Archives for the month of: September, 2018
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Mercedes Schneider: Encouraged by a Funeral

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2018 //
22

I watched Senator JOHN McCain’s funeral, from start to finish.

It was inspiring.

I was especially moved by the spirit of shared values. The missing goon was at his private golf club, tweeting furiously about our enemy, Canada.

For a few hours today, it seemed that sanity and comity had returned. The madman was not invited, even though his daughter and son-in-law and his chief of staff were.

Mercedes Schneider watched too.

Encouraged by a Funeral

She too felt the whiff of a better world, a normal world, a world not run by an angry bitter fool.

For a few precious hours, we could pretend he did not exist.

Categories Education Reform

Los Angeles: UTLA Members Vote Overwhelmingly to Authorize Strike

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2018 //
21

98% of UTLA members voted to authorize a strike.

In a significant show of strength and unity, 98% of UTLA members voting said yes to authorize a strike, should one become necessary. During the week-long vote at school-sites, 81% of members cast ballots. Because of this historic turnout, a small number of ballots are still being counted tonight.

“Our members have spoken, with one big, united voice,” said Arlene Inoyue, chair of the UTLA Bargaining Team. “After 17 months of bargaining with LAUSD, educators are frustrated and angry. We want a district that partners with us—not fights us—on critical issues like lower class sizes, fair pay, and bringing more staff to work with our students.”

The results were a sharp rebuke to Austin Beutner and his austerity agenda to ultimately cut pay, healthcare, pensions, staffing, and student services, starving schools of resources and opening the door to dismantling the district. The huge turnout shows that educators in LA know what’s on the line and are ready to take action, connecting with the national teacher rebellions to stand up for public education.

While LAUSD would like to constrict contract talks to pay and a few narrow issues, educators have been fighting for a righteous set of proposals that are urgently needed for the district to survive and thrive, including lower class sizes, fair pay, less testing and more teaching, accountability for charter operators and co-locations, respect for early and adult educators, and more nurses, counselors, and librarians to support our students.

The force behind our vote is a clear signal to Beutner that he should stop the delay tactics, end his attempts to reach a backroom deal, and agree to enter mediation immediately.

The vote does not mean we are going on strike immediately. The results authorize the UTLA Board of Directors to call for a strike if LAUSD does not show good faith in mediation and offer a fair contract that respects educators, our students, and our communities.

Parents were with us at the vote count today to show their support for educators.

“Our teachers are there for us and our children every day, and now I stand with them in this important fight,” said Alejandra Delgadillo, a parent at Trinity Elementary. “I see what teachers take out of their pockets every week to spend on their classrooms. They deserve a fair pay raise for doing one of the most important jobs in our communities. But they are fighting for much more than just a pay raise—they are fighting for a better education for our children. As a parent, I hope a strike won’t be necessary, but I support the teachers if it does come to that. It will be a short-term sacrifice for my children’s long-term future.”

Categories Education Reform, Los Angeles, Unions

Farewell, Lindsey Graham

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2018 //
23

Dana Milbank wrote a touching eulogy for the late Senator Lindsey Graham in the Washington Post.

“We lost two mavericks within a week.

“On Saturday, we lost the legendary John McCain.

“On Tuesday, we lost his loyal sidekick, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham.

“Graham remains alive and well, but after serving for two decades as Robin to McCain’s Batman, Graham buried whatever remained of his own reputation for iconoclasm even before his partner’s funeral.

“On Tuesday, Graham took a seat on the couch of “Fox & Friends,” President Trump’s favorite show, and sealed his transition from apostate to Trump apparatchik.

“Word of caution to the public,” he said. “A lot of people try to convict President Trump. Don’t be so fast. I have seen no evidence of collusion after two years.” Having echoed Trump’s no-collusion line (as if that were the lone issue), Graham, a former military lawyer, picked up Trump’s attack on the justice system: “Plenty of corruption at the Department of Justice and the FBI. Should be stunning. Not one Democrat seems to care.”

“From there, the South Carolina Republican echoed all of Trump’s attacks against the Russia investigation: “They had a bias against Trump for [Hillary] Clinton . . . They gave a politically corrupt document to get a warrant . . . Christopher Steele was on the payroll of the Democratic Party.” He parroted Trump’s line that Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to help Clinton, not Trump: “Russia was involved in our election . . . in terms of developing this dossier.”

“Incredibly, Graham even joined the “lock her up” movement. “No American would get the same treatment she did. If you were charged or suspected of this kind of misconduct, you would be in jail now….”

“This came after Graham abandoned his previous support of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom Trump wants to fire as a likely precursor to ending special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation. A year ago, Graham declared himself “100 percent behind Jeff Sessions” and vowed “holy hell” if Sessions was fired.

“But now, Graham says “we need an attorney general that can work with the president.” This week, he even alleged on CBS News that Sessions “blindsided” Trump with “zero-tolerance” family separations — as though that policy wasn’t a Trump signature.

“Graham previously described Trump as a “jackass” and “unfit for office.” He began his pivot after the election, but intensified his embrace of Trump as illness kept McCain from Washington. “If you don’t like me working with President Trump to make the world a better place, I don’t give a shit,” he said on CNN in June. This week, he demurred on renaming a Senate building for his friend, and though displeased by Trump’s posthumous insults of McCain, he said it is the president’s right “to feel any way he’d like.”

“No longer protected by McCain, he seems to have lost that famous McCain courage. It is difficult to avoid the impression that, since McCain’s illness, he has found a new patron. “I never did anything politically of consequence without John,” Graham acknowledged this week. “I mean all of the big stuff, campaign finance, climate change, Iraq, you name it. I was by John’s side. I was his wingman.”

“Yet, now, he is serving as wingman to a president who takes the opposite view on each of those issues.”

RIP, Senator Graham, now Trump’s obedient servant.

Categories Education Reform

Stephen Dyer: Ohio Charters Present a Picture of Incompetence, Ineffectiveness, and Malfeasance

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2018 //
11

Stephen Dyer writes on his blog about the utter haplessness of the charter industry in Ohio.

In 2015, Ohio won $71 Million from Arne Duncan’s Department of Education despite widespread reports of academic failure and corruption. In the past three years, only $1 Million has been allocated.

A study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education reported that the state had no plans to improve the effectiveness of charter schools, no plans to be sure that were serving the neeediest kids.

Maybe from this mess might come some insight into the uselessness of running two parallel publicly funded school systems, one with oversight, the other without.

Taxpayers in Ohio are very patient. They don’t care what happens to their money.

Categories Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Ohio

New Study Finds That NCLB Got Small and Diminishing Returns

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2018 //
27

No Child Left Behind will be recognized in time as the most colossal failure in federal education policy, whose disastrous effects were amplified by Race to the Top.

Its monomaniacal focus on test scores warped education. RTT just made it worse and left a path of destruction in urban districts.

And the gains were, as a new study reports, modest and diminished over time.

Anyone familiar with Campbell’s Law could have predicted this result. Social scientist Donald T. Campbell wrote:

“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”

Campbell also wrote:

“Achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways. (Similar biases of course surround the use of objective tests in courses or as entrance examinations.)”

Scores on NAEP rose modestly for a few years but went flat in 2015 and again in 2017.

Arne Duncan is traversing the country and TV boasting of his success and asserting that American education is built on lies. He should know. The biggest lie was NCLB. The second biggest lie was Race to the Top. The third biggest lie is ESSA.

The belief that threats and rewards will produce better education is not just a lie. It is stupid.

Categories Campbell's Law, Duncan, Arne, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Lies, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Stupid

Good News! New Jersey Trashes VAM!

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2018 //
33

Good news! The Governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, and the State Commissioner, Lamont Repollet, slashed the stakes attached to PARCC testing. Until now, 30% of a teacher’s evaluation was tied to test scores on the Common Core PARCC Test. The governor and Commissioner just dropped it to 5%.

The practice of evaluating teachers by student test scores was heavily promoted by Arne Duncan and Race to the Top. It has been widely discredited by scholarly organizations like the American Statistical Association. It remains on the books in many states as a dead vestige of the past, a zombie policy that has never worked but never died.

New Jersey drove a stake in its icy heart.

“New Jersey Commissioner of Education Dr. Lamont Repollet today announced that PARCC scores will account for only five percent of a teacher’s evaluation in New Jersey next year, down from the damaging 30 percent figure mandated by his predecessors. State law continues to require that standardized test scores play some role in teacher evaluation despite the lack of any evidence that they serve a valid purpose. In fact, researchers caution against using the scores for high-stakes decisions such as teacher evaluation. By cutting the weight given to the scores to near the bare minimum, the Department of Education and the Murphy administration have shown their respect for the research. The move also demonstrates respect for the experience and expertise of parents and educators who have long maintained that PARCC—or the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers—is an intrusive, harmful test that disrupts learning and does not adequately measure student learning or teacher effectiveness.

“Today’s announcement is another step by Gov. Murphy toward keeping a campaign promise to rid New Jersey’s public schools of the scourge of high-stakes testing. While tens of thousands of families across the state have already refused to subject their children to PARCC, schools are still required to administer it and educators are still subject to its arbitrary effects on their evaluation. By dramatically lowering the stakes for the test, Murphy is making it possible for educators and students alike to focus more time and attention on real teaching and learning.

“NJEA President Marie Blistan praised Gov. Murphy and Commissioner Repollet for putting the well-being of students first and for trusting parents and educators. “Governor Murphy showed that he trusts parents and educators when it comes to what’s best for students. By turning down the pressure of PARCC, he has removed a major obstacle to quality teaching and learning in New Jersey. NJEA members are highly qualified professionals who do amazing work for students every day. This decision frees us to focus on what really matters…”

“While the move to dramatically reduce the weight of PARCC in teacher evaluation is a big win for families and educators alike, it is only the first step toward ultimately eliminating PARCC and replacing it with less intrusive, more helpful ways of measuring student learning. New Jersey’s public schools are consistently rated among the very best in the nation, a position they have held for many years. Despite that, New Jersey students and educators are among the last anywhere still burdened by this failed five-year PARCC experiment. By moving away from PARCC, New Jersey’s public education community will once again be free to focus on the innovative efforts that have long served students so well.”

Categories Accountability, Duncan, Arne, New Jersey, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, VAM
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