to private operators.

Thomas asks a few questions:

So there are actually some very important questions that the editors at the P&C are failing to ask:

Why have some students been allowed ever to languish in school conditions that are subpar when compared to vibrant schools and opportunities for other students in the same city? Burns Elementary with a poverty index of 96 is but one school that represents a long history in SC of how negligent we have been as a state in terms of providing anything close to equity in the opportunities poor and racial minority children are afforded.

Why does any public school board need a private partnership to do what is needed to offer these students the sort of school all children deserve? If what is needed is so obvious, and so easy to do (which is a subtext of the editorial), the truth is that the school board simply does not have the political will to do what is right for some children.

And this is very important: What third party, not invested in the Meeting Street Academy, has examined the claims of academic success in the so-called “successful” schools that are being promised as fixes for Burns? I cannot find any data on test scores (setting aside that test scores aren’t even that good for making these claims), but I have analyzed claims of “miracle” charter schools in SC—finding that these claims are always false. Always. I do not trust that Meeting Street is going to prove to be the first actual miracle school in a long line of those that have been unmasked before.

He notes that politicians are easily bamboozled and follow the crowd, without asking where they are going.

SC political leaders have pushed for school choice, charter schools, VAM evaluations of teachers, ever-new standards and high-stakes testing, exit exams, third-grade retention, and now takeover policies for so-called “failing schools”—yet all of these have no basis for policy in the body of research refuting the effectiveness of each one.

For the editors of the P&C, as well as our political leaders and the public, the real questions are why do we persist in ignoring the stark realities of our inequitable society, why do we then continue to play politics with our schools that are just as inequitable as our society, and then why do we refuse to consider the evidence about addressing social and educational inequity directly in our policies?

Why do politicians continue to push for policies that have failed elsewhere, again and again? Because they don’t care. Because they are happy to maintain the status quo. Their eager embrace of “school choice” and other failed policies is a smokescreen. They know such policies will change nothing.

Closing schools, renaming schools, shuffling students—these are the practices of those who are invested in the status quo regardless of the consequences for “other people’s children.”

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, South Carolina, Testing

Angie Sullivan: Read-By-Third Grade Begins the Destruction of Young Children in Nevada

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
20

Angie Sullivan teaches elementary school in Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas). Most of her children are poor and ELL. She writes often about the disastrous policies imposed on the schools by the legislature.

Angie writes:


Read-by-Three is upon us. Ready to damage disenfranchised kids because as Assemblyman Elliot Anderson stated: They need “tough love”.

I will note here poor children need a lot of things – “tough love” isn’t one of the things.

Basically read-by-three requires students to read on grade level by third grade or they are not promoted to the next grade.

Do you see the fatal flaws?

1. Not research based or proven effective – academically or politically

2. Money diverted so it does not reach the kids who need it the most.

3. Money spent on people who are not directly teaching kids.

4. Language learners and IEP students in double jeopardy without access or support

Let me explain:

A century of education research proving retention does NOT work should be enough.

Simply: Whole group learning did not work the first time so the remedy should not be another year of whole group learning. Repetition of a grade level, without a significant change in the method of instruction does not work. Real remedies would include smaller class-size, differentiated instruction, language learning scaffolding if necessary, or individualized support like tutoring in small groups. The worst possible remedy is blanket retention for large masses of at-risk studennts.

States like Florida which have used this destructive program – are now regretting it. Data shows it failed badly. Academically and politically.

Florida may promote 3rd graders who fail standardized tests

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/08/16-student-retention-west

Besides the complete failure of this education policy – Nevada presses forward intent on replication of bad policies of other states.

To add insult to injury, the program is grant based. The Northern school districts applied and received most of the funding. Now Clark County which has 80% of the at-risk primary students will only receive 47% of the money to support kids so they are not retained. While 20% of the children in rural Nevada will receive the bulk of the money and possibly avoid the punitive result.

With the inequitable funding Clark County receives, CCSD is hiring many “read-by-three” strategists. Again – this does not change the method of instructional delivery. Another teacher who is not working with directly with students? This has been very ineffective and tried many times by the district. Teachers who are not assigned students often are assigned lunchroom tasks, playground duty, and paperwork by adminstrators. Very few specialists are effective because they do not work with kids.

Supposedly language learners and students with IEPs will be “exempt”.

Which shows a further flaw, since parents who often do not have an e-mail address must navigate the enrollment system in Infinite Campus accurately identifying their child as LEP. Parents who do not speak English or regularly use the Internet get limited support to go through this process. Accuracy of data in the system is questionable and I have seen many young children enrolling themselves in school because they are the person in the family who uses a computer regularly. Identification is complex and inaccurate.

Also if certain students are “exempt” will they be ignored? Is it better to not mark accurately so a child may receive instruction? Even if this means jeopardy? This is an unintentional result of placing pressure on students and kids. Schools will focus on kids to avoid retention while not focusing on others. Especially when working in a system which is not appropriately funded. Limited resources and too many at-risk kids means tough choices which are unfortunate need to be made.

This is a big civil rights and access problem. Along with being seriously flawed legislation.

It will cost millions of tax payer dollars.

Listening to teachers could have prevented this destruction.

Now teachers will have to make do – while “tough love” lawmakers brag about putting needed information in spam. I hope the campaign donation from reformers was worth it for the assembly democrats.

Reformers enjoy disruption. Disruption is teaching zero kids. It is just destructive.

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Civil Rights, Corporate Reformers, Nevada, Testing

Bill Moyers: The Rot at the Heart of the Democratic Party

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
31

Do you want to know why Debbie Wasserman Schultz is controversial? Read this. 

 

 

“First, a quick recap: Rep. Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), chair of the Democratic National Committee, also has been an advocate for the payday loan industry. The website Think Progress even described her as the “top Democratic ally” of “predatory payday lenders.” You know — the bottom-feeding bloodsuckers of the working poor. Yes, them.

“Low-income workers living from paycheck to paycheck, especially women and minorities, are the payday lenders’ prime targets — easy pickings because they’re often desperate. Twelve million Americans reportedly borrow nearly $50 billion a year through payday loans, at rates that can soar above 300 percent, sometimes even beyond 500 percent. Bethany McLean at The Atlantic recently reported that the government’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) studied millions of payday loans and found that “67 percent went to borrowers with seven or more transactions a year and that a majority of those borrowers paid more in fees than the amount of their initial loan.”

“Yet when the CFPB was drawing up new rules to make it harder for payday predators to feast on the poor, Rep. Wasserman Schultz co-sponsored a bill to delay those new rules by two years. How, you ask, could the head of the party’s national committee embrace such an appalling exploitation of working people?

“Just follow the money. Last year, the payday loan industry spent $3.5 million lobbying; and as we wrote two weeks ago, in Wasserman Schultz’s home state, since 2009, payday lenders have bought protection from Democrats and Republicans alike by contributing $2.5 million or so to candidates from both parties, including her. That’s how “Representative” Wasserman Schultz, among others, wound up representing the predators instead of the poor.”

Then there is Connecticut’s Governor Dannell Malloy. His first allegiance is to the richest citizens of his state.

Categories Education Reform

Duncan and Former Aides Land Cushy Jobs

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
29

Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is working for Steve Jobs’ widow in Chicago. He was invited to sit on the board of a $1 billion technology start-up. Corporate board memberships are well paid.

 

As usual, Peter Greene has the best explanation of what’s happening.

 

He is puzzled that the press release for Duncan refers to him as a “thought leader.”

 
“Arne Duncan– Highly Regarded Thought Leader. Holy smokes. I mean, holy frickin’ smokes. Duncan was not even a particularly apt Thought Sayer, and I can’t remember a single time that Duncan stood up to speak and folks from all across the nation fell in behind him, excited by his vision and his leaderliness. Not to be mean, but I’m not sure that Duncan ever proved to be a Thought Haver. Is there a Duncan policy that didn’t come from somewhere else? Anything? Test-and-punish, charter schools, data mining, Common Core– pretty sure that someone else did the thinking on those.

 

“He certainly did expand federal reach, but he did it through the artful use of blackmail (apply for a waiver or face the consequences of being in violation of NCLB). It is true that the stimulus money saved some jobs, but are we going to give Duncan credit for that? How about pissing off Congress so badly that they united in the historic stripping of power from a cabinet-level department? Or the complete bungling of Common Core? Or the demoralization and alienation of public school teachers? I don’t want to rehash the whole question of Duncan’s legacy again, but this is a spirited rewrite of history indeed.”

Earlier this year, President Obama’s friends took control of the Apollo Education Group, which owns the University of Phoenix. Duncan’s deputy secretary of education Tony Miller will run the multi-billion dollar for-profit operation.

 

In other news, Duncan’s former deputy Jim Shelton will advise Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan.

 

Nice gigs.

 

 

Categories Education Reform

Kids Do Worse on Computers When Taking Tests

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
24

A growing number of studies conclude that students perform worse on tests when they take them online than when the questions are on paper.

A study published by MIT and conducted at the U.S. Military Academy found that the students who did not use computers scored significantly higher than those who did.

The researchers suggested that removing laptops and iPads from classes was the equivalent of improving the quality of teaching.

The study divided 726 undergraduates randomly into three groups in the 2014-15 and 2015-16 academic years. The control group’s classrooms were “technology-free,” meaning students were not allowed to use laptops or tablets at their desk. Another group was allowed to use computers and other devices, and the third group had restricted access to tablets.

“The results from our randomised experiment suggest that computer devices have a substantial negative effect on academic performance,” the researchers concluded, suggesting that the distraction of an electronic device complete with internet access outweighed their use for note-taking or research during lessons.

The research had an unusual twist: the students involved were studying at the West Point academy in the US, where cadets are ruthlessly ranked by exam results, meaning they were motivated to perform well and may have been more disciplined than typical undergraduates.

But even for the cream of the US army’s future crop, the lure of the digital world appears to have been too much, and exam performance after a full course of studying economics was lower among those in classes allowed to use devices.


“Our results indicate that students perform worse when personal computing technology is available. It is quite possible that these harmful effects could be magnified in settings outside of West Point,” the researchers concluded.

The Hechinger Report reported that writing online essays may contribute to a widening of the achievement gap.

The U.S. Department of Education launched a study of fourth graders using computers for writing compared to fourth graders using paper and pencil.

High-performing students did substantially better on the computer than with pencil and paper. But the opposite was true for average and low-performing students. They crafted better sentences using pencil and paper than they did using the computer. Low-income and black and Hispanic students tended to be in this latter category.

“(T)he use of the computer may have widened the writing achievement gap,” concluded the working paper, “Performance of fourth-grade students in the 2012 NAEP computer-based writing pilot assessment.” If so, that has big implications as test makers, with the support of the Department of Education, move forward with their goal of moving almost all students to computerized assessments, which are more efficient and cheaper to grade.
In the study, high-performing students — the top 20 percent of the test takers — produced an average of 179 words per assignment on the computer, three times the number of words that the bottom 20 percent produced. They also used spellcheck, backspace and other editing tools far more often. The researchers found that these high-performing students were more likely to have access to a computer and the Internet at home.

But these high achievers were in the minority. More than two-thirds of fourth-graders’ responses received scores in the bottom half of a 6-point scoring scale that rated grammar and writing quality. Overall, the average fourth-grader typed a total of 110 words per assignment, far less than the 159-word average on the 2010 paper test.

In looking for explanations for the disparity in performance, it seems likely that the high-performing students are more familiar with computers than low-performing students or even those in the middle.

But it is also likely, at least to me, that it is easier to read and re-read a passage when it is on paper than to read it online. Some young children may have difficulty scrolling up and down the page.

And there may be a difference in recall associated with the medium. That requires further study.

Let me confess that I have tried and failed to read books on a Kindle or similar device. It is easy to lose your place; it is hard to find it again. Maybe the difficulty is age-related; after all, I have only been using a computer for 32 years and began using it as an adult. Children who grow up in the digital age may not have the same visual problem that I have in reading large blocs of text. But it will take more studies to figure out when it is beneficial to use the computer and when it is not. Unfortunately policymakers have rushed into online instruction and online assessments on the assumption (untested) that there are no downsides. They do this, as the Hechinger Report says, because the computer makes it easier and cheaper to grade tests. Standardization has some benefits. But it also has drawbacks. We should be aware of both.

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, Online Education, Online Learning, Standardized Testing, Testing

Dallas Morning News: We Love Testing (Other People’s Kids)

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
15

The Dallas Morning News published an editorial praising high-stakes testing. The News thinks the tests are necessary and valuable, even though parents don’t.

 

You can tell that no one on the editorial board has children in public schools, because they can’t understand why parents object to the state’s obsession with standardized testing. They congratulate patents got not opting out. They say nothing about the billions of dollars cut from Texas schools in 2011.

 

They just love that data. The kids, not so much.

 

They write:

 

“Dallas Morning News education writer Corbett Smith reports that only about 2,000 Texas families refused the test in 2015-16. That number is tiny compared with New York, where 240,000 opted out of the assessment, or Colorado, where 100,000 didn’t take it.

 

“Opting out of STAAR tests isn’t easy in Texas — but it is possible. So the low number leads us to hope that, despite the massive dislike of accountability exams, parents recognize STAAR’s importance.

 

“This newspaper shares that belief. That’s why our goals for 2016 include advocating for accountability and making a renewed case for the importance of testing, despite the system’s flaws. We have pledged to listen carefully to critics and bone up on best practices so we can urge reform that works.

 

“The first cleanup falls squarely on the state’s new testing vendor. New Jersey-based Educational Testing Services, which won a $280 million contract from the state, has left campuses mired in computer glitches and exam flaws. Just Thursday, it was accused of losing all the elementary and middle school tests in a small Central Texas school district.

 

“Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath assessed the mess this way: Those problems are “unacceptable” and must be fixed.

 

“But the solution isn’t to throw out the whole system, and it’s encouraging to see that most families and school districts get that.

 

“Families deserve to know how their students are progressing against the state standard; without a consistent scorecard, too much is left to chance. That can be a special problem as children move into the later years of elementary school and into middle school, where students most often slip.

 

“Likewise, school districts need to know not only how their students are performing, but how to evaluate teachers and help them grow to be the best possible educators.”

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Opt Out, Parents, Standardized Testing, Texas
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »