Archives for category: Teachers and Teaching

Education reform is definitely found a home in Connecticut!

There, Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy wants to prove he is the biggest and baddest of education reformers.

Through his efforts, the Legislature passed a “reform” bill that mandates new standardized tests for kindergarten, first grade, and second grade.

No child in Connecticut will be left untested!

No, sirree!

Remember if you will, that the three highest performing states in the nation on the no-stakes NAEP are: Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey.

Malloy is very very worried about the state’s terrible performance. He will fix it with more tests.

His core belief is that teachers should “teach to the tests.”

Educators used to believe that teaching to the test was reprehensible, almost like cheating.

No more.

Governor Malloy will get his wish.

Categories Accountability, Connecticut, Malloy, Dannel, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

What Parents Need to Know about “Reform”

By dianeravitch

August 26, 2012 //

Carol Burris has written an article addressed to parents, explaining what tests are good for and how they are being misused.

Send this to your friends, especially if they are public school parents.

She identifies three “reforms” that parents should be concerned about, involving the misuse of testing.

This is the “reform” that you should keep your eye on:

The amassing of individual student scores in national and state databases.

State and national databases are being created in order to analyze and house students’ test scores. No parental permission is required. I wonder why not. Students who take the SAT must sign off before we send their scores to colleges. Before my high school’s students could participate in the National Educational Longitudinal Study, they needed written permission from their parents. Yet, in New York, massive amounts of student data are now being collected and sent beyond the school without parental permission —end of year course grades, test scores, attendance, ethnicity, disabilities and the kinds of modifications that students receive. This data will be used to evaluate teachers, schools, schools of education and perhaps for other purposes yet unknown. Schools are no longer reporting collective data; we are now sending individual student data. Although the name remains in the district, what assurances do parents truly have that future databases will not be connected and used for other purposes? The more data that is sent, the easier it will be to identify the individual student.

Eleven states have agreed to give confidential teacher and student data for free to a shared learning collaborative funded by Bill Gates and run byMurdoch’s Wireless Corp. Wireless received $44 million for the project. With Common Core State Standards testing, such databases are expected to expand. Funding for data warehousing siphons taxpayer dollars from the classroom to corporations like Wireless and Pearson. Because Common Core testing will be computer-based, the purchase of hardware, software and upgrades will consume school budgets, while providing profits for the testing and computer industries.

Although all of the above is in motion, it can be modified or stopped. Parents should speak to their local PTAs and School Boards, as well as their legislators. They should ask questions regarding what data is being collected and to whom it is sent.

Burris recommends that:

It is time to get Back to Basics. Let’s make sure that every test a student takes is used to measure and enhance her learning, not for adult, high-stakes purposes. Basic commonsense tells us that student test results belong to families, not databases. Remind politicians that the relationship between student and teacher, not student and test helps our young people get through life’s challenges. Finally, let’s return to the basic purpose of public schooling — to promote the academic, social and emotional growth of our children. It is the role of schools to develop healthy and productive citizens, not master test takers.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Parents, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Texas

This Teacher Says: Support Teachers and Get Out of the Way

By dianeravitch

August 25, 2012 //

In response to an earlier post that asked whether schools improve by attacking teachers, this reader offers advice based on her experience in Nevada:

Schools don’t improve if you attack teachers, or threaten them, or harass them, or fire them, or just hound them out of the profession! Schools only improve with appropriate professional development training in ‘best practices,’ with a shared belief system, and a common and well defined goal. Rather than ‘getting rid of’ teachers who don’t fit the mold or the school culture, you achieve cohesiveness by showing positive results. Just like the children we teach, teachers need to want to learn, want to achieve similar results, and trust their professional colleagues enough to ask for help.

That paragraph contains about ten years of experience and observation, and requires a lot of explanation.

I teach in Nevada. Nevada school districts encompass the entire county, – 17 counties, 17 school districts. There are three major population centers, each in a different county, – Las Vegas in Clark County, Reno in Washoe County, and Carson City in Douglas County. The rest of the state is rural. I teach in Nye County. Geographically, Nye County is the third largest county in the United States, after the Borough of Barrow, Alaska, and San Bernardino County, California. From Duckwater’s one-room schoolhouse in the northern county, and Gabbs K-12 schools also in the northern county, to the town of Pahrump with four elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school in a town of 30,000 people is a good six to seven hour drive. About eleven years ago, my position at Gabbs Elementary was cut, and I transferred to Manse Elementary in Pahrump.

My first day on the job was a teacher work day. The school had been struggling for two years to come to terms with NCLB, and was a needs improvement school. They had also changed principals twice, and had about 40 percent of their teachers retire or move out of the district. On that teacher work day, a group came from the state to ‘help’ our struggling school, and the first words the first person said were “We can fire all of you!”. I don’t remember anything else anyone in that group said, and they talked, harangued and cast blame all day long. I remember being angry, and tearful, and distrustful of my colleagues. I also remember thinking that the needs improvement status was based on standardized tests given to 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students, and that an entire grade level had moved on to middle school, and that I was new at that school, and that I could be much better employed getting my first grade classroom ready for the students.

I had been in the military, and that experience taught me never to identify a problem unless I could also propose a solution. That group from the state had no proposed solution to the problem. And, honestly, I feel that the core problem is NCLB! Giving anyone only one way to succeed and 37 ways to fail is just wrong! Any teacher, parent, clergyman, psychologist, coach or sensible person could tell you that!

My school and district have been working on the problems ever since. I have received training, gone to conferences, had professional development, and done a lot of personal research and independent reading. I feel I’m a much better teacher, and getting better all the time!

One of the best things my school does is called Instructional Consultation. That is where one knowledgable teacher with a puzzling and struggling student asks for help, and another knowledgable teacher helps identify the reason the child is struggling, and together they arrive at a better instructional match for the child. We also have Professional Learning Community groups at our school, and that has greatly improved communication among teachers, and between grade levels.

I’ve also become very informed about my teacher’s union membership, and the master contract that covers union and non-union people in the bargaining unit in this right-to-work state. That group from the state could never have fired any of us, and could only have recommended a transfer if they could specifically identify a teacher as being responsible for a failure in one of those 37 sub categories. Their bullying tactics were not only poor motivation for improvement, but they were based on wrong information.

So my solution for NCLB, simply stated, is support the teachers who teach the children who take the tests. Give the teachers the tools and training they need to do their job, and then get out of their way and off their backs while they do it. Threats, intimidation, bullying, personal and professional attacks, – those don’t work!

Categories Teachers and Teaching

Do Schools Improve if You Attack the Teachers?

By dianeravitch

August 25, 2012 //

Caroline Grannan wrote the fact sheet about the parent trigger for Parents Across America. Here she explains more about what is happening now in the Adelanto School District, where Parent Revolution is leading the effort to convert Desert Trails Elementary School into a charter school.

The ultimate question is whether the way to repair a struggling school is to attack its teachers and attempt to turn it over to corporate privatizers. (I don’t use the term “failing school,” which heartlessly brands the students and the rest of the school community as failing.) The concept is that we must destroy the school in order to save it.

In fact, as anyone informed knows, the Adelanto school district had just put a new principal in place at Desert Trails, and parents have been pleased with him.

Charter schools overall have a worse record than comparable public schools, and “takeover” charters, in which an operator steps into an existing struggling school, have an exceptionally dismal record. There have been no successful parent triggers anywhere. Why would someone want to inflict a “solution” that has no track record of success on an already challenged school community?

For those who are sincere about believing this is a good idea (I don’t harbor any illusion that anyone within Parent Revolution is sincere about that; they are simply trying to keep the funding coming in), the concept behind that is that the school is such a disaster that something, anything, must be done, no matter what. Would you apply that thinking to a medical crisis — randomly start removing organs, even with a record of failure in past organ removals?

Many parents at Desert Trails are pleased with and hopeful about their school, though the press is so bought into the parent trigger that only the small number of Parent Revolution loyalists get attention.

Parent Revolution’s hostility to teachers also demonstrates how doomed their approach is, should anyone be gullible enough to believe their efforts are sincere. Waging war on teachers is not the way to repair a broken school; teachers must be partners. “You can’t win a war by firing on your own troops,” as Diane Ravitch has said.

Here’s a great article on the heart and soul of a school that would appear to be “failing” based strictly on flinty-eyed data:
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/08/mission-high-false-low-performing-school

And here’s what education scholar Richard Rothstein has said about the concept that we must destroy America’s schools in order to save them:

“A belief in decline has led to irresponsibility in school reform. Policymakers who believed they could do no harm because American schools were already in a state of collapse have imposed radical reforms without careful consideration of possible unintended adverse consequences. …
“I do not suggest that American schools are adequate, that American students’ level of achievement in math and reading is where it should be, that American schools have been improving as rapidly as they should, or that the achievement gap is narrowing to the extent needed to give us any satisfaction. I only suggest that we should approach fixing a system differently if we believe its outcomes are slowly improving than if we believe it is collapsing.”

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/04/07/richard-rothstein/a-nation-at-risk-twenty-five-years-later/

Categories California, Charter Schools, Parent trigger, Teachers and Teaching

A Teacher’s Dilemma

By dianeravitch

August 24, 2012 //

This letter from a veteran teacher should be read and discussed in every TFA institute, during the five weeks of training. Corps members should take a pledge never to take a job away from a well-qualified, experienced teacher who was laid off to save money and to hire TFA:

All I ever wanted from teaching was to do good work, excite children and really teach them. And I have done that. Always trying to do it better, always assessing and reworking what I do. I’ve been proud of my contribution to the children in my community, but I realize now that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that I work until late every night or that I’ve had a high standard (Common Core is no big stretch for me). Or that I’m passionate about what I do. None of that will matter because if parent triggers gain traction, my school could get taken over by 51% of the public. And if that happens, it won’t matter how good a job I’ve done. All that will matter is that I’m expensive. With 21 years of public ed experience, a charter could hire two teachers for the price of hiring me. That lowers class size or increases profits. Either way, I will be terminated and will have to look for work in my 50s. It doesn’t matter who I vote for because the fix is in. Either party can cost me my livelihood even though I’ve done all the right things.

The only strategy I have left is to continue to do my job and try to educate people in my community. Oh… and stop spending money on anything at all. I need to save every penny I have because this may not work out well for me. I can’t contribute to the economy or believe in the future. All I can do is hang on, do good work and hope that I can make it till retirement. Not because I’m burnt out or no longer love teaching, but because someone can come in and steal my life’s work out from under me, and I’ve got my government’s approval no matter who wins the election.

Categories Teach for America TFA, Teachers and Teaching

Here is My Interview on CNN

By dianeravitch

August 22, 2012 //

Many readers have contacted me to ask why CNN has not posted Randi Kaye’s interview with me, rebutting Michelle Rhee’s assertions.

This reader, Michael Brocoum, made a copy of the interview and posted it on Youtube. Here it is.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the interview began with a question about the National Assessment of Educational Progress (you will note that it is misspelled by CNN as the National Assessment of Educational Process). I don’t recall the precise wording, but the question went like this:

“You claim that test scores on NAEP are at their highest point in history, but how do you explain that the scale score for fourth grade reading is only 221? That’s 221 out of 500. That’s less than 50%. Isn’t 50% a failing grade?”

I then tried to explain that scale scores don’t work like that, that the question itself was a completely erroneous interpretation of scale scores. NAEP has a vertical scale, and scale scores in the 4th grade are lower than in the 8th grade. They can’t be converted into a grade in the way that Randi Kaye asserted, although they are useful as measures of progress.

Consider this: the average scale score for 4th grade is 221, but students scoring at the 90th percentile–our top students–have a scale score of 264. By Randi Kaye’s fallacious reasoning, they are failing too! In 8th grade reading, the students at the 90th percentile had a scale score of 307 (on a scale of 500). She would convert that to a grade of 61, which is borderline failing.

Wouldn’t you think that the editor or research staff at CNN would have prevented Randi Kaye from making such absurd assertions?

But it was of a piece with all the questions that followed. I felt as if I were being interrogated by someone who worked for StudentsFirst, not by a reporter seeking to ascertain either my views or the basic facts.

Rhee said at the outset of my interview that the answer to what she thinks is the terrible performance of our schools is merit pay. So Randi Kaye drilled in on that with two questions (one of them was dropped from the show before it aired). She ended up with a quote from someone named Lucas who said he wanted merit pay. That wasn’t exactly definitive, since I was able point out that merit pay has been tried again and again and has always failed to make a difference.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Michigan, NAEP, Privatization, Ravitch, Diane, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Is This the True Goal of “Reform” Today?

By dianeravitch

August 22, 2012 //

I have often been struck by the uneven playing field that policymakers and legislators establish for charter schools and public schools. The public schools are increasingly strangled by regulations and by high-stakes testing and punitive evaluations, at the same time that the charter schools are exempt from most of the strangulation. I have heard many times from principals who say that they want to turn their public school into a charter so they can escape the tentacles of regulation that are wrapped tight around their school. And I have wondered whether the purpose of “reform” was to make public schools fail while the deregulated charter schools increase and thrive.

Here is another take on the current corporate reform movement, inspired by an earlier post about stagnant ACT scores:

The more conversations I have about the entire “reform” movement, the more convinced I am that it’s really about disbanding teacher unions so that the majority of education programs will eventually be part of a private industry thus paving the way for the privatizing of all public systems.

The evidence just keeps mounting to show that standardized testing is a flawed way to judge the efficacy of the public schools, and the mere fact that charters and private/parochial schools do not have the same “rigorous” standards as public schools points to the idea that “standards” are not really important at all to the reformers who push for these kinds of alternate schools.

Utilizing standardized tests that the reformers know are flawed is a tactic to devalue the people who teach in public schools so that they can be fired and a private interest can take over.

It’s as if these policy-makers have found a way to rig the game: Create new rules that make for impossible goals and then watch a good system that serves the public fail under these new rules. They have set up the game so that the players will fail no matter what–IF you believe the rules are sound.

It’s pretty evident that the main goal is to disband two of the largest public unions in the country using children as pawns. Once the AFT and the NEA are toppled, so they must think, the rest will follow, and the privatization of public systems in America will ensue.

I would not put it past our policy-makers to be trying to sell the public a bill of goods by pretending they care about the children at all, when in reality, they care about getting rid of union teachers and privatizing education so their buddies can “invest” and continually get rich.

This isn’t about parent choice (unless legal segregation is what they’re after), this isn’t about success, and this isn’t about getting rid of “bad” teachers. It’s about getting rid of unions and privatizing. To me, the evidence points to these intentions no matter how anyone else wants to spin it.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, Unions, Vouchers

What We Can Learn from the New PDK/Gallup Poll

By dianeravitch

August 22, 2012 //

The annual Phi Delta Kappa-Gallup poll on education was released today.

The sponsors characterize public opinion as split, which is true for many issues.

We must see this poll in the context of an unprecedented, well-funded campaign to demonize public schools and their teachers over at least the past two years, and by some reckoning, even longer.

The media has parroted endlessly the assertion that our public schools are failures, they are (as Bill Gates memorably said to the nation’s governors in 2005) “obsolete,” and “the system is broken.” How many times have you heard those phrases? How many television specials have you seen claiming that our education system is disastrous? And along comes “Waiting for ‘Superman'” with its propagandistic attack on public education in cities and suburbs alike and its appeal for privatization. Add to that Arne Duncan’s faithful parroting of the claims of the critics.

That is the context, and it is remarkable that Americans continue to believe in the schools they know best and to understand what their most critical need is.

Here are the salient findings:

1. Americans have a low opinion of American education (how could they not, given the bombardment of criticism?): only 18% give it an A or B. And here is the real accomplishment of the corporate reformers: Those who judge American education as a D or F have increased from 22% to 30% in the past 20 years. Actually, their success in smearing U.S. education is even greater, because in 2002, before the implementation of NCLB, only 16% judged the nation’s schools so harshly. So the reform campaign has doubled the proportion of Americans who think the nation’s schools deserve a D or F.

2. When asked to evaluate the schools in their own community, 48% give them an A or B, which is the highest rating in 20 years.

3. When asked to evaluate the school their oldest child attends, an astonishing 77% give it an A or B. This is the highest rating in 20 years. Only 6% give it a D or F. This question elicits the views of informed consumers, the people who refer to a real school, not the hypothetical school system that is lambasted every other day in the national press or condemned as “obsolete” by Bill Gates.

4. When asked whether they have trust and confidence in teachers, 71% said yes. Americans continue to respect and admire teachers, despite the nonstop public bashing of them in the media.

5. When asked whether standardized test scores should be used to evaluate teachers, opinion split 52-47 in favor. Considering that the public has heard nonstop endorsements of this bad idea from President Obama, Secretary Duncan, and most other political figures–and very limited dissent–it is surprising that opinion is almost equally divided. How did so many Americans manage to figure out that this idea is problematic at best?

6. When people were asked to describe the teachers who had the greatest influence in their lives, they used words like caring, compassionate, motivating, and inspiring. Interesting that few remembered the teachers who raised their test scores.

7. There has been a big change in what the public sees as the biggest problems facing the schools today. Ten years ago, the biggest concerns were about discipline (fighting, gangs, drugs, lack of discipline, overcrowding). Today, the biggest problem that the public sees, by far, is lack of financial support. 35% chose that option. Among public school parents, it was 43%. Concerns about discipline almost faded away in comparison to concerns about the lack of financial support for the schools.

8. On the subject of vouchers, there was a surprising increase in the proportion who would support “allowing students to choose a private school at public expense.” It increased from 34% to 44%, which is a big jump. I recommend that future questioning ask about support to allow students “to choose a private or religious school at public expense.” That would be closer to the reality of voucher programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland, D.C., Louisiana, Ohio, and Indiana.

9. On the subject of charters, public opinion dipped, from an approval rating of 70% in 2011 to 66% in 2012. It will be interesting to see where this number goes as the public begins to understand more about charters in their own communities.

10. A question about the parent trigger was so vacuous as to be misleading. The question was “Some states are considering laws that allow parents to petition to remove the leadership and staff at failing schools. Do you favor or oppose such laws?” 70% favor, 76% of public school parents favor. This is a misleading question, however, as the parent trigger is not a matter of simply allowing parents to sign a petition, but of allowing parents to take control of a public school and hand it over to private management. My guess is that the public doesn’t know much about the parent trigger concept and hasn’t heard a discussion about the pros and cons. So, I don’t put much stock in the response–after all, why shouldn’t parents have the right to sign a petition to change the staff at their school? It does show how clever the corporate reformers are in framing issues that advance privatization and doing it in ways that are deceptive and alluring.

11. In a series of questions about the Common Core standards, most people believe they are a good thing and that they will make the nation more competitive globally; about half think they will improve the quality of education while 40% think they will have no effect. These answers exemplify why polls of this kind must be viewed with caution. I am willing to bet that the majority of respondents has no idea what the Common Core standards are; and willing to bet that 98% have never read them.

In future versions of the poll, I hope that questions will be asked about for-profit schools, privatization, and vouchers for religious schools. These are big issues today, and the poll should ask about them.

My takeaway from the 2012 poll is that the corporate reform movement has succeeded in increasing support for vouchers, but that the American public continues to have a remarkably high opinion of the schools and teachers they know best despite the concerted efforts of the reformers to undermine those beliefs. This is an instance where evidence trumps ideology. The reformers have not yet been able to destroy the bonds between the American people and their community’s schools.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Opinion Polling, Parent trigger, Parents, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, US Education, Vouchers

“A Daily Act of Love”

By dianeravitch

August 21, 2012 //

I came across a moving story about a music educator in Wisconsin whose death stirred his town and wrote about him last night. His influence was widely acknowledged.

I asked, in light of the community’s reaction, how such an inspiring teacher should be evaluated. It was obvious that test scores was not the right answer, in part because what he taught–music and band–do not lend themselves to measurement by test scores. But the qualities that the community honored in him–his ability to inspire, his love for music, his concern for students–are inherently not quantifiable. The same might be said for teachers in other subjects as well, not just teachers of music and the other arts.

A music educator commented:

As a former high school band teacher, and current music teacher educator, this story shines a light on one of the glaring inadequacies of the current, one-size-fits-all approach to teacher evaluation. music teaching is different than teaching math, or science, or reading–and one rubric or test can’t measure every kind of teacher. or school. or community. music teachers across the country are struggling with how to use these tools to describe the totality of what we do, and with the reality that our jobs–as it is with our colleagues in every other other discipline–are just too complex, complicated and messy to fit in this tiny little box.

It has always seemed to me that the things we care the most about, that are most important to us, are the most resistant to this sort of simplistic measurement. do we measure our marriages with a 4 point scale? do we “grade” the love we have for our children on a rubric? teaching is a daily act of love; love for our students, for their learning, for our colleagues, and for our communities. to think that we can measure our effectiveness as teachers with a 4 point scale is not only absurd, its insulting.

Mr. Garvey made a difference in his community that could never be measured by a test. it was measured by the length of the line at his wake, and by the depth of the grief felt by his former students and his family at his funeral. Mr. Garvey, like many, many teachers across the country who are getting ready to return to their classrooms, taught because he wanted to bring his love of his subject matter to his students, to make them think about the world differently, and to help them become the persons they wanted to become. there aren’t enough “points” on any teacher evaluation rubric to measure the difference these teachers will make this year.

Categories Arts Education, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching