The National Council on Teacher Quality holds an important position in the public arena, passing judgment on the quality of teacher education programs across the nation.
Mercedes Schneider, who holds a Ph.D. In statistics and research methods, is reviewing the board of NCTQ to determine its qualification to do its job. Among its members are Michelle Rhee, Wendy Kopp, Joel Klein, and quite a few more. How many have classroom experience? How many understand how teachers are or should be prepared?
In this article, which appeared on Huffington Post, Alan Singer of Hofstra University in New York, nails the empty promises and misleading claims in President Obama’s State of the Union address. He calls it “Obama’s Mis-Education Agenda.”
Alan Singer writes:
I am a lifetime teacher, first in public schools and then in a university-based teacher education program. I think I do an honest job and that students benefit from being in my classes. I was hoping to hear something positive about the future of public education in President Obama’s State of the Union speech, I confess I was so disturbed by what Obama was saying about education that I had to turn him off. In the morning I read the text of his speech online, hoping I was wrong about what I thought I had hear. But I wasn’t. There was nothing there but shallow celebration of wrong-headed policies and empty promises.
For me, the test question on any education proposal always is, “Is this the kind of education I want for my children and grandchildren?” Obama, whose children attend an elite and expensive private school in Washington DC, badly failed the test.
Basically Obama is looking to improve education in the United States on the cheap. He bragged that his signature education program, Race to the Top, was “a competition that convinced almost every state to develop smarter curricula and higher standards, for about 1 percent of what we spend on education each year.” I am not sure why Obama felt entitled to brag. Race to the Top has been in place for four years now and its major impact seems to be the constant testing of students, high profits for testing companies such as Pearson, and questionable reevaluations of teachers. It is unclear to me what positive changes Race to the Top has actually achieved.
In the State of the Union Address, Obama made three proposals, one for pre-school, one for high school, and one for college.
Obama on Pre-Schools: “Study after study shows that the sooner a child begins learning, the better he or she does down the road. But today, fewer than 3 in 10 four year-olds are enrolled in a high-quality preschool program . . . I propose working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every child in America . . . In states that make it a priority to educate our youngest children, like Georgia or Oklahoma, studies show students grow up more likely to read and do math at grade level, graduate high school, hold a job, and form more stable families of their own.”
I am a big supporter of universal pre-kindergarten and I like the promise, but Georgia and Oklahoma are not models for educational excellence. Both states have offered universal pre-k for more than a decade and in both states students continue to score poorly on national achievement tests. Part of the problem is that both Georgia and Oklahoma are anti-union low wage Right-to-Work states. In Oklahoma City, the average salary for a preschool teacher is $25,000 and assistant teachers make about $18,000, enough to keep the school personnel living in poverty. Average Preschool Teacher salaries for job postings in Oklahoma City, are 17% lower than average Preschool Teacher salaries for job postings nationwide. The situation is not much better in Georgia. In Savannah, Average Preschool Teacher salaries for job postings are 12% lower than average Preschool Teacher salaries for job postings nationwide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law
http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Preschool-Teacher-l-Oklahoma-City,-OK.html
http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Preschool+Teacher&l1=savannah+georgia
Obama on Secondary Schools: “Let’s also make sure that a high school diploma puts our kids on a path to a good job. Right now, countries like Germany focus on graduating their high school students with the equivalent of a technical degree from one of our community colleges, so that they’re ready for a job. At schools like P-Tech in Brooklyn, a collaboration between New York Public Schools, the City University of New York, and IBM, students will graduate with a high school diploma and an associate degree in computers or engineering . . . I’m announcing a new challenge to redesign America’s high schools so they better equip graduates for the demands of a high-tech economy. We’ll reward schools that develop new partnerships with colleges and employers, and create classes that focus on science, technology, engineering, and math – the skills today’s employers are looking for to fill jobs right now and in the future.”
Unfortunately, P-Tech in Brooklyn, the Pathways in Technology Early College High School, is not yet, and may never be, a model for anything. It claims to be “the first school in the nation that connects high school, college, and the world of work through deep, meaningful partnerships, we are pioneering a new vision for college and career readiness and success.” Students will study for six years and receive both high school diplomas and college associate degrees. But the school is only in its second year of operation, has only 230 students, and no graduates or working alumni.
http://www.ptechnyc.org/site/default.aspx?PageID=1
According to a New York Times report which included an interviews with an IBM official, “The objective is to prepare students for entry-level technology jobs paying around $40,000 a year, like software specialists who answer questions from I.B.M.’s business customers or ‘deskside support’ workers who answer calls from PC users, with opportunities for advancement.”
The thing is, as anyone who has called computer support knows, those jobs are already being done at a much cheaper rate by outsourced technies in third world countries. It does not really seem like an avenue to the American middle class. The IBM official also made clear, “ that while no positions at I.B.M. could be guaranteed six years in the future, the company would give P-Tech students preference for openings.”
Obama on the cost of a College Education: “[S]kyrocketing costs price way too many young people out of a higher education, or saddle them with unsustainable debt . . . But taxpayers cannot continue to subsidize the soaring cost of higher education . . . My Administration will release a new “College Scorecard” that parents and students can use to compare schools based on a simple criteria: where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.”
As a parent and grandparent I agree with President Obama that the cost of college is too high for many families, but that is what a real education costs. If the United States is going to have the high-tech 21st century workforce the President wants, the only solution is massive federal support for education. There is a way to save some money however I did not hear any discussion of it in the President’s speech. Private for-profit businesses masquerading as colleges have been sucking in federal dollars and leaving poor and poorly qualified students with debts they can never repay. These programs should to be shut down, but in the State of the Union Address President Obama ignored the problem.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/higher-education-for-the-_b_1642764.html
The New York documented the way the for-profit edu-companies, including the massive Pearson publishing concern, go unregulated by federal education officials. These companies operate online charter schools and colleges that offer substandard education to desperate families at public expense.
President Obama, celebrating mediocrity and shallow promises are not enough. You would never accept these “solutions” for Malia and Sasha. American students and families need a genuine federal investment in education.
The reform/privatization strategy is now in full operation is states across the nation.
This is the way it works:
First, set an impossible goal, say, 100% proficiency for all students.
Second, say that there can be “no excuses,” no reference to social conditions in which children live.
Third, insist on accountability for schools, teachers, and principals. If they can’t meet the impossible goals, fire the staff and close the school.
Fourth, hand the school over to private management.
Mission accomplished!
Oklahoma is in the midst of this process, as this teacher describes here. The schools will be graded. Many will fail, by design. Does anyone still believe this is about improving education?
You know what comes next. This Oklahoma teacher writes:
Oh, it’s much worse than just testing…the use of this data will “fail” schools and then trumpet their failure. In order to earn an “A”, a school must score nearly 94%. The easy-to understand resources on the OKSDE website are anything but simple and transparent. The district Superintendents (nearly 200, I believe) who objected to the release of scores have been called names by our State Super and our Governor. Dedicated professional educators have been attacked personally.
The State Superintendent likened them to the kid who runs home to white-out his report card before his parents get home. Remember, she’s speaking to career educators…which she is not. She was a speech pathologist for a few years, became a dentist, and helped open a charter school in OKC because her own children were struggling in public schools. She sees herself as the heroine of DON’T BACK DOWN.
The spokesperson for the SDE says they’ve worked with districts, getting their input. I was at the Public Comments meeting, at the SDE…scheduled by the SDE. NO ONE representative from the SDE attended the meeting except the lawyer who pushed ‘play’ on the tape recorder. We all spoke to a tape recorder…superintendents, principals, school officials, legislators, PTA state officers, and I was the lone teacher…we were all ignored. Is THIS how our SDE works with us? Unfortunately, the answer is ‘yes’.
Our state officials are bullies, and they bully with smiles on their faces, with the knowledge that the media won’t pursue the story to the ultimate truth.
Tomorrow the grades come out…the same grades Mitt Romney thinks are such a good idea. My firm belief is the grades will show exactly what high-stakes testing shows: poverty matters. So, once again, schools and teachers and districts will be punished and publicly shamed because we serve poor children.
Pray for us.
Florida pioneered the use of school grades. New York City followed. Now other states and districts are jumping aboard.
The latest to adopt school grades is Oklahoma. The superintendents there don’t understand what is gained by this action. For some reason, the people who put grades on schools think of this as “reform,” but it is not.
It is a label based mostly on test scores. What we have learned in New York City over the past decade is that the school grades are meaningless. Schools bounce from A to F, or from F to C to B to D. This happens even though nothing has changed.
In this society, we are obsessed with data even when the data are based on flimsy measures. Standardized tests are a good way to measure what percent of your students live in poverty and what percent are affluent. The former school will be labeled “failing,” and the latter will be a success.
How is this “reform”?
I recently printed a blog about the Oklahoma Department of Education’s outrageous decision to publish personal information about some two dozen students who got waivers and did not take the state tests. This seemed like permission to publish their vital statistics on the department’s website, an outrageous and unprofessional action.
Now we hear from a teacher in Oklahoma:
Oklahoma is NOT OK…we’ve had the misfortune to elect a public-school-hating dentist as Superintendent of Public Instruction for the state…she’s in Jeb Bush’s back pocket, so all we have to do is look to Florida to see what’s coming at us. In less than two years she’s begun dismantling our schools.
She recently published the names, personal information, IEP status of students who appealed for graduation (they hadn’t passed the four required tests of seven) and lost…just the names of the students who lost! Their parents had to sign a FERPA waiver in order to appeal at all. We had been told they removed the information, but they only removed students’ names — initials and all disability info is still on the State Department of Ed’s website.
Vouchers, third-grade flunk law, teacher evaluations based on test scores, A-F school grades, weakened due-process for tenured teachers….we’re there. A dust-up at her first State School Board meeting resulted in her being able to hand-pick a Board of ‘yes’ men. We see the ALEC footprints and Mr. Bush’s.
How very sad that we’re all suffering like this, and the ‘reformers’ will ell you they’re doing this for our students. WE are the ones working for our students!
Officials in the Oklahoma Department of Education posted on its website the personal information of students who received an exemption from state testing. The names, date of birth, test scores and disabilities of these students were made public.
To get an exemption from the state test, the students waived their rights under federal privacy law, but the waiver typically means that their records will be released to education officials with a need to know, not to the public.
Legislators who complained were unsure whether this act was done out of ignorance or as retribution for students who might be challenging the state superintendent’s testing mandates.
If any state official was ignorant of state and federal law governing student privacy, they should be fired. If they acted out of malice, they should be fired.
What an outrage.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 