Live Long and Prosper...

THERE'S NO EVIDENCE

We’re onto the phony education reformers: Charter school charlatans and faux reformers take it on the chin: After years of attacks on teachers and public education, Americans are catching up to the real story in our schools

If I were an optimist I would say that this article is a good sign...showing that the general public is finally catching on to the damage done by "reform" to America's public education. Perhaps it's because I live in the super-"reformist" state of Indiana – near the super-"reformist" states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, and the super-"reformist" city of Chicago – but I see continued, if not stronger inroads made by privatizers against a fully funded public education system. The attack is slowly killing public education...

...comments made by establishment presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will reverberate through the election in 2016. Specifically, at a town hall held in South Carolina, broadcast by C-SPAN, Clinton responded to a question about charter schools by saying, “Most charter schools, I don’t want to say every one, but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids. Or if they do, they don’t keep them.” A week or so later, Clinton transgressed the status quo again by remarking, in a conversation with members of the American Federation of Teachers, “I have for a very long time also been against the idea that you tie teacher evaluation and even teacher pay to test outcomes. There’s no evidence. There’s no evidence.”

FAILURE IN MICHIGAN: DETROIT

Here are two versions of the same story...and both give the same information about a city which has abandoned its children. This is not just a problem for Detroit...it's a problem with our nation and is happening in other places as well. When will the nation as a whole understand that our future depends on the way we treat our children. Carl Sagan said,

What kind of a future do we build for the country if we raise all these kids as disadvantaged, as unable to cope with the society, as resentful for the injustice served up to them. This is stupid.

We are one of only three wealthy nations in the world who spend more money to educate the children of the wealthy than we do to educate the children of the poor.

How bad are conditions in Detroit public schools? This appalling.

The odorous smell of mold and mildew hits you like a brick wall when you step through the front doors at Spain Elementary-Middle School in Detroit.

I have been at Spain for 19 years, first as a first-grade teacher, then, after earning a master’s degree in counseling, as a school counselor. When I first started, it was a school any city would be proud to have in its district. Today, it’s the poster child for neglect and indifference to a quality teaching and learning environment for our 500 students. The gym is closed because half of the floor is buckled and the other half suffered so much rainwater damage from the dripping ceiling that it became covered with toxic black mold. Instead of professionally addressing the problem, a black tarp simply was placed over the entire area like a Band-Aid. That area of the school has been condemned.

The once beautiful pool sits empty because no one has come to \fix it. The playground is off-limits because a geyser of searing hot steam explodes out of the ground. What do our kids do for exercise with no gym, playground or pool? They walk or run in the halls. Seriously. Our pre-K through eighth graders move like mall walkers.

Exposed wires hang from missing ceiling tiles. Watermarks from leaks abound. Kids either sit in freezing classrooms with their coats on or strip off layers because of stifling heat.

How can you teach or learn in conditions like these?

Detroit Public Schools: Beyond a State of Emergency

Since 1999, the state has been “taking over” Detroit Public Schools. Since 2009, Detroit’s schools have been subject to a stream of emergency managers who move in for just under 18 months, do not answer to voters, and can basically do what they want without consequence.

FAILURE IN MICHIGAN: FLINT

This Is What Happens To Humans When They Are Exposed To Too Much Lead

Flint, Michigan has become ground zero for the battle against America's poor. Democracy was canceled, a state sponsored dictator was imposed upon the people, and, through neglect and shortsightedness the families of Flint were poisoned. The dictator, after doing his damage, has now moved to Detroit, to manage the public schools.

This isn't specifically about Flint...just about what happens when an entire city has been poisoned.

Infants and children exposed to lead may suffer in various ways, including delayed puberty, speech impairment, high blood pressure, hearing loss, decreased muscle and bone growth, kidney damage, and a weakened immune system. Breastfed infants are also at risk if there is lead in their mother’s bloodstreams.

Equally important, lead also affects children’s brains and nervous systems. Those exposed to lead at a young age may suffer from a coma, convulsions, or even death. Children who survive serious lead poisoning may be left with mental retardation and changes in behavior, like a shortened attention span or increased antisocial behavior.

Lead Exposure in Children

DIVERSITY IN TEACHER MAKEUP HELPS KIDS

Bright black students taught by black teachers are more likely to get into gifted-and-talented classrooms

Diversity in our teaching force is essential.

A better, quicker solution to reducing the racial gap in gifted classrooms, according to Grissom, is to test every child in the school system for giftedness, so that you’re not relying on subjective humans to decide whom to test. Education geeks call it “universal screening.”

Indeed, after Broward Country, Florida, adopted universal screening in 2005, the number of Hispanic students in gifted programs increased by 130 percent and the number of black students by 80 percent. Low-income students increased by 180 percent. But it proved expensive to test everyone, and the district stopped testing all children in 2011. The number of disadvantaged students in gifted classrooms fell back to pre-2005 levels...

People often say the solution to our education problems isn’t more money. But in this case, it might be.

VAM

Fact Sheet: Value-Added Measurement (VAM)

Thanks to Parents Across America for this well thought out and comprehensive information sheet about the evaluation of teachers using student test scores. VAM is built on junk-science and tries to put a number on something that can't be measured by numbers – the impact that a caring adult has on a child. It also doesn't even attempt to include other valuable aspects of teaching such as the ability to motivate and inspire students.

Now is the time to write to your state legislators and urge them to end this practice. If you're an Indiana resident you can find your legislators at iga.in.gov/legislative/2014/legislators/

The proliferation of high-stakes standardized tests has had many negative side effects. Overtesting has led to increased stress, a narrowed curriculum and widespread teaching to the test. It has caused students to lose interest in school and learning, driven excellent teachers from the profession and discouraged young people from pursuing teaching careers. It has fueled the school-to-prison pipeline, sparked cheating scandals, and diverted time, energy and resources from other educational goals. These negative effects have been especially evident in schools that serve low-income children of color. Even if VAM ratings could be calculated accurately, the limited information they provide is simply not worth the effort or the consequences.

MEMO FROM THE REAL WORLD

School Testing Makes My Daughter Feel Stupid

Here's a story from the mom of an ADHD and Learning Disabled child...and the damaging effect of testing. Specifically, the piece is about DIBELS, and how difficult it is for her child to focus and succeed. The child says "I'm stupid," a common response from students with learning challenges when they are faced with impossible tasks and tests.

At the end of the article the mom says, "DIBELS has affected my home life and my daughter’s self-confidence. I know that there are many benefits to conducting this test in schools." That's wrong. DIBELS is not a good test. Its benefit is that it's short and it provides numbers. Whether those numbers mean anything is questionable and it's still in wide usage.

DIBELS sounds like a disease, doesn’t it? It stands for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills. It is one of North Carolina’s ways of testing our kids to make sure they meet the requirements for No Child Left Behind (NCLB). DIBELS is a computerized test, administered by a teacher to acquire a child’s knowledge in oral reading fluency, retell fluency, and word use fluency. Teachers hold a handheld device that records a student’s response to the content being assessed. Why would this test cause my daughter to feel like she is not smart, can’t read, doesn’t know how to write, and to hate school? It is a timed test that some adults would find stressful. DIBELS allots one minute to each section of the test. One minute? Give me a break. I can’t even pack a lunch in one minute, much less think about being tested on my knowledge.

WAL-MART ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

The Walton Billion Dollar Plan

My Medley wouldn't be complete without something from Curmudgucation's Peter Greene.

The last paragraph below shows Greene's insight into the "reform" movement. Treating school like a business, like Wal-Mart, for example, provides billions for those at the top, but "cheap mediocrity" for the rest of us.

If they were truly concerned about the well being of students, and improving schools, the Waltons would notice this cognitive dissonance. The fact that they don't implies either the conscious misuse of their economic power for more economic gain, or a lack of ability to comprehend what they are actually doing.

The thought was that more choices would generate more competition. Competition would catalyze systematic improvement.

Let's think about this for a second. Let's really think about whose theory this was. This was the Walton theory, the theory of people whose entire fortune is built on being hugely competitive, leading to several results, over and over-- the systemic destruction of most retailers in a community who aren't Wal-Mart. Nor have they achieved this by pursuing excellence-- raise your hand if you associate the Wal-Mart brand with excellence. No, the Wal-Mart brand is built on "broad mediocirty that's cheap and good enough for unwealthy people" and the very goal of their competitiveness has been to win the retail competition by eradicating other choices. Wal-Mart's business plan is not, "We will go into a community, compete by providing excellent products to the community, and when we're done, there will be a broad range of excellent choices among many retailers."

I continue to be gobsmacked that the Waltons, of all people, would imagine that school choice would spark competition that would lead to excellence, because these are people who seem to have a pretty good idea of how the free market works-- and the free market does not work in ways that go well with public education.

VOUCHERS

Vouchers - The Defunding of a Public Trust

Why should you pay taxes to support public schools when you have no students who attend the public schools?

Our founders understood that an educated populace was a benefit to everyone. Thomas Jefferson called for federal support of public education in his 1806 State of the Union message. John Adams declared that the public should support public education at the public expense. James Madison called for the federal government to "take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the union..."

We all benefit when our fellow citizens are educated. Just as we all support police departments, public parks, roads, libraries, and fire departments, for the public good, we must all support public education for everyone. Part of the responsibilities of a government is to provide essential services to the people. It is the people's responsibility to support that effort through their taxes.

If you choose to send your children to private school you should not expect to be relieved of the responsibility to support the public schools which benefit everyone.

...from Lead Your School

There are parents in our community that are also school tax paying homeowners that elect to not send their children to the local public school. This is their choice, and there is no negative consequence for exercising it. They simply pay tuition to a private provider to educate their children. If at anytime they change their mind, the local public school will accept their children.

From a taxpayer perspective, THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE between the private schooling parent and myself. We both pay into a public trust that neither of us uses.

Except, there are now people who advocate the breaking of this public trust. They argue that if a parent chooses to send their child to a non-public school, they should be allowed to remove money from the public trust and spend it to subsidize their choice. If my private schooling neighbor were allowed to take his tax dollars and use them as he chooses, this would mean that he IS NOW DIFFERENT than me. Effectively, his tax bill has been reduced.

Crisp: Ideology must not trump education

Here's a not so subtle comment about the selfishness, and the lack of foresight we Americans have. We're not against stepping all over our fellow citizens if it means more for us. Give me mine...I don't care what you get...just get your hands off mine.

We have lost the concept of working together for the common good (if we ever actually had it) and sacrificing for the good of the community or nation as a whole. If we did, then we would understand that a fully supported, free, universal, public education system benefits us all, and that a 25% child poverty rate is unacceptable, unsustainable...and threatens our future as a people.

...from John M. Crisp

..the first and most obvious beneficiaries of a school voucher program would be the parents of children who are already enrolled in private schools and the schools, themselves, which would have an incentive to raise their prices. These are the people who want voucher programs most of all.

We already know how to produce excellent public schools. I went to one, and if you’re reading this paper, you probably did, too. The problem is that we’ve never been willing to produce them for everyone, regardless of race or economic status.

ACCOUNTABILITY FOR EVERYONE

Arne's Dumb Expectations

Blogger Peter Greene has some advice for Arne Duncan, who, like other test-and-punish privatization advocates, is all about accountability -- for everyone else.

...from Peter Greene

Imagine how different education would reform would play out if we just changed half of the following sentence. Instead of

Where we find failing schools and students, we must hold teachers and school districts responsible for their failure to properly teach those students 

we could instead say

Where we find failing schools and students, we must hold politicians responsible for their failure to properly support those schools with needed resources.

WHO WILL BE TOMORROW'S TEACHERS?

Why Do So Few College Students Want to Be Teachers?

The kindergartners who entered school in the first years of No Child Left Behind, in 2002, are graduating high school now. Is it any wonder that those children, whose academic lives have been focused on gaming the system and testing, testing, testing, should reject the idea of becoming a test-and-punish practitioner? The privatizers and testepreneurs have soured the taste of learning for an entire generation of children. Our nation will live under the deleterious effects of NCLB for many years.

...from Jan Resseger

...why would we be surprised when fewer young people seek careers as school teachers? They are getting the message. Our society now conceptualizes teaching merely as adding value by pouring into each child’s head the big publishers’ canned curriculum that is coordinated with the standardized tests they also publish. Our law makers adopt policies that ignore what teachers do and describe teachers’ work in business-school terms. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invests $45 million to develop teacher evaluation systems based on econometric formulas that are blind to the human part of teachers’ work with children. We pay teachers less, and state governments seek to destroy their unions and thereby undermine due process and career protections. Our lexicon seems even to be losing the words that would value the time and energy and expertise school teachers expend day after day to help our children realize their promise.

Losing Good Teachers? Hooray!

We've invested in the "education sector" and have seen a proliferation of privatization schemes -- charter schools, vouchers, test-and-punish practices. The money flows from board room to political campaign accounts...and law-makers then return the money to the board room via tax payments supporting privatization. The "education economy" is booming, but the most important investment opportunity, the investment in our children, is being squandered.

...from Richard Sindall

I doubt that the money saved by destroying the teaching profession will, in the main, go back to taxpayers. It will go to the investors in “the education sector.” It will go to the test makers and test-related curriculum peddlers. It will go to those who invest in charter schools and for-profit universities. It will go to the software and hardware developers who will deliver the standardized lessons and standardized tests coordinated to give the illusion of successful learning. And then it will go to the re-election campaigns of politicians who enable corporate reform for the investors in the education sector.

FAILURE = PROFIT

DIBELS Raises Common Core Cut Scores to Show More Students Below Grade Level

If enough students aren't failing simply raise the "cut scores" and the crisis will continue.

...from Lace to the Top

There is no money to be made in labeling children as successful, but labeling them failures has continued to fuel the perceived crisis in education and increases profits.

OPT-OUT: REFUSE THE TEST

To Stop the Opt-Out Movement, Start the Opt-In Movement

...from John Kuhn

Parents aren’t just opting out of tests. They are opting out of an entire fouled ecosystem of which tests are an integral part. They’re opting out of a punitive game of Mousetrap with their kids’ scores as the snap-off pieces, wherein political shakers (who may have something to gain or who may sincerely believe in the “failing schools” gospel) have set a trap not just for some bad teachers, not just for this or that neighborhood school, but for the entire constitutional vision of a publicly-funded, publicly-accountable, democratically-operated, free and open-to-all-students system of schools.

TAKE A FAILED PLAN AND EXPAND IT

The failure of Renaissance 2010 in Chicago has been replicated throughout the nation with a similar lack-of success, unless you consider profits for Pearson, K-12, Charter USA, etc. as success.

...from Bob Herbert, Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America

"In 2004, Gates was one of the prime movers and the lead funder of a citywide initiative called Renaissance 2010, a program that was supposed to transform Chicago's public schools in just six years. Lousy teachers would be fired, failing schools would be closed, and charter schools would blossom. . . . And the school system's CEO, Arne Duncan was responsible for designing and implementing the initiative, which was popularly known as Ren 10.

The enthusiasm was misplaced. Like Gates's 'transformative' small high schools initiative, Ren 10 was a flop. . .The architect of Renaissance 2010, former schools CEO Arne Duncan, is now the US Secretary of Education--and he's taking the Daley-Duncan model national as part of his Race to the Top reform plan.

Renaissance 2010 never delivered the promised goods, but Duncan was not hurt by its failure, and neither was Gates."

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

There's a new central office administrator in the school system from which I retired last June. One of his "pet" concerns is teacher absences.

The administrator, Mr. H, is trying to limit the number of days off teachers take. This makes sense from a fiscal point of view since when teachers are absent they get paid anyway and use a benefit day, and a substitute must also be paid.

The problem comes with Mr. H's attitude. According to some teachers, he acts condescending and overbearing. This may or may not be true, depending on one's point of view, however, the issue of teacher absences is indicative of other problems.

In his blog Reality Check, Walt Gardner wrote about teacher absenteeism in Central Falls Rhode Island. His comments are specific to the Rhode Island school district, but he makes some points which can be generalized to other schools and school systems. Mr. H, if you're reading this (which I doubt), pay attention. Perhaps you can figure out why teacher absences are a problem in our school district.

Nationwide, 5.3 percent of teachers are absent from the classroom on any given day, according to a 2008 study by the Center for American Progress. In New York City, one-fifth of teachers were absent for more than two weeks in the previous school year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Absenteeism was highest in schools serving the most disadvantaged students. In impoverished Brownsville, for example, 24.4 percent of teachers were out more than the 10 sick days allowed, compared with 13.2 percent in the posh Upper East Side.

Research shows that teachers who teach in high poverty schools are absent more. This makes sense, since there is generally more stress in those schools. The stress can come from a variety of areas, btw...students, administration, parents, and most of all, government threats of punishments for lack of "adequate yearly progress."

In our system, though, this does not seem to be a consistent pattern. Schools with high poverty rates do not seem to have more teacher absences than schools with fewer students living in poverty.

There is another issue, though, which I think relates specifically to our school system.

...It's here that it's instructive to look at San Diego.

From 1998 to 2005, teachers were subjected to an aggressive reform campaign without their input that was unprecedented in educational history. In The Death and Life of the Great American School System (Basic Books, 2010), Diane Ravitch devotes an entire chapter to what transpired. A wave of depression and anxiety swept teachers, forcing them to seek medical attention at the local Kaiser Permanente clinic. Once a new superintendent who embarked on a more collaborative strategy took over, clinic visits dropped precipitously.

The lessons from San Diego become even more relevant because in the 1990s, its schools were widely considered one of the best for an urban district. But despite San Diego's reputation, it didn't take long for Alan Bersin, a former federal prosecutor, to destroy morale as city superintendent. He rejected research that emphasized the importance of involving teachers in change, believing that what he was doing was in the best interests of students.

A similar rationale is heard at Central Falls High School. But when control supersedes consensus, it invariably results in severe teacher stress. In San Diego, Ravitch says that many teachers complained of "a climate of fear and suspicion," and of being "exhausted, stressed out, and in some cases, fearful of losing their jobs if they do not perform under this new program."

The low morale...the climate of "fear and suspicion" pervades our school district. Here are a few reasons. I'm sure current teachers in the system could add more...

• The superintendent presented, and the school board approved, a plan to save millions of dollars for the school system. The plan would close 6 elementary schools, and move the students to centralized locations in and around high schools. A referendum to increase income from the community was soundly defeated during the last election. Teachers in the closing schools are uniformed about timelines for closing...about where they will be teaching...about cuts that need to be made...
• During the last round of contract negotiations, the school board's team would not negotiate. They came to each meeting with a "this is what we want" attitude. There was no give and take and no discussion. The presentations from the school board's team did not respond to teachers proposals. It was not negotiations...it was not discussion. At the last minute, the school board agreed to language about parent teacher conferences, while teachers accepted a large increase in insurance premiums (a 500% increase gradually introduced over the next few years), a zero percent pay increase, and a retirement incentive package (which I took).
• Elementary teachers have been given a curriculum developed with teacher input (a committee of classroom teachers) which takes much of the day to day decision making away from individual teachers. Much of the rest of the country has experienced this, but it's new in our school system. Teachers are now facilitators of the new curriculum. Each school has an instructional coach. The curriculum was given to the teachers with a minimal amount of training. What training there was, at least at the beginning, was scheduled to take place during the teachers' preparation time which meant less time to prepare lessons and materials.

Low morale leads to high turnover...high absentee rate...

There is little local control in elementary schools. Decisions from the central office are dumped on the principals who deliver it to teachers. The teachers are obliged to follow through. Directives come from above. There's little room for decision making at the building level. Complaints made to the principals might be listened to...but nothing can be done to change things at the local level.

Scripted curriculum + reliance on "data" (using DIBELS at the elementary level) from standardized tests + lack of opportunity for teacher individualism or creativity + loss of buildings to closings and the fear of job loss due to cutbacks = low morale = teacher absences.

I got an email this morning from an old friend and former college roommate who has been an educator for more than thirty years. He has spent his professional life in public education, trying to help kids make the transition to adulthood, doing his best to change things for the better. He has been a teacher, administrator, and now, a superintendent. We haven't always seen eye to eye on educational issues, but we do agree that what we do with our students while they're in school will determine not just their futures, but the future of our nation.

In his email he told me that he was sick of complaining about NCLB and was hoping that a change in administration will change the direction education has taken in the last 5 years. He said that I was preaching to the choir with him and that he agreed with what I had to say.

Well...I'm sick of complaining about NCLB, too...but I'm even more sick of watching it damage students and teachers, destroy schools and school systems, weaken public schools in general, and misrepresent what is happening in the public schools of the United States.

I wish I could believe that a change in administration would change the course of public education in the US, but I believe that the errors of NCLB go much further than the current administration. The errors of NCLB go to the very nature of the economic and social culture of the US.

No child left behind is the logical outgrowth of the now discredited report "A Nation at Risk." It is no mistake that the errors in that report were quashed by the Reagan administration.* Yet the myths of that era were embraced by the nation by Democrats as well. Bill Clinton was just as eager to develop a "national curruculum" as the Republicans. His administration was just as quick to call for the grade retention of students who didn't pass "the test" as the Republicans. He was just as willing to use standardized testing as the benchmark from which all school results are gathered and compared as are the Republicans.

We don't have the luxury of being sick of complaining about NCLB. The students who are under our care are being damaged right now. If we sit back and wait for things to change who will be the voice of the students who are being pushed to drop out so their low test scores won't effect AYP? Who will be the voice of the 5 year olds who are being drilled and killed so they can improve their DIBELS scores?

If not us, who? If not now, when?

* See Gerald Bracey's "The 10th Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education"
http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kbra0010.htm