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Pedro Noguera Reviews Vicki Abeles’ “Beyond Measure”

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2015 //
9

Pedro Noguera has an excellent book review in the New York Times Book Review of Vicki Abeles’ new book “Beyond Measure.”

 

Vicki is the California mom who created the film “Race to Nowhere” about the pressures of high-stakes testing and how they were ruining children’s lives. She traveled all over the country, showing her film in community centers, churches, wherever she could find an audience.

 

Her new book shows how the “reforms” of the past generation have crushed students’ appetite for learning. Noguera praises it highly and says it will upset the education establishment. He says it is a subversive book that has the potential to upset the current creativity-killing reforms that are popular in Washington and state capitols, but not in schools.

 

The only error in his review is his reference to America’s alleged “slippage” on international tests. As I have demonstrated time and again, our students have never been no. 1 or no. 2 on international tests; typically, we have scored in the bottom quartile or at the median, not at the top. We have not slipped. This has been the case for fifty years. The low scores of the poorest students drag down our average. And besides, the international tests don’t predict anything anyway.

 

Nonetheless, it is a terrific review of an important book.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Testing

Indiana: Testing Company Mis-Scores Thousands of Tests

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2015 //
11

A computer glitch did it. Thousands of students in Indiana received the wrong scores on the state tests.

 

Company officials downplayed the problem,  but education officials said the integrity of the tests was crucial, as they will affect student grades, teacher pay, and people’s lives.

 

This is is the latest in a series of flaws that have plagued the computerized testing.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Indiana, Testing

Horace Meister: The Myth of Charter School “Success”: Hillary Was Right

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2015 //
44

Horace Meister (a pseudonym) worked as a data analyst for many years in the New York City  Department of Education. He is currently conducting research at a major university. In this post, he addresses some of the common misperceptions about charter schools. I cannot explain why everyone who writes about SA feels the need to be anonymous.

 

 

 

 

The Charter School Myth

 

 

Hilary Clinton recently remarked “there are good charter schools and there are bad charter schools…most charter schools, I don’t want to say every one, but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest to teach kids, or if they do they don’t keep them.” This upended a comfortable consensus that had emerged in the past decade. Politicians, both Democrat and Republican, blindly support charter schools. Facts are ignored or denied.

 

Simultaneously, a number of unflattering stories came out in the press about the Success Academy charter chain in New York City. It turns out that the charter chain suspends large numbers of kindergarten and first grade students.[i] It also turns out that the charter chain tries to force out challenging students.[ii]

 

Success Academy should serve as a lesson, debunking the mythologizing of charter schools that has become so widespread in education reform and political circles. But before examining the myth of Success we must address a deliberate obfuscation often introduced into such analyses by some defenders of charter schools.

 

We assume that the purpose of charter schools is to educate the same students as the public school system. In other words a successful charter school should have great outcomes with students living and growing up in challenging circumstances and environments. A charter school that creams students, that selectively gets rid of large numbers of challenging students, or that otherwise manipulates its outcomes is not fulfilling the purpose of charter schools. Talk of magnet public schools or the all too many zoned public schools that, due to the unfortunate segregation in American neighborhoods and communities, are not diverse, is irrelevant to the policy issue under discussion. The bottom line is that thousands of public schools and tens of thousands of teachers are dedicated to students that American society has put at significant disadvantage. The relevant policy question is—do charter schools show up the public schools doing this critical work?

 

So, what do we know about Success Academy?[iii]

 

Success Academy schools have a student body very different than public schools. The New York City Department of Education’s (NYCDOE) School Quality Report data show that. Success Academy has a very different student population than the NYC public school system.[iv] On average, a Success Academy school has sixty six percent fewer English Language Learners (4.7% vs 13.8%), forty three percent fewer special education students (12.3% vs 21.4%), eighty six percent fewer of the highest need special education students (.9% vs 6.5%), and forty percent fewer students living in temporary housing (8.1% vs. 13.4%) than a public school. These disparities will only grow as Success Academy’s push into gentrifying and middle class neighborhoods continues.[v]

 

 

 

Success Academy has very high and selective attrition rates. SA has high attrition rates particularly among special education students and English Language Learners.[vi] The attrition rate increases as students advance to the grades when they will be taking the state tests.[vii] “This pattern repeats cohort after cohort with growth in early grades, followed by sharp winnowing accumulating over time.”[viii] The selective nature of the attrition is crucial, since that is the distinguishing characteristic between attrition at Success Academy and that at public schools. Such selective attrition is characteristic of the charter sector.[ix]

 

Success Academy suspends students at extremely high rates as a deliberate strategy to get challenging students to leave. “The charter school network suspended its students at more than double the rate of the New York City public schools, eleven percent to five percent” with a much less challenging student population.[x] “In its first two years, Success Academy 1 suspended 8% and 2% of its students respectively. Over the next five years, however, those numbers jumped to 12%, 15%, 22%, 27%, and 23%…By the way, the out of school suspension rate for 2011-2012 at Upper West Success, a school where 29% of students qualify for free lunch and 10% for reduced price lunch? 5%. Apparently suspension rates in the high 20s are a necessity for schools where 78% of the students are in or near poverty.”[xi] Insiders report that “school leaders and network staff members explicitly talked about suspending students or calling parents into frequent meetings as ways to force parents to fall in line or prompt them to withdraw their children.”[xii]

 

Success Academy forces high need special education students to leave. “But The News found a disturbing number of suspension cases where the network’s administrators removed special-education pupils from normal classrooms for weeks and even months, while at the same time pressuring their parents to transfer them to regular public schools.”[xiii]

 

Success Academy employs additional strategies to winnow out challenging students. For example, they mail the annual reenrollment forms to only preferred families.[xiv] By the way, public schools as a general rule don’t even have reenrollment forms. A student on the roster of a public school remains on the roster.

 

Teaching at Success Academy is focused on test prep and practice. It appears that teachers are mandated to focus overwhelmingly on test prep.[xv] To such an extent that students wet their pants out of the induced anxiety.[xvi] This leads to high teacher attrition rates, with over 30% of teachers annually leaving the charter chain entirely.[xvii] Often because the teachers could not abide by the way SA wanted them to treat students.[xviii]

 

Despite these shenanigans the academic outcomes of Success Academy schools are questionable.

 

A Success Academy education does not seem to prepare students for success in high school. Only 21% of SA middle school graduates passed their classes and earned at least 10 credits (44 credits are required to graduate high school in NYC) in their 9th grade courses. Note that since SA is a relatively new charter chain these data only exist for their first school, Harlem Success Academy 1.[xix] And not a single SA student scored well on the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT).[xx]

 

Success Academy seems to do a mediocre job of growing their students academically. For the sake of argument we will use test scores on the New York State exams as a measure of success, since Success Academy likes to boast about those scores. The NYCDOE calculates growth targets for every school.[xxi] On the English exams three Success Academy schools exceeded, two schools met, one school approached and one school did not meet expected growth targets.[xxii] On the Math exams only two schools exceeded, four met, and one approached the expected growth targets.

 

Success Academy seems to do a very poor job with their high need students. The data provide a measure for how students in each school’s bottom third do. Only two Success Academy schools exceeded and two schools met English growth targets for these students, while two approached and one did not meet the target. In Math, four schools did not meet the expected growth target while two exceeded and one met the targets.

 

Other analyses have found similarly poor outcomes from Success. An examination of 2012 and 2013 fourth grade scores found that “Success schools dropped by about 40 points while other schools that had such high 2012 scores dropped by about 20 points. But in math, two of the four Success schools had a smaller drop than the other schools and the other two Success schools had about the same drop.”[xxiii] A different analysis of the 2013 data found that “Success Academy scored in the 39th percentile on English exam growth for their overall student population and in the 21st percentile on English exam growth for the students who began with scores in the lowest 1/3 of students.”[xxiv]

 

Overall these are rather sorry outcomes that nonetheless overestimate Success Academy’s performance since even growth measures don’t account for selective attrition and other SA tactics. Still the growth metrics do a better job than pure performance metrics in measuring the true contribution of a school to student learning.

 

What can be learned from Success Academy? There are of course positive take-aways from Success. Additional learning time, such as that mandated by SA, is likely a positive intervention strategy for some students requiring additional academic support. SA offers the equivalent of about fifty additional schools days, thanks to their extended school day.[xxv] That is of course expensive and we know that SA spends thousands of dollars more per student than public schools with similar populations.[xxvi] There is no question that additional funding for schools helps improve outcomes for students growing up in poverty.[xxvii] New York City is now directing additional funds, along with other initiatives such as extended learning time, to their Renewal schools, schools that serve a disproportionately disadvantaged student body. Providing schools with such supports can benefit students at both charter and public schools.

 

Teachers must be given the time and support to grow into the tremendous responsibility that every educator has for student success. As Success Academy first year teachers are assistants in the classroom ideally working with and learning from excellent and experienced teachers. Such an initiative, at a national scale supported by local districts and the federal government in collaboration with schools of education, is definitely worth a look.

 

 

 

[i]http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/kindergarten-young-suspend-student/

 

[ii] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/nyregion/at-a-success-academy-charter-school-singling-out-pupils-who-have-got-to-go.html

 

[iii] An earlier review of claims made by and about Success Academy can be found here https://dianeravitch.net/2014/09/12/researcher-charter-chain-built-on-hyperbole/.

 

[iv] The data can be found in the file here http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/06F7DE89-AA46-4509-9A0C-600038728D14/0/2014_2015_EMS_SQR_Results_2015_12_09.xlsx. For explanation of the various metrics see http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/5347DA79-B985-4CBF-B56E-B05C8380C53B/0/201415EducatorGuideEMS11122015.pdf. The Success Academy schools with data include five schools in Harlem, two in the Bronx. Two schools, one in Bedford Stuyvesant and one on the Upper West Side have demographic but no academic performance data as they are too new. All the other twenty three SA schools are so new that they have no Quality Report data at all.

[vi] http://commonal.tumblr.com/post/58209601458/harlem-success-academy-charter-and-attrition

 

[vii] http://insideschools.org/blog/item/1000359-vanishing-students-at-harlem-success#

 

[viii] See the data here http://danielskatz.net/2015/11/25/eva-moskowitz-cannot-help-herself/.

 

[ix] See https://dianeravitch.net/2015/02/09/the-unholy-alliance-charters-the-media-and-research/.

 

[x] http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/student-discipline-race-and-eva-moskowitz%E2%80%99s-success-academy-charter-schools

 

[xi] http://danielskatz.net/2015/11/25/eva-moskowitz-cannot-help-herself/

 

[xii] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/nyregion/at-a-success-academy-charter-school-singling-out-pupils-who-have-got-to-go.html?_r=0

 

[xiii] http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/success-academy-fire-parents-fight-disciplinary-policy-article-1.1438753

 

[xiv] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/nyregion/at-a-success-academy-charter-school-singling-out-pupils-who-have-got-to-go.html?_r=0

 

[xv] https://dianeravitch.net/2013/10/04/mole-in-success-academy-speaks/ and https://dianeravitch.net/2015/04/07/my-conversation-with-a-success-academy-charter-teacher/ and http://nymag.com/news/features/65614/index3.html. Interestingly enough there has been a recent attempt by some apologists to claim that Success Academy is a progressive pedagogy paradise. First-hand reports by teachers (i.e. those not describing carefully arranged guided and pre-scheduled tours) provide an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary.

 

[xvi] http://www.businessinsider.com/students-wetting-pants-success-academy-charter-schools-2015-4

 

[xvii] http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/teacher-turnover-success-academy-charter-schools with data suggesting even higher attrition rates found here http://citylimits.org/2014/08/20/why-charter-schools-have-high-teacher-turnover/.

 

[xviii] http://www.wnyc.org/story/302768-high-teacher-turnover-at-a-success-network-school/. It has been suggested that “The pedagogy in the Success Academy schools is rote, highly disciplined and punishment, suspensions, are commonplace, perhaps the pedagogical/discipline practices chase away teachers of color.” https://mets2006.wordpress.com/2015/10/20/success-academy-charter-school-staff-diversity-why-is-the-staff-overwhelming-white-tone-deaf-by-choice-a-diverse-workforce-is-essential-in-the-21st-century/. Some telling reviews of Success Academy’s culture can be read on Indeed.com http://www.indeed.com/cmp/Success-Academy-Charter-Schools/reviews and on glassdoor.com https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Success-Academy-Charter-Schools-Reviews-E381408.htm. Other first-hand accounts can be read here https://dianeravitch.net/2015/04/27/a-former-success-academy-teacher-steps-forward-to-tell-her-story/ and here https://dianeravitch.net/2015/12/01/former-success-academy-teacher-why-i-resigned/.

 

[xix] See column CW on the following file http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/06F7DE89-AA46-4509-9A0C-600038728D14/0/2014_2015_EMS_SQR_Results_2015_12_09.xlsx under the “student achievement” tab.

 

[xx] http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/gonzalez-success-charter-students-fail-top-city-schools-article-1.1833960. It would not be surprising if SA has already begun intense SHSAT prep for this exam for their students in response to this, now widespread, statistic. While unfortunate that tests are driving so much of what happens in schools that may be the best way to open high school opportunities for their students.

 

[xxi]The data can be found in the following file http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/estimated-versus-actual-days-learning-charter-school-studies. See columns P, V, AT, and AZ under the “student achievement” tab. Broadly speaking one third of all schools each exceed, meet or approached their growth targets. The remaining ten percent of schools did not meet their target. See pages 24-25 in the document here for an explanation of these growth targets http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/5347DA79-B985-4CBF-B56E-B05C8380C53B/0/201415EducatorGuideEMS11122015.pdf.

 

[xxiii] http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2013/08/13/how-to-define-success/

 

[xxiv] https://dianeravitch.net/2014/09/12/researcher-charter-chain-built-on-hyperbole/

 

[xxv] Somewhat disappointingly it appears that the better test results claimed by many charter schools often reported as an “estimated days of learning” metric are less than the actual extra days of learning at those charter schools. See http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/estimated-versus-actual-days-learning-charter-school-studies.

 

[xxvi] See Table 2 here http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/ttr-charter-rent_0.pdf

 

[xxvii] See http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ruckerj/Jackson_Johnson_Persico_SFR_LRImpacts.pdf. Of course the additional funds must be spent sensibly.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Testing

David Berliner: Why It is Wrong to Evaluate Teachers by Student Test Scores

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2015 //
12

David Berliner is one of our most distinguished educational researchers. He has received numerous honors for his studies of education. He is currently Regents’ Professor of Education Emeritus at Arizona State University.

 

This video is a presentation that he made at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education in Australia. He explains why standardized tests are a terrible basis for teacher evaluation because the tests primarily reflect student demographics, not teacher quality.

 

Please set aside the time to watch and listen to this important presentation by one of our great scholars.

Categories Accountability, Testing

John Thompson: A Closer Look at the “Success” in D.C. That Wasn’t

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2015 //
8

John Thompson knows that reformers point to the District of Columbia as one of their examples of success. After all, the district has been controlled by Teach for America alumnae Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson since 2007. They own whatever successes and not-successes that occurred over the past eight years. The centerpiece of their claims of success is NAEP scores, which are up.

 

In this post, Thompson identifies the flaws in the narrative of success. Thompson lauds John Merrow for critiquing the narrative of a district he once held up as an exemplar of successful reform. Merrow asked, in his post, why anyone was celebrating Kaya Henderson’s five-year anniversary in the wake of the disastrous scores on the Common Core PARCC tests, which showed a district where academic performance was dismal.

 

Thompson reviews the NAEP scores, using Rick Hess’s data.

 

Hess cites overall gains in NAEP growth under Rhee and Henderson, but those same NAEP studies actually support the common sense conclusion that the numbers reflect gentrification. Hess’s charts show that from 2005 to 2013, the percentage of D.C. students who are low-income dropped from 66% to 61.6%. (In my world, a 61.6% low-income urban school seems danged-near rich.) Per student spending increased by 40% during that time. (The new spending, alone, comes close to the total per student spending in my 90% low-income system.)

 

According to Hess’s chart, the percentage of the D.C. students who are black dropped by 1/8th from 2005 to 2013, and the percentage of students with disabilities dropped by 1/7th. And, the 2015 NAEP excluded as many as 44% of D.C.’s English Language Learners. The conservative reformer RiShawn Biddle calls that exclusion “massive and unacceptable test-cheating.”

 

Even so, as Merrow reminds us, the performance gap between low-income and more affluent students has grown even wider; for instance, from 2002 to 2015, the 8th grade reading performance gap grew from 17 to 48 points.

 

Before Rhee/Henderson, the growth in D.C. test scores was spread much more widely. Because I believe that 8th grade reading is the most important NAEP metric in terms of evaluating school performance, I will cite some of those metrics in support of Merrow. From 1998 to 2002, black 8th grade reading scores increased from an average of 233 to 238. By 2015, they were down to 236. From 1998 to 2002, average 8th grade reading scores for low-income students increased from 229 to 233. In 2015, they remained at 233.

 

Thompson says it is sad that the elites now re-engineering public education are utterly disconnected from the lives and realities of the children who attend those schools or the people who teach in them. They need a reality check, or maybe a course in sociocultural sensitivity training so that they stop stepping on the faces of children and adults whose lives they know nothing about.

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Common Core, District of Columbia, Education Reform, NAEP, Testing

Carol Burris: Will Governor Cuomo Actually Change Anything?

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2015 //
33

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and former principal at South Side High School in Rockville Center, Long Island, New York, has subjected the report of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s task force to a close reading.

 

But not the kind of close reading where you forget about context and prior knowledge. She notes that Governor Cuomo has no intention of amending or repealing the law he pushed through last June, which requires that teachers are evaluated by test scores that count for 50% of the evaluation.

 

There is the elephant in the room–the evaluation of teachers by test scores. When it comes to the damage done by APPR, the report is strangely silent. It is as though the committee never heard a complaint on how evaluating teachers by test scores increased both anxiety and test prep. The only place where it is addressed is in Recommendation 21 that states that until a new set of standards are phased in, the results of Common Core 3-8 assessments should be advisory only. Cuomo immediately seized on the ambiguity of that statement and issued the following:

 

[Cuomo statement] “The Education Transformation Act of 2015 will remain in place, and no new legislation is required to implement the recommendations of the report, including recommendations regarding the transition period for consequences for students and teachers. During the transition, the 18 percent of teachers whose performance is measured, in part, by Common Core tests will use different local measures approved by the state, similar to the measures already being used by the majority of teachers.”

 

The Education Transformation Act was the bill Cuomo pushed through the legislature to raise the percentage of test scores in teacher evaluations to 50 percent. Like a teenage boy who doesn’t get that the relationship is over, Cuomo cannot let go of his APPR, even though more researchers agree that evaluating teachers by test student scores makes no sense.

 

And more ominously, she describes the new testing corporation that New York has contracted with for the next five years.

 

Truth be told, no matter what recommendations the report made, at least half of the horse is already out of the testing barn. The new direction in assessment was set with the July approval of a $44 million contract with Questar that locks the state in for five years. If parents are looking for relief from test-driven instruction, they will not find it with Questar. You can read about the company’s philosophy of continuous assessment-driven instruction here. Below is an excerpt:

 

…after every five minutes of individualized tablet-based instruction, students would be presented with a brief series of questions that adapt to their skill level, much as computer-adaptive tests operate today. After that assessment, the next set of instructional material would be customized according to these results. If a student needs to relearn some material, the software automatically adjusts and creates a custom learning plan on the fly. The student would then be reassessed and the cycle would continue…

 

The practice of adaptive, computer-based learning, known as Competency Based Education (CBE), is a reincarnation of two other failed reforms from the last century — Outcomes Based Instruction and Mastery Learning. As the tests roll out, Questar will be marketing their CBE modules for test prep, and schools desperate to increase scores will buy them.

 

Thus far, Governor Cuomo has gotten the press he wanted: banner headlines in the New York Daily News and Long Island’s Newsday, proclaiming prematurely that Common Core is dead. No, it is not. What happens next is up to the Governor.

 

The good news is that he has an outstanding educator advising him, Jere Hochman, former superintendent in Bedford, New York. Hopefully, Hochman will help the Governor understand how to get out of the hole he dug for himself and how to take concrete steps to remove the disruption and constant churn that the State Education Department and the Governor’s interventions have imposed on schools. It is time for some stability and sanity at the helm. At the moment, teachers and students see a battle for control of the wheel, and the ship is lurching from side to side. I won’t torture the analogy any more. But I do hope that Governor Cuomo listens to Jere Hochman’s advice and takes the task force report seriously.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Cuomo Task Force Will Recommend Revision of Standards, Tests, Teacher Evaluation

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2015 //
35

The task force appointed by Governor Andrew Cuomo to review the Common Core standards, testing, and teacher evaluation will recommend a moratorium on tying teacher evaluation to test scores--as much as four years–and a reboot of the standards and tests.

 

Why Cuomo is making these decisions is unclear because the New York State Constitution gives the governor no role in education. The New York State Board of Regents is the legal authority, not the governor, but this governor decided to take control of education.

 

Meanwhile, we wait to hear from Governor Cuomo to see what in the task force report he agrees with, since he has made himself the Decider.

Categories Common Core, New York, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Superintendent Steven Cohen: This is What Great Education Looks Like

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2015 //
16

Superintendent Steven Cohen addresses parents on Long Island and explains what a great education is. It is the kind of education available to the children of Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama, Merryl Tisch (the chancellor of the New York State Regents), and other leaders of the “reform” movement. Cohen reads what children do at the University of Chicago Lab School, at the Dalton School in New York, and other excellent private schools, and contrasts them with the punitive mandates imposed on public schools. He denounces the Common Core standards and high-stakes testing. In the elite private schools, children have the opportunity to study subjects in depth, to explore ideas, and to have full programs in the arts and other non-tested subjects. The “reformers” know what is best for their children, but they treat the public’s children as “losers.” They don’t want the public’s children to have what they demand for their own children. In short, he lacerates the “reformers.”

 

Dr. Cohen is one of a group of superintendents in Long Island who are traveling to school districts to explain why Long Island parents should reject the current “reforms” of high-stakes testing and Common Core standards. The others are David Gamberg of Southold-Greenport, Joe Rella of Comsewogue, and Michael Hynes of Patchogue-Medford. They have inspired parents and educators across the Island.

 

He faults Bill Gates for foisting the Common Core standards on the nation with Arne Duncan’s help, without ever having testing the standards anywhere to see what effects they have. “Just trust me,” the salesmen of Common Core say. Would you buy a used car without evidence that it actually runs?

 

He explains how the Common Core was intended to drive the curriculum and testing, for the benefit of vendors and profit-seekers. The claim that it is “just standards, not curriculum,” is nonsense.

 

He describes the excellent results of the New York Performance Standards Consortium, which does not use high-stakes testing, and wonders why the state refuses to allow other high schools to join it. It works, but admission is closed. Why?

 

This is an excellent presentation and well worth your time to watch it. Be sure to hear him reading from the MIT catalogue about what MIT considers “college-readiness.”

 

Dr. Cohen is part of a group of thoughtful and courageous superintendents in Long Island who have been traveling school districts across the Island to explain what good education is–and what it is not.

 

Dr. Steven Cohen is a hero of public education and of students. He richly deserves to be on the honor roll of the blog.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Education Industry, Honor Roll, Privatization, Testing

Michael Hynes: Time to Abolish the U.S. Department of Education

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2015 //
27

Michael Hynes is Superintendent of the Patochogue-Medford public schools on Long Island in New York state.

 

As an educator, I have no use for the U.S. Department of Education.

 

The fact is, as parents and educators begin to understand the infinite failures of federal initiatives such as No Child Left Behind, the carrot-on-a-stick incentive on steroids called Race to the Top and the soon-to-be-passed version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act — dubbed the Every Student Succeeds Act — this bloated department of non-educators has wasted tax dollars and ruined millions of children’s lives over the past four decades.

 

It is an experiment gone awry and it’s time for the U.S. Department of Education to go.

 

It’s as simple as that.

 

Now that our new acting secretary of education will be John King — the man who oversaw New York State’s disastrous rollout of the Common Core State Standards — that only makes my claim that much stronger.

 

The U.S. Department of Education was formed in 1980 by combining offices from several federal agencies. It now has 4,400 employees and a $68 billion budget.

 

The department claims to establish policies on federal financial aid for education. It also collects data on our schools and shares research. Finally, it asserts to focus national attention on key educational issues and pretends to prohibit discrimination and ensure equal access to education.

 

My question is, when was the last time this institution actually produced something positive for our children? According to the Department of Education’s website, its mission is to “promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.”

 

In practice, it has churned out one bad policy after another, policies that have been wreaking havoc on our public schools. This department has left a wake of children who have been tested to death and also degraded educators by reducing them to numbers.

 

What may have sounded like a good idea at the time, some 35 years ago, has proven to be both inefficient and unconstitutional. I don’t believe in federal control of our schools. I feel many of our parents and teachers can figure out for themselves how to educate our children. The challenge of a great education is best addressed as close to the student as possible. Local control should chart its own courses on education.

 

I fear the latest iteration of a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act will perpetuate and enforce the terrible educational mindset of “How intelligent are you?” instead of “How are you intelligent?”

 

You can bet that the Department of Education won’t be far behind waiting to craft and enforce ridiculous policies, technology driven programs and unfunded mandates that schools will have to comply with.

 

By abolishing this behemoth, we will be better served to identify a child’s strength’s and interests while providing opportunities for all children to soar at the local level — right where all this belongs.

 

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Testing

Long Island: Michael Hynes, a Visionary Superintendent

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2015 //
4

Michael Hynes, superintendent of schools in Patchogue, Long Island, in New York, has a new idea: Let’s forget about the politicians and do what we know is best for students. Hynes is hereby declared a hero of public education for truly putting children first.

 

The Greater Patchogue website reports that Superintendent Hynes is working with the school board and a committee of 65 to forge a better path for the Patchogue-Medford schools. Hynes’ motto is “leave no stone unturned.”

 

Hynes, who has been an outspoken supporter of the opt out movement, said:

 

 

“If we want to stay on the same road and be average and settle for mediocrity, then we’re not going to turn over every stone,” Hynes said in his first in-depth media interview about the plan. “But if you really want to bring this place to another level for our kids, then what you need to do is make sure you look at everything humanly possible that’s going to benefit all of our students.”

 

“He looks to the positive growth of Patchogue Village as inspiration, explaining how the village’s leaders had a clear goal of what they wanted to accomplish, and though there was some pushback, once people started seeing real results, then even doubters began to buy in.

 

“Hynes indicated some drastic changes will be explored, and with that, there could be pushback.

 

“The hardest part will be holding onto our old mental models, or thoughts and feelings of how schools should be,” he said. “Because the one common experience we all have is we all went to school, and there are a lot of emotions attached to that. Many people think that it should stay the same.

 

“I think some things should remain the same, but with some things, because of time and because of the way things are, we need to think differently, and we need to be progressive. And that’s what I’m hoping this plan becomes. But it also needs to be inclusive and collaborative.”

 

“Pressed for details, Hynes mentioned the possibility of reconfiguring the district elementary schools so that they’re no longer K-5 schools drawing students from the immediate neighborhoods. The schools would instead be grouped by grade through what’s called a Princeton Plan, or Princeton Model.

 

“He noted that Princeton Plans are often proposed in districts that are looking to close a school.

 

“If its sole purpose is to save money, I don’t believe in it,” he said. “If you move to a different construct because it’s best for kids, and allows teachers to meet more often, to collaborate, to serve kids in a higher and more efficient way, then that’s a model we need to look at. That doesn’t meant adopt, but at least investigate and research it.”

“The district could examine freeing up a building for vocational opportunities, he said.

 

Hynes explained that, currently, students who might be looking toward the trades or the military, as opposed to college, aren’t offered resources within the district to pursue those interests until the twelfth grade.

 

“For us, we want to start providing those opportunities in ninth grade,” he said. “Right now we’re missing out on three extremely vital years.”

 

“A vocational school would allow Patchogue-Medford to offer trade skills from plumbing to hairdressing to paralegal work, he said.

 

“These are professions where people are making a good living,” Hynes said. “The caveat is, it would have to include a one-year internship program through the Patchogue and Medford areas, and that’s where a relationship with the larger community comes into play.”

 

“As for the district’s higher-achievers, Hynes said there are opportunities for them to be challenged even further, such as through a Geneva-based International Baccalaureate program.

 

“We’re already looking at the feasibility of that,” he said. “It’s an investment, not only in resources but it’s actually an investment in our educators, because they have to be trained as well.”

 

With special education and English language-learners, Hynes said there could be more of an emphasis on before and after school opportunities, outside of the students’ core academic work, that could help them socialize within the wider communities more effectively.

 

 

“Asked about whether spending would need to increase under the strategic plan, and if the district would consider bonding, Hynes replied as follows:

 

“You want to do whatever is necessary to accomplish what needs to be done. When we look at cost, we’re going to look at investment and return on the investment, and if the return on the investment is worth it, then anything is possible as far as I’m concerned…..

 

“Asked how the plan could operate within the state’s mandates, including its across-the-board educational standards, Hynes — an outspoken critic of recent education reform efforts in Albany — said he must do now whatever he believes is in the long-term interests of Patchogue-Medford students — not wait for Albany to figure its own policies out.

 

“If this plan comes to the place where I think it can, I would like the state to exempt us from 3 through 8 testing, and allow us to evaluate teachers on our own accord, based on our professional judgements, and assess students in a much better way,” Hynes said.

 

“Then we can possibly use this as a case study for other districts in New York State, to see if this is a possibility for them to — I don’t want to say emulate, but to look into and make it their own.

 

“Nothing like this has ever been done before.”

 

Superintendent Michael Hynes is already a member of the blog’s honor roll.

Categories Education Reform, Honor Roll, New York, Testing
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