Archives for category: Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)
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Allies Should Work Together, But Not Everyone Agrees

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2016 //
117

Jim Horn has a website called “Schools Matter.” He opposes corporate reform, as I do.
I have never met him. I hear he doesn’t like me. I don’t know why. I thought we were fighting for the same goals.

The first time I became aware of his hostility was when he posted a photograph of me with the caption, “Nice face job, Diane.” Very puzzling as I have never had a facelift. Sexist too. I ignored him.

When Anthony Cody and I decided to create the Network for Public Education, aiming to build alliances among the many individuals and groups fighting against corporate reform, we selected a board and announced our existence. Horn emailed to say that he was going to attack us because we included a much admired NBCT African American teacher from Mississippi. Horn discovered that she had written an article praising merit pay. Many emails went back and forth among him, Anthony, and me. He decided not to poison us at our birth.

But he has an intense and personal animus towards me. Again, I can’t explain it. I don’t know why.

I thought I would share with you his latest blast, which was (I assume) a response to my post about how progressive movements die when they turn on one another. In the post, I urged us all to work together towards our shared agenda. Apparently he is angry that I supported ESSA; I supported it because it eliminated NCLB (No Child Left Behind), AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress), and VAM (value-added modeling or test-based teacher evaluations). If ESSA had not passed, NCLB would still be federal law, and John King would have the authoritarian power that Arne Duncan had over the nation’s schools. If I were writing the law, I would have eliminated all federal mandates for accountability and testing, but I was not writing the law.

Despite what he writes, we are on the same side of the issues. Like him, I oppose standardized testing, other than for sampling purposes. I oppose evaluation of teachers by test scores. I oppose segregation. I support equitable and ample funding of schools. I support teacher professionalism and collective bargaining. I support public education and oppose privatization. Yet he says I am his enemy. He wants us to fail.

This is what Jim Horn wrote yesterday:

Today’s Communique to the Ravitch Forces

After what seems to me to have been a pretty effective skirmish, the Ravitch forces have climbed out of their tent at their permanent Basecamp, stomping the ground and waving their, um, whatevers. For those Ravitch acolytes who are not too drunk on revenge to read, here’s something to ponder, as I am working on a next book today and don’t have time to attend to your whining.

In everything I have seen from D. Ravitch and the band of intellectual eunuchs who comprise the NPE echo chamber, a theme stands out, which is that we cannot afford to fight among ourselves, that allies cannot be ripped asunder, that we must stick together in the same tent, blah blah. So let me speak to Diane directly here, and I hope that all of her disciples will read this carefully.

The problem is, Diane, our goals are not the same. My goals are ending testing accountability in all forms, ending segregated classrooms in all forms, and ending corporate education reform in all forms. I can’t work toward those goals with any effect while misleaders like you and the union suits are cutting deals on ESSA to guarantee another generation of testing accountability, segregated classrooms, and corporate control. Have you read the history of NCLB?

We are on different sides of these issues, regardless of how much braying and foot stomping you are able to stir up. We are not allies. I am your enemy. Get used to it.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB, Network for Public Education, Resistance, Standardized Testing

Democratic Congressional Leaders Applaud Bush-Era Punitive Accountability

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2016 //
45

To my amazement and disgust, Democrats in the Senate and the House is that they have become forceful defenders of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind-style legacy of punitive accountability. They love testing and accountability, which was always the GOP agenda.

During the debate about the reauthorization of NCLB, which produced the Every Student Succeeds Act, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut proposed an amendment that would have preserved the punitive AYP accountability of NCLB. Almost every Democratic senator supported the Murphy amendment, even Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren. See here and here. The only Democrats to vote against the Murphy amendment were Senator Tester of Montana and Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire.

Yesterday, POLITICO reported that Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington State and Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia commended Secretary of Education John King for his efforts to insert sharp teeth into ESSA, doing an end run around the Republicans’ decision to eliminate the worst features of NCLB.

“- Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Bobby Scott teamed up for their public comments. In a letter to Education Secretary John B. King Jr., they applaud a number of provisions, like the requirement that states come up with concrete evaluations or scores for schools. They also support the requirement that states test 95 percent of students annually, and include that participation rate in their accountability systems. But the lawmakers want to see changes and tweaks to a number of items, including the timeline for states to get their new accountability systems up and running, transportation for students in foster care, calculating graduation rates, “n-sizes,” resource equity and more. The department should change the definition of “consistently underperforming” when it comes to student subgroups, they write. Student subgroups should be identified for consistent underperformance based on all indicators in a state’s accountability system – not just a select few – and whether or not student subgroups are hitting interim and long-term goals set by the state, the letter states. Read the letter: http://politico.pro/2aHrmIZ.”

Recall that the idea of giving schools a “concrete” score of A-F came from Jeb Bush and won the approval of many Red State governors. Murray and Scott also support King’s effort to suppress and punish schools and districts with opt out rates that exceed 5%. This is astonishing. In the last round of testing in New York, the overwhelming majority of districts had opt out rates that exceeded 5%.

Murray is the senior senator in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Scott is the senior Democrat in the House Education Committee.

Question: Why are they defending George W. Bush’s legacy?

Mercedes Schneider writes here about the way that New York parents threaten to bring down John King’s desire to crush the opt out movement. 22% of the state’s eligible children didn’t take the tests. Should the school be punished for the actions and decisions of parents. As long as New York’s well-organized opt out movement keeps going, ESSA is unenforceable.

Categories Accountability, Democrats, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

EduShyster: What is the Match “Graduate School of Education”?

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2016 //
52

The new federal law titled “Every Student Succeeds Act” encourages states to welcome newcomers to the field of teacher education, such as the Relay Graduate School of Education and the Match Graduate School of Education. Relay and Match have much in common. They do not have scholars or researchers on their “faculty.” At last check, neither had anyone with a doctorate in any subject on their faculty. They do not appear to teach cognitive development, child study, the history or economics of education, the uses and misuses of testing, early childhood education, or any other subject normally found in a typical graduate school of education. These “graduate schools” consist of charter teachers teaching future charter teachers how to raise test scores and how to maintain strict discipline. They might appropriately be called a “program,” but they are not “graduate schools of education,” nor should they have the right to award master’s degrees. Going to Match or Relay is akin to taking classes in computer programming or cooking or going to a trade school.

I discovered that EduShyster explained the Match “Graduate School of Education” a few years back. Read this short piece to understand what Match is and why so many of its ill-prepared teachers don’t last.

And remember, the Congress of the United States wants to promote more of these sham teacher-preparation programs.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Fraud, Teacher Education, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching

Laura Chapman: ESSA and the Degradation of Teacher Preparation

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2016 //
21

Laura Chapman, retired arts consultant, predicts that the new “Every Student Succeeds Act” is a blow against professional teacher preparation. It offers carte blanche to the new institutions created by entrepreneurs and charter operators. She posted the following comment:

The biggest player in making teacher preparation an “anything goes” job is our US Congress with the passage of ESSA.

TITLE II—PREPARING, TRAINING, AND RECRUITING HIGH-QUALITY TEACHERS, PRINCIPALS, OR OTHER SCHOOL LEADERS is not just a bad joke for a title. It is cynically misleading.

ESSA marginalizes higher education’s role in teacher preparation. Scholarship is not required to prepare teachers or to be a teachers, or principal, or other school leader. All you need to do is be a producer of test scores as measures of “academic” achievement. All you have to do is let our governors expand the charter industry to teacher education by setting up an “authorizing entity” to approve “teacher preparation academies” for prospective Teachers, Principals, and other School Leaders.

Here are a couple of sections of ESSA that show the perverse incentives for awarding a master’s degree in a chartered
TEACHER , PRINCIPAL , OR OTHER SCHOOL LEADER PREPARATION ACADEMY .—The term ‘teacher, principal, or other school leader preparation academy’ means a public or other nonprofit entity, which may be an institution of higher education or an organization affiliated with an institution of higher education, that establishes an academy that will prepare teachers, principals, or other school leaders to serve in highneeds schools (not defined) and that—
‘‘
(A) enters into an agreement with a State authorizer that specifies the goals expected of the academy, including—

‘‘(i) a requirement that prospective teachers, principals, or other school leaders who are enrolled in the academy receive a significant part of their training through clinical preparation that partners the prospective candidate with an effective teacher, principal, or other school leader, as determined by the State, respectively, with a demonstrated record of increasing student academic achievement, including for the subgroups of students…, while also receiving concurrent instruction from the academy in the content area (or areas) in which the prospective teacher, principal, or other school leader will become certified or licensed that links to the clinical preparation experience; ‘‘

(ii) the number of effective teachers, principals, or other school leaders, respectively, who will demonstrate success in increasing student academic achievement that the academy will prepare; and ‘‘

(iii) a requirement that the academy will award a certificate of completion (or degree, if the academy is affiliated with, an institution of higher education) to a teacher only after the teacher demonstrates that the teacher is an effective teacher, as determined by the State, with a demonstrated record of increasing student academic achievement either as a student teacher or teacher-of-record on an alternative certificate, license, or credential; ‘‘
(iv) a requirement that the academy will award a certificate of completion (or degree, if the academy is affiliated with an institution of higher education) to a principal or other school leader only after the principal or other school leader demonstrates a record of success in improving student performance; and

(v) timelines for producing cohorts of graduates and conferring certificates of completion (or degrees, if the academy is affiliated with, an institution of higher education) from the academy; ‘‘

(B) does not have unnecessary restrictions on the methods the academy will use to train prospective teacher, principal, or other school leader candidates, including—
‘‘(i) obligating (or prohibiting) the academy’s faculty to hold advanced degrees or conduct academic research;
‘‘(ii) restrictions related to the academy’s physical infrastructure;
‘‘(iii) restrictions related to the number of course credits required as part of the program of study;
‘‘(iv) restrictions related to the undergraduate coursework completed by teachers teaching or working on alternative certificates, licenses, or credentials, as long as such teachers have successfully passed all relevant State-approved content area examinations; or
‘‘(v) restrictions related to obtaining accreditation from an accrediting body for purposes of becoming an academy; ‘‘

(C) limits admission to its program to prospective teacher, principal, or other school leader candidates who demonstrate strong potential to improve student academic achievement, based on a rigorous selection process that reviews a candidate’s prior academic achievement or record of professional accomplishment; and
‘
(D) results in a certificate of completion or degree that the State may, after reviewing the academy’s results in producing effective teachers, or principals, or other school leaders, respectively (as determined by the State) recognize as at least the equivalent of a master’s degree in education for the purposes of hiring, retention, compensation, and promotion in the State.”

These specification appear to come from the training models offered by the recently formed “Coalition” of charter teacher prep academies and programs well-funded by foundations. These programs have token or no ties to higher education. Charter residency programs are operated primarily to offer a “pipeline of talent” for charter schools. The new “Coalition” is a functioning as a lobby to keep students’ academic test scores as the measure of effective teaching and teacher preparation programs funded by ESSA. The Coalition includes Urban Teachers, Aspire Public Schools, Blue Engine, Boston Teacher Residency, Match Teacher Residency, National Center for Teacher Residencies, Relay Graduate School of Education (a darling of Bill Gates), Teach for America, and TNTP (formerly The New Teacher Project).

In ESSA, Congress has expressed absolute contempt for professional preparation of teachers. They approved a law that insists on… “no restrictions” on faculty academic qualifications, “no restrictions” on where academies exist, “no restrictions” on course credits (including undergraduate and academy programs), and freedom to operate with no accreditation “as long as such teachers have successfully passed all relevant State-approved content area examinations.”

The law is conspicuously tilted to support high scores on academic tests as the measure of “effectiveness.” Effectiveness is not formally defined but in ESSA it is used 150 times

(5) “TEACHER RESIDENCY PROGRAM —The term ‘teacher residency program’ means a school-based teacher preparation program in which a prospective teacher— ‘‘

(A) for not less than 1 academic year, teaches alongside an effective teacher, as determined by the State or local educational agency, who is the teacher of record for the classroom;

‘‘(B) receives concurrent instruction during the residency year

‘‘(i) through courses that may be taught by local educational agency personnel or by faculty of the teacher preparation program; and

‘‘(ii) in the teaching of the content area in which the teacher will become certified or licensed; and

(C) acquires effective teaching skills, as demonstrated through completion of a residency program, or other measure determined by the State, which may include a teacher performance assessment.

As I read Part 5, the teacher residency program is ambiguous. A teacher residency is typically a paid full-time co-teacher position, with the novice having full responsibility for classes well before the end of the school year, including securing proofs of their ability to increase the academic achievement (test scores) of their students. Meanwhile most residencies also require job-specific coursework (in addition to the full-time residency) that will justify earning a master’s degree. However, Part C seems to permit a direct path into teaching by taking a state approved performance assessment such as edPTA.

I can vouch for one thing about ESSA. It is a patched together law which deserves and F for clarity, wisdom, and sound investment of tax dollars.

Title II of ESSA calls for a four-year appropriation totaling $11,079,417,150. That is a huge investment, given the estimated demand per year for about 160,000 new teachers to take the place of teachers who will retire in the next four years.

Categories Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Teacher Education

Mike Klonsky: John King’s Law is Test-and-Punish

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2016 //
22

Mike Klonsky writes tonight about John King’s efforts to circumvent the intent of the ESSA law and restore the punishments of NCLB.

Governor Jerry Brown wants to use multiple measures to judge schools, and King does not approve. He wants to impose an A-F letter grade, based primarily on test scores, a simplistic idea invented by Jeb Bush.

The schools that suffer most are those that enroll poor children and children of color.

“King claims it has to be a “simple” rating system so that parents can understand it. He thinks parents are too stupid to understand that there’s more than one way to tell how their schools and their children are doing. His approach is what led to the mass parent opt-out revolt in N.Y. under his administration.

“This is the same line we heard under Bush’s No Child Left Behind. It turned out that NCLB testing madness was just another form of social reproduction. Or more simply put, a way of replicating and enforcing existing inequalities by punishing schools and districts with the neediest kids. Testing mania only reinforced school segregation and hurt poor kids and children of color the most.

“Not to mention the discredited role of the use of standardized tests as a valid measure when it comes to evaluating teachers or schools.”

King claims he is merely enforcing the law, but Senator Lamar Alexander (who led the writing of the law) doesn’t agree with him.

King is trying to assert power he does not have. Senator Alexander is not going to let him get away with it. In a stand-off between a lame-duck Secretary of Education and the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, my money is on the Senator.

Categories Accountability, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), John King, Testing

NPE Action: Stop John King from Reviving NCLB Punishment System!

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2016 //
14

Please open the link from NPE Action and, if you agree that John King is overreaching, write a letter to your member of Congress.

King will testify before the Senate Committee that led the revision of NCLB and eliminated the federal punishments. King is trying through regulation to restore them.

Please let your members of Congress hear from you!

Here are the members of the Senate HELP Committee.

http://www.help.senate.gov/about/members

Most of the Democratic members (especially Warren, Sanders, Murphy, and Bennett) are accountability hawks. Write them anyway.

Categories Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB

Senator Lamar Alexander Talks to Education Week about ESSA

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2016 //
14

This is a very interesting interview with Senator Lamar Alexander, which appears in Education Week.

Alexander was the architect or ringmaster in crafting the Every Student Succeeds Act, which reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Alexander explains how he created a bipartisan coalition to draft the law. The Education Department, he says, was left out in the cold. He doesn’t like “federal outreach” or a “national school board.” He was critical of the Education Department (and Duncan) for not recognizing any restraints on the federal role.

He noted that the subject he heard the most about was testing and over-testing. The Network for Public Education was one of many grassroots groups that urged Congress to abandon annual testing and switch to “grade-span” testing instead (e.g., 4, 8, and 12). There was considerable public opposition to annual testing, imposed by federal law. But in the end, Democrats insisted that annual testing had to remain, because of pressure from civil rights organizations. To get the bill passed, he acquiesced to the Democrats’ insistence on annual testing and “subgroup accountability.” To this day, it remains hard to understand why civil rights organizations wanted annual standardized testing, because in the past, the same organizations had filed lawsuits against standardized testing.

Ironically, it was Senate Democrats (including Senators Warren and Sanders) who ended up protecting George W. Bush’s NCLB legacy in the new law. Almost every Democrat in the Senate voted for the Murphy Amendment, which would have retained NCLB accountability and punishments. Fortunately, the amendment did not pass.

Senator Alexander is watching the Education Department closely now, because he fears that it is drafting regulations intended to subvert the intent of Congress.

Here is a small part of the Q&A:


How do you square the law’s crackdown on secretarial authority with its accountability focus?

“I didn’t trust the department to follow the law. … Since the consensus for this bill was pretty simple—we’ll keep the tests, but we’ll give states flexibility on the accountability system—I wanted several very specific provisions in there that [limited secretarial authority]. That shouldn’t be necessary, and it’s an extraordinary thing to do. But for example, on Common Core, probably a half a dozen times, [ESSA says] .. you can not make a state adopt the Common Core standards. And I’m sure that if we hadn’t put that in there, they’d try to do it.”

Alexander said that when he was education secretary during President George H.W. Bush’s administration Congress created the direct lending program, allowing students to take out college loans straight from the U.S. Treasury. Alexander didn’t like that program, but he implemented it anyway.

“Contrast that with the attitude of this secretary and this department,” Alexander said. Exhibit A: supplement-not-supplant.”That’s total and complete disrespect for the Congress, and if I was a governor I would follow the law, not the regulation.”

Do you think that there’s anything you possibly could have done in crafting this bill to prevent current controversy over supplement-not-supplant?

“I guess we could abolish the Department of Education. … I’m convinced that the law is the most significant devolution of power to the states in a quarter century, certainly on education.”

What’s your take on the accountability regulations?

Alexander declined to talk about the Education Department’s proposal, released late last month. “At the request of the White House I’m holding my powder on this until I have a chance to read and digest it.”

But it’s clear he’s pretty fired up about the supplement-not-supplant regulation, which deals with how federal dollars interact with state and local education spending. Congress, he said, produced a bill that could give school districts certainty on education for years. “Now the department is trying to rewrite what the Congress did and throw the whole issue into political wrangling,” he said. “They have no authority to do that.”

The change to the way teacher’s salaries are calculated that the department is pursuing through its proposed supplement not supplant regulation was already floated in a bill by Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., which failed to gain support, Alexander noted.

“Under this department’s theory of regulatory authority, you can apparently do anything,” Alexander said. “Governors across the country will fight and resist, and I think it’s a shame because we had ended a period of uncertainty, there were hosannas issuing forth from classrooms everywhere, and this one little department is about to upset that.”

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Sandra Stotsky: Opting Out is a Civic Duty, Not Civil Disobedience

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2016 //
8

Sandra Stotsky was responsible for the development of standards, assessments, and teacher tests when she was an official in the Massachusetts Department of Education in the 1990s. She has since become an outspoken critic of the Common Core standards.

 

In this article, she argues that parents should ignore attempts to bully them into taking the state tests. She says that opting out of mandated tests is a civic duty. I don’t agree with her that the money spent on the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act was wasted. In my book “Reign of Error,” I showed that there has been dramatic improvement in the scores of black and Hispanic students since the early 1970s, when the federal testing (National Assessment of Educational Progress) began. But I agree with Stotsky that the millions and billions spent on testing has been wasted.

 

She writes:

 

“If Common Core’s standards and tests are, as it is claimed, so much better than whatever schools were using before, why not use them only for low-achieving, low-income kids and let them catch up? Why can’t Congress amend ESSA to exempt students already at or above grade level in reading and mathematics and target ESSA funds to curriculum materials, teachers, and tests for just the kids who need a boost? That’s just the beginning. Maybe a different use of federal money is also needed.”

 

 

– See more at: http://newbostonpost.com/2016/03/16/opting-out-a-civic-duty-not-civil-disobedience/#sthash.RtytITBa.dpuf

Categories Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Opt Out, Resistance, Standardized Testing

US Department of Education Announces Committee to Write ESSA Regulations

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2016 //
39

Here is the list of people chosen to write the regulations for the new federal law, Every Student Succeeds Act. The regulations are crucial for interpreting the law.

 

Not everyone is pleased. Some see the hand of the Gates Foundation in the choices. 

 

Interesting that Exxon Mobil gets a member of the committee, a Republican who served in the George W. Bush administration but is now education program director of Exxon Mobil. If you recall, the CEO of Exxon Mobil Rex Tillerson said that American schools were producing a “defective product” (our kids).

 

 

Categories Corporate Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)

CCSSO Asks Jeb Bush’s “Chiefs for Change” to Help with ESSA

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2016 //
13

Politico.com reports that the Council of Chief State School Officers is partnering with Chiefs for Change, the group created by Jeb Bush to promote school choice, digital learning, and high-stakes testing, as well as Achieve, one of the groups that created the Common Core standards, to help states make the transition to ESSA. I can’t confirm which state superintendents belong to Chiefs for Change because its website is down.

 

Mercedes Schneider wrote that the Gates Foundation recently gave $15.4 million to CCSSO, so you can see where this “assistance” is going.

 

 

FIRST LOOK: GROUPS TO HELP WITH ESSA TRANSITION: The Council of Chief State School Officers is partnering up with a number of groups in a new initiative this year to help states transition to the Every Student Succeeds Act. The group is teaming up with Chiefs for Change, Achieve and Ed Counsel to help states design new accountability systems, for example. A working group of state chiefs and district leaders will do a deep dive into the accountability design process, looking at “their vision for school improvement in their state, the systems they need to achieve that and the strategies they need to do it,” Chiefs for Change CEO Mike Magee told Morning Education. Former Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman has also been tapped as a consultant for the new initiative. CCSSO said the groups hope to provide sample accountability models and best practices for states. And they’ll be holding meetings and conference calls with states in the coming months to provide guidance and feedback as states develop new accountability frameworks.

 

 

– CCSSO will also work with states in its Innovation Lab Network [http://bit.ly/1m4RI8C ] – like California, Kentucky and New Hampshire – to share ideas and best practices to help states that may be looking to participate in new innovative assessment pilots under ESSA. And CCSSO hopes to work with states as they refine – and possibly look to change – teacher evaluation systems under the new law.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Chiefs for Change, Common Core, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)
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