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News! Michelle Rhee is Merging StudentsFirst with 50CAN

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2016 //
31

The world of rightwing corporate reform is ever-changing. It seems like only yesterday that Michelle Rhee announced her intention to challenge teachers’ unions, destroy tenure, and take away due process from teachers across the nation. She said she would raise $1 billion in a year and gather 1 million members for her new organization, which she called StudentsFirst, because (she said) teachers don’t care about students, only billionaires really care. She did raise some money–only $7 million or so, far from $1 billion–and she spent it trying to elect Tea Party Republicans and others who support charters and vouchers. Her organization turned into the public voice of anti-teacher, anti-public school activism. But in 2014, she stepped back from the national stage to help her husband Kevin Johnson, the Mayor of Sacramento (whom she married in 2011), and joined the board of Scott’s Miracle-Gro. She also assumed the chairmanship of her husband’s charter chain, St. Hope.

 

And now we learn that Michelle Rhee is folding the tents of StudentsFirst and merging it with 50CAN. The latter organization is funded by hedge fund managers and the Sackler family of Connecticut, whose fortune was made from pharmaceuticals, specifically the opiod drug Oxycontin, that is now causing so much addiction and death across the nation. Forbes says they are the 16th richest family in America. Jonathan Sackler’s daughter Madeleine made a documentary about Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain called “The Lottery.” It gave viewers the impression that these were the world’s most magical schools, and any child lucky enough to win the lottery would have a blessed life. Never having attended a public school, she bought into the myth that they are horrid places that one must escape from, and that charter schools are sort of like the private school she attended in Greenwich.

 

The leader of StudentsFirst is Jim Blew, who most recently worked for the Walton Family Foundation (e.g., Walmart money), which funds StudentsFirst, Teach for America, KIPP, and every organization that promotes the privatization of public education. Now Blew will head the California branch of StudentsFirst, whatever is left of it after the merger.

 

What a close and tight knit world the corporate reformers live in!

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Testing

Parents Applaud Election of Betty Rosa as Chancellor of New York Board of Regents

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2016 //
7

Parents in New York are thrilled by the ascent of Dr. Betty Rosa as Chancellor of the New York Board of Regents.

 

They know that she is knowledgeable, experienced, and sensitive to the needs of children with disabilities and English language learners.

 

They know she has openly supported the parents who opt their children out of state testing that is too long, developmentally inappropriate, and invalid. Whereas the previous chancellor, Merryl Tisch, vocally supported the Common Core and the high-stakes testing, Rosa has made her skepticism clear. Tisch insisted that the state tests provide important information to help children, but parents and teachers know that a score of 1, 2, 3, or 4 is not useful information, nor is it helpful to know what percentile rank your child or student has.

 

Rosa has also actively supported vigorous state action to protect the mostly-minority children of East Ramapo, whose school board is dominated by orthodox Jews whose own children are not in public schools and who have starved the public schools of resources to keep taxes low.

 

“Bravo, Betty,” lohud commenter Teddy Gross said on an article reporting the chancellor-elect’s support for the testing opt-out movement.

 

The chancellor-elect expressed support for opt-out parents, just weeks before the grade 3-8 assessment tests are to begin. Citing her own two, now grown children, Rosa told the Capitol Pressroom radio show that one of her kids found testing stressful. “As a family, we would make a decision about my two children,” she said Tuesday, expressing concern about whether she could be certain that the tests had “an entry point where my child would feel successful with it.”

 

 

While Rosa has criticized both tying teacher evaluations to test scores and Common Core, Tisch championed a rapid-fire implementation of Common Core standards and bought into high-stakes testing. Their backgrounds also couldn’t be more different: Tisch has devoted much time, and family wealth, to civic and philanthropic endeavors; Rosa, the first Latina chancellor, was born in New York City but raised partly in Puerto Rico, and later worked as a teacher and administrator. One overlap: Both have Ivy League Ph.Ds.

 

The state has already made changes to this year’s standardized testing regimen, with shorter tests and unlimited time allowed. The Regents also voted to stop using state test scores for teacher evaluations for the next few years — only data-centric Tisch voted against the move.

 

Who is Betty Rosa? Read her official biography here on the Regents’ website.

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, New York, Opt Out, Testing

Carol Burris: The Coming Collapse of Corporate Reform in New York

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2016 //
27

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, has been active in the resistance to New York’s state’s reliance on high-stakes testing for several years. As a high school principal, she helped to organize other principals across the state in opposition to test-based evaluation of both principals and teachers. About 40 percent of the state’s principals signed the petition opposing the so-called Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) based on test scores.

 

In this article, she describes the recent dramatic turn of events in New York. This state led the way in corporate-style reform. For many years, the Board of Regents–the state’s governing body for education–has strongly supported standards, testing, and accountability as the key to statewide success. Since the passage of charter legislation in 1998, the charter sector has grown, especially in the state’s urban districts. The leader of the Regents, Merryl Tisch, is a member of one of the city’s wealthiest and most philanthropic families. Tisch was a member of the Regents for the past 20 years, and chancellor since 2009. She pushed hard to win a Race to the Top grant of $700 million. She pushed hard for Common Core and rigorous testing. She selected David Steiner of Hunter College as Commissioner of Education, then pushed him aside and selected John King. She said it was all about the kids, particularly the poor kids. She thought that high standards and rigorous tests would be good for them.

 

But then came the parent opt out rebellion, and state officials went into a frenzy trying to figure out how to placate the angry parents. As it happened, Tisch lost her most powerful political ally in the legislature, and suddenly the landscape began to change. There are 17 members of the Board of Regents. Less than a year ago, six of them signed a letter protesting Governor Cuomo’s demand for tougher testing, accountability, and teacher evaluation policies. (A seventh member gave conditional support to the dissidents.) At the time, the dissidents seemed to be fighting a steep uphill battle, with the governor and the board majority opposed to their ideas. A month after the issuance of their letter, the board hired MaryEllen Elia as state commissioner to replace the unpopular John King. Elia was well known as an ardent advocate for high-stakes testing, the Common Core, and test-based accountability.

 

Burris explains in her article the miraculous revolution that occurred in less than a year.

 

Tisch announced that she would not run for reappointment by the Legislature. One of the dissidents, Dr. Betty Rosa, announced that she wanted to succeed Tisch. The possibility of Rosa winning seemed far-fetched. But incredibly, she was elected in a secret ballotmby the Regents on a vote of 15-0, with two abstentions.

 

As Burris writes, Rosa has been critical of the Common Core, high-stakes testing, and test-based evaluation. She was supported by the parents in the opt out movement.

 

The dissidents have taken charge.

 

Burris writes about her personal interactions with Betty Rosa, who is a career educator:

 

Rosa was one of three Regents who voted against the teacher evaluation system known as APPR. In 2011 she met with principals and actively listened to our concerns. As a former administrator, she understood why the practice was bad for kids, and never waivered in her opposition, referring to the inclusion of scores as “poison.”
In 2013, she publicly spoke out against the Common Core, accusing the State Education Department of manipulating data and ignoring successful schools in order to create a myth of massive failure to support their reforms. And last year she led a group of seven Regents (all women and nearly all career educators), in opposition to Cuomo’s revision of teacher evaluations. The seven created a position paper of dissent regarding the Governor’s law that increased the proportion of test scores in teacher evaluations, and six of the seven voted against the New York State Education Department’s revisions.

 

Burris predicts what she expects from Rosa. She calls it a “sea change.” I call it a miracle.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, New York, Privatization, Testing

Sara Roos: The Student as Corporate Tool

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2016 //
15

Sara Roos, a public school parent who blogs as Red Queen in LA, has written a thoughtful and provocative article posted in Huffington Post.
She remembers a time when schooling was focused on the education of the student. But with the advent of mandated state testing, the balance has shifted to a paradigm. The student now performs on the test so his/her teacher and school and principal can be evaluated. 

Categories Education Reform, Students, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Researchers: Common Core and Tests Do Not Help Neediest Students

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2016 //
36

Valerie Strauss reports on an important statement signed by more than 100 education researchers, asserting that the Common Core standards will not improve the achievement of the neediest students and will not reduce the achievement gaps between haves and have nots. Furthermore, the education researchers recommended that high-stakes exams should be abandoned, because they are not reliable, valid, or fair.

 

She writes:

 

“The researchers, from public and private universities in California — including Stanford University, UCLA, and the University of California Berkeley — say that the Common Core standards themselves do not accomplish what supporters said they would and that linking them to high-stakes tests actually harms students.

 

The brief says:

 

Although proponents argue that the CCSS promotes critical thinking skills and student-centered learning (instead of rote learning), research demonstrates that imposed standards, when linked with high-stakes testing, not only deprofessionalizes teaching and narrows the curriculum, but in so doing, also reduces the quality of education and student learning, engagement, and success. The impact is also on student psychological well-being: Without an understanding that the scores have not been proven to be valid or fair for determining proficiency or college readiness, students and their parents are likely to internalize failing labels with corresponding beliefs about academic potential.

 

More specific to California: a recent study on the effects of high-stakes testing, in particular of the CA High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE), found no positive effects on student achievement and large negative effects on graduation rates. The authors estimated that graduation rates declined by 3.6 to 4.5 percentage points as a result of the state exit-exam policy, and also found that these negative effects were “concentrated among low-achieving students, minority students, and female students.”

 

 

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Testing

Angie Sullivan: Retaining Students Always Fails, Yet Legislators Love It

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2016 //
46

Angie Sullivan teaches early elementary grades in Las Vegas, where most of her students are English language learners, and all qualify for free and/or reduced price lunch. She regularly writes to legislators, trying to bring them into contact with the realities of schooling as seen by a practicing teacher.

 

She writes here about retention:

 

 

This is the time of year when primary elementary teachers discuss retention.

 

 

Even though all valid education research states retention should only be used in rare and special instances, it has become an unfortunate political remedy. When kids who are not supported properly fail academically – people leap to the conclusion that repeating a grade again is the solution. Again every scrap of real research shows this is not effective and in many cases detrimental- but it is politically popular.

 

 

http://www.nasponline.org/assets/Documents/Research%20and%20Policy/Position%20Statements/WP_GradeRetentionandSocialPromotion.pdf

 

 

Nevada has read-by-three legislation that CCSD (the Clark County School District) is preparing to implement. Another punitive measure which will be detrimental and primarily affect language learners and kids in poverty – because of lack of access and lack of proper support. It will be primarily minority students who will fail en masse in some parts of town. Legislators say it is tough love. It is actually a lack of understanding of learning and a failure to fund appropriate instruction. It is an attack on kids in poverty which is the real issue. It is very likely that two-thirds of the district will be retained at grade three if implemented.

 

 

http://www.fasp.org/PDF_Files/FASP_Publications/PP3rdGrdRet.pdf

 

 

Read-by-Three will be a living nightmare in Las Vegas. At-risk schools will balloon in second and third grades. Students will be hurt.

 

 

How do I know? Already we see the effects as Nevada teachers receive students who have been victims of this type of retention legislation in other states like Florida, Ohio, Indiana.

 

 

Currently a Stanford student who was retained in first and second grades three times in Florida – is finally being assessed for a reading disability at my school. This looks like a 10 year receiving instruction with 6 year olds in a first grade classroom – awkward and weird for everyone. It is not socially appropriate and actually disguised the real problem and best remedy. It is easier to punish a voiceless child than work to effectively to determine the real source of the problem. This child in particular was finally removed from her mother in Florida and placed with a step-father in Nevada. It is highly likely, it was parental neglect that led to her current situation and multiple retentions. Nothing that was the child’s fault, she is now socially out of place and years older than her peers. She will be 14 in the fifth grade.

 

 

Other states who have put this legislation in place already regret it or have had to revisit.

 

 

http://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25919971&bcid=25919971&rssid=25919961&item=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.edweek.org%2Fv1%2Few%2F%3Fuuid%3D68D76FA2-DD1D-11E3-AAEC-4BCDB3743667

 

 

Besides the national failure of huge retention programs, Nevada schools also manipulate scores by retaining.

 

 

There are CCSD principals who routinely fail ten students per grade level to manipulate scores. How is this done? Identify the students who scored poorly – force disenfranchised parents to sign retention paperwork. Student scores are “hidden” because retained students “do not count” in the scores the next year. This is done at many schools that supposedly showed “growth”. Is this good for kids? No. It is a game played on communities of color to satisfy politicians and a number system the community demands for supposed accountability.

 

 

Again -retention in large numbers is inappropriate. Nevada will regret it. It will hurt at-risk kids. It is a remedy that has failed in other states. It also gets manipulated, hides real problems, and punishes kids who actually require the most help.

 

 

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/08/16-student-retention-west

 

 

Please read the actual huge body of educational research. Change for the sake of change is not good change.

 

 

Retention is not best practice.

 

 

The gauntlet is already raised against 75% of children in Vegas. Poverty is the real obstacle which is not resolved by a stigma creating law which is punitive instead of requiring and funding real help.

 

 

Meanwhile I see very effective best practice – like class size reduction– is under attack in CCSD school board discussions. The acccounting gimmicks and tricks at CCSD never cease to amaze and confuse most everyone who sees the public relations campaigns against educators and kids. Never enough money unless there is a trip to take or a limo to ride in. Teachers are watching and see it all.

 

 

This is why we do not make headway.

 

 

Egos, power plays, bad managment, people who are not educators, people who have not read real educational research, implementing expensive ineffective change that won’t help anyone in my language learning, Title I, 100% free and reduced lunch classroom.

 

 

Angie

Categories English Language Learners, Failure, Poverty, Testing

Mercedes Schneider: My Three Big Concerns about ESSA

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2016 //
7

Mercedes Schneider has read the new Every Student Succeeds Act, every word of it.

 

She has three major concerns:

 

First, the bill requires 95% participation in state tests. It is vague about parents’ rights to opt their children out of the test. States can ask for waivers, but this puts them, as she puts it, “at the mercy of” the Secretary of Education.

 

Second, she is worried about the security of data that the U.S. Department of Education collects. It has confidential data on every student and teacher. In a recent hearing, Congressmen mentioned that the Department’s data system had been hacked in the past. Why trust them now?

 

Third, ESSA is as charter-friendly as NCLB. Certainly, the Department is eager to shovel millions, hundreds of millions to charters. Mercedes cites the recent decision of ED to give $71 million to Ohio charters, even as the state’s charter industry was experienced a series of charter scandals. Clearly, the Department is good at talking standards, but its own standards are mighty low.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Data and Data Mining, Delaware, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Privatization, Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Tennessee: The State Where Kids Come Last

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2016 //
15

The blogger known as “Dad Gone Wild” lives in Chattanooga, and he is astonished by the Tennessee Department of Education’s inability to schedule and complete the state testing. First, it was all going to be online, but the platform crashed. Then, it was back to paper-and-pencil, but unknown numbers of schools never received the tests. Kids were scheduled to celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday by reading, but that was canceled for testing. Now, school trips scheduled long ago will be canceled, because the testing window has moved again.

 

Remember when they said that “reform” was all about the kids? This dad thinks that none of this is for the kids or about the kids.

 

 

All the lectures I’ve received over the last couple of years about how the kids come first and now that we are in the midst of a fiasco that is basically robbing our kids of the last two months of their school year, nobody can address them. Here’s a newsflash: you only get one 4th grade March. You only get one 7th grade April. What the Tennessee Department of Education is essentially saying is that these tests supersede their needs and their right to an actual education, and that it’s not even necessary to ask kids if they are okay with giving up that time. As a parent, that angers me. As a kid, it would incense me.

 

And what about the teachers? The instructional time lost due to test preparation aside, teachers have been scrambling to create new lesson plans for all of these shifts in testing schedules. I guarantee teachers would prefer to not have to deal with this incompetence from the DOE and instead have the authority to plan lessons that would be truly beneficial to their students. It’s maddening and very time-consuming to constantly be changing the schedule. But hey, Governor Haslam and TNDOE are saying these tests won’t count, or well maybe they’ll count, but hey…let’s just take them and we’ll figure out what they count for after we have the results. Have you ever heard of such a thing? It’s insanity.

 

 

Categories Tennessee, Testing

Parents Across America on Test Stress

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2016 //
9

I accidentally posted this when I meant to edit it and add the links. The links are now inserted.

 

 
Press release *** For immediate release

 
Parents and educators stand together against growing test stress in children

 

 

March 8, 2016

 

 

Contacts: Julie Woestehoff, Interim Executive Director, Parents Across America, 773-175-3989

Laura Bowman, leader of PAA-Roanoke Valley (VA), 540-819-6385

Danielle Arnold-Schwartz, leader of PAA- Suburban Philadelphia (PA), 215-498-2549

 

 

Today, Parents Across America announces the endorsement of its position paper, “Parents Stand up Against Test Stress,” by such prominent educators as Alfie Kohn, Jonathan Kozol, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige (list follows).

 
PAA has also contacted the National Institutes of Health and the American Academy of Pediatrics asking that they investigate our concerns that high-stakes standardized testing has become a health hazard for our nation’s public school children.

 
According to Dr. Isabel Nuñez, Associate Professor in the Center for Policy and Social Justice, Concordia University Chicago:

 
“High-stakes testing is doing children grievous mental and emotional harm. Parents Across America has gathered overwhelming evidence of the destructive psychological impact of test anxiety. For your children’s sake, read and be outraged!”

 
Dr. Peter Gray, a research professor in the department of Psychology, Boston College, added:

 
“The evidence is overwhelming that our national mania for testing–and for so much time in school and at schoolwork–is damaging the physical and psychological health of our children. I appreciate the work of Parents Across America and sincerely hope that the educational powers that be start to listen. What we have today is, essentially, state-mandated child abuse.”

 
Testing in the early years, which is strongly opposed by early childhood professionals, is taking a toll. According to Dr. Nancy Carlsson-Paige,
“As we see testing increasingly edge out play and active learning in classrooms for young kids, we also see more and more children who don’t like school, who feel way too much pressure, who don’t want to go to this place that feels so uncomfortable and out of synch with who they are and what they need.”

 

 

A research paper recently published in JAMA Pediatrics suggests a correlation between the increased academic pressure on young children and the significant increase in ADHD diagnoses (Brosco).

 

 

Coping skills, “stealth” assessments not the answer

 

Much of the literature on test anxiety focuses on how to help children cope with the stress. In contrast, PAA believes the cause of the stress itself must be addressed. No child should be exposed to prolonged, intense stress, which can inhibit brain function and take a toll on mental health.

 

PAA is not simply asking for an end to high-stakes, one-shot testing. Parents are demanding that no child be harmed in the assessment process. We know that test publishers and education entrepreneurs are already developing new ways to label, sort and profile students through high-tech devices now taking over classrooms. This may not create as much stress but carries other dangers such as:

 

 

Constant collection of student data via online websites, apps, and programs without parental notification.

 

 

Embedded or “stealth” assessments – students will not even be aware if their work is being used for high-stakes purposes.

 

 

A significant increase in the amount of screen time children are exposed to – the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a two hour per day screen time limit for children.

 

PAA has many other concerns about the misuse and overuse of standardized tests which we have detailed in previous position papers and fact sheets (see, for example, “Testing and ESEA,” and “Why More Standardized Tests Won’t Improve Education”).

 

Our full position paper with recommendations and endorsements can be found here.

 

Our one-page fact sheet on test stress is here and a downloadable pdf version of our position paper is here.

 

To learn more about testing or PAA, please visit http://www.parentsacrossamerica.org
or email us at info@parentsacrossamerica.org.

—

Interim Executive Director

Parents Across America
JulieW@parentsacrossamerica.org

http://www.parentsacrossamerica.org
Our children, our schools, our voices

Categories Education Reform, Parent Groups, Testing

Reader: Let Us Teach What We Know, Not “Grit” or Other Abstractions

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2016 //
71

The comments on this blog are often a source of enormous common sense. How can you teach what you can’t define?

 

Reader Ponderosa writes in response to the debate about teaching grit:

 

 

The mania for teaching grit exposes a broader problem in American education. We’ve developed this habit of identifying some valuable abstract quality –grit, critical thinking, problem solving ability –and assume: a. that it’s teachable; and b. that we really know how to teach it, without any strong evidence that these are true. Then we devise programs that purport to teach these things and everyone assumes, simply because they’re called “Teaching Grit” or “Teaching Critical Thinking” that they actually are doing these things. Look, we know how to teach geography and chemistry and Spanish. There is no doubt about this. But once we get beyond teaching concrete knowledge, we’re in fog –where charlatans frolic because nobody really knows what’s going on and, while nobody can say for sure that what they prescribe does work, nobody can say for sure it doesn’t work either. It’s hard to discredit the charlatans when they’re dealing with such fuzzy and etherial stuff. That’s why charlatans still abound in the realm of religion. My view: let’s teach the concrete stuff, the stuff we KNOW we can teach, with creativity and joy and rigor. I bet the other stuff will fall into place. But if we just try to teach the fuzzy and etherial stuff, with just a haphazard smattering of the concrete stuff, we risk not giving kids much of anything real in their school years.

Categories Testing
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