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Peg Robertson: Why No Protest Over Approval of Relay, a Fake Graduate School of Education?

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2016 //
37

Peg Robertson is rightfully outraged that the Relay Graduate School of Education received state approval to operate in Colorado.

 

She was even more outraged that no one spoke out in opposition to this travesty.

 

She writes:

 

This is the story of a fake graduate program getting approved by the Colorado Commission of Higher Education. CCHE has approved that non-educators trained by non-educators can be “certified” teachers who are in charge of the social, emotional, physical, mental and academic well-being of Colorado’s children. Imagine your child in that classroom. I’d like to see all the principals and leaders in Colorado who attended Relay Principal training PUT THEIR OWN CHILDREN IN THESE CLASSROOMS.

 

These fake teachers must prove that they can achieve one year’s growth via TEST scores in order to graduate from Relay. You can be assured that they will be stellar at teaching to the test. This is all that they know. And in order to make this happen, militant disciplinary methods must be used because children, and adults, ultimately find this form of dog training to be boring, redundant, and insulting. Therefore, it must be enforced – and as it is enforced this conditioning will become normal – it will be accepted as “as good as it gets.” Democratic thinking will continue to erode.

 

These fake teachers will be led by a fake dean who appears to be 31 years old and is a former TFA. She has two years teaching experience and appears to have some bizarro M.S.T. in which she got her training by speaking to robotic students via video games. Meanwhile her bachelor’s was in sociology.

 

Daniel Katz of Seton Hall University wrote a scathing article about Relay last year. Of course, Arne Duncan praised it.

 

Katz described it thus:

 

It is a “Graduate School of Education” that has not a single professor or doctoral level instructor or researcher affiliated with it. In essence, it is a partnership of charter school chains Uncommon Schools, KIPP, and Achievement First, and it is housed in the Uncommon Schools affiliated North Star Academy. Relay’s “curriculum” mostly consists of taking the non-certified faculty of the charter schools, giving them computer-delivered modules on classroom management (and distributing copies of Teach Like a Champion), and placing them under the auspices of the “no excuses” brand of charter school operation and teachers who already have experience with it.

 

This is a direct assault on the very idea of teacher professionalism. This alleged graduate school has no Ph.D.s or EDDs on its “faculty.” It consists of charter teachers teaching prospective charter teachers how to raise test scores. No research. No library. No scholars. Of its several campuses in five states, not one has a dean with a doctorate. They are mostly TFA graduates. They will now train and award master’s degrees in test-score raising.

 

Relay is spreading like kudzu, offering to “train” teachers and principals. It has been approved in New York by the Board of Regents. It was approved in Massachusetts. And most shocking of all, it has been approved by NCATE, which apparently has no standards for what constitutes a graduate school of education. Having a masters’ degree in raising test scores should be about as valuable as a BA from Corinthian Colleges.

 

 

Categories Colorado, Education Reform, Hoax, Teacher Education

When School Board Members Bully Students

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2016 //
15

Let’s start from the assumption that school board members should be expected to act with dignity when they engage with students. That was not the case recently in Douglas County, Colorado, and in Buffalo, New York.

 

In Dougco, as it is known, two school board members have been accused of trying to intimidate a student who wanted to start a protest about high teacher turnover. Parents and educators have started a petition calling for the resignation of Dougco school board President Meghann Silverthorn and VP Judith Reynolds. The board meets again May 10.

 

According to the petition, these school board members bullied a student named Grace Davis:

 

“During the Douglas County School Board meeting on April 19, 2016, Grace Davis, a student at Ponderosa High School, gave public comment about a meeting between her, Director Silverthorn, and Director Reynolds regarding a student protest organized by Grace.

 

“This meeting took place without the knowledge or consent of Grace’s parents. When there is a meeting between a minor and school administration, parental consent is a requirement. Grace describes how she felt small, intimidated and uncomfortable during this meeting. She goes on to describe her family’s attempts to resolve this issue with Silverthorn and Reynolds, with no results. To hear Grace’s public comments, click here.

 

“The audio of the meeting between Grace and Directors Silverthorn and Reynolds was also released on April 19. It is clear that during this meeting, Directors Reynolds and Silverthorn used their position to intimidate and bully Grace to deter her from proceeding with the planned protest.

 

Among the statements made by the directors:

 
·”*** Grace did not fully understand her First Amendment rights and this protest was not necessarily protected speech.
·” *** People with other motivations could hijack the protest.
· “*** Police officers could be hurt and Grace and her family would be financially responsible.

 
“Additionally, Director Silverthorn outright lied, claiming a police officer had been injured during a Denver student protest by “an angry motorist.” In reality, the officer was struck by a driver who had a seizure at a Black Lives Matter protest. For the full audio of the meeting, click here.”

 

In Buffalo, one of the wealthiest real estate developers in New York State, Carl Paladino, ran for re-election and was nearly upset by a high school senior, Austin Harig. (When Paladino ran against Cuomo, he became noted for his outrageous statements.) Paladino won his school board seatby only 100 votes out of 3,000 cast. He lashed out at the student, saying that Harig had been suspended from school for tardiness. How did Paladino gain access to Harig’s record. Harig threatened to sue, but the multimillionaire school board member laughed.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Colorado, New York

Students in Douglas County, Colorado, Protest High Teacher Turnover

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2016 //
6

Students in Douglas County, Colorado, walked out and picketed to express their outrage at the high rates of teacher turnover in their school. Teacher turnover may be caused by the demoralizing policies enacted by the state and the district. Colorado teachers have suffered since 2010 under State Senator Michael Johnston’s legislation to tie teacher evaluations to student test scores. DougCo has had a conservative school board, which destabilized the schools.

 

A boisterous crowd of 100 or so students walked out of Ponderosa High School on Wednesday morning to highlight what they say is an excessive departure rate among teachers at the school and within the Douglas County School District.

 

They waved signs on school property that read “We love teachers” and “Keep DCSD Great,” while chanting “best teachers, best students.”

 

Several passing drivers honked their horns in support.

 

“We don’t find it fair that our teachers are leaving the district, and we want to know why,” said senior Lisa Culverhouse, who was skipping math, English and Spanish to rally with classmates. “We hope the district will realize it’s a problem — students want to be heard….”

 

Courtney Smith, president of the Douglas County Federation, said teacher morale has never been lower. She counts the teacher evaluation system — which she said was mostly about “uploading evidence” rather than true assessment of teaching skills — among the chief problems.

 

Good work, Senator Johnston. When does your promise of “great schools, great principals, great teachers” come to pass? How much longer shall we wait?

 

 

Categories Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers

BREAKING: Corporate Reformers Defeat Effort to Scale Back VAM in Colorado

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2016 //
17

The Democratic-controlled House Education Committe in Colorado rejected a bill that would have modified the state’s draconian and pointless teacher evaluation system.

Key testimony against the bill was provided by leaders of the privatization movement who masquerade as reformers.

“Lobbyists from three education advocacy groups — the Colorado Children’s Campaign, Colorado Succeeds and Stand for Children — testified strongly against the bill. Another major reform group, Democrats for Education Reform, was neutral, Arndt said.

“But other witnesses from the Poudre school district — as well as board certified teachers and representatives of the Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union — urged the committee to pass the bill.
In closing statements before the vote, some committee members clearly were torn.
“I’m really struggling with this one,” said Rep. Dominick Moreno, D-Commerce City.

“With the defeat of the House bill, no other pending bills would alter the state system, which requires that principals and teachers be evaluated half on their professional practice and half on student academic growth.”

FYI, from a Denver source:

“The founder of the Colorado Children’s Campaign is a current Denver Public Schools’ board of Ed member, former lieutenant governor, current CEO of the non-Union schools’ principal training program Catapult. President of Colorado Succeeds is former leg aide to Johnston and helped write SB-191.”

Categories Colorado, Corporate Reform, Hoax, Teacher Evaluations

Colorado: Michael Johnston’s Terrible Teacher Evaluation Bill Wins a New Lease on Life

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2016 //
29

In 2010, I was in Denver the day that the Legislature was debating S. 10-191, a bill sponsored by young Senator Michael Johnston. It was a bill to base 50% of teachers’ evaluation on test scores, a new, untried, and very controversial idea. Teachers were strongly opposed, and the Legislature was deeply divided but the bill passed. I was supposed to debate Johnston at a lunch in downtown Denver, but the debate didn’t work as planned. There were about 60 civic leaders in the room, and we waited patiently for Johnston. We finished lunch and still no Johnston. So I got up and gave my talk and explained why it was wrong to evaluate teachers and principals by test scores (at that time, I was working with Richard Rothstein on a statement against test-based evaluation that was signed by a bevy of testing experts). No sooner did I finish, then presto-change-o, young Senator Johnston strides through the doors in the back of the room. He had carefully managed not to hear anything I said.

 

He then proceeded to talk for 20 minutes or more about the glories of using test scores to judge teachers, principals, and schools. He predicted that the passage of his bill would bring about miraculous improvements in education across the state of Colorado. He praised his legislation as the dawn of a new day. Michael Johnston is an alum of Teach for America (were you surprised to hear that?). The title of his bill was something grandiose and completely fraudulent, something like “Great Schools and Great Teachers Act of 2010.” Gosh, it is six years later, and almost everyone except Michael Johnston knows that test-based accountability flopped. It flopped in Colorado and it flopped everywhere else, despite the billions pumped into by the federal government, the Gates Foundation, states and local districts.

 

Just in the past few days, both John Merrow and the team of Checker Finn and Michael Petrilli independently agreed that teacher evaluation by test scores was Arne Duncan’s worst mistake. John Merrow said, “Tying teacher evaluations to testing was a mistake, probably Arne Duncan’s biggest mistake.” Petrilli and Finn said that the federal mandate for teacher evaluations was “politically poisonous.” But not in Colorado, it seems.

 

A group of legislators proposed revising his bill to eliminate evaluation by test scores, and it appeared to have the support it needed. But at the last minute, two of the Republicans changed their minds about dropping the teacher evaluation by test scores, and Michael Johnston’s failed idea survived by a vote of 6-3. So Johnston and five Republican Senators managed to preserve this program, which has not worked in Colorado nor anywhere else in America. Six years after passage, there is not a whit of evidence that it improves teaching and learning.

 

Do you think Michael Johnston read the statement by the American Statistical Association in 2014 warning that using test scores to evaluate individual teachers is not a reasonable idea, because teachers influence between 1-14% of the variation in student test scores? I don’t think so. Do you think he saw the statement by the American Educational Research Association last fall against the use of this method? I don’t think so. Do you think he read the statement by Edward Haertel, the Stanford University testing expert, on the flaws of value-added assessment? Do you think he knows that it has been dropped by district after district because it costs millions and it has failed everywhere to identify the best or the worst teachers? Apparently not.

 

Michael Johnston doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. With this last-ditch effort to preserve the bad idea he sponsored, he has proved that he neither reads nor thinks.

 

Message to Colorado parents: Opt out. Resist. Do not let the state impose bad policies on your children or their teachers.

Categories Colorado, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Angela Engel: Interpreting the Colorado Elections

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2015 //
14

Angela Engel is a public education activist in Colorado. Here is her summary of the Colorado school board elections.

She writes:

Display problems? View this newsletter in your browser.

—
Thank you Nancy Ulrich and Bill Freud for hosting me on Far More Colorado.

Election Update:

Elections and Celebrations

In mainstream headlines this morning, journalists once again pinned both wins and losses on teachers unions, but there is a different story here and it is a powerful one!

Citizens in three communities woke up to the reform agendas playing out in local school board elections and said, “NO MORE.” This election was not about political parties, unions, or even philosophical differences.

For over a decade now, economic interests outside of education have been “buying” seats in school board races. These seats then buy political power and economic opportunity. In Douglas County the board passed a voucher initiative that directed tax payer dollars away from successful neighborhood schools and directed those dollars at private schools with zero transparency or public accountability. The decision was later defeated in court but the board spent millions of taxpayer dollars defending themselves and forwarding an agenda to micro-manage and simultaneously starve community schools. Voters in Douglas County on Tuesday elected new leadership.

In Jefferson County, the majority board conducted a similar reform agenda directing public dollars to business interests. In setting the budget, the board cut $600,000 to fund all-day kindergarten for low-income families and increased funding to the 16 charter schools in the district by $2.5 million dollars. The conservative led board was first recalled and subsequently replaced by a stunning majority.

Denver Public School board candidates, all democrats, have followed an aggressive plan similar to conservative boards in Dougco and Jeffco; replacing community schools in high poverty neighborhoods with charter schools like KIPP, a national chain. Veteran teachers have been systematically eliminated and replaced with novice teacher trainees. Many complete a six week training program through Teach for America, a for-profit education enterprise. Investment banker, Anne Rowe, financed by wealthy power players to the tune of over $200,000 in her last election, retained her seat with the help of the Denver Post and Chalkbeat who launched smear campaigns against her opponent. Both news sources receive funding from similar interests forwarding the corporate reform agenda. Unfortunately, Michael Kiley and Robert Speth both lost by small margins.

This election illustrates a major shift in a state that has helped lead the corporate reform agenda throughout the country. Colorado followed Texas in passing legislation grading schools based on test scores. Senate Bill 186 was passed two years before Congress instituted the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002. In 2012, Colorado was again one of the first states to pass Senate Bill 191, tying teacher pay to test scores. Reform efforts are credited to well-financed charter school lobbies and campaigns financed by corporate interests. Both have gained significantly from the influx of public dollars to private coffers including test publishers, education management organizations, consulting firms, online providers, data management tools, and corporate charters.

This election signifies a major departure as the pro-charter, pro-testing, pro-corporate control reformers have been replaced with pro-student, pro-teacher and pro-community controlled parent leaders. It’s a new day in education.

Come Celebrate With Us

Children’s Advocates Celebration
Hey all you hard-working, under-appreciated, beautiful advocates for Children’s Education! We want you to join us for cocktails, conversation and a little reflection and recognition of everyone’s accomplishments over the last year.

RSVP
When: November 12th, 5-7:30 PM
Where: Interstate Kitchen & Bar, 1001 Santa Fe Dr, Denver, CO

or….if more than 50 people respond to this invitation, we’re moving it to:

Govnr’s Park Tavern, 672 Logan St., Denver, CO

Note: We’ll let you know in advance if this event gets moved to Govnr’s Park Tavern!

Time: 5:00pm – 7:30pm MDT
Location: Interstate Kitchen and Bar

Angela Engel, 8131 S. Marion Ct., Centennial, CO 80122

Categories Colorado

NPE Action Fund Endorses Kathleen Gebhardt for Boulder Valley School Board in Colorado

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2015 //
0

The Network for Public Education Action Fund endorses Kathleen Gebhardt for the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education in Boulder, Colorado.

Kathleen has an unparalleled combination of experience in education that makes her ideally suited to be a school board member. Not only is she is a graduate of the district, she has been a parent in the district for over 25 years, and has served on several school and district committees. She clearly has a deep and thorough understanding of the issues specific to the Boulder Valley School District.

In addition, Kathleen has spent over 20 years working professionally in education, and currently teaches education law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. She is the Executive Director of Children’s Voices, which is a “non-profit law firm of school advocates dedicated to achieving equal access to a high quality public education for all school-age children in Colorado.” Children’s Voices puts a special emphasis on working on behalf of special education students, English language learners, and children who live in poverty.

It is no surprise that Kathleen has received multiple endorsements, including the Boulder Valley Education Association and Boulder’s newspaper, the Daily Camera. The paper’s endorsement stated, “Kathy Gebhardt’s passion, experience and lifelong commitment to children make her the hands-down favorite and the candidate we endorse for the District C school board seat.”

Kevin Welner, professor at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education and director of the National Education Policy Center, has also endorsed Kathleen. He writes, “If school board members were hired through a normal application process, based on qualifications, Kathy would be hired immediately. No person in the state of Colorado is better qualified for such a position. She has worked tirelessly for two decades to get our children the supports and resources they need for their educations.”

NPE Action agrees that Kathleen’s qualifications are phenomenal, and we urge our members in Boulder to do everything they can to support Kathleen’s campaign. Please visit her website to learn more about her positions on the issues. We are sure you will agree that the Boulder Valley Schools will be well served by Kathleen, and hope you will donate or volunteer to help her win a seat on the school board.

Categories Colorado, Politics

John Thompson: The Administration’s Backtracking on VAM Is Good for a Belly Laugh

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2015 //
32

John Thompson, historian and teacher in Oklahoma, sees the bright side in the Obama administration’s apparent step-back from the testing regime it so loved.

He feels certain that the administration will go through some serious contortions to avoid admitting that the past seven years of test-and-punish was an outright mistake.

They might not want to be known as phase 2 of the Bush-Obama education program.

The most important opening that he sees is a ray of sunlight in the retreat from value-added-measurement, which educators despise.

Who knew that the administration praises Minnesota’s educator evaluation plan, which values test scores at 1% or less?

Of course, the overwhelming majority of the nation’s educators would completely strip the test score growth component out of any accountability framework for individuals. The best we could previously do, however, was help kick the value-added can down the road. This wasted money and educators’ energy, but it kept invalid and unreliable test score growth models from inflicting too much damage in the short run. It did so under the assumption that states would eventually tire of flushing those resources down the toilet in order to appease the federal government.

Now, the USDOE is basically inviting that delaying tactic. It endorses the District of Columbia’s backtracking. D.C. had once proclaimed its value-added evaluations as a great success but now it is seen as a model because it “has temporarily removed its value-added measures from its teacher and leader evaluation systems and continues to focus on providing quality feedback on its Teaching and Learning Framework/Leadership Framework.”

The Obama administration has not only demanded that student growth models be used as a part of “multiple measures,” it has insisted that these flawed and destructive metrics must count anywhere from 35 to 50% of teachers’ evaluations. Being realists, some educators have tried to water down test score growth metrics so that they become meaningless and thus harmless.

It could be argued that we need to give reformers a fig leaf, and accept a miniscule portion of an evaluation – say 1% – so that we don’t hurt corporate reformers’ feelings as we “monkey wrench” their scheme. If systems want to waste incredible amounts of money on testing and computer systems for keeping score in order to avoid admitting a mistake, that’s on them.

Guess what? The administration now supports Minnesota’s plan which allows “its districts to include state assessment based growth at any percent (even less than 1 percent).” The administration apparently agreed to this because Minnesota can pretend that it is gauging student learning growth measured by other factors.

And that suggests the obvious first step. Oklahoma and other states should immediately grab the low-hanging fruit and stop the indefensible policy of using test score growth guesti-mates for sanctioning individuals. I’d hate to have to continue to waste scarce resources on test-driven accountability, but I’d be willing to engage in a discussion of whether bubble-in growth should count as .01% of 1%, or .5% or even .99% of 1% of a teacher’s evaluation. It would be a process worthy of The Onion.

I hadn’t known enough about the Minnesota waiver the administration now claims to read in such a manner. So, I’d missed the humor of the situation. If the administration is willing to contort itself into such a pretzel in order to free us from the quantitative portion of teacher evaluations, we should enjoy the ride. If it will go through such contortions to avoid admitting a mistake and to not offend the Billionaires Boys Club who dumped this fiasco on us, it should prompt more than groans.

 

Thompson says we should not be too hard on the administration. Give them credit–or at least that fig leaf–to salute their symbolic retreat from the testing disaster. Please note that Thompson counts Colorado’s testing mania as one of the worst in the nation, based on a law written by ex-TFA State Senator Michael Johnston, who became the state’s leading advocate of high-stakes testing with his obnoxious S. 191. Johnston received some sort of commendation at Harvard a few months ago, for unknown reasons. For sure, no educator in Colorado is grateful for his foisting high-stakes testing on everyone else.

So, Thompson’s advice is to encourage the administration to keep backtracking while the rest of us enjoy an unexpected outburst of good sense and perhaps a good belly laugh.

Categories Colorado, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Historic News from Colorado: A Real Public Debate about “Reform”

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2015 //
11

Colorado public television Brian Malone’s documentary about the “reform”movement, called “Education, Inc.” The showing was followed by a debate, involving pro- and anti- views. 

This is a huge breakthrough, first, because Brian was able to bring the issue to a public audience. And second, because Colorado is a major stronghold of the “reform” movement. Senator Michael Bennett, former superintendent of the Denver schools, is a favorite of DFER (the hedge funders and equity investors), which is a source of funding for privatization. At every election, whether state or local, out of state money pours in to assure reformster control. Colorado also has one of the worst, most punitive educator evaluations in the nation, thanks to State Senator Michael Johnston (ex-TFA).

The panel discussing Brian’s film included Brian, the president of the Independence Institute (ALEC), the vice-president of the Colorado Education Association, the leader of a pro-school choice group, and a reporter from “Chalkbeat.” 

Here is the link to the program, which is the debate about it. To learn more about Brian’s excellent film, go to his website. 

Edincmovie.com

By the way, it was funded by Brian Malone.

Categories Colorado, Corporate Reform, Education Reform

High School Students in Colorado Opt Out of State Testing in Large Numbers

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2015 //
8

Colorado Chalkbeat reports that the opt out numbers were high in the state, especially for high school students. Only five of the state’s 20 large districts met the federal government’s requirement of a 95% participation rate. The greatest concentration of opt outs was in the 11th grade.

Changes are planned, but test critics don’t think it will make a difference. The biggest source of information and support for opting out was, apparently, students talking to other students.

The PARCC language arts and math tests were given in two sections, one in March and the second at the end of the school year. Many districts reported that opt-out rates were higher for the second set of tests.

High school assessments and the testing schedule both will change in 2016. Juniors won’t be tested in language arts and math, and there will be only a single testing “window” in April.

“I don’t claim to be a prophet, but, yeah, I expected high opt-out percentages,” said Republican Sen. Chris Holbert of Parker, who was heavily involved in legislative testing and opt-out debates. He also suggested high school refusal rates were significantly driven by students. “The awareness and them advocating to each other is more important.”

“Folks have been wondering where those big districts would fall. It’ll be an interesting convers what we do about those big districts with a high rate” of opt outs, said Bill Jaeger, a vice president with the Colorado Children’s Campaign. Jaeger served on the state task force that studied testing before the 2015 legislative session and has followed the issue closely.

As for the variation among districts, Jaeger said, “It’s an interesting finding to me, and there’s a whole host of explanations that I don’t think anyone’s explored.”

Noting testing changes made by both the legislature and the PARCC, Jaeger said, “It will be interesting to see if there is a restoration of confidence in the assessments.”

One testing critic, St. Vrain Superintendent Bob Haddad, doesn’t think that will happen.
“I don’t think it will make a difference,” Haddad said of testing reductions. “I don’t think you’re going to get parents and students back at the table … because there’s no trust” in the state testing system. “CMAS was summarily rejected by our students and parents.”

Categories Colorado, Opt Out, Standardized Testing, Students
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