According to this story in Philadelphia’s Notebook, the Gates Foundation has been generously funding a teacher-training program tailored to test prep.
Philadelphia schools need higher scores, so the Philadelphia Great Schools Compact wants more, please, of this test-prep teaching training.
The city is also investigating dozens of schools for cheating on tests.
Step back a minute and ask yourself.
How did these tests become the goal of education instead of one measure?
Being a Texan, though long removed from my native soil, I always react with a start and with more than a bit of pleasure when I hear the authentic voice of a fellow Texan. We Texans don’t like to be pushed around. We like to express ourselves with vigor. Some of us care a lot about learning. Here is a Texas teacher who is fed up with the bullies who want to fence her in:
| The exact same thing is happening in Texas. The scripted lesson plans actually cause me anxiety. Teaching is an ART! How dare they try to tell me to throw away all my lessons that facilitate my kids’ learning, so I can follow their “teacher” proofed script. Never!! Nev-uh!! I shut my door, and when they walk in, I fake it if I have to. My kids are so sweet; they just play along. Once the devils leave, I teach REAL reading and writing–no multiple choice for my kids! Never!!The full parking lots at schools every Saturday is just sickening. What is that? We sent men to the MOON, and we never took these horrible low-level tests! All this tutoring is ridiculous. Our kids are simply bored and tested to death! They do just enough to make it through the day!Instead of attacking the real educational issues that stop instruction, the issues that de-motivate students, education prescribes the same old thing, tutoring and scouring “data.” You’d think they’d realize it isn’t working. It’s not about the kids!It’s not about the kids. A colleague has been telling me, “It’s not about the kids!” I am finally starting to believe her. I just could not wrap my head around it, but it must be true.
Not to mention, I’ve literally heard and seen the extreme bullying of many teachers by these ex-three year teachers turned administrators. It is shocking. I understand we all need our jobs, but to take abuse. I just don’t get it. To take abuse from ex-teachers who did all they could to RUN out of the classroom as soon as they fulfilled their “in-class” requirement. Disgusting. Those that SHOULD be principals can’t bear to leave the kids behind. How ironic. If I were some of these administrators, I would be afraid. How can they treat people so abysmally and feel safe. Dress code for the kids? I’m more worried about a teacher going Koo Koo for Cocoa Puffs. Goodness forbid, but these fool administrators consciously and unconsciously make many of our schools an UNSAFE environment. Women need to stand up; we have the power to change the world; this field is abdicating its responsibility. At times, anger is useless, a wasted emotion. But when it comes to education, ANGER is desperately needed, anger that fuels a change.
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A few things we know about the Pittsburgh public schools.
They were led by Broad-trained superintendent Mark Roosevelt. Now they are led by his deputy Linda Lane, also trained by the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy.
They received a $40 million grant from the Gates Foundation for teacher evaluation.
They have a bold plan to close the achievement gap.
Scores in 2012 in Pittsburgh dropped for the first time in five years.
Scores dropped across the state and it may have been because of heightened security.
A Pittsburgh parent posted this comment:
| Don’t forget our Broad influence either — our “reforms” were begun with Mark Roosevelt being named superintendent with the backing of a foundation supported “community watchdog group.” He was replaced by his second in command and also a Broadie, Linda Lane. He said when he left that he’d “planted the garden” and all we had to do know was to tend the growth. We just got a new Broad fellow this year, too, to join our crop. Teachers have been furloughed, but administration has been doing fine. |
A reader of this blog who teaches in the Pittsburgh school posted the following comment:
| I teach in Pittsburgh Public Schools and can attest to conditions in Pittsburgh being similar to those faced by children and teachers and parents around the country. Simultaneously, the social fabric of the lives of our children and their parents has become more and more unraveled (jobs, housing, income, public transit, cost of higher ed, etc. wrecking havoc) AND their schools are victims of radical budget cuts and huge focus on curriculum modified to get those test scores up AND teachers, as everywhere, are vilified and furloughed and humiliated and attacked. But we teachers and our union keep doing our best to hold our heads up and keep our eyes on the real only important thing, and that is trying to hold things together for our beautiful children. And we will keep doing that, because that’s who we are. There is so much more to our children and our schools and our teachers than these test scores. Of course. |
Test scores dipped in Pittsburgh for the first time in five years, and the graduation rate is flat.
Here are some possible reasons.
Budget cuts.
Teacher layoffs.
Budget cuts and layoffs mean larger class sizes.
Schools will be closed, and teachers are uncertain about where they will be assigned.
One thought: budget cuts and turmoil do not enhance learning.
Both cause anxiety among teachers and undoubtedly among students as well.
Time for leaders in Pittsburgh to think some more.
Newsflash! This tweet just arrived:
I forgot that Pittsburgh is one of the districts that received a big grant from the Gates Foundation ($40 million) and adopted the Gates’ approach: data-driven instruction, Gates-style teacher evaluation, etc. Pittsburgh was one of the Gates’ prize districts. We will wait to hear what Bill Gates says about this. It seems clear by now that the Gates Foundation has never reformed any district, but has no hesitation telling districts what to do so that every teacher is in the top quintile. Their constant meddling makes you long for the days when all they wanted to do was create small schools, not tell everyone what to do all day. |
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A reader realizes something important:
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A friend works in the online industry. It’s a job. She sent me a copy of a high school graduation exam. The students learn at home on a computer.
She said the kids can take the exam over if they don’t like their score. Because they take the exam online at home, they can google the answers. Or they can have the book open in front of them.
Bear in mind that the big money in this country is investing millions to put our kids online as much as possible. They are not doing this for philanthropic reasons. They are doing it because there is a game plan. The plan is to reduce the cost of education by having fewer teachers. In a virtual school, class size may be 60-200. That means fewer teachers. And the teachers are paid low salaries.
ALEC, the shadowy organization of conservative state legislators, has model legislation promoting for-profit virtual schools. Chris Christie is eager to open more in New Jersey. Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania has many of them. So does John Kasich, who coddles the two big for-profit virtual school founders, who are major contributors to the Republican party in Ohio.
Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence and Bob Wise’s Alliance for Excellent Education are pushing virtual schools as the acme of excellence.
Here is an excerpt from a current graduation exam. Is this high quality? Does this look like excellence to you?
Consider the intellectual level displayed in the exam questions here (and they are typical). This was the literature section of the high school graduation test. The subject, ironically, was George Orwell’s 1984. The questions were either true-false or multiple choice. If the whole country could be reduced to this kind of simplistic thought process, people would be easy to manipulate and control.
A. faking photographs B. destroying originals C. telling the facts
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Quiz: Final Examination E201A
D. storing corrected documents
ce Points Earned: 1/1 Correct Answer: C Your Response: C
5.
040 Points Earned: 1/1 Correct Answer: A Your Response: A
6.
X Points Earned: 0/1 Correct Answer: B Your Response: A
7.
http:// us/section/content/default.asp…
Winston’s job is to Part 1 Chapter 3-4
A. rewrite the news to fit the Party’s needs B. write the news
C. help rewrite a new dictionary
D. write the scripts for the telescreen news
What is unusual about the dictionary Syme is working on? (Part 1 Chapter 5-6)
A. It contains slang
B. Words are being destroyed C. Words are being added
D. It contains curse words
In this chapter, Winston twice says that
A. Mrs. Parsons
B. O’Brien
C. Syme
D. All of the above
fie Points Earned: 1/1 Correct Answer: C Your Response: C
will be vaporized (Part 1 Chapter 5-6)
8.
Which is NOT an appealing aspect of the room upstairs at Charrington’s. (Part 1 Chapter 7-8)
A. Modern furnishings B. Old
C. Comfortable
D. Fireplace
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Quiz: Final Examination
9.
The Party teaches all kinds of half-truths about history. (Part 1 Chapter 7-8)
se Points Earned: 1/1 Correct Answer: True Your Response: True
10.
se Points Earned: 1/1 Correct Answer: A Your Response: A
11.
All were sights at Victory Square EXCEPT (Part 2 Chapter 1-2)
A. Prisoners in leg-irons
B. Soldiers marching
C. Guards with submachine guns D. A line of trucks
Winston and the girl decide to meet (Part 2 Chapter 1-2)
A. at her house.
B. at the park.
C. at Mr Charrington’s shop. D. on Sunday afternoon.
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Which thought did Winston NOT have about the scrap of paper? (Part 2 Chapter 1-2)
A. He was being invited to join a committee. B. The Brotherhood was alive.
C. The Thought Police were on to him.
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman had a column a few days ago saying that PISA would soon make it possible for everyone to compare the scores of their school to schools all over the world. No one will be average anymore! Just being able to take tests and compare scores will drive us all to the top!
After I read this with a sinking sensation, thinking of the whole world competing to get better test scores (why?), I asked the eminent scholar Yong Zhao to react to this column.
He sent the following as he was traveling in Australia:
“Imagine, in a few years, you could sign onto a Web site and see this is how my school compares with a similar school anywhere in the world,” says Schleicher. “And then you take this information to your local superintendent and ask: ‘Why are we not doing as well as schools in China or Finland?’ ”
Sounds like a commercial for a global standardized testing service? Well, it is. And it is from one of the most influential media outlets The New York Times and endorsed by one of the most popular voices about globalization Thomas Friedman in an op-ed piece last week http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/opinion/friedman-average-is-over-part-ii-.html.
The product is OECD’s PISA, the international assessment program that claims to test reading, math, and science skills of 15 year olds. PISA should a great case study of marketing strategy in business schools. In about 10 years, it has been successfully marketed to governments and educational authorities in over 70 countries.
PISA has convinced many that it is the gold standard of education quality. Although there are other international assessment programs, which has had a long history, but more countries participate in PISA, which by itself is a great marketing slogan, just like “More Doctors Smoke Camel” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCMzjJjuxQI.
Up until now, PISA has remained at the system level, reporting averages of groups of students, which has already generated a “PISA Score Race” across the world. With this new round of PISA and the system OECD is developing, it is coming to a school near you and your house. But before you log on and “march to your local superintendent and ask ‘Why are we not doing as well as schools in China or Finland,’ it would be good if you ask the PISA advocates the following questions:
The reason is perhaps best illustrated by OECD itself. A report (http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/46581016.pdf) about lessons to learn from high PISA performers produced by OECD says:
Compared with other societies, young people in Shanghai may be much more immersed in learning in the broadest sense of the term. The logical conclusion is that they learn more, even though what they learn and how they learn are subjects of constant debate. Critics see young people as being “fed” learning because they are seldom left on their own to learn in a way of their choice. They have little direct encounters with nature, for example, and little experience with society either. While they have learned a lot, they may not have learned how to learn. The Shanghai government is developing new policy interventions to reduce student workload and to refocus the quality of student learning experiences over quantity. (p. 103)
Essentially, the issues (and questions we must ask) are:
Read my op-ed in Education Week: Doublethink http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/07/18/36zhao_ep.h31.html)
In a nutshell, American education is far from perfect, but China is not a model for emulation. For more about China, PISA, and American education, read my latest book World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students http://zhaolearning.com/world-class-learners-my-new-book/or Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Leading-Way-Education-Globalization/dp/1416608737/ref=pd_sim_b_1
Hey, I’m a historian and it’s my job to have a long memory, but I know that many people don’t remember how the whole nation got stuck with this crazy No Child Left Behind law.
Back in 2000, when George W. Bush was running for president, he talked about the Texas miracle. There was a secret formula, he said, and it was really simple: Test every child every year. If scores go up, the school gets honored, maybe even a bonus. And if the scores drop or go flat, the school is humiliated.
How easy. Testing! Accountability! And look what happened, or so he said: The test scores went up, the dropout rate went down, and the achievement gap was closing.
That sounded so totally wonderful (and almost cost-free except for buying lots more tests) that Congress decided everyone should do it and they passed NCLB. The law ended up on President Bush’s desk in January 2002, and he proudly signed it, with Democrats and Republicans together behind him.
True bipartisanship.
Now we look around at the wreckage and we see that lots of children are still left behind.
What happened? Here is a good place to find out. There was no Texas miracle.
When I was growing up in Houston, we used to read a funny little book called “Texas Brags,” which contained all the crazy boasts that Texans made, not expecting anyone to believe them. You know, we’re the biggest and the best and we have the most and the largest of everything. And you better believe it!
Hey, folks, here’s the inside scoop. We were not serious! It was a tall tale.
The teachers in Brazil said they would not give tests that did nothing to help their students.
They would not give tests that harm their students by giving them demeaning labels.
Testing is not teaching.
They said they are professionals and cannot be driven to do things that are wrong and violate their professional ethics.
Remember the Hippocratic Oath: “At least do no harm.”
Teachers must do the same as a minimum, to protect the children who are in their care.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and billionaire Bill Gates and gadfly Michelle Rhee wring their hands over American students’ test scores. They look enviously at Shanghai and wonder why we can’t be like them.
But the Los Angeles Times had a story explaining that Chinese educators have mixed feelings about those high test scores. They know that they are squeezing the joy of learning out of their schools and pressuring children to grind, grind, grind. They worry that their students lack creativity and imagination.
Before we follow China’s example, we should think about the qualities that we value. Do we want good test-takers or do we want creativity and innovation? Do we want obedient and compliant workers or do we want divergent thinkers? Which will serve us better in the decades ahead?
