Live Long and Prosper...

BYE, BYE BETSY

Betsy DeVos Resigns

I was ready to publish the rest of the articles in this post on Wednesday, but I got sidetracked by the horrible events in Washington D.C. Since then I have paused, while I figured out what I wanted to say. Then, last night, Betsy DeVos resigned...

I am against nearly everything DeVos has done during her term as Secretary. She has pushed her agenda of privatization and has rejected pleas to support students overwhelmed by debt. She has ignored racist education policies and neglected the students who need the most help. She hates public education and public educators. I doubt that she cares much for public school students, either. She was never qualified for her job. She never attended a public school. She never worked in a public school. She never sent her children to a public school. She's an elitist billionaire who cares only about what she can control with her money.

I'm sure she will now return to private life and continue to wreak havoc on public education by buying legislators and using her billions to support private, religious education.

There are a lot of articles discussing DeVos's resignation -- the nation's worst Secretary of Education appointed by the worst President. Mitchell Robinson verbalizes how I feel about her. After all the terrible things her boss has done over the last four years, she has finally had enough, apparently...

I wish I could find more satisfaction in something I’ve hoped would happen for 4 years.

But as usual, Ms. DeVos did the absolute least she could do (resign), well past the time when it could have made a difference (with 13 days left in her lamest of all duck terms), and is probably only doing it to avoid doing something she doesn’t want to do (invoke the 25th Amendment).

DeVos resigned, allegedly, because her boss’ insurrection attempt was an “inflection point” she simply couldn’t ignore.

TIME FOR TEST WITHDRAWAL

The Tests Are Lousy, So How Could the Scores Be Meaningful?

If anything good can come out of the devastating pandemic still terrorizing the nation, then it's that there is absolutely no reason to continue our overuse and misuse of standardized tests. Alfie Kohn pens another excellent, thought-provoking piece...

Standardized tests are so poorly constructed that low scores are nothing to be ashamed of — and, just as important, high scores are nothing to be proud of. The fact that an evaluation is numerical and the scoring is done by a computer doesn’t make the result “objective” or scientific. Nor should it privilege those results over a teacher’s first-hand, up-close knowledge of which students are flourishing and which are struggling.

Sadly, though, some educators have indeed come to trust test scores more than their own judgment. One hears about parents who ask a teacher about problems their child is having in school, only to have the teacher reach into a desk and fish out the student’s test results. Somewhere along the way such teachers have come to discount their own impressions of students, formed and reformed through months of observation and interaction. Instead, they defer to the results of a one-shot, high-pressure, machine-scored exam, attributing almost magical properties to the official numbers even when they know those exams are terrible.

SCHOOLS AND COVID-19

COVID and Schools: The Data and Science Then and Now

The conventional wisdom is that it's safe to send kids back to school. The need for students to be in face-to-face school situations is so important that we should not worry about adults in the building and their susceptibility to COVID, but send the kids so they can get an education (Note: this is often said by the same people who lobby for online charter schools!).

It turns out that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Schools are not always the safest place for kids or adults.

...internationally, they have already figured out in the public consciousness that schools are platforms for superspreading. It is very clear that Covid has taken advantage of some of American’s most challenging traits— denial and hubris— in the debate about reopening schools.

So what does the national data reported in early December by US News tell us about the situation with communities, schools, and Covid?

• Their analysis of their national data shows that the high school student case rate (13 per 1,000 students enrolled for in-person classes) is nearly three times that of elementary school students (4.4 per 1,000).
• They observed that the higher the community case rate, the higher the school district case rate...

THE MYTH THAT TURNS OUT TO BE TRUE

Can charter schools pick the best students? No, but many believe the myth.

Jay Matthews, the reformist Washington Post education writer without any educational training, writes this article about how it's not true that charters can pick and choose their students...and then proceeds to tell us how charter schools pick and choose their students.

So it’s wrong to say that charters are allowed to pick whatever students they want. But that’s not to say some of them haven’t skirted those rules.

In 2016, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the Public Advocates civil rights law firm found that at least 253 of California’s roughly 1,200 charter schools maintained policies that illegally prevented students from enrolling or remaining at their schools.

A school in Hemet, Calif. said that to apply as a sophomore a student “must be earning an ‘A’ or ‘B’ in both Geometry and Biology.” A school in Redlands said “only students who show steady academic progress . . . will be eligible for enrollment.” Within a few months of the report’s publication, more than 100 charter schools contacted the authors to say they were correcting their policies to get off the bad list...

IT'S ALL THE TEACHERS' FAULT

The New York Times Adds One Plus One And Gets Three

When the pandemic hit and schools closed, teachers were lauded for their heroism...changing their entire jobs overnight and taking care of their students online. As the public has tired of the pandemic, however, the inconvenience of not having all schools open -- despite the danger to those who work in education -- has opened teachers up for derision. The very fact of teachers as essential workers has given many the opportunity to blame teachers for inconveniencing their lives.

Peter Greene, in the following two posts, explains some things about education and teaching...

...what the heck do people think teachers do every fall? Seriously. Do they imagine that teachers just assume that all their new students know X, Y and Z because it's in the curriculum. Do folks imagine that teachers spend the weeks before school poring over BS Test results to learn where their students are? Because, no-- mostly the test results aren't available yet and because teachers are forbidden to see the actual question, all they get is the test manufacturer's "analysis" of the results, which is mostly hugely broad and unhelpful.

No, in the fall, teachers use a large array of formal and informal assessments to figure out student's individual weaknesses and strengths. Teachers do this daily, and then they keep doing it all year. This remains one of the great, silly fictions of the BS Test--that the results are useful to teachers who would be lost without them. In reality, the BS Test is like a guy who shows up at the office of a general who is commanding thousands of troops on dozens of fronts and this guy--this guy shows up with a pop gun and announces, "I am here to win this war for you."

Another Round Of Teacher Bashing

The level of bash, of demeaning insult, in this "selfish teachers close our schools" argument is huge. Because there are only a couple of possible explanations for the picture critics like FEE [Foundation for Economic Education] paint:

Teachers are stupid people who don't understand the settled science.

Teachers are stupid and also lazy people who went into teaching hoping they would have to never actually work and the pandemic shut-downs are their idea of a gift from God, and they want to stretch out this paid vacation for as long as possible.

Teachers are big fat liars who are pretending not to understand the settled science so they can milk the taxpayers while providing nothing in return.

Teachers should be martyrs who want to give up their entire lives for their students, and if they don't want to do that (or, incidentally, want to be well-paid for it), they're lousy teachers and terrible human beings.

Note that all of these include the assumption that distance learning is a big fat vacation. Also, people who chose teaching as their life's work don't actually want to teach. Also, as FEE makes explicit, teachers do not have students' interests at heart. They don't care about the kids at all (which adds to the assumption of their stupidity, because if you don't care about children, teaching seems like a pretty dumb career choice, but hey--maybe you became a teacher because you couldn't manage a real job).

A TAKE ON THE "SCIENCE OF READING"

The Critical Story of the “Science of Reading” and Why Its Narrow Plotline Is Putting Our Children and Schools at Risk

Last one for today, an essential article for teachers of reading and literacy.

#1. Hijacking Terminology
Words have power. The term science connotes credibility, but it also represents evolution and diversity. The “science of reading” has stripped away the dynamic interplay of experiences that grow a child into a reader and a writer and centered the literacy process solely atop phonics. This narrow plotline disregards the impact of writing, comprehension, culture, play, mentor texts, family, and the power of a teacher-researcher to individualize instruction...

#2. Reframing the National Reading Panel...

#3. Attacks on Higher Education and the Problems with NCTQ...

#4. “The Sky Is Falling” atop Declining NAEP Scores...

TESTING

The Scores Are In: School Reformers Earn F's

An excellent young teacher I know spent a few years teaching in the urban district of a large midwestern city. After several consecutive years of prepping for the test, practicing the test, administering the test to get ready for the test, and watching his students fail the test, he left teaching and became a children's librarian. Now he can actually do something to help children.

...students at the bottom, clustered in low-income schools, the kind of young people that reformers swore they knew how to save, suffered most from being force fed years of test preparation...

...tens of billions of dollars had been devoted to massive school reform. Most of that money went to testing companies, company executives, or passed through lobbyist’s hands to self-serving politicians, or to school reform experts who gave high-priced speeches, and to pay bureaucrats to gather, tally and study all the data.

Here’s Who’s Creating Indiana’s New School Tests

A new test won't change a thing. The idea that "experts from the field of education" (aka actual educators) ought to be the ones to choose the test is admirable. However, the uneducated legislators and policy makers have obligated those experts to choose a test which will be misused. It doesn't matter what test they choose. It's invalid to use a student achievement test to grade schools, evaluate teachers, and rank students.

If the committee chooses an "off the shelf" test it still won't matter. Achievement tests don't claim to be valid for evaluating teachers and schools. Here are some examples of test descriptions...

• Iowa Test of Basic Skills – "offer educators a diagnostic look at how their students are progressing in key academic areas."

• Stanford Achievement Test (Pearson) – "reliable data to help measure student progress toward content standards and high expectations. This multiple-choice assessment helps to identify student strengths and needs, leading to effective placement and instructional planning."

• Terra Nova – "educators can review student results in the context of common school and district criteria, plus key enhancements that help your educators improve achievement and learning."

• NWEA MAP Test – "...Inform instruction using valid, reliable, and real-time data...Measure the growth of every student over time regardless of on, above, or below grade level performance—and even if standards change"

Test developers understand that tests are only valid when used to measure what the test was developed to measure. We don't use blood tests to check for broken bones. We don't use teaspoons to measure temperature. We shouldn't use student achievement tests to evaluate teachers and schools.

The ISTEP+ Review Panel will hammer out details of the replacement — what a new test will look like, its length and how state officials can use it to rate schools and teachers.

“Rather than trying to pick a rabbit out of a hat during the legislative session with policymakers, who generally are not testing experts, we thought best to assemble a panel of experts from the education field,” said Bosma.

There has to be a better way...

The fact that students did better when the test was on paper rather than on computers only shows that the test has weak validity. What are we really measuring – student achievement or test-taking/computer skills?

...student performance across the state demonstrated that students did better when taking the exam on paper as opposed to computer. Given the high stakes nature of the results of these exams for districts one can’t fault systems for trying to give themselves a competitive advantage by gaming the system. However, what do such strategies have to do with an accurate measurement of student achievement?

"REFORM"


“Tests Great”–“Less Knowing”

The quest for a piece of the public education fund pie has distorted the teaching/learning process.

...perhaps it’s time someone pointed out that test-based accountability, which has meant more drill and test prep and cuts in art, music, drama and all sorts of other courses that aren’t deemed ‘basic,’ has failed miserably–and there are victims.

Students have been the losers, sentenced to mind-numbing schooling. Teachers who care about their craft have been the losers. Craven administrators who couldn’t or didn’t stand up for what they know about learning have been the losers. Add to the list of losers the general public, because the drumbeat of bad news has undercut faith in public education.

There are winners: The testing companies (particularly Pearson), the academics who’ve gotten big grants from major foundations, profiteers in the charter school industry, and ideologues and politicians who want to undermine public education.

TEACHER SHORTAGE

Teacher Pay Decay

If things were fair, politicians, pundits, and policy makers salaries would be adjusted by the same percent as teacher salaries...

Teacher pay nationally has, adjusted for inflation, dropped 1.8%

Nine states have seen teacher pay drop from 6.5% to as much as 13.7%.

That "top" 13.7% drop belongs to Indiana. Congratulations, hoosiers.

NPE: Teacher Voices on Teacher Evaluation

Check out the above article, but the quote comes from a commenter.

Comment by NY Teacher – April 20, 2016 at 8:23 PM

One 40 minute observation (out of a 180 day school year) is the equivalent of a movie reviewer watching a random 45 second clip of a two hour movie - and then trying to accurately judge the film.

Imagine judging Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer by watching him run one play.

INEQUITY

Public Education Advocates Rally For Change

Competition doesn't work in education. We're not manufacturing ice cream, or playing professional baseball. We're trying to educate students and all students come to school with different needs. You can't call for competition when some students take 2 years to learn what other students come to school already knowing. You can't call for competition and still depend on teaching practices to improve through collaboration. You can't call for competition where some schools have fewer resources than others.

A high quality public education system is fully funded through a progressive tax system and is open to all students. It must provide the services each individual student needs.

“What’s at stake here is whether or not we’re going to have a robust, well-funded, high-quality system where people can just cross the threshold and receive the service for free and have the schools deploy whatever resources are necessary to meet the needs of that student as opposed to a selective, competitive system which will inevitably reproduce dramatic inequality we’re already seeing in our system.” -- Brian Jones

TENURE

The learning atmosphere in our public schools has deteriorated into one of constant drill, test, and punish. Developmentally inappropriate curricula, abusive testing regimes, and a lack of balance in education has taken over our schools. The people who do the work are blamed and blasted as incompetent and even more unbelievably, uncaring...as if people become professional teachers in order to hurt children. In Indiana, due process (often mislabeled "tenure") has been taken away from teachers. Depending on the actual contract language, teachers can be fired at the whim of an administrator. Is it any wonder that there are teachers who are afraid to speak out? And if teachers don't speak up for the abuses that the legislature and policy makers are foisting upon our schools, who will?

Legislators and policy makers are telling teachers how to teach, what to teach, and when to teach it and then blaming teachers when it doesn't work.

Where will the "great teachers" come from when the teaching profession is made less desirable? If teachers are punished based on the achievement of their students who is going to want to work with the hard-to-teach students? Who is going to want to work with students who come to school hungry, traumatized, or with untreated health problems if their livelihood depends on their students' achievement?



Cindi Pastore of The Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education (NEIFPE) wrote,

[Educators'] hands are tied by administrators whose hands are tied by legislators whose hands are filling up with money from special interest and profit driven groups. Time to stop this chain with your votes!!!

Moral Distress in Teachers by Walt Gardner

When teachers know that something is ethically wrong but don't speak out because of fear of retaliation by their principal, they suffer from the condition [of moral distress].

Although teachers don't take the equivalent of the Hippocratic oath, they nonetheless are professionally responsible for acting ethically at all times. If it were not for the existence of tenure, teachers might be intimidated in remaining silent about anything they deemed inimical to the students.

Tenure Is a Civil Rights Issue by Peter Greene

...the types of due process derailing being promoted will (by design or not) directly attack the quality of the teaching staffs in the schools that can least withstand these attacks. Linking teacher job security and pay to student test scores makes it harder to recruit and retain teachers for the urban schools already socked in by poverty and suffering from the instability that comes from steady staff churn.

Massachusetts Proposes Plan to Chase Teachers Out by Diane Ravitch

How is it possible to improve education by ruining the lives of teachers? How is it possible to improve education by making test scores the measure of everything? Good business for Pearson, not so good for the children.

See the follow up...The Massachusetts Teachers Association Blasts State Plan re Evaluations



PRIVATIZATION

"Reformers" continue to point to test scores as the only way to prove that students are achieving as well as the only way to evaluate (blame) teachers, administrators, and school systems. Yet, when it comes to blaming teachers unions for all the problems in America's schools they calmly ignore test scores which show that states with high test scores have high union membership and states with low test scores have low union membership.

Likewise, "reformers" love to label schools as "failing" and ignore the well documented relationship between poverty and low achievement.

The labels and teacher bashing are important to "reformers." By continuing to label schools, teachers, and students as "failing" and blaming unions and teachers for that "failure" they deflect attention away from the corporate takeover of America and the inability of policy makers to eliminate or even reduce poverty.

Instead, "reformers" continue to erode the public confidence in public education in order to press for increased privatization.

Where is the accountability of the politicians and the policy makers for the high level of poverty in America? Where is the accountability of corporate America for the inequity running rampant through the nation?

"When Congress passes No Child Left Unfed, No Child Without Health Care and No Child Left Homeless, then we can talk seriously about No Child Left Behind." -- Susan Ohanian

Blame It All on Teachers' Unions By Walt Gardner

In what has become a mantra, corporate reformers argue that powerful teachers' unions are the primary cause of the failure of students to perform ("Teachers Unions vs. Charter Schools, The Wall Street Journal," Nov. 20, 2013). But the reality is quite different....

Lest I be accused of selective perception, I pose the following question: If teachers' unions are the villains, as charged, why do states, such as Arkansas and Mississippi, where they are weakest, persist in posting appalling results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress? Conversely, why do states, such as Massachusetts and Minnesota, where they are strongest, continue to post the highest scores? Clearly something else explains the disparity, but it is given short shrift by the media.

"Stop using the word "failing schools" -- no longer. The word is "abandoned schools," or come up with something else, but stop labeling our children. Stop labeling the buildings, and stop labeling the people who do the work." -- Karen Lewis

CHARTERS

On Education, Barack Obama is the President of Privatization. Can We Stop Him? Will We? by Bruce A. Dixon

Charter schools are private schools as long as they are not accountable to publicly elected school boards. They take public money, but they claim to be private entities when pressed to be accountable.

On every level, the advocates of educational privatization strive to avoid using the p-word [privatization]. They deliberately mislabel charter schools, just as unaccountable as every other private business in the land as “public charter schools,” because after all, they use public money. So do Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, but nobody calls these “public aerospace companies,” “public military contractors,” or “public banks.” For the same reason, corporate media refuse to cover the extent of the school closing epidemic, or local opposition to it, for fear of feeding the development of a popular movement against privatization, and Race To The Top, the Obama administration's signature public education initiative, and the sharp edge of the privatizers, literally driving the wave of school closings, teacher firings, and the adoption of “run-the-school-like-a-business” methods everywhere.

TESTING


Does Arne Duncan think ‘suburban moms’ are a gullible bunch? by Carol Burris (in Valerie Strauss, The Answer Sheet)

And that really sums up the thinking of Duncan and his cheerleading Chiefs. Their distrust of public schools and the democratic control of schooling run deep. It colors every solution that they propose. They have no idea how to effect school improvement other than by making tests harder and making sticks bigger. When punishing the school did not work, it morphed into punish the teacher through evaluations based on test scores. The reality that no country has ever improved student learning using test and punish strategies is lost on those who refuse to address the greater social issues that we who do the work confront every day.

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

DEFINE 'GOOD TEACHER'

A Dozen Essential Guidelines for Educators

For the last several years Alfie Kohn has been blogging for Psychology Today under the title of The Homework Myth: How to Fix Schools so Kids Really Learn. Last October he wrote a list of "core principles" which he said would help give our children the schools they deserve. Read these two before you read the next article...

11. All learning can be assessed, but the most important kinds of learning are very difficult to measure—and the quality of that learning may diminish if we try to reduce it to numbers.

12. Standardized tests assess the proficiencies that matter least. Such tests serve mostly to make unimpressive forms of instruction appear successful.

Other Data: 20 Signs You’re Actually Making A Difference As A Teacher

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." -- Attributed to Albert Einstein (See here)

What do students remember about their teachers?

When I meet students I have had in class over the last 4 decades they invariably bring up one thing -- the books I read to them. No one has ever mentioned spelling words, or math problems, or even recess. No one brings up standardized tests, reading vocabulary or subjects and predicates.

Several of my students who have become teachers have written to tell me that they are reading one of the same books I read to their class.

Of course teachers must teach content, how to read and how to add and subtract. But students learn because of who the teacher is...not just because the teacher presents material. How do you know that you're doing something right as a teacher? Here are a few ways...

1. Your students are asking questions, not just giving answers...
3. You have listened as often as you have lectured. Another lesson in authority...
4. Your shy students start participating more often without being prompted...
5. A student you’ve encouraged creates something new with her talents...
6. You’ve been told by a student that, because of something you showed them, they enjoy learning outside of class...
12. You’ve let your passions show through in your lessons...
16. One of your students becomes an educator...

DEFINE 'BAD TEACHER'

Ten Reform Claims That Teachers Should Know How to Challenge

What constitutes a "bad teacher?" Arne Duncan, and his host of "reformers" claim that it's student test scores.

Claim 4: It should be easier to fire bad teachers. Tenure is a problem.

Response: Lots of teachers agree with you. But can you describe your plan for firing bad teachers and not good ones? How will you separate the two groups? How will you make sure that only the bad teachers are impacted by this?

...Claim 10: Teachers only work nine months a year.

Response: Can you tell me how many hours you work in a year? Can you guess how many hours I work in a year? Can you guess three things that I might be doing in the summer to get ready for September?

Harper's Index

Average number of hours per week U.S. public-school teachers are required to work to receive base pay : 38

Average number they actually work : 52

Source: National Center for Education Statistics (Washington)




DUNCAN BLACKMAILS STATES

Superintendents forced to tell parents their schools are failing, even though they aren’t

Arne Duncan has blackmailed states into accepting his idea of school "reform" -- more charter schools and teachers evaluations based on test scores. If states don't do what he demands they they are thrown back into the pit of No Child Left Behind where everyone fails.

Twenty-eight superintendents from the State of Washington added a cover letter to the required NCLB letter. The NCLB letter tells the parents that their child's school is a "failure." The superintendents' cover letter let's them know that it's NCLB and the U.S. DOE which has failed, not their child's school.

The label of "failing" schools is regressive and punitive, as nearly every Washington school will not meet the NCLB Requirements. Some of our state's and districts' most successful and highly recognized schools are now being labeled "failing" by an antiquated law that most educators and elected officials -- as well as the U.S. Department of Education -- acknowledge isn't working.

Even Duncan's own Department of Education understands that NCLB is a punitive, damaging law. That's why they allowed the waivers in the first place. But, your state can only be excused from the stupidity of NCLB by adopting equally damaging "reforms." Since the state of Washington hasn't followed his rules he is forcing them back to the requirements of No Child Left Behind. Duncan's petulance will punish schools, teachers, and students. Education doesn't matter. Learning doesn't matter.

... instead of giving strings-free waivers, the department designed a list of school-reform hoops that states had to promise to jump through in order to receive one. Those included the establishment of assessment systems that link teacher evaluations to student standardized-test scores, a highly controversial practice...

There is a consequence to having an NCLB waiver pulled. It means that the state has to revert back to meeting all of the requirements of the law —even those requirements that Education Secretary Arne Duncan himself had said repeatedly were unattainable.

“We’ve got 60 languages, we’ve got high mobility, we’ve got high poverty,” Frank Hewins, superintendent of the Franklin Pierce School District, said Wednesday. “When you have students with those challenges, the metrics established by this law are nonsensical.”


28 superintendents to parents: Schools are not failing

The additional letter tells parents that nearly every school in Washington won’t meet the No Child Left Behind requirements this year, and that the 28 superintendents are “proud of the significant academic progress our students are making.”

“Some of our state’s and districts’ most successful and highly recognized schools are now being labeled ‘failing’ by an antiquated law that most educators and elected officials – as well as the U.S. Department of Education – acknowledges isn’t working,” the superintendents’ letter says.

EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY

The founding fathers understood the importance of an educated populace.

Jefferson said, "Educate and inform the whole mass of the people...they are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." and “[T]he tax which will be paid for this purpose [education] is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”

Madison wrote, "Learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty."

Benjamin Franklin said, “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

And John Adams plainly agreed that public education was so important that the people ought to pay for it. "The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves."

The government, then, has a vested interest in making sure that everyone has the opportunity to be educated to the extent that they are able (and not, as Mitt Romney said, just to the extent they can afford). It's the government's responsibility to see that...

• all children are afforded an equitable education
• students are prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship
• students can grow to be economically self-sufficient
• tax money used for public education is used responsibly

Home School Upheaval: Texas Court Rules Against Religious Freedom Right To Unregulated Home Education

There’s also a well-established legal right to home school. But that right, like all rights, is subject to certain restrictions. Parents do have the right to home school, but they don’t have the right to provide their children with a substandard education or, like the McIntyres, deny their children an education altogether. The law is clear: You can believe Jesus is coming back at midnight if you want. You can even tell your children that it’s a fact.

But you still have to teach them how to read.

CHARTERS

Charter schools claim to be public schools when they want public money, but then they claim they are private entities when they are expected to be responsible with the money.

Lawsuit: Virtual charter school owes $600K for services

Indiana Cyber Charter School, a virtual charter with locations in Fort Wayne and Avon, is accused of not paying Pennsylvania-based National Network of Digital Schools for contracted services and not following through with an additional repayment plan agreement. National Network filed the lawsuit July 25 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.. . . The school listed 200 students enrolled for 2013-14 academic year, according to state data. Passage rate for this spring’s ISTEP exam was 54.4 percent — 20 percentage points lower than the state average.

NJEA decries 'massive corporate takeover' of Camden schools

The NJEA supported the original law, passed in 2012, but said the amended bill would allow charter-school expansion that ran counter to the original intent of the legislation.

California state auditor probing LA's Magnolia charter schools

After sampling transactions from Magnolia campuses in 2012, L.A. Unified found over $43,000 in duplicate payments to vendors, flagging those as potential misuse of funds.

The Los Angeles Unified school board ordered a second audit in 2014, voting to close two of the schools if any fiscal problems arose.

IMPROVE LITERACY

COLUMN: Boosting children's literacy skills in four easy ways

This is a good list of things everyone should do to increase literacy. I would also add (among other things)...

• Read aloud to children from birth.
• Provide all children access to books

Parental education is essential...

Challenge yourself to devote 20 to 30 minutes a day to boosting a child's literacy skills. It could not only change the way that child starts the school year, but it could also change his or her life. 

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

ISTEP OBSESSION

Indiana's big education news this week has been the release of the 2014 ISTEP scores. No surprises here...

Carmel-Clay and Zionsville public school corporations (Free and Reduced lunch populations under 10% and LEP under 5%) scored the highest.

Indianapolis Public Schools (Free and Reduced over 80% and LEP over 10%) and Gary (Free and Reduced over 80%) didn't fare so well.

The articles below (and most of the others I've seen) focus on the test scores, old standards, new standards, higher scores, lower scores, charter school scores, private school scores, and all are written with the underlining assumption that standardized tests are adequate measures of student achievement. They equate learning with test scores.

The insane focus on standardized test scores in the U.S. hasn't changed a bit since President Bush II signed No Child Left Behind into law surrounded by smiling suits filled with both Democrats and Republicans -- but no teachers.

In 2002 Alfie Kohn wrote about the mind-numbing, child-punishing testing regimen which permeates American education...

Standardized Testing: Separating Wheat Children from Chaff Children

Of all the chasms that separate one world from another, none is greater than the gap between the people who make policy and the people who suffer the consequences. There are those who reside comfortably on Mount Olympus, issuing edicts and rhetoric, and then there are those down on the ground who come to know the concrete reality behind the words...it’s the difference between important grown-ups who piously exhort us to hold our educational system “accountable” and a nine-year-old who has come to detest school because the days are now full of practice tests in place of projects and puzzles. Up there: people pounding the pulpits about the need for World-Class Standards. Down here: little kids weeping, big kids denied diplomas on the basis of a single exam score, wonderful teachers reduced to poring over the want ads...

And once you realize that the tests are unreliable indicators of quality, then what possible reason would there be to subject kids – usually African American and Latino kids -- to those mind-numbing, spirit-killing, regimented instructional programs that were designed principally to raise test scores? If your only argument in favor of such a program is that it improves results on deeply flawed tests, you haven’t offered any real argument at all. Knock out the artificial supports propping up “Success for All,” “Open Court,” “Reading Mastery,” and other prefabricated exercises in drilling kids to produce right answers (often without any understanding), and these programs will then collapse of their own dead weight.

ISTEP scores released, final year for old test

Carmel-Clay Schools once again scored the highest among school corporations...

Indianapolis Public Schools...51.6% of students passed both portions of the test

State releases ISTEP-Plus scores

The scores at EdisonLearning's Gary Roosevelt continue to falter. EdisonLearning is a private management company appointed by the state to operate the high school. The Indiana Department of Education graded the school an F in 2013.

IDOE releases 2013-14 ISTEP results

ISTEPs bring 'mixed bag' for Ind. charter schools

Carmel, Zionsville top Indiana's ISTEP scores

Middle schools at center of IPS testing woes


PRIVATIZATION

Privatization Watch is a great blog to watch. Public education isn't the only target of privatizers.

Here are some items from the last few weeks of Privatization Watch...

Fixing something that isn't working right makes sense. If public schools are "broken" (an assumption which I don't believe is true to the extent that privatizers do), then they should be fixed...not closed or sold to private corporations.

Rather than privatize, fix public schools

The solution should not be to outsource our children's education to institutions that care more about the bottom line or resist accountability. The solution should be to address and fix our problems, many of which were created by individuals and politicians who seek to privatize our schools and profit off our children.

Defend public schools.

The Public School Counterinsurgency Field Manual

A public school defender's tactics should certainly include conventional weapons, such as union organizing, protests, civil disobedience, legislative, electoral and judicial processes. But conventional weaponry alone cannot beat back an insurgency. School-based educators especially must focus on non-combative, ally-building approaches: tactics that foster personal connections between the local populous and their public schools.

Hedge fund managers, corporate shills, ALEC, and other private sources don't want the public to know that they are fostering the destruction of America's public education. "Corporations are people, too, my friends" is making it easy for billionaires and tax-freeloading corporations to buy up America's infrastructure.

Campbell Brown Won’t Say Who Is Funding Her School Privatizing Group

Using Brown’s logic no political contributions should be made public for fear that people will be criticized for funding candidates and initiatives others find objectionable. The rich and powerful should be able to buy elections and candidates freely – that’s none of the public’s business.

Rarely is the backwardness and venality of the movement to privatize public education made so obvious.

Private companies running charter schools is wrong. The idea behind public schools and public school boards is that public accountability is important. Luckily this group is being investigated.

FBI raided local charter school

FBI agents raided a Bond Hill charter school in June as part of an ongoing federal investigation into whether Horizon Science Academy Cincinnati, its sister schools in Ohio and two other states, and its management company outside Chicago had improper relationships with several technology vendors.

TEXAS TEXTBOOKS c. 2002

Textbook publishers don't publish different books for every state. Instead, they focus on the states with the largest markets and publish books that will sell there. Texas is one of the nation's biggest markets and the right wing faction of the state school board always makes it difficult for the rest of us.

In 2002, these folks decided that a free, public education is an entitlement, and is therefore unacceptable. One wonders if these folks want to start charging admission to public parks or libraries. The rabid anti-taxers don't believe that government has any purpose whatsoever...It's a selfish, anti-community attitude. According to them we're not "all in this together." Instead, it's "every man for himself." The social studies text books are up for revision this year. I don't doubt that the same sort of lunacy will prevail (Think I'm wrong? Take a gander at the Texas GOP platform for this year).

Ten Outrageous Changes Publishers Agreed to Make to Texas Social Studies Textbooks in 2002

A publisher agreed to delete “In the United States, everyone has a right to free public education” from a textbook after a critic argued that the sentence suggested education is an entitlement.

TIME TO DREAM AGAIN

Neil deGrasse Tyson...

Do You Know The Silly Reason Why America Put A Man On The Moon? Do You Know Why We Stopped Going?

"The NASA budget is four-tenths of one penny on a tax dollar." If I held up the tax dollar and I cut - horizontally into it - four tenths of one percent of it's width, it doesn't even get you into the ink. So I will not accept a statement that says, "we can't afford it."

Do you realize that the $850 billion dollar bank bailout - that sum of money is greater than the entire 50 year running budget of NASA? And so, when someone says, "We don't have enough money for this space probe." I'm asking, "No. It's not that you don't have enough money." It's that the distribution of money that you're spending is warped in some way that you are removing the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow.

The home of tomorrow. The city of tomorrow. The transportation of tomorrow. All that ended in the 1970's. After we stopped going to the Moon, it all ended - We stopped dreaming.

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

TECHNICAL PROBLEMS WITH ISTEP+

Yesterday representatives from CTB/McGraw-Hill reported to the Indiana legislature about the technical problems with the state test, the ISTEP+...

ISTEP+ vendor apologizes, admits errors

CTB has agreed to pay for a third-party validity study and that the company’s $95 million, four-year contract with the state allows for penalties and fines.

...The Indiana Department of Education has since hired an outside consultant to review the validity of scores for tens of thousands of students.

Depending on the results, all or some of those tests could be thrown out.

ISTEP+ scores are used in part to determine teacher performance and compensation. And they determine each school’s A-to-F accountability grade. The accountability grade can be used to eventually close failing schools or allow more students to take vouchers without first attending public school.

Before the "outside consultant" can determine if the tests are valid let's look at what "valid" actually means in the assessment world. Here is the definition of validity (click the quote to read about reliability).

[Note: in assessment there is more than one kind of validity: content validity, face validity, criterion-related validity (or predictive validity), construct validity, factorial validity, concurrent validity, convergent validity and divergent (or discriminant validity). The definitions below are generalized. Furthermore, to be valid an assessment must also be reliable, though reliability is not sufficient to make an assessment valid. Clear?]

...validity refers to the extent we are measuring what we hope to measure (and what we think we are measuring).

What, then, is the ISTEP+ supposed to measure? The following is from the 2012-2013 Indiana Assessment Program Manual.

ISTEP+ Grades 3-8

The purpose of the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress-Plus (ISTEP+) program is to measure student achievement in the subject areas of English/language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. In particular, ISTEP+ reports student achievement levels according to the Indiana Academic Standards that were adopted by the Indiana State Board of Education.

Appendix H of the program manual reports on the reliability and validity of the test. Unless you're trained and interested in tests and measurements you're not likely to care much about the discussion in this section of the Program Manual. However, for those who understand the statistics involved and are interested, this appendix explains how the state has determined that the test is reliable and valid.

The outside consultant hired by the state will determine whether the validity of the test has been compromised by the testing irregularities caused by the technical glitches.


STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

The ISTEP+ purports to be a valid measure of student achievement with respect to the Indiana standards. Good testing practice dictates that it should be used only for determining student achievement. Other uses have not been validated and variables which would influence the test's validity in other areas have not been taken into account. Therefore...

1. It's not a valid measure of teacher effectiveness. It has never been validated for that purpose. (It's also not a reliable measure of teacher effectiveness since reliability has never been determined either.)

2. It's not a valid measure with which to "grade" schools ("A" to "F").

All that's ever been provided for the ISTEP+ is it's (supposed) validity as a measure of student achievement. Using it for any other purpose is not valid. Period.




THE CASE AGAINST STANDARDIZED TESTING

Back in 2000 Alfie Kohn wrote an article, Standardized Testing and Its Victims, in which he listed reasons why standardized tests are not just inadequate for evaluating students (and schools), but downright harmful. He lists some facts (in the original all facts are explained in more detail.

Fact 1. Our children are tested to an extent that is unprecedented in our history and unparalleled anywhere else in the world...Few countries use standardized tests for children below high school age—or multiple-choice tests for students of any age.

Fact 2. Noninstructional factors explain most of the variance among test scores when schools or districts are compared. A study of math results on the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that the combination of four such variables...accounted for a whopping 89 percent of the differences in state scores.

Fact 3. Norm-referenced tests were never intended to measure the quality of learning or teaching.

Fact 4. Standardized-test scores often measure superficial thinking...it appears that standardized-test results are positively correlated with a shallow approach to learning.

Fact 5. Virtually all specialists condemn the practice of giving standardized tests to children younger than 8 or 9 years old.

Fact 6. Virtually all relevant experts and organizations condemn the practice of basing important decisions, such as graduation or promotion, on the results of a single test. The National Research Council takes this position, as do most other professional groups (such as the American Educational Research Association and the American Psychological Association), the generally pro-testing American Federation of Teachers, and even the companies that manufacture and sell the exams. Yet just such high-stakes testing is currently taking place, or scheduled to be introduced soon, in more than half the states.

Fact 7. The time, energy, and money that are being devoted to preparing students for standardized tests have to come from somewhere. Schools across the country are cutting back or even eliminating programs in the arts, recess for young children, electives for high schoolers, class meetings...discussions about current events...the use of literature in the early grades...and entire subject areas such as science...

Fact 8. Many educators are leaving the field because of what is being done to schools in the name of "accountability" and "tougher standards."

[NOTE: Remember, Kohn's article was written in 2000, before No Child Left Behind became law! ISTEP+ is a criterion-referenced test, not a norm-referenced test. Criterion-referenced tests are "intended to measure how well a person has learned a specific body of knowledge and skills." Furthermore, the ISTEP+ is a particular variation of a criterion-referenced test known as a "standards-referenced test" or "standards based assessment" because it measures the accumulation of knowledge of the Indiana Standards.

Nevertheless, Fact 3 can correctly be rewritten as: Criterion-based tests were never intended to measure the quality of learning or teaching.]

The main point of Kohn's article is not simply to suggest that standardized testing is inappropriate as a high stakes measure, but to emphasize that those children who need the most help -- children who come to school with fewer skills, i.e. children of poverty -- are hurt the most by the emphasis on testing. He writes.

*The quality of instruction declines most for those who have least. Standardized tests tend to measure the temporary acquisition of facts and skills, including the skill of test-taking itself, more than genuine understanding. To that extent, the fact that such tests are more likely to be used and emphasized in schools with higher percentages of minority students (a fact that has been empirically verified) predictably results in poorer-quality teaching in such schools. The use of a high-stakes strategy only underscores the preoccupation with these tests and, as a result, accelerates a reliance on direct-instruction techniques and endless practice tests. "Skills-based instruction, the type to which most children of color are subjected, tends to foster low-level uniformity and subvert academic potential," as Dorothy Strickland, an African-American professor at Rutgers University, has remarked...

*Standards aren't the main ingredient that's in low supply. Anyone who is serious about addressing the inequities of American education would naturally want to investigate differences in available resources. A good argument could be made that the fairest allocation strategy, which is only common sense in some countries, is to provide not merely equal amounts across schools and districts, but more for the most challenging student populations. This does happen in some states—by no means all—but, even when it does, the money is commonly offered as a short-term grant (hardly sufficient to compensate for years of inadequate funding) and is often earmarked for test preparation rather than for higher-quality teaching. Worse, high-stakes testing systems may provide more money to those already successful (for example, in the form of bonuses for good scores) and less to those whose need is greatest.

Many public officials, along with like-minded journalists and other observers, are apt to minimize the matter of resources and assume that everything deficient about education for poor and minority children can be remedied by more forceful demands that we "raise the bar." The implication here would seem to be that teachers and students could be doing a better job but have, for some reason, chosen not to do so and need only be bribed or threatened into improvement. (In fact, this is the tacit assumption behind all incentive systems.) The focus among policymakers has been on standards of outcome rather than standards of opportunity.

To make matters worse, some supporters of high-stakes testing have not just ignored, but contemptuously dismissed, the relevance of barriers to achievement in certain neighborhoods. Explanations about very real obstacles such as racism, poverty, fear of crime, low teacher salaries, inadequate facilities, and language barriers are sometimes written off as mere "excuses." This is at once naive and callous, and, like any other example of minimizing the relevance of structural constraints, ultimately serves the interests of those fortunate enough not to face them.

Finally, testing in Indiana, as in most other places around the country, has become the "end" of education, not just a method of measuring learning. For the state, scoring well on the test is the goal. This forces schools to emphasize them or be punished (as opposed to being offered more support). In the conclusion to an article titled, The Limits of Standardized Tests for Diagnosing and Assisting Student Learning the authors at Fairtest.org wrote,

When standardized tests are the primary factor in accountability, the temptation is to use the tests to define curriculum and focus instruction. What is not tested is not taught, and what is taught does not include higher-order learning. How the subject is tested becomes a model for how to teach the subject. At the extreme, school becomes a test prep program – and this extreme already exists.

It is of course possible to use a standardized test and not let its limits control curriculum and instruction. However, this can result in a school putting itself at risk for producing lower test scores. It also means parents and the community are not informed systematically about the non-tested areas, unless the school or district makes a great effort.

To improve learning and provide meaningful accountability, schools and districts cannot rely solely on standardized tests. The inherent limits of the instruments allow them only to generate information that is inadequate in both breadth and depth. Thus, states, districts and schools must find ways to strengthen classroom assessments and to use the information that comes from these richer measures to inform the public.

In its ignorance and arrogance the State of Indiana has elevated the state assessments, including ISTEP+, as the prime measure with which to judge students, schools, teachers, administrators, and school systems.

The current uproar over the technical glitch debacle during the last ISTEP+ administration window is just a distraction from the real issue of our overuse and misuse of testing. It has become an argument over how best to misuse testing in our obsessive quest for data.

The whole discussion about the technical glitch during the ISTEP+ is irrelevant.

For more about testing see The Case Against High Stakes Testing

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

According to Arne Duncan, "Poverty is not destiny..." Jerry Bracey would respond, "Poverty is not an excuse. It's a condition. It's like gravity. Gravity affects everything you do on the planet. So does poverty."

I accept that "poverty is not destiny," however, while Duncan and the "reformers" are quick to give examples of high poverty children and schools which have succeeded, they ignore the effect that poverty has on the millions of children who are struggling. They use outliers as "proof" that poverty doesn't matter when we (and they) know that it does.

Spouting phrases like "poverty is not destiny" is an excuse to ignore it...to ignore the fact that our legislators, governors, and presidents have failed to resolve issues like poverty. It's much easier to find fault with America's public schools than to take on the difficult issues facing the country.

We are a profoundly divided nation...and the greatest divide is economic. While politicians try to destroy each other...while lobbyists buy legislators...while the wealthiest individuals control more and more of this country's resources...more than one fifth of our children live in poverty and attend underfunded schools. We know that there is a high correlation between a child's family and his/her academic achievement, yet, instead of providing health care, counselors, transportation, and other wraparound services, such as those suggested by the Chicago Teachers Union, we close schools, which punishes students for living in poverty, and punishes teachers for dedicating their lives to helping at-risk children.

Politicians and policy makers don't want to accept the fact that it is they who have failed, so they look for a place to lay the blame.

Privatizing hasn't helped. Closing schools hasn't helped. High-stakes testing hasn't helped. The source of the problem is child poverty.

Valerie Strauss

The biggest scandal in America

Valerie Strauss is one of public education's strongest voices...

There are many ramifications for this in the realm of public education. Because public schools are largely funded by property taxes, schools in high-poverty areas have fewer resources. Federal dollars appropriated to help close the gap don’t come close. Furthermore, if there is anything that education research has shown consistently and conclusively, it is that student achievement is linked to the socioeconomic level of families. Students who attend low-poverty schools do well on international test scores, as well as students in any other country.

Jonathan Kozol

Here is Jonathan Kozol's speech at the Save Our Schools March in DC, 7/30/2011. No one over the last 40 years has spent as much time advocating for poor children as Kozol.


Stephen Krashen

Protecting Students Against the Effects of Poverty: Libraries

• Children of poverty are more likely to suffer from "food insecurity," which means slower language development as well as behavioral problems (Coles, 2008/2009).
• High-poverty families are more likely to lack medical insurance or have high co- payments, which means less medical care, and more childhood illness and absenteeism, which of course negatively impacts school achievement. School is not helping: Poor schools are more likely to have no school nurse or have a high ratio of nurses to students (Berliner, 2009).
• Children of poverty are more likely to live in high-pollution areas, with more exposure to mercury, lead, PCB's (polychlorinated biphenyls) and smog, all of which influence health and learning, and often impact behavior as well (Berliner, 2009, p. 23; Martin, 2004).
• Children of poverty have very little access to books at home and in their communities, with less access to good public libraries and bookstores (Neuman and Celano, 2001).

Protecting children from poverty a better investment than the common core.

The major reason for our unspectacular school achievement is our level of child poverty, now 23%, the second highest child poverty level among 35 “economically advanced” countries. Poverty has a devastating impact on school performance. When we control for poverty, American children's international test scores are near the top of the world.

There is no evidence that more rigorous standards and increased testing improve school performance.

There is strong evidence that that protecting children from the effects of poverty will increase school performance: Strengthening food and health care programs, and providing better support for libraries and librarians is a much better investment than the common core.

Alfie Kohn

Poor Teaching for Poor Children … in the Name of Reform

Those who demand that we “close the achievement gap” generally focus only on results, which in practice refers only to test scores. High-quality instruction is defined as whatever raises those scores. But when teaching strategies are considered, there is wide agreement (again, among noneducators) about what constitutes appropriate instruction in the inner city.

The curriculum consists of a series of separate skills, with more worksheets than real books, more rote practice than exploration of ideas, more memorization (sometimes assisted with chanting and clapping) than thinking. In books like The Shame of the Nation, Jonathan Kozol, another frequent visitor to urban schools, describes a mechanical, precisely paced process for drilling black and Latino children in “obsessively enumerated particles of amputated skill associated with upcoming state exams.”

Not only is the teaching scripted, with students required to answer fact-based questions on command, but a system of almost militaristic behavior control is common, with public humiliation for noncompliance and an array of rewards for obedience that calls to mind the token economy programs developed in prisons and psychiatric hospitals.

David C. Berliner

Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success

...despite their best efforts at reducing inequalities, inequalities do not easily go away, with the result that America’s schools generally work less well for impoverished youth and much better for those more fortunate. Recent test results from America’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and from the international comparisons in both the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program on International Student Assessment (PISA) all show this pattern. Figure 1 (following), from TIMSS 2007, illustrates how closely linked school scores are to the school’s enrollment of low-income students. Comparing the scores of schools in 58 countries in the TIMSS pool against only wealthier American schools, instead of overall averages, makes the link clear. Looking first at the American schools with the lowest levels of poverty—where under 10% of the students are poor—we find that the average scores of fourth grade American students are higher than in all but two of the other 58 countries.6 Similarly, in American schools where under 25% of the students are poor, the average scores of fourth grade American students are higher than all but four of these other countries.

And others...

Hunger, Academic Success, and the Hard Bigotry of Indifference

Research on young children in several U.S. cities found that food insecure children were two thirds more likely to experience developmental risks in expressive and receptive language, fine and gross motor control, social behavior, emotional control, self-help, and preschool functioning. These outcomes held even after controlling for potential confounding variables such as caregiver's education, employment, and depressive symptoms. Other data from a study of 1,000 poor families identified associations between food insecurity and children's behavior problems, such as temper tantrums, fighting, sadness, depression, anxiety, and loneliness.

Map: How 35 countries compare on child poverty (the U.S. is ranked 34th)

UNICEF’s data is important for measuring the share of children who are substantively poorer than their national average, which has important implications for the cost of food, housing, health care and other essentials. Its research shows that children are more likely to fall below this relative poverty line in the United States than in almost any other developed country.

Does America Really Care About Its Children?

I'm really not interested in hearing politicians on either side of the aisle talk about "reform" when they can't even keep per pupil spending at least constant (and that's not even counting for inflation!). And I'm especially uninterested in hearing billionaires tell us their latest wacky schemes to "reform" our schools when the money that's not being spent on our children is winding up in their pockets.

More on Poverty...

No school can make up for years of neglect before a child reaches school age. No school can correct the damage done by lead poisoning or poor nutrition as the child grows. No school can teach a child who has been traumatized by violence. Closing public schools and opening militarized charter schools - such as our new Secretary of Education did in Chicago - do not solve the problem caused by years of social indifference. “Better” tests don’t improve teaching and learning. You don’t fatten the cow by weighing her with a better scale.

Schools need to be included as part of the solution to the problems of generational poverty, crime and malnutrition - absolutely…but someone has to carry the ball back to the children’s homes…and someone has to deal with the other 18 hours a day that the children are not in school.

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.