Archives for category: Teachers and Teaching
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Michelle Gunderson: What Can I Give My Children to Keep Them Safe and Feeling Loved?

By dianeravitch
December 28, 2016 //
14

Michelle Gunderson teaches first grade in Chicago Public Schools. She thought about her own childhood on a farm. She thought about what to give the children she teaches. 

 

I have been struggling with what safety and caring look like inside a society that seems to care very little for children. Education budgets have been cut to the bone, teachers are overrun with needless mandates for paperwork and policy that take us away from the heart of teaching, both adults and children are judged and labeled by meaningless tests. And the list goes on.

 

And then we have the forthcoming presidency of Donald Trump and his incoming Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. If we believe their words, schools will become contested spaces where market driven practices will govern policy. And the world will become a contested space where dominant race and religion rule. I feel these times are as tumultuous as the times adults faced in 1968 when my world was safe. How do I take the lessons from my childhood and apply them now?

 

I gave the six year old children in my classroom small, beautiful tangerines for a celebration. They were perfect, fragrant, and yummy. We ate them mindfully – looking at them, smelling them, peeling slowly apeacend savoring – as if they were a gift from the world.

 

I teach in Chicago – it is difficult, and I do not have a fairy tale view of childhood. But I do believe that it is our role to bring simple beauty and peace into children’s lives.

 

In response to this world around us, I ask you, educators and parents alike, to share a “store bought” orange with children, to think of simple acts of caring, that will help our children gain the strength and courage to lead us out of this mess.

Categories Childhood, Love, Teachers and Teaching

Will Philanthropy Change Direction in the Age of Trump?

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2016 //
7

Vu Le directs a nonprofit organization. He wrote a bold article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy advising philanthropists to change direction and pay more attention to small organizations that work directly with those in need and cut back on their demands for paperwork, data, and endless documentation.

The nonprofit world woke up last week to a surreal and terrifying new reality, one that must force us all to operate differently. To see our nation choosing walls, divisiveness, xenophobia, and demagoguery over love, hope, diversity, and community is devastating.

The people nonprofits serve felt the pain immediately. We have kids chanting “Build that wall” in school lunchrooms. We have women wearing hijabs being attacked. (Trump supporters have been assaulted as well.) I personally know Latino parents trying to answer their kids’ questions about when they will get deported. Many of my LGBTQ friends and colleagues are in despair.

We cannot just hope it will all be OK. The new presidency threatens to undo all the progress nonprofits have worked so hard to make: progress on climate change, gender equity, marriage equality, support for the poor and homeless, and the push for diversity and inclusion throughout society. Millions of people may lose their health insurance. Hundreds of thousands of Dreamers may be exiled.

As nonprofits work to oppose all the ways in which a Trump presidency threatens the people we serve, we need money and support — and that must come from a new social contract with foundations. Grant makers must end, once and for all, the destructive funding philosophies and practices that have hampered nonprofits’ ability to achieve success.

To face a future that is terrifying to many of us and the people we serve, foundations must think and fund differently.

One thing that most of us know about philanthropies is that they have almost completely abandoned public education. The big three–Gates, Broad, and Walton–are all in for privatization. They think that the public schools that enroll 94% of the children are hopeless. They don’t like public schools. They don’t like unions. They want public schools to operate like businesses. They want them to hire inexperienced and uncredentialed teachers. They micromanage their grants. They overemphasize test scores as the data that shows whether their grantees are successful. They have wrought immeasurable harm on our democratic public system.

After reading this article, I feel moved to write something for The Chronicle of Philanthropy. I don’t know if they will publish it, but it is worth a try.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Pasi Sahlberg on the Beauty of Small Data

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2016 //
24

Pasi Sahlberg is the great Finnish educator whose book Finnish Lessons gave us a vision of a nation that succeeds without high-stakes testing, without standardized testing, and without charter schools or vouchers. He wrote of highly educated teachers who have wide scope and autonomy in their classrooms and who collaborate with their colleagues to do what is best for their children. He wrote of a national school system that values the arts, physical activity, and play. And, lo and behold, the OECD calls it the best school system in the world!

 

So entranced was I but what I read about Finland that I visited there a few years ago and had Pasi as my guide. The schools and classes were everything he claimed and more.

 

Pasi, like many other education experts, is aghast at the GERM (Global Education Reform Movement) that has swept the world. The agency that has spread GERM far and wide is international testing, the great horse race that only a few can win. Since most are losers, the frenzy for more testing becomes even stronger.

 

Pasi suggests a different approach. Instead of Big Data, produced by mass standardized testing, why not search for small data? 

 

Here is Pasi’s thumbnail sketch of the contrast between Big Data and small data:

 

Big data is a commonly used term in daily discourse that often comes with a label that big data will transform the way we think, work, and live. For many of us, this is an optimistic promise, while for others it creates anxiety and concern regarding control and privacy. In general terms, big data means data of very large size to the extent that its manipulation and management present significant practical challenges.
The main difference between big and small data in education is, of course, the size of data and how these data are collected and used. Big data in education always requires dedicated devices for collecting massive amounts of noisy data, such as specific hardware and software to capture students’ facial expressions, movements in class, eye movements while on task, body postures, classroom talk, and interaction with others. Small data relies primarily on observations and recordings made by human beings. In education, these include students’ self-assessments, teachers’ participatory notes on learning process, external school surveys, and observations made of teaching and learning situations.

 

To watch and listen to Pasi, introduced by Howard Gardner, here is the lecture he gave at Wellesley College in October. 

Categories Data, Education Reform, International, Real Education, Teachers and Teaching

William Doyle: Please, Mr. Trump, Put Betsy DeVos on a Plane to Finland ASAP

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2016 //
21

William Doyle is living in Finland as a scholar-in-residence at the University of Eastern Finland.

 

In this post, he describes what Betsy DeVos would learn if she visited Finland.

 

He writes:

 

Donald Trump is promoting “school choice” as he vows to improve the American education system. To achieve this vision, he should start by putting his incoming Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on a plane to world education superpower Finland to see what school choice means in its most powerful form — the choice from among numerous, great, neighborhood schools anywhere in the country.
Just ranked by the World Economic Forum as the No. 1 primary school system globally Finland shows us, that true educational choice means holding politicians accountable to provide families the choice between safe, well-resourced, high-quality local schools, especially in high-poverty areas, schools run by teachers trained at the highest levels of professionalism and supported by a national culture of teacher and school collaboration and respect for families and teachers.
We need to make the teaching profession respected enough to attract and retain the most highly qualified, motivated and passionate young people…and many of the teachers already in America’s schools.

 

The classroom scene in Finland is strikingly different from prevailing atmosphere reported in many classrooms in America, the U.K. and elsewhere, where teachers are routinely under-trained, micro-managed, surveilled, data-shamed, punished, overworked, disrespected and stressed to the breaking point by politicians, bureaucrats and non-educators….

 

We must not base our entire system of education on the staggeringly expensive, relentless standardized testing of children by faceless data collectors – make test design, administration and evaluation the job of the real experts – the classroom teachers who know our children best….

 

For example, Finland has discovered a crucial secret of education: Instead of flooding classrooms with graduates of unaccredited “alternative certifications” or six-week summer training courses as we do in the United States, teaching should be treated much more seriously, like an actual profession that’s critical to our nation’s future. Teaching requires rigorous, graduate-level training in both research and classroom practice.
It is a fantasy to believe, as the newly enacted federal Every Student Succeeds Act proposes, that we can improve our schools by requiring America’s teacher training universities to be evaluated by the standardized test scores of the children who are taught by their graduates. No high-performing school system does things this way.

Categories International, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Amy Moore: What Trump and Teachers Have in Common

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2016 //
13

Amy Moore is a teacher in Dems Moines, Iowa. In this post, she congratulates Donald Trump and explains to him what it means to be a public servant, like her and other public school teachers.

 

“Congratulations on your recent successful interview process. Though I understand that the hiring committee was divided in their selection, you were chosen to run the United States of America. As a public school teacher, I welcome you to the ranks of those of us who are servants to the people.

 

“Knowing that you are used to being served by others rather than being the support to others, I am here to help. Many in the education world believe that having an expert mentor to show the ropes to those who are new is essential to success. While I’d not necessarily call myself an expert, I do have lots of years of practice in the public service sector, and I heard that I might get a little stipend for the extra time spent assisting you, which would really help save up for the amount of money I will need to put my children through college.

 

“Speaking of money, we teachers have another similarity with you. Many of us have more than one job as well! And, while your career in business is able to fund your yachts and mansions and our second jobs often fund our groceries and child care, it’s still a connection. It’s really great that you’re giving up your presidential salary. We have that in common, as many teachers give up a portion of our own salary — although ours is given up to buy materials for our students.”

 

 

Categories Teachers and Teaching, Trump

Angie Sullivan: This is What the Schools of Nevada Need

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2016 //
3

Something amazing happened in Nevada in the 2016 election. Democrats won control of both houses of the legislature. There is still a Republican governor.

 

Angie Sullivan is a second-grade teacher in Nevada who often writes letters to legislators and journalists, to keep them grounded in the reality of the classroom. Nevada has what is very likely the worst performing charter sector in the nation; most of the state’s lowest performing schools are charter schools. It also has a voucher program with no income limits, that is utilized by affluent families to underwrite private school tuition. It is starting an “achievement school district,” modeled on the one that failed in Tennessee and the one that voters in Georgia just rejected, where state officials may take over public schools with low scores and hand them over to charter operators.

Here is Angie with her good-sense newsletter:

Read this:

http://m.reviewjournal.com/opinion/lawmakers-must-work-together-fund-schools

Educators have been forced to become issue based in our state. We can no longer afford to depend wholly on either party. We have to get things done and work with any ally.

We have to get things done.

We will not get everything we want but we have to make headway.

Last session I was proud of the leadership in my state.

Teachers are used to compromise – we do it everyday to make headway for kids. Please be willing to do the same again this session.

These are my asks.

_______________

First Ask: A real teacher in every classroom –

In the recent past, politicians, administrators and businessmen have scape-goated Nevada’s education problems onto those working directly with students – the teachers.

This has lead to unfunded mandates, witch-hunt type behavior, firing professionals, and driving off good teachers in our state. This never made sense – since the classroom teacher is directed by many others and very little is in our control at any level. My day is outlined and many classrooms are micromanaged to the point of damaging students. And the supplies are very limited. Teachers were blamed none-the-less.

These attacks on professional teachers occurred on both sides of the aisle.

Less productive.

We are the front line. We never were the enemy.

Now we have at-risk schools filled with under-prepared people struggling to become an educator. It is the poor, the disenfranchised, and the needy who do not have a teacher for several years in a row. If a child has an IEP and a special education need, they probably do not have a prepared professional to implement the plan.

This is reform?

We need to step back from attacks on collective bargaining, whittling teacher due process, and proclamations that skilled teachers are the problem. Filling our schools with temporary labor is damaging a generation of students – mainly students of color.

Spending all our time looking for the “lemon” instead of retaining the “good guys” is costly in more ways than one.

_______________________

Second Ask: Stop funding scams and craziness.

In an effort to produce quick results, Nevada grabs ideas from other states. These ideas have not proven themselves and flaunt questionable research. None have proven effective with populations as diverse as ours. These Nevada legislative ideas are failing on epic levels and need to be cleaned up.

– Charters are a disaster in Nevada. The amount of fraud, embezzlement, and criminal type behavior occurring in Nevada’s charters is astounding. The bipartisan legislature who supported and implemented reform by charter needs to put some teeth into laws to clean this mess up. I’m adding up the cost and it is millions and millions.

– Read-by-Three which is grant based will fund programs in the north. 75% of the students in need are in the south but the way the language was built – only a drizzle of funding will help students who are most likely to be punished by this legislation in Vegas. Again Nevada demands rigor without giving students and teachers resources to get the job done. Punishing 8 year olds without giving them adequate opportunity is a violation of civil rights. Read-by-Three has only been successful in states willing to fully fund early intervention. And that costs a significant amount of money. States which implement Read-By-Three as Nevada is doing without funding – fail miserably. This is not tough love – it is a crime.

-ASD [Achievement School District] is scary. Due to our lack of per pupil funding, Nevada cannot attract viable charter operators. We spent $10 million on a harbor master, Allison Serafin, to attract charters to Nevada. What a waste. We will now replace 6 failing public schools with charters who have failed elsewhere. To be watched over by the same system that allows the charter systems in Nevada to fail on an epic level already. Just how much are we spending on the Charter Authority and other groups responsible for overseeing charters? Do we continue to ask public schools to be accountable while ignoring the atrocious failure of charters? And we force charters on communities of color with the ASD – in the name of school choice. Force is not choice.

– ESA [Education Savings Accounts–or vouchers] is scary. A treasurer will determine education curriculum and spot check for fraud. Parents will “police themselves”. Blank checks will be given to mainly white affluent parents to take wherever they like or allow children to lay on the couch. And those checks will go to 8,000 applicants in the amount of $40 million in tax payer money. While lack of regulation sounds like a great idea, in Nevada education it leads to waste and fraud. This is a nightmare of waste ready to happen.

We have little money for real research based best practice but have spent millions on unproven and failing reform.

Ten years of reform and limited gains. Some reform may have damaged a generator. Of learners. Time for a return to the steady growth produced by funding best practice. It’s not fancy or flashy but it works.

____________________

Third Ask: Funding Fairness.

The Southern Caucus needs to advocate for our children.

In a bipartisan manner, the southern caucus needs to work and make progress for our children. Teachers and students need our legislators to do the heavy lift for the kids in our area. Frankly we need money.

The south generates most of the revenue for the state. 80% of the DSA (Distributive Schools Account) is funding put there from Clark County.

Clark County receives 50% in return. This is the antiquated Nevada Plan.

Also the south does not have access to mining proceeds which many rural communities can also tap for school funds.

I am not advocating a grab from other schools. I am advocating for restructuring that is fair to all students wherever they reside.

The south serves students who traditionally need more financial support to be successful.

CCSD [Clark County School District: Las Vegas] has huge numbers of children in poverty.

Our students cannot continue to endure class sizes of 40 plus.

We cannot continue to ignore early intervention so vital to future success.

We have to continue to fund and expand Victory and ZOOM schools.

CCSD was considering an ELL plan which is necessary. The cost would be $1 billion to fund at a level appropriate for our learners in Clark County.

We cannot continue to train educators who leave for greener pastures. We need committed and permanent educators to see a return in teacher development investment. We need to invest in teacher pipelines and retention of excellent and fully qualified professionals. We also need teachers who reflect the faces we see in our community. It is very expensive to endure teacher churn as skilled labor looks for a better deal.

__________________________

Final Ask:

Listen up both sides of the aisle . . .

Everything costs.

Unfunded mandates that may be easily implemented in a tiny rural district, can cost multiple millions to implement in CCSD with 380,000 students and 36,000 educators.

That great idea a random legislator has – needs to have a price tag on it. Just one thing – can rob a classroom of supplies. A great idea – can mean my students do not have books. The pot is limited. The budget is already stretched thin. We have to prioritize and necessities need to come first.

We cannot continue to do more with less.

Unfunded mandates are killing public schools. Do not send that idea without cash.

Just don’t do it.

I’m looking at everyone here because I have seen it non-stop. Most returning law makers are guilty.

If we are running at a deficit of $300-$400 million, please know unfunded mandates will rob from another need.

If there is zero money. There is zero money. No money – no reform. No money – no new ideas. No money – no change. It is not that different from a budget at your house. It is not that we do not want things, we just cannot afford it right now.

Whipping teachers like we are going to row faster on a Viking ship – just leaves us too whipped to teach.

Unfunded mandates are usually implemented by teachers from our own pockets – we pull from our personal bank accounts, our families, and our time to implement that great idea. Many unfunded mandates are half implemented and just waste time and money because they are impossible. It is a burden.

Ideas cost money.

____________

Listen to me.

I am without guile.

My hands are clean as I work to teach seven year olds to read.

These are my asks.

I have spent a lifetime educating children. I am from Nevada where we used to fund near the top and achieve results near the top too. I have watched my state’s educational success plummet as our per pupil spending has declined. That is a fact proven with real data.

Educating students costs.

Competition has not and will not improve Nevada’s system.

Tough love, fads and gimmicks are draining precious resources.

Teachers will fail if we do not have what we need to do the job.

Some things are more important than winning and losing a political game.

Please work together for kids this session in a well thought out way that makes progress.

You expect a lot from teachers.

Teachers need resources spent the right way to make progress.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Nevada, Privatization, Teach for America, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers

G. F. Brandenburg: Lies Reformers Tell

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2016 //
14

G. F. Brandenburg, a fearless blogger who taught math for many years in the schools of D.C., writes here about the hypocrisy of reformer rhetoric. 

 

He writes:

 

If you look at the lingo used to justify all the horrendous crap being imposed by “Ed reform”, you’ll see that it’s all couched in lefty-liberal civil rights language. But its results are anything but. Very strange.

 

He takes, for example, the flowery language used to recruit college students to join Teach for America. They are led to believe that their presence will reduce the achievement gap and bring us closer to the day when all children, regardless of zip code, get an excellent education.

 

 

He writes:

 

GFB: However, the way TFA works in practice is that the kids who need the most experienced, skillful teachers, instead get total newbies straight out of college with no teaching experience, no mentoring, and courses on how to teach whatever subject they are they are assigned to. Their five weeks of summer training are mostly rah-rah cheerleading and browbeating. Their only classroom experiences during that summer are a dozen or so hours teaching a handful of kids, **in a subject or grade level totally different from whatever they will be randomly assigned to**.

What underprivileged students do NOT need is an untrained newbie who won’t stick with them. If anything, this policy INCREASES the ‘achievement gap’.

 

He then proposes 17 ideas that would actually improve the lives of children and their education. Begin, he says, by getting non-educators out of the drivers’ seat.

 

Get people who don’t have actual, extensive teaching or research experience out of the command and control centers of education except as advisors. So, no Michelle Rhee, Andre Agassi, Arne Duncan, Billionaire Broad at the helm.

 

Read his other good ideas, and add your own.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Teach for America, Teachers and Teaching, U.S. education

A Reader: Where Should the Money Go?

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2016 //
12

After listening to the debate between Duke Professor Helen Ladd and Harvard Professor Marty West about the funding of our schools (“Getting Our Money’s Worth“), a reader sent this comment:

 

I don’t understand why we’re not talking more about the great things our teachers are doing in spite of being under funded. What don’t our schools have? My goddaughter asked for a ream of copy paper for Christmas a couple of years ago! Her whiteboard is actually plastic shower stall wall material that can’t be cleaned. She works in the Boston area.

 

Our schools are giving our students wonderful, whole child educations. They’re winning awards for the wonderful things they do with parents, students and other community members but we rarely talk about it.

 

What do the almighty (all richy) charters have – facilities in good repair with great technology, small classes, resources we can’t even dream about? That’s what I hear is the case for many charters. Where does that money come from? Do they save so much by not paying certified teachers that they can afford all those amenities or do they get tax deductible gifts from afar? How much more money does all their splendor take? Can community public schools get some from the same places? How about just enough for small classes?

 

Proud of public schools
Mary

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Supporting public schools, Teachers and Teaching

United Educators of San Francisco Defends Academic Freedom of Frank Navarro

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2016 //
9

Frank Navarro is the veteran history teacher who was briefly suspended from his work at Mountain View High School for discussing parallels between the rise of Hitler and the rise of Trump. The actual content of his lesson has not been disclosed. He is a specialist in the teaching of the Holocaust. He is back in his classroom.

The United Educators of San Francisco released the following statement supporting his freedom to teach:

Affirming the right to Academic Freedom

Many UESF members have expressed great concern over teacher Frank Navarro being placed on leave from his teaching duties at Mountain View High School for pointing out the similarities between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Hitler’s rise to power. 

UESF has strong contractual language that acknowledges that a “teacher’s academic freedom is his/her right and responsibility to study, investigate, present, interpret and discuss all the relevant facts and ideas in the field of his/her professional competence. This freedom implies no limitation other than those imposed by the generally accepted standards of scholarship. As a professional, the teacher strives to maintain a spirit of free inquiry, open-mindedness and impartiality in the classroom….The teacher is free to present in the field of his or her professional competence his/her opinions convictions and with them the premises from which they are derived.(Article 6.2.1)

UESF has an unequivocal stand that academic freedom must be defended in our classrooms and in our schools.  Our students need teachers who can teach without fear of censorship or reprisal for encouraging students to be critical thinkers.

UESF has reached out to district leadership to ask that SFUSD also take a public stand in defense of academic freedom. We contacted the Mountain View Teachers Association to offer our support for Frank Navarro and his union. Finally, we also reached out to CFT,CTA, NEA and AFT to urge that the state and national leadership of our affiliates take a clear public stand on this critical issue.

Lita Blanc
President, UESF

Categories Academic Freedom, Teachers and Teaching

Arthur Goldstein: Chancellor Farina, Put a Letter in My File, Please

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2016 //
17

Arthur Goldstein teaches English language learners in a high school in Queens. He is active in his union and more often than not, a thorn in its side. He writes a blog where he speaks his mind, protected by tenure.

He addresses the question that most educators will have to face in the days ahead. What do you tell the students? What do you say to Hispanic students? to Black students? to gay students? Do you still teach an anti-bias curriculum? an anti-bullying program? If you do, are you criticizing the President-elect?

Goldstein writes:

In this post, he calls on the Chancellor of the New York City public schools to put a letter in his file. He also offers a graphic/meme that he hopes will appear in every classroom in the city (or state or nation).

Chancellor Fariña declared there would be no overt political talk in class. To a degree, I understand that. It’s not my place to tell kids who I voted for. It’s not my place to tell them who to vote for either. I would never do such a thing. But I knew they would ask me anyway.

Nonetheless, on Monday, I wore a tie a little bit like the one on the right. You wouldn’t notice what was on it unless you looked closely. When the kids asked me who I was voting for, I showed them the tie. I told them that a donkey represented Democrats, and an elephant represented Republicans. They didn’t know that. They looked at my tie and said, “Oh, you’re voting for Hillary.” I was glad they asked, because I needed them to know I would not vote for someone who hated them and everything they stood for, to wit, the American dream.

I also needed them to know that I stood against all the bigoted and xenophobic statements our President-elect made. I’m sorry, Chancellor Fariña, but I’m a teacher, and unlike Donald Trump, I stand for basic decency. My classroom rule, really my only one, is, “We will treat one another with respect.”

Donald Trump failed to treat a wide swath of people with respect. He’s a hateful, vicious bully. There are all sorts of anti-bullying campaigns that go in in city schools, and I fail to see why Donald Trump should get a pass simply for having lied his way to the Presidency. So I specifically repudiated a whole group of his insidious statements. I also added LGBT to my group, and told my kids that we would not tolerate slurs to gay people in my classroom. Even my kids seem to expect a pass on that. They won’t get one.

Categories Freedom of Speech, New York City, Resistance, Students, Teachers and Teaching
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