Archives for category: Childhood, Pre-K, K
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

No, the District of Columbia Is Not a National Model

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2013 //
22

Despite its recent gains on the 2013 NAEP, the District of Columbia is not a national model.

It remains the lowest performing urban district in the nation.

Its policy of test-and-punish-and-fire have produced a startlingly high attrition rate among teachers.

Churn is not good for schools or for children or for building a culture of collaboration.

Few of the principals hired by Rhee remain in the system.

The real story in D.C.: Thanks to Mayor Vincent Gray, D.C. started universal pre-K, and it is showing benefits in the early grades. A writer in the Washington Post called Gray’s work “a staggering achievement.”

As for the rest of the story, read this article that I wrote for Talking Points Memo.

It is hard to imagine that anyone would want to copy a system built on striking fear into the hearts of teachers and principals.

No successful corporation–large or small– operates in that manner. The best of our nation’s business companies boast of how they carefully select new hires, support them, and pamper them with perks to make them happy in their work.

Success in schooling grows from collaboration, love of learning, experienced teachers and principals, equitable and adequate funding, and leadership that holds itself accountable for its decisions.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, District of Columbia, Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle

Greg Anrig: Why Universal Pre-K Makes Sense

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2013 //
10

Greg Anrig of the Century Foundation here refutes the criticisms of universal pre-K, particularly those published by Grover Whitehurst of Brookings, who was George W. Bush’s research director.

If you were reading this blog in 2012, you may recall that Whitehurst fired me as an unpaid senior fellow at Brookings–a position I had held for 15 years, on grounds that I was “inactive.” At the time, my book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education,” was the #1 social policy book on amazon.com.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K

Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Randi Weingarten: Stop Testing Little Children!

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2013 //
39

Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Randi Weingarten have co-authored a terrific article about why little children should not be subjected to standardized testing.

They write:

Young kids learn actively, through hands-on experiences in the real world. They develop skills over time through a process of building ideas. But this process is not always linear and is not quantifiable; expecting young children to know specific facts or skills at specified ages is not compatible with how they learn. It emphasizes right and wrong answers instead of the developmental progressions that typify their learning. 

Young children need opportunities to engage in active, age-appropriate, play-based learning. They need to figure out how things work, explore, question and have fun.

Such experiences have been shown to have significant educational and social benefits for children. And studies show that early childhood education provides a high rate of return for society’s investment.

They explain that standardized testing is counter-productive for young children.

This should be read by policymakers, especially in Washington, D.C., and state legislatures.

Parents don’t need to read it, because they already know that standardized testing is inappropriate to “measure” their child’s readiness for college-and-careers, or for anything else.

Early childhood educators know it too. They have issued statement after statement decrying the insistence by policymakers that little children who barely know how to hold a pencil should pick a bubble.

It is time to stop labeling children as “successes” or “failures” based on what the testing industry determines is right for their age.

One day, we will see similar articles about standardized testing for students in grades 3-12.

Standardized tests have their uses for older children, but only as an audit function, not as a measure of the knowledge and skills of individual children.

Students should be tested primarily by their teachers, who know what they were taught. The teachers can get instant feedback and use the information from their tests to help students who need help, and to recognize where their teaching didn’t click.

Isn’t it amazing that we became a great nation without standardized testing?

The nation’s mad love affair with standardized testing reaches the height of absurdity when children in the early grades and in pre-kindergarten are subjected to the tests.

Carlsson-Paige and Weingarten are right: Stop now. Let the children learn and play and develop as healthy, happy human beings.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Standardized Testing

John King Opposes K/2 Testing

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2013 //
63

Amid massive parent protests against Common Core testing in grades 3-8, NY Commissioner John King announced the state’s opposition to K-2 testing, which was never mandated.

He said, “”We support the drive to prohibit standardized testing of pre K through 2nd grade students.”

That’s a step forward. Now let’s hope that he takes the next logical step and eliminates the dysfunctional educator evaluation program and throws out the state’s disastrous Common Core tests for grades 3-8. Any testing program that declares 70% of the children of the state to be failures is on its face absurd. If educators are declared “ineffective” when their students fail, then Commissioner King must be held accountable for this massive failure.

But let’s be glad for the end of the indefensible K-2 bubble tests.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, New York, Testing

“Reform” is Destroying Humane Values, Creating a Hatred for School

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2013 //
50

Raymond Gerson of Austin Community College sent this article, which expresses a growing recognition across the nation that federal and state education policies are ruining children’s lives and crushing the love of learning.

Gerson writes:

Scarcity of Humane Values in Educational Policies

By Raymond Gerson

Frequent high stakes testing, hours of test prep drills, large classes and reduction or elimination of art, music and P.E. are taking their toll on both students and teachers. School counselors have reported an increase in A.D.H.D., anxiety, depression and other psychological problems among students. Parents have reported that as early as elementary school their children are starting to hate school and are turning off. Many students are bored and stressed out from the constant pressure to perform on high stakes bubble tests.

Children begin school with a natural curiosity and intrinsic motivation to learn. Learning should be an enjoyable process which stimulates student imagination, creativity, ability to think for oneself and the ability to solve problems that have more than one right answer. This type of learning experience will prepare students to become well-informed and productive members of society and to work in good careers in the future. Many current educational environments are breaking the spirits of students and teachers and are turning off intrinsic motivation to learn and teach.

Many wealthy and powerful individuals (and organizations) with little or no teaching experience are influencing educational policies which are destructive. They are in favor of frequent high stakes testing, large classes, closing public schools and reducing courses in the arts except when it comes to their own children. Their children usually attend private schools with small classes, health support services, plenty of courses in the arts and little or no frequent high stakes standardized tests with hours of test prep drills. This is hypocritical and inhumane.

Children need to be emotionally healthy to live successful and fulfilling lives as adults. Development of their emotional and social intelligence are important if they are to grow into fully functioning adults with humane values. Values such as kindness, caring for others, love, integrity and compassion make us good human beings. Students will learn these values from the example of adults and by the way adults treat them. The way many students are being treated is lowering their sense of self-worth, diminishing their creativity, blocking their potential and teaching them to be less compassionate and empathetic.

Teachers should be allowed to teach and create their own lesson plans based on the curriculum that they are teaching. They need time to teach students to think for themselves instead of spending hours doing test prep. They also need time to collaborate with other teachers.

There are schools which are excellent models of education such as the one in Finland. Instead of modeling our education system after successful ones, the U.S. is following in the footsteps of educational systems like the one in Chile which is a “free market” disaster.

The changes that are needed for a great education system will not come from the top down until there is enough action and pressure from the bottom up. Students, parents, teachers and school administrators will need to protest in large numbers before the PTB will make necessary changes. An example of this occurred recently in Texas. Mothers who were angry about all of the high stakes testing convinced the state politicians to take action. They voted to reduce the amount of yearly standardized tests from fifteen to five.

Let’s reawaken a love of learning in our students, treat them with humane values and give our teachers opportunities to teach students to think for themselves.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Industry, Education Reform, Testing

Child Psychotherapist: How Common Core Is Ruining Childhood

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2013 //
20

Katie Hurley, who is a psychotherapist who works with children and adolescents, writes at Huffington Post that Common Core is having a harmful effect on students.

Her first discovery was seeing what happened to her own daughter:

“My daughter has four tests this week. Week after week she has at least four tests, one of them a high-pressure timed math factor test. If she gets more than one answer wrong, she repeats the same test the following week (which, by the way, is a great way to start an unhealthy competition among classmates). Some weeks, if they happen to finish a unit in social studies, science, or math, they also have a unit test. So now we’re up to five.

“What’s the big deal? She’s 6-years-old. This is first grade we’re talking about. For the first couple of weeks of school, it actually wasn’t a big deal. She’s never taken a test before, so there was no fear of incorrect answers or failure. As the daughter of a musician and a psychotherapist, she’s actually one of the lucky ones. There is no pressure to perform, academically or otherwise, in this house. We believe in creativity, low stress, and happiness.”

The stress is evident among teachers:

“So far the Common Core appears to be putting fear into teachers — they very people who care about, teach, and protect our children. I happen to know a lot of teachers. These are people who stay up entirely too late each night planning fun and engaging lessons for the following day. These are people who call me to seek help for those hard-to-reach students. These are people who hide first grade students in cabinets and sing them songs to keep them calm while a shooter wreaks havoc on their campus.

“Forget about all of that. Today teachers are being forced to follow a script. They teach to tests and fear job loss if they don’t see the expected results.

“The result of this test giving, job loss fearing style of teaching is written all over the faces of the little kids caught in the transition. The people behind the Common Core might think that they are ensuring college/career readiness, but what they are really ensuring is a generation of anxious robotic children who can memorize answers but don’t know how to think.”

She then gives five reasons why Common Core is ruining childhood. Read the article to see what they are.

Correct link http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katie-hurley/5-reasons-the-common-core-is-ruining-childhood-_b_4153698.html

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Common Core

Third Grader Prepares for the Global Economy

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2013 //
176

A mother sent this comment:

“Here is a problem my third-grader brought home (I had to read it 3 times, and it took ME forever to work this–forget an 8 year old):

“Easton has been raising vegetables in his garden all summer. He plans to sell some of his vegetables at a local farmer’s market.

“He has selected 24 radishes, 30 onions, 16 heads of lettuce and 25 tomatoes to sell. He wants to display the radishes together, the onions together, the lettuce together, and the tomatoes together, and to place them in sets with equal rows for each kind of vegetable.

“He plans to put each kind of vegetable in at least 2 rows. Show ALL the different ways that he can display equal rows for each kind of the vegetables at the market. Write an equation for each way you find.”

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Common Core

David Greene: The Sound of Silence

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2013 //
14

David Greene, experienced teacher and mentor, was out of the country for afew weeks. When he returned, he was excited to hear echoes of our struggle against high-stakes testing, privatization, the theft of public schools, and data piracy in the mainstream news. Is the silence over? Are we on the cusp of the change we have all been hoping for?

An informed public will not permit a corporate takeover of its schools. An informed public will not give away personal information about their children to data mining.

David Greene writes:

THE SOUND OF SILENCE

I’ve been sitting relatively silently for a few weeks for a couple of reasons. I was out of the country for three weeks. Upon return I began new job. I was growing frustrated with the barking and lack of movement. I have been completing a book soon to be pubished. Other voices were more important to be heard.

Over the past few days however a number of events stirred the silence within me. First, I read Joe Nocera’s October 14th NY Times column, “A World Without Privacy”.

That was followed by a one-two punch of articles in The Local Gannett paper, The Journal News. The first, on October 16th validated what I am currently reading in Diane Ravitch’s brilliant new book, Reign of Error. The second article that moved me entitled “Study faults N.Y.’s teacher evaluations“, was written by Gary Stern, a reporter who seems to be figuring out what is really happening in the privatization process of public schools.

The third followed a day later also in The Journal News by Gary Stern was entitled, “Local parents seek ouster of N.Y. education commissioner”.

Finally, the one that moved me to this keyboard was in the October 20th edition of The NY Times Magazine entitled, “No diagnosis left behind”.

The fact that these articles came out within a week shows me the turn around in mainstream media we have been searching for may be coming sooner than I had thought. It inspired me to speak out again, to end my “sound of silence”.

One of my favorite songs of all time is Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence”. It is haunting and timeless. It speaks to the horrors in societies that are perpetuated when,

“ And in the naked light I saw ten thousand people, maybe more. People talking without speaking. People hearing without listening. People writing songs that voices never share. And no one dared disturb the sound of silence.”

Nocera’s column tells us how close to Orwell’s 1984 we have become as he compares Dave Egger’s new novel, The Circle to Orwell’s prophecies. Orwell’s, Big Brother government’s Ministry of Truth uses the big lie, repetitious slogans (ominously similar to chapters in Mein Kampf): WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. Egger’s private technology corporate world power (ALA Google, Facebook and Twitter) uses similar phrases: SHARING IS CARING. SECRETS ARE LIES. PRIVACY IS THEFT.

My God…. Is that not the strategy used by corporate education reformers and their governmental allies in stealing public education form the public and it’s employees?

“Fools,” said I, “you do not know. Silence like a cancer grows. Hear my words that I might teach you. Take my arms that I might reach you.” But my words, like silent raindrops fell; and echoed in the wells of silence.”

Have the “Emperor With New Clothes” actions of NY Commissioner John King awakened us from our sounds of Silence?

Has Gary Stern and Lo-Hud inadvertently become a leader in this new voice calling for his resignation by finally voicing the concerns of thousands of parents, students, and teachers in this article that finally doesn’t attack those voices as King does.

Has their expose regarding the improper use of invalid testing to evaluate teachers finally allowed other mass media publications and networks to come out of their sounds of silence and become:

“The sign [that] flashed out its warning in the words that it was forming. And the sign said, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls?”

Finally, the NY TIMES reports, in “No diagnosis left behind” that:
“High-stakes standardized testing, increased competition for slots in top colleges, a less-and-less accommodating economy for those who don’t get into colleges but can no longer depend on the existence of blue-collar jobs — all of these are expressed through policy changes and cultural expectations, but they may also manifest themselves in more troubling ways — in the rising number of kids whose behavior has become pathologized.”

And, The No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush, was the first federal effort to link school financing to standardized- test performance. But various states had been slowly rolling out similar policies for the last three decades.

North Carolina was one of the first to adopt such a program; California was one of the last.

The correlations between the implementation of these laws and the rates of A.D.H.D. diagnosis matched on a regional scale as well. When Hinshaw compared the rollout of these school policies with incidences of A.D.H.D., he found that when a state passed laws punishing or rewarding schools for their standardized-test scores, A.D.H.D. diagnoses in that state would increase not long afterward.

Nationwide, the rates of A.D.H.D. diagnosis increased by 22 percent in the first four years after No Child Left Behind was implemented.

To be clear: Those are correlations, not causal links. But A.D.H.D., education policies, disability protections and advertising freedoms all appear to wink suggestively at one another. From parents’ and teachers’ perspectives, the diagnosis is considered a success if the medication improves kids’ ability to perform on tests and calms them down enough so that they’re not a distraction to others. (In some school districts, an A.D.H.D. diagnosis also results in that child’s test score being removed
from the school’s official average.) Writ large, Hinshaw says, these incentives conspire to boost the diagnosis of the disorder, regardless of its biological prevalence.

Times have changed. The words are now on Facebook and Twitter and the Blogosphere. They are increasingly in the streets, in the “public forums”, and in legislative, not tenement, halls.
And needed to get out! Let’s all of us, let out our sound of silence and change what is happening to us and to our children.

“Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again because a vision softly creeping left its seeds while I was sleeping, and the vision that was planted in my brain still remains within the sound of silence.”

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Corporate Reformers, Testing

Critics Are Wrong About Value of Pre-K

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2013 //
26

Two different conservative critics have lambasted me for saying in “Reign of Error” that early childhood education was a research-based way to improve the achievement of low-income students and narrow the achievement gap.

Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute called such a proposal “pie-in-the-sky,” as did a reviewer for the (ironically named) “Public Sector,” published by the conservative Manhattan Institute.

There may be many good reasons to attack my book and my policy proposals–even though each of them has a solid research base–but attacking pre-school education is simply bizarre. There are few policy ideas that have more research or more bipartisan support. It is frankly embarrassing when reviewers say “the money is all gone” or “we can’t afford it” or “the research isn’t there” or come up with some other half-cocked reason not to do what other advanced nations long ago recognized as valuable and necessary.

Today, Motoko Rich in the New York Times has an article supporting (yet again) the importance of early childhood education, but in this case, reporting on research showing that the achievement gap begins as early as 18 months. The implication is that starting pre-school at age 4 is already too late.

Let the defenders of the status quo take their argument to the New York Times and to Nobelist James Heckman and to Susan Ochsborn of ECE Policy Works or to others in the research community.

What they have amply demonstrated if they don’t care about poor kids or closing the achievement gap, only maintaining the status quo.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Reform

WSJ Writer Opposes Early Childhood Education, Almost Alone

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2013 //
45

To certain ideologues, evidence doesn’t matter. The overwhelming scientific consensus supports high-quality early childhood education. It would be hard to find an expert in the field of child development who opposes it.

Yet the Wall Street Journal managed to find a non-expert to speak out against this evidence- based policy, apparently because Néw York City Democratic candidate Bill de Blasio supports it And wants to raise taxes on those who earn more than $500,000 annually to pay for it.

Susan Ochshorn, one of the best informed advocates for early education, politely shreds the arguments against it.

But the editors of the WSJ should also consider the benchmarking project of the conservative Economist magazine. It reviewed 45 nations in relation to their provision of high-quality, affordable early childhood education, and the United States ranked 34th.

If we want children to start school ready to learn, we must be prepared to pay for it. Don’t complain about test scores if poor kids if you aren’t willing to pay to give them a fair chance at the starting line.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »