No Live Child Left Behind (NLCLB) Scheduled For Launch Tomorrow

Graphic from the New York Times.

Citing the most recent findings from research begun back in 1980 that shows a widening mortality gap between rich and poor, the Bush Administration will formally announce tomorrow morning a bold new initiative to close the mortality gap and to mandate world class standards for American life expectancy and infant mortalilty.

By 2020, the new program calls for the mortality gap to be closed and for 100% of citizens to attain the American median life span. The President remarked, "If the American people are going to compete in the world economy, our citizens can't be getting sick and dying on us. American business will need healthy workers if the American economy is going to be continue to dominate--but dominate, you know, in a good way."

In order to carry out this sweeping new policy initiative, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control will mandate annual testing of all citizens who receive their health care from public health clinics. Each state will be charged with setting testing standards and targets to assure that all citizens will be healthy by 2020. If any group of citizens in a community falls below the annual health targets established by the state, stiff sanctions will be imposed on the local public health clinics and the health care workers. If mortality rates are not raised to the targets in subsequent years, the local public health clinic employees will be fired, and private corporate MMOs (Mortality Management Organizations) will be hired by states to manage public health clinics.

Another health care choice option: Poor citizens with failing health will be offered a publicly-funded health voucher to pay for health care from a private clinic, which will not be required to do the annual health testing. When asked how citizens will know if their health is improving or if the mortality gap is closing if the private clinics collect no data, the soon-to-be named head of NIH, Dr. Reid Lyon responded, "The market will decide which clinics are doing the best job, and if a few people die along the way, that is a small price to pay for a 100% at full life expectancy." When it was pointed out to Dr. Reid that the health vouchers will not provide enough money for working class citizens to receive care from the best private health providers, Lyon assured reporters that the free market will take care of these discrepancies.

When the President was asked how life expectancy and infant mortality in poor, minority communities could be improved simply by raising mortality targets on annual health screenings, the President angrily responded by saying that "minority folks can live as long as other regular folks if they are expected to be healthy and if public health clinics are held accountable, and anyone who disagrees with that simple fact is showin' the bigotry of low life expectancies."

The NLCLB Program will be formally announced at the Waffle House near Crawford, Texas tomorrow, April 1.

The Struggle to Keep the Reading First Gravy Train on Track

Soon after the Supreme Court settled the Presidential election for us in late 2000, the phonics zealots of Governor Bush’s reading czar, Reid Lyon, along with the scripted direct instruction (DI) lieutenants of Sig Engelmann disciple, Doug Carnine, took an ideologically-corrupted National Reading Panel report to devise a federal program for early reading instruction and intervention, aimed at molding and controlling the neurological development and behaviors of the children of the poor. (See examples here and ask yourself if middle class parents would ever allow their children to attend one of these incarceration centers called Title I schools).

This program would become Reading First, the centerpiece of the new Title I under what we now fondly refer to as NCLB. And with the same conservative cronies who drafted the program in charge of selecting recipients of the $1,000,000,000 a year in federal reading grants to the states, it didn’t take long for word to get out on which literacy approaches that the Paige/Spellings shop would fund and which they would not. The full extent of the corruption remains unknown, but Congressional testimony and ED’s own Inspector General uncovered enough to show why DI, DIBELS, and phonics now rule in schools with large numbers of poor children. It also offers enough details to see how corporate and academic and bureaucratic insiders got fabulously wealthy in the process.

Last year Congress acted to slash funding of the Cronies, er, Reading First program. So now while we wait to see if the Inspector General’s referral to the Justice Department will lead to a criminal investigation and/or indictments, Margaret Spellings is making the rounds advising cash-starved state departments of education on how to re-direct federal funds to make sure that the gravy train doesn’t get derailed and to make sure that the “cognitive decapitation” (Kozol’s term) of poor, minority children continues unabated.

In the meantime, many states are stuck with the parrot reading programs approved by the Lyon-Carnine Cabal, such as McGraw-Hill’s Open Court (or as reading teachers refer to it, Open Cult). And what about the balanced, humane, and marginalized programs like Reading Recovery, which was systematically excluded by the goon squad of Reading First Director, Chris Doherty? In the Fed’s own research last year, reported by Education Week, Reading Recovery was the only program "found to have positive effects or potentially positive effects across all four of the domains in the review—alphabetics, fluency, comprehension, and general reading achievement:"

. . . .That program, Reading Recovery, an intensive, one-on-one tutoring program, has drawn criticism over the past few years from prominent researchers and federal officials who claimed it was not scientifically based.

Federal officials and contractors tried to discourage states and districts from using Reading Recovery in schools participating in the federal Reading First program, citing a lack of evidence that it helps struggling readers. . . .

Is Margaret Spellings advocating for a reconsideration of all Reading First grant funding decisions in light of these new findings? Any guesses?

Spending More Money to Make Things Worse

From the Rocky Mountain News:

By Rep. Judy Solano

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Again this year, the taxpayers of Colorado will spend millions on standardized tests to over comply with the underfunded federal mandate of No Child Left Behind.

More than $20 million will be spent on CSAPs this year, with only a fraction of the dollars coming from the feds. That doesn’t count for the tens of thousands of local dollars each school district spends for student- preparation materials, data compilation, lost instruction time and state reporting. The estimated cost of CSAPs to Colorado taxpayers is well more than $50 million.

And yes, we over comply with the federal mandate. Colorado is one of only 14 states that exceed federal requirements. Under the NCLB law, each state must test students annually in grades three through eight and once in high school in reading, math and science. In Colorado, we test three times in high school and tack on an additional writing test.

What are we getting for those extra tests? What is our bang for our CSAP buck? Here are some results: When President Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law in 2001 and high-stakes testing began, Colorado’s dropout rate was 2.6 percent across all ethnic and racial groups. Today, our dropout rate has increased to more than 4.5 percent.

Graduation rates have dipped from 82 percent in 2002 to 74 percent in 2006. For minorities, the numbers are even more distressing. Graduation rates among Hispanics dropped 9 percent, to 56.6 percent. For African- Americans, the graduation rate plunged from 74 percent to 63 percent in 2006.

In just four years, the achievement gap between whites and minorities has widened.

CSAP scores have changed very little from year to year. Last year’s test results indicate 70 percent of students who scored unsatisfactorily three years ago remain unsatisfactory today. High school scores can be described as unchanged.

Forty percent of fifth- graders who scored “advanced” on CSAPs in third grade scored “proficient” this year. Are our smart third graders being “dumbed down” as they become fifth graders?

One of the strongest correlations in this data-driven-assessment world we have created is that the higher the population of low-income students, the lower the CSAP scores. Eight of 10 students participating in the free or reduced-price lunch program are enrolled in the bottom 10 percent of schools in terms of performance. The higher the family income, the higher the test scores. Only five of 100 students participating in free or reduced-priced lunch program are enrolled in the top 10 percent of schools.

This is not an excuse; it is a reality. Testing more does not change the results. Equal opportunities, fair funding and effective resources affect learning.

Believing that high-stakes testing will improve learning is like taking the temperature of a sick child and expecting him to get well. Until we are willing to invest in the proven educational remedies, we can expect more of the same. Such things as small class sizes, quality teachers, vocational training and post-secondary opportunities, art, music, technology, before- and after-school programs, preschool, and full-day kindergarten all would be better uses of our money than excess testing.

Authentic assessments, locally driven accountability, and teacher influence have positive impacts on learning. Dependence on one standardized test to measure, capture and quantify human learning is chasing false hope. Human potential can not be measured and trying to do so is a waste of money.

Let’s stop wasteful spending and redirect resources to proven programs.

State Rep. Judy Solano, D-Thornton, spent 29 years as a fifth-grade teacher. She is vice chair of the House Education Committee and the sponsor of two bills dealing with CSAP reform.

© Rocky Mountain News

School Bribes and the Brains of Children

In November Newsweek had a story on the campaign to sell the test factories we call schools to the children we have caused to hate them. Among the bribes--cell phones for poor kids in New York City:

So Klein is setting out to sell school achievement to schoolchildren—much in the same way that kids are sold soda, breakfast cereal or pop music. With the help of an as yet unnamed advertising agency, he's launching a slick multimedia campaign complete with celebrity pitchmen, viral marketing schemes, free videos and give-away prizes aimed at "rebranding" academics.

Here's the plan: in January about 15,000 middle-schoolers from high-poverty neighborhoods will be given free cell phones. Through those phones kids will then receive taped—and perhaps even personal—messages from entertainment and sports celebrities reminding them to try their best in class. They'll be able to download "interviews" with well-to-do men and women who work as dentists, technicians, scientists and accountants and who will discuss the way they parlayed school success into financial security. Teachers will also use the phones to remind pupils about upcoming tests or an overdue homework assignment. When individuals or groups of kids improve their attendance, up their grades or display good citizenship in school, they'll be rewarded with free minutes on their phones and tickets to shows and sporting events. Kids who get phones will also be assigned mentors.

Now we have new evidence of the growing threat of cell phone radiation to users over time, especially children, who are more vulnerable to extended exposure:

From The Independent:

By Geoffrey Lean
Sunday, 30 March 2008

Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation.

The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks.

It draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.

Earlier this year, the French government warned against the use of mobile phones, especially by children. Germany also advises its people to minimise handset use, and the European Environment Agency has called for exposures to be reduced.

Professor Khurana – a top neurosurgeon who has received 14 awards over the past 16 years, has published more than three dozen scientific papers – reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones. He has put the results on a brain surgery website, and a paper based on the research is currently being peer-reviewed for publication in a scientific journal. . . .

White Hat's Ohio Operations Rake In $84 Million Annually in "Non-Profit"

With so many of Brennan's chums in jail, indicted, or kicked out of office, one has to wonder how his mis-education enterprise for the poor survives. From the Beacon-Journal:

By Dennis J. Willard
Beacon Journal Columbus bureau

Published on Friday, Mar 28, 2008

COLUMBUS: The Ohio Federation of Teachers has asked the Internal Revenue Service to examine the non-profit status of charter schools managed by White Hat Management, the company established by Akron entrepreneur David Brennan.

The union, which has a long history of challenging Brennan's company, is asking the IRS to determine whether the schools under White Hat's umbrella can properly register as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt firm.

Lisa Zellner, an OFT spokeswoman, said the union does not expect an immediate answer, but a ruling against the White Hat charter schools would force the company to pay taxes ''like the rest of us,'' and possibly jeopardize their standing, because state law requires all charter schools to be nonprofit.

Through Columbus-based public-relations firm Falhgren Mortine, White Hat issued a statement calling the OFT's accusations a publicity stunt that recycles points previously raised and addressed.

''The Internal Revenue Service is aware of the community school structure and White Hat Management's contract provisions making the management company responsible for all start-up and day-to-day operations of its contracted schools,'' the press release noted.

The public-relations firm also stated that White Hat is a target for groups like the OFT that are seeking to promote their own interests.

Brennan, a large contributor to Republican candidates, was instrumental in pushing then-Gov. George Voinovich and the Republican majorities in the Ohio House and Senate in the mid-90s to pass laws allowing charter schools to open in the state.

White Hat currently operates 38 Life Skills schools geared toward high-school dropouts in Ohio, Colorado, Michigan and Florida.

Initially, White Hat established Hope Academies for elementary students, but after opening 12 in Ohio, the company has been focused on Life Skills, which are considered to be more lucrative.

OFT points out to the IRS that at least 25 charter schools operating under White Hat have qualified for tax-exempt status with the Ohio auditors' office.

Zellner said a number of the schools have also applied for and received nonprofit status through the federal government.

Don Mooney, an attorney representing OFT, wrote the IRS that documents indicate that the for-profit White Hat company controls the non-profit charter schools that pass through 95 percent of all their tax dollars to Brennan's firm, which amounts to about $84 million annually. . . .

Retreat from Collective Madness or the Restoration of Sanity?

There's no doubt that the disgust arising from our Guantanamo Bay torture camps has peaked. This morning the papers report that all former and living American Secretaries of State have come out with a strong statement for ending this chapter of American shame.

At another level of our current political nightmare, disgust is growing daily from the organizational, ethical, and humanitarian disaster of No Child Left Behind. Here are a couple of the systemic outrages that Bracey brings to our attention in a blog post at Huffington:

. . . .Some play it as if they have lost all sense of proportion and common sense. The Texas Education Agency refused to grant a waiver from the state test for a young woman hospitalized after a serious automobile accident that killed her brother and left her memory impaired. Her school dispatched an assistant principal to administer the test in the hospital. Fortunately, one of the girl's teachers overheard what was up, got to the hospital first and told her to refuse to take it. In Colorado, a father, a teacher himself, sought to opt his daughter out of the state fifth grade test. Fine, said the superintendent, but she won't be promoted to sixth grade.

In Washington, a willing testee who simply couldn't think of how to respond to a writing prompt was harangued by his teacher, then by his principal and then by his mother. Unable to respond, he was forbidden to attend a post-test party at which pancakes were served and the movie Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events shown. He was told he had ruined everything for everyone else at the school and suspended for a week.

And some play it desperately. On March, 27, 2008, the Houston Chronicle reported that a middle school principal told a group of teachers that he would kill them and kill himself if the school's science scores did not improve. He was not, the teachers said, joking. "You don't know how ruthless I can be," he is alleged to have said. The incident is being investigated as a "terroristic threat."

At this point we should be asking HAVE WE GONE COLLECTIVELY MAD? . . . .

Have we, indeed. Have we, in fact, managed to create our own unique brand of grade school interrogation camps in the nation's 90,000 public schools? Is there a thread that, indeed, runs all the way from Gitmo through our schools and into our large flat screen TVs, where we can't seem to get enough of the hellish incarcerated life celebrated on the Prison Channel, MSNBC, or even by National Geographic over in hi-def.

So what to do? This week we saw three states, Minnesota, Arizona, and Virginia, trying to get Margaret Spellings' attention by threatening to forego federal aid to escape the NCLB madness. Minnesota faces giving up over $200 million, Arizona over $500 million, and Virginia over $600 million. That's serious disgruntlement.

But do these states believe that this Administration cares whether or not they refuse Title I dollars intended for the poor? These are the same folks who have been trying to disband Title I for the past 40 years. They couldn't care less about these threatened refusals of tax revenues aimed to provide assistance to the poor.

When you think about it, this approach makes little sense and has an entirely hollow ring to it. It would be the equivalent of France, Germany, and Spain threatening to withdraw from the UN because they disagreed with the Bush torture policy. Such empty threats might placate their enraged citizens, but it does nothing to change the policy.

Leaving behind our own bit of domestic madness that threatens the future of the American democratic republic is not going to happen from threats to refuse Title I funds by state legislators looking for political cover. State legislatures, governors, mayors, and school boards will have to say, Enough. No Mas! We are not going to give up our Title I money! And we are not going to continue to torture! In effect, it is time to do away with this shameful policy of incarceration and surveillance training billed as education!

GAO Study Shows ED Lax in Monitoring and Assisting School Improvement

Today's Baltimore Sun carries a story on ED's Raymond Simon's visit to take questions from concerned school administrators, who see their schools, teachers, and students being run into the ground by NCLB. Pretending that he will have his job more than a few more months, and that the Administration's school privatization testing policy will continue unabated, he had this:

Anne Arundel's Superintendent Dr. Kevin Maxwell asked if there would be any flexibility in requiring all students to reach the target goals of No Child Left Behind in 2014.

Simon stressed that there was no flexibility on this issue.

"The 2014 is nonnegotiable to us," Simon said.

However you read this stubborn departure from reality and this pretense that the public does not recognize NCLB as the bare-knuckled failure expansion plan that it is, the dogged monitoring and draconian testing by all children, regardless of whether or not they can read the test, will remain the memorable aspect of this utterly calamitous and immoral education policy. Not so memorable will be ED's strategy to improve those thousands of schools that end up on the failed AYP lists. That is because there is none to speak of.

A new GAO study shows, in fact, ED asleep at the wheel once more when it comes to monitoring the school improvement funding to schools not making AYP or in providing guidance or other assistance to schools. For instance, the What Works Clearinghouse that ED set up as a shell for federal assistance to failing schools is regarded by 19 states as "moderately to very helpful," while 22 states find it "some to no help."

Here is a summary of the GAO finding from Senator Harkin's office:

The report, titled “Education Actions Could Improve the Targeting of School Improvement Funds to Schools Most in Need of Assistance,” is available at this link or at http://www.gao.gov . . .

Among other things, the GAO made the following findings:

• Some states have not allocated or tracked their school improvement funds as required by the NCLBA, and the Department of Education has failed to monitor the lapses. For example, all states are required to keep a complete list of the schools that receive improvement funds; three states (Arkansas, Florida and North Carolina) could not provide any school-level data to the GAO, and California could provide only a partial list. The GAO also found that in a few cases, “non-Title I schools had inappropriately received Title I school improvement funds.” Though the Education Department is responsible for monitoring the allocation of improvement funds, it did not uncover those issues.

• All states are also required to take certain factors into account when allocating school improvement funds, such as focusing on the lowest-achieving schools. However, three states (Delaware, New Hampshire and Virginia) and the District of Columbia reported that they required districts to provide each school an equal amount of funding, and thus, the GAO states, may not have prioritized the allocation of funds as required under NCLBA. Again, the Education Department failed to identify those issues during its State monitoring efforts.

• The GAO also found that many states have not been able to set aside the full 4 percent of Title I funds for school improvement, as intended under NCLBA. Twenty-two states were unable to set aside the full 4 percent for at least one year, and six of these – Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, and Michigan – were unable to do so for three or more years. These states were limited by a hold-harmless provision that prevents a state from reducing the Title I funding for any school district from the previous year.

And here are some quotes from the GAO Report, itself, that show in spades the lax attitudes by ED toward improvement, as opposed to their rigid and hyper-vigilant oversight of testing requirements and failure production. While states are required to set aside 4 percent of Title I money for school improvement, the growing list of failing schools makes this impossible if other Title I schools that are not failing are to to continue to receive their funds that are guaranteed by a "hold-harmless" provision (to make sure these funds aren't siphoned off for other purposes).

Sometimes, after taking into consideration the hold-harmless provision, there are not enough funds available from those districts with increasing Title I allocations to cover the full 4 percent set-aside. Specifically, 22 states have been unable to set aside the full portion of Title I funds for school improvement for 1 or more years since NCLBA was enacted because they did not have enough left over after satisfying the hold-harmless provision.

While most states monitor funds, 4 states were unable to make publicly available the complete list of schools receiving improvement funds, as required under NCLBA, because these states do not collect information on each school receiving improvement funds, and Education has not provided guidance on this requirement.30 Almost all states were able to provide a list of schools receiving funds to us, but 3 states—Arkansas, Florida, and North Carolina—provided information on districts that received funds, but could not provide information on which schools received funds, and California provided a partial list of schools that received funds. In a few cases, we found that non-Title I schools had inappropriately received Title I school improvement funds. State officials said that they would take steps to address this issue, and we referred this matter to Education, which is following up on it. Though Education monitors the allocation of school improvement funds through its 3-year Title I monitoring cycle, Education officials told us they had not uncovered these issues. In addition, Education does not regularly check when and whether states have made the lists of schools receiving improvement funds publicly available, as required, and has not provided guidance on how states make lists of schools receiving improvement funds publicly available.

So far ED's solution to this 4 percent funding problem is to do away with the "hold-harmless" provision, which would, in effect, allow states to take money from Title I schools that have miraculously managed to make AYP to pay the 4 percent to those that have not made AYP. It's the classic rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul solution.

Minnesota Passes First Test to NCLB Withdrawal

From Hometown Source.com:

by T.W. Budig
ECM Capitol reporter

The House K-12 Finance Committee on Tuesday (March 25) voted to end Minnesota’s participation in the federal testing program, No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

The committee on a bipartisan vote adopted an amendment by Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, for the state to drop out of NCLB.

“If it feels good, do it,” Garofalo urged committee members of voting for his amendment, several of whom expressing sourness over the mandated testing but also qualms about opting out. “I would say we are smart enough to run our schools,” Garofalo said.

Loss of $200 million in funding

Opting out of NCLB could mean the loss of about $200 million in federal funding, he argued. But that’s not even covering the cost, Garofalo opined.

The House K-12 Finance Committee on Tuesday (March 25) adopted an amendment offered by Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, that directs the state commission of education to nullify the state's No New Child Left Behind plan with the federal government — to opt-out of the testing program. . . . .

An English Teacher Responds to Ed Dis-Ttrust's Camile Esch

From the LATimes:

By Pamela Felcher
March 26, 2008

In her Op-Ed article, "Put teachers to the test," Camille Esch writes that "the old evaluation system that ignores student achievement and finds virtually all teachers 'satisfactory' simply sets the bar too low." Although I agree with her, and with all writers who feel that cynicism and ironclad backward thinking pervade public education, I also find that these essays, usually theoretical rather than practical, resonate with the same platitudes that have calcified the public school teaching profession. Evaluating teachers using punishing criteria helps no one.

To evaluate teacher performance, one must examine what "standardized" tests really test and whether or not one should give them any credence. Unfortunately, standardized tests and teacher evaluations are constructed and conducted primarily by people who have opted out of classrooms. And because the only forward thinking in public school seems to occur in the alchemy between individual teachers and their students, our reliance on such instruments to determine student and teacher success truly baffles me.

I have taught for 22 years, and though I have spent most of that time in the public school trenches, I have also taught in prestigious private schools in Los Angeles and at a local university in an effort to better my "practice." Yes, teaching, like medicine and the law, is a practice. But unlike those practices, teachers remain isolated in their classrooms, and their habits and methods are rarely, if ever, intelligently examined or supported. There seems to be no time or desire for this kind of thoughtful work in public school, particularly when those in charge think that examining "data" should be the priority at all meetings.

Recently at an English department meeting at Hamilton High School, where I serve as department chair, I was allowed to lead without a data screed in my hands. I asked my 30 colleagues to read a John Keats fragment and discuss how they would explicate it and how they would get their students to construct theses for the same exercise. Just add water -- or in this case, a genuine discussion of literature -- and watch English teachers come to life and find the motivation that makes their next step into the classroom a little happier. At this meeting, I aimed to ensure that my colleagues were respected for what they know and treated as though what they teach matters.

What a concept.

Recently I ran into a good friend from the progressive private school where I had taught for a few years. He sent me their teacher self-evaluation form, which was divided into key criteria. Teachers must rate these elements by importance and discuss how well they are performing in these areas. For example, if a teacher thinks being current in one's field of expertise is most important but does not take classes or engage in learning more about the field in some way, he or she needs to find a way to bring balance into his or her teaching practice.

Another novel concept: planning based on deep individual reflection.

The evaluation form also asks teachers to evaluate their students' level of engagement, participation in active learning, and persistence. How would standardized tests translate these important measures of success? Unfortunately, when I brought up these ideas, some of my colleagues found them more humorous than useful.

But how useful are standardized tests? The ones we administer to high school students are often written for eighth-graders (and some would say by eighth-graders). On these tests, students are asked to read mind-numbing, ersatz essays, letters and other "informational texts" and to assess them. The students' contempt for these tests is palpable and righteous, especially after reading Shakespeare Chaucer, and essays and poetry and plays written by other esteemed thinkers and writers.

After testing, all my students -- no matter what level -- felt they learned things in my class that were not pertinent to the tests. Does this mean I did not prepare them? Even though they had read and written extensively about heroism as we evaluated it in "Beowulf" and in fiction they read outside of class? Even though they had read many recently published essays about race and gender as they relate to heroism, to say nothing of the current election? Even though they had written essays about the "exquisite suffering" evident in Petrarch's paradoxes? These are a few of the things all my students, honors and regular, do in my classes. Why is this not considered "proficiency"?

On the most recent test, several students were appalled by a question that asked them to identify the literary device in the phrase "the frowning forest." The answer choices included "alliteration" and "personification." Because both are right, one has to wonder which answer would exhibit "proficiency." During another test, one student asked me how to bubble her answer since the choices were lettered (a), (b), (d), and (c). Then, when reading a piece about a village where everyone politely referred to an elderly man as Grandfather, my otherwise savvy urban students thought that he was really someone's grandfather and answered incorrectly what turned out to be a set of culturally biased questions.

Blaming the tests, however, is not my goal, even though they are imperfect instruments and can't reveal proficiency proficiently. Instead, my goal is to suggest that teachers be evaluated thoughtfully and that those who say they value education figure out a way to provide opportunities to do this right. Teachers should be asked to consider how they value goals and how they would evaluate themselves using key criteria: Are they knowledgeable and current in their fields of expertise? Do they have high expectations of their students? Does the teacher build a classroom community and foster student dignity in the classroom? Is the teacher flexible and willing to reflect and make changes where necessary? There should be deep conversations about these goals and others, and teachers should be supported in their efforts to find balance in the chaos that is public school.

Only when we truly respect the people to whom we give lip service by saying "you do the most important job there is," when we eradicate old ideas and their limits, and when we foster growth and exploration will teachers and their students approach the success everyone craves.

If those in charge ran the system the way the best teachers run their classrooms.... I'll let you fill in the blank.

Pamela Felcher chairs the English department at Los Angeles' Hamilton High School.

No Confidence in Testocrats or Their Tests

From Seattle PI:

By JESSICA BLANCHARD
P-I REPORTER

Kids aren't the only ones who hate the WASL -- so do many teachers, and some are so fed up that they're taking on the state's top education official over her continued support for the test.

Members of several local teachers unions will decide soon whether to issue votes of no confidence in state Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson.

Much of the discontent stems from Bergeson's unwavering support of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, an annual statewide test used to gauge public school students' academic performance and to show progress toward meeting federal reading and math goals.

The test always has been controversial, but opposition has reached a fever pitch as high school graduation approaches for the class of 2008. Those students are the first required to pass the reading, writing and math sections of the test, or an approved alternative, to earn a diploma.

"Her over-the-edge commitment on this has really created a big problem," said Dan Wilson, president of the Edmonds Education Association. "She endlessly says what a fabulous test it is, and teachers are saying, 'No, it's not.' "

The Auburn, Bremerton, Edmonds, Seattle, Lake Washington and Lake Stevens teachers unions are among the affiliates considering votes of no confidence.

The discussion is simmering at the local level for now, but it's likely a prelude to larger action that could occur when the statewide teachers union, the Washington Education Association, holds its annual meeting in May.

"After 12 years, they've reached a point where the frustration level is high," WEA spokesman Rich Wood said. "The discontent is pretty widespread."

Bergeson, a former teacher and counselor, is seeking re-election this fall to a fourth term as state superintendent, and losing the support of the state teachers union, a group she once headed, could be politically damaging. She wasn't available for comment Friday. . . . .

. . . . Even teachers in the Lake Washington district, where students generally perform well on the WASL, have problems with the test, said Kevin Teeley, the president of the local teachers union.

"Teachers are really, really frustrated about the time it takes away from instruction," he said. Between test preparation and actual test-taking time, "it's easily a month of lost instruction."

More importantly, he said, subjects that aren't tested on the WASL -- such as social studies -- tend to get pushed aside. . . .

Chinese Look Beyond Test Obsession

Hmmm. From China Daily:

By Chen Jia (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-25 06:34

Four in 10 Chinese complain about the yawning gap between large investments in education and its returns, a recent nationwide survey has showed.

The Horizon Research Consultancy Group polled 3,355 residents aged 16 to 60 in both urban and rural areas, including seven metropolises such as Beijing and Shanghai.

The survey found that only 16 percent of respondents believed their investments on education gave good returns.

Those with higher education voiced greater disappointment at the quality of education received, the survey showed.

"Even with a master's degree, I failed to find a decent position in big companies," Mao Xin, a 26-year-old Beijing resident, told China Daily yesterday.

"My textbook knowledge gave no advantage whatsoever in the competition."

Mao had to lower his expectations and work for a small private company, with wages similar to what undergraduates got.

"I disappointed my parents, who gave me at least 30,000 yuan ($4,250) to attend a postgraduate management course in a key university for three years," Mao said.

People in the rural areas generally gave more positive feedback on the quality of education than those from the cities, the survey found.

"Our education has been focusing on an examination-oriented system," Huo Qingwen, the deputy director of language education testing service center under the Beijing Foreign Studies University, told China Daily yesterday.

"The survey result doesn't surprise me, as I had heard complaints not only from the students, but also from the teachers who have been asked to focus more about the exam-passing rate," Huo said.

The Ministry of Education has called on schools and universities to gradually phase out an exam-dominated education system, amid concerns that students pursue higher academic results rather than practical experience and competence.

"The job market is still hungry for talented staff, but many graduates are not competent because the posts require more practical experience and creative ability of workers," Huo added. . . . .

Noddings Commentary

Nel Noddings Op-Ed: The new anti-intellectualism in America

The New Anti-Intellectualism in America
When Curricular Rigor and 'Pedagogical Fraud' Go Hand in Hand

March 20, 2007
Education Week
Commentary
By Nel Noddings

It seems odd to accuse the schools of anti-intellectualism when they are engaged in a relentless drive for higher test scores, and students are required to take more difficult academic courses. Passing rates on some state and local tests show small increases, but there has been little if any improvement on well-established national tests. The small gains we�ve seen may be the result of concentrated instruction on narrowly defined objectives. But we are not promoting intellectual habits of mind. Indeed, we may be reducing intellectual life to mental labor. What are the signs that this is happening?

First, there is a proliferation of fake academic courses. These courses are instigated by the demand that almost all children now take academic courses such as algebra and geometry. The decision for this requirement has not been supported by strong, well-informed debate. Is it true, for example, that all students need more mathematics today than people did in previous generations? If the answer is yes (but there are powerful arguments in favor of a negative reply), then it is reasonable to ask, What sort of mathematics? Must it be traditional algebra and geometry? Why?

Instead of debating these questions, policymakers have mandated�in the name of equality�that all children, regardless of their talents and interests, should have the �opportunity� once reserved for relatively few. Hardworking teachers then must try to get unwilling, unprepared students through material they have no interest in learning. Many youngsters have alternative, genuine talents, but these are disregarded. To give such students a chance to pass the required courses, teachers concentrate on a few discrete skills that can be gained through a steady routine of drill.

I�ve observed such classes. In some, no word problems or applications are even attempted. In a bow to analytic geometry, the distance formula is memorized, but with no mention of the Pythagorean theorem. In many geometry classes, no proofs at all are done. (Reducing the emphasis on proof is justified, but eliminating it entirely casts doubt on whether the course should be called geometry.) The end result is that many students have �algebra� and �geometry� on their transcripts, but they can�t pass state tests in math, and they need remedial courses in college. They have had pseudo-algebra and pseudo-geometry. This is pedagogical fraud, and such students are doubly cheated. They do poorly in the required courses, and they are deprived of courses in which they might have done well.

I am not arguing that the traditional academic courses are properly �intellectual� and other courses are not. On the contrary, I believe that intellectually exciting topics and challenging problems can and should arise in all well-taught classes�in cooking, chemistry, photography, mechanics, and everything else the schools offer. My objection is to the virtual elimination of intellectual content in many of today�s academic courses.

---------------------------------------------

A second signal is that the overuse of specific learning objectives in all subjects works against the development of intellectual habits of mind. Superficially, it seems fair to tell students exactly what they must learn and be able to do as a result of instruction. This is instructionally sound when we are teaching a narrowly defined skill, but it is a poor way to encourage problem-solving, critical thinking, and the habits of mind that support further, deeper learning. Too often the result of such instruction is students who can add when told to add, or solve quadratic equations when told to �solve the following quadratic equations,� but cannot decide when to use these techniques in solving problems. In the interest of intellectual habits of mind, students must be asked to identify for themselves the important points in every unit of study, construct their own summaries, attempt problems that have no obvious solution, engage in interpretation, and evaluate conflicting explanations and points of view.

Providing a complete structure of what is to be learned and a detailed list of outcomes expected of all students facilitates quick, shallow learning and swift forgetting. The little actually remembered is very like a collection of meaningless bits for Trivial Pursuit. Students come to expect that they should have answers at their fingertips instead of developing an attitude of inquiry�one of willingness to figure things out.

----------------------------------------------------

The insistence on precisely stated learning objectives, moreover, also drastically reduces the number of classroom sessions designed to expose students to new, interesting ideas that may or may not result in specific learning. It is right to pay continuous, careful attention to whether students are learning certain specific material. But there should also be sessions devoted to intellectual �inputs��topics teachers choose to present or offer�leaving open what students might do as a result.

Many intellectually exciting and socially significant lessons conducted by creative teachers are designed to induce awareness, not specific learning. It is a shame to sacrifice such sessions in our zeal to achieve a pre-specified learning objective for every lesson, every day. In addition to asking the question, Has Johnny learned X? we should also ask, What has Johnny learned? In a class of 25 students, we might get 25 different answers to this�some disheartening (from which we should learn), and some quite thrilling.

To support intellectual life and the joy of learning, we should expand the possibilities, not narrow them. Part of our job as educators is to offer opportunities, to open the door to a world of intellectual possibilities. Another part is to encourage our students to think and to take responsibility for their own expanded learning. It is important, therefore, to consider intellectual inputs as well as pre-specified student outcomes.

Students do not come to us as standard raw material, and we should not expect to produce standard academic products. Intellectual life is challenging, enormously diverse, and rewarding. It requires initiative and independent thinking, not the tedious following of orders. It should not be reduced to mental drudgery.

Nel Noddings is the Lee L. Jacks professor of education, emerita, at Stanford University. Her latest book is Critical Lessons: What Our Schools Should Teach (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

From KIPP to SABIS: Industrial Knowledge for the Knowledge Industry

Part of untold story of the success of the KIPPsters has everything to do with the large numbers of children who can't hack the 12 hour days and "work hard, be nice" brainwashing that white liberals prefer so much for the children of the poor. These young washouts, of course, do not figure in to the test score totals, which have the media convinced that these industrial KIPP learning camps are the solution to teaching the future poor how to keep their mouths shut in the global economy.

Now there is a for-profit, corporate welfare outfit (actually it predates KIPP) that uses the same reform school discipline to whip high schoolers into smiling, glassy-eyed Burger King employees. Not everyone in Massachusetts is a fan (as the following letter indicates) , even if the Boston Globe would prefer it:

THE GLOBE did a disservice to children of color in its March 10 editorial "The achievement gap wins one," which embraced the proposal for a for-profit SABIS charter school in Brockton. In fact, SABIS may push out more high school-aged students than it graduates. SABIS, which has a wait list of 2,677 students in Springfield, shrinks from 160 students in grade nine to just 73 in grade 10. Is the above-average MCAS performance of this tiny 10th-grade cohort really evidence of SABIS's value?

According to a Department of Education report, "significant numbers of students do transfer out of the school at the secondary level because their academic or programmatic needs were not being met." An attrition rate this high should be a mark against the school, not the foundation for praise.

SABIS should also be judged at several grades, such as English language arts at grade four, where blacks, Latinos, whites, and students with disabilities at SABIS scored needing improvement and warning status at higher levels than the state average for each subgroup. Only the reduced cohort of students of color in grade 10 outperformed whites in the state in the English test.

The Globe editorial board misinformed us by presenting one thin slice of questionable data. Board of Education chairman Paul Reville should be applauded for declining another SABIS charter.

DANIEL J. LOSEN
Lexington
The writer is a senior education law and policy associate at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School.

Urge Nebraska Politicians to Save STARS

It could be the assessment model for many other states, and it stands for School-based, Teacher-led, Assessment and Reporting System. Now it is threatened by herd mentality and ignorance of the facts. Contact the Nebraska Legislature.

From McCook Daily Gazette:

Friday, March 21, 2008
Connie Jo Discoe

District 44 State Sen. Mark Christensen said Thursday morning that LB 1157 -- legislation requiring state tests of Nebraska students' learning and progress -- may not come back onto the floor in the 14 days remaining in the second session tentatively scheduled to convene April 17.
LB 1157 may not come back to the floor, not without some adjustments and changes, Christensen told those gathered for his weekly telephone conference at the McCook Area Chamber of Commerce.

Sen. Ron Raikes of Lincoln, chairman of the Legislature's Education Committee, is working hard on the passage of LB 1157, said Christensen, who called it a bill "that's been controversial enough."

Christensen said he does not believe that Nebraska -- the only state in the nation without a state-wide system of testing students' progress -- is at risk of losing federal education funding by not having a state test system. He said, however, that Texas has been fined for not being in full compliance with federal "No Child Left Behind" legislation.

Christensen said he has visited with school officials in his district who are opposed to state testing, who are pleased with the existing STARS (School-based, Teacher-led, Assessment and Reporting System) system in use across Nebraska.

Christensen said he is concerned that a state test system will compare districts without considering their innate differences -- number and training levels of teachers, student-teacher ratio, the percentages of single- vs. two-parent families, English-language learners, working parents, migrant families, free and/or reduced lunch qualifiers. "These things affect test scores beyond just how smart kids are," Christensen. "My fear is, with a state-wide test, that School A (will be graded as) bad because they don't test well. Some schools don't test well, but are still doing an excellent job," of teaching students. He said schools and student progress should be determined on issues besides test scores.

Christensen asked, who better to educate and test students than their local teachers and administrators.

On Monday, March 17, senators adopted an amendment to LB 1157 (see an accompanying story with McCook's curriculum director Gayle Sharkey), and Senator Cap Dierks filed a motion, which is pending, to indefinitely postpone LB 1157.

© Copyright 2008, McCook Daily Gazette
Story URL: http://www.mccookgazette.com/story/1319726.html

Not on the Test

By Tom Chapin:

Using Dropout Rates to Punish the Poor

A black male student entering 9th grade in an urban high school has a 50-50 chance of getting a diploma four years later. This fact has been submerged for years in Byzantine attendance tracking systems in most states, and with the pressures of NCLB, schools now have a new perverse incentive to push out additional low fliers who threaten a school's AYP status.

I am all for stating the facts as they exist, but now the privatizers want to use the facts to pile up sanctions on the most vulnerable schools, to undercut public support, and to charterize those schools that suffer most under generations of educational debt. Those who are owed the most, then, must continue to pay the debt with their support of cheap charter chain gangs or cheap vouchers paid for with corporate tax breaks. These are the school choices that the econ-anthropists offer in the name of social justice.

A clip from the NY Times:

JACKSON, Miss. — When it comes to high school graduation rates, Mississippi keeps two sets of books.

One team of statisticians working at the state education headquarters here recently calculated the official graduation rate at a respectable 87 percent, which Mississippi reported to Washington. But in another office piled with computer printouts, a second team of number crunchers came up with a different rate: a more sobering 63 percent.

The state schools superintendent, Hank Bounds, says the lower rate is more accurate and uses it in a campaign to combat a dropout crisis.

“We were losing about 13,000 dropouts a year, but publishing reports that said we had graduation rate percentages in the mid-80s,” Mr. Bounds said. “Mathematically, that just doesn’t work out.”

. . . .

Governors also stepped in, worried that schools were not preparing the work force their states need. In December 2005, all 50 agreed to standardize their graduation rate calculations, basing them on tracking individual students through high school.

Fifteen states have begun to use the formula, said Dane Linn, director of the education division at the National Governors Association. And it has produced some stunning revelations.

In North Carolina, the rate plummeted a year ago to 68 percent from 95 percent. The News & Observer in Raleigh likened the experience to the shock of hearing a doctor diagnose a terrible illness.

“But now doctors can start treatments that can lead to a cure,” the paper said in an editorial.

Mississippi is among the states that have become the most serious about confronting their dropout problem, Mr. Linn said.

The state has been building a record system capable of tracking student data from year to year, and in 2005 used it to estimate a graduation rate of 61 percent, 24 points below the official rate.

Mr. Bounds took office that fall and was initially consumed with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But he eventually had time to pore over the data.

“It was time to boldly confront the facts,” he said.

Mr. Bounds has used the new figures to persuade the Mississippi Board of Education to require school districts to prepare dropout prevention plans. Last month he told 2,000 community leaders that the state’s dropout crisis was like “a Katrina hitting our schools every year.”

The state will eventually report the lower rate to Washington but has set no schedule, Mr. Bounds said. One problem, he said, is that when Mississippi sends revised rates for its more than 200 high schools, their success levels will appear to plummet and many schools could be exposed to sanctions.

“It’ll look like everybody has dropped, when actually everybody’s doing a better job,” Mr. Bounds said. “But we’re capturing the right score on the scoreboard.”

New York City Parent Revolt?

In defiance of professional ethics and common sense, Mayor Gradgrind and Chancellor McChoakumchild have added a new layer of punishment for poor children--to go along with guaranteed failure machine that requires 3rd, 5th, and 7th graders to pass math and reading tests before moving to the next grade. Now these Dickensian jackasses have their eye on the 8th graders. Parents and students have had enough. From the New York Times:

By ELISSA GOOTMAN

Published: March 18, 2008

The Bloomberg administration won approval for a new eighth-grade promotion policy last night at a meeting repeatedly interrupted by the chanting and heckling of parents who contend that the policy amounts to blaming students for the failings of the city’s middle schools.

The policy requires next year’s eighth graders to pass classes in core subject areas and to score at a basic level on standardized English and math exams to be promoted. The Panel for Educational Policy, which oversees the city schools, approved the policy by a vote of 11 to 1 in its meeting at Tweed Courthouse, the Education Department’s headquarters. Eight of the 13 members on the panel — there is one vacancy — are appointed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and the five borough presidents appoint one each.

From the moment the meeting began, it was punctuated by parents chanting, “Postpone the vote” and “No plan, no vote,” a reference to what they said was the department’s lack of a comprehensive plan for fixing the city’s middle schools.

After the vote, the chants grew louder, culminating in shouts of “Shame! Shame!” that were accompanied by wagging fingers. The meeting was adjourned, with other items on the agenda pushed off to next month’s meeting. Parents continued their protests outside the building while Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein met with reporters to defend the policy.

“In the end, passing kids through the system without making sure they’re ready for the next grade level is not a formula for success,” he said. “Our job is not to move a kid out of middle school; our job is to move a kid from middle school to high school, prepared for high school.”

Mr. Klein said he believed there was “widespread support throughout the city for the policy.”

But parents and education advocates, who held a news conference protesting the measure on the steps of the courthouse before the meeting, disagreed.

Ken Cohen, the N.A.A.C.P. regional director for New York City, called on the panel to postpone the vote, based on what he said was widespread disapproval of the policy. “Today we are here to see how this body reacts to the voice of the people,” he said. “This is not their government; it is our government. Let the people speak.” . . . .

Achievement Gap Reflects Education Debt

From the Forum for Education and Democracy:

Posted by Gloria Ladson-Billings at 3/18/08 5:30 AM
Tags: Education Policy

(A version of this paper will appear in the Journal of Teacher Education)

Dear Mister/Madam President:

The very fact that this letter begins with addressing either a man or woman in the office of President of the United States is in itself a cause for celebration and a tribute to the historic nature of this year’s presidential contest. For this we all—regardless of political persuasion—should feel more deeply invested in the promise of democracy to include all Americans regardless of race, class, and gender.

My letter to you is linked specifically to the question of public education and what I believe are the more pressing issues facing your administration and the nation at large regarding the future of public education in our society. To address these issues I want to speak specifically to the question of what has been called popularly, the racial achievement gap.

The “Achievement Gap” has been on the lips of almost every politician, education researcher, education leader, and education policy maker in the nation. The provision of the re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, more conventionally known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), that profoundly illuminated this achievement gap was the requirement to disaggregate student test score data based on categories like race, special needs, and English language proficiency. We know that African American and Latino students score substantially lower than their White and (some) Asian American counterparts. According to the National Governors’ Association, the achievement gap is, “a matter of race and class. [And], across the U.S., a gap persists between minority and disadvantaged students and their white counterparts.” It further states, “this is one of the most pressing education-policy challenges that states currently face” (http://www.subnet.nga.org/educlear/achievement/ retrieved electronically 10/27/05). We want to erase this achievement gap. Indeed, that sounds like a noble and good goal.

However, as a new president with presumably a new vision I want to suggest that it is important to begin re-thinking or re-conceptualizing this notion of the achievement gap. Instead of an achievement gap, I believe we have an education debt (Ladson-Billings, 2006). The debt language totally changes the relationship between students and their schooling. For instance, when we think of what we are combating as an achievement gap, we implicitly place the onus for closing that gap on the students, their families, and their individual teachers and schools. But, the notion of education debt requires us to think about how all of us, as members of a democratic society, are implicated in creating these achievement disparities. . . .

Read the rest here.

Spellings' New Deck Chair Arrangement for NCLB DOA

Get thee behind me, Satan!

Fairtest has a bit more nuanced reaction:

Dr. Monty Neill (617) 864-4810 Robert Schaeffer (239) 395-6773

For immediate release, Tuesday, March 18, 2008

SEC. SPELLINGS “DIFFERENTIATED ACCOUNTABILITY” PLAN IS “FUTILE EFFORT TO RESCUE A COLLAPSING LAW,”SCHEME IS EQUIVALENT TO “REARRANGING DECK CHAIRS ON TITANIC” REACTION OF NATIONAL CENTER FOR FAIR & OPEN TESTING

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’ plan to allow ten states to pilot “Differentiated Accountability” approaches to comply with federal “No Child Left Behind” mandates is a futile effort to rescue a collapsing law. Though it correctly recognizes that NCLB identifies far too many schools as failing, the proposal is the political equivalent of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, not changing its misguided course. It will not slow the ever-growing demand for complete overhaul.

At its core, “No Child” is unworkable. It makes impossible demands such as expecting all children to attain proficiency by 2014, relies too heavily on educationally destructive standardized tests which narrow curriculum while encouraging “drill-and-kill” test prep, and imposes counterproductive punishments.

Simply imposing a state-by-state patchwork of new rules onto the top-down federal bureaucracy created by “No Child Left Behind” will not lead to improved education for the communities that most need it. Far more fundamental changes, focusing on identifying the real causes of weak academic performance and building schools’ capacity to address them, are required.

FairTest initiated the Joint Organizational Statement on NCLB, a set of principles for overhauling the federal law, which has been signed by 143 national education, civil rights, religious, parent, disability, civic and labor groups. FairTest also facilitates the Forum on Educational Assessment, which works to implement the Joint Statement.

The Joint Statement and other materials concerning NCLB, including FairTest’s six-year “Report Card” on the law’s impact, are online at: http://www.fairtest.org

Corporate Tax Credits to Save Poor Children

While we witness BushCo. write a check out of our account for $30 billion to bail out one of the corporate sewers on Wall Street that has operated entirely without accountability of any kind, we see nothing of the sort going on when it comes to funding schools or opportunities for the poor, where children and teachers are blamed for a societal failure. Bear Stearn's execs walk away with tens of millions from their cesspool of corruption, while teachers lose their jobs in reorganization efforts and children are held back to assure their continued failure.

In fact, in a state like New Jersey that has actually tried to mitigate a history of segregation and oppression (following Kozol's 1992 exposure of Camden's heartbreaking reality), the cost has been pushed onto the middle class property tax bill. Playing to the resentment among white homeowners, the improvements in school facilities and resources that have resulted from the Abbott decisions are now being attacked by school privatizers and corporate welfare artists as a waste of money.

These leeches in New Jersey operate under the name of E3 with grants from the same deep pockets that have built Sam's School of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, whose Endowed Chair of School Choice, Patrick Wolf, is the lead author of the "scientifically-based" five-year voucher study in Milwaukee. Is Endowed Professor of School Choice a giveaway to the underlying ideology, or what! And who chairs that Department? None other than Jay P. Greene, the longtime edu-propagandist for the Manhattan Institute, who now uses his academic cred to push merit pay, vouchers and charters to replace public education.

In New Jersey, E3 wants to rescue poor children from these new schools that are being built for them by offering their parents a school voucher (discounted by $5,000 from the State level of per-pupil spending). These vouchers would be paid for by corporations, whose philanthropy will be rewarded by a dollar for dollar tax credit to send New Jersey's poor children to charter schools that are already receiving tax-deductible dollars from the same corporations. In effect, the State would end up paying to fund schooling for the poor while decreasing State revenues by allowing corporations to avoid their tax responsibilities. Helluva deal.

A bit from APP, which always enjoys piling onto the corporate bandwagon:

There's only one thing lacking in the Abbott districts — academic quality, said Dan Gaby, executive director of Excellent Education for Everyone. His group, known as E3, favors state financial support of private schools. Gaby served as vice president of the state Board of Education in the 1970s under former Democratic Gov. Brendan T. Byrne.

Despite the $30 billion spent on education in the Abbott districts over the last decade, standardized state test scores show little improvement, except in the elementary grades, according to state Department of Education data.

In some of the poorest districts, dropout rates remain high. Asbury Park High School's graduation rate was 63.5 percent last year. Camden High School's graduation rate was 49.8 percent. In 2007, the state's average graduation rate was 92.3 percent.

"We could spend half the money and get better results. The children are out of time, and the taxpayers are out of money," Gaby said.

His group wants to permit corporations to provide scholarships of up to $9,000 per pupil for low-income parents in seven low-income school districts, including Lakewood and Camden.

Under bill A-1003, corporations would pay for the scholarships, which low-income parents could use to move their children from what Gaby termed "dangerous schools . . . that have a proven track record of failure" to safer, private schools.

Corporations would get a tax break equal to every dollar they contribute, under the bill. The idea is similar to a program in place in Arizona.

The fiscal impact of the bill is in dispute.

Gaby said New Jersey taxpayers would save money because it would cost less to educate fewer pupils in the public school system if enough urban students attended private or religious schools.

But the powerful teachers union, feared by some legislators because of its well-organized, motivated, get-out-the-vote drives, is opposed to the bill.

Sending urban children to private schools wouldn't save money, said Steve Wollmer, spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association. He said it would funnel money from public schools to private and religious institutions, resulting in a net loss of $360 million for urban districts over the proposed five-year pilot program.

The bill remains in the Assembly Education Committee, awaiting a hearing.

The Jay Mathews Attack on Block Scheduling

Testing industry insider and long time manipulator of public opinion, Jay Mathews, had a piece two pieces last week that give the editors of Washington Post reason enough to pull the plug on this guy. The sad fact is that Mathews has filed an impressive portfolio of editorials masked as news stories at the Post, and since no one at the paper cares enough about education to check out the facts or the rest of the story that Mathews does not report, they continue to let him do what he wants with impunity.

One of Mathews' target last week was block scheduling. Now for any story or innovation that Mathews wants to knock down or to promote, there is the ultimate criterion of test scores to consider, which serves as ironclad arbiter for any policy consideration. If there is no evidence, for instance, that whole grain bread for lunch increases test scores, then there is no reason to replace the Bunny Bread. Same with block scheduling: no evidence for increasing test scores, then let's go back to the six, seven, or nine lap race course that leaves students scatter-brained and exhausted at the end of the day. Of course, that is the accepted mode of societal management, is it not?

And how Mathews found a principal who would act the fool for him in a national newspaper, that's pretty impressive:

But Einstein Principal James G. Fernandez said he is unconvinced that block scheduling, used in his school for several years, raises student achievement. He suggested that the format might lead some students to drop out because of long classes. So why have so many schools adopted it? "Other than it was the fad, I'm not really sure," he said. He said he switched back to a traditional schedule because it allowed a longer lunchtime for one-on-one work with students and because it might help prevent students from dropping out.

"Show me some data that indicates kids perform better" with block scheduling, Fernandez said.

Well, Principal Fernandez, here is a link a piece in the Kappan offers several sound reasons that might have influenced your decision, had you chosen to let your decision be influenced. Below are a few of them that Jay Mathews didn't ask you about or tell you about, because when it comes down to it, he is an opponent of block scheduling because the College Board is an opponent of block scheduling:

It was difficult to schedule Advanced Placement classes in some block systems.

A few reasons to consider block scheduling:

• greater flexibility in scheduling
  

• opportunities for students to complete more courework

• less time during day spent in class changes and routine management tasks
  

• improved school climate . . . a more relaxed atmosphere

• greater student/teacher rapport

• instruction and curriculum improvement/innovation

• more individual student attention from teachers

• improved school discipline

• more teacher planning time

• more time for labs, vocational projects, art, band, writing, and research

• less time needed for grading, more time to devote to teaching

• more shared ownership of teaching and learning among students and teachers
  

In terms of tests, there have been no notable differences on standardized test scores among block compared to non-block. For those schools and teachers that seek to maintain lock-step authoritarian control, however, the block is a challenge. If you think it is hard to lecture teens for 44 minutes, try 88 minutes. Good teachers adapt--authoritarians resent the change, and blame block scheduling for messing up their day (as well as their one year of experience, repeated 20 times). That is why, I am afraid, that there is such a blowback in recent years toward the bad old schedule of the past. Authoritarian regimes breed authoritarian schools. And, then, there's the economics of testing to be protected, and that is where Jay Mathews comes in.

Free Tibet: Boycott Poisonous Chinese Politics and Products

China Cracks Down in Tibet and Beyond as Protests Spread
By Mark Magnier
The Los Angeles Times

Sunday 16 March 2008

Chinese police pour into Lhasa and outlying areas as China scrambles to control the latest uprisings. Sympathy demonstrations are reported around the world.

Xiahe, China - The spread of protests from Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, to neighboring communities and now Gansu province represents a crisis for a government eager to project an image of friendly confidence and cultural refinement in advance of the Beijing Olympics.

On Saturday, a massive police presence could be seen blanketing Xiahe, a holy city outside Tibet that houses the sprawling Labrang Monastery complex, one of the most revered in Tibetan Buddhism.

By early today, the cordon in Xiahe had tightened further as English-speaking police were stopping all vehicles for miles and forcing foreigners to turn around or, if they were on local transportation, to climb down.

This followed demonstrations involving an attack on a police station by thousands of people and the raising of a banned national Tibetan flag.

Twenty people were arrested in the ensuing violence, the London-based Free Tibet Campaign said, and a local official said seven people were injured, as authorities scrambled to quell the worst protests against Chinese dominion over Tibet in two decades.

The crackdown followed efforts by authorities in Lhasa to contain six days of violence. "They are in the process of restoring order, but it is not complete," a Western aid worker living in Lhasa said.

The government has reported 10 deaths in Lhasa resulting from the protests, which it blamed on rioters setting fires. The self-proclaimed Tibetan government-in-exile, based in India, said the figure was 30, and other estimates ran higher.

Lhasa residents reached by phone said the city was under a near state of emergency with people afraid to go out. . . .

"countless dollars and hours. . . for these pathetic tests"

Very nice essay, Fear-based education as the testing season starts, by Claudia Ayers in Santa Cruz Sentinel:

Next September, teachers like me will face hours of meetings considering mountains of data, derived from rounds of testing that our students -- and we -- must now endure. In the fall, we will no longer have the students whose scores we will analyze, but what else are you going to do with the data, besides publish it in the local papers and wonder why the mathematically challenged gloat with the up-ticks, and feel shamed by the downturns?

The confused and erratic sophomores we now attempt to teach have had scripted education since first grade, when whole language reading programs and "fuzzy math" were rejected and all too often replaced with worksheets that were guided by scripts that teachers simply read. Additionally, since the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, these students have had endless practice rounds for standardized tests. They know how to bubble in answers, but have limited ability to ask questions, and seem so much less interested in understanding their world than the students who preceded them.

All school children and youth now carry many burdens: content standards, measurable objectives, rigor, accountability, school-wide pacing, subject breadth [mile wide, inch deep], proficiencies in bunches-of-facts, homework in the primary grades, skills drills and practice tests, fewer high school electives but more math support classes, heavy backpacks and exit exams. These are the fruits of fear.

Gone are the days of true engagement and authenticity, when emerging goals included such things as integrated- and systems-learning, concept development and global citizenship. Other things being left behind: field trips, democracy in action, age-appropriate curriculum [everything is hurried], project choices, recess, problem solving, team building, discussion, teachable moments, student-taught lessons, inquiry, discovery, inductive thought, art, music, teachers teaching to their strengths, freedom, or even ... joy.

No wonder kids are dropping out in record numbers. The kinds of things that lead to wisdom and ideals are steadily being eradicated, and if the people who should know better don't start standing up, valued public education will, simply, be irrevocably lost. Private school enrollments steadily increase.

Kids were prompted to think in the "fuzzy math" days; the math skills were embedded in rich problems [not on drills and work sheets]. Whole language sought to offer children the rewards of rich literature -- public confusion about imaginary battles between phonics and sight-word advocates aside. There is a difference between authentic reform efforts and the so-called reforms that NCLB has wrought [or is it rot?].

Should every high school student really be required to take three years of college preparatory high-school courses in order to graduate [as is required in many local schools]? Or is this just another way to force kids with lower testing abilities to drop out so those who remain will produce higher Academic Performance Indices?

When your school administrators and board members keep telling you their main goal is "improving student achievement," that is the first clue they have uncritically accepted fear-based education. The joy of learning and creativity are not measurable.

Granted, true graduation rates and satisfaction surveys could give some useful data. But basing "achievement" almost exclusively on standardized test scores is astonishingly nearsighted.

Honestly, I have seen hundreds of standardized test questions, and educated people would be appalled by their quality. That the testing companies regularly rack up errors in scoring is also a little known facet of the industry that is taking hundreds of millions of dollars away from U.S. classrooms.

The High School Exit Exam [HSEE] has just been given to all of California's 10th-graders [March 11 and 12]. Most of our students will "pass." The ones who do not pass are likely to have a different first language, have testing anxiety, or have a learning disability. Sure, they have more chances to pass, but anxiety cranks up with each "try." Each year there will still be thousands of great kids in California who will not receive a diploma and will not walk at graduation. Sadly, these are the students who will be most devastated by the missed opportunity.

Then in April, all students from second through 11th grades take another enormous battery of California Standards Tests [CSTs]. The dollars and hours thrown at this enterprise is insane, especially given that 20 percent of the school year remains, yet students are evaluated on how they did for yearlong course standards.

My college-age daughters were not subject to the HSEE and I opted them out of the CSTs. They tell me that were they still in high school they would not take the HSEE as a form of civil disobedience, even if it meant they could not walk at graduation. They say they wouldn't want to shake the hands of adults with hardened hearts who did nothing to prevent this test from devastating the lives of our most vulnerable students.

While I love the idea that students would seek justice by protesting the HSEE, it is the appropriate role of adults to protect children from poor policy decisions by standing up and unconditionally loving children, not only their own, but all children. Tax dollars are precious; they should not be used to make profits for test companies. Nor can we afford the countless hours and dollars devoted to prepare for and administer these pathetic tests.

Claudia Ayers is a teacher at Aptos High School.

Gates Prefers to Import Cheap Workers Rather Than Export Jobs

Microsoft took a PR hit in 2004 when documents emerged showing a embedded culture of high tech job exportation and foreign contracts for cheap high end labor. Since then Gates has shifted the company focus to cheap labor imports, rather than that good job exports. On this past Thursday, Gates was back before Congress pleading for more H-1B visas that would allow him to import 40k a year engineers, rather than employ our indigenous engineering culture. And all of this comes as the Business Roundtable cries out for more American engineers and technicians. We don't have a shortage of engineers--we just have a shortage of them willing to work for 40K:

By Kim Hart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2008; Page D03
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates paid a visit to Capitol Hill yesterday with a familiar wish list: more money for math and science education, more funds for research and more visas for skilled foreign workers.

In his last scheduled testimony to Congress before he retires, Gates said those provisions are necessary for the United States to maintain a competitive edge in technology innovation. He said some of the most talented graduates in math, science and engineering are temporary residents and cannot get the visas they need to take jobs with U.S. companies.

"U.S. innovation has always been based in part on foreign-born scientists and researchers," Gates told the House Committee on Science and Technology. "The fact that [other countries'] smartest people have wanted to come here has been a huge advantage to us, and in a sense, we're kind of throwing that away."

The committee held the hearing to mark its 50th anniversary; it was founded after the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellite was launched in 1957. Most members of the panel congratulated Gates on his achievements at Microsoft, which he founded in 1975 after dropping out of Harvard, as well as the contributions his philanthropic foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has made to educational causes.

Gates, 52, smiled throughout the two-hour hearing, sipping from a can of Diet Coke and occasionally jotting notes with a pencil. He tapped his feet underneath the table as he talked, sometimes in sync with the rhythm of his voice.

When asked about taxes, Gates jokingly pointed out that he has written checks to the federal government for billions of dollars. "I don't begrudge it at all," he said. "I'm glad you're all working hard to see it's well spent."

Much of the discussion surrounded Gates's call to raise the annual maximum of 65,000 H-1B visas, which allow employers to hire foreigners with specific skills. Last year, Gates said, Microsoft was not able to get visas for about one-third of the foreign-born people it wanted to hire. . . .

Leininger vs. Public Education

From the Waco Tribune:

Editorial: A school voucher sneak attack

Friday, March 14, 2008

Supporters of public schools really need to keep an eye on the Texas Legislature and surreptitious efforts to undermine school funding by shifting dollars to private and church-run schools through school vouchers.

Comment on this story
Vouchers represent direct cuts in school funding. Though money “follows the student” to a private or church school, meaning one less student to educate, public schools’ costs like heating, cooling and more stay fixed.

A coterie of schemers supported by campaign bank-roller James Leininger constantly tries to find ways to get a foot in the door in Texas for school vouchers.

Proponents often press for “pilot” programs aimed at big-city urban school districts where the challenges presented by poverty and lack of parental involvement are most pronounced.

They blame public schools for lack of achievement and downplay the parental role. A recent study of 1,000 low-income 12th-graders by the non-partisan Center on Education Policy found that when comparing apples to apples — comparing students whose parents were comparably involved in their education — public schools performed better than private schools.

That’s not what the voucher lobby wants you to believe.

Another thing it doesn’t want people to understand is that even when offered vouchers, most parents stick with their public schools.

Unfortunately, this week when the High School Completion and Success Initiative Council met, a body appointed by voucher proponents Gov. Rick Perry, House Speaker Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, some members tried to turn their advisory role into a mission to bring about vouchers for “drop-out prevention.”

Fortunately, State Rep. Rob Eissler, chairman of the House Public Education Committee, made an impromptu appearance to tell the advisory group that vouchers were not germane to the committee’s mission under the language of the bill that created it. The council backed off.

Without question, the council has an important mission: Advise on how public schools can better prepare students for higher education and to see how standards of both can intertwine.

It is clear that teaching focused strictly on passing state standardized tests doesn’t do the trick. College-bound students need to shoot higher or vast numbers will need remedial classes, as too many do today. And these days every student needs continuing education to thrive in the changing marketplace.

As with the whole of public education policy, there’s enough to examine and improve without sidetracking discussion to the tendentious and dubious idea of siphoning dollars from public schools to private ones with vouchers.

Stick to the agenda, please, and leave Mr. Leininger’s agenda out of it.

How FCAT Succeeds Where Other Social Engineering Attempts Have Failed

After 10 years of teaching the poor to recognize and accept their failure and the rightful control by others that their failure demands, Florida's corporate politicians have no doubt succeeded in padding their future supply of minimum wage workers to care for the retiring baby boomers moving South. The dropout rate is booming!

At the same time, corporate allies in Washington have used NCLB to undercut support of public education and to seed charter schools and vouchers and the cheap alternatives for these stubbornly defective children and lazy teachers who just won't help their schools make AYP. The Washington allies even put in place a phony teacher credentialing outfit to supply "teachers" in these cheap chain gangs for the poor. And Florida's corporate community stands ready to assist with big-hearted contributions that will earn dollar for dollar tax credits. Sweet!

Apparently, not everyone sees the benefits. From the Sun-Sentinel:

Take a breath. Relax.

For a day or two.

We're in the eye of the testing storm.

The squall began last week with the latest round of the FCATs. And for many, students will continue through this week with more FCAT testing and then a national test called the Norms Reference Test.

So, here we are today, smack in the middle of uncertainty and anxiety.

This is what education has become in Florida.

So many of us manipulated by an FCAT test that almost everyone agrees is faulty: Supporters say it probably needs revising, critics say it needs scrapping. And yet, this peculiar beast is entwined in the lives of thousands of children and families — most of the quarter-million kids and families who attend Broward public schools, and the 175,000 in Palm Beach County.

That's a lot of canceled baseball practices. Chores set aside. Bedtimes moved back.

If it was only those impositions and inconveniences, I might be a fan of the test.

But the FCAT also negatively affects teachers' livelihoods and kids' education. Although Broward's school board voted to de-emphasize the test, Palm Beach County took a different tack. It was all-FCAT-all-the-time.

The test even threatens successful educators and entire schools.

"We're definitely under the gun," said Rebecca Dahl, the principal at my son's middle school. "The kids know it. The teachers know it."

. . . .

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education gave Florida a C for "learning" in its 2006 national report card. "Florida's underperformance in educating its young population could limit the state's access to a competitive workforce and weaken its economy over time," the 2006 report said. "Since the early 1990s, Florida has seen a double-digit drop in the proportion of ninth graders graduating from high school, and the state now ranks among the lowest in the country on this measure. Of those who do graduate, relatively few go on to college."

After a decade of paying with our state treasury, with our kids' psyches and teachers' sanity, is this what we hoped to hear?

That's the very first FCAT question that needs an answer.

Ralph De La Cruz can be reached at rdelacruz@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4727 or 561-243-6522. Read his blog at Sun-Sentinel.com/ralphblog

Catholic Elementary Schools Score Lower in Math Than Publics

From Americans United . . .:

It has been a rough couple of months for advocates of private and religious school vouchers.

First, voters in Utah – the reddest red state in the nation – went to the polls and trounced a voucher scheme that misguided legislators had tried to foist on them.

Then, a researcher examining Wisconsin’s voucher program for children in Milwaukee determined that students in the plan are doing no better academically than their public-school counterparts. The finding is similar to other studies that have been released over the years.

Now comes a real shocker: A researcher has determined that students attending Catholic elementary schools make no more progress in reading than similar students in public schools, and they do even worse in math. . . .

Higher Teacher Pay: How to Kill a Great Idea

While doing some research on Teach for America (or at least for Awhile), which is described by one unconvinced Yale senior as "like the Peace Corp but, you know, creepier," I came across this quote by one of those young former Ivy Leaguers who signed up for TFA to do his 2-year urban teaching stint to prove that grim sociological reality can be eclipsed by the sunny stumbling of high cognitive functioning and and untested egomania:

"I'm having trouble sleeping, but I'm really enjoying it," he said. "It's frantic but fun. Classroom management is the hardest thing for me. I've learned that the minute I turn my back, it's a volcano in the classroom, so I won't be turning my back anymore. There's three other T.F.A. teachers in my school, and we're getting through it together."

Still these social entrepeneurs just keep on coming. With no experience, history, sociology, or politics of education to inform their splendid mental gifts and social positions, they are left to their own self-acknowledged ingenuity and glassy-eyed spunk to come up with schemes that are saleable to the new econanthropists and human capital market managers who are taking over education. Most recent example: Washington Heights TFA teacher and former Yalie, Zeke M. Vanderhoek. Zeke has a funded plan to pay teachers $125,000 a year to teach in his new school, The Equity Project. The working hypothesis: Pay enough in salary to attract people like himself to teach in the poorest schools, and voila!

If there were anything to hold Mr. Vanderhoek's immodest enthusiasm within the realm of the possible, he might have noticed that teacher pay is a factor in getting and holding great teachers--but it is not the factor. And many of those other factors have everything to do with the infrastructure, non-instructional support, resources, curriculum, facilities, climate, etc. that Mr. Vanderhoek would cut back on in order to pay the higher salary:

. . . .“I would much rather put a phenomenal, great teacher in a field with 30 kids and nothing else than take the mediocre teacher and give them half the number of students and give them all the technology in the world,” said Mr. Vanderhoek, 31, a Yale graduate and former middle school teacher who built a test preparation company that pays its tutors far more than the competition.

In exchange for their high salaries, teachers at the new school, the Equity Project, will work a longer day and year and assume responsibilities that usually fall to other staff members, like attendance coordinators and discipline deans. To make ends meet, the school, which will use only public money and charter school grants for all but its building, will scrimp elsewhere. . . .

Ah, yes, efficiency zeal and either-or thinking--the two enemies of common sense. What a great deal of energy that a little background reading and research might have saved. But then that would have necessitated the acknowledgement that the past might be relevant to what we do today, and clearly, hubris has already eliminated that possibility.

School Choice or Schools Cheap?

If the school privatization mob could sink to a more morally bankrupt position, I don't know what it could be. For years conservatives who don't give a rat's patootie for the plight of the poor or the brown have disingenously argued that poor parents should be given a choice of good schools just like the parents who can afford private schools.

That kind of cynical abuse of social sentiment just got exposed once more in Florida, as legislators of both parties try to finagle a way to give corporations huge tax credits for money they funnel through non-profit charters that, then, hand over cheap vouchers to poor families, vouchers that actually represent a reduction from what the State now spends in the public schools for these same children.

It's not called vouchers anymore because the Florida Supreme Court ruled those unconstitutional. How about corporate tax credit scholarships? I am wondering if Florida taxpayers want to assure that the obscene profits by McGraw-Hill and Pearson go untaxed, profits that both companies have extracted from the blood, sweat, and tears of the state's children and teachers. And what kind of scholarships are being offered? The 20 to 30K needed to enroll in a good private school? No, no, we are talking about $3,750 for a cheap charter school with poorly paid teachers who have been certified through ABCTE. Yes, Jeb Bush made sure that ABCTE would have a big footprint in Florida's brave new world of corporate socialist schools.

Here is a clip from the Bradenton Herald:

. . . ."It's going to be really difficult for us to support any expansion in corporate vouchers in an environment where the Legislature and state are having trouble properly financing schools," said Mark Pudlow, a spokesman for the Florida Education Association.

State lawmakers already are poised to cut more than $300 million from education early this month, and more cuts could come by May. Gaetz, however, counters that vouchers could wind up saving the state money - a point echoed in a 2007 analysis done by the Collins Center for Public Policy. The argument is that it's cheaper to hand out a $3,750 private-school voucher than have the state pay $7,000 for each student in a public school.

Pudlow, however, said certain school expenses will continue no matter the size of a classes.

"The school is going to still be there, the lights will still be on and the buses will still roll," he said.

Corporations earn a credit on their stateincome-tax bills if they provide money to organizations that provide a voucher. Only children who qualify for reduced-price or free lunches are eligible for what are called corporate tax credit scholarships. . . .

Backdoor Voucher Attempt in Texas

Here is another case of conservatives cynically using the plight of the poor as an excuse to subvert public policy for the purpose of subverting public institutions. And one may ask, as Jon Stewart asked Grover Norquist last night, why the free market zealots continue to insist on tax-supported vouchers if the free market is the answer to all questions, educational or otherwise. Is the "free market" on welfare? From the Austin American-Statesman:

By Kate Alexander
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

In a statewide plan to reduce the number of high school dropouts, school voucher opponents see a backdoor opening for using public money to pay for students enrolling in private or religious schools.

The legislatively mandated plan up for final approval today will set guidelines for more than $107 million in grant money for districts, charter schools and nonprofits to improve Texas high schools.

The plan includes broad priorities of better preparing students for college and the work force by encouraging them to take college courses while in high school, helping students prone to dropping out and redesigning troubled high schools. It does not explicitly address vouchers but includes language that suggests they could be on the table.

Members of the High School Completion and Success Initiative Council — including Education Commissioner Robert Scott and Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes — did not rule out the use of vouchers when pressed by opponents Monday.

Vouchers could be useful for helping students who have dropped out of high school to complete their education, Scott said. "Anybody who can get a kid a diploma, I'm all for."

Scott said a voucher program could be created through the Texas Education Agency's rule-making authority.

But to do so, opponents said, would be overstepping.

"It is the role of elected officials to create public policy," said Richard Kouri of the Texas State Teachers Association.

Kathy Miller, president of the anti-voucher Texas Freedom Network, said it would be an end-run around the Legislature, which has rejected voucher programs. She also questioned whether the council has the authority to create a voucher program.

State Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, chairman of the House Education Committee, said he plans to withhold judgment until he sees the final product. Lawmakers did not discuss vouchers last year when they formed the council nor has there been much of an appetite for vouchers in the Legislature, he said.

Don McAdams, president of the Center for Reform of School Systems and a member of the council, said, "If it was the intent to open the door to vouchers, it would explicitly say so."

kalexander@statesman.com; 445-3618

The Monster's Mother

The insult:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

And then the racist insult:

"I have to tell you that what I find is offensive is that everytime somebody says something about the campaign, you're accused of being racist," Ferraro told Fox News Channel.

" 'Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up. Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?' "

School Voucher Research and the Conservatives Who Abuse It

Media Matters calls out conservative columnist, John Tierney, for making up his own findings for some earlier voucher research:

Tierney misrepresented study on Milwaukee school vouchers

Summary: New York Times columnist John Tierney misrepresented the findings of a study of school vouchers in Milwaukee, claiming that it showed "that as the voucher program expanded in Milwaukee, there was a marked improvement in test scores at the public schools most threatened by the program." In fact, the study questioned whether the Milwaukee voucher program actually had an effect on public schools.

New York Times columnist John Tierney, in his March 7 column (subscription required), misrepresented the findings of a study conducted by Harvard researcher Rajashri Chakrabarti on school vouchers in Milwaukee, claiming that Chakrabarti's study showed "that as the voucher program expanded in Milwaukee, there was a marked improvement in test scores at the public schools most threatened by the program." In fact, Chakrabarti's 2005 study, which compared school voucher programs in Milwaukee and Florida, questioned whether the Milwaukee voucher program actually had an effect on public schools. . . .

Opting Out of Testing

There is only one tactic that will stop the testing hysteria: parents who refuse to have their children's education hijacked. From Coalition for Better Education:

We would like to encourage you to read through our site and make a decision to join us. We hope you will not remain silent but will let your local school board and representatives know how you feel about NCLB and CSAP. If you are parents, we would like to encourage you to opt your child out of testing. It is legal and can be done (see below). This act may be the best way to inform education officials of your stance on the endless testing of our students.

Use the navigation bars to the left and above to navigate our site. If you wish to join our list serve, email dperl@myexcel.com

CSAP: Leaving Our Children Behind
Dear Parents:
CSAP (Colorado Student Assessment Program) testing is upon us…my 8-year-old’s class alone is scheduled for 16.5 hours of timed testing. After months of researching this exam and its negative implications, I have come to the conclusion that such extended testing is not only cruel, but also a waste of my tax dollars, a poor use of time that could be spent learning, and an activity that returns inconsequential results for my child, Canyon Creek and our district. My child will be opting out of CSAP testing because as a parent, that is my choice.

Read the rest of Kelley Coffman-Lee's research on CSAP

Please click on the opt out letters below if you wish to exempt your child from CSAP.

Click on the Susan Ohanian hyperlink for two sample opt out letters that she has created. Ohanian sample Opt Out Letters

We have also provided downloadable Opt Out Letters below.

Opt Out Letters

The Opt Out Letter is a form that can be downloaded as a PDF (in English/en Espanol) or as a print friendly form (in English/en Espańol) (opens a new window).

The Opt Out Letter is summarized as follows:

Please be advised that my child, ___________________________________, will not be participating in CSAP testing during the current school year. I understand that the law provides the parent or guardian the right of choice regarding this standardized testing. In my opinion, such testing is not in the best interests of our children since it promotes competition instead of cooperation, and blunts, not stimulates, our children's curiosity. I understand, too, that the school will provide appropriate learning activities during testing times. I request that no record of CSAP testing be part of my child's permanent file.

Please join us in signing a petition calling for the end to NCLB. You can reach this petition at the following website.http://www.educatorroundtable.org/

Want to know how it's going in other states? Paste the link below into your browser to read information from our sister organization in California.

www.calcare.org

Ohanian's New Book

Take advantage of the introductory rate.

When Childhood Collides with NCLB

by Susan Ohanian

published by Vermont Society for the Study of Education

Author Susan Ohanian, by creating a mesmerizing blend of poetry and advocacy, breaks new ground in the literature of educational criticism. Millions of children in public schools across America have been forced to live iin the cruel and insensitive world of the No Child Left Behind Act. This book passionately responds to those moments when the innocent lives of children are put on a collision course with the toxic provisions of a heinous piece of legislation.

$8.95 Until April 1st

Order:
VSSE
Box 26
Charlotte, VT 05445

email orders queries:
msclass@gmavt.net

After April 1st Visa and MasterCard accepted on orders of three or more copies.
Vermont Society for the Study of Education

Lisa Graham Keegan as the New Margaret Spellings?

(Photo from the Arizona Republic)

Back when Lisa Graham Keegan was just another young attractive blonde female contender for the Arizona Superintendency of Education, she was lucky to have a gentleman and mentor like John McCain to rally to her support and to push her name forward. It was the move that would rocket Lisa to the top of the education industry privatizers and corporate socialists that moved into Washington when W was elected. All those delicious discretionary grants! And what a capable grant writer Lisa turned out to be.

Now after some years of laying low following the evaporation of milllions of dollars from some of those big federal grants to the Education Leaders Council that Lisa headed up, Lisa is on the move once more as an advisor and education consultant to the McCain campaign. Will John ask Lisa where the federal grant money went? Will Lisa become the new Margaret if John is elected? After all, she loves charter schools and high-stakes testing for social engineering purposes. Stay tuned.

From the Arizona Republic:

Yvonne Wingett
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 6, 2008 12:00 AM

Lisa Graham Keegan will scale back on her job as an assistant Maricopa County manager to spend more time working on John McCain's presidential campaign as an education-policy adviser.

She has worked for the county since last year, first as a contract consultant, then as one of its top - and best-paid - administrators, at a $175,000-a-year-salary. Keegan will scale back her role no later than May 1, and will continue to work with the county and bill by the hour.

Keegan is part of an unpaid crew of five from across the nation that will advise McCain on education policies, speak at events and travel with him, she said.

"We write for him, but because it (education) hasn't been a really active issue, none of us have had to spend very much time with him on this issue yet," said Keegan, a Republican from Peoria.

Keegan is a former Arizona superintendent of public instruction, and was the architect of controversial education reforms of the 1990s.

She is best known for opening the door to charter schools, enacting new state curriculum standards and fighting a bitter political battle to impose the state's high-stakes AIMS graduation test.

Keegan and McCain go way back, to the 1980s, when he first took office. He later served as chairman of her campaign for superintendent of public instruction, and prepped her when she was on President Bush's short list for Education secretary in late 2000.

Keegan has no interest in joining McCain's team as a full-time, paid staffer, she said.

$3 Billion A Week

Every 9 week grading term an amount equivalent to the entire yearly Federal commitment to K-12 education is burned in Iraq:

The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show. In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the "burn" rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book. Beyond 2008, working with "best-case" and "realistic-moderate" scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion -- or more -- by 2017. . . .

Exterminating Public Schools . . .

From Global Research:

Exterminating Public Schools in America

by Steven Miller and Jack Gerson

The "Tough Choices or Tough Times" report of the National Commission on Skills in the Workplace, funded in large part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and signed by a bipartisan collection of prominent politicians, businesspeople, and urban school superintendents, called for a series of measures including:

(a) replacing public schools with what the report called "contract schools", which would be charter schools writ large;

(b) eliminating nearly all the powers of local school boards - their role would be to write and sign the authorizing agreements for the "contract schools;

(c) eliminating teacher pensions and slashing health benefits; and

(d) forcing all 10th graders to take a high school exit examination based on 12th grade skills, and terminating the education of those who failed (i.e., throwing millions of students out into the streets as they turn 16).

These measures, taken together, would effectively cripple public control of public education. They would dangerously weaken the power of teacher unions, thus facilitating still further attacks on the public sector. They would leave education policy in the hands of a network of entrepreneurial think tanks, corporate entrepreneurs, and armies of lobbyists whose priorities are profiting from the already huge education market while cutting back on public funding for schools and students.

Indeed, their measures would mean privatization of education, effectively terminating the right to a public education, as we have known it. Many of the most powerful forces in the country want the US, the first country to guarantee public education, to be the first country to end it.

For the last fifty years, public education was one of only two public mandates guaranteed by the government that was accessible to every person, regardless of income. Social Security is the other. Now both systems are threatened with privatization schemes. The government today openly defines its mission as protecting the rights of corporations above everything. Thus public education is a rare public space that is under attack.

The same scenario is being implemented with most of the services that governments used to provide for free or at little cost: electricity, national parks, health care and water. In every case, the methodology is the same: underfund public services, create an uproar and declare a crisis, claim that privatization can do the job better, deregulate or break public control, divert public money to corporations and then raise prices.

In the past year, it's become evident that the corporate surge against public schools is only part of a much broader assault against the public sector, against unions, and indeed against the public's rights and public control of public institutions.

This has been evident for some time now in New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina's devastation is used as an excuse for permanently privatizing the infrastructure of a major American city: razing public housing and turning land over to developers; replacing the city's public school system with a combination of charter schools and state-run schools; letting the notorious Blackwater private army loose on the civilian population; and, in the end, forcing tens of thousands of families out of the city permanently. The citizens of New Orleans have had their civil rights forcibly expropriated.

Just as the shock of the hurricane was the excuse for the shock therapy applied to New Orleans, so the economic downturn triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis is now the excuse for a national assault on the public sector and the public's rights. . .

In public education, the corporate surge has grown both qualitatively and quantitatively. Where two years ago the corporate education change agents were mainly operating in a relatively small number of large urban areas, they have now surfaced everywhere. The corporatization of public education is the leading edge of privatization. This has the effect of silencing the public voice on every aspect of the situation.

Across the US, public schools are not yet privatized, though private services are increasingly benefiting from this market. However, increasing corporate control of programs - a different mix in every locale - is having a chilling influence on the very things that people (though not corporations) want from teachers: the ability to relate to and teach each child, a nurturing approach that nudges every child to move ahead, human assessments that put people before performance on standardized tests.

Perhaps the single most dramatic development of the corporate approach was the launching of the $60 million Strong American Schools - Ed in '08 initiative, funded by billionaires Bill Gates and Eli Broad. This is a naked effort to purchase the nation's education policy, no matter who is elected President, by buying their way into every electoral forum.

Ed in '08 has a three-point program: merit pay (basing teachers' compensation on students' scores on high stakes test); national education standards (enforcing conformity and rote learning); and longer school day and school year (still more time for rote learning, less time for kids to be kids. . . )

Where two years ago charter schools were still viewed as experiments affecting a relatively small number of students, in 2007 the corporate privatizers - led by Broad and Gates - grossly expanded their funding to the point where they now loom as a major presence.

In March, the Gates Foundation announced a $100 million donation to KIPP charter schools, which would enable them to expand their Houston operation to 42 schools (from eight) - effectively, KIPP will be a full-fledged alternative school system in Houston. Also in the past year, Eli Broad and Gates have given in the neighborhood of $50 million to KIPP and Green Dot charter schools in Los Angeles, with the aim of doubling the percentage of LA students enrolled in charter schools. Oakland, another Broad/Gates targets, now has more than 30 charter schools out of 92. And, as we shall see below, the same trend holds across the country.

NCLB in 2008 is still a major issue. It continues to have a corrosive effect on public schools. It is designed an unfunded mandate, which means that schools must meet ever rigid standards every year, though no more money is appropriated to support this effort. This means that schools must take ever-more money out of the class room to meet federal requirements when schools with low test scores are in "Program Improvement". Once schools are in PI for 5 years they can be forced into privatization.

NCLB is a driving force that decimates the "publicness" in public schools. In California, more than 2000 schools are now in "Program-Improvement". This means that they have to meet certain specific, and mostly impossible standards, or they must divert increasingly greater amounts of money out of the classroom and into private programs.

For example, schools in 3rd year PI must take money out of programs that helped schools with a high proportion of low achieving schools and make it available to private tutors. . .

Privatizing public schools inevitably leads to a massive increase in social inequality. Private corporations have never been required to recognize civil rights, because, by definition, these are public rights. If the corporate privatizers succeed in taking over our schools, there will be neither quality education nor civil rights.

The system of public education in the United States is deeply flawed. While suburban schools are among the best in the world, public education in cities has been deliberately underfunded and is in shambles. The solution is not to fight backwards to maintain the old system. Rather it is to fight forward to a new system that will truly guarantee quality education as a civil right for everyone.

Central to this is to challenge the idea that everything in human society should be run by corporations, that only corporations and their political hacks have the right or the power to discuss what public policy should be. . .

The real direction is to increase the role and power of the public in every way, not eliminate it. . .

Stop Jindal's Backdoor Voucher Plan

If citizens do not call and write their state reps, the privatizers will have this one done before you can say dirty scumsucker. Good reporting from the Times-Picauyne:

BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Bobby Jindal will launch the second special legislative session of his 8-week-old administration today aimed at spending a $1.1 billion surplus left over from last year's budget and pursuing a widely popular effort to eliminate three taxes on business.

But during the narrow window of time for the session, Jindal is also proposing a surprise initiative that signals a significant shift in state policy by offering government support for private school tuition expenses.

Following a path that only a few other states have taken, Jindal and his top allies in the Legislature want to give parents a state income tax deduction for 50 percent of their private school tuition up to $5,000, which generally would result in tax savings of $60 to $300 per pupil. It also would give a tax break for home schooling expenses.

Although the program's overall $20 million price tag is relatively minor compared to the billions of dollars in the state budget, the program crosses a line that Louisiana has long placed between public and private school support and would create a tax break tilted in favor of those with higher incomes.

"I'm pretty confident it's something that we have widespread support for," said Rep. Hunter Greene, R-Baton Rouge, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee that will consider the proposal.

Greene has reason to be confident. A similar initiative passed overwhelmingly last spring but was vetoed by Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who said she feared "that this legislation may subsidize private schools at the expense of public school children."

With Jindal as governor, a veto is practically out of the picture. But that fact may change the calculations for some lawmakers, and the House and Senate this year are composed of many new members.

"I think it's going to be one of those issues that's pretty hotly debated," said Rep. Don Trahan, R-Lafayette, chairman of the House Education Committee. . . .

The rest here.

Rhee's First Friday Afternoon Massacre

From WaPo:

By V. Dion Haynes and Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, March 9, 2008; Page C07
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's decision to fire 98 central office employees Friday is generating a debate among workers and questions from D.C. Council members about the fairness of the process.

According to several people who lost their jobs, the firings affected numerous departments, including business operations, food service, budget and communications. But information technology appeared to be the hardest hit, losing about 40 of its 50 employees. Former workers in that unit said Rhee has decided that the functions will be absorbed by the city's IT department.

Rhee's spokeswoman said yesterday that she could not specify the departments affected by the firings or provide information about the people who lost their jobs. She also could not determine how much money the firings would save.

The former employees said they are angry that they were let go despite years of good service. The legislation gives Rhee the right to dismiss them whether they are good or bad performers. They also said they thought the system treated them shabbily in giving them a phone number to call to get information about final pay. Some said they are seeking legal advice. The terminated workers refused to be quoted by name because they officially remain on the school system's payroll for two weeks. . . .

Virginia's NCLB Pullout Now in Hands of State BOE

From the Virginan-Pilot:

The General Assembly won't recommend the state try to pull out of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, under a compromise measure agreed to by the House of Delegates on Friday.

Instead, the governor will likely get a bill that leaves it to the Virginia Board of Education to recommend what to do if federal officials don't grant the state waivers from the landmark education law. HB1425 and SB490 originally said that if the waivers weren't granted, the state board would develop a plan to withdraw from NCLB by July 2009.

Senators kept removing the language, and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has frowned on withdrawing. Del. Steve Landes, R-Weyers Cave, said he ceded to the tamped-down measure in an effort to get a bill passed. Both the House and Senate version were amended Friday and passed by the House. The Senate is expected to pass them as well.

"Even though this is a scaled-back version of the original bill," Landes said, "it definitely keeps the issue out there."

Gordon Hickey, a spokesman for Kaine, said the amended bill appears to be more palatable. Hickey added that Kaine "supports the concept. He is opposed to withdrawing from NCLB."

Utah PTA Honored

For good reason. Thank you.

From the Salt Lake City Tribune:

Article Last Updated: 03/07/2008 01:21:20 AM MST

The national PTA honored Utah PTA with its first-ever national PTA Outstanding Advocacy Award for leadership in advocacy at the state level and for the successful defeat of a law that would have given Utah the nation's broadest school-voucher program.

The Utah PTA was part of a coalition of educators that sought a referendum on a voucher law passed during the 2007 Legislature. Utah voters in a November referendum defeated the voucher law.

"Utah PTA served as an excellent model for how local and state advocacy can effectively be combined to serve PTA's mission," Jan Harp Domene, PTA national president, said during a recent awards ceremony in Washington, D.C.

"Everybody wants some money, and nobody wants to get left behind"

Jennifer Medina does such a good job on the City Schools beat that she has surely earned a ticket out of the journalistic purgatory of big city education coverage. I'll be sorry to see her go.

She had three stories the past week that should be put in a time capsule labeled NYC Schools Sad But True, 2000-2010.

One deals with the possibility of limiting the powers for Mayor Gradgrind and Chancellor McChoakumchild (could Council be questioning the wisdom of their monarchical appointment?);

The harshest criticism came from Councilman John C. Liu, who suggested that several of the mayor’s education-policy changes had been politically motivated.

“Mayoral control was not meant to be martial law,” Mr. Liu said.

The words provoked a terse response from Mr. Walcott, who said that policy changes were not politically motivated and added, “I totally disagree with you.”

and one on Gradgrind's failure to follow state law governing the teaching of the arts (he will make those scumbag teachers pay for this);

“We are moving in the right direction,” he [Gradgrind] said. “We will hold them accountable for teaching the arts just as we have established holding them accountable for English and math.”

and a third piece on the City's transformation of school learning into the lowest-paying kind of dead end production work (a guy from Harvard was hired to come up this shameful scam):

Would it be better to get the money as college scholarships? Shouts of “No way!” echoed through the room. “We might not all go to college,” one student protested.

Read them all. Nice job, Ms. Medina.

Charter School Corruption Summary

Daily News: DAYTON — Five charter schools in the city were cited by Ohio Auditor Mary Taylor's office for financial problems in their annual audits ranging from missing documentation to failing to make payments for worker's compensation and medicare.

The audits, released Thursday, March 6, show two — Academy of Dayton and New City School — with budget deficits of $722,600 and $202,319 respectively at the end of last school year.

Three cited by Taylor were begun by William Peterson, a former charter school superintendent over five schools who resigned under pressure last year. . . .

OregonLive: HILLSBORO -- The former bookkeeper of City View Charter School was arraigned Thursday on charges she stole from charity and a separate financial client. . . .Meanwhile, the Washington County Fraud and Identity Theft Enforcement Team is investigating allegations that Wheeler stole at least $64,000 from Hillsboro's only charter school after she started working there in June 2006.

Wheeler resigned Dec. 11 when City View board members began looking into the 154-student school's finances. She offered to repay $64,000, but not admit any guilt, as long as no criminal or civil actions were taken against her. After the offer was turned down, City View auditors discovered another $20,000 was missing. . . .

Daily Gazette: SCHENECTADY — The Schenectady City School District plans a lawsuit to recover money sent to the failing International Charter School of Schenectady in pupil aid.

The state Education Department sent money to the Rotterdam-based school in January to make up for money the city district withheld because it challenged the accuracy of the school’s enrollment figures. . . .The money sent to the school — which is roughly $9,500 per pupil per year — comes from both state aid and local taxpayer dollars.
Ely said the district still does not know the exact amount of money the charter school should have received. He said he knows it is less than $741,000 because the district sent the school a $73,000 payment. “We believe it’s probably less than half of that,” he said. . . .

News and Observer: DURHAM - About 60 students at Omuteko Gwamaziima charter school and their teachers will have to find a new school and new jobs for the fall.

The South Durham school's board of directors has agreed to surrender the 10-year-old school's charter to the state in June because of low enrollment and because too many teachers lacked required certifications. . . .

9News.com: BRIGHTON – District 27J said Wednesday it may make its decision on the future of a much-maligned charter school next week.

The Brighton Collegiate Charter School was asked to come up with a corrective action plan after it had three different sex scandals in two years. District 27J had proposed some revisions to the plan, but the charter school board voted Monday night to reject those revisions. . . .

Parents and Teachers Fear Retaliation from Charter School Corporation

Here's a case of what happens when civic responsibility gets shifted to corporate control in the corporate town of Pingree Grove, the fiefdom of Wyman "Clint" Carey. From the Daily Herald, for Cambridge Lake, IL:

If you feel you haven't had a say in what happens at the Cambridge Lakes Charter School, Pingree Grove will give you a chance to offer your input and ask questions next week.

A town hall meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. March 14 in the Cambridge Lakes community center, 1125 Wester Blvd., Pingree Grove.

Village President Wyman "Clint" Carey announced the meeting Tuesday. On Monday, the Pingree Grove village board named him village liaison to the Northern Kane Educational Corp., the nonprofit organization that runs the charter school.

The announcement comes a week after Carey met with Larry Fuhrer, executive director of Northern Kane, and Jerry Conrad, chairman of the Northern Kane board, to discuss his concerns.

Carey said parents have expressed concerns about the charter school to village trustees. One of the main complaints is a lack of communication between the charter school and parents.

"There's a feeling that there's a frustration that they aren't being heard," Carey said. The village president said he hopes "to get the parents together (to) voice their concerns or their support."

"The village just wants to see a successful charter school," Carey said.

Fuhrer addressed parents' complaints about communication on Monday.

"I don't think it's valid," Fuhrer said. "Will it be addressed? Of course."

Carey has invited Fuhrer and Conrad, who is also vice president of Cambridge Homes, to the town hall meeting. Fuhrer said he'd probably attend, and Conrad was not sure if he would.

Cambridge Homes, which developed the surrounding Cambridge Lakes subdivision, also developed the charter school. Most of the more than 500 students who attend the school live in Cambridge Lakes. Charter school teachers and parents have said they fear charter school officials will retaliate against them or their children if they express their concerns openly. At a staff meeting last week, charter school officials threatened to take action against employees who had been involved in "the recently publicized acts against the interests of Northern Kane Educational Corp." Union officials, labor officials and teachers understood the "recently publicized acts" to be a barely veiled reference to employees' recent efforts to form a union.

Carey said he understands how parents and teachers feel and may try to allay their concerns by allowing them to ask questions anonymously.

Fuhrer said parents would not face retaliation for speaking out.

"I don't know of any parent that's ever suffered any repercussion, so why would it start this week?" Fuhrer said.

Carey said he hopes his appointment as liaison to the charter school will improve communication between the village and Northern Kane officials.

"I can bring concerns directly to the (charter school) board … and also listen and hear what's going on," Carey said.

Fuhrer said the village has always had a seat at the table.

"We've welcomed that relationship from the very first day," Fuhrer said.

Carey also addressed communication at his meeting with Fuhrer and Conrad last week.

"What I was trying to stress is to reopen the lines of communication between the village and the charter and to try to promote more open lines of communication between the parents and the charter," Carey said.

Fuhrer said his discussion with Carey and Conrad was productive.

"Was it a useful meeting? And were we able to look at some things and think through them? Yes, we were," Fuhrer said.

Conrad said Monday it's important for parents, teachers and officials from the village and Northern Kane to meet to discuss solutions.

"It's got some bugs and problems that need to be worked out, and the more people get together and talk, the better chance that has to happen," Conrad said.

Northern Kane is also under contract to run Pingree Grove's parks and recreation program until the village is able to start its own program, Carey said.

Sex Segregated Education Based on Phony Science and Real Oppression

From Huffington Post:

On Sunday, the New York Times Magazine devoted its cover story to the new sex segregation movement in public schools. The same day, the Washington Post published one of the more offensively misogynist op-eds in memory, arguing that as a biological matter, women are pretty stupid. Unfortunately, a reliance on archaic gender stereotypes unites the author of that op-ed (Charlotte Allen, of the Independent Women's Forum) and the leaders of the sex segregation movement, as the New York Times Magazine makes clear.

Charlotte Allen writes:

The theory that women are the dumber sex . . . is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence. Men's and women's brains not only look different, but men's brains are bigger than women's (even adjusting for men's generally bigger body size). The important difference is in the parietal cortex, which is associated with space perception. Visuospatial skills, the capacity to rotate three-dimensional objects in the mind, at which men tend to excel over women, are in turn related to a capacity for abstract thinking and reasoning, the grounding for mathematics, science and philosophy.

Sadly, she is not the only one weighing brains and concluding that women's just don't measure up. The leaders of the effort to promote single-sex schools and classrooms for public school students across the country tell a similar story of biological determinism. For example, Michael Gurian, the author of Boys and Girls Learn Differently! and one of the single-sex education advocates profiled, is the founder of the Gurian Institute, which trains teaches on gender differences; as the Times describes, these trainings are full of brain scan imagery and pseudo-scientific assertions about the fundamental physical differences between boys' and girls' minds. For instance, in the Teacher's Guide that accompanies his book, Gurian (a novelist and counselor whose graduate degree is in creative writing) writes:

Girls have difficulty learning some math, perhaps because they are not called on as much but also for biological reasons. Adolescent males receive surges of the hormone testosterone five to seven times a day; this can increase spatial skills, such as higher math. Increased estrogen during the menstrual cycle increases female performance in all skills, including spatials, so an adolescent girl may perform well on any test, including math, a few days per month.

Math teachers trained in these theories are unlikely to expect much of their female students -- at least most days of the month. Leonard Sax, a family physician and the founder of the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education, also profiled in the Times article, argues that as a biological matter, girls' brains perform worse under stress, while boys' brains perform better, and thus girls should never be given time limits on tasks, while boys' classes should be structured around competition. Who do you think will perform better in a demanding work environment after receiving such a gender-typed education?

Not all advocates of sex-segregated education are brain difference theorists like Sax and Gurian (or like Allen, whose employer, the Independent Women's Forum, is another enthusiastic supporter of single-sex education). However, most schools experimenting with sex-segregated programs today are doing so on the basis of these theories. And it is difficult, if not impossible, to create a legal regime that permits sex segregation in education without opening the door to programs based on shoddy science and dressed-up stereotypes about gender difference. This is exactly why Title IX was written to prohibit sex segregation -- a protection that was undermined when the Bush administration amended Title IX regulations to encourage the creation of single-sex schools.

As the Times article explains, the science behind these radical experiments in sex-segregated education is shaky at best. Moreover, the overgeneralizations that brain difference theorists promote have pernicious real-world effects. While boys' classrooms are being designed to engage students physically, to allow for hands-on learning, and to make education a game as often as possible, girls' classrooms are places where students are encouraged to sit quietly at their desks and to talk about their feelings. Girls lose when their education is based on the notion that their brains leave them unqualified for abstract thought or risk-taking, just as boys lose when teachers assume that their brains leave them unable to empathize or to nurture. This is how gender stereotypes get perpetuated, and why gender-based discrimination continues. Our kids deserve better.

To learn more about the ongoing fight against this and other forms of gender-based discrimination, visit the ACLU's Women's History Month website.

Social Justice Teaching

From Inside Higher Ed:

By Thomas R. Tritton
What does a college president do after leaving the high intensity rigors of the job? One likely calling is the classroom, whence many of us came in the first place. So after a decade as president of Haverford College, I returned to the classroom at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Professor Judy McLaughlin — she one of the world’s experts on college presidents — created the unique position at Harvard of “President-in-Residence”. Each year Judy invites one of the newly departed to join the faculty, participate in a seminar on the broad topic of higher education, and teach a course of one’s own design. The usual courses a former president might teach — Theories of Leadership, Fundraising 101, Navigating Campus Politics — seemed too easy and too obvious. I decided instead to angle a different approach, an idea which morphed into: A710f: Social Justice in the Undergraduate Experience. You’ll find it right there in the Harvard catalogue. . . .

Read the rest, including the reading list and assignments.

ABCTE and the Dissembling Hacks and Plagiarizers They Employ (With Your Money)

During most months when ABCTE is running its Special Offers for 150 bucks off their bogus teaching credentials, anyone with a bachelors degree can sign up for $500 to take a test to become a teacher. With the millions of dollars poured into this venture by the U. S. Department of Education, it is the best hope that the enemies of teacher professionalism have of achieving Reid Lyon's dream of blowing up legitimate teacher preparation programs. So far ABCTE's propaganda machine has pushed their way into 5 states as a route to being a "highly-qualified teacher." All with the blessing and sanction of the Bush-whacked U. S. Department of Education. And now Missouri is their target.

It is not often that I come across something on the Web that make me gasp, but today, quite unexpectedly, it happened. Actually, I gasped twice.

I came across this piece of dreck from retired ed psych professor, George Cunningham, at a right-wing braintrust called the Education Consumers Foundation. In a brief offered up there, Cunningham purports to compare the anti-preparation of ABCTE with the highly-respected NBPTS, which at present represents the profession's best shot at a cross-borders type of national licensure for teachers. Most states pay extra to get teachers who have achieved National Board certification. And not only does Cunningham compare them, but he finds ABCTE superior to NBPTS! This is truly conservative ideology run amok.

In his brief, Distinguished Teacher Certification: National Board of Professional Teacher Standards (NBPTS) vs. American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE), Cunningham cites two studies, one that found little difference in student test scores between NBPTS teachers and the rest of Florida teachers without NBPTS credentials. In the other study, Tennessee student test scores gains were compared between two other groups of teachers, one group of 13 teachers who passed the ABCTE tests and the other group of 42 teachers that did not pass the ABCTE tests.

And guess what--those teachers who failed the ABCTE tests had smaller gains than those who passed the ABCTE tests. Besides being too small to have any validity whatsoever, this second study compares two very different groups than the first study. Whereas the first study compares NBPTS teachers to the universe of other teachers in the state of Florida, the second study compares one group that we know has at least rudimentary teaching knowledge to one that does not. Even if the second study were valid, we might conclude that that those without rudimentary pedagogical knowledge or subject area knowledge, i.e., those who would fail ABCTE, are not as likely to be as successful in the classroom as those with rudimentary knowledge. Amazing.

Cunningham, nonetheless, concludes on the basis of his apples and dog do-do comparison, that ABCTE is far superior to NBPTS. Not only that, he goes on to mis-characterize the process of National Board certification. Heckuva job, George.

The ABCTE study that Cunningham cites has other difficulties, too. The study was supposedly produced by Joshua Boots, who owns his own bachelor's degree in secondary teaching, and who "manages all program research" for, who else, ABCTE. One may add that he manages to massage research there, too, having plagiarized (gasp # 2) an earlier published study, Student Achievement and Passport to Teaching Certification in Elementary Education, by ABCTE (May 2006) (download pdf) and presented it as his own in 2007 at the AERA National Conference in Chicago. Boots did manage to change a few things in the paper, including one word of the title:

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND ABCTE PASSPORT TO TEACHING CERTIFICATION
IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION


2007 AERA NATIONAL CONFERENCE
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS



JOSHUA BOOTS
AMERICAN BOARD FOR CERTIFICATION OF TEACHER EXCELLENCE

Here are a few other examples of Boots's plagiarism, beginning with the Abstract that rips off the Executive Summary of the earlier study:

Example #1

The mission of the ABCTE is to develop and provide an effective and efficient teacher certification process that enhances teacher quality. Passport to Teaching is the national teacher certification program offered by ABCTE. Currently, certifications are available in elementary education (K–6), English/language arts (6–12), mathematics (6–12), general science (6–12), biology (6–12), physics (6-12), chemistry (6-12) and special education (K–12). ABCTE also offers a reading endorsement for certified elementary education teachers (Boots, p. 1)

Compare to--

A vital function of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence is to develop and provide an effective and efficient teacher certification process that enhances teacher quality. Passport to Teaching is the national teacher certification program offered by ABCTE. Currently, certifications are available in elementary education (K–6), English (6–12), mathematics (6–12), general science (6–12), biology (6–12), special education (K–12), physics (6-12) and chemistry (6-12). ABCTE also offers a reading endorsement for certified elementary education teachers (ABCTE, p. 5).

Example # 2

All candidates for Passport to Teaching certification must hold a bachelor’s degree and demonstrate mastery on rigorous examinations of subject area and professional teaching knowledge. Prior to earning certification, candidates must also pass a federal background check.

Passport to Teaching is a four-step process that offers individualized preparation:
1. Candidates enroll in Passport to Teaching.

2. Candidates complete an online Self-Assessment survey to identify strengths and weaknesses in their teaching and content knowledge. Based on the Self-Assessment, certification candidates work with an experienced teacher (Learning Plan Advisor) to develop an Individualized Learning Plan. This plan recommends materials and resources to prepare the candidate for certification. Candidates are not required to take additional college courses, but may choose to do so for preparation purposes. (Individuals seeking Pennsylvania certification will be required to complete additional coursework).

3. To earn the Passport to Teaching certification, candidates must demonstrate mastery on the computer-based examinations. Each exam has a single national cut scores. The assessments are administered at secure testing centers located throughout the world, and must be completed within one year of enrollment.

With a Passport to Teaching certificate, successful candidates can apply for a teaching license in the states of Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Utah. ABCTE is also actively working to earn recognition for Passport to Teaching in other states. After earning the Passport to Teaching, teachers are eligible to participate in ABCTE’s mentoring program. (Boots, p. 2)

Compared to--

All candidates for Passport to Teaching certification must hold a bachelor’s degree and demonstrate mastery on rigorous examinations of subject area and professional teaching knowledge. Prior to earning certification, candidates must also pass a federal background check.

Passport to Teaching is a four-step process that offers individualized preparation.
1. Candidates enroll in Passport to Teaching.
2. Candidates complete an online Self-Assessment survey to identify strengths and weaknesses in their teaching and content knowledge. Based on the Self-Assessment,
certification candidates work with an experienced teacher (Learning Plan Advisor) to develop an Individualized Learning Plan. This plan recommends materials and
resources to prepare the candidate for certification. Candidates are not required to take additional college courses but may choose to do so for preparation purposes. (Individuals seeking Pennsylvania certification will be required to complete additional coursework.)

3. To earn the Passport to Teaching certification, candidates must demonstrate mastery on computer-based examinations. The examinations are a nationally recognized measure of excellence. The assessments are administered at secure testing centers located throughout
the world and must be completed within one year of enrollment.

4. With a Passport to Teaching certificate, successful candidates can apply for a teaching license in the states of Florida, Idaho, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Utah. ABCTE is also actively working to earn recognition for Passport to Teaching in other states. After earning the Passport to Teaching, teachers are eligible to participate in ABCTE’s mentoring program. (ABCTE, p. 2)

Example #3

Study Findings
The analysis contrasts all self-contained elementary classroom teachers whose examination scores would qualify them for ABCTE certification with those who would not receive certification. To pass, ABCTE candidates must demonstrate proficiency on both the Professional Teaching Knowledge (PTK) exam and the Multiple Subject Exam (MSE).

The 13 teachers scoring at the proficient level on both certification examinations, therefore meeting the certification criteria, are referred to as “passing” teachers. The other 42 teachers failing one or both of the examinations, therefore not meeting the certification qualifications, are referred to as “failing” teachers.

Overall improvement in student’s achievement is a combined average of student performance in all four subject areas tested by Tennessee. Students of passing teachers made positive gains in relation to their peers, while students of failing teachers did not make as much progress. The difference in student achievement between passing and failing teachers is a 1.04 NCE gain advantage for students of passing teachers (significant to the p<.05 level.) Teachers who met the ABCTE certification requirements for elementary education produced greater academic achievement from their students than teachers who did not meet the requirements. The greatest difference in student learning gains by individual subject area was in mathematics; passing teachers’ students had a 2.38 NCE gain advantage (significant to the p<.01 level). In addition, the students of passing teachers showed higher learning gains in science and social studies. The average learning gains of the students of passing teachers were all above zero, indicating that passing teachers’ students exceeded one year’s progress in all subjects. Except in reading, failing teachers’ students made less than one year of progress, compared with their peers. The difference in NCE gains between passing and failing teachers approached statistical significance but only mathematics was small enough to report (Boots, pp. 8-9)

Compared to--

The analysis contrasts all self-contained elementary classroom teachers whose examination scores would qualify them for ABCTE certification with those who would not receive certification. This is the comparison of interest for policymakers wanting to use the Passport to Teaching credential as an indication of elementary teacher quality. To pass, ABCTE candidates must demonstrate proficiency on both the Professional Teaching Knowledge (PTK) exam and the Multiple Subject Exam (MSE).

The 13 teachers scoring at the proficient level on both certification examinations, therefore meeting the certification criteria, are referred to as “passing” teachers. The other 42 teachers, failing one or both of the examinations and, therefore, not meeting the certification qualifications, are referred to as “failing” teachers.

Students of passing teachers had substantial overall improvement in achievement, compared with students of failing teachers. Passing teachers also had positive student learning gains in each subject area, while failing teachers showed below-average student learning gains in every subject area except reading (see Table 1). This suggests that ABCTE certification in elementary education is a valid indicator of teacher effectiveness in a self-contained classroom.

Overall improvement in students’ achievement is a combined average of student performance in all four subject areas tested by Tennessee. Students of passing teachers made positive gains in relation to their peers, while students of failing teachers did not make as much progress. The difference in student achievement between passing and failing teachers is a statistically significant 1.04 NCE gain advantage for students of passing teachers. (Statistical significance is based on results from a two-tailed t-test.)

Teachers who met the ABCTE certification requirements for elementary education produced greater academic achievement from their students than teachers who did not meet the requirements. The greatest difference in student learning gains by individual subject area was in mathematics; passing teachers’ students had a statistically significant 2.38 NCE gain advantage. In addition, the students of passing teachers showed higher learning gains in science and social studies.

The average learning gains of the students of passing teachers were all above zero, indicating that passing teachers’ students exceeded one year’s progress in all subjects. Except in reading, failing teachers’ students made less than one year of progress, compared with their peers (ABCTE, p. 8).

Not only did Boots plagiarize, but he misrepresents other research that he cites. Just one example, here, where Boots cites a study commissioned by ABCTE, which is based on surveys with principals whose experience with ABCTE teachers amounted to exactly one teacher each. And it cannot be argued that Boots was unfamiliar with the research he cites, for he was, in fact, the Project Officer of the Mathematica study he lies about. This is from p. 5 of Booth's plargiarized presentation paper at AERA:

Mathematica also surveyed principals of ABCTE-certified teachers in 2006 and found that, as a group, they were judged to be more effective than both first-year and all other teachers in all 11 areas of teacher effectiveness (Glazerman, Tuttle, and Baxter 2006).

Now here is what the study (download report (pdf)) actually says:

We found that principals typically rated Passport holders to be “as effective” as or “somewhat more effective” than “all other teachers [they had] observed in their career” on every dimension of job performance. A small number of Passport holders received low ratings (“much” or “somewhat” less effective), and a slightly larger number received “much more” effective ratings. Based on the ABCTE teachers they had supervised, principals were mixed on their appraisal of American Board certification, with the most common response that of uncertainty because of the limited experience with the program (typically just one teacher) (p. 3).

And here at left (click to enlarge) are the survey results (based on 39 teachers and 39 principals), which make the report text and Boots's exaggerations about the report even more ridiculous.

Any policymaker or politician looking to get the facts from this ABCTE outfit, or from any consulting group of retired hack professors representing them, should think twice and then again about how these "facts" may come back to bite them. These guys are out to supply the cheapest "teachers" to those who need the best teachers the most, while crushing the progress already made at teacher professionalism over the past 150 years.

Technology Group Visits Scandinavian Schools

There are a number of glaring contrasts that stand out in this piece, with trust/autonomy vs. policing/ accountability, and social welfare vs. laissez faire capitalism, as the most prominent to me.

Perhaps it is the privatizers, corporate welfare artists, and denigrators of civic commitment who are the ones who have turned back the clock on realizing a free and democratic America based on equity and excellence? Ya think?

From ESchool News:

Mon, Mar 03, 2008
U.S. educators seek lessons from Scandinavia
High-scoring nations on an international exam say success stems from autonomy, project-based learning
By Meris Stansbury, Assistant Editor, eSchool News

Primary Topic Channel: Cross-cultural communication

A delegation led by the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) recently toured Scandinavia in search of answers for how students in that region of the world were able to score so high on a recent international test of math and science skills. They found that educators in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark all cited autonomy, project-based learning, and nationwide broadband internet access as keys to their success.

What the CoSN delegation didn’t find in those nations were competitive grading, standardized testing, and top-down accountability—all staples of the American education system.

As CoSN officials explained during a webcast held Feb. 27, the delegation traveled to Helsinki, Stockholm, and Copenhagen to talk with the ministries of education in each country and exchange ideas with local business and school leaders.

The group’s goal was to learn how these countries are approaching education, reaching students, involving teachers, and implementing policy. Specifically, CoSN wanted to see how strategic investment in information and communications technology (ICT) was affecting education in the region.

As in the United States, most Scandinavian classrooms are connected to the internet, students and teachers have access to computers, and there is an ample supply of online learning resources and virtual-schooling programs. However, according to Keith Krueger, CoSN’s chief executive, ICT in that area of the world “is supportive of programs, rather than a driving force, and is viewed as important primarily to ensure students’ success in their future careers.”

Kati Tuurala, Microsoft’s education manager in Finland—whose students scored the highest in both math and science on the latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)—said there is a “huge change in the knowledge economy because of the global market. In order to ensure future success, we need to know how to go from good to great.”

She credits Finland’s success to its major reforms of the 1970s, which included an emphasis on primary education for everyone in the country. “That’s the reason for our present-day success,” Tuurala said.

In all three countries, students start formal schooling at age seven after participating in extensive early-childhood and preschool programs focused on self-reflection and social behavior, rather than academic content. By focusing on self-reflection, students learn to become responsible for their own education, delegates said.

Barbara Stein, manager of external partnerships and advocacy for the National Education Association, said Scandinavian countries “encourage philosophical thought at a very young age. … Grading doesn’t happen until the high-school level, because they believe grading takes the fun out of learning. They want to inspire continuous learning.”

In fact, educators and policy makers in all three countries view accountability and assessment far differently than in the United States, delegates said. In contrast to the focus on quantitative measures and standardized testing found in No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Scandinavian officials rely on a system that produces highly competent teachers who use their professional expertise to work with each student and develop individualized learning plans.

“My teacher” and “the teacher” are terms of respect, not only when used by the students, but also by the school leader or headmaster. The teacher is most often viewed as a mentor, someone who has both knowledge and wisdom to impart and plays a key role in preparing students for adulthood.

In Finland, for instance, teaching is one of the most highly venerated professions in the country—and only one in eight applicants to teacher-education programs are accepted. All teachers there have a master’s degree.

Unlike in the United States, which has taken the opposite approach, Scandinavian countries have established national curriculum standards but have set fairly broad mandates, letting authority trickle down as close to the classroom as possible. Local school officials have the flexibility to provide education services according to their students’ unique needs and interests, as long as the basic policy framework is followed.

Therefore, teachers are extremely autonomous in their work. So are students. For example, internet-content filtering in the three countries is based largely on a philosophy of student responsibility. Internet filters rarely exist on school computers, other than for protection from viruses or spam. As a school librarian in Copenhagen said, “The students understand that the computers are here for learning.”

Julie Walker, executive director of the American Association of School Librarians, said these countries see students as having “the filter in their heads.”

Walker also noted that while “the U.S. holds teachers accountable for teaching, here they hold the students accountable for learning.”

One school that delegates visited in Copenhagen, Katrinedalsskolen, has students become independent learners working across curricular areas. Students stay with one teacher or mentor from grades one through nine, moving freely about the building—which is centered around the school library, or “pedagogical center.”

Assessment

In the Danish system, the notion of grading is a foreign concept, with competitive grading postponed until high school. Students are judged in relation to their own growth, rather than that of others, and they are continuously evaluated. Teachers also write individual learning plans for each student after these evaluations.

Project-based learning begins in the first grade, and teachers work with students to structure their learning through a process described by one educator as “dialogue and trust.” Assessment is achieved primarily through a dialogue with each student, as is communication with parents about their child’s progress.

Exams tend to be limited as exit criteria to grade nine, along with a project-based assignment that requires students to plan, research, present, and create around a broad theme.

Finland, which does not use standardized exams, reformed its educational system in the 1990s to remove the European school inspectorate system of accountability. According to Walker, “Students use progressive inquiry and are educated through questions and problem solving.”

The change occurred because teachers felt the system stifled them and hindered creativity in the classroom.

One school in Helsinki, Aurinkolahti School, believes that learning should let children “have fun and know the joy of life.” Educational technology is used to create a community of learners who build knowledge together.

ICT abroad

It’s important to note that in all three countries, neither abject poverty nor ostentatious wealth are manifest, webcast participants heard. This is owing to strong traditions of social programs that provide young people and their families with a robust support system. “Therefore,” explained Krueger, “there is no great digital divide like in the U.S.”

About 98 percent of homes in all three countries have computers and broadband internet connections. The communities in all three countries also frequently have media centers where students and teachers can receive help from qualified professionals.

Because of this high degree of home connectivity, Sweden has decided that the government is not in charge of implementing technology in its schools.

So, home connectivity does not necessarily translate into widespread, sophisticated use of ICT in schools. Said Krueger, “We did not hear expressions about the need to make a deep-level change in the nature and structure of schooling in the three countries … nor did we get the sense that ICT was provoking efforts to reconstruct the nature and role of school in an extensively wired society.”

However, connectivity for all schools is still a goal in Denmark, and its widespread implementation is encouraged through district competitions for winning technology prizes. Denmark also has a national social-networking portal and is a leader in terms of Web 2.0 applications.

Yet, none of the three countries has implemented classroom technology to the scale of the United States. Said Ann Flynn, director of educational technology for the National School Boards Association, “Technology is less visible in all classrooms—technology such as whiteboards, student response systems, students laptops—they’re just more focused on personal productivity.”

Technology tools, such as computers, have been given primarily to teachers as a way of supporting their instruction—but there are few student-focused ICT initiatives, such as one-to-one computing programs. . . .

Illinois Students Required to Take Test They Can't Read

It is interesting to note that Chicago Schools Chief, Arne Duncan, engages here in a transparent bit of grandstanding on this issue. Who is he trying to impress with his "last minute" appeals to the State? Surely it is the Latino parents of Chicago, who will hopefully react by staging a citywide and statewide boycott of this insanity. Did Duncan only recently learn about the fact that the state will require English learners to pass a test they can't read, or did he wait until he knew it was too late to file his protest? Great job, Arne.

Parents of Illinois need to take their children to the street for the civics lessons they are not getting in the chain gang test factories that are preparing their children to compete in that part of the global economy that sees Chinese workers working 300 hours a month for $200? Civil disobedience will prove the only antidote to this poison.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Spanish-speaking public school students will have to take standardized tests in English beginning Tuesday, after the state rebuffed a last-ditch effort by Chicago Public Schools to delay the testing.

Chicago Public Schools chief Arne Duncan blasted the state Monday for moving forward with the Illinois State Achievement Test, even for students who are more fluent in Spanish.

State officials have said they have no choice, since federal education officials said that a Spanish-language alternative, the IMAGE test, is not adequate.

Duncan said that as a result of the state's refusal to delay the test, the district will not use the results of the ISAT exams as a condition for students to advance to the next grade. Students instead will be evaluated on their attendance, course work and test grades during the school year.

Duncan said that on Friday, U.S. Department of Education officials gave Illinois State Board of Education officials the permission to delay the ISAT exam for the English language learners, but state officials refused. . . .

From NCLB to MECA

The difference between hype and hope. From Campaign for Educational Equity:

NCLB Should Ease Universal Proficiency Targets, New Book Argues; Focus Instead on Greater Educational Opportunity

Published: 2/28/2008 10:34:00 AM

With just six years left for all students nationwide to achieve proficiency in math and reading as required by federal law, two leading experts on educational equity say the target should be scrapped before its rhetorical intent “is undermined by the frustration of mounting failures.”

The experts -- Michael Rebell and Jessica Wolff, respectively executive director and policy director of The Campaign for Educational Equity, based at Teachers College, Columbia University -- argue that the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) should be restructured to provide all students with a range of opportunities and resources, both in and out of the classroom, which they believe are essential to learning.

“In place of the impossible goal of 100 percent proficiency, Congress should establish as its mandatory goal for 2014 the more achievable aim of providing meaningful educational opportunity for all children by that time,” write Rebell and Wolff in their new book, Moving Every Child Ahead: From NCLB Hype to Meaningful Educational Opportunity (Teachers College Press, 2008). “The term ‘proficiency’ should be redefined to emphasize consistent progress toward high levels of achievement, rather than absolute attainment of a concrete level of performance at a definite point in time. Each state’s adequate yearly progress should also be judged in terms of the extent to which the achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students are reduced.”

On Wednesday, March 5th, from 3:30 to 5 p.m., Rebell – the former lead attorney for the plaintiff in New York State’s educational adequacy lawsuit – will present the book’s main points at Teachers College, 525 West 120th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, in 179 Grace Dodge Hall. His presentation is part of The Campaign for Educational Equity’s “Equity and Education Forum Series.”

TC professor Arlene Ackerman, recently named Superintendent of the Philadelphia public school system, will moderate a discussion between Jack Jennings, President of the Center on Education Policy, and Thomas L. Rogers, Executive Director, New York State Council of State Superintendents, in response to Rebell’s presentation. . . .

What Educators Everywhere Can Learn from the Finland

Unlike the U.S., the Finns do not believe in beginning the social sorting in kindergarten with high-stakes tests. Unlike the U.S., the Finns are not committed to crushing the teaching profession and the public schools. Unlike the U.S., the Finns believe in the importance of play and personal autonomy.

So how come they are doing so great on international tests?

From the Wall Street Journal (not blocked to non-subscribers):

Finland's teens score extraordinarily high on an international test. American educators are trying to figure out why.
By ELLEN GAMERMAN
February 29, 2008; Page W1
Helsinki, Finland

High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don't start school until age 7.

Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens finished among the world's C students even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and rules. Finnish youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they're way ahead in math, science and reading -- on track to keeping Finns among the world's most productive workers. . . . .

. . . . The Norssi School is run like a teaching hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each year. Graduate students work with kids while instructors evaluate from the sidelines. Teachers must hold master's degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom.

Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. "In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs," says Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000.

One explanation for the Finns' success is their love of reading. Parents of newborns receive a government-paid gift pack that includes a picture book. Some libraries are attached to shopping malls, and a book bus travels to more remote neighborhoods like a Good Humor truck. . . .

Check out the video from WSJ:

Diebold Oops!

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Tuckerism Replaces Taylorism in Colorado Education Reform

Everyone committed to education reform at the beginning of the 20th Century wanted to be known as a progressive. Progressive meant forward thinking, science minded, backwards shunning, philosophy scoffing, utility seeking, elitist enabling, common people patronizing, business friendly, efficiency driven, waste avoiding. A great deal of the inspiration of the time came from Frederick Winslow Taylor's The Prinicples of Scientific Management, still in print today and still hailed by many CEOs as the best book on management ever written. It was Taylor's little book that inspired time and motion studies, assembly line techniques, and the fixation on the elimination of waste in organizations.

His book came at a critical time for the early education reformers, who were busily trying to create respectability in 1911 for a new academic discipline to train superintendents and other school administrators to run America's public school system, then experiencing explosive growth. John Franklin Bobbitt, Elwood P. Cubberley, and Joseph Mayer Rice borrowed Taylor's ideas to create a "scientific management" of school systems, thus assuring that the future of schools would be guided more by economic concerns than by pedagogical ones. A history of schools done on the cheap went all the way back to Colonial times, and the new quantifiable management strategies of the early 20th Century offered a future that would be fixated even more on efficiency. It also set the stage for a long war with the teachers, who saw children as people rather than units or numbers, and who saw themselves as educators rather than production workers.

We can look back from 2008 to 1908 and see, in fact, the same 19th Century economics and science guiding education reform today as it did then. The biggest difference today is that business is not only interested in schools preparing future employees and assuring social control among the populace, but now business would like to assure that the charter school business does the preparing, with taxpayers to foot the bill for what was once a civic responsibility of elected representatives. Today's corporate socialism offers another example of corporate excess driven by corporate feeding on the jobs that cannot be exported. If not checked, it promises to gobble up the civic and civil space required for a democratic republic to exist. And it seems that Obama and Clinton, both, are oblivious to the reality of the corporate charter solution and the enabling that results when urban schools are turned over to mayors' offices to run.

And so the new generation of efficiency zealots are so similar to the ones at the beginning of the last century. For yesterday's Taylorism stands to be replaced by a 2.0 version inspired by Marc Tucker, whose connections to the Democrats promises him a shot at imposing his new efficiency model if Clinton or Obama is elected.

Today in Colorado there are signs that Tucker has found a petri dish to grow his own culture of 21st Century Taylorism that he spelled out in the fear-mongering Tough Choices or Tough Times, offered in a summarized form for the Kappan last year. (Here is the critique of Tuckerism offered by EPI. Read it!!).

Essentially, the Tucker solution aims to use, what else, testing to eliminate waste in school systems of the 21st Century. Better tests, of course!! Tuckerism envisions a P-22 curriculum designed for the corporate state, with testing as the trigger for moving through the system. In fact, 10th graders may test out of high school if they can pass a test, which will guarantee them acceptance into a state college or a vocational school. This test is for the low fliers, especially those who are at risk of dropping out. Solution here: test students out of school before they can drop out. And if they can pass the test, then they will not need remedial courses in college--more efficiency.

Now for those who are more capable and more ambitious, they can pass the same test in 10th grade at a higher level to stay IN high school, thus assuring them a Gold Plated honors diploma and a spot in the Research One universities or the exclusive liberal arts colleges. In other words, students have to score higher to stay in high school, where one can imagine then an unending series of AP exams to get them ready for college--and to eliminate the necessity of taking intro level college courses. More efficiency. Of course, family income (the gold), as it always has, will continue to determine who gets the Gold.

And this is the basis for the big talk of education revolution in Colorado. I am still wondering what happens to the 11th graders who don't pass the test low enough to get into trade school or who don't pass it high enough to stay in high school.

If this is the best that Democrats can do in terms of education improvement, they should never have been elected or they should never be elected. This is The Old Sham Redux, perpetuating the same stupidity based on the same old thinking and inept notions that seriously threaten our future as democratic republic. It would be better to let the entire current structure crumble than to put under it a new foundation made of the same faulty foundation materials, while hoping for different results. Unfortunately, Colorado parents, teachers, and children seem on the verge of a new edifice based made from the same sand.

Here is a bit from the Daily Sentinel last week to give you an idea of the same tired old crap, recycled for Colorado audiences:

Monday, February 25, 2008

The governor’s office and state lawmakers plan to unveil a comprehensive education reform proposal this week aimed at fundamentally rewriting the state’s content standards and standardized tests.

Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, said the bill will work in three phases: first, to strengthen Colorado’s course content standards; second, to mesh the new standards with the Colorado Student Assessment Program tests and “deal with the very real deficiencies in CSAP” tests; and, third, to create a new diploma for advanced-level students.

Penry said the proposal, co-sponsored by Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, and Rep. Rob Witwer, R-Golden, will mark a revolutionary alignment of curriculum standards from preschool through high school.

“It will attempt to create a new philosophy, a belief system that in order to succeed in the 21st century marketplace, all kids need something beyond high school,” said Evan Dreyer, spokesman for the governor, “whether that’s vocational education or certificate training or traditional college.” . . .

And here is a very sensible commentary from the Denver Post last week by someone concerned with children. It reminds us that "quality doesn't depend on doing the wrong thing better":

By Angela Engel

Article Last Updated: 02/24/2008 08:30:21 PM MST

In 2000, Citizens for Quality Public Education published "Senate Bill 186 and The Truth About Colorado Educational Reform," a report warning about the consequences of grading schools based solely on standardized test scores.

Under the leadership of Gov. Bill Owens, SB 186 was passed anyway. At that time, my daughter, Sophie, was 4 months old. The following year, the federal No Child Left Behind was enacted.

Since then, everything the report cautioned concerning high-stakes testing has come to pass: narrowing curriculum, negative school climates, disenfranchised teachers, frustrated parents, and children who quickly losing sight of the value of their own education.

Not only were the Citizens for Quality Public Education correct, but all of the outcomes associated with education reform over the past decade have demonstrated failure. Consider the following:

• Dropout rates have increased significantly. Since the implementation of high-stakes testing, including NCLB and SB 186, Colorado's dropout rate has nearly doubled, from 2.4 percent in 2003 to 4.5 percent in 2006.

• Students now have fewer course electives. A survey by the Center on Education Policy found that since the passage of NCLB and high-stakes testing, 71 percent of the nation's school districts have reduced the hours of instructional time spent on history, music and other subjects.

• Recess has been reduced or canceled. According to the National Parent Teacher Association, nearly 40 percent of U.S. schools have either canceled recess or are considering doing so because of the time constraints of standardized testing and budget cuts. Over the past 12 years, DPS has decreased physical education time by an average of 40 minutes per week.

• More than a dozen schools have been closed down. High-stakes testing promised to close the achievement gap, but instead districts are closing schools predominantly in low-income areas. Cole Middle School is on its third conversion in a decade, now that KIPP has abandoned its students. Before SB 186, Cole was a thriving school for the performing arts.

By all indicators, the state's version of school reform has not worked. Even test scores have remained mostly flat, despite the millions spent on McGraw-Hill tests, curriculum guides, and after-school tutorials. Littleton and Cherry Creek, some of the highest performing districts in the state, haven't been meeting federal guidelines for "adequate yearly progress."

The biggest complaints of parents include large class sizes, too much homework, insufficient time for our children to eat lunch or play outside, decreases in programming, and stressful learning environments. These complaints are echoed in the appallingly high turnover of teaching staff.

Assessments aren't the problem; high-stakes testing is. And there is a difference. In very simple terms, the problems we are facing today are the result of an education system that has been redesigned to serve the state. We need a system that serves our children.

Standardization and high-stakes testing rest on a paradigm of uniformity and conformity. If we graduate an entire generation proficient on a single skill set and mindset, we will have failed because our future will depend upon adaptability, imagination and collaboration.

The danger of this game is that it reinforces the misconception of a failing educational system, when what we really have are failing priorities and policies. We can no longer afford to defer the responsibility of our children to a one-size-fits-all test, or "all or nothing" reforms.

This session, Sen. Mike Kopp will introduce Sernate Bill 61, requiring exit exams for 11th-graders. Sen. Peter Groff is sponsoring Senate Bill 130, establishing a two-tiered system for accountability while maintaining the real barrier to innovation: CSAP.

It didn't work in Florida and it won't work in Colorado. Quality doesn't rely on doing the wrong thing better.

Before adding more layers of legislation, our government representatives first need to clean up the mess they've already created.

Sophie is 8 years old now; our children simply can't afford to wait any longer for the legislature to come to terms with its mistakes.

Angela Engel is project director for the Children's Action Agenda.