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New Orleans: Researchers Find That Charter Schools Dropped Pre-K Because of Cost

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2017 //
28

The Education Research Alliance for New Orleans issued a report about Pre-Kindergarten in the nearly all-charter district. It found that the growth of charter schools had a negative effect on pre-kindergarten because of the lack of funding.

In this study, we examine how the growth of charter schools in New Orleans affected pre-kindergarten (pre-K) program offerings as the school system transitioned from a centralized school system to an almost-all-charter district. In Louisiana, charter schools can opt into offering state subsidized pre-K for low-income and special-needs students, but the per pupil funding level is far below the average cost of educating a pre-K student. In New Orleans’ decentralized setting, schools offering pre-K must cover this funding gap from other sources of revenue.

School districts and charter schools have different incentives for offering optional educational services, such as pre-K. In order to better understand school-level decision making, we interviewed school leaders about their reasons for offering or not offering pre-K. We also analyzed data from 2007 to 2015 to determine whether charter schools that offer pre-K programs gain a competitive advantage over those that do not. Our key findings are:

After the reforms, the number of schools offering pre-K and the number of school-based pre-K seats dropped, even after accounting for drops in kindergarten enrollment. The decrease in seats occurred primarily in charter schools.
At charter schools that continued to offer pre-K after Katrina, school leaders offered two school-centered motivations – pursuit of higher test scores and early recruitment of families committed to sticking with the school for the long-run – in addition to more mission-focused commitments to providing early education for the benefit of students and the community.

Through analyses of student test scores from 2012 to 2015, we find that offering pre-K had no measurable effect on charter schools’ third grade math or ELA test scores, potentially as a result of high student mobility between pre-K and third grade.

Charter schools that offered pre-K programs saw short-term, but not long-term, enrollment benefits. On average, charter schools with pre-K filled half of their kindergarten seats with existing pre-K students, whereas schools that did not offer these programs had to fill all kindergarten seats with new students. However, charter schools offering pre-K did not have any advantage in persistent student enrollment after kindergarten.

It is important to emphasize that our results do not speak to the important and cost-effective benefits of pre-K for students, as those have been well established in prior research. Rather, the study is meant to show how charter-based reforms influence how and why pre-K and other optional educational programs are offered in almost-all-charter systems. While we discuss below new efforts to address the shortfall of pre-K seats, our study provides initial evidence that decentralization without offsetting financial incentives can lead to reduced investments in programs that advance the broader social goals of public education.

Categories Charter Schools, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Early Childhood Education, New Orleans, Privatization

The Horror: Here Comes Baby PISA, Testing 5-Year-Olds

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2017 //
19

The testing monster is coming for our children.

Helge Wasmuth of Mercy College in New York writes here about the full-steam-ahead plan for international testing of five-year-Old children. As he reports, the planning has excluded experts on Early Childhood Education and has been shrouded in secrecy.

This is the latest and most disgusting manifestation of what Pasi Sahlberg dubbed GERM (the Global Education Reform Movement).

Wasmuth predicts that Baby PISA will lead to:

“increased standardization, high-stakes accountability, predetermined learning outcomes, control over teachers, business-based management models, and privatization.

“The goal of the study is to gather information on children’s cognitive and social-emotional skills as well as characteristics of their home and early education environments. Direct assessment, including actual samples of student work, will measure the domains of emerging literacy and numeracy, executive function, and empathy and trust. Children will be expected to do their work on a tablet, devoting approximately 15 minutes to each domain over a period of two days. Indirect assessment—parents’ and staff reports and administrator observations—will focus on cognitive and social-emotional skills. By participating in the study, OECD asserts, member nations will have access to the primary factors that drive or thwart early learning, developing a common framework and benchmarks.

“The study is now underway. A pilot that was originally planned, which would have provided a valuable opportunity for meaningful feedback and fine-tuning, has been scrapped. The organization has moved forward with data collection, to be conducted from the end of 2017 through 2019. This will be followed by so-called “quality control” and analysis, and the release of a report in 2020.

“While the original plan called for participation by three to six countries in the northern and southern hemispheres, a number of early childhood communities have already successfully registered protest, urging their governments to abstain. (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, and Denmark are among them.) The only outliers are England—Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not taking part—and the United States…

“Critique of the IELS has been fierce, and numerous concerns have been raised. Most egregious is the marginalization of the wider early childhood community. “The entire IELS project has been shrouded in secrecy from day one,” Mathias Urban, director of the Early Childhood Research Centre at the University of Roehampton in London, told me. Respected researchers and scholars in the field were not consulted, their input unwelcome. As has long been the case with early education policy, decades of research have been ignored.

“The OECD values objectivity, universality, predictability and that which can be measured. The organization seems to be oblivious to alternative ideas about educating and caring for young children. Nor have local contexts and traditions for this process been part of the conversation…

“So, why is all of this shrouded in secrecy? Why are we kept in the dark? Why are the experts and the field’s knowledge marginalized? One needs to ask: Who really benefits from such a study? The children? Will it really inform policymaking and improve educational practices in a meaningful way? Or is it another piece to open up public education sectors to corporate interests?

The disregard of the early childhood community is concerning enough. Don’t even get me started on the collection of child-based data on a global scale without the consent of children, parents, or practitioners. Or with assessing five-year-olds on a tablet. How flawed and meaningless are the results. How do you assess trust and empathy, or the complexities of learning and development?

“The impact on our field will be disastrous—maybe not immediately, but soon enough. OECD is a powerful and influential institution. Everyone should be clear about their goals of creating a common framework with benchmarks and assessing learning outcomes. Early childhood education will be reduced to what can be measured: literacy and numeracy.

“Ultimately, the field will fall even deeper into the clutches of GERM. Many countries will feel compelled to do well on the IELS, and the easiest way to do that is to align the curricula to what is measured. Pedagogical compliance will follow, along with teaching to the test—especially in countries, such as the U.S., with many private providers of early education, who will use their outcomes to win new customers. As in the case of the Common Core, a new market will be created, “Aligned to IELS” the new trademark.

“The quest for predictable outcomes leaves no place for the hallmarks of early childhood—for uncertainty, experimentation, surprise, amazement, context, subjective experiences. OECD values and measures what can be measured, but not necessarily what is important.”

Baby PISA opens a Pandora’s box. Out of it flies standardization, conformity, inappropriate pedagogy. Trapped in the box will Be Children, yearning to play.

Categories Childhood, Early Childhood Education, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International

Hearings for Top ED Department Officials Start at 2:30 PM Today

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2017 //
7

If you are near a TV at 2:30 pm and afterwards, please report back on these hearings:

From Politico:

TWO EDUCATION NOMINEES FACE CONGRESS TODAY: The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this afternoon will take up the nominations of two people for top Education Department jobs – Mick Zais for deputy secretary and Jim Blew for assistant secretary of the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. Both are expected to face tough questions from Democrats about Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ record on education issues and her decisions this year. They could field a number of tough questions about their own records as well.

– Zais, a retired Army brigadier general, checks off a lot of conservative boxes. He was most recently superintendent of South Carolina schools until he announced in 2014 that he wouldn’t run for reelection. As superintendent, Zais refused to participate in the Obama administration’s signature Race to the Top program, which encouraged states to adopt more rigorous academic standards like the Common Core in exchange for federal grants. Zais saw the standards, which were never mandated by the Obama administration, as federal overreach.

– Ranking Democrat Patty Murray could raise concerns about Zais’ past support for expanding school choice and his skepticism over early childhood education, according to prepared remarks shared by a Democratic aide with Morning Education. Zais previously opposed expanding public kindergarten for 4-year-olds, citing costs and that it could put private- and faith-based programs out of business. He has also been skeptical about the lasting benefits of early childhood education, citing studies of Head Start, a federal preschool program for low-income families.

– Murray could also raise concerns about Zais’ past support for abstinence-based sex education and about comments he made in 2014, reported by The Post and Courier at the time, about the teaching of natural selection in schools. Zais said, “We ought to teach both sides” of the principle “and let students draw their own conclusions.” Murray is expected to tell Zais that his comments “make me question your ability to help set a course for this agency based on facts, science and evidence.”

– Blew, in turn, is the director of the advocacy group Student Success of California, which advocates for performance-based systems for teachers and supports charter schools. He has also served as president of Students First, the national advocacy organization founded by former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Murray plans to raise concerns about Blew’s history of supporting school choice, noting that the office he has been nominated for “is critical in developing and implementing policy – which impacts every student in the country. So your record of promoting school vouchers gives me pause that you will not stand up for students and public schools.”

– Chairman Lamar Alexander is expected to say that Zais “has an excellent and deep background” for the position of deputy secretary, according to prepared remarks provided by a Republican aide. Alexander will also note that Blew has spent two decades working to improve “educational opportunities for families and children by overseeing grants to low-income, high risk schools.”

– Absent from the hearing will be Michigan state Rep. Tim Kelly, after the Trump administration this week formally pulled his nomination for a top career and technical education post at the Education Department. Kelly, a Republican, was axed because of statements that he made on his blog, the “Citizen Leader,” between 2009 and 2012. In his blog, Kelly called for banning all Muslims from air travel, said that women aren’t interested in science careers and labeled low-income preschool parents “academically and socially needy.” In an interview with POLITICO last week, Kelly accused the “deep state,” “haters” and federal employees who don’t like President Donald Trump for making the nomination process “toxic” and “intrusive.”

– The hearing starts at 2:30 p.m. in 430 Dirksen. Watch the livestream here.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Early Childhood Education, School Choice, U.S. Department of Education

The Lessons of Virginia

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2017 //
59

Here are a few of the lessons I take away from the crucial Virginia elections. You may have others. Feel free to chime in.

First, the Trump message of ”American carnage” (the theme of his inaugural address) failed. Appeals to fear didn’t work. The blatant and latent warnings about crime, immigration, race, and insecurity lost. Virginians Close hope over fear.

Second, Trump phony themes of patriotism, delivered by references to athletes taking a knee and sacred Confederate statues, were not enough to overcome opposition to Trump and Trumpism. Voters are not dumb. They see through the smokescreen.

Third, Democrats win by uniting their base, including parents and teachers. Northam spoke positively about Virginia’s public schools and promised to reduce the burden of testing, to expand early childhood education, and to improve teachers’ Salaries. Not a word about charters or choice.

His pledge:

“Our kids deserve to go to schools where they feel safe and get the highest quality education. We can’t allow the Trump Administration to destroy the success of Virginia’s public schools, public universities, or community college system. Ralph will fight to defend our public schools and will support classroom innovation to develop new methods of teaching our kids the skills they need for a 21st century economy.

“As a member of the Children’s Cabinet, Dr. Northam and the McAuliffe administration are helping our most challenged schools combat chronic absenteeism and poor academic performance — but there’s still work to do. The commonwealth of Virginia spends, on average, $80 million per year to remediate students in kindergarten through third grade. We need to reevaluate how we test our youngest students and ensure we’re putting them on track for success at the beginning of their academic careers. A big part of addressing this issue is making sure quality pre-K is available to all young Virginians — though it also involves challenging conventional methods of student assessments and alternatives to having students repeat grades at early ages.”

There is more.

Every Democratic Candidate in 2018 should read Dr. Notham’s commonsense approach to education.

Categories Early Childhood Education, Support for public schools, Teacher Pay, Virginia

Nancy Carlsson-Paige: This is the Way to Do Early Childhood Education Right!

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2017 //
9

Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an expert in early childhood education, recently visited Nova Scotia, Canada, and returned excited about what she saw there.

She realized that Nova Scotia has the right framework for ECE, and the United States is heading in the wrong direction.

In this illuminating article, she describes the Nova Scotia program.

For starters, the program was written by experts in early childhood education, unlike the Common Core standards, which did not include anyone from the field and produced developmentally inappropriate standards and curriculum for young children.

An excerpt:

The Nova Scotia Framework focuses on the whole child — on cognitive, social, emotional and physical development — and the importance of a holistic view of the child that includes personal, social and cultural contexts. The U.S. approach is to teach bits of information and isolated skills.

The Nova Scotia Framework emphasizes dispositions for learning such as curiosity, creativity, confidence, imagination and persistence. It emphasizes processes such as problem solving, experimenting and inquiry. The U.S. approach emphasizes memorization and expects all children to learn the same things at the same time.

The Nova Scotia Framework views the child as a participant in her or his own learning — a co-constructor of knowledge who contributes to shaping the learning experience. The U.S. approach consists of telling children what they should learn, with activities and outcomes predetermined.

The Nova Scotia Framework describes play as one of the highest achievements of the human species. It emphasizes the critical role of play in learning and the increasing recognition by researchers and policymakers of the role of play in fostering capacities such as investigating, asking questions, creativity, solving problems and thinking critically. Play is seen as vital to building a wide range of competencies such as language development, self regulation and conflict resolution. In the U.S. approach, play is minimized and considered secondary to acquisition of academic skills.

Read the rest of this article for yourself.

Early childhood educators know all of this. It is what they believe. It is what they teach and practice, when they are allowed to do so.

Yet in every state, the standards for early childhood education violate the basic principles of learning.

Get out the pitchforks, parents and teachers.

Change is needed.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Early Childhood Education, Play

New York: Regents Set to Adopt Harsh Test-and-Punish Regime

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2017 //
51

Despite the failure of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, despite the cruel pressures of this approach on very young children, the New York State Board of Regents is set to adopt a punitive plan (to meet the requirements of the new “Every Student Succeeds Act”). Common sense and concern for education values appears to have disappeared from Albany.

Cruelest of all: the state will retain the absurd Common Core standards for the littlest children, K-2 (with a new name, of course).

Districts with high numbers of opt outs will be punished.

Here is the summary in Newsday, by John Hildebrand, showing how little impact parent activism has had on the Board of Regents. Sorry to note, the state teachers’ union applauds these retrograde decisions. (Postscript: I hear the state teachers’ union is discussing their position, so the quote in this article may not be the last word.P

“ALBANY — Sweeping new objectives for school districts and students, with potential effects on controversial state tests and academic standards, are on the state Board of Regents agenda at its first meeting since classes resumed for the 2017-18 academic year.

“The 17-member educational policy board on Monday will tackle the issue of regulating districts as it works toward agreement on enforcement of the revamped federal law called the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. New York, like many other states, must submit its enforcement plan to the U.S. Department of Education by Sept. 18 for final approval.

“A 200-page draft plan, under review since May, would regulate schools on a range of objectives important to Long Island.

“Those include steps to discourage students from boycotting state tests — a movement that last spring swept up about 19 percent of more than 1 million students statewide in grades three through eight eligible to take the exams. That included about 90,000 students in Nassau and Suffolk counties, more than 50 percent of the region’s test-takers in those grades.

“Later on Monday, the Regents are scheduled to approve new academic standards, formerly known as Common Core and recently renamed as Next Generation Learning standards. The detailed guidelines — 1,048 standards in English and 450 in math — encompass classroom lessons from preschool through 12th grade statewide.

“The actions, while distinct from one another, are largely intended to settle controversies over student testing and school accountability that began rocking the state more than seven years ago. Though disagreements continue, policy experts said the Regents’ upcoming actions could set the state’s educational course for years to come.

“They’re kind of like cornerstone initiatives,” said Robert Lowry, deputy director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents and a veteran observer of Albany politics. “The standards define what students are supposed to learn, and ESSA defines how schools will be held accountable for teaching students.”

“Highlights of proposals the Regents are expected to consider include:

“School districts that don’t meet federal requirements for student participation in testing — and that includes all but a handful of districts on the Island — would have to draft plans for improvement. Systems that don’t improve would face potential intervention by a regional BOCES district or the state.

“The goal for high school graduation rates would eventually rise to 95 percent statewide, from a current level of slightly more than 80 percent. State education officials have not decided how diploma requirements might be revised to make that reachable.

“In rating school districts’ academic performance, greater recognition would be given to students who score well on college-level exams sponsored by the Advanced Placement program and by International Baccalaureate.

“For some districts, that could help balance out low performance by other students on the state’s own grade-level tests.

“Greater weight also would be given for student improvement, or “growth,” on state tests, as opposed to recognizing only the percentage of students who reach proficiency level. This reflects the intent of the Every Student Succeeds Act, signed into law in 2015 by President Barack Obama, which was to provide states with greater flexibility in regulating schools than was possible under the former federal law known as No Child Left Behind.

“Questions linger over whether the proposals will have an effect on stemming the test-refusal movement, especially on the Island.

“Jeanette Deutermann of North Bellmore, chief organizer of the Long Island Opt Out network, predicted that test boycotts in the region will continue unabated as long as the state sticks with academic standards that she and many other parents believe place too much stress on students.

“Deutermann pointed especially to standards in the earliest grades.

“Pre-kindergarten standards say all students should write their numerals to five,” she said. “Some kids are just learning how to hold a pencil.”

“At the state level, education leaders credit the Regents’ leadership and Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia for listening to their concerns and quieting debate over tests and related issues. Statewide, the percentage of those opting out of the spring English and math exams was down 2 percentage points from 2016.

“New York State United Teachers, a statewide union umbrella group that once fiercely opposed federal and state efforts to tie test results to teacher performance evaluations, recently expressed support for much of the state’s plan to enforce ESSA.

“Overall, it’s reasonable and rational,” said Andy Pallotta, president of the 600,000-member NYSUT organization, during an interview on WCNY-FM, an upstate public radio station. “I think we’re on the way.”

Categories Early Childhood Education, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Graduation rates, New York, Opt Out, Parents, Standardized Testing

California Teachers Form Statewide Alliance to Fight for Real School Reform

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2017 //
29

Teachers organizations from across the state of California have formed an alliance to fight for genuine School reform.

CALIFORNIA: 8 Teacher Union Locals Unite Against the Trump/DeVos Agenda, Fight for Public Schools through Collective Bargaining, Community Power

United around common struggles and a shared vision, The California Alliance for Community Schools is a groundbreaking coalition of educator unions from 8 of the largest cities in California, representing more than 50,000 educators. The alliance officially launches tomorrow, Thursday March 23 and includes: Anaheim Secondary Teachers Association, Oakland Education Association, San Bernardino Teachers Association, San Jose Teachers Association, San Diego Education Association, United Educators of San Francisco, United Teachers Los Angeles and United Teachers Richmond.

All 8 unions are uniting around statewide demands, through local bargaining as well as legislation, for more resources in schools, charter school accountability, lower class sizes and other critical improvements. Most of the locals are in contract bargaining or are interested in organizing around these key issues. The alliance plans to expand to include other labor and community partners.

As California faces a statewide teacher shortage, school districts issued more than 1,750 pink slips for educators last week. Trump released his proposed federal budget, which slashes funds for disadvantaged children, afterschool programs, teacher trainings and other vital services. Trump wants to spend $1.4 billion to expand vouchers, including private schools, and would pay for it from deep cuts to public schools. Voters in California have twice rejected voucher plans.

“We are reaching a state of emergency when it comes to our public schools,” said Hilda Rodriguez-Guzman, an Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment member and charter school parent since 1994. “We must support and reinvest in public education. I join educators in the fight for well-resourced, transparent, accountable, and democratically run schools, at the bargaining table and beyond.”

All 8 unions will use the power of bargaining and statewide organizing to fight for:

Lower class sizes

Resources for high-needs schools and students

Shared decision-making at local school sites, critical to student success

Charter school accountability

Safe and supportive school environments

The first significant step is the launch of the bargaining platform and petition, which includes statewide demands and specific contract demands for each local union. The petition reads:

“As educators in large urban school districts across California we face many of the same challenges. We are particularly concerned about disinvestment in schools and communities, especially those with the greatest needs; educational policies that discourage authentic teaching and learning; and the rapid expansion of privately managed and unregulated charter schools at the expense of our neighborhood schools.”

We applaud the work of these unions, who are fighting back the Trump/DeVos agenda and standing together with their students and communities to reinvest in public education.

To find out more, contact each union for more information:

Anaheim: Grant Schuster, CTA State Council Representative on ASTA Executive Board, schusters3@charter.net, (562) 810-4035

Los Angeles: Anna Bakalis, UTLA Communications Director mailto:abakalis@utla.net, (213)305-9654

Oakland: Trish Gorham, OEA President, oaklandeapresident@yahoo.com, (510) 763-4020,

San Diego: Jonathon Mello, mello_j@sdea.net, (619) 200-0010

San Francisco: Mathew Hardy, Communications Director, mhardy@uesf.org, (415) 513-3179

Richmond: Demetrio Gonzalez, UTR President, president@unitedteachersofrichmond.com, (760) 500-7044

San Jose: Jennifer Thomas, SJTA President, jthomas@sanjoseta.org, (408) 694-7393

San Bernardino: Ashley Alcalá, SBTA President, ashleysbta@gmail.com, (909) 881-6755
—

THE CALIFORNIA ALLIANCE FOR COMMUNITY SCHOOLS
We are a coalition of California parents, community, educators, and students united in our commitment to transforming public education in ways that contribute to a more just, equitable, and participatory society.

Together, we are fighting for well-resourced, community-centered, publicly funded and democratically run schools that prepare our students with the intellectual, social, and emotional skills necessary for success in a changing and often turbulent world.

Our Platform for The Schools All Our Students Deserve

1. Low Class Sizes: Quality instruction for all our students depends on limiting the number of students in a class. Lowering class sizes improves teaching and learning conditions leading to growth in student achievement and positive social interactions.

2. Adequate Resources for All Schools with Additional Resources for Our High Needs Schools and Students: All schools and students deserve adequate levels of funding and support, including but not limited to quality early childhood education programs, lower class size, lower Special Education caseloads, additional educators, after-school tutoring, counselors, nurses, certificated librarians, and other resources to address our students’ academic, emotional, and social needs. Schools and students with the highest need should receive additional funding and support. Site based governing bodies consisting of democratically selected staff, parents, students, and community partners should be responsible for deciding how such additional supports are to be used.

3. Shared Decision-Making at Our Local Schools: The needs of a school are best addressed by the members of the school community. Site based governance by democratically selected stakeholder representatives is a critical component for school and student success. Districts and unions should provide joint trainings to fully empower these bodies.

4. Charter Schools Accountable to Our Communities: All schools receiving public money must be held accountable and be locally and publicly controlled. Unfortunately, many privately run, under-regulated charter schools drain needed resources from neighborhood schools, are not fully transparent in their operations, and fail to provide equal access to all students. Common sense standards and adequate oversight are necessary. New charter schools should not be approved without ensuring accountability and transparency and without a comprehensive assessment of the economic and educational impact on existing public schools.

5. Safe and Supportive School Environments: All students at publicly funded schools, regardless of ethnicity, gender, economic status, religion, sexual orientation, and immigration status, have a right to an academically stimulating, emotionally and socially nurturing, and culturally responsive environment that recognizes and addresses the many stresses that affect student performance and behavior. Adequate trainings and supports for restorative justice programs must be provided as an alternative to punitive disciplinary programs.

Categories Arts Education, Budget Cuts, California, Class size, Early Childhood Education, Funding, Real Education, Teacher Shortage, Teachers, Unions

Susan Ochshorn: Listen to the Voices of Teachers of Early Childhood Classes

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2017 //
11

Susan Ochshorn of the ECE Policy Works writes here about the marginalization of those who teach early childhood. Governor Chris Christie defamed them as “babysitters.” No one asked for their expertise when the Common Core standards were written.

In this post, she describes a report released by “Defending the Early Years,” called “Teachers Speak Out.”

“The report highlights the concerns of early childhood teachers about the impact of school reforms on low-income children. Authors Diane E. Levin and Judith L. Van Hoorn culled their data from interviews with 34 educators in California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, and Washington, DC.

“The link between socioeconomic status and academic achievement has been firmly established in research. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 47 percent of children under six years old lived in low-income families near or below the poverty line in 2014. The level rises to nearly 70 percent for Black and Native-American children and 64 percent for Hispanic youngsters. In a recent survey conducted by the Council of Chief State School Officers—which helped design the Common Core standards—teachers across the United States listed family stress, poverty, and learning and psychological problems as the top barriers to student success.

“Yet the mandates of the Common Core are exacerbating the problem. As Levin and Van Hoorn point out in the report’s introduction, “recent reforms…have been developed and implemented by people with good intentions but often little formal knowledge of early child development.” Those with the expertise now face a “profound ethical dilemma.” As top-down mandates dictate the teaching and assessment of narrow academic skills at younger and younger ages, early childhood educators are forced to do the “least harm,” rather than the “most good.”

“In an exchange at the [DeVos] hearing, between DeVos and Todd Young, a Republican senator from Indiana, she crowed about our “great opportunity…to really empower [teachers] in a new way to do what they do best.” She horrifies educators. They’ve been leaving the field, exhausted and dispirited, in record numbers. Respect for the profession and morale are at an all-time low, as teachers have picked up the slack for a society that starves its schools and communities, and blames them for all its ills. But out of this malaise, a new activism has emerged, with great energy dedicated to defeating her.

“Early childhood teachers—with some notable exceptions—have been missing from the action. The reasons are complex. This is a workforce that has long been marginalized, their work devalued, and expertise ignored….

“​As I read through the report, I kept underlining the quotes from the teachers, as if to amplify them, to lift them off the page. They’re struggling to honor early childhood’s robust evidence base, but they’re undermined by a lack of agency and autonomy:

“The trust in my expertise and judgment as a teacher is gone. So are the play and learning centers in my classroom. Everything is supposed to be structured for a specific lesson and rigidly timed to fit into a specific, tight, preapproved schedule.

“The negative impact of reforms on children’s development and learning can’t be overstated. Practice has become more rote, and standardized, with less time for deep relationships—among children, and between them and caring adults. We’re stealing the heart of high-quality early education, as the individual strengths, interests, and needs of children get lost:

“With this extreme emphasis on what’s called ‘rigorous academics,’ drills are emphasized. It’s much harder for my children to become self-regulated learners. Children have no time to learn to self-regulate by choosing their own activities, participating in ongoing projects with their classmates, or playing creatively. They have to sit longer, but their attention spans are shorter.

“The authors bring us into the classrooms studied by Daphna Bassok, Scott Lathem, and Anna Rorem, of the University of Virginia, who used two large, nationally representative data sets to compare public school kindergarten classrooms between 1998 and 2010. More formal, directed instruction in reading, writing, and math, once the province of first grade, has trickled down into kindergarten. Close reading is becoming part of the expected skill set of 5-year-olds, and the pressure has extended, in some cases, to prekindergarten, where children are being asked to master reading by the end of the year. The repercussions are severe:

“It’s essential for every kindergarten child to feel welcomed and included, to be part of the class. Instead, we’re separating the cream from the milk. From the beginning, we’re telling kids who are poor, ‘You’re deficient,’ instead of helping them become competent and feel successful and part of their class. Then it’s ‘remedial this, remedial that.’ It’s discrimination.

“The report concludes with a series of recommendations—from the real experts in the room. The first calls for the withdrawal of current early childhood standards and mandates. Another urges the use of authentic assessment, based on observations of children, their development, and learning. Number ten addresses child poverty, our national stain:

“Work at all levels of society to reduce, and ultimately end, child poverty. To do this, we must first acknowledge that a narrow focus on improving schools will not solve the complex problems associated with child poverty.

“Breaking the silence was never so sweet. Now it’s time, as John Lewis says, to get in good trouble.”

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Common Core, Early Childhood Education, Education Industry, Testing

The Biggest Problem in Early Childhood Education Today Is….

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2016 //
14

In this post, which appeared on Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet” blog, Nancy Carlsson-Paige explains that the biggest problem in early childhood education today is the erosion of time for play.

 

Carlsson-Paige is an emeritus professor at Lesley College, where she taught teachers of early childhood. She explains in this post that the changes in the recent past have damaged children and their classrooms.

 

She said, in a recent speech:

 

For the last 15 years or so, our education system has been dominated by standards and tests, by the gathering of endless amounts of data collected to prove that teachers are doing their job and kids are learning. But these hyper requirements have oppressed teachers and drained the creativity and joy from learning for students. Unfortunately, this misguided approach to education has now reached down to our youngest children.

 

In kindergartens and pre-K classrooms around the country we’ve seen a dramatic decrease in play. There are fewer activity centers in classrooms and much less child choice, as well as less arts and music. At the same time, teacher directed instruction has greatly increased, along with more scripted curriculum and paper and pencil tasks.

 

Play is very important in child development, she says:

 

Children all over the world play. They all know how to play, and no one has to teach them how. Any time we see a human activity that is wired into the brain and accomplished by all children worldwide, we know it is critical to human development.

 

So much is learned through play in the early years that play has been called the engine of development. Children learn concepts through play; they learn to cope and make sense of life experiences; and, they develop critical human capacities such as problem solving, imagination, self regulation and original thinking.

 

She notes that early childhood educators were never at the table when government officials, think tanks, testing companies, and standards writers decided that play didn’t matter. It does matter, and strangely enough, we need to fight to defend the right of children to play.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Early Childhood Education, Play, Testing

A Member of the State Board in Ohio Resigns, with Good Advice for His Colleagues

By dianeravitch
November 27, 2016 //
9

A. J. Wagner formally resigned as a member of the Ohio State Board of Education, due to family circumstances.

 

He wrote  this letter of advice to his colleagues.

 

He said that he “joined the Board with a hope of moving the needle on programming for children in poverty from ages zero to three. I leave the Board having accomplished nothing in that regard. So, I leave with one more articulation of recommendations for what can be done to improve education in Ohio.” He has a list of recommendations that are based on research and commonsense. Every state and local school board member should read his recommendations.

 

I hope his colleagues take his letter and proposals to heart. Ohio has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on low-performing charters and disastrous cyber charters, allowing their public schools to be negatively impacted and underfunded. Mr. Wagner has sound ideas about how to improve education in Ohio.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Early Childhood Education, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Ohio, Privatization
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