Archives for category: Childhood
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Revolutionary Idea: Elementary School Children Should LIKE School

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2016 //
22

Laura Eberhart Goodman is a parent and a retired teacher. She is upset that her children come home from elementary school exhausted, frustrated, and listless. When she asks them about the good things that happened that day, they can’t think of anything unless it was during lunch or recess. They have been subjected to scripted learning and continual assessment. There is no play, no imaginative activities, no fun, no good memories. It shouldn’t be like this. Thanks, President George W. Bush. Thanks, Sandy Kress and Margaret Spellings. Thanks, President Obama. Thanks, Arne Duncan. You ruined childhood for millions of children.

 

She writes:

 

 

From a parental perspective, a good learning environment is one with positive energy. The teachers want to be there, and the children want to be there. No one is counting the minutes to the end of the day before it has even started.

 
From an educator’s perspective, an environment that is engaging, hands-on, with opportunities for meaningful learning, practice, discussions, and creativity, makes kids happy. When kids are happy, they learn more, and without having to resort to bribery. It’s not rocket science.
When the learning environment becomes very serious, and relies heavily on assessment and grades, learning targets and goals, it is not as enjoyable. It is “work”, and children don’t enjoy work. It’s not in their nature to enjoy work; children are created to learn through play.

 
You will have as much success asking a tiger not to have stripes as you will asking children not to play. I was watching two children at the post office the other day waiting to get passports, and they had been there for quite a long time. They developed a game using one of their jackets, and entertained themselves nicely with it. It is as natural as breathing for children to play. What defines “play”? Any activity that engages the imagination and creativity, two skills that lead to innovation and problem solving when practiced often enough.

 
We can’t expect them to do work in the same way that an adult does work. We are not the same. They don’t have to pay a mortgage and I get to stay up as late as I want to. One is not better or worse than the other; they are different.

 
Just because students may have to sit in an office for 8 hours a day when they are adults, doesn’t mean that they should have to start practicing it now as children. It is like saying to a ten year old, “One day you’re going to pay taxes, so I’m going to keep 50% of your birthday money from Grandma because I want you to get used to it.”

 
There’s a proper time for everything.

 
Why has elementary school become the time for instructional and assessment methods that are more appropriate for high school and college students?

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Testing

Florida: Parents Organize to Fight for Recess in Elementary Schools

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2015 //
17

In Florida, there are laws governing how many minutes must be devoted to reading but there is no law requiring recess.

 

Some elementary schools have eliminated recess altogether. Some make it available only once a week.

 

The state does require 150 minutes of physical education each week. But that is not the same as recess, where children can play without adult direction.

 

Folks, we are talking about little children. They need time to stretch and run and play. They need time to exercise their bodies. Why are state officials allowing schools (or, compelling schools) to eliminate activity that is necessary for good health?

 

Fortunately, parents have begun to organize to demand that their children have recess every day.

 

Time for recess has been squeezed out in recent years, but now social media is helping parents, such as Lakeland mother Amanda Lipham, organize recess supporters.
Lipham says she organized the push for recess in Polk when she saw changes in her five year old son.

 

“He was losing his enthusiasm for school,” Lipham says. “His attitude was changing. I could see his spirit being broken.”

 

First, Lipham handed out flyers in the car line at her son’s elementary school, and she spoke out at a school board meeting. Then, she formed an online petition that garnered thousands of signatures.

 

Now parents are creating similar online petitions around the state. More than 2200 people have signed a petition to make recess mandatory in Pinellas County, This fall, Parents in Osceola County also started a petition demanding recess. And a similar effort in Orange County last year led to a school board resolution recommending that schools provide the breaks.

 

And that’s the way change might happen, says Judy Stockman, who teaches at Sykes Elementary school in Lakeland — when parents get involved.

 

You may be sick of hearing about Finland, but consider this: Elementary school students get a 15-minute recess after every class. They go outside and run around and play. Then they return to their classes refreshed and ready to learn. Sounds good to me.

 

 

 

 

Categories Childhood, Florida

Jack Covey Reviews Eva’s ED Talk

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2015 //
52

Reader Jack Covey watched Eva Moskowitz’s ED talk at Governor Cuomo’s Camp Philos retreat:

“Holy moley!

“I just watched a one-woman Eva Moskowitz’ horror show… starring Eva herself. It’s her six-minute “Ed Talk” (get it? rhymes with “Ted Talk”) at the 2014 Corporate Reform jamboree called “Camp Philos”:

She glowingly tells the story of Sidney — an eighth grade Success Academy student — while projecting her picture on a screen. (Did she get permission?)

“During Common Core testing, Sidney was in a life-threatening battle with sickle-cell anemia. Even at the most severe moment of crisis in her health, Sidney insisted on taking the entirety of that year’s Common Core testing. The adults around argued otherwise, because she had just had her infected spleen taken out that very day, “had lost a lot of weight,” and “was extremely cold and weak.” In the light of this, the principal informed Sidney that she was entitled to claim a “medical excuse” and delay taking the test.

“However, Sidney wouldn’t hear of it, and took the test.

“I want to get a 4,” Sidney replied, with Eva recounting these words with emotion.

Eva’s point?

( 02:10 – 03:03 )

( 02:10 – 03:03 )

“EVA MOSKOWITZ: “Children are incredibly resilient, and I would urge you to think about NOT treating children AS children… I think that we have underestimated in this country the pleasure that comes from achieving mastery, and from performance. In my experience, kids actually want to perform. The want to master. Sidney was a perfect example, even though she was in a life-threatening situation.”

Sweet Lord! What is WRONG with this woman?

“Cue the Supremes:

“(By the way, Camp Philos 2015 is this weekend. My invite must have got lost in the mail.
I wonder what Eva’s 2015 “Ed Talk” will be this year, given the timing.)”

Categories Charter Schools, Childhood, Common Core, Testing

Susan Ochshorn: Let the Children Play

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2015 //
39

Susan Ochshorn is an authority on early childhood education. She reports with pleasure that many states and districts are expanding access to pre-kindergarten, but notes with unhappiness that the political leaders who are expanding early childhood education are making a terrible mistake: They are introducing four- and five-year-olds to Common Core and imposing “rigor” on these little ones.

Rigor for 4-year-olds? What about their social-emotional development, which goes hand-in-hand with cognitive skill-building? What about play, the primary engine of human development?

Unfortunately, it seems like we’re subjecting our young children to a misguided experiment.

“Too many educators are introducing inappropriate teaching methods into the youngest grades at the expense of active engagement with hands-on experiences and relationships,” Beverly Falk, author of Defending Childhood told me. “Research tells us that this is the way young children construct understandings, make sense of the world, and develop their interests and desire to learn.” She isn’t alone.

Early academic training has become an obsession among child development experts and teachers of young children as the Common Core standards have encroached upon the earliest years of schooling.

Ochshorn cites research studies that show that children actually learn better if they are not subjected to an academic curriculum too soon.

It’s not that they can’t read at this young age. Some pick it up on their own. In fact, studies have shown that children as young as 4 or 5, including those defined “at risk,” can be taught decoding skills, the foundation for reading. But research has also shown that youngsters who begin this process later than their peers — by as much as 19 months — eventually reach parity in fluency, and do even a little better on reading comprehension.

And we may well actually be doing kids harm.

Earlier this year, the report “Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose” highlighted the research of developmental psychologist Rebecca Marcon. In a study of three different curricula, characterized as “academically oriented” or “child-initiated,” she found negative effects of overly directed preschool instruction on the later school performance of 343 students, 96% of them African-American and 75% eligible for subsidized lunch. By third grade, the differences in academic achievement were minor. But by fifth grade, students in the academic preschool earned significantly lower grades than those who had spent their days in classrooms in which they were actively engaged, with their peers and teachers, in the process of learning.

Categories Childhood, Common Core

Those Joyful, Illiterate Kindergarten Students in Finland

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2015 //
38

Thanks to the reader known as FLERP for finding this terrific article about kindergarten children in Finland.

What matters most: Play!

While our five-year-olds buckle down to show that they have mastered academic skills in math and reading, the children in kindergarten in Finland are playing.

When children play, Osei Ntiamoah continued, they’re developing their language, math, and social-interaction skills. A recent research summary “The Power of Play” supports her findings: “In the short and long term, play benefits cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development…When play is fun and child-directed, children are motivated to engage in opportunities to learn,” the researcher concluded.

Osei Ntiamoah’s colleagues all seemed to share her enthusiasm for play-based learning, as did the school’s director, Maarit Reinikka: “It’s not a natural way for a child to learn when the teacher says, ‘Take this pencil and sit still.’” The school’s kindergarten educators have their students engage in desk work—like handwriting—just one day a week. Reinikka, who directs several preschools in Kuopio, assured me that kindergartners throughout Finland—like the ones at Niirala Preschool—are rarely sitting down to complete traditional paper-and-pencil exercises….

This is scandalous! How can they expect to be global competitors when they don’t buckle down and learn to suffer through stultifying exercises?


And there’s no such thing as a typical day of kindergarten at the preschool, the teachers said. Instead of a daily itinerary, two of them showed me a weekly schedule with no more than several major activities per day: Mondays, for example, are dedicated to field trips, ballgames, and running, while Fridays—the day I visited—are for songs and stations.

Once, Morning Circle—a communal time of songs and chants—wrapped up, the children disbanded and flocked to the station of their choice: There was one involving fort-making with bed sheets, one for arts and crafts, and one where kids could run a pretend ice-cream shop. “I’ll take two scoops of pear and two scoops of strawberry—in a waffle cone,” I told the two kindergarten girls who had positioned themselves at the ice-cream table; I had a (fake) 10€ bill to spend, courtesy of one of the teachers. As one of the girls served me—using blue tack to stick laminated cutouts of scoops together—I handed the money to her classmate.

With a determined expression reminiscent of the boys in the mud with their shovels, the young cashier stared at the price list. After a long pause, one of her teachers—perhaps sensing a good opportunity to step in—helped her calculate the difference between the price of my order and the 10€. Once I received my change (a few plastic coins), the girls giggled as I pretended to lick my ice cream.

Throughout the morning I noticed that the kindergartners played in two different ways: One was spontaneous and free form (like the boys building dams), while the other was more guided and pedagogical (like the girls selling ice cream).

In fact, Finland requires its kindergarten teachers to offer playful learning opportunities—including both kinds of play—to every kindergartner on a regular basis, according to Arja-Sisko Holappa, a counselor for the Finnish National Board of Education. What’s more, Holappa, who also leads the development of the country’s pre-primary core curriculum, said that play is being emphasized more than ever in latest version of that curriculum, which goes into effect in kindergartens next fall.

“Play is a very efficient way of learning for children,” she told me. “And we can use it in a way that children will learn with joy.”

Imagine that! Finland will surely lose the race to the top of global competition if they keep up this play methodology. They should do what we do: drum the kids into silence, require them to march and sit in rows, teach them to keep their eyes on the teachers at all times, and require that they are college-and-career-ready from day one!

Categories Childhood

Laura H. Chapman: Is This Generation Trapped in Stale Ideas?

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2015 //
15

Laura H. Chapman, a frequent contributor to the blog, raises some important points about Common Core test and its reach into kindergarten and into the future:

 

 

You should be aware that PARCC tests are in the works for Kindergarten. They are called “formative tasks.” They are more accurately labeled “Tests for Tykes. You can find a draft of the exam for reading informational text as called for in the Common Core category at http://parcconline.org/sites/parcc/files/PARCC%20DRAFT%20K-1%20Prototype%20ELA%20K_Reading_Spring_Informational%20Texts.pdf

 

The test is completely embedded in fully scripted lessons for the teacher. Judging from the reproducible worksheets designed for students, the test makers seem to assume that by the Spring of the school year, Kindergarten students will have learned, or been taught, to write complete sentences (with the proper heights of letters). They will also know how to color in a drawing of a fish. All of the questions are based on one “informational text” about fish. Additional plans are in the works for at least three more kindergarten tests, all of them called “formative tasks.”

 

There is a real mazy-hazy problem with retrieving trustworthy information about testing materials on line. For example “parcc.pearson.com” seems to be as authoritative as “parcconline.org/parcc-assessment‎. Then there is parcconline.org where you will find 194 pages of information prepared in 2012 by Achieve, Inc. and the U.S. Education Delivery Institute, the latter an organization lead by Sir Michael Barber, of Great Britain, and also the chief education advisor to Pearson. The lines bewteen the federally financed tests developed by PARCC and Pearson’s pursuit of profits is not at all clear.

 

Readers should know that parcc.com has test-prep materials for kindergarten math. They are called “games” and they are the product of a cartoon company in Great Britain, complete with audios in a British accent http://parccgames.com/?page_id=25 . The bottom of the page on the games website says: “This site is intended to match students and teachers with the most effective games for reinforcing Common Core curriculum.” Of course, there is no single curriculum for the Common Core.

 

At http://www.corecommonstandards.com/common-core/kindergarten-common-core-workbooks, you can find three “Common Core Assessment Workbooks” —test prep materials for Kindergarten, I kid you not. Another version of test prep for Kindergartener is discussed by a master educator who has a personal stake in the test-em-til-they drop ethos created by federal and state policies. Go to http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2013/11/26/my-daughters-kindergarten-common-core-math-workbook/

 

Not to be outdone by the PARCC tests, and CCSS, The Maryland State Department of Education, has PreKindergarten Common Core standards!!! These “specify the mathematics that all students should study as they begin preparing to be college and career ready by graduation.“ The language in these extrapolated standards is so exotic that the writers of the publication had to color-code the language in the standards. See http://mdk12.org/share/frameworks/CCSC_Math_grpk.pdf

 

So there are more Common Core tests in the works, Kindergarten and perhaps preschool, multiple tests, every year. They are coupled with a cockamamie idea that the Common Core Standards and associated tests are perfect predictors and guarantors of college and career readiness of children in grades K-12, who may survive the testing regime and graduate in 2025-2028…Meanwhile a new Cngress is uncertain whether to say “college OR career,” or “colege AND career.”

 

The promoters of this belief system and agenda for public schools seem to think that this generation should be locked in a time capsule of ideas and tests. This frozen–in-time agenda for American education has been embedded in federal and state legislation as if to say: There are no paths to useful and rewarding work and the good life, except as set forth in the first decade of this century when these standards were written. The writers said, in effect, there is no need for educators, or parents, or students to think about what life offers and may require beyond passing these tests, getting a job, and going to college. Pathetic.

 

This is the awful mind-trap that has been set for this generation. Parents and teachers who will not comply with these tests know that the test scores are not 100% faithful and true predictors of life outcomes. For having this warranted knowledge and wisdom, they are being threatened by the purveyors of the non-sense.

 

Parents who are lawyers or who have access to legal help may want to look at whether districts are in full compliance with FERPA, the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act, and especially with COPPA—the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, not the US Department of Education.
The primary goal of COPPA is to allow parents to have control over what information is collected online “from their children” under age 13.

 

The FTC “consumer protection office” appears to be getting a batch of questions about the PARCC/Pearson relationship and specifically the on-line testing environment where Pearson—a commercial contractor—is empowered to get personal information from tests and social media websites.

 

You will find a lively discussion there, along with a clear indication that this matter is just now beginning to show up on the radar screen of a lot of people, especially those who say that parents have no legal right to opt-out. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2015/01/testing-testing-review-session-coppa-schools

Categories Childhood, Common Core, Education Industry, Pearson, Testing

Washington State Will Test Kindergarten Children (But, Shhh! Parents May Opt Out)

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2015 //
27

A reader shares this information with us. The state will administer assessments to children in kindergarten but parents have the right to opt out. Will the parents know? If you live in Washington, make sure you inform parents of their right to opt out their children from this unnecessary assessment. Let the children play.

 

 

So here in the Pacific North West, our legislature just finished a special session and they’re now into the third. One part of our legislature, the House, just passed Washington HB 1491…”Expand Early Childhood Education Across the State” and has nice fine print related to testing kindergarteners and 3-4 year-olds. That’s right. TESTING. FOR KINDERGARTENERS. Section 2, [2][a] “Improve short-term and long-term educational outcomes for children as measured by assessments including, but not limited to, the Washington kindergarten inventory of developing skills in RCW 28A.655.080. The only saving grace? RCW 28A.150.315 is in force WITH THE EXCEPTION OF STUDENTS WHO HAVE BEEN EXCUSED FROM PARTICIPATION BY THEIR PARENTS OR GUARDIANS. That’s right. The K-12 public schools will now HAVE to administer the test with all the attendant costs and time suck but, as a parent, you won’t be hearing how you can opt-out. Lots of more work to do. Then again, I’m so pissed about it that it gives me the energy I need to fight, fight, fight.

Categories Childhood, Standardized Testing, Washington State

Susan Ochshorn: Angie Sullivan is Weeping for the Children of the Common Core

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2015 //
16

Susan Ochshorn tells the back story on her early childhood education blog. Angie Sullivan, a teacher of grades K-2 in Nevada, is upset because Lucy Calkins is supporting the Common Core. Angie is weeping for the children. She wrote a letter to Lucy Calkins, whose Writers Workshop she admires.

 

She writes:

 

 

There is one Common Core writing standard for kindergarten students in Las Vegas: write a fact and opinion paper.

 

Yep.

 

And that is all.

 

Children who have never picked up a pencil have one global standard: write a paper.

 

I’m weeping as I read through these pages in your book (up to 13)—as you describe fine-tuning your research, somehow expressing a loving Common Core at the same time.

 

I’m having a very difficult time thinking that something as beautiful, powerful, and developmentally appropriate as Writer’s Workshop can work smoothly with the terribly inappropriate, developmentally gross Common Core. I appreciate that this program is your best attempt to fill in the holes with solid examples and sample lessons, but as a professional educator, I question why we would accept this solution. While Common Core meets the needs of a few, in my experience, it ensures the failure of many.

Categories Childhood, Common Core

Jean Marzollo: If Only Our Leaders Would Read This Book

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2015 //
12

This review was written by Jean Marzollo, one of the nation’s leading writers of children’s books. My children, and now my grandchildren, grew up reading and loving her “I Spy” books, and many others.

 

 

 

 

A wonderful educator friend of mine, Ellen Booth Church (http://www.ellenboothchurch.com) sent me a copy of her new book, Getting to the HEART of Learning, published by Gryphon House, 2015. I wish every candidate running for president would read her first two paragraphs and quote from them on the podium:

 

 

“All learning is social-emotional learning. Children do not learn skills in isolation but through social connection and interconnection to the real world—their world. It is their curiosity about the world that stimulates their desire to learn and to share what they have learned. We all learn best when we care about what we are learning and whom we are learning it with. Children live their lives with their hearts and minds open and connected. From that union of heart and mind, they develop into people who are balanced, happy, and successful.

 

 

“Take a quick look at what is being presented in the news, and you will see the need in our culture for social-emotional development. Preschool and kindergarten teachers recognize both the need to address social development in their students and with their students’ families and the need to teach the basic skills that are essential to learning. These two things do not need to be separate; in fact, they truly are inseparable.”

 

 

In Chapter 3, Getting to the Heart of Science, Church says, “Children are natural scientists. They wonder, predict, and experiment with everything! Scientists work best in a lab team, and these activities are designed just for team explorations. The children will explore science themes as well as processes together as they build the social skills of cooperation, helping, and working with others. Many of these activities work best with a partner. The children will have to wait to use materials, control impulses to take over, and communicate ideas together. In the process, children also will be building problem-solving skills that will last a lifetime.”

 

 

Church says that in order to get to the heart of learning, we need to help preschool and kindergarten teachers teach basic skills and social skills while studying the exciting topics of sound, magnets, camouflage, sunlight, melting, weather, clouds, mirrors, sand, seeds and plants. She spells out, in enjoyable detail, lesson plans for these topics in her book.

 

 

Imagine a presidential candidate quoting Aristotle (as Church often does in her presentations): “Educating the mind without the heart is no education at all.”

 

 

 

Categories Childhood

Steve Nelson: The Danger of Measuring the Wrong Things

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2015 //
39

Steve Nelson laments the current policies in education, which are secretly tied to measurement and data. These are the policies cook up by economists, he says, not educators.

Educators seek development, not accountability. What matters most can not be measured.

He writes:

“Measure the wrong things and you’ll get the wrong behaviors.

“This simple statement succinctly characterizes why the American education system continues beating its head against the wall.”

And he writes:

“After nearly 20 years of reading, observing, teaching and presiding over a school, I’m convinced that this simple statement — “Measure the wrong things and you’ll get the wrong behaviors” — is at the root of what ails education, from cradle to grave. Measuring the wrong thing (standardized scores of 4th graders) drives the wrong behaviors (lots of test prep and dull direct instruction). In later school years, measuring the wrong thing (SAT and other standardized test scores, grade point averages, class rank) continues to invite the wrong behaviors (gaming the system, too much unnecessary homework, suppression of curiosity, risk-aversion, high stress).

“Measuring the right things is more complicated and less profitable. But if we measured, even if only in our hearts, the things that we should truly value (creativity, joy, physical and emotional health, self-confidence, humor, compassion, integrity, originality, skepticism, critical capacities), we would engage in a very different set of behaviors (reading for pleasure, boisterous discussions, group projects, painting, discovery, daydreaming, recess, music, cooperation rather than competition).”

Categories Childhood, Real Education
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