Mercedes Schneider reports on speculation that Arne Duncan is returning to Illinois so he can meet the residency requirement to run for governor. It would be interesting to see Duncan debate Bruce Rauner on who loves charter schools the most.
Archives for category: Illinois
What a story. First Lady Michelle Obama joined with Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner to christen a new $2.7 billion nuclear submarine.
Rauner has cut programs for the homeless mentally ill and for children with disabilities. He hates unions and public schools. He is a rightwing Republican who would cut every social program and privatize public education if he could get away with it. All to balance the budget without raising taxes on billionaires like himself.
The sub, of course, was built in Connecticut by union labor.
Dr. Terri Reid-Schuster writes:
I was disgusted by my IEA President, Cinda Klickna’s, response regarding the low scores soon to be released in Illinois. I sent her the following:
Dear Cinda Klickna,
I was very disturbed to read your recent response to the news that Illinois students’ recent PARCC score test release. You characterized it as something that will improve as teachers get better at the standards and students get more experienced with the test. You could not be more wrong.
First, I am a career Illinois teacher with more than 20 years of experience. I have a doctorate in developmental literacy and currently work as a reading specialist in Oregon, IL. I have been active in my union and am currently serving as OEA president. I vote democrat, and have always been a proud union member. However, now I am doubting whether IEA/NEA really has the best interests of children and teachers at heart. Your recent response has confirmed that.
Here is what you SHOULD have said:
The PARCC test is a capstone of corporate reform efforts to discredit hard-working teachers and school districts. It is a natural progression of developmentally inappropriate and unvalidated Common Core Standards that were written almost exclusively by test publishers whose intentions are to create a market for their “new and improved” curriculum materials, assessments, remedial programs and expensive consulting deals.
The test itself is written several years above the average student’s reading level, it is to be given on unfamiliar computer technology, contains intentionally vague and poorly designed questions with opaque directions, and is excessive in length. Additionally, cut scores were set outrageously high–ostensibly to align with NAEP proficiency levels and completely disregarding the fact that a rating of “proficient” on the NAEP means the equivalent of “A” level work in the classroom.
This is the new and impossible standard Illinois students have “failed” to reach. This is by design, it is absolutely the intention of companies like Pearson who stand to make billions off the misery the CCSS and PARCC are creating. Now politicians can “prove” teachers are lazy and incompetent and point to PARCC scores as evidence, then hand over public dollars to their business cronies and donors for charter schools. Your statement helps that process along by promoting the fantasy that it is possible to improve these test scores if only we numbskull public school teachers would just get up to speed on these dandy new standards.
Please, if you are going to take our money and purport to represent teachers collectively in Illinois, it is incumbent upon you to educate yourself about the reality of the monumental bamboozle that is corporate reform. I recommend Diane Ravitch’s book Reign of Error for starters, and her blog is a daily format for exposing the damaging effects of the move to privatize and profitize education. Todd Farley’s book Making the Grades is an insider’s expose of Pearson’s shoddy test design process and and standardized test-grading mills.
Additionally, I am requesting that IEA not accept funding from Bill Gates or Pearson or any other entity that seeks to destroy public education. Doing so ensures our demise as a profession, and will hasten the dismantling of democracy itself.
Democracy works best when we prepare students to be critical thinkers who are creative problem solvers and question authority–CCSS are preparing students to be obedient worker bees. Ask yourself why students at elite private schools aren’t being subjected to CCSS or PARCC testing? If these standards and tests are so essential to a great education, wealthy parents would be clamoring to have them for their own children. In fact, exactly the opposite is happening. CCSS and unfair, rigged exams like the PARCC are for the unwashed, undeserving poor and middle class.
Cinda, you disappoint me. I am beginning to believe my dues to the IEA and NEA are not money well spent. Please educate yourself and become an advocate for children and teachers in this state. Call out corporate reform for what it is: a blatant profit-making scheme. Stop falling for the slick marketing. Talk to real teachers about their struggles under this brutal and demoralizing test-and-punish regime. STOP looking to “have a seat at the table.” Don’t collaborate and cooperate with those who will destroy the education profession.
If you need real teachers to talk to, I volunteer myself and my colleagues. Thank you for your attention in this matter. It is critical teachers have the informed support of our biggest professional organization.
This Illinois blogger wondered why the failure rate was so high on the Common Core PARCC test. He probably didn’t know that the passing marks were set so high that mass failure was certain.
He asked a math teacher and this was her answer.
Mike Klonsky shows the face of Bruce Rauner, a billionaire financier who doesn’t like the public sector, especially public schools and unions. He loves charter schools and even has one in Chicago named for him.
Rauner and State Superintendent Tony Smith want to abolish all unfunded mandates. Smith was once part of Ted Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools. But he has gone along with Rauner’s program.
Klonsky writes:
“For Rauner/Smith that’s exactly what the call to abolish mandates means. Rauner wants nothing less than to privatize all public space and eliminate civil rights protections and public employee unions altogether.
“Yes, let’s get rid of unfunded mandates like, Rahm Emanuel’s longer school day, like Common Core and PARCC testing madness. But we need to keep mandates that ensure student safety, special education, ELL, class size ceilings, caps on charters, and school desegregation as well as all other fundamental civil and human rights — including teachers’ right to bargain collectively with elected school boards.
“The response to necessary, but unfunded, mandates, should be to adequately fund them, not abolish them.”
Mike Klonsky does his usual round up of Chicago news.
70% of students in Illlinois “failed” the PARCC test. Arne Duncan was not troubled at all.
“Arne Duncan agrees…
“It actually doesn’t concern me at all. What Illinois and many other states are doing is finally telling the truth.” (EdWeek)”
Did he forget that President Obama named him as Secretaryof Education because of the alleged leap in test scores in Chicago? We’re they not telling the truth in 2008?
The news: the Dyett hunger strike is in day 32. See the interview with Jitu Brown.
Illinois released the results of Common Core test results, and the proportion of students who met PARCC’s wildly unrealistic expectations declined from previous years.
“In a troubling picture of performance, the vast majority of Illinois students failed to reach the high academic bar on the new state PARCC exams, meaning they weren’t on track academically for the next grade level, let alone for college or careers.
“Preliminary statewide results from last spring’s testing, released for the first time Wednesday, reveal the extent to which students fell short of the key goal of the Common Core movement, to ultimately prepare students for higher education and the world of work.
“Between 26 and 36 percent of third-through-eighth-grade students “met expectations” or “exceeded expectations” on the PARCC math exams. In English language arts/literacy, the figure was 33 to 38 percent for third-through-eighth-graders.
“In high schools the picture was even more dismal, with 17 percent of students meeting or exceeding expectations in math while 31 percent did so in English language arts/literacy. In high school, districts had the choice to give the exams in various grades, depending on the level of courses students were taking in math and English. For example, districts could give ninth-graders the Algebra 1 PARCC exam.
“The Illinois State Board of Education’s data is not complete but includes students who took the exams online, which represents more than 75 percent of test takers. Results of students taking the exams with paper and pencil will be melded into final results later.
“The scores on the new exams are lower than any statewide test results since 2001, data shows, when the state launched the Prairie State Achievement Examination for high school juniors. The Illinois Standards Achievement Test for grade school students had debuted in 1999. The percentage of students meeting and exceeding expectations on those exams since 2001 never dipped below 50 percent statewide, even after the state made it tougher to pass the grade school tests.”
These are the dismal results that the test developers of PARCC and Smarter Balanced planned for and predicted.
Some educators recognized the tests for what they are: madness .
“For educators following the debate over testing and the new exams, the results were expected.
“We’ve been writing and meeting with ISBE officials for over two years to stop this madness. We’ve told them that our technology isn’t ready, our Common Core curriculum isn’t ready and the test will be hurting kids,” said Argo Community High School District 217 Superintendent Kevin O’Mara, who also is president of the Illinois High School District Organization.
“They didn’t listen then; I hope with a new ISBE chairman and a new ISBE state superintendent, they’ll finally rethink PARCC and get back to helping students learn.”
With a rabidly pro-charter Governor Rauner, students and educators can’t expect much relief. These are results that discredit public education and can be used by the privatizers to push their agenda.
As Mercedes Schneider has repeatedly declared, there is zero evidence that these tests are an accurate gauge of college or career readiness.
Mercedes writes:
“Chin up, Illinois. These lousy scores are only a half-full glass. Besides, there will be other PARCC states releasing terrible scores, and we can make it a senseless contest to see which of the few PARCC states is the worst.
“Of course, there is no evidence that PARCC and its Common Core host have any empirically-established, practical connection to any useful outcome. But practicality is beside the test-obsessed point. These scores must be useful because they’re just too awful to not accurately capture the marketed message about American public education.”
Fred Klonsky’s blog carries a post by retired educator Sandra Deines about a fateful decision in Illinois:
“Starting this fall Pearson will be in the business of deciding who becomes a teacher in the state of Illinois.
“The Illinois State Board of Education has adopted a rule that designates Pearson’s “edTPA” as the means by which student teachers will be evaluated and granted certification.
“As the fall semester begins, all student teachers in the state will be required to pay an extra $300 (on top of the tuition they are already paying) and arrange for videotaping so that they can submit a lengthy narrative that covers the planning, execution and evaluation of a series of lessons with one of their classes as well as a ten-minute video of themselves carrying out their lesson with a class.
“Student teachers are required to get parent permission for their children to be video-taped.
“Pearson owns the video.
“Once submitted to Pearson, an “evaluator” will apply rubrics and 2-3 hours of their time to decide whether or not the student teacher “passes” and can be licensed to teach by the State of Illinois.
“That’s right—no longer will the evaluations of cooperating teachers, university field instructors and education professors determine the success of a student teacher.”
To learn about how to resist the Pearson takeover of teacher certification in Illinois, read the test of the post.
Fred Klonsky reports on his blog that Thereis a dangerous bill in the legislature that would wipe out all school funding and pensions and appoint acommission of legislators to start from scratch.
Since this is apparently Governor Bruce Rauner’s idea, you can be sure whatever happens will hurt the state’s public schools and benefit charters.
The bill has passed the State Senate and awaits action in the House.
Get involved. Speak out.
Bruce Rauner never held public office until he ran for Governor of Illinois as a Republican against Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn. Who is Bruce Rauner?
Ken Previti has a word for him: Sociopath. This is his word, not mine. Rauner cuts autism programs to pay for high-priced hires, like the new “education czar,” who will make a quarter million a year. Rauner loves charters. He even has one named for him. Previti quotes a conversation I had with Rauner in front of about a dozen people a few years back. I asked him if it bothered him that charters like his enroll small proportions of students with disabilities or ELLs. He said it didn’t bother him at all. He said that charters were for students who were highly motivated and eager to work hard. When I asked what he thought we should do about those other children, the ones rejected by charters, he said he didn’t care, it was not his problem. I would say Bruce Rauner is heartless. I would say he is indifferent to those he considers less worthy than himself.
Rauner is an equity investor. He made a lot of money managing pension funds for public employees. Forbes says he is worth nearly a billion dollars. That means he is very, very rich. Now that pension funds made him super-rich, he wants to get rid of them. Edward Siedle, who writes about pensions for Forbes, writes:
With an estimated personal net worth of nearly a billion and a stable of high-end residences, managing state workers’ retirement savings for decades– shielded from public scrutiny– has worked out very nicely for private equity titan Bruce Rauner.
You’d think he’d be thanking his lucky stars that public pensions have contributed generously to his lifetime of opportunity.
You’d be wrong.
Today Rauner is using some of the millions he garnered from workers savings to fund a run for governor of Illinois. As the Republican Gubernatorial Candidate he wants to “reform” state pensions and force public workers into the same poorly-designed 401(k)-style plans that have utterly failed to provide retirement security for private sector employees.
After having paid his firm, GTCR, and Wall Street billions in private equity asset-based and incentive fees, Rauner believes Illinois public pensions can’t afford the lavish $2,500 in average monthly benefits promised to workers.
Personally, I have never understood why someone who is “nearly a billionaire” (or in the case of former Enron trader John Arnold, is a multi-billionaire) wants to take away the pensions of working people who barely scrape by. I don’t get their motivation. It baffles me.
Diane Ravitch's blog 