New York teacher Katie Lapham shared the following letter with me, which she sent today. I believe it reflects the feelings of many educators caught in the middle between Common Core hopes and testing realities.
New York State Board of Regents and Dr. John B. King, Jr., Commissioner of Education and President of the University of the State of New York

New York State Education Department

89 Washington Avenue

Albany, New York 12234
Dear New York State Board of Regents and Dr. John B. King, Jr.,
I am an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher at a Title I elementary school in New York City. This is my seventh year of teaching in the same school. Prior to becoming a teacher, I worked in sales for textbook publishers. In defining what it means to be a teacher, I have always held the belief that, first and foremost, I must serve as an advocate for all of my students. It is this deep-seated conviction that has inspired me to write to you.
Last week, I administered the grade 5 Common Core English Language Arts (ELA) test to a group of 10-year-old

Today, Gotham Schools saw fit to run a "principled" defense of standardized testing. As corporations continue to massively profit off of our children, as Pearson makes preposterous, indefensible and humiliating errors, someone at Gotham decided this was a good time to run this piece.

First of all, it's interesting to read the writer's claims:

I have no stake in testing itself, beyond that of a taxpayer and an educator privileged to work with teachers and schools. 

And then there's this:

One of the amazing things I get to do for a living is help schools design performance-based assessments that ask students to do something with what they have learned, not just recall what they’ve learned.  

While that's a qualifier, it's pretty clear to me that this is someone who designs assessments for a living. And last time I looked, tests were assessments. Furthermore, one of the things I keep hearing about Common Core is that it promotes thinking skills beyond mere recall. And it better, since kids taking it this year are largely unprepared for it, and likely to fail in huge numbers. (And let's not even mention how much money there will be in 

UPDATE: Because of protests from parents and his State board of education, John White, the state superintendent of Louisiana,  just announced he was pulling all the state’s student data out of inBloom.  Louisiana was the only state sharing all its confidential student data statewide except for NY with this controversial corporation called inBloom Inc., and the only other state that we know of that had already begun to send them this sensitive data, which in turn planned to provide it … →

I recently had the privilege of chatting with one of the two brave Mandeville High School students that participated in a BESE meeting about student privacy at the Louisiana Department of Education on Wednesday the 17^th. (I only wish I could have been there myself but was not able to get away at that time.) However I feel like was more than adequately represented by these two young adults. Below is the statement made at this meeting by Rachael Sachs, a 16 year old student from Mandeville High School.

How would you feel if your house got broken into and all of your personal belongings were stolen? And later when you went on the Internet, you discovered that your belongings were being sold to the highest bidder?

How you would feel then, is how we feel now. Our personal information is being sold to anybody who has money, whether it is a company, or a predator, not to mention hackers. We are being put in danger.

As Illinois legislators continue their attempts to pillage active and retired teacher pension systems, please keep in mind that the Liberal Democrats led by 28 year Speaker of the House Mike Madigan is following the same program being used by Tea Party Gov. Rick Scott in Florida. Legalized corruption has no party affiliation.
A family court judge whose wife is a lobbyist and friend of Rep. Diane Nekritz (D) made a ruling stating that healthcare is not a benefit – or some such legalese statement – that just set a precedent that attempts to redefine the basis for many laws that protect public employees. His attempt to redefine the historical definition will be brought to higher courts.
Pension Advocate and retired Illinois teacher, Jane Artabasy, has a superb letter-to-the-editor in today’s Chicago Tribune.  HERE
 The PI

Some students from Gage Park High School are planning to boycott part of the Prairie State Achievement Examination (PSAE).
About 80 Gage Park students walked out of a NAEP exam earlier this year. NAEP is a national exam used to compare districts and states across the U.S. The students objected to having their time taken up with tests that had no bearing on their studies, at a time when some students didn’t even feel safe inside the school.
A WBEZ report quotes the students saying they are sick of test prep and opposed to the use of PSAE test scores to evaluate teachers, principals and schools.
The danger of the PSAE boycott is that the exam is a state graduation requirement — students don’t have to 

With everything else going on these days, I’ve neglected the very important story about ISBE’s proposal to lift class size caps on special education classes and on the percentage of special education students that can be served in regular education classes.
ISBE claims that removing this critical protection for special needs students is necessary to help districts balance their budgets and to make local determinations about the best way to serve  the children.
Comments on this proposal are being accepted at [email protected] until the end of the day today. I apologize for the last minute notice. Please reference proposed Amendments to 23 Ill Adm Code 226; 37 Ill Reg 2637.
Here’s what I just sent to ISBE:
Parents United for Responsible Education opposes the proposed rules changes to eliminate class size caps for special education programs and the percentages of special education students allowed in a regular classroom.
The fact that districts like Chicago have consistently failed to meet these standards and are now crying poor is 

At the rate the state is going, teachers will end up being trained before the English curriculum is even in place, and instruction would start before the new textbooks are in anyone’s hands. Yet if the school reform movement has its way, teachers will be evaluated in part based on how well their students do on the very different standardized tests that go with the new curriculum. Reflecting the concern that teachers throughout the state have been expressing, one California teacher recently tweeted that within a couple of years, “we start testing on standards we’re not teaching with curriculum we don’t have on computers that don’t exist.”

Teachers justifiably fret that they’re being set up for failure. Schools worry about finding the money to make all this happen…

…Experts are divided over the value of the new curriculum standards, which might or might not lead students to the deeper reading, reasoning and writing skills that were intended. But on this much they agree: The curriculum will fail if it isn’t carefully implemented with meaningful tests that 

1.  Why are they backtracking (speaking of state officials)?
She said the reasons that some oppose the standards are:

In most cases, opponents of the standards argue three points: That the state’s own standards are already rigorous, that the effectiveness of the Common Core standards is not proven and that national standards diminish the autonomy of state and local education officials.

Actually I’d also add the process was flawed, there are problems with the content and the federal involvement is illegal.
2.  What will it cost?
Excellent question – we still are not completely sure.  She made the following point that I have in discussions 

On Friday, April 19, I wrote a post regarding John White’s supposedly pulling out of student data storage with the Gates-and-Murdoch-associated nonprofit, InBloom. Since that time, I added an update to my original post, which I will reproduce here for those who might have missed it:

Last year, Florida State Senators failed to pass a parent trigger bill because not a single parent group in the state supported the bill. Parents came from across the state to testify against the legislation. They accurately saw the bill as a transparent effort to trick parents into handing their public school over to a charter corporation.
The bill comes up for a vote in the next few days. Jeb Bush and his surrogates are working hard to get the bill 

Michelle Rhee was recently invited to meet with the Los Angeles Times editorial board.
The interview occurred after John Merrow published his bombshellpost about the mysterious memo, the one showing that Rhee was informed about the likelihood of widespread cheating and did nothing about it. Rhee forgot about the cheating memo or didn’t think it important.
In the same post on his blog, Merrow said that the public schools were worse off after the Rhee-Henderson years 

“Do students have a responsibility to use what they’ve learned in school to address societal plights?”
A professor recently posed this question. I struggled to answer. My logic is that if you aren’t teaching us to
address, analyze, and solve problems — you can’t expect us to do any of the above.
If colleges and universities, or society, are asking students to use what we’ve learned in the classroom to
help solve the problems which we all face, then why are they drill, kill, bubble filling us?
Our systems shouldn’t be slanted towards memorizing and testing. Instead they should be centered on
critical thinking, analyzing, and problem solving. Testing has become such an important component to
education from K-12 and through undergraduate (depending on your school/program) that the space
for problem solving, logic, and critical redesign have been squeezed, or worse, pushed out. Whether you
believe in charter schools or public education as the solution — neither should be structured on learning
as a binary system. If you want problem solvers, thinking mustn’t be void of the classroom.
If someone goes to plumbing school, but is taught how to be an electrician would you ask that person to

April 22 Chat – Green Schools