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NY Parents Demand Responsive State Board

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2013 //
10

Parents in Néw York are organizing statewide to demand a state board of education that reflects the interests of parents and students. The board in Néw York is called the Board of Regents. It is appointed by the State Assembly, which is overwhelmingly Democratic. The speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, effectively decides who will be appointed to the Regents. The current board, led by Merryl Tisch, is solidly supportive of high-stakes testing, trst- based evaluation of teachers, and rapid implementation of the Common Core.

It would be enlightening if the members of the Board of Regents agreed to take the 8th grade math test and publish their scores. Wonder how many would pass? You can bet their enthusiasm would wane if they had to do unto others what they want done to themselves.

Here is the parents’ statement:

Parents Demand More Accountability in the Appointment of Members of the Board of Regents

Parents across New York State are demanding that members of the Board of Regents up for re-appointment this March, Regents Christine Cea, James Jackson, James Cotrell, and Wade Norwood, publicly clarify their positions on the current education reforms.

“Those members of the Board of Regents who do not support an agenda that includes an immediate moratorium on high stakes Common Core testing and the sharing of student data must be replaced with new members who will recognize their responsibility to protect our children and our schools,” said Eric Mihelbergel, a public school parent in Buffalo and a founding member of the NYS Allies for Public Education. Mihelbergel went on to say, “the people of New York have lost confidence in Commissioner John King, Chancellor Merryl Tisch and the current Board of Regents to call a halt to these destructive education policies.”

Lisa Rudley, a public school parent in Ossining and a founding member of NYS Allies for Public Education, said “As evidenced in the Albany Times Union, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2013, the Regents’ policy on allowing privately funded fellows with little to no public education experience to drive curriculum calls into question the integrity of the system. We need an educational plan in New York not a marketing plan.”

The process of electing Board of Regents members has long been an elusive process that has not been widely understood by the public. Persons wishing to apply for a position submit a resume to Assemblywomen Catherine Nolan, Chair of the Education Committee, and Deborah Glick, Chair of the Higher Education Committee, by January 31, 2014. In-person interviews are then conducted in Albany in February by Nolan and Glick.

Although all legislators vote in early March, the process is controlled by the Democratic Majority of the Assembly. Many Republican members abstain from the voting process altogether, because it is so strongly controlled by the Democratic Majority and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Legislators are typically given less than 24-hour’s notice of the vote, and up to now, a current Regent is almost automatically re-appointed until they resign or retire.

“As a parent of four school-aged children, I am shocked at how the majority of Regents members have not listened to the protests of their constituents — parents, educators and members of the communities whose interests they are supposed to serve, and have been silent while the Commissioner imposes one damaging policy after another. It is time for REAL change at the Board of Regents and at the NYS Education Department” said Tim Farley, a parent and a principal of the Ichabod Crane School in Kinderhook, New York.

NYS Allies for Public Education is proposing parents adopt an Action Plan to lobby their legislators to appoint four Board of Regents members who will support a call for a moratorium on high-stakes testing, data sharing, and the Common Core modules and curriculum. In alignment with this goal, the organization will be sending out a survey to the current Regents members whose terms are up, as well as other applicants for these positions, to seek and publicize their views on these critical issues.

Jeanette Deutermann, public school parent in Bellmore and Long Island Opt-Out Facebook founder, says, “Parents will no longer allow Board of Regents members to be re-elected when they are not doing their job for children. We will hold legislators accountable for their votes for or against individual Regents. New Regents must be elected that support a moratorium on current practices.”

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters and a founding member of NYS Allies for Public Education said, “Many educators have pointed out the high costs and low quality of the Common Core modules adopted by the NYS Education Department. These critics include Carol Burris, an award-winning NY Principal who in the Washington Post, pointed out that NYSED paid more than $14 million for faulty math modules produced by a company called Common Core Inc. At the same time, this same company has received millions from the Gates Foundation, which also spent $100 million to fund inBloom Inc., a corporation that is collecting highly sensitive and personal student information without parental consent, and putting it on a data cloud, so that it can more easily be shared with for-profit vendors.”

Though seven of the nine original inBloom states have pulled out, Commissioner King says he is determined to go ahead with this data-mining project, and is sharing the personal information for the entire state’s public school students with inBloom, despite the protests of parents, school board members, and Superintendents, as well as a lawsuit filed in court two weeks ago. The Gates Foundation is also helping to pay for the salaries of the Regents fellows who have been placed in charge of implementing the Common Core and this data-sharing project.

“This evident conflict of interest calls into serious question who is controlling education policies in this state, and whether private funders have been allowed undue influence over our children,” says Bianca Tanis, a public school parent in New Paltz and steering member of Re-Thinking Testing Mid-Hudson Region.

New York State Allies for Public Education represents forty-five grassroots parent groups from every corner of the Empire State. The organizations are proud to stand with the parents, community members and fellow educators in NYSAPE to call for a change in direction and policy beginning with new leadership at the New York State Education Department.

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“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Margaret Mead

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

Alan Singer: New York’s Secret Education Policymakers

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2013 //
27

In this article at Huffington Post, Alan Singer has investigated the secret, privately funded apparatus that designs education policy in New York State.

The group is known as the Regents Research Fellows, but they are not subject to any public oversight.

They are appointed by the state commissioner, funded by big foundations, and seem to have more authority than the duly appointed Board of Regents.

It is an unusual arrangement, to say the least, in that the Fellows operate outside the legal framework of state law.

Who are they?

“The initial group of Regents Research fellows included, Matthew Gross, executive director of the fund, who previously recruited business leaders to partner with schools. Gross was originally a Teach for America recruit. Other fellows were Kristen Huff, a former College Board research director who developed their advanced placement and SAT testing programs; Amy McIntosh, formerly CEO of Zagat Survey and a senior vice president at a company that provides business information, previously developed teacher and principal effectiveness strategies for the New York City Department of Education; Julia Rafal, fellow for teacher and principal effectiveness was a TFA graduate and consultant for charter schools; and Kate Gerson. Gerson is promoted as a former New York City teacher and school principal who brings legitimate educational credentials and experience to the table. The reality however is that Gerson only worked for two years at a transfer school for over-aged-under-credited students before leaving for an organization called New Leaders for Schools.

“Later fellows have included Peter Swerdzewski, a psychometrics specialist from the College Board; Joshua Marland, another a psychometrics specialist; Jason Schweid, also recruited from the College Board; Joshua Skolnick, an attorney, assumed Gross’s management and fund raising responsibilities when Gross resigned; TFA graduates Ha My Vu and Joyce Macek; Beth Wurtmann, a television reporter; Jennifer Sattem; Doug Jaffe, a lawyer; Anu Malipatil, a TFA graduate and charter school advocate who also works for the Two Sigma Investment company; and Wendy Perdomo, a New York City DOE bureaucrat with no apparent teaching experience.”

Government in a democratic society should be transparent and accountable. This group is neither.

Categories Common Core, New York, Teacher Evaluations

Raginghorse Blog: How Coddled Are Opinion Writers for New York Times?

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2013 //
25

The blogger called Raginghorse has noticed some important facts about the opinion writers in the New York Times:

Several have written glowing articles about the Common Core standards.

None offers any evidence that they have read the standards.

All report what the press releases say about the standards.

Most ridicule their critics as extremists and pay no attention to parents or teachers, who arguably know more about the standards than writers for the Times who are unfamiliar with the standards.

None seems to have undertaken any research into the issues.

In short, their opinions are shallow and uninformed.

One might reasonably say that pontificating without research or knowledge indicates the musings of the coddled.

Categories Common Core

Resist Educational Apartheid Now or Get More of It

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2013 //
40

Superintendent Steve Cohen’s article, posted this morning, got a huge response and many tweets and retweets.

Here he speaks directly to a reader of his post:

“We’ve had at least 30 years of plutocratic leadership in the US, and that reality puts us way behind the curve. What other choice do we have but to gather up our political, moral, cultural resources and resist? These resources may prove to be insufficient. But we know that doing nothing, or believing that our plutocrats are democrats, will just bring us more of what we have. If parents care about their kids’ futures, they must step up, and soon.

In the 1934 gubernatorial election in California, a Methodist minister was asked why he intended to vote for Upton Sinclair, who was then running far behind the Dem and Rep candidates. Wasn’t a vote for Sinclair a “wasted” vote? The minister’s response was, “I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it, than to vote for something I don’t want and get plenty of it.”

We’re at such a point. We need a third party. Now.”

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

Jersey Jazzman Schools Frank Bruni

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2013 //
10

Jersey Jazzman has words of wisdom for Néw York Times columnist Frank Bruni. Bruni recently wrote, in defense of the Common Core standards, claimed that American kids are “coddled.”

Read his post in its entirety. He calls it “Dumb Things White People Say About Schools: Frank Bruni.”

This is how he begins:

“Let me start by apologizing to Tom Friedman. You see, for years I’ve thought that the Mustache of Understanding was the silliest, most wankeriffic pontificator within in the NY Times’s Op-Ed Page hierarchy of mandarins. But it’s clear to me now I was completely wrong. The proof?

Frank Bruni’s latest column, in which he jumps into the pool of education policy unencumbered by the water wings of knowledge.”

Categories Common Core, Students

LI Superintendent Blasts Board of Regents for “Educational Apartheid”

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2013 //
62

Steve Cohen, superintendent of the Shoreham-Wading River School District, published an editorial in the local newspaper blasting the New York Board of Regents.

Many educators are afraid to speak out against what they know is wrong because they fear for their jobs. Teachers may be fired. Principals may be fired. Superintendents may be fired. When anyone expresses their professional judgment without fear and says what’s right for children, it takes courage. For teachers, it is best to do it en masse. The same for principals. Superintendents are leaders of their community and are in a position to make a new path. They can lead opinion. More should do so.

I am happy to add Steve Cohen to our honor roll.

High schools have always prepared students for college and careers, he writes. But the Regents have a new idea.

He writes:

First, consider exactly how the Board of Regents defines “College and Career Ready.”

If a student passes an algebra test in 8th or 9th grade at a level that correlates to a C in freshman mathematics in college, and if that same student passes an English test in 11th grade at a level correlated with a C in freshman English in college, along with earning 22 credits in high school and passing three other Regents exams, then she or he is set and ready to go to college and into the world of work.

No music, art, advanced study in much of anything; no community service, no sports, no occupational training; no independent work in any academic or other creative field is required. In addition, to do well on these tests, it is not necessary to read entire novels or histories or write papers of any length or complexity. It is not necessary to develop a love of anything or demonstrate an ability to think on one’s own feet.

Second, note that 16 of the 17 Board of Regents members, in addition to the commissioner of education himself, send their children to private schools — ones that have not embraced the reforms the Board of Regents and the commissioner claim are needed to make students “College and Career Ready.” I mention this fact because its relevance becomes obvious once one understands what “College and Career Ready” means for the children of our educational leaders. You see, the colleges that the children of Regents and commissioners of education are expected to attend, places like Harvard University, define “College and Career Ready” differently.

But this is not what is expected by elite universities, who want so much more for their students.

And he adds:

So it turns out that “College and Career Ready” means two different things depending on whether you are a public school student in New York or a student at an expensive private school. “College and Career Ready” for public school kids means achieving at a decidedly mediocre level when compared to the expectations the Regents have for their own children. Perhaps that’s one reason they would never send them to schools that are benefiting from their wonderful reforms.

For “College and Career Ready,” once one digs a bit below the surface, suggests readying public school students for work that does not demand advanced learning in anything and is not oriented toward preparing students to “take advantage of future learning opportunities of all kinds.” No, these loftier expectations, and the courses and other resources needed to achieve them, are to be reserved for students not subject to the glories of the Regents Reform Agenda, students whose parents have the money and connections to keep them out of the public school system.

Most new jobs created in our economy are low-paying service jobs. We should be concerned that “College and Career Ready” actually refers to a curriculum that guides public school students to these jobs, leaving the few good jobs to students who receive a private high school education that prepares them to “take advantage of future learning opportunities of all kinds.”

Make no mistake about it, “College and Career Ready” is code for education apartheid. Do not let your children breathe the stale air of low expectations, reduced exposure to the arts and music, limited engagement with sophisticated science and little, if any, prolonged, deep and thoughtful contact with great literature.

“College and Career Ready” is a trap. Don’t fall for it. Your kids deserve better. Just like theirs.

Categories Common Core, Honor Roll, New York

Paul Karrer: My Students Are Not Coddled

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2013 //
15

Paul Karrer teaches fifth grade in a low-income community in California.

He writes:

Frank Bruni’s New York Times piece “Are Kids Too Coddled?” basically states tougher education standards like the Common Core may require a tough love that some parents and educators don’t like. So some parents are opting their kids out of testing.

Mr. Bruni is a journalist not an educator and it shows. He’s done a very harmful fluff piece on parents who “coddle” their young kids. He misses the many valid points that testing is a total waste unless it is diagnostic for kids. It should not be used for teacher evaluations. It is a destructive input into our educational system because it is subtractive to the content of what we teach. High stakes testing only causes test preparation. Plus, it sucks money out of the classroom.

Mr. Bruni is most fortunate that his life experience is around the sheltered, pampered, and the entitled. But even so, the conclusions he draws are incorrect. Even the entitled know testing is basely wrong, but testing and more testing for those who reside in the clutches of poverty is criminal.

Putting aside my first impulse to deeply insert some number two pencils (erasers first will be my humane gesture) in Mr. Bruni’s ears, I’d like to comment on coddling and reality for the vast majority of us in schools with children swaddled in the luxurious lap of desperate poverty.

Two weeks ago we had parent conferences – my cherubs are ten or eleven years old. A nice age. One parent confided that her child wore a diaper. (I hadn’t noticed – AH HA… THAT’S WHY THE CHILD WEARS BAGGY PANTS ALL THE TIME. )

Later, another parent had her kids spinning around me during our conference. One is on meds (not something I like or recommend) turns out the parent is a recovering meth addict, only the recovering part is in much doubt.

At last year’s conference an Anglo mom brought in her three children. All incredibly low performers, with low attendance rates, and low ability. In the middle of the conference her cell phone rang. For a milli-second this annoyed me. The youngest of the girls beamed at me, “Dad’s ready to cross.”

“Cross?” I asked.

“Yup, he’s at the frontier.”

“Frontier?”

The mom interrupted her daughter, “We are at the girls’ teacher conference. Her teacher is here.” The mom addressed me, “Their dad says hello.”

The mom refocused on the call, “When you going? Ok..we love you and will pray for you.”

She turned her phone off and couldn’t eyeball me. “Their dad was deported. He’s in the Mexican desert ready to make an illegal crossing on the frontier…the border.”

The girls are all 100% US citizens as is the mom. They linked up with their dad days later, but live on luck’s flip and poverty’s edge. They also moved….again.

Coddle….no, Mr. Bruni we don’t coddle our kids very much. I wish we could. But I hug them a lot…it keeps me from crying.

Categories Common Core, Poverty, Students, Testing

Common Core on Teaching the Gettysburg Address: What a Travesty!

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2013 //
102

The Common Core emphasizes the importance of “close reading,” that is, understanding the meaning of a text without reference to context or background knowledge, which presumably might privilege some students over others.

In this post, Valerie Strauss explains how the writers of the Common Core conceptualize the teaching of the Gettysburg Address. It was delivered by President Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, nearly five months after the Battle of Gettysburg, where Union forces defeated the Confederate army.

Strauss writes:

The unit — “A Close Reading of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address“ — is designed for students to do a “close reading” of the address “with text-dependent questions” — but without historical context. Teachers are given a detailed 29-page script of how to teach the unit, with the following explanation:

The idea here is to plunge students into an independent encounter with this short text. Refrain from giving background context or substantial instructional guidance at the outset. It may make sense to notify students that the short text is thought to be difficult and they are not expected to understand it fully on a first reading — that they can expect to struggle. Some students may be frustrated, but all students need practice in doing their best to stay with something they do not initially understand. This close reading approach forces students to rely exclusively on the text instead of privileging background knowledge, and levels the playing field for all students as they seek to comprehend Lincoln’s address.

The Gettysburg Address unit can be found on the Web site of Student Achievement Partners, a nonprofit organization founded by three people described as “lead authorsof the Common Core State Standards.” They are David Coleman,  now president of the College Board who worked on the English Language Arts standards; Jason Zimba, who worked on the math standards; and Susan Pimental, who worked on the ELA standards. The organization’s Linked In biography also describes the three as the “lead writers of the Common Core State Standards.”

Strauss added a letter from a teacher who complained about the insufficiency of “close reading” when considering a text so fraught with meaning as the Gettysburg address. How is a student to understand the text while knowing nothing about where or why it was delivered?

In this post, Paul Horton–who teaches history at the University Lab School in Chicago–reacts to Valerie Strauss’s column on the Common Core “close reading” of the Gettysburg Address.

Horton writes:

The reading of the Gettysburg Address for the authors of the Common Core Standards is an exercise in the acquisition of literacy. The document is cut away from any context that would allow students to understand its historical significance.

This idea, after all, is the whole point of the postwar evolution of the “New Criticism”: literary value is determined by a work’s internal complexity: the tensions between elements or particulars and symbols, as leading “new critic” John Crowe Ransom who was the founding editor of the Kenyon Review might say.

Students who read the Address will be assessed on developing a short essay discussion of three main ideas discussed. The short essay will be graded according to a rubric that looks for key words, organization, and the repetition of key ideas.

He notes that this vitally important speech is shorn of any historical meaning when it is subjected to “close reading.”

Why the “close reading,” absent context?

It makes student answers easier to grade by machine.

Horton writes:

When the test makers designed the standards and the curriculum, they were not concerned with what the kids are learning or with anything that could possibly resemble knowledge. They created tests that could be graded easily and cheaply, either by teams that had been validated on an airtight rubric, or by computer algorithms.

And he adds:

If you were to write about the unbearable sadness of feeling the weight of hundreds of thousands of deaths and families torn asunder, you would fail your Pearson test. The state Superintendent’s “cut” might feel like an amputation.

Context? Don’t they do that in history class? From what I have seen, the Common Core snippet patrol can pare “Big History” down to a couple of milliseconds of not so cosmic time. History is lucky to get a “New York minute” these days. Schools are letting go of all of the old farts and marms who teach in depth research and who care about “significance.”

If you don’t know that the winter of 1863 was a tough time because of all of those details that the retired and fired teachers took with them when they cleared their desks, you would be a great candidate for teaching the “Gettysburg Address” and History with the script handed you by our genius test makers.

How is it possible for any student to understand the meaning of the Gettysburg Address without knowing the historical context in which it was delivered?

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Common Core, Curriculum

New York: Speakers at Public Forum Again Blast Commissioner King, Regents, Common Core, Testing

By dianeravitch
November 27, 2013 //
18

Another public forum in the suburbs of New York City, and another nearly unanimous display of outrage towards the policymakers in New York state.

Commissioner John King has made clear again and again that nothing said at these public forums will change his course of action.

He will stick to the Common Core and the testing no matter what parents and teachers say.

And so will the Board of Regents.

Of course, this display of disdain toward the public only serves to raise the temperature, and speakers were plenty heated by the knowledge that no one was listening.

According to the report linked here,

“They’re mad as hell — and they’re not going to take it anymore.

A Common Core forum held at Eastport-South Manor Tuesday night brought out scores of parents, educators and students who echoed a common refrain of disappointment, despair and anger over a curriculum they said stands to dim the light of learning in their children.”

Many were outspoken:

“Setting up kids to fail is damaging to their self-esteem,” said Kathleen Hedder of the Rocky Point Board of Education. “How can you accurately rate progress if no one understands the rules and the game has changed mid-stream?”

Added Jan Achilich, director of special education at the Remsenburg-Speonk Union Free School District, added, “What you are doing is tantamount to physically throwing them into a rushing river without a life preserver.”

The Blue Ribbon school, she said, where music and dance have long been celebrated, is “now a place where anxiety and stress shadow our days.”

Concerns were raised about special education students who cannot keep up to a cookie-cutter standard.

Achilich asked King to reevaluate the current situation.

Others blasted King.

Julie Lofstad of the Hampton Bays Mothers Association lashed into the commissioner. “Can you explain why our children aren’t as important to you as Mattel?” she asked. The toy company, she said, recalled toys that were “potentially harmful. Why don’t you recall the Common Core? Why aren’t you willing to admit the Common Core is flawed, and needs to be fixed, or the program scrapped?”

A local school board president said,

“This is a program that breaks the children, not educates,” he said. “It is destroying our children. Allow our teachers to teach, not be proctors.”

“Shame on you,” said Chris Tice of the Sag Harbor school board. “Please tell us specifically how you are going to fix this and give us a timeline.”

King responded by saying there was a “great gap” between the evening’s conversation and what is happening in classrooms that he’s visited, where children are writing and reading more challenging texts — his words were met by a loud outcry from the audience.

The standards were adopted in 2010 and would be phased in over seven years.

“They won’t be here in 2017 and neither will you,” one audience member yelled. 

John King again made clear that he disagrees with the public. They are wrong, he is right. Period. ”

He disagreed that Common Core instruction was “less joyful” and said he saw kids happy in their classroom. “Joy and rigor in learning aren’t opposites.”

The article does not mention the appearance of any members of the Tea Party or (as Frank Bruni put it recently in the New York Times) “left-wing paranoiacs.”

The speakers were parents and teachers and school board members in the local communities.

 

Categories Common Core, New York

A Texan Responds to Frank Bruni About “Coddling” and the Common Core

By dianeravitch
November 26, 2013 //
28

This comment came from a reader:

Diane,

In response to the Frank Bruni article in the NYT I wanted to share with you what I shared with my colleagues at the Schlechty Center. I am a Senior Associate with the Center, a former school superintendent in Texas and was heavily involved in the effort of the Texas Association of School Administrators in developing the document, “Creating A New Vision for Public Education in Texas”, with which you are familiar. Here is what I shared:

We have always had some parents who were over protective, but to use current parental reactions to Common Core and abusive uses of standardized tests as evidence that todays children are being “coddled” is a gross misinterpretation of what parents are saying. The “suburban white moms” comment from Secretary Duncan, which was the trigger for this article, is a misinterpretation and a misrepresentation as well as a mischaracterization. The suburban schools I am familiar with are highly competitive environments and in many cases a lot of children are pushed too hard, are expected to be involved in numerous organized activities in and out of school, leaving little time to “be children”.

More disturbing is how dismissive the author is of the critics of Common Core and the associated testing. He categorized the critics from extreme conservative to extreme liberal and those engaging in imaginary conspiracies about privatization. The latter is a veiled slap at the work of Diane Ravitch. The criticism of CC and the test-based accountability are real, growing, and based on legitimate concerns. The privatization movement is well substantiated. To reframe the discussion as “too much coddling” may be an attempt to shift the focus of the debate. The fact that 17 states are now backing away from Common Core is probably alarming to the so-called “reformers”, Secretary Duncan, Jeb Bush, etc. –and perhaps to this author.

If one looks closely at the criticisms, they are more about the standardized tests, arbitrary cut scores, and failing labels, etc., as the single means of assessing and reporting on the Common Core, than they are about the standards themselves. As Phil has asserted for years, when high stakes are attached to the assessments, the assessments become the standards.

John Horn

Categories Common Core
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