Archives for category: Race to the Top
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Study Says Teacher Churn Hurts Student Achievement

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2012 //
9

This study by a group of prominent researchers will not be news to teachers and principals, but should be a revelation to the U.S. Department of Education, to Secretary Arne Duncan and to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Here is the summary.

It says that teacher turnover harms student test scores in both mathematics and reading. It says that it harms academic performance most among poor and black students. It says that high rates of teacher churn affect both the students who lose their teachers and even those who didn’t. The researchers are cautious about why this is so, but they think it may have to do with the continual disruption of the school’s community and culture. It is hard to have collegiality and a cohesive staff when staff members come and go in large numbers.

Good schools don’t have high attrition among teachers and principals. Good schools are schools that professionals feel part of and want to sustain and improve. Churn is not good for schools. And now we know it is not good for children either.

So every time you hear Secretary Duncan laud the “turnaround” model, remember that he is lauding a bad idea. Remember he is saying that the mere act of tossing out the principal and half the staff constitutes “reform.” There may be instances where a school is so bad and so incompetent and so corrupt that a start over is necessary, but those instances are rare. Typically a school with low scores is struggling to meet the needs of children who are poor and don’t speak English; it needs help, not churn-by-design.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Race to the Top, Teachers and Teaching

The Last Living Defender of NCLB Speaks

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2012 //
5

I should have titled this “one of the last living defenders of NCLB speaks,” but it required too many characters for a headline. I am sure that in addition to the author of this article, NCLB is still defended by Sandy Kress, Margaret Spellings, and others who designed it. Maybe there are another 50 or 60 people who still defend it. I just can’t think of their names offhand.

Most people, including educators and parents, think of it as a disaster. Most think it turned our schools into testing factories and squeezed out such things as art, history, literature, physical education, science, foreign languages, geography, civics, and other things that are important. No one can deny the importance of basic skills but no one should claim that they are a complete education, or that scores on standardized tests are all that matters.

NCLB was and still is a landmark in the dumbing down of American education.

The writer is under the misapprehension that NCLB had something to do with raising standards. If only.

The author, it may not surprise you to learn, was President George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter from 2001 to 2006. He was also a member of the White House Iraq Group.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

Is This Any Way to Improve the Teaching Profession?

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2012 //
55

This is President Obama’s vision for reshaping the teaching profession. I certainly agree with the idea that entry into teacher education programs should be selective and rigorous, but almost everything else about the program is odious.

The administration proposes a competitive grant program that would do the following [my comments are in brackets]:

The proposed grant program calls for states and districts to undertake a comprehensive set of five reforms including:

  • Reforming colleges of education and making these schools more selective  [good idea, but today the biggest producers of teaching degrees are online “universities” that have no standards at all so it is hard to know how these  diploma mills might be affected, if at all]
  • Creating new career ladders for teachers to become more effective and ensure their earnings are tied more closely to performance [this is merit pay, the same policy that has failed over and over, tying teachers’ earning to the test scores of students and calling it “performance”]
  • Establishing more leadership roles and responsibilities for teachers, improving professional development, and providing autonomy to teachers in exchange for greater responsibility [no problem here, though I bet many teachers would like to have the autonomy to be freed of the high-stakes testing that NCLB and Race to the Top and Obama’s waivers from NCLB require]
  • Creating evaluation systems based on multiple measures rather than just on test scores [what a joke, just like the “multiple measures” now adopted in state after state where test scores are “only” 40-50% of the teacher’s evaluation but outweigh all the other measures]
  • Reshaping tenure to protect good teachers and promote accountability [in other words, no tenure at all, unless your students get higher test scores every year]
This is the same old test-based accountability of NCLB, with a new wrapper. Will the Obama administration ever look at the research? Might they look at the persistent failure of merit pay? Might they look at the National Research Council’s report on the meager results of test-based accountability? Must they continue to shove testing down everyone’s throat for the next four years?
Hey, I know Romney will be worse. But can’t Obama give us something positive to hope for in another term, some possibility of reforming his ruinous Race to the Top?
Categories Education Reform, Race to the Top, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Transforming Education into a Marketplace

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2012 //
16

This reader scrutinized the website of the Capital Roundtable. This is what he learned:

Although I am not a middle-market investor, I sure did learn a whole bunch over at the Capital Roundtable website. You see, I did not know this:

“Education is now the second largest market in the U.S., valued at $1.3 trillion.  So while an industry of this size will always be scrutinized by regulators, the most onerous recent changes are likely over, and investors should face an easier climate down the road.  And while eventual passage is not guaranteed, several pieces of legislation favoring the for-profit industry have been proposed in Congress.”

And I have been following Arne Duncan and the Race to the Top but it was nice to see the following in black and white.

“In the K-12 space, the federal “Race To The Top” initiative has enabled a growing level of privatization in the K-12 segment, and rewarding districts for embracing alternative models, technological advances, and locally-based criteria.”

So in this new “space” public education is a market not a public good. RTTT enabled privatization. OK, now I get it.

Categories Education Reform, For-Profit, Race to the Top

What Is “Addition Through Subtraction”?

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2012 //
10

Critics of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have long warned that the federal government’s demand for ever higher test scores would lead to perverse consequences. There would be narrowing of the curriculum, teaching to the test, cheating, and gaming the system. All of these things have happened, but the advocates of high-stakes testing don’t listen and don’t care.

It isn’t always easy to explain what it means to “game the system.” Connecticut provides an excellent exemplar of what it means and how it is done.

Quite simply, there are districts that have figured out that the best way to raise test scores is to assign more children to the alternate assessment given to students with special needs. As the number of reassignments grows, the scores on the regular state tests rise.

And without any change in curriculum or instruction, the leadership can boast of getting great results. This is what has been called “addition by subtraction.”

It is also a good example of gaming the system.

Categories Accountability, Connecticut, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

Real Life in a “Turnaround” School

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2012 //
4

Mayor Bloomberg and Secretary Duncan like to describe the firing of teachers and the closing of schools as a wonderful reform strategy.

Something magical is supposed to happen because of clearing out half or all of the staff and starting over with a new team, or half a new team.

The public knows nothing about the details, reads that “reform” is happening, and is satisfied to know that someone is doing something even if they don’t know what it is.

There is an implicit assumption that the teachers who got fired must be “bad” teachers because they work in a “failing” school.

Change the teachers, goes the story, and the school won’t be a failing school anymore, It will be a “turnaround” school.

If only it were that easy.

Here is a comment by a teacher who worked or works in a turnaround school in New York City. I don’t know which verb tense to use because he was fired, then he was reinstated by the ruling of an arbitrator, and now Mayor Bloomberg is litigating to reverse the arbitrator’s decision. So, for the moment, he has a job. But only for the moment. If nothing else, his account gives the lie to the claim that those who were fired deserved to be fired and that getting rid of them would “help the school” and “save the students.”

I work in one of those 24 turnaround schools in NYC and was appalled at the hiring process. The majority of the teachers who were NOT hired back were indeed effective and amazing teachers. They were “culled” from the herd because they were senior teachers and made too much money. Among the teachers who were not hired back were the bilingual science teacher whose Regents passing rate was the highest of all the science teachers. She is amazing, but her sin was being in the system too long. Honestly, teachers were stunned when they were not hired back.Ironically, some of the teachers who were hired back were among the weakest on our staff. Nobody really understood the hiring process or how these decisions were made. Yes, we knew there was a rubric and yes, the UFT sat on these committees, but let’s be honest–none of this addresses the real issues in many of these students’ lives. They are sent to the high school with deficient skills and other social problems.And “Harold,”,none of this, please be clear, was about helping kids. It was about hiring the least expensive workers. Kids be damned. Morale at my school was so low to begin with. Nobody even knows if they are back or not, nobody knows if the old principal is in or not and nobody even knows what the school’s name is.This is chaos. This is destruction. This is immoral. This is DANGEROUS!

 
Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Education Reform, NYC, Race to the Top

Common Core Standards: A Boon for Edu-Biz

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2012 //
15

Whether the Common Core standards are good or bad, one thing that is clear is that they have opened up multiple opportunities for entrepreneurs.

The textbook industry is retooling, at least adding stickers that say their products are aligned with the Common Core.

Pearson is developing a complete curriculum package in mathematics and reading, for almost every grade, assisted by the Gates Foundation. Children in some district will be able to take their lessons from Pearson products from the isearliest years right through to high school graduation.

Consultants are standing by, ready to sell products and services to school districts.

Here is one interesting list of what is available. There are many more.

What is happening now was not unexpected. Indeed, it is the intended result, it was planned for, hoped for, envisioned.

Joanne Weiss, who helped design Race to the Top and is now chief of staff to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, described the plan:

The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale.

Weiss spent many years as an edu-entrpreneur, engaged in the design, development and marketing of products for the education industry.

We don’t know yet whether Common Core standards will improve the education of America’s children. But of this we can be sure: They will be good for the education industry.

Diane

Categories Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Obama, Pearson, Race to the Top, U.S. Department of Education

A Field Report on New York’s Educator Evaluation System

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2012 //
23

The principals of New York State have been up in arms in opposition to the “educator evaluation” system that the New York State  Education Department has designed. More than one-third of the principals across the state have bravely signed a petition in protest.

The reason for the evaluation system is that New York had the misfortune to “win” Race to the Top. The $700 million did not go to schools for urgent needs, but to meet the mandates imposed by the U.S. Department of Education. One costly mandate requires the state to evaluate principals and teachers, based in part on test scores. Despite the fact that no state or district has figured out how this will work or how it will improve instruction, New York is plowing ahead.

A reader describes his views of this new system:

Earlier this week, I spent two days along with 60 other school administrators (Superintendents and Principals) from the area districts to learn how to become a “Lead Evaluator” for the implementation of the new APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review).
This new law requires district administrators to conduct multiple evaluations on every teacher (60% of the score), then add the teachers’ students’ results (20%) on flawed state assessments (remember the Pineapple story?), and another 20% on the results from local assessments. This score will give each teacher a score based on a 100-point scale and determine whether or not they are “highly effective, effective, developing, or ineffective”. The state will be providing the scores to the districts because they are “secured tests”. Teachers will not be able to glean significant data from the tests to see how they can improve their instructional practice, because the state will not provide schools with the test questions to allow for detailed and accurate item analysis.
It is not difficult to see where this train is going. Teachers will be vying for students that would be considered to have a positive impact on their APPR score and praying that students deemed to have a negative impact will be placed in one of their colleague’s classes. When the scores of individual teachers are made public (parents will be allowed access to their child’s teacher’s score and will assuredly end up on Facebook before they hit the parking lot), they will be demanding that their child be placed with the teacher with the highest score. Teachers will be pitted against other teachers, students, and parents.
This system was put in place allegedly to make it easier to fire ineffective teachers. However, if one looks at the law, it is now much more onerous to terminate an ineffective teacher than it was previously. The law was also put in place in order to be a contender for the infamous Race To the Top (RTtT) money. NYSUT supported the initiative assuming it would infuse more money into a system that desperately needs it. However, the money did not go to school districts to offset the massive decreases in state aid, but rather to the BOCES across the state in order to implement the new APPR.
Mr. Cuomo and Dr. King have cited many “facts” leading up to these massive changes. One example they have used is: New York schools are “Number 1 in spending but 34 in terms of results”. However, this statistic has been discredited. Education Week, which publishes the annual “Quality Counts” guide, ranked New York State No. 2 in the nation in a comprehensive analysis of policy and performance. Other statistics used for US schools in comparison to other industrialized nations have us ranked quite low. For example, scores from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) show that US students ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math out of 34 countries. However, when one digs deeper, the “facts” change. Dr. Gerald N. Tirozzi, Executive Director from the National Association of Secondary School Principals dug deeper and found that in order to get a more accurate assessment of the performance of U.S. students would be to compare the scores of American schools with comparable poverty rates to those of other countries. He found that Schools in the United States with less than a 10% poverty rate had a PISA score of 551. When compared to the ten countries with similar poverty numbers, that score ranked first. That’s right folks, the United States ranked FIRST! Finland was second. As Mark Twain once said, “There are three kinds of lies; lies, damn lies, and statistics.”As an educator for 20 years, I am proud of our schools and our teachers. They work hard and deserve our respect. Teachers and students should never be reduced to a number. It is bad for education and it is bad for our nation. APPR as it now stands should be repealed. For the sake of our children, please contact your state Assemblyman or Assemblywoman to get rid of this law. Our children deserve better.
Categories Accountability, Education Reform, New York, Principals, Race to the Top

School’s Out at a Turnaround School

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2012 //
4

This era may be remembered as the time when our nation’s leaders decided to break the spirits of our teachers and to close enough schools to instill fear in the hearts of all educators

I don’t know which “thought leader” came up with the idea that the best way to “fix” a school with low test scores is to fire the principal and at least half the staff. I don’t know the evidence to support this policy of wiping the slate clean without individual evaluations.

But now with the federal imprimatur of Race to the Top, it’s happening in many school districts. And of course, the U.S. Department of Education will stretch to prove that lowering the boom works, because it’s their idea. But how do you persuade the public and especially communities of color where the axe will fall most often that this punitive strategy is a good idea?

Imaginary scene: Some bright PR guy or gal figured out how important language is in selling a really destructive idea. “How can we explain to people that we are firing most of the teachers and renaming the neighborhood school? The one that everyone knew and loved for fifty years? How do we make this unpleasant reality palatable?” Ponder, ponder.

“Ah, I’ve got it! When we shut down their school and fire everyone, let’s call it a “turnaround!” That sounds like a dance around the Maypole. It sounds so festive. It’s positive and happy.

“Crazy idea. No one will believe that. No one is that stupid.”

“Think so? Let’s try it and see how it goes.”

With that context, here is how it went for this teacher in New York City.  This comment and the events it describes occurred before the arbitrator postponed the school turnarounds last Friday. Some teachers had already found other jobs. Those who choose to remain have a one-year lease on life, unless a court throws out the arbitrator’s decision. The bottom line: chaos, uncertainty, disruption. This is no way to run a school or a school system.
Categories Accountability, Education Reform, NYC, Race to the Top

The Reformers’ “Fight Club”

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2012 //
25

Back when I was on the right side of the political fence, I was on the editorial board at Education Next. It is supported by the Hoover Institution and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, both conservative think tanks with which I was affiliated. The journal, which is based at Harvard and edited mainly by Paul Peterson, was created to counter what was seen as the liberal bias of the mainstream education media.

Education Next is a well-edited journal (I used to write a monthly book review there), but it does have a strong bias in favor of charter schools, vouchers, and testing. It is the journal of the corporate reform movement.

The current issue of Education Next has a fascinating article about the “reformers’ fight club.” I have been writing and speaking about the interconnections among these organizations (and there are many more), and it is good to see confirmation of what I have been saying.

For some reason, these incredibly rich and powerful organizations like to portray themselves as underdogs in contrast to the teachers’ unions.

So, get this picture: On one side are the 3.2 million teachers who belong to the NEA and the AFT. On the other side are the Gates Foundation ($60 billion), the Broad Foundation (billions), the Walton Foundation (billions, and spent $159 million this past year alone on education grants), the Dell Foundation, big corporations, Democrats for Education Reform (Wall Street hedge fund managers who can pump millions into political campaigns at will), and 50CAN (more hedge fund managers). And there are supposedly “liberal” advocacy groups like Education Trust and Ed Sector.

Gosh, that is surely an unequal lineup. No wonder the “fight club” feels like underdogs. Those teachers’ unions are just so doggone powerful and rich. Why, they have the big foundations and Wall Street trembling. Who knew that teachers had so much power?

Diane

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, ConnCAN, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), Privatization, Race to the Top, Stand for Children
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