Archives for category: U.S. Department of Education
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

US DOE Struggles to Prove That VAM Works, But It Doesn’t

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2014 //
12

As is well known, the U. S. Department of Education zealously believes–like Michelle Rhee–that low test scores are caused by “bad” teachers. The way to find these ineffective teachers, the theory goes, is to see whose students get higher scores and whose don’t. That’s known as value-added measurement (VAM), and the DOE used Race to the Top to persuade or bribe most states to use it to discover who should be terminated.

As we also know, things have not worked out too well, as some Teachers of the Year were fired; some got a bonus one year, then got fired the next year. In many states, teachers are rated by the scores of students they never taught. The overall effect of VAM has been demoralization, even among those with high scores because they know the ratings are arbitrary.

For some reason, teachers don’t like to “win ” at the expense of their colleagues and they can spot a phony deal a mile away.

But the U.S. DOE won’t give up, so they released a research brief attempting to show that VAM does work!

But Audrey Amrein Beardsley deconstructs the brief and shows that it is a mix of ho-hum, old-hat and wrong-headed assumptions.

It’s true (but not new) that disadvantaged students have less access to the best teachers (e.g., NBCT, advanced degrees, expertise in content areas (although as Beardsley says, the brief doesn’t suggest such things matter).

It is true, that “Students’ access to effective teaching varies across districts. There is indeed a lot of variation in terms of teacher quality across districts, thanks largely to local (and historical) educational policies (e.g., district and school zoning, charter and magnet schools, open enrollment, vouchers and other choice policies promoting public school privatization), all of which continue to perpetuate these problems.”

She writes:

“What is most relevant here, though, and in particular for readers of this blog, is that the authors of this brief used misinformed approaches when writing this brief and advancing their findings. That is, they used VAMs to examine the extent to which disadvantaged students receive “less effective teaching” by defining “less effective teaching” using only VAM estimates as the indicators of effectiveness, and as relatively compared to other teachers across the schools and districts in which they found that such grave disparities exist. All the while, not once did they mention how these disparities very likely biased the relative estimates on which they based their main findings.

Most importantly, they blindly agreed to a largely unchecked and largely false assumption that the teachers caused the relatively low growth in scores rather than the low growth being caused by the bias inherent in the VAMs being used to estimate the relative levels of “effective teaching” across teachers. This is the bias that across VAMs is still, it seems weekly, becoming more apparent and of increasing concern.”

VAM in the real world is Junque Science.

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, U.S. Department of Education

Teacher: I Am One of the the Worst Teachers in My State

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2014 //
21

This teacher thought she was doing a swell job. But then
the
ratings came out and she discovered she is the worst
teacher in the state! In the past, she has won many
awards, and she loves teaching. In addition: I initiated
and continue to run the chess and drama clubs with no
remuneration. I do get a small stipend for being the
academic games coordinator, running the Mathletes team and spelling
bee for the school, along with keeping the staff and students
informed of enrichment opportunities like academic
competitions. I organize the field trips for my grade
level and a trip for 4th and
5th graders to spend three days at an
oceanographic institute in the Florida Keys.

My own 5th grade
gifted students will end this year with a full understanding of
three Shakespearean plays, as class sets of these and other texts
were secured through my Donors Choose
requests. Saturday, I’ll be the designated
representative picking up free materials for my
school. I write the full year’s lesson plans over the
summer (then tweaking as I go).
She is the victim of the ceiling
effect. Her students got such high scores last year that they can’t
get higher scores this year.
She explains:
Last year, many of my students had had the
highest scores on the state tests possible the year prior—a 5 out
of 5. That’s how they get in to my class of gifted and
high achieving students. Except, last year, they
raised the bar so that the same
5th graders who scored 5s in
4th grade were much less likely to earn
5s in math and reading in
5th grade. Some still DID
score 5s in math AND reading, yet were still deemed not to have
made sufficient progress because they did not score as high within
the 5 category as they had the year before.

It’s like expecting the members of an Olympic
pole vaulting team to all individually earn gold medals every time
the Olympics come around, regardless of any other factors affecting
their lives, with the bar raised another five inches each go
around. In a state where 40% of students pass the
5th grade science test, 100% of my
students passed; but no one (at the state level) cares about
science scores.
Therefore, I suck.
How nutty is this? Why does the
U.S. Department of Education insist that states must adopt flawed
measures? Does anyone at the U.S. Department of Education consider
the consequences of their policies? Do they know anything about
research or evidence? Do they care how many people lives or
reputations they carelessly ruin with their dumb ideas?
Just wondering.
Categories Education Reform, Florida, Research, Teacher Evaluations, U.S. Department of Education

My Interview with Salon about Education Reform Today

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2014 //
9

This is a wide-ranging interview with Salon that started as a discussion of the Network for Public Education, then went on to discuss budget cuts, high-stakes testing, Common Core, Race to the Top, privatization, and much more.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Chicago, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Testing, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. education, Unions

Jere Hochman: What the Federal Government MUST Do

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2014 //
10

Jere Hochman, superintendent of the Bedford Central School District in Westchester County, New York, points out the single biggest failure of the federal government: Congress mandated special-education services but has never paid the costs of its mandate.

Consequently, it is the children who are neediest who are most often neglected and left behind.

He writes:

“The word “education” does not appear in the Constitution.

“Where education is and does belong in the Federal Government is federal law: PL 94-142 now knows as IDEA. That, and civil rights issues, ARE the stuff of federal law and jurisdiction.

“The irony is that while Mr. Duncan et al pay attention to everything else except IDEA and civil rights, the children with the greatest needs are the most unserved.

“The irony is that while Mr. Duncan et al PROMOTE charter schools, vouchers, privatization, and testing every student regardless of disability; they do nothing about those same schools and procedures as they deny and dishearten children with disabilities.

“The irony is that while Mr. Obama et al wants us all to Race to the Top after Mr. Bush et all wanted No Child Left Behind, IDEA is grossly UNDERFUNDED from the 40% “full funding” promised to states at decade ago.

“And, then there’s the Federal Catch-22 – NCLB/RTTT requires annual testing of students in grades 3-8 and HS in English, reading, mathematics, etc. And, they exempt 1% (?) of the students with disabilities from the test while the rest sit in front of exams there is on chance of them having success or feeling good about their learning.

“We’ve always had standards, testing, and data storage issues yet for some reason this has everyone riled up unnecessarily (sorry but this is all fixable) while the real problems go unaddressed. The real problems? Underfunding of IDEA. Subjecting students with disabilities and limited English to standardized tests and double standardized testing. Segregated charter schools.

“Common core standards can be fixed. It’s the federal double standards that need work. And -that’s not news – that’s since 2002 with little outcry.”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Special Education, U.S. Department of Education

Erin Osborne: Keep Profiteers Out of the Classroom!

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2014 //
54

Erin Osborne warns in this powerful article at Salon.com that the profiteers are invading the classroom. They aren’t just selling pencils and textbooks. They are creating business ventures to make millions from controlling and directing the curriculum and testing, supplying the software and hardware that the new curriculum and testing requires.

Tellingly, she titles her article: “Keep Fox News Out of the Classroom! Rupert Murdoch, Common Core, and the Dangerous Rise of For-Profit Public Education.”

Arne Duncan spins a narrative that the Common Core standards mark a brilliant new direction for American education, in which achievement gaps will disappear as every child learns the exact same lessons in the same sequence in every state and school district.

But Osborne sees something else:

America’s most recent education reform, the Common Core State Standards, has divided teachers and parents across the United States. Whether or not the standards mark a step in the right direction for the education system, one thing is for sure. For the first time in American history, businesses are able to freely tap into the K-12 market on a large scale, and they aren’t waiting.

Make no mistake, she writes, the Common Core standards were designed to create a national market for goods and services (Joanne Weiss, tapped by Secretary Duncan to run Race to the Top, said that this was the purpose of national standards). Now, entrepreneurs are devising plans to get rich from taxpayer dollars:

How have the authors proposed we track the success of this reform? Testing, and lots of it. Along with the Common Core come two new major testing consortiums called SmarterBalanced and Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. Forget your No. 2 pencil; these aren’t the bubble tests you remember from school but adaptive computer testing that is required two to three times a year for every student in every grade. From the SmarterBalanced website, “The full suite of summative, interim, and formative assessments is estimated to cost $27.30 per student … These costs are estimates because a sizable portion of the cost is for test administration and scoring services that will not be provided by Smarter Balanced; states will either provide these services directly or procure them from vendors in the private sector.”

Big business in education isn’t new. Pearson and McGraw-Hill have dominated the textbook market while the College Board, makers of the SAT and Advanced Placement courses, are the veritable gatekeepers to higher education. The entire U.S. education system has been valued at nearly $1.5 trillion, second only to the healthcare industry. As media mogul Rupert Murdoch said after acquiring education company Amplify (previously known as Wireless Generations), “When it comes to K-12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching.”

Until the creation of Common Core, businesses have found breaking into the K-12 market very difficult. States have historically written their own curriculums and standards, buying suitable materials and textbooks as they saw fit. Creating content that was accessible to multiple states was difficult and being able to approach the districts within their tiny budget window was nearly impossible. The nuanced field of state, local and federal funding and regulations that companies are forced to navigate takes years to master and states were the ones controlling the checkbook.

From a business point of view, why go to them when you can make them come to you? Many of the people who financially aided the creation of Common Core have investments in place in companies that would do quite well with the standards implementation. By using financial clout and political connections, billionaires, not teachers, were able to influence the landscape of our education system. If states wanted a chunk of the RttT money, they had to adopt Common Core. If they adopt Common Core, they have to pay for the assessments and proprietary materials that come with it. Products that are “Common Core Aligned” have flung the door to K-12 wide open. Still not convinced Common Core is more about money than education? Check out the American Girl back-to-school accessory set children can buy, complete with a mini Common Core-aligned Pearson textbook.

Osborne notes the number of start-ups that have jumped into the education business, seeing this lucrative market, and she also notes that most start-ups don’t survive:

Given the growing emphasis on technology in the classroom plus Silicon Valley’s affinity for gadgets, there are dozens of start-ups trying to cash in on the new market. Rupert Murdoch’s company Amplify has created its own tablet and Common Core-aligned games. According to CNBC, the amount of venture capital invested in education start-ups quadrupled, from $154 million in 2003 to $630 million in 2012.

Mick Hewitt, co-founder and CEO of education start-up MasteryConnect, said earlier this year, “I would be wrong if I said the Common Core and the dollars around it haven’t driven a lot of the activity for us.” MasteryConnect raised more than $5.2 million in investments, $1.1 million of which came from the NewSchools Venture Fund, which in turn has received more than $16 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation since 2010. Hewitt does not have an education background.

Note the investment in this particular start-up by the NewSchools Venture Fund. NSVF is the epicenter of the for-profit approach to education. Its CEO Ted Mitchell was nominated by the Obama administration to become Undersecretary of Education, the second most powerful job in the Department. NSVF is not known as a friend of public education, but as a source of funding and strategy for charter chains, charter schools, and for-profit ventures.

It should not be surprising, really, that Secretary Duncan picked the head of NSVF to become #2 at the Department of Education. In 2009, he asked Joanne Weiss, who was then the CEO of NSVF to run Race to the Top. Once the Race to the Top competition was completed, Weiss then became Duncan’s chief of staff. Weiss memorably described the rationale for the Common Core this way in a blog for the Harvard Business Review:

The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale.

This was certainly the first time in history that the U.S. Department of Education created a program whose purpose was to stimulate new markets for entrepreneurs and investment.

Erin Osborne is an active member of the Education Bloggers Network, a group of bloggers who support public education. These were her first reflections on the recent conference of the Network for Public Education.

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, For-Profit, U.S. Department of Education

Peter Greene Knocks the Highly Qualified Teacher Talk Outta the Park

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2014 //
63

Peter Greene has a ball with the U.S. Department of Education’s latest fantasy plan: Every child has a civil right to a “highly qualified teacher.”

Who is a “highly qualified teacher”? Any teacher who can raise test scores or anyone who belongs to Teach for America and leaves before the third year of test scores are reported.

It is all super but here is the laugh-out-loud deconstruction of Duncan-style logic:

“Discussion of teaching as a civil right often circles back around to the assertion that poor students have more lousy teachers than non-poor students. This assertion rests primarily on a model of circular reasoning. Follow along.

“A) Teachers are judged low-performing because their students score poorly on tests.

“B) Students low test scores are explained by the fact that they have low-performing teachers.

“Or, framed another way, this argument defines a low-quality teacher as any teacher whose students don’t do well on standardized tests. The assumption is that teachers are the only single solitary explanation for student standardized test scores. Nothing else affects those scores. Only teacher behavior explains the low scores. That’s it.

“Ergo, the best runners are runners who run down hills. Runners who are running uphill are slow runners, and must be replaced by those good runners– the ones we find running downhill. Or, the wettest dogs are the ones who are out in the rain, while the driest ones are the ones indoors. So if we take the indoor dogs outside, we will have drier dogs in the yard. While it rains.

“As long as we define low-quality teachers as those who teach low-achieving students (who we know will mostly be the children of poor folk), low-achieving students will always be taught by low-quality teachers. It’s the perfect education crisis, one that can never, ever be solved.”

Categories Duncan, Arne, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teach for America, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, U.S. Department of Education

A Stunning Article About the Obama Administration’s War on Public Education

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2014 //
46

This article by Michael Brenner, a professor of international relations at the University of Pittsburgh, is a trenchant summary of the relentless attack on public education launched by the Obama administration and backed by billions of federal and private dollars.

Brenner begins:

“A feature of the Obama presidency has been his campaign against the American public school system, eating way at the foundations of elementary education. That means the erosion of an institution that has been one of the keystones of the Republic. The project to remake it as a mixed public/private hybrid is inspired by a discredited dogma that charter schools perform better. This article of faith serves an alliance of interests — ideological and commercial — for whom the White House has been point man. A President whose tenure in office is best known for indecision, temporizing and vacillation has been relentless since day one in using the powers of his office to advance the cause. Such conviction and sustained dedication is observable in only one other area of public policy: the project to expand the powers and scope of the intelligence agencies that spy on, and monitor the behavior of persons and organizations at home as well as abroad.

“The audacity of the project is matched by the passive deference that it is accorded. There is no organized opposition — in civil society or politics. Only a few outgunned elements fight a rearguard action against a juggernaut that includes Republicans and Democrats, reactionaries and liberals — from Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York to the nativist Christian Right of the Bible Belt. All of this without the national “conversation” otherwise so dear to the hearts of the Obama people, without corroboration of its key premises, without serious review of its consequences, without focused media attention.

“This past week, as the deadline approached for states to make their submissions to Arne Duncan’s Department of Education requesting monies appropriated under the Race to the Top initiative, we were reminded that the DOE has decreed that no proposal will be considered where the state government has put a cap on charter schools. In other words, the federal government has put its thumb heavily on the scales of local deliberations as to what approach toward charter schools best serves their communities’ interests. Penalties are being imposed on those who choose to limit, in any quantitative way, the charter school movement.

“This heavy-handed use of federal leverage by the Obama administration should not come as a surprise. After all, Obama himself has been a consistent, highly vocal advocate of “privatization.” He has travelled the country from coast to coast, like Johnny Appleseed, sowing distrust of public schools and – especially – public school teachers. They have been blamed for what ails America – the young unprepared for the 21st century globalized economy; the shortage of engineers; high drop-out rates; school districts’ financial woes, whatever.*”

Please read the entire article, and you will hear loud echoes of the many voices who have posted here: the demoralized teachers, the frustrated parents, the outraged students. We are the outgunned rearguard. And we will not be silent. Our voices will grow louder and louder as we demand an end to policies that destroy public education and demonize teachers and stigmatize students.

Join us at the first annual conference of the Network for Public Education on March 1-2 in Austin, Texas, where we will strengthen our resolve to stop the juggernaut of privatization.

Margaret Mead said it: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Obama, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. education, US Education, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Pearson Press Release, 2015:

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2014 //
12

Peter Greene, a high school English teacher in Pennsylvania, has concocted a press release by Pearson, issued soon after it purchased the U.S. Department of Education in 2015.

In this press release, Pearson announces the release of the Common Core 2.0.

Here is a sample:

“*We’re pretty sure that Kindergarten simply isn’t early enough to start the reading process, so we are proud to announce a program that starts this important educational experience as soon after conception as possible. Our problem with backwards scaffolding has been that we stopped too soon. How can we hope to compete internationally when our newborns have not yet been exposed to a dynamic and robust reading curriculum. Phonics for Fetuses closes that gap.

*DIBELS broke new ground with its program of having small children read gibberish. But why stop there. The new SHMIBELS program will require students to write gibberish. Students must produce ten pages of lettering without creating a single recognizable word (yet all completely pronounceable). The writing will be timed and matched against the Pearson master SHMIBELS list to see if students have produced the correct gibberish and not just any random gibberish. (Note: this program is expected to help target many future USDOE employees).”

It gets better as Greene goes on. These are my favorite changes to CCSS:

“*In response to continued complaints that focus on testing has squeezed out many valuable phys ed and arts programs, we are proud to introduce the Physical Arts program. For this program, offered during one day of the 9th grade year, students will draw a picture of a pony on a tuba and then throw the tuba as far as possible.

*By pushing subject matter further down the sequence, we expect to free up the entire 10th grade year for testing. Nothing but testing, every single day, all day. With that much testing, our students are certain to become the kinds of geniuses who can trounce our historic enemies, the South Koreans and the Estonians. We anticipate this becoming a rite of passage and popular cultural milestone as families look forward with joy and anticipation to the Year of the Tests. To those critics who claim that we have not offered support in the literature for this testing, we want to note that we have closely followed the writings of Suzanne Collins and Franz Kafka.”

Categories Humor, Pearson, U.S. Department of Education

Who Is Behind the Vergara Attack on Due Process in California?

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2014 //
33

Who is paying for and supporting the lawsuit claiming that due process for teachers harms the civil rights of students?

Until now, all we knew was that the case was bankrolled by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur named David Welch.

That much is true, but Welch also has an advisory board that includes Russlyn Ali, who served as an assistant secretary to Arne Duncan, now working for the supposedly liberal Education Trust; and even more disturbing, Ted Mitchell of NewSchools Venture Fund, who was nominated by President Obama to be the #2 official in the U.S. Department of Education. Also on the board is Ben Austin of Parent Revolution.

The anti-due process group, anti-union group is running a well-honed PR campaign. The California Teachers Association has decided not to compete in the PR war.

” Remarkably, this one-sided communications war has been initiated by a single person – Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch, the founder of the nonprofit organization Students Matter, which brought the suit – and provides a case study of what impact a single individual can have if he has the resources, or access to them, to take action based on his beliefs.

“California Teachers Association President Dean Vogel says his organization, representing more than 300,000 teachers, has no intention of trying to counteract what he described as a campaign funded by the bottomless pockets of the “billionaires boys club….”

“The organization is a relative newcomer to the California education policy landscape. The organization has no staff on its payroll, or even its own office. Instead it is run out of its communications firm’s office in Los Angeles. Its sole purpose, as described on its website, is “sponsoring impact litigation to promote access to quality public education. Welch’s net worth is unknown, although public reports assert that he receives more than $2 million in annual compensation from the Infinera Corporation, which he founded.

“For weeks leading to the opening of the trial on Jan. 27, media outlets have received a stream of emails and announcements about the pending proceedings.

“An email sent out on the weekend before the trial opened provided possible tweets – complete with scripts, hashtags and Twitter handles – with a half dozen to draw from. Here’s one: Let’s get back to basics, starting with a great teacher in every classroom! I support @Students_Matter #VergaraTrial

“Students Matter called a news conference a few days before the trial opened, and on opening day yet another news conference was held during the lunch break with all nine students who are listed in the suit as plaintiffs in the case, along with Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy who has testified on their behalf.

“On the morning the trial opened, Students Matter emails sent at 5 a.m. by the communications firms landed in media outlets’ inboxes. Before 8 a.m. that day a news release appeared on Yahoo News with the headline “California Students Get Their Day in Court: Groundbreaking Education Equality Trial Begins Today.”

Win or lose, the goal of the campaign seems to be to smear the union and teachers.

Is it surprising that a soon-to-be-confirmed high-level official in the Obama administration is part of the anti-teacher team?

Categories Los Angeles, Teacher Tenure, U.S. Department of Education

News from Washington, D.C.

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2014 //
38

I had a very exciting day in our nation’s Capitol today.

Randi Weingarten and the American Federation of Teachers invited me to spend a day in D.C. And offered to set up meetings with members of the education committee in both houses. At the end of he day, the AFT hosted a reception.

I took the train to D.C. to avoid the uncertain weather of recent days, and spent 2 hours on the train writing blogs.

The train arrived a bit before 10, and I went directly to meet with Congresswoman Gwen Moore of Milwaukee. She is well-informed and warm; she remembered me from my last visit in 2010. I was fortunate to have an escort from the AFT to make sure I got to my meetings.

All my conversations were off the record, so all I can share is that I was very candid, and so were the members of Congress.

I next saw Congresswoman Marcia Fudge of Cleveland, who is very sharp. That too was a very pleasant meeting.

Then on to see Congresswoman Rosa de Lauro, who has a key position on the appropriations committee. She is a wonderful, kind, and delightful woman.

After a fast sandwich, we went to the Senate, where I had the pleasure of meeting Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin–imagine, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin! And then we met Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, who is very impressive.

Here is the news: George Miller of California, Democrat of California, announced his resignation a couple of weeks ago. Miller was a huge fan of testing and charters, as well as an architect of NCLB. Next in line was Rob Andrews, but today he unexpectedly announced he too was retiring. So very likely the next top Democrat on the House education committee will be Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia, a liberal Democrat.

Things should get interesting in D.C. We have friends in high places.

Categories U.S. Department of Education, U.S. education, Unions
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »