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Maya Angelou to Obama: Stop the Standardized Testing

By dianeravitch
November 10, 2013 //
49

Maya Angelou, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author, was one of 120 writers and illustrators who called on President Obama to cut back on the deluge of standardized testing promoted by his administration.

The 120 authors and illustrators issued the following statement to the President:

We the undersigned children’s book authors and illustrators write to express our concern for our readers, their parents and teachers. We are alarmed at the negative impact of excessive school testing mandates, including your Administration’s own initiatives, on children’s love of reading and literature. Recent policy changes by your Administration have not lowered the stakes. On the contrary, requirements to evaluate teachers based on student test scores impose more standardized exams and crowd out exploration.

We call on you to support authentic performance assessments, not simply computerized versions of multiple-choice exams. We also urge you to reverse the narrowing of curriculum that has resulted from a fixation on high-stakes testing.

Our public school students spend far too much time preparing for reading tests and too little time curling up with books that fire their imaginations. As Michael Morpurgo, author of the Tony Award Winner War Horse, put it, “It’s not about testing and reading schemes, but about loving stories and passing on that passion to our children.”

Teachers, parents and students agree with British author Philip Pullman who said, “We are creating a generation that hates reading and feels nothing but hostility for literature.” Students spend time on test practice instead of perusing books. Too many schools devote their library budgets to test-prep materials, depriving students of access to real literature. Without this access, children also lack exposure to our country’s rich cultural range.

This year has seen a growing national wave of protest against testing overuse and abuse. As the authors and illustrators of books for children, we feel a special responsibility to advocate for change. We offer our full support for a national campaign to change the way we assess learning so that schools nurture creativity, exploration, and a love of literature from the first day of school through high school graduation.

In addition, Maya Angelou specifically condemned the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program. She said “it is ‘a contest’ that doesn’t help children learn to love to read and get a better understanding of the world.

“She states, “Race To The Top feels to be more like a contest… not what did you learn, but how much can you memorize.” “Writers are really interested in forming young men and women,” she said. “… ‘This is your world.’ ‘ This is your country.’ ‘ This is your time.’ And so I don’t think you can get that by racing to the top.”

Categories Education Reform, Race to the Top, Testing

NAEP Nonsense: Don’t Believe the Hype

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2013 //
40

The latest NAEP reports on reading and math have been heralded as evidence for the success of the “reforms” that involve test prep, testing, punishing teachers if scores don’t go up, rewarding them if they do, closing schools, and other versions of the carrot and stick method of school reform.

Here is my one-word comment: Balderdash!

There are just as many states using the same misguided strategies who made few or no gains as there were reformy states making big gains.

If test-and-punish strategies work, why don’t they work everywhere?

D.C., Tennessee, and Indiana raised test scores, but the gains in other reformy states were small or negligible.

Below the national average were hard-driving reformy. States including Colorado, Delaware, Louisiana, Rhode Island, Ohio, Connecticut, and. North Carolina.

That highly reformy state Wisconsin made no gains at all.

Michigan, New Jersey, and Massachusetts actually lost ground.

It is impossible to conclude, as some leaders have, that D.C., Tennessee, and Indiana have the right formula because so many states with exactly the same formula made no progress at all. Some of the states that were unlucky enough to win Race to the Top mandates made little or no gains or lost ground.

As a former member of the NAEP board, let me say that I find this statistical horse race utterly stupid. Are students in D.C. getting a better education than those in Massachusetts? Highly unlikely.

Are the students in the states with the biggest gains getting better education or more test prep?

Let me say it as bluntly as I know how: these state comparisons are stupid and say nothing about the quality of education available in different states. Anyone who takes them seriously is either a sports writer covering education or someone who thinks that education can be reduced to the scores on standardized tests.

Will families rush to enroll their children in the schools of D.C. or Tennessee because of these scores? Don’t be ridiculous.

Categories Corporate Reformers, NAEP, Testing

A True Story Told as a Fairy Tale

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2013 //
11

A principal in New York City wrote this story, borrowing from the story of the wolf and the Three Little Pigs. The wolf wants to eat the pigs. Who will save them?

The moral of the story: The only way to defeat evil is to speak truth to power.

Read on:

 

 

On Wednesday afternoon a principal stricken with worry about her increasing complicity in miseducative school deform policy stops by the New York Public Library to browse through the exhibit of the History of Children’s Literature, before travelling home for Rosh Hashanah dinner. While kvelling about the gorgeous manuscripts and kvetching about the current state of the schools with the exhibit curator, the curator guides the principal into an archive room and unwraps a most unusual artifact. It was program notes for an opera that the Metropolitan Opera House wanted to present but the libretto, score and stage design, while imagined, were never completed.

 

THE THREE PIGGIESTEINS

A Fracked Folktale Operetta for the Jewish New Year

 

Libretto: Tony Kushner*

Visual Design: Maurice Sendak * *Played by Meryl Streep

Music: Leonard Bernstein*

 

Big Brother Pigs: Tweedies (DOE Central)

Principal Pig: Principals/CSA

Teacher Pig: Teachers/UFT

Kid Pig: Kids/Parents

Wolf: The State

 

 

SYNOPSIS

 

Prologue: Once upon a dystopic time, an uber wolf runs rampant through the state threatening to raze every weak school in order to feed its appetite for economic and mind control and fueling itself by eating the weakest and tenderest flesh it could find.

 

Scene One: The Wolf knocked on the door of Tweed Court House and demanded that Big Brother Pigs supply access (“let me come in”) to the data-bases of all of the schools in New York City. Big Brother Pigs made claim to protest and protect the schools, but when the Wolf threatened to raze Tweed (“then I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll fire your asses”) the Big Brother Pigs complied. The Wolf retreated to plot the data and plan strategic strikes.

 

Scene Two: Big Brother Pigs gathered the Principal Pigs and provided them with a suite of robust building materials and sent them off to fortify the foundations of their schools so that Wolf would find them too strong and tough to eat.

The Principal Pigs complied and placed surveillance cameras around the schools, and entered all teacher and child data into ARIS. Of course the surveillance cameras and data entry did nothing to improve the quality of teaching and learning at the schools and instead ate away at their cores.

The Wolf came and knocked on the schoolhouse doors and demanded access to the classrooms (“let me come in”). The Principal Pigs tried to protest and protect the teachers and students, but the Wolf threatened to raze the schoolhouses (“then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and the Big Brother Pigs will fire your asses”). The Principal Pigs agreed to give the Wolf access to the teacher and student data and told the Wolf to come back after the State tests were administered. The Wolf retreated to analyze the prior data in order to predict what would be the tastiest and tenderest targets, and licked its chops in anticipation of the Spring results.

 

Scene Three: The Principal Pigs gathered the Teacher Pigs and provided them with a visibility cloak (multiple measure evaluations) declaring that this would protect them from the salivating jaws of the Wolf. The Teacher Pigs went back to the classroom and awaited the Wolf, trembling because the visibility cloak was awfully sheer for a New York City winter. The month before the State tests the Wolf came and banged on the door demanding access. The Teacher Pigs didn’t want the Wolf to come eat all of the tasty and tender young children and refused. The Wolf threatened that if the Teacher Pigs did not comply it would raze the school (“then I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and the Principal Pigs will fire your asses”). And so the Teacher Pigs complied and scheduled a date to send the new State test scores to the Wolf. Wolf retreated with the data to consider the tastiest and tenderest morsels to pursue.

 

Scene 4: Meanwhile throughout New York City, parents realized that the schools were not protecting their children from the Wolf and took matters into their own hands. Parent Pigs gathered Kid Pigs and gave the Kid Pigs a magically strong piece of paper that would shield Kid Pig from harm (opt out letters). When Wolf did not receive the test scores as promised, it went back to the classrooms looking for the Kid Pigs’ data. The Kid Pigs showed Wolf the magical opt out letters. Wolf huffed and puffed and puffed and huffed and raged that it would the fire Kid Pigs’ asses. The Kid Pigs stuck out their tongues and scoffed, “You’re not the boss of me.”

 

Epilogue: Kid and Parent Pigs saved themselves, and the schools by speaking truth to power. That is a lesson in civic and life readiness, without which there can be no college and career readiness.

Categories Accountability, Testing

Bloomberg Declines to Expand Model School

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2013 //
21

During the Bloomberg years, the Department of Education has had a public relations staff that declared major successes whenever a new idea is launched, without waiting to see how things worked out. It is always good to be willing to try new ideas, but it is even better to withhold judgment until they have had time to prove themselves. But that has not been the New York City way these past dozen years.

One such well-heralded school is called the New American Academy, which opened in 2010, founded by Shimon Waronker, an Orthodox Jew who had studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and graduated from Mayor Bloomberg’s prized Leadership Academy. The school received extensive, often fawning press coverage. The big idea was to have 60 students in the same classroom with four teachers. It would be a new model of schooling, somewhat like the “bullpens” where Mayor Bloomberg’s employees work, in open cubicles rather than individual offices. It would replace the 19th century Prussian model of one teacher in one classroom with a large roomful of youngsters and four teachers. Its founder predicted that he would have 50 such schools open by 2012.

The press was intrigued. The New York Times heralded the opening of the school with its bold new concept, though with a hint of skepticism characteristic of the reporter Sharon Otterman, who was unimpressed by the noise and disorder. Nonetheless, she made clear that this was one of the models that education officials were excited about. The New York Post wrote an admiring article. David Brooks, always fast to see a big story in the making, called it “the relationship school,” and described it in glowing terms as akin to “the networked collaborative of today.” He hedged a bit at the end of his article, saying that it was too soon to say if it would work, but he made clear his admiration for the boldness of the scheme and its leader.

Alas, too soon the praise. Rachel Monahan of the New York Daily News reports that only 2 of its 22 students who took the Common Core tests in reading and math managed to pass. The city halted its plans to expand the school to a middle school. Worse, “more than half of the first class, which started with 40 first-graders three years ago, are no longer enrolled or weren’t promoted to the fourth grade, city stats show.” Although the city withdrew its plan to expand this school, two similar prototypes have already been approved. Undaunted by the test scores and the attrition rate, teachers and parents say they are enthusiastic about the new school.

 

Categories Accountability, New York City, Testing

Melissa Tomlinson: What Do Teachers Want?

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2013 //
24

Thanks to Kipp Dawson of Pittsburgh for drawing my attention to this letter written by Melissa Tomlinson, the teacher who confronted Governor Chris Christie, who shouted her down and said contemptuously, “What do you people want?”

This is her answer, which appeared on Mark Naison’s blog:
Dear Governor Christie,

Yesterday I took the opportunity to come hear you speak on your campaign trail. I have never really heard you speak before except for sound bytes that I get on my computer. I don’t have cable, I don’t read newspapers. I don’t have enough time. I am a public school teacher that works an average of 60 hours a week in my building. Yes, you can check with my principal. I run the after-school program along with my my classroom position. I do even more work when I am at home.

For verification of this, just ask my children.

I asked you one simple question yesterday. I wanted to know why you portray NJ Public Schools as failure factories.

Apparently that question struck a nerve. When you swung around at me and raised your voice, asking me what I wanted, my first response “I want more money for my students.”

Notice, I did not ask for more money for me. I did not ask for my health benefits, my pension, a raise, my tenure, or even my contract that I have not had for nearly three years. We got into a small debate about how much money has been spent on education. To me, there is never enough money that is spent on education. To invest in education is to invest in our future. We cannot keep short-changing our children and taking away opportunities for them to explore and learn.

As more money is required for state-mandated curriculum changes and high-stakes standardized testing, it is our children that are losing. Programs are being cut all over the state as budget changes are forcing districts to cut music, art, after-school transportation, and youth-centered clubs.

But let’s put money aside for a moment. What do I want? What do ‘we people’ want? We want to be allowed to teach.

Do you know that the past two months has been spent of our time preparing and completing paperwork for the Student Growth Objectives? Assessments were created and administered to our students on material that we have not even taught yet. Can you imagine how that made us feel? The students felt like they were worthless for not having any clue how to complete the assessments. The teachers felt like horrible monsters for having to make the students endure this. How is that helping the development of a child? How will that help them see the value in their own self-worth?

This futile exercise took time away from planning and preparing meaningful lessons as well as the time spent in class actually completing the assessments. The evaluations have no statistical worth and has even been recognized as such by the NJ Department of Education. I am all for evaluation of a teacher.

I recognize that I should be held accountable for my job. This does not worry me, as long as I am evaluated on my methods of teaching. I can not be held wholly accountable for the learning growth of a student when I am not accountable for all of the factors that influence this growth. Are you aware that poverty is the biggest determination of a child’s educational success. If not, I suggest you read Diane Ravitch’s new book Reign of Error. Take a moment and become enlightened.

Getting back to the issue of money. I am fully aware of our educational budget. Where is all of this money? To me it seems like it is being siphoned right off into the hands of private companies as they reap the benefits of the charter schools and voucher programs that you have put into place. It certainly hasn’t gone to improve school conditions in urban areas such as Jersey City. The conditions that these students and teachers are forced to be in are horrifying. Yet you are not allowing the funds needed to improve these conditions. Are you hoping that these schools get closed down and more students are forced to go to private charter schools while the districts are being forced to pay their tuition? I know for a fact that this is what has happened in Camden and Newark.

Yet these charter schools are not held to the same accountability as our public schools. Why is that? Because deep down you know that you are not really dealing with the issues that influence a child’s education. You are simply putting a temporary band-aid into place.

Unfortunately [for you] that temporary fix is already starting to be exposed as Charter Schools are showing that they actually are not able to do better than public schools. You are setting up teachers to take the blame for all of this. You have portrayed us as greedy, lazy money-draining public servants that do nothing. I invite you to come do my job for one week Governor Christie. I invite you to come see my students, see how little they really have during the school day as they are being forced to keep learning for a single snapshot of their educational worth.

For that one end-all, be-all test, the NJASK. The one that the future of my job and my life is now based upon. Why do you portray schools as failure factories? What benefit do you reap from this? Have you acquired financial promises for your future campaigns as you eye the presidential nomination? Has there been back-room meetings as you agree to divert public funds to private companies that are seeking to take over our public educational system? This is my theory. To accomplish all of this, you are setting up the teachers to take the blame. Unfortunately, you are not the only governor in our country that has this agenda.

What do “we people’ want, Governor Christie? We want our schools back. We want to teach. We want to be allowed to help these children to grow, educationally, socially, and emotionally. We want to be respected as we do this, not bullied.
BadAss Teacher, Melissa Tomlinson
http://withabrooklynaccent.blogspot.com/2013/11/letter-to-governor-christie-from-new.html

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Jersey, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Montessori Teacher to John King: Montessori Is Not About Testing and Common Core

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2013 //
39

I received an email from a Montessori teacher in Wisconsin. She asked me to publish this so that Dr. John King, State Commissioner of Education in New York, understands that the Montessori school to which he sends his own children does not have a philosophy aligned with what he proposes for Other People’s Children.

Dear Diane,
John King keeps on saying that Common Core is a lot like Montessori education. I am an upper-level teacher (1st-6th grade) at a private Montessori school in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I have read the CC standards and researched it. Many of our parents are teachers in the public school district and I discuss CC with them. I am reading your book and I can tell you that Common Core is nothing like the Montessori method. There are many differences, but I’ve limited my explanation to how we view homework and assessment in the Montessori classroom. This is also how I explain the differences to parents.
One of the current trends in education, to increase “academic rigor,” has resulted in elementary students receiving more homework on a daily basis. So why do Montessori students receive very little homework? While many schools and teachers feel pressure to assign daily homework, research shows this is actually causing children more harm than good. The harm includes loss of family time, limiting time for unstructured play and exercise, restricting the time that children have to pursue their own interests and self-learning, and most importantly, it kills off a love of learning. Children need to go outside and play. So what is our goal in Montessori schools? It is to help the parents raise a well-rounded, happy person with a healthy dose of curiosity and an everlasting interest in our world.How do we assess the students in the elementary classroom if we don’t give tests? First, let me clarify a common misconception about tests. In a conventional classroom, many of the assessments that students take are standardized tests. The results of these tests are received months after the test is given and are not used by the teacher to determine lesson planning for each student. Teacher-made-tests provide immediate results that are used for grades, but the results usually do not influence the lesson plans for each individual child. In the upper-level classroom, we continually evaluate the progress of each child through observation and discussion: observation of the written portion of the assignment, observation of the student at work, and discussion of the work with each student. We record the progress of each student, with the goal that the student is working at his or her best potential and has mastered the concepts. In order to achieve that goal, we often need to review, re-explain, alter assignments, or choose a material that will show the concept from a different perspective based on the needs of each individual student.

Maria Montessori said that “Before elaborating any system of education, we must therefore create a favorable environment that will encourage the flowering of a child’s natural gifts. All that is needed is to remove the obstacles.” There are many obstacles which may cause a student to struggle but the most common causes are fear and maturity, two factors that greatly determine a person’s ability or inability to learn but are rarely ever considered as relevant to education. In a Montessori classroom, we try to create an atmosphere where it is safe to make a mistake and trial and error is the norm, thus reducing the amount of fear and anxiety. The varied rates of maturity are reflected in the three year time spans of 3-6, 6-9, and 9-12. Montessori teachers evaluate the work habits that enable lifelong learning, independence, responsibility, and kindness.

On my evaluation form, I also include if the student is working for his or her own enjoyment. I must say that my students love coming to school everyday and it is hard for me to get them to leave at the end of the day. Parents have told me that their first graders are sad when it is the weekend because they can’t go to school. Montessori classrooms create a setting for children that is very natural to them and encourages learning, discovery, and creativity. It highly respects and values each child. That is the education that John King’s children are receiving.

Marianne Giannis

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Testing

“Reform” is Destroying Humane Values, Creating a Hatred for School

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2013 //
50

Raymond Gerson of Austin Community College sent this article, which expresses a growing recognition across the nation that federal and state education policies are ruining children’s lives and crushing the love of learning.

Gerson writes:

Scarcity of Humane Values in Educational Policies

By Raymond Gerson

Frequent high stakes testing, hours of test prep drills, large classes and reduction or elimination of art, music and P.E. are taking their toll on both students and teachers. School counselors have reported an increase in A.D.H.D., anxiety, depression and other psychological problems among students. Parents have reported that as early as elementary school their children are starting to hate school and are turning off. Many students are bored and stressed out from the constant pressure to perform on high stakes bubble tests.

Children begin school with a natural curiosity and intrinsic motivation to learn. Learning should be an enjoyable process which stimulates student imagination, creativity, ability to think for oneself and the ability to solve problems that have more than one right answer. This type of learning experience will prepare students to become well-informed and productive members of society and to work in good careers in the future. Many current educational environments are breaking the spirits of students and teachers and are turning off intrinsic motivation to learn and teach.

Many wealthy and powerful individuals (and organizations) with little or no teaching experience are influencing educational policies which are destructive. They are in favor of frequent high stakes testing, large classes, closing public schools and reducing courses in the arts except when it comes to their own children. Their children usually attend private schools with small classes, health support services, plenty of courses in the arts and little or no frequent high stakes standardized tests with hours of test prep drills. This is hypocritical and inhumane.

Children need to be emotionally healthy to live successful and fulfilling lives as adults. Development of their emotional and social intelligence are important if they are to grow into fully functioning adults with humane values. Values such as kindness, caring for others, love, integrity and compassion make us good human beings. Students will learn these values from the example of adults and by the way adults treat them. The way many students are being treated is lowering their sense of self-worth, diminishing their creativity, blocking their potential and teaching them to be less compassionate and empathetic.

Teachers should be allowed to teach and create their own lesson plans based on the curriculum that they are teaching. They need time to teach students to think for themselves instead of spending hours doing test prep. They also need time to collaborate with other teachers.

There are schools which are excellent models of education such as the one in Finland. Instead of modeling our education system after successful ones, the U.S. is following in the footsteps of educational systems like the one in Chile which is a “free market” disaster.

The changes that are needed for a great education system will not come from the top down until there is enough action and pressure from the bottom up. Students, parents, teachers and school administrators will need to protest in large numbers before the PTB will make necessary changes. An example of this occurred recently in Texas. Mothers who were angry about all of the high stakes testing convinced the state politicians to take action. They voted to reduce the amount of yearly standardized tests from fifteen to five.

Let’s reawaken a love of learning in our students, treat them with humane values and give our teachers opportunities to teach students to think for themselves.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Industry, Education Reform, Testing

Students at Elite HS in NYC Boycott Tests

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2013 //
13

Students at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, a school that accepts only students that have high scores on their entry examinations, boycotted the latest tests to protest their purpose. The students knew that the tests had no purpose other than to evaluate their teachers, and they thought the tests were not only a waste of students’ time but unfair to their teachers.

Geoff Decker of Gotham Schools writes:

A group of students at the elite high school in lower Manhattan pledged to opt out of the English tests that were administered today, saying they’re opposed to the exam’s purpose. The tests are low-stakes for students, but they’ll be used to grade teachers on new evaluations being rolled out this year.

“This movement is meant to support Stuyvesant teachers in opposing an unfair teacher evaluation system,” Senior David Cahn wrote on the Facebook page he created to encourage other students to join in.

Students across the city are taking formal baseline tests this year in many subjects because of new teacher evaluation rules. The rules require teachers to be rated in part by how much their students improve over the course of the year, and schools are using tests this fall as the baseline for determining student proficiency at the beginning of the year. 

The extra testing has eaten into class time and taken teachers out of classroom for grading. “

The students at Stuyvesant High School proved that they understand more about teaching and learning than policymakers in Washington and Albany.

Categories Students, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Montclair Prepares for Test Score Decline under “”Reform” Leader

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2013 //
27

Jersey Jazzman describes the new era of creative disruption in Montclair, New Jersey, under its Broad-trained superintendent.

Montclair was, until now, one of the best districts in a high performing state.

Expect the crisis narrative to begin any day now as a prelude to charters and school closings. Unless, that is, the parents rebel. Suburban parents don’t like to be shoved around, and don’t like experiments on their children.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Broad Foundation, New Jersey, Testing

This Reader Was Educated in China

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2013 //
61

The reader writes: “One thing I have repeated heard in this
‘Ed Reform’ talk is that American kids need to ‘catch up’ with kids
from other countries because we are behind in those international
tests. I grew up in China, where there is very rigorous curriculum;
where frequent testing and ranking of students is part of a
student’s life the moment the child walks into a school; where
students do perform well in internationally-benchmarked tests. “Is
that what some ed reformers here are going after? If so, I would
suggest that they take a look at how lost and uninspired to learn
college freshman year students are in China; how students, even at
very young ages, cheat on tests so that they can rank higher in
their class and consequently get to better schools; how many
people, like myself, still have nightmares about not being able to
finish all the questions on a test, even in our adulthood. “Go
visit a Chinese airport, or bus stop, or subway station. See if you
can spot people reading while waiting. Likely not – because
people’s desire to read, to explore, to think and keep learning was
killed long ago, inside the schools, by those tests…”

Categories International, Testing
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