Archives for category: Education Reform
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Arnold Hillman: How to Reform NAEP Scores: A Satire

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2023 //
18

Arnold Hillman is a retired educator who spent his career in Pennsylvania and retired in South Carolina. Bear this in mind when you read his satire. Must be the SC water.

The decline of both reading and math scores on the NAEP national test is a harbinger of a predictive outpouring of solutions to the problem. That has been the standard for the last 100 years of public education. We typically find panaceas to “fix” problems in education.

Here is a very simple one. Until the beginning of the 20th century, education was rather simple- teach reading, writing and arithmetic. On the side you might provide vocational programs. However World War I provided us with a look into the future.

Many of the conscripts in the American army were seen not to be physically fit. That was a danger in a war. There was no part of the constitution that mentions education. The idea of a healthy mind and healthy body was promulgated by none other than John Dewey. World War I was an instigator, and schools took up the mantle.

That’s how things change in education. The nation needed more scientists to combat Russia’s preeminence in space and so Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA). I know that you are getting the idea now. If you live long enough, you will see even more of these things.

Now, how will the decline in these scores be cured by those with the money to do it. Seems like administrations these days are not in the business of fixing education. You can tell by all ofthe news about investigations, indictments, Russian problems and all sort of other adjuncts to those happenings. So then, who or what will come through to help us climb out of this educational abyss?

Lets try this on for size. How about the Broad Foundation. Let’s give them leave to train all of the school superintendents in the nation. That’s only 13,452 school district superintendents. With all of the resources available to the foundation, this could be accomplished in the wink of an eye (see the movie “I Robot” for a reference).All problems of reading and math will follow the same successes that the Broadies have had in all of the places where they have been installed as superintendents. That’s for sure.

Let then have the voucher folks come up with the plan to take over public schools and do their level best to cherry pick the students that they will help. There will certainly be some unintended consequences, such as massive dropouts, higher crime rates, more unemployment and many other charming things.

These voucher folks have a way with statistics. In their first year of operation, math and reading scores will soar. All students will be on grade level in reading and all of them will be up to fractal geometry, after surpassing the highest scores ever on the NAEP test.

Another challenger will be the charter school folks. All schools could be “charterized” and escape from the silly laws that restrict public schools in their education of kids. Since charters do not have to have all certified teachers, that will be a great advantage. We can then dismiss those pesky teachers who have not been doing a good job anyway.

There would not be any responsibility for those charters to have any parental involvement. Parents or guardians will only know what is going on when their child gets a report card.

Huge management companies will continue to “buy up” these charters and run them for profit. The movement to make these charters non-public has already happened in the Washington state Supreme Court. It has decided that Charter Schools were not, in fact, public schools.

Think of all the improvements that charter schools have made across the country since their inception in Minnesota. We can have a myriad of online charter schools which will definitely improve reading and math scores, especially in kindergarten.

We are fortunate to have a parents group that is very interested in improving education by going onto the nation’s school boards and making things so much better when they are there. Incompetent administrators are fired by the dozens and reading and math scores have already risen as a result of these actions.

The premiere group is called “ Moms for Liberty.” Not sure why there are no Dads included. There must be a Title IX reason. These folks have the kind of enviable clout that gets these students on their way to improving their math and reading scores.

With “Moms for Liberty” in charge, schools will have the advantage of being close to those who lead our country. They are proud to have national figures, some even running for President, who will make sure the schools are doing the right thing.

Then we have a group that includes some very wealthy folks. Some of them are anonymously giving funding and directions to those who were described earlier. They are famously supporters of vouchers, privatization of public schools, charters and the like. They support parent groups like “Moms for Liberty.” Their aims are certainly to help students improve their reading and math scores. We will call them, for better or worse, “ The Billionaire Class.”

With all of these folks helping out, how long do you believe it will take for our youngster’s math and reading scores to soar?

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Humor, Innovation, NAEP, Standardized Testing

Jan Resseger: Ohio’s New Budget Reflects “Opportunity Hoarding”

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2023 //
2

Jan Resseger writes frequently about education in Ohio. Her major concern has always been the common good. She describes the latest state budget as “opportunity hoarding.” It includes a welcome increase for public schools, but an even bigger increase for private schools.

She writes:

This blog has focused recently on the fraught political debate about public school finance as part of Ohio’s budget—passed on June 30 and signed into law on the 4th of July. Two years ago, the Ohio Legislature failed to implement a long-awaited Fair School Funding Plan in a stand-alone law. Although a new formula must be fully enacted for the state to allocate adequate school funding and distribute it equitably, the legislature chose to phase in the formula in three steps—making its full implementation dependent on the will of the legislature across three biennial budgets.

Despite efforts this year by the Ohio Senate to undermine school finance equity, the second step of the Fair School Funding Plan was, thanks to House Speaker Jason Stephens and his coalition, enacted fully in the new budget.

Ohio’s new budget and the political fight that led up to it has epitomized what Princeton University sociologist and acclaimed author of Evicted, Matthew Desmond defines as a fight about “opportunity hoarding.” Desmond devotes a chapter of his new book, Poverty, by America, to “How We Buy Opportunity”:

“Among advanced democracies, America stands out for its embrace of class extremities… What happens to a country when fortunes diverge so sharply, when millions of poor people live alongside millions of rich ones? In a country with such vast inequality, the poor increasingly come to depend on public services and the rich increasingly seek to divest from them. This leads to ‘private opulence and public squalor’…. As our incomes have grown, we’ve chosen to spend more on personal consumption and less on public works. Our vacations are more lavish, but school teachers must now buy their own school supplies. We put more money into savings to fuel intergenerational wealth creation but collectively spend less on expanding opportunity to all children… By 2021, government spending on all public goods… made up just 17.6 percent of GDP… Equal opportunity is possible only if everyone can access childcare centers, good schools, and safe neighborhoods—all of which serve as engines of social mobility… Opportunity can be hoarded… not only by abandoning public goods for private ones, but also by leveraging individual fortunes to acquire access to exclusive public goods, (like) buying yourself into an upscale community.” (Poverty, by America, pp. 106-112)

Policy Matters Ohio’s press release about the new Ohio budget might have been copied right out of Desmond’s chapter on opportunity hoarding: “Years of underfunding in our public sector have taken a toll which has been compounded by stagnant wages for many workers… Ohio tax revenues consistently beat estimates, in large part due to rising incomes spurred by federal support for COVID recovery, and a tight labor market. Instead of putting those dollars to work strengthening programs that ensure Ohioans share in the prosperity they help create, lawmakers once again prioritized giveaways to private interests, as well as tax cuts for the wealthy and big business.”

Policy Matters Ohio summarizes some of the details: “The operating budget includes a $1-billion-per-year income-tax cut that disproportionately benefits the wealthy, does nothing for Ohioans in the lowest-income 20%, and temporarily increases taxes for some middle-income households. According to modeling provided by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy… 85.4% of the value of this billion-dollar cut will go to the richest 20% in Ohio… The budget also reduces the state’s main business tax, the Commercial Activity tax… The governor signed off on a $2-billion giveaway to private schools through voucher expansion… Kids will have continuous Medicaid coverage through age 3, greatly reducing gaps in care and supporting healthy kids and babies. However, the conference committee removed provisions that would have extended health insurance coverage for kids and pregnant people to those with incomes up to 300% of poverty…. The bill that made it to Governor DeWine’s desk raised wages for the direct care workforce to $18 over the biennium. The mandate was removed by the governor and replaced with only a promise to work toward implementing an increase. Child care workers did not even receive that… The elements of this budget that benefit the majority of Ohioans pale in comparison to the great need.”

Likewise, the private school tuition voucher expansion shifts the entitlement to wealthy families. Making students in families with income at 450% of the federal poverty level ($135,000) eligible for a full voucher, and students in families with even higher incomes eligible for a 50% or 25% or a minimal 10% voucher as family income gets higher—only exacerbates a current trend that tilts Ohio voucher use to middle and upper income families. These are families who were previously ineligible because their incomes are too high.

Please open the link to read the rest of her post.

Categories Education Reform, Equity, Ohio

Nancy Flanagan: Why Do Moms for Liberty Support the “Science of Reading”?

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2023 //
163

Nancy Flanagan, retired teacher in Michigan, wonders why the extremist Moms for Liberty have jumped into the reading wars on the side of the “Science of Reading.” The politicization of reading is not new. Phonics has long been a rightwing cause, unfairly, in my view. Every reading teacher should know how to teach phonics.

What’s new is the idea that only phonics can be considered “the science of reading.” This conceit was hatched by the National Reading Panel in 2000. The new Bush administration was super pro-phonics and inserted a $6 billion phonics program called Reading First into No Chikd Left Behind. After six years, Reading First was abandoned because it was riddled with conflicts of interest and self-dealing, and an extensive evaluation concluded that it didn’t make a difference.

Flanagan is especially interested in reading instruction in middle school.

She begins:

I am fascinated by the increasing politicization—no other word for it—of reading instruction. How to best teach reading has always been contentious in the United States, from the 1950s look-say method featuring Dick and Jane, accused of letting Ivan slip ahead of us in the space race, right up until last week, when Moms for Liberty jumped into the Faux Science of Reading (FSoR) fray.

It’s unclear why Moms for Liberty has aligned itself with the phonics-forward FSoR movement. I get that white parents, accustomed to being first in line for educational goodies, feel threatened when they’re told that other children may be having their needs met first. I know racism is a thread that has run through the entire history of public education in America. I also know that many ordinary citizens feel bewildered and angered by rapidly changing social beliefs and customs around acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community.

A friend of my says you can measure social progress by observing who can be beat up on Saturday night without consequences—Wives and girlfriends? Ethnic minorities? Gentle souls like Matthew Shepherd and Elijah McLain? I hate living in a country where threats align with archaic ideas about who’s in charge of our customs and institutions, including public schools. I hate it, but I understand why it happens.

What I do NOT understand is why a far-right, power-grabbing, deep-pocket-funded group of purported “concerned moms” are choosing to endorse One Right Way to learn the skill of reading.

Surely some of their children learned to read using cuing systems or word walls or balanced literacy. Surely some of their children picked up reading quickly and easily reading stories on grandma’s lap. Surely some of their children had caring and creative teachers who employed multiple strategies to nurture genuine literacy.

Which makes me think that a lot of the enmity around learning to read stems from free-floating hostility toward public education and schoolteachers in general, greatly exacerbated by recent events: a pandemic, a child-care crisis, growing and dangerous inequities, and terrible political leadership that plays to the worst in human nature.

Please open the link and read her account of how impassioned this debate has become and her experience teaching music to students in middle school.

Categories Curriculum, Education Reform, Extremism, Literacy

Carol Hillman: Some Suggestions to Share with Teachers Everywhere

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2023 //
29

Carol Hillman was a teacher for many years in Pennsylvania, and she ran a consulting service that encouraged rural youth to attend college. When she and her husband Arnold retired (he is also an educator), they moved to South Carolina. They must have expected to lead a quiet life, but they immediately became involved with rural high schools, where the students are Black and impoverished. They worked tirelessly to help students set their sights on going to college.

Carol wanted to share some of her life’s lessons with other teachers.

She wrote:

To teachers everywhere……..

Regardless of what subject we teach we share the responsibility to help our students prepare for their futures. Middle school students need to begin to think about, and high school students must further explore, the ways in which they shape their futures through their own actions.

Each of these prompts provide a topic you might invite your students to consider. Students will appreciate the opportunity to share their own opinions and need to learn to consider the opinions of their peers. In examining these ideas students will be using abstract thinking and higher orders of thinking.

You can limit discussion to a set day and/or time or invite students to address concepts in a journal you are willing to read.

If you have a school newspaper or yearbook you might include student comments on different topics.

Do they agree that a particular idea is valuable? If so, why or why not?

Class discussion will help students give examples of how the concepts apply to real life.

•Enjoy change because it’s the only thing we can predict.

•Have the courage to face new challenges.

•Accept that you can control your own behavior.

•Surround yourself with people who value you.

•Embrace diversity so you can enjoy other people, places and things.

•Understand that the world needs good followers and good leaders.

•Define and redefine your personal goals.

•Know when to accept help and when to say, “I can do this myself.”

•Show that you value others so you can keep old friends and make new ones.

•Know the joy of celebrating small accomplishments as they are the building blocks of a good life.

•Welcome new experiences to expand your knowledge and interests.

•Cooperate so you can become a constructive member of your community.

•Keep your promises so people can trust you.

•Understand that successful people know when to quit and move on.

•Take pride in your accomplishments.

•Accept that while you can’t always control what happens to you, you can control how you react to it.

•Understand that the best motivation comes from within.

•Recognize that you can make the world a better place.

If you have questions about these prompts and how to present them, feel to contact me at carol@scorsweb.org

Thank you,

Carol Hillman

Categories Character, Citizenship, Discipline, Education Reform, Ethics, Students, Teachers

Jesse Hagopian: Visiting My Enslaved Ancestors’ Grave

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2023 //
12

Jesse Hagopian, a teacher-author-activist in Seattle, wrote this moving article in The Nation. He, his brother, and his father traveled to Morgantown, Mississippi, to visit the plantation where his ancestors were enslaved. The trip was delayed by the pandemic and illness. But when they arrived at last, they had an unforgettable experience.

Knowing that their trip occurred at the same time that many states were banning the teaching of the truth about slavery made them even more motivated to learn the truth and teach it.

Categories Education Reform, Mississippi, Racism

James Risen: Prigozhin Told the Truth About Ukraine

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2023 //
34

James Risen of The Intercept writes about the remarkable thing that the leader of the Wagner Group did when he led a short-lived mutiny: he told the truth about why Putin invaded Ukraine.

Risen writes:


ONE OF THE most subversive things that Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin did during his brief rebellion last weekend was to tell the truth.

Prigozhin is a pathological liar, a professional disinformation artist who was indicted in the United States in connection with the internet troll farm he ran, which was at the forefront of Russian efforts to intervene in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help Donald Trump win.

But as the mercenary boss began his mutiny in late June, he experienced a brief and surprising bout of honesty when he launched into an online tirade against what he said were the lies used by Moscow to justify the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. His comments were so candid and off-message for a Russian leader that it seemed as if someone had mistakenly handed him a speech meant for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The invasion was nothing more than a massive land grab by the Russian oligarchy, Prigozhin charged, designed to enrich the country’s powerful elites while poor Russians served as cannon fodder. Russian claims that a Nazi regime in Ukraine, backed by NATO, was about to attack Russia were lies, Prigozhin said. The war was started by the Russian oligarchy to benefit themselves and gain power. In his rant, Prigozhin did not criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin by name, focusing instead on the broader Russian elite, and specifically on his personal enemy Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

“The Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there were insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO bloc,” Prigozhin said on his Telegram channel on June 23. The truth, he said, was that “there was nothing extraordinary happening on the eve of February 24,” the day last year when Russian invaded. Ukraine was not planning any kind of attack against Russia, he added.

Russia’s invasion “was started for a completely different reason,” Prigozhin said. “What was the war for? The war was needed for Shoigu to receive a hero star. … The oligarchic clan that rules Russia needed the war,” he said. “The mentally ill scumbags decided: ‘It’s OK, we’ll throw in a few thousand more Russian men as cannon fodder. They’ll die under artillery fire, but we’ll get what we want.’”

“Shoigu killed thousands of the most combat-ready Russian soldiers in the first days of the war,” Prigozhin said, adding that the invasion began even as Zelenskyy and Ukraine were eager for peace. The Ukrainian leader “was ready for agreements. All that needed to be done was to get off Mount Olympus and negotiate with him.”

Prigozhin thus punctured the main argument used by Russian propagandists and their Western lackeys: that NATO’s eastward expansion since the end of the Cold War caused the war in Ukraine. Putin has constantly railed against NATO, and his misleading narrative that the U.S. caused the war in Ukraine by pushing for alliance’s expansion has resonated widely among pro-Putin right-wing extremists in the West.

Kremlin lies. Open the link to finish the article.

Categories Education Reform

The Onion Explains the Test Questions That Stump Students Today

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2023 //
18

We can always count on The Inion to find the funny side of the news.

Here are the test questions that show how far behind American students are.

Categories Education Reform, Humor, NAEP

Colorado Web Designer Who Won Supreme Court Victory Has Not Opened Her Business

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2023 //
46

The web designer who won her case today in the Supreme Court has not yet opened her business and has not been asked to design a wedding website for a gay couple. I’m not sure why she had standing to overturn the state’s anti-discrimination law when she has no business.

The case, though framed as a clash between free speech and gay rights, was the latest in a series of decisions in favor of religious people and groups, notably conservative Christians, who celebrated the ruling on Friday as a victory for religious freedom.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the ruling “profoundly wrong,” arguing that the Colorado anti-discrimination law “targets conduct, not speech, for regulation, and the act of discrimination has never constituted protected expression under the First Amendment. Our Constitution contains no right to refuse service to a disfavored group.”

The designer, Lorie Smith, said her Christian faith requires her to turn away customers seeking wedding-related services to celebrate same-sex unions. She added that she intends to post a message saying the company’s policy is a product of her religious convictions.

A Colorado law forbids discrimination against gay people by businesses open to the public as well as statements announcing such discrimination. Ms. Smith, who has not begun the wedding business or posted the proposed statement for fear of running afoul of the law, sued to challenge it, saying it violated her rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion.

But when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, 303 Creative L.L.C. v. Elenis, No. 21-476, it agreed to decide only one question: “whether applying a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment.”

In a news conference Friday in Washington, Ms. Smith said she was grateful to the court, who “affirmed today that Colorado can’t force me or anyone to say something we don’t believe.”

Here’s what else to know:

  • Progressive interfaith groups and L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organizations around the country condemned the ruling. Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement that the ruling was “a deeply troubling crack in our progress and should be alarming to us all.”
  • Both sides have said that the consequences of the court’s ruling could be enormous, though for different reasons. Ms. Smith’s supporters said a decision for the state would allow the government to force all sorts of artists to state things at odds with their beliefs. Her opponents said a ruling in her favor would blow a hole through anti-discrimination laws and allow businesses engaged in expression to refuse service to, for example, Black people or Muslims based on odious but sincerely held convictions.
  • The decision appeared to suggest that the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people, including to same-sex marriage, are on more vulnerable legal footing, particularly when they are at odds with claims of religious freedom. At the same time, the ruling limited the ability of the governments to enforce anti-discrimination laws.
  • Lower courts have generally sided with gay and lesbian couples who were refused service by bakeries, florists and others, ruling that potential customers are entitled to equal treatment, at least in parts of the country with laws forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation.

On her dissent, Justice Sotomayer wrote:

The unattractive lesson of the maiority opinion is this: What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours. The lesson of the history of public accommodations laws is altogether different. It is that in a free and democratic society, there can be no social castes. And for that to be true, it must be true in the public market. For the “promise of freedom” is an empty one if the Government is “powerless to assure that a dollar in the hands of lone person] will purchase the
same thing as a dollar in the hands of another].” Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U. S. 409, 443 (1968). Because the Court today retreats from that promise, I dissent.

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Colorado, Democracy, Education Reform, Gender

Michigan Passes Historic Increases for Education

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2023 //
2

Michigan is in track to make record investments in the quality of life for children and schools.

My friend Mitchell Robinson, a member of the State board of education, shared the following good news:

The State of Michigan passed a third consecutive historic education budget last night—and did so with bipartisan support, meaning the changes included in this budget can go into effect immediately.

It’s amazing to see what a state education budget can look like when you have pro-education legislators in charge–and teachers chairing the House and Senate Education Committees and the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on PreK-12.

The budget includes:

•universal school meals

•foundation allowance increase of 5% — the largest in state history

•fully funded special education programs

•expanded Pre-K programs

•student teacher stipends for K-12

The budget also appropriates $11 million to a K-5 Music Education Pilot Program that provides funding to school districts that currently do not have elementary music instruction to hire certified music teachers.

Budgets are about more than dollars—they are moral documents; and in Michigan we are showing that we value our children, our families, and our future by directing funding to programs and initiatives that strengthen our schools and communities.

edbudget2023.jpeg
Categories Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Early Childhood Education, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Michigan, Supporting public schools

U.S. Supreme Court Bans Affirmative Action in College Admissions. Will It Matter?

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2023 //
154

In a decision handed down today, the United States Supreme Court banned the use of race-based affirmative action in college admissions. The six conservative justices voted for the decision, the three moderate-liberal justices voted against it.

The media coverage stresses the likelihood that entrants to elite universities will become more Asian and more white, because of reliance on standardized tests, where those two groups typically have higher scores.

But we do not yet know how much it matters to eliminate official policies of affirmative action.

Most colleges in this country admit everyone who applies, so the elimination of affirmative action won’t change anything for them.

The elite colleges have many more applicants than openings. This is where the elimination of affirmative action is expected to matter. The top colleges often have five or ten times more applicants than spaces.

But selective colleges don’t rely solely on standardized test scores to fill their freshman class. They consider a variety of factors, including grade point average, the student’s participation in non-academic activities, students’ essays, and other factors. They may give preferences to fill their athletic teams, to provide enrollment for all majors, to recruit talented musicians, to accept “legacy” students, the children of alums.

In addition, growing numbers of selective colleges are test-optional, so the tests don’t matter for them.

After nearly 50 years of affirmative action, most elite colleges have internalized the norms of equity, diversion and inclusion. They have welcomed the diversification of faculty, students, and staff. How likely are they to abandon those norms? Not likely, in my view.

My own undergraduate college is led by a very respected African American woman; the director of admissions is also an African American woman. Harvard University has a new president, an African American woman. I doubt that the ethnic profiles of such institutions will change much if at all.

Conservatives have forgotten that President Richard Nixon started affirmative action. That decision was hotly debated but never abandoned until now. At the time, in the late 1970s, I questioned a system that gave points for skin color but in retrospect, I think Nixon’s policy was a great success. It generated a significant number of Black professional. That’s good for Anerican society.

I doubt that the decision today will curtail access to higher education for Black students, not even in the elite colleges that are the target of today’s decision. Diversity, equity and inclusion have become the norm.

Categories Education Reform, Higher Education, Race
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »