Archives for category: Teachers and Teaching
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Why Did Stores Abandon Teacher Appreciation Day?

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2013 //
16

This article tells a sad story of teachers in San Francisco who count on a yearly event called Teacher Appreciation Day to get free stuff for their students. Before the era of deep budget cuts, teachers didn’t have to forage for school supplies. But once the budget cutting started, it never ended.

The teacher in this story plans her day and figures she can visit nine stores to pick up free stuff that her students will need. But in store after store, the best she can finagle is an empty shopping bag. If her students need notebooks and pencils, teacher must pay for them out of her salary.

Categories Budget Cuts, Teachers and Teaching

What’s Not to Like About Exeter? Sidwell? Lakeside? Dalton?

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2013 //
133

The folks at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute are struggling to come to terms with the New York testing disaster. They certainly will not retreat from their deep faith in standardized testing, and they insist that there must be more parent choice, even though parents are sick of the excessive testing and most continue to choose their neighborhood school, if they still have one.

This is my favorite line:

“Reform critics like Diane Ravitch often question why we don’t push reforms that would create a “Sidwell Friends” for every student. Putting aside where we would find the extra $1.6 trillion it would take to make that possible, there is a simpler answer: some of us don’t want Sidwell Friends. And just because some believe the elite culture of the top 1 percent is what’s best for all children, doesn’t mean all parents share that belief.”

I can’t say where that $1.6 trillion number comes from. I went to ordinary public schools that did not face annual budget crisis, that did not squander millions on standardized testing, that provided arts programming and daily physical education and foreign languages, that did not fire teachers if students got low test scores. But people who did not go to ordinary public schools may not know that.

What I want to challenge here is the assertion that “some of us don’t want” what the best private schools have to offer.

Who wouldn’t want what Sidwell offers? Or Exeter? Or Lakeside Academy in Seattle?

Who wouldn’t want classes of 12-15 instead of 35-40?

Who wouldn’t want a beautiful campus?

Who wouldn’t want experienced, respected teachers?

Who wouldn’t want a rich curriculum with science labs, history projects, drama and music, and lots of sports every day?

Who wouldn’t want to go to a school that never gave standardized tests and didn’t judge teachers by students test scores?

Maybe there are such people. I have never met them. Maybe they work at Fordham or the Gates Foundation, but I doubt it.

Categories Class size, Curriculum, Parents, Standardized Testing, Teachers and Teaching

Who Was Your Favorite Teacher?

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2013 //
36

This is a terrific website.

Readers answer the question, “who was your favorite teacher and why?”

It is fun to read the responses.

People write about teachers who were strict and demanding; they write about teachers who were passionate about their subject; they write about teachers who were inspiring; they write about teachers who were fun and pulled pranks; they write about their physics teacher, their German teacher, their music teacher.

I couldn’t find anyone who wrote about the teacher who raised their test scores.

Categories Teachers and Teaching

Teacher: Too Many Ignorant Know-It-Alls

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2013 //
19

This teacher is tired of getting instructions from inexperienced policymakers and politicians.

He writes:

“Really! We always seem to pay the price for self proclaimed “know-it-alls” when it comes to Schools. Why is it those who have never stepped foot in a school since the day they (dropped out) or graduated seem to think they can do better than those who have invested in a higher education as well as time, blood/sweat/tears working to change the tide?

“I agree, we should focus on other BAD people. How about BAD Politicians, BAD Doctors, BAD Nurses BAD (fill in the blank). For example lets make Doctors accountable for their patients recovery rate! Surely, there are lots of tests and measures to determine “adequate yearly progress” for Doctors! But, lets be fair… why don’t we pay everyone based on the “test scores” of the recipients of goods and services they provide?”

Categories Teachers and Teaching

NC: Teachers Get No Pay Raises for Masters

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2013 //
35

North Carolina legislators, ever on the hunt for ways to demoralize teachers, decided there would be no extra pay for masters’ degrees.

This is their way of showing their contempt for education. They don’t see the return on investment for a masters’ degree in history or science or special education.

Teachers with existing masters are grandfathered in, and those enrolled in masters programs now may be out if luck.

Expect the education level of teachers in NC to decline. A victory for ignorance.

Categories North Carolina, Teachers and Teaching

NC Teacher: These “Reforms” Are Insane

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2013 //
18

A reader from North Carolina explains how the legislatures so-called reforms will affect her:

“I have been teaching in NC for 13 years now. To be honest, having to sign a new contract each year or not getting a raise yet again doesn’t concern me as much as having 25+ 7 year olds with no assistant. I’ve had to share an assistant with 3 other teachers for the past few years, and that is better than having no one. The idea that teachers can meet the individual needs of all children with less time and resources is insane. During a classroom emergency (sick or violent behaving student) how am I supposed to take care of the student needing help plus keep teaching the others? I’d like to see how some of these politicians would function without their secretaries and personal assistants. Instead of trying to help public schools, they are setting us up for failure. It’s like giving a carpenter a hammer, a handsaw, a couple of boards, and a box of nails then calling him incompetent when the house isn’t built in 3 weeks.”

Categories North Carolina, Students, Teachers and Teaching

A BAT Writes a Letter to Bill Gates

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2013 //
32

Here is good advice for the Gates Foundation:

Mr. Gates,
I have been working on this letter for days now. I just can’t seem to get my thoughts down before my anger gets the best of me. Then it turns into a letter of rant which helps no one, least of all my students.

I am a 10 year veteran teacher. I have earned my BA and my MAT. I also have received National Board Certification. I am sick over this testing and evaluation mess that you sir created. It’s time that you clarify and clean up what you have caused.

You and your buddies The Walton’s and Broady’s need to finally understand that you have accomplished nothing to further education. You have caused a chasm, a divide. You have made matters worse. Because it suits your agenda you have fueled the ‘everything is the teachers fault’ fire. We know it and you know it. If you truly care about students and their success and not about dollars and data points, then you will put your resources behind proven policies.

Here are some ideas that you can research, study and then support. These are changes that have actually been proven to be successful.
1. No for-profit schools. No one should make a dime off of students.
2. No standardized tests until high school. PreK-8th grade should be the time to instill curiosity, a drive to learn and to find what excites them.
3. Schools of Education should be extremely selective. Only the best and brightest should be accepted.
4. Educators should be held in high esteem as the professionals they are and paid accordingly.
5. End the competition between public schools. Support collaboration and cooperation.
6. Teachers should be expected to teach 4 classes (approximately 4 hours) per day.
7. Teachers should be expected to collaborate during the school day.
8. School meals should be free.
9. Health care should be accessible. Nurses at all prek-8th grade schools.
10. Individualized guidance for all students.

You finally agree that teachers should be at the table for policy discussions. Here I am. Hear me now: We are mad and we are NOT going to take it anymore. STOP this testing craze. STOP the school to prison pipeline. STOP closing schools. STOP making money off our children!

We won’t back down,
One of many BATs

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teachers and Teaching

Nancy Flanagan Dissects the Latest Harebrained Reform Idea

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2013 //
23

Nancy Flanagan taught music in Michigan for many years. She now blogs at Edweek.

In this post, she dissects a new reformy idea called “the opportunity culture.” The bottom line is that if you are in the top 25% of teachers, determined by test scores, then you should teach larger classes and get paid more. This is Bill Gates’ and Michael Bloomberg’s dream.

Nancy is at her best in this column. You deserve a break today. Read it and enjoy the absurdity of this latest gambit.

Here is a small sample of Nancy’s post:

“How did this exciting window of opportunity emerge? Public Impact explains:

“Only 25 percent of classes are taught by excellent teachers. With an excellent teacher versus an average teacher, students make about an extra half-year of progress every year–closing achievement gaps fast, leaping ahead to become honors students, and surging forward like top international peers.”

“That’s a whole lot of leaping and surging. Unfortunately, it’s based on a faux statistic, sitting triumphantly on a pyramid of dubious research, prettied up with some post-modern infographics. Like other overhyped blah-blah of “reform”–the “three great teachers in a row” myth, for example, or nearly every “fact” in Waiting for Superman–it’s a triumph of slick media slogans over substance. A quick look at the Opportunity Culture Advisory Team tells you what the real purpose of the OC is: cutting teachers, privatizing services, plugging charters and cultivating a little astroturf to cover the scars.

“The Opportunity Culture’s bold plan begins with a policy recommendation: Schools should be required by law to identify the top 25% of their teachers. Then, once that simple task is completed, OC suggests ten exciting new models for staffing schools, beginning with giving these excellent teachers a lot more students (plus a merit pay carrot) and ending with enlisting “accountable remote teachers down the street or across the nation” who would “provide live, but not in-person instruction while on-site teammates manage administrative duties and develop the whole child.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Teachers and Teaching

BAT Teacher: I Am Not My Test Score!

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2013 //
6

Amanda Shaw writes here about what happened when students were allowed to write without the threat of a test hanging over them. She is a full-time elementary school teacher of music, who also helps students learn to write. In this post, she describes an experience that reminded her why she loves teaching. Imagine giving students the freedom to be creative!

Categories Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Are Teachers to Blame for Achievement Gap Between Black and White Students?

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2013 //
56

Joy Resmovits, the education reporter for Huffington Post,  is usually a sharp and thoughtful reporter, but she had a bad day today.

Today she posted an article blaming “bad” teachers for the achievement gap between black and white students.

Along the way, she makes some factual errors. For example, she states that the achievement gap in ninth grade reading narrowed from 1994-2012, from 33 points to 13.

But that is wrong, for two reasons.

First, NAEP doesn’t test ninth grade. It tests fourth and eighth grades.

Second, the achievement gap for eighth grade shrank during that period from 30 points to 25 points.

She says the achievement gap persists because black students get less experienced teachers (Teach for America?) and have less success in raising test scores (tautology, anyone?).

Joy should know that the achievement gap exists before the first day of school in kindergarten.

It is nourished by large socioeconomic differences.

The achievement gap is an opportunity gap.

Black students are far likelier than white students to live in poverty, to miss school because of illness, to live in bad housing, to be homeless, to have less access to medical care, to live with tremendous economic insecurity.

Their families have fewer resources to invest in them.

The fact that there is an achievement gap is not prima facie evidence that those who teach black students are not good teachers.

Frankly, it is not like Joy to sound like Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, and Arne Duncan.

Joy Resmovits owes an apology to the many thousands of urban teachers who are hard-working, dedicated to their students, and determined to educate them despite the insults hurled their way by politicians and the media.

 

Categories NAEP, Poverty, Teachers and Teaching
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