Snow Days

Snow days are good for lesson plans.

Lesson in Democracy 101.

How can we save our schools if grassroots education activists can't endorse or support candidates running for public office?

This in my in box from Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action. The love fest is over. The high stakes have gotten too high.

If SOS can not support Network for Public Education which has political clout and candidates, it is worthless. Stop wasting your time people and start endorsing candidates who support public education like De Blasio in NY and other in your state, city, county, and town.

"NPE – Network for Public education                      SOS cannot endorse it because of our 501C3 status because it raises money and campaigns for individual people.  However, individuals are free to endorse."

Children should not be allowed to behave like children.

Published in The Oregonian, Feb. 4, 2104
http://blog.oregonlive.com/myoregon/2014/02/letters_kindergarten_readiness.html

It's wonderful to know how seriously Oregon takes kindergarten entry testing. The kind of publicity from The Oregonian, proclaiming that "Kindergarten test results a 'sobering snapshot'" (Feb. 1) will ensure that preschools will take firm steps to make sure that children are ready for the rigors of kindergarten, as well as encourage parents to follow strict, sequential standards in teaching their toddlers to count and develop pre-phonics skills to prepare them for preschool.
The unfortunate tendency of children to want to play and enjoy themselves must stop, despite the claims of mushy-minded "experts" who claim that play improves "social and emotional development," whatever that is.
Children should not be allowed to behave like children.

Stephen Krashen
President, Kindergarten Kalculus Association
Author of "Phonemic awareness training for prelinguistic children: Do we need prenatal PA?" Reading Improvement 35: 167-171, 1998

original article: http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/01/kindergarten_test_results_a_so.html

Critics of education: Nostaglia for a time that never was

Sent to the Los Angeles Times

Nicholas Meyer ("Better history through storytelling" (Feb. 2), thinks that "no one learns history (of civics ...) anymore" and blames the"dismanteld" school system. 

The same complaint appeared in the New York Times, Sunday, April 4, 1943, in an article with the title "Ignorance of US History shown by college freshman." The article said that only 25% of the students knew that Abraham Lincoln was the president during the civil war, and only 15% knew where Portland, Oregon was.

In 1930, Thomas Briggs of Columbia Teachers College, who reported that high school students had no idea who Solon was and were unable to define the Monroe Doctrine.  They were also deficient, according to Briggs, in math and writing.

Complaints about school quality go back at least to the 1830's, and even then, as now, critics called for a "return" to higher standards .

Stephen Krashen

Source for Briggs, studies in the 1930's: Hostadter, Richard. 1963. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.  New York: Vintage Books

Knoxville Letting Bids to Install Cameras in Classrooms?

From Tennessee Bid Network

Install Camera Systems in Each Classroom and Externally

Owner Type: Public

Buyer: Telamon Corporation
Website: http://www.telamon.org
Website: http://www.telamon.org

TREE Sponsors Elaine Weiss to Talk about What NAEP Means

Elaine Weiss offers a primer on NAEP and recent gains in Tennessee.  Make a cup of tea and enjoy.

Join the Battle to Stop Corporate Shutdown of Memphis Schools

Action News 5 - Memphis, Tennessee

MEMPHIS, TN -

(WMC-TV) – Parents and students from Westhaven Elementary have been fighting for their school for months. Saturday they took to the streets to get signatures to try to keep their school open.

They are asking the community to get behind their efforts and it's not every day you see this kind of support inside a mall.

TN House Representative Karen Camper said, "It had been tremendous because most people know and understand how important it is to have neighborhood schools. And most people believe in neighborhood schools."

Parents, students and Rep. Camper were inside Southland Mall gathering signatures to keep Westhaven Elementary school open.

Westhaven is one of 13 schools slated for closure and student Jade Jordan was asking everyone to support her school.

Jade said, "I have a great teacher and I love my teacher and I'm a straight A student and I work hard."

She isn't alone in her efforts; more than 6000 people have signed the petition asking school leaders to keep the school open.

Katina Broadway has a special needs student who attends Westhaven and says the community school is vital to her daughters success.

"She's able to get all of her necessary therapies there and it provides a consistent nature, its loving atmosphere. There are other children with special needs there, so that is really important," Broadway said.

Important to these families and important to this community Rep. Camper says.

"This last push is just what we need," she said.

The board meets Tuesday to discuss the closure of these 13 schools.

Elementary schools: Alcy, Graves, Gordon, Klondike, Riverview, Shannon, Westhaven

Middle schools: Cypress, Corry, Lanier, Riverview, Vance

High school: Northside

New York City Channels $210 Million in Corporate Charter Giveaways to Pre-K

From the Gothamist:

Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña made the announcement yesterday, noting that the diversion of funds "will help us create high-quality, full-day pre-Kindergarten seats citywide that will deliver strong instruction"; the DOE also hopes to reduce class sizes citywide.

The move is a big one one for the de Blasio administration, as the mayor has been openly critical of charter schools, which notably expanded under Mayor Bloomberg. While campaigning this summer he announced plans to place a moratorium on the schools. The slashed funds will only affect schools that need the funding in the 2015-2019 fiscal year, and will not impact current charter school projects. "These are important steps that will dramatically improve educational outcomes for our students," Fariña said yesterday.

Charters are not superior to public schools and public schools are not failing

Sent to the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 1, 2014

The WSJ's enthusiasm for the Sgt. Marcus Lutheran school, and for charters in general, is not supported by the data ("The 'Progressive' War on Kids," February 1-2).

An article in the Milwaukee Courier (October 12, 2013) revealed that St. Marcus Lutheran students perform well below the Wisconsin state average on state tests, with between 18 and 32% performing at the proficient or advanced levels in reading. The current state average is about 38%.  In fact, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (Sept. 23, 2013), charter schools in Milwaukee have done well. Research has shown that in general charter schools do not do as well as public schools, even though they can often be very selective in who they admit, and can expel "problem" students.

The WSJ's editorial sends the message that our public schools are failing. They aren't. When researchers control for the effects of poverty, American schools rank near the top of the world. Our overall scores are unspectacular because the child poverty rate in the US is very high, 23%, second-highest among all economically advanced countries.  Children of poverty suffer from hunger, malnutrition, inferior health care, and lack of access to books. All of these have a powerful impact on school performance: The best teaching in the world will not help when children are hungry, ill, and have little or nothing to read.

Our focus should be on protecting children from the impact of poverty.

Stephen Krashen


Sources:

Performance of St. Marcus Lutheran students: The myth of academic achievement at St. Marcus Lutheran School: http://milwaukeecourieronline.com/index.php/2013/10/12/the-myth-of-the-academic-achievement-at-st-marcus-lutheran-school/
Milwaukee charters: Many independent charter schools miss mark on state report cards. http://www.jsonline.com/newswatch/many-independent-charter-schools-miss-mark-on-state-report-cards-b99102550z1-224814982.html#ixzz2rSKZlIva
Wisconsin State Norms: http://wisedash.dpi.wi.gov/Dashboard/portalHome.jsp
Performance of charter schools: National Charter School Study. Can be downloaded at http://credo.stanford.edu/.
Control for the effect of poverty: Carnoy, M and Rothstein, R. 2013, What Do International Tests Really Show Us about U.S. Student Performance. Washington DC: Economic Policy Institute. 2012. http://www.epi.org/). Payne, K. and Biddle, B. 1999. Poor school funding, child poverty, and mathematics achievement. Educational Researcher 28 (6): 4-13; Bracey, G. 2009. The Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/Bracey-Report;
Levels of child poverty: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre (2012), ‘Measuring Child Poverty: New league tables of child poverty in the world’s rich countries’, Innocenti Report Card 10, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence.

Huffman "flummoxed" as VAM Canned for Teacher Licensure Renewal

Yesterday we witnessed the beginning of the end for value-added testing for high stakes purposes.  

If Commissioner Kevin Huffman is, indeed, flummoxed that the Tennessee Board of Education has canned attempts to value-added test results to determine teacher licensure renewal, and if he doesn't have to read the book, he should begin here and here to understand what's going on.  

Story in the Tennessean by Joey Garrison:

In a stunning move, the Tennessee Board of Education overrode Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman and reversed a key piece of controversial new teacher licensing law on Friday, giving the teachers’ union a rare win in this state.

The state board, by a voice vote, rescinded a recently approved practice of using student growth measured through “value-added data” to determine renewing teaching licenses, capping a meeting Friday in which a visibly frustrated Huffman said he was “flummoxed” by the union’s opposition.

The same board had voted to approve the new policy last year, triggering criticism from teacher advocates and Democrats. The policy is still set to go into effect during the 2015 school year, but it is now dramatically altered. . . .

A better way to deal with summer loss in reading

Sent to the Seattle Times, Jan 31, 2014

There is a much cheaper and much more effective way to deal with summer learning loss than adding 20 days of school to the school year ("How to solve summer learning loss and close the opportunity gap," January 30): Provide more access to interesting reading material. 
Research tells us that those living in poverty have the least access to books and also show the most summer loss, and that those who read more over the summer make better gains in reading achievement.
Let's invest in libraries filled with books and other kinds of material that students will read, as well as librarians who will help children find what is right for them. We are living in a golden age of literature for young people; let's take advantage of it.
Stephen Krashen

Sources:
Poverty and access to books: Neuman, S. and Celino, D. 2001. Access to print in low-income and middle-income communities. Reading Research Quarterly 36(1): 8-26.

Summer loss and poverty, more reading and gains:
Allington, R. and McGill-Franzen, Anne. 2012. Summer Reading: Closing the Rich/Poor Reading Achievement Gap. New York: Teachers College Press.
Heyns, Barbara. 1975.  Summer Learning and the Effect of School. New York: Academic Press.
Kim, Jimmy. 2003. Summer reading and the ethnic achievement gap, Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk 9, no. 2:169-188.
Shin, Fay. and Krashen, Stephen. 2007. Summer Reading: Program and Evidence. New York: Allyn and Bacon.