Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Gableman changes his mind about that Rindfleisch appeal #JohnDoe #JohnDoeII #JohnDoe2
“A Wisconsin Supreme Court justice on Tuesday withdrew his unusual request asking for his colleagues on the state’s highest court to review its decision not to hear an appeal of a felony conviction from a former aide to Gov. Scott Walker.” – source Interesting. I feel loathe to speculate about this turn of events because more »
Monday, June 29, 2015
Peter Greene: Jeb’s Outfit Declares a National Crisis Due to “Proficiency Gap”
Peter Greene reports on the latest declaration that the sky is falling, released by the Foundation for Educational Excellence. FEE was established by Jeb Bush to push the Florida Miracle, digital learning, vouchers, charters, and high-stakes testing. When Jeb! decided to run for President, he stepped down and Condoleeza Rice took his place. She has been quiet, perhaps because she is learning the ropes about education. While Condi is studying up, Jeb!s righthand woman, Patricia Levesque wrote this latest blast at America’s terrible schools.
Quite frankly, I wonder why everyone swallows the latest alarm. We are,after all, the most powerful nation on earth. If our schools are so awful, how did we achieve economic, military, and cultural success? Sure, we have problems, big problems, especially segregation and poverty. But that is never what reformsters worry about. They work on the assumption that if they could get the right standards and the right tests, poverty would disappear.
FEE has discovered an earth-shattering crisis: the “Proficiency Gap.” It seems that NAEP has a higher standard for proficiency than almost every state. This is not a new finding. I think it has been written about many times. The NAEP “proficiency” standard is very high; it represents a very high level of performance on the NAEP tests. States, which must be concerned about getting kids through high school, do not set as high a standard as NAEP. NAEP proficiency was never meant to be a goal that all or almost all students could reach. No matter how high your expectations, some kids will not do as well as others. Not all will achieve A-level performance.
Greene’s complaint is that FEE never defines what proficiency is or how it should be measured. FEE seems to assume that a score on tests of reading and math are all that is needed to predict whether students are ready for college and careers. Peter has too much experience to accept that claim, especially when it comes from privatization advocates with no classroom experience.
Greene asks:
Is there a proficiency gap?
Between what and what? If the assertion is that we have a gap between the results of one lousy standardized test and another different lousy standardized test, then, yeah, I guess so, but so what? If the gap is between what we tell students they can accomplish and what they actually are able to accomplish– well, where’s the evidence? Oh, I know what reformsters believe– that all the poverty in the country is the result of students who couldn’t score high enough on a standardized test. This strikes me as highly unlikely, though I get that there are many possible explanations for and solutions to widespread poverty. But if we’ve had the most terrible education system in the world, and we should fear that because it will lead to failure and collapse, I just feel as if the country isn’t doing as badly as all these chicken littling privatizers want to say, and where I do see failure, I see problems of racism and systemic barriers to class mobility. Oddly enough, race and poverty do not appear as issues on the proficiency gap site.
So if FEE is declaring that states need to do more about closing the resource gap and the opportunity gap and the stupid racist barriers gap, that would be swell. But I’ve read enough FEE materials to suspect that they’re chicken littling in one more act of “There’s a terrible emergency, so you must do as we say!!” The Honesty Gap folks wanted us all to buy more PARCC and SBA tests, and Common Core harder, as well as handing over more public schools to private interests. Oh, and stop opting out. This seems like more of the same old stuff aimed primarily at helping privatizers close their revenue gaps.
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Laura Chapman on The Big Lie about “Global Competition”
Laura Chapman, a frequent contributor to the blog, comments here in response to an article in the Boston Globe about whether the Common Core was “killing” kindergarten:
THE BIG LIE: “The United States is falling behind other countries in the resource that matters most in the new global economy: human capital,” declared a 2008 report from the National Governors Association. Creating a common set of “internationally benchmarked” standards was seen as the best way to close the persistent achievement gaps between students of different races and between rich and poor school districts.”
THE BIG LIE: I have found only two international benchmarking documents in the early history of the Common Core. The first was in 1998 with comparisons of standards in two states and the math and science standards in Japan and standards available from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS). The second report in 2008. titled “Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education,” was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates and GE Foundations. The author was a professional writer of reports. The advisory committee included seven governors or former governors, CEOs at Intel and Microsoft, three senior state and large metro area education officials, three advocates for minority groups, one foundation, and five university faculty, only two of these scholars in education. The most important source of information was the data analytics expert at the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). In this report, benchmarking is little more than a process of: (a) identifying the nations that score high on international tests, then (b) assuming the scores reflect higher expectations, and then (c) looking at some economic descriptors for those countries.
The result is a set of dubious inferences– high test scores and high standards are predicates for economic prosperity. Dubious should be written DUBIOUS, especially because this publication was rolled out with great fanfare in the midst of the 2008 crash of the world economy…for reasons that have no bearing on international test scores, no bearing on educational standards, no bearing on the nation’s children and teachers and public schools.
Nevertheless, “The executive summary (p.6) calls for the following:
Action 1: Upgrade state standards by adopting a common core of internationally benchmarked standards in math and language arts for grades K-12 to ensure that students are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to be globally competitive.
This is a very big lie. It is a dangerously misleading one when tossed into a discussion of kindergarten. There is no way to internationally benchmark standards or tests for every grade or subject because the meaning of “internationally benchmarked” is limited to test scores on international tests in at most three subjects, no international tests yet in kindergarten.
On top of those insistent misrepresentations from the nation’s governors and those involved in the whole Common Core Experiment to save the economy is it not strange that we find no demand at all for more and better knowledge of geography, cultural history including the arts, political history, and world languages–all of which might actually bear on functioning with savvy and grace on an international stage?
If the only or the prime value of our nation’s children and youth is economic, we are back to the same wretched outlook on children as that which existed before child labor laws. The Governors are still using this appalling rhetoric, treating the nation’s children and youth as more or less useful and productive for the economy. The same for their teachers. What will it take to get a reversal of this narrow and attitude that “It is perfectly OK to think of kids as economically worthless, or worthwhile, or somewhere in between?
The real causes of the so-called achievement gap are the result of thinking that test scores are objective…when they are not. It is the result of thinking that humans should all be thoroughly standardized to perform in the same way, at the same time, to the same level on a set of test questions that only predict scores on other tests. And those tests and scores are the marketing tools of choice for the unregulated testing industry.
Test scores have been a major weapon in the arsenal of federal and state policies designed to produce, reproduce, and not to reduce the huge disparities in income and opportunities in this nation and to distract attention from real fraud and abuse. Children are not responsible for the fate of the economy. They did not tank the economy in 2008. Nor did their teachers.
This nation is in desperate need for more ample education and for more generous views of humanity than has come from the National Governor’s Association, the Secretary of Education, corporate leaders, billionaires, and the press. The press has become too lazy. This piece about kindergarten does little more than recycle talking points from easy to find and ready-made sources.”
Algebra Teacher Apolgizes for Terrible Common Core Test
Mercedes Schneider posted a letter written by a Néw York algebra teacher to parents of his students.
He begins:
“Dear Algebra Parents,
“The results from this year’s Common Core Algebra exam are now available and have been posted on the high school gymnasium doors. They are listed by student ID number and have no names attached to them. The list includes all students who took the exam, whether they were middle school students or high school students.
“I’ve been teaching math for 13 years now. Every one of those years I have taught some version of Algebra, whether it was “Math A”, “Integrated Algebra”, “Common Core Algebra”, or whatever other form it has shown up in. After grading this exam, speaking to colleagues who teach math in other school districts, and reflecting upon the exam itself, I have come to the conclusion that this was the toughest Algebra exam I have ever seen.
“With that in mind, please know that all 31 middle school students who took the exam received a passing score. No matter what grade your son or daughter received, every student should be congratulated on the effort they put into the class this year.
“Although everyone passed, many of you will not be happy with the grade that your son or daughter received on the exam (and neither will they). While I usually try to keep the politics of this job out of my communications, I cannot, in good conscience, ignore the two-fold tragedy that unfolded on this exam. As a parent, you deserve to know the truth.
“I mentioned how challenging this exam was, but I want you to hear why I feel this way.”
Sunday, June 28, 2015
The presidential clown car: Trump trumps Walker, Bernie’s coming to WI, Jill Stein is in, and More
TRUMP ON TOP A FOX poll puts Jeb at #1 and Trump at #2 in New Hampshire. Scott Walker is not in the top. This Politico article says that the numbers are too good to be true and quotes pollsters who say “Everybody should calm down“. Whatever the case, I’m still going to take pleasure more »
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Harvard Political Review: The Case Against Annual Standardized Testing
Quinn Mulholland of the Harvard Political Review examined the issues surrounding annual mandated testing, interviewed leading figures on both sides, and concluded that the exams are overkill. They cost too much, they narrow the curriculum, they take too many hours, they distort the purpose of education.
Mulholland concludes:
Given all of these problems with standardized testing, it seems that the civil rights issue is too much testing, not too little. Instead of forcing low-income schools to spend millions of dollars and countless hours of class time preparing for and administering standardized tests that only serve to prove, oftentimes inaccurately, what we already know about the achievement gap, we should use those resources to expand programs in the arts and humanities, to provide incentive pay to attract teachers to areas where they are needed most, and to decrease class sizes, all things that could actually make a difference for disadvantaged students.
This is not to say that America’s accountability system should be completely dismantled. Politicians and schools can de-emphasize testing while still ensuring high achievement. Student and teacher evaluations can take multiple measures of performance into account. The amount of standardized tests students have to take can be drastically reduced. The fewer standardized tests that students do take can incorporate more open-ended questions that force students to think critically and outside the box
Thirteen years after NCLB’s mandates were first set into place, the rhetoric used by politicians and pundits is sounding more and more like that which the same politicians and pundits used to endorse NCLB. Congress would be ill advised to try to use high-stakes test-based accountability to narrow the achievement gap and expect a different result than the aftermath of the 2002 law. It is time to acknowledge that putting an enormous amount of weight on standardized test scores does not work, and to move on to other solutions.
Regardless of the outcome of the current debate, grassroots activists like [Jeanette] Deutermann will continue to fight against harmful test-based accountability systems like New York’s. “This is an epidemic,” she said. “It’s happening everywhere, with all sorts of kids, from the smartest kids to the kids that struggle the most, from Republicans to Democrats, from kids in low-income districts to kids in high-performing districts. It doesn’t matter where you are, the stories are exactly the same.”
“We may be passive when it comes to all the other things [corporate reformers] have interjected themselves into,” Deutermann warned, “but when you mess with our kids, that’s when the claws come out.”
While Politicians Ponder, Bree Newsome Takes Down the Confederate Flag in SC
Politicians are lining up in agreement that the Confederate battle flag should be removed from the South Carolina Capitol grounds and placed in a musem. But doing so requires a supermajority vote of the Legislature and then a waiting period. It could be months before the flag is removed, if the Legislature agrees to do so.
One lone activist decided to engage in civil disobedience. Bree Newsome scaled the pole near the Capitol building, unhooked it, submitted to arrest, and walked away reciting the 23rd Psalm, with her police escort. She has been released.
Newsome has a website with a few videos. She describes herself as an artist and an activist,
Friday, June 26, 2015
Friday Favorites – 6/26
Happy Friday! I hope you’re all having a great week! Let’s kick things off with a quick recap of some of the awesome posts that were shared in last week’s link up: Iced coffee? Latte? What does your coffee say about you? Globetrotting this summer? Here are 5 reasons you should travel on a budget. No […]
The post Friday Favorites – 6/26 appeared first on Virginia Bloggers.
2015 Convention MP3 Giveaway!
This 2015 Convention MP3 Set comes on a thumb drive and is packed with all the recorded workshops! Experience the benefits of the convention at your own pace, wherever you like. Be inspired, encouraged, and instructed all year long! *Exhibitor...
EduShyster: Charter Teachers Disrupt National Charter Conference, Demanding Right to Join Union
EduShyster has a fascinating report on the festivities in New Orleans, where the National Charter School Conference is meeting. The event was supposed to be a celebration of the complete elimination of public education in New Orleans, but something unexpected happened. A group of charter teachers from Ohio disrupted a session to ask a charter founder why he fired teachers for trying to organize a union at his schools.
Here is the backstory:
When is *disruption* not just a super cool buzz word but something that’s actually, well, *disruptive*? That would be when teachers at the National Charter Schools Conference in New Orleans ask the CEO of an Ohio charter management organization about firing teachers for trying to organizing a union at his schools—and using taxpayer money to pay the fine when he got caught. This went about as well as you might expect. And when security arrived, combing through the crowd for disruptors, that’s when things got really disruptive…
Our story actually starts long before the bon temps starting roulez-ing at this year’s charter conference in the Big Easy. In 2014, teachers at two I CAN charter schools in Cleveland decided to unionize in hopes of improving working conditions at the school, raising pay and reducing sky-high turnover. And when the school year ended, seven teachers who were leaders of the organizing effort, found themselves no longer working at the schools. Why? Because they’d been fired by school leaders, who, according to a federal complaint filed by the teachers, *led teachers to believe they were under surveillance and pressured teachers into revealing who was leading the organizing effort.*
But wait—it gets better (for realz)
The feds sided with the teachers, finding that I CAN was guilty of *interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees.* The order, similar to an indictment in a criminal case, also accused I Can of *discriminating in regard to the hire or tenure or terms or conditions of employment, thereby discouraging membership in a labor organization.* I Can founders Marshall Emerson and Jason Stragand, meanwhile, acknowledged that they’d like their schools to remain union free, then paid the $69,000 in backpay they were ordered to pay the fired teachers with tax-payer money.
At the National Charter School Conference in New Orleans, the CEO of I CAN charters was talking about his plans for growth, emphasizing the importance of “hiring, working with, and retaining good teachers,” when one of his teachers disrupted his presentation. She asked, “Um, how do you square that with firing a bunch of them when they tried to organize a union?” and a group of other charter teachers began handing out leaflets about the situation at I CAN. In no time at all, security guards were there to corral the disrupters, which wasn’t all that easy.
EduShyster says that the teachers were “cage-busting,” to use Rick Hess’s term, people who bust out of their cages and take ownership of their schools.
This is all very funny, because the “reformers” have made a virtue of disruption. They call it “creative.” But apparently it is not welcome when they are the ones disrupted!
Senator Lindsey Graham: A Mediocre Student Who Succeeded
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is lucky he got out of school before Common Core and high-stakes testing. He would never have finished high school.
As politico.com reports, Graham was a C student. He scored 800 out of 1600 points on the SAT. That’s about 400 on reading and 400 on math, abysmal scores.
Yet he was accepted by the University of South Carolina, the first in his family to go to college, and made a success of his life, despite his awful test scores and average grades. He was NOT college-and-career-ready.
There is a lesson here.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Gableman hopes to reel Rindfleisch (and Scott Walker’s secrets) back to Wisconsin
Dear Readers: We have some John Doe II news to talk about. I’m not absolutely positive what’s up – but I have some strong suspicions, which I will go into. Whatever’s going down, the timing of this could not be more threatening to Scott Walker’s impending presidential campaign. First you need to know that the more »
Maine: Farewell to SBAC! We Hardly Knew Ye
Emily Talmage of Save Maine Schools says goodby (and don’t come back) to the federally-funded Common Core assessments called SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium).
It is not a fond farewell.
She writes:
“SBAC, you will not be missed – but rest assured that we will not forget you.
“We will not forget how many hours you took from children so that they could take part in your failed testing experiment.
“We will not forget the way you set our children up to fail – confusing them with strange, multi-part directions that even adults could not decipher; giving them reading passages written for students well beyond their grade level; requiring them to manipulate complicated computer interfaces to answer your questions…
“We will not forget how hard some parents had to fight to protect their children from your nonsense.
“We will not forget the way you hid your profit-seeking makers behind non-profit organizations.
“We will not forget how very expensive you were.”
Milwaukee Common Council Rejects State Takeover of the City’s Public Schools
The Wisconsin legislature is considering a bill sponsored by two suburban Republican legislators that would allow a state takeover of the city’s lowest performing schools, which would be turned into charters or voucher schools. None of this is new to Milwaukee; it has had a charter sector and vouchers schools for 25 years. The public schools outperform the other sectors. Well, let’s see what happens? Does Governor Scott Walker and the Legislature listen to the citizens of Milwaukee or do they listen to ALEC and the Koch brothers?
The Milwaukee Common Council overwhelmingly passed a resolution opposing the state takeover:
Milwaukee Common Council Adopts Resolution Firmly Opposing Kooyenga/ Darling MPS Takeover Proposal
Filed under: MPS Takeover
Introduced by Alderperson Tony Zielinski and adopted by the Milwaukee Common Council on June 21 2015
Resolution opposing the Opportunity Schools and Partnership Program proposal currently pending in the Wisconsin Legislature.
This resolution expresses the City’s opposition to the provisions of the Opportunity Schools and Partnership Program proposal currently pending in the Wisconsin Legislature.
Whereas, The proposed Opportunity Schools and Partnership Program currently pending in the Wisconsin Legislature provides that the Milwaukee County Executive oversee the turnover of up to 5 struggling Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) district schools to public charter or private voucher school operators; and
Whereas, The proposed program would diminish the power of Milwaukee City residents to control their public school district by allowing non-City residents to indirectly control the operation of certain City public schools by playing a part in the election of the Milwaukee County Executive who would have the authority to intercede in MPS operations; and
Whereas, Turning over struggling MPS schools to public charter and private voucher school operators is no guarantee of success given the fact than many public charter and private voucher schools have been no more successful than MPS in improving the performance of low-performing schools; and
Whereas, A change in governance of struggling MPS schools offers no promise to remediate the root cause of poor performance in low-performing public schools and seems a thinly-veiled attempt by the state to privatize public schools; now, therefore, be it
Resolved, By the Common Council of the City of Milwaukee, that the City of Milwaukee opposes the provisions of the Opportunity Schools and Partnership Program proposal currently pending in the Wisconsin Legislature; and, be it
Further Resolved, That the City Clerk shall forward copies of this resolution to members of the City of Milwaukee’s delegation to the State Legislature and Governor Scott Walker.
Food Lion and Martin's Agree to Merger
RICHMOND, VA (WWBT) -European grocery chains Royal Ahold NV and Delhaize Group, parent companies to Martin's and Food Lion grocery stores, has agreed to a $29 billion merger.
The merger would create one of the largest supermarket operators in the U.S., with "a complementary base of more than 6,500 stores with 375,000 associates," according to Ahold.
Local shoppers were divided on the idea of Food Lion and Martin's combining when the parent companies first entered talks for the merger.
Copyright 2015 WWBT NBC12. All rights reserved
Not sure how I feel about this. I am not a huge fan of Food Lion. Will Martin's still double? Will there still be fuel perks??
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Why can cops tote guns into WI schools now? The NRA called for that after Sandy Hook
As of today, Scott Walker signed bills* that remove the 48 hour waiting period on handgun purchases in WI and to allow retired and off-duty cops to roam while armed on school property. A friend on facebook said today, “I am very curious why anyone needs to carry a gun into our schools? Also how more »
Fox News: Meet the PARCC Test Maker!
Chris Wallace on Fox News interviewed Laura Slover, identified as the CEO of the federally funded PARCC.
The interview–and the description of Common Core and PARCC on the Fox website–repeats common myths about both.
This is how PARCC is described:
“PARCC is one of two nonprofits set up by states to test how students are measuring up to Common Core education standards.”
But PARCC and the other testing program were not created by the states. They were both created by the U.S. Department of Education with a grant of $360 million.
No mention of the fact that numerous states have backed out of PARCC. It started with 24 states. Now it’s down to 12 states and D.C.
And then comes a slew of bogus claims. See how many you can count:
Slover says:
“”I think it’s vital that we set a high standard for kids, because if we build it, they will come,” Slover said. “If we expect a lot of kids, they rise to the occasion.”
“Wallace noted that the main complaint about Common Core testing is that it is part of a federal takeover of local schools.
Slover asserted that it’s actually a state-driven program, and states make all the decisions.
“As a parent, I can understand why there are concerns about testing,” Slover said, adding that she wants her daughter taking the tests. “I want to be sure she’s learning. I want to be sure she’s on grade level. And I want to be sure she knows how to do math and is prepared for the next grade.”
“She asserted that for far too long a child’s success has been determined by their parents’ income level and where they grew up.
“We think it’s critical that kids all have opportunities, whether they live in Mississippi or Massachusetts or Colorado or Ohio,” Slover said. “They should all have access to an excellent education. And this is a step in the right direction.”
Biggest bogus claim: if all kids have the same standards and same tests, all children will learn the same things in the same way and will have high test scores. The path to an excellent education requires standardization.
Susan Ochshorn: Angie Sullivan is Weeping for the Children of the Common Core
Susan Ochshorn tells the back story on her early childhood education blog. Angie Sullivan, a teacher of grades K-2 in Nevada, is upset because Lucy Calkins is supporting the Common Core. Angie is weeping for the children. She wrote a letter to Lucy Calkins, whose Writers Workshop she admires.
She writes:
There is one Common Core writing standard for kindergarten students in Las Vegas: write a fact and opinion paper.
Yep.
And that is all.
Children who have never picked up a pencil have one global standard: write a paper.
I’m weeping as I read through these pages in your book (up to 13)—as you describe fine-tuning your research, somehow expressing a loving Common Core at the same time.
I’m having a very difficult time thinking that something as beautiful, powerful, and developmentally appropriate as Writer’s Workshop can work smoothly with the terribly inappropriate, developmentally gross Common Core. I appreciate that this program is your best attempt to fill in the holes with solid examples and sample lessons, but as a professional educator, I question why we would accept this solution. While Common Core meets the needs of a few, in my experience, it ensures the failure of many.
Kaplan: Denver is #1 in Reform But Not in Improving Education
Jeannie Kaplan discovers that Denver ranks #1 on a scorecard compiled by the Center for Reinventing Public Education, an outpost of corporate reform.
Denver has faithfully complied with most elements of the reformster agenda, but what has its compliance done for Denver students, she asks.
And she answers: nothing.
She writes:
“Way back in 1972 there was a committee whose acronym was CRP. CRP stood for Committee to Re-elect the President, who at the time was Richard M. Nixon. Because CRP became integrally involved in some creepy activities including Watergate, its acronym morphed into CREEP. A creepy committee funding some CREEPy goings on. (On a personal note, I worked at CBS News in Washington, D.C. during this time. While I thought some of the activities were CREEPy, I loved the political intrigue).
“Fast forward to 2015 and my continuing involvement with Denver Public Schools. Another creepy organization has touched my life: Center on Reinventing Public Education or (another) CRPE, a University of Washington research center funded in part by Bill and Melinda Gates. It turns out this creepy organization has provided the blueprint for all that is happening and has happened in DPS over the last ten years.
“This creepy CRPE has tried to lead us to believe that a business portfolio strategy can somehow be successful in the public education world. Strategies and phrases such as “risk management,” “assets,” “portfolio rebalancing and managing,” “ridding yourself of portfolio low performers,” “monoploy” dominate the conversations with these folks. And because DPS has been so successful and diligent in adopting these elements it has finally, finally, reached the top of a reformy chart. The problem with this achievement is that it only represents success as it relates to implementation of some convoluted business strategy.
“Remember, a portfolio strategy requires constant churn, for the investor is always ridding his portfolio of low-performing stocks while looking for higher performing ones. This may be a good strategy for business, but schools, children, families and teachers are not stocks and bonds. They should not be treated as such.
“And so far implementation of this strategy has had virtually no impact on improving educational opportunities or outcomes for Denver’s children. So after being national exemplars for choice (or as I like to call it chaos), funding, talent (see here and here for Chalkbeat’s take) and accountability, Denver Public Schools still shows no growth in 2014 standardized tests. Proficiencies across the district slog along at 57% for reading, 47% for math, and 44% for writing with achievement gaps increasing in each subject. Even with a slight increase ACT scores are still only 18.4 (a 26 is needed to enter the University of Colorado) and the overall graduation rate is still at only 62.8%. Sadly, even after ten years, DPS has failed to transfer implementation into outcomes.”
Shutterfly-FREE 8x8 Hardcover Photo Book (Reg $29.99!)
Shutterfly is offering all of their customers a FREE 8x8 hardcover photo book when you use code SUNNYBOOK at checkout! This is a great deal since they are usually $29.99! You will need to pay for shipping which is $7.99. Deal ends 6/30!
These make great gifts for others as well!
Rafe Esquith Will File a Class Action Suit
According to LA School Report, Rafe Esquirh has hired a high-profile lawyer, who will file a class-action suit on behalf of all teachers who had been denied due process rights. Esquith, who has written best-selling books and been featured on national television, is a super-star teacher.
The district refuses to say why Esquith was suspended. He thinks it was because he made a joke about nudity. Rumors say that he is being investigated for the activities of his nonprofit group, the Hobart Shakespeareans, which raises money to take student productions to Shakespeare festivals. The Los Angeles Times summarized the situation here.
Who Is Grading Common Core Tests? It Is Worse Than You Thought
Motoko Rich of the Néw York Times answered the question deftly. Peter Greene says she gave a “master class in how to let the subjects of a story make themselves look ridiculous.”
Most of the graders have never been teachers. We know that Pearson and other testing companies hire test graders from Craigslist and Kelly Temps.
Rich writes:
“On Friday, in an unobtrusive office park northeast of downtown here [San Antonio], about 100 temporary employees of the testing giant Pearson worked in diligent silence scoring thousands of short essays written by third- and fifth-grade students from across the country.
“There was a onetime wedding planner, a retired medical technologist and a former Pearson saleswoman with a master’s degree in marital counseling. To get the job, like other scorers nationwide, they needed a four-year college degree with relevant coursework, but no teaching experience. They earned $12 to $14 an hour, with the possibility of small bonuses if they hit daily quality and volume targets.”
My favorite lines in Rich’s story (and Peter’s too) are these:
“At times, the scoring process can evoke the way a restaurant chain monitors the work of its employees and the quality of its products.
“From the standpoint of comparing us to a Starbucks or McDonald’s, where you go into those places you know exactly what you’re going to get,” said Bob Sanders, vice president of content and scoring management at Pearson North America, when asked whether such an analogy was apt.
“McDonald’s has a process in place to make sure they put two patties on that Big Mac,” he continued. “We do that exact same thing. We have processes to oversee our processes, and to make sure they are being followed.”
So, if you want test scoring by readers who are paid by volume, who are not teachers, and who are trained like employees of McDonald’s and Starbucks, the results of Common Core testing should please you.
Don’t you wonder whether this madness is done on purpose to drive parents out of public schools and make them desperate to find an alternative to be free of mass-produced teaching and testing?
The best way to stop it is to refuse the test. Opt out. Take control away from Pearson, PARCC, and the privatizers. Make the machine grind to a halt.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Please Join Our Coalition to Oppose Annual High-Stakes Testing
Please join us! Over 60 groups dedicated to education, children, and civil rights have joined with the Network for Public Education to oppose annual high-stakes testing. No high-performing nation in the world tests every child every year as we do. It is a waste of instructional time and a waste of money.
Add your organization’s name by contacting the Network for Public Education:
NPE Forms Coalition of Education and Civil Rights Groups to Oppose High-Stakes Testing
June 18, 2015 Action Alerts, Activism, Civil Rights, Testing / Opting Out
We, the below undersigned organizations, oppose high-stakes testing because we believe these tests are causing harm to students, to public schools, and to the cause of educational equity. High-stakes standardized tests, rather than reducing the opportunity gap, have been used to rank, sort, label, and punish Black and Latino students, and recent immigrants to this country.
We oppose high-stakes tests because:
There is no evidence that these tests contribute to the quality of education, have led to improved educational equity in funding or programs, or have helped close the “achievement gap.”
High-stakes testing has become intrusive in our schools, consuming huge amounts of time and resources, and narrowing instruction to focus on test preparation.
Many of these tests have never been independently validated or shown to be reliable and/or free from racial and ethnic bias.
High-stakes tests are being used as a political weapon to claim large numbers of students are failing, to close neighborhood public schools, and to fire teachers, all in the effort to disrupt and privatize the public education system.
The alleged benefit of annual testing as mandated by No Child Left Behind was to unveil the achievement gaps, and by doing so, close them. Yet after more than a decade of high-stakes testing this has not happened. Instead, thousands of predominantly poor and minority neighborhood schools —the anchors of communities— have been closed.
As the Seattle NAACP recently stated, “Using standardized tests to label Black people and immigrants as lesser—while systematically underfunding their schools—has a long and ugly history. It is true we need accountability measures, but that should start with politicians being accountable to fully funding education and ending the opportunity gap. …The use of high-stakes tests has become part of the problem, rather than a solution.”
We agree.
Yours sincerely,
Network for Public Education
50th No More
Action Now
Alaska NAACP
Alliance for Quality Education
Badass Teachers Association
Better Georgia
Caucus of Working Educators
Chicago Teachers Union
Children Are More Than Test Scores
Citizens for Public Schools
Class Size Matters
Community Voices for Education
Concerned Parents of Franklin County, Tennessee
Croton Advocates for Public Education
Defending the Early Years
Delaware PTA
Denver Alliance for Public Education
Denver Classroom Teachers Association
ECE PolicyWorks
EmpowerEd Georgia
FairTest
First Focus Campaign for Children
HispanEduca
Indiana Coalition for Public Education
Indiana PTA
Indiana State Teachers Association
Journey for Justice
Metamorphosis Teaching Learning Communities
Montclair Cares About Schools
More Than A Score
NE Indiana Friends of Public Ed
Newark Parents Union
Newark Students Union
NJ Teacher Activist Group
NY State Allies for Public Ed
Opt Out Orlando
Oregon BATS
Oregon Save Our Schools
Oregon State NAACP
Parents Across America
Providence Students Union
Refuse of Cuyahoga County
Rethinking Schools
Save Michigan’s Public Schools
Save Our Schools March
Save Our Schools NJ
Scottsdale Parent Council
Seattle King County NAACP
Students United for Public Ed
Teachers Voice Radio
Tennessee Against Common Core
Tennessee BATS
Tennesseans Reclaiming Educational Excellence
The Coalition for Better Ed
The Opt Out Florida Network
The Plainedge Federation of Teachers
The Public Science Project at the Graduate Center, CUNY
United Opt Out
United Opt Out Michigan
Voices For Education
Waco NAACP
Washington State NAACP
We Are Camden
Young Teachers Collective
New York Budget Deal: No Vouchers, More Charters [Update!]
Update! A few minutes ago, I posted that the budget lifted the charter cap by 100. There are differing reports; this one says there will be 180 new charters.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders reached a deal on the budget that included major education issues.
The budget does not include the “education tax credit” for private and religious schools (vouchers), but does include $250 million for religious schools. That should satisfy Mr. Cuomo’s friends in the religious communities whom he courted.
The deal includes 180 new charter schools, 50 in Néw York City and 130 outside the city. That should please the hedge fund manager who gave millions to the Governor’s re-election campaign, while providng Eva Moskowitz plenty of room to grow her chain.
The deal extends mayoral control in NYC for only one year, despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s request to make it permanent. That should remind the Mayor who is in charge.
The deal retains the tax cap on school districts. Regardless of their needs, they won’t be able to raise property taxes by more than 2%, unless they are able to win 60% approval by voters. It may be undemocratic, but it is popular, especially among GOP legislators.
It is amazing how much education policy is now being made during budget negotiations, with no educators in the room.
Stephen Dyer: Why Is Charter Magnate Closing His “Best” Schools?
Ohio is a happy state for the for-profit charter industry. They make huge profits regardless of school performance.
Stephen Dyer reminds us of the great financial success of David Brennan of White Hat, the state’s largest charter chain.
“Now we know what White Hat Management is all about. There was always a pretty strong indication that White Hat was about making money, not educating children.
“After all, when you get exactly 1 A on a state report card and have 72 opportunities to get an A, you’re probably not in the game for the same reasons most educators are.
“When you’ve collected more than $1 billion in taxpayer money without having to make a single appearance before a legislative committee, as White Hat founder David Brennan has been able to do, you’re probably not in the game for the same reasons most educators are.
“When you contribute more than $4 million to politicians, you’re probably not in the game for the same reasons most educators are.
“But then we got the news last week that Brennan’s White Hat Management was going to sell off their least profitable, “highest performing”, and most at-risk for closure schools to a group run by K12, Inc.’s founder Ron Packard. That’s right, the same guy who gave us the Ohio Virtual Academy and all its “success.”
“But White Hat will keep its cash cow online school, OHDELA, which has the worst performance index score of any statewide E-School — and that’s saying something, given how abjectly horrible Ohio’s statewide E-Schools perform. Its performance index score actually dropped more than 4% from four years ago, the only statewide E-School to see such a precipitous drop. Again, that’s saying something.”
Do you think the day will come when legislators will demand real accountabilility from charter operators? When they will stop giving away hundreds of million or billions to failed charter operators?
1984 Arrives Thirty Years Late: Say Goodby to Privacy Forever if This Bill Passes
Legislation called “The Student Right to Know Before You Go Act” has been introduced in both houses of Congress. Nice name, no? Don’t you think you should have “the right to know before you go” to a college or university?
What it really means is that the federal government will:
authorize the creation of a federal database of all college students, complete with their personally identifiable information, tracking them through college and into the workforce, including their earnings, Social Security numbers, and more. The ostensible purpose of the bill? To provide better consumer information to parents and students so they can make “smart higher education investments.”
Big Data, the answer to all problems. All you need do is surrender your privacy and become someone’s data point, perhaps the point of sales.
Barmak Nassirian, writing on the blog of Studentprivacymatters, warns about the dangers this legislation poses. He wrote originally in response to an article endorsing the legislation by researchers at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who viewed the invasion of personal privacy as less significant than the need for consumer information about one’s choice of a college or university:
First, let’s be clear that the data in question would be personally identifiable information of every student (regardless of whether they seek or obtain any benefits from the government), that these data would be collected without the individual’s consent or knowledge, that each individual’s educational data would be linked to income data collected for unrelated purposes, and that the highly personal information residing for the first time in the same data-system would be tracked and updated over time.
Second, the open-ended justification for the collection and maintenance of the data (“better consumer information”) strongly suggests that the data systems in question would have very long, if not permanent, record-retention policies. They, in other words, would effectively become life-long dossiers on individuals.
Third, the amorphous rationale for matching collegiate and employment data would predictably spread and justify the concatenation of other “related” data into individuals’ longitudinal records. The giant sucking sound we would hear could be the sound of personally identifiable data from individuals’ K12, juvenile justice, military service, incarceration, and health records being pulled into their national dossiers.
Fourth, the lack of explicit intentionality as to the compelling governmental interest that would justify such a surveillance system is an open invitation for mission creep. The availability of a dataset as rich as even the most basic version of the system in question would quickly turn it into the go-to data mart for other federal and state agencies, and result in currently unthinkable uses that would never have been authorized if proposed as allowable disclosures in the first place.
This is a bill that conservatives and liberals should be fighting against. Imagine if such a data-set existed; how long would it be before the data were hacked, for fun and profit, exposing personally identifiable information about students who had never given their consent? Didn’t the government recently become aware of a massive hack of its personnel records?
According to the New York Times:
For more than five years, American intelligence agencies followed several groups of Chinese hackers who were systematically draining information from defense contractors, energy firms and electronics makers, their targets shifting to fit Beijing’s latest economic priorities.
But last summer, officials lost the trail as some of the hackers changed focus again, burrowing deep into United States government computer systems that contain vast troves of personnel data, according to American officials briefed on a federal investigation into the attack and private security experts.
Undetected for nearly a year, the Chinese intruders executed a sophisticated attack that gave them “administrator privileges” into the computer networks at the Office of Personnel Management, mimicking the credentials of people who run the agency’s systems, two senior administration officials said. The hackers began siphoning out a rush of data after constructing what amounted to an electronic pipeline that led back to China, investigators told Congress last week in classified briefings.
How long will a treasure trove of personally identifiable student data remain confidential?
If this bill passes, farewell to privacy.
Ask the Experts: Valedictorians Speak Out about Common Core
Newsday, the major newspaper for Long Island, New York, had the ingenious idea to ask high school valedictorians what they thought of the Common Core standards. Understand that Long Island has some of the best high schools in the state and in the nation. These students have their pick of elite colleges and universities; they are super-smart and super-accomplished. Here are their reactions.
“Simply, I think the Common Core is absolutely terrible,” Harshil Garg, Bethpage High School’s 2015 valedictorian, said. “It suppresses freedom and boxes children into a systematic way of thinking.”
Garg said he was concerned that the standards actually stifle innovation and discourage exploration.
“Kids are special, because they color outside the lines, and think outside the box, no matter how preposterous their ideas may seem,” he said. “To restrain that inventiveness at such an early age destroys the spark to explore.”
Some of the valedictorians drew from their experiences with younger students who have been more directly impacted by the implementation of Common Core.
“I tutor a few elementary and middle school aged students and the transition has been pretty hard on them,” said Emily Linko, valedictorian of Hauppauge High School’s Class of 2015. “All the effects I’ve seen have been negative.”
Another tutor, Rebecca Cheng, Smithtown High School West’s valedictorian, said she does see the purpose and potential benefit of Common Core, but is still against it.
“It closes your mind and forces kids to think in one particular way,” said Cheng, who tutors third and fifth graders. “There isn’t just one way to solve a problem, and it almost hinders the ability to solve a problem on your own.”
Kacie Candela, a private math tutor and valedictorian of H. Frank Carey High School, said the curriculum itself is good, but the roll out was botched.
“You can’t build a building without a solid foundation, and students just don’t have the knowledge base to do well,” Candela said. “Schools should have adopted it gradually.”
Watching his 6-year-old brother embrace the new standards, Vincent Coghill, Massapequa High School’s valedictorian, said he, too, can see a positive side to the Common Core’s approach to learning.
“I’ve seen him solve math problems in so many different ways, but it seems as though he has a better understanding of what is being taught,” he said.
Still, Coghill said he opposes the initiative, because he feels “uncomfortable” with federal government intervention into education, which he said should remain a “state priority.”
Hailey Wagner, Bellport High School’s valedictorian, agreed with Coghill, saying the federal government has no business dealing with a state matter like education.
And Alex Boss, valedictorian of Rockville Centre’s South Side High School, said politicians should stay out of the process altogether, stating: “Education should be left to teachers and parents, not legislators.”
Central Islip High School valedictorian Radiyyah Hussein finds herself somewhere in the middle of the debate.
“I like the fact that it is challenging and forces children in school to do more critical thinking,” she said. ” … However, I don’t like how much agonizing work has to go into solving simple problems or questions.”
She added, “If we want a more progressive world, we need ways for kids to figure things out in an easier and quicker fashion.”
Tyler Fenton, valedictorian of Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School, had smiliar thoughts, acknowledging that students learn in their owns ways and also at their own pace.
Fenton said it’s “unrealistic” and “unfair” to hold everyone accountable to the same standards, and trying to causes “unnecessary stress and anxiety among kids.”
And Natalie Korba, valedictorian of Walter G. O’ Connell Copiague High School’s graduating class, said Common Core just puts too much emphasis on exams.
“Teachers are being unfairly judged on student performance and students are suffering as they are crushed under the pressure of standardized testing,” she said.
Korda added, “School should be about learning life skills and gaining knowledge, not about learning how to take a test.”
Monday, June 22, 2015
Stephen Dyer: How to Protect Failing Charters from Accountability
Lets face it. The Ohio legislature and Governor John Kasich protect failing charter schools from any accountability. Could large campaign contributions have anything to do with it?
Stephen Dyer reports the latest gambit.
he writes that:
“The worst-performing general education schools in the state — E-Schools — are not being counted by the state when they calculate the performance of sponsors. SO, for example, even though the Ohio Council of Community Schools sponsors two of the worst-performing schools in the state — the Ohio Virtual Academy and David Brennan’s OHDELA, the astounding number of Fs those schools get on the state report doesn’t count for OCCS’s rating. So the state says they’re academically perfect, even though OCCS gets $1.5 million in taxpayer money to oversee these schools.
“The other schools not counted? Dropout Recovery schools. So the schools David Brennan earns his money on aren’t counted on sponsor ratings? So that means that no sponsor should fear oversight of a horrible White Hat school, especially now that they’ll only be online schools or dropout recovery schools, because they won’t count.
“Amazing what $4 million will buy you these days, isn’t it?”
Remember: it’s all about the kids!
The Newark Rumors Were Correct: Cami Anderson Steps Down Before Contract Expires
Yesterday Bob Braun reported that Cami Anderson would step down in a day or two and be replaced by former state commissioner Chris Cerf. He was right. Cerf will serve as interim superintendent until a permanent replacement is selected by Governor Christie.
Cami Anderson announced that she was resigning and hoped that the work she had done in Newark would be an inspiration for other urban districts.
Cami Anderson had a very rough ride in Newark. She arrived as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook gave Newark $100 million for “reform.” Cami proceeded to use that money and much more to implement a bold privatization plan, closing neighborhood schools and replacing them with charter schools. Newark parents and students became very angry. They had nothing to say about what happened to them or their schools. The school board, which was powerless, was angry at Cami, and one school board member insulted her; Cami stopped attending school board meetings. A few months ago, students from the Newark Student Union occupied her office and refused to leave until she met with them. Their number one demand: She should resign.
Anderson claimed credit for an increased graduation rate and for the choice plan that parents and students hated.
Now it is Chris Cerf’s turn. The local school board has heard that Governor Christie might consult them. That would be a first.
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