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 
Diane, you may wish to repost this http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2012/09/nineteenth-century-english-schools-for.html#comment-form excellent visual parallel between the old and new “schools for the poor.”
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Here’s a link to a PBS page about a “school”???? that grants high school diplomas to kids who pass a 200 question test after being intensively coached just before the test. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/education/dropout-nation/how-private-schools-help-lower-texas-dropout-numbers/ They’re not at all ashamed of what they do.
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Perhaps another hero of education? Donald Sternberg – Wantagh Elementary School Principal. http://www.schoolleadership20.com/m/blogpost?id=1990010%3ABlogPost%3A120983
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Last night the City of Camden, NJ Board of Education fought back the deforms in their city and rejected 4 Urban Hope Schools that the NJDOE and the South Jersey Democrats were trying to force on them. Here is the link to the news artlcles about this.
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/camden_flow/171328532.html
http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20120926/NEWS01/120926001/Camden-school-board-rejects-all-Hope-proposals
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Wow, this will add fuel to Governor Christie’s efforts to get legislation to force charters on communities that don’t want them.
Thanks for not backing down to corporate pressure.
Truly “Won’t back down.”
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I taught for 43 years and I don’t remember one time when the union influenced what I taught. They did a lot of good, but can’t think of a time they negatively influenced what I was doing in the classroom. The heroic teacher who says if they get rid of the union she can teach how she wants is just pure fiction.
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http://www.bossierpress.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8235:besemember-takes-aim-at-la-education-reform&catid=19:letters&Itemid=146
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http://theadvocate.com/home/4004848-125/evaluator-defends-not-renewing-own
Haha!! Louisiana teacher evaluation (compass) creator is a TFA alum! 27 years old with 2 years teaching experience AND a lapsed teaching certificate. Nice to see such experienced professionals creating such important tasks! My my!
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Michael Medved retells famous lie about Albert Shanker as portrayed in “Won’t Back Down”
http://townhall.com/talkradio/johnhowellandamyjacobson/656681
Right wing psuedo-intellectual Michael Medved gave a glowing review of “Won’t Back Down.” Medved is always outraged over alleged liberal media bias and inaccuracy. But in this interview (around 17:35) he paraphrases Albert Shanker as saying he would start caring about students when they payed union dues, following up with “By the way that’s a true quote from Albert Shanker who was head of the teachers’ union in New York.”
The only problem is that Albert Shanker never said it. See:
http://shankerblog.org/?p=2562
The source of the Medved interview is: Townhall Talk Radio John Howell and Amy Jacobson Big John and Amy – 9/28/12 Hour 4Friday, September 28, 2012
Although it would be a huge task, Medved should be exposed every time he plays fast and loose with the “facts” because his whole persona is the truth-telling voice of rationality in the face of liberal lies and hysteria.
I don’t advise calling his show as he has a million tricks to cut people off when they start winning a debate or catch him in a lie.
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With all the poverty here in Louisiana I was thinking the other day as one of my students had to leave to go to a doctor’s appointment that there are other consequences of privatizing schools that may need looked at. School attendance was one of the few reasons if not the only reason that many many kids get immunized. They had to attend school and they had to have the shot record up to date to attend. What will happen to the health of our nation when kids will stay home and do school online and not need immunizations? Schools provide vision and hearing checks, scoliosis checks and provide meals to kids, breakfast and lunch. What will happen when the private schools open? I imagine they will get fed but will it be free? Will the students have the free hearing and vision checks? Will immunizations be mandatory or will parents be able to opt out for religious reasons?
What about all the socialization issues? We work very hard to develop relationships with our students so that they have adults who know them and they can have someone there they trust. We also try to stay in touch with parents and work with them to help their child succeed at school. We have programs to help kids understand bullying, diversity and what sexual harassment is. We celebrate their birthdays, accomplishments and go funerals when a family member dies. We call their home when they are absent, check on them when they just don’t show up and we report all the things we see that may hint at abuse and neglect.
If more kids are doing school online, especially high school, are the parents going to stay home and watch them? Will we have larger populations of kids out on the streets at all hours of the day unsupervised? Schools did serve a function in that parents knew, with some lapses, that the kids were in school all day or parents got a phone call. Will the truancy laws have to be changed so that kids who are online students, can just “hang out” without fear of arrest? Will the promise of being able to do school “work” anytime of day change how many kids are roaming the streets and increase the numbers of police who have to stop each child and ask? If I was a student in a public school and had friends who were online schooling at home and knew they were able to do whatever they wanted during the day would I be tempted to skip?
Louisiana is collecting applications from all sorts of online vendors of high school classes. I wonder what will happen when we start having all these teens left to their own devices. A student of mine said her mom is excited about her being able to stay home most of the day and still take high school classes. Her mom feels that good Christian families, they are Pentecostal, have a mom at home anyway as it should be. My student then admitted that she wasn’t sure she wanted to stay home with her mom all day! Guess she will soon find out.
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http://www.louisianaschools.net/topics/ppmltr.html
this is a multiple page horror that is being used for our evaluation. We know we have no hope of getting a 4, no one is, and most of us, teachers far better than me, are getting 2’s! Most leave in tears! The administrators claim it is not their fault and don’t shoot the messenger but the teachers are being evaluated to wildly different degrees depending who the observer is and many are physically ill if they are having an observer known for tearing you apart in the pre-observation meeting. One teacher was told that if he didn’t fix a long list of “problems” with his lesson plan he would be given a ZERO on his evaluation. He and several of us helping, stayed up at school till early the next morning fixing things like, ” desks too close together” (33 kids in a 25 x 45 room), old posters on the wall, (from 2010), inadequate creativity supplies(With $100 dollars per teacher what did she expect?), book bags in the aisles(33 kids in a 25 x 45 room), daily objectives not visible to the entire class, (we couldn’t move the white board up since it is screwed into the old chalk board so that will be a ding), objective of TLW compare the information provided by symbols on three multipurpose maps.” wasn’t a learning objective but an activity.(but this is listed as a learning objective in the districts pacing guide and must be used), special needs students are not getting all accommodations and all of these must be written into his lesson plan specifically for each student even though he has the IEPs in his room(he has 6 in his class and no para), no technology is in the room for student use (where would he put it and why is that his fault?), groups were not assembled based on data that is available to the observer in the room(????) etc etc etc…..
from the link above:
“To provide teachers and administrators with clear and concrete guidance, the Danielson model explains in concrete terms, with accompanying examples, the actions a teacher should take to improve his or her practice. With an emphasis on planning and instruction, the Danielson model has been implemented in more than 15 states and hundreds of districts.
Louisiana’s rubric was developed based on extensive feedback from educators across the state. The LDOE initially published a draft teacher rubric and solicited input from teachers and other stakeholders.”
If you don’t survive the observation you sure as heck aren’t going to have a chance to improve your practice! Sort of like my grad biology professor said: “If an animal doesn’t survive long enough to reproduce, evolution is a moot point. That animal essentially is removed from the gene pool”
If a teacher doesn’t survive long enough to improve(according to these so-called standards), that teacher becomes, essentially, extinct.
And the state doesn’t want us to survive that long and we all know it! Sort of like edu-genics.
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Michael Medved repeats fake Albert Shanker quote from “Won’t Back Down.”
http://townhall.com/talkradio/johnhowellandamyjacobson/656681
Right wing psuedo-intellectual Michael Medved gave a glowing review of “Won’t Back Down.” Medved is always outraged over alleged liberal media bias and inaccuracy. But in this interview (around 17:35) he paraphrases Albert Shanker as saying he would start caring about students when they payed union dues, following up with “By the way that’s a true quote from Albert Shanker who was head of the teachers’ union in New York.”
The only problem is that Albert Shanker never said it. See:
http://shankerblog.org/?p=2562
The source of the Medved interview is: Townhall Talk Radio John Howell and Amy Jacobson Big John and Amy – 9/28/12 Hour 4Friday, September 28, 2012
Big John and Amy – 9/28/12 Hour 4 John Howell and Amy Jacobson Chicago’s Morning show. 5 am to 9 am Length: 00:27:25
Medved should be exposed every time he plays fast and loose with the “facts” because his whole persona the truth-telling voice of rationality in the face of liberal lies and hysteria.
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Dear Confused– It was painful to read your comment. I’d like to share an administrator’s point of view. I live in New York. I am an administrator in a K-6 building in the suburbs. My teachers team teach in grades 4-6. The idea of team teaching arose from our Shared Decision/ Building Level Curriculum Council. The teacher who is strongest in teaching math, requested to teach math to all 5th & 6th graders. Teaching assignments were based upon teacher input in total consideration of their teaching skills. I was devastated when I received our building growth scores and so were they. My strongest teachers did not fair well according to the “secret Mumbai jumbo” formula the State Ed department conjured up. Now, they fear for they jobs. They are the main “bread winner” in their family. I am being trained on a computerized evaluation tool, and we are being told that if a teacher scores Ineffective on the state Mumbo Jumbo formula I am not to rate them effective on their evaluation. Furthermore, once we hit the close and submit button we cannot make any changes . What is up with that??? The student scaled scores differ from year to year on these NYS standardized tests. There are times when a question is thrown out ( much like the famous pineapple passage), the length and number of passages on the tests differ from year to year. In order for my teachers to show growth, they will have to have self- contained classrooms. No teaming. That means students do not have the advantage of instruction from the best math teacher, writing, science, etc. We will have to narrow the curriculum and teach to the test . We will be giving all sorts of pre-assessments and assessments throughout the year as deemed by the State Ed Dept. So, we will be concentrating on ELA and Math. Tell me what that does to motivate boys who love Science?? This is really dumbing down our students. When I “poured” over each individual students’ data sheet that is going home to parents, it became quite apparent that the Special Ed students w IEPs made little growth and the same was true of the really bright students- they too made very little growth. So what is the over-arching plan of the elites & politicians? Charter schools. Religious schools are also bearing the brunt of this madness as more and more Catholic
Schools in our area close down. So are the
Politicians & elites against public education & religion?? Parents are not happy with all of this testing. They want to sign petitions that will allow them to Opt Out of the testing without penalizing the schools. Election time will be interesting. I am heart broken with what I see happening. Help Stop the madness.
Marge
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As a school librarian, I am concerned about what is happening to school libraries and librarians–especially in NYC. Outside of the library community, I see very little mention of this. There is actually a NY state mandate requiring libraries and certified librarians for grades 7-12, but it is being widely ignored, as librarians are being “excessed” or not hired and many of those libraries that do exist are sitting vacant or are being used for other purposes. Also, when a charter school moves into a school building, the library seems to be one of the first spaces to go. I strongly believe that books and libraries are essential to education and literacy and cannot understand why this is happening–especially with so little opposition.
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Marge,
What you are beginning is just a bit behind Louisiana. Thank you for sharing your perspective and while it is all horrible, it is nice to know that others out there are all thinking the same thing I am: how is this happening and why is the nation allowing it?
I have been pouring over my baseline Eagle test scores, after spending hours trying to figure out how to get to the data. They gave us a 1 hour course last fall, so since I have slept since then it is long gone from my memory! HA!
I posted a link to the evaluation form we use above. I bet you are going to be using the same system, and it sounds like the teachers will be randomly punished and rewarded and eventually no one will know what is consider “good” teaching or “bad” teaching. So we will all just wander around and try to keep teaching in a manner we know to be good and risk getting fired. This team teaching is best for the students and horrible for teachers now with VAM. There were some harsh words exchanged this weekend between several normally laid back peers when the ELA teacher announced that she was talking her kids on a field trip next Thursday and the math teachers got mad because they have to get their Eagle tests done by Friday and could only get the computer lab Thursday….
I suppose mores scenes like this are yet to come.
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Jindal and White might as well just slap all of us in then face and get it over with.
http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2012/09/outrage.html
The woman in charge of our COMPASS teacher eval system ……….is……..a………
“TFA Corps member to manage the evaluation of 60,000 public school teachers and administrators. It turns out this person has never served as a principal, or evaluator. In fact she has no real teacher credentials, and taught for 2 years in a school that was considered by the Department to be a failing school.”
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Hi Dianne, I ran across this article and immediately thought of you and your readers. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
http://help4teachers.com/Americas_Wonderful_Education_System.htm
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The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
Want to see a movie that shows how teachers can powerfully and positively influence students lives even when the students are growing up in chaotic and stressful situations? This is the best I’ve seen in a long time. While the role of the teacher is only an underlying theme in this coming of age story, it comes through powerfully. I highly recommend this movie that is really “based on true events” about coming of age in a suburban Pittsburgh high school in the early 1990’s (before corporate reform and No Child Left Behind.
Information and trailer from Rotten Tomatoes:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_perks_of_being_a_wallflower/
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I’m not sure if this is the right place to post. I’m looking for people who have been, or are being, indoctrinated into the PLC Professional Learning Community” cult. I’m finding it all shades of creepy. I did find one critical article that nailed it, but I can’t find anything else.
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Diane, I don’t know if you have seen this yet, but it is from the Advocate (Baton Rouge) New Orleans Edition. The Times-Picayune has stopped publishing daily so the Advocate now has a New Orleans edition. It just shows how the corporatization of education is now very directly disrupting the lives of our children. The last thing you want to do is change up a school after it has been in session for 2 months (mid August). The kids and teachers are just getting settled in. But the RSD and the charters don’t care. They are no more important than a box of cereal on a shelf at Walmart. Watch for violence here. Cohen is an inner city school and these kids are old enough to remember Hurricane Katrina. PS: They have 6-12th graders in the same building. That seems to be a tendency in the “Recovery District”. Hot early adolescents rubbing shoulders with older teens. Uh Huh! You know in the good schools they not only have middle schools or junior highs, but they have Freshman Academies to keep the 9th graders focused and away from the older kids. But the corporatizers do the opposite.
I don’t know how to send you an article so this is the only way I could figure it out.
Cohen firings draw ire
Show caption
Students protest ouster of principal, staff and teachers
BY ALLEN POWELL II
New Orleans bureau
October 06, 2012
1 COMMENTS
New Orleans — Angry at the second administrative shake-up at their school in two years, Walter L. Cohen Senior High School students stormed out of class on Friday and told Recovery School District Superintendent Patrick Dobard they won’t return until their principal and teachers do as well.
Juniors and seniors at the school were protesting Dobard’s decision to fire Principal Gavin Lewis, much of his staff and four of the 12 teachers assigned to those grade levels. Cohen’s 11th- and 12th-grade classes are operated by the RSD, but students in sixth through 10th grades attend a separate school within the same building called Cohen College Prep. That school is run by New Orleans College Prep, a charter school group.
Dobard plans to turn over management of Cohen’s juniors and seniors to Future Is Now Schools, a national charter school organization partially backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The changeover is supposed to happen Oct. 15.
Dobard said after his staff conducted site visits at the school recently, they recommended to him that a change in leadership occur. Dobard acknowledged that the change was abrupt but said officials needed to make certain students were being prepared properly.
“I could not just sit by and say we’re going to let the status quo go,” Dobard said.
He came out to the school on Friday to talk to students, but received a testy response from them and the few parents in attendance.
Dobard has scheduled meetings for next week to discuss the change with parents and students. He said he hopes they will trust him and return to learning.
“We appeal to their sense of trusting us as educators,” Dobard said.
But students at the school Friday expressed little trust in Dobard or his policies. Several of them questioned how he could hire an entirely new staff for this school year and then fire them six weeks later. Students said they had built relationships with teachers and staff members, and now that process has to start all over again.
“The point we’re trying to make is that this is going to set us back,” senior Terrell Major said.
Major said it was already obvious that the older students weren’t a priority, but this recent decision just drives that point home. The students learned of the firings during a school assembly and were initially given the impression that they would be moved to different schools as part of the change, Major said.
Although Dobard has said that won’t happen, students said they believe the shake-up is proof that only charter school students matter. Major said it seems like they’ve already been cast aside by the system.
“A lot needs to change, and it’s more than just my school. The superintendent needs to change,” said Major, adding that he believes the RSD kept a few teachers just to placate students. “What they don’t know is that we’re going down for all of them.”
Meagan Mckinnon, another senior, said Cohen has a graduation rate in the high 90s, and students truly love their school. She couldn’t understand what sort of problems Dobard found that required such a drastic action. Now she’s worried about whether the shake-up will affect her ability to get the credits she needs to graduate.
“It’s really making us mad,” Mckinnon said.
Dana Peterson, the RSD’s Deputy Superintendent for External Affairs, said that the new administration will be focused on helping students get the credits and education they need. Peterson said the site visits found a disturbing culture at the school, although he would not provide specifics on those problems. Peterson said there is no precedent for such an abrupt change, but the superintendent felt it was necessary or the problems would “linger.”
“He walked away not satisfied with what was going on there,” Peterson said. “Our goal is to get kids college and career ready.”
The Future Is Now organization recently took over the troubled John McDonogh High School on Esplanade after that school had been plagued by violence and poor performances for decades. The group is most famous for school takeovers and turnarounds in Los Angeles. Future Is Now schools concentrate on smaller class sizes, improved technology and longer school days to help students learn, according to the group’s website.
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You send an article by going to it online and copying the link. Then send the link.
See if you can send the link, which is easier to copy and forward than full text.
Diane
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There are signs that some in the media are waking up. See this editorial in the Reading, Pa. Eagle:
School evaluation system can paint misleading picture
from the Reading Eagle
“The Issue: Six local districts receive warnings for failing to meet student performance benchmarks.
Our Opinion: Complex regulations built around standardized tests can make good schools seem like failures.
Two recent stories concerning standardized test results in Berks County school districts reinforce our belief that this is no way to judge an education system.”
http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=418396
See also:
School Funding Inequity Forces Poor Cities Like Reading, Pa., To Take Huge Cuts
from Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/02/school-funding-reading-pennsylvania_n_1922577.html
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Invitation to a Dialogue: A Student’s Call to Arms
Editors’ Note: We invite readers to respond by Thursday for the Sunday Dialogue. We plan to publish responses and Mr. Goyal’s rejoinder in the Sunday Review. E-mail: letters@nytimes.com
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Diane,
Here is a letter I sent to the President several months ago.
Dear Mr. President,
I became a teacher in 1987. I’m sure there’s no need for me to describe for you how hard the job is, how emotionally rewarding it can be, or how poorly I’ve been paid. At the time I became a teacher, Ronald Reagan was still the President and I had studied A Nation At Risk in my undergraduate program. While I was working on a masters degree, from 1990 to 1997, the standards movement began in earnest, and school districts and states were asked to create curriculum standards for each subject. To me, this was an exciting moment. I thought this was going to lead to a higher level of instruction at all schools and I was optimistic it could lead to more equitable funding for public schools. I worked on creating the benchmarks in the district where I taught and I participated in reviewing the state’s draft standards for my subjects.
My main concern, since my first years of teaching, has been that the students who attended public schools in poor districts, urban and rural, didn’t graduate with skills at the level of those who attended public schools in suburban districts. I, like Secretary Duncan, had seen this first-hand and had found it inexcusable. I wanted it changed. Sadly, President Bush’s administration, along with Congress, created No Child Left Behind, which did nothing to equalize funding for schools and created what seems to be the new standard approach to federal education policy — “accountability” by test scores. In the name of brevity, I will not list all the reasons I find this to be a bone-headed approach to “school reform.” Instead, I will simply say that there have been countless consequences of NCLB that I can only hope were unintentional.
I voted for you in 2008 and I plan to vote for you again in 2012, which I only mention because I need you to understand how disappointed I was by Race to the Top. I never assumed that you and I would see eye to eye on education, and I fully recognize that education has not been your top priority in your first term. You’ve had a couple of wars to deal with and a Congress that has been dysfunctional. Let’s face it — you inherited a bit of a mess. I am truly appreciative that you even want to run again! But, as someone who has devoted her entire adult life to working in poor urban and poor rural public schools, I am begging you to please reconsider your administration’s current approach to education.
My state has, since the 1990s, been one of the most test-friendly places on earth. We’ve had annual end-of-grade and end-of-course tests for years and schools have been evaluated on their students’ scores. It used to be that students could not be promoted to the next grade or, in the case of high-school students, could not get credit for a course unless they passed the test. In the past few years, however, our legislature has recognized that this kind of high-stakes testing for students was counter-productive. So, at this point, we still have most of the tests, but they cannot prevent a student from progressing in and of themselves.
With Race to the Top, though, we now must apply this bad idea to teachers, even though they’re not the ones taking the tests. There are so many practical problems with this approach, I can’t even begin to list them. However, what is more important is the message teachers and principals are getting from this kind of “reform.” We’re being told that the most important thing we do is prepare students to take tests. This was already the message we received from No Child Left Behind, but Race to the Top takes it a step further by making it part of each teacher’s and principal’s evaluation. Our value is now directly tied to our students’ test scores.
I will not be directly affected by this part of the grant requirement. Nonetheless, I am moved to write to you because my friends and colleagues will be directly affected by it. My daughter’s teachers and principal, and, therefore, my daughter, will be directly affected by it. I cannot see that this will be a good thing. If you’re interested in why I think that, please read this essay by Linda Darling-Hammond: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/03/05/24darlinghammond_ep.h31.html?qs=linda+darling-hammond
One of the other issues that I’d like you to reconsider is grants for public schools. More than anything, the funding for public schools needs to be made more equitable. Grants such as Race to the Top do nothing to accomplish that. Yes, it requires states to focus most of the funds and work on the lowest performing 5% of districts, which are probably the poorest districts. And, I’ll set aside the fact that we’re still defining school performance by test scores. But Race to the Top doesn’t ask states to review their funding policies and procedures. After 24 years of working in public schools in Maryland, Illinois, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, I firmly believe that a child’s socio-economic status is the decisive factor in his life. It doesn’t define him, but it determines, among many other things, what kind of education he receives.
I implore you to shift the focus of your educational policies to working with states to change their school funding policies. Wealthy communities continue to have superior public school facilities and greater opportunities for their students than average and poor communities. Until that discrepancy is resolved, we will continue to see an achievement gap. We need to work simultaneously on reducing the number of children living in poverty and providing supports to families in poverty, in order to reduce the effects of poverty on the ability of children to be successful in school. This would be real education reform.
Yours truly,
Jamie Gillespie
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Want to know how “Won’t Back Down” is doing? From Daily Koz:
UPDATE 12:45pm 10/14: National estimate for box office for this weekend is…$126,000. If you assume an average of eight bucks a ticket, and that everyone brought someone for free, that comes out to approximately 31,500 people nationally this weekend. Probably not even enough to cover the cost of the full page ad in the Los Angeles Times that egghead mentioned below. As the old saying goes, they stayed away in droves…
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/13/1144241/-Won-t-Back-Down-Back-despite-popular-demand
It opened at 2,515 theaters three weeks ago. It is now showing at 513 theaters.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekend&id=learningtofly.htm
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Dear President:
Your education Secretary Arne Duncan, his Race to the Top, and the No Child Left
Behind Act have created
(1) legions of children who hate school and want to drop out ASAP because they
see school only as a place of standardized tests and preparation for those tests
(2) Millions of demoralized teachers who have been bullied and berated by those
enforcing the unreachable goals of NCLB. Teachers meeting are no longer about
solving school problems. They are now diatribes by “replacement” principals. At
teachers meeting, teachers are not allowed to talk. They must hang their heads
and not look up. They must take the verbal abuse without comment or even defiant
look because otherwise they become the target of the teacher hunt– a sport that
the replacement principals participate in so they have “kills” they can report
to the superintendent.
School teachers are mostly well educated, middle age women who have taken low
paying, high stress jobs because they wanted to help others. Now these best and
brightest most caring members of our society are being vilified and bullied as a
foreseeable result of the policies your education secretary, Arne Duncan, has
put in place.
Charters don’t improve scores. They just cherry pick students, finding only the
ones most likely to score well to take the Arne’s tests.
Removing the last bits of fairness in firing teachers, does not make them
better. It just makes them paranoid and fearful.
Low test scores are only correlated with poverty. Period. Nothing else. You want
better test scores. Improve the lives of the low income students and their
parents.
I believe you are a decent human being. You can’t possibly want the destruction
that you policies under Arne Duncan are causing to our school system.
Fire Arne Duncan today before the election. Hire someone to replace him who
actually has been a classroom teacher.
Sincerely,
Peter Welch
One of your small financial supporters both in 2008 and this year (but not
nearly as enthusiastically this year)
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Here is some background on the rejection of four charters by the Camden, New Jersey School Board last month.
Camden school official expresses concern through silence
from the Philadelphia Inquirer
http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20121017_Monica_Yant_Kinney__Camden_school_official_expresses_concern_through_silence.html
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Diane,
I am a teacher in Louisiana. We received a letter from John White, superintendent yesterday. I have drafted a response. How can I get them to you? I would like to send them to you as two attachments. I have received a lot of positive comments about my letter to White from teachers state-wide.
Susan Muchmore
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Send them to the blog and I will read them.
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Diane, you might be interested in knowing that “Mr. Michelle Rhee” traveled cross country recently to try and convince the citizens in Bridgeport, Connecticut to vote against their own right to elect their school board members! His “arguments” were about as obtuse and transparent as they come.
I’ve seriously never heard of such a thing: a politician flying in from another state, trying to convince local citizens to vote in favor of limiting their own voting rights. Bizarre.
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Education-reform-leader-backs-plan-to-appoint-3969514.php#ixzz29ziy9aHu
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“Won’t Back Down” is going down! Last weekend it made $44,889. It is now playing in only 168 theaters in its 4th week , down from 2,515 theaters at its opening.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekend&id=learningtofly.htm&sort=date&order=DESC&p=.htm
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Diane, I’ve nominated your excellent blog for a “One Lovely Blog” award (it’s not exactly an award, but it is nice). Read more about it here: http://perfectwhole.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/one-lovely-blog/
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I heard your interview on Npr a couple of weeks ago and thought it was the most succinct analysis of our educational woes I have ever heard. Though I am retired, I shared it with all of my co-hearts still in the trenches trying to make sense of the baffling buffoonery that they have to deal with each day. Thank you for your insight and unflinching willingness to speak the truth. I could almost hear the interviewers jaw hit the floor when she was expecting pablum and got the real medicine. Keep up the good work and if you need me on the barricades let me know.
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Diane, here is a satirical “Recipe for How To Change The Nation’s Schools.” I am a 33 year classroom teaching veteran currently working on the campaign to stop the charter school initiative in WA state. It doesn’t look good as Bill Gates and friends spend $9 million on ads (we have no ads).
RECIPE for Taking over a Nation’s Public Schools
Ingredients:
• A Few Super Wealthy Families (that have never attended public schools)
• Powerful Religious Groups convinced that what is wrong with the nation is caused by public education.
• Lobbyists for Private Corporations Waiting To Cash In on Public Money.
• A Political System that allows legislation to be “bought” where campaign money is uncontrolled.
• The illusion that the Public School System is Broken (despite the fact that it has steadily gotten better over time according to the NAEP)
• A few convincing movies to create a negative version of public schools to sway public sentiment.
• A pretense at reform by mandating progress on test scores with unattainable, unsupported goals that ensure turmoil and failure. Tie funding to those scores so they become all consuming. Also, remember that testing is big business for our friends.
• Someone to Blame: Teacher Unions (this is an especially important ingredient since they are the only organization with enough influence to stop the process of taking over the public schools)
Directions:
Put all the ingredients together, stir well. When the time is right, buy legislation with millions and millions of dollars that puts into place the kind of privately controlled schools you really want. Also, do this in a way that further weakens neighborhood public schools by stealing their funding and resources.
Finally, sit back and enjoy you what you have created: A new version of Public Schools where teacher’s cannot unionize, where creationism can be taught as scientific truth with public funds, and where corporations can better control education of the public more to their liking while their friends cash in on the profits.
The frosting on the cake: Yes, it was a little expensive buying these ingredients, but now we have the public permanently financing our project!
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I want to become a teacher, a real teacher, a good teacher. After reading some comments, I’m afraid I will just get head shakes and “save yourself” replies. But educating our youth is the thing I am most passionate about. Its the thing I get most inspired about. I have tried to avoid it by not getting my teacher’s license and trying to get other jobs, but I am 26, and what I would really like to do is get involved in education, to teach.
I grew up and live in Middle Tennessee. I was educated in Nashville Metro public schools, and had very bad experiences there, which despite they’re having been bad, those experiences have always pushed me to want to change it. I have 4-year degrees in english and biology. I am having a hard time finding a job in what I thought would be the practical field of biology.
I’m now working in a warehouse for an internet shopping website. I’m so afraid of teaching in TN, of getting burned out, frustrated and depressed by the lack of will to change things in the interest of our youth. I’m afraid that if I spend the money (that I don’t have) to get a teachers license, that it will just be a waist of time and money.
Aren’t there any other options? Do I have to move? Could I ever get a job in a private school? How do I gain experience so I can get a teaching position in a non-crappy school? Is there a really good teachers education program that will prepare me to get a job in a good school – one that doesn’t teach to tests that don’t really assess student’s preparedness for work or college? Where do I start? How do I tell between paths to false hopes and the path that will lead to a successful education career in a true education system? Any advice?
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Hi Michelle,
I don’t like charter schools for various reasons, but you could possibly be hired by one without a degree in education. This would give you first-hand experience of teaching, and most likely with motivated students and motivated parents. You could then better decide whether pursuing a Master’s degree in education in order to teach in public schools (which pay better) would be worth it for you.
best wishes!
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http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2012/11/ldoe-proposing-radical-changes-in.html
LDOE Proposing Radical Changes in Teacher Salary Schedules
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Did anyone notice the research about stress in children being a factor in education? Read the following: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/11/07/11poverty_ep.h32.html?tkn=WQMFF0xOuDDVvcqdL8y07zRuZKyJCDpdV34r&cmp=clp-edweek
and ask yourself if testing more and teaching to the test will be likely to help! Any veteran classroom teacher would probably tell you that smaller class sizes and family services helping to get every child really ready to learn would help more. What do you think?
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Play helps us develop resiliency to handle stressors. See what can happen when a child is play deprived and suppressed and had to conform… Charles Whitman the Texas Tower Sniper
Not all play deprived kids end up mass murderers…. There are a host of negative compensations that can develop….
We need to know about Play Science!
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We now know that play is a survival drive emanating from the ancient brain, and is not unlike sleep, sex or nutrition. And like sleep, for instance, we can deprive ourselves of play and still function for a while. But after a while, we begin to experience negative compensatory behaviors due to it’s privation. Play deprivation may foment addictive disorders, compulsions, rigid thinking and behaviors, bullying and domination, depression and more. We have research on this.
Sleep deprivation is a torture technique. We may be at the cusp of scientifically proving that play deprivation is also torture, and missing from the child’s life, tantamount to child abuse.
Play is embedded into us by mother nature to develop resiliency and explore the possible. It builds community and resolves conflict. Play is how we learn to deeply engage with the other, to be in the moment, and explore the possible. Play appears purposeless, but it is not.
Play was trivialized through the industrial era, and appears to continue to be trivialized by industrial era assembly line schooling. Unproductive, many say.
I don’t think teaching to the test promotes play. Too bad. Play literally drives innovation. Its not about survival of the fittest, the biggest or most dominant, it’s about survival of the most resilient.
Innovation develops new businesses and jobs.
Interesting to note the trend of the elite in China now sending kids to play-based programs. They know their future depends on their capacity to innovate.
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No Child Left Behind: A National Scam
No Child Left Behind was never meant to improve education–follow the money. Can you imagine the impact of a law that requires every school district in America to buy tests from specific testing companies? The law was designed to line the pockets of the testing company stock holders and board members. It is theft from every school district in America.
George W. Bush and his friends rarely exhibited concern for the education of America’s children outside of this law. Most developed countries use testing 2-3 times in a child’s entire schooling. This law allowed profiteers to enrich themselves from the nation’s public educational resources.
I would like to see the stock prices of testing companies before and after No Child Left Behind, who is on the board of directors of the testing companies, and who contributed to the Bush campaigns, and if and how they benefited from the law. Can we have some investigative reporting on this?
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Good Morning — Margot is 100% correct!! Follow the money. Full disclosure of those who have invested in Pearson Publishing. Did state education departments all across the USA follow a bid process in using Pearson Publishing company exclusively?? How about some transparency here?? President Obama just said he was re-elected to serve the people. How about starting with the children?? Young children are being seen by their pediatricians for anxiety and school is being viewed as the major contributor. Common sense must prevail!!
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I thought you would be interested in reading this blog in which you are quoted. He touches upon all the things wrong with the way teachers are being asked to write curriculum for the common core instead of teaching and how phony all the concern about putting children first is on the part of the “refomers.”
The Common Core: Putting Corporations First. Always « Raginghorseblog
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An Up-Side-Down School?
Jim Lacey
If the media are to be believed, just about everyone is unhappy with public schools as they are—school boards, principals, parents, and politicians. In the face of this disenchantment, there have been extraordinary federal mandates such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, currently being tinkered with because of reactions in the schools that range from dissatisfaction to outrage. Foundations, corporations, and wealthy individuals have gotten into the act, some from a desire to improve universal public education, others to replace it with charter or private-sector schools. The focus of most educational reform is on teachers. In my home state, Connecticut, Governor Malloy’s program, though it may differ in details, will apparently have the same focus as the federal mandates. The goal is to discover who the good teachers are and reward them, while identifying and retraining or dismissing those found wanting. The usual method is to test students in order to evaluate the performance of their teachers as well as of the schools themselves, a procedure that has produced a quagmire of questions, objections, and a maze of statistics, dear to the hearts of bureaucrats fond of crunching numbers. Certainly, standardized tests are inexpensive to print, administer, and machine correct, but just what do they measure? Though they show the willingness and ability of an individual student to take a standardized test, they may have little or no relationship to anything else, including the proficiency of the teacher.
Of course, the kids, colleagues, and most principals already know who the really great teachers are as well as those few who are just awful. Most teachers are somewhere in the middle and are doing a commendable job. Critics of the current focus of reform claim that frequent standardized testing is counter-productive, that it will bore students, frustrate teachers, and destroy much of the curriculum that is not being tested, and they argue that poverty and straitened family circumstances are the fundamental causes of underachievement–not the classroom teacher. So perhaps there is a better approach to improving education, one that deals with issues more basic and significant than teacher evaluation.
A brief look at two high schools, about nine miles apart in eastern Connecticut, yields some counter-intuitive surprises and strongly suggests that poverty and ethnicity are major factors in the failure of a school. Windham High School is located in Willimantic, an urban center and former mill town; E. O. Smith High School is located in largely rural Mansfield, right next to the University of Connecticut campus. While the towns are adjacent, Willimantic, though it features many fine Victorian homes, is relatively poor, with a median household income of $45,465, and Mansfield is considerably wealthier, with much higher real estate values and a median household income of $66,304. According to test results Windham High is failing, with a GreatSchools rating in the bottom 10%, and E. O. Smith is doing a lot better with a GreatSchools rating in the 50th percentile..
Some might believe that the relative amount of money spent on these schools is the key to success. Surprisingly, Windham, despite its annual struggle to pass its educational budget, spends slightly more per pupil than wealthy Mansfield, and its school spends a slightly higher proportion of its budget on instruction. The most obvious difference is that of those attending Windham, 60% are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, twice the state average, while at E. O. Smith only 8% are eligible. In addition, only 38% of Windham’s students are Caucasian, while the figure for E. O. Smith is 88%. Though there is little difference in the money spent per student and the resources available, there is a considerable disparity in the proportion of students from ethnic minorities, which in this region are mainly Hispanic. For example, only 4% of E. O. Smith students are Hispanic, while the figure for Windham is 54%. The obvious, if certainly unpopular, solution to this extreme ethnic imbalance would be busing. Most probably, however, busing would be bitterly opposed and would in all likelihood, considering only grades on standardized tests, do little more than raise Windham’s scores a notch or two and lower E. O. Smith’s by about the same amount.
Instead of focusing on the performance of teachers or waiting for the millennium when poverty and straitened family circumstances will be no more and ethnicity will no longer be a negative factor, why not experiment right now with a structural change in public education? A revenue-neutral revolution would be to change the culture of the schools by turning the system upside-down—literally. In place of a top down hierarchy with mandates from school boards, superintendents, and principals, try a democratic, bottom-up approach. Let the teachers elect a principal for a given term; let committees of teachers, with input from parents and students, determine policies–budget allocation, curriculum, evaluation, activities, and the like. In short, empower the teachers, parents, and students to make all the important decisions about their school. Such a change in the culture of the school would motivate all parties involved and ensure that everyone is heard and their questions addressed. Motivation is surely the single most important predictor of success in school. Of course, such a change might best be introduced with pre-schoolers and work its way through a system from the primary school, through the middle school, and finally high school. Perhaps some “under-performing” school district is ready for such an experiment.
Jim Lacey is professor emeritus at Eastern Connecticut State University, where he directed the honors program for ten years. In this piece “Caucasian” means non-Hispanic White and the statistics (2009) are from . An earlier version appeared as commentary in the Willimantic Chronicle.
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Jim, you are describing an idea that is working right now in Chicago: Local School Councils. Are you familiar with Dr. Moore’s work? He did an excellent job of documenting improvements through democratic local control of elementary schools. Sadly he died last year. Here is the link:
http://www.designsforchange.org/index.html
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Steve– The report on the Chicago schools is interesting, if rather complex, but the conclusions are clear enough. Why do most powers that be in education prefer the top-down approach? It’s the simplist way to seem to be doing something, I suppose. Whenever there’s a problem in higher education in Connecticut, the answer inevitably is to hire an administrator or another level of administrators to take care of it, or at least to make it go for a while. Of course the problem never get’s solved, only more complicated. requiring even more administrative assistants!
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Jim and Steve, thanks for this great conversation. I agree completely and have seen the same problem in the schools in which I have worked. The school that I based my book on had anywhere from 4-7 administrators at any time, and as we got more admins, the school got worse and worse. The year I left, they fired the principal, and the new one they hired was even worse. Why not let the community, made up of parents, teachers, and even students, have a say in who leads their school? It would definitely hold these leaders more accountable to the people they serve rather than the higher ups who really don’t care about the kids.
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Sorry for the duplicate comment, but now that I have read through the information on the designs for change website, I have further questions. I noticed the document that discusses the reforms made in Chicago was published in 1991. Not being from Chicago, I’m wondering what has happened in the more than 20 years since. Is the bottom up approach still in effect and still working? I’m very interested in learning more about this. If it is working, why haven’t we heard of other communities moving forward with this approach?
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Ms. Frank,
My understanding is that PURE (a parent group) is the organization supporting Local School Councils in Chicago. http://pureparents.org/
Also, look through their publications for a Feb 2012 Report Democracy vs. Turnaround Schools. Great stuff!
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There is a Designs for Change report on democratically controlled schools, published in March 2012. They outperformed the turnaround schools.
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Diane and Steve, thanks for the info! I’m speaking at an event regarding educational reform (and my book) in New York on Monday, and I plan on discussing this democratic model. It’s a great idea, and I just don’t understand why it hasn’t reached the main stream discussion. Why are we all talking about Danielson and the common core, and not this???
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Education Reform
Despite the specious claims made by corporate financed education “reformers” claiming
that teacher “performance is our schools’ central problem, the real problem is the failure of our political classes to learn from schools that are effective. The model for effective schools are the ones they send their children to, private schools.
Those children are in small classes 12-16, usually managed by a teacher and teacher assistant. Social services and counseling are available in depth, right in the building (though their parents can afford it on their own).
Private tutoring, test prep, real science labs and respect for the students by Administration and security staff contrasts from the zero tolerance and near criminalization of public school security screenings and metal detectors.
Newark’s new teacher’s contract addresses none of these things. Instead it takes the a assumptions of the “corporate reformers” and accepts them a priori. This is a grave error. The new contract creates a merit system that will divide teachers, a two-tier wage system and an evaluation program based on standardized testing.
Over the last few years I have witnessed a steep decline in the morale of excellent teachers. Our “performance” has been confused with the inevitable outcome of increasing inequality in the U.S. Increasing numbers of teachers feel afraid to speak freely and teach creatively ( because of the assault on Teacher Unions ) as Charter schools actually eliminate Union jobs.
Some people would argue that the 600 billion dollars spent each year on public education is the prize the corporate world and Charter advocates seek by demonizing public education. I am sure that’s true but I would argue that our teachers and their students are really victims of a shell game. The goal of that game appears to be to hold political leaders and School Officials harmless for school failures. At the same time, they withhold the solution, making the schools for working-class children in Newark more like those in the private schools.
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You are my hero! Saw your interview on Chicago Tonight- you make the teachers here in Chicago very proud!!!
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Quispe
Some years ago a friend in an isolated rural area in Cape Breton Island, Canada, had played with imaginative ways of encouraging literacy among a population of people given to cutting pulp and catching fish. The Dept of Ed sent some testers out and his grade 4 students (the school was grades 1-9 and had two teachers. He taught grades 1-4). His grade four students were reading at a “grade 6” level.
Five years later these same students, in grade 9, were tested and it was determined that they were at a grade 3 level.
Teaching a university course in philosophy of education I related this to my students. It was an evening class and they were all teachers. The response was unanimous: “you’re surprised? This was only to be expected. They have other interests.”
So now, under the influence of the US testing madness, the Province of Ontario gives reading tests to grade 10 students. Passing is a condition for high school graduation.
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Diane,
Did you listen to Leonard Lopate show interview today of Paul Tough on his new book? I thought he had many interesting and good ideas.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2012/nov/23/how-children-succeed/
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Dr. Ravitch:
We are roughly at the 25th anniversary of What do our 17-Year-Olds Know, and I commented on your book at http://mikespinrad.blogspot.com/2012/11/25-years-later-what-do-our-17-year-olds.html Perhaps it will renew interest in your book. All the best!
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The sample test questions for the Keystone Exams in the Sunday Edition of the PG, are an excellent example of what’s wrong with our education system. These questions may be suitable for a very small percentage of Americans but they are inappropriate for the general education in our high schools. They are the trivia that infects what we call academic education. This is not information that everyone needs to know and it takes away from that which should be a part of secondary education and it also includes algebra and other inconsequential requirements I shall give some alternative questions and studies that should be a part of all our basic education:
A. Describe the elements that are required to formulate a scientific theory, e.g. gravity and evolution.
B. Discuss the effects upon a society in which 50% of the population is under age 25 and one in which 50% is over age 60.
C. Given that all the founders of America were men of the Enlightenment, discuss the effects of that fact on our government and society.
D. Elucidate the intent and significance of the Establishment Clause in our Constitution.
E. Compare and contrast climate and weather.
F. What is a double blind study in medical research?
G. What is the double bind in human psychology?
H. What do we mean by fossil fuel and what is it origins.
I. What were Jim Crowe laws?
J. What is the International Dateline, where is it and why?
K. What is meant by the phrase he can’t see the forest because of the trees?
These test questions are derived from some of the information and concepts we all should know. Do you understand the difference? If not you are part of the problem.
David N. Campbell
4512-374-0898
105 Golf Ridge Drive – Monroeville
dcampbell105@comcast.net
To:Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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Regarding the electronic tagging- You ended with- “You have to wonder, first, who dreams up these ideas, and second, who reviews and approves them.” Don’t forget-Who makes money from them?
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Hi Diane, I’m a parent active in my city’s public schools, and I –and many other parents here–totally agree with your perspective on what’s happening to our public schools. I’m wondering whether you think starting a petition to the president (at https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/) would be helpful in getting President Obama and Sec Duncan to rethink their emphasis on charter schools and testing? If so, are you willing to help write a succinct statement of the best way to help our public schools and especially the populations of children who are struggling? (The petitions must be no more than 800 characters and need 25,000 signatures to be considered.)
Thank you!
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I am swamped right now–must fly to Texas for a funeral–but remind me in a few days and I will help you. In the meanwhile, we have many talented people who read this blog, and maybe one will help out.
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Hi Diane,
I contacted Parents Across America, but they decided not to pursue this idea. Would you (or anyone else on this blog) be willing to draft a short (800 characters) petition to the president to rethink his emphasis on testing and charter schools over helping traditional public schools and figuring out how best to help our struggling students to learn? I and others would help to gather signatures. Thanks!
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Paula — I and many others are concerned with what is going on in public education. There are many petitions being signed in several states, and there was a letter writing campaign to President Obama. The only thing that is going to put an end to all of the harmful testing if children is if parents UNITE and make sure that their voices are heard.
I am confident that other readers of this blog will respond to you as well.
What State do you reside in??
Marge Borchert ( New York)
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Yes, uniting is important. But what are we going to unite FOR? What is the vision and means for realizing the vision? When people simply complain about what isn’t working well without providing a solution, it sounds like sour grapes- whether it is or isn’t. Please don’t think I’m saying this to you personally, for I am not. But generally speaking, someone who comes forth with leadership is of more value than one who simply complains about what isn’t working. We know standardized testing isn’t working.
We need to move education from the assembly-line thinking of the industrial era. Forget manufacturing jobs- they are gone. And with the new technology of 3d printing, perhaps new opportunities will come forth. In any event, only those who can think creatively will thrive well.
I highly suggest reading this article, as it sums up the situation quite well
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/05/play-power-how-to-turn-around-our-creativity-crisis/238167/
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You will enjoy my new book. It will be published next fall. Lots of solutions. We all have good ideas but can’t get anywhere until our leaders stop the carrot and stick stuff, stop misusing testing, stop the privatizing.
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Excellent! I’ll keep an eye open for it.
Let’s talk to Arne about Play Science? We have schools in Asia setting up Play Science Institutes. They know that they need to innovate. The teacher is the one who can identify and scaffold upon the innate talents of the child. No computer program can see, feel, connect and mentor that deeply. Data is not knowledge. Metaphoric thinking is developed through three dimensional play, something one cannot develop from a two dimensional screen. It has everything to do with hand-brain co-evolution and the neuroscience of tinkering, object play, or other three dimensional forms of play. Real world problem solving necessitates nuanced metaphorical thinking, not rigid, scripted programming.
This published today in Richmond Times Dispatch
http://www.timesdispatch.com/entertainment-life/columnists-blogs/life-notes-play-is-important-for-your-kids-and-for/article_b762643b-9d18-5cda-a6b6-76f61256c2b9.html
And I think everyone here will like this one, as scripted schooling kills innovation.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2012/0124/Toddlers-to-tweens-relearning-how-to-play
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Congrats on finishing. Too bad it can’t be published sooner. I’ll just have to wait. Arggggh. I just want you and your publisher to know that it’s difficult to do so.
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In Scotland, they are petitioning for MANDATORY play time. Perhaps we should follow suite.
http://www.playscotland.org/
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Thank you, Diane, and my condolences.
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My condolences, Diane. Paula you can Google the following sites to see what parents have been doing. I can’t provide the actual links: NYC Public School Parents, Parents Across America and Change the Stakes.
Pat
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I’m in Massachusetts, Marge.
I would like to petition to emphasize that the focus on charter schools is draining money, resources, and motivated students and their families from the traditional public school system. Instead of helping ALL students in public schools, focusing on starting charter schools only helps a small percentage of students in each district.
As a parent who’s worked so hard in my district, I’m very frustrated that the progress being made in my city’s traditional public schools is being threatened with a loss of funding if a new charter school opens up.
I’m sure we could get 25K signatures on a well-worded petition, but hope it will present positive steps, not just negative responses to what’s being done now.
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Paula,
The Parents Across America website has great information. Their platform would make a great petition:
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/what-we-believe-2/
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Thanks! This group is exactly what I’ve been looking for! I’ll contact them to see if they would like to put together the wording of a petition.
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Hello- Diane, I have to say that I will eagerly await your new book. I too, have ideas for school reform which I feel will make the learning environment more suitable to producing children who are problem solvers. I need to stop getting distracted from all of the nonsense currently going on in with standardized testing and teacher evaluations, and write. One of the greatest things about reading this blog is the wealth of information that comes forward, the recommendations for articles and books to read, and the willingness of people to help one another. Steve, I appreciate your coming up with a contact for Paula so quickly! I was responding from my Iphone and that screen isn’t conducive to research. I would have had to wait until this morning to give Paula some suggestions.
I just want to say, that as a building principal, parents have been asking about a desire to Opt out Of the Testing. They share concerns that their child’s test data will be stored in a data warehouse. They question who will have access to this data. They also tell us that their children are coming home very anxious about all of the test takin. We are giving pre-assessments to Kindergarten children. The tests must be administered on an individual basis because Kindergarten children cannot read as yet and are unfamiliar with the bubble sheet process. In order to assure the security of the tests we had a major discussion as to who should actually administer them. Naturally, this testing process is cumbersome and will deprive children of valuable teaching time. This is disturbingly wrong. I can recall a test that was administered by a stern reading teacher several years ago to a very shy child.The child failed the DIBELS test and her teacher had a vociferous argument with the reading teacher. He asserted that the test was invalid and that this particular student was one of the top students in her class. This year, that student was highlighted in our school Newsletter as being one of the Top Ten in her graduating class.
This is where I find the testing, and teacher evaluation process that is based on student growth DISTURBING to say the very least. Imagine if this child’s future was based on this test? Imagine if a teacher lost his/her job because this student did not show growth scores. That is what parents should be
concerned about. This is what needs to change. This is what people need to UNITE about. Common sense needs to prevail. I do have ideas for school reform. I do know how to teach children to become problem solvers. It isn’t about privatizing education and creating more charter schools. it is about parents knowing that they are their child’s first teacher and that together we will do what is best for children. We do not want them sitting in front of a computer all day, we do not want them to become shallow individuals, we do want them to be successful, well rounded individuals who contribute to making the world a better place.
That being said, I will continue my efforts in writing the President, the Secretary of Education and the State Education Department and signing those petitions that come my way.
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I refused to send my child to school during testing. We played and followed our interests instead. Just think if 30% or more of parents did the same.
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Hi Kristen,
Bold move! I’m just curious what the ramifications were, if any, and which exams these were…class or state-wide?
Next week at my school is mock Regents week, which I think is especially ridiculous. By the time the students take the real exams in January, they are already burnt out and tired of testing.
Thanks for your efforts.
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It was state wide testing. I simply left a VM indicating I didn’t want my daughter tested. I was prepared to simply say “come and get me” and make a public stink. But they didn’t even call me.
I don’t think the school authorities want problems or media coverage on this, which makes me think an organized boycott by parents highly effective and could frame the resistance to standardized testing and motivate other parents to get involved.
Students could participate in the boycott by either physically protesting with parents in front of the school and/or be dropped off at parks or places of interest (museums etc) with parent volunteers for parents who must work.
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Kristen– Please send your children to my school!!!! Parents need to be aware of how much instructional time is being lost on testing. In addition to all of the pre-test nonsense, in grades K-6 we are giving post test, field tests from State Ed and the standardized tests. Student data is being stored in data warehouses within the state and nationally. Who is using this data? Do they have access to student social security numbers?
We need the assistance of thoughtful parents such as yourself. I give you alot of credit for keeping your child home during testing. You are absolutely correct when you ask if 30% of the parents did so– what an impact this would have??? Who would listen then— especially if parents insisted that the state have the signed permission of parents for all of this testing. How are the students’ privacy rights being addressed?? Those are the difficult questions some of the parents of the students in my school are asking. Imagine if those questions were being asked all across the United States– by WE THE PEOPLE.
I admire you for having your child’s best interest at heart.
Marge
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I just read this article in the American Conservative and thought Bruce Bartlett’s experience with supply side economics matched your experience with test-based “reform”. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/revenge-of-the-reality-based-community/
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Here’s a Chicago schoolteacher who’s had it with testing: “Why do we keep taking the temperature all the time … Our students aren’t sick; it’s the system that’s sick.”
http://www.schooltechconnect.com/2012/11/culture-of-testing-ii.html
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Dear Diane,
I came home the other day to another WNYC membership renewal request. The sting of their organization–through their Schoolbook Website– publishing the TDRs last spring is still with me, so I dashed off a letter to their membership director and the editor of their SchoolBook, The Website STILL has the now-moldy data prominently displayed and searchable.
Especially since WNYC is in high-gear targeting membership renewals, the listeners (and member supporters!) of WNYC need to voice their concerns and let them know that TDRs are not editorial neutral data.
November 28, 2012
Ms. Lisa Torres
Membership Director
WNYC New York Public Radio
160 Varick Street
New York, NY 10013
Dear Ms. Lisa Torres,
I thought if I just ignored the recent Annual Membership Renewal Forms, they’d stop coming. But I got another one today.
I am a New York City public school teacher. Please understand that when your organization, through its SchoolBook Website, made the decision last spring to publish the Teacher Data Reports, the editors made a grave editorial decision standing AGAINST all teachers. To put it in the most basic term, the information is libel against teachers. (For the record, I am a high school teacher and my name is not included in the TDRs.) The information was never intended for public viewing and it contains errors. Further, many statisticians and education policy makers agree that the standardized test scores of students that go into each teacher’s report was never intended for such a distorted and destructive use.
By publishing the TDRs, even with the disclaimers and sidebars—acknowledging that some reports have a margin of error more than 50%! — the editors of your organization stand with the so-called “education reformers” who are intent on destroying public education. The act of publishing the TDRs is not editorially-neutral “news information,” as your editors might argue.
Finally, the information about teachers is now almost four years out-of-date, and it is STILL on your website! To publish it last spring when every other mainstream news organization in New York CIty was doing so was offensive enough, but to keep it there now that it is so old? Really? You call yourself a NEWS organization? Please remove the TDRs and issue an apology to New York City public school teachers. Immediately.
In the meantime, please stop sending me your membership renewal forms. It will be a long time before I’m ready to help your organization with a cent of my teacher’s salary.
Sincerely,
David Rohlfing
Cc: Laura Walker, President & CEO of New York Public Radio
Patricia Willens, Editor of SchoolBook
Diane Ravitch
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Great work here, Diane. I have added you to my blogroll at Eclectablog
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This article appeared around Michigan recently. It reveals the kind of schools the Michigan Governor and the GOP have in mind for the schools of the poorest students in our state. Keep in mind this is a lot of schools, since Michigan’s child poverty rate has climbed 57% in the last decade. http://www.grandhaventribune.com/article/education/255821
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Dear Diane,
I have learned about you in my education courses when working on my graduate degree. While researching and googling on “teachers quitting in America,” your website came up.
I just started teaching full-time in NYC as a special educator for children with autism. Upon arriving my new job, I have not received any support and help from my administration. With the new common core alignment for my students, I know that many of them are just not ready for that kind of learning yet. It is ashamed that my administration is pushing me to teach my kids how to retell details from a text when some of them still need to learn how to hold a pencil, do potty training, or drawing a line. I am absolutely opposed to this common core alignment in NYC. I do see this new standard as a way to set up special educators to fail.
As an educator, I like for my students to thrive in their learning at their own pace, especially for students of special needs. However, the more I get pushed around by the hierarchy and “educratics”, I do not feel like this job is a profession that I can respect any longer. I have put too many long hours to make my students learn but only to have the administration telling me that I am not challenging my students enough.
I feel that there has to be a better solution for making our student learn and be ready for the 21st Century. For every state to get funding for RACE TO THE TOP, that is just setting every child to fail and fall in the bottom.
Sincerely,
LC
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Diane,
Good news–State Board of Ed Chair in NC wants to treat teachers better:
http://stateboard.ncpublicschools.gov/chairmans-blog/blame-to-gratitude-and-respect%20?j=672949&e=ROBIJOHNSTON@GMAIL.COM&l=14260_HTML&u=10767923&mid=1077648&jb=62
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Not sure if you’ve seen this… http://slowridedown.com/
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Diane, not sure if you’ve seen this… http://slowridedown.com/
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Play deprivation is real. When are people going to connect the dots?
ABC News reviews play deprivation and another campus mass murderer, Texas Tower Sniper Charles Whitman. Gov John Conolly spared no resources or funding on this investigation and it began the exploration
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Whenever you are ready, Diane. I think a NYT oped is timely
http://www.nifplay.org/whitman.html
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Dear Mrs. Ravitch,
My name is Amadeu Sanz and I am the publishing coordinator of STEPV, a union of teachers in Valencia (Spain).
In Spain, just as in the US, there’s a heated debate on the results of public schools in international assessment tests such as PISA, and our Minister of Education (José Ignacio Wert) wants to impose a reform of the educational system that advocates the de-regulation of the system to favor complete freedom of school choice and the introduction of the principles of accountability and competition among all kinds of schools (public, private and charter ones). this reform hasn’t been passed in our parliament yet, but we fear that the absolute majority that the party in government has will approve of it, even though there is a wide refusal towards it in all spheres of education (teachers and students unions, parents’ associations, prominent scholars…).
In addition to this, the economic and debt crisis in this country is a perfect excuse to significantly cut education budgets, fire teachers, reduce their salaries and increase the ratio of students per classroom.
The situation is becoming really awful, to the extent that we consider this reform and these cuts the biggest attack against the public school system that has been developed after the death of Franco and the transition to democracy in Spain.
As a response to this situation, STEPV, along with two other unions –STEi, from the Balearic Islands, and USTEC, from Catalonia, with whom we share the same language, Catalan- are developing an opposition campaign to the reform designed by our minister.
In order to enrich our arguments and proposals, we are planning to publish a critical analysis of the reform and we want to illustrate how similar proposals to these from minister Wert have worked out in other countries, being yours a very valuable example.
Because many ideas come from the U.S. and because we’re absolute fans of some of your books and videos, we would be really pleased if you would like to contribute to our critical analysis issue by writing an article about the effects of school choice and accountability on education.
Best regards,
Amadeu Sanz
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Dear Mr. Sanz,
It seems that Spain is following the path of what Pasi Sahlberg of Finland calls the Global Education Reform Movement or GERM.
You should reach out to Pasi (his email is on his website) and Yong Zhao (his email is on his website).
Contact me at my website and I will try to help you.
Diane
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Thank you for your prompt response. Indeed, this is what it seems. I’ll contact you through your website, and also try to reach out Pasi Sahlberg and Yong Zhao.
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Dear Mrs. Ravitch,
Last week I sent you an email regarding the spanish reform. Did you received it?
Thanks again for your attention. Have a happy new year.
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This was published on the editorial page of The Providence Journal, 12/14/12
Testing mania leaves urban students behind
As a person who left a teaching position at Hope High School, in Providence, last June after almost two decades, I’d like to add my perspective to the discussion of high-stakes testing.
I left several years earlier than I’d planned to. I’m proud of my teaching record and of the role I played at Hope: I was the internal facilitator for school improvement when we broke down Hope into small learning communities. The years after that when we were instituting such researched-based practices as longer class periods, common planning for teachers, literacy across the curriculum and portfolio-based evaluation were exciting years.
The level of teacher commitment was astonishing; we worked many, many extra hours, often without pay, to achieve school goals.
Of course, the endemic problems of poverty don’t go away, but we created an environment where many more students thrived. For a few years the faculty, with the support of the Rhode Island Department of Education, changed Hope into a preferred destination among the city’s schools, with a rich curriculum, rising test scores and a safe environment.
The New England Association for Schools and Colleges, on its decennial visit in 2002, took Hope off its warning list and rewarded our efforts with accreditation, making Hope the only school in the city besides Classical High School with NEASC accreditation. In 2009, about two-thirds of our junior class in two of the three small learning communities achieved or exceeded proficiency in reading.
The positive environment began to change about five years ago, when the federal government issued its mandates based on No Child Left Behind. Slowly support for real school improvement was withdrawn and all activity was subsumed under the massive burden of standardized testing and record-keeping.
Eventually the intimate small learning communities were disbanded. All teacher meetings on curriculum, literacy, etc., came to a screeching halt. Instead of common planning time for improving teaching practices, teachers were summoned to after-school meetings, where they were instructed on how to fill out the multitudinous forms to show that progress was being made. Students were actually referred to as data points. Teachers became data-enterers whose main purpose was to prove that they could raise the test scores on whatever standardized test was thrown at them.
It is hard to imagine a more toxic environment for urban students. Instead of a positive community and classrooms rich with learning activities, they were now spending almost a week every quarter taking on the alphabet soup of standardized testing (NECAP, SAT, GRADE, etc.). The tests were completely unrelated to any curriculum; they were boring and repetitive, and they did not recognize the inherent challenges of the various urban populations. When the results eventually filtered back, students were harangued in grade-wide assemblies with threats of not being able to graduate, regardless of how well they were doing otherwise, if their scores were low.
Our students, under extraordinary stress from so many different quarters, now had this added to their burden.
After spending years refining strategies for getting my students to become enthusiastic readers and writers, I watched those strategies being undercut by testing that moved students nowhere.
After years of working on thoughtful, relevant curriculum, I was being forced to teach a canned curriculum purchased for millions of dollars from textbook publishers who knew nothing about urban teaching. Watchers — school and district administrators — roamed the halls and classrooms, taking notes on shiny new iPads, to make sure that teachers were on the same page every day as every other teacher of our grade and subject in the district. Field trips that opened the students to a world beyond the narrow constraints of their neighborhoods were no longer permitted; time taken away from the mandated plan was seen as time wasted. Every path to good teaching was effectively blocked off.
That is the reason I left.
Teacher attrition is a nationwide crisis. Nationally, the average turnover for teachers in urban school districts is 20 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Experienced teachers are being replaced by recent graduates who in most cases cannot manage urban classrooms and in many cases leave before their first year is over.
The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future estimates that one-third of all new teachers leave within the first three years, and 46 percent within five years. The commission estimates that teacher attrition has grown 50 percent over the past 15 years and costs roughly $7 billion a year — for recruiting, hiring and trying to retain new teachers.
I have always thought I could do more to help underprivileged teenagers from within the system, but I no longer believe that. Shamefully, in recent history we have engineered segregated schools for our urban youth and deprived them of equal resources for education. With No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top we are removing their final hope of an equal education: experienced teachers.
Carole Marshall, of Pawtucket, is writing a memoir about teaching in the Providence Public School System. Before teaching she was a journalist for The Observer of London and the Financial Times, both of London.
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Thank you for posting this story. I’ve wondered about collecting oral histories from teachers who are experiencing this take-over. How could we begin to document what is actually happening in our schools? How could we document programs that had a huge impact in improving students lives within the framework of free, high quality public education for all?
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New Yorker Story Remarks
I just read the New Yorker “Public Defender” story about Diane’s evolutionary trek from reformer to epiphany and I congratulate her for finally seeing the big picture. None of the physical reforms i.e. the theft of public money going to create charter schools or school choice voucher which is a euphemism for the cheap handouts to parochial schools (blurring the line between church and state) have done little to enhance public education and are most likely contributing to its decline.
The last part of the New Yorker story of Diane’s aboutface lays the whole thing out and connects those dots between education and human needs. The education sector doesn’t suffer in a vacuum. When people aren’t able to meet their needs such as nourishment, housing, transportation, day care, healthcare, then the whole society (commons) breaks down. Each one of these needs is connected to the other like one big organism.
For some reason Americans seem to think we need to do things differently by reinventing the wheel instead of building on what works in other countries. Ultimately, the spiraling failures in our society fall on the shoulders of the small government crowd who claim to want to build an exceptional country but don’t want to pay for anything. They make the case for their way of thinking by tugging on our biased heartstrings. In a state of naive or altruistic bliss, we continue to tackle each societal (public) crisis in a vacuum as if they were disconnected from all the other deficiencies pushing and pulling on it. What will it take for the rest of us to come around as Diane has done and create a society where the words public and good can be said together?
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Check it out: followup to the Pearson “1.7 billion too much to spend?” post: http://fwd.pearson.com/2012/12/17/what-are-better-kinds-of-tests/
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PLEASE help me out – I’m the only commenter on this so far and I feel like I’ve done a woefully inadequate job of rambling!
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As the parent of two children in an urban school district that has scored in the lowest 10 percent in our state, I totally agree with Carole Marshall’s assessment of how NCLB HAS left behind urban students who are “low-performing” on standardized testing. (My kids are doing very well in this school district, by the way, and one is now at a top-50 private college with a generous scholarship and financial aid. His classmates who were also in the NHS, most of whom are the children of immigrants and/or low income and first-generation college students, are also now at great colleges,)
I think the money spent on standardized testing should be redirected to examining the needs of the students (and school districts) who have by now been identified as low-performing and addressing those needs. Do away with the testing systems, focus on reading and comprehension, math, and science, and address the cognitive skills kids need to succeed academically. (This would require integrating enough physical activity, which would also address behavioral issues and obesity.) Institute free full-day preschools for kids starting at 3 years (if not earlier) in these districts, with adequate afterschool care.
I really think parents need to complain to the president — ask him to change his direction on education in this second term!!
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Hello Diane, I’m a huge fan….keep up the good work!
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Do you have any relatives who also teach college? I thought I had a professor at Rider University whose name was Dr. Ravitch
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No.
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Teach to the test? Measurable performance? Scripted learning?
This is what it’s all about! Deep engagement…. through play
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Thank you for the reminder. The message is simple and the purpose is clear.
Human Beings have the capacity to stretch even when they think they can’t
and even when the pain is profound. Wright’s Law has chronicled for sharing
the highest example of what a parent and teacher can aspire to be in the
example of this man, this fellow human being.
As an advocate for the disabled, in particular the learning disabled, I am reinspired
after thirty plus years of work to push even harder for that level learning playing
field for all children. The new normal for education and government is to look the
other way and believe the value added child is only for a global workforce. Adam
reminds us of how hard a human being can work to be human, be loved, be
treated with respect, be given an opportunity for an enriched life no matter what
others think it should be or for, that a dream can stay alive even if it is not the
dream we envisioned it to be.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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I am a recently retired elementary school reading teacher. High-stakes testing tied to teacher evaluation is a bad idea. Most testing is accomplished via computers (whether in the classroom or a computer lab), whole group style. Children are to bring along a book to read after they finish their testing session. Here are some observations. Some children view computer time as “playtime,” a chance to guess, play a game or interact with images. Other children notice their peers finishing a testing session and think they should be “done” too; and they quickly finish/guess. Many tests (MAPS, Performance Series, STAR, to name a few) are multiple choice, so kids who have not been schooled in multiple choice strategies don’t know how to take these tests. I question the reliability of these tests. Then, one must remember that the test results are ONE snapshot, of ONE day in the life of a child: maybe she didn’t get breakfast that day, maybe she was sent off to school by an angry, unemployed parent. My school district tests students K-12 three times per year! Look at the time taken away from classroom instruction…testing occurs in Reading, Math, Social Studies, Language Arts, Science with each discipline taking up its own testing session. Then one must also ask about the age/developmental appropriateness of testing 5-10 year olds. Go read Piaget and the stages that young children developmentally go through: concrete, concrete/operational, symbolic, etc. We are doing a huge disservice to our children. Not to mention the Common Core Standards: they are incredibly difficult to measure and implement. Not all children are ready to read, comprehend, compute, analyze, synthesize, infer at the same time. Diane Ravitch is spot on to take on the reformist movement. As a mentor and teacher, I believe that great teachers are the key to our future. We can get that right.
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Diane, could you share?
It’s a petition to Gov. Cuomo (NY) to end high stakes testing?
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Leon Wiseltier’s article “The Unschooled” appeared in the December 31st issue of the New Republic (http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/111376/the-unschooled#) Although he speaks to the importance humanities in a college education, much of what he says is relevant to the discussions on this blog
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Diane,
I am a bit scattered so I cannot remember if I found this recent article in a link on an article you promoted, an article on EduShytster, or somewhere else. If there are any doubts in your mind that charter schools are selective AFTER accepting students, as well as beforehand, read this and doubt no more:
http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130102/chicago/charters-ring-up-fines-along-with-additional-public-funding
Is the mother guilty for failing to adequately discipline her son? Maybe. We can’t know without knowing whether or not the boy has any outstanding mental issues, etc. But that’s not the point. The point is that soon, the Chicago Bulls Charter School will no longer have to deal with him causing trouble in its classrooms and bringing down the averages on its standardized test scores (assuming it even has to deal with those — the latest charter scandals seem to involve charters wriggling out of the same sort of “accountability” measures advocated by the same people who push for more charters). When that day comes, the school can put on a look of doe-eyed innocence and assert that it didn’t kick the boy out, his mother CHOSE to withdraw him — and it was powerless to stop her!
– Ron ^*^
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Um… That would be “EduShyster”, of course. Are my cheeks red!
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Hi Diane… I have been a fan of yours since I was in grad school back in the 90’s. I am a teacher in the Philadelphia Public Schools and have been appalled at how our School “Reform” Commission has been giving away our schools left and right to charters. I have begun blogging about my experiences in the classroom because I want to give all of those who are not in the field of education an idea of what we as educators do deal with on a daily basis. Here is my blog address if you are interested http://teachertalkdannyboy.blogspot.com/. Be well.
Sincerely,
Daniel Meier
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Dear Diane–
I am in my fifteenth year of teaching and I am a music teacher (was a gifted teacher for a while too). I have taught in five states and in many settings (rural, urban, wealthy, poor). The subject that stays on my mind the most with education and schools in the context of community is resources that are all around schools but not used by schools. I mean the excesses discarded by businesses that end up in dumpsters and could be used by schools. It seems silly, but for me the fun of various lessons often centers around the materials we use—do we have stickers, for example, to put on our staff to represent notes; do we have nice paper to do a presentation about a composer–stuff like that. The quality and type of materials we use often makes learning into living for children–something they enjoy and remember rather than something they endure (because when our senses are engaged we are more present in what we are doing–we will remember it more); we all know children learn what they live. I worked all throughout my education (college and graduate school) at jobs within retail and other businesses (restaurants, hotels, radio) and there is so much excess that is discarded daily. Having spent time in Haiti and in parts of Mexico, these materials are a big deal, I think. Why are window displays at stores not donated to school theatre groups? I know that in some instances these types of connections are made, but I think more often than not “stuff” goes wasted. It might seem silly because we live in a country of wealth, etc. but to me it is indicative of a negligence of resources that indicates negligence as a society: if we are negligent with materials, we will be negligent with people. Perhaps more organized efforts to utilize business excess (waste, if you will) could trigger systemic stewardship that reaches to people too and impacts schools positively in ways we have not even imagined. Teachers jest that they will take any discards (pizza boxes, cardboard, etc) to use in lessons–but it is so true and necessary in good teaching. Stuff matters. And all around us stuff is being wasted. I have heard of a warehouse somewhere (can’ t remember where) that a community has established for schools to access business waste (everything from elastic from a bra factory to cardstock from a stationery company). This type of effort needs to happen more. Two things we know about stuff: we have lots of it, and children love it. I think there should be an intentional effort to coordinate the gap between business excess and school need. Perhaps our achievements gaps are symptoms of a society that has gaps in other areas (well not perhaps–we know it is so)–and silly as it may seem, stuff is part of that. Stuff might be part of the solution! Having seen Haitian children try to sell me shells from the very water I was swimming in, and when I receive brochures in the mail to help developing countries teach girls to make things out of magazine pages, etc. I think we can focus on stuff more and solve problems at the same time. It seems trivial, I know. But for a child stuff is so huge! The smell, the touch, the feel of a resource you handle has an impact on children and impacting children is where learning begins. Every day we throw away chances to impact them. Am I on to anything here?
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Hi Joanna, I agree that kids love to make things out of items in the recycling bin, and do appreciate office and school supplies. My daughter came home from school with a box made of sticky notes and some colored feathers she’d used in art, for example.
I wonder if part of the appreciation is that our increasingly online existence is making them appreciate the sensory qualities of tactile material even more? Also, when my son, now a college student, was in elementary school, before standardized testing started to rule the roost (in Mass.), there was more art as part of the school day … not just in Art class, but in the regular classroom, as a way to learn more about different cultures or to represent the solar system in 3-D, for example. Visual and tactile (hands-on) learners can really learn things more easily that way than by learning about it online, no matter how interactive the site may be.
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here is a source that does just what you suggest. It is a wonderful place.
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Sorry, here is the link for Materials for the Arts:
Materials For The Arts :: New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
mfta.org/
Materials for the Arts (MFTA) provides over 3000 New York City (NYC) arts programs, artists and art educators with materials and art supplies donated by area …
Google+ page
33-00 Northern Boulevard Queens, NY 11101
(718) 729-3001
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Diane:
Another School Board Scandal is developing in Winston-Salem, NC. The recent long-time chair has been elected to the General Assembly, and the handling of vacancies has been outrageous, particularly in light of the fact that the elections are supposed to be non-partisan!
Once a new chair was named for the Board, the Vice-Chair selected was an official that was appointed (not elected) by the majority Republican County Commission to fill a vacant seat from a well-known Democratic member of the Board.
http://www.camelcitydispatch.com/new-school-board-vice-chair-unelected-official-john-davenport/
The vacant seat has basically be bungled, first when the county GOP nominated an extreme right-winger and then he had to withdraw after his residency was questioned:
http://www.camelcitydispatch.com/forsyth-county-gop-makes-school-board-replacement-recommendation-who-is-david-regnery/
http://www.camelcitydispatch.com/ccd-reporting-leads-to-regnery-withdrawal/
Then they chose a total unknown with a history that includes working for the Koch Brothers’ America for Prosperity.
http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/article_466e746e-55e3-11e2-bdad-0019bb30f31a.html
http://www.camelcitydispatch.com/unknown-irene-may-appointed-to-ws-forsyth-county-school-board/
To sum up: the GOP has hijacked two seats (and the vice-chairmanship) on what is supposed to be a Board chosen through non-partisan elections, naming two candidates that are voucher supporters and corporate reformers.
Hope you can help us shine some light on this terrible problem.
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Dianne, Michigan Radio is doing a four-part series about what is happening in Muskegon Heights, the first school district to be run by a for-profit company. This series is in-depth and extremely well-done and balanced. You and your readers can find it at michiganradio.org. I will also be posting them on my blog: politicsforabetteramerica.blogspot.com. I hope all of your readers will follow this series, as it is an accurate telling of what we are headed for if we continue turning our schools over to for-profit companies.
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Hi Dianne, I wanted to let you know about a new Pinterest board on which Nationally Certified Teachers share free materials, plans and ideas. This board currently has pins from over 25 NBCTs and I am hoping this is just the beginning. I’d love to see this become a well-known vehicle through which NBCTs can share ideas. If you would like to take a look, the link is: http://pinterest.com/annegardner4/national-board-certified-teachers-nbpts-nbcts-offe/
Thanks, Anne Gardner
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After a couple of years in retirement, I decided to take an assistant’s job at a charter school in order to continue to be involved in the education of young people. I started working at the Audeo Charter School which is a part of a larger organization Altus which in turn is chartered through the San Diego, CA school district. The Audeo site I work at is set up in a bare bones large room in the office complex adjoining a shopping center. Audeo seeks students from the surrounding district, Moreno Valley, who have fallen seriously behind in credits and thus are unable to graduate from high school within an acceptable time frame. All routes for remediation and credit recovery available in the school district have been eliminated for these students, so they are more or less forced to drop out of the district and go to a place like Audeo. Quite the opposite from what charter schools claim, Audeo offers nothing new, individualized or innovative. It gives kids the same tired credit recovery packets that public schools have doled out for years and seeks to award credits if the students complete them in some minimally acceptable manner. For this service they get all of the state student aid that the public high school gets. While this appears to be very profitable, I don’t see why the tax payers should be contributing in this way to the enrichment of private investors.
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Sounds like an investigative reporter could perhaps develop quite a story here. Why not write it up yourself?
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Muskegon Heights School District, in Muskegon County, Michigan, is the first school district taken over by a for-profit company. The Emergency Manager in charge of the district, Don Weatherspoon admits what we all know. “It’s like building a plane while you’re flying it.”
Here is a revealing article about it written by Lindsey Smith of Michigan Radio. There are four articles in this series, which can be found at michiganradio.org.
Students in Muskegon Heights are going through a lot of changes this year, because the entire school district was converted to a charter school system. After tackling some tough issues in the first half of the school year, the operators of the charter school system want the public to give them a full school year to put the changes in place.
Former lawmaker: school system’s fate lies in state policies
Muskegon Heights Public Schools faced such a huge budget deficit last spring, the state appointed emergency manager laid off the staff, teachers and all, and hired a charter school company to run the new school district he created.
He says the financial situation was so bad he didn’t have a choice.
But former Democratic State Representative Mary Valentine doesn’t buy that.
“There’s no other alternatives because that’s the way our legislature has worked it,” Valentine said.
Listen
1:22
Mary Valentine has become a vocal critic of the new charter school district in Muskegon Heights. She thinks state policies around schools of choice, charter schools, and school funding are impacting public school districts in negative ways.
Valentine’s been very interested and very unhappy with the changes at Muskegon Heights schools under the emergency manager.
“Anytime you put someone in charge of a school district who will fire all of the teachers and pull that safety net out, it is very clear they don’t know what they’re doing and how they’re hurting children. So why are we putting people like that in charge of our schools?” Valentine asked.
Valentine was a speech therapist in public schools for 30 years. At her home office in Norton Shores, which borders Muskegon Heights, Valentine proudly displays a signed picture of herself and President Barack Obama.
She fears that Republican state lawmakers are looking for cheap solutions to the complicated problems facing cash-strapped school districts and she’s speaking up about it. She wants to see lawmakers put forward “solid, research-backed solutions”.
“If they cost a lot of money then we should pay for them anyway, because it’s a lot cheaper to pay for good schools than it is to pay for prisons and there isn’t any way around it,” Valentine said, “Let’s bite the bullet and do what we need to do to make it a good solid school system.”
Muskegon Heights students, families keep watch on “work in progress”
A couple hundred parents and students spread out in the Muskegon Height High School auditorium for the December school board meeting.
The hot topic on the agenda was mid-year implementation of school uniforms at the high school.
A letter informing parents of the policy change went home less than two weeks before Christmas. Many parents felt that did not leave them with enough time to fit the cost of new uniforms into their budgets before January 2nd. Eventually, the board opted to delay uniforms at the high school until next school year.
“As a student I can honestly say there are bigger and better things to worry about at school right now than uniforms,” 17-year old Trevon Kitchen, a high school senior, told the charter school board.
Kitchen and other students started listing things off for the board. They don’t feel like they have any help researching or applying to colleges. Young, new, teachers can’t keep kids in class under control. Many are unhappy with their class schedules.
Kitchen wants to be a computer engineer. He says he certainly didn’t pick a class about music appreciation.
“Can I tell you what I learned in that class? No, because I didn’t learn anything. I can’t even take a pre-calculus class that I need for college,” Kitchen said.
“If we would’ve been paying attention the first time around we wouldn’t be in this situation now. So we’re trying to get better at it,” Trevon Kitchen’s dad, Roger Kitchen said, speaking in part to the parents in the room.
Listen
1:24
Roger Kitchen, the parent of a Muskegon Heights high school student, makes a heartfelt plea with parents near the end of a tense charter school board meeting December 17th.
“We’re not blaming ya’ll or pointing fingers. You’ve got your hand full,” Roger Kitchen added, pointing at the school board and administrators on stage.
He looks around at frustrated parents as he speaks. “We have to get out of this together. We can’t point fingers because it starts with us. So we got to do better – we got to be held accountable too…We can’t blame them. This starts at home,” Kitchen said.
New system needs time: “We’re building the airplane as we fly it.”
School administrators say they understand things aren’t perfect.
“People should definitely hold us accountable,” Mosaica Education Regional VP Alena Zachery-Ross said. But she cautions that the company, staff, and students need more time to adjust. “I want people to realize that it’s going to take the full year,” Zachery-Ross said.
“It takes time to build a foundation,” Zachery-Ross said, “Any house that’s built too quickly and doesn’t have a strong foundation, in the long run it falls down and it’s not secure. We are building the foundation.”
“Well remember, I said we were building an airplane as we fly it,” Muskegon Height schools’ Emergency Manager Don Weatherspoon said, “Nothing is going to be perfect in its first year.”
Weatherspoon says it’s “very easy for people to develop negative impressions” about the district and says that’s wrong. He says it’s unfair to judge the new system too soon.
He’s expected to hire an outside consultant to independently evaluate the charter companies running Muskegon Heights and Highland Park schools. He’s now managing both school districts.
Listen
0:52
Don Weatherspoon says the community has regrouped around the new school district, and it’s wrong to develop negative impressions.
He points out Mosaica is working with community groups to re-open the high school pool. The company is working on a teacher retention program, and he says student enrollment is higher than he expected.
Last year there were 1,265 students at MHPS. This year there were 1,112 on student count day in October. But Mosaica’s records show attendance had increased to 1,211 by late November. Mosaica had more than 1,400 students in their budget plan that was adopted by the charter school board in July.
Weatherspoon estimates it’ll take the old school district up to 20 years to pay off all its debt. He points to the community’s support for a property tax renewal in November as proof they’ve “regrouped” around the new school system.
“If you look at where this community has been and what it’s done for itself you’ve got to say ‘wow’, because at the beginning of this year there was total despair,” Weatherspoon said. “Now, did some things happen that were disruptive? Absolutely, and there were some hard decisions that had to be made.”
Listen
1:05
Don Weatherspoon on whether he thinks students in the new charter school system in Muskegon Heights are getting a good education.
Could this happen to other cash-strapped Michigan school districts?
Weatherspoon was appointed to run the district in April 2012 under Public Act 4, commonly known as the emergency manager law. That law allowed managers to break union contracts, in this case laying off the school staff, and forming the new charter school district, which then hired Mosaica Education.
He got all that done before Public Act 4 was put on hold and eventually repealed by voters in November. At that point, a former version of the emergency manager law took effect, a version that would not authorize an emergency manager to break union contracts.
“Yes, we were very fortunate that we got (the charter contract) done when we did,” Muskegon Heights Public Schools attorney Gary Britton said in November 2012, shortly after Public Act 4 was repealed.
Governor Rick Snyder just signed a new emergency manager law. It goes into effect later this spring.
Under the new law, the privatization of a school district could happen. Emergency managers will once again have the power to break part or all of union contracts; although there are more stipulations in the new law.
Governor Snyder on privatizing public schools: “The kids don’t care”
Enlarge image
Credit Lindsey Smith / Michigan Radio
Governor Snyder’s tour bus parked in front of a hotel in downtown Grand Rapids just before the November election. Don Weatherspoon and others supporting Public Act 4 rode along.
I got a chance to sit down with Governor Snyder shortly before the November election. He was taking a tour bus across the state to urge voters not to repeal the emergency manager law he signed. Don Weatherspoon was along for the ride.
“Bankruptcy is not a trivial act. It’s a major issue,” Snyder said. The basis for the law was that one city or school district’s bankruptcy will hurt the credit rating of not only that district, but the credit rating of surrounding communities and the state’s too. So the law gave emergency managers broad powers to avoid bankruptcy.
I asked what Snyder thought of a private, for-profit company running a whole public school district, like in Muskegon Heights school (and Highland Park schools).
Listen
0:19
In late October, Governor Rick Snyder says the concern shouldn’t be about who runs schools, but whether students are getting a great education.
“The real question isn’t ‘are they not for profit or for profit?’ It’s ‘are the kids getting a great education?” Snyder answered.
“The kids don’t care,” Snyder continued, “I’ve never had a child come up and say, you know, I need to have a for-profit or a not-for-profit. They want to get a great education, so that’s the driving consideration in this whole discussion.”
The new emergency manager law (Public Act 436) does require managers to submit an “education plan” to the state. But the conditions under which the “emergency” is triggered or resolved are financial, not academic in nature.
The new law provides more options for financially troubled school districts and municipalities up front (options besides the appointment of an emergency manager), and a more clear transition process once the finances are in order.
David Arsen is a Professor in the Department of Educational Administration at Michigan State University’s College of Education. He co-authored a study on Public Act 4 shortly before it was repealed in November that concluded the law “does not address student learning and could even hurt academic performance in high-need communities.”
Arsen says it would be “hard for the very best administrators in the state to avoid deficits” given the situations in such districts. He says state education policies, particularly funding policies, can play a big role in those districts getting into deficits in the first place.
“As much as we’d like to think so, these are problems that can’t be solved simply by changing the boss. It’s wishful thinking,” Arsen said.
Arsen says Public Act 4 didn’t have “basic provisions” for academic accountability. He noted that emergency managers were required to have expertise in business and finance, but the law says nothing about required experience in education if a manager is appointed to a school district.
A read-through of both the now repealed Public Act 4 and the new Public Act 436 shows identical requirements for those individuals considered to be emergency managers.
(a) The emergency manager shall have a minimum of 5 years’ experience and demonstrable expertise in business, financial, or local or state budgetary matters.
(b) The emergency manager may, but need not, be a resident of the local government.
(c) The emergency manager shall be an individual.
Arsen declined to comment on the new emergency manager law, since he has not had adequate time to study it yet.
Public Act 436 goes into effect March 27th, 2012. Share your story
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Education
8:00 am
Mon January 7, 2013
Muskegon Heights school leaders “building the airplane as we fly it”
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By Lindsey Smith
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Credit Lindsey Smith / Michigan Radio
Don Weatherspoon answers questions from Mary Valentine (top right) after a school board meeting following the repeal of Public Act 4.
This story is the fourth in a four-part series about how things are going so far in Michigan’s first fully privatized public school district. Find part one here, part two here, and part three here.
Listen
3:23
The on-air version of the story. An expanded online version is below.
Students in Muskegon Heights are going through a lot of changes this year, because the entire school district was converted to a charter school system. After tackling some tough issues in the first half of the school year, the operators of the charter school system want the public to give them a full school year to put the changes in place.
Former lawmaker: school system’s fate lies in state policies
Muskegon Heights Public Schools faced such a huge budget deficit last spring, the state appointed emergency manager laid off the staff, teachers and all, and hired a charter school company to run the new school district he created.
He says the financial situation was so bad he didn’t have a choice.
But former Democratic State Representative Mary Valentine doesn’t buy that.
“There’s no other alternatives because that’s the way our legislature has worked it,” Valentine said.
Listen
1:22
Mary Valentine has become a vocal critic of the new charter school district in Muskegon Heights. She thinks state policies around schools of choice, charter schools, and school funding are impacting public school districts in negative ways.
Valentine’s been very interested and very unhappy with the changes at Muskegon Heights schools under the emergency manager.
“Anytime you put someone in charge of a school district who will fire all of the teachers and pull that safety net out, it is very clear they don’t know what they’re doing and how they’re hurting children. So why are we putting people like that in charge of our schools?” Valentine asked.
Valentine was a speech therapist in public schools for 30 years. At her home office in Norton Shores, which borders Muskegon Heights, Valentine proudly displays a signed picture of herself and President Barack Obama.
She fears that Republican state lawmakers are looking for cheap solutions to the complicated problems facing cash-strapped school districts and she’s speaking up about it. She wants to see lawmakers put forward “solid, research-backed solutions”.
“If they cost a lot of money then we should pay for them anyway, because it’s a lot cheaper to pay for good schools than it is to pay for prisons and there isn’t any way around it,” Valentine said, “Let’s bite the bullet and do what we need to do to make it a good solid school system.”
Muskegon Heights students, families keep watch on “work in progress”
A couple hundred parents and students spread out in the Muskegon Height High School auditorium for the December school board meeting.
The hot topic on the agenda was mid-year implementation of school uniforms at the high school.
A letter informing parents of the policy change went home less than two weeks before Christmas. Many parents felt that did not leave them with enough time to fit the cost of new uniforms into their budgets before January 2nd. Eventually, the board opted to delay uniforms at the high school until next school year.
“As a student I can honestly say there are bigger and better things to worry about at school right now than uniforms,” 17-year old Trevon Kitchen, a high school senior, told the charter school board.
Kitchen and other students started listing things off for the board. They don’t feel like they have any help researching or applying to colleges. Young, new, teachers can’t keep kids in class under control. Many are unhappy with their class schedules.
Kitchen wants to be a computer engineer. He says he certainly didn’t pick a class about music appreciation.
“Can I tell you what I learned in that class? No, because I didn’t learn anything. I can’t even take a pre-calculus class that I need for college,” Kitchen said.
“If we would’ve been paying attention the first time around we wouldn’t be in this situation now. So we’re trying to get better at it,” Trevon Kitchen’s dad, Roger Kitchen said, speaking in part to the parents in the room.
Listen
1:24
Roger Kitchen, the parent of a Muskegon Heights high school student, makes a heartfelt plea with parents near the end of a tense charter school board meeting December 17th.
“We’re not blaming ya’ll or pointing fingers. You’ve got your hand full,” Roger Kitchen added, pointing at the school board and administrators on stage.
He looks around at frustrated parents as he speaks. “We have to get out of this together. We can’t point fingers because it starts with us. So we got to do better – we got to be held accountable too…We can’t blame them. This starts at home,” Kitchen said.
New system needs time: “We’re building the airplane as we fly it.”
School administrators say they understand things aren’t perfect.
“People should definitely hold us accountable,” Mosaica Education Regional VP Alena Zachery-Ross said. But she cautions that the company, staff, and students need more time to adjust. “I want people to realize that it’s going to take the full year,” Zachery-Ross said.
“It takes time to build a foundation,” Zachery-Ross said, “Any house that’s built too quickly and doesn’t have a strong foundation, in the long run it falls down and it’s not secure. We are building the foundation.”
“Well remember, I said we were building an airplane as we fly it,” Muskegon Height schools’ Emergency Manager Don Weatherspoon said, “Nothing is going to be perfect in its first year.”
Weatherspoon says it’s “very easy for people to develop negative impressions” about the district and says that’s wrong. He says it’s unfair to judge the new system too soon.
He’s expected to hire an outside consultant to independently evaluate the charter companies running Muskegon Heights and Highland Park schools. He’s now managing both school districts.
Listen
0:52
Don Weatherspoon says the community has regrouped around the new school district, and it’s wrong to develop negative impressions.
He points out Mosaica is working with community groups to re-open the high school pool. The company is working on a teacher retention program, and he says student enrollment is higher than he expected.
Last year there were 1,265 students at MHPS. This year there were 1,112 on student count day in October. But Mosaica’s records show attendance had increased to 1,211 by late November. Mosaica had more than 1,400 students in their budget plan that was adopted by the charter school board in July.
Weatherspoon estimates it’ll take the old school district up to 20 years to pay off all its debt. He points to the community’s support for a property tax renewal in November as proof they’ve “regrouped” around the new school system.
“If you look at where this community has been and what it’s done for itself you’ve got to say ‘wow’, because at the beginning of this year there was total despair,” Weatherspoon said. “Now, did some things happen that were disruptive? Absolutely, and there were some hard decisions that had to be made.”
Listen
1:05
Don Weatherspoon on whether he thinks students in the new charter school system in Muskegon Heights are getting a good education.
Could this happen to other cash-strapped Michigan school districts?
Weatherspoon was appointed to run the district in April 2012 under Public Act 4, commonly known as the emergency manager law. That law allowed managers to break union contracts, in this case laying off the school staff, and forming the new charter school district, which then hired Mosaica Education.
He got all that done before Public Act 4 was put on hold and eventually repealed by voters in November. At that point, a former version of the emergency manager law took effect, a version that would not authorize an emergency manager to break union contracts.
“Yes, we were very fortunate that we got (the charter contract) done when we did,” Muskegon Heights Public Schools attorney Gary Britton said in November 2012, shortly after Public Act 4 was repealed.
Governor Rick Snyder just signed a new emergency manager law. It goes into effect later this spring.
Under the new law, the privatization of a school district could happen. Emergency managers will once again have the power to break part or all of union contracts; although there are more stipulations in the new law.
Governor Snyder on privatizing public schools: “The kids don’t care”
Enlarge image
Credit Lindsey Smith / Michigan Radio
Governor Snyder’s tour bus parked in front of a hotel in downtown Grand Rapids just before the November election. Don Weatherspoon and others supporting Public Act 4 rode along.
I got a chance to sit down with Governor Snyder shortly before the November election. He was taking a tour bus across the state to urge voters not to repeal the emergency manager law he signed. Don Weatherspoon was along for the ride.
“Bankruptcy is not a trivial act. It’s a major issue,” Snyder said. The basis for the law was that one city or school district’s bankruptcy will hurt the credit rating of not only that district, but the credit rating of surrounding communities and the state’s too. So the law gave emergency managers broad powers to avoid bankruptcy.
I asked what Snyder thought of a private, for-profit company running a whole public school district, like in Muskegon Heights school (and Highland Park schools).
Listen
0:19
In late October, Governor Rick Snyder says the concern shouldn’t be about who runs schools, but whether students are getting a great education.
“The real question isn’t ‘are they not for profit or for profit?’ It’s ‘are the kids getting a great education?” Snyder answered.
“The kids don’t care,” Snyder continued, “I’ve never had a child come up and say, you know, I need to have a for-profit or a not-for-profit. They want to get a great education, so that’s the driving consideration in this whole discussion.”
The new emergency manager law (Public Act 436) does require managers to submit an “education plan” to the state. But the conditions under which the “emergency” is triggered or resolved are financial, not academic in nature.
The new law provides more options for financially troubled school districts and municipalities up front (options besides the appointment of an emergency manager), and a more clear transition process once the finances are in order.
David Arsen is a Professor in the Department of Educational Administration at Michigan State University’s College of Education. He co-authored a study on Public Act 4 shortly before it was repealed in November that concluded the law “does not address student learning and could even hurt academic performance in high-need communities.”
Arsen says it would be “hard for the very best administrators in the state to avoid deficits” given the situations in such districts. He says state education policies, particularly funding policies, can play a big role in those districts getting into deficits in the first place.
“As much as we’d like to think so, these are problems that can’t be solved simply by changing the boss. It’s wishful thinking,” Arsen said.
Arsen says Public Act 4 didn’t have “basic provisions” for academic accountability. He noted that emergency managers were required to have expertise in business and finance, but the law says nothing about required experience in education if a manager is appointed to a school district.
A read-through of both the now repealed Public Act 4 and the new Public Act 436 shows identical requirements for those individuals considered to be emergency managers.
(a) The emergency manager shall have a minimum of 5 years’ experience and demonstrable expertise in business, financial, or local or state budgetary matters.
(b) The emergency manager may, but need not, be a resident of the local government.
(c) The emergency manager shall be an individual.
Arsen declined to comment on the new emergency manager law, since he has not had adequate time to study it yet.
Public Act 436 goes into effect March 27th, 2012.
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Diane, No surprise that Districts in AZ can’t fund the Common Core. Also, last week AZ instituted the new voucher law allowing more parents to choose. Segregation here we come even more.
http://www.azcentral.com//news/articles/20121213arizona-education-standards-funds-lacking.html?source=nletter-
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In case you didn’t see this from PURE –
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Good news! Art-infused instruction going back into schools in Arkansas:
http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/arkansas-a-puts-art-in-academics/Content?oid=2612751&showFullText=true
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A bit of history about Diane: In a post “Diane Ravitch on and since 1/11/88” at http://politicswestchesterview.wordpress.com/, I wrote up my notes on a talk she gave 25 years ago to the day at Franklin and Marshall College on 1/11/88. I tended to agree with her then, and i agree with her even more now!
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Charter Schools, a failure that cannot be measured.
January 12, 2013 by Joe Hernandez
As I drive happily and optimistically through our South Florida roads, I can’t fail to notice the familiar signs we are all accustomed to viewing, the burger chains, gas stations and the strip malls. As an educator and more specifically, a school psychologist, something catches my eye in a decrepit, run down strip mall, a charter school. I pull in, curious, as to what this school has to offer, as it looks like any other store I could walk in, including an adult book store a few hundred feet away and a gun shop to go with it! I ask the friendly young lady behind a window, what type of school is this? She happily explains that this is a Kindergarten through Eigth grade charter school. Curiously, I ask where are the classrooms? She answers, they are behind that door, but I’m sorry, visitors are not allowed back there. So I ask, may I see the school counselor? I have some questions about enrolling my children here. The young lady quickly snaps back and says, “I am the school counselor”. Being of a mental health background I naturally ask, what experience do you need to be a counselor here? She quickly responds, none, that is just my title. I enroll students here. I only work part-time here. At this point, this so-called counselor is beginning to become suspicious of my intentions. So she asks, would you like to see our administrator? I answer no, not now at least, I am going to read the application completely first.
I settle down into what appears to be an old sofa of a doctor’s office, in fact, the whole charter school appears to be an old office renovated for educational purposes, complete with the obnoxious sliding glass window you need to knock on to get the attention of the office aide/school counselor to turn in your application. In the far distance, I can here the familiar laugh of children and a teacher screaming at the top of her lungs “shut up”. I look around the small waiting room, and I cannot help to notice a young lady wringing her hands, with an impatient look. Next to her, is a stack of papers and a textbook. Curious, I ask her, how do you like this school? She quickly responds that she is very disappointed. Very disappointed I ask? Yes, she says, as she begins to recount how she arrived to this school. I was offered something called a McKay Scholarship where I could choose any school I wanted private or public. Acting naive, I asked, isn’t this a good thing? She answers back, well, on the surface, everything looks great. The school is small, the staff is friendly, and the students all have to wear uniforms. So what is the problem?, I ask. She quickly explains that in order for her “application” to be accepted she had to sign a waiver. A waiver I ask? Yes a waiver. You see, when my child was in public school last year, she was receiving special education services for her Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. This school, like most other charter schools do not have the resources that public schools have. So you are required to sign a waiver stating that even though your child has “special needs” you agree that the school does not have to provide any accommodations. Surprised at this revelation, I asked the parent, and you agreed to this? Well, the school seemed so eager to please, I felt at ease that my child could learn here. So what are your plans, I ask the mother. I am going to ask the administrator if the staff could at least look at her previous year’s work and have some compassion. I looked back at her and asked, and when will the administrator see you? She snapped quickly, they told me in half an hour, but as you can see, you and I have been close to an hour here and there is no administrator in sight. I again ask naively, is this common? Oh, you don’t know? I said no, I am applying here. She looks at me straight in the eyes, think twice about the decision you are about to make. There is one administrator for the ten charter schools this company runs.
At this point, I had heard or you can say learned enough. I quietly exit the waiting room and venture to the back alley of the strip mall to see for myself what type of Physical Education field or playground this charter school had to offer. As I passed numerous, obnoxiously smelling dumpsters, I observed a fence, a 20 by 20 feet area approximately, that had a group of students doing some jumping jacks. There were no swings, slides, fields to run through, nada! Just concrete and space to do some kinesthetics!
By this time, my charter school curiosity had been fulfilled, I had seen enough what this “free, unregulated, market model” had to offer our children. I believe my experience with this randomly selected charter school, in a local strip mall may not be representative of all charter schools. I suspect that charter schools, located in our more affluent/wealthier neighborhoods run at a higher standard. Naturally, this defeats the notion of an “equal education for all”. Some may disagree with me and say, there is no more segregation in our education system. I beg to differ, charter schools are creating and contributing to what I call the new “socio-economic segregation” of our times. It is the cancer that is draining the resources of an education system, already stretched to its limits, and that has long been regulated to serve all of our children, hungry, poor, rich, disabled, gifted etc.
Joseph Hernandez, ED.S.
School Psychologist
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Do you mind if I ask…why did you send your sons to private school??? Do you think this choice and experience affected the way(your policies, your educational values )you see public education considering you did not have to navigate the system emotionally??
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That’s a long story and a personal one.
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Seattle Times “letter to the editor” encouraging lawsuit against Washington’s new charter school initiative.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/northwestvoices/2020114379_chartschoollets11.html
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As a Canadian who has taught around the world, I applaud your stand. Like many non-Americans I have never really understood the stragnlehold that the gun lobby has on the political scene – is there really that much money in selling guns?
I quote from my blog The Provocative Pedagogue http://www.provocative-pedagogue.com/ :#
December 15th
We have been told that right now is not the time to debate the issue of gun control, and it is a safe assumption that the gun lobby will soon move into high gear to argue that the easy availability of firearms had no direct bearing on this tragedy. We will also hear the usual defence of personal liberties and constitutional protection of the right to bear arms. In addition, non-Americans like me will be told that this is a domestic debate in which we have no legitimate voice.
My response is that I claim a voice because I have worked in schools; I claim a voice because I know and have taught American children; I claim a voice because I have enough working brain cells to recognise that the correlation between easy gun ownership and sky-high levels of gun crime is not a coincidence, and that a constitution written two hundred years ago for a society in which the survival of the nation was under threat may not provide a perfect blueprint for today; I claim a voice because I view what happened at Sandy Hook in the same way I view apartheid, or the suppression of free speech, or the oppression of women, or the exploitation of children, i.e. as a violation of the standards to which the human race should aspire.
January 7th:
‘Instead of a gun in every classroom, let’s put a teacher in every gunshop.’
I came across this gem on Facebook while I was still spluttering over the crass statement by Wayne LaPierre, the Vice-President of the NRA, that ‘The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.’ The NRA advocates putting armed guards in every school as the way to prevent further mass shootings such as the pre-Christmas massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School at Newtown, Connecticut. (It probably also recommends keeping buckets of gasoline in the house in case of fire.)
I was delighted by the image of every potential gunshop customer being challenged at the point of sale to reflect upon, explain and justify their reasoning in deciding that they needed a gun. The teacher would, of course, only accept properly thought-through answers, would pick up on any logical inconsistencies, and would use astute questioning to guide the ‘learner’ to a proper understanding of the implications of his or her actions. Imagine the effect on sales! (Perhaps others shared this same image, which is why the share price of both Smith & Wesson and Remington plummeted.)
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The latest in ? I can’t think of a word.
Ohio School District Moves To Arm . . . Janitors
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Oh man… Bad move be it teachers or janitors.
At the risk of great chagrin from fellow teachers, I know too many unhappy teachers already at the breaking point, and many are on antidepressants and have negative compensatory behaviors and coping mechanisms. As you know, turnover in the profession is very high and most don’t last five years. Lack of support, horrible working conditions, stress and more all lead to bad news. Now put a gun in the hands of an unstable fed up teacher or janitor (often isolates anyway) and we have a new word for “going postal”.
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Finally!
Re: DCPS School Closings – DC teachers and community groups to fight back
Barras: Saluting D.C. teachers, then delivering a smack in the face
http://washingtonexaminer.com/barras-saluting-d.c.-teachers-then-delivering-a-smack-in-the-face/article/2518537
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Are you familiar with this blog? I loved the sections he quoted about the meetings to improve schools. http://blog.ourfuture.org/20130115/why-not-ask-teachers-how-they-would-improve-our-schools
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Dear Dr. Ravitch,
I am a NYC public school teacher (currently on hiatus after giving birth to my daughter in August), and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a sane voice for teachers and children in the national spotlight. In addition, thank you for giving teachers from all over the country, and indeed, the world, a space to discuss, debate, and unite.
As a New Yorker, I am wondering your thoughts on Christine Quinn’s plan for the schools if she is elected mayor: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/nyregion/christine-quinn-presents-vision-for-improving-nyc-schools.html?ref=nyregion&_r=0
Have you heard anything else about this? I haven’t been a fan of Quinn’s previously, as she has seemed to be Bloomberg’s female clone, but I might be more inclined to look upon her favorably if this were true.
Thanks!
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I don’t know enough about Quinn to pass judgement. My hunch is that she gives Mayor Mike a fourth term.
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This kid deserves some admiration. He took on the vouchers too.
http://io9.com/5976112/how-19+year+old-activist-zack-kopplin-is-making-life-hell-for-louisianas-creationists
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I recognize that Florida’s St. Lucie County is not the only one feeling the fiscal pinch but I thought I ought to share what our double-dipping and finally retiring Superintendent Lannon and his comrade H.R. Director Sue Ranew suggested to be cut in order to improve education.
The list, which actually amounts to $26.4 million ($9.4 million MORE than the district claims to need) is alarming. Not so much for what is on the list, but because of what has been left off.
On the list:
Cuts to the people who know kids best. CHECK!
Cuts to the programs and services that put kids first. CHECK, CHECK!
Cuts to the building blocks of student success. GOT ‘EM!
Not on the list:
Cuts to district administrative staffing! NOPE!
Reduction to recently added district office non-administrative positions created in the last two years! NONE!
Cuts to non-essential programs, excessive testing, wasteful duplication of effort! NADA!
A cut plan like this can only mean one thing. Blame the teachers and punish the students.
It’s politics as usual in the Superintendent’s Suite!
Here’s The List: (a nearly complete one)
Cut Athletics: $1,000,000
Cut transporation (there has been no extra-curricular busing for 4 plus years): $1,000,000
4 Day School Week for students/employees: $3,600,000
Fire all Media Specialists/clerks (Librarians): $3,000,000
Fire many P.E., Music, Art, and Technology teachers: $1,300,000
“Reduce availability” of Substitute Teachers: $1,500,000
Reduce Social Worker and School Psychology Services: $1,400,000
7th year-in-a-row cut in salaries (also, there has been no steps for the same time): $1,800,00
Reduction in teacher contract days: $1,000,000
10% reduction in contribution to employee health insurance: $3,100,000
4 day work week for maintenance (not custodians): $1,000,000
Oh, by the way, if you ever wanted to work in St. Lucie County, the District debits your years of experience by at least 5 years when calculating your pay. I’ve heard of hiring bonusses BUT never hiring penalties.
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Of note:
Kenneth J. Bernstein is a schoolteacher and a blogger whose work appears on Daily Kos and other sites. His latest is a good read.
Why Not Ask Teachers How They Would Improve Our Schools?
http://www.nationofchange.org/why-not-ask-teachers-how-they-would-improve-our-schools-1358348567
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Diane, How do we get you invited to speak?
TED TEAMS WITH PBS TO TALK EDUCATION
On April 16, PBS will air the very first televised TED event, TED Talks Education. The event, which will be filmed in New York on April 4, will bring together an hour of speakers and performers with a deep-rooted passion for education. The first three speakers booked: Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone, plus TED favorites Bill Gates and Sir Ken Robinson — and watch for more announcements in coming weeks of dynamic teachers, speakers and performers to take the stage. With fresh thinking and bold ideas, the speakers onstage will discuss how we can curb the high school dropout crisis. TED Talks Education will be broadcast nationally in the U.S. and will be produced by WNET in conjunction with TED. The program is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s American Graduate Program. It promises to be an exciting, thought-provoking hour of television.
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Whoa – look what just came across my FB feed!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/16/crenshaw-high-school-reco_n_2489820.html?ir=Education
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Fulton, NY teachers rally for more time teaching, less time testing. Here’s a link to the story.
http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/story/Fulton-teachers-rally-for-more-time-in-the/OyqcobeAyEuCAqXNMAiZhQ.cspx
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Heads Up!
“WARNINGS FROM THE TRENCHES”
Posted by Ezra Deutsch-January 18, 2013
Kenneth Bernstein just retired from a career as a high school teacher in suburban Washington, DC, and he has a stark message for college professors: the students entering your classes this year will be less prepared than ever. He points to two culprits, both related to increased testing:
I agree. In the early 90’s we were constantly told to foster, encourage, and teach “critical thinking skills”. I strive to continue doing that, but with tests; the kid’s see no purpose since it isn’t being tested.
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Please read my blog: http://teachertalkdannyboy.blogspot.com/
It totally related to this whole testing debacle. We are being tested to death here in Philadelphia. We are just finishing our Keystone Exams and have now been told we need to complete our district mandated benchmarks next week. When oh when will I be able to teach again???
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Diane,
In case you missed it, here’s the link to David Coleman’s interview & other info regarding CCSS on NPR.
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/19/169798643/new-reading-standards-aim-to-prep-kids-for-college-but-at-what-cost?sc=17&f=2
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Diane,
More shenanigans in Winston-Salem, NC, as the outgoing school board chief has become a state House rep and plans to introduce a bill creating a path for Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools to become a ‘Charter District’. ?!?!?!?!?
http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/article_845e97b6-6283-11e2-b31e-0019bb30f31a.html
Could this be why the county GOP was so desperate to stack the school board with pro-voucher and pro-charter members as others retired?
Yikes.
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Seen this?
Very interesting: http://themoderatevoice.com/174001/stop-funding-creationist-school-vouchers-guest-voice/#CSuGW1R4mjXqiKRl.99
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Diane,
We have posted a NEW letter to Obama at http://dumpduncan.org and have accumulated 800+ signatures in the first 2 weeks. Here is what we are demanding. (Well, maybe not demanding, but at least requesting).
End the use of incentives or penalties to compel states and municipalities to use test scores as a basis for evaluating students and teachers, preferring charter schools to existing public schools, and requiring closure of low performing schools.
Remove Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education and replace him with a lifetime educator who has the confidence of the nation’s teachers.
Create a National Commission, in which students, teachers, and parent representatives play a primary role, which explores and recommends how to best improve the quality of America’s schools.
Incorporate parents, students, teachers, and school administrators in all policy discussion taking place in your administration, inside and outside the Department of Education.
We could sure use a plug on your blog from time to time. Note the first signature following the hosts’ is that of Deb Meier.
Bob Valiant
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Hello, Diane,
I have been following your blog since November, and find that it really informs my work as a principal and as the State and Federal Relations Coordinator for MEMSPA (Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association) and NAESP. And I am interested in following what is going on around our country. One principal and teacher at a time, I am spreading the word.
This article was recently published in my school district’s local newspaper. Imagine: a legislature that does not know what the public wants, but just what special interests want.
Survey shows Michigan lawmakers and residents don’t see eye to eye on education reform
To view the contents on http://www.livingstondaily.com, go to:
http://www.livingstondaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/201301230500/NEWS01/301230306
Keep fighting the good fight!
Stacey Urbin
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Lift the charter school cap in Massachusetts?
http://bluemassgroup.com/2013/01/barry-finegold-throws-away-his-political-future/
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Hi Diane, Elliot Spitzer wrote a great editorial in today’s Albany Times Union about how to fund educa.
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Dr. Ravitch, a former student contacted me this week with a sincere question I’d love for you to respond to and maybe even present to your readers. I was moved that he had the sense to ask his question of teachers rather than politicians and/or business people who seem to be running the education game of late.
Here is his question: “…here lately I’ve become curious. I see that you take a stance against the STAAR/EOC exams. My curiosity is in what you think would be the optimal alternative. What type of standardized testing, if any, would maximize the passing of knowledge from teacher to student?”
This young man, who is now studying at a Texas university, was an exceptional student, and I’m sure he will be in a policy-making role in the future. To see the full post concerning his question, please see http://lisamyers.org/.
Thank you for all you do for education.
Lisa Myers
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By the way, his name is Matt.
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Wondering why education reform is such a hot topic here in PA? These are Gov. Corbett’s top 5 contributors from his gubernatorial campaign, as listed on followthemoney.org. Take note of #4, the single largest individual contributor to the campaign, Vahan Gureghian.
Contributor Total
REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS ASSOCIATION $6,000,967
PENNSYLVANIA REPUBLICAN PARTY $2,095,333
FRIENDS OF TOM CORBETT $763,500
GUREGHIAN, VAHAN H $325,714
TEMPLETON JR, JOHN M $283,500
GUREGHIAN, VAHAN H
Total Given to Date: $424,964 (31 records)
Contributor Type: Individual
Address: GLADWYNE, PA
Employer: CHARTER SCHOOL MANAGEMENT CORP CHARTER SCHOOL MANAGEMENT INC
Employers Listed: VARIOUS
Occupations Listed: ATTORNEY, CEO, VICE PRESIDENT
Hmmmmmmmm. Interesting, don’t you think?
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The Manifestations of Rhetoric: a poem of reflection from a public school teacher
Posted on January 25, 2013 by 70jamsession
1970 born to teachers
not simply parents
too biological
My beloved nurturers
place the whole world in my hands
while disco
dancing with me in plaid, bell bottoms.
Manifestations of opportunity, relationships, belonging,
appreciation of artistry and beauty
masking the rhetoric of hatred
and isolation as American
hostages are seized in Iran.
Empowered, the journey
evolves into a systematic manifestation
of defined teachers modeling, guiding, and encouraging
as the rhetoric embraces the American Dream.
Real or imagined?
Is the bell tolling for “A Nation at Risk?”
In the footsteps of mentors before me,
I teach; I learn; I contribute.
I am firm. I am forgiving.
I have standards and expectations.
Challenge; construction; dissection; appreciation
all manifest individually and collaboratively.
Yet, beyond the security of my student learners and our classroom,
rhetoric bruises and tears at dignity and respect.
We internalize: greedy, detached, less than, undeserving.
Why do we devalue the artistry of evoking critical analysis,
original thought, innovation: the Humanities?
The soul begins in the hands of our teachers.
Outreach and Appreciation
Language
enriching the soul
Manifestations as Rhetoric
igniting a conflagration
decimating
all Souls
–JAM, 2013 January
Dr. Ravitch, this is an original piece. Please follow me at 70jamsession.wordpress.com
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Lisa,
Please tell this young man that no standardized test can assure the passing along of knowledge from teacher to student. A yardstick is a measure; it doesn’t make you grow taller. A test is a measure, not a means of instruction.
More valuable than a standardized test would be an assignment in which the student is asked to write a research paper about a topic of interest. Conduct research on a historical or political issue. Compare different books. This is how students learn: they learn by thinking and acting and assembling what they have learned into a coherent report to their teacher.
Diane
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Yes, and the role of the teacher is to see the student: to bring out their inherent talents, deeply engage them and scaffold upon their interests.
Here is a radical thought: put love into the love of learning.
There is no love without play. There is no play without love.
Why do we have to standardize students, suck the creativity and independent thinking out of them and fill them with scripted thinking?
Is this the way to prepare students for the 21st century creative economy where the resilient, flexible and innovative survive and thrive? Life as we have known it is not coming back. Time to visualize and create our own future.
Scripted thinking cannot effectively address the challenges of an oil spill, climate change, gridlock in Congress or an ineffective president.
80% of the public schools are failing NCLB benchmarks, and we are the nation with the most citizens incarcerated in prison. Time to try something new.
Reform? Hell, we need a revolution.
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Thank you, Diane. Matt will be thrilled that you responded. I hope his curiosity, like the birth of student movements against corp-reform, is signaling an awakening in our younger populace.
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