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A Teacher in Huffman World

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2013 //
26

Tennessee state superintendent Kevin Huffman expects to get great teachers by cutting the salaries of those with advanced degrees and experience. Wonder where he learned that formula? And of course, he will evaluate teachers by test scores, aka junk science. This is supposed to improve education because the top graduates of the nation’s universities will rush to teach in a state where advanced degrees and experience don’t matter. They will, won’t they?

Here is a comment by a Tennessee teacher, who teaches Spanish:

“I’m another teacher in TN…. I love to teach, and I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life, but it’s getting harder and harder to pay the bills. Many of us, including me, have to work multiple jobs at this point, despite our degrees, training, and professional expertise.

“Among other ludicrous things, in my evaluations, I have been critiqued for my students speaking Spanish during class because “it wasn’t listed on the board as an objective” (yes, for a Spanish CLASS), and I’ve been told to “speak less Spanish when I teach” during evaluations, because my evaluators do not know Spanish. In other words, I’m supposed to teach less, so that people who do not know my content area can evaluate the quality of my teaching.

“It’s very difficult to hang in there right now.”

Categories Teachers and Teaching, Tennessee

“Declaration of Independence” by United Opt Out

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2013 //
24

United Opt Out has consistently spoken against the abuses of testing and high stakes for students and teachers.

Here is a link to their Declaration of Independence and to other important information about them.

And here is their Declaration of Independence from corporate education reform.

 

United Opt Out National http://unitedoptout.com

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IN OPPOSITION, July 4, 2013
The unanimous Declaration of the national United Opt Out,
When in the course of educating a nation, it becomes necessary for its people to restrain the political and private powers which have obfuscated the fundamental mission of a public system of education to, among other points, compensate for the proclivities of the Laws of Nature to separate and exclude swaths of humankind into those that have and those without.

That to secure this broad mission of a public education, Governments are commissioned by its people to serve unequivocally the explicit needs of those to be educated. It is not to relinquish control of the purposes of education to incorporated powers which deign the will of a free People to determine the means and ends of their cultural developments.

Whenever any Government or Agent of the State abrogates the responsibility to defend the general preparations of its future citizens from untoward profit-making, it is the Right of the Educated to alter or to refuse impositions, and to institute a new Education, laying its foundation on principles and powers to most likely effect their Autonomy, Freedom, and Happiness.

Love, indeed, will resolve that a public system of Education long established should not be upended for fickle and makeshift designs, and accordingly all experience has shown, that an aspirational People are disposed to trust, as certain evils are trustworthy, when impossible oaths are expressed as guarantees of accomplishment. That such promises are made by representatives of the Education State, to whom its People have become accustomed, is the most perverse injury of all.

But when a long record of exploitations and failures, in pursuit of objectives that evince a design to reduce the Educated to absolute Quantification, in effect leading to total economic Exploitation, it is their right, it is their obligation, to refuse such Education, and to provide new Custodians for their future achievement. Such has been the persistent sufferance of the Educated, particular to Inhabitants of the most meager of circumstances; and such is now the requisition which prohibits them from amending their rightful System of Education.

The history of the present Secretary of Education, of his maids of State, and sycophants in unelected offices, is a history of recurring ignorance and ineptitude, all having in ultimate purpose the reduction of the Educated to singularly objective values that are inherently valueless. It is with this Ignorance and Ineptitude that the current Government wields an inseparable Autocratic alliance between Incorporated and State interests against the wishes of the People.

To prove this, let United Opt Out submit these Facts to a candid world:

• He has refused to reduce inequality and segregation, the most unwholesome and unnecessary for a public Education.

United Opt Out National http://unitedoptout.com

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  • He has constrained the role of professional Educators and contributed to their egregious humiliation in the face of unreasonable scrutiny from the State.
  • He has ignored significant corrective actions necessary to diminish disparities in opportunities, resources, and human capital in Education as sanctioned by the Fiscal Fairness Act.
  • For refusal to recommend other Laws or Regulations for the Rightful accommodation of large groups of students, principally second language, impoverished, and students of color, unless Schools relinquish the autonomy of Educators and control of their Curriculum, needs inestimable to them and formidable to ideologues only.
  • He condones through inadequate and narrow investigations a professional culture of Lying, Cheating, and Exploitation within School communities.
  • He has endeavored to prevent School populations from selecting refusal of specific Federal impositions that hinder local needs from an erroneous Competition for funds, such that these limited monies could not possibly repair previous and egregious breaches in support, that otherwise bind Schools and Districts to compliance.
  • For taking away our traditional public Schools in favor of Charters, altering our most valuable laws to hasten dissolutions, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Local Boards to enact control of Mayors as opposed to the People expressly.
  • For Accommodating large bodies of untrained Educators among us:
    • For protecting them, by granting certain exceptions, from qualification for any

      Educator position which they hold in the most challenging Schools;

    • For imposing Subsidies on public School systems to sponsor amateurs;
    • For shielding open Educator positions, that should otherwise be available to

      qualified candidates, for provisional Recruits.

  • He has excited insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the

    inhabitants of our cities against each other, setting as rivals the poor against the poor, to become executioners of their own friends and Brethren, to fall themselves by their Hands, to enable the affluent in escaping responsibility.

  • He has affected to render Corporations independent of and superior to the Civil power.
  • He has exacerbated the conditions dissolving elected Boards repeatedly, for opposing with effete vacillation his encroachment on the rights of the people.
  • He has denied sufficient protections to confidential information gathered by private entities in the process of public Education; ignored the apprehensions expressed by the caregivers of the students of our public Schools therein; and perseveres in implementation of diffuse collection methods in defiance of personal Privacy.
  • For conscripting the publicly Educated into labour on behalf of Private entities to refine the instruments of our own Oppression; not for the re-investment of knowledge and resources acquired, but to enrich the remunerative coffers of speculators.
  • He has abdicated Government in the defense of public Education by declaring Accountability greater to Preservation, and waging Wars of Attrition against us.

United Opt Out National http://unitedoptout.com

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In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Secretary of Education whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Profiteer, is unfit to be the warden of a Public lavatory let alone a free system of Public Education.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Private brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their Board members to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of our Allegiance to the public in Education. We have appealed to their assumed senses of innate justice and fairness, and we have summoned them by the ties of our common citizenship to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our cooperation and camaraderie. They too have been deaf to the voices of equality and solidarity. We must, therefore, submit to this necessity, which denounces our Disobedience, and hold them, as we hold us all, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Administrators of the national United Opt Out, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the free people of this Nation for the integrity of our intentions, do, in the Name and our Authority, defiantly publish and declare, That our public systems of Education are, and of Right ought to be, Absolved from any and all Obligations, Oppressions, and Exploitations set forth only by Private and Unelected Associations; that we assert the abilities to Choose and Refuse certain Acts and Things that violate the interminable conscientiousness of professional Educators; and that as Discerning and Intellectual personnel, charged with labors few are wont or capable to do, we have full Power to secure our own professional identities, determine to Whom and under what conditions for which we are Accountable, and succeed with significant voice to govern the Laws of our work.

And for support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Good Sense and a Common Destiny, we mutually pledge each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor. 

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching

Scenes I’d Like to See: Pundits Teaching

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2013 //
30

A reader, Karl Gabbey, has a proposal:

“MAD Magazine once had a page in each edition entitled, “Scenes We’d Like To See,” that depicted a bit of “Schadenfreude” about people who deserved it. It might be fun to see loudmouthed politicians and assorted corporate types who consider themselves “educational experts” teach for an extended period of time. I have a suggestion: They ought to teach high school academic subjects with a minimum of 125 students per day preferably in rural or inner city schools, carry a full class load each school day with a minimum of three daily preparations, plus coach after-school sports without additional compensation. They should be required on their own time to write college recommendations for any seniors. Let’s not forget cafeteria or hall supervision. They should communicate regularly by phone e-mail, or have conferences with all parents about their sons’ or daughters’ academic progress. Hopefully, they’ll also have the opportunity to attend in-service workshops. Throughout the year, they should supervise other school activities like debate tournaments, plays, concerts, and of course the junior/senior prom. As a crowning touch, their performance(s) for the year should be rated by parents and students. That would be truly a “scene that I’d like to see.”

“P.S. I could add some more items like paying for class supplies, arranging and supervising a field trip, chaperoning class trips, or taking additional post-graduate evening or summer classes at their own expense to upgrade knowledge in their fields or to improve their teaching methods but those could be a bit much for a rookie and may border on cruelty.”

Categories Teachers and Teaching

My Message to the Badass Association of Teachers

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2013 //
114

I was uneasy with the name , but I got over it.

The reality is that the Badass Association of Teachers fills a need. Teachers have been beaten up in the media, and have seen state after state strip away their academic freedom, their rights, their status in the community.

I was invited to join and to write an address to the BAT. This is it.

And here it is in full (by the way, I am uncomfortable with the name lie many others, but our struggle requires militants and BAT is the point of the spear):

Message of Support from Diane Ravitch to the Badass Teachers Association

Dear Members of the Badass Teachers Association,

I am honored to join your group.

The best hope for the future of our society, of public education, and of the education profession is that people stand up and resist.

Say “no.” Say it loud and say it often.

Teachers must resist, because you care about your students, and you care about your profession. You became a teacher to make a difference in the lives of children, not to take orders and obey the dictates of someone who doesn’t know your students.

Parents must resist, to protect their children from the harm inflicted on them by high-stakes testing.

Administrators must resist, because their job is changing from that of coach to enforcer of rules and regulations. Instead of inspiring, supporting, and leading their staff, they are expected to crack the whip of authority.

School board members must resist, because the federal government is usurping their ability to make decisions that are right for their schools and their communities.

Students must resist because their education and their future are being destroyed by those who would force them to be judged solely by standardized tests.

Everyone who cares about the future of our democracy must resist, because public education is under attack, and public education is a foundation stone of our democracy. We must resist the phony rhetoric of “No Child Left Behind,” which leaves every child behind, and we must resist the phony rhetoric of “Race to the Top,” which makes high-stakes testing the be-all and end-all of schooling. The very notion of a “race to the top” is inconsistent with our democratic idea of equality of educational opportunity.

We live in an era of ignorant policy shaped by politicians who have never taught a day in their lives.

We live in a time when politicians and policymakers think that all children will get higher test scores if they are tested incessantly. They think that students who can’t clear a four-foot bar will jump higher if the bar is raised to six feet.

We live in a time when entrepreneurs are eyeing the schools and their budgets as a source of profit, a chance to monetize the children, an emerging market. Make no mistake: They want to make education more cost-effective by eliminating your profession and eliminating you. Their ideal would be 100 children in front of computers, monitored by classroom aides.

You must resist, because if you do not, we will lose public education in the United States and the teaching profession will become a job, not a profession. What is happening today is not about “reform” or even “improvement,” it is about cutting costs, reducing the status of teachers, and removing from education every last shred of the joy of learning.

It is time to resist.

Badass Teachers, as you resist, be creative. Writing letters to the editor is good but it is not enough. Writing letters to the President is good, but it is not enough.

Be creative. The members of the Providence Student Union have led the way. They staged a zombie march in front of the Rhode Island Department of Education to demonstrate their opposition to the use of a standardized test as a high school graduation requirement. They invited 60 accomplished professionals to take the released items from the test, and most failed. This convincingly demonstrated the absurdity of using the test as a requirement for graduation. When the state commissioner of education who was the main backer of the tests scheduled her annual “state of education” speech, the students scheduled their first “state of the student” speech.

Act together. A single nail gets hammered. When all the nails stick up, the people with the hammers run away. When the teachers of Garfield High School in Seattle boycotted the MAP test, they won: the test was canceled and no one faced retribution.

Be brave. When you stand together and raise your voices, you are powerful.

Thank you for counting me as one of your own.

I salute you.

Diane Ravitch

Categories Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Is Eli Broad Abandoning TFA?

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2013 //
55

In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad heaps praise on the much-maligned report of the National Council on Teacher Quality. For a foundation that claims to care most of all about performance, not inputs, Broad is surprisingly willing to endorse a report based solely on a review of course readings and catalogues, not results. That is probably because his foundation helped to support the “study.” He is impressed that the report was “eights years in the making,” but doesn’t mention that the NCTQ was created only 13 years ago by a conservative think tank to act as a battering ram against schools of education. This report is the culmination of its ambitions.

Bear in mind: NCTQ is not a professional association; it is not a research organization; it is not a think tank. It is an advocacy organization that promotes alternative ways to become a teacher, that is, alternative to going to an education school.

Broad’s recommends that future teachers be deeply grounded in their subject and that they participate in a high-quality residency program.

He writes: “We would never allow a medical student to perform surgery without participating in a high-quality residency program and studying under the careful eye of an experienced physician. We shouldn’t force new teachers to enter the classroom without the same type of support and training.”

Medical students are not allowed to perform surgeries without years of training in medical schools, internship, and residency. That leaves out Teach for America.

Is Eli Broad turning his back on Teach for America?

Categories Corporate Reformers, Teach for America TFA, Teachers and Teaching

The Origins of BAT: When Reason Doesn’t Work

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2013 //
20

Mark Naison, one of the founders and leaders of the Badass Association of Teachers, explains why BAT became necessary, and why its numbers have grown so dramatically:

 

When Reason Doesn’t Work: Another Explanation for “The Rise of the BATs”

Many people have criticized the “Badass Teachers Association” for its unprofessional sounding name and in your face image, but the meteoric rise of this group didn’t come out of nowhere.  All over the country educators have faced policies imposed from above by education officials-political appointees all- which violate their best practices and common sense, but have had no success whatsoever modifying these policies by writing position papers, mounting petition drives or testifying before the few open forums where such policies are discussed

 

Let’s use New York State as an example. During the last year, the Governor, the Legislature, and the State Education Department have imposed on school districts throughout the state protocols for teacher evaluation that are expensive, complicated, time consuming, unfair, and in the judgment of most principals in the state, completely unworkable. Some of the best principals in the state organized to challenge the new system. They wrote an extensive, well researched critique of the policies, circulated a principals letter with thousands of signatures, got even more signatures on a parents letter, and tried to testify at allegedly “open hearings” held by the state’s

“Education Reform Commission,” but found themselves marginalized and rebuffed.  The policies have been literally rammed down the throat of school districts by the Governor, who now have to cope with massive demoralization of teachers and administrators, the smothering of creative pedagogy in favor of “teaching to the test” and the cancellation of beloved art, music and sports programs to pay for the unfunded mandates the new system requires.

 

This  misapplication and intensification of high stakes testing provoked a huge statewide test revolt organized by parents, concentrated in Long Island, the Hudson Valley and Western New York,  as well as a broad based movement against Common Core Standards,  but is it any wonder that teachers, whose union leaders reluctantly supported the plan, are also rising up?

 

Teachers and children’s lives are being destroyed every day in New York State  and some teachers decided that  maybe a new, more confrontational style was required to deal with the arrogance of policy makers and  the astro turf, billionaire supported education policy groups behind the new policies.  So Badass Teachers Association was born, fueled by that rage and disappointment.

 

That is touched a chord with teachers throughout the nation, and the world, says something about how much concentrated power, and concentrated wealth, has undermined even the the pretense of democratic discussion regarding education policies.

 

Maybe it’s time to fight fire with fire.

 

Categories Corporate Reformers, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

They Closed My School, But It Will Always Be in My Heart: CORRECTION!

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2013 //
15

In my original post, I miscredited the author of this piece. It is Carina Hilbert. I attributed the piece to someone who retweeted it. My apologies to Carina Hilbert.

Here is the link to her blog.

Teacher Carina Hilbert is heart-broken. She was proud to work at Albion High School. She loved the kids. The kids were the best. So was the staff.

But they closed the school.

It hurts her to think about it, to talk about it, to write it.

“I may be gone from AHS, but a piece of my heart will always be there, hidden away in room 121, where magic happened, students learned and grew, and lives were changed. We are all Wildcats.”

Who are “they”? Who are these cold, callous people who blithely shut down a beloved school and disrupt communities? How dare they? And they piously claim they are doing it “for the children.” Did they ask the children? Did they ask their parents?

Of course not.

Categories Closing schools, Education Industry, Michigan, Teachers and Teaching

Arthur Camins: Why the Debate Over Standards Flounders

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2013 //
12

Arthur Camins has written an insightful critique of the current debate over standards. As he puts it, “the past gets in our eyes.”

Camins begins:

“The Common Core State Standards for Reading and Mathematics appear to be simultaneouslyunstoppable trains and under siege, making strange bedfellows of both supporters and opponents.

Two issues cloud the debate about their validity, value and efficacy: (1) The idea of standards
has been conflated with standardization; (2) Standards have become inextricably linked to highstakes assessments. This has superseded a deeper meaning of assessment- the daily cycle of
diagnosis and feedback to students that marks the practice of every effective teacher.
However, there is something deeper contributing the cloudiness. I am reminded of a classic
Peanuts cartoon in which Lucy laments upon missing a fly ball, “Sorry I missed that easy fly ball,
manager. I thought I had it, but suddenly I remembered all the others I’ve missed. The past got in
my eyes!”

Camins notes a strange paradox: The supporters of “reform” says that the best schools (i.e., charters and vouchers) have autonomy, while the opponents of the Common Core say that teachers need autonomy.

He writes:

“Ironically, the critique of standards as unwarranted, creativity-stifling impositionsis grounded in many of the same autonomy assumptions about the power of unencumbered individuals to drive innovation and improvement. For example, many supporters and critics appear to share the idea that regulation stifles creativity. What separates the two perspectives is a different notion of size and characteristics of the group that can be trusted with autonomy. For supporters of standards, high-stakes assessments, charter schools, and privatization, the group to be counted upon is small: the really smart entrepreneurs. For some opponents, the number is large: virtually everyone.

Curious, this idea that schools should have autonomy, but teachers should not.

Read this provocative article.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Fairfax County Teacher: Why I Quit

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2013 //
14

Ron Maggiano taught history and social studies in the Fairfax County (Virginia) public schools for 33 years. Along the way, he picked up many awards for his excellent teaching.

Here he reflects on why he quit a career he loved.

“Now more than three decades later, I have just spent my last day as a teacher. I resigned my teaching position because I can no longer cooperate with the standardized testing regime that is destroying creativity and stifling imagination in the classroom. I am sad, angry, hurt, and dismayed by what has happened to education and to the teaching profession that I so dearly love.

“It was a difficult decision, but I am confident that it was the correct one. For me this was a moral choice. I believe that our current national obsession with high-stakes testing is wrong, because it hurts kids and deprives students of an education that is meaningful, imaginative, and relevant to the demands of the 21st century.”

And more,

“More significantly, critical thinking skills and analytical problem solving have now been replaced with rote memorization and simple recall of facts, figures, names, and dates. Educators have been forced to adopt a “drill and kill” model of teaching to ensure that their students pass the all-important end-of-course test. Teaching to the test, a practice once universally condemned administrators and educators alike, has now become the new normal in classrooms across the country.

“If teaching to the test was wrong 30 some years ago when I first entered the classroom, it is just as wrong today as I leave my classroom for the final time. The fact is that we are not really educating our students. We are merely teaching them how to pass a test.”

Categories Teachers and Teaching, Testing

A BAT Teacher’s Dream

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2013 //
19

Want to know why the Badass Association of Teachers were created.

It is because of stories like this one.

Amanda wanted to be a teacher for as long as she can remember. She loved teaching. She was laid off. Thousands of other teachers could tell the same story.

Does anyone care?

Teachers care. They know that they could be next. That’s why the BAT gathered more than 20,000 members in only two weeks.

There is poison in the air. It is toxic to teachers and to children. It is time to say no. It is time to join the resistance.

Categories Teachers and Teaching
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