Archives for category: Education Reform
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The Secret of Finland’s Amazing Success

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2016 //
43

A recent article in The Guardian in the U.K. revealed the secret of Europe’s most successful school system: Finland. It is a four-letter word: P-L-A-Y.

The author, Patrick Butler, visited the Franzenia daycare center and describes what he saw.

Central to early years education in Finland is a “late” start to schooling. At Franzenia, as in all Finnish daycare centres, the emphasis is not on maths, reading or writing (children receive no formal instruction in these until they are seven and in primary school) but creative play. This may surprise UK parents, assailed as they are by the notion of education as a competitive race. In Finland, they are more relaxed: “We believe children under seven are not ready to start school,” says Tiina Marjoniemi, the head of the centre. “They need time to play and be physically active. It’s a time for creativity.”

Indeed the main aim of early years education is not explicitly “education” in the formal sense but the promotion of the health and wellbeing of every child. Daycare is to help them develop good social habits: to learn how to make friends and respect others, for example, or to dress themselves competently. Official guidance also emphasises the importance in pre-school of the “joy of learning”, language enrichment and communication. There is an emphasis on physical activity (at least 90 minutes outdoor play a day). “Kindergarten in Finland doesn’t focus on preparing children for school academically,” writes the Finnish educational expert Pasi Sahlberg. “Instead the main goal is to make sure that the children are happy and responsible individuals.”

Play, nonetheless, is a serious business, at least for the teachers, because it gives children vital skills in how to learn. Franzenia has 44 staff working with children, of whom 16 are kindergarten teachers (who have each completed a three-year specialist degree), and 28 nursery nurses (who have a two-year vocational qualification). The staff-child ratio is 1:4 for under-threes and 1:7 for the older children. Great care is taken to plan not just what kind of play takes place – there is a mix of “free play” and teacher-directed play – but to assess how children play. The children’s development is constantly evaluated. “It’s not just random play, it’s learning through play,” says Marjoniemi.

He cites British researcher David Whitbread, who says:

Carefully organised play helps develop qualities such as attention span, perseverance, concentration and problem solving, which at the age of four are stronger predictors of academic success than the age at which a child learns to read, says Whitebread. There is evidence that high-quality early years play-based learning not only enriches educational development but boosts attainment in children from disadvantaged backgrounds who do not possess the cultural capital enjoyed by their wealthier peers. Says Whitebread: “The better the quality of pre-school, the better the outcomes, both emotionally and socially and in terms of academic achievement.”

Importantly, early years care in Finland is designed and funded to ensure high take-up: every child has a legal right to high-quality pre-school care. In Franzenia, as in all daycare centres, there are children from a mix of backgrounds. Fees, subsidised by the state, are capped at a maximum of €290 (£250) a month (free for those on low incomes) for five-day, 40 hours a week care. About 40% of 1-3-year-olds are in daycare and 75% of 3-5-year-olds. Optional pre-school at the age of six has a 98% take-up. Initially envisaged in the 70s as a way of getting mothers back into the workplace, daycare has also become, Marjoniemi says, about “lifelong learning and how we prepare young children”.

Finnish educator look at the big picture, not test scores.

Daycare is not the only factor underpinning academic success. Hard-wired into Finland’s educational mission is the idea that equality is vital to economic success and societal wellbeing, as well as the belief that a small nation, reliant on creativity, ingenuity and solidarity to compete in the global economy, cannot afford inequality or segregation in schooling or health. Behind its stellar education ranking is a comprehensive social security and public health system that ensures one of the lowest child poverty rates in Europe, and some of the highest levels of wellbeing. Gunilla Holm, professor of education at the University of Helsinki, says: “The goal is that we should all progress together.”

Finnish children do not face the competitive pressures of children in the UK and US. When test scores on PISA dipped, what do you think Finnish educators did?

As UK educational policy becomes more narrow and centrally prescribed, Finland devolves more power to teachers and pupils to design and direct learning. Teachers are well paid, well-trained (they must complete a five-year specialist degree), respected by parents and valued and trusted by politicians. There is no Ofsted-style inspection of schools and teachers, but a system of self-assessment. Educational policy and teaching is heavily research-based.

Worried that its sliding Pisa scores reflected a complacency in its schools, national curriculum changes were introduced this year: these now devote more time to art and crafts. Creativity is the watchword. Core competences include “learning-to learn”, multiliteracy, digital skills and entrepreneurship. At the heart of the new curriculum, the National Board of Education says unashamedly, is the “joy of learning.”

Categories Childhood, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Reform, Equity, International, Play, Testing

Mike Klonsky’s Advice to His “Fellow Lefties”

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2016 //
37

Mike Klonsky has been a radical for many decades. Back in the 1960s, he was a key figure in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

He offers sage advice to his fellow lefties on the current election:

http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2016/09/note-to-some-fellow-lefties.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+mikeklonsky+(SmallTalk)&m=1

He writes:

Students from Johnson C. Smith University at a rally for Hillary Clinton in Charlotte, North Carolina. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
Sorry to say, rapacious capitalism will still be here in November. Not only that, but I doubt it will ever be simply voted out. Even if a “socialist” like Bernie were to someday be elected (I wish). But maybe that’s just old-school me.

Whatever the case, come the first of the year, either Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, will be our next president and Jill Stein and Gary Johnson will have taken their campaign funds and gone home, a la Ralph Nader and the rest of those perennial presidential spoiler candidates

That’s when the real movement for social justice, peace and racial equality needs to kick into gear again — after the election, no matter who is elected.

NYT columnist Charles Blow, speaking to Morgan State Univ. students, tries to break through the reported millennial political malaise and encourage a large youth turnout for Clinton.

“First — and this cannot be said enough — Clinton and Trump are not equally bad candidates. One is a conventional politician who has a long record of public service full of pros and cons. The other is a demagogic bigot with a puddle-deep understanding of national and international issues, who openly courts white nationalism, is hostile to women, Mexicans and Muslims, and is callously using black people as pawns in a Donnie-come-lately kinder-gentler campaign.”

As an educator, I would also include Trump’s pledge to do away with public education or what he calls, the “government monopoly” of public schools. And here I thought Trump loved to play Monopoly.

Blow continues…

“That person will appoint someone to fill the current vacancy on the Supreme Court (assuming that the Senate doesn’t find religion and move on Merrick Garland before the new president takes office) and that person will also appoint federal judges to fill the 88 district court and court of appeals vacancies that now exist (there are 51 nominees pending for these seats).”

And more…

“You can’t have taken part in a march for Eric Garner, chanting “I can’t breathe,” and risk the ascendance of a man who has as one of his chief advisers Rudy Giuliani, the grandfather of the very “broken windows” policing strategy that sent officers after low-level offenders like Garner.

“You can’t detest racial-dragnet-policy stop-and-frisk policing as not only morally abhorrent but thoroughly unconstitutional and risk the ascendance of a man who on Wednesday reportedly suggested that he would consider using stop-and-frisk more across the nation.
Makes sense. As Bernie Sanders himself said last week: “This is not the time for a protest vote.”

As one of the leaders of the “vote in the streets” 60’s youth revolt and someone who has often cast protest votes or gone fishing on meaningless election days, I couldn’t agree more.

Categories Clinton, Education Reform, Trump

Rebecca Lee, Tulsa Teacher, Deals with the Tragedy of Terence Crutcher’s Death

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2016 //
16

Rebecca Lee teaches at the KIPP Tulsa College Preparatory School, where Terence Crutcher’s daughter is a student. She describes in this post (which appeared on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog at the Washington Post) how the children in the school reacted to the terrible news of the unjust death of their schoolmate’s father.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/09/22/as-the-questions-roll-so-do-the-tears-a-tulsa-teacher/

Weep for the children. What lessons are they learning from these events?

Categories Education Reform

New York Revises the Common Core Learning Standards–by a Lot or a Little, Depending on Whom You Believe

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2016 //
50

New York State just released a draft of its revision of the Common Core standards.

There are different interpretations of how much has changed. Some say more than half of the standards were tweaked. Defenders of the standards insist they were barely changed at all.

We will have to wait until teachers have seen the revisions and offered their comments.

In New York, the Common Core standards have also became part of a larger discussion about other policy reforms, such as the use of state standardized test scores in teacher evaluations. Replacing the standards is the first step in redefining what it means to get an education in New York state, which will include revising assessments, teacher evaluations and how the state rates schools.

The standards will now go out for public comment, which will be open until Nov. 4. The Board of Regents are expected to consider the standards in early 2017 and roll out new assessments based on the standards by the 2018-19 school year.

The standards were revised in response to the success of the Opt Out movement; 20% of children eligible to take the tests–about 200,000–did not take them in 2015. The number rose slightly this past year. Governor Cuomo formed a commission that recommended a thorough review of the standards and the tests.

Here are the draft standards:

http://www.nysed.gov/draft-standards-english-language-arts

and here:

http://www.nysed.gov/draft-standards-mathematics

The crucial question will be whether the standards are age-appropriate, especially in the early grades, where complaints have been most intense. Early reviews from teachers suggest that very little if anything has changed in the K-2 grades, where the standards are the worst.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Industry, Education Reform, New York, Testing

Jersey Jazzman: Boston Charter Schools Have Higher Attrition Rate than Boston Public Schools–By Far

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2016 //
56

We have had quite a lot of back and forth on this blog about Boston charter schools, in anticipation of the vote this November in Massachusetts about lifting the charter cap and adding another 12 charter schools every year forever. Pro-charter advocates argue that the Boston charters are not only outstanding in test scores but that their attrition rate is no different from that of the public schools, or possibly even less than the public schools.

Jersey Jazzman (aka Mark Weber) is a teacher and is studying for his doctorate at Rutgers, where he specializes in data analysis.

In this post, he demolishes the claim that Boston charters have a low attrition rate. As he shows, using state data,

In the last decade, Boston’s charter sector has had substantially greater cohort attrition than the Boston Public Schools. In fact, even though the data is noisy, you could make a pretty good case the difference in cohort attrition rates has grown over the last five years.

Is this proof that the independent charters are doing a bad job? I wouldn’t say so; I’m sure these schools are full of dedicated staff, working hard to serve their students. But there is little doubt that the public schools are doing a job that charters are not: they are educating the kids who don’t stay in the charters, or who arrive too late to feel like enrolling in them is a good choice.

This is a serious issue, and the voters of Massachusetts should be made aware of it before they cast their votes. We know that charter schools have had detrimental effects on the finances of their host school systems in other states. Massachusetts’ charter law has one of the more generous reimbursement policies for host schools, but these laws do little more than delay the inevitable: charter expansion, by definition, is inefficient because administrative functions are replicated. And that means less money in the classroom.

Is it really worth expanding charters and risking further injury to BPS when the charter sector appears, at least at the high school level, to rely so heavily on cohort attrition?

Categories Charter Schools, Data, Education Reform, Massachusetts

Kenneth Zeichner: What We Know (and Don’t Know) about Non-Traditional Teacher Education Programs

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2016 //
24

Kenneth Zeichner is Boeing Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Washington in Seattle. He recently reviewed five alternate routes into teaching. Here is a question-and-answer session with him about his study.

The study is here.

He said:


My examination of the research on the five programs (The Relay Graduate School of Education, Match Teacher Residency, High Tech High’s Internship, iTeach and TEACH-NOW) concludes that there is no credible evidence that supports the claims of success that are made about them, and that the continued expansion of these programs is driven by ideology rather than by empirical evidence of success.

He added:

First of all, in the U.S. we have very serious problems of an inequitable distribution of teachers and inequitable access to a high-quality education, which enables students to interact with knowledge in authentic and meaningful ways. Students living in communities highly impacted by poverty are disproportionately taught by uncertified teachers, inexperienced teachers and by teachers teaching outside of their field. Most of the teachers who graduate from independent programs teach students who live in communities that are highly impacted by poverty.

I found that two of the five programs that I studied (Relay Graduate School of Education and Match Teacher Residency) contribute to the inequitable distribution of professionally prepared teachers and to the stratification of schools according to the social class and racial composition of the student body. These two programs prepare teachers to use highly controlling pedagogical and classroom management techniques, “a pedagogy of poverty,” that are primarily used in schools serving students of color whose communities are severely impacted by poverty. Meanwhile, students in more economically advantaged areas have greater access to professionally trained and experienced teachers, less punitive and controlling management practices, and to broader and richer curriculum and teaching practices. The teaching, curriculum and management practices learned by the teachers in these two independent programs are based on a restricted definition of teaching and learning and would not be acceptable in more economically advantaged communities.

In a sense, the expansion of independent teacher education programs like Relay and Match is furthering the building of a second-class system of education for children living in poverty while middle class children continue to be taught by professionally prepared teachers and have more access to a genuine education that aims for much more than just raising standardized test scores.

Categories Education Reform, Teacher Education

Peter Greene Has Advice for You about Evidence-Based Decisions

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2016 //
22

Peter Greene read a new publication from the U.S. Department of Education that is chock-full of useless and redundant information.

He sums it up:

Okay, listen carefully boys and girls, because this is some pretty heavy-duty stuff. Here’s the process for implementing evidence-based interventions:

1) Figure out what problem needs to be solved
2) Pick a solution that looks like it would work
3) Get ready to implement the solution
4) Implement the solution
5) Check to see if it worked

Oh, and there’s a graphic– five balls in a circle with arrows pointing from one to the next. I think I speak for Americans everywhere when I say thank God there are federal bureaucrats out there willing to provide us with this kind of hard-hitting guidance, because God knows, we would all be out here spinning our wheel randomly. Granted, I’ve translated the Department’s guidance into what I like to call “Plain English,” but I am absolutely stumped as I try to imagine who was sitting in DC thinking that this needed to be published. Was someone sitting in the Department saying, “You know, I bet people don’t understand that they should pick out solutions that will fit the problem. They’re probably picking some other solution. Probably a bunch of school districts out there thinking they need a new math series to get their reading scores up. We’d better address this. Oh, and add a graphic.” , listen carefully boys and girls, because this is some pretty heavy-duty stuff. Here’s the process for implementing evidence-based interventions:

1) Figure out what problem needs to be solved
2) Pick a solution that looks like it would work
3) Get ready to implement the solution
4) Implement the solution
5) Check to see if it worked

Oh, and there’s a graphic– five balls in a circle with arrows pointing from one to the next. I think I speak for Americans everywhere when I say thank God there are federal bureaucrats out there willing to provide us with this kind of hard-hitting guidance, because God knows, we would all be out here spinning our wheel randomly. Granted, I’ve translated the Department’s guidance into what I like to call “Plain English,” but I am absolutely stumped as I try to imagine who was sitting in DC thinking that this needed to be published. Was someone sitting in the Department saying, “You know, I bet people don’t understand that they should pick out solutions that will fit the problem. They’re probably picking some other solution. Probably a bunch of school districts out there thinking they need a new math series to get their reading scores up. We’d better address this. Oh, and add a graphic.”

Someone was paid to write this. Really.

Considering that this came from a federal agency that has been trumpeting the success of Race to the Top, you may rightly assume that the department has no idea what evidence based interventions are. What was the evidence for closing schools as a “reform”? What was the evidence that firing entire staffs and calling it a “turnaround” was evidence-based (it hasn’t worked in Chicago)? What was the evidence for evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students (answer: none)?

The ED needs to find out more about what constitutes “evidence.” It is not what you feel like doing, or a hunch, or a whim, or something Bill Gates told you to do.

It means that the approach was tried out and the results were reviewed to see what effects were produced. And then this was repeated again and again, to be sure that the relationship between cause and effect are genuine.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, U.S. Department of Education

New Jersey Parent: A Charter School is Ruining Our Neighborhood Public School

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2016 //
16

In a warning to the people of Massachusetts and Georgia, this parent in Red Bank, New Jersey, explains her community’s fight against a charter school that has drained resources from the town’s public school and increased segregation by luring mostly white students.

She writes:

Many years ago, a small group of Red Bank parents started talking about how upset they were that the Red Bank Borough schools were terribly underfunded and terribly segregated, mostly due to the charter school in our small town.

For years, a group of us did our best to ignore the negative effects the Red Bank Charter School was having on our schools and community. We hoped these effects would go away, and magically we would be properly funded and less segregated. We worked tirelessly on fundraising, asking for community support (for arts, music, etc.) and doing our own recruiting of parents to help even out the segregation issue.

But as time went on, evidence of the negative effects caused by the charter school continued to present themselves — whether it was in annual cuts to our school programs, broken friendships and neighborhoods, or simply being exposed to class pictures from the mostly white charter school.

I tried to turn the other cheek and focus on our schools and making them better. I became highly involved in the Parent Teacher Organization and worked with state politicians on our arts programs and underfunding.

Success was achieved. We restored our string instruments program with the help of our superintendent and many community partners. We also maintained our valuable elective classes such as Chinese, AVID (college-prep) and Project Lead the Way (engineering). We were making great strides through the leadership of our very smart administration, involved parents and community.

Then everything came to a head last year when the charter school asked to expand. We were faced with the already existing negative effects multiplying — less funding, deeper segregation. Our community was floored. But we pulled together to block the expansion. As we did, we had a chance to educate our larger community even more about the negative effects the charter school has on our district.

It was like unpeeling an onion, one layer at a time, and examining the funding model, segregation, student academic achievement, programming, budgeting, school communications, and more. And with each layer, we became more and more astounded and shocked. The data supported our deepest fears: We were indeed living in the most segregated neighborhood in New Jersey — yes, our “hip town,” our cool little town of Red Bank, the same Red Bank that Smithsonian magazine, The New York Times and many others have written about as one of the best small towns in America. The data and information we uncovered was the dirty little secret that creeped below the headlines.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Jersey, Privatization, Resistance, Segregation

Student Privacy Advocates to Congress: DO NOT PASS the Phony “Safe Kids Act”

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2016 //
10

Leading advocates for student privacy warn that the Senate Commerce Committee is close to approving legislation that will NOT protect student privacy.

For Immediate Release: September 21, 2016

Contact: Rachael Stickland; rachael@studentprivacymatters.org, 303-204-1272

Parent Coalition for Student Privacy opposes passage of Daines/Blumenthal SAFE KIDS Act

Coalition members fear the bill would open up the floodgates of commercialism

The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, composed of parents, advocates and educators throughout the nation, and whose members led the fight against inBloom, came out against the SAFE KIDS Act, co-sponsored by Senators Daine and Blumenthal, scheduled to be marked up in the Commerce Committee today.

Rachael Stickland, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy said, “While we appreciate the sincere motivation of these Senators to put controls on how personal student information is used by companies and organizations, we believe that this bill would inadvertently further erode student privacy. Right now, both the Student Privacy Pledge and FERPA, as well as other federal laws, actually ban the use of student data for non-educational purposes including behavioral advertising, while this bill would seem to allow for that possibility. There is also much confusion and ambiguity in the bill’s language about how parents would be informed about how their children’s data is being used by companies, how to request its deletion, and when this will occur, as well as what specific security protections will be required to protect against breaches.”

Josh Golin, Executive Director of Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, said: “The bill, though well-intentioned, has far too many loopholes to give children the protection from commercial exploitation that they deserve. It allows unlimited targeted ads to students through the use of apps assigned by schools, as long as these ads are based on personal information gained through an individual online session. It also exempts some of the most frequently assigned websites and apps such as YouTube. This is unacceptable, as advertising is harmful to children and detracts from any educational benefits the program might otherwise provide.”

Leonie Haimson, the Executive Director of Class Size Matters and the co-chair of the Parent Coalition concluded, “We would like to work with Senators Daine and Blumenthal and the other members of the Commerce Committee, on improving this bill to ensure that student privacy is strengthened rather than further eroded. Right now, we cannot support this legislation given the huge push from the ed tech industry to exploit our children’s personal information and to treat them as consumers rather than as students. Parents are increasingly concerned about the accelerated adoption of so-called educational apps in schools; we strongly believe their use must be approached with caution and regulated with a firm hand, to ensure that they do not violate children’s privacy and safety or undermine the learning experience. We fear this bill would further open up the floodgates of commercialism.”
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Categories Data and Data Mining, Education Reform, Privacy and Privacy Rights

Daniel Katz on New Jersey’s Love Affair With PARCC

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2016 //
11

Daniel Katz points out that the number of states still signed with the federally funded PARCC tests has dwindled dramatically, from 25 (including DC) to a lonely 7.

Yet New Jersey won’t concede that PARCC stinks; it was designed to fail most students.

Instead, New Jersey is doubling down: PARCC will be its high school graduation test and will count for 30% of teachers’ evaluation.

What will New Jersey do about the majority of students who snt graduate high school?

Who made these dumb decisions?

New Jersey <3's PARCC

Categories Education Reform
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