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The Fraud Continues

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2012 //
23

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan likes to boast of the success of the turnaround model, in which the principal is fired along with at least half the staff or the school is closed. “We can’t wait,” say the reformers. Here is a report from a turnaround school.

This email came today from a high school math teacher in a “turnaround” school:

       Pushing teachers to pass everyone is a widespread practice now.   Anyone who has more than a 15% failure rate in a class, not hard to do in math, is called downstairs and asked to explain what the problem is.  At this time of decision about who will be back next year, many see fit to pass almost everyone to stay off the radar and be asked to return. 
       The new principal issues orders which are often contract violations but no one challenges her because they need to work.  I hope you understand how hard it is to do this. If you know Ms. XXXXXX, please don’t tell her I said any of this.  There used to be a television show, “Dallas.” Oilman JR Ewing’s famous line:”Once you lose your integrity, the rest is a piece of cake” is really how it is now.   Hoping the State will kill the turnaround model.  It’s not helping anyone. All of this is confidential. Like others, family needs to be cared for.  
       Grade inflation, score inflation, and social promotion all in one package. As Secretary Duncan used to say, ” We have to stop lying to our children.”
       No wonder college remediation rates remain stubbornly high. Some success.
Diane
Categories Accountability, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Race to the Top

Is Vermont the Best State?

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2012 //
20

I have received many comments from readers nominating their state as the worst in the nation for having enacted legislations that removes due process from teachers or reduces their status or connects their evaluation to student test scores or defunds public education or harms professional educators and the public weal in other ways.

Vermont is different. Vermont still has leadership that wants to improve its schools and support teachers. Vermont decided to turn down the NCLB waiver when it realized that it provided no flexibility, just another bunch of mandates that would be bad for the schools and for children. Vermont doesn’t want to test its students every single year. Vermont realized that NCLB and Race to the Top are not good for students or education.

Are there other states that refuse the enticements offered by Washington, D.C., to create more market-style competition for public schools and to reduce the status of professional educators?

If your state has had the wisdom and foresight of Vermont, please let me know.

The question we must ask is, why is Vermont different? Why has it stood outside the destructive mainstream of education “deform” that has swept the nation?

We can all take heart in knowing that one beacon of sanity remains. And yet how discouraging to know that of our fifty states, there is only one that still wants children to have a childhood and for education to be a time to learn rather than a time to be ranked, rated, and numbered by instruments of limited value.

A reader sent this comment:

Vermont is one of the only states in the country that refuses to get on the bandwagon for corporate ed. reform. The state has a law against charter schools and they refused Race to the top funds. Vermont did try to get a NCLB waiver, but was rejected by Sec. Duncan because their proposal did not include tying student test scores to teacher evaluations or charter schools. Their proposal did include focusing more on creativity, a rich curriculum, and less on testing, but I guess that was not good enough. I’m getting certification in both Mass. and NY, but I may consider going to teach in Vermont. Burlington is beginning to focus more on equity and creating a system similar to what they have in Finland. If it is successful, then maybe people will begin to pay more attention to what actually works.
Please sign this petition to get rid of Arne Duncan:http://dumpduncan.org/

Categories Education Reform, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Is Tennessee the Worst State?

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2012 //
8

A reader in Tennessee nominates his state as the worst in the nation in terms of implementing the usual stale ideas to “reform” the schools.

How could it not be in contention to win the race to the bottom when it was one of the first states (Delaware was the other) to win the Race to the Top? That guaranteed that Tennessee would adopt every untested and harmful policy idea that Arne Duncan’s team could think up.

Conservative Republicans control the state, and they like the Obama agenda. Go figure. Could it be because Obama’s agenda is a more muscular version of NCLB? Republicans love the tough accountability, they like cracking the whip on the teachers, and they love privatization of public services.

Where other people (like parents and teachers) look at schools and see children, the reformers in Tennessee (and elsewhere) look at schools and see entrepreneurial prospects and a steady stream of government revenue.

So naturally the state is committed to evaluating teachers based on student test scores, and those who don’t teach tested subjects get evaluated by some other teachers’ work. Makes sense, no? And surely there will be lots of new charters in Tennessee to “save” the children.

Then, to add to that state’s woes, the new state commissioner of education, Kevin Huffman, is not only Michelle Rhee’s -ex, but was formerly the PR director for TFA. That guarantees a very big foot in the door for the ill-trained novices who only Teach For Awhile. Huffman hired a charter school leader from Houston to take over the state’s lowest performing schools. Tennessee will soon be charter school paradise, or at least paradise for TFA.

And then there is all that Gates money in Tennessee, now deployed to figure out how to have an effective teacher in every single classroom in the state. Watch Tennessee overtake Massachusetts on NAEP rankings. Wait a minute, isn’t Tennessee the birthplace of value-added assessment under William Sanders, the agricultural statistician? Didn’t Tennessee start measuring value-added by teachers in the 1980s? Why aren’t they already number one?

Yes, Tennessee is a contender.

Last year, TN and our TfA commissioner of ed and Michelle Rhee’s ex, Kevin Huffman, rushed into use a similar teacher evaluation system purchased from the Milken Foundation (the same Michael Milken of securities fraud fame) that measures teacher competence on a 1 – 5 Likert scale, aptly named TEAM. 1-5 is the same crude metric I used to rate my hotel stay and my car dealership. Sensitive to the effects of nuanced teaching practices, it’s not. If scored according to the TEAM trainer, on 15% of all teachers will gain or keep tenure protection. 85% will be subject to firing.
Tied into the teacher’s average TEAM score is 40% VAM scores from the TCAP state assessments in reading in math. Teachers who do not teach reading and math were forced to use the VAMs of the school TCAP average or arbitrarily assigned either the school reading or math average score. Recommendations by an “independent” committee to improve the system suggested adding more tests to include all subject areas.
With the republicans well in control of all branches of government in TN, teachers here have lost their collective voices. In 2010, Ramsey with the help of ALEC ended tenure, collective bargaining, auto deductions for TEA dues, and kicked all teacher reps off of the state retirement board. Three of the largest school systems in the state have Broad trained superintendents. The day after Walker in WI survived his recall, TN’s Lt Gov Ron Ramsey announced he’d propose vouchers in the 2013 legislative session.
For profit, online teacher education is proliferating. Requirements for certification to teach are being dumbed down at the same time requirements to raise achievement are increased to levels nearly impossible. Further, state university teacher education programs are being evaluated according to their graduate’s VAM scores. Huffman posted the VAM scores on the TN website and guess which teacher ed program scored the best? Teach for America! The results were so skewed and improbable that several schools requested the raw data, only to be rebuffed, with great umbrage, by the state.
TN politicians in collusion with wealthy privatizers in both the Democratic and Republican parties are using the full force of state power to crush involvement of teachers and parents in decisions about our children’s schools. God help us all in TN.
Categories Education Reform, Race to the Top, Teach for America TFA, Teacher Evaluations, Tennessee

Is Rhode Island the Worst State?

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2012 //
9

Teachers in Rhode Island frequently write me to tell me that the state is rapidly deteriorating in its commitment to public education, especially after winning $75 million from the Race to the Top. Commissioner Deborah Gist is enamored of evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students, and she fought hard to increase the number of charter schools in the state, over the determined opposition of parents. The parents in Cranston actually defeated the state’s efforts to bring in the charter chain Achievement First, which now is bound for Providence. Commissioner Gist is a member of  the rightwing group called Chiefs for Change, which is affiliated somehow with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and is religiously devoted to data, testing, accountability, grading, ranking, rating, and other means of turning children and teachers into data points. Chiefs for Change sent out a press release congratulating Louisiana on the passage of Jindal’s legislation to dismantle public education and replace it with vouchers and charters, while reducing the status of teachers to at-will employees who can be easily fired.

I personally don’t think Rhode Island is the worst state, as compared to states like Louisiana, Ohio, Michigan, Florida, and Indiana. But it deserves credit for moving in the same direction and seeking to earn its spurs in the competition for worst.

In Rhode Island, all the teachers in Central Falls were fired, and a year later all the teachers in Providence were fired. Commish Gist’s PhD dissertation (defended about a month ago) was on this horrendous new evaluation plan. Principals from around the State were begging her to slow the process down because it was impossible for them, and for teachers, to get it done. In many cases, one principal was responsible for evaluating 123 teachers, complete with scripts, multiple classroom visits, and tons of paperwork on both sides. Many teachers and admins have retired because of this madness.
Categories Charter Schools, Chiefs for Change, Education Reform, Race to the Top

A Letter from Jill Biden to You

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2012 //
40

Some readers received an email signed by Jill Biden. They asked what I thought of her message. They asked me how I would respond if I were in their place.

The letter says:

Dear  –

I’ve been a teacher in public schools and community colleges for more than 30 years.

Being an educator is about more than teaching — it’s about instilling confidence. There is no better moment than when I see a student realize that she can do whatever she sets her mind to do. I’m sure you know that feeling, too.

President Obama knows what that’s like, too. He understands that improving the education system takes all of us, and that teachers are absolutely critical to those efforts. He listens when teachers explain the challenges they face in overcrowded and underfunded classrooms. And he knows that education is key to a healthy economy and a strong country. That’s why he’s working so hard to improve our schools.

You are receiving this email because you have told the campaign you also work in education.

Today, I’m proud to invite you to join me as a member of Educators for Obama, a new group of supporters dedicated to re-electing the President, who was once a college professor himself. Sign up and get connected with the Educators for Obama community today.

President Obama has made education a priority. He is giving states the flexibility they need to strengthen their schools and end the practice of teaching to the test. When states were cutting their budgets and laying off teachers, he took action to keep more than 400,000 educators in the classrooms where they were needed. He’s proposed competitive funding to make sure teachers and educators like us get the respect we deserve. And he’s made federal student loan payments more affordable by ensuring public school teachers who make their payments on time will have their remaining debt forgiven after 10 years.

Our students deserve a president who is committed to their education — and to the teachers who help them succeed.

As a member of Educators for Obama, you’ll be kept in the loop about important news and events. We’ll also provide you with the resources you need to organize your friends and colleagues in support of the President.

So join teachers, principals, educational professionals, and me, and stand with President Obama this November:

http://my.barackobama.com/Join-Educators-for-Obama

Thanks,

Jill

Of course, everyone should write whatever they believe.

This is what I would say.

Dear Jill,

Since you are an experienced educator, I know you can sympathize with my plight. I admire President Obama and remain grateful for his work in providing stimulus dollars to prevent budget cuts in 2009-2010. That meant a lot to me and to fellow educators.

However, I am surprised that you think that Race to the Top has introduced “flexibility” or that “competitive funding” (i.e. Race to the Top) gave “respect” to educators or that Race to the Top will “end the practice of teaching to the test.” None of this is true, and I assume that someone in the Department of Education has not informed you accurately about the negative effects of Race to the  Top on educators and our nation’s schools. 

Race to the Top has made “teaching to the test” even more important than No Child Left Behind. Because of RTTT, my state now ties teachers’ evaluations to student test scores. Because of RTTT, many states are passing laws to remove any protection for teachers’ freedom to teach, as it will be easier to fire teachers for any reason or no reason. Because of RTTT, my job and that of other teachers and principals requires that we teach to the test.

My state was lauded by Secretary Duncan for opening more privately managed charter schools, which takes funding away from the public schools, so we now have larger classes and fewer resources to help the neediest children, who are not welcomed by the charter schools. So, yes, there is overcrowding and underfunding, and the diversion of public funds to charter schools and vouchers is one cause of those conditions. 

As this terrible movement to dismantle public education and to reduce the status of teachers to at-will employees gathers momentum, I have not heard either President Obama or Secretary Duncan speak out forcefully against it. I have not heard either of them denounce the legislation that hurts our nation’s public schools. Instead, Secretary Duncan has given federal funds and plaudits to some of the states that are enacting the most toxic legislation.

I voted for President Obama and Vice-President Biden with enthusiasm in 2008. I am certainly not attracted to Romney, whose ideas are even worse for educators and public schools than Race to the Top.

But I wanted you to understand why I and so many other educators are disappointed in the education record of the Obama administration. It is likely to be a close election, and the Obama team needs our votes. I remain hopeful that the President will eliminate Race to the Top. Words will not be enough to persuade educators that this administration is on their side. 

Yours truly,
Categories Education Reform, Obama, Race to the Top

Why Test the Arts and PE?

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2012 //
24

As I read Dana Goldstein’s article about the advance of standardized testing into subjects like the arts and physical education, I began to get a queasy feeling. “This isn’t right,” I mumbled to myself. I thought of my grandchildren taking standardized tests in music and gym, and I shook my head. This isn’t right.

Race to the Top has promoted this movement to test every subject. Arne Duncan brandished $5 billion to encourage states and districts to judge teachers by the rise or fall of their students’ scores. The fact that there is no evidence for this method of judging teachers doesn’t matter. Bad ideas backed by big money have a way of catching on, no matter how mindless they are.

South Carolina has developed online tests for the arts, multiple-choice, of course. Florida is building tests of music and other pervormance arts that can be scored by machine, that is, by artificial intelligence. The vendors of these tests lobby to make them permanent, regardless of their quality.

Are they doing this at Sidwell Friends or the University of Chicago Lab School or Dalton or Exeter or Deerfield Academy? Of course not.

Is this what they do in Finland? Of course not.

What is the reason for testing the arts and physical education? It’s not to help students take joy in singing or playing a musical instrument or running fast or shooting baskets.

No, the purpose of all these tests is to collect data to evaluate the teachers! Wasting the students’ time with stupid questions and pointless activities and trivial measurements is just a way of gathering information so teachers of the arts and physical education can get a value-added score, just like teachers of reading and math.

Sometimes Americans do really foolish things. Sometimes they do these things because it is so easy to follow the crowd. Sometimes it’s because no one is thinking clearly. Sometimes they get caught up in nutty fads because someone is making a profit and buying legislators. Usually it’s because the people who launched these bad ideas have no moorings. They have lost touch with their own values. They do to other people’s children what they would never do to their own. They don’t listen to teachers. They don’t listen to parents.

History is not kind to people who do foolish, nay harmful, things and fail to exercise independent judgment. That’s why it’s best to say “no” when your conscience tells you to.

Diane

Categories Arts Education, Education Reform, Florida, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Do Not Accept the New Normal

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2012 //
14

Since No Child Left Behind began its reign of error a decade ago, the American public has slowly but surely changed its understanding and expectations of schools.

We have come to think that every school must “make” every student proficient, and if it cannot, then the school is a “failing” school.

We have come to look on schools as “failing” if they enroll large numbers of students who don’t perform well on standardized tests, regardless of their personal circumstances, their language ability, or their disability.

We have come to believe that teachers alone can bring every student to high test scores. And if we don’t believe this is possible, we are accused of defending the status quo or not caring about students or not believing they can succeed.

In pursuit of impossible goals, goals that no nation in the world has reached, we have come to accept (with glee, if you are a corporate reformer, or with resignation, if you are informed by reality) that schools must close and staff must be fired en masse in pursuit of that evanescent goal of “turnaround” from failure to success.

And here is the latest small and barely noticed episode in the continuing assault on common sense and public education.

The Los Angeles Times reported that students and parents demonstrated to protest the planned layoff of at least of the staff at Manual Arts High School. This school has been run for four years by a private group called L.A.’s Promise.

It is no longer unusual to see students and parents protesting the mass dismissal of teachers, so they will be ignored. That’s the new normal.

What is odd here is that L.A.’s Promise laid off about 40% of the staff last year. 50% last year, 40% this year.

It seems that this organization will just keep firing teachers until they finally get a staff that knows how to raise test scores and graduation rates higher and higher.

Such punitive actions display a singular lack of capacity on the part of leadership to build and support a stable staff.

Such heavy-handed measures surely demoralize whoever is left.

We have become so accustomed to mass firings and school closings that we have lost our outrage, even our ability to care.

Another school reconstituted, another school closed, more teachers fired. Ho-hum.

That’s the new normal. That is what is called education reform today.

So normal are such crude and punitive measures that the events at Manual Arts High School didn’t even merit a real story in the Los Angeles Times. It was posted in a blog.

Destroying public schools is called reform. Mass firings of staff are called reform.

It’s the New Normal.

Don’t accept it. Don’t avert your eyes. It’s not supposed to be this way.

Schools need a stable staff. Schools need continuity. Schools need to be caring and supportive communities.

Schools need to be learning organizations, not a place with a turnstile for teachers, administrators and students.

Don’t lose your own values. What is happening today is wrong. It is not education reform. It is wrong.

It does not benefit children. It does not improve education. It is wrong.

Diane

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

Long Arm of Federal Control Reaches Districts

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2012 //
5

In what must be the most startling development of the past month, year, and perhaps decade, the U.S. Department of Education is now launching a Race to the Top competition for districts. It has nearly $400 million to award, but as we have seen in the state-level competition, the amount of money was sufficient to compel almost every state to rewrite its laws so as to be eligible.

So with this relatively small amount of federal discretionary money, Arne Duncan has set the stage to impose his will and his flawed ideas on districts across the nation.

Districts will have to show that they have the data to track students from pre-k through post-secondary education, as well as to tie test results to individual teachers. The data systems will be elaborate and they will track everyone from age 3-21. And teachers will be held accountable!

What is worse, as the article in Education Week cited above noted, is that “districts will have to promise to implement evaluation systems that take student outcomes into account–not just for teacher and principal performance, but for district superintendents and school boards. That’s a big departure from the state-level Race to the Top competitions, which just looked at educators who actually work in schools, not district-level leaders.”

Think of it. Who will evaluate superintendents and school boards? Will they be evaluated by test scores? Will the federal government fire school boards if test scores are flat? Will it fire district superintendents and replace them? Will Arne Duncan tell school boards and superintendents to raise test scores or resign? Did anyone in Congress approve this bizarre program of federal over-reach?

Even conservative blogger Rick Hess was taken aback. As he put it, “My only reaction to reading the info on this new Race to the Top-District was, “You have…got…to…be…kidding.” It’s like they read all their admiring press clips from RTT, strenuously tuned out any criticism or lessons learned from the, um, uneven track record when it comes to implementation, and wanted to see whether they could take the hubris meter up to 11 (with apologies to Spinal Tap).”

Hess disapproves because he thinks that the new competition will result only in vague promises and punch-list compliance. I am appalled because the U.S. Department of Education should not be in the business of telling districts how to do their job. They lack the competence to do so, and by doing so they ignore decades of history, tradition, and precedent. Is it really appropriate for Arne Duncan to take control of the nation’s schools?

Has anyone at the U. S. Department of Education ever heard of the principle of federalism? Does Arne Duncan think he was appointed the national Superintendent of Schools? Is there no limit to his desire to impose his bad ideas on others? His belief in the value of standardized testing is startling, to say the least. One might even say it is faith-based.

Diane

Categories Duncan, Arne, Race to the Top, U.S. Department of Education

Why the Gates Compact?

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2012 //
6

As I was researching the story about the closing of Allan elementary school in Austin, which will be replaced in the fall by an IDEA charter school, I came across this story about the Gates compact.

What is the Gates compact? Austin was the 16th district to apply for $100,000 from the Gates Foundation to sign a compact with the charter schools, agreeing that charter schools and public schools would receive equal treatment. By signing the compact, a district then becomes eligible to win millions of funding from the Gates Foundation. But of course, it may never win anything more.

So what’s the deal? Charter schools win recognition and are treated henceforward as if they were public schools, entitled to equal funding. This legitimates their status. So, rather than being experimental, or even laboratories of innovation, their inroads are made permanent thanks to the generosity of Bill & Melinda Gates.

The Gates compact works sort of like Race to the Top. By competing for funding they may never win, the districts agree to commit millions of their own dollars to equalize funding for charter schools.

Meanwhile, the charter schools continue to pursue policies that skim the best students from the public schools and to take disproportionately small numbers of students who are English language learners and have special needs. The public schools are left with the most expensive students to educate, and the charters get equal funding. The charters have fewer regulations and get extra resources while the public schools get budget cuts and are daily rebuked that they are failing, failing, failing.

The Gates compact cements the gains of privatization.

Worse, it persuades the leaders of the  public schools to endorse a plan that undermines the future of public education.

How embarrassing that so many public education leaders call press conferences to acknowledge what they have done when they should be embarrassed.

Diane

Categories Charter Schools, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Race to the Top

BLOCK THAT EUPHEMISM!

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2012 //
4

I wonder why our policymakers in Washington, D.C., love euphemisms. Ten years ago, Congress passed No Child Left Behind, and by now, is there anyone in the United States who takes seriously the idea that “No Child” has been “Left Behind”? Since Congress can’t agree on how to change the law, maybe they could just rename it and call it “Many Children Left Behind” (MCLB) or “No Child Left Untested” (NCLU). When the name of a federal law is so clearly at odds with its actual results, either we must rename the law or declare it a failure or both. But, please, no euphemisms, no flowery predictions in the title of the legislation.

Then there is Race to the Top. No one has explained what it means to “race.” Does it mean that with more and more pressure on teachers, their students will get higher test scores? Surely, a “race to the top” has nothing to do with equality of educational opportunity. And what, exactly, is “the top”? Does that mean that if we just test everyone with greater frequency, then student scores will rise to the top of the world? Where is the evidence for that? Another deceptive euphemism.

The euphemisms that are most annoying, however, are “turnarounds” and “transformations.” When we think of a turnaround, we are likely to think of a charming little dance, perhaps one where we all hold hands and circle the Maypole, with rosebuds fluttering around the heads of the children. But “turnaround” means something dark and sinister, not a happy dance. It means that if you get the money, you must fire the principal, fire half or all of the staff, close the school, give it a new name. That’s harsh medicine, not a turnaround. Whether the new school will be better or worse than the old one is by no means clear. What is it about closing a school that promises that the achievement gap will close or that children who don’t read English will now learn English and speak it fluently? I don’t see the logic or the sense.

Honesty is the best policy. If the federal government really wants to fire the principals and teachers in the 5,000 schools with the lowest scores, why don’t they call it the Close Bad Schools policy? Or something that approximates the brutal reality? Why don’t they explain the mechanism by which mass firing leads to better education?

Just call it what it is.

Diane

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing
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