Live Long and Prosper...

DO REPUBLICANS HATE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND PUBLIC SCHOOL CHILDREN?

The Republican tax bill punishes American families who use public schools

Incentives for parents who send their children to private schools, but none for public school parents.

That means that the "school tuition" that parents of public school kids are paying, in the form of state and local taxes, isn’t deductible from their federal taxes, and public schools themselves will have less money to spend on kids. But rich families who can afford private school get a brand new tax break. That’s a win for the 10%.

The Republican War on Children

No health insurance for poor children...tax incentives for wealthy children.

Let me ask you a question; take your time in answering it. Would you be willing to take health care away from a thousand children with the bad luck to have been born into low-income families so that you could give millions of extra dollars to just one wealthy heir?

You might think that this question is silly, hypothetical and has an obvious answer. But it’s not at all hypothetical, and the answer apparently isn’t obvious. For it’s a literal description of the choice Republicans in Congress seem to be making as you read this.

TOSSED OFF FACEBOOK

The False Paradise of School Privatization

Why did Facebook suspend Steven Singer's (Gadfly On The Wall Blog) Facebook account for the second time in two months?

The first time was when he published School Choice is a Lie. It Does Not Mean More Options. It Means Less. This time it's for The False Paradise of School Privatization. Could it be there's someone working for Facebook who doesn't like the politics of public education?

If you haven't had a chance to read Singer's post, The False Paradise of School Privatization, be sure to do so. Then, when you've finished that, check out Two Theories Why Facebook Keeps Blocking Me When I Write About School Privatization.

One person’s paradise is another person’s Hell.

So the idea of designing one system that fits all is essentially bound to fail.

But doesn’t that support the charter and voucher school ideal? They are marketed, after all, as “school choice.” They allegedly give parents and children a choice about which schools to attend.

Unfortunately, this is just a marketing term.

Charter and voucher schools don’t actually provide more choice. They provide less.

Think about it.

Who gets to choose whether you attend one of these schools? Not you.

Certainly you have to apply, but it’s totally up to the charter or voucher school operators whether they want to accept you.

It is the public school system that gives you choice. You decide to live in a certain community – you get to go to that community’s schools. Period.

READING: TESTING

PIRLS: The effect of phonics, poverty, and pleasure reading.

The last half of my 35 year teaching career was spent working with students who had difficulties with reading. I worked in rural schools with small, but significant numbers of low-income students. We knew then, and we know now, that child poverty is the main factor in low school achievement. We also know that factors associated with poverty, like low birth weight, poor nutrition, exposure to environmental toxins, and lack of health care, have an impact on a child's learning. These out-of-school factors are rarely discussed when politicians and policy makers blame schools and teachers for low student achievement.

You may have read about the recent release of the PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) scores along with much pearl-clutching because of the nation's poor performance. Most reporters focus on comparing scores of American students with students in other countries (We fall somewhere in the middle). Rarely is the impact of poverty noted.

Stephen Krashen continues to educate.

Kevin Courtney is right about the negative influence of poverty on PIRLS tests; two of our studies confirm this. He is also right in rejecting phonics instruction as the force responsible for the recent improvement in PIRLS scores: Studies show that intensive phonics instruction only improves performance on tests in which children have to pronounce words presented in a list. Heavy phonics does not contribute to performance on tests of reading comprehension. In fact, several scholars have concluded that knowledge of phonics rules, beyond the simplest ones, is acquired from reading.

For Further Reading: 

Valerie Strauss has a guest post from James Harvey, executive director of the National Superintendents Roundtable which gives the PIRLS tests a more nuanced analysis.

Also from Valerie Strauss – Ten things you need to know about international assessments

READING: POVERTY

The Reading Achievement Gap: Why Do Poor Students Lag Behind Rich Students in Reading Development?

This article was published in 2015 by Richard Allington. Here he reinforces the need for access to books for low-income children.

Students from lower-income families experience summer reading loss because they don’t read much, if at all, during the summer months. Students from middle-class families, on the other hand, are far more likely to read during this same summer period. Low-income students don’t read during the summer months because they don’t own any books, and they live in neighborhoods where there are few, if any, places to purchase books. Middle-class students have bedroom libraries and live in neighborhoods where children’s books are readily available, even in the grocery stores where their parents shop. Middle-class kids are more likely to live in a neighborhood where one can find a child-friendly public library than is the case with children living in low-income areas. These children live in neighborhoods best described as book deserts.

Historically, low-income students relied primarily on schools as sources for the books they read. Ironically, too many high-poverty schools have small libraries, and there are too many classrooms that have no classroom library for kids to select books to read. Too many high-poverty schools ban library books (and textbooks) from leaving the building (fear of loss of the books, I’m usually told). However, even with fewer books in their schools and more restrictive book-lending policies, these kids do get most of the books they read from the schools they attend. But not during the summer months when school is not in session!

READING: COMPREHENSION

How To Get Your Mind To Read (Daniel Willingham)

Reading teachers understand that students' comprehension improves when teachers activate prior knowledge before having students read a passage (or before they read aloud). What happens, however, when students don't have the knowledge they need?

...students who score well on reading tests are those with broad knowledge; they usually know at least a little about the topics of the passages on the test. One experiment tested 11th graders’ general knowledge with questions from science (“pneumonia affects which part of the body?”), history (“which American president resigned because of the Watergate scandal?”), as well as the arts, civics, geography, athletics and literature. Scores on this general knowledge test were highly associated with reading test scores.

Current education practices show that reading comprehension is misunderstood. It’s treated like a general skill that can be applied with equal success to all texts. Rather, comprehension is intimately intertwined with knowledge. That suggests three significant changes in schooling.

VOUCHERS

Voucher Programs and the Constitutional Ethic

Acceptance of a voucher by a private school should be subject to that school’s compliance with certain basic requirements. At a minimum, school buildings should meet relevant code requirements and fire safety standards; teachers should be able to offer evidence that they are equipped to teach their subject matter; and the school should both teach and model foundational constitutional values and behaviors. Ideally, schools receiving public funds should not be permitted to discriminate on the basis of race, disability or sexual orientation (religious schools have a constitutional right to discriminate on the basis of religion in certain situations, although they do not have a right to do so on the taxpayer’s dime) and should be required to afford both students and staff at least a minimum of due process. At present, we are unaware of any voucher program that requires these commitm

GIVING UP RIGHTS FOR PROFIT

DeVos Won’t Publicize a School Voucher Downside, But It’s Leaking Out Anyway

DeVos admits that students who attend private schools lose their rights under IDEA.

DeVos seems to forget that she's the Secretary of Education for the entire United States, not just for private and privately owned schools.

There’s another key issue at stake in the conversation about vouchers for students with disabilities — one Jennifer and Joe asked DeVos about during their private conversation.

Do students with disabilities lose their rights to a fair and appropriate education — a guarantee under the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — if they use vouchers to attend private schools?

Yes, DeVos said.

“She answered point blank,” Joe said.

Here are some pictures, graphic images and cartoons from around the net -- plus my own 2 cents worth of comments. Click on any image to see the full sized version.

Food for Thought

This is a visualization of the contiguous United States, colored by distance to the nearest domestic McDonald’s. No editorial comments are necessary.



The Goal is Education

We've lost sight of the goal of public education...we've lost sight of the role of teachers.

"Somewhere along the line we've forgotten that education is not about getting this or that score on a test, but it is about enlarging hearts, minds, and spirits. It's about fulfilling human potential and unleashing human creativity. It's about helping children understand that the world is a place full of wonder, truly wonder-full. It's about giving children the tools they will need to participate in a complex global world where we can't imagine today what the next twenty years, let alone century, will bring" -- Susan Zimmerman in Comprehension Going Forward

[Note: The preceding quote is also appropriate for the section in this entry titled Real Learning]

Teachers are neither mercenaries nor missionaries. They do the best they can in spite of - not because of - the salaries they receive. Reformers who have never taught do not understand what motivates teachers. I don't think they ever will. All the more reason to be skeptical about "innovative" merit pay plans. -- Walt Gardner

My Kids

I started volunteering the year following my retirement. I worked with some first grade students. I still volunteer at a local elementary school and work with first graders and third graders. I still refer to them as "my kids" even though their classroom teachers surely do as well. I'm grateful to their classroom teachers for sharing them with me.

I reconnected with a group of my former students last month. Some were from my very first class of third graders -- school year 1976-77 (my first full year of teaching). They're all older than my oldest child, but I still call them "my kids."


Using Tests

Look at this answer from a second grader. Instead of a simple score of "right" or "wrong" this question could be used as a teachable moment exploring the use of plurals (shape vs. shapes), drawing three dimensional objects on a two dimensional medium (drawing a rectangular prism), or simply reading comprehension. Any one of those would be a valuable use of the test.


Real evaluation of student learning yields the opportunity for immediate feedback, diagnosis and reteaching, and extended learning, not shaming, blaming and punishment.



Real Learning

Educating children to be productive citizens entails more than just teaching them to read or cypher -- or pass a standardized test. As Bloom's Taxonomy teaches us, learning is more than just remembering and understanding. We need to help students learn to apply knowledge, analyze products and processes, evaluate what they see and hear, and create new ideas.

• Remembering: Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant knowledge from long-term memory.
• Understanding: Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages through interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining.
• Applying: Carrying out or using a procedure through executing, or implementing.
• Analyzing: Breaking material into constituent parts, determining how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose through differentiating, organizing, and attributing.
• Evaluating: Making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing.
• Creating: Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning, or producing.

Where do the words in the picture below fit into Bloom's Taxonomy? Those are the words which describe educated humans...none of them are measured by standardized tests.



Proud to be a Teacher

Before Sandy Hook bashing teachers was a full time job for some politicians, pundits and policy makers. The respite will last until the short national memory moves on to the next crisis.

Public employees, since the time of Benjamin Franklin, have been an important part of a free society. Franklin started the first fire department and the first library. He improved the post office and understood that government had a role to play in the health and safety of the people. He understood that everyone needed to pay their societal membership dues -- in the form of taxes -- to support those who worked for the public good...teachers, police officers, firefighters...



Fight the Sources
Don't Simply Blame Those Who Try to Help

Fire fighters aren't to blame for fires. Police officers aren't to blame for crime...

Teachers and other school personnel work with the students they have. Factors outside of educators' control have an impact on student learning...

• lack of parent involvement
• emotional stresses caused by divorce, unemployment, neighborhood strife, drug abuse or violence
• food and shelter insecurity
• lack of access to books and other reading materials
• difficult births
• pollutants in the environment
• untreated mental health problems

Mr. Fitz Rocks

Mr. Fitz is a middle school teacher in Florida. He draws this daily cartoon. Check out his web sites...support him in any way you can. We need his voice.

Mr. Fitz reacts like most teachers to the overuse of testing, lack of support for public schools, and privatization.


Arne Duncan doesn't know anything about teaching in a regular public school. He has never taught, he has never attended a public school, he has no experience in education other than his failure to improve student achievement (while increasing charters and closing schools) as the CEO of Chicago Public Schools. He doesn't deserve the position of the nation's top public educator.


For the Forgetters

I've never advertised a product on these pages before...and I can't vouch for the quality of those below...however, the idea of these two items appeals to me. I know that I could have used them when I was teaching...for my students and myself!!

The first is a Powerpoint file you can use to print bracelets. I'll assume that you can get the labels somewhere. Click the picture for the link...


Here's the same idea from the people who make sticky notes. Again, click the picture for the link.
Happy New Year

Support Public Schools is a Facebook group. Their description:

Politicians, industry leaders and the media are trying to destroy Public Education by vilifying public school teachers. Students and teachers should not be judged on one standardized test score. Teachers, parents and students need to band together and let their officials know they must stand up to the attacks on public schools.

Show your support for Public Schools and the dedicated teachers of America's public school system by joining this page.

An end of year posting...

While RTTT and the Reformers including testing companies like Pearson have worked to destroy public ed this year, there have been some major victories. Feel free to add any I left out :)

Top 5 Victories of 2012:

#5 Tony Bennett thrown out of Indiana. (Unfortunately Florida has him now)
#4 Florida Parents take on Jeb Bush and the Parent Trigger Law and win!!! (Let's hope they can do it again in 2013!!)
#3 Protests against the film "Won't Back Down" and horrible reviews made this film the worst box office flop in history!! (The American public knew it was total propaganda!!)
#2 A small group of Hawaiian Teachers take to the streets and now over 100 schools are participating!! (Hopefully it will become statewide and many teachers and parents will show up to the rally in Honolulu.)
#1 Chicago Teachers Strike!! Karen Lewis emerges as a hero!! (Rahm Emanuel fell of his pedestal.)

Do You Believe in Miracles?

...We know that there is a strong and undeniable correlation between family income and test scores. This correlation appears on the SAT, the ACT, the NAEP, and every other standardized test.

Corporate reformers claim that great teachers alone can close achievement gaps, and recently it has been the vogue to make bold claims for "miracle schools," where dramatic gains supposedly happened either because the school was a charter without a union or because the school was "transformed" by using federal funds to fire the staff and start over. If only it were that simple!

Violent Video Games Alter The Brain

After just one week of violent game play, the video game group members showed less activation in the left inferior frontal lobe during the emotional task and less activation in the anterior cingulate cortex during the counting task, compared to their baseline results and the results of the control group after one week. After the second week without game play, the changes to the executive regions of the brain were diminished.

You would have to wonder as well, if those who watch 10 hours of violent movies per week, might also exhibit a similar change in the brain.

What we learn before we're born

Pop quiz: When does learning begin? Answer: Before we are born. Science writer Annie Murphy Paul talks through new research that shows how much we learn in the womb -- from the lilt of our native language to our soon-to-be-favorite foods.

After women repeatedly read aloud a section of Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat while they were pregnant, their newborn babies recognized that passage when they heard it outside the womb.

Friendly Advice For Teachers: Beware Of Facebook

Don't ever friend or follow your students on Facebook or Twitter, never post during work hours or using work materials such as a school computer, and certainly never post anything about your job online, especially about students

New York Principals Protest Role of Testing in Evaluations

...one good thing about the new evaluation system was that it had united teachers, principals and administrators in their contempt for the state education department.

Are half of New York’s teachers really ‘not effective?’

Last Thursday, he told an MIT conference audience how to quickly improve public schools. “I would, if I had the ability – which nobody does really – to just design a system and say, ‘ex cathedra, this is what we’re going to do,’ you would cut the number of teachers in half, but you would double the compensation of them and you would weed out all the bad ones and just have good teachers. And double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students.” 

The mayor never cites any research to support his claims about what’s a good deal for students. Nor does he explain a sensible way to determine the bottom half of teachers — the ones who would be sent packing. But he should be forgiven on this point since there is, in fact, no such research and no such sensible way.

Insanity: Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results: HOW MANY DECADES BEFORE "REFORM" BECOMES "STATUS QUO"?

Our nation's current school reform agenda dates back to a time when U.S. Secretary of Eduction Arne Duncan was an underclassman at Harvard, a time of "Billie Jean" and "Flashdance." This hoary education "change" agenda that began with the wake-up call in the report "A Nation at Risk" has survived the passing decades, blossomed as No Child Left Behind, and re-emerged in the Obama administration's Race to the Top. Such reforms, advanced as offering an exciting, untraveled pathway, are more accurately described as driving along the same old road, just with our foot pressing down harder on the pedal. 

When approaches have been tried unsuccessfully over a couple of decades with less-than-stellar outcomes, we might expect the next policy, or at the very least the next "change," to lean in a new direction. But the seemingly permanent wave of test-based accountability, privatization, and choice has managed to soar past its silver anniversary almost entirely unscathed by the depredations of time and evidence.