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Andy Hargreaves: Why England’s Schools are in Trouble

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2016 //
9

Andy Hargreaves, Professor at Boston College and recipient of many honors, including the Grawemeyer Award, writes here about the problems of English schools, which he attributes to its reckless pursuit of free-market policies, akin to those now dominant in the U.S. In this article, which appeared in the Times Education Supplement (U.K.), Hargreaves blames the free-market  strategy of “reform,” which demoralizes teachers and damages the profession.

 

He writes:

 

Britain has a teacher recruitment crisis. But it is not truly British. The complaint is much more spectacular in England. In Scotland, teaching is an attractive profession and while recruitment levels are disappointing, the issue is not as profound. The Scottish system is creaking; the English system has fallen over. What explains the difference?

 

 

The answer is simple. Scotland values a strong state educational system run by 32 local authorities that is staffed by well-trained and highly valued professionals who stay and grow in a secure and rewarding job. Teachers serve others, for most or all of their working life, in a cooperative profession that supports them to do this to the best of their abilities.

 

 

England no longer values these things. About half of its schools are now outside local authority control. England offers a business capital model that invests in education to yield short-term profits and keep down costs through shorter training, weakened security and tenure, and keeping salaries low by letting people go before they cost too much.

 

 

By comparison, Scotland models what is called professional capital: bringing in skilled as well as smart people; training them rigorously in university settings connected to practical environments; giving them time and support to collaborate on curriculum and other matters; and paying them to develop their leadership and their careers so that they can make effective decisions together and deliver better outcomes for young people.

 

 

In December, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published its review of Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence. I was one of four people on the review team. Like any system, Scotland’s isn’t perfect. But there is a strong foundation to build on – with a priority placed on valuing and developing teachers’ professional judgment.

 

 

The defenders of the status quo of market reform claim that teachers are overpaid; that they don’t improve over time; and that collaboration is over-rated.

 

All of this sounds very familiar to Americans. We have heard the same buzzwords of efficiency and outcomes and metrics used to demean the teaching profession, and now we are surprised when experienced teachers leave and new teachers do not appear to take their place. Perhaps this is the intended effect, because the manufactured teacher shortage creates market opportunities for vendors of technology to replace the missing classroom teachers.

 

 

 

 

 

When first minister Nicola Sturgeon opened the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement in Glasgow in January, she underlined the importance of the “professional judgment” of teachers. From Glasgow to Stornoway, teachers told our team that teaching today had been like a “breath of fresh air”, which replaced a system of “counting minutes and percentages” that had offered “no room for movement”.

 

 

While Scotland is in the vanguard of global educational improvement, England is in the guard’s van, at the back. Worldwide, England’s business capital view is now on the run. The evidence of high-performing nations such as Canada, Singapore and Finland hasn’t been on its side, and countries like Sweden that followed the free-school business model, and saw their results collapse, are reversing course.

Categories Education Reform, International, Teacher Shortage, Teachers, Testing

Education Expert Campbell Brown Offers Advice to the Next President

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2016 //
80

The rheeform leadership has changed. Michelle Rhee was once the cover girl for test-and-punish reform, and now it is Campbell Brown. The telegenic Brown used to read the news on television but now she has taken Rhee’s place in the reformy firmament. Since she launched her career as an education expert with an op-ed attacking the teachers’ union in New York City for protecting sexual predators, Brown has become increasingly active in the world of education punditry. She received $4 million from various billionaires to launch a news site called “The 74,” which was supposed to refer to the number of school-age children in the United States. However, there are 50 million school-age children, but then why quibble? Brown organized candidate debates for both parties last fall. Three Republicans showed up, and no Democrats. Yesterday, she moderated a panel at the Harvard Graduate School of Education at a symposium on poverty and schooling.

 

Now Brown, having established her bona fides as an expert on education, has prepared a memo for the next president. 

 

Unfortunately her memo begins with a false statement. She starts by saying that 2/3 of American students in eighth grade are “below grade level” in reading and math. Apparently she refers to the National Assessment of Education Progress, the only national assessment of student skills. She confuses NAEP proficiency, a specific achievement level, with grade level.

 

To begin with, “grade level” is a median. Fifty percent are always above grade level, and fifty percent are always below.

 

But the NAEP achievement levels do not measure “grade level.” They are defined in the NAEP reports thus: “basic” represents partial mastery of skills; “proficiency” represents mastery; “advanced” represents extraordinary performance. “Below basic” is very poor performance.

 

Here are the definitions on the NAEP website:

 

 

Achievement Level Policy Definitions
Basic

 

Partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work at each grade.
Proficient

Solid academic performance for each grade assessed. Students reaching this level have demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter, including subject-matter knowledge, application of such knowledge to real-world situations, and analytical skills appropriate to the subject matter.
Advanced

 

Superior performance.

 

Here is a statement on the U.S. Department of Education (National Center for Education Statistics) website:

 

https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/studies/statemapping/faq.aspx

The statement, “Proficient is not synonymous with grade-level performance.”

 

The NAEP website says that the Governing Board thinks that the goal should be “proficient,” not “basic,” but the reality is that these achievement levels have been in place since 1992, and in no state or district has 100% of students ever achieved NAEP proficiency. In only one state, Massachusetts, has as much as 50% of students reached proficiency. If you believe, as Campbell Brown and the NAGB board does, that 100% of students should reach proficiency, then you believe that somewhere there is a baseball team that never loses a game, or an entire school district in which all children get grades of all As. It has never happened, not even in the wealthiest, most successful schools and districts. When elephants can fly, that is when “all” students will reach NAEP proficiency. Be it noted that the standard (the passing mark or cut score) for the Common Core tests is aligned with NAEP proficient, which is why 65-70% of students consistently “fail.”

 

I was a member of the National Assessment Governing Board for seven years. I read questions before they were administered to samples of students across the nation and in every state. The greatest number of students are scored as “basic,” which I consider to be the equivalent of a B or C. Those who register as “proficient” are the equivalent of an A performance. Advanced is for superstars. Typically, only 5-10% of students are “advanced.” About a third are proficient or advanced. The remaining 65% are basic or below basic. (These are my definitions, not the government’s or the NAGB board.)

 

To expect that most students will score the equivalent of an A is nonsensical.

 

Ms. Brown has been engaged in a Twitter debate with Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution. Loveless, a real expert with years of teaching experience (elementary school) and a doctorate, has been studying and writing about NAEP and student performance for many years. He chastised Brown on Twitter for saying that 2/3 of students are “below grade level.” He encouraged her to check her facts, because he assumed that her journalistic background had taught her to do so. Carol Burris, director of the Network for Public Education, and veteran educator, jumped into the exchange.

 

Just yesterday, Brown responded with this comment:

 

Campbell Brown ‏@campbell_brown 
@carolburris @tomloveless99 this is why parents dont listen to u. U play semantics while 2/3 kids arent where they should be. I call BS

 

Since Brown thinks that NAEP proficiency is the same as “grade level,” she would profit by reading this report on the meaning of NAEP achievement levels. It gives a good overview of them and points out that they do not refer to grade levels. The report also usefully reviews the numerous critiques of the achievement levels, by experts who consider them “fundamentally flawed” and an inaccurate measure of student achievement.

 

I can only hope that Ms. Brown, education expert, gets a quick tutorial about what NAEP achievement levels are.

 

And I invite her to take the NAEP eighth-grade test, composed of released questions in reading and math, and release her scores. In a supervised setting, of course. I think she will be surprised. I will be interested to see if she is “proficient,” since she believes that anyone who is not proficient is a failure.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, NAEP, Testing

Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights Calls for “Better Use of Information” to Challenge Segregation

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2016 //
7

Comment: More than information is needed to combat growing segregation. But information is a good start.

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Rebecca Sturtevant
Communications Officer
(202) 662-8347
(202) 257-7918 (cell)
rsturtevant@lawyerscommittee.org

 

 

Lawyers’ Committee Supports Call for Better Use of Information to Challenge Increasing Racial and Socioeconomic Segregation in Schools

 

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 17, 2016 – Today, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released an important report confirming that residential segregation continues to contribute to racial and socioeconomic segregation in our public schools. The GAO was asked to examine changes in student racial isolation or integration in schools over time and concluded that data from the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) shows that “race and poverty continue to be a driver for inequities in education.” Over time, there has been a large increase in schools that are the most isolated by poverty and race. Between the 2000-01 and 2013-14 school years, racial and socioeconomic isolation in K-12 public schools grew from nine percent to 16 percent, and students eligible for free or reduced lunch (FRL) increased by 143 percent. The GAO therefore urges the better use of information to identify and address the disparities perpetuated by racially and socioeconomically isolated schools.

 

Over 60 years after the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the Lawyers’ Committee continues to fight the negative impact of segregation on student achievement and life outcomes.

 

“The findings of this report are deeply disturbing, but come as no surprise,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “We know that African-American and Hispanic students are attending schools which are increasingly segregated by both race and class. Moreover, we know that these changes in racial and socioeconomic isolation are closely associated with unequal access to educational resources and opportunities, as well as racially disproportionate school discipline practices. We urge our educators and administrators to fulfill the legacy of Brown by implementing proactive policies designed to further racial and socioeconomic integration.”

 

The Lawyers’ Committee continues to challenge racial segregation in both K-12 schools and institutions of higher education. The GAO report found that the U.S. Department of Justice does not always track open federal desegregation cases. The GAO cited one example of a case in which there had been a lack of activity but where relevant information would have allowed the school district to address disparities in a more timely way. Meanwhile, the Lawyers’ Committee and other advocates have closely monitored districts experiencing increased racial segregation in spite of open desegregation orders.

 

Partnering with the University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights (CCR), the Lawyers’ Committee opposed the Pitt County School Board’s motion for unitary status in an open North Carolina desegregation case which had been inactive for nearly three decades. More recently, the Lawyers’ Committee successfully challenged the ongoing segregation at the four Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in Maryland. A remedial trial is scheduled in that case for January 2017.

 

“We are particularly concerned that Hispanic students, the largest minority group in K-12 public schools, tend to be ‘triply segregated’ by race, income and language,” said Brenda Shum, director of the Educational Opportunities Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “Moreover, the GAO confirms that among high-minority, high-poverty schools, there is a subset of schools with even higher percentages of poor and minority students and that the growth in those schools has been particularly dramatic. The civil rights implications are clear: we are undermining the success of some of our most vulnerable students.”

 

In order to combat this, the Lawyers’ Committee has partnered directly with communities and families in order to promote student achievement. The Parental Readiness and Empowerment Program (PREP) offers parents information about their child’s educational rights and options through both free in-person workshops and online resources, webinars, video tutorials and consultations.

 

There are clear detrimental effects of concentrated poverty and racial isolation on student learning and life outcomes. However, the GAO report concluded that in jurisdictions where education officials took steps to improve racial and socioeconomic integration, outcomes improved for all students. Armed with the analysis and recommendations outlined in the GAO report, the Lawyers’ Committee will continue to demand that low-income and minority students have access to more resourced, integrated learning environments and that policymakers implement the interventions available to mitigate the growing segregation within the nation’s schools.

 

 

About the Lawyers’ Committee
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Lawyers’ Committee), a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, was formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to involve the private bar in providing legal services to address racial discrimination. Formed over 50 years ago, we continue our quest of “Moving America Toward Justice.” The principal mission of the Lawyers’ Committee is to secure, through the rule of law, equal justice under law, particularly in the areas of fair housing and community development; employment; voting; education; environmental justice; and criminal justice. For more information about the Lawyers’ Committee, visit http://www.lawyerscommittee.org.

Categories Education Reform

Arthur Goldstein: How Can I Get Away from Michael Bloomberg?

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2016 //
15

Arthur Goldstein has taught in the New York City public schools for more than 30 years. His blog is NYC Educator. He has been a frequent critic of the disruption and turmoil of the past fifteen years in the schools.

 

Michael Bloomberg is everywhere I look. A few weeks ago I went to see NYS Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa at George Washington Campus, nee George Washington High School. “Campus” means it’s been broken up into four smaller schools. If your test scores weren’t high enough for Mayor Mike, you got broken up. If they were good, like in my school, you got filled to 300% capacity.

 

 

Two miles south of my school is the Jamaica Campus, a building that looks exactly like the George Washington Campus. It used to be Jamaica High School, and it had, for my money, the smartest and best UFT chapter leader in New York City, James Eterno. It had a long history, and photos in the halls of the doughboys who’d attended, of the bowtie clad principal on the David Susskind Show, and a million things in between. Michael Bloomberg closed it based on false stats. James sent the corrected stats to then-Chancellor Joel Klein, and as far as I know, they’ve never even been disputed.

 

 

Michael Bloomberg renamed the Board of Education the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP). He controlled the majority of votes on the PEP, and when a couple of his appointees disagreed with him, he simply replaced them. Despite Patrick Sullivan’s persistent voice of sanity, they approved every school closing, every new school, every charter that Michael Bloomberg wanted. Mayoral Control is very much favored by prominent reformies like Bill Gates because it sidesteps all that messy, time-consuming democracy stuff.

 

 

Bill de Blasio wants mayoral control too, though I have no idea why. At first I was glad to see mayoral control in the hands of someone who appeared not to be insane, but I was quickly disappointed. Once de Blasio decided not to approve a few Moskowitz Academies, Andrew Cuomo moved to change the law. Now de Blasio had to pay Eva’s rent even if he doesn’t want her school. It was like the spirit of Michael Bloomberg had taken over Andrew Cuomo, who took to calling himself a “student lobbyist.” (Curiously, he hasn’t bothered lobbying for the billions of dollars the state owes NYC from the CFE lawsuit.)

 

 

Every time I look at the car I bought in May 2014 I think about Michael Bloomberg. By 2009, just about every union but teachers got an 8% raise. After a few years it adds up. In fact, by that time that raise would have more than paid for that car. But Mayor Mike passed it off to Bill de Blasio, who isn’t paying until 2020. The Mazda dealer was a nice guy, but would not agree to wait that long.

 

 

Many of Michael Bloomberg’s friends and cronies still sit at Tweed. Even Chancellor Carmen Fariña once worked for him. In fact, her predecessor, Dennis Walcott, was an alumni of my school. Our principal named our college office for him and now I feel like I have to wash my whole body with Brillo pad every time I set foot in there.

 

 

Mayor Bloomberg, with what was in effect mayoral dictatorship, used our city as a laboratory for reforminess, and used our children as guinea pigs. He gave no-bid contracts to all his pals, and if they left young children outside waiting hours for buses freezing days, well, too bad for them. He spent 95 million dollars on a computer system no one used. He boasted of being a regular guy, taking the subway to work, but had two SUVs pick him up at his townhouse because he didn’t like the stop closest to it.

 

 

But where we really feel his presence is in the tests. They are everywhere, and they mean everything. And though much of the state is rebelling against them, NYC lags far behind. Why? Because Michael Bloomberg set up a system, and this system has everything to do with Michael Bloomberg and nothing to do with community.

 

 

In Michael Bloomberg’s NYC, if you want to send your kid to a particular middle school, it may use test grades as criteria for admission. So if you opt your kid out of a test, too bad for you, and too bad for your kid. The city turns the wheel of fortune, and wherever your kid lands, that’s it.

 

 

This is in stark contrast to the rest of the state. Where I live, in Freeport NY, my kid goes to the same middle school no matter what grade she gets and whether or not she takes the test. We have a community, and we have a community school. Not only that, but we, the community, elect our school board and have genuine input into how it is run.

 

 

Michael Bloomberg wanted what he wanted, and he had all that money, so he was entitled to it. Old-fashioned democracy wasn’t efficient enough for him. Better that he should make all decisions, and if the voters twice voiced their preference for term limits, he’d change the law and buy himself another term anyway.

 

 

Thank God his polling must have revealed all his money couldn’t buy the presidency. Only one question remains.

 

 

What on earth do we have to do to exorcise his reformy ghost from New York City once and for all?

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, New York City, Testing

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater: Time and Childhood

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2016 //
8

Read the rest of this entry »

Categories Childhood, Education Reform, Joy, Play

The College Remediation Hoax

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2016 //
48

Last week, the New York Times published an editorial criticizing the nation’s public schools for the rate of remediation courses taken by college students. It relied on a report prepared by Education Reform Now, which is part of Democrats for Education Reform, the advocacy group created by hedge fund managers to push charters, high-stakes testing, and Common Core.

 

 

Aside from the partisan advocacy of the funders and sponsors, there are basic questions of fact and interpretation, i.e., spin.

 

 

I didn’t go into the underlying study, but others did.

 

 

Alan Singer posted a blistering critique and suggested that the editorial writer would not have gotten through middle school with such faulty logic and weak evidence. While the editorial promotes Common Core, it fails the most basic expectations for textual analysis.

 

 

He reviewed the numerous flaws in the report and concluded:

 

 

“I don’t know if the New York Times considered any of these issues before it endorsed the propaganda report by charter school and testing advocates promoting their political agenda. Apparently the Times editorial team has difficulty when it has to “[d]istinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text, “ another area where they failed middle school Common Core. Instead of praising colleges for raising standards and providing support so students can reach these standards, the Times and the testing and charter school people take pot shots at public schools. ”

 

 

Russ Walsh wrote about what he called “the college remediation course hoax.”

 

 

Walsh explains why remedial courses ballooned and how the colleges responded inappropriately.

 

 

He writes:

 

 

“With the growing number of students attending college since the 1960s, colleges found that not all students had the skills in reading, writing and mathematics that professors were expecting when they entered the classroom. The colleges responded by creating non-college credit remedial courses that students were forced to take, almost always because of some score they received on a college “placement” test. And so a cottage industry of remedial, non-credit courses was created on campuses across the country, often taught by adjunct faculty of dubious qualifications and most often completely separated from the for-credit courses that other students were taking.

 

 

“The results were inevitable. Students began collecting huge tuition debt paying for courses for which they did not receive credit. Often these students had to take these remedial courses over and over again because they could not pass the exit exam, which was frequently another standardized test. The students never got the chance to feel like they were regular college students. Within a year or two these students, frustrated with their lack of progress, dropped out of school burdened with student loan debt and without a degree or good job prospects.

 

 

“Colleges, certainly the four-year colleges, I am addressing here, should not have and did not have to go the remedial course route. The schools could have and should have known that reading and writing courses that are removed from the context of a real course have very limited impact. (I will not address math remedial courses here because it is outside my expertise, but I believe the same principles would hold.) Rather than place students in courses designed for writing improvement or reading improvement, the colleges would have been much better off placing these students in the regular classroom and then providing them with the support they needed to succeed in these courses.”

 

 

Others have weighed in.

 

 

Jersey Jazzman reviewed the data and raised important questions. Why did the report use public schools as a punching bag (what % of the students in need of remediation attended private schools, religious schools, or charter schools)? How credible was it to claim that affluent students had higher rates of remediation at four-year colleges than economically disadvantaged students? Does that mean that the high schools attended by kids in poverty are better than those in posh suburbs? Jersey Jazzman questions the Times’ faith in the idea that high standards and hard tests are the key to college readiness. He threw down the gauntlet on Common Core, challenging anyone to produce evidence that adherence to Commin Core increases college readiness.

 

 

Audrey Hill challenged the study authors’ decisions about which families should be considered affluent, middle-class, and low-income. She compares their data with federal guidelines defining poverty and concludes–unlike the ERN study–that only 6 of 100  students receiving remediation come from middle-class or upper-income families.

 

It seems odd that sensible people have to argue that low-income students are less likely to get a good education than students from middle-class and upper-income communities. If that were true, as the ERN report and the New York Times believe, then upper-income students should be clamoring to get into the schools attended by low-income students. Are the wealthy kids on the losing side of the achievement gap? What a ludicrous claim.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Higher Education, Hoax

Who Wants to Be a Global Guru?

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2016 //
25

I received an email notice informing me that I am the #1 Global Guru on a list compiled by a research organization based in London. I don’t know anything about them.

 

The list is very odd. There are some terrific people on it, such as Pasi Sahlberg, Andy Hargreaves, Edward Deci, Michael Fullan, and Deborah Meier, who are true global gurus.

 

But further down on the list is the disappeared Michelle Rhee; we are informed that her organization StudentsFirst has brought about the passage of 110 pieces of “child-centered” legislation. The only legislation that I associate with StudentsFirst is the kind that takes away rights from teachers and promotes the privatization of public schools. Nothing “child-centered” about it.

 

I don’t understand the rationale behind these selections.

Categories Education Reform

Where Are Schools and Communities Working Well to Help Children?

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2016 //
18

Dear Readers, 
I know you live in every state. You are parents, grandparents, educators, and concerned citizens. Can you respond to this request that I received? Please respond here and I will forward your suggestions to Mr. Casteel.
“Dr. Ravitch,

 

“Greetings.

 

“I work for the Danville Regional Foundation (DRF), a place-based, hospital conversion foundation located in Southern Virginia. We focus on the transformation of a region that has a population of about 125,000 in a geographic area on the Virginia/North Carolina border about the size of Rhode Island. Generations ago this region made their economic bets on textile manufacturing and tobacco, and for a few generations that worked out really well. Now the median household income in Danville Virginia is about half that of the state average. And many realize we’re not simply coming out of a recession where things will get back to normal, but we’re struggling to find a new normal in a transformed economy. Our foundation is one of the partners trying to help the region find new competitive advantages. We focus most of our efforts on education, workforce development, economic development, and health and wellness. 

 

“Every other year DRF takes our board of directors on a trip to places which are farther along the developmental curve in certain areas than this region. In the past we’ve been to Greenville SC (downtown revitalization), Lewiston-Auburn Maine (regionalism), and Dubuque Iowa (economic development platforms). We do this not to find silver bullets, or buy models off the shelf and try to plug them in here, but to try and understand the issues more deeply and to “see the possible” of what’s out there and working in other places.

 

“We want to go to places that look like this region as much as possible, rather than significantly larger and wealthier cities with lots of resources. This year, the board is interested in a trip that would highlight a place that is doing innovative work in education.

 

“We’ve made some significant investments (for us) in education, including over $9 Million in the region for the creation of a local program focused on early childhood education. With those efforts we realize measuring impact is a long-term prospect. We’re looking for a place being thoughtful about various innovations that are focused not on “failed fads and foolish ideas” and not models built only to improve the test scores, which I fear is what many think success looks like. Ideally, perhaps, would be a school district where the community and the schools have a shared vision about what success looks like for them and agreed upon strategy to get there. 

 

“I very much appreciate your work and ideas in the field and I write today to see if you have any suggestions of places we should consider, or other guidance you can offer.

 

“Sincerely,

 

“Clark Casteel”

 

 
 
 

 

Categories Arts Education, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Reform, Hope

Peg Robertson: Why No Protest Over Approval of Relay, a Fake Graduate School of Education?

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2016 //
37

Peg Robertson is rightfully outraged that the Relay Graduate School of Education received state approval to operate in Colorado.

 

She was even more outraged that no one spoke out in opposition to this travesty.

 

She writes:

 

This is the story of a fake graduate program getting approved by the Colorado Commission of Higher Education. CCHE has approved that non-educators trained by non-educators can be “certified” teachers who are in charge of the social, emotional, physical, mental and academic well-being of Colorado’s children. Imagine your child in that classroom. I’d like to see all the principals and leaders in Colorado who attended Relay Principal training PUT THEIR OWN CHILDREN IN THESE CLASSROOMS.

 

These fake teachers must prove that they can achieve one year’s growth via TEST scores in order to graduate from Relay. You can be assured that they will be stellar at teaching to the test. This is all that they know. And in order to make this happen, militant disciplinary methods must be used because children, and adults, ultimately find this form of dog training to be boring, redundant, and insulting. Therefore, it must be enforced – and as it is enforced this conditioning will become normal – it will be accepted as “as good as it gets.” Democratic thinking will continue to erode.

 

These fake teachers will be led by a fake dean who appears to be 31 years old and is a former TFA. She has two years teaching experience and appears to have some bizarro M.S.T. in which she got her training by speaking to robotic students via video games. Meanwhile her bachelor’s was in sociology.

 

Daniel Katz of Seton Hall University wrote a scathing article about Relay last year. Of course, Arne Duncan praised it.

 

Katz described it thus:

 

It is a “Graduate School of Education” that has not a single professor or doctoral level instructor or researcher affiliated with it. In essence, it is a partnership of charter school chains Uncommon Schools, KIPP, and Achievement First, and it is housed in the Uncommon Schools affiliated North Star Academy. Relay’s “curriculum” mostly consists of taking the non-certified faculty of the charter schools, giving them computer-delivered modules on classroom management (and distributing copies of Teach Like a Champion), and placing them under the auspices of the “no excuses” brand of charter school operation and teachers who already have experience with it.

 

This is a direct assault on the very idea of teacher professionalism. This alleged graduate school has no Ph.D.s or EDDs on its “faculty.” It consists of charter teachers teaching prospective charter teachers how to raise test scores. No research. No library. No scholars. Of its several campuses in five states, not one has a dean with a doctorate. They are mostly TFA graduates. They will now train and award master’s degrees in test-score raising.

 

Relay is spreading like kudzu, offering to “train” teachers and principals. It has been approved in New York by the Board of Regents. It was approved in Massachusetts. And most shocking of all, it has been approved by NCATE, which apparently has no standards for what constitutes a graduate school of education. Having a masters’ degree in raising test scores should be about as valuable as a BA from Corinthian Colleges.

 

 

Categories Colorado, Education Reform, Hoax, Teacher Education

This Post about the Test Was Deleted Overnight by….

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2016 //
34

This is unbelievable but true.

 
Last night, I posted a comment from a teacher about the P—C test. When I looked at my email this morning, a reader asked me what happened to the post. It was gone.
I am reposting the content here. I hope it is not removed by anonymous.

 
From a reader:

 

“Remember, copyright protects only words, not ideas. PARCC may be able to find DMCA complaints related to the question text, but DMCA cannot apply to the statement of facts.

 
“For example:

 
“The PARCC asked students to read texts far beyond any reasonable expectation of their abilities. These included the poem “The Mountains” by Margan Dutton, which draws on the philosophy of Plato, and an article for Scottish mountaineers about how dialing 999 for an ambulance in climbing accidents causes logistical problems. 4th grade students also read a selection from a book about sharks advertised by Scholastic as having a Lexile score appropriate for 7th grade and being of interest primarily to high school students.
“And there’s not a blessed thing the DMCA can do for them, because they don’t own the copyright to those words. They also can’t hunt me down through my district, because I don’t teach in the US and never signed any confidentiality agreement.”

Categories Common Core, Education Reform
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