Archives for category: Students
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Will Trump Dare to Meet Emma Gonzales, Student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School?

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2018 //
27

 

Watch Emma Gonzalez’s electrifying speech about the massacre at her high school. She knew the shooter. She calls out the cowardly politicians who take NRA money and send their “thoughts and prayers.”

Trump says he will have a “listening session” with students and teachers on Wednesday.

Will he dare to invite Emma Gonzalez?

She is well-informed and fearless. She speaks for her classmates and her generation.

She will not back down.

Let this be the last mass murder, she says.

Tremble, NRA.

Watch out, Governor Scott.

Time’s up, Senator Rubio.

Emma is coming for you!

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Florida, Guns in Schools, Students

Jesse Hagopian: My Students Are Individuals, Not Test Scores

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2018 //
37

 

Please watch and share this two-minute, eloquent and passionate statement by teacher Jesse Hagopian. Each of his students have lives. He knows them. They have their individual problems and needs. They are more than a score.

Please tweet, share on Facebook, share with your friends.

This video was created by videographer Michael Elliott, with the invaluable assistance of Kemala Karmen, and sponsored by the Network for Public Education.

Categories Network for Public Education, Students, Testing

Christine Yeh: Forget Grit. Focus on Inequality.

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2018 //
33

 

 

This is the most sensible commentary I have read about “grit.” It was written by Christine Yeh of the University of San Francisco. 

The notion that kids in poverty can overcome hunger, lack of medical care, homelessness, and trauma by buckling down and persisting was always stupid and heartless, exactly what you would expect to hear from Scrooge or the Koch brothers or Betsy DeVos.

She writes:

”Grit is an easy concept to fall in love with because it represents hope and perseverance, and conjures up images of working-class individuals living the “American dream.” However, treating grit as an appealing and simple fix detracts attention from the larger structural inequities in schools, while simultaneously romanticizing notions of poverty…

“Perhaps this idea of grit resonates with so many people who believe in the popular American adage that if you work hard and pull yourself up by your bootstraps, then you can achieve anything. This belief unfortunately, assumes that individuals have the power, privilege, and access to craft their own futures, regardless of circumstance and systemic barriers.

“Statistics on educational access consistently reveal vast differences in resources in affluent versus poor neighborhoods. Predominantly white, middle- and upper-income school districts tend to spend significantly more money per student than the districts with the highest percentages of marginalized students. Our poorest schools also tend to have large class sizes, unsafe school transportation, damaged and outdated facilities, and high staff turnover. All of these conditions directly contribute to low educational outcomes and underscore the link between access to school resources and improvements in students’ success. Schools that focus on grit shouldn’t ignore structural inequities because they assume that regardless of your race, class, or social context you can still triumph.

“To be sure, there have been many examples of poor students possibly using their grit to overcome the greatest of odds—such as unstable housing, our troubled foster care system, and community violence. And there are probably advantages for teaching students to persevere and stick with a goal while facing challenges and obstacles. However, the responsibility of a great education should not be placed on the individual student to achieve through grit. Rather, schools need to build their own type of grit—that is, a long-term investment and goal, a stick-to-itiveness—to serve all students, but especially those in the margins.

“Educators need to resist the temptation to hyper focus on singular qualities—such as grit, self-esteem, or IQ—as quick cure-alls for our nations’ education problems and identify meaningful changes that tackle discrepancies in student resources. We don’t want to teach grit as a skill without making larger systemic and contextual changes in schools that promote equitable conditions for success…

”Numerous educational research studies demonstrate that schools that provide culturally relevant curriculum—including books by authors of color, critical explorations of histories and social movements, and school-based programs that creatively foster positive identities and cultural empowerment—dramatically increase students’ engagement in school, bonding with teachers, and academic achievement. These practices work because students feel connected and represented as a meaningful part of school, and subsequently they develop a focus on future goals. These ideas may not conform to the recent movements on character education and, more specifically, on teaching grit, but they do embody the lives and stories of many targeted and vulnerable communities. The notion of grit has certainly spurred important discussions about the nonacademic experiences and skills we want our students to have, but it has often obscured the very conditions that created educational inequities in the first place.”

 

 

 

Categories Inequality, Poverty, Students, Stupid

A Proposal: What to Do About Testing So It Is Used Appropriately

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2018 //
109

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, we have allowed standardized testing to swamp our schools, stigmatize our students, and demoralize teachers. For years, test publishers warned against the misuse of tests. Tests should be used only for the purpose for which they are designed. They should be used diagnostically, to help students, not to label them or rank them.

But federal law requires that the tests be misused. Educators are frustrated because they feel helpless. They are forced to teach to the tests, which used to be considered unethical. The current tests cannot be used diagnostically, because teachers are not allowed to review the questions and answers with students after the tests. Those are considered the “intellectual property” of the test publisher. From a diagnostic perspective, the tests are useless. All they can do is rank and sort students, based on a criterion that is completely subjective and arbitrary.

Here is what John Dewey wrote about testing in Democracy and Education, p. 222:

How one person’s abilities compare in quantity with those of another is none of the teacher’s business. It is irrelevant to his work.

What is required is that every individual shall have opportunities to employ his own powers in activities that have meaning.

I have a suggestion.

How about giving the tests in September, when school starts? No one would be judged by test results. No student would be stigmatized, no teacher would be given a low rating, no school would be closed. Whatever information can be gleaned from the test at a point when teschers might find it useful. If there is nothing useful to be gained, it would be clear from the outset, and the tests would do no harm.

Furthermore, states and districts should require the testing companies to reveal the questions that students answered correctly and incorrectly. That way, the teachers would learn what the students need to spend more time on. Without that information, the tests are useless.

The states are the consumers. If they jointly insisted that test publishers release the diagnostic information for every student, the test publishers would comply. If the test publishers refuse to do so, the states should seek different vendors and find those willing to supply the necessary information.

Categories Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Students, Testing

Leonie Haimson Visits a Summit Charter School, Funded by the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2017 //
11

A few days ago, I posted an article by Kristina Rizga about Summit charter schools and their online lessons. On the whole, it seemed to me, the article was admiring.

Leonie Haimson has a different view of Summit.

Haimson has played a leading role in the movement to stop data mining of students and to protect student privacy. After writing a column in The Answer Sheet Blog expressing her concerns about the Summit charter schools and their online platform, Haimson was contacted by the founder of Summit and invited to visit one of their schools.

Haimson writes here about her experience when she visited the flagship Summit Charter School in Redwood City, California.

“Summit charter schools and their online platform, now used in over 300 schools across the country, both public and charter, have received millions of dollars from Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg; Zuckerberg has pledged to support the continued expansion of the online platform through his LLC, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative.

“Shortly after my Washington Post piece appeared, I was contacted by Diane Tavenner, the CEO of Summit charter schools, who asked if we could meet when she was visiting NYC. I agreed. We had lunch on Sept. 15, and I handed her a list of questions, mostly about Summit’s privacy policy, most of which my associate, Rachael Stickland, had already sent to Summit staff that she had met at SXSW Edu the previous March, and to which she’d never received a response….

“During the lunch, I mentioned that I was going to be in Oakland the weekend of Oct. 14- 15 for the Network for Public Education conference, and that I would be interested in visiting some schools after that are using the Summit platform. I said I was especially eager to visit public schools, since I’d heard from many public school parents in five states who told me their children had negative experiences with the program. These parents were upset that Summit had withdrawn the right of parents to consent to the system shortly after CZI took over, and they were concerned about how their children’s personal data was being shared with Summit and then redisclosed with unspecified other third “partners” for unclear purposes.

“Diane later emailed me and said that I could visit Summit Prep charter school on Oct. 16, in Redwood City, their flagship school. An Uber would come and pick me up at my Oakland hotel, she said, and the drive would take about an hour each way…

“At Summit Prep, I was met by two school leaders, and we talked in an empty office for about a half hour, where they explained to me about the platform and how it was designed. Then we briefly toured two classrooms. In the first classroom, there were about thirty students engaged in “Personalized Learning Time”, gazing at computer screens and working on their individual “playlists.” These playlists include content in different “focus areas” delivered via various mediums, including online texts and videos. When students have learned these materials, they’re supposed to take multiple choice online tests to show they’ve “mastered” the area. In addition, in each of their courses, there are projects they are supposed to complete…

“I visited another classroom where 12th graders were engaged in peer-reviewing essays they had written at the beginning of the class, grading them according to the Summit’s complex rubric of cognitive skills. When I asked why the essays were written on paper rather than on computers, the school leaders told me that this was because they were practicing for the California state exam in which students are asked to write essays on paper.

“I noted that I had seen no classroom or small group discussions. The Summit leaders said that was because none were occurring during my brief visit. It is true that the amount of time I spent in classrooms wasn’t sufficient to make an informed judgment either way, but what I saw did not encourage me.

“When we returned to the office, I questioned why delivering content primarily online was an effective method of teaching. Shouldn’t learning happen in a more interactive fashion, with the material presented in person and then discussed, debated, and explored? Why did they have this comparatively flat, one-dimensional attitude towards content? And how could math be taught this way, given that math requires helping students learn how to solve problems in a more interactive fashion?

“They told me math is taught differently, and indeed had to be taught through teacher-student interaction, but that this isn’t true of any of the other subjects, whether it be English, social sciences or physical sciences.”

Leonie reviewed the many complaints that she has heard from parents at Summit charter schools, especially regarding privacy of student data and long hours in front of a computer.

She writes,

“Yet the juggernaut that is Summit will be difficult to stop. The Silicon Valley Community Foundation gave $20 million to Summit in 2016. The Gates Foundation awarded Summit $10 million in June 2017, “to support implementation of the Summit Learning program in targeted geographies.” In September, the day before I met with Diane Tavenner, Summit was one of the ten winners of the XQ Super High School prize, receiving another $10 million from Laurene Powell Jobs’ LLC, the Emerson Collective, to create a new high school in Oakland.”

Besides, Betsy DeVos loves Summit.

Categories Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Students, Technology

Nancy Bailey: Pressure to Succeed in “High School Hell”

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2017 //
51

Nancy Bailey writes about the ratcheting up of pressure on high school students.

What are we doing to our kids?

“Freshmen are told on one hand not to worry about college, then given an early version of a college entrance exam three weeks into their first year of high school.

~Chicago Tribune Nov.13, 2017

“Like kindergartners pushed to be first graders, high school is the new college.

“Teens are more anxious than ever. Depression and anxiety are a fact. Drugs and alcohol use are an actuality. Suicides are real. More teens seek support from counselors and mental health facilities than ever. Some miss school due to hospitalization.

“The New York Times recently chronicled the lives of teens who struggle with anxiety. They’re frightened they will fail. They load up on Advanced Placement (college) classes not understanding they’re pushing themselves beyond high school—beyond normal teen development.

“However, despite all this so-called concern in the media, the underlying theme is still—grit and mindset.

“The subtitle for the above report is Parents, therapists and schools are struggling to figure out whether helping anxious teenagers means protecting them or pushing them to face their fears.

“Does anyone believe school administrators, teachers, and parents will quit pushing?

Students are expected to learn more than ever. They must do college in high school so they will succeed.

There’s little time to relax. Even sports and extracurricular activities come with a price. Students can’t just play a sport. They must lead. If there’s art, it must be a perfect drawing. If it’s music, there are contests to win.

Some competition is fine, but how much, and at what price? If so many students are struggling, isn’t that a sign there’s too much?

Categories Competition, Students

What Are We Doing to Our Children? Pressure, Competition, Anxiety, Broken Spirits

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2017 //
25

This is a powerful and very disturbing article about the teenagers who crack under the pressure to succeed.

Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety?

Read this and ask yourself, why are we putting young people into pressure cookers?

Isn’t it possible to recognize many ways to succeed?

The current obsession with standardized testing guarantees winners and losers. Whose child should be sacrificed at the alter of high-stakes testing? Which will crack because they are fearful of being losers?

“Over the last decade, anxiety has overtaken depression as the most common reason college students seek counseling services. In its annual survey of students, the American College Health Association found a significant increase — to 62 percent in 2016 from 50 percent in 2011 — of undergraduates reporting “overwhelming anxiety” in the previous year. Surveys that look at symptoms related to anxiety are also telling. In 1985, the Higher Education Research Institute at U.C.L.A. began asking incoming college freshmen if they “felt overwhelmed by all I had to do” during the previous year. In 1985, 18 percent said they did. By 2010, that number had increased to 29 percent. Last year, it surged to 41 percent.

“Those numbers — combined with a doubling of hospital admissions for suicidal teenagers over the last 10 years, with the highest rates occurring soon after they return to school each fall — come as little surprise to high school administrators across the country, who increasingly report a glut of anxious, overwhelmed students. While it’s difficult to tease apart how much of the apparent spike in anxiety is related to an increase in awareness and diagnosis of the disorder, many of those who work with young people suspect that what they’re seeing can’t easily be explained away. “We’ve always had kids who didn’t want to come in the door or who were worried about things,” says Laurie Farkas, who was until recently director of student services for the Northampton public schools in Massachusetts. “But there’s just been a steady increase of severely anxious students.”

How important are test scores as compared to mental health?

Are they more important than life itself?

Categories Competition, Students, Testing

Mercedes Schneider: Sex Scandal at New Orleans Charter School

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2017 //
11

There is an inherent problem with privatizing and deregulating publicly-funded schools. Without supervision, without oversight, without accountability, bad things may happen. And they may not be noticed unless there is a whistle-blower, because that’s what happens in the absence of oversight.

Mercedes Schneider reports here on a sex scandal in a New Orleans Charter School.

“It baffled me when I read that administration at a New Orleans charter school, Success Preparatory Academy, failed to immediately alert police regarding a cell phone video of a sexual incident that happened on campus in April 2017.

“School admin are mandated reporters of sexual abuse.

“However, what really sealed the deal for the two administrators arrested is their apparent ignorance that deleting the video from a student’s phone constitutes destroying evidence, and emailing the video– one that falls under the definition of child pornography– to oneself and to another administrator– constitutes possession of child pornography.

“But there is more:

“When made aware of the incident, the principal of the school also failed to report it to the police, and he publicly defends the failure to report the incident to police as well as the decision of the other admin to delete the video from the student’s phone; return that phone to the student, and email the pornographic video to herself and another admin.”

Do sex scandals happen in public schools? Yes. But they are likely to be reported because there is oversight and supervision, and because teachers know that they are mandated to report such cases.

A student was forced to perform sex acts in a bathroom. The student’s mother reported the incident to the police, and the school’s administrators were arrested.

“According to the Advocate, all three administrators (Gangopadhyay, Kusmirek, and Shane) hail from Teach for America. As administrators of a K-8 Louisiana school, all should have been well aware that they are mandated reporters of “the involvement of the child in any sexual act with… any other person… or the aiding of the child’s involvement in any sexual act with any other person [or] …pornographic displays.”

Maybe they didn’t learn that in their five weeks of training.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, New Orleans, Scandals, Students, Teach for America

Kansas City: What Students in a Private School Thought About Betsy DeVos

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2017 //
9

Betsy DeVos visited Kansas City Academy, a progressive private school in Kansas City on her national tour promoting school choice. Probably she expected a Queen’s welcome but that’s not what happened. The students were not happy. They felt used. They didn’t u detstand why she came to her school.

Their responses appeared on Alternet.

One was a transgender student. Some students decided not to come to school that day.

An eighth grader wrote:

“I honestly do not understand why she would want to visit our school that stands against almost everything she stands for. I also do not understand why my principal would accept her visit, but I’ll get back to that later. But what truly angers me is she’s using this school as an example of a school that works. Her stance on public schools angers me to a point I can’t describe in text. And at first I might come off hypocritical since, well, I go to a private school, but the reason I’m here is public school isn’t properly funded and equipped with the capability to help me. And if they were better funded I’d like to think I wouldn’t have to be at KCA. But all of this leads me to believe the only reason my principal accepted her visit is to get the press to grow the school and possibly to feed his ego, but I don’t truly know.”

A junior was not impressed. “As one of the students who had the opportunity to ask the Secretary questions, the experience was dispiriting at best. In response to a question about her plans, she mentioned through a jumble of repetitive, pleasant-sounding word salad with assorted jargon as garnish her plans to do away with “burdensome regulations.” At that point my concern was that even regulations that are apparently burdensome can still be necessary to protect vulnerable students. My curiosity was piqued, so I asked for an example — just one example, that stuck out to her. I got a whole lot of not much at all. She mentioned there being regulations that required the documentation of certain information that, as she described it, may not be necessary. But no specifics. Insisting did no good. DeVos instead chose to turn to our principal, Kory Gallagher, for agreement. It became a laughing matter to them. I could not find the humor in what seemed to me to be a show of incompetence.”

A junior, far wiser than Secretary DeVos, wrote:

“Before Betsy DeVos’s visit to my school I remember not caring that she was coming. My main reason for not caring was because this is just high school, and once I am out, none of it will matter. But I realized it goes beyond high school. I realized her policies go beyond school. They will affect the whole of society. Public school is a necessary instrument in building and fortifying a strong society and public. We must educate the people to avoid an obsolete country, where a few rule the majority, because the majority are not educated enough to stand up for their rights. And that is what I learned after DeVos’s visit.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Students

Viola Davis: Don’t Forget the Teachers and Public School That Changed Your Life

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2017 //
13

Viola Davis is one of the most gifted actors of our time. She has won the Tony Award, the Academy Award, and many other awards. She has never forgotten her humble origins and those who helped her rise to the top.

When she received the Tony award in 2010, she gave a powerful speech. She thanked God, her parents, and her teachers at Central Falls High School in Central Falls, Rhode Island. In that order.

I recall leaping to my feet when I heard her speak in 2010, because that was the very time when the city of Central Falls and the state of Rhode Island threatened to fire the entire staff of the High School that Viola Davis attended. To fire them en masse, from the principal to the lunch room staff. Arne Duncan congratulated the state officials for having the “courage” to fire everyone, and President Obama echoed Arne’s insult.

It was also the year of “Waiting for Superman,” and the corporate assault on the public schools went into high gear.

But then there was Viola Davis, thanking her teachers. I learned later that her own sister was a teacher at Central Falls HS.

But…but…but…then, Viola Davis took a leading role in the film “Won’t Back Down,” funded and produced by arch-evangelical billionaire Philip Anschutz (one of the “Superman” funders). “Won’t Back Down” celebrates the parent trigger, telling the fictional story of a parent and a teacher who were so disgusted with their public school that they gathered signatures and flipped the school over to a charter operator. I didn’t get to see the movie because it opened in 2,500 theatres (Anschutz owns the Regal theatre chain) and its receipts were so bad that it closed within a month and disappeared.

Last night, Viol Davis moderated Laurene Powell Jobs’ XQ extravaganza, which asserted that high schools are obsolete and need to be reinvented.

Viola Davis, please watch the speech you gave at the Oscars at 2010.

We need a real champion for public schools.

Trump and DeVos want to eliminate the schools that made you who you are today. Our public schools need your help. They are far from perfect. They need real reform, not a wrecking ball and disruption.

Viola Davis, help us. Join the millions of parents and educators who want better public schools.

The billionaires don’t need your help. We do. They are using you.

Join the Network for Public Education. Help the children and teachers whom the billionaires despise.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Parent trigger, Parents, Privatization, Propaganda, Rhode Island, Students
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