NCLB Blasted

From the Examiner:

BALTIMORE - Two key proposed Bush administration changes to the No Child Left Behind law drew criticism from local public school education officials and union leaders.

The Teachers Association of Baltimore County, a National Education Association member, criticized the White House for proposing to allow school officials to override collective bargaining agreements.

“We do have to abide by the governing laws,” Teachers Association President Cheryl Bost said in a phone interview. “All schools have to respect the collective bargaining agreements, even charter schools. But that doesn’t mean we can’t possibly make changes. We can still work together on some things.”

Citing one example, Bost said, the association might allow longer work days for teachers in charter schools wishing to extend school hours; however, it would have to come with commensurate pay.

“We have ideas for improving schools, adding staff to lower-performing schools, making available the best leaders on instructional and behavior issues,” Bost added. “We’re not given an equal seat at the discussion table.”

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings released the changes the administration wants in the 5-year-old education law, up for renewal this year.

A second proposal would allow students in failing public schools to apply for a $4,000 religious or private school voucher.

“President Bush has clearly decided to invite partisan bickering rather than bipartisan progress,” said American Federation of Teachers President Edward McElroy. “Every minute spent debating a voucher proposal means less time for making needed changes to a law that has been long on promise and short on progress.”

Baltimore Teachers Union spokesman David Barney said Tuesday that the union would support the AFT’s position.

“Vouchers would shift resources and the best students, but what about the kids left behind,” Baltimore County School Board President Donald Arnold said. “The biggest thing we need to do is bring all the schools up to the top-performing levels.”

With school board leaders from Harford, Anne Arundel and Carroll counties, Arnold met with Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., Tuesday at noon in his Capital Hill office to discuss the No Child Left Behind reauthorization.

Arnold would like to see the current law changed to designate an entire school as failing, even if only one small subgroup of students misses the adequate yearly progress marks. Ruppersberger said he’s more concerned about fully funding the legislation.

“It was a good idea,” Ruppersberger said of the law. “But it was never funded completely. For example, the federal government was supposed to pay for 40 percent of the special education costs. That number has been at 15 percent or 18 percent. That puts the squeeze on the state, and then the state puts the squeeze on the local governments.”

Finally a Little Pell Grant Relief

Despite all the saccharine lip service by conservatives about not leaving children behind, they have staunchly stood against increases in Pell Grants, just as they have refused to budge on the minimum wage. One must wonder if the millionaires in Congress will block this effort as well:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30— The maximum federal grant for middle- and low-income students to attend college would increase for the first time in four years under a catchall spending bill that House and Senate Democrats agreed to on Tuesday.

The measure would complete budget issues left over from 2006.

The increase, announced by the chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, would raise the maximum grants, under the Pell program, to $4,310 a year from $4,050. The last substantial increase in the grants was in 2001.

Spellings on the Road Again Hawking High School Charters

Spellings is on tour once more, this time to tout the Bush Co. alternative to public high schools: for profit or non-profit, privately-managed charter high schools that use tax money to fund them. The non-profit variety is increasingly popular, because with it, corporations can received tax breaks for money contributed to the charter fundraisers to shut down public education.

And if states have caps on the number of charter schools allowed? Easy--just ignore the law. Never mind that there is no empirical research to show that these ED-supported alternatives are any better than the publics they are intended to replace. Obviously, the Decider has decided once again, and who will dare stand in his way. The evidence will now be manufactured to support the decision:

The day after the Bush administration unveiled its most detailed plans yet for renewing the No Child Left Behind Act, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings selected a charter high school here as the first stop in a campaign to sell a plan that includes expanding the role of charter schools and revamping high school instruction.

“People ask me, ‘Is No Child Left Behind possible?’ And I say yes, it’s absolutely possible. And people say where is that happening, and I say right here at Noble Street,” Secretary Spellings said on Jan. 25 at a student assembly at Noble Street Charter High School, which was founded under a charter from the Chicago school board. It was her first school visit after Mr. Bush’s Jan. 23 State of the Union address. “I am very encouraged by the innovation that’s going on here. … We need to open up more charter schools where they are needed.”

The administration’s plan would make it easier for districts to turn faltering regular public schools into charters. The administration said it would support local decisions to reopen schools identified as needing improvement under the No Child Left Behind law as charters, even if state law limits the number of those independent public schools. . . .

Accountability for Failing Doctors and Hospitals

Children in poor areas of DC, Chicago, New York and other urban areas have much lower birth weights than children in the suburbs. It is obvious that public health care doctors and hospitals that serve these poor, black, and immigrant early underachievers are going to require new accountability measures to make sure that birth weight gap is addressed. And if they fail to produce children who meet the new birth weight targets, then we are going to have to shut them down and re-open them as privately-managed companies that will be operated from funds that went previously to the failed government clinics and the lazy doctors who worked there. Maybe then we will finally begin to see birth weights increase. And if not, they certainly couldn't be any less. Could they?

Clinics and hospitals receiving federal funds intended for poor patients will be required to weigh pregnant patients in Months 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 and to report these weights the the State. If patients do not meet the target weights that have been estabished by the State to make sure that all American babies are born at average or above average weight by 2014, then the facilities and doctors who treat and weigh these patients will be placed on "Needs Improvement List" (NIL). After five years on the list, the doctors will be fired and the facility re-opened under private management.

Sure, there will be the bigots of low expectancy expectations who whine about other factors influencing birth weights, but these are the same welfare advocates will use any excuse keep their government handouts coming in while children remain trapped in a failed public health care system. No more excuses, bigots!

Still Think Impeachment is a Bad Idea?

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats. . . .

Knights-Errant of the Business Roundtable, Begone

The members of the Order heard an unpleasant banging noise below. When they peered down from the ivy-covered parapet, they saw workers with jackhammers and others with explosive charges that were being inserted into the foundation walls. The Knights-Errant of the Business Roundtable had a new target. The members conferred and offered a resolution:

The Phi Beta Kappa Society

Published in The Key Reporter

Winter 2006

The 41st Council of Phi Beta Kappa in Atlanta was a great success, not least in electing to leadership positions distinguished people who will guide the Society’s future. It was also a celebration of 50 years of our Visiting Scholars Program. How better to celebrate than by hearing from, and conversing with, some Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars themselves? In the midst of all this, we authorized six new chapters, and the Council took a major step toward fulfilling the first goal stated in the Society’s strategic plan: to be a more effective advocate of the liberal arts and sciences on the national scene. That step was the adoption of a resolution, in plenary session, that places Phi Beta Kappa in the conversation about the future of American higher education.

In September of this year, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings accepted a report on that topic from a specially appointed commission, and she very quickly laid out an action plan to pursue its recommendations. The report and information about the commission are available on the Web at ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/index.html. In her action plan, located on the Web at ed.gov/news/speeches/2006/09/09262006.html, the secretary targets access, financial aid and affordability, and institutional accountability for student learning outcomes. These are important issues. They deserve our attention. But missing from the report and from the action plan is any mention of certain aspects of American higher education that have made it, in the commonly heard phrase, “the envy of the world.” By an overwhelming voice vote, the Council endorsed the following statement as a basis for expressing Phi Beta Kappa’s perspective:

"The U.S. Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education has issued, in September 2006, a report seriously flawed by omission of the role of the liberal arts and sciences in sustaining the excellence of American higher education.

"Since 1776, the Phi Beta Kappa Society has upheld the conviction that broad undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences, by all students, conducted with rigor, is essential to the accomplishment of higher education’s most important purposes. Phi Beta Kappa has honored outstanding achievement in the liberal arts and sciences and has elected as members many who have gone on to become the nation’s most eminent leaders in government, the private sector, and academe.

"The transformative and empowering consequences of higher education depend upon strong student engagement with the liberal arts and sciences. The Phi Beta Kappa Society, therefore, urges the nation’s higher education leadership, in pursuing appropriate goals of increased access, affordability and accountability, to advance these studies as a wellspring of excellence in American higher education."

Aid, access, and accountability need our best thought. But we must speak up when national policy initiatives are framed by the idea that higher education is no more than a service delivered to a consumer. That metaphor will obscure the most distinctive aspect of education that is truly “higher.” Education in the liberal arts and sciences cannot be adequately captured in the language of consumerism: it specifically aims at the student’s transformation and not at the gratification of pre-existing desires. Its real value may well be made invisible by the model of mass distribution of standardized goods and services.

So we need to talk about why it is a good thing to have thousands of faculties across the country striving for their own vision, why it is a good thing for society to cultivate persons of deliberation and reflection, rather than persons of didactic or apodictic habits. We need to talk about the importance of public understanding of the nature of science and the nature of civilizations and cultures across the globe. We need to talk about the value of a democratic society in which citizens have the help of learning to inform their choices.

In The Washington Post on September 4, Duke University President Richard Brodhead responded to a prepublication draft of the Spellings report. He wrote, in part, that “we need to promote everything in our system that breeds initiative, independence, resourcefulness, and collaboration. One of these is the liberal arts model of education.” This is the conviction expressed in the Council’s resolution, and we join President Brodhead, an initiate of Alpha of Connecticut, in the effort to place these values at the center of the nation’s conversation about higher education.

NYC Principals Get No Respect

School principals in New York want more money and a contract to offset their miserable existence in Bloomberg and Klein's brave new world of corporate control. This is a world in which principals will replace the traditional superintendents as the new "field commanders" in the war against "the magic and poetry of teaching and learning." If I didn't read it in the New York Times today, I wouldn't believe it. Perhaps a salary increase will make it easier to join the testing Gestapo and rule with an iron fist and a hardened heart.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Under Mr. Bloomberg’s latest plans, announced in his State of the City address this month, principals will gain power but also face far more scrutiny. They will be held accountable for students’ progress and for rigorously reviewing teachers up for tenure. They will be rated by superintendents in the chancellor’s office and also, for the first time, by the staffs in their own schools.

And since the mayor plans to eliminate traditional superintendents’ offices, principals will become the field commanders.

Many principals applaud the concept. Kenneth Baum, principal of the Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science, a Bronx middle school, said, “These kind of empowering moves for principals allow us to make the school-based decisions that make sense for us.”

Yet others complained that the emphasis by Mr. Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein on corporate-style management and data-driven accountability, and relentless pressure from the federal No Child Left Behind Act, were drowning out the magic and poetry of teaching and learning.

“I think the principals as a group feel very battle weary,” said a Brooklyn high school principal, who asked not to be identified out of fear of alienating superiors. “We’re tired. We don’t feel like there’s any real vision coming from the leadership around instruction.” This principal added: “The emotional and hopeful and romantic piece of education is left behind by businessmen.”

Still, what echoed most in the interviews was bitterness over the lack of a raise to compensate for the added duties.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, those hopeless romantics

Testing and the "Darkest Underbelly"

In moving toward the negotiating table for reauthorization talks, Bush and Spellings have shown zero interest in acknowledging the impossibility of children reaching their 100% proficiency target in math and reading by 2014. To acknowledge reality would require change, and that, in turn, would shake loose the linchpin of the Right's school privatization plan that requires a steady stream of public school failures in order to undercut public support and, thus, get traction for the voucher and charter alternatives intended for those who don't have a choice in the matter.

In the meantime, of course, there are the millions of children, parents, and teachers who are being sacrificed each year in order to attain the assured failure that has been planned for them. The choking canaries in this dark poisonous mine are, of course, the poor, the disabled, the immigrant, the minority--the ones supposedly for whom the title of this legislation was stolen from the Children's Defense Fund. No Child Left Behind, indeed.


Here is a commentary from science teacher, Robert Tyrrell, on what is happening to the children at his school, children who are being ground up in this cruel crucible--and what is happening, too, to the attitudes of the survivors who now see the test failures as the "dumb ones" who stand in the way of success:

Campus West School is a kindergarten through eighth-grade Buffalo public school that has had a long and proud tradition in its association with Buffalo State College. The staff is highly trained, motivated and constantly involved in professional development.

Our school is a site for training student teachers, with many professionals using our school for educational research. Our scores for eighth-grade general education students on the 2006 English language arts, math, social studies and science exams are the second- or third-highest in the district for nonselective schools. The scores surpass some suburban schools.

Campus West, however, has been listed as a "school in need of improvement" for a number of years by the State Education Department, as was reported in The Buffalo News on Jan. 11. How could this happen?

Campus West has, throughout its existence, been a wonderful learning center for special education students. At this time, about 40 percent of our student body is special-needs students. One part of the No Child Left Behind Act requires special education students to meet the same benchmarks as their counterparts in general education.

A little-known aspect of this policy is that a school can be judged deficient solely on the basis of the Education Department's judgment that special education students are not successful on state assessments. This indeed is the mechanism by which Campus West was designated as needing improvement. The policy of judging an entire school program by measuring special education student achievement on standardized testing precipitates much more negative fallout than the simple label implies. First and foremost, parents and community and media people are not able to see real successes in the school program.

For example, the percentage of Campus West general education students who passed the eighth-grade English language arts test has increased 20 percent in the last two years. The eighth-grade general education students of Campus West are almost 25 percent above the city average on all state tests.

It also undermines the professionalism of special education teachers who traditionally have judged the success of special education students based on their individual learning plans.

Lastly, and the reason for this explanatory piece, the policy of judging a school by the success of its special education students on standardized tests affects student responses to their educational program. One bright student, perhaps reflecting her parent's comments, was recently overheard: "Campus West is a "bad' school because we have "dumb' kids taking these [standardized] tests."

Much more could be said, but to me, this statement reflects the darkest underbelly of the unwarranted use of standardized testing and provides its own commentary.

Robert Tyrrell is a science teacher at Campus West School in Buffalo.

America's Schools of Institutionalized Child Abuse

A clip from the NY Post:

January 28, 2007 -- For a month, third-graders at one Brooklyn elementary school had only two social-studies lessons.

Their teacher said she was too busy teaching kids test-taking strategies.

"The kids can't tell you who the president was during the Civil War," she said. "But they can tell you how to eliminate answers on a multiple-choice test. And as long as our test scores are up, everyone will be happy.

"That's education?"

The teacher, who requested anonymity, said she was ordered by her principal to "forget about everything except test prep" over the four weeks prior to this month's statewide English tests.

"All anyone cares about now are test scores," she lamented.

Since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 brought high-stakes testing to the nation, city teachers have complained that statewide tests and test preparation have dominated class time. Now, they say, the situation is getting worse.

With Mayor Bloomberg's announcement of plans to crack down on tenure, teachers fear test scores will become even more important than other performance indicators.

They also fear the focus on tests will grow as a city science test for grades 3 through 8 debuts in 2007-08 and a city social-studies test arrives for the same grades in 2008-09. Currently, only two grades take those tests.

"My students haven't done science or social studies since three weeks before the ELA [English language arts] exam," said Jennifer Giovinazzo, a fourth-grade teacher at PS 14 in Staten Island who attended a forum on testing last week.

"We did one period of science today, and I had to review everything we learned from before the reading test," she said. "That took the whole period. Nothing new was learned."

She said her students get prep during lunch and aren't getting additional classes like art. "The kids don't even know what a crayon is," she said.

Another teacher called it "institutionalized child abuse." . . .

When Schools No Longer Matter

If the educational genocide is allowed to continue with the reauthorization of NCLB, how long will unschooling remain a choice for just the quarter-million or so children whose parents have already opted out of the test prep chain-gangs that have replaced school? If schooling is allowed to become even more irrelevant to a humane education, who can blame parents for choosing a different path altogether?

Perhaps when the survival of schooling, itself, becomes an economic issue for the NEA and the AFT and the McGraw-Hills of the world, then we may begin to see some return to consideration of what children need in order to become adult humans, rather what the Business Roundtable believes it needs--more roboticized components of the human capital market.

A clip from the Tennessean:

. . . . Families often turn to unschooling in rejection of what they see as a one-size-fits-all school system they say crushes curiosity and creativity. Advanced children get bored waiting for classmates to catch up, while slower learners can fall between the cracks.

They also shun traditional home schooling because it follows the same mold of telling children what they need to be taught and how to learn it.

"The object of school is to make everyone come out the same. That whole concept offends me," said Chelsea Gary of Franklin, who is unschooling an 18-year-old stepson, Chris, and her other two children, ages 3 and 5. There's nothing a school system could do to persuade her to enroll them, she said.

Chris, nestled in an oversized red beanbag in his bedroom, said he hated reading until his parents pulled him out of school in California in December 2005 so he could direct his own education at home.

"I've learned more in the last year than I ever did in public school," said Chris, who spent the first few months "deschooling," getting used to his educational freedom.

A giant TV, shelves of CDs and a nearby computer loaded with video games are easy distractions in the typical teen-age bedroom. But Chris said he's not tempted because he's more interested in what he's reading, Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things.

"Topics I don't like, I skim it," he said. "It's kind of a cool idea. I focus on things I want to use in life."

Life, he hopes, will mean either being a rock star or chef — that's why he spends the afternoons working at a Panera Bread cafe or rehearsing in a heavy metal band. He's not sure if he'll go to college.

"I want my children to grow up retaining all their creativity and interests they were born with," his stepmother said. " I can't imagine someone crushing that out of them.". . .