A little humor, yes

This from David Corn--apparently he doing a little stand-up these days:

So Bush recently reiterated that he believes intelligence design should be taught in public schools. He says evolution is just a theory and intelligence design is just a theory. So why not teach both theories? Well, I have a theory. I believe that Bush believes in intelligence design because he knows that the only way he could have become president was...through divine intervention.

Communities for Quality Education

What is going on in your state to challenge NCLB? This link might have the answer, and it comes from Bob Schaefer at Assessment Reform Network (ARN), a listserv operated by Fairtest.org.

GAO Investigates ABCTE

A closer look at the history of ABCTE reveals that my outrage at the shoveling of US DOE funds to neocon cronies of the White House has been shared by others. In October 2004, Rep. George Miller's office requested a GAO investigation of the awarding of US DOE contracts in ABCTE's $40 million dollar scam. In the same letter, Miller asks the GAO to investigate another shady deal involving America's leading virtuecrat, Bill Bennett. Bennett received over $4 million in US DOE money for his "online learning company" from NCLB’s Voluntary Public School Choice Program, which was not intended to support the private home schoolers that Bennett's company targets.

The story was reported by Stateline in December of last year, and Susan Ohanian printed both the Stateline story and Madigan's response here.

Wonder what the GAO found out?

Jeb Bush and "integrity that is unquestioned"

The Palm Beach Post reports that Jeb Bush was sworn in on Friday by Maggie Spellings as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board. Exhibiting the sharp contrasts that can be found among siblings, Jeb describes himself as " an aspiring policy nerd" and as "an amateur psychometrician." But there is one strand of his thinking that puts him on the same page with his brother--his insistence on the infallability of tests as the true measure of learning. He is quoted, too, as claiming infallability for the FCAT, the state test that Florida uses each year to ethnically cleanse the losers in the testing bonanza that was once known as school in Florida:

"We're dispelling a lot of myths in our state about how kids can learn... and the core of all of this is assessment. . . .Without an assessment tool that has integrity that is unquestioned, you can't challenge the basic assumptions."

Some readers may find good reason to remain skeptical about Bush's absurd claim, particularly when taken together with less amateur psychometricians such as James Popham, Professor Emeritus from UCLA, who spent more than 40 years studying and developing tests. At a conference I attended recently, Popham described 90% of the tests used now to make high stakes decisions on NCLB mandates as "junk." Read an excellent interview with Jim Popham here. Popham still believes there is much to learned with good tests, but he insists that the belief in tests as the true measure of school quality is folly:

The most profound misuse of educational tests these days is to employ a traditionally constructed standardized achievement test and base the student's scores, use those scores, as a reflection of school quality. These tests should not be used to evaluate school quality. And many citizens think that should be done and many educators can't disabuse them of that notion, because they don't know better.

If Florida teachers were to believe their governor, they would never know better. Fortunately, Florida teachers are coming to understand the lunacy of the state testing policy and the conscious intellectual and emotional genocide that is being waged against children of poverty.

"Scientifically-Based" Teacher Preparation?

"Scientifically-based research" has been the new mantra for federal education grants since passage of NCLB in late 2001. The phrase, "scientifically-based," is mentioned in the context of reading instruction, alone, nearly 50 times in NCLB. In 2002, Grover Whitehurst, the head of the Institute of Education Sciences and final arbiter for federal grant apps, testifed before a Senate Committee about the necessity for federal funding to be based upon scientific data: "Whitehurst explains that adherence to scientifically-based research will be a critical factor in the funding decisions and endorsement of programs that fall under the purview of NCLB."

In fact, any materials purchased by principals to meet NCLB testing requirements must be validated by "scientifically-based research" before Federal dollars can be spent. (The implications of this requirement will be discussed in subsequent posts.)
The US DOE has gone so far, in fact, to write into its rules and regs requirements now that all federally-funded research must be scientifically based (Fed. Register 1/25/05):

We take this action to focus Federal financial assistance on expanding the number of programs and projects Department-wide that are evaluated under rigorous scientifically-based research methods in accordance with the ESEA of 1965, as reauthorized by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

With all of this emphasis on science for Federal spending decisions, and with all the good research by Linda Darling-Hammond and other scholars that demonstrates the value of college teacher preparation for teacher candidates, one must wonder how the US DOE came to a decision to fund a reckless venture for teacher preparation that, 1) has no research to support it, scientific or otherwise, and 2) disregards all of the scientifically-based research that clearly shows teacher retention advantages and student learning advantage when teachers have been prepared to teach by university teacher education programs.

We are not likely to see a clearer domestic case of misappropriation of Federal monies, just as we are not likely to find a more hypocritical, cynical, and selective use of policy used to drive an ideological agenda aimed at the further weakening of public schools.

ABCTE and Federal $$ Stream

Gerald Bracey, educational researcher and, otherwise, impeccable source, points out that Kathleen Madigan seems to have had it wrong: ABCTE is not mentioned in the NCLB Act. In examining ABCTE's own press releases, however, they offer that US DOE began the money flow to them in the Fall of 2001. Their October 1, 2001 press release touts the initial 5 million coming over two months before Congressional passage of NCLB.

Here is more on this interesting timeline:

• March 18, 2003. Paige promotes ABCTE at the National Press Club (3 months before they announce the development of their first credentialing tool), where he says of ABCTE, “It focuses on what teachers need to know and be able to do in order to be effective, instead of the number of credits or courses they’ve taken . . . . It demands excellence rather than exercises in filling bureaucratic requirements.”
  

• June 4, 2003. ABCTE announces it will partner with Promissor to develop the first series of rigorous exams for its Passport to Teaching certification.
  

• June 15, 2003. The Secretary of Education endorses ABCTE (two weeks after the announcement of work starting on the first series of tests) as an approved path to the Federal requirement for "highly-qualified" teachers. Some quotes from the US DOE document available here:
  

The American Board “bases its certification not on whether an applicant has come up through the traditional route, such as a college of education, but on whether that teacher knows his or her academic content and classroom management skills,” says American Board president Kathleen Madigan (2003). “That’s teacher excellence—and that’s ‘highly qualified’” (p. 26).

“Some people will argue that this change is too radical, that it’s too risky, that we should maintain the status quo,” Secretary Paige added. “Well, I agree that it’s radical. It’s radically better than the system we have now, a system that drives thousands of talented people away from our classrooms” (p. 27).

• September 25, 2003. ABCTE announces the awarding of a 35 million dollar grant from US DOE.
  

ABCTE Written into NCLB Legislation?

In poking around in the California's State website hoping to find out more on the fake credential story in the LA Times yesterday, I came across more interesting history on ABCTE, the sham operation designed to introduce "market forces" to teacher preparation. It seems the Dr. Kathleen Madigan, President of ABCTE has been pitching her goods in California as well. This report on Madigan's latest visit is from the State's website. It is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the self-reported claim that ABCTE was approved in NCLB before they ever offered their first Internet test to certify a teacher. From the California Commission for Teacher Certification (CCTC), August 2004:

PSC 4A-1
Update on the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) Passport to TeachingSM Certification Program

Introduction

In 2003, the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (American Board or ABCTE) began offering a standards based approach using individualized learning programs and set of rigorous examinations for potential teachers seeking a national level license. The Professional Teaching Knowledge exam and the Elementary Education exam were first administered in September 2003. The English Language Arts and Math content exams were administered in February 2004. ABCTE is recognized in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) as an approved provider (Title II, Part A, National Activities Section). Teacher candidates who meet ABCTE standards are considered "Highly Qualified" by the federal government. The information provided in this item briefly describes the four exams that the American Board developed and currently administers.

The next section is key, too. Here, Madigan provides more on the timeline as to when ABCTE (or what was planned to be ABCTE) landed its first $5 million from the Federal treasury. This is consistent with her claim that ABCTE was written into NCLB, because the date of the initial Dept. of Ed. grant was Sept. 2001, before final passage of the Act. Also pointed out here in the State's summary of Madigan's informative presentation is the fact that ABCTE sucked another $35 million dollars($35,000,000) in 2003 from the US Dept. of Education to continue its fake preparation of teacher candidates for another 5 years. Where could all this money be going? To improve teacher quality? Or to maintain a website and line the pockets of the education reform profiteers in Washington? More from Madigan's to the CCTC, August 2004:

History of the American Board

Created in 2001 through a partnership between the Education Leaders Council (ELC) and the National Council on Teacher Quality, the American Board was developed to create options in teacher certification.

The National Council on Teacher Quality received a $5 million dollar, two-year grant from the United States Department of Education's (USDOE) Fund for the Improvement of Education (September, 2001) for the purpose of creating the American Board. The American Board used a standards based approach to teacher certification including preparation resources, online advisors, and computer based teacher exams.

Passing scores were adopted for the Elementary Education (K-6), English (6-12), Mathematics (6-12) and the PTK exams in 2003. In 2003-04, the USDOE awarded the American Board an additional five-year, $35 million dollar grant. This grant is intended to "implement innovative teacher recruitment strategies, expand subject area certifications, develop preparation resources, create mentoring programs using technology and fully evaluate the effectiveness of this approach" (Test Development Process: Executive Summary, June 2004). At this time, federal funding is ABCTE's primary source of revenue.

Currently four states, Florida, Idaho, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania have considered and adopted the ABCTE Passport to TeachingSM as an alternative route to certification. The Florida State Board of Education and the New Hampshire State Board of Education voted in June 2004 to accept the American Board, Passport to TeachingSM as a new route to full certification for the state's public school teachers.

Florida, imagine that!

This part of the NCLB story is consistent with the other elements of the emerging travesty and tragedy that clearly show NCLB as the manufactured problem that would be solved by the testing/textbook industry and the corporate welfare artists on the MacSchool Boards of Directors and conservative think tanks with their self-published fake research. Their advisors, too, sit on "non-partisan" and "non-profit" Boards of the Education Leaders Council (is that Gene Hickok's name I see there!), the National Council on Teacher Quality (chaired by Andy Rotherham, is it?), and other professional-sounding hack outfits who sell their services to the testing-technological complex.

Is there a real education reporter out there interested in this story? Just one?

Highly Qualified Fake Teachers in Urban Areas

There is a story today in the LA Times about the fake credentialing that is going on in L.A. for teachers who work in poor urban schools. Apparently this is being done to circumvent the "highly-qualified" teacher requirements of NCLB.

These guys should have checked out a few Web sites--there are fake ways to become "highly-qualified" that are endorsed by the U. S. Department of Education. When the NCLB wizards included their demand for highly-qualified teachers in every school by 2005, they knew, of course, that their demand would create a big problem that would be solved by offering alternate routes for teacher certification. Falling short of the bombing that NICHD Director, Reid Lyon, wanted for the colleges of education, this cynical scheme offered a chance to have teacher candidates avoid the "liberal agenda of teacher education programs," while offering a chance for some of the White House's cronies in the ed biz to engage in some real education reform profiteering. The American Board for Certification of Teacher Education is one such opportunity for teacher candidates and uncertified teachers to become credentialed and certified without ever taking an education course.

ABCTE offers certification via Internet test-taking, which is handled by Pearson Education, a division of McGraw-Hill. Credentials are offered for beginning and “master” teachers, and neither credential requires any coursework in education. ABCTE requires a Bachelors Degree and $500 for the Internet test, and 100 dollar discount coupons are often available on the Web site.

The Back to Basics Redux crowd even got the Dept. of Education to provide grant money to help set up their venture, and they did something, who knows, to get verbal support by former Sec. Paige for ABCTE. In the DOE Secretary’s 2003 Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge (pdf), the Secretary enthused: “States could decide that individuals who pass the relevant sections of the American Board assessment would be considered fully certified to teach, regardless of where they learned the important knowledge and skills that were tested” (p. 5).

Did I say this outfit was started by by Eugene Hickok, Paige's Deputy Secretary, and other charter members of the Education Leaders Council. Hickok also happens to be a former Commissioner of Education for Pennsylvania, one of the four states that now accept ABCTE credentials to fulfill regular teacher certification requirements. Imagine that!

Drill and Kill Preschools

Here is a very good article, "A Dream of Preschool for All," from the New York Times News Service that deserves wide circulation, although Google has it only on AZ Central. Not only does it lay out a convincing argument for universal preschool, but it also provides an historical context for the predictable disagreement today on how those preschools should be conducted. Professor Zigler, Headstart's first director notes:

"Ever since Sputnik went up," recalls Zigler, decision makers have vacillated between emphasizing cognitive skills "and focusing on the whole child." The skill-and-drill mentality fostered by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which represents the most recent swing of the pendulum, has reached preschool. Many prekindergartens now stress reading readiness. And because there are only so many hours in a preschool day, they devote less time to encouraging creativity or motivating 4-year-olds to work and play well with others. It is in Head Start that this shift - away from social-emotional development and problem-oriented learning, toward decoding language and numbers - is most fiercely contested. The stakes are high. The outcome will not only mold Head Start but also affect the nature of states' prekindergarten initiatives.

What is not addressed here is the historical precedent for two both models to be used, with the choice depending upon the family income of the children who are to be enrolled. In the early development of the kindergarten, we saw the use of the more harsh and demanding model in the poor urban areas, whereas the caring, whole child approach was reserved for the middle and upper classes.

The neocon traditionalists of today want nothing more than the elite, Protestant, captitalist-patriots of old. They want a controllable work force that doesn't ask questions, they want to maintain white privilege even with the inevitability of an emerging brown majority, and they want these things more than ever. Is there any doubt, then, why this round of back-to-basics appears more like a bare-knuckled assault on the poor and working classes than it does an education reform. The most disturbing part is that many of these "reform" advocates are so ideologically blinded that they cannot see the racism that is at the heart of their social engineering plans. The enraging part, of course, is that the cynical manipulators who are pulling the political strings know exactly what they are doing.

NCLB and Military Recruiters

One little known part of the 600+ pages of the No Child Left Behind Act allows military recruiters access to high school student records, SS numbers, etc. If you have a child in high school or about to enter high school, read this advice published here in the New York Daily News.