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Reader: Memories of a Better Time in Education

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2014 //
48

This reader shares memories of a different time. I can vouch for what he or she writes. I remember those days too. The time after school was spent riding bikes or playing pick-up games of baseball or playing in someone’s backyard. Homework was for after dinner. There was always time for play with friends. The family ate dinner together. I went to a high school with about 1,200 students. None of the girls got pregnant. There were no drugs (but some alcohol and lots of fast driving). All teachers were Mr. or Mrs. or Miss. Were they the good old days? In some ways, yes, in some ways, no. But there was not the same degree of pressure on students to perform that there is today. No one committed suicide; the only deaths among youth were the result of reckless driving. We had childhoods.

What is sad is kids are no longer kids but little carbon copies of adults. When I grew up after dinner everyone went outdoors to play all kinds of games. It was all, clean good fun. We’d come home exhausted, sweaty and sleep like logs.
Drive down any residential street and no kids playing outdoors. Each having computers, texting, little islands unto themselves, and families not eating together. So sad.
I cannot remember anything I learned in first or second grade. Cursive writing in third only. Some Viking history in 4th. Frankly, what I would have liked to learn throughout school was about finances, saving money, investing, balancing a check book, raising kids, and more about communicating my needs to my mate.
I am 77 and I have a young friend who has been a second grade teacher for 23 years. I was absolutely APPALLED at the strict learning program for her second graders this year.
I am appalled also at these programs teaching babies to read at some ridiculous age, 13 months is it?
the whole world is upside down and so is the purpose of kids going to school. To learn social graces, share, abide by rules, respect self and others. All of life is about rules and that what we learn in school, but kids are meant to have fun, create, play,and not be stressed to the max and suffer anxiety.
When I was in high school, NO ONE became pregnant. NO drugs. Girls wore skirts, boys pants. If you were sick you were sent home. teachers were called Mr.or Mrs. etc. You wrote 5,000 essays if you talked back, or marred your desk. Later homework was neat
and thrown away to do over if messy.
No one freaked out. We loved our years at highschool.
Gee, Ben Franklin left school at second grade. Many great writers, people left early.
No one had died in my high school.
When my sons were in high school they were pall bearers 6x by the time they graduated.
And, even when younger, I told my sons, as you get older you will see more and more
suicides amongst your peers. This came to pass.
We must begin to see that something is radically wrong in education for so many deaths, suicides, pills, meds, etc. Something is TERRIBLY wrong.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Testing

Caleb Rossiter on KIPP and the Challenge of Educating All

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2014 //
29

When we talk about educating all, we usually mean educating all. But as Caleb Rossiter points out, educating all is a mighty challenge when so many children are so woefully unprepared and unmotivated. Caleb quit his job in a charter school because he was asked to raise scores that were undeserved. But now he has a habit of speaking with candor about kids who have no interest in what is happening in the classroom.

In this post, he writes about his experience with KIPP, and he has much to say about the misuse of standardized testing and gaming the system.

But what bothers him most is that our society has no real plans for the kids who don’t do homework, don’t do classwork, and don’t care much about learning in school.

KIPP is part of the national turning away from vocational high schools and a boosting of watered-down college prep for students who lack the interest or skills to be successful.  From presidents down to principals there is a silly insistence that college is the holy grail in a country with probably a 75 percent true high school graduation rate, 50 percent drop-out rates in poor areas, and most poor students so far behind by 9th grade that success in college is extremely unlikely until later in their lives.  Many kids would benefit from having a real choice for a high school education, like the one we provide in upstate New York through the BOCES vocational half-day schools, that graduated them to be successful electricians, plumbers, cosmetologists, computer technicians, nurse’s aides, and carpenters.        

KIPP also is part of the bleeding of the public schools of money and talent by charters, which Diane Ravitch points out, en bloc, at the macro level of system change, have no better record than public schools when properly compared on the education of the same families and kids.  But I know that charters, good and bad, fraudulent and purposeful, are here to stay, and more are coming all the time.  

Reading Jay’s book right after Diane’s new book on the Privatization movement was unsettling.  She focuses on showing how income and education level of parents is still the primary driver of outcomes in schools — and for me, she still misses the special challenges of Post-traumatic Slave Syndrome and Currently-traumatized Segregation Syndrome that are peculiar to the progeny of the peculiar institution.  Jay focuses on how better achievement can be coaxed out of the situation.  I’d like to see the two of them get together to make some joint proposals!

I am not so sure about the “Post-traumatic Slave Syndrome and Currently-traumatized Segregation Syndrome.” But maybe Caleb knows more than I do from his experiences in the schools of D.C.

I share Caleb’s distrust of standardized testing; it has become part of the problem, rather than an answer or even a reliable measure. Somehow I think that if we expect to solve our biggest social problems, we have to come up with better answers for those kids who don’t care. They are the kids who fail and fail and fail. Kicking them out of charter schools and magnet schools may feel right to the schools that exclude them, but it doesn’t answer the larger questions. What will happen to them? What will happen to our society if we continue to ignore their fate? What kind of society are we if we think we can forget them?

 

Categories Charter Schools, Poverty, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Testing

My Speech about Common Core to MLA

By garyrubinstein
January 18, 2014 //
36

On January 11, I spoke to the annual meeting in Chicago of the Modern Language Association about the Common Core. My talk was titled “Common Core: Past, Present, Future.”

I think readers of this blog will find it of interest.

It is about 17 pages long, so sit down.

I explain the background of the standards and explain why they have become so controversial, with critics and supporters on all points of the political spectrum–right, left, and middle.

I recommend decoupling the standards from the testing. And I recommend that the standards be reviewed, corrected, and updated on a regular basis by panels of teachers and scholars. No set of standards should be considered so sacrosanct that they can never be revised. These arrived encased in concrete.

To open the speech, click here.

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Testing

Mercedes Schneider on Duncan: Why Does He Blame Everyone But the DOE?

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2014 //
41

Mercedes Schneider has a terrific post in which she reviews Arne Duncan’s interview with U.S. News, in which he claims that American teachers “often come from the bottom of the academic barrel.”

His ideal of academic excellence? Examination hell in South Korea.

Schneider explains what Duncan finds so admirable. For one hing, his only way to think of education is test scores. Nothing else matters.

She wonders why Duncan is quick to blame everyone for what he sees as failing schools but never thinks about the ineffectiveness of the Bush-Obama policies. If they were graded, they would certainly be graded Ineffective. A dozen years of failed policy is enough!

Categories Duncan, Arne, International, Testing

Paul Thomas: Time for AFT to Take Another Look at Common Core

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2014 //
9

Paul Thomas believes that the Common Core standards do not answer any of the most pressing problems in American education, most of which are economic and social, not pedagogical.

In this post, he commends Randi Weingarten for turning against VAM but worries that states will push ahead with it anyway. He expresses the hope that AFT will take the next logical step and recognize that the Common Core standards are not a great new idea but rather a continuation of the standards-based, test-based reform that characterizes NCLB and Race to the Top. These strategies always leave those with the least far behind. They never close the achievement gap. They reflect it.

He writes:

It is now time for leaders in education—including political leaders, union leaders, professional organization leaders—to acknowledge the historical record on standards-based accountability, the research base on standards-based accountability, and the real-world consequences related to standards-based accountability; and then, CC should be rejected, the real problems facing schools should be identified, and a new reform paradigm embraced.

AFT and Weingarten could offer a brave and powerful voice in that fight, and it would be welcomed.

 

Categories Common Core, Testing, Unions

Where Does All That Spending on Education Go?

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2014 //
32

This teacher has an idea why the costs of American education are going up while teachers are being laid off, and teachers must pay for supplies out of their own pocket. It is no paradox to her. She left this comment:

 

When I think of the money that has been diverted from classrooms to testing and teacher evaluation companies, it makes me sick. The extra supports (after school programs, counseling, smaller classes, electives, etc.) have been sucked away by corporate greed. This borders on plain stupidity and theft.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Testing

StudentsFirst Issues Another Ludicrous State Report Card

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2014 //
84

StudentsFirst, the organization created by Michelle Rhee to promote her ideas about fixing schools by high-stakes testing and choice, has issued its second state-by-state report card.

The highest scoring states are not those whose students have the highest achievement on NAEP; that would be Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

No, the highest scoring states are those that do what Rhee did in D.C., the nation’s lowest-scoring district on NAEP.

She awards points for “elevating the teaching profession,” which means tying evaluations of teachers and principals to test scores, eliminating teacher tenure, eliminating collective bargaining, awarding bonuses to teachers whose students get higher test scores, and opening teaching jobs to teachers who have no certification or other credentials. In other words, the way to “elevate the teaching profession” is to make teachers into temporary workers whose job depends on the test scores of their students and to lower standards for entry into teaching. I wish that whoever defined this category would read the research on value-added methodology (VAM), like here and here. Tying teacher and principal evaluations leads to narrowing the curriculum, teaching to the test, and CHEATING.

She awards points for “empowering parents,” which means that a state gets higher scores if it offers charters and vouchers and has a parent trigger so that parents can hand their public school over to a charter corporation. Of course, the report offers no research to support these recommendations since voucher schools do not outperform neighborhood public schools-their advocates, nor do charters, on average. Some charters get higher test scores, because they enroll motivated students who apply. Others get high scores because they exclude students with disabilities and English learners. But on average, there is not much difference in outcomes between public schools and charter schools. The “parent trigger” has thus far–in its four years as state law in California–converted one public school to charter status and fired one principal.

Her third priority–spending wisely and well–promotes governance by the state and mayoral control. In other words, states get a plus if they override or preferably abolish local school boards.

The highest scoring states: Louisiana: #1; Florida (#2); Indiana (#3); Rhode Island (#4); D.C. (#5).

How did the highest performing states in the nation do on the StudentsFirst report card:

Massachusetts: (first in nation on NAEP): D (#21 on Rhee’s report card);

New Jersey: (tied for second place in the nation on NAEP): D (#31 on Rhee’s report card);

Connecticut (tied for second in the nation on NAEP): D+ (#24 on Rhee’s report card).

It is ironic that an organization that wants states to rank teachers, students, and schools in relation to student test scores issues a report card that evaluates states without any reference to student test scores.

Clearly, the rankings have nothing whatever to do with any academic outcomes for students. These are the states that comes closest to complying with Michelle Rhee’s ideological preferences: privatization and dismantling the teaching profession.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Why I Defend Randi

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2014 //
135

A reader who calls himself or herself “Democracy” left comments criticizing me for defending Randi Weingarten–or perhaps for not attacking her.

Here is my response to Democracy:

Democracy, you ask a good question, and I will answer as best I can..

As you know, I have criticized the Common Core in many posts. I have criticized the lack of transparency and the lack of educator participation in its development. I have criticized the fact that the Gates Foundation paid out nearly $200 million to develop and promote the CCSS, which really means they are the Gates Standards. I have said that rigorous standards will not solve–let alone address–the economic dysfunction at the root of educational inequality–and is likely to exacerbate it.

Randi Weingarten is certainly more positive about Common Core than I am. She is the president of the AFT and has been willing to engage on the issues, while the NEA has remained supportive of Common Core and silent.

I have long believed that Randi would ultimately change course, and she has done so recently. First, she called for a moratorium on testing. only days ago, she came out in opposition to VAM, saying that VAM is a sham. She has followed her reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is that Common Core should be decoupled from testing. If Common Core is in fact decoupled from testing, it loses its power as a means of rating and ranking students and teachers and principals. It becomes a set of standards that may or may not prove useful but has no power to ruin lives and careers

The next, inevitable step is to recognize that Common Core must be amended by teachers and scholars. As it currently exists, it is an infallible edict encased in concrete. No standards are so perfect that they need never be updated.

I will not attack Randi, not only because she is a personal friend, not only because she is showing the capacity to evolve and change her mind, but because we who object to the current demolition derby can’t prevail without the support of at least one of the major unions. In short, we need her leadership. To turn against her is to wound our cause irreparably, our cause being the survival of public education and the teaching profession. To attack one of our few national leaders in the middle of a crucial war will aid those who are attacking public education and teachers. If we who are allies fight one another, we lose. I prefer success to defeat. Too much is riding on the outcome of these questions to indulge in ideological purity and cast out those who are not in complete agreement.

Categories Common Core, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, Unions

New Volume About Teacher Evaluation and High-Stakes Testing Now Available

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2014 //
12

A group of expert researchers have published a new collection of articles about teacher evaluation and high-stakes testing and their consequences.

The collection appears online in the Teachers College Record. It is called “High-Stakes Teacher Evaluation: High Cost, Big Losses.”

You will recognize the names of many of the contributors. (I wrote the foreword, the least significant part of the volume.) This collection provides solid research evidence demonstrating that the teacher evaluation practices promoted by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are not only worthless but harmful. Sad to say, his advocacy for these misguided policies have been adopted in many states and may well damage American education for many years to come.

Categories Research, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Randi Weingarten: Decouple the Common Core from the Testing

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2014 //
169

Randi Weingarten believes in the promise of the Common Core standards, and she has strongly defended them.

But she recognizes that the rushed implantation, notably in New York, jeopardized the standards.

In this post, Randi says that the standards must be separated from the testing.

They must not be used to rank and rate teachers or to apply value-added measurement, where teachers are judged by computer-generated algorithms.

She writes:

“It’s time to call the question. Will the powers-that-be continue to be more concerned with creating a testing and data system that ranks and sorts schools and educators, in the quest for the perfect industrial algorithm to judge teachers, students and schools? Or will they look at the evidence and join educators, students and parents in fighting to reclaim the promise of public education?

“We can’t reclaim the promise of public education without investing in strong neighborhood public schools that are safe, collaborative and welcome environments for students, parents, educators and the broader community. Schools where teachers and school staff are well-prepared and well-supported, with manageable class sizes and time to collaborate. Schools with rigorous standards aligned to an engaging curriculum that focuses on teaching and learning, not testing, and that includes art, music, civics and the sciences — and where all kids’ instructional needs are met. Schools with evaluation systems that are not about sorting and firing but about improving teaching and learning. And schools with wraparound services to address our children’s social, emotional and health needs.”

We know who “the powers that be” are. Will they listen?

Categories Common Core, Testing
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