My website is dianeravitch.com. I write about two interconnected topics: education and democracy. I am a historian of education.
Diane Ravitch’s Blog by Diane Ravitch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at dianeravitch.net.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am gleefully devouring Reign of Error. This makes perfect sense as I’ve been a long time fan whose agreement was only temporarily suspended by Ms. Ravitch’s time on what she came to acknowledge as the dark side.
The book hooked me early with its reference to A Nation at Risk, which I described at the time of its release as the beginning of an acceleration of a race to a bottom we haven’t yet reached and can then rebound from. That was during my sixth year teaching. At this point I’m four years retired after 33 in the public schools. My rage has only increased, but I guess I’m still optimistic to say we can rebound.
I must say that I think Ms. Ravitch either errs on the side of fairness or political correctness, or is naive when she states in Chapter 4: “They (today’s reformers) lack any understanding of the crucial role of pubic schools in a democracy.” To the contrary, this understanding is precisely why they want to privatize and corporatize the schools. Theirs is the elitist, recently Mitt Romney expressed, Darwinian view which finds equity abhorrent, even unethical. The democratic concept of the greater good does not exist for them. Their “good” is their own, not others’. Their success is creating the greatest distance between themselves and those their exploitation of makes them rich, winners. They consider the public as their marketing targets, or better, victims. Their language, perhaps highlighted by the word “choice” is but a marketing scam.
This is as evident in education as it is in their positions on the tax code, environmental protection, campaign financing, corporate malfeasance, investment governance, etc. Their “collective responsibility” (Ms. Ravitch) identifies the public collective as the market that they manipulate to enrich and empower themselves.
We know that traditionally the biggest expense in any endeavor is the human resources. It stands to reason therefore that the best way to increase profits is to minimize the investment (they would use the word “expense”) in people, in this case the educators and their charges, the students. And if that can be done, and in part using public funds, to maximize private profit, which is what Ms. Ravitch accurately argues their “reforms” are all about, even better!
True democracy is antithetical to these titans. For them, power, control, success, and participation is only for individuals “chosen” by those who already have it, newcomers who succeed at a game governed by rules those elites determine.
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I am a librarian in Syracuse, New York and our local newspaper is conducting a “peeps” art content in anticipation of Easter. Several entries have been selected for the final round and I thought this one entitled “Peeps for Public Education – Gilbert” would be appreciated by Diane and followers of her blog. I hope it wins – Enjoy!
http://photos.syracuse.com/yourphotos/2014/04/peeps_for_public_education_-_g.html
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I am working on a doctoral research project inspired by Diane’s book, Death and Life of the Great American School System (2011). If the public school system–as many of us knew it, at least–is dead or near death, it would stand to reason that public school teachers who remember the system as it was prior to No Child Left Behind (2002) have experienced loss and grief. If you remember what it was like to teach prior to No Child Left Behind, if you feel as if teaching completely changed when No Child Left Behind was implemented, or if you ever felt saddened by some of the changes that resulted from educational reform, then you may be interested in taking my survey.
Professional Loss and Grief in Teachers (a survey)
https://ndstate.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5nCLnPAFadWZX93
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http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2014/04/16/spencerport-cosgrove-teachers-petition-common-core/7795453/
Hello,
Please see the above story that appeared in today’s Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester’s newspaper). Thank you!
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Diane,
I posted a review of John Kuhn’s new book, Fear and Learning in America. Like you I am a fan of John’s passion, commitment and how his point of view is rooted in real teaching and educational leadership experience.
http://russonreading.blogspot.com/2014/04/john-kuhns-fear-and-learning-in-america.html
Russ
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Hey Diane, Graduate student here at UVA looking for your thoughts about the following proposal for a NYC-UFT collective bargaining agreement. What do you like, what would you change, what’s feasible? Thanks!
http://nycteachersproposal.wordpress.com/
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Sadly, perhaps the fact that the current “reformers” find a more more visible audience than people like Ravitch and John Kuhn is evidence of shortcomings in our educational system. If ignorance and silence prevail, we struggle.
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Excuse me, we are NOT a democracy. Well, we originally weren’t. Our founders loathed the idea of becoming a democracy.
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And we are not a democracy now:
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/new_study_finds_the_us_is_not_a_democracy_so_what_is_it_20140417
…If you guessed oligarchy, sadly, you’re correct. Princeton University researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page discovered that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Scary isn’t it? The rich have basically all the control in what was meant to be the great democracy of the United States and rulings like the Supreme Court’s recent McCutcheon decision will only further perpetuate this disaster.
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Yeah, Our Constitutional Republic is morphing at a break neck speed. It’s what happens when people, in the call for compromise, destroy the principles that protected us.
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If the public school system–as many of us knew it, at least–is dead or near death, it would stand to reason that public school teachers who remember the system as it was prior to No Child Left Behind (2002) have experienced loss and grief. If you remember what it was like to teach prior to No Child Left Behind, if you feel as if teaching completely changed when No Child Left Behind was implemented, or if you ever felt saddened by some of the changes that resulted from educational reform, then you may be interested in taking my survey. This survey is for a doctoral research project.
https://ndstate.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5nCLnPAFadWZX93
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Fear and loss may be connected. I am working on a doctoral research project inspired by Diane’s book, Death and Life of the Great American School System (2011). If the public school system–as many of us knew it, at least–is dead or near death, it would stand to reason that public school teachers who remember the system as it was prior to No Child Left Behind (2002) have experienced loss and grief. If you remember what it was like to teach prior to No Child Left Behind, if you feel as if teaching completely changed when No Child Left Behind was implemented, or if you ever felt saddened by some of the changes that resulted from educational reform, then you may be interested in taking my survey.
https://ndstate.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5nCLnPAFadWZX93
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This article is about the struggles of a new teacher and the debt he acquired in order to earn his master’s degree in education: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dj-cook/working-poor-series_b_5120547.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
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Sadly, the “partisan-ization” efforts of the press continues
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SF, the New York Times continues to misunderstand the controversy surrounding the Common Core standards. There is a carefully designed narrative that asserts that all criticism of the Common Core comes from the farthest extremes of the Republican party, especially the Tea Party. This narrative leaves out the leading role of the Obama administration in the promotion, execution, and adoption of the CCSS, as well as the role of the Gates Foundation in funding them. It also, importantly, leaves out the critique of the standards by teachers and other educators, who are very well informed about the way they were developed and their pedagogical shortcomings. Whether the New York Times’ inability to portray fairly the issues surrounding CCSS is intentional or not, I do not know.
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Saul Alinsky at work again.
Colleagues, please drop the labels, quit subscribing to the blame game.
I sent Reign of Error to our School Board and two nights ago they rejected a Charter School!
Telling the truth is often a tedious job and it’s hard to hold the attention of the people conditioned to non-depth reporting of the salacious side of the facts.
If you know what is right, then act to make the change. Playing the blame game may feel good but it’s like cotton candy.
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In 1848, Sam Brannan ran up and down the streets of San Francisco yelling, ”Gold! There’s gold in the American River!” Brannan had no intention to dig for gold himself, of course. Just before he made the announcement, he had purchased every pickaxe, shovel and pan available in Northern California. He knew that the people who came to California to dig for gold were suckers; a few might find wealth, but most would simply line his pockets.
Today, politicians, state education officials, district superintendents and school board members are suckers in the new “gold rush.”
In the “Race to the Top,” we have lined the pockets of gurus, computer hucksters, and corporate consultants galore—and the further we go, the higher the price tag gets. In the search for “gold,” we spend plenty of it.
So who’s our Sam Brannan? Well, Pearson Publishing has applied for the position, and appears to be the front-runner. But watch out, because these guys are famous for sloppy in-house “research” to support their money-making initiatives.
Take, for example, Cogmed, a “brain-training” system Pearson claims will “effectively change the way the brain functions to perform at its maximum capacity.” According to the Journal of Experimental Psychology, it’s all bunk. Dr. Douglas K. Detterman, professor of psychology at Case Western Reserve University and founding editor of the influential academic journal Intelligence says, “Save your money. Look at the studies the commercial services have done to support their results. You’ll find very poorly done studies, with no control groups and all kinds of problems.”
Pearson also markets “SIOP” (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) as a “scientifically based” program for ELL students. The Institute of Education Sciences found that “No studies of … (SIOP) … meet … evidence standards.” Another study also found major deficiencies, stating “Because of the widespread use of the SIOP and its far-reaching advertising, published research supporting the SIOP should be made of sterner stuff.”
The Common Core and PARCC tests are baloney, too. There is no evidence that the CCSS “standards” positively affect learning or that performing well (or poorly) on these tests is any indication of future performance in college or career—and test results certainly have no relevance to becoming a productive member of our society. All evidence indicates that Pearson is making plenty of money, however.
Sam Brannan was a heartless capitalist, but at least his picks and shovels did the job. The guys at Pearson who have concocted the Kommon Kore Swizzle Quizzes can’t even claim that. They’re flogging bogus products, a pattern of behavior that seems well established.
Why have we allowed ourselves to be suckered? Several obvious factors include:
A sincere, but misguided desire to “guarantee” that all students make lockstep progress, despite poverty or other intervening variables.
Political and financial pressure—Arne Duncan demands that states accept the CCSS and use test scores to evaluate teachers…or face restricted use of federal funds for education.
Unwitting and unwarranted trust in companies that sell products to assist already overworked educators.
In the end, the only people who find gold in education today are companies like Pearson, whose main objective is a higher profit margin, not the development of young citizens for active participation in a democracy. They are snake oil salesmen of the lowest variety. They cynically peddle their products with false promises of better learning which is “scientifically based,” leading school districts to expend limited funds on unnecessary and unhelpful items. Those expenses rob students themselves of funds that might better be spent on decreased class size and an expanded, more personal curriculum.
So what does one teacher do?
You can start at your own staff meetings by forcing public acknowledgment of the stark realities of Testing über Alles:
Ask your administrators if the tests you are required to give have been tested for reliability and validity—and to supply the research on which that determination is based. If they can’t, assume it doesn’t exist.
Ask them for specific examples of “instructional decisions” that the tests will influence for the students you have at present. I’ll bet the results won’t be available until the little darlings have flown your coop.
Ask them how much money is spent per pupil on each test…and if they’d prefer to spend the money on some other frippery…like maybe additional staff?
Ask administrators for evidence that test scores actually reflect differences in classroom learning, and not income level or other intervening variable. All evidence is to the contrary.
Let members of your community know that it is legal to opt-out of standardized testing—and ask your administration for specific district guidelines parents should follow to do so. Advocate that those guidelines be published and distributed to parents along with all other information about standardized testing.
Then, when you are accused of being “unprofessional” because you are forcefully challenging decisions made by district or state officials above your pay grade, ask them how it can be unprofessional to expect that educational decisions be based on “real science” that shows a benefit to both teacher and student rather than the wallets of Pearson investors?
The moral of the story is that since we aren’t in the gold digging business, we don’t need to buy shovels from anyone.
And if you just can’t accept that, at least don’t buy your shovels from companies like Pearson, whose only goal is gold by any means necessary.
David Sudmeier
http://davidsudmeier.com
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Diane,
Just in time for “National Testing Month,” Here are some thoughts on the current obsession with standardized testing from yours truly. Please feel free to share this on your blog. Thanks to Valerie Strauss and the Washington Post for helping to get the word out!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/04/22/11-problems-created-by-the-standardized-testing-obsession/
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My theory about TFA is that these TFA young people are easily intimidated and manipulated. Many are basically abused by the system because many are vulnerable. They come from all over the country, get an apartment, get a TFA job, sign a contract, and essentially have to put up with anything and everything their principals dish out. The system loves it. The pay is not good. They usually don’t have the flexibility to tell their principals to take the job and shove it. They can’t. They have to make a living, so they have to put up with everything. They have no recourse. I’ve seen some of them have nervous breakdowns because of all this. My question: Is this any way to treat the people who do the incredibly important job of teaching our kids?
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Not sure if you’ve seen this or not, but CNN online ran an article about the evils of Common Core testing and one or Dr. Ravitch’s posts was linked!
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/23/opinion/tampio-common-core/index.html
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I am working on a doctoral research project inspired by Diane’s book, Death and Life of the Great American School System (2011). If the public school system–as many of us knew it, at least–is dead or near death, it would stand to reason that public school teachers who remember the system as it was prior to No Child Left Behind (2002) have experienced loss and grief. If you remember what it was like to teach prior to No Child Left Behind, if you feel as if teaching completely changed when No Child Left Behind was implemented, or if you ever felt saddened by some of the changes that resulted from educational reform, then you may be interested in taking my survey.
Professional Loss and Grief in Teachers (a survey)
https://ndstate.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5nCLnPAFadWZX93
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http://standwithspencerport.wordpress.com/
We have quite a movement upstate! Over 4,000 signatures to a petition that started with 60 teachers at Cosgrove Middle School protesting the secrecy of the poorly written, developmentally inappropriate and purposefully deceptive 3-8 ELA Exams! I’m sure we’ll get even more signatures if you blog about the petition. Thank you!
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I’d like to post a short essay that articulates what is mostly unknown about the system through which the Gates Foundation’s wealth was accumulated at Microsoft Corp. My hope is that many more people will connect the dots among the various elements, the intents/agenda of those operating the system, and the impacts through the chain of cause/effect on children & teachers subjected to excessive emphasis on standardized testing. Keep this essay in your back pocket and share it when people puzzle over the need for heavy industry (and ultimately cultural) regulations. Here’s the essay:
Antitrust Law was created to counter Rockefeller, maverick that busted the boundaries to roam a ethically devoid wasteland, relying on the denial of his employees (like the Iraqis deny Saddam’s despotism) and the greed of his investors to keep him nourished. Gates is exactly like Rockefeller, except…
Barrier to entry to competition in software is much higher due to network effects. This creates hysteresis – once the dirty work is achives to corral in customers, they find themselves locked in automatically. They are locked in because their master is required to share protocols with his competition in order to lower the barrier to entry. Since Gates is not required to share the protocols, his captives are stuck.
The reason Gates is not required to share his protocols is because U.S. copyright law has been castrated by 20th century federal public servants. They removed the time limits. Copyright time limits ensure a balance between the public and private benefit of intellectual property. Copyright policy enforcement, like all law enforcement, is a public expense. It should therefore have a public benefit. 20th century public servants, as puppets of big business, hijacked the copyright policy and removed the time limits that Jefferson mandated in the U.S. Constitution.
Thus these public servants failed their obligation to uphold the U.S. Constitution. The result has been that the intellectual property under the hood of the world’s computing essential facility is being used by Microsoft to extract monopoly rents from the vast majority of computer users. This majority, known as late adopters, take basically what is handed to them. The early adopters, who know what they want, see Microsoft only in their rear view mirrors. They provide a market for the leading edge innovators. A very small market. Because after a new product is introduced and accepted by the early adopters, Microsoft takes notice, and begins development on a functional clone. Gradually, the late adopters catch wind of the value of this new product. They weigh the pros and cons of Microsoft’s and the pioneer’s offering. Microsoft’s is, of course, going to be much better integrated into Windows, and it’s heavily subsidized. Their choice is made for them by Bill Gates. They choose the clone.
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Nothing will improve in NYC schools until Walcott’s cronies are removed from the Dept. of Ed.
Foremost is Grace Zwillenberg, who as Principal of a high school in Queens, forced teachers to pass more than 80% of their students; whether they were learning anything or not. She did this to keep her job as Principal.
If teachers didn’t pass more than 80% of their students, they were written up, and demoralized by her.
Many devoted teachers lost their careers because they wanted their students to learn, but this principal didn’t care; as long as she falsely raised her school’s graduation rate.
Bloomberg closed her school anyway, but she was promoted to Head of Safety for the borough of Brooklyn in 2012.
How are we going to have good schools with people like this in charge?
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Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall…
I used to live in a room full of mirrors
All I could see was me
I took my spirit and I smashed those mirrors
Now the whole world is here for me to see
Jimi Hendrix
It is maddening to be assaulted with the cacophony of demands on public schools today. Schools (and by that I mean teachers) are expected to “fix society” in any number of ways. Each of these goals has a degree of merit, and it is not surprising that non-educators might hope that they would be met within the K-12 years. These expectations cannot be met, however. Schools have never, and will never, “fix society.” Instead, schools reflect the society they exist within.
Anti-bullying programs will not rid us of people who want to push society in one direction or another. Ask the Koch Bros. and Bill Gates if this isn’t so. “Raising standards” will not cause children to escape the effects of poverty or emotional deprivation. Teaching Shakespeare in elementary school will not inoculate future generations against the Duck Dynasties of the future.
The purpose of public schools is to preserve a democratic society by assisting citizens in their pursuit of happiness and to prepare citizens to take an active role in public affairs. Corporatists instead insist that education is utilitarian; that it functions to provide a workforce that will maintain American dominance in world markets. They work toward ensuring that every reflection of corporatism remains permanent—toward a society that shapes itself to a corporate structure, paralyzed by a need for certainty.
Corporatists are determined folks. They can amplify their messages and the political consequences of their beliefs in proportion to their willingness to use their cash. They believe that their position in society is evidence of the equivalence of capitalism and democracy, and that their socioeconomic status therefore entitles them to dominate the political scene. It’s a circular argument that has the added advantage of perpetuating their power.
It does not serve corporatists to have an engaged citizenry. They would much rather that citizens be passive spectators, disaffected by political chicanery and alienated from a government they do not think they can affect. This leaves civic affairs firmly in the hands of the one percent who distort democracy by manipulating the language of debate and purchasing the loyalty of persons who possess political power.
Corporatists want us to change the “mirror” rather than change our society. They demand a school system that conforms to market-driven forces. The mirror they offer is a distorted one; one that reflects with limited focus and exaggerated promise the possibilities of an instrumentalized education. We who have great experience in keeping the mirror in focus have been excluded from decisions that only those anointed by corporatists or their lackeys are permitted to influence. These anointed ones possess little or no experience with the population of students we engage with daily, yet feel entitled to meet behind closed doors to undermine the curriculum and limit the student opportunities.
Jimi Hendrix encouraged us to smash the mirrors surrounding us, but I believe that refocusing and a bit of polish may yet permit us to enlarge and expose the image of society those mirrors reflect. Truth exists in mirrors that are square and plumb, not those built with distorting curves. That refocusing can only begin when the warping curves of education deform are straightened by teachers who demand transparency in the processes leading to determination of curriculum and the goals of public education.
At the same time, we must not permit corporatist initiatives such as CCSS and excessive standardized testing to dishearten us. If we do, our dismay will breed the apathy that permits corporatists’ unfettered control of the one institution that exists to provide students with experiences likely to instill commitment to democracy rather than oligarchy.
No, mirrors don’t fix anything, but they do permit us to consider those aspects of ourselves that might deserve attention. The discussions that can result from honest self-reflection are the heart of democracy. But there is no honesty in the reflection I see from the corporatist’s mirror. Their vision is of a profit-driven and profit-producing educational system, for that is the sort of society they are committed to. It is a society as bereft of humane interest as it is ravenous for mammon.
And yet, the number of people who have encouraged me during these “dark times” heartens me. If we all will reach out to others with and for support, our schools and world will be a better place. If we connect, then we will be able to make a commitment to a society that we will be proud to be mirrors for. My commitment is to a society that is inclusive, supportive, and fundamentally democratic and to an educational system that reflects those values.
What do you want to see in the mirror? Let’s make the changes to our society needed to bring that vision into focus in our schools.
© David Sudmeier, 2014
http://davidsudmeier.com
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@NationalPTA just tweeted this article by president Otha Thornton
http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/education-nation/commentary-education-needs-high-standards-involved-families-n11926
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“President Obama Throws Teachers Under the Train”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/27/1294954/-President-Obama-Throws-Teachers-Under-The-Train
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Ms. Ravitch,
I didn’t know if you were aware that seven Houston ISD teachers were suing the district for their evaluation system (which includes VAM and performance pay). Randi Weingarten will apparently be in Houston tomorrow when they submit the suit.
http://blog.chron.com/k12zone/2014/04/hisd-teachers-to-sue-over-job-evaluation-system/
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http://www.businessforcore.org/5-common-core-supporters-hear/ Here is some PR coming out from the chamber of commerce about the common core. Perhaps a rebuttal to them is in order? The media PR machine never stops grinding about this that’s for sure.
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As a regular searching of “Common Core” at news.google.com, I’ve been disappointed at the percentage of pro-Common Core articles to anti-CC. Today, actually, is different. The lead articles for “Common Core” are anti-CC. Here’s one from Randi W. that I was pleased to see: http://www.salon.com/2014/04/29/the_common_core_may_actually_fail_union_chief_sounds_off_on_christie_rhee_and_for_profit_testing_gag_order/
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Washington state has become the first state in the country to lose its waiver from the requirements of the NCLB Act.
Here is an article from Jesse Hagopian responding to…..
Arne Duncan Has Labeled Every School in Washington State a Failure. Cue To Revolt:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/29
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Mrs. Ravitch
This is what I read April 14th to the committee on education in Texas about standardized test. I have included a link to the video I took as I read and the petition I started.
Thank you for the work you do!
Bret Wooten
“I am here today to talk about standardized tests. I have started a petition that would ask that all elected and appointed officials be required to take the same standardized tests as our children. Then make the results public. I would like for each of you to sign it.
I would also like to ask you to sit in with some of your constituent’s children that have a disability like autism or down syndrome. Then watch as a child is given this test in English when they do not speak English. Then explain the educational value you found in what you witnessed.
What is the objective of giving these tests near the end of the year when there is limited time to address the issues the testing may reveal? The data generated has minimal value, because soon they will move into a new grade level with a completely new curriculum.
I am fine with accountability and reasonable testing. Our schools, its children and teachers value should not be based on a test. It should be a collection of data points. Including, but not limited to, what programs are offered at the school. How broad is the curriculum. Do they provide services for children with special needs?
The testing system can be, and is, easily manipulated by narrowing the curriculum and the drill and kill method of teaching. Engagement of our kids is diminished, because, we’ve made learning monotonous and boring. Explaining the science and mathematics behind building a robot is far more productive than just feeding our children another worksheet. No one found their passion in a test or was inspired by a worksheet?
You may see this as a gimmick, you would be right, but, no more of a gimmick than these test. We don’t need gimmicks in education, we need solutions. A test did not change my life, a teacher asking me to read one paragraph did. That moment in time mattered, not only to me, but to society.
You can and should make a difference, and I truly hope you will. Continue to work with groups like TAMSA and authorize the Texas Consortium of school districts. This is not some political game. These are our children, our schools, our communities and your constituents. Believe in them!”
Me reading my statement to the committee. I flubbed a line to two:)
My petition
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/all-elected-officials?mailing_id=21643&source=s.icn.em.cr&r_by=10317302
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Diane,
We have a few items coming out in op-eds and white papers in the next week to try and influence the North Carolina Legislative session to be a little more pro-education. Here is a op-ed from the News Observer that ran yesterday. I have stayed fairly incognito up to now on your blog (not that anyone who cared would have had trouble figuring out who I was) but I guess this outs me completely. As a professor of education at UNCW as well as a parent of two children in the public schools I have been speaking with parents and teachers and children across North Carolina about the impact of the recent legislation on education. Pamela Grundy has done the same as an advocate in the Charlotte region. Though there are many issues, we believe the Read to Achieve law, that may fail as many as half of the current 3rd graders, is going to be a massive blow to education in North Carolina. I usually stay out of anything political but this current legislation will harm children so I cannot watch this unfold without saying something. I know you have given North Carolina a great amount of attention in your blog. I hope you will help us to pressure the legislature when it reconvenes on May 14 to stop this train before it wrecks. Thank you for all of your help and support.
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/04/30/3823800/politics-driven-read-to-achieve.html?sp=%2F99%2F108%2F
Politics Driven Read to Achieve a Path to Failure for North Carolina
By Janna Siegel Robertson and Pamela Grundy
Across North Carolina, this has been the worst third-grade year in memory for teachers, students and families. The General Assembly’s requirement that third graders must pass the End of Grade (EOG) reading exam in order to be promoted has drained countless third grade classes of the excitement that comes with reading and learning, and turned the last months of third grade into a slog of worksheets, test practice and stress.
At the end of the school year, the Read to Achieve (RTA) legislation will force many North Carolina third-graders to repeat the grade, even though retention is enormously expensive and has been shown to harm students more often than it helps them.
The legislators who voted for this measure and the families enmeshed in its consequences should take heed. RTA is a perfect example of the problems that ensue when elected officials enact educational policies that fail to take into account the specific challenges that struggling students face, the solutions that have well-established track records of success, and the professional judgment of educators who know children as individuals, rather than simply as test scores.
For the well-being of North Carolina’s children, North Carolina’s citizens need to demand that their representatives either scrap or profoundly overhaul Read to Achieve. In addition, to avoid such negative consequences in the future, both legislators and citizens need to pay far closer attention to education legislation before it is enacted.
Few question the significance of third grade reading. Prominent education research organizations, most notably the Annie E. Casey Foundation, have made it clear that a child’s third-grade reading level is a useful predictor of later school achievement, graduation and adult success.
The challenge becomes how to help students reach proficiency.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation linked most of the reading problems it identified to the limited opportunities available to low-income children at early ages. It recommended actions that included supporting low-income parents, increasing access to high quality programs from birth to age eight and addressing the challenges of chronic absenteeism and summer learning loss.
North Carolina’s legislative leaders, in contrast, pushed through an underfunded mandate with punitive consequences. They required that the vast majority of North Carolina’s third graders pass the reading EOG or be retained (a handful of exceptions were allowed). They imposed these new requirements at the same time that they reduced prekindergarten opportunities, eliminated class size caps, and cut the ranks of teachers and teacher assistants. The only funding attached to the proposal was a small per-student fund to pay part of the cost of summer school for third-graders who did not pass the test.
The mandated solution – retention – flies in the face of decades of research which indicate that retention often sets a child on a path to dropping out of school. In addition, retention lacks a long-term track record of improving reading proficiency. In Florida – often touted as a model for North Carolina – third graders retained under a similar program showed initial reading gains over promoted peers. Those gains, however, faded by the time students reached seventh grade.
Read to Achieve thus:
1. Fails to address the problem at its source.
2. Imposes a solution that is enormously expensive, has clearly documented negative consequences, and has produced no long-term track record as an effective reading intervention.
3. Treats students as test scores, rather than individuals.
4. Further raises the stakes on standardized tests, which encourages teaching to the test at the expense of other, often more valuable learning activities.
5. Reduces many third graders’ interest in school and love of learning.
6. Places additional burdens on North Carolina teachers, who are already contending with low pay, larger classes, less support, rising expectations and shrinking resources.
These problems have emerged because Read to Achieve is a political, rather than an educational program. It is a superficial “high standards” measure that produces headlines but diverts money and attention from real solutions. It did not emerge from consultation with North Carolina educators, families, and education experts. Instead, legislative leaders copied it from a Florida program that has been heavily promoted by former Florida governor and potential presidential candidate Jeb Bush, as well as by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
If our legislators genuinely want to improve public education in North Carolina, they can do far better than following the lead of those who copy problematic policies from states whose students perform less well overall than North Carolina students. As the General Assembly reconvenes, voters need to let them know that we plan to hold them to legitimate higher standards, ones which draw on practices with strong evidence of effectiveness, respect the judgment of parents and educators, and support our children as precious individuals.
Janna Siegel Robertson is professor of Education at UNC-Wilmington, and co-coordinator of the UNCW Dropout Prevention Coalition. Pamela Grundy is co-chair of the Charlotte-based advocacy group MecklenburgACTS.org. They both have children in North Carolina public schools.
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Diane,
FYI on what’s happening with the Bloomfield NJ Board of Education:
Bloomfield Board of Ed President says high stakes testing and test prep are crowding out in-depth study and stifling curiosity. He also says the cost to implement the tests is a financial burden on the district and encourages residents to ask Congress to hold hearings on high stakes standardized testing.
How can we get other BOE presidents to craft a similar letter to their constituents?
Here is the text.
As with all public school districts in New Jersey, the Bloomfield Public Schools are mandated to test their students using standardized tests. These tests are now used to evaluate students, teachers, administrators and schools. The emphasis on testing has increased under the Race To The Top initiative and No Child Left Behind waivers. The Bloomfield Board of Education has questioned the validity of using these kinds of tests for such assessments.
The Bloomfield Board of Education has held four forums dealing with current education issues, including high-stakes standardized testing. (Links to the forums can be found on the district website here and on the WMBA-TV website.) The tests have taken priority over what should be taught in our classrooms. Teachers are frustrated with the daily regimentation of test preparation. There is little time remaining for students to examine in depth and explore with curiosity the true meaning of learning. Classroom teachers are forced to become drill instructors with students being indoctrinated into being proficient test takers yet lacking the exposure of a truly comprehensive education. The tests now seem to have become the purpose of education, rather than a measure of education.
We believe that every child should have an equal opportunity to prosper and be provided the skills to be a successful member of society. Every child deserves a full curriculum in a school with adequate resources. We are deeply concerned that the current overemphasis on standardized testing is harming children, public schools, and our nation’s economic and civic future. It is our conclusion that the over-emphasis on high-stakes standardized tests is threatening public education, as we know it.
It has become a significant burden on our school system to provide the required mandated programs that are not funded by either the state or the federal government. The cost of funding these programs has negatively impacted on our ability to provide a thorough and efficient educational experience for all our children.
The Network for Public Education, a public school advocacy group founded by Diane Ravitch, is urging the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee to hold hearings to investigate the over-emphasis, misapplication, costs, and poor implementation of high-stakes standardized testing in the nation’s K-12 public schools. If you agree that the use of high-stakes tests needs to be examined, please fill out and sign the attached letter. (Click links to print letters below.) Return the letter to your school’s office by Friday, May 9. We will collect all of the letters and deliver them to Washington, D.C.
The Bloomfield Board of Education
Shane Berger, President
Letters are in this link: http://www.bloomfield.k12.nj.us/pages/bloomfield/News/MESSAGE_FROM_BOARD_OF_EDUCATIO
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Hi Diane,
I would like to share my TFA experience with you.
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Diane, Louis C.K. ‘s slam of CC testing on David Letterman last night is also talked about at http://gothamist.com/2014/05/02/video_louis_ck_slams_common_core_te.php
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Responding in agreement to Janna Siegel Robertson and Pamela Grundy-
The powers that be are dooming 8 year olds to life of submission, doubt, and mistrust in themselves – siphoning the life out of them by mandating retention. The powers that be are making false assumptions just like the cosmologist in the Middle Ages saying the earth is flat. Common Core puts the wrong teaching tools into the hands of reading teachers and making the wrong assumptions and consequently, the third graders are being punished for the sins of adults.
As Lorrie Shepard and Mary Lee Smith said in “Flunking Grades” ’89 “Flunking kids does nothing to solve low-achievement, and flunking is an expensive proposition.” “Flunking kids is one of the most harmful tools in the arsenal of educators.”
Everyone who is responsible for implementing such a horrific punishment on our children should be made to experience the same humiliation they are imposing on these children. They mandate that the children read proficiently by third grade yet don’t give them the proper standards, program, nor the proper assessment tools.
The Common Core continues to perpetuated a phonetic based program which, according to a congressionally mandated study of the reading program used in the No Child Left Behind law was found to be flawed.( Study of Reading Program Finds a Lack of Progress 11/19/08.) Children who have an auditory discrimination problem can’t learn via the phonetic approach! So the governors punish them/retain them. How cruel!!!!!!! Won’t they ever listen to experts ?! Starting the Behavioral approach in pre-K will not solve the problem. It just compounds it because we are giving the students the wrong idea what reading is all about and squelches their interest. Even four year olds want captivating stories – not the contrived sentences fed to them already at Pre K.
The opening sentence of the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts is problematic, “ One of the key requirements of the Common Core State Standards for Reading is that all students must be able to comprehend texts of steadily increasing complexity as they progress through school.” Plus, the Common Core is anchored in a modified Behavioral approach to learning. CC states,
“varied and repeated practice leads to rapid recall and automaticity.” CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.1
“Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.”
Being able to regurgitate information will be of no use to the students if they can’t relate to the information in some way and apply it. Furthermore, some people/children have phenomenal memories but others do not. Just like actors on stage need props/cues to help them remember their lines so do children need cues to retrieve information. Relating the subject matter/curriculum to the students and their background is like using mnemonics not only to help them retrieve information but more importantly to help them construct meaning and apply the information. Common Core concentrates on the text instead of starting with the child and what the child knows. “Closed Reading” negates the years of research stating the importance of utilizing prior knowledge; limits higher order thinking skills of analyzing and comparing negating the imagination. CC also maintains that children should occasionally read on a level that is too difficult. However, children will regress if under stress – being forced to read on a frustration level.
It is apparent that the “Work Group” of the CC, made up mainly of business people, had no background in psychology of learning and ignored all the experts in the field of literacy and the psychology of learning.
From my observations children who are successful as readers learned in spite of the Common Core Standards and are successful because they learned what reading is all about from home. Their parents/caregivers value education and read to them, interacted with them, and built up their background knowledge. Parents don’t have to be wealthy to support their children’s learning at home.
“The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children. ” Commission on Reading in a Nation of Readers
“You do not have to read every night – just on the nights you eat.”
Dr.Carmelita Williams former president of the NRA
“Children’s first grade reading achievement depends most of all on how much they know about reading before they get to school… The differences in reading potential are shown not to be strongly related to poverty, handedness, dialect, gender, IQ, mental age, or any other such difficult-to-alter circumstances. They are due instead to learning and experience – and specifically to learning and experience with print and print concepts.” Adams, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print, 494pp
The reading program that needs to find its way back into our schools is the program anchored in the Constructivist philosophy- a three-pronged, interactive approach such as Marie Clay’s Reading Recovery. Common Core ignored years of research done by Marie Clay, a world renowned educator. Her three-pronged cueing system went beyond just the phonics and sight vocabulary. She utilized semantics, syntax, along with graphophonics. Marie Clay’s and other Constructivists focus is on supporting active learners, engaging all their senses, interacting with the the text and responding to the text. She believed in starting with the child and his/her prior knowledge and ending with the child.
Marie Clay with her Reading Recovery believed in giving all the support a child needs so he/she would not make a mistake. She utilized reasoning skills along with all the senses. A happy environment, freedom to explore, confidence, a feeling of success, a challenge that can be met, hands on, and modeling were all very important to Marie Clay. She began with the child’s own words/sentences. Marie Clay believed in empowering children by helping them take ownership of what they learned. Common Core is indifferent to the affective realm, to the child’s feelings, and utilizing the child’s experiences, instead it has caused the Common Core Syndrome – child abuse.
No program is going to bring all children – learning disabled, those with emotional and physical problems- on par with the students who were ahead before they began for obvious reasons. Some people will never be able to run a 4-min. mile or to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. However, educators must work with the child at his instructional level, where children feel safe enough to learn with all the mistakes that are part of learning, where they can achieve and feel good about themselves. This will not happen to children who, for a variety of reasons, are competing against more advance peers.
It is not the child’s fault if he/she can not read. It is the mandates of the politicians, administration, teachers and the inappropriate reading program. Furthermore, the assessment is inappropriate. A standardized test will not give the teacher the instructional level of the student. Children should be assessed with an appropriate tool in a quiet, calm setting. When children sit in fear, start crying, vomiting, running to the bathroom the test has already been invalidated. Plus, the standardized test does not give the teachers the instructional level of a child. The teachers’ assessment such as Marie Clay ‘s Observation Survey, Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark System, or even a running record will inform the teacher.
“I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.” Albert Einstein
Children at risk should be given double time with reading instruction from day one. A reading specialist should work in tandem with the classroom teacher working with the children on their instructional level. Instead of pre-K, give schools sufficient reading specialists to help the At Risk students in elementary school working with the At Risk on their instructional level.
We must listen to early childhood literacy experts and not to the demands of politicians who have no educational background.
“As the old saying goes,
“… when injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.”
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There is nothing wrong with phonics as a strong component of reading instruction. Most children do well with it, and it is a good skill to learn, even when others may work. The error is always in assuming there is only ONE correct method which will be effective with all children.
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It is been a continual disappointment to me that the American Association of University Women (AAUW) issued, back in February, a public policy statement in favor of Common Core. I’ve been posting ad nauseam about it on their FB page. Ok, think about this. We all know that Common Core (CCSS) is part of a single big package for every state that applied for and received money. That package is Race to the Top Funding (RttT) and, for all but one state that is doing CCSS but NOT linking teacher evaluations to test scores (WA State), you have a mandatory linking of teacher evaluations and their future job as a teacher to student test scores in one academic year. Now think about this. Really think about this because here’s the money shot. We KNOW that the K-12 education profession has teacher sorting in teaching grades by gender. We typically find more male teachers in middle-jr.-sr. high schools. We know by observation that the majority of teachers in this country are women. Now here’s the facts, according to a National Center for Education information report released in 2011, 84% of public school teachers are female. Tell me how AAUW’s support for Common Core, with its high stakes federal money and mandatory testing and linking of teacher evaluations with student test scores won’t disproportionately and negatively affect women? How does AAUW square that circle, hmmmmm? Does anyone have any research links that touches on this issue? Who is working on the gender injustice issue of this?
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All the focus on test prep, knowledge of facts, etc. that is so focused on now, here is what employers are saying on MSNBC: And a recent study indicates that many of them question whether millennials have what it takes to succeed in the workplace. In that survey, State of St. Louis Workforce 2013, a lack of communication skills, a poor work ethic and a lack of critical thinking and problem solving were the biggest shortcomings of the job applicants they were seeing. ” ‘Soft skills’ once again far outpaced technical skills such as math and computer skills as the most lacking in the workforce,” the study concluded.
And what are schools heading toward? More individual, less interactive learning, disappearing problem solving skills and fill in the bubble thinking vs. critical thought, exactly opposite of what employers want to hire. Who says the CCSS are leading to college and career readiness? The employers are saying the thing missing is exactly what the massive testing environment won’t allow to be taught.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/careers/big-chill-millennials-learning-harsh-reality-workplace-n95606
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Reply to Lynn Hazen 5/2/14 comment:
“There is nothing wrong with phonics as a strong component of reading instruction. Most children do well with it, and it is a good skill to learn, even when others may work. The error is always in assuming there is only ONE correct method which will be effective with all children.”
Lynn, evidently you are unfamiliar with the Constructivists’ philosophy and methodology. Marie Clay, e.i., doesn’t negate the importance of phonics but phonics can’t be the all embracing method. She, as well as other Interactive-Constructivists, (I coined the word and labeled Marie Clay a Constuctivist. People get the wrong idea when you call her a Progressivists. ) believe that there must be a three-pronged approach to teaching reading. Besides phonics and illustrations, students need to use their background knowledge -semantics/meaning- along with syntax – the arrangements of words in a sentence; viz., you expect a noun to follow a noun marker. I listen to my four-year-old grandson read. He only can decode the multi syllabic words because they are in his hearing vocabulary, he is familiar with the topic, the illustrations, and the initial consonant sounds. He does not blend those multi-syllable words – too long to remember all those syllables. He would not recognize the word in isolation. Phonics is more important when encoding. Did you read the congressionally mandated study of the reading program used by No Child Left Behind? It was found to be flawed; it was anchored in phonics. It had no impact on comprehension. Phonics is important but keep it in balance. It is easy to teach phonics but it takes skill in guiding students in constructing meaning. It takes insight to relate the stories to the readers and to make applications.
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Diane, I don’t know where to put this, but it looks like it needs to be mentioned on this blog, too, since it’s another instance of the plutocracy exerting its mighty power over the 99%, when the Internet is so important to us and our cause: “Is Net Neutrality Dead?” http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-is-net-neutrality-dead/
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Please sign this petition to stop the corporate take-over of the Internet: http://act.credoaction.com/sign/verizon_netneutrality
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Diane, to bring this to your attention:
This skullduggery just in from the last hours of the spring legislative session in Florida’s right wing Republican-controlled Legislature:
Tampa Bay Times, May 2, 2014: Lawmakers revive, then approve school voucher expansion
Quote:
TALLAHASSEE — A surprise procedural maneuver Friday helped Florida lawmakers pass one of the most controversial bills of the session.
Both the House and Senate gave final approval to a bill that would expand the school voucher program and create new scholarships for special-needs children.
The proposal will now head to Gov. Rick Scott, who is expected to sign it.
School choice advocates celebrated bill’s passage — an unexpected end to a roller-coaster session.
—–
Joanne McCall, vice president of the Florida Education Association, the statewide teachers’ union, said she was disappointed. “The members of FEA are chagrined by the continued march to expand voucher schools that are largely unregulated, don’t have to follow the state’s academic standards, don’t have to hire qualified teachers and don’t have to prove to the state that they are using public money wisely,” she said.
McCall said it was “especially galling that the voucher expansion was tacked on to an unrelated bill on the final day of the session.”
—–
“Public schools should not have a monopoly,” Senate Budget Chairman Joe Negron, R-Stuart, said in debate. “We have choices in everything else.”
——-end quote
http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/lawmakers-revive-then-approve-school-voucher-expansion/2178137
With this development, Jeb Bush must be gleefully rubbing his hands together.
Just as certain as many people here in Florida were, that then-Governor Jeb Bush would leave no stone unturned in jamming his brother into the White House, many of us KNEW that these radical Republicans in Tallahassee would force this thievery of public education resources into law.
God willing, we will flush Rick Scott and as many of these thieves running the Florida legislature as we can this November, along with their micromanaging mentor, Jeb Bush.
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Diane,
This was forwarded to me by a current Colorado Springs, Harrison District 2, teacher. It was sent to all teachers in the district:
Why Harrison High School Can’t Retain Teachers
A 16th Century Italian political philosopher by the name of Niccoló Machiavelli once said “it is better to be feared, than loved if you cannot be both,” embodying his belief that a disorderly society can only be remedied through a ruler’s use of intimidation and force. While equating this hard line authoritarian philosophy of the late-Middle Ages to present-day education problems seems irrelevant, my short time working at Harrison High School has demonstrated quite the contrary. I feel that HHS (and HSD2 to a certain extent) is a prime example of how archaic methods like this are still alive and well. Only here, it is encouraged under the righteous guise of education reform and a rigorous teacher accountability model that not only drives away effective teachers, but reduces the quality of students’ academic abilities.
Oppression in the Name of Reform
Though it is insulting to Machiavelli’s legacy to liken Harrison’s administrative team to his sociopolitical genius, some credit must be given to our school’s relentless leadership who maintain their power not with the tip of a sword, but with an arsenal of evaluation rubrics, high-stakes tests and iPads. These ambitious leaders of the 21st Century have managed to “coach” teachers into quiet acceptance that a school is no longer a place for collaboration among educators for the betterment of students. Instead it seems that HHS now acts as a factory for manufactured achievement data that caters more to the interests of building and district officials than the actual students’ academic needs.
But despite the standardized test scores that loosely indicate that HHS is defying the prescribed shortcomings of typical low income schools, the fundamental factor of retaining its skilled teachers continues to deteriorate. Administrators and educators on all levels agree that teacher retention contributes to sustainable student achievement and overall school improvement. But high staff turn-over every year serves as a visible cancer that undeniably cripples the otherwise stellar outward reputation of Harrison’s most recent administration. Cognizant of the detriments that this serves to the public image of the school (and to its students only as an afterthought), Harrison’s administration annually embarks on a frantic search for a quick fix to this problem. As fear and discomfort grow with the prospect of losing this recently obtained media prestige, our administration’s thirst to regain control and to preserve their prowess drives them to depend upon their one true leadership skill: coercion.
The Unintended Impacts of a Broken System
Even though HHS conducts a yearly “collaboration” with returning staff members over how to improve retention for the upcoming school year, it is hardly the candid forum most would assume of such a school of immense growth. Instead these meetings serve as a propagandistic façade of welcoming teachers in an open discussion about the school’s direction, nothing more than an ironic theatrical production that Orwellian antagonists would applaud. To be frank, there is nothing quite like sitting in a discussion where we know that the answers to the questions at hand are the very responses that could get us fired. The paradoxical weight of this test serves less as a problem solving discussion for the benefit of the students and more as a loyalty measurement to the powers that be.
So if this is the annual trend (and anyone in the building can admit that it is), then why do HHS’s principals find themselves questioning why every graduation is coupled with a mass exodus of teachers? Surely this credentialed group of intelligent data-analysts can draw conclusions from the overabundance of evaluations and statistical information that they compile every semester. After all, isn’t the purpose of evaluating teachers to ensure that they develop into highly impactful academic role models for students?
Or perhaps as the critical eye is shifted away from the classroom and lands on the coveted Effectiveness & Results model (HSD2’s teacher accountability system), the true intention of our school’s leadership comes into focus. In an educational environment that is modeled around extrinsic motives of increased pay based upon high stakes tests and subjective evaluations, it seems naïve to expect educators to immediately overcome deeply rooted academic deficiencies. This is especially true when teachers are the very individuals who intentionally avoid the cut-throat, monopolistic and capital-driven private sector to sacrifice instructional creativity and autonomy for a slightly less meager salary.
But just as teachers’ pay and job security is contingent upon student achievement and administrators’ less-than-objective evaluations, so too are the principals’ livelihoods based upon growth and proficiency on standardized assessments, lower dropout rates, fewer behavior referrals and, believe it or not, teacher retention. Truly American in its design, this pay-for-“performance” system plays into the well-known Pavlovian method of motivation. Only instead of the classic expectation of a dog salivating at the sound of a bell, teachers are conditioned to respond to an offer of a slightly more sustainable lifestyle with the expectation of grossly improving student achievement within a short time frame. To the common citizen investing their hard earned tax dollars into public education, this seems to be the perfect model for ensuring a desired outcome. Provide the conditioned stimulus necessary for motivation and inherently the desired response will occur.
However, when it comes to American education, factors influencing the abilities of teachers to achieve the desired outcome are far greater than the conditioned stimulus can possibly promote. In other words, the belief that an increased salary is an adequate incentive for teachers to overcome America’s perpetual socioeconomic plight and education debt is simply illogical. Aside from the fact that more money is an unsound incentive to begin with (educators know before entering the classroom that even the highest paid teachers make less than the majority of equally credentialed but far less experienced professionals in the private sector), a teacher accountability system of this sort does nothing more than send the message to educators and students that knowledge and understanding of the world has a finite monetary value. Surely policy makers and district administrators do not believe that something as simple as a slight pay raise based upon a series of 20 minute observations and mistake-ridden, misaligned assessments will give teachers the ability to work past some of the most institutionalized levels of oppression that the education world has ever seen… or do they?
“Do or Die” Pedagogy and Manufactured Learning
This scenario leaves Harrison’s teachers in between a “rock” (underachieving students) and a “hard place” (self-invested administrators). Do you choose to give in to the force of the “hard place,” where you sell your pedagogical soul to a model of teaching that appeases those in charge? Or address the “rock” by doing your best to fly under the radar, meeting their expectations on the surface but finding your own way to address the endless factors causing low student achievement? Either way, the intellectual capital held by highly qualified educators is bastardized in the name of innovation and reform and undermines teacher’s professional integrity.
By appeasing the administrators, you maintain your job and can even potentially be considered an exemplary teacher without doing much more than a little brown-nosing and placating with a “dog and pony show” while they are in the room. Adhering to the expectations of the evaluator ensures job security, but at the cost of addressing the needs of the students. And what impact does this have on their academic achievement? While the teachers maintain their jobs and stay on the administrator’s good side, this approach inevitably creates intellectually helpless student drones that cannot learn anything without teacher-led PowerPoint lessons spoon-feeding knowledge to them. Harrison School District 2 prides themselves on their foremost core value of “No excuses for poor quality instruction,” but do they realize that a teaching model of this kind places no expectation on students taking ownership of their own learning? In pursuit of flawless first instruction, the district has effectively ignored the importance of student ownership of learning: All accountability on the teacher, no accountability on the students.
What self-respecting teacher with a desire to make true impacts on students would put up with this?
The answer to this question is zero. Hence why HHS administrators (and HSD2 leaders) ensure that they coerce teachers into inaction by enforcing monotonous and pointless requirements for their daily classroom. This includes, but is not limited to the following daily requirements: posted standard numbers, posted lesson relevance, posted DOLs, updated progress monitoring charts, posted class goals for assessments, individualized, interactive and updated student grade folders, etc. And these are just the expectations that ensure you will not risk getting fired, let alone what will get you the highest salary.
Add a number of inane tasks and expectations to the already overwhelming daily work of a teacher and make them a part of the teacher accountability system and you’ve created a loyalty test that can be measured during any random walk-in observation. Throw in a sacrificial staff member or two to terminate for not being “on board” each school year and administrators have the perfect recipe to exploit the fears and doubts of all staff members, while maintaining full control over all aspects of the classroom.
I can almost guarantee that all HHS teachers have at one point, if not every day, walked into the building with a pit in their stomach and mind in a tizzy, anxious over the myriad of tasks they must complete and preparations that must be made before school even begins. This added anxiety is not for the sake of their students but for the purpose of obeying the whims of their content supervisor. Would parents want their students’ teachers to be under such undue stress when attempting to secure their children’s future? I think not.
Nonetheless, the deceitful veil of education reform serves as the overarching justification for placing teachers in such an unnecessary and unfair position. As the political and economic spotlight falls on the waxing achievement gap, the American educational climate hysterically attempts to slap new surface-level bandages on a deeply malignant societal cancer. As a result, districts like HSD2 fall back on a set of far-reaching, teacher-centric core values that assert a doctrine that if students fall short of proficiency, those to blame are the teachers and the teachers alone. It is quite apparent that the definition of teacher accountability is taken so literally, that neither administrators nor the students are held responsible for academic achievement or failures. We teachers then become the ones to blame for any and all failures that will inevitably ensue in our daily work, thus making school and district administrators invincible to public criticism.
Such scapegoating is only further encouraged by a consistent flood of new, inexperienced and ambitious young teachers (mostly from alternative licensure programs such as Teach For America) entering the building. While willing to work themselves to death in pursuit of helping students, these teachers only enable such abusive administrative behavior by unknowingly accepting the mistreatment as commonplace for all schools, thus contributing their sacrifice for the students and the common good. This is a truly sad state of affairs as both traditionally and alternatively trained educators, for their personal and emotional well-being, are forced to abandon their students and seek more tolerable working conditions.
Simply said, the unintended consequences of this accountability system encourages those in power force to us to work so hard that it becomes nearly impossible to remain in the classroom for more than just a few years. High teacher turnover should be expected under such conditions, especially at Harrison.
A Call for Change
I fear, as national rhetoric increasingly favors the methods of HSD2 that while this treatment is not currently commonplace, it will quickly sweep America’s schools like an epidemic. We as teachers, not only by virtue of our expertise and credentials, but also by our unwavering dedication to bettering the lives of young people, deserve to be free from such professional oppression that is slithering through the halls of our schools and district.
We must never forget that the ideal of public education is vested in the common goal of equality of opportunity for all who seek it. We cannot allow this egalitarian dream to be tainted by the simple-minded belief that individual gain and more money will fix the deep social problems that we take on every day. Otherwise, those with the true intentions of making positive change in America’s schools will be driven from the profession forever.
For the sake of our students and their futures, we must take action against these inherent injustices that are plaguing their learning environments. The dehumanization of our students and teachers as a result of this accountability system is only counterproductive to the objectives of the education reform movement. The rest of the country is looking at Harrison School District 2 as the beacon of light that models a cure to the nation’s education woes. Would we condemn students and colleagues in other districts and other states to the same levels of deprivation?
We cannot remain in an inert state of compliance. Machiavelli depended upon the masses to quiver back into the comforting shroud of self-preservation to maintain control. If we continue to follow our current and tranquil path of silence, we are sure to see the integrity of educators across the nation fall to the whims of the authoritarian impulses of our superiors—as has happened in Colorado Springs, CO at Harrison High School.
Sincerely and deeply yours,
A colleague for change
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http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2014/05/01/at-success-academy-schools-high-octane-test-prep-leaves-nothing-to-chance/
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Academic Football with No Pads?
I’ve got to admit a level of hypocrisy when it comes to the subject of football. I’m against it. I’m also a Seattleite who went as nuts as anyone when the Seahawks took all the marbles. Still, those are two different subjects, really. Putting children in a situation where concussions are likely, not just possible, is unconscionable in my book. The risk an adult athlete wants to take in order to earn a significant salary is, short of outright murder in the ring, an appropriate decision to leave up to the individual.
The children in our care in the public schools are subjected involuntarily to a daily game of academic football, minus pads. The “concussions” are emerging even now; Louis C.K. speaks eloquently on that subject, and I expect many, many similar stories to emerge in coming days. When abusive standardized testing is forced upon students, the curriculum narrows, the educational experience is diminished, and the need for more testing is justified…and the circle goes ‘round and ‘round.
It’s time to admit the damage done due to institutionalized underfunding that has led school districts everywhere to become dependent on federal or corporate dollars. That need for funding has opened the door to coercion of state and district leaders by federal officials who have no constitutional authority to demand anything of them. When dollars, politics, and educational philosophy intersect, it ain’t a pretty sight, though…stuff happens.
The damage is evident when students—regardless of developmental disability, emotional instability, academic background or language understanding—are required to take a test, lest the school be penalized for being unwilling to test everyone. When a decision for kindness, for reason and humanity is declared inappropriate in order that corporations may more easily calculate “academic goals” in winning educational contracts, the system tosses children without reasonable protection into a game they do not comprehend. These students gain nothing from participating in the process, but are mined for information of value to a corporate entity.
The damage is evident in the diminished commitment to the process of education I see in student eyes year by year. As demands for “rigor” have grown, alongside the institution of “safety net” classes to improve test scores, the academic breadth of experience has diminished for students who give up “electives” to double up on a purely academic subject. Increasingly, we will see these remedial courses placed on-line, and if any specific connection is necessary between student and teacher…best of luck. Students who experience learning as a deeply personal collaboration will resent the constraints of “standards” as much as they do standardized testing now.
The damage is evident in the time students lose for further enrichment and guidance in the classroom due to excessive standardized testing. The amount of time varies widely from state to state, but it has increased dramatically for all during the past two decades. A lost week? Is that justified? How about places where yearly testing takes up even more time? Are their teachers able to use the time while students are testing to do productive work, or are they misused as very expensive proctors? How much do students lose when school administrators, office staff, and instructional support personnel are entirely focused on the organization of test materials, staff training, and test administration rather than the real and present needs of children? I think the public at large would be outraged to know the true costs of standardized testing, including hours spent on proctoring, organization and administration.
Students deserve a safe, healthy environment for learning. Excessive standardized testing is not conducive to that end. The information generated by those tests is unlikely to benefit students either directly, or through the creation of greater opportunities in their future. Rather, that information will be exploited to extract value in form of payment for increasing student adeptness in taking those same lousy tests that tell students nothing.
The only profit in public education should accrue to the learner, who should feel that they have gained by the opportunity to pursue happiness in a socially responsible way, and that they are ready to accept the responsibilities of citizenship. When that basic principle is met, students will find themselves in a safe and healthy environment , with pads firmly in place as they compete and cooperate in the supreme individual and team full-contact learning challenge!
© David Sudmeier, 2014
http://davidsudmeier.com
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Hi Diane, I would like to call your attention to a piece from Terry Moe at the Hoover Inst. entitled “Has Ed Reform Failed?” http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/176631
Moe sees the unions as the main obstacle to “reform”, but the thing that struck me in his piece was his open admission that ed tech will destroy the teachers’ unions:
“That something is the worldwide revolution in information technology—an exogenous development, originating entirely outside the education system, that is among the most profoundly influential forces ever to sweep the planet. With its rooting in information and knowledge, it cannot help but transform the way students learn, teachers teach, and schools are organized. It is the future of American education—indeed, of world education.
“Already, online curricula can be customized to the learning styles and life situations of individual students: giving them instant feedback on how well they are doing, providing them with remedial work when they need it, allowing them to move at their own pace, and giving them access—wherever they live, whatever their race or background—to a vast range of courses their own schools don’t offer, and ultimately to the best the world can provide. By strategically substituting technology (which is cheap) for labor (which is expensive), moreover, schools can be far more cost-effective than they are now—which is crucial in a future of tight budgets.
“Because technology stands to have enormous impacts on jobs and money, the teachers unions find it threatening. And throughout the 2000s, they have used their political power—in state legislatures, in the courts—to try to slow and stifle its advance. But they won’t succeed forever. Education technology is a tsunami that is only now beginning to swell, and it will hit the American public school system with full force over the next decade and those to follow. Long term, the teachers unions can’t stop it. It is much bigger and more powerful than they are.
“The advance of technology—much like the advance of globalization—will then have dire consequences for established power. There will be a growing substitution of technology for labor, and thus a steep decline in the number of teachers (and union members) per student; a dispersion of the teaching labor force, which will no longer be so geographically concentrated in districts (because online teachers can be anywhere); and a proliferation of new online providers and choice options, attracting away students, money, and jobs. All of these developments will dramatically undermine the membership and financial resources of the teachers unions, and thus their political power. Increasingly, they will be unable to block, and the political gates will swing open—to yield a new era in American education.”
============
And IT people wonder why teachers are resistant to the push for more tech in the classroom…
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David Fortin, Chubb and Moe’s most recent book is called “Liberating Learning,” in which they advocate for educational technology. One reason they like it is that they believe the ability to access content from anywhere in the world will destroy the teachers’ unions. Moe has a pathological hatred of unions.
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Diane,
I read your blog everyday. Thank you for what you do! I just wanted to wish you good luck with your Orthopedic surgery. I don’t know where you are having it done, but if it is possible, ask them to use IV acetaminophen as part of your peri-operative pain management plan. You should be able to take fewer opioids post-op and have better control of your pain, AND be nice and alert to write!!
Good luck! I hope everything goes smoothly for you and that you have a speedy recovery!
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The latest from North Carolina – State Senator Warren Daniel replies to a parent’s letter expressing concerns about cuts in teacher pay by comparing teachers to corrections employees, and says they should teach for love, not fair wages:
Ms. Greene,
Do teachers teach because they love teaching, & they love children, or
because they are paid at some national average? Are you considering that
in addition to the State salary, teachers also make approximately 14
thousand dollars in taxpayer paid benefits, and most counties have salary
supplements? In addition, compared to similarly situated state
employees, a teacher’s work year is approximately two months shorter.
While a department of corrections employee or a highway patrolman may
have to work on Christmas and Thanksgiving, teachers receive vacations
for every major holiday and are with their families. These are factors
that are almost never mentioned in this discussion. Noone believes that
a teacher’s job is easy, but neither are the jobs of many of our state
employees.
I hope that we are able to give all of our state employees a raise the
session, but as you mentioned we do have serious budget issues to contend with. And sometimes the only solution to that, is to gore someone
else’s ox in the form of cuts to other departments.
Thank you for your comments, and for recognizing that we have serious
government challenges in this economic downturn.
Sincerely,
Senator Warren Daniel
NC Senate District 46
Burke, Cleveland
Source: http://payourteachersfirst.com/in-the-news/
Email a response to Senator Daniel: Warren.Daniel@ncleg.net
Please share widely!
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Hey Diane, I have an idea I’d love to share with you (sounds, weird I admit, but let me have your attention for just 5 minutes – and stinks I need to leave it in the comments!).
We are currently developing a learning tool for computer education. Academia basically told us to “rack off” in no uncertain terms because we refused to employ Constructionism.
Long story short, we think we have an amazing little programming language that can teach kids to code. We don’t have the money that would be available from academic grants, so we are trying to drum up some grassroots support.
If you think you could check out our tool and plug us on your blog, we’d be super grateful.
Thanks Diane,
Sam
———————————————
Told not to pursue research…
Sam Boychuk was told by supervisors not to pursue his research (upon penalty of academic censure). Well, that is a sure fire way to get someone interested in why they can not research something. It turns out that all computer programming teaching in high schools is based on one idea (don’t believe us – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw3Z3GfK514) and it doesn’t work.
So with a desire to do nothing short of change the teaching of programming for youths, we have created Pipes.
Check it out at learnpipes.com (for details & swag). Also watch out for us on the international press wire in the next few weeks.
Kind Regards
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Hey Diane, I have an idea I’d love to share with you (sounds, weird I admit, but let me have your attention for just 5 minutes – ad stinks I have to leave it in the comments!).
We are currently developing a learning tool for computer education. Academia basically told us to “rack off” in no uncertain terms because we refused to employ Constructionism.
Long story short, we think we have an amazing little programming language that can teach kids to code. We don’t have the money that would be available from academic grants, so we are trying to drum up some grassroots support.
If you think you could check out our tool and plug us on your blog, we’d be super grateful.
Thanks Diane,
Sam
———————————————
Told not to pursue research…
Sam Boychuk was told by supervisors not to pursue his research (upon penalty of academic censure). Well, that is a sure fire way to get someone interested in why they can not research something. It turns out that all computer programming teaching in high schools is based on one idea (don’t believe us – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw3Z3GfK514) and it doesn’t work.
So with a desire to do nothing short of change the teaching of programming for youths, we have created Pipes.
Check it out at learnpipes.com (for details & swag). Also watch out for us on the international press wire in the next few weeks.
Kind Regards
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Dear Ms. Ravitch and all who are interested,
A prime example of privatizing ed reform has been taking place at Pasadena City College (a public community college). Here are links to 1. A (very funny but spot on) Los Angeles Times summary of a pubic snafu related to the commencement speaker, 2. a leaked internal memo (to the “leadership team”) by college president/reckless reformer Mark Rocha. (Among his stated goals are “say no to the union” and to run roughshod over shared college governance.) He also seems to think a new Catholic online college offers superior education to his venerable campus, based on nothing more than a press release. and 3. a copy of the faculty’s review of the president’s performance, a document that the board of trustees has officially refused to look at.
http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-ra-a-commencement-speech-for-troubled-times-20140502-story.html#page=1
Click to access rocha-memo-april-17-2014.pdf
Click to access complete-results-of-eval_52-pages.pdf
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This is in response to Sam Boychuck- once again reiterating my view in hopes someone will listen to the experts in the field.
Sam received his degree in history – not in Cognitive Psychology, in Learning Theories, in Child Psychology or Philosophy of Education….
Sam stated,”Academia basically told us to ‘rack off’ in no uncertain terms because we refused to employ Constructionism.” (Academia is not involved with Constructionism but in Constructivism.) Of course Constructivist wouldn’t give his program credence because it negates the child and his/her prior knowledge.
I went to his web site; the video is not available. So much for computer programing.
You sound like Dr. Ron Paul. ( I was so stunned to learn of his asinine program! My belief in him and his son was suddenly squelched. )
Ron Paul Curriculum: The Story of Liberty, K-12 He also ignores all expert researchers, just like Sam, and Bill Gates.
Basic for John Dewey was developing critical thinkers by starting with the child in relationship to the curriculum and ending with the child – applying information to the child and to his/her environment. This is crucial in the teaching of reading. Every story/text a child reads should be related to the students in some way so they can predict, be motivated to verify, analyze and apply. But both Bill Gates’ doesn’t want background knowledge to enter the picture and I suspect Sam nor Ron Paul do either.
We do not need yet another program anchored in phonics. Phonics is just one aspect of reading and it is more important when encoding. Reading is not about being able to bark at words – pronouncing them correctly. Comprehension of a text develops through guided reading – the interaction and guidance of teachers with students. A constant diet of testing does not develop comprehension skills. That is what the phonetic programs amount to.
Through daily interaction and guidance of teachers and fellow students, real learning take place- not with videos, not with “drill and kill.” One of the problems with on-line distance learning is the lack of interaction with students and teacher/professors with immediate feed back on a question or a quandary plus another point of view. Students need to interact with live people- not machines.
Through the Socratic method of teaching students, their critical thinking skills are developed. Developing critical thinking skills begins with day one – not after they have learned their phonics. Comprehension and decoding are taught simultaneously to make the text interesting and meaningful. The answers to questions are not a stopping point for thought but are instead a beginning to further analysis. Teachers use the Socratic method in reading in order to challenge students to examine pictures, sentence structure, prior knowledge along with the aide of phonics in developing the skill of reading. The teachers’ questions encourage students to analyze and respond to a story/text-not to come up with the right answer but rather to help students “examine their attitudes, knowledge and logic that form the basis of human belief.” ” It involves recognizing that all new understanding is linked to prior understanding, that thought itself is a continuous thread woven throughout lives…” rather than isolated sets of phonic rules, questions and answers. ” Most importantly, Socratic teaching engages students in dialogue and discussion that is collaborative and open… They are to avoid focusing on a ‘correct’ interpretation of the text.” Learning is social as Dewey maintains.
Sam stated that,”…we think we have an amazing little programming language that can teach kids to code…” Again decoding is only part of the task. The skill of reading should not be departmentalized into decoding, comprehension, and application; it is all part of the same process. Of course to momentarily isolate a skill is expected but then it has to be placed back into the entire composite.
The world renowned educator, Marie Clay- influenced by John Dewey and the Socratic approach- with her Reading Recovery realized the importance of the affective realm – the child’s feelings. Sam, Bill Gates and Ron Paul are indifferent to the affective realm, to the child’s feelings. Gates’ Common Core has caused the Common Core Syndrome – child abuse.
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I do not understand why anyone would want to quote John Dewey. If you read what he supported, it had nothing to do with education. It had to do with control and forming the minds of the children.
“The mere absorption of facts and truths is so exclusively an individual affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat.” (The School and Society, 1899) John Dewey
The man believed in communism and was funded by the Rockefellers. He was a huge fan of collectivism and felt it was through education our country could be changed. sikit
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In response to Carol:
Dewey did not believe in Communism. He wrote a book Democracy in Education, one of his most famous books. Does that make him a Communist?
Your quote,”The mere absorption of facts and truths… ” is a criticism of the schools. Continue reading and you will discover that he laments when schools stresses the absorption of facts and acquisition of knowledge.
The first three chapters of the book “School and Society” were delivered as
lectures before an audience of parents and others interested in the University Elementary School, in the month of April of the year 1899. Dewey is explaining what he refers to as the “New Education”: what he was doing in the Lab School at the University of Chicago.
“There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat. Indeed, almost the only measure for success is a competitive one, in the bad sense of that term–a comparison of results in the recitation or in the examination to see which child has succeeded in getting
ahead of others in storing up, in accumulating, the maximum of information. So thoroughly is this the prevailing atmosphere that for one child to help another in his task has become a school crime. Where the school work consists in simply learning lessons, mutual assistance, instead of being the most natural form of cooperation and association, becomes a clandestine effort to relieve one’s neighbor of his
proper duties.
Where active work is going on, all this is changed. Helping others, instead of being a form of charity which impoverishes the recipient, is simply an aid in setting free the powers and furthering the impulse of the one helped.
A spirit of free communication, of interchange of ideas, suggestions, results, both successes and failures of previous experiences, becomes the dominating note of the recitation. So far as emulation enters in, it is in the comparison of individuals, not with regard to the quantity of information personally absorbed, but with reference to the quality of work done–the genuine community standard of value. In an informal but all the more pervasive way, the school life organizes itself on a social basis.” mw.1.11
For Dewey the whole socializing process was important.
John Dewey’s works consist of
37 volumes
29 books, 588 essays
1079 entries
1882-1953 –
He lived in Huntington, LI ; he ran the lab school at the University
of Chicago; he had his own lab of nine children…
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Dewey was a socialist but not a Communist. While he was initially sympathetic to the Soviet experiment, he turned against it in the npmid-1930s when his colleagues were systematically murdered orcsentto Diberia. He convened a trial in New York City of the murderers of Leon Trotsky in 1937. He never forgave Stalin or the regime for its brutality. He still has much to teach us, especially now.
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This endless attack on the profession we love is eloquently explained by my husband in this speech he gave a couple of weeks ago at a forum on the politicization of education. He loves teaching, but must quit. Please watch if you have time.
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Your husband is a good man and will be a great loss to the profession. His words are moving. Prayers for a smooth career transition.
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Thank you. He is a good man and a good teacher. I appreciate you watching.
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I beg to differ. If you read his writings of the second half of his career, you will find he STILL supported the idea of collectivism and a transformation of the educational system as a tool to reach that goal. Having formed the Frontier Thinkers at Columbia University, he used the teachers college to change what and how children were taught. He might not have liked the outcome in Russia of those beliefs, but he never gave up the ideology.http://books.google.com/books?id=ndPGAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=The+Frontier+thinkers+and+communism&source=bl&ots=er9YCDiVO4&sig=7IbyAy_RDXEdfZRTGBbSyV2A1FU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YXJrU4eJCrPIsATauoGIBw&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=The%20Frontier%20thinkers%20and%20communism&f=false
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Carol,
You can beg to differ if you choose, but I am a historian of education and I assure you that Dewey abandoned all admiration for Communism in the mid-1930s at the time of Stalin’s purges. Read my account in “Left Back.” One of the leading “Frontier Thinkers” was George Counts, who openly admired the Soviet Union, but turned vehemently anti-Communist in the 1930s and ran for the presidency of the AFT on an anti-Communist slate.
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In the Communist Manifesto (1848), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels applied the term communism to a final stage of socialism in which all class differences would disappear and humankind would live in harmony.
Perhaps this is why so many people associate socialists with communists.
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And if you read this, you will find out why the Federal Government became so involved in education and dictating the how’s and what’s of teaching. http://ponderingprinciples.com/tag/givens/
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Yes, there are those here pushing for a pure Democracy as we speak. They had that in the USSR you know, mod rule until the hammer came down. They also socialized their children, facts be damned.
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I’m all in favor of dialogue, but that requires reasonable and respectful interpretation of facts.
Carol, your rants lack either reason or respect for facts.
It’s ironic, I suppose, that I’m teaching the Red Scare of the 1950s right now…our democracy is not under attack by Communist fellow travelers, it is under attack by corporations motivated by profit.
Joe McCarthy discredited himself with his unfounded accusations…you are doing the same to yourself.
I’m going to allow you to fade from my consciousness, and I encourage others to do the same until your contributions become constructive and respectful of facts.
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I think part of the confusion stems from progressive educational reform being co-opted by corporate interests, who see technology plus accountability (which they, of course, avoid in any arena) as a way to “reform” education. Thus, the “student centered” model pushed by Dewey and Freire, which was originally intended to be anti-authoritarian, has now been turned on its head to perpetuate the ideals of the corporate world.
Some of the most politically progressive teachers I know tend to be a bit more traditionalist in their teaching pedagogy, so the idea today that “progressive=student centered” is misleading.
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Diane, Yes, I agree Counts turned against Stalin but I do not believe he turned against Socialism (the path to communism. And he did not turn from the idea of changing our form of government, a government based on the idea of individuality into a collective, socialist society. In this statement, he spells out his difference of society and this country from that of our founders…..Counts concludes that there is no longer any choice between individualism and collectivism, but rather we must choose between two different forms of collectivism: “one essentialy democratic, the other feudal in spirit; the one devoted to the interests of the people, the other to the interest of a privileged class” (Dennis, 1980, 103). In order for democracy to survive, Counts sees no other way accept by creating a new economic foundation. I think his last book was titled, “Dare the School Build a New Social Order”.
The new economic foundation would do away with the Free Market and profit. Something Socialist and communist do agree on. Counts and Dewey do not support a Constitutional Republic in any of their writings and as you can see above, their idea of Democracy is not what most people understand Democracy means.
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Carol, You really don’t know much about Counts. His 1932 pamphlet “Dare the School Build a New Social Order?” was written when he was in the throes of collectivism. It was not a book, nor was it his last writing. After he was disillusioned with the CP, he wrote several books about American civilization and democracy after that period of his life. Counts abandoned Communism, and so did Dewey. Saying the same thing over and over again doesn’t make it true, and in this case, it is false. I happen to be one of the few people alive who has actually read John Dewey’s FBI file (It is in the Hoover Institution Archives). He was not a Communist. Yes, he was a socialist, but being a socialist is not a pathway to Communism. Britain was socialist for many years, but no one would call it Communist today. End of conversation. Please don’t send me references to rightwing tracts. I know the history. Read the chapter about the “Social Frontier” in my book “Left Back.” I don’t find this an interesting discussion, as what you are alleging has no factual basis.
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David, Am I to understand you believe your interpretation of facts are the only legitimate ones out there? And that you think anyone disagreeing with you is unreasonable? What disinformation is there in the links I provided on Dewey. I do not think there is any ambiguity in any of his quotes so I do not understand why you want to “shut me out of your consciousness” because I have shared them. Do you do this to your students? Shut them out if they don’t agree with your take on things?
Also, if you are teaching about the Red Scare, are you also teaching your students about Elizabeth Bentley and her confession before the Senate Committee on the activities of Soviet spies within our government? She handed over 40 names of Federal employees in Washington she had worked with as communist party activist. Yes, I know there were those who tried to discredit her as an unstable whack, but the Venona papers proved she was telling the truth. So I guess, along with the other communist found in FDR’s administration, McCarthy was right about communist in our government. It wasn’t a witch hunt after all.
One thing I do agree on, Communism/Socialism is being brought about with the Cronyism going on in this country. Mega corporations are destroying competition with the help of politicians through the use of regulations and taxes. Bye bye mom and pops, bye bye start ups. Bye bye Free Market.
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Diane, I am not in this discussion as a right winger. I am simply and American citizen that is concerned with what I see happening in this country. I use information from all kinds of sources. My memory on Counts is from a book I read twenty years ago called, “None Dare Call it Treason”. My point still stands, his idea of Democracy (Socialism), still leads to what Karl Marx wanted which is pure communism. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm
England is not a done deal. The EU is not a done deal. OK, I shall stop with my comments Diane as I see we disagree on the merits of Socialism VS Capitalism.
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Tacoma Public Schools Board of Directors authorized a RIF (reduction in force = non-renewal of contracts) tonight of 17 teachers. Not up to 17, but specifically 17. They claim that the demographers project a loss of 400 high school students. Remember charter schools are coming to WA and of the 7 approved across the state, 3 will be in Tacoma, 1 will be a high school.
They claim that the loss of the waiver means a loss of $1.7 mil in Title I funding. However, they only lose the use of those funds for 3-4 months and then the portion unused for federally directed purposes returns to the general fund. Last year, Tacoma only used a small portion of the Title I money for the tutoring and other services mandated by the federal government. With a reserve fund of $33 mil (far more than other districts),
I think they can cover that $1.7 for a couple of months. They don’t and 17 teachers get RIF notices by May 15. It is my understanding that we will love 6 secondary PE/Health teachers because the district allows our children to waive PE if they play one season of a sport either in school or as part of a non-school related club. A sports season is two weeks of practice and 8 weeks of play which is far shorter than the 18 weeks of instructional time received in class. I’ve heard rumor that we will lose more of our Career and Technical Education teachers, even after 6 were RIF’ed last year. This was done due to the need to offer more remediation because our students just aren’t passing the tests at a high enough rate so we’ll take away their accounting, wood shop, and welding classes so they can take remedial math and reading.
I don’t know for sure what other departments across the district will be affected by this RIF but be sure this will hurt kids. Our demographers are notoriously wrong when it comes to what students actually show up to buildings in September and we’re going to be woefully understaffed.
In other news, the board also approved the adoption of the Springboard ELA curriculum. Three teachers who piloted it spoke eloquently on how easy it is to use and how effective it is with diverse student population including classes with SpEd students. The total combined teaching years for all three was 7 years (one 3rd year and two 2nd year teachers). We know have a mandated curriculum 6-12 that is…wait for it…fully aligned with the Common Core that focuses on non-fiction and excerpts from novels. The kids will only need to read at most one full length book each year of the secondary career.
By the way, we’re the only district in the state designated an Innovated Zone. We don’t just have innovated schools here and there but our whole district qualifies as innovative. Given our new ELA curriculum and our knee jerk firing of 17 teachers, maybe we should have that designation changed to “Zone that Drank the Kool-Aid.”
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Thank you, Professor Ravitch. You are now almost a lone national beacon supporting free and public education. The Right and a large portion of the white Liberal Left have never stopped their racist, misogynistic agenda, seeking the utter destruction of our world created and designed for peace and the well being of all.
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One Step at a Time
I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!” Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hope is an aspiration in itself. I’ve grown in hope as well as in despair for our public school system for some time. I’ve learned that hope and despair are necessary partners, not oppositional forces. If you are working for recognition of a fundamental truth in conflict with the interests of the wealthy, history says that you will learn this lesson. A few examples:
Thomas Clarkson, worked from 1787 to 1846 to eradicate slavery as a part of the British Empire and the United States. He did not live to see America in upheaval over bondage, and probably doubted it would ever occur, despite the demise of slavery in British colonies.
David Walker wrote aggressive abolitionist literature to contrast the lives of slaves with the values of democracy. He saw the Nat Turner rebellion crushed.
And finally there is Abigail Adams, whose entreaty to her husband, “remember the ladies,” went largely unheeded. Her suggestion that women’s rights existed absent a law to protect them only brought forth fruit in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment. There is no indication that Mrs. Adams felt her words had no effect on her husband, or lost hope for women’s rights. Still, she must have been galled by the revocation of suffrage for women in New Jersey in 1807.
Each of these people not only did not live to see their fight “won,” but also witnessed setback after setback in their attempts to promote the idea of equal rights as inherent to a functioning democracy. We should expect no less. As our voices rise in volume to proclaim public schools off limits to corporate exploitation, we will be subject to political attack and professional harassment. Corporations can purchase loud amplifiers for their messages, assuming that if they drown us out, we’ll shut up.
Let’s not.
Instead, when we feel beaten up in the press, or when corporate dollars do prevail in a given political campaign, let’s take it as a sign that our voices have had an effect on public debate. It’s going to be a long, hard slog to make our message connect with the lives of persons who send their children to us for an education.
Right now, there is something each of us can do in the fight to protect public education.
Remember, corporatists value the bottom line more than anything. Now, individually, we can’t make much of an impression by refusing them our patronage. As a group, however, we can have a real impact. Why give your consumer dollars to corporations who work to violate the right of citizens to have an education free of corporate influence? Martin Luther King, Jr. said as much in his “Mountaintop” speech when he encouraged people not to purchase Wonder Bread. And that’s a great place to begin.
Flowers Foods: These guys produce Wonder Bread, Tastykakes, and Nature’s Own brands, among many, many others. They also give a greater percentage of their political donations to Republican organizations that sponsor attacks on public education than any other corporation. Surely you can find another bakery—perhaps in your own neighborhood—that bakes bread, but doesn’t scorch basic rights in the process?
I challenge you to identify and publish the names of other products peddled by corporate pirates who target the democratic values of a free and public education. Put them in a reply to this blog—and provide at least one link to substantiate each of your claims.
Help us compile a list that all soldiers in the fight against corporatism can consult. Then, we will post the list wherever those soldiers may be.
Just another step. It’s one step we can all take, whether we individually ever see the “Promised Land” ourselves.
http://davidsudmeier.com/2014/05/12/one-step-at-a-time/
© David Sudmeier, 2014
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Barbara Madeloni was the director of the secondary-teacher education program at UMass. Her contract wasn’t renewed after she spoke out against the Pearson teacher performance assessment.
This weekend she was elected to head the Massachusetts Teachers Association, an NEA affiliate (Apologies. And thanks to those who corrected me – immediately – when I reported it incorrectly as an AFT affiliate).
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“Last year… 25 hedge fund managers made more than twice as much as all the kindergarten teachers in America combined.”
From “Now That’s Rich” by Paul Krugman, NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/09/opinion/krugman-now-thats-rich.html
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Karen Lewis “offered to negotiate a cut to teacher pensions.” I am not a CPS teacher, just a concerned resident, and I find this to be outrageous! What a let down. She should not be doing this:
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140508/BLOGS02/140509808
And when politicians talk about cutting the pensions of public workers, the table needs to be turned and the discussion should be aimed at cutting the pensions of politicians first.
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If people had any questions about the New York Times and which team they are really playing for, that has been solved by their report on the FCC and Net Neutrality. They are most definitely servants of the 1%:
“The New York Times Busted Lying Through its Teeth”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/15/1299692/-The-New-York-Times-Busted-Lying-Through-its-Teeth
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BIG news! Is the L.A. Times softening its stand on using value-added models (VAMs) to evaluate teachers? This editorial, titled “Casting Doubt on Linking Teaching Evaluations to Test Scores” appeared in the paper on Tuesday.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-teacher-evaluations-value-added-study-usc-u–20140514-story.html
3 letters-to-the-editor regarding the editorial appeared in today’s paper.
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Oops! Here’s the link for the 3 letters:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-le-0516-friday-teachers-value-added-20140516-story.html
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Diane, I wonder if you’ve seen this article about Kansas’ economy under Brownback, which touches on public schools:
http://www.thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/16/3438587/kansas-growth-projections/
“At the same time that Brownback’s promised economic growth is failing to materialize, his critics‘ predictions about the tax cuts are largely coming true. The tax package is starving the state of revenue. With less money coming in, Kansas is cutting public services. The state Supreme Court has ordered lawmakers to restore funding to poor school districts, saying that the spending levels they enacted were so low as to be unconstitutional.”
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Our study just came out in Public Schools First NC. Thanks for tweeting about it yesterday. But the cover letter may be of interest. Thanks to you and Vamboozled a lot of the references were easy to find.
North Carolina Public School Teachers:
Reactions to Teacher Evaluations and Merit Pay
Megan M. Oakes, MPA and Janna Siegel Robertson, Ph. D.
University of North Carolina Wilmington
Due to the considerable and increasing array of dissenting opinions on recent educational reforms across the state North Carolina, the purpose of this study was intended to assess the opinions of teachers, perceived impacts and implications of two legislative reforms: (1) the federal Race to the Top (RttT) teacher evaluation standards, with an emphasis on Standard 6 calculated by EVAAS and (2) the state elimination of career status in exchange of a merit pay bonus of $500 awarded to the top 25th percentile. Recent reports of dissatisfied teachers leaving North Carolina or the field of education for another career led the researchers to ask teachers to share their perceptions of the current North Carolina teacher evaluation system and report how long they were planning to stay in education in North Carolina.
With 800 respondents and 85 NC counties represented, the survey responses indicated that current reforms were not improving the quality of teaching that is occurring in classrooms, teacher morale, or retention of teachers. Overall, there was high disapproval of using merit pay bonuses to incentivize teachers and the evaluation process, including Standard 6, was not one that is highly regarded for determining teacher effectiveness. Respondents on the survey referred to the evaluation system as the “Horse and Pony Show” and that merit pay will lead to the “Hunger Games” of public educators. While some believe there may be some value to holding teachers accountable for student growth, the data that is collected and the rankings are not believed to be meaningful. Most teacher respondents believed that putting emphasis on student test scores will harm education if they are continued to be given such weight.
The researchers would like to caution that the survey was posted online during April 2014 and participants were self-selected. The overwhelming negative perceptions may be biased since people who are upset may be more likely to respond than those who are doing well. There is some support for the results that many teachers are unhappy with the current legislation as evidenced in other studies (Smith & Imig, 2013; Kifer & Elder, 2014) and the trending increase in teacher separation rates from their positions for 2013-14 (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, 2014; Wake, 2014).
Since both political parties enacted this legislation, we do not find this study as an endorsement or condemnation for either. What we do question is any education policy that uses student high stakes testing to make teacher evaluation and merit pay decisions. Though North Carolina teacher evaluation reports to use “multiple data sources in assessing educator performance . . . to provide the basis for performance goals and professional development activities” (NCDPI, 2014). Often only high stakes tests are used to create an EVAAS student growth score on which teachers are not privy to any direct data or details. One main criticism in the survey was that the data was not useful in helping teachers improve their practice, nor was it a fair assessment for a large number of teachers who teach non-assessed subjects, students with special needs, ELL students, or students from poverty. North Carolina spent over $1.15 million in 2013-14 (NCDPI, 2013) on EVAAS scores; however, survey results indicated that most teachers did not find the information helpful and many saw it as confusing or harmful. Several teachers reported that they saw the high stakes tests as encouraging teachers to teach to the test and may even promote cheating.
All major reputable educational statistical research organizations including the American Educational Research Association, the National Academy of Education and more recently the American Statistical Association have come out against using high stakes tests to evaluate teachers and schools (ASA, 2014; AERA, 2013). There are multiple studies demonstrating that the scores from EVAAS and other value-added models are unreliable and not accurate for measuring teacher impact on student growth (Amrein-Beardsley & Collins, 2012; Berliner, 2014; Corcoran, 2010; Haertal, 2013; Polikoff & Porter, 2014).
We hope that these findings will encourage educational policy towards adopting evidenced-based evaluations and incentives that will support professional development and improved instructional practices of teachers in North Carolina. There are valuable teachers in North Carolina and many of them are choosing to leave their classrooms for a better future in another state or in another line of work. When promoting accountability in North Carolina, we also must encourage the preservation of successful teachers who are essential to delivering quality education four our students.
http://www.publicschoolsfirstnc.org/home-2/whats-new/scholars-corner/
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Diane, you are such an inspiration to teachers all over the country. You have inspired me more than you can ever know. Here is something I wrote after attending the NPE conference. Thanks to some wonderful people I met at NPE, it’s actually on a blog. It’s titled “I am a Teacher”
http://icpe-monroecounty.weebly.com/welcome/guest-post-i-am-a-teacher-by-heidi-nance
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Heidi, I went into surgery on May 9 and most of the comments did not show up on my iPad. Catching up now
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No problem! Glad you’re home. I was just worried you thought I was spam. Thanks again for all you do.
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Hi everyone,
I would like to share a talk I gave recently to the School Board of Palm Beach County, FL about the excessive standardized testing going on in our public schools and about who profits from this.
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http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/15/what-if-finlands-great-teachers-taught-in-u-s-schools-not-what-you-think/
Pasi Sahlberg’s take on what Finnish teachers could do in America… interesting.
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I’m a big fan of comedians who can put me in stitches while remaining apparently oblivious to their own jokes. I don’t need tickets to a comedy club to have my funny bone tickled, though. All I have to do is listen to what Bill Gates and other assorted dilettantes have to say about public education.
Gates broke out of the education comedy pack with his gig at the National Conference of State Legislatures in 2009, where he said that a common set of standards in education would “…unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching.” His frank and edgy humor surprised people who didn’t understand that what he says to get laughs out of an audience he himself takes perfectly seriously.
“Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.” This is Bill at his most sophisticated; after all, he knows full well that teachers are his tools. Technology is the means by which they will be pushed aside, so that students—instead of working together—will work separately, each facing their own glowing screen. Just another example of Bill’s subtle humor.
“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” This quip always makes me chuckle. Bill’s a magnificently successful businessman who just can’t imagine that educators might not share his views, and that’s why I enjoy watching him set himself up for a fall. I’d love to have a handful of bananas to toss in his path. Better yet, I think I’ll sell bananas to educators outside the Gates Foundation headquarters here in Seattle. I’ll be as rich as Mr. Gates in no time.
If you think that Bill kills with his one-liners, you ought to listen to the slick yarns the Koch Bros. like to promote.
Koch Industries leads with the statement, “…all forms of energy—whether oil, gas, wind, solar or biofuels—should be allowed to succeed or fail on their own in the free market, without the assistance (or hindrance) of government subsidies or mandates.” The punch line? The Kochs buy and sell about a tenth of all ethanol produced in the US, picking up plenty of cash from government subsidies. What a hoot!
And how about this “well-Koched” nugget: “We always strive to act with integrity, even if it’s politically unpopular.” Hey, maybe that’s why they spend so much on political campaigns! By winning, they can act without integrity and blame voters for the popularity of their ideas…Kinda makes me think that the boys have confused integrity with consistency, because their unethical actions certainly have established a pattern. Maybe they share a learning disorder and need 504 plans?
Their ideas for higher education are even funnier. The Kochs, paragons of virtue that they claim to be, recently handed Florida State 1.5 million dollars, asking that the university establish a course called “Market Ethics: The Vices, Virtues, and Values of Capitalism.” Suggested textbooks? (Wait, wait…) The books of Ayn Rand! (Cue groans from audience.)
The Kochs are equal-opportunity jokesters, and have no compunction about playing pranks on religious as well as secular educators. For instance, the funny fellas dangled a cool million in front of the staff at Catholic University of America in DC, with the requirement that the institution teach “principled entrepreneurship.” When the faculty identified the consistent principles of the Kochs as greed and duplicity, they demanded that the money be rejected. The Kochs seem to have had the last laugh, however. University officials pointed out that parochial colleges have been accepting Koch Koin for some time, and they saw no reason to demonstrate fidelity to ridiculous ideals like truth or social conscience at this late date. I got a pretty good laugh out of the idea that people might expect otherwise.
You know, you can choose to cry about the damage done to society by these purveyors of falsehood, but their claims deserve belly laughs, and that’s no joke.
Let’s just make sure we have the last laugh.
© David Sudmeier, 2014
http://davidsudmeier.com/2014/05/19/are-you-laughing-or-crying/
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/05/19/3872691/a-nc-judge-halts-the-attack-on.html?sp=/99/108/
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The Michigan legislature has decided to move the oversight of standardized testing to the Treasury Dept. This story is playing out under the radar here in Michigan but it is very disconcerting:
http://www.mlive.com/lansingnews/index.ssf/2014/05/meap_move_to_treasury_could_af.html
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MEDIA WATCH: Sun-Times gives voice to Blaine principal, echoing the fearful hundreds of principals who so far have only spoken out from the shadows or who stand on stage with Rahm Emanuel as extras in just one more publicity stunt for the Mayor Of Chicagoland:
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=4972§ion=Article
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What happens when over half of your class has failed the benchmark assessment testing? My child’s class score is at 40% only pass the pre-test. Most students have been with this same teacher for over two years. Now the students are in the 4th Grade parents are seeing that their children are seemingly struggling. In this class, students do not know how to add or subtract accurately, multiply or do fractions. Now the testing in just a matter of days, the same teacher has not taught the students all the materials needed for the 4th grade and that is on the test. So, what options are available to the parents at this point? Go to the principal…NO…because most will stand behind their teachers…whether right or wrong. Go to the district/ board of education…MAYBE…but what could they do at this point…Testing is in just a few days. Now what??
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Closing the Door on the Community College
Like eighteen other community colleges in Michigan, my community college will begin charging tuition next academic year by the “contact hour.” For many courses where the credit hours equate to the contact hours, for example, English courses, there won’t be a difference. A three-credit English course with three contact hours will cost $273.00 ($91.00/credit hour.)
The same can’t be said for courses in animation, automotive technology, the sciences, and welding.
Here are a few examples,
– Animation 100 Adobe Creative Suite = 3 credit hours but 7 contact hours. What in the past would have cost $273.00 (3 credit hours x $91.00 the cost/credit hour for 2014-15) will now cost $637.00, a 133% increase.
Automotive Brake Systems = 4 credit hours but 8 contact hours. What in the past would have cost $364 (4 credit hours x $91.00 the cost/credit hour) will now cost $728.00, a 100% increase.
-Microbiology = 4 credit hours but 6 contact hours. What in the past would have cost $364 (4 credit hours x $91.00 the cost/credit hour) will now cost $546, a 50% increase.
And my favorite example: -Respiratory Care Sem/Clinic I = 9 credits but 23 contact hours. What in the past would have cost $891 (9 credit hours x $91.00 the cost/credit hour) will now cost $2093, a 134% increase.
Why the change?
One answer may be sleight of hand: tuition for the academic year was raised only 3.4% from $88.00 to $91 per in-district credit hour, which keeps the increase within the “guidelines” the Michigan State Senate and Governor Synder were considering making into law.
A second answer is the continued defunding of higher education in Michigan. In 1979 the state provided almost 50% of the state’s community colleges’ budget. Today they provide 18.9%. Michigan community college students continue to pay more and more in tuition and fees and to take on more and more student debt.
Finally, many of the techincal programs that will see obscene tuition increases are in the very careers where we are told there is a skills-gap and high demand for workers. Yet, my communty college is now pricing students, many of whom are working class, right out of any chance to enter a career.
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John Ewing, Executive Director of the American Mathematical Society and President of Math for America, was the speaker at a Brown commencement forum today. He spoke to a packed audience on the question, “Is There an Education Crisis?” Since it’s unlikely that the media was there for this one, here’s a synopsis for those following the public education debate:
Ewing briefly described the various reports going back to 1958 that proclaimed the so-called crisis, and listed the forces that benefit from keeping it “in the forefront of the news”: politicians; the education/industrial complex; and that aspect of the American character that likes a crisis because a crisis “demands action and demands it now.”
He focused on three areas in which the crisis has been manufactured. First, the falling scores on the Program for International Assessment (PISA) scores really haven’t fallen; scores have been roughly the same over the years in both reading and math. Second, the reporting of the National Assessment of Educational Proficiency (NAEP) has been misleading; scores have been reported as showing “only” one-third of students as proficient or above proficient, but actually one-third of students received a grade in the A range, which is really pretty good. As for the “dropout crisis,” Ewing pointed out that while the graduation rate looks low at 76%, it’s hard to get right and also a poor measure compared with the completion rate (percent of 18-24 year-olds getting a degree) at 90%, or the dropout rate, which at 8% is about half of what it was in 1970.
Ewing acknowledged that some things in public education are very wrong – namely endemic poverty, awful textbooks published by an industry that’s only interested in profits, and lax teacher education programs – but condemned the crisis mongering. It leads to public alarm, an obsession with testing and accountability, a failure to focus on the real problems, and, worst of all, the destruction of the public education infrastructure, its teachers. He warned that good, experienced teachers are leaving, and young people no longer see teaching as a worthy career choice. We need to recognize that successful reform is a slow process, to turn down the volume on the alarm, and to make our teacher education programs both appealing to our best college graduates and difficult to gain admission to.
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I’m getting really sick of your trolls, Diane. In addition to the regulars, it seems some right wingers against Common Core have joined in and I just get so tired of the standard conservative clap trap about people in poverty getting their just desserts because of the “poor choices” they’ve made. Which choices are we to make on jobs with unlivable wages: paying the rent, the utilities, for food or for medication? Those are the choices poor people like me have today, because we can’t afford to pay all of those bills, in order to meet basic survival needs.
I know your discussions are open to dissenters. I just have a hard time with the increasing number of know-it-all haters who monopolize the comments and needed to vent. Thanks for doing all that you do. I hope your health is improving.
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By the way, to those who make assumptions about the poor, I’m sure I’m not the only person who chose to not have children because I couldn’t afford to support myself, let alone a family. I really regret that though, as I saw my sister get help because she was a single parent, but I’ve gotten no support and now I have no one to turn to in my old age.
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Don’t regret that path. You are NOT alone in that choice. Search for a support system… friends you can count on. You can never know what another life may have been like… you might have had children and NOT gotten the help you needed. The journey you are on is still sacred.
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Chi-Town Res, please let me know if any trolls–or which trolls–have crossed the line into incivility and I will banish them. No bullying here.
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Thank you very much, Diane and Hannah. Maybe I’m just more sensitive right now to people who diss the poor because I’m facing the prospect of becoming homeless and I don’t yet know how I can avert that.
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https://www.facebook.com/GreatHeartsTexas
The Great Hearts in San Antonio began it’s propaganda campaign last year and is enrolling growing numbers of liberals who are sending their children their without critical analysis of the big picture. What we are hearing here is me and mine, and no talk of the community, racial segregation, undermining of public schools, lack of transparency, profiteering, never mind the underlying structure of neo-liberalism. When asked to talk about these issues, you either get a dead eyed stared or an offended emotional reaction.
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Great Hearts ran inroads resistance in Nashville for its lack of interest in diversity. In Arizona, it has been criticized for doing business with a member of the board. Charters are inherently divisive and introduce consumerism and me-first.
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Diane, Are you familiar with what’s been going on with education “reform” in the UK? This is one of the most informative articles I’ve read about it:
“The Social Class Gap for Educational Achievement: A Review of the Literature”
Click to access RSA-Social-Justice-paper.pdf
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Diane,
There is an excellent series of articles about Charter Schools in Ohio in the Akron Beacon Journal. Journalist Doug Livingston is the author/researcher. Here is the link:
http://www.ohio.com/news/local/ohio-s-charter-school-dropouts-soar-push-state-in-opposite-direction-of-u-s-1.490893
Ohio has some very problematic charter issues. Earlier Mr. Livingston had a series on Ohio’s charter schools financing. Worth looking at – really!!
Thanks! I find your blog very informative and I often use it in the Ed. in Democratic Society class at Kent State!!
Sue Kelewae
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“Speak roughly to your little boy
and beat him when he sneezes
he only does it to annoy
because he knows it teases.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
The word “data” has invaded my teaching environment in new and un-intriguing ways over the past few years. To my mind, data is verifiable quantification of some variable over a period of time or space. Data sources I like to use in my history classes include maps—which are almost magical in packing both time and space together—and charts, which permit analysis of varied combinations of data. New on my living room wall is a map of the original Jamestown Colony, which constantly provokes new questions of relationships and consequences. Struggling with the questions that data suggests is some of the most rewarding work I do along with students. We don’t usually find the answers, but we expand our understanding and sure rack up a list of good queries to pursue!
I like data.
That side of data is not what I hear much about. Instead, teachers are asked to collect “data” on student achievement in their classroom in order to “improve instruction.” Districts need data! Are students up to standard? Did you use the Common Formative Assessment that your district Committee to Forestall Creativity and Professional Judgment created to go along with the Uncommonly Boring State Standards that were produced by a Secret Committee for Undemocratic Mandates? Since teachers must provide “data” to prove that students who don’t care about standards are mastering standards teachers did not choose to create or abide by, a “smart teacher” creates goals that are almost impossible not to achieve, or simply alters the data to suit. Data is no longer a tool of informed judgment, but a means of quantifiable coercion. Data “speaks roughly” to us in the tones of Duchess Michelle Rhee rather than conversing with us as Socrates might.
The surreal feeling of participation in a system that corrupts the meaning and use of data not only prompts alienation of teachers from their occupation, but also incites self-loathing. Somehow, teachers know that collecting data for an end of the year summary evaluation meeting has limited relevance to the development of student ability to participate effectively as an individual in a democracy. If you are compiling a stack of “evidence,” you sure aren’t talking with students, or working alongside them as meaningful, productive data is pored over. Data can lead us to greater interaction and thoughtful engagement in the process of learning, or it can limit our scope to one or two measurements, chosen a priori. Data becomes dada, because the natural and dynamic quality of data has become an obstacle to education.
I love the absurd and participate in it daily with gusto, but a system that is supposed to have serious merit should not be based on a preposterous notion. It is definitely absurd to think that persons drawn to a humanistic endeavor like teaching would value the reductionist quantification of learning this notion of data represents. Absurdity ought to make me laugh. This absurdity makes me wince, and every administrator doing their final evaluation meetings ought to cringe with embarrassment if they are focusing on numbers rather than the professional judgments that stem from them.
The true purpose of this system is to transfer students to a system where achievement can be thoroughly quantified and “individualized,” with those poor learners all becoming perfect replicas without blemish—of a systematically neutered blandishment. Machines do this sort of thing better and better, and do it without internal conflict. Computers collect data faster and more accurately than any human, and apply it without concern for irrelevant factors like, say, whether the learner had breakfast or a parental hug before school.
Data—Data—Dodo. The extinction of teachers as a species is inevitable if we do not contest the perception of data as the final arbiter of educational excellence. I believe teachers will speak up to demand attention to the un-quantified and undervalued professional judgments that are necessary to a rounded educational experience and which do not exist without human interaction.
I may be a dinosaur, but nobody’s diggin’ my bones yet.
© David Sudmeier, 2014
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Dear Ms. Ravitch,
I would like to share with you an essay I wrote regarding the daunting adventure into the NYC public middle school application process. Though this is a stressful experience for thousands of parents and their 5th grade children, there does not seem to be much dialog about it. I think there will be parents who can relate to some of what I’ve described. It is a timely topic right now, since the results of the applications came out recently, and there is rejoicing, disappointment and plans for appeal in the midst.
Thank you and best regards,
Irene
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/05/my-middle-school-application-journey-irene-inouye/
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Take a look at this madness in Rhode Island:
http://www.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/content/20140527-providence-superintendent-proposes-change-in-policy-on-necap-that-would-allow-more-to-graduate.ece
We are using a standardized test as a barrier to graduation, but because of the hare-brained policy we are poised to award diplomas to students who scored LOWER than other students who are being DENIED diplomas because of their low score on the test.
I am not making this up.
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Dear Ms. Ravitch,
I am reaching out to you because of your strong views and commitment to the education of our children. It is my hope that raising your awareness to the situation our community is facing will gain your support in our fight to save the community schools in our district.
Cleveland Elementary School is a school in Upstate New York that has experienced a transformation in the past seven years – due entirely to character education and an intentional focus on building relationships with students and the larger community. The school now stands as the pride – and hub – of the community.
The Central Square School District, one which was recently honored in Albany with a NY State District of Character Award, voted to close Cleveland Elementary – a National School of Character, only days apart in the same week. This noble district-wide achievement would not be conceivable without the model and leadership of Cleveland Elementary. Cleveland Elementary, Home of the Shamrocks, was honored by the US Department of Education as a 2010 Blue Ribbon School for Academic Excellence. In 2012 Cleveland Elementary sought and received a New York State School of Character Honorable Mention Award and continued on to earn a 2013 National School of Character Award. This school of academic and character excellence, who also proudly serves as the local food pantry, is among less than 1% of the schools across the country with such distinction.
To many, a school is nothing more than brick and mortar. While that may be the case in other schools, I have to say Cleveland Elementary has been so much more to us. Behind its doors is a sense of community—a family. A culture of developing ethical, responsible, and caring children- in addition to academic principles. The teachers and staff are passionate about their roles as mentors to the children; their dedication and love for what they do is evident in every interaction. If given the opportunity I am certain every parent would want this for their children. This type of education is LOST in over-crowded class rooms and schools….positive relationships cannot be fully developed due to time constraints and demands on the teacher; a student becomes just a student. Our Cleveland Family wants to maintain the ability to engage ALL children—get to KNOW them as people, TEACH them how to be a part of something bigger than themselves. I will never understand how anyone could put a price tag on our children’s development when it matters most.
As a parent of a first grader, the decision to close Cleveland Elementary is truly disheartening and unacceptable. What does it say about the value of education? Cleveland Elementary is so much more than brick and mortar…..It is the HEART of our Community….and the children are our future. Our community takes great pride in the collective efforts and accomplishments our school has achieved. The reputation of our school has been a draw for many families to move to this rural area. Closing this vital part of our community will have devastating effects to us, our community, as well as to those that rely on the services the school provides outside of the academic day.
Although I am certain this decision was not taken lightly, I am concerned it was made in haste under the pressure of a budget crunch. There are detailed options that are more viable and fiscally responsible than closing a Nationally Recognized School that only represents 1% of the tax levy. Perhaps it is easier to target schools that are in less economically prosperous areas. The district has not shared information with its members or been open to conversations regarding these options. We are unaware of a projected long term plan, and truthfully it does not appear there is one. Our concerns lie in knowing the impact closing ANY school with have on ALL of the children in our district? Over-crowding the class room is not the answer to our current situation of low enrollment. This consolidation will put students at 107% capacity. While I know there are no easy answers….I would ask that someone revisit the numbers, the current aid our district just received ($960,055 above what was expected), as well as the goal for our district as we move forward.
What is the incentive for dedicated teachers to strive for excellence in the education of children, if the reward is having your successful award winning school closed? How will our Country ever be Leaders in Education if we cannot see the value in community schools?
Please take the time to visit our Facebook Page, and see for yourself the struggle we are facing.
https://www.facebook.com/saveclevelandelementary
Our concerns have not been addressed by the board. They will not answer any questions, and have been dismissive and rude. There has yet to be even a letter to parents from the Administration regarding the closure, which is not only a little over a month away.
Thank you in advance for your consideration and time. I appreciate your anticipated support for our Community Schools.
Sincerely,
Jennifer S. Leahy
Proud Parent, Community Member &
President of American Legion Auxiliary Unit 858
Cleveland, NY
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Teachers said no in NC, so they are upping the ante.
However, all raises in the past had accountability talk attached. I think some of this has been long time coming.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/05/28/4937805/nc-senate-rolls-out-teacher-pay.html#.U4cya9q9KSN
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I have been wondering about accountability subgroups. Why have they chosen the subgroups that neither the students or school can change. Race, gender, income, ELL, and learning disability status. Why not also subgroups like does homework, eats breakfast at school, plays sports, participates in community based homework help center, plays an instrument, etc. All of these are factors that students and school have power over. Why not look at these and see if the things schools can and should do improve learning.
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Yesterday I was disappointed to read in AAUW Outlook magazine on page 25 titled “Members support Common Core”. “This year AAUW members nationwide have started working to shore up support for the Common Core State Standards, a state-led, voluntary effort that established a single set of educational standards for K-12 students in English and mathematics. Although the standards have been adopted in 45 states, Washington D.C. and four territories, some groups have been spreading misinformation about Common Core. But AAUW members have ben working to set the record straight. AAUW of New York spoke out through North Country Matters, a local video public affairs magazine. AAUW of New York Public Policy Chair Donna Seymour interviewed local school officials about Common Core implementation and educational standards. Look for opportunities to work on Common Core in your state during the AAUW Action Fund’s get-out the vote efforts for the 2014 elections. AAUW’s Public Policy Committee took the position to support the Common Core standards at the urging of state leaders.” Here in Delaware we have “Race To The Top” and Governor Jack Markell who is really pushing and involved in this education reform says that opponents just are misinformed. The guy in charge Mark Murphy has announced that they have signed on to Jeb Bush’s educational reform corporation and the “Smarter Balanced” testing program. Rodel Foundation is on the state board and they really like Teach for America teachers and an increasing amount of public Charter Schools with increasing segregation resulting.
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I am impressed with the elegance of the Montessori Method of teaching grammar, how it is illuminated through the philosophic understanding of Aesthetic Realism, and how grammar at a basic level finds its way into the visual world of film editing. Finally, grammar is included in the Common Core.
Montessori Style:
http://www.blog.montessoriforeveryone.com/grammar.html Maria Montessori, knowing that children respond well to shapes and colors, decided to use a system of colored shapes to represent the different parts of speech.
Method in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PuLMFS2oPU (notice the ONLY technology used: small white rolled out carpet, red sphere and black pyramid)
Grammar and Aesthetics:
http://www.sheldonkranz.com/Aesthetic-Realism-Class-Report-9-13-48.html Look at any sentence you speak. It has laws operating whether you know it or not. It has logic and structure. You can break it down and show parts of speech–the relation of every word to every other word. A tough guy as well as a professor talks in a strict, logical form.
http://www.aestheticrealism.net/Education_LR.htm (The English Record) My students would come to love adjectives as they saw that these words stand for a world that is interesting, and beautifully combat the cynical feeling that the world is dull and doesn’t come to much.
Grammar and Video Editing:
The grammar of film editing: http://pamcole.com/DOCS/film_editing.html – substantial comprehension of montage is already established in the preschool years
http://www.videomaker.com/article/3398-digital-video-editing-the-grammar-of-editing
Grammar and Common Core
http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/L/3/
Tenafly High School’s Lalor Library Media Center
http://www.librarymedia.net
David G. Di Gregorio
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Hello Diane,
I hope this reaches you directly so we chat in the near future.
I will be spending the next eight weeks this summer writing a final paper for my Master of Art Education regarding the pros & cons of policy, teacher evaluation, and charter versus public schools in an over all lit review.
Having attended progressive elementary, parochial middle, public magnet inner city high, public suburban high, community college, private college, and state university as a student I find myself well rounded in experiencing and understanding education.
I became a certified teacher over three years in Pennsylvania while substituting teaching for a school district that was taken over by the state during my time there. I was unable to find employment in that state, and found work in another… Connecticut, in the city of Hartford, at Capital Preparatory Magnet School.
My direct firsthand understanding of how that place operates is fascinating. If you would like to contact me please feel free to do so. I would love to be able to quote you directly into my paper and perhaps have it published.
~Kr!s
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http://secondcityteachers.blogspot.com/2014/05/ravitch-wrong.html
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Jim Vail,
Yup, I was fooled by Beverly Hall in Atlanta. I checked her out with some “experts, and they were fooled too. Atlanta had steadily rising NAEP scores, so it seemed real. I corrected my error in the paperback edition of “Death and Life.” As you surely know, nobody’s perfect. Certainly not me. I am not sure there is such a thing as “positive accountability.”
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Coercion—the Post-democratic Tradition?
”Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature.” Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
When Jefferson wrote those words, he was emphasizing the need a democratic society has for tolerance of minority viewpoints. Today, even majority viewpoints may be subjected to coercion—by those whose pocketbooks enable them to purchase tremendous political power and who use that power to undermine democratic process in the public realm. The Gates Foundation subverts democracy by determining the “correct” path for public education, funding secret meetings and promoting private decisions—and misrepresenting those decisions as legitimate public policy. These actions fly in the face of American tradition and violate any sense of legitimacy.
Today, we hear people talk about the “Founding Fathers” as if they were some monolithic bloc of unanimous assent to the policies enacted by our national government. In reality, they were a bag of cats, arguing, conniving (and drinking) to create a constitution that might satisfy the needs of a diverse population. At least three delegates did not sign the final document. The Founding Fathers did, in fact, work secretly—a choice made to alleviate public outcry that might prevent full and uninhibited exploration of possible answers to the young nation’s problems. But while the meetings were held in secret, the attendees at the Constitutional Convention were legitimate representatives, granted authority by their respective states to make decisions on their behalf. The final document was then open to public debate and ratification—a heated contest, to be sure, and one that took nearly a year to complete. The Founding Fathers, lacking the hubris of corporate oligarchs, anticipated that changes to the Constitution might be desired, and provided a clear means to do so.
It was a model of democratic decision-making.
How well does the creation story of the Common Core State Standards measure up to that model? Not very.
The committee members for the CCSS were chosen by the National Governor’s Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). None of the NGA Educational Division staff had K-12 experience. You might expect that the members of the CCSS Math and English Language Arts Work Groups would have had extensive classroom teaching experience, but you’d be disappointed. Out of the 24 members, less than half had any classroom experience at all, and several of those were experienced in a content area other than that of their committee work. 14 members had direct ties to testing companies. That tells me that people were not primarily selected for professional qualifications, but that ties to the less-than-edifying testing industry counted at least as much. It also suggests to me that the purpose of the group was not to compose a document primarily for student benefit, but was instead to build a system that would be mined for profit. The fox was building the henhouse and designing the security system, so to speak. No wonder NGA and the CCSSO resisted releasing the names of committee members— obvious conflicts of interest between the common good and commercial interests were the rule.
These conflicts of interest alone ought to have caused queries of corruption; add to them the secrecy concerning membership and the process by which the committee worked and there is no reason left to grant legitimacy. Anyone believing that the CCSS is a document that has earned the right to be enforceable public policy has little understanding of democratic process.
Beyond all of this is the omission from the document of any method for ratification or amendment. CCSS was a fait d’accompli on arrival, since state officials were asked to commit themselves before the working committees ever met. In fact, the CCSS is not exactly a “public document” in any real sense, since ownership remains in the hands of the NGA and the CCSSO. This group got Arne Duncan and the federal Department of Education to act as their enforcers, making adherence to the CCSS part of the requirements states must meet for taking federal dollars. No state or individual has any legal power to demand reconsideration of the CCSS in whole or part, and probably never will.
At the rotten core of this perversion of democratic process is the Gates Foundation. Over $170 million dollars has been provided by Bill Gates to fund the creation and implementation of CCSS. These donations are not benevolent grants provided without strings to further a common good. They are at first bribes offered to public officials who, starved for ongoing revenue sources for any educational initiative, jumped on board without due diligence. They are at last the basis for coercion of the states, which must adhere to requirements for testing by companies that created the tests corresponding to the CCSS… and the (at least) equal coercion of teachers, for states must use those test results as a means for evaluating educators.
The power of law has been granted to CCSS without the necessary process to assure public input and debate. Coercion, rather than professional debate, has taken precedence as the source of educational policy.
That coercion is geared to turn math and English language arts classrooms into production venues of standardized, homogenized instruction. “All children can learn” becomes “All children will learn what, how, and when we want them to, and for as long as we make money from it…”
Thomas Jefferson warned against people like Bill Gates over 230 years ago. Bill Gates is that fallible man who is governed by a bad passion for privatized, monetized, and standardized education. He seeks uniformity because it provides a sense of certainty in a field which ought to reject anything of the sort. Corporations can’t adequately predict needs and outcomes if educators creatively expand horizons of learning as they work alongside students. As Gates said, back when the CCSS committees were just getting started, “When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better.”
Mr. Gates, the common good is not compatible with coercion. When your “donations” are offered to grateful educators so that they can do meaningful professional work in a democratic setting, you’ll be welcome to join in at the appropriate moment for public input. You are not welcome to pre-determine the topics for discussion, nor the outcomes of those discussions. You are not welcome to disregard the voices of professionals or to fund the coercion of educators.
We intend to close the door on Mr. Gates.
Join the Washington State BATs on June 26, 2014, at the door of the Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA!
© David Sudmeier, 2014
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Diane,
Today’s (6/2/130 L.A. Times has an oped by Donald Moynihan discussion the Veterans Administration’s problems, “The VA’s ‘performance perversity’.” He describes the problems that result from placing pressure on people to attain certain goals. In this case, the vast cheating that occurred when VA administrators offered carrots or sticks to accommodate vets within a 14-day limit. It seems like one of the clever people among us could take this article and adapt it to the relentless pressure placed upon children, teachers, schools, and district to attain ever higher test results.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-moynihan-va-scandal-performance-perversity-20140602-story.html
It takes me back to the early years of my career at the UCLA Lab School when we discussed an important aspect of teaching was intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation. The power of extrinsic to put pressure on student short-term goals and learning that may be fleeting versus intrinsic motivation which has the long-term goal of learning for the sake of learning, a life-time skill.
BTW I’m looking forward to a meeting in Southern California of a NPE group (contacts at the Austin Conference) that is getting together in June to discuss future strategies.
Larry Lawrence
Retired Teacher/Administrator
Carlsbad, CA
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Larry, thanks for the idea concerning the VA and the connection to the experiences of educators. I also ran into a comment by Alisa van Ginkel comparing recent events to the events of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
Don’t know how “clever” I am, but I tried to put together something that connected the two.
http://davidsudmeier.com/2014/06/16/the-crucible/#comments
Dave Sudmeier
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I would like to know if PARCC (Pearson?) compensates our school districts and students for fine-tuning, aka ‘piloting’, their ‘assessment’. Shouldn’t the public, via the school districts, be paid for students’ time, effort, distraction from learning and inconvenience?
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Hi Diane,
The general consensus is that nary a bra was burned at the Miss America Pageant, but not for want of trying. Robin Morgan and the NY Radical Feminists had planned a Freedom Trash Can, consisting of various items symbolizing the oppression of fashion and beauty culture–torture-girdles, falsies, hair curlers, and even a brassiere. They issued a press release describing their intention to make the trash can a bonfire, but when the Atlantic City Fire Department got wind of that, they refused to issue a permit (a fire on a wooden boardwalk not being a very good idea). So the trash can remained a trash can, with a lot of dramatic dumping of hated items into it.
Unfortunately Lindsy Van Gelder, a reporter for the NY Post, wrote a story based on the press release, “Bra Burners and Miss America,” and thus the legend was born. Lindsy describes it thus:
“At the Post I coined the phrase “bra burning” to describe a feminist protest in which pointy padded bras, restrictive girdles and other symbols of enforced femininity were going to be tossed in a bonfire outside the Miss America pageant. The Atlantic City fire chief later refused to give the demonstrators a permit, and so the Great Undies Immolation never happened… but the phrase stuck. I hope it’s not my most lasting contribution to the culture.”
http://lindsyvangelder.com/about
Wikipedia has a quote from Carol Hanisch, one of the organizers:
The dramatic, symbolic use of a trash can to dispose of feminine objects caught the media’s attention. Protest organizer Hanisch said about the Freedom Trash Can afterward, “We had intended to burn it, but the police department, since we were on the boardwalk, wouldn’t let us do the burning.” A story by Lindsy Van Gelder in the New York Post carried a headline “Bra Burners and Miss America.” It drew an analogy between the feminist protest and Vietnam War protesters who burned their draft cards. A local news story in the Atlantic City Press erroneously reported that “the bras, girdles, falsies, curlers, and copies of popular women’s magazines burned in the ‘Freedom Trash Can’.” Individuals who were present said that no one burned a bra nor did anyone take off her bra.
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Virginia, One of my college classmates was part of a feminist group called WITCH (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell)–I know, I know–and her group did burn their bras at Atlantic City. I was not in Atlantic City to see it, but she told me about it at the time. I have no reason to doubt her.
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Here’s a “light at the end of the tunnel” that isn’t another train approaching …:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/06/01/317433695/in-kentucky-students-succeed-without-tests
Alternative approach to “real assessment” not data gathering.
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In NJ today: substitute teacher duct tapes kids mouths shut in an Elizabeth school. Perhaps she is enamored with the ways of Michelle Rhee.
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should this teacher name be made public? I find it strange that her name wasn’t mentioned on the news.
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http://newjersey.news12.com/news/substitute-teacher-at-winfield-scott-school-no-2-in-elizabeth-allegedly-duct-taped-mouths-of-students-1.8340628
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Horrors!!!!!!!!!!
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Must have taken a page from MR and her Baltimore years.
http://nyceducator.com/2014/04/rhees-two-takes-on-her-taping-incident_17.html
and audio:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcschools/2010/08/michelle_rhee_first-year_teach.html
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“In NJ today: substitute teacher duct tapes kids mouths shut in an Elizabeth school. Perhaps she is enamored with the ways of Michelle Rhee.”
Was it a TFA sub?
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Diane, I apologize for my French, but it is very difficult to watch TE intimate that you have been bought, just to try to bolster his argument in support of Chetty. I think it smacks of slander: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/06/02/chetty-and-friends-stand-by-their-vam/
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My thoughts are with you at this difficult time, Victorino. But I’m sure you’ll get through this trying experience.
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Victorino,
I tolerate TE as a tribute to free speech, but to be honest, I don’t read all his comments. He has a customary stance of saying “no” to whatever issues or concerns I or others write about. I did not see his comment (I skipped it) where he accused me of having been bought out on the issue of VAM. Unlike Chetty, et al, no one, no organization, no foundation, underwrites me. Did he say who bought my views? Did he document this view with any evidence? If he slandered me, I am finished with him.
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Diane, In TE’s inimical way of diverting attention away from the issues at hand by posing numerous questions, supposedly in support of his position, he wrote, “How much Gates money does Dr. Ravitch get? How much money do right wing opponents to the CCSS give to NYU? Should we be suspicious of Dr. Ravitch’s scholarship because of the folks that donate to the institution? Should we be suspicious of it because of the labor practices of the folks working for NYU?” Presumably, answering none and no to matters that would reflect poorly on your integrity would boost the credibility of Chetty. (TE contends that Chetty received no money from nefarious sources that would influence his conclusions on VAM research, even though he’s taking money from John Arnold for other research and Gates has contributed heavily to Harvard for education “reform” research.)
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Victorino, thanks for saving me the time of searching for that flailing answer by TE. It should be obvious that his questions, as usual, are red herrings, meant to distract readers and confuse or derail the conversation. I am not funded by anyone. I have no idea who contributes to NYU. TE has an unfortunate habit of bordering slander but never quite crossing the line.
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“unfortunate” indeed –for all of us! Well, I had told him to “STFU” because I thought he went too far. But of course, nothing stops him besides ignoring and not engaging with him at all. So, I will just stop reading anything he writes, too.
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“REVEALED: Gates Foundation financed PBS education programming which promoted Microsoft’s interests” By Nathaniel Mott and David Sirota
http://pando.com/2014/06/05/revealed-gates-foundation-financed-pbs-education-programming-which-promoted-microsofts-interests/
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Wow! Thank God for David Sirota!
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“If the Left Had a Tea Party: Dan Cantor and the making of a liberal uprising” by David Sirota
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/if-the-left-had-a-tea-party-107501.html#ixzz33p9j5UUP …
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Dear Diane,
Hoping this post reaches you.
I don’t want to take up your time with too many details so I will get right to my question. As a strong believer in public education, how do you feel about specialized public schools that use a screening process to select students? Specifically, I have in mind arts themed high schools with rigorous arts curricula where every student majors in a specific art form for four years.
My question arises out of a discussion I had with a friend about the differences between public schools and charter schools. I started a non profit that works to bring back high quality arts programs to public high schools. The organization currently does not support any charters. When I told my friend that I had concerns about how charters were run, he said, “Well what’s the difference between a charter school and a specialized school that screens applicants?” Of course, the differences are many but, I had made the point to him that many charters work hard to only select the best students and frequently do not accept the ones with challenging behavioral issues, ELLs, students with special ed needs, etc.. Never the less, in screening student applicants, a public school is selecting as opposed to taking any and all who walk through its doors. So, in the case of a specialized school with a very rigorous program, how do you feel about a screened selection process?
Thanks for your time.
Best,
Susan
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Susan, I think there is value in having theme schools, like schools for the arts, but I see no reason why the selection process should screen students in or put by test scores. The original purpose of theme or magnet schools was to increase racial integration by having more applicants than spaces available, thus allowing administrators to increase diversity.
There is a huge difference between charter schools and public. theme/magnet schools. Charter schools are privately managed schools. They make up their own admissions rules, their own disciplinary policies, their own program. Public schools are subject to public governance, to laws governing admissions and expulsions, and to transparency of financial matters.
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Diane,
Thanks very much for the quick response.
Just to make sure I was clear in my original email. By screening process for an arts school I mean an audition not an academic test for admission.
I also want to thank you for your book, Reign of Error. It is extremely informative and I will use it as a valuable reference in the future. When you write in the book about how to make charter schools work for all children, I was wondering if you might have some examples of charters that do meet the critiria you lay out in chapter 26.
Again, thank you for your time and for reminding us all of the importance of our most democratic of institutions – public education.
Best Regards,
Susan Benedetto
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Hi Diane, I wanted to let you know two things. You may have already read or heard but the Luis Munoz Marin public school in Philadelphia held the parent vote last night to decide if it would be turned over to Aspira Charter school or remain a neighborhood public school. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of remaining public. So both schools the district targeted for charter takeover have voted to remain public. This is a big testimonial to the parents in those neighborhoods who did not want to sell their schools to the district’s highest bidder.
Also, today, I was at a rally in Philadelphia where SEIU gave Tom Wolf their endorsement for governor. I took the opportunity to approach Mr. Wolf and give him a gift of your book Reign Of Error with an accompanying letter explaining that although he is a stated supporter of public schools and fair funding, the educational issues we face are so multifaceted and complex that I hope he will read your book to fully understand the attack on public education. He thanked me for the book and said he had intended to buy it and read it. I thank you for writing that book because it encompasses so much of what is wrong and has the research to back it up. Hope you are recovering well.
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Dwayne, that is GREAT news on all fronts!
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Oh boy! This is starting to be a fun investigation! My partner, Amy Kesselman–a historian of 2nd Wave feminism–knows several folks from NY Radical Feminists and Redstockings. I myself knew only 2 WITCH people who came to New Haven briefly: Florika and Marimar Benitez. Amy is going to query some folks she knew from the time to see what they remember, or whom to contact who might have been more intimately involved. I’ll keep you posted on what we find out.
Virginia Blaisdell, Wellesley College, ’62
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Is there some reason why posts that include more than one link are blocked automatically? I’ve seen where you can set WordPress to accept posts with a specific number of links. Been waiting for my post to be approved since yesterday. I don’t think two links is any more likely to be spam than one link really. I hesitated to include two links but did so anyways because I didn’t realize it would take so long for approval.
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Other Spaces, there are no comments pending moderation
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OK, thanks for the info, Diane. I was able to go back to the correct page in my browser and find my message, so I just posted it again. It should be awaiting moderation now.
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Other Spaces, your comment had nothing to do with education so I thought it was spam.
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I was replying to someone holding the Tea Party promoted beliefs that Agenda 21 is a global conspiracy to take over the world, including education, and that man-made global warming is a hoax, who asked for evidence to the contrary, so I addressed the latter. (She has posted several times about this in the past.)
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Here is a great clip from John Oliver about global warming:
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Thanks for sharing this, Stuart! So true! I had cited that report on the 97% of climatologists who are in agreement on man-made global warming in my comment, too. Sometimes humor can get through to people, but I read the YouTube comments and, sadly, regardless of scientific evidence, some will always believe the earth is flat. I get very concerned when those people are educators…
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Agreed…I think comedians are doing the work musicians used to do–pushing envelopes and pointing out the inanities of life. People are going to believe what they believe. We just have to do our best to find the truth.
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I have an ongoing battle…one-sided, since my foe follows the sensible strategy of completely ignoring me….I have asserted for a couple of years, now, that it is irresponsible of the St. Louis Post Dispatch to refuse to acknowledge the existence of the vice president of the Missouri School board….Michael Jones. There are terrible things going on in Missouri, and I had hoped for a long time, that this significant black leader, would help put up a fight…….this interview was disappointing to me….it gave me a feeling he intends to use the state commissioner, Chris Nicastro as his puppet….agreeing to a state run district for low achieving schools….I have tried to compare it to Detroit….his interview compared structural barriers for black children to be like hyenas, which must be killed. I need help understanding where he is heading….it seems a little like resegregation……but this guy is a complex character……the pd destroyed his ex wife, who still nominated him for the state board when she was a senator…..here is the link and a paragraph or two……http://www.stlamerican.com/news/political_eye/article_30d21cb2-ec48-11e3-a478-0019bb2963f4.html
In the opening of “The Lone Ranger,” the announcer always said, “Returning to the days of yesterday.” I would argue that for children in Normandy (and places like Normandy) to learn, they need their educational instruction based upon the same premise as I had. I can find a country full of old guys from places like Normandy who are wildly successful, not because of the education they received, but because of the frame reference they had for the education they received.
Think of it like this. How long would lions survive if adult lions didn’t first protect and then teach lion cubs how to recognize and deal with hyenas? In fact, killing hyenas is one of the prime responsibilities of adult male lions.
Well, these children are our cubs, and the structural barriers that threaten them are the hyenas. Our responsibility – no, really, our duty – is to first protect them, then educate them to recognize and deal with hyenas and every chance you get kill a hyena.
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[With sincere apologies to the late Pete Seeger…]
For charter schools– churn, churn, churn
There is one purpose– earn, earn, earn
And no time for equity in education
A time to recruit, a time to hire
A time for ads, a time to conspire
A time to fib, a time to conceal
A time to invest, a time to make the deal
For charter schools– churn, churn, churn
There is one purpose– earn, earn, earn
And no time for equity in education
No time for doubt, no time to think
No time to reflect, more bucks for machines
No time to inhale money’s stink
No time to heed the voice of learners
For charter schools– churn, churn, churn
There is one purpose– earn, earn, earn
And no time for equity in education
Get rid of real pros, the TFA plan
Get only the young, they don’t have a clue
Get rid of the educators who squawk
Get rid of all who are not the true believers
For charter schools– churn, churn, churn
There is one purpose– earn, earn, earn
And no time for equity in education
A time to open, a time to close
A time to arrive, a time to flee town
A non-profit gig that pays owners well
The public’s been conned, I hope it’s not too late!
Charter schools are for the Byrds.
© David Sudmeier, 2014
http://davidsudmeier.com/2014/06/09/churn-churn-churn/
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Regarding the afore mentioned Micahel Jones in Missouri….I am thrilled to report that the Post Dispatch ran a story today about how Normandy will not be putting in a charter school, (the reporter does not know the law about charters in Missouri, but no harm done in this article)…..she talked to Michael Jones….and now he seems to be kind of important…..”And it’s just as unclear whether charter schools will play any role within the district over the long term.
“A 300-student school does not solve the systemic problems in Normandy,” said Michael Jones of St. Louis, vice president of the state Board of Education. He said that unless a reform idea can help a broad range of students — and be shown to work when repeated elsewhere — “it will not meet the policy threshold I can consider. Fundamentally, that’s what we’ve got to have.”
Jones is skeptical that charter schools could be part of any broad solution.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/in-normandy-charter-schools-struggle-to-take-root/article_97c20b82-c1d8-5a7a-9fcb-1c2d6c132baf.html
Even Bob Dylan would have trouble writing a song about this Mr. Jones.
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We thought you would enjoy hearing from a Superintendent who “gets it.” See link below.
Mary Stoner
President Cy Fair TSTA/NEA
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Henry-Tying-high-stakes-tests-to-teachers-is-5536255.php?t=11e7e7a9ac&cmpid=fb-premium
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Syracuse Teachers No Confidence in Current Administration
http://www.syracuse.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/06/we_can_no_longer_remain_silent_about_the_leadership_crisis_in_syracuse_schools_c.html#incart_most-comments
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Nice take on Common Core: http://educationopportunitynetwork.org/standards-scolds-are-getting-us-nowhere/
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