Archives for category: Race to the Top
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Reasons for Hope: The Pushback

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2012 //
31

We are all aware of the destructive policies that are being pushed into the schools, despite any evidence for their value and considerable evidence that they do harm.

The good news is that parents and educators are pushing back, in city after city and state after state. The resistance to overtesting, to attacks on educators, and to privatization is growing, as Mark Naison reports here

Next year, it will blossom and grow.

If you are part of a grassroots group supporting your public schools, please send me the name of your group and website.

We will continue the pushback.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Corporate Reformers, Pre-K, Privatization, Race to the Top, Supporting public schools, Testing

What Is the True Cost of RTTT Teacher Evaluation Plans?

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2012 //
10

Newsday on Long Island ran an article about the exorbitant cost of new teacher evaluation programs mandated by the state to comply with its Race to theTop grant.

The editorial board of the newspaper opined in favor of the unproven, heavy-handed plans to judge teachers and principals by student scores.

The superintendent of the Southold, Long Island, schools wrote a wise response to the editorial:

What is the true cost of the new teacher and principal evaluation systems?

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
-Albert Einstein

When we look at the cost of principal and teacher evaluation (Newsday Editorial, Teacher evaluations usually not ‘unfunded’ 11/27/12) there is a temptation to look at the numbers and come to the conclusion that the benefits of a new system are worth it, except for the complaints coming from educators. Beyond the dollars and cents lurks a far greater cost for something that is bereft with many untested variables. The public at-large rightfully demands a sound return for their investment in taxpayer dollars—whether local property taxes, or precious resources at the state level. Dig just beneath the surface of the new evaluation system and discover the true hidden costs.

Both large and small school districts face the same dilemma regarding the effective design of their respective educational systems. This is true whether we look at establishing a vigorous curriculum, defining the proper role and use of educational technology, determining how we should preserve school infrastructure, as well as what are effective means to monitor and evaluate all facets of the educational enterprise? Examine any public or private initiative or undertaking and you will find both effective and efficient ways to measure what works; you will also find cumbersome, over-intrusive, and costly designs for such systems of measurement.

The presumption that what works in one sector applies equally to others using the same or similar metrics which renders a determination of where quality lives may in fact be shortsighted at the very least, and detrimental to an organization’s mission at worst. The educational establishment is not, and should not be, exempt from scrutiny, or effective means to evaluate results. The current system, well underway, is not such an effective or efficient means to conduct such an evaluation.

The personal and professional opinions of citizens, policymakers, legislators, and practitioners run the gamut when it comes to a prescription for what ails the educational system. Look in one school and you find a drop out rate that should alarm everyone for what it portends in the way of the true cost to society in the years ahead (reliance on social service support, possible incarceration, let alone the human travesty of lives that go unfulfilled). Look elsewhere and you may see aspiring artists, musicians, and the like being nurtured in their respective school community. The aspiration for career and college readiness is not, and will not be, enhanced with an agenda that over tests and under engages students. Measuring the outcomes under a single banner that accounts for all variables would be difficult at best.

The true cost comes not in what we gain from this new system but what we lose with its narrow focus of effectiveness despite an expansive investment of time and energy to render judgments on what that effectiveness may look like. This time is equatable to dollars, but worse, it drains resources from the true mission of public education—to imbue a clear and compelling sense of purpose for the ideals of our American democracy, our entrepreneurial spirit, and a commitment to preserve our past and find our future. This prescription for measurement would leave the most ambitious and innovative private company ill equipped to compete with a more nimble and creative enterprise that does not find itself in a misguided mode of compliance.

Rather than champion the broad brush approach that is presently being administered throughout every schoolhouse in the state, the editors of Newsday would be well served to critically examine the net effects of this rush to judgment by looking at examples the world over that produce excellent results in school. Countries like Finland and Canada do not use a similar means of evaluation to arrive at an unequivocal definition of success. In fact in some cases you need look no further than right here on Long Island.

David Gamberg
Superintendent
Southold School District

Categories Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations

How to Speak Out Against Race to the Top

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2012 //
10

Parents and teachers have organized a telephone campaign to register their objections to the Race to the Top program, which has led to more testing and more school closings and more disruptions for students and teachers.

Here is the campaign message:

Contact the White House weekly at 202-456-1111  

Message: Give all students the same education your girls are getting! Abandon Race to the Top and stop privatizing public schools.

MONDAY
1. Alabama
2. Alaska
3. Arizona
4. Arkansas
5. California
6. Colorado
7. Connecticut
8. Delaware
9. Florida
10. Georgia 

TUESDAY
1. Hawaii
2. Idaho
3. Illinois
4. Indiana
5. Iowa
6. Kansas
7. Kentucky
8. Louisiana
9. Maine
10. Maryland 

WEDNESDAY
1. Massachusetts
2. Michigan
3. Minnesota
4. Mississippi
5. Missouri
6. Montana
7. Nebraska
8. Nevada
9. New Hampshire
10. New Jersey 

THURSDAY
1. New Mexico
2. New York
3. North Carolina
4. North Dakota
5. Ohio
6. Oklahoma
7. Oregon
8. Pennsylvania
9. Rhode Island
10. South Carolina 

FRIDAY
1. South Dakota
2. Tennessee
3. Texas
4. Utah
5. Vermont
6. Virginia
7. Washington
8. West Virginia
9. Wisconsin
10. Wyoming
11. Washington, D.C.

What is “Race to the Top”? 

RttT is an initiative from the Obama administration that allows states to extend the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate that ALL children be working at grade level by the 2014. States that accepted RttT agreed (along with many other things) to evaluate teachers using student test scores as part of the evaluation and provide more charter schools as a parent “choice”. Just these two provisions have resulted in high stakes testing impacting America’s children and tax dollars being removed from traditional public schools to fund charter schools. A “not so coincidental” byproduct of just these two actions is a decline in the quality of education in our public schools AND corporations lining up to write tests, new curriculum, and open charter schools. If continued, RttT will ultimately destroy public schools as we now know them and continue to provide a way for the monies designated for public education to go to the accounts of corporations that are joining the education bandwagon. Not all children are accepted at charter schools. Education will become a commodity for a select few children and the rest others will be “trained” to be docile employees (google Common Core Standards for more info). Parents must speak out now! Teachers and administrators must speak out now! America must speak out now! STOP THE RACE TO THE TOP!

Categories Race to the Top

Rick Hess: Why Does Tom Friedman Have a Crush on Arne Duncan?

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2012 //
9

In another smart column, Rick Hess dissects Thomas Friedman’s fawning praise for Arne Duncan.

What puzzles me is why so many knowledgeable commentators continue to speak of Duncan’s great success in Chicago. I get confused about whether it was Paul Vallas or Arne who “saved” Chicago. Despite a string of saviors, Chicago remains un-saved.

In this column, Hess has it both ways, simultaneously praising Arne’s run in Chicago and pulling it apart.

Whatever: he remains the reigning iconoclast of the right.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Race to the Top

If Arne Becomes Secretary of State, Then…

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2012 //
22

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times thinks that Arne Duncan should be the next Secretary of State. He would like to see Race to the Top applied to our international relations.

Readers have reacted. Leonie Haimson in New York City suggested that Arne could close embassies that can’t end wars and conflicts.

Here is another good idea:

He could start an innovative new trend of “Charter Embassies.” They would be U.S. embassies that are publicly funded, but cheaper to maintain and not beholden to rules of international law.

Actually, if you take it to its logical conclusion, every embassy would have its own foreign policy.

Categories Duncan, Arne, International, Race to the Top

Carrots and Sticks Are for Them, Not Us

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2012 //
11

Jersey Jazzman describes Race to the Top as “segregation gone wild.”

Strangely enough, the districts that applied for RTTT cash and mandates are mostly poor and minority.

Wonder if they know that none of the federal “remedies” has ever worked?

Wonder if they know their district is likely to spend more on implementing the mandates than the money it “wins”?

Categories New Jersey, Poverty, Race to the Top, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Wireless Generation Wins Common Core Contract

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2012 //
27

From NYC Parent blog (by Leonie Haimson):

Wireless Generation, owned by Murdoch/run by Joel Klein, Wins the $4.9M Contract to develop the software that will be used to report & analyze results for the new #CommonCore Assessments – both the interim and “summative” exams being developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium for 25 states (blue states in map below.)

Wireless is also developing the software/ infrastructure for the Gates-funded Shared Learning Collaborative, which is collecting confidential student & teacher data in states throughout the country, including NYS, & planning to turn this information over to for-profit commercial ventures, without parental consent, to help companies develop and market their “learning products.” The information will include among other things, names, addresses, grades, test scores, disciplinary and attendance records, and learning disability status.

The SLC has now named a new CEO, Iwan Streichenberger, who is going to direct SLC’s transition from a project to a nonprofit enterprise; to “ manage the technology and related services.”

Streichenberger was formerly the Chief Marketing Officer of a for-profit company called Promethean, where he was “responsible for product development, marketing, and sales strategy for the education technology company’s newest division.

He says he will “look forward to telling the story about the transformative technology we are building and how we are working with our industry partners to help education technology achieve its potential for students” and will be speaking about this at the SXSW Edu conference in Austin Texas March 4-7.

Here we go.

http://shar.es/6uSxE

Wireless Generation Wins Contract for Common Assessments

By Jason Tomassini on November 29, 2012 12:00 PM | No comments

As the two consortia developing assessments around the Common Core State Standards move closer to the tests’ adoption, for the 2014-15 school year, they are starting to award contracts that will shape how the assessments look and operate. On Wednesday, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium announced that the software used to report and analyze results from its assessments will be developed by Wireless Generation, the education software company.

Wireless Generation will partner with Educational Testing Service (ETS) on the contract. The terms of the contract were not disclosed, but the Request for Proposal stipulated the project could not exceed $4.9 million. Smarter Balanced’s projects are funded through a four-year, $175 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

The reporting system will be used for the common assessments students will take in Smarter Balanced’s 25 member states (you can view those states in the map below). The system will collect data from interim and summative assessments given to students and also track their progress toward college and career readiness, as determined by the individual standards. The data will be available to administrators and teachers as well as parents, according to a news release from Smarter Balanced. Schoolwide and districtwide reports will also be available.

The entire system will be open source, which means other computer programmers can build applications using the software’s source code. For instance, Moodle is an open source learning management platform that is used as the framework for companies like Moodlerooms.

Early next year, the public will have a chance to provide input on the system requirements. You can read the Request for Proposal here, and Wireless Generation’s winning proposal here, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Some important notes regarding Wireless Generation. News Corporation, the international media conglomerate implicated in a widespread phone hacking scandal last year, owns 90 percent of Wireless Generation, which is part of the company’s new Amplify education business. Since the acquisition, for $360 million in November 2010, concerns over possible connections between Wireless Generation’s data operations and its parent company have arose. In response, Wireless Generation has pointed out that its data operations are independent from News Corp. and the company has always complied with the many laws governing student data, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. In August 2011, the company did lose a $27 million contract to develop assessment tracking software for New York state education department because of the scandal embroiling News Corp.’s newspaper division.

(Larry Berger, a co-founder and executive chairman of Wireless Generation, serves on the board of Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit corporation that publishes Education Week.)

In somewhat related news, the Brown Center on Education Policy, at the Brookings Institution, released a report Wednesday on the cost of state assessments around the country, including a recommendation for states to join testing consortia in order to lower costs. Read more about it here.

Leonie Haimson

Executive Director

Class Size Matters

124 Waverly Pl.

New York, NY 10011

212-674-7320

leonie@classsizematters.org

http://www.classsizematters.org

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonie-haimson

Follow me on twitter @leoniehaimson

Make a tax-deductible contribution to Class Size Matters now!

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Categories Common Core, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Klein, Joel, Race to the Top, Testing

What Would Happen if Arne Became Secretary of State

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2012 //
22

You may recall that Thomas Friedman of the New York Times proposed that Arne Duncan should become Secretary of State and extend his Race to the Top internationally.

Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters in New York City sees the implications:

“Close &/or privatize embassies that are struggling in terms of diplomacy & conflict resolution?”

Any readers with better ideas?

Categories Duncan, Arne, Race to the Top

Jeb Bush: Testing and Privatization Are the Right Path

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2012 //
8

Jeb Bush recognized at his summit meeting that the policies he champions were soundly rebuffed by voters in Indiana (and did he mention Idaho?).

But he assures his rightwing allies that testing, evaluating teachers by student scores, vouchers and charters are the right course, even if educators, parents, and other citizens don’t agree. He apparently compared himself to Lyndon Baines Johnson, fighting to push civil rights legislation when it was unpopular.

Someone should inform him that he is fighting to preserve a failed status quo, not a struggling dissident movement. Someone should tell him that NCLB is federal law and that its ugly step-child Race to the Top bribed the states to double down on the punitive strategies of NCLB.

His lament of “stay the course” is very good news indeed. It is a public admission that the privatizers know they have no popular base.

Their strategies have failed for more than a decade.

When do they admit to themselves that it’s over?

At some point, they will stop pouring money into a losing and unpopular cause.

That’s the day when we can begin to build a genuine movement to improve our schools.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), On-Line Education, Privatization, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Technology, Computers, Testing, US Education, Vouchers

What Happened to Public Education in 2012 Elections

By dianeravitch
November 27, 2012 //
13

Joanne Barkan has written an excellent summary of how public education fared in the recent elections.

Barkan knows how to follow the money. Her article “Got Dough?” showed the influence of the billionaires on education policy.

She begins her analysis of the 2012 elections with this overview of Barack Obama’s embrace of GOP education dogma:

“Barack Obama’s K-12 “reform” policies have brought misery to public schools across the country: more standardized testing, faulty evaluations for teachers based on student test scores, more public schools shut down rather than improved, more privately managed and for-profit charter schools soaking up tax dollars but providing little improvement, more money wasted on unproven computer-based instruction, and more opportunities for private foundations to steer public policy. Obama’s agenda has also fortified a crazy-quilt political coalition on education that stretches from centrist ed-reform functionaries to conservatives aiming to undermine unions and privatize public schools to right-wingers seeking tax dollars for religious charters. Mitt Romney’s education program was worse in only one significant way: Romney also supported vouchers that allow parents to take their per-child public-education funding to private schools, including religious schools.”

Barkan’s analysis shows significant wins for supporters of public education–the upset of uber-reformer Tony Bennett in Indiana, the repeal of the Luna laws in Idaho, and the passage of a tax increase in California–and some significant losses–the passage of charter initiatives in Georgia and Washington State.

The interesting common thread in many of the key elections was the deluge of big money to advance the anti-public education agenda.

Even more interesting is how few people put up the big money. If Barkan were to collate a list of those who contributed $10,000 or more to these campaigns, the number of people on the list would be very small, maybe a few hundred. If the list were restricted to $20,000 or more, it would very likely be fewer than 50 people, maybe less.

This tiny number of moguls is buying education policy in state after state. How many have their own children in the schools they seek to control? Probably none.

The good news is that they don’t win every time. The bad news is that their money is sometimes sufficient to overwhelm democratic control of public education.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Colorado, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, K12 Inc., Michigan, Privatization, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Unions, US Education, Vouchers, Walton Foundation
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