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Letter to President Obama from Connecticut Founder Of Parents Across America

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2012 //
37

Wendy Lecker, a parent activist in Stamford, Connecticut, has sent a powerful letter to President Obama.

The link is here.

The letter is here:

Parents Across America grieves with the community of Newtown, Connecticut over the loss of their precious children and educators. The following letter, sent yesterday to President Obama from the founder of Parents Across America-CT, expresses some aspects of what many of our members are feeling at this difficult time.

Hon. President Barack Obama

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama:

As a public school parent of three in Stamford, Connecticut, I wanted to thank you for lending your support to the devastated community of Newtown. I listened intently to your remarks at the memorial service last night, especially to the questions you raised: “Can we claim, as a nation, that we’re all together there, letting them know that they are loved, and teaching them to love in return? Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?”

You indicated that you were reflecting on these questions, alluding to the issue of gun control. I hope also, that these questions caused you also to reconsider your approach to education reform.

As you said last night, “our most important job is to give [children] what they need to become self-reliant and capable and resilient, ready to face the world without fear.” You described in vivid detail how skilled the teachers and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School were at dealing with the immediate unthinkable trauma of the tragedy; how they managed to keep children calm and feeling safe in the face of life-threatening danger. We can predict that the teachers of the surviving children will have to be as equipped to handle the trauma these children will carry with them as they will be to teach them the subjects the children learn. We know that these teachers will have to help these children develop the non-cognitive skills that make all the difference to success in life- those skills we cannot measure on any standardized test.

We also know, as you mentioned, that those poor children in Sandy Hook are not the only ones who deal with trauma on a daily basis. Children today, especially those living in our poorest areas, face the stress that crime and poverty exact on their young lives on a daily basis. And we know from research, like that done at the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, that when children experience prolonged stress, it becomes toxic and hinders the development of the learning and reasoning areas of the brain. These researchers maintain that a nurturing environment is key to enabling these areas to grow properly. For many children, school is their safe haven; and science, and the awful events in Newtown show us that it is our paramount duty to maintain school as a secure and loving place.

In order to ensure that schools are a safe haven, where children can develop both cognitive and non-cognitive skills, they need to have preschool, reasonable class size, so children can get needed attention from teachers; enough supplies and books, and rich curriculum, including art, music sports and extra-curriculars, so children can explore and understand the world and have many outlets to express themselves; and enough support services, especially for children at-risk.

Many of our schools across this nation do not have the resources to make our schools a safe haven. As you noted in your recent report, for example, in New York City, the number of classes of 30 and over has tripled in the past four years. School districts across this country have been forced to cut support services, teachers, extra-curricular activities, music, art, even AP classes and core classes. They have to delay repairs until a roof collapses, endangering children.

Unfortunately, your policies toward our public schools are making it nearly impossible to keep public schools a nurturing and safe environment. Your chief strategies are evaluating teachers based on standardized test scores and implementation of the Common Core standardized tests in every grade, with a multitude of interim computerized tests as well as summative computerized tests. None of these preferred strategies of yours have ever been proven to raise achievement. Surely you are aware of the studies proving that rating teachers on standardized tests results in a 50% misclassification rate. The ratings vary by year, class, test and even statistical model used. The CCSS is not supported by any research showing that standards or tests improve learning. In fact, the National Research Council concluded that ten years of NCLB testing has done nothing to improve achievement.

Even more damaging, these strategies force teachers, administrators and children to abandon attention to all-important non-cognitive skill development, and focus primarily, if not only, on test scores.  This shift of focus includes a diversion of limited resources away from necessary educational basics. You have moved the focus from the well-being of children to the job status of adults.

A recent report from the Consortium of Policy Research in Education reveals just how harmful this strategy is. The report found that NCLB’s test-driven mandates provided little guidance on how to improve. Consequently, schools tried a hodgepodge of strategies akin to “throwing many darts at a target and hoping one of them hits the bulls-eye.” The only consistent tactic used to raise test scores was test prep. As CPRE acknowledged, test prep is shallow and narrow. The report recommends changing accountability systems so schools concentrate less on standardized tests and more on developing the “host of non-cognitive skills found to be related to later success.”

Other researchers found a disturbing trend caused by testing, standardization and scripting: America’s children are becoming less creative. While other countries strive to build creativity into the curriculum, American schools are increasingly forced to homogenize. Consequently, creativity, which increased steadily until 1990, has declined ever since, with the most serious decline appearing in children from kindergarten to sixth grade.

This body of research demands that we rethink our national obsession to use tests as the goal in education. A low test score should be an alarm, not that a school or teacher is failing, but more likely that there are stressors in a child’s life that warrant intervention.

Your waiver and Race to the Top programs, which push the use of standardized tests to judge all teachers and the implementation of even more standardized tests through the Common Core State Standards, only increase this hollow focus on testing. You hold hostage funding to provide the necessary resources described above to the implementation of these narrow and destructive goals. You encourage states to withhold basic funding as well, as evidenced by Governor Cuomo’s threat to withhold basic state school aid unless districts implement a teacher evaluation based on test scores. You hold up as examples of model schools privately run charters that often exclude our neediest children and often are militaristic-style test-prep factories. Moreover you encourage the proliferation of these schools, which are not answerable to democratically elected school boards, and therefore disenfranchise our neediest citizens.

My oldest child is in 12th grade and my youngest is in 7th. I have seen the increased scripting and narrowing of learning that has occurred in just the five-year gap between them. I have seen the increase in stress in my youngest, who has to suffer through meaningless computerized test after test, while units on poetry and other subjects that would expand his world, are jettisoned (to the point where I have opted him out of many of these tests). I have spoken to so many wonderful teachers frustrated and dejected by their new roles as simple proctors, rather than inspiring educators. I have spoken to school nurses who tell me that at test time, they see a spike in headaches, stomachaches and the need for anti-anxiety medication.

Is this the safe haven to which we aspire for our children? Can this stressful and intellectually-empty school experience really teach our children that they are loved, how to love and how to be resilient?

You said last night that we have to change. While I believe you were hinting at gun control, I respectfully request that you expand this resolve to change and include a rethinking of your education policy. We want all our children to feel safe and loved. We want them to be able to find their own, unique voices. We want to protect them and teach them ways to adapt and protect themselves. Please help us do that by helping schools expand our children’s world. Let us build our schools’ capacity to serve all our children, rather than tearing down the foundations of our public education system.

Sincerely,

Wendy Lecker

Categories Accountability, Obama, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

A Brief Conversation with John Thompson

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2012 //
20

John Thompson wonders if I overstate my concern about the current direction of the education reform movement.

He is not convinced that the end game is privatization.

Perhaps I sat through too many closed-door meetings of conservative think tanks to think otherwise.

As I read and listen to the leading lights of the movement (Jeb Bush; Tony Bennett; ALEC; DFER; Stand for Children; Michelle Rhee), I hear no liking for the public schools. I hear promises of the golden age to come when public schools have been replaced by charters and vouchers and virtual schools, when teachers have no unions or tenure or job protections whatever, when teachers need no more than a few weeks of training to be considered “highly qualified,” when schools are regularly closed if their test scores don’t improve, and teachers fired if their students’ scores don’t improve.

I see the P-word at work (privatization); I see the education profession turned into jobs for temps and short-timers.

I think it is time to stop practices that we know are harmful to children and to their education, like high-stakes testing.

Maybe I am wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I try to follow the evidence.

John, where do you think this is heading?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Common Core Tests Likely to Cause Passing Rates to Plummet

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2012 //
28

New York officials are warning parents and the public to be prepared for a big drop in the proportion of students who are proficient on new tests aligned with the Common Core.

The English language arts tests contain vocabulary that most children are not likely to know and the math tests contain concepts that may not have been taught.

Members of the Board of Regents express concern that neither students nor teachers are prepared for the tests or the standards. Some worry that the tests will have a devastating effect in schools that enroll poor and minority students.

The linked article gives examples of test questions.

When Common Core Test results were recently released in Kentucky, passing rates fell and the gaps widened.

I am reminded of Rick Hess’s recent article in which he said that reformers are hoping that the terrible results of the Common Core tests will persuade suburban parents that their schools are awful. They too will then clamor for charters and vouchers.

Read this article about the widespread drop in passing rates that is expected across the nation, and pay attention to Jeb Bush’s gleeful anticipation. Now, former Governor Bush is described as an “education expert,” although most of his time is spent selling technology and privatization. The collapse of test scores and passing rates is good news for his business and his ideology.

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

More Good News from Latest International Tests

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2012 //
6

GF Brandenburg, retired math teacher, analyzed the latest international reading test, and it is chock full of good news.

Good news that it is for American children, parents, teachers, principals, administrators and school board members.

Not so good news for all the prophets of gloom and doom who have been prophesying the imminent collapse of the American economic and national security, while offering to sell snake oil to make it all better.

 

Categories International, Testing

Thoughts on Humanity

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2012 //
3

Our policymakers have lost sight of what schools do.

They have forgotten what teachers do.

They don’t remember what children need.

Peg Robertson does

Tell them..

Categories Connecticut, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, For-Profit, Testing

Exclusive! Pasi Sahlberg on TIMSS and PIRLS

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2012 //
13

At my request, Pasi Sahlberg has written comments on the latest international test scores. Sahlberg is a prominent Finnish educator and author of the award-winning book “Finnish Lessons.”

Sahlberg writes:

International testing mania

This week educators around the world got a new opportunity to benchmark their students’ performance to their international competitors when The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) released the results of TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) mathematics and science of 63 countries and PIRLS (Progress in Reading Literacy Study) in 48 countries. The United States took part in both of these studies that tested how well 4th grade children can read and what 4th and 8th grade students know about mathematics and science in school.

The media gave rather blunt headlines of the U.S. performance in these international tests this week. “U.S. students continue to trail Asian students in math, reading, science” wrote the Washington Post and “Competitors Still Beat U.S. in Tests” reported the Wall Street Journal. Only to be Number One seems to be enough for America media. Similar headlines were published in Canada, New Zealand and Norway – all countries with lower than expected results.

But a glance at participating countries’ national averages reveals some interesting aspects of American students performance in the 2011 TIMSS and PIRLS studies. 4th grade Americans scored high in science and reading and a bit lower in mathematics (7th, 6th and 11th respectively). Ahead were only East Asian countries (South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan) and Finland. Americans 4th graders did better than most of their European peers in all tested areas.

Eighth grade American students also did well, hitting 9th in mathematics and 10th in science. Here again, before the U.S. came East Asians, Finns and, perhaps against the odds, Russians. This may seem to some in America as not good enough. But it is good to remember that according to historical data, American education has never been good if the criterion is performance in international studies. IEA has tested students in mathematics and science since the 1960s, the U.S. being one of the permanent participants. Over the half century, as Yong Zhao has concluded, American students performance in international mathematics and science tests has improved from the bottom to above international average.

Another interesting revelation in TIMSS 2011 is amazingly high performance of some U.S. states that took part in that study as ‘countries’. For example, 4th grade pupils in Florida performed above Canadian provinces of Alberta, Ontario and Quebec in reading, science and mathematics and were on par with Finland, except in science. Furthermore, 8th grade students in Massachusetts, Minnesota and Colorado were better than high performing Hong Kong in science. If Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Indiana and Colorado were countries, they would all fit into top ten in 8th grade mathematics. Not bad at all.

Less than a month ago Pearson Corporation published another international study that compared 40 selected education systems, among them the U.S. and Finland. This study was based on an analysis of cognitive skills and educational attainment in these countries. In a way, “The Learning Curve” as Pearson has named its study, is a composite index that combines different sources of data and information. Finland was the winner in this new index, the U.S. being 17th. There has been some controversy concerning this study because it has been architectured and conducted by a commercial firm that has high interest in pushing forward certain education reforms around the world.

To make the scene of international comparisons even more complex, there is yet another international study, one that has gained more momentum and popularity than any other study. This is the Programme for International Student Assessment, better known as PISA, administrated by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). PISA was first run in 2000 and it tests 15-year-olds competences in math, literacy, and science in 34 OECD countries and similar number of non-member countries. It is conducted in three-year cycles – the results of PISA 2012 will be launched in December 2013.

In my book Finnish Lessons (2011) I highlighted early trends of American and Finnish students’ performance in reading, mathematics and science literacy. Findings were rather interesting. The U.S. students’ performance trend in PISA 2000 to 2006 was declining, similarly to all other countries that were infected by GERM (global educational reform movement of competition, choice, testing and privatization) in the 1990s. At the same time Finland’s scores in all areas were improving. Overall, as many people in the U.S. now know, American students have been left behind by most other OECD countries according to PISA test.

All that is said above invites two important questions. First, how is it possible that different international studies that compare education systems by having a particular look at students’ learning outcomes lead to such different results? Who is right? What do these studies really tell us? Second, are these studies in the end really able to inform policy-makers and guide education reforms in coherent ways so that teachers and students would have better opportunities to succeed? Do they help politicians to understand the nature of human learning?

Well, TIMSS and PISA are technically different studies, although they both build on similar measurement methodology. Simplified distinction of these two studies is that where TIMSS tests students’ mastery of what have been taught from the curricula, PISA assesses how students can use those knowledge and skills that they were taught in new situations. These both are student assessment studies. Pearson’s “The Learning Curve” index is different kind that consists of different indicators and is therefore a composite index. The problem with any study that relies on composite index is that it is open to designer manipulation. “Global Economic Competitiveness Index” and “The Best Country in the World” are good examples, just like “The Learning Curve.”

One may also conclude that these international standardized tests are becoming global curriculum standards. Indeed, OECD has observed that its PISA test is already playing an important role in national policy making and education reforms in many countries. Schools, teachers and students are now prepared in advance to take these tests. Learning materials are adjusted to fit to the style of these assessments. Life in many schools around the world is becoming split into important academic study that these tests measure, and other not-so-important study that these measurements don’t cover. Kind of a GERM in grand scale.

Pasi Sahlberg
Helsinki FINLAND

Categories International, Testing

Teacher: When I Dared to Ignore the Standards

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2012 //
5

A teacher writes:

“I went to the Thinking in the Deep End blog, as you suggested, and returned to your site resisting the urge to cry. As a recent arrival to the teaching field — as a creative writer/poet and journalist who did so at the ripe age of 48, that is — I am utterly distressed at the test-centric atmosphere of the urban high school where I teach Language Arts. The again, I feel like a giddy young rebel, as I recently decided to guide my students on a creative writing assignment with fewer parameters (read: no detailed rubric abiding strictly by the common core standards) than any of them are used to. It was initially confusing for some — as they are so used to being told which hoops to jump through and when — but ultimately liberating, for student and teacher alike.

“I’ll take the damn disciplinary letter in my file if it need be. I suddenly feel teary eyed once again, thinking of one particular student (a high-functioning student who nonetheless has an IEP) who thanked me for setting his creativity free for the first time, he said, in his schooling. He is a senior in high school, by the way. Though I don’t deserve his praise, he now walks around telling people that I am the best teacher he has ever had. I don’t know if he will become a poet or the next Einstein, but I hope I ripped opened a door to that possibility.”

Categories Common Core, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Outlook for Common Core: Turmoil Ahead

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2012 //
11

Researchers usually find that students flourish where there is stability in the school, with an experienced staff, clear expectations, small classes, and a rich curriculum.

In Kentucky, first state to implement and test the Common Core, student scores fell and achievement gaps widened.

This teacher in Connecticut foresees rough weather ahead as the state and federal government launch a massive experiment:

I wonder about the impact specifically in Connecticut where we are rolling out a new comprehensive teacher evaluation system at the same time [as Common Core]….so we have teachers learning new standards, possibly new curriculum, new evaluation processes, new observational rubrics for lessons, teaching and then setting learning goals based on results of one type of test in 2014, and then another online, common core test in 2015…how many schools will fail? How many teachers will not make gains with their students? How many will be fired? How many schools will be taken over? How will the students handle all the stress and change in the schools? It sounds to me like a lot of people will benefit – private companies waiting to take over schools, publishers, trainers, RESCS, but the hands-down, biggest loser will be the students. It is going to be a rough ride in Connecticut for a few years as this experiment unfolds.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Technology, Computers, Testing, US Education

Joshua Starr: “Stop the Insanity”

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2012 //
8

Joshua Starr is the superintendent of Montgomery County’s public school system, the 17th largest district in the nation. He says that the “country needs a three-year moratorium on standardized testing and needs to ‘stop the insanity’ of evaluating teachers according to student test scores because it is based on ‘bad science.’He also said that the best education reform the country has had is actually health-care reform.”

He said that evaluating teachers by test scores is a very bad idea.

Starr said that “a good way to create assessments for Common Core-aligned curriculum would be to crowd-source the development and let teachers design them rather than have corporations do it. He criticized policies that help make public education ‘a private commodity.'”

Starr said that schools have been asked to make too many changes at the same time.

Joshua Starr was named as a member of the honor roll on September 1, 2012, for refusing to accept Race to the Top funding to judge his teachers by their test scores.

Superintendents across the nation have told me they share Starr’s views. If only they all said so in public, we could reclaim American education from the miasma of bad ideas.

Categories Education Reform, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

The Big Five: A Better Way Forward for Education

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2012 //
42

Andrew Hargreaves has some ideas about how education can improve and stop demoralizing those who work in schools. First, he looks for the good that Race to the Top may have accomplished. Then he looks at other nations’ experience and finds that those who are most successful are not doing anything that looks like Race to the Top. Hargreaves published two books in 2012: The Global Fourth Way: The Quest for Educational Excellence, with Dennis Shirley; and Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School, with Michael Fullan.

Hargreaves writes:

Now that the bickering and backbiting of presidential electioneering is over, we have a new opportunity to look at the future of American education with fresh eyes. Many of us, especially Diane Ravitch in this blog, have been critical of the US Race to the Top Strategy and of No Child Left Behind before it.

But suppose, at this moment, even if through gritted teeth, we concede what the work of RTTT has perhaps accomplished. The rise of charter schools has prompted many districts to question the bureaucratic hierarchies and inflexibilities that have strangled innovation and improvement in the past. The new performance-based reward agenda has undoubtedly brought teachers unions to the table to set aside some of their old blue-collar mentality and engage in different conversations about professional quality and recognition. The emergence of online alternatives for learning may be opening more teachers’ minds about the ways that technology can enhance their teaching. Suppose RTTT advocates have been at least partly right when they have insisted that the system had to be broken before it could be fixed.

What does that now mean for the next four years?

First, let’s acknowledge one of the key lessons of Change 101: in any change process, the strategies that get people to one point are rarely the same ones that will get them further. Charismatic leaders can fire people up, but they often have to be followed by more inclusive leaders who are able to distribute wider responsibility for the long-haul of change. No-nonsense leaders may be able to impose immediate order on chaos, but they usually need to be succeeded by leaders who can build collective responsibility for lasting improvement.

What does this mean for the next phase of RTTT?

Are we going to face four more years of breaking up the system into more and more charter school pieces, staffed by teachers with barely one or two years experience? Should educators be confronted with another unrelenting era of fear, threat and cut-throat competition?

In the short-term, fear and threat can create a sense of urgency and grab people’s attention. In the long-run, however, states of perpetual fear and threat just drive all the best people away. Just look at the exodus of top educators who have fled Wisconsin after their grueling battles with Governor Scott Walker.

We believe it’s time to build a new platform on which we can bring our schools back together, strengthen communities of teachers, inspire the educational profession, and keep the best young people in teaching instead of seeing them cycle in and out of the system as if it were a rapidly revolving door. This isn’t just a matter of our personal preferences and beliefs. It’s what the international evidence on high educational performance is clearly showing us.

In our new book, The Global Fourth Way: The Quest for Educational Excellence http://www.sagepub.com/books/Book235155, we describe our research evidence on some of the highest achieving schools and systems around the world such as Finland, Singapore, Alberta, and Ontario.

The first thing that is striking is what we don’t find in all these high-performing systems. We don’t find governments pushing charter schools, fast-track alternative certification programs, and salary bonuses for teachers who get the test scores up.

We don’t see systems testing all students in grades 3 through 8 on reading, writing, and mathematics with a national Department of Education setting the goals from afar, year after year.

We don’t come across governments setting up escalating systems of sanctions and interventions for struggling schools and endless rotations of principals and teachers in and out of schools that erode trust and destroy continuity.

What do we find instead?

We do find a lot of leadership stability and sustainable improvement at the system level, that establishes a platform for innovation to take off in districts and schools.

We do find educators who have gone through excellent university-based preparation programs that are also backed up by extensive practice in schools, and who study research and bring a stance of inquiry to the work they do with their students every day.

We do find a highly respected profession along with a public that lets and expects these trusted professionals to bring their collective talents to bear in their work.

We do find testing that is applied in a couple of grades, not all of them; or to a representative sample of students rather than an unnecessary census of everyone.

And we do find turnaround strategies that rely on connecting struggling schools with higher performers who are tasked with helping them, rather than on parachuting in intervention teams from the top.

In high-performing systems, there is a strong teaching profession backed by powerful and principled professional associations that are in the forefront of educational change. These professional associations are not afraid to challenge government when necessary or to collaborate with them whenever they can. Over 50% of the resources of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, for example, goes to professional development for its members; whereas just 5% or so of teacher union budgets are currently allocated for these purposes in the US.

If you want to improve as a teacher, it’s important to learn from teachers who are doing better. If you are trying to turn around as a school, look to a higher performing school that can give you clues about the best way to proceed. The same is true for the US and other nations.

If, like the US, you are languishing far below the leaders in the international rankings of student achievement, then look, with open eyes and no excuses, at what the highest performing countries are doing instead. Their path is clearly the opposite of what has been pushed on American schools.

Let’s concede that districts and unions may have needed shaking up a bit, if America’s education system was to move forward. But shaking things up isn’t the same thing as improving them. Real and lasting improvement, rather than a few triumphant turnarounds here and there, is going to need something else. High performing counterparts from around the world provide some of the best ideas about what this might be.

If the United States is going to be the world-leader in education that the country’s national wealth and international status lead everyone to expect, what might it do in the next four years to move to the next level? Here are five big changes that can make a huge difference based on the international evidence:

  • Test prudently, in two or three subjects in a couple of grades, not pervasively in almost every single grade all the way up to Grade 8.
  • Shift the focus from fast track programs into teaching itself, to strong pathways that retain the best teachers in the profession.
  • Redirect half of the resources from top-down intervention teams whose impact is temporary at best, towards strategies for schools to assist each other in raising achievement results across district boundaries and even state lines.
  • Commit everyone to exploring how technology can enrich teaching wherever it is truly needed, rather than insisting it replace teachers at every opportunity.
  • Invest more resources in public services as a whole – in housing and infant care, for example – so that educators don’t always have to pick up the slack.

It’s time to look elsewhere for inspiration again. America has always learned from other countries. It adapted Harvard College from Cambridge and Oxford in England, imported the kindergarten from Germany, and adopted the Suzuki method of violin instruction from Japan. The same spirit of curiosity and inventiveness that has served Americans so well in the past can and shoud serve the nation once more.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Merit pay, Race to the Top, Teachers and Teaching, Testing
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