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Peter Greene: Why I Am Not Quitting

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2015 //
12

Peter Greene observes that there is a burgeoning number of “I Quit” letters by teachers. It has become a genre of its own. But he wants the world to know that he is not quitting.

Here is how his “I don’t quit” letter begins:

Dear Board of Education:

Just wanted you to know that I am not going any damn where.

Yes, a lot of people have worked hard to turn my job into something I barely recognize, and yes, I am on the butt end of a whole lot of terrible education policy, and yes, I am regularly instructed to commit educational malpractice in my classroom.

But here’s the thing– you don’t pay me nearly enough for me to do my job badly, on purpose.

I’m not going to make children miserable on purpose. I’m not going to waste valuable education time on purpose. I’m not going to teach them that reading is a miserable activity with no purpose other than to prepare for testing. I’m not going to tell them that these big stupid tests, or any other tests, or grades, even, are an important measure of how “good” they are or how much right they have to feel proud or happy or justified in taking up space on this planet. I’m not going to tell them any of that.

Most of these new education reform policies are wrong. They’re bad pedagogy, bad instruction, bad for students, bad for education, and we all know it. I am not going to spend another day in my room pretending that I don’t know it.

Am I God’s gift to teaching, so awesome that I never need to listen to anybody about anything? Not at all. It’s a big, wide, complicated world, and I’ll listen to anybody who thinks they have something to share about how children can be educated.

But here’s the thing. I am a teacher. I am an education professional. I trained to do this job, and I have never stopped training and learning since I started on this path. This is my world. This is the work that I committed myself to. I live here, and that means I know more about this work than the edu-tourists just passing through.

Read it all. It will remind you that teaching is a noble profession, and that this is a time to fight off the barbarians and stand strong for what you know is right.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

The Reformers’ War on Language and on Democracy

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2015 //
57

Maybe it is just me, but I find myself outraged by the “reformers'” incessant manipulation of language.

“Reform” seldom refers to reform.

“Reform” means privatization.

“Reform” means assaults on the teaching profession.

“Reform” means eliminating teachers’ unions, which fight for better salaries and working conditions.

“Reform” means boasting about test scores by schools that have carefully excluded the students who might get low scores.

“Reform” means using test scores to evaluate teachers even though this practice has negative effects on teacher morale and fails to identify better or worse teachers.

“Reform” means stripping teachers of due process rights or any other job security.

“Reform” means that schools should operate for-profit and that private corporations should be encouraged to profit from school spending.

“Reform” means acceptance of privately managed schools that operate without accountability or transparency.

“Reform” means the incremental destruction of public education.

I am reminded of George Orwell’s lines from his prophetic novel 1984:

“War is peace.

“Freedom is slavery’

“Ignorance is strength.”

The goal of the leadership in the novel was to teach the population “doublethink.” To believe in contradictory ideas.

So we see schools closed, teachers and principals fired, and we are supposed to believe this is “reform.”

The media, with few exceptions, say that what is happening almost everywhere is “reform,” so it must be reform to replace public schools with privately managed charters, and to fire experienced professionals and replace them with newcomers, with untrained and inexperienced teachers and with principals who taught for one or two years.

It must be reform to allow out-of-state billionaires to buy local and state school board elections so they can control the schools of a state they don’t live in.

I confess I am also irritated by the habit of referring to young children as “scholars.” To me, a scholar is someone who has devoted his or her professional life to the advancement of knowledge. If a five-year-old is a “scholar,” what do you call a distinguished university professor who is widely recognized for her research and publications?

Has the public been suckered into believing that the destruction of public education is “reform”?

Does the public willingly accept the idea that hedge fund managers and equity investors are taking control of what is supposed to be a public responsibility?

Will we let them monetize our children and their public schools?

Does the public understand that a small group inside the Beltway wrote the “national standards” behind closed doors, that one billionaire (Bill Gates) paid for them and paid millions to national education organizations to advocate for them, and that the federal government bribed 45 states to endorse them?

How long will the public tolerate tests tied to those standards that are designed to fail 65-70% of the nation’s children?

How much longer will we allow the nation’s children to be labeled and sorted by standardized tests whose outcomes may be predicted by family income?

When will the public realize that test-based accountability does not improve education, does not promote better teaching, and actually reduces the quality of education?

How long can the Emperor parade through the streets before someone tells him he is naked?

How long can a charade persist before the public knows they have been conned?

How long will it take to unmask this great theft of a democratic institution that belongs to the public, not to entrepreneurs, foundations, rightwing ideologues, hedge fund managers, or their compliant politicians?

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Gary Rubinstein Questions Louisiana’s “Big Gains” on AP Tests

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2015 //
1

Gary Rubinstein, who teaches mathematics at elite Stuyvesant High School in New York City, is a crack data analyst. Although he was one of the first to join Teach for America, he has become one of the most perceptive critics of “reform.”

In this post, he examines Louisiana’s claims of great success on Advanced Placement exams.

He writes:

To education ‘reformers,’ test scores are the ultimate measure of success. Test scores are the evidence that the country’s education system is broken. Test scores of certain charter schools prove that most teachers in this country have low expectations and don’t try very hard. Schools have been shut down over test scores. Teachers have been fired over test scores.

Contrary to the narrative of common core proponents, there are currently many national tests that can be used to compare test scores of different states. There’s the NAEP, the ACT, the SAT, and, probably the highest quality of all of them, the Advanced Placement exams. Though I’m not a huge fan of a lot that The College Board does, I find the tests that I’m knowledgeable about, AB Calculus, BC Calculus, and Computer Science, to be good tests.

Education ‘reform’ leaders use low test scores as a way to justify their radical policy changes. “Kids can’t wait,” they say. They promise that they know what works and that they just need some time for their changes to take effect.

In Louisiana, the State Education Commissioner John White has boasted for the past three years about increased participation in taking AP exams, but he underplays the continued very low passing rates of students on those exams. Gary has commented on these AP passing rates every year and notes that this year, John White is claiming “big gains.” So Gary takes a closer look.

He finds that Louisiana has passing rates (a score of 3 or higher) that are third from the bottom in the nation.

True, the participation rates have gone up, but even so, Louisiana continues to be one of the lowest performing states in the nation.

Gary writes:

In addition to the state-by-state data released by the College Board, the state of Louisiana, a few months ago, released AP data for their districts and their schools. These numbers are shockingly low and certainly seem to be something that ‘outcome driven reformers’ want to ignore. Sci Academy, which is one of those New Schools For New Orleans schools touted on Oprah, for example, had over 110 students take an AP exam while less than 10 of them passed one. Out of about 500 students who took an AP in the entire Recovery School District, only 27 students, or 5.5% passed one.

‘Reformers’ like to say that they get increased freedom in exchange for increased test score accountability. They are truly running out of time to deliver on their promises.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Louisiana, Testing

Lisa Rudley: What Parents Want for Their Children

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2015 //
5

Lisa Rudley, the leader of the New York State Allies of Parents and Educators and a prominent proponent of Opt Outs, here presents to the Cuomo Commission to review the Common Core standards and tests. Lisa is a public school parent in Ossining, New York.

She explains the origins and flaws of the Common Core standards, and she explains the critique of them.

She also offers specific recommendations to improve education in the state.

She expresses the impact of the standards and high-stakes testing on children with disabilities and students who are new to English.

She demands a thorough review and changes in standards, assessment, curriculum, and teacher evaluation.

She says, “When you hurt teachers, you hurt kids. And when you hurt kids, parents get very angry.”

With leaders like Lisa and NYSAPE, parents are leading the way to a much better, far richer, quality of education than the one offered by the “reformers.”

But whoa! Hang on. Don’t turn it off when Lisa finishes. She is followed by the informed and eloquent Jamaal Bowman, principal of the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action. He has a series of clear and pragmatic recommendations on truly reforming the public schools.

 

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, Education Reform, Testing

Emily Talmage: B.F. Skinner and Competency Based Education

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2015 //
62

Emily Talmage lives in Maine, where she blogs about the latest fads to “reform” American education. In this post, she shows the relationship between the theories of B.F. Skinner, a psychologist who was renowned in his time for his belief in behaviorism, and today’s big new idea: competency based education. In President Obama’s recent “Testing Action Plan,” he endorsed the strategy of competency based education, where every student moves at his or her own pace through programmed instruction on computers. The plan sets aside $25 million to encourage states to try new forms of assessment, including competency-based models. Although this approach is often referred to as individualized, customized, and personalized instruction, it is a direct descendant of B.F. Skinner’s teaching machines. In a previous post, she noted that:

 

A shift to competency-based education has been in the works a least a decade, with the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Gates Foundation, and the Foundation for Excellence in Education (among others) at the helm of this shift.

 

 

Here, she sets the ideas of B.F. Skinner, enunciated in the 1950s, alongside those currently on the website of testing company Questar, whose assessments have been adopted by New York State:

 

Here’s Skinner:

As soon as the student has written his response, he operates the machine, and learns immediately whether he is right or wrong. This is a great improvement over the system in which papers are corrected by a teacher, where the student must wait perhaps until another day, to learn whether or not what he is written is right.

Such immediate knowledge has two principle effects: it leads most rapidly to the formation of correct behavior. The student quickly learns to be right…

 

Now compare the Skinner quote with this description that comes from the website of Questar – the testing company recently adopted by New York State:

With tablets and the right software, this approach is possible on an individualized basis: 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.

 

Here’s Skinner again:

Another important advantage is that the student is free to move at his own pace. With techniques in which a whole class is forced to move together, the bright student wastes time, waiting for others to catch up, and the slow student, who may not be inferior in any other respect, is forced to go too fast. …A student who is learning by machine learns at the rate, which is most effective for him. The fast student covers the course in a short time, but the slow student, by giving more time to the subject, can cover the same ground. Both learn the material thoroughly.

 

Now, compare this with Questar:

Because students progress through subject material at their own pace, they can be grouped by ability instead of grade level, similar to competency-based learning approaches currently being tried in various schools and districts.

Questar and Skinner…pretty much indistinguishable, aren’t they?

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Technology, Computers, Testing

Vermont Board of Education: Common Core Tests Don’t Mean Much

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2015 //
25

Vermont continues to be amazing.

 

It recently issued a letter to parents telling them not to worry about the Common Core tests because the passing mark is set so high that they are meaningless. No national the world has ever reached the level expected of students on these tests.

 

This is an excerpt from the letter:

 

These tests are based on a narrow definition of “college and career ready.” In truth, there are many different careers and colleges, and there are just as many different definitions of essential skills. In fact, many (if not most) successful adults fail to score well on standardized tests. If your child’s scores show that they are not yet proficient, this does not mean that they are not doing well or will not do well in the future. 

 

We also recommend that you not place a great deal of emphasis on the “claims” or sub-scores. There are just not enough test items to give you reliable information.

 

The Vermont Board hits on a bizarre aspect of the Common Core and the associated tests: There is no single curriculum or test that can test for both college and career readiness. The student who plans to go to an Ivy League school, the student who plans to be an electrician, and the student who plans to join the military, the student who plans to be a farmer, cannot be judged by a single measure.

 

 

 

 

Categories Common Core, Testing, Vermont

Teacher to Bill Gates: Let Me Show You What Is Really “Hard” Work

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2015 //
15

Bill Gates recently said that he didn’t realize how hard it was to change education. It is really hard work. He has no idea. Sitting in his air-conditioned offices overlooking Seattle, flying in his personal jet, relaxing on his family yacht, surrounded by hordes of assistants and aides, he has no idea of what teachers do and no understanding of why his efforts to “reform” schools keep failing. He thinks it is hard work.

 

But, in Valerie Strauss’ blog, she quotes Nancy E. Bailey, a special education teacher who left the classroom because of the damage done to her students by high-stakes testing. Bailey explains to Gates what is really hard work. It is harder than “philanthropic work.”

 

Bailey, who wrote the 2013 book “Misguided Education Reform: Debating the Impact on Students,” challenged Melinda and Bill Gates to spend “some serious time in poor public schools” to learn what is really hard in education for teachers and students — and to “spend time with the many moms of students with disabilities who home-school not because they want to, but because schools have cut special education services.”

 

Here is a shortened version of her admittedly incomplete list of what’s really hard in education (and you can see the full blog post and list here):

 

Being an over-tested kindergartner, not getting any recess, and being made to feel you are a failure before you get started in your schooling.
Working as a teacher on a day-to-day basis with students who come from abject poverty and must deal with the many troubling consequences that come with a life lived in hardship.
Being a child with disabilities and being afraid of a high-stakes test (or several) you don’t understand and feeling like a failure!
Being made to read before you are ready,
Failing third grade based on one test.
Being a high school student who has to focus on test-taking and not given ample time to explore real career options.
Being poor and working only in math and reading with little opportunity to participate in music or art classes.
Deciding if you can afford to leave teaching because you hate the changes that negatively impact children, including all the high-stakes Common Core testing.
Knowing you have to teach to pay the bills but understanding why parents dislike you for being forced to implement harsh reforms.
Being told you will have to reapply for the job you need in the career you hold dear because your school has been turned into a charter school.
Working with overcrowded class sizes because some reformer doesn’t know better and thinks class size doesn’t matter.
Not being able to get to all your students because your paraprofessional has been let go.
Not being able to go to the bathroom when you need to because your paraprofessional has been let go.
Not being paid for a master’s degree on which you spent time and money to better yourself professionally.
Working in a crummy school building while a brand new charter school is opened down the street.
Getting judged for your teaching by the test scores of students you don’t have.
Being forced to focus more on data than children, and filling out mounds of time-consuming and often useless paperwork.
Watching your young students fail computer-based tests because they can’t type fast enough.
Knowing how much time you spent learning to be a teacher and watching others with inadequate training get jobs.
Being forced to put away your developmentally appropriate student play kitchens, puppets and costumes in kindergarten.
Seeing your school put money into iPads when there are so many other things needed.
Working in a school with no librarian or media specialist.
Sending your child to a school that has no school nurse.
Not having enough guidance counselors to work with you when your student has mental health issues.
Not having appropriate special education services to offer children who need them.
Being a student in a no-excuse charter school and knowing that you could be punished for the smallest disciplinary infraction.
Having your local school board ignore your pleas to keep your public school open.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Special Education, Testing

Jon Pelto: Is It Fair to Test Students on Content They Have Not Studied?

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2015 //
40

Obviously not. But as Jonathan Pelto writes, the new SAT will be much harder than the old SAT, including content that many students have never been exposed to. Since Jon lives in Connecticut, he notes with dismay that the state legislature has mandated that all eleventh grade students take the new SAT. He predicts disaster.

He writes:

A New York Times article last week entitled, Everything You Need to Know About the New SAT, laid out the facts about the NEW SAT including the news that,

“The addition of more-advanced math, such as trigonometry, means the test will cover materials from a greater number of courses. That will make it more difficult for students to take the SAT early. Some questions will require knowledge of statistics, a course relatively few students take in high school.”

Thanks to Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy and the Democrat and Republican members of the Connecticut General Assembly, a new state law adopted last spring mandates that high school students now take the SAT in their junior year.

The test results will be used to judge both students and teachers.

However as high schools students (and parents) know, most high school juniors are, at best, tackling Algebra in 11th grade and many are still working to master Geometry.

But that coursework won’t be enough for high school juniors to succeed on the NEW SAT.

Even in academically successful Connecticut, few students will have even taken the courses needed to master the SAT and the majority of juniors may not have been provided with the math content to even survive the NEW Common Core aligned SAT.

According to most recent data published by the United States Government’s National Center for Education Statistics, only 16% of high school graduates in the country had taken a calculus course, 11% a statistics course and only a third had even come in contact with pre-calculus concepts, all of which they will be expected to answer if they want to master the NEW SAT.

And that was graduating seniors, not juniors!

Of course, you know that David Coleman, architect of the Common Core, is now president of the College Board, which sponsors the SAT. So the SAT had to be aligned with the Common Core.

Soon we can expect to hear that Connecticut, one of the leading states on NAEP, has a failing school system. We can expect the charter industry to rush in to the rescue and the revenue.

Categories Common Core, Connecticut, Testing

Cuomo’s Common Core Task Force Meets Opt Out Movement on Long Island

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2015 //
13

Governor Cuomo’s Common Core task force held its first meeting on Long Island–the epicenter of the Opt Out Movement–and it got an earful. Parents, teachers, even superintendents turned out to tell the task force that testing should be delinked  from teachers’ job ratings; that testing was overwhelming the school calendar; and that the Common Core should go.

Jeanette Deutermann, leader of the opt out group on Long Island, predicted that opt outs might double (from 220,000 in 2015 to 500,000 in 2016), if real changes do not happen.

The reporters pointed out that the hearing was very different from the one conducted by State Commissioner John King in 2013, when the audience was angry and rowdy, and King canceled future public meetings.

Lesson: ignoring parents makes them angry. Patronizing them and condescending to them will energize the opt outs.

PS: when I opened the article, I read it in full. When I went back to open it again, it was behind a  paywall. Hope you are lucky.

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Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Opt Out, Parents, Testing

Mike Petrilli and I Have a Brief Exchange about International Test Scores

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2015 //
53

I knew Mike Petrilli well, back when I was a trustee of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Institute in D.C. But after I became disillusioned with testing and school choice, I didn’t see much of him anymore. We occasionally trade emails. I have a certain residual fondness for him. But I nonetheless think he is wrong and hold out hope that he will one day realize it.

But he is not ready.

He sent me this note recently:

Joanne gets it exactly right. Ready to concede a few points?

—-
Mediocre U.S. scores: Don’t blame poverty
// Joanne Jacobs — Thinking and Linking by Joanne Jacobs

When U.S. students post mediocre scores on international tests, poverty is “the elephant in the room,” says American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten. Others point to a “poverty crisis” rather than an “education crisis.”

The elephant is not in the room, write Michael Petrilli and Brandon Wright in Education Next. U.S. schools do as well — or poorly — educating low-income students as other countries. Furthermore, U.S. children aren’t more likely to be poor: Those sky-high child poverty rates really are measuring inequality rather than absolute poverty.

Overall, the U.S. rates 28th in math proficiency for advantaged students among the 34 countries in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Disadvantaged U.S. students rank 20th compared to similar students in other PISA countries.

Our advantaged students may do better than poor kids here, but they don’t outperform similar students in developed countries.

While income inequality is high in the U.S., absolute poverty is not especially high, Petrilli and Wright argue. Including all forms of income, including welfare benefits, the U.S. poverty rate is lower than Britain’s, the same as Germany’s and “barely higher than Finland’s.”

Poverty drags down performance here — and everywhere, they conclude. The U.S. is not an outlier.

My response:

Except that the international scores predict nothing about the future. We were dead last in 1964. By now, we should be a Third World country. Except we are the biggest economy in the world with the most powerful military. How did all those dumb 15-year-olds manage that?

This is something I find hard to understand about the “reformers.” Why do they want the world to believe that we have the worst education system in the developed world? Why are they always eager to discredit our country? Who do they think created the goods and services, the technology and culture that has changed the world? It wasn’t just graduates of Andover, Exeter, and Deerfield Academy, or Lakeside and Sidwell Friends. It wasn’t graduates of charter schools. I remember the disgusting commercials that StudentsFirst produced and ran during the 2012 Olympics, portraying an American athlete as an overweight man in a tutu falling down; this was supposed to represent our flabby, effete, faltering education system. It struck me as crass anti-Americanism, as well as a few other ugly attributes.

The worst thing about our country is our tolerance for poverty, extreme income inequality, extreme wealth inequality, and segregation. The reformers scoff at such concerns and twist into pretzels trying to deny what is obvious. They are right that our education system must change, but not in the direction they seek. Our education system needs drastic change to get away from the soul-deadening conformity imposed by corporate reform. The status quo is stultifying, boring, and harmful to children and teachers.

How can I say more clearly that I don’t think the international test scores mean anything about the future? If destroying the joy of learning and the passion of discovery is the price of raising test scores, it is too high a price to pay.

Mike, please read Yong Zhao’s “Why China Has the Best and the Worst School System in the World?” Please watch the spectacular speech that he gave to the annual meeting of the Network for Public Education last April in Chicago. Please read Ted Dintersmith and Tony Wagner’s new book, “Most Likely to Succeed.” Open your mind. Create the world you want your children to live in, not a world where parents like you have to find private alternatives to escape what you and your rightwing friends are doing to our public schools.

Categories International, Testing
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