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Schott Foundation: If You Care About a Better Education for All, Vote NO on Question 2 in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2016 //
2

Dr. John H. Jackson of the Schott Foundation (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Josie Greene, a director of another foundation (writing for herself, not her foundation), penned a powerful opinion piece about “a better education for all.”

As it happens, the purpose of this blog is to advocate on behalf of “a better education for all.” Not a better education for a few, or for some, but for all. That means better public schools for all children. That is why I oppose charter schools, school choice, and competition. As Jackson and Green post out, competition means winners and losers, and equality of educational opportunity will never be produced by competition but by a commitment great public schools in every district.

This is the letter that was posted by the Schott Foundation (I made two insertions of “bold” format):

A Question of Better Education for All

Dear Education Advocates,

Question 2, which will appear on Massachusetts voters’ ballots on Nov. 8, claims that it will increase educational choice and improve educational standards across the state. In fact, it would do the opposite.

For the past decade, Massachusetts has led the nation in academic achievement. Our students have even been top ranked internationally in a time when the country’s educational outcomes have slid year by year. Massachusetts accomplished this by taking bold steps that impact all students, most importantly changing the state’s school funding system to invest more in schools in high need, low-income areas so that all students have a better opportunity to achieve. There is still critical work to be done to close persistent opportunity gaps in the system, but we won’t get there if we go in completely the wrong direction. This would be to allow state officials to give up on investing in improving a system that serves all students in need.

Saying “yes” to Question 2 would move the Commonwealth off the path towards great public schools for all students. Question 2 proposes to use taxpayer resources to increase, by 12 per year, the number of charter schools that can only be attended by a few in the state.

When charter schools, which now serve only 4% of the state’s public school students, were added to the Massachusetts model, they were never intended to be a comprehensive “education plan” for a state or locality, but rather an experiment that might provide sparks of innovation whose best practices would be integrated into the main system. It is in that system that the great majority—a full 96%—of Massachusetts students are educated. While it’s true that, like any educational system, we have a mixed record on innovation as well as achievement—there are exemplary as well as troubled charter schools—the bigger issues we need to examine go to the heart of our commitment to high quality public education for all children in the Commonwealth.

Public schools and an equal commitment to all children are pillars of our democratic system. Accountability has been rooted in local control ever since Massachusetts pioneered the first statewide system focused on all children when it instituted compulsory K-12 education in 1852.

Charters run directly counter to this democratic value. The state can approve a charter school in a community over the strong objection of the school committee and all the other locally elected officials who are accountable to the voters in that town. Only the state, not any local officials, can examine the finances or exercise oversight over charter schools. As for their private boards, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform’s study of Massachusetts charter schools revealed that many board members do not even live in the district where the charter is located; 31% are financial or corporate executives, while only 14% are parents; 60% of charters in our state have no parent representation at all.

When the corporate concept of “competition” is used to justify the argument for increasing the number of charter schools (and student enrollment in them), we need only remind ourselves that competition means winners and losers.

When the corporate concept of “competition” is used to justify the argument for increasing the number of charter schools (and student enrollment in them), we need only remind ourselves that competition means winners and losers. Why would voters ever want to substitute that value for a commitment to ensuring a high quality education for every child? We should focus our attention and resources on what has been the most successful in proven outcomes in our state: Constantly improving our public education system. Charter schools draw funding away from public schools that educate the great majority of state students, ranging from accelerated learners to special education, and including English language learners, children with learning disabilities, and homeless children who register mid-year.

Expanding the number of charter schools reinforces a caste system of private, charter and public schools. This is not visionary leadership or the bold leap needed to keep all Massachusetts students advancing as leaders in the nation. There are social justice reasons for ensuring any changes to our current system are designed to improve the opportunity to learn for all students.

And there are compelling economic reasons as well. Equal education for all breaks the cycle of intergenerational poverty; it is the path to economic opportunity. Investing in a great education for all children in the Commonwealth is the only way to create a broad-based, diverse, well-educated workforce that is a magnet for employers and can fuel economic growth across the state. It also ensures full participation in our democratic society.

Voting “NO” on Question 2 will keep policymakers, educators, parents and students focused on the right question: What steps should we be taking to advance as the best public education system in the country for all Commonwealth students?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reformers, Equity, Massachusetts, Privatization

Civil Rights Groups Sue to Block PARCC as a Graduation Requirement

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2016 //
9

Good news from the Education Law Center: Several civil rights groups in New Jersey are suing to stop the state from using PARCC as a high school graduation requirement.

Several New Jersey civil rights and parent advocacy organizations have filed a legal challenge to new high school graduation regulations recently adopted by the State Board of Education. The new rules make passing the controversial PARCC exams a requirement for a New Jersey high school diploma and will also prevent students who opt out from graduating.

The lawsuit was filed in New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division, on October 21st on behalf of the Latino Action Network (LAN), the Latino Coalition of New Jersey (LCNJ), the Paterson Education Fund (PEF) and the Education Law Center (ELC). ELC and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey (ACLU-NJ) are co-counsel.

The lawsuit says the new regulations violate the NJ graduation statute and other applicable laws in several ways:

The state law requiring a graduation test, originally passed in 1979, explicitly requires an 11th grade test that assesses state standards in English Language Arts (ELA) and Math. Instead, the State Board designated the PARCC ELA10, a tenth grade exam, and the PARCC Algebra I test, which is given across a wide range of middle and high school grades, as the primary high school graduation tests.

The new rules undermine important protections established by the Legislature, such as eliminating retesting opportunities required by the graduation statute.

The designation of a 10th grade graduation test deprives English Language Learners (ELLs) of an extra year to develop their language ability.

The use of fee-based tests like the SAT and ACT as “substitute competency tests” through 2020 will restrict low-income students’ access to diplomas. Because NJ’s at-risk students are more likely to be members of racial minority groups or ELLs, use of fee-based assessments will have a negative, disparate impact on these student groups, a violation of their civil rights.

The substitute assessments are also not 11th grade tests and, as the Department has acknowledged, are not aligned with state standards. The lawsuit alleges these provisions violate the state constitution’s Education Clause and state anti-discrimination law.

Under the new rules, the substitute assessments will be eliminated after 2020, and students who do not pass PARCC ELA10 and Algebra 1 will have only one other option to graduate: the NJ Department of Education’s time-consuming “portfolio appeals” process. Access to the portfolio appeal will be restricted to students who took all PARCC exams during their high school years.

If these new rules had been in effect for the class of 2016, more than half of the senior class—50-60,000 students—would have been at risk of not graduating. In 2015, the passing rate on the PARCC ELA10 was 37 percent and on the PARCC Algebra I it was 36 percent. In 2016, the rates were 44 percent and 41 percent, respectively. Passing rates on the previous graduation test, the High School Proficiency Assessment, were above 90 percent.

Preparing tens of thousands of portfolio appeals for seniors who do not pass PARCC would be a major new burden for staff and students, particularly in high needs districts. Last year, about 11,000 seniors needed portfolios to graduate. Students who needed portfolios after multiple rounds of testing faced more lost instructional time, increased stress and disrupted senior plans. Districts using the portfolio process incurred extra costs for staff time, additional test administrations, and after-school and Saturday sessions devoted to preparing portfolios for review.

“Setting high school graduation standards is an important public policy issue,” said Christian Estevez, President of the LAN. “It’s also important to protect the rights of students to the opportunities that a high school diploma represents.”

PEF’s Executive Director Rosie Grant added, “NJ has sustained one of the highest graduation rates in the country, in part because we’ve always had multiple ways for students to earn a high school diploma. We want to make sure students continue to have multiple opportunities to succeed.”

The decision to tie high school diplomas to specific test scores is a state policy decision, not a federal mandate. Currently, fewer than one-third of all states use high school exit tests, and several states have used the transition to new assessment systems to eliminate them. Many states continue to give tests for diagnostic and accountability purposes without using the scores to make graduation decisions for individual students. A bill now pending in the NJ Legislature (S2147/A3849) would allow for that alternative.

“The State Board of Education is going full-steam ahead with a plan that breaks New Jersey law and, more disturbingly, disproportionately harms the most vulnerable students,” said ACLU-NJ Legal Director Ed Barocas. “The state knows about the PARCC’s high failure rates, extreme racial disparities, and deep economic divisions in passing scores, and yet officials decided to use this test as a key criterion for graduation despite the glaring problems. The New Jersey Board of Education has put New Jersey students on the wrong course.”

PARCC, a federally-funded consortium that produced the new tests, once had 25 state members. But today only six remain, and just three use PARCC at the high school level. Only NJ and New Mexico currently use PARCC exams as a high school graduation requirement.

“Ultimately, the legislature needs to revisit NJ’s exit testing policies,” said Stan Karp, Director of ELC’s Secondary Reform Project. “Until then, this lawsuit seeks to safeguard the rights of students and families, particularly in high need districts and schools.”

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Education Industry, Equity, High School Graduation, New Jersey, Testing

Jersey Jazzman Gives a Lesson to DFER About W.E.B. DuBois and the Talented Tenth

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2016 //
13

The NAACP’s decision to call for a moratorium of charter school expansion until laws can be revised to provide accountability and transparency. This decision sent shock waves inside the corporate reform echo chamber. Would they still be able to call themselves leaders of the civil rights ipissue of our time if the NAACP disagreed with their aggressive efforts to privatize public schools?

The right wing reform headquarters called the Center for Education Reform in D.C. put out a press release accusing the NAACP of caving in to pressure from teachers’ unions. Of course, that implies that the corporate-funded conservatives at CER care more about black children than the NAACP and its national convention. Hard to believe.

Then Shavar Jeffries of the Democrats for Education Reform (the hedge fund managers’ pro-charter advocacy group) issued a statement saying that the great African-American scholar W.E.B. DuBois would be shocked to see the NAACP turn against charter schools and privatization.

Jersey Jazzman calls out Jeffries for apparently never having read DuBois. JJ points out that DuBois was clear about his commitment to an elite education for “the talented tenth.” Maybe Jeffries was acknowledging that charters are only for a small elite (which Mike Petrilli called “the strivers”). If so, that case should be stated openly and clearly, instead of pretending that charters could save “poor kids in failing schools.”

JJ also notes that DuBois was a Marxist and it was unlikely that he would support the privatization of public education. Or that he would be able to tolerate an alliance with Wall Street and hedge fund managers.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Equity, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: The New York Times Rebukes the NAACP for Demanding Charter Accountability

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2016 //
23

Mercedes Schneider dissects the decision by the national board of the NAACP to call for a moratorium on new charter schools until charter schools agree to transparency and accountability. As she points out, the New York Times education editorial writer chastised the NAACP in advance for expecting charter schools to be accountable.

The Times acknowledges that some charters are disasters, and that more than half the students in Detroit are in charters, with no discernible benefit.

It is worth noting that the same person has been writing the Times editorials on education for the past 20 years. He loved No Child Left Behind, he loved Race to the Top, he loves charters. He loves tests and the Common Core. Once when he was on vacation, the Times ran a reasonable education editorial.

Who is out of touch?

Mercedes writes:

“It is not good enough to note that when charters excel, they’re great, or tossing off the charters “are far from universally perfect” line (which the NYT does in its op-ed) and that failing charter schools “should be shut down”–another pro-charter, clichéd non-solution that only leads to unnecessary community disruption– disruption that could be curbed if there were stronger controls in place to begin with.

“As is proven by its “misguided” editorial, the NYT editorial board is ‘reinforcing an out of touch impression,’ not the NAACP.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Industry, Equity, Failure, Media, Privatization

Lloyd Lofthouse: This is How Schools Succeed

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2016 //
92

Lloyd Lofthouse, veteran of the military and veteran teacher, wrote this explanation of the ingredients of school success. He writes that school choice undermines success because it destroys community support for the community’s children.

He wrote in a comment:

The neos (liberal and conservative) are always looking for language loopholes to subvert the constitutions of the states and nations.

How can schools compete unless the students compete because using student test scores to rank schools forcing schools to compete can’t work unless every single student competes by actually paying attention to teachers, what teachers teach, cooperating, no behavior problems, no disruption, and every child reads every day for fun and learning in addition to doing all the work?

Find me a teacher in almost all the public schools who’s taught for at least 10 years and claims that every one of their students has is is always on track and working/learning, and I will show you a liar. If you can’t cherry pick the students and cherry pick the facts, then you can’t be successful with 100 percent of the students.

Choice means the end of a free public education for every child even if the child is a challenge to engage in the process for learning.

The formula for a child’s education takes a village. Schools can’t do it alone. Teacher’s can’t do it alone. Children can’t do it alone. Parents can’t do it alone. They all have to come together and work together for learning to happen.

Choice will never replace the village. That why the community based, locally controlled, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools are the only way to allow the opportunity for every child to be offered an education to work.

Children also have a choice when they walk into a school. They have a choice to learn or not to learn and some of them choose not learning when they do not do the work and do not read for whatever reason and there are a lot o reasons why those children do not join the village to learn what teachers teach.

Even Donald Trump was a challenging child to teach. I’ve read that Trump was kicked out of his expensive private school because he was a challenge to teach so his father sent him to a military boarding school, a boot camp school similar to Eva’s Success Academy.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Privatization, School Choice, Supporting public schools

Civil Rights Activists Ask the Candidates: Where Do You Stand on K-12 Education?

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2016 //
5

Before the second debate tonight, the Journey for Justice asks the candidates to respond to these questions:


NEWS RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT: Jaribu Lee
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(773) 548-7500
October 8, 2016
info@j4jalliance.com

Education activists release statement ahead of second presidential debate: “Will the next president be tone deaf…”
​

CHICAGO – Today, Jitu Brown, national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4JA) released the following statement ahead of the second presidential debate in St. Louis on Sunday, September 9th. Thousands of African American and Latino parents, students and activists have challenged both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (and third-party candidates) to release their K-through-12 public education platforms, as well as identify how, if elected, they will work to end federal education policies that have destabilized communities and hurt students of color:

“As parents, students and residents of communities impacted by corporate education interventions in 24 cities across this nation, we are dismayed by the omission of public education as an issue during this presidential election season. Public education repeatedly polls as a top tier issue, but has been largely ignored by both major and third party candidates,” said Brown.

“Will the next president be tone deaf to the tremors from the ground? As a national network of grassroots community organizations across America, we have seen first-hand a determined resistance to failed, top-down corporate education interventions that cannot be ignored; Title VI civil rights complaints filed in 12 cities, thousands of people in determined protest against school closings, sit-ins and traffic blockades, students occupying the superintendent’s office in Newark, a 34-day hunger strike to save a neighborhood’s last open-enrollment high school in Chicago, the rejection of punitive standardized test across the nation and from those who wish to be the leader of the free world; silence.

“The next president must base their advocacy in relationship with people’s lived reality, not corporate relationships. When a mother cries in Detroit because her child’s school is being closed, or students walk-out by the thousands in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Camden and Newark, Baltimore and Philadelphia; it matters. The next president must understand that the United States ranks 19th in the world in public education among OECD countries but when you remove poverty we are number 2. The next president must have the courage to stare down inequity in public education with a commitment to hear the voices of the people directly impacted. The next president must understand that we do not have failing schools in America, as a public we have been failed,” he continued.

“We are asking the next president to meet with the Journey for Justice Alliance and adopt our education platform. Include J4J on your education transition team so that public policy can be rooted in our lived experiences, not someone’s opinion of our communities. We were disappointed that the vice-presidential candidates said nothing about public education in their October 4th debate. We want to hear from both candidates on October 9th about their education agenda. Will they be honest about the harm inflicted on our communities by school closings and the unwarranted expansion of charter schools? Will they acknowledge that the “illusion of choice” must be erased by the reality of strong, high quality neighborhood schools within safe walking distance of our homes? We will be watching.”

​###

The Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) (www.j4jalliance.org) is a national network of inter-generational, grassroots community organizations led primarily by Black and Brown people in 24 U.S. cities. With more than 40,000 active members, we assert that the lack of equity is one of the major failures of the American education system. Current U.S. education policies have led to states’ policies that lead to school privatization through school closings and charter school expansion which has energized school segregation, the school-to-prison pipeline; and has subjected children to mediocre education interventions that over the past 15 years have not resulted in sustained, improved education outcomes in urban communities.

Journey For Justice Alliance
4242 S. Cottage Grove
Chicago, IL 60653
773-548-7500

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Industry, English Language Learners, Equity, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Inequality, Injustice, Poverty, Privatization, Race

The Most Segregating District Lines in the Nation

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2016 //
9

The Supreme Court ruled in 1974 (Bradley v. Milliken) that a court could not order desegregation across district lines. The case referred to Detroit, which was highly segregated. That put an end to the possibility of metropolitan districts like the one already established in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC. The children of Detroit were doomed to remain in segregated, underfunded schools in an increasingly impoverished district.

This article reports the findings of a study of the most segregating lines dividing the children of different races. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/08/where-school-district-borders-are-invisible-fences/497279/

[ALERT: I was just informed that Edbuild is funded by reformers who want to destroy our public schools. Keep that in mind as you read—DR]

“A few blocks away from Bernita Bradley’s house, the Detroit Public School district ends and the Grosse Pointe Public School System begins. The border is invisible, but with a 12-year-old daughter enrolled in DPS, the reminders for Bradley are impossible to ignore. Every student seems to have a Macbook. There’s the annual Grosse Pointe toy drive, which distributes free bicycles to kids who need them. And there are the parks with shiny new playground equipment, where parents routinely ask Bradley, “Do you live around here?”

“Ours are torn down and dilapidated,” Bradley says. “Just seeing theirs makes me feel bad.“

“According to a new report and interactive map by the education think tank EdBuild, the district border that Bradley navigates as a parent and an activist (she helped launch Enroll Detroit, which distributes information about school enrollment requirements to families) is the most income-segregating in the nation. The median property value in DPS is $45,100, versus $220,100 in suburban Grosse Pointe, and roughly half of the city student population lives in poverty, compared to one out of every 15 students across the district line—a difference of 42 percentage points. Local per-pupil public revenue is about the same, at around $4,650 per student, but that’s because Detroit now taxes properties at a rate of 8.7 percent each year to pay for its schools. This is 47 percent higher than the rate paid in Grosse Pointe, “where, it goes without saying, there are most likely no vermin carcasses under the desks,” says Rebecca Sibilia, the founder and CEO of EdBuild, in an email to CityLab.

“EdBuild’s report ranked the country’s top 50 segregating school-district borders. More than 60 percent of these borders are in Rust Belt cities in upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, eastern Wisconsin, and Illinois, which have suffered from patterns of disinvestment similar to those in Detroit. As the city underwent decades of depopulation, hundreds of Detroit’s public schools closed, leaving properties abandoned and blighted. DPS now struggles with a budget deficit of nearly $300 million, along with frequent teacher shortages and staff walk-outs. Research shows that students coming from profound disadvantage need even more resources from schools than their wealthier peers to achieve equal outcomes—yet DPS cannot meet those needs, even with additional state funding.”

Categories Detroit, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Wendy Lecker on That Disappointing Judicial Decision in Connecticut

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2016 //
6

Wendy Lecker, civil rights attorney, explains here how disappointing the recent Connecticut funding decision is.

“As noted in my previous column, CCJEF trial judge Thomas Moukawsher refused to order the state to ensure adequate resources in schools, though determining constitutional adequacy was his responsibility. By contrast, the judge freely issued sweeping directives regarding educational policy.

“The judge issued far-reaching orders involving elementary and high school education and teacher evaluations. He also aired abhorrent views toward children with disabilities, which several commentators already addressed.

“This column addresses his orders regarding elementary education. I will address the others in subsequent columns.
Moukawsher observed that the educational disparities in secondary school begin in elementary school. (He actually acknowledged that they begin before elementary school, but declined to rule that preschool is essential.)

Moukawsher’s “fix” for elementary school was to order the state to define elementary education as being “primarily related to developing basic literacy and numeracy skills needed for secondary school.”

“Most of us understand that to thrive in secondary school, children must develop skills beyond basic numeracy and literacy. From an early age, children must develop the ability to think critically, creatively and independently.
There is no real division among brain functions — cognitive, social and motor — so they all must be developed in concert. As neuroscientist Adele Diamond observed, “a human being is not just an intellect or just a body … we ignore any of those dimensions at our peril in … educating children.”

“However, Moukawsher ruled that elementary school should concern itself with basic literacy and numeracy skills. Moreover, he demanded that this definition have “force,” “substantial consequences” and be “verifiable” — code for high-stakes statewide standardized elementary school exit exams.

“The judge’s myopic focus was emphasized by his suggestion for giving the required definition “force.” He declared that the state definition “might gain some heft, for example, if the rest of school stopped for students who leave third grade without basic literacy skills. School for them might be focused solely on acquiring those skills. Eighth-grade testing would have to show they have acquired those skills before they move on to secondary school. This would give the schools four school years to fix the problem for most children.”

Many children who do not score well on standardized tests are poor and experience stress in their lives that inhibits learning. Others are just learning English. Others have disabilities. Any lag in reading does not mean a child cannot think at grade level or beyond. Moreover, many low-income children have limited exposure to the wide variety of experiences their more affluent peers enjoy. Yet Moukawsher’s prescription for “fixing” them is to limit their education to reading instruction. No art, music, physical education, social studies, science, drama, or field trips. This “solution” will leave our neediest children further behind developmentally.

Moukawsher’s proposal not only threatens to hinder development for our neediest children. It is not even an effective way to teach reading.”

Read the rest of her analysis. This is the same decision that the New York Times treated as historic. Apparently, no one at the Times actually read the decision.

Categories Accountability, Connecticut, Equity, Funding

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

New York: Regents Chair Calls for End to Testing ELLs and Students with Disabilities Who Are Not Ready

By dianeravitch
September 16, 2016 //
22

This item appeared in politico.com for New York, but it is not posted online, so no link.

Betty Rosa, chancellor of the state Board of Regents, was elected with the help of the New York state opt out leaders.

By Keshia Clukey
09/12/2016 02:39 PM EDT

State Board of Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa Monday called for New York State to be a national leader in taking a stand against the testing of English language learners and students with disabilities who are not ready to take the exams.

“I want us to take a super leadership role in our waiver,” Rosa said at the Regents meeting. The state has continued to apply for a federal testing waiver, but the request has yet to be granted.

“Not just children with disabilities, but with the English language learners, we know before they even take a test that they cannot,” Rosa said. “They don’t have [the] language proficiency to demonstrate their success story.”

Regents board member Roger Tilles agreed and said that former state Education Commissioner John King Jr. had signed on and sent the request for the federal testing waiver during his time in New York, but now as U.S. secretary of education has the power to act and has yet to act on it.

With the low proficiency rate of English language learners on the state exams, Regents board member Luis Reyes said, it could be taken up as a civil rights violation.

“Testing children who are recently arrived is child abuse, not to say bad education law or bad education policy,” he said.

Categories Accountability, English Language Learners, Equity, New York, Special Education, Testing
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