ESSA Questions? Ask Diane Ravitch to Ask Lamar Alexander

“I still wonder why we, over time, don’t make every public school a charter school.” He continued, “You couldn’t do it all overnight, but you could do it over 20, 25 years. - See more at: http://www.aft.org/ae/winter2014-2015/kahlenberg_potter#sthash.y5Y6mha1.dpuf

“I still wonder why we, over time, don’t make every public school a charter school.” He continued, “You couldn’t do it all overnight, but you could do it over 20, 25 years. - See more at: http://www.aft.org/ae/winter2014-2015/kahlenberg_potter#sthash.y5Y6mha1.dpuf

“I still wonder why we, over time, don’t make every public school a charter school.” He continued, “You couldn’t do it all overnight, but you could do it over 20, 25 years. - See more at: http://www.aft.org/ae/winter2014-2015/kahlenberg_potter#sthash.y5Y6mha1.dpuf

“I still wonder why we, over time, don’t make every public school a charter school.” He continued, “You couldn’t do it all overnight, but you could do it over 20, 25 years. - See more at: http://www.aft.org/ae/winter2014-2015/kahlenberg_potter#sthash.y5Y6mha1.dpuf

I don't know why we, over time, don't make every public school a charter school....You could not do it overnight, but you could do it over 20, 25 years." --Lamar Alexander, 2013

--> Lamar Alexander has spent the last thirty years working in one capacity or another to realize the Reagan dream of privatizing public schools.  
First as governor of Tennessee in the 1980s, he poured millions of scarce education dollars into an unwieldy and unfair performance pay scheme that gave recognition and pay raises principally to teachers in well-funded leafy suburbs.  

In the early 1990s, Alexander used his leverage as U. S. Secretary of Education to attempt to reward his former business associate, Chris Whittle, with federal contracts to fund hundreds of Whittle's corporate Edison Schools.

As Secretary, Alexander also worked closely with Diane Ravitch to promote the creation of national curriculum standards, and he worked closely with Bill Clinton to raise the conjoined policymaking influence of the National Governors Association and the Business Roundtable.  As a result, the NGA would come to have tremendous influence in shaping the carpet bombing testing strategy used in the NCLB war on public schools.

After 2002 when Alexander was elected to the U. S. Senate, he worked to solidify the testing accountability influence of NCLB, and just in time for the final push for the reauthorization of ESEA, he was named Chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

With the help of his old friend, Diane Ravitch, who helped to quell any fears of and to tamp down any resistance to the new states rights version of ESEA, Alexander was able to push through a bill that now has the best chance ever to attain his goal of complete privatization of all public schools, via corporate charter. 

So if you have any questions about how ESSA will help children or parents or teachers or public schools, NPE wants you to ask Diane to ask Lamar.  What a nice couple they would make!

. . . .I think it is important to stop looking for purity among our allies. We don’t want to be a tiny band of zealots. We want—I want, maybe not “we”–everyone who shares a commitment to children, to the teaching profession, and to public schools, to join together to change the climate of opinion. We can’t do that by demonizing those who approach the issues differently but share our goals. Progressive social movements die when they spend as much energy criticizing their allies as they do with their adversaries.--Diane Ravitch comment below this post.

Standardized tests versus grades

Sent to the South China Morning Post, Feb 18, 2016

Lovelyn Wong ("Assessment serves useful purpose," Feb 15) advises parents not to  be too hasty in calling for an end to the Primary Three-Territory Wide System Assessment. Ms.Wong argues that tests help reveal students' weaknesses and help teachers improve their instruction.

This argument has been used to justify increased testing in the United States as well. There is no evidence that it is true; in fact studies done at the secondary school level comparing grades teachers give students and standardized tests show that grades are an excellent predictor of future academic success, and standardized tests do not add additional information. 

There are, in addition,  plausible reasons to think that teacher evaluation of students is better than standardized tests. The repeated judgments of professionals who are with students every day is probably more valid than a test created by distant strangers and given only once.

Moreover, teacher evaluations of students are “multiple measures," done by different teachers in different years, are closely aligned to the curriculum, and cover all subjects.

Arguments for giving students a standardized test must be accompanied by evidence showing that they do a better job than grades alone.

Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus
University of Southern California

original letter:

Assessment serves useful purpose
Fewer primary schools will be subject to the Primary Three Territory-wide System Assessment test.
This has been done in order to deal with the anger felt by ­parents and the pressure pupils face from the TSA.
One of the problems faced by students connected with the TSA test is that they are forced to do too much drilling.
Schools do this because heads feel the schools themselves are being tested and so they want children to ­improve their scores. The ­Education Bureau has tried to allay these concerns by saying only students’ standards will be tested.
Another criticism has been that in the past the test questions were too difficult. I am glad to learn that this is being dealt with and the questions will be modified. If it is still felt the bureau is still putting too much pressure on pupils and teachers, it must make whatever modifications are necessary.
Despite the bureau’s adjustments, many parents still want to see the TSA abolished, ­however, I do not think there is a need to do so.
The assessment has its value as it can judge students’ levels. And this gives teachers clues about how to improve their teaching methods based on whatever weaknesses the ­students had. If it is scrapped, ­officials will probably come up with another assessment mechanism and it will have its own problems.
I hope the bureau decides not to cancel the assessment.
Lovelyn Wong, Tsing Yi

See Bill. See Money. See News.

 by Susan Ohanian

 

 

The Money

            Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grant

            New Venture Fund

---

              Date: June 2015
              Purpose: to enable the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) to improve student learning
              across the nation by defining, sharing and advocating for effective teaching practices and policies
             Amount: $1,000,000

The Money Traveling as News

February 16, 2016

Nation's top teachers back PARCC and Smarter Balanced 

Over two separate weekends in August and September of last year, 23 State Teachers of the Year each huddled for nearly 20 hours at a hotel in Chicago, Illinois. The teachers assembled to participate in a first-of-its-kind study: a deep and thorough analysis of the two new assessments used in 27 states in 2015 (named PARCC and Smarter Balanced) judged against previous tests used in several states.
Commissioned by the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY), the study found a marked preference for Smarter Balanced and PARCC. . . .

blah
blah
blah

See the   Coincidence:

• The Executive Director and CEO of NNSTOY served as Director of Policy and Partnerships for the Center for Educator Effectiveness at Pearson;

• The Director of Strategic Projects served on a professional development committee for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; served as a founding board member for Advance Illinois (plus 37 links at www.SusanOhanian.org);

• The  Director of Professional Learning is on the board of trustees    Learning Forward New Jersey;

• The  Executive Assistant/Event Planning Manager worked as a Press Assistant on Capitol Hill for United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

In the name of Money, Connections, and Money,

Amen.

Guest Post: To Good to Be True?

By Alison McDowell
Alison is a parent of a public school student and a member of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools.

February 17, 2016

On February 16, 2016, Diane Ravitch's blog promoted a vision statement for the future of Texas public education that had been developed by a group of 35 Texas superintendents between 2006 and 2008. If you simply read the excerpted portions quoted on the blog, you'd likely find the sentiments expressed sympathetic to those who oppose the test and punish system. However, if you continued past the first twelve pages of the document, you'd have been abruptly confronted with "Article 1: The New Digital Learning Environment" that is at its core essentially a pitch for online learning. As a parent involved with opt out in Pennsylvania, I found many elements from these pages and the more-detailed tables available in a companion document, eerily similar to changes proposed for the PA school code that are now under consideration in my home state.

The corporate interests aiming to "transform" our schools know what we want to hear. They know we are weary and looking for hope wherever we can find it. They are not above manipulating our emotions to get what they want. They will distract us. They will speak our language, while at the same time sowing seeds like this "Article 1" that are meant to destroy neighborhood public schools. Pay attention and stay on your guard. If it sounds too good to be true...dig down until you find the real truth.

For the details of Alison's concern, click here to read the comments she made to the post on Diane Ravitch's blog.

Will KIPP's Levin Be the New British Inspector of Schools?

The Independent reports that the British Secretary of Education, Nicky Morgan, is considering hiring Mr. Positivity, Dave Levin, to direct inspections of British schools.  No, I am not kidding. 

As you might imagine, British educators are ready to move with torches and pitchforks. 

. . . .Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, suggested Ms Morgan should take her search to Finland.

“[Finland] is universally agreed to have an excellent education system, characterised by co-operation, collaboration and trust,” she said. “A far cry from the charter school ethos of the US.”

The hunt for a replacement for Sir Michael Wilshaw, who stands down from Ofsted in December, is said to have taken in the US, Canada and northern Europe.

New York City’s schools watchdog and three bosses of American school groups are understood to be under consideration for the job.

Ms Morgan is said to be looking for a chief inspector with a history of forcing through education reforms against resistance from unions.

Her favourite candidate is said to be Mr Levin, co-founder of the KIPP group. The group, which was praised by Ms Morgan’s predecessor Michael Gove, runs a network of US “charter schools”. Like academies, these are publicly funded but operate independently of local government. . . .

TNReady NOTReady

Last week the poster state for corporate education reform showed just how wasteful, embarrassing, and tragically miseducative the high stakes testing fiasco has become.  The $108 million that Tennessee paid Measurement, Inc. to put the new Common Core tests online proved not enough when testing time began and the entire system crashed.

The February 14 Tennessean had this letter to the editor, which eloquently states the obvious:

There is a message etched in the failure of the new online TNReady testing platform: Standardized testing has got to stop.

Testing results are superfluous and ultimately useless. Testing causes the loss of valuable classroom learning time, teachers lose their jobs and taxpayers pay millions for this meaningless exercise in bureaucracy.

Standardized testing does not measure the development of empathy and morality, the ability to persevere through difficulty, the capacity to care and to have altruism for your peers, the ability to process information and solve new problems in new situations, the capacity to think outside the box and see things from other perspectives, the development of integrity and principle, the command over spoken language or the zest for experimentation and discovery.

These are the things our students have lost because of testing. Instead, we are concerned only with test taking ability.

To make matters worse, insidiously placing the blame on teachers for poor student performance on test scores has decimated the entire teaching profession.

It is no more logical than blaming a farmer for a poor crop yield during a drought.

Great teachers have left the classroom because they can no longer practice the art of teaching. There is no education in teaching students how to take a test.

Having a surfeit of data results in a dearth of education. Our children lose. Take the cue that has been sent, and eliminate standardized testing. It is time to bring education back to our schools.

Bennett Williams, Signal Mountain 37377

To the Basics of Understanding Corporate Education Plans

Gerald Bracey's death on October 20, 2009 left a huge hole in the anti-corporate education movement that has never been filled adequately.

I hope you will make a cup of tea and spend a half hour listening to Dr. Bracey talk about some of the core myths that have been seeded and perpetuated by the enemies of public education and the profiteers whose solutions are always looking for a problem.

This video is from 2003 and was recorded at George Mason University, where Bracey taught.

Before You Sign On to Universal Pre-K, Ask This Question:

How much does your city or state plan to spend?  

If parameters are in place for professionally-trained teachers, adequate resources, research based pedagogy, socioeconomic integration, and competent leadership, I am all in.  

If, however, your state is like Florida trying to do it on the cheap with half the resources needed, segregation, poorly trained teachers with scripted programs, and "entrepreneurial" bottom feeders running the programs, forget it.  What you end up with are damaged kids in chain gang holding pens learning nothing of any value, but learning that school is all about taking orders and working.

Clip from story by David Kirp in the New York Times:

....New York decided early to make pre-K available to every child, rather than just poor kids. A study of Boston’s preschools found that poor and middle-class children who attended pre-K did better on subsequent tests of literacy and math. Poor youngsters also became more socially and emotionally competent. In short, everyone benefits from pre-K.

In New York, the percentage of 4-year-olds in prekindergarten is essentially the same in every neighborhood, in part because the city made an effort to attract families across the demographic spectrum. A door-to-door campaign was mounted to persuade parents in poorer precincts, many of whom were unfamiliar with the early education the city was offering.

The make-or-break factor for prekindergarten is quality, and every study confirming its long-term benefits focuses on an exemplary initiative. What makes for quality? A full-day program, staffed by well-trained teachers, supported by experienced coaches and social workers, who know how to talk with, not at, youngsters; a teacher for every 10 or fewer children; a challenging curriculum backed by evidence; and parental involvement.

But quality costs money — $9,076 per student per year, according to a report by two groups, The Institute for Women’s Policy Research and Early Childhood Policy Research. Few states are willing to make that kind of commitment. Florida, the only state to deliver preschool on a scale and at a speed comparable to New York City, offers a cautionary lesson. In 2005, voters there made universal prekindergarten a constitutional right. But quality suffered because the state spent a meager $2,238 for each 4-year-old in 2013-14, largely by using underpaid and poorly trained teachers.

Florida isn’t the only place coming up short. During the 2013-14 school year, the 41 states that provide prekindergarten spent an average of $4,125 per child. That’s not much more, in constant dollars, than a decade earlier, and a little more than a third of the average per-student cost for kindergartners through 12th graders.

On paper, New York City’s full-day program checks the quality boxes. The teachers must have at least a bachelor’s degree. They receive in-class tutoring and help from social workers. The curriculum has been well vetted and the classrooms are well stocked. There’s a spot in a full-day class for every 4-year-old. The city is spending $10,200 for each child, about as much as Boston budgets for its public pre-K, a demonstrably effective program....

Koch Brothers' Gunslinger, John Fennebresque, Arrested at Charlotte Airport

At the behest of the John Birchers and Wall Street hustlers now controlling government in North Carolina, corporate crony and lawyer, John Fennebresque, was put in charge of firing UNC's eminently qualified former president, Tom Ross, and installing the unqualified corporate stooge, who has BS degree in political science. 

Two days ago Fennebresque was arrested trying to take a handgun onto a commercial jet at the Chartlotte airport.

Take a few minutes to watch the video below from a story in the News & Observer to see Fennebresque's feeble attempt to explain why Tom Ross, sitting to his right, was fired for no reason other than to put the Koch choice in charge of public higher ed in NC.

Governor Charlie Baker Misleads on State Charter Data

Massachusetts governor, Charlie Baker, is pumping hard for his hedge fund buddies to get the charter cap lifted in MA, and he doesn't care if he has to create his own facts to get it done.  Latest evidence: he misstated information from the state auditor's report so badly that the Auditor's Office released a statement this week to clarify the situation for taxpayers.  Here is clip:

It had been my hope that this audit would serve as a tool to provide meaningful, unbiased, and complete data so that when this debate next took place, policymakers and the public would have access to more facts. I have long believed in, and as State Auditor am committed to, the notion that better information makes for better public policy. However, the lack of complete data when conducting this audit made it impossible to provide the tool my office sought to develop. When incomplete information is presented as fact, as is the case by this campaign, policymakers are not afforded the ability to make unbiased decisions and the public is misled. The education of our children is too important to base these important decisions on misleading information.