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Florida: The Graveyard of American Public Education

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2019 //
36

 

Florida has the worst education policies of any state in the nation, and it is about to get even more destructive, more ignorant, more backward.

Read this alarming article and remember that Betsy DeVos points to Florida as a model.

A model, yes. A model of how religious extremists, rightwing ideologues, and uneducated political hacks can destroy public education, drive away teachers, and fund “schools” that indoctrinate students in religious dogma.

The post was written by Kathleen Oropeza Parent Activist in Orlando.

Jeb Bush started the descent into the swamp of ignorance. Now the torch is carried by Ron DeSantis, who wants to arm teachers, expand the state’s voucher programs to include middle-class families with income up to $100,000 a year, reduce the power of local school boards so they can’t block new charter schools, and undercut public schools in every way their little minds can imagine.

Oropeza writes:

“Pay attention, because what happens in Florida usually shows up in the thirty or so other states under GOP control.

“Step one for DeSantis was to stock the State Supreme Court with three conservative judges. Next, DeSantis charged the Board of Education with appointing Richard Corcoran as State Commissioner of Education. As the immediate past Speaker of the Florida House, Corcoran was the architect of the “school choice” expansions logrolled into multi-subject, opaque omnibus bills that became law over the past several sessions.

“DeSantis, a known Trump ally, made it clear in his proposed education visionto legislators before the the start of the 2019 session that they should “send me a bill” for a new private school tax-funded voucher program. The DeSantis voucher became SB 7070/HB 7075, the radical Family Empowerment Scholarship Program. Funded through the Florida Education Finance Program from property taxes, this is a dangerous co-mingling of the already thin dollars designated for Florida’s district public schools.

“In a state that prizes high-stakes accountability for its public-school students, these vouchers go to unregulated private schools that maintain their right to discriminate against certain students, charge more than the voucher for tuition, teach extreme curriculums, and are not required to ensure student safety or hire certified teachers. This dramatic expansion of private religious school vouchers, once meant for low-income recipients, is morphing into a middle-class entitlement program for families of four making close to $100,000 a year….

”On teacher pay, DeSantis wants to double down on the awful policy of providing bonuses instead of raises via SB7070. Teacher pay in Florida ranks 45th in the nation: $47,858 on average. The state is struggling with a massive teacher shortage projected by the Florida Department of Education to reach 10,000 vacancies by the start of next school year.”

As Oropeza points out, no one ever bought a home with a one-time bonus (except on Wall Street).

”DeSantis supporter Representative Kim Daniels continues to insert religioninto public schools this session by sponsoring HB 195. This is model legislation from ALEC-like Christian Nationalist Project Blitz. Daniels, a Democrat, passed a 2018 law requiring “In God We Trust” to be displayed in public schools. This year Daniels is pushing Blitz legislation requiring public high schools to offer a religion class that teaches only Christianity.”

Another bill allows schools to withdraw any book that is “morally offensive,” such as Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes.” Expect to see demands to remove a lot of “morally offensive” classics by authors such as John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Harper Lee, and Mark Twain.

“Another bill, HB 330 by Senator Dennis Baxley, the original sponsor of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, seeks to revise curriculum standards and force public schools to teach “science” theories such as creationism and alternate views to subjects such as climate change.”

Florida is indeed a model: a model of kakistocracy.

Look it up.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Standardized Testing, Vouchers

Laura Chapman: Did Betsy DeVos Violate the Law?

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2019 //
23

 

Laura Chapman read the post about the U.S. Department of Education threatening to cut off $340 million in Title 1 funding from Arizona unless all high school students took the same test—either the state test or the SAT or the ACT. She pored through the Every Student Succeeds Act and could find no legal basis for this threat.

Laura Chapman writes:

I have spent several hours looking at ESSA. I could find nothing about specific tests other than those required for the International Baccalaureate or Advanced Placement. Neither the SAT or ACT is mentioned but there are technical requirements for ESSA accountability tests. As Diane notes, the SAT and the ACT are designed for college admission, not as a high school accountability test or a test aligned with state standards, a requirement for ESSA. Use for high school accountability is in violation of ESSA. I do not understand why EdWeek and state officials think SAT or ACT tests are OK. Here are a few relevant sections of ESSA.

ACADEMIC ASSESSMENTS.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—Each State plan shall demonstrate that the State educational agency, in consultation with local educational agencies, has implemented a set of high-quality student academic assessments in mathematics, reading or language arts, and science. The State retains the right to implement such assessments in any other subject chosen by the State.
(B) REQUIREMENTS.—The assessments under subparagraph (A) shall—be
(I) the same academic assessments used to measure the achievement of all public elementary school and secondary school students in the State; and (II) administered to all public elementary school and secondary school students in the State; (ii) be aligned with the challenging State academic standards, and provide coherent and timely information about student attainment of such standards and whether the student is performing at the student’s grade level; (iii) be used for purposes for which such assessments are valid and reliable, consistent with relevant, nationally recognized professional and technical testing standards, objectively measure academic achievement, knowledge, and skills, and be tests that do not evaluate or assess personal or family beliefs and attitudes, or publicly disclose personally identifiable information; (iv) be of adequate technical quality for each purpose required under this Act and consistent with the requirements of this section, the evidence of which shall be made public, including on the website of the State educational agency;
(v) (I) in the case of mathematics and reading or language arts, be administered— (aa) in each of grades 3 through 8; and (bb) at least once in grades 9 through 12;
(II) in the case of science, be administered not less than one time during—(aa) grades 3 through 5; (bb) grades 6 through 9; and (cc) grades 10 through 12; and
(III) in the case of any other subject chosen by the State, be administered at the discretion of the State.” find that and more beginning on page 24 in the ESSA pdf

In addition, Betsy cannot tell states what tests to use. There are multiple prohibitions in ESSA, and this is a variant of long established federal law governing the US Office of Education.

SEC. 2302. 020 U.S.C. 6692 RULES OF CONSTRUCTION. (a) PROHIBITION AGAINST FEDERAL MANDATES, DIRECTION, OR CONTROL.—Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize the Secretary or any other officer or employee of the Federal Government to mandate, direct, or control a State, local educational agency, or school’s—
(1) instructional content or materials, curriculum, program of instruction, academic standards, or academic assessments;
(2) teacher, principal, or other school leader evaluation system;
(3) specific definition of teacher, principal, or other school leader effectiveness; or
(4) teacher, principal, or other school leader professional standards, certification, or licensing. p.196

ESSA also has stipulations about informing parents about opt out policies.

There is much else in ESSA. It should be repealed and replaced with a bare minimum document for distributing federal funds to the schools and students most in need. ESSA turns the idea of accountability into an extended effort to micromanage public education and de-professionalize the work of educators. I became an involuntary expert on NCLB. ESSA is a nightmare. It is filled with contradictions, planned loopholes, gotchas. word salads. It gives legitamacy to too many really bad ideas from amateurs and reformers.

https://www2.ed.gov/documents/essa-act-of-1965.pdf

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Testing

Fresno: Low Scores, Great Students!

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2019 //
13

 

The boys’ volleyball team at Kepler Neighborhood School, mostly 7th and 8th graders, went for a run over a bridge near the school. They spotted a woman attempting suicide, dangling from the bridge. They raced to ask their coach what to do. He said, “Tell her that her life matters,” as he dialed 911.  The boys ran to the woman and told her again and again that her life matters, that people care about her, that she must not give up.

She pulled herself up. She did not commit suicide. The boys persuaded her to go on living.

According to the NAEP data, Fresno schools and students are among the lowest performing in the nation. Their scores are very low.

What do you think of those kids in Fresno now? Put another way, what do you think about using the scores to judge the worth of these boys?

Categories California, Character, Citizenship, Education Reform, Goodness, NAEP, Testing

The Boston Globe Today on Our Bought Politics

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2019 //
37

I subscribe to the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Denver Post, the Arizona Republic, the Orlando Sentinel, and a few other newspapers. I want to keep journalism alive.

One of my favorite features is a daily summary in the Boston Globe called Fast Forward by Teresa Hanifin.

This is an excerpt from this morning’s Fast Forward.

“Trump heads to Texas today for a couple of fund-raisers. While there, he’ll sign some executive orders designed to further roll back energy and environmental regulations and promote the fossil fuel industry, apparently to meet his goal of making global warming worse.

“The orders also contradict Republicans’ long-held belief in states’ rights. Trump is trying to rob states, especially those run by Democrats, of the power granted to them under the Clean Water Act to stop pipelines and other projects that could harm the water quality in their districts, and give that power to the feds instead.

“It’s also yet another attempt by the GOP to subvert the will of voters who elected those Democrats, presumably for reasons that included protecting their water. But oil and gas interests donate a ton of money to hold more sway with Republicans, so there you have it.

“But Republicans aren’t alone in working against the best interests of ordinary people when it suits them: Democrats have joined their GOP colleagues to push a bill that would permanently ban the IRS from creating its own free electronic tax filing system. Why? Because it would compete with Turbo Tax, H&R Block, and other private tax prep companies, and if you can’t buy off lawmakers with campaign donations and millions of dollars in lobbying, then what good are you? The full House could take up the measure soon; there’s a similar measure over in the Senate. ProPublica has the sordid details.

“AG William Barr is back before a congressional budget committee today and is still being asked about the Mueller report. Here are live updates.

“Meanwhile, Bloomberg found out that Barr is placating the boss by assembling a team to investigate why the FBI decided to investigate possible ties between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government. Why was there an investigation? Oh, I don’t know …

— Maybe it was the fact that there were at least 100 known contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian-government linked people or entities, according to Business Insider, including 23 meetings or calls.

— Or perhaps the fact that 16 Trump campaign officials had direct contact with a Russian government official or a Russian-linked operative, and at least an additional nine campaign officials were aware of these contacts.

— Or maybe it was the fact that Trump campaign officials had meetings, calls, and digital correspondence with high-level Russian government officials, billionaires linked to Putin, an accused Russian spy, and hackers enlisted by Russian intelligence to meddle in the 2016 elections.

“All that may seem like a big, fat nothingburger to some. Reasonable people would disagree.”

Categories Education Reform

#Red4Ed Keeps Moving On: North Carolina and Oregon

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2019 //
8

 

Teachers in North Carolina are planning a mass action for May 1 according to this email from high school teacher Stuart Egan.

“We have already closed down six systems for that day and more will be announcing soon.

“The numbers we have so far are much more than last year’s march at this time and far more organized.
“Five specific issues.
  • Provide $15 minimum wage for all school personnel, 5% raise for all ESPs (non-certified staff), teachers, admin, and a 5% cost of living adjustment for retirees
  • Provide enough school librarians, psychologists, social workers, counselors, nurses, and other health professionals to meet national standards
  • Expand Medicaid to improve the health of our students and families
  • Reinstate state retiree health benefits eliminated by the General Assembly in 2017
  • Restore advanced degree compensation stripped by the General Assembly in 2013”

Teachers in Oregon are considering a strike. 

“Educators across Oregon are planning to walk out of class Wednesday, May 8 should the Oregon Legislature not add an additional $2 billion per biennium needed to maintain and improve K-12 schools.

“Over the last two decades, the state has financed schools at 21 to 38 percent below what its own research suggests districts need to be successful.

“Many educators argue the lack of funding has resulted in teachers having to do more with less. They say this is reflected in the state’s low graduation rates, high dropout and absenteeism rates, as well as rising issues with disruptive behaviors, mental health needs and large class sizes.”

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Resistance, Teacher Pay, Teachers

DeVos Continues D.C.’s Mad Obsession with Standardized Testing

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2019 //
25

 

Betsy DeVos’ team warned Arizona that it could lose $340 million in federal funding if it persists in offering options to students taking standardized tests. The state has to pick one test for high school students—either the state test, SAT or ACT-or it may lose Title 1 funding for disadvantaged students.

Leave aside the fact that the SAT and the ACT are designed for college admission, not as a high school accountability test. Leave aside the fact that all standardized tests are normed on a bell curve to produce “winners” and “losers” and are completely misaligned as high school tests of competency. Leave aside that using these two commercial tests is a multimillion dollar windfall for two private testing corporations.

The federal government should not be holding any state hostage over its decision about how or whether to use certain tests. It should not threaten to withhold funding for the neediest students to force states to do what the U.S. Department of Education or Congress prefers. Congress should use its powers to protect the civil rights of students, not to interfere in how to educate students, a subjectwhereit is woefully and demonstrably ignorant.

This is a stellar example of federal control of education, which was banned by federal law in the early 1970s. Using a standardized test to judge the “success” of every student will predictably rank students by family income with only rare exceptions. The students from low-income families will cluster at the bottom, along with children English-learners and students with disabilities.

This spring, Arizona allowed its districts a choice of offering the ACT, the SAT, or the state’s traditional test, the AzMerit test, at the high school level.  ESSA allows states to offer districts the option of using a nationally-recognized college entrance exam in place of the state test, but first they must meet certain technical requirements.

For instance, states must make sure that the national recognized exam (such as the ACT or SAT) measures progress toward the state’s standards at least as well as the original state test. They also must make sure that the results of the nationally-recognized exam can be compared to the state test. And they have to provide appropriate accommodations for English-language learners and students in special education. All of this is supposed to happen before the state ever allows its districts the option of an alternate test…

The department has other, big concerns about Arizona’s testing system. The state passed a law allowing its schools a choice of tests, at both the high school and elementary level. That is not kosher under ESSA, which calls for every student in the same grade to take the same test, in most cases, Brogan wrote.

What’s more, Arizona hasn’t had a single high school test for several years. Instead, students are allowed to take one of three end-of-course math and reading/language arts tests, Brogan’s letter says. The failure to offer students the same test statewide is the reason the state has been put on high-risk status.

The state needs to pick one test for high school students, Brogan says, or it may lose federal Title I funding for disadvantaged students. It’s up to Arizona to decide whether the single test is the AzMerit, the ACT, the SAT, or something else.

Congress needs to abandon its belief that tests improve outcomes and that it can use federal funding to force uniformity of testing. NCLB proved that this theory was wrong.

After almost 20 years of failure, after a decade of flat test scores, isn’t it time for the members of the Congressional education committee to reflect on the bad ideas they have been promoting and figure out that it is time to stop compelling states to adopt harmful practices? Don’t they know they are still inhaling the toxic fumes of a failed NCLB? Or do they still believe that there was a “Texas Miracle”?

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Standardized Testing

Anthony Cody Reviews “Wisdom and Wit”

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2019 //
4

 

Garn Press published a collection of my most significant essays.

The book brings together essays that would otherwise have been lost to posterity. 

It contains many of the articles I wrote for Huffington Post Articles from 2010 to 2018; many articles that were published in The New York Review of Books and NYR Daily; several articles that appeared in widely disparate publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The New Republic, The Detroit News, The Washington Post; a speech that I delivered to the Modern Language Association about the Common Core  from  2014; and a number of posts that appeared on this blog.
Happily, Anthony Cody reviewed the book here.
The publisher, Garn Press, prepared the following links to introduce the book and perhaps to entice you to buy it.
I am happy to see my scattered essays gathered in one place.
All royalties, should there be any, will be donated by Garn to the Network for Public Education Action to continue its important work.
Visual Press Release – Enhanced
Categories Education Reform

Albany Times-Union: Save the Pep Rallies for What Really Matters, Not for Testing

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2019 //
13

 

The editorial board of the Albany Times-Union editorial board is one of the wisest in the nation. It understands, as few other editorial boards do, that the annual standardized tests are a waste of instructional time that do nothing to help students. Their only error in this editorial is to assume that the tests measure school performance. They don’t. They measure school demographics, which can be obtained without the testing.

The editorial board objects to the state and districts’ efforts to bribe or threaten students to take these useless tests.

 

Which word or words best describe some schools’ approach to last week’s state English tests for grades three through eight?

(a) misguided

(b) disappointing

(c) both of the above

Take out your No. 2 pencil and bubble in (c). New York has been working hard to make testing better. But last week’s reports of how schools are incentivizing test participation show we have a long way to go.

Some schools.. have dangled a deal in front of their students: Take the statewide English and math tests and you’ll get out of taking your core subject finals in June. Other schools have promised pizza parties if enough students take the tests or have held pep rallies to encourage them. 

Still others have taken a sterner approach, pressuring parents or doing away with “refusal rooms” for students whose parents opted them out…

All of these approaches are troubling.

Let’s recall what the tests are for. They aren’t a measure of children’s progress. They’re a measure of schools’ performance. They’re not designed to help the kids who take them, at least not directly. The results don’t even arrive till the next school year…

Instead, these assessments — mandated, along with a minimum 95 percent participation rate, under federal law — have warped the curriculum, chipping away at social studies, science, art, even recess, in the push to provide more English and math instruction. Emphasizing standardized tests over regular classroom work — yes, including final exams — is a distraction from real education.

Pep rallies for an exam? Why not a pep rally to encourage, say, participation in the science fair? And bribes and cajolery are not the tools of a system that’s working correctly. They’re signs that we’ve lost sight of what’s really important. Hint: It’s not increasing a school’s test participation rates.

And perseverance and resilience? Better for children to learn to persevere through a long-term project like a science experiment or a poetry portfolio; better to learn resilience through a chance to revise a tough math worksheet or the challenge of presenting in front of the class. Perseverance certainly isn’t taught by tests plagued by the kinds of computer glitches we saw last week, which only raise kids’ frustration and parents’ ire…

Save the pep rallies for things that really count.

Categories Education Reform, New York, Opt Out, Real Education, Standardized Testing

An Oxymoron: “Diverse” Online Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2019 //
12

 

A paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Toronto reported on the extent to which online charter schools have racial diversity. Benjamin Herold wrote about the paper in Education Week. 

This struck me as an odd finding, because online instruction by definition is delivered by computer tostudents at home. There is little, if any, face to face contact among students.and since students may be spread across an entire state, the opportunities to interact with others is minimal.

There may be “diversity” in the school’s purported enrollment, but this would be diversity without integration. Students could be enrolled in a “diverse” virtual school yet never encounter a student of a different race.

Herold wrote:

“While full-time online charter schools nationally enroll a relatively high percentage of white students, there are significant variations in enrollment patterns by state, according to new research presented today at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, being held here.

“In Colorado, for example, the enrollment of online charters is just 36 percent white, compared to 54 percent in brick-and-mortar traditional and charter schools throughout the state, according to University of Alabama assistant education professor Bryan Mann.

“Online charters in Arizona, Nevada, and South Carolina, meanwhile, enroll significantly higher percentages of white students than do brick-and-mortar traditional and charter schools in their states.

“Most states have majority-white online charter school populations with less diversity than … other schools. However, there are states where students experience more diverse environments in online charter schools,” Mann wrote in a paper presented at the conference, titled “Whiteness and Economic Advantage in Digital Schooling: Equity Considerations for K-12 Online Charter Schools.”

 

Categories Education Reform, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Virtual Charter Schools

Washington Post: White House Photos Show Trump in a White Male World

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2019 //
53

David Nakamura wrote in the Washington Post about the regular release of photos by the White House showing Trump surrounded only by white people. He should have added, only by white men. Trump’s only black cabinet member, Ben Carson, rarely appears in White House photos. Seldom is there a woman in the informal gatherings.

The monochromatic gatherings are a stark contrast to the increased and increasing diversity of the population,  and an even starker contrast to the Obama administration, which featured diversity among its appointees and invitees.

”In picture after picture, emanating from the most exclusive corridors of American political power, Trump is seen with a team of aides and advisers that is almost exclusively white — a vivid, if unspoken, statement of the distance between the president and wide swaths of a nation that is growing increasingly and rapidly more diverse.

“To a degree, the photos are simply a reflection of what is already well known: Trump lacks racial diversity among his senior staff and Cabinet. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has been the only African American in the top ranks of the administration since the departure in December 2017 of White House senior adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former reality television star.

”But for a president whose agenda has centered largely on undoing the legacy of his White House predecessor, Barack Obama, the procession of daily images has served to reinforce the notion that the era of the nation’s first black president is over.

“The backdrop to this visual representation of Trumpism is ‘Make America Great Again,’ a nostalgic longing for a period in which whiteness and white people didn’t feel threatened,” said Eddie Glaude Jr., chairman of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. “For eight years, we had young Americans from all walks of life looking to the seat of American power and seeing a black family and seeing diversity in all its fullness occupy the White House. In some ways, just as Trump’s policies have sought to erase Obama’s policy legacy, the images coming out of the White House aim to erase eight years of the visual black presidency.”

“The images range from official events and bilateral meetings to informal social gatherings among the president’s staff. They are taken by news photographers, White House staff photographers and Trump aides, who post the shots on social media.”

Categories Education Reform
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