Beware, this might be a hoax.
I hope it is true.
If it is true, please share at once with your legislators. Send it to Arne Duncan. Share it with corporate leaders.
A principal of an elementary school in Massachusetts fired the security guards and expanded the school’s arts programs. Everyone and everything got better.
Call Ripley. Tell “Believe It or Not.”
The school board in Lansing, Michigan, reached a deal with its teachers union to slash the budget. The district will eliminate teachers of the arts, music, and physical education in elementary schools. That is a cut of 87 teachers in a staff of 915. The teachers also accepted a pay freeze.
What kind of state and nation can’t afford arts and physical education for its young children?
There is this motley group of people and organizations in the U.S. who call themselves “reformers.” Few of them are educators. Most are corporate leaders, pundits, think tank thinkers, or rightwing politicos.
They say they want to “fix” education but their main goals seem to be to belittle the people who actually work in schools and to close down public schools in high-poverty districts.
These self-named reformers (did GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz write their playbook?) have been in charge of federal policy since the passage of No Child Left Behind. President Barack Obama built his Race to the Top program right on top of the NCLB approach.
And what’s the result?
The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher 2013 says the troops are stressed out, demoralized, and doing their best to survive. What kind of general would go into a crucial battle with his heavy artillery pointed at his own troops?
Actually, the survey includes both teachers and principals. Both are beaten down by the Bush-Obama reforms. It seems that the non-educators and entrepreneurs decided that to impose their ideas without bothering the people who do the daily work.
Three-quarters of principals say their job has become far too complex. Half of them feel stressed out lost daily. Their job satisfaction has declined, and about one-third of them are thinking of quitting.
Despite the constant reformer sniping and whining about “bad” teachers, 98% of principals–the ones with boots on the ground–have a positive view of their teachers.
But we have all seen those Hollywood movies that tell us teachers suck, and teachers have seen them too.
The reformers’ nasty portrayal of our nation’s teachers has had the following result:
“Teacher satisfaction has declined to its lowest point in 25 years and has dropped five percentage points in the past year alone, from 44% to 39% very satisfied. This marks a continuation of a substantial decline noted in the 2011 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher; teacher satisfaction has now dropped 23 percentage points since 2008.”
Principals and teachers think they can implement the Common Core standards but only one out of five educators (or fewer) feel “very confident that the new standards will raise achievement or better prepare their students for college and careers.
Among high school principals and teachers, only 11-15% of principals and teachers are very confident that the Common Core will help their students.
Bottom line: a workforce in the schools that is increasingly demoralized, stressed out because of the demands imposed on them by politicians, and worried that they and their students are being set up to fail by clueless reformers.
When will the CEOs of the “reform” movement be held accountable for the harm they are inflicting on students, teachers, and principals?
John Dewey wrote this great sentiment over a century ago:
“What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”
I do not begrudge any parent their decision to send their child to a private or religious school, so long as they pay for it themselves. What I object to is when parents choose a private school for its small classes, its experienced faculty, its wonderful curriculum, its great arts programs, and its freedom from standardized testing…..but advocate for something far different for other people’s children.
Instead of fighting to get comparable programs for public schools, they insist that other people’s children should have larger classes, a school day devoted to reading and math, no arts programs, and nonstop testing.
Sandy Kress, the architect of NCLB, is now a lobbyist for Pearson, which won a contract worth nearly $500 million from the state of Texas as the legislature cut the schools’ budget by $5.4 billion.
This comment came from a reader in Texas:
Ms. Ravitch – I found the following as I was researching private schools for my son last night. The first part is a part of the homepage for a primary school affiliated with the middle school that Sandy Kress’ children have attended. The second part includes testimonials from Sandy Kress. I removed his childrens’ names.
Why Paragon for grades 2-5?
• Central Austin Location
• Small class sizes
• Experienced and caring teachers
• Academic challenge
• Daily PE, plus Art, Music, Electives
• Selective admission
• Fully accredited
• No STARR test = more time to learn!
To schedule a visit – contact Headmaster ____________________________________________________
Testimonials for Paragon Prep
Paragon creatively concocts the perfect recipe for bright adolescents: begin with a classically driven curriculum seasoned with open-minded innovation, high moral expectations with a good dose of humor and a hilarious pinch of irreverence. Then add competitive spirit on the field and in the classroom, blended with genuine care so that each student and athlete feels a valued part of the school. But their secret and unique ingredient: the total focus is on the middle schoolers’ needs with the aim to provide the best preparation possible for high school. We as ourselves how is it possible that all this takes place in such a modest building with no aggressive fundraising or fancy bells and whistles. How do they turn out kids with a disciplined work ethic and a passion for learning? Now we know. Our son, _____, comes home everyday with stories of friendship, teamwork, and a mind brimming full of new thoughts. Paragon Prep is one of the smartest decisions we have ever made.
Camille and Sandy Kress
Parents of _____ Kress (Class of _____)
and _____ Kress (Class of _______)
________________________________________
Every year the sixth-grade students at Albert T. Lawson Intermediate School in Essex Junction, Vermont, build an igloo. It is part of a multidisciplinary study of polar regions in Mr. Gustafson’s class, a tradition for 30 years. Last year, there was so little snow that the students missed out on this beloved tradition. But, this year, the snows came, and here is the igloo. Students will remember this forever!
What does your school do to create joy and great memories for your students?
As we head deep into the winter season, we need to think of all the good things around us, the little miracles that we witness and take part in.
Please share.
A reader writes:
Shakedown Artists
A number of billboards have gone up recently in LAUSD board member and candidate for re-election, Monica Garcis’s district two months before school board elections. They read, ‘ Dream Big – Arts education fuels creative thinking’ and include a picture of a thirteen year old Monica Garcia. This billboard was funded by LA Fund (lafund.org), a non-profit group founded in 2011 by her political allies LAUSD Superintendent and former Deputy Director of Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, John Deasy and Megan Chernin. One of the LA Fund projects is Arts Matter which was started in response to the deep cuts to arts education in Los Angeles. Their website points
out that ‘In four years, the LAUSD has gone from running a nationally recognized arts education program’, to today struggling to piece together a drastically reduced and inequitable program. However, neither the website nor billboards point out that it was Monica Garcia and John Deasy who cut the arts program to the bone and created this crisis in the first place!
The LA Fund website points out how the arts promote creative thinking while at the same time, Deasy and Garcia have supported a stripped down curriculum focused on standardized tests. To put it simply, they have created a phony crisis by cutting the arts and are now using that very crisis to ask for monetary donations to be made to Deasy’s foundation. And how is that money used? The LA Fund website states that ‘All proceeds raised throughout Arts Matter will directly support arts integration in LA. public schools’ when in fact, a great deal of their money is being used to create billboards of Monica Garcia! This is the same Monica Garcia who recently let the school board know how she feels about funding programs supported by the community. She suggested that, instead of funding the arts, adult and early childhood education, LAUSD should spend $500,000 on ipads for each student! It is also important to point out that Superintendent Deasy is an employee of LAUSD supervised by Ms. Garcia who has voted in favor of a number of raises for Deasy in the time since he founded the LA Fund.
The bottom line………Deasy created a crisis, created a non-profit to collect money to fix it and instead spends it on political ads for the woman who helped create the crisis and is responsible for his employment.
Matt Kogan
BILLIONAIRES OUT OF EDUCATION!!!!!!
The billionaire boys club wants to beat Steve Zimmer so they can proceed with dismantling public education in Los Angeles. Steve had the nerve to say there should be some oversight of charter schools, so the privatizers are out to get him. They raised over a million dollars from corporate types in just a few days.
There are many reasons to support Steve Zimmer. His courage, independence, and integrity are good reasons. Another is his passionate support for the arts.
From a strong supporter of the arts in Los Angeles:
;
;
Dear Friends of Arts Education,
You are receiving this email because you’ve expressed interest in education in and around Venice. As we spread the word about the importance of re-electing Steve Zimmer, I’ll be sending more information to help us discuss the issues with other voters. If you do not want to receive these emails, just let me know.
While so-called reformers claim no progress is possible until unions are shut down and school governance is turned on its head, Steve just gets the work done. This election is getting national attention because his opponent has backing from big money supporters who want to corporatize our school system. As a mom, would I sometimes like to scrap the whole school system and start over? Heck yeah! But Steve has accomplished so much without that kind of drama.
Responding to a post about a test question for second-grade students, which assumed they knew the words “commission” and “Mozart,” this parent replied:
My second-grader defined “commission” without needing the
multiple choice prompts this morning, but her school has a really
strong music program.
She credited her music teacher for having
taught her the term–which was done in the context of an annual
all-school field trip to a local Symphony Orchestra concert. (This
is not district-wide; our PTA fundraising pays for the cost of the
buses necessary to take all the kids. I don’t know of another
public school in the district or in the area that has all of its
kids at the concert every year; most take only one or two grades,
if they participate at all.)
Before they go to the concert, our music teacher gives the kids the elementary-school equivalent of a pre-concert lecture–which is to say, it takes place over a few
weeks and isn’t a lecture, but they come away with much of the same
information.
My daughter has also played violin since she was 4,
and her public school has a fabulous strings program that she’s
been in since kindergarten, also thanks to our fabulous and amazing
music teacher (who, it might be noted, belongs to the union and
runs the entire strings program during her free periods).
Our school is also blessed with amazing parents, and several of them
attend each and every orchestra rehearsal to help the kids tune
their instruments and set up music and stands. And in the spirit of
full disclosure, my daughter has a musicologist for a mother.
Do I think most second-grade students could define this term? Probably
not, especially with so many schools cutting music and arts
programs. Unfortunately, putting terms like this on a test will
likely have the effect of extending vocabulary lessons and cutting
into time that would otherwise be used for music or art or
P.E.
A reader in Florida saw the description of the Rocketship charters, where students get no art or music. She was not surprised because her child’s school has neither art nor music, just testing:
“My children attend a Title I school in Florida called Triangle Elementary in Mount Dora. They have no art class, no music class, and no recess (my children are 6 and 8). Florida puts all its emphasis on high-stakes testing, and this is the norm unfortunately, unless you can afford private school.”
Florida was one of the two highest rated states on Michelle Rhee’s report card. Providing the arts and a full curriculum does not qualify as education reform in her ranking system. Only testing and pro privatization policies.
Alan Borsuk is a knowledgeable journalist who has covered education in Milwaukee for many years. He is now professing at Marquette, but still keeps a close watch on what is happening to education in Milwaukee.
In this article, Borsuk says that a new vision is needed to get beyond the stale and failed answers of the past. He is right.
Milwaukee has had vouchers since 1990. longer than any school district in the nation. The students in the voucher schools perform no better than those in the public schools.
Milwaukee has had charter schools for about 20 years. The students in the charter schools do no better than those in the public schools.
As the other sectors have grown, the Milwaukee public schools have experienced sharply declining enrollment. At the same time, the number of students with disabilities is far greater in the public schools than in either the voucher or charter schools. The latter are unable or unwilling to take the children who are most challenging and most expensive to educate. Thus, Milwaukee public schools are “competing” with two sectors who skim off the ablest students and reject the ones they don’t want. Most people would say this is not a level playing field.
Governor Scott Walker’s answer to the Milwaukee problem is to call for more vouchers and charters, and for virtual charters. But if the students in those schools are not outperforming the ones in the public schools after twenty years, why should those sectors grow? And we know from multiple studies that students in virtual schools do worse than those in brick-and-mortar schools.
More of the same is no answer. Doubling down on failure is a bad bet.
Yes, Milwaukee needs a bold vision.
It needs a reset.
It needs one public education sector, not three competing sectors. The time for dual- and triple-systems should have ended in 1954, with the Brown decision.
Milwaukee needs one public school system that receives public dollars, public support, community engagement, and parental involvement.
Vouchers and charters had their chance. They failed.
Now it is time to build a great public school system that meets the needs of the children of Milwaukee.
The children of Milwaukee need universal pre-kindergarten so that they arrive in school ready to learn. The children with high needs require small classes and extra attention. The public schools should provide a superb program in the arts for all children in every grade. They should have a rich curriculum–history, literature, foreign languages, the sciences, mathematics, and civics–for all children. Every student should have daily physical education. The schools should have the nurses, guidance counselors, social workers and librarians they need. Children should have after-school programs where they can learn new skills, strengthen their bodies, and get extra tutoring.
It is impossible to achieve these goals in a city with three competing school systems. It is entirely possible to achieve when there is one school system that becomes the focus of the energies of parents, civic leaders, and the business community.
Many children, one Milwaukee.
Diane Ravitch's blog 