Archives for category: Education Reform
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Paul Thomas: Closing Schools, Opening Schools: Why Not Look at the Evidence?

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
6

Paul Thomas reacts to an editorial in the Charleston (S.C.) “Post and Courier,” which recommended closing a high-poverty school with low test scores and turning it over to private operators.

Thomas asks a few questions:

So there are actually some very important questions that the editors at the P&C are failing to ask:

Why have some students been allowed ever to languish in school conditions that are subpar when compared to vibrant schools and opportunities for other students in the same city? Burns Elementary with a poverty index of 96 is but one school that represents a long history in SC of how negligent we have been as a state in terms of providing anything close to equity in the opportunities poor and racial minority children are afforded.

Why does any public school board need a private partnership to do what is needed to offer these students the sort of school all children deserve? If what is needed is so obvious, and so easy to do (which is a subtext of the editorial), the truth is that the school board simply does not have the political will to do what is right for some children.

And this is very important: What third party, not invested in the Meeting Street Academy, has examined the claims of academic success in the so-called “successful” schools that are being promised as fixes for Burns? I cannot find any data on test scores (setting aside that test scores aren’t even that good for making these claims), but I have analyzed claims of “miracle” charter schools in SC—finding that these claims are always false. Always. I do not trust that Meeting Street is going to prove to be the first actual miracle school in a long line of those that have been unmasked before.

He notes that politicians are easily bamboozled and follow the crowd, without asking where they are going.

SC political leaders have pushed for school choice, charter schools, VAM evaluations of teachers, ever-new standards and high-stakes testing, exit exams, third-grade retention, and now takeover policies for so-called “failing schools”—yet all of these have no basis for policy in the body of research refuting the effectiveness of each one.

For the editors of the P&C, as well as our political leaders and the public, the real questions are why do we persist in ignoring the stark realities of our inequitable society, why do we then continue to play politics with our schools that are just as inequitable as our society, and then why do we refuse to consider the evidence about addressing social and educational inequity directly in our policies?

Why do politicians continue to push for policies that have failed elsewhere, again and again? Because they don’t care. Because they are happy to maintain the status quo. Their eager embrace of “school choice” and other failed policies is a smokescreen. They know such policies will change nothing.

Closing schools, renaming schools, shuffling students—these are the practices of those who are invested in the status quo regardless of the consequences for “other people’s children.”

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, South Carolina, Testing

Bill Moyers: The Rot at the Heart of the Democratic Party

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
31

Do you want to know why Debbie Wasserman Schultz is controversial? Read this. 

 

 

“First, a quick recap: Rep. Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), chair of the Democratic National Committee, also has been an advocate for the payday loan industry. The website Think Progress even described her as the “top Democratic ally” of “predatory payday lenders.” You know — the bottom-feeding bloodsuckers of the working poor. Yes, them.

“Low-income workers living from paycheck to paycheck, especially women and minorities, are the payday lenders’ prime targets — easy pickings because they’re often desperate. Twelve million Americans reportedly borrow nearly $50 billion a year through payday loans, at rates that can soar above 300 percent, sometimes even beyond 500 percent. Bethany McLean at The Atlantic recently reported that the government’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) studied millions of payday loans and found that “67 percent went to borrowers with seven or more transactions a year and that a majority of those borrowers paid more in fees than the amount of their initial loan.”

“Yet when the CFPB was drawing up new rules to make it harder for payday predators to feast on the poor, Rep. Wasserman Schultz co-sponsored a bill to delay those new rules by two years. How, you ask, could the head of the party’s national committee embrace such an appalling exploitation of working people?

“Just follow the money. Last year, the payday loan industry spent $3.5 million lobbying; and as we wrote two weeks ago, in Wasserman Schultz’s home state, since 2009, payday lenders have bought protection from Democrats and Republicans alike by contributing $2.5 million or so to candidates from both parties, including her. That’s how “Representative” Wasserman Schultz, among others, wound up representing the predators instead of the poor.”

Then there is Connecticut’s Governor Dannell Malloy. His first allegiance is to the richest citizens of his state.

Categories Education Reform

Duncan and Former Aides Land Cushy Jobs

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
29

Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is working for Steve Jobs’ widow in Chicago. He was invited to sit on the board of a $1 billion technology start-up. Corporate board memberships are well paid.

 

As usual, Peter Greene has the best explanation of what’s happening.

 

He is puzzled that the press release for Duncan refers to him as a “thought leader.”

 
“Arne Duncan– Highly Regarded Thought Leader. Holy smokes. I mean, holy frickin’ smokes. Duncan was not even a particularly apt Thought Sayer, and I can’t remember a single time that Duncan stood up to speak and folks from all across the nation fell in behind him, excited by his vision and his leaderliness. Not to be mean, but I’m not sure that Duncan ever proved to be a Thought Haver. Is there a Duncan policy that didn’t come from somewhere else? Anything? Test-and-punish, charter schools, data mining, Common Core– pretty sure that someone else did the thinking on those.

 

“He certainly did expand federal reach, but he did it through the artful use of blackmail (apply for a waiver or face the consequences of being in violation of NCLB). It is true that the stimulus money saved some jobs, but are we going to give Duncan credit for that? How about pissing off Congress so badly that they united in the historic stripping of power from a cabinet-level department? Or the complete bungling of Common Core? Or the demoralization and alienation of public school teachers? I don’t want to rehash the whole question of Duncan’s legacy again, but this is a spirited rewrite of history indeed.”

Earlier this year, President Obama’s friends took control of the Apollo Education Group, which owns the University of Phoenix. Duncan’s deputy secretary of education Tony Miller will run the multi-billion dollar for-profit operation.

 

In other news, Duncan’s former deputy Jim Shelton will advise Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan.

 

Nice gigs.

 

 

Categories Education Reform

Kids Do Worse on Computers When Taking Tests

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
24

A growing number of studies conclude that students perform worse on tests when they take them online than when the questions are on paper.

A study published by MIT and conducted at the U.S. Military Academy found that the students who did not use computers scored significantly higher than those who did.

The researchers suggested that removing laptops and iPads from classes was the equivalent of improving the quality of teaching.

The study divided 726 undergraduates randomly into three groups in the 2014-15 and 2015-16 academic years. The control group’s classrooms were “technology-free,” meaning students were not allowed to use laptops or tablets at their desk. Another group was allowed to use computers and other devices, and the third group had restricted access to tablets.

“The results from our randomised experiment suggest that computer devices have a substantial negative effect on academic performance,” the researchers concluded, suggesting that the distraction of an electronic device complete with internet access outweighed their use for note-taking or research during lessons.

The research had an unusual twist: the students involved were studying at the West Point academy in the US, where cadets are ruthlessly ranked by exam results, meaning they were motivated to perform well and may have been more disciplined than typical undergraduates.

But even for the cream of the US army’s future crop, the lure of the digital world appears to have been too much, and exam performance after a full course of studying economics was lower among those in classes allowed to use devices.


“Our results indicate that students perform worse when personal computing technology is available. It is quite possible that these harmful effects could be magnified in settings outside of West Point,” the researchers concluded.

The Hechinger Report reported that writing online essays may contribute to a widening of the achievement gap.

The U.S. Department of Education launched a study of fourth graders using computers for writing compared to fourth graders using paper and pencil.

High-performing students did substantially better on the computer than with pencil and paper. But the opposite was true for average and low-performing students. They crafted better sentences using pencil and paper than they did using the computer. Low-income and black and Hispanic students tended to be in this latter category.

“(T)he use of the computer may have widened the writing achievement gap,” concluded the working paper, “Performance of fourth-grade students in the 2012 NAEP computer-based writing pilot assessment.” If so, that has big implications as test makers, with the support of the Department of Education, move forward with their goal of moving almost all students to computerized assessments, which are more efficient and cheaper to grade.
In the study, high-performing students — the top 20 percent of the test takers — produced an average of 179 words per assignment on the computer, three times the number of words that the bottom 20 percent produced. They also used spellcheck, backspace and other editing tools far more often. The researchers found that these high-performing students were more likely to have access to a computer and the Internet at home.

But these high achievers were in the minority. More than two-thirds of fourth-graders’ responses received scores in the bottom half of a 6-point scoring scale that rated grammar and writing quality. Overall, the average fourth-grader typed a total of 110 words per assignment, far less than the 159-word average on the 2010 paper test.

In looking for explanations for the disparity in performance, it seems likely that the high-performing students are more familiar with computers than low-performing students or even those in the middle.

But it is also likely, at least to me, that it is easier to read and re-read a passage when it is on paper than to read it online. Some young children may have difficulty scrolling up and down the page.

And there may be a difference in recall associated with the medium. That requires further study.

Let me confess that I have tried and failed to read books on a Kindle or similar device. It is easy to lose your place; it is hard to find it again. Maybe the difficulty is age-related; after all, I have only been using a computer for 32 years and began using it as an adult. Children who grow up in the digital age may not have the same visual problem that I have in reading large blocs of text. But it will take more studies to figure out when it is beneficial to use the computer and when it is not. Unfortunately policymakers have rushed into online instruction and online assessments on the assumption (untested) that there are no downsides. They do this, as the Hechinger Report says, because the computer makes it easier and cheaper to grade tests. Standardization has some benefits. But it also has drawbacks. We should be aware of both.

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, Online Education, Online Learning, Standardized Testing, Testing

Dallas Morning News: We Love Testing (Other People’s Kids)

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
15

The Dallas Morning News published an editorial praising high-stakes testing. The News thinks the tests are necessary and valuable, even though parents don’t.

 

You can tell that no one on the editorial board has children in public schools, because they can’t understand why parents object to the state’s obsession with standardized testing. They congratulate patents got not opting out. They say nothing about the billions of dollars cut from Texas schools in 2011.

 

They just love that data. The kids, not so much.

 

They write:

 

“Dallas Morning News education writer Corbett Smith reports that only about 2,000 Texas families refused the test in 2015-16. That number is tiny compared with New York, where 240,000 opted out of the assessment, or Colorado, where 100,000 didn’t take it.

 

“Opting out of STAAR tests isn’t easy in Texas — but it is possible. So the low number leads us to hope that, despite the massive dislike of accountability exams, parents recognize STAAR’s importance.

 

“This newspaper shares that belief. That’s why our goals for 2016 include advocating for accountability and making a renewed case for the importance of testing, despite the system’s flaws. We have pledged to listen carefully to critics and bone up on best practices so we can urge reform that works.

 

“The first cleanup falls squarely on the state’s new testing vendor. New Jersey-based Educational Testing Services, which won a $280 million contract from the state, has left campuses mired in computer glitches and exam flaws. Just Thursday, it was accused of losing all the elementary and middle school tests in a small Central Texas school district.

 

“Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath assessed the mess this way: Those problems are “unacceptable” and must be fixed.

 

“But the solution isn’t to throw out the whole system, and it’s encouraging to see that most families and school districts get that.

 

“Families deserve to know how their students are progressing against the state standard; without a consistent scorecard, too much is left to chance. That can be a special problem as children move into the later years of elementary school and into middle school, where students most often slip.

 

“Likewise, school districts need to know not only how their students are performing, but how to evaluate teachers and help them grow to be the best possible educators.”

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Opt Out, Parents, Standardized Testing, Texas

Arthur Camins: How to Go Beyond This Manufactured Crisis

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2016 //
8

Arthur Camins, Director, Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, recognizes that the nation’s public schools and their educators have been targets of a false narrative of failure. He argues that it is necessary not only to refute the propaganda campaign but to propose better ideas to strengthen public schools and our democracy.

 

He writes:

 

“There are real persistent problems in education. Today, failure narratives are the strategy-of-choice for groups who want to privatize education, undermine unions, disempower workers, and open profitable markets for educational technology, testing materials and publically funded, but privately managed charter schools that are unencumbered by government regulation. However, what is said is a smoke screen for what it intended.

 

“Let’s open up schools as profit centers,” “We don’t trust communities to make democratic decisions about their schools,” and “Let’s get taxpayers to fund some charter schools for a few poor kids to get ahead,” would have garnered little public support. Instead, the preferred narrative is that American public schools are failing (especially for the poor and students of color), as have past improvement efforts, so we must do something before it is too late. With the release of every new national and international assessment results, statistics are marshaled to support that argument. The unstated assumption is that our society has abandoned serious efforts to end poverty or segregation. Instead, the US has accepted the audacity of small hopes.

 

In response, critics of the privatization agenda have been justifiably quick to point out flaws, biases, and limitations in how data is often presented. That is a necessary lie-exposing response, but only one of the steps needed to promote equitable democratically-governed education.

 

As with the hyped Soviet and Iraqi threats, critics of the phony education crisis have also countered, with, “It’s not as bad as they say.” That line of argument always comes up short for two reasons. First, it permits those in power to frame the debate and put critics on defense. Second, there is a believable element in the narrative. Education in the US has, in fact persistently failed poor students.

 

Exposing lies provides the clarity and information that lay the foundation for action. The next step is resistance. Resistance is a strategy for protection, survival and to engage people in a unifying common struggle. Opting out of high-stakes over-testing, critiquing flawed standardized tests, fighting school closings and budget cuts, opposing pay for performance for teachers, opposing the disproportionate influence of wealthy donors on education policy, opposing charter school expansion, and resisting attacks on unions are all essential.

 

However, a win for equity and democracy also requires a third step: Promote a new and different proactive agenda for education that resonates with the public more effectively than the current, “We are losing” narrative. (Donald Trump is only the extreme version of that continuum.)

 

There is no denying that education falls short. However, supporters of equity and democracy need to reframe what ails American education and offer unifying solutions that give people something new to fight for together.”

 

Arthur proceeds to offer a clear, coherent and positive agenda for real education reform.

 

“Free, high-quality, universal Pre-K through post-secondary education should be the new norm. That is what the country now needs for all citizens to be successful in life, work, and citizenship. Fairness dictates equitable funding by progressive income, capital gains, and corporate taxes, rather than inequitable local property taxes….

 

Learning in diverse, well-integrated schools and classrooms is vital for personal, social and workplace success. Government policies must promote neighborhood, school, and workplace integration…..

 

Every child should be valued, known, and respected in a school where they learn not just a broad range of academic skills for college, career, and personal fulfillment, but also the empathy and social skills to be a responsible member of their community.

 

Funding programs that have the potential to mediate poverty and historic racial inequity are essential, as is promoting integrated schools. However, for too long both of those goals have been framed narrowly as helping “them.” Since the larger inequities in the US have never been fully addressed, too many people have heard “helping them” and thought, “Not at my expense.”

 

Exposing the lies and organized resistance are the essential steps to stop destructive policies. Winning policies that promote equity and democracy requires a next step: Frame new needs and new solutions that are explicitly multi-racial and unifying.

The crisis we face is in education is not about test scores. Rather, it is that we cannot achieve satisfactory results amidst the far broader crisis of growing inequality, eroding democracy, and escalating divisiveness.”

 

Categories Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity

Tom Scarice: Time for an Education Revolution in Connecticut

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2016 //
7

Tom Scarice is superintendent of schools in Madison, Connecticut, and a well-informed critic of what is deceptively called “education reform” in that state. He also happens to be a member of the honor roll of this blog because of his thoughtful commentaries about what needs to be done to fix education in Connecticut.

In this post, he says that it is time for an education revolution in Connecticut.

He begins his post with a metaphor about music that long ago brought everyone to the dance floor, swinging and swaying, but that is now tired and irrelevant.

We are the state left on the dance floor with tired policies, while other states are running away. We are overdue for a bold statewide vision that matches the uncertain and ever-changing world our students will enter when they graduate. But who will lead?

Codified by state law, and enforced by a bureaucracy utterly consumed by compliance, tens of thousands of educators across the state are suffocating, desperate to be exhumed. Consequently, this suffocation is stifling the young, inquisitive minds of children from all backgrounds and colors.

Have we seen the types of educational changes we want for our kids in the past 10-15 years, particularly as the world endures revolutionary changes? If not, why continue the same ineffectual practices? Can Connecticut jump to the forefront and lead in innovation, or do we stand on the dance floor with the two embarrassing guys clapping and swaying?

As we careen through rapid global changes that have profound implications for the worlds of work, citizenship, and lifelong learning, it is safe to assume that the traditional promise of “go to school, get good grades, go to a good college, get a good job” no longer applies. If you are clinging to that promise, you are probably still searching for your music at Tower Records.

The world continues to decentralize its economy, and the flow of information, at an unprecedented rate. The “sharing economy” rewards innovators and diversity of thought. Yet, Connecticut clings to a command-and-control educational approach destined to homogenize children.

Either directly through prescriptive laws, such as ones that mandate precisely how local boards of education must evaluate their employees, or indirectly through schemes and mechanisms that place high stakes on invalid and unreliable tests such as the SBAC, we rank and sort kids, schools, and teachers based on test scores. Our 8-year-old students take more state tests than what is required to pass the bar exam to become a lawyer. All the while we are missing the point.

We are educating our children for the wrong era.

What changes are needed?

Read on. Tom explains.

Categories Connecticut, Education Reform

Christine Langhoff: Report from Boston on Our Broad Superintendent’s Trail of Destruction

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2016 //
28

Christine Langhoff is a teacher in Massachusetts, a regular commenter on the blog, and a loyal member of the Network for Oublic Education. She describes what is happening in Boston, which recently hired Tommy Chang as its superintendent. Chang, a graduate of the unaccredited Broad superintendents academy, was a deputy for John Deasy in Los Angeles, who left his post under a cloud and now works for the Broad Foundation, which hopes to put half the students in Los Angeles in privately managed charter schools.

Here is Langhoff’s report:

I. Here in Boston, where the Third Way confab was held, parents FOIA’ed emails between the mayor’s hit man on education and various entities hell bent on following CRPE’s playbook to close 30-50 Boston schools, while moving towards universal enrollment.

II. This afternoon, there was a meeting held for students to participate in the on-going budget discussions. It didn’t go quite as planned:

“ ‘I think the atmosphere is kind of tense in here so we should do an ice-breaker,’ she [a student] said. ‘I have one in mind. It’s a stand-up, sit-down game.’
‘Stand up if you felt patronized by this activity,’ Joseph said.

Every student stood up. Multiple students expressed how they didn’t come to play games. They came to talk about the budget.”

Boston public school students overtook the district’s budget forum Tuesday with tough questions for the superintendent

III. And here are some proposals from the Broad superintendent’s negotiating team to the members of the Boston Teachers Union, currently bargaining a new agreement. Even allowing for the usual give and take inherent in the process, this is a pretty extreme starting point. Anyone see anything of benefit to kids in a single one of these proposals?

“Here is a small sampling of where some School Department proposals remain after more than 4 months of bargaining:

Teachers may be excessed from a school without regard to their seniority, but based on their ‘performance.’ Performance will be defined by performance evaluation ratings, which can include Student Impact Ratings as determined by District Determined Measures (DDMs).

Excessed teachers who are proficient or better and who don’t earn a position by the first day of school will be placed in a positon of Suitable Professional Capacity (SPC). Those placed in SPC will retain salary and benefits for a finite length of time. If unsuccessful in finding a position, the person serving in an SPC position will be fired.

The length of time in an SPC position will depend on one’s service years, and whether or not the teacher is from a school that has been closed. (As most know, the city last year commissioned the McKinsey Report, which claims there are 39,000 surplus seats in the BPS and calls for the potential closing of 30 to 50 schools.)

Teachers with a less-than-proficient rating on their last evaluation who are not hired by August 31 will be fired immediately.

Teachers fired, regardless of rating, shall not have a right of recall to any teaching position.

On teacher staffing: Those who take approved leaves, including maternity leaves, for a duration of 6 months or longer will not have an attachment right to their old building & assignment. Any such person without a position on the first day of school shall become an SPC.

Within a school, administrators ‘can reassign teachers to any teaching position … for which they are qualified.’

On length of teacher work day: Teachers will be expected to work a ‘professional day required to perform their required duties.’ Translated, that means that the length of the school day will be solely at the call of your administrator — as will any additional compensation.

The class size maxima in Grades 6 and 9 in Level 3 and Level 4 (Turnaround Schools) shall be increased by one.

On enforcing class size: Instead of ‘an appropriate number of regular teachers shall be hired’ to enforce class size maxima, the obligation now will be that the ‘district (shall) endeavor to hire a sufficient number of teachers.’

Caseload maxima, both individual and system-wide average, for SLPs, OTs, PTs, Nurses, and Guidance Counselors – all limits will be eliminated.

The eight Social Workers hired for the duration of the 2010 to 2016 will be fired.

The SEIMS Agreement will be eliminated. Secondary SPED teachers will lose the benefit of having two administrative periods set aside to do SEIMS paperwork.

Paraprofessionals will be excessed from a school by performance, not by seniority. Excessed paraprofessionals may be eligible for – but are not guaranteed– a positon.

Excessed paraprofessionals who have not secured a position for the following school year by June 15 will be fired.

Fired paraprofessionals with satisfactory performance ratings will be eligible for an interview for one year, however they will not be able to claim a position.

Paraprofessional training: The current $25,000 that funds the Paraprofessional training program will be eliminated.

Paraprofessionals will be able to be placed in any classroom for substitute coverage purposes.

The 20 ‘Coverage’ Paraprofessionals hired to service those students with the most severe Special Needs when their regularly-assigned paraprofessional is absent will be fired.

Substitute teachers who are both certified and recommended for hire will no longer be guaranteed up to four interviews.

Per diem substitute teachers who work more than 120 or 150 days will no longer receive a $1000 or a $1500 bonus, respectively.

And finally — On the school calendar: The superintendent shall determine when the school year begins, in mid-August or September, and whether there is a February break.”

http://btu.org/e-bulletin/btu-ebulletin-44/

Categories Education Reform

Yes, Bill Gates Wants to Help the Poor by Advising Them to Raise Chickens

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2016 //
57

Yesterday our friendly reader Raj reacted with outrage to the post about Bill Gates telling poor people around the world to improve their lot in life by raising chickens. Raj said the source was a disreputable British rag, and I should be ashamed for referring to such “sensational” claims.

 

To satisfy Raj’s curiosity (and my own), I did a wee bit of Internet research, and in four seconds, I found the original source of the story: it was an article written by Bill Gates.

 

The guy with $70 billion says if he were poor, he would raise chickens.

 

Now don’t get get me wrong. Raising chickens is a swell thing to do, and I donate to the Heifer Fund to help buy animals for people in poverty. Of course, I can’t raise chickens myself because I live in an apartment building, and it is probably against the house rules to raise chickens in an apartment. Also, I am not poor, so he wasn’t talking to me.

 

Bill Gates is different from me. He has about $70 billion. World leaders listen to him. I would expect him to have more fully developed ideas about how to reduce poverty. There is a big difference between abject poverty and subsistence. Maybe raising chickens would help large numbers of people live at a subsistence level.

 

But with Gates’ billions and his huge staff, I expected deep thinking about the structural nature of poverty. Not chickens.

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, International, Poverty

Michigan: Theresa Abed for State Representative

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2016 //
2

If you live in the 71th district in Michigan, I urge you to help elect Theresa Abed to the legislature  as a member of the House.

 

The 17th is Eaton County, west of Lansing.

 

Theresa is a career school social worker (for 30 years) when she decided to run for office to support the schools. She was twice elected to the post of County Commissioner. She served as state representative from 2012-2014, the first Democrat to win that seat in 50 years.

 

When end she ran for re-election in 2014, she lost by only 148 votes to a candidate funded by the Koch brothers.

 

She is running for state representative for her district in 2016, and she needs our help. She is fighting for public education. She understands children and schools and will be a great advocate for Real Reform in the legislature. She is a member of the Network for Public Education; she attended our annual conference in 2015 in Chicago.

 

If you live in her district, please volunteer to help. If you don’t, please consider a gift to her campaign. She will be a great advocate for children and schools in the Michigan legislature.

 

You can send a contribution to Theresa at:

 

Friends for Theresa Abed
605 Schoolcraft St.
Grand Ledge, MI 48837

Categories Education Reform, Michigan, Politics, Supporting public schools
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