Archives for category: Childhood, Pre-K, K
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How to Kill a Love of Learning

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2012 //
11

A reader who is active in the SOS (Save Our Schools) movement wrote:

Dr. Ravitch: Ever since I became involved with the planning of the first SOS March (back in May of 2010), I have treasured your historic perspective on testing and your insight on education reform. You have shown the unique ability to see both the forest and the trees. I wish that more people had your ability to understand how seemingly isolated actions and policies are part of a bigger picture– one driven by the corporate profit and the desire to privatize public education.

Based largely on the information gained from people such as you, I became an activist and have fought hard on both the front lines and behind the scenes against such destructive actions. What I saw scared me and, at the same time, hurt. I truly believe in the importance and power of quality public education.

Nothing, however, hurts worse than seeing the youngest members of your own family hurt by such so-called ed reform.

My grandson, age seven, is a very active, imaginative, and smart boy. When he was five, he was discussing how critical thinking skills could be applied to inventing new playground equipment and finding new uses for that which already existed.

At age six, he decided that he wanted to run for President when he was old enough. He created a campaign poster, a platform to run on, and a children’s action group which focused on improving access to water in Africa and gathering food and clothing for children who had none. His theory was that he needed to practice with small jobs before he took on the world. When visiting one weekend, he decided to practice his Presidential skills by directing the activities of his stuffed animal collection. He assessed his animals by their apparent capabilities, set up skill training centers to teach them how to work better, and set up hospitals to repair those animals with tears and other defects that limited their abilities. You should have seen my messy house!

Now the bad news.

He currently attends an elementary school in a very rural county that prides itself on its school rating. When he entered first grade, they were an “A School.” Honestly, rather than seeing this as a plus, it made me uneasy.

At the end-of-the year student awards ceremony, the only subjects that the principal mentioned were math and reading. He announced that the school had the highest FCAT score for 3rd graders in our state. I noticed, however, that very few students made the all-subject honor role (all As and Bs). After speaking with teachers, it became apparent that all emphasis was on math and reading and, as a result, enthusiasm and achievement in other subjects suffered. Luckily, his own teacher rebelled and actually read the class Isaac Asimov. My grandson now loves science fiction and believes science is important.

This school philosophy, however, is seriously hurting him now. His current teacher has announced that his entire class will not have recess until their AR (Accelerated Reading) scores improve. It turns out that their school declined to a B school, and current scores indicate that they are not improving. Mind you, they have only been in school for 6 weeks.

Imagine how an active, imaginative, and very verbal 7 year old boy will function during a school day that does not include an outlet for him to express himself or learn to socialize with others in an unstructured environment.

As an only child, socialization and the ability to physically play with others is of critical importance. Without such, I do not see how he will be able to fully grow, let alone function in such a restrictive environment for hours on end.

This breaks my heart. I have spend most of my free time for the past 2 1/2 years working with various education advocacy activities. I have helped to coordinate a national rally, marched on DC and our state capitol, lead seminar sessions, and even met with Arne Duncan… I have felt America’s pain and fear and knew something had to be done. But when it affects someone close to you, the pain and fear grows to an intensity that is overwhelming.

Dr. Ravitch. I want to thank you for opening my eyes to what has been happening to public education and for devoting so much of your life to our mutual cause. Now, however, I selfishly ask one thing of you. Please, under any circumstances, do not give up. Do not let up. Do not stop.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Florida, Testing

When Mr. Rogers Saved PBS

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2012 //
8

At a time when Mitt Romney is threatening to remove federal funding from PBS, please watch what Mr. Rogers said to Congress in 1969 when President Nixon wanted to cut funding to PBS. Senator Pastore got “goose bumps” when he listened. I got tears in my eyes. Please watch.

It reminds you of when we thought about children’s feelings, not their test scores. It reminds you of a man who was gentle and kind. Remember that?

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Romney, Mitt

No Tests for MY Child, says This Teacher

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2012 //
19

This teacher will not allow her children in pre-K and K to be tested. If everyone opted out, the testing regime would collapse.

I have been a high school teacher for 16 years. My own children begin pre-K and K this year.  I have already informed their schools that my children will be “ill” on standardized test days.  I had to take this route because as far as I can find, WA does not have an “opt out” opportunity for testing.  The pre-K and K teachers voiced the concern that if the kids were absent the they would be counted as a zero for test scores and that would reflect badly on their teaching ability.  My response was that I have very few methods to protest standardized testing and one easy method is to simply not allow my student to be tested.  I also said that I would encourage as many other parents as possible to keep their students home on testing days as possible.

I choose this school for my child because in my innovative district this is one of two Montessori programs offered pre-K-8.  I want the school to continue to succeed but not on the backs of students who spend too much time testing.  Until it can be shown that academic standards improve educational outcomes and that testing is a fair assessment of learning, my children will be absent.  I hope all parents are willing to stand up for the rights of their children.

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Testing

A Powerful, Important Letter to President Obama

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2012 //
25

This letter was written by an early childhood educator. It expresses succinctly what many readers of this blog believe to be true:

Dear President Obama,

Please wake up and see that the education policies your administration is promoting are decimating our public schools, harming our children, demoralizing our teachers, and threatening the future of our democracy. Worst of all, your policies are promoting inequities in our education system and diminishing the opportunity every child in the nation should have for an excellent education

Your mandate for more charter schools is fast creating a three-tiered education system in our country. Children of the wealthy and privileged such as your daughters attend elite private or public schools. Children of less affluent families who are relatively able students with better informed parents increasingly find their way to charter schools, many of which have access to private funding and greater resources. But the third tier is left for the majority of poor or working-class children who must attend underfunded, under resourced, mostly inner-city public schools.

I am an early childhood educator and I can say with certainty that your policies are impacting the early childhood field in many negative ways, but that the greatest harm is falling on our nation’s poorest children. They are getting the worst of test-based, restrictive, standardized, rote instruction, while children in more affluent communities continue to benefit from more play and activity-based curriculum. More often the teachers in lower income communities have less training and are therefore more dependent on the standardized tests and scripted curricula that are a result of your misguided policies.

Standardized tests of any type don’t have a place in early childhood. Children develop at individual rates, learn in unique ways, and come from a wide variety of cultural and language backgrounds. It’s not possible to mandate what any young child will understand at any particular time.

Early childhood teachers are leaving the field in great numbers. They can’t teach using their professional expertise and many detest having to follow prescribed curriculum that they don’t agree with. As one teacher said recently, “I see kids with eyes glazed who are simply overwhelmed by being constantly asked to perform tasks they are not yet ready to do. I finally had to leave my classroom and retire early.” (www.deyproject.org).

Please look closely at how your education policies are impacting children, especially our youngest and poorest children. Your focus on competition and market-driven reforms is resulting in greater inequities in our education system and an undermining of our public schools. A vibrant, flourishing public education system is the cornerstone of our democracy. Please be willing to re-examine and reverse the direction of your approach to education. Please don’t be the President who abandoned our nation’s children and our public education system.

Respectfully,

Nancy Carlsson-Paige

Professor Emerita
Lesley University
Cambridge, MA

Categories Charter Schools, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Obama, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Why Teachers Are Demoralized

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2012 //
40

There is this superintendent in a small district in Texas who is brilliant. His name is John Kuhn. He speaks like a giant. He writes like a dream. He says what teachers everywhere are saying, and he says it better than anyone I know.

Read this and thank John Kuhn for being a hero of public education, a hero of teachers, and a hero of students.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Honor Roll, Parents, Students, Teachers and Teaching

A Remarkable Investigative Reporter

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2012 //
10

Stephanie Simon of Reuters has written one blockbuster story after another. She has done the digging and investigation that make her stories genuinely valuable. In education, as more newspapers cut back their in-depth education reporting, this kind of investigative journalism is becoming increasingly rare.

She wrote stunning articles about the privatization momentum in Louisiana, about TFA, about profiteers jumping into education, about the parent trigger, and about testing in kindergarten.

She is truly fair and balanced, never taking sides, but clearly explaining the issues in context, with attention to their consequences.

Categories Charter Schools, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana, Parent trigger, Privatization, Teach for America TFA

How High-Stakes Testing Harms Children

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2012 //
9

Parents and teachers know that high-stakes testing has negative consequences on students and the quality of their education. It causes narrowing of the curriculum, so students have less instruction in history, civics, the arts, and even physical education. Some schools have eliminated recess to make more time for test prep.

Anthony Cody published a guest column by Rog Lucido, an experienced teachers who is co-founder of Educators and Parents Against Testing Abuse (EPATA). In this excellent article, he describes the mental abuse of children. He writes: What is happening to many students is often not immediately apparent to them or their parents/guardians. It is insidious. Students are being seduced into believing they are just ‘going to school’, when in fact their hopes, dreams and aspirations are being taken from them by the systemic focus on high-stakes testing.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Testing

How Testing Reduces Instructional Time

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2012 //
12

A veteran teacher explains how the testing process affects kindergarten students:

I taught Kindergarten for 23 years. In addition to using imbedded assessment practices during instruction (listening, watching, asking, redirecting, challenging, etc.) I also conducted individual interviews with kids, when needed, to find out what they knew so that I could diagnose problems and plan individual instruction. In recent years my assessment practices became less and less valued by people in charge. Everyone wanted standardized test results that spawned digital graphs about kids. This did not bother me until I found out how much instructional time was lost.

Here’s the reality: You begin the year by testing to obtain baseline scores. One might think this is useful because by testing again at the end of the year you could have a nice graph showing growth. But unfortunately this is not how it is done. Local districts want to see data showing progress along the way so they want tests to be done in between. And most significantly, if a student does not meet the benchmark, you are asked to set up a program to test that child more often, perhaps every month or every two weeks.

When a teacher is testing, there is no instruction going on for that student or any students in the class. Keep in mind that real instruction involves the imbedded assessment practices I mentioned above and must be done by the teacher not a substitute. If someone simply shows kids or tells kids something that is to be learned, this is not teaching. A teacher has to engage with students in a way that will reveal to the teacher what the children are thinking or able to do. Then the instruction moves forward based on this information. Throughout instruction meaning is constantly being negotiated among participants.

Although no child learns anything while taking a test (because the teacher is not permitted to ask questions, challenge or give guidance in any way) the children who need the most instruction end up getting less. They not only lose instructional time when they are being tested, they also lose it when others in the class are being tested. In a typical year, my students lost about 9 weeks of instruction due to testing, perhaps more. Remember, classroom teachers do not test during lunch, recess, specials, special projects, assemblies and other events. We do not test children beyond the school day or year. We test during prime instructional time and therefore it takes days and weeks to complete.

It addition, top performing students who are able to read well beyond grade level take longer to test (passages were longer, responses more in-depth, etc.). So, while spending days and days to obtain scores for exactly how far above grade level these children are, the struggling readers receive no instruction. When struggling readers miss daily instruction their learning degrades rapidly. Also it is important to note that struggling students are absent from primary instruction more than other students for a multitude of reasons.

Teaching really does make a difference and instructional time should be our number one priority. Instead, we are constantly whittling away precious instructional time and then blaming teachers when learning does not happen. So it’s not just about the time spent “teaching to the test” that bothers me, it’s also about the actual time it takes to do the testing that concerns me. It’s a huge problem that should be studied and resolved.

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

More Standardized Testing for Kindergarten

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2012 //
31

Testing children in kindergarten is becoming common practice. Oregon will begin testing all 5-year-olds next fall to assess their “readiness” for kindergarten. It is never too soon to test children, and some states have drafted standards for pre-schoolers.

How did this happen? An article by Stephanie Simon in Reuters explains it all.

“Testing young children is not a new concept. In the 1980s, many states assessed children to determine whether they were ready to enter kindergarten or first grade. Experts in child development denounced the practice as unfair and unreliable and it faded out.

In recent years, however, the federal law known as No Child Left Behind has put pressure on schools to raise scores on the standardized reading and math tests given to students starting around age 8. Schools that post poor scores are labeled failing; principals and teachers can lose their jobs.

With the stakes so high, many administrators have decided to start testing in the earlier grades, to give kids practice and to identify students who need help.

The Obama administration accelerated the trend in 2011 with a $500 million competitive grant to bolster early childhood education. States that pledged to assess all kindergarteners earned extra points on their applications.”

So now state after state is falling into line, testing the littlest students to find out what they know and what they don’t know. The experts are strangely silent about whether this is developmentally appropriate. It is never too soon to start compiling data, it seems.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing

A Sound Mind in a Sound Body

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2012 //
13

As everyone knows by now, there are districts that are eliminating recess and physical education because they want that time to devote to test preparation.

The test scores determine who will get a bonus, who will be fired, and whether the school lives or dies.

This is awful for children. They are active, growing, and in need of a break from study.

Now comes more evidence that physical activity is good for mental activity.

Actually, physical activity, play, unsupervised play is good in and of itself.

Whether it is walking, running, jumping, playing games, or just messing around, children and adults need time to engage in unsupervised activity.

This is the time when imagination runs free and children can be creative. They don’t choose a bubble; they aren’t stressed. They dream and imagine and live in other worlds than the one we have constructed for them.

Last year, I attended the Aspen Ideas Festival and I was invited to a private event where Secretary Arne Duncan spoke. The event celebrated the publication of a book by a friend of his who runs an organization called Kaboom. Kaboom enlists volunteers to build playgrounds; it has built over 2,000 of them. Secretary Duncan’s wife is affiliated with Kaboom (she was identified that way in the video introducing Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention).

At that Aspen party, Secretary Duncan spoke in a heartfelt way about the value of unsupervised play, the need that children have to “tinker” and make things without someone telling them what to do.

I was very impressed, but for the fact that only days earlier, the U.S. Department of Education had issued guidelines about testing children in kindergarten, first and second grades.

Please help me. How can one value unsupervised play time while judging children by test scores?

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K
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