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NYC: On Thursday, Join a Demonstration for Education!

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2013 //
2

This just in:

Hope you can join us and spread the word!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, June 6th, 2013

NYC public school children will sign John Hancocks to their own “Declaration of Education” on Chancellor’s Day

City Hall Park gathering injects a positive message into the standardized testing debate, favors giving administrators room to create learning communities and giving teachers time to do what they do best: teach!

MANHATTAN—Parents, New York City public schoolchildren and community members will gather in City Hall Park on Thursday, June 6th at 10:00 am for a Chancellor’s Day event that will feature music, giant puppets and a participatory social studies lesson inspired by the drafting of the Declaration of Independence.

“We’re coming together in support of our amazing public school teams,” said Jody Drezner Alperin, one of the event’s organizers. “The high-stakes testing culture handcuffs our teachers and administrators and keeps them from doing what they do best. We want to see the tests return to being just one valid measure of success among many.”

Vicky Finney Crouch, another event organizer, said “This isn’t about opting out, it’s about redressing the balance. We don’t send our kids to school to just take tests and do endless test prep; we send our kids to school to learn. We don’t want our schools turned into test-taking factories; we want them to be nurturing communities of learning again.”

At the gathering, as part of an interactive lesson, kids will offer suggestions for what they believe are the fundamental ingredients every school should have, and their ideas will be inscribed on an enormous scroll, the “Declaration of Education”. Candidates for mayor and City Council have been invited to attend.

The scroll, which the kids will sign, will be delivered later to New York State Education Commissioner John King. Copies will go to Mayor Mike Bloomberg, NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, NY State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, NYC City Councilmembers, city members of the NY State Legislature, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew, Council of School Supervisors and Administrators President Ernest Logan, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

“We’re helping New York City Public School children share their strong and important voices with the powers that be,” said Drezner Alperin. Added Finney Crouch, “This will remind decision-makers how fantastic kids can be when they’re encouraged to think for themselves. And it will show them that when kids are actively engaged, real learning happens – the kind of learning can’t happen during test prep and isn’t valued by standardized tests.”

Media Contacts: Jody Drezner Alperin: 917.902.0944. jd.alperin@gmail.com
Vicky Finney Crouch: 917.608.4321. vickyfinney@mac.com
Robin Epstein: 917.658.8803. robinepsteindesign@gmail.com
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Categories New York City, Parents, Students, Testing

The Patron Saints of Standardized Testing

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2013 //
15

Two political leaders—Arne Duncan and Dannell Malloy, governor of Connecticut–recently held a press conference where they both pretended to disdain high-stakes testing. Duncan went so far as to claim that he had decreased standardized testing when he led the Chicago public schools.

If only it were true! Jonathan Pelto and Sarah Darer Littman did some fact-checking, and the only question is why these guys don’t own up to their public record. They are both champions of standardized testing. Their unwillingness to own up to their own record shows how unpopular the testing-accountability movement has become. Now if they would only practice what they preach!

Categories Connecticut, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Race to the Top, Testing

Gary Rubinstein: The Illegal Trojan Horse in King’s Evaluation Plan

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2013 //
12

Gary Rubinstein, who teaches mathematics, analyzed Commissioner John King’s plan to evaluate NYC teachers, which he imposed in the absence of an agreement between New York City and the United Federation of Teachers. Gary went a step further and read the law that King based his plan on. Gary concludes that King misread the law and that his plan is fundamentally flawed.

Step back a minute and ask yourself how many other professions are evaluated based on legislative mandates. Even in public sector jobs, like firefighters and police, nurses and social workers, do legislatures dictate how they should be evaluated on the job and by what criteria rpthey should be rated?

Categories New York, New York City, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Camins: What Would Real Reform Look Like?

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2013 //
15

Arthur Camins is director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.

In this excellent article, he notes that the advocates of the status quo are those who are in power and who impose high-stakes testing and privatization on districts and states. Oddly enough, the leaders of the status quo dismiss critics by calling them “defenders of the status quo.”

Camins suggests that real reform would be very different from the current evidence-free status quo.

He argues that: “the pillars of current education reform are more likely to preserve rather than change the status quo. Further, there are alternative policies that are more likely to mediate educational inequity, creating real rather than illusory movement. None of the pillars of reform will address either of these conditions at scale. Instead, they merely give some students a competitive advantage. Even if reforms redistribute these benefits or slightly alter the size of the advantaged group, they are still essentially maintaining the status quo, creating the illusion of movement, without fundamental change.”

One of the pillars of the “status quo reformers” is a devout belief in charters. Camins says this is not real reform: “Current policies that fund increasing numbers of charter schools is not a game-changer because there is no evidence that high-quality charters are a scalable strategy. Some argue that they should be part of a solution. However, since they only serve the few based on comparative advantage, this is in the end a cynical idea- a solution for the lucky few. Others argue that they are the solution. These folks see results-driven competition as a means to weed out ineffective schools through closings. This implies continual disruption in the lives of the disadvantaged children they are meant to serve. Rather than forward movement, it is an exacerbation of current conditions. The publicity around the limited number of effective charter schools creates the illusion of improvement for a few, while everything else stands still. Finally, since the evidence is mounting that charter schools are increasing rather than deceasing class and racial segregation, they are supporting not disrupting the status quo.”

The other pillar of the “status quo reforms” is high-stakes testing. This too is not real reform. “In reality, these reforms preserve rather than challenge the status quo because they do not address the fundamental causes of educational inequity. They preserve the core idea that competition rather than collaboration is the lever for fundamental change. Competition for rewards is only effective for short-term superficial goals while undermining the collaboration necessary for long-term improvement. Since teacher isolation is too often a feature of current school culture, a competitive reward system will only makes this situation worse. Again, we have the illusion of movement while leaving things in place. As many have argued, fostering intrinsic motivation is the only sure strategy for deep sustainable change.”

What would real reform look like? To begin with, it would address the root causes of poor academic performance. Camins says that “A focus on improving the collective culture of schools, rather than individual teachers, has far greater potential for substantive progress.” He has ten specific approaches that would lead to real reform and would liberate students and teachers from the punitive status quo. Read the article.

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Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Support for public schools, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, Vouchers

A Brilliant Post By Anthony Cody: How to Win

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2013 //
23

Anthony Cody gets stronger and sharper with every column he writes.

In this post, he explains how the best defense is a good offense.

He shows how critics of NCLB were tricked in 2008, then tricked again by Race to the Top.

It’s time to stop collaborating with those who want to destroy public education, he says.

It’s time to recognize, he writes, that Common Core is old wine in new bottles. Instead of getting rid of the testing and accountability dragnet, we will be ensnared in it even more deeply.

He writes,

“The Common Core could be called a “High Tech Rehabilitation of High Stakes Tests.” The major goal of the project has been to overcome objections to data-driven school reform, by offering standards and tests that are so new and different that we will not mind having our schools driven by them. They are heavily supported by a coalition of corporate entities that stand to make billions from the privatization of education. If we cannot mount a coherent counterproposal, we will be stuck objecting piecemeal to the worst elements of this regime, just as we did with NCLB. This may give us some small victories, but the entire project will remain intact.”

What would a good offense look like? The first step, as he puts it, is to “discredit bogus claims and false solutions,” as we do here regularly, like the stories about the miracle schools where 100% of the students graduate and go to college (except for those that don’t), or the miracle claims for mayoral control (but forget about D.C. and Cleveland), or the phony claims about privatization and inexperienced teachers.

What else? Read his post.

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing, U.S. education, Vouchers

Teacher: We Should Return the Race to the Top Money

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2013 //
19

Just in from a teacher:

 

I teach in Albany, New York, and the State Education Department is crazy.

I just completed 1 month of testing. and no real teaching.

We are giving more tests than I ever dreamed possible.

Not only the state exams, but now local measures to help teachers with low testing students.

These new evaluations have spurred the worst frenzy I have ever seen.

It has been brought on by the Race to The Top money.

What a terrible idea no distict should have accepted the money.

There should have been mass protests about the strings attached, and it should be given back.

Categories Accountability, Race to the Top, Testing

News Flash: National Exam Leaked Online in the Netherlands

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2013 //
2

A 22-year-old man was arrested in The Netherlands in connection with the posting online of a national examination in French.

With the trend towards online national assessments, the temptation for hackers to obtain them, rewrite them, release them, sell them, etc. becomes irresistible.

Categories Technology, Computers, Testing

Do Students Perform Better When the Course Is “Harder”?

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2013 //
24

The Hillsborough district in Florida pays superintendents a bonus if more students register for AP courses. It doesn’t matter if they pass the exams or get credit, just register.

Here is the result: only 22% passed the Algebra 1 end of course exam. No matter. The superintendent gets a bonus.

This idea that low-performing students will succeed if the bar is raised and raised again is like a coach saying to the runners: all those who could not jump over a 4 foot bar will now be required to jump over a six foot bar.

Categories Accountability, Florida, Testing

Testing Insanity in NY: New Tests for Gym, Music, Art, K-2

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2013 //
24

Testing is moving from onerous to ridiculous.

In response to the new teacher evaluation agreement, where every teacher must be evaluated in part by student test scores, the city education department is moving rapidly to develop new tests for every teacher, including teachers of physical education, music, arts, and even kindergarten through second grade.

At this point, one must ask whether city education officials have lost all sense of education values or whether they are trying to make public school so dreadful that parents flee to charters and private schools.

Naturally the agreement was praised by a spokesperson for the rightwing National Council for Teacher Quality, which has a faith-based devotion to standardized testing.

Someday this testing madness will collapse of its own weight, as one foolishness is piled onto another and then another and then another.

And those who created this regime will go down in history as opportunistic, anti-intellectual, or worse.

 

 

Categories New York, New York City, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

“Mrs. Ratliff” Lives

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2013 //
15

I received a letter from a veteran teacher who recognized herself as my teacher Mrs. Ratliff, whom I wrote about in chapter 9 of my recent book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. When I read about all the schemes to measure the worth of students by the test scores of their students, I thought about Mrs. Ratliff, who was both my homeroom teacher and my literature teacher. She had high standards, she was no-nonsense, she demanded the best of her students, and students lined up to get into her classes. I wondered if there would be more Mrs. Ratliffs, in light of the new demand that everything and everyone be measured by standardized tests. Mrs. Ratliff didn’t give any standardized tests. I wondered what she would think of the autocratic, mindless new world in which we live now.

Beverly Hart wrote (and I post here with her permission):

Dear Diane:

I was reading your latest book and came to the chapter “What Would Mrs. Ratliff Do?” The more I read about her, the more I realized that I was reading about myself! I was stunned to see the parallels: I teach high school English (and U.S. History), I insist on accuracy in students’ writing (do it over until you get it right), I wield a hefty red pen, I am stingy with A’s (you really have to earn an A, none of this grade inflation), and I love teaching the great writers and thinkers. (For many years I also taught Latin until, unfortunately, it died out.)

I am in my 45th year of teaching at the same small rural high school in central Illinois and am teaching children of my former students. I believe passionately in the value of a strong public education system, and I am troubled when bureaucrats who really know nothing about teaching proscribe from on high and reduce the art and science of teaching to standardized test scores that are based on many untenable assumptions. I feel like an anachronism as I try to uphold standards of excellence in a world of mediocrity.

I know why I have continued to teach for these many years—it’s all about my students. I get positive feedback from former students who have gone on to success in higher education and in careers. “Thank you, Mrs. Hart, for teaching me how to write” is an oft-heard comment. I also have my current students evaluate my classes anonymously. Recently my American Studies students (a double period class that integrates American literature and U.S. History) evaluated how the class was going so far after the first 9 week grading period. “I love this class” appeared on several papers. “You can definitely tell you enjoy teaching this class” wrote one student. “You really know your stuff. I’m excited to have a teacher who loves history so much” wrote another. “I appreciate your passion in this class. I come in here every day, and I learn” stated another student. I have a whole file bulging with student evaluations, but one comment has really stuck with me: “A very good teacher, the kind of teacher that makes it worth coming to school.” No standardized test can ever measure the impact of the Mrs. Ratliffs of the world.

For 14 years I served on the Board of Education in my home district and am now also an assistant principal with a focus on curriculum and professional development (in addition to a full teaching load). I certainly give the taxpayers their money’s worth. When students attempt to dissuade me from giving them an assignment, I remind them that I have to give them their money’s worth. Groans and the rolling of eyes follow this lecture about no free lunch.

Well, I have rambled on, and now it is time to close. I admire your taking a stand and speaking out on the state of public education in this country. I remain a strong advocate of a quality public education system that has made this country great.

Sincerely,

Beverly Hart

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teachers and Teaching, Testing
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