Archives for category: Education Industry
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Laura Chapman: The Problems with EdTPA

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2014 //
29

Laura Chapman writes:

Unfortunately, this next generation of teachers is not just subject to manipulation by Teach for America.

The new EdTPA (Teacher Performance Assessment) is one of the new gatekeepers for entry into teaching. EdTPA was designed by scholars at Stanford. It has been rubber-stamped by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). AACTE represents 800 teacher education programs..

EdTPA is aligned with the CCSS. It honors direct instruction made evident in video snippets of teaching and plans that prospective teachers submit for scoring. Scoring has been outsourced to Pearson who charges a minimum of $300 per test, while paying $70 per hour to raters of the tests. In early 2014, edTPA was being used in 511 educator preparation programs in 34 states and the District of Columbia. CCSS plus training for direct instruction over authentic education will not just fade away. http://edtpa.aacte.org/about-edtpa

States can use edTAP scores for teacher licensure. Teacher education programs can use the scores for state and national accreditations.

The edTPA scores of graduates, and gains in students’ scores that they produce on the job will now be used to rate the “effectiveness” of teacher education programs. In other words, Obama+Duncan’s flawed K-12 policies are being foisted on teacher education. The Gates’ desire to track student test scores produced by graduates of teacher education programs in on track for becoming the new normal. Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/barack-obama-arne-duncan-teacher-training-education-106013.html#ixzz2zwfJdsRs

it is hard to be optimistic. In addition to EdTPA, other tests for teacher certification require knowledge of the CCSS (e.g. Praxis http://www.ets.org/praxis/ccss). Other certifications of teacher education programs are no less troubling.

For example, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), approved new standards for teacher education in August, 2013. CAEP is a new entity merging NCATE, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education and TEAC the Teacher Education Accreditation Council. In 2013, the merged organizations had accredited over 860 programs. CAEP standards must still be approved by USDE and appear to have been written for that purpose.

The standards from CAEP illustrate how hard it is to bury bad policies, and overcome horrific language about education.

Programs that prepare teachers are now called “providers.” Teachers who graduate are now called “completers.” The CAEP standards rely on 110 uses of the term “impact” to describe what teacher education and teachers are supposed to do. (Ask Diane what “impact” meant for her knee, or consider how ‘impacted” sardines may feel in a can).

Here is CAEP’s Standard 1.4 for teacher education: “Providers ensure that completers demonstrate skills and commitment that afford all P-12 students access to rigorous college-and career-ready standards (e.g., Next Generation Science Standards, National Career Readiness Certificate, Common Core State Standards).” http://caepnet.org/accreditation/standards/standard1/

CAEP Standard 4.1: “The provider documents, using multiple measures, that program completers contribute to an expected level of student-learning growth. Multiple measures shall include all available growth measures (including value-added measures, student-growth percentiles, and student learning and development objectives) required by the state for its teachers and available to educator preparation providers, other state-supported P-12 impact measures, and any other measures employed by the provider.” http://caepnet.org/accreditation/standards/standard4/ This standard is absurd. It requires the use of “measures” that are known to be invalid and unreliable.

CAEP Standard 5.4: “Measures of completer impact, including available outcome data on P-12 student growth, are summarized, externally benchmarked, analyzed, shared widely, and acted upon in decision-making related to programs, resource allocation, and future direction.” http://caepnet.org/accreditation/standards/standard5/

Clearly, the demolition derby on K-12 is expanding to damage the independent voice of faculty in higher education, especially those most directly responsible for teacher education.

The “provider” language signals that alternative paths to teachers preparation are being honored. The 42 member “commission” charged with developing CAEP’s standards was dominated by high-level administrators in education and entrepreneurs who appear to be totally unaware of (or indifferent to) the meaning of due-diligence in developing standards. They ignored sound scholarship that should have informed their work, including extensive peer-reviewed criticisms of the CCSS, value-added and related “growth” measures, as well as all the well-document flaws in industrial strength management strategies from mid-century last.

Damn the torpedos, ignore the evidence, full steam ahead.

Categories Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

In Which Mercedes Schneider Flays Pearson

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2014 //
127

Mercedes Schneider here reviews the transcript of a board meeting of Pearson in April 2014. Anyone can read the transcript but is allowed to quote only 400 words. That was Mercedes’ challenge.

What struck her was that Pearson’s business plan is heavily tied to adoption of CCSS. In this case, contrary to the assurances of Bill Gates, national standardization promotes monopolization, not competition.

What struck me was that the leaders of this behemoth, now taking control of large sectors of American education, had nothing to say about education. The discussion, not surprisingly, was all about profits and business strategy. Who decided to outsource American education?

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, On-Line Education, Pearson, Testing

A Reader Explains the Purpose of Charter School Waiting Lists and Lotteries

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2014 //
60

A reader left this comment:

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I worked in the front office of a charter school for two years. We marketed heavily in the neighborhood and would get hundreds of applications for a school that had anywhere from 30-40 seats available in Kindergarten and 0-2 seats per class available in grades 1 and up. I remember the crestfallen looks on parents’ faces when it was announced at the admissions lottery that there were no seats open in a class and that the lottery would determine the order of the waiting list.

I once recommended to the principal that we stop taking applications after a certain point. I had two reasons for suggesting this: 1) We were giving families false hope, as anyone other than the first five to ten on the waiting list had no realistic chance of getting in, and 2) We could make better use of the time and money being spent on processing applications for students we knew would never be accepted, and on marketing to more families when we were already at capacity. His response was that we needed to keep adding as many names as possible to the waiting list, so that we would have numbers to back up our organization’s efforts to demonstrate the need for more charter schools.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Will Congress Commemorate the Brown Decision by Reviving a Dual School System?

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2014 //
49

Congress is considering new charter legislation, awarding more money to the charter sector, which will operate with minimal accountability or transparency.

The bill has already passed the House of Representatives with a bipartisan majority and now moves to the Senate.

Make no mistake: on the 60th anniversary of the Brown decision, Congress is set to expand a dual school system. One sector, privately managed, may choose its students, exclude those who might pull down its test scores, and kick out those it doesn’t want. The other sector–the public schools–must take in all students, even those kicked out by the charters.

One sector–the charter sector–may enroll no students with profound disabilities, while the public schools are required by federal law to accept them all. The charter sector may accept only half as many English language learners, while the public schools are required to accept them all. Some charter schools push out children who are behavior problems, the public schools must take them all.

This is a dual school system, one bound by laws, the other deregulated. One free to select the “winners, ” the other bound to accept all.

Will federally-funded charters be allowed to operate for profit, as many charters do? Will they pay their executives exorbitant salaries, of more than $400,000, as some charters do? Will they be exempt from nepotism laws, as many charters are? Will charter leaders be allowed to hire their relatives or give them contracts? Will they be exempt from conflict of interest and self-dealing laws, as they are in some states? Will members of the board be permitted to win profitable contracts from the board?

The growth of the charter sector has been driven by a strange coalition. Charters are supported by wealthy hedge fund managers who give generously to individual charters and to charter chains; they fund political candidates who support charters. Charters are supported enthusiastically by the Obama administration, which endorses the privatization of public schools. Charters are a favorite of conservative groups like ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) and rightwing governors. Charters receive millions from some of the nation’s wealthiest foundations, including the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.

This odd coalition doesn’t seem to care that it is reversing the Brown decision of 1954. The fact that charters are highly segregated does not trouble them. The fact that charters undermine public education, an institution that is basic to our democracy, does not trouble them.

The federal courts bore the historic burden of dismantling the long-established institution of legally-enforced racial segregation. Sadly, as new justices were appointed, the federal courts abandoned that role. The U.S. Department of Education too abandoned its once strong dedication to eliminating segregation and ignored its return. Both parties lost interest in integration. Imagine if the Obama administration had dedicated its $5 billion in Race to the Top funds as rewards for districts that increased racial integration. Instead, it initiated a pursuit of higher test scores, and dismissed segregation as yesterday’s issue.

Once there was a dream that American children could live and learn together. That was Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream. The charter movement says that dream is over, if it ever existed, and that the democratic dream of equal educational opportunity for all in common schools controlled by local communities is history, a relic of the past, replaced by the 21st century reality of a dual school system, separate and unequal.

Should we acquiesce in a social arrangement that we know is wrong? Should we celebrate the official approval of segregated schools? Should we hail Congress for bending to the new realities of segregation and academic apartheid? Should we cheer Congressional support for privately-managed schools that get public funds but are not subject to the same requirements of accountability and transparency as public schools?

The 60th anniversary of the Brown decision is a time to recall how far short we have fallen from our ideals. And a time to plan for the day when we can reclaim them and build the America we want for our children and grandchildren.

Categories Charter Schools, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, For-Profit

Community Groups File Civil Rights Complaints Against Destruction of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2014 //
10

Grassroots community groups in Néw Orleans, Newark, and Chicago filed complaints of violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the Justice Department and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. They seek an investigation of racially discriminatory school closings in their communities.

They wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary Arne Duncan:

“Journey for Justice is a coalition of grassroots organizations in twenty-two cities across the country. The coalition has come together because, across our communities, education “reformers” and privatizers are targeting neighborhood schools filled with children of color, and leaving behind devastation. By stealth, seizure, and sabotage, these corporate profiteers are closing and privatizing our schools, keeping public education for children of color, not only separate, not only unequal, but increasingly not public at all.

“Adding insult to injury, the perpetrators of this injustice have cloaked themselves in the language of the Civil Rights Movement. But too many of the charter and privately-managed schools that have multiplied as replacements for our beloved neighborhood schools are test prep mills that promote prison-like environments, and seem to be geared at keeping young people of color controlled, undereducated, and dehumanized. Children of color are not collateral damage. Our communities are not collateral damage.

“Thus, we stand in solidarity, Kenwood Oakland Community Organization in Chicago, Coalition for Community Schools and Conscious Concerned Citizens Controlling Community Changes in New Orleans, New Jersey’s Parents Unified for Local School Education in Newark, and Journey for Justice member organizations across the country, to shed light on the racial injustice of school closings.

“Neighborhood schools are the hearts of our communities, and the harm caused by just one school closure is deep and devastating. This is death by a thousand cuts.”

There is deep irony and sadness in the fact that these community groups are appealing for justice even as the nation commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision striking down legal segregation.

There is deep irony and sadness in the fact that these complaints are filed to the administration of the nation’s first black president.

There is deep irony and sadness in the fact that these complaints are directed at the policies not of racist governors but of the Obama administration itself.

Secretary Duncan has encouraged and funded the school closings that are at the heart of the complaints. He has applauded and funded the privatization of schools in black communities. He openly admires the “no excuses” charter schools that emphasize control over education and that teach strict conformity to arbitrary rules, not the habits of mind and dispositions of a free people.

In effect, the Obama administration is being asked to overrule its own education policies. How sad. How ironic.

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Jersey, New Orleans, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Anthony Cody: How Will Big Data Transform Education?

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2014 //
11

Anthony Cody recently read Simon Head’s Mindless: Why Smarter Machines Are Making Dumber Humans. This book, Cody says, shows how society is organized to benefit corporations, not people. He then includes a video clip from the CEO of Knewton, who claims that education is ripe for data mining.

He says:

“Education happens to be the world’s most data minable industry by far. And its not even close…. The name of the game is data per user. So one of the things that fakes us out about data in education is because it is so big – like the fourth biggest industry in the world – it produces incredible quantities of data. But data that just produces one or two data points per user per day is not really all that valuable to an individual user. It might be valuable to like a school district administrator, but maybe not even then. So let’s just compare. Netflix and Amazon get in the ones of data points per user per day. Google and Facebook get in the tens of data points per user per day. So you do ten minutes of messing around in Google and you produce about a dozen data points for Google. So Knewton today gets five to ten million actionable data points per student per day. Now we do that, because we get people, if you can believe it, to tag every single sentence of their content – we have a large publishing partnership with Pearson, and they’ve tagged all of their content. And we’re an open standard, so anyone can tag to us. If you tag all of your content, and you do it down to the atomic concept level, down to the sentence, down to the clause, you unlock an incredible amount of trapped, hidden data.

“We literally know everything about you and how you learn best. Everything. Because we have five orders of magnitude more data about you than Google has. We literally have more data about our students than any company has about anybody else, about anything, and it’s not even close. That’s how we do it.”

The day of Big Data grows closer. Arne Duncan sees it. David Coleman sees it. Do you see it?

Categories Common Core, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Education Reform

Parents and Educators to Protest Cuomo-Anti-Public Education Agenda

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2014 //
2

Say NO to Cuomo’s Anti-Public Education Agenda. Cuomo’s heart belongs to the hedge fund managers. He does not care about public school kids. He is the lobbyist for the charter industry.

PROTEST CUOMO’S FAILING EDUCATION AGENDA AT DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION!

Come protest at the Dem state convention where Cuomo will be re-nominated for Governor a week from Thursday!

PROTEST GOVERNOR CUOMO’S FAILING EDUCATION AGENDA AT THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION!

Get on the bus to Long Island and join parents from NYC, and other parts of the state, to tell Governor Cuomo that real Democrats fund public schools!

————————————————–

Thursday, May 22nd

Bus leaves:

Union Square –> 7:45 a.m.

(100 East 17th St., Manhattan, NY)

2-4 Nevins St. in Brooklyn –> 8:15 a.m.

*Return by 4pm*

————————————————-

To save a seat on bus contact:

Maria Bautista, maria@aqeny.org, 212-328-9271

Since taking office in 2011, Governor Cuomo has abandoned our public schools by:

· Underfunding public schools and refusing to comply with the Campaign for Fiscal Equity ruling, starving our schools and students of classroom funding and resources.

· Proposing to give less classroom dollars to public schools that serve 97% of students, while driving more resources and special privileges to charter schools that serve a mere 3% of students across the state.

· Increasing testing and teaching to the test through the botched implementation of the Common Core and the flawed teacher evaluation system.

· Collecting large sums of campaign cash from hedge fund managers and super-wealthy donors that want to push forward more corporate-style reforms.

____________________________________________

__,_._,___

Categories Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Industry, New York, Resistance

Leonie Haimson: Six Charter School Myths

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2014 //
38

In her testimony to the New York City Council Education Committee, education activist Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters exploded several common myths about charter schools.

 

First is the myth that they are public schools. They are not. They are private corporations with contracts to run schools, exempt from most state laws and from most state oversight. In court after court, the charters themselves have argued that they are NOT public schools. We should take their word for it. They are not public schools.

 

Second is the myth that charter schools enroll exactly the same demographic of students as the real public schools. This is patently false. With few exceptions, they take smaller proportions of students with disabilities and almost no students with severe disabilities, and they enroll smaller proportions of English language learners. They have the power to kick out students who do not meet their stringent disciplinary codes, which leaves them with a very different student population than public schools. Meanwhile, neighborhood public schools get disproportionate numbers of the students who are most expensive and most difficult to educate. This is not a fair playing field on which to compete. The original purpose of charters was to collaborate, not to compete, yet charter schools take every opportunity to boast of their success with a select population of students.

 

If you want to know about the other four myths, read the rest of the post.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, New York City, Privatization

Ted Mitchell, Leader in Privatization Movement, Confirmed as Undersecretary of Education

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2014 //
44

One of the nation’s leaders of the privatization movement, Ted Mitchell, has been confirmed by the. u.S. Senate as Undersecretary of Education, the second most powerful job in the U.S. Department of Education.

Mitchell most recently was CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund, which collects millions from philanthropies and venture funds and invests the money in creating charter chains and for-profit ventures.

Among his many other accomplishments, Mitchell served as chairman of the State Board of Education for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegegger, a time of unprecedented expansion of charter schools and deep budget cuts for both K-12 piblic schools and public higher education.

Lee Fang

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education

Is This the Real Reason that Cuomo Wants a $2 Billion Technology Bond?

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2014 //
32

A reader posed this question about Governor Cuomo’s reason for promoting a $2 billion bond for new technology. He wrote this after seeing that Pearson and AIR are dueling over control of PARCC assessments, which will ultimately provide several BILLIONS in revenue to the testing corporation with the contract. Pearson recently won the PARCC contract, being declared the sole bidder. AIR is suing:

 

The reader writes:

 

I hope New York residents who oppose Common Core are astute enough to grasp that Governor Cuomo’s support of a $2B Technology Bond Issue is a requisite to make many districts PARCC ready. If you want to stop Common Core you need to recognize the underlying reason that Cuomo is willing to go into debt to fund a technology bond issue–PARCC! Strange how Cuomo prefers Tax Cuts for the wealthy over aid to local school districts–but promotes a bond issue to support technology. Mr. Tax Cap–and Mr. Tax Freeze is out there promoting $2B for Gates and Google–don’t believe for a second that he does not have ulterior motives that are not good for NY kids!

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, Privatization, Technology, Computers, Testing
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