Live Long and Prosper...

MASK MISINFORMATION

N.J. school nurse fails science, experts say, in comments about face masks.

Sadly, this nurse at the center of this article has failed to keep up with the science she (should have) learned in nursing school.

One of the arguments Nurse Pein gives for being against masks is that it causes damage to the mental health of children. More first-graders are suffering from anxiety and depression, she claims. She blames the masks but fails science in at least two ways.

Science lesson #1

First, her conclusion is based on a small sample size, just one school. Any good scientist will tell you that a large enough sample size is necessary before concluding that a hypothesis is correct. Small samples increase the margin of error and reduce the confidence level. Are the first-graders in her school representative of all the first-graders in the state...the country...the world? Obviously not. Perhaps there's something happening in her community that is causing stress among the population of young children -- something like a pandemic, for example. Blaming it on the masks alone is just plain ignorant.

Science lesson #2

Failure number two -- correlation does not imply causation. Nurse Pein blames the masks for the distress of the children in her school, but did she explore anything else that might be causing the problems? Are all the children who wear masks to school feeling anxious or depressed? Perhaps her attendance area has a large number of COVID cases and the students are worried about their family members or classmates. Perhaps the children have heard adults spout misinformation about the dangers of wearing masks! Whatever the cause, the conclusion that the masks are causing the negative feelings of the children is a conclusion without a basis.

Finally, it must be noted that she hasn't kept up with the changes to the science of the pandemic as we learn more about the virus. Early on we were told that masks weren't effective against the virus and were needed for medical professionals. However, as we have learned more about how the virus is spread the science has changed. We've learned more. We know more than we did in February and March of 2020. Now we know that masks are effective in preventing the spread of the virus. Similarly, we now know that children are more susceptible to coronavirus variants than they were a year ago (Northeast Indiana readers, see also here).

Science is not an unchanging truth. Science conclusions can and do change when we learn more.

Other objections Pein has for mask-wearing are debunked in the article.

After refusing to wear a mask herself, Erin Pein said she was suspended from her job in the Stafford Township school district.

Now her supporters are planning a rally and her cause has become an issue in the upcoming Republican primary for Hirsh Singh, who arranged and posted a widely shared video interview with her and argues that no one should be forced to wear masks — calling it “a matter of personal freedom.”

But epidemiologists say such claims are little more than “inflammatory rhetoric” and at odds with the science that has repeatedly shown that face masks are highly effective in reducing the spread of the coronavirus. At the same time, they said as new variants of the virus develop, the wearing of masks has become more important than ever.

CLIMATE CHANGE MISINFORMATION

Making the Grade? How State Public School Science Standards Address Climate Change

Are you surprised that Indiana didn't get an F in its state standards addressing climate change? The fact that there's some hope raised the grade to a D.

The state standards for science in Indiana, according to the report by the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund, don't even acknowledge that the changing climate is a problem. Students graduating from K-12 schools in Indiana will hear pundits on TV raging about the dangers of climate change and will assume that it's not a problem we need to worry about. Graduates from Indiana will be unlikely to contribute to advances in climate science and other related fields. The right-wing myth that climate change is a hoax will continue to find a home in Indiana.

Indiana
Overall grade: D

Indiana earned a D, just barely escaping and overall failing grade. The state's approach to the reality and severity of climate change as well as the human responsibility for causing it is abysmal. One reviewer: "I must say [the standards do] not meet the needs of Indiana students in the process of learning their foundational understanding of the world they are inheriting and the promising careers and opportunities available to them; this is a disservice to them." Saving the state from an F were somewhat better -- but still poor -- marks for addressing the possibility of solutions to the problem, which is odd since the standards failed to make clear that the problem exists. One reviewer summed up thus: "These standards do a relatively poor job in meeting the four rubrics. They do not have a coherent learning progression or explicit information. Interestingly, there is a good deal of focus on science and engineering solution-oriented perspectives, and this is why I scored the 'there's hope' section higher. This...focus could be very effective if it was used to address and ideate climate adaptation and mitigation solutions." Not surprisingly, the state got failing grades for preparing students for studying climate change in higher education and for responsible participation in civic deliberation on the issue.

VACCINE MISINFORMATION

Why mRNA vaccines can’t change your genome: a lesson from Elmer Elevator
My last blog post, Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket, focused on science literacy, and the lack of it in American culture. I suggested that teachers connect to organizations to help bring science literacy to their students. One of those groups was the National Center for Science Education. In this post, Executive Director of NCSE, Ann Reid, debunks the conspiracy that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines alter a person's DNA. Hint: You should read the book My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett, a 1949 Newbery Honor Book. Hint #1: mRNA vaccines won't alter your DNA.

Over the course of Elmer’s adventure, he uses each of these objects. For example, the toothbrush and toothpaste serve to distract a hostile rhinoceros that threatens to drown Elmer in the pool he weeps in because his horn (the book says “tusk,” but rhino horns aren’t teeth) has grown grey and ugly. Only the jackknife, which Elmer eventually uses to saw through the ropes holding the dragon, makes any sense in advance. But every object is used, and every one is essential; without each and every one of them, Elmer would never have reached and rescued the baby dragon.

All right, I can hear you saying: “What in the Sam Hill does this have to do with mRNA vaccines?”

Well, this. For an mRNA vaccine to alter your DNA, it would have to overcome a series of challenges, each of which requires specialized cellular components that would have to be in the right place at the right time. Just like Elmer Elevator, the mRNA can’t just show up in your cell and expect to get past all the wild animals between it and the baby dragon, as it were.

SCIENCE IGNORANCE CAN BE HARMFUL TO YOUR PUBLIC SCHOOL

A state legislator is howling indoctrination because my 7th graders are learning the ocean is polluted

A North Carolina representative wants to make sure that students aren't taught about climate change which he says is "indoctrination."

This is what happens when science is misunderstood, misrepresented, and then politicized.

What also scares me about this bill is that it would require teachers to spend an insane amount of time every day posting lesson plans online.

A member of the North Carolina House of Representatives held up my teaching as an example of harmful indoctrination of children this week as state legislators met to discuss a new bill which would require teachers to post their lesson plans online for public review.

The K-12 Education Committee approved HB 755, also known as “An Act to Ensure Academic Transparency.” It passed the House by a vote of 66-50 and now moves on to the Senate.

The legislation mandates that all lesson plans, including information about any supporting instructional materials as well as procedures for how an in-person review of lesson materials may be requested, be “prominently displayed” on school websites.

Iredell County Republican Representative Jeffrey McNeely gave the bill two enthusiastic thumbs up, pointing to my teaching as an example of the hidden indoctrination that will be exposed if the bill is passed into law

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Carl Sagan's 1995 book, The Demon-Haunted World, is prescient in its description of the world 26 years into its future -- superstition, lack of critical thinking, the inability to question, the inability to distinguish between truth and falsehood...

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

CHILDREN DON'T EAT ON GRADE LEVEL

When Betsy DeVos “Likes” Your “Research”…

This post isn't about reading, but Mitchell Robinson brings up important information we should remember.

Last month, third graders in Indiana took the IREAD-3, a reading achievement test. Those who fail to achieve the arbitrarily designated cut score must take the test again during the summer. Those who fail it again must repeat third grade.

The concept of grade level should be flexible, not based on an arbitrary cut score. It should reflect the average reading level of a child in a particular grade instead of a goal for every child to achieve on a given test day. We should teach children at their zone of proximal development -- the level just beyond the child's independent level, not at the level the test insists upon.

Would we like all children to be above average? Of course, but we can't ignore the math which renders that impossible. Additionally, we can't ignore the detrimental impact of poverty on school achievement. Our job, as teachers, is to analyze a child's achievement and make our plans based on what will help him progress as quickly as possible. That means starting where the child is...not at some vague "grade-level" determined by an outside source.

By setting a cut score on a test, and using the test to determine grade placement, the state is ignoring this basic concept of academic achievement and development, usurping the professional judgment of the classroom teacher, and ignoring the best interests of children in a misguided quest to get a number with which to label teachers, schools and school districts.

I agree with Robinson when he says that we can set "goals as teachers for when we introduce various literacy concepts to our students." We do that by understanding the reading process and observing our students. [emphasis in original]

Children don’t “read on grade level” anymore than they “eat on grade level” or “care about their friends on grade level.” Anyone who has actually helped a child learn how to read, or play a music instrument, or ride a bike, knows that kids will accomplish these goals “when they are ready.” Not by “grade level.”

So, kids will read when they have a need to read, and when what they are reading is relevant to their lives. Not when they are supposed to read as measured by their grade level. Can we set our own goals as teachers for when we introduce various literacy concepts to our students? Sure. And teachers do that, every day in every public school in the nation.

But the only thing that measuring reading by “grade level” does is make a lot of kids–and teachers–feel dumb when they are not, and turn reading into drudgery instead of the life-long pursuit of joy, knowledge, and enjoyment it’s meant to be.

FOOD IMPACTS ACHIEVEMENT

Food for thought: Students’ test scores rise a few weeks after families get food stamps

What's this? Students learn better when they are well fed? Go figure!

...scores were highest around three weeks after families received benefits, and lowest at the beginning and end of that cycle. The differences were modest, but statistically significant.

It’s not fully clear why scores spike around that three-week mark, but the researchers suggest that the academic benefits of better access to food, like improved nutrition and reduced stress, take some time to accrue.

“Students with peak test performance (who received SNAP around two weeks prior to their test date) may have benefited from access to sufficient food resources and lowered stress not only on the day of the test but for the previous two weeks,” Gassman-Pines and Bellows write.

Source: Food Instability and Academic Achievement: A Quasi-Experiment Using SNAP Benefit Timing

SCHOOLS ARE THE MIRROR OF THE NATION

'As society goes, school goes:’ New report details toll on schools in President Trump’s America

Children learn what they live. Guess what happens when they live in a society filled with hatred and bigotry...in a society where truth has no meaning...in a society where disagreements are solved by shooting those who you disagree with...

John Rogers and his colleagues (Michael Ishimoto, Alexander Kwako, Anthony Berryman, and Claudia Diera) at UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access surveyed a nationally representative sample of more than 500 public high school principals from across the country and found this:

* 89 percent reported that “incivility and contentiousness in the broader political environment has considerably affected their school community.”

* 83 percent of principals note these tensions are fueled by “untrustworthy or disputed information,” and over 90 percent report students sharing “hateful posts on social media.”

* Almost all principals rate the threat of gun violence as a major concern, and one in three principals report that their school received in the previous year threats of mass shooting or bombing or both.

There’s more: In schools with a sizable immigrant population, principals report the significant negative effects that federal immigration policy and its associated anti-immigrant rhetoric have on student performance and family stability.

And schools that are in the areas of the country hardest hit by the opioid crisis are directly affected by addiction, overdose, and family devastation.

Source: School and Society in the Age of Trump


TOMORROW'S TEACHERS

The teacher shortage is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought

The right-wing war on the teaching profession is succeeding. Fewer young people are going into education. The number of uncertified teachers is increasing. Class sizes will increase.

As might be expected, this has the greatest impact on high-poverty schools.

What can we do? Who will be tomorrow's teachers? Will there still be a well staffed, local public school for our children and grandchildren?

Schools struggle to find and retain highly qualified individuals to teach, and this struggle is tougher in high-poverty schools...

Low teacher pay is reducing the attractiveness of teaching jobs, and is an even bigger problem in high-poverty schools...

The tough school environment is demoralizing to teachers, especially so in high-poverty schools...

Teachers—especially in high-poverty schools—aren’t getting the training, early career support, and professional development opportunities they need to succeed and this too is keeping them, or driving them, out of the profession...

THERE MUST BE ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CHARTERS, TOO

Weekly privatization report: Charter special ed failure in Louisiana

In the Public Interest's weekly privatization report for April 8, 2019, is all about charter schools. Fully ten of the fifteen education articles have to do with charters failing to do the job that taxpayers were giving them money to do. Charters should not be allowed to open in areas where an additional school isn't needed. Charters must be fiscally and academically accountable, just like real public schools.

Louisiana officials are recommending to close a charter school amid allegations of financial mismanagement and a failure to provide proper special education services to the roughly 40 percent of enrolled students with disabilities.

DISENFRANCHISEMENT FOLLIES

Editorial: Republican legislators insult voters who support public schools

What does it say about a political party which wins elections by preventing citizens from voting...by arranging districts so that politicians choose their voters, not the other way around...and by going against the will of the voters to divert money from public institutions to privatization?

Republicans in Indiana tried this during the 2019 legislative session and didn't get away with it. I don't doubt that they will try again.

Pinellas County voters reapproved a special property tax in 2016 to improve teacher salaries and arts programs, not to subsidize charter schools. Miami-Dade voters approved a property tax increase last year to raise teacher salaries and hire more school resource officers, not to subsidize charter schools. Yet now Republicans in the Florida Legislature want to change the rules and force local school districts to share money from local tax increases with privately operated charter schools. Their efforts to undermine traditional public schools and ignore the intent of the voters know no boundaries.

Teacher appreciation week has ended for another year, so now politicians and privatizers can go back to trying to undermine the work and livelihood of our nation's public school educators.

In my last post I quoted Corinne Driscoll of Syracuse who, in 2012 wrote about politicians statements during Teachers Appreciation Week,

All of these words are empty and merely paying lip service to something they do not believe. By their actions, these "leaders" have made it obvious that they neither appreciate, admire, respect nor comprehend the jobs of the people who spend their days with the nation's children. Nor do they understand the first thing about the children in those classrooms.

Not much has changed in the last 6 years since that was written except perhaps, that the role of public school educator has gotten more difficult, with more restrictions and barriers placed in our way by those who would destroy public education.

Despite the change in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 2015 (ESSA), students are still forced to spend too much of their school career testing. Here in Indiana the legislative supermajority has taken the flexibility offered to the states by ESSA and doubled down on testing. Teachers and schools are still being punished for enrolling students of poverty. Teachers are still being evaluated by unreliable student test scores, and schools are still being closed, privatized through charters, or taken over by the state instead of being helped and supported.


POLITICIANS MAKE THE RULES...

Driscoll continued...

They cut budgets, eliminate classroom positions, overload classrooms, remove supports, choose ineffective and downright useless instructional tools, set up barriers to providing academic assistance, and then very quickly stand up and point fingers at teachers, blaming them for every failure of American society, and washing their own hands of any blame.

Indiana's public schools are trying to survive while sharing their funding with charters and voucher schools. Some are doing well, especially those in wealthier areas. Some, however, are losing the battle.

For example, in two days (May 14, 2018) the state legislature will vote to take over two school systems because of fiscal mismanagement. The school systems obviously need some help, and already have the benefit of emergency managers. In the past, the state legislature has provided loans to charter schools and then forgiven those loans – to the tune of $90 million. But, instead of simply providing loans to these two distressed school systems along with the emergency managers, the one-party ruled state legislature is poised to allow a take-over of the schools, silencing the local school boards and by extension, the voters. The bill, HB1315, also eliminates transparency and excuses one of the two systems from following hundreds of regulations required of other public schools


...THEN BLAME THE TEACHERS

The bill rewards [sic] teachers for their hard work in the classroom with the loss of collective bargaining rights, and gives the emergency manager the right to lay off 5% of their numbers in the middle of the school year (the latter applies to any emergency manager, in any school system in the state). Teachers, then, are being held responsible for the condition of the school system's finances!

And some of these same legislators wonder why young people don't want to go into teaching!

In other words, policy makers have made the rules, restrictions, and requirements for education in this state, and then blame teachers when things don't work.

So much for appreciation.

HIRING UNDER QUALIFIED PERSONNEL

Indiana lawmakers resurrect proposal to let districts hire more unlicensed teachers

[Not law as of this writing...]

In Indiana you can teach a high school subject if you have a degree in the subject you want to teach, a B average in your degree program, pass a test on the subject content, and have worked in the subject area field for 6000 hours. For example, if you have a college degree in English, in which you carried a B average, and worked in an English related field – let's say journalism – and you can pass the state's English test, you can teach high school English. You don't have to know anything about child development or learning theory to start, though you do have to eventually learn something about pedagogy. In other words, you can walk into a high school classroom on the first day of a school year with no experience other than content knowledge.

Now, the Indiana legislature, in order to counteract the teacher shortage caused by its own punitive attack on public education and educators, is suggesting we expand that plan to all schools.

Now, we have such a shortage of teachers, that we need to relax the rules so that anyone can teach. Because, as I wrote in Kill the Teaching Profession: Indiana and Wisconsin Show How It's Done...

...nothing says increased achievement more than hiring under qualified personnel.

The same people who made becoming and remaining a teacher so onerous and unattractive, and thereby created the current teacher shortage, are now telling us we need to make it easier for unqualified adults to teach our children...

Behning said he brought back the proposal because he thought it was a simpler fix to the bill’s original goal of addressing teacher licensure exams. The tests have been criticized recently for being too difficult and keeping potentially qualified teachers out of the classroom at a time when schools have struggled to hire in certain subjects such as math and special education.

DPE FOR DUMMIES

Destroy Public Education (DPE) for Dummies

Do you know what "education reformers" are trying to do? Do you know when the "ed reform" movement got started and what drives it?

Thomas Ultican, a retired teacher (in California, I think), gives a succinct history of DPE – Destroy Public Education – beginning in the early 80s with the publication of A Nation At Risk.

His DPE Movement False Taking Points are excellent, as is his list of billionaires working together to privatize public education.

It is unlikely that government spending on education will end any time soon. However, as schools are increasingly privatized, public spending on education will decrease.

Today, we have come to expect high quality public education. We expect trained certificated teachers and administrators to staff our schools. We expect reasonable class sizes and current well-resourced curriculum. It is those expectations that are being shattered.

Many forces are attacking public education for diverse reasons, but the fundamental reason is still rich people do not like paying taxes. Choice and the attack on public education, at its root, is about decreasing government spending and lowering taxes.

TRY RUNNING A BUSINESS AS A PUBLIC SCHOOL

Public Schools Aren’t Businesses – Don’t Believe Me? Try Running a Business as a Public School

Stu Egan, a NC teacher, explains to business types why their ideas about "running a school as a business" is just so much B.S. As a thought experiment, he suggests that we consider what it would be like if we tried to run a business like a school, thereby showing how foolish it is to conflate the two. His main points underscore the fact that, since public schools are required to follow certain laws, they cannot, and should not, be run like businesses.

Be prepared to open up every book and have everything audited...
Be prepared to publicize all of the salaries of the people who work for you. ALL OF THEM...
You must allow every stockholder to have equal power on how your run your business even if they own just one share...
Be prepared to abide by protocols and procedures established by people outside of the business...
You will not get to choose your raw materials...
Be prepared to have everything open to the press...
You will not get to advertise or market yourself...
Even though you are supposedly “fully” funded, you will have to raise funds because you are not really fully funded...
Your work hours, schedule, and calendar will be dictated by those who do not even work for your business... You will have to communicate with all of your clients’ parents and guardians.

The Blueberry Story

CLOSING SCHOOLS

What research really says about closing schools — and why it’s a bad idea for kids

Nationally so-called "failing" public schools are being closed rather than improved. In places like Chicago, Philadelphia, and Indianapolis, school boards and mayors are deciding that helping schools with low test scores isn't worth the time and the effort. Unfortunately, what usually happens is that the "low-performing" closed public schools are replaced by equally "low-performing" charter or private schools. In other words, the only thing that changes is that privatization gets a boost from those policy makers charged with the success of public schools.

What's wrong with this picture? First, low test scores are not usually the fault of the school. Years of economic neglect leaves schools in high poverty areas with fewer resources, fewer opportunities, and deteriorating facilities. Poor students need more resources to help them achieve, yet the United States is one of only a handful of advanced nations where more money is spent on wealthy students than poor students. This is especially important because the United States has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty among developed nations and poverty correlates with lowered achievement.

Policy makers who close schools because they are "failing" are themselves at fault for the high rate of poverty in their district or state. The school...the teachers...and the students get punished because of economic circumstances.

Closing schools doesn't help.

In 2017, three of my colleagues at the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) examined the research on school closings. Many studies, they found, confirm that closing schools in the name of improving student achievement is a “high-risk/low-gain strategy” that fails to increase students’ achievement or their overall well-being.

Chicago Sticks to Portfolio School Reform Despite All the Evidence that It Isn’t Working

Chicago is one of the places where school closings/replacement with charters is a way of life. The mayor and his hand-picked school board have failed the most vulnerable children of the city. Now, instead of admitting that the process has been a failure, the city has doubled down and continues to do the same thing...perhaps expecting different results.

First, as Chicago has continued to launch new charter schools and specialty schools and selective schools, parents have been enticed by the advertising along with the idea that at least at the selective schools, their children will study with a more elite peer group. Parents have been willing to try out the choice schools and have their children travel long distances to elite schools and thereby abandon the neighborhood schools, whose funding drops as children leave. This process has hollowed out the comprehensive neighborhood high schools, which have been left serving a very vulnerable population with a higher percentage of students in special education. Last week’s Chicago Sun-Times reported that there has even been cheating on the lotteries, cheating in which school leaders have been able to find space for their children or relatives’ children in more elite schools, leaving behind students without powerful connections. This is a lifeboat strategy gone bad—a system that saves the privileged and leaves behind on the sinking ship the children who lack means or power or extreme talent.

SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

Much has been written about the Valentine's Day shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in which 17 students and teachers were killed. Here are three articles which focus on the insane recent proposal to arm teachers because increasing the number of guns in a school will somehow make schools safer.

What I Saw Treating the Victims From Parkland Should Change the Debate on Guns

A radiologist explains why a bullet from an AR-15 is worse than a bullet from a handgun.

[Note: While both are unacceptable and both are horrible. One makes it much more difficult to survive.]

In a typical handgun injury that I diagnose almost daily, a bullet leaves a laceration through an organ like the liver. To a radiologist, it appears as a linear, thin, grey bullet track through the organ. There may be bleeding and some bullet fragments.

I was looking at a CT scan of one of the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who had been brought to the trauma center during my call shift. The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer, with extensive bleeding. How could a gunshot wound have caused this much damage?

Have I Got This Straight?

Peter Greene describes the irony of giving "failing" teachers the responsibility of carrying guns and using them to protect students.

Teachers cannot be trusted with fragile young minds, because we will try to inculcate them with Very Naughty Ideas, like socialism...

But we can be trusted to use guns around those young minds.

...Teachers in public school are so terrible and have failed so badly that an entire new system of schools should be opened up so that students can escape those terrible public school teachers...

But we terrible teachers should be allowed to use guns in our schools. 

Despite Parkland’s opposition, Florida House panel votes to arm teachers

Follow the money. The NRA gets most of its money from "contributions, grants, royalty income, and advertising, much of it originating from gun industry sources." It keeps the money flowing by buying legislators who do their bidding.

...just one more shameful aspect of American society...

The mother of slain geography teacher Scott Beigel, who gave his life to save his students, pleaded with lawmakers not to put loaded guns in the hands of teachers, even after a rigorous training and screening program.

"It could easily cause additional chaos and fatalities," Linda Beigel Schulman told legislators. If another shooter attacks a school, she said, "with the ongoing chaos, law enforcement could unintentionally shoot at a teacher."

Her voice breaking, Beigel Schulman said her son became a teacher to teach, "not to be a law enforcement officer."

The last in a series of resolutions for 2018...

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION #4

• Speak out for public education.

FIND YOUR VOICE

Now that you've educated yourself about public education and have learned what the forces of DPE (Destroy Public Education) are doing to privatize schooling and end public education, what can you do about it?

You can speak out.

Find your voice. Become a vocal supporter of, and activist for, public education.

WHO GETS HEARD?

Example 1: Have you ever seen a news show on the topic of public education? Who are the "experts" frequently brought on to discuss "what's wrong with our schools?" They are...

• Lawyers

• Businessmen

• Politicians and other policy makers

• Pundits

Who is often missing from those discussions?

• Teachers

• Parents

Example 2: Take a quick look at the history of the office of the U.S. Secretary of Education. Betsy DeVos, the current Secretary, has never attended a public school. She never worked in a public school. Her children never attended a public school. Yet, she is responsible for policy affecting the 90% of American children who attend public schools.

And she's not the first unqualified person to have that position.


There have been eleven U.S. Secretaries of Education. Only three of the eleven had training and experience in K-12 education. A few were public school students as children, but for most of them, that's the extent of their public school experience.

Add your voice to the voices supporting public education. The voice of public education is rarely heard by non-educators and the general public. Public education needs voices to compete with billionaire privatizers like Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, and Eli Broad. Public education needs voices to compete with political privatizers like (in Indiana) Bob Behning and Dennis Kruse.

Public education needs your voice. Speak out on behalf of your students/children and local public schools.

TELL YOUR STORY

Parents (and grandparents) and teachers (active and retired) are the most important voice in public education. We are the ones who know public education the best. We are the ones who are involved in the schools every day of the school year. We are the ones who see the drain that vouchers and charter schools have on our neighborhood schools. We are the ones who see the loss of programs, the increase in class sizes, and the negative impact that the overuse and misuse of testing has on children and adults.

Tell your story. Tell the stories of the children in your classroom. Tell the stories of your children at home. Let the public know what's happening to our schools.

MAKE SURE YOUR VOICE IS HEARD

You already know what to do...

• Write to your legislators. Once you know the issues, tell your legislators how you feel about what they're doing.

• Call and visit your legislators and tell them how you feel about that they're doing.

Indiana residents use the links below to find your legislators.

State Legislators

United States Representative

United States Senate

• Educate your friends, family, and neighbors.

• Promote public education and supporters of public education on Social Media.

• Write letters to the editor of your local newspaper. Write to national newspapers. Start your own blog and write about public education.

• Join with others in your city, county, or state who are working to support public education.

• Let your local school board members know about your concerns for public education.

• Testify at state legislative committee meetings and state school board meetings.

• Work for candidates who promise to support public education. Once they're elected, hold them to their promises.

• Run for public office.

Family and work responsibilities might restrict what you can do. Personal finances might restrict what you can do. Physical limitations might restrict what you can do. But, everyone can do something.

Once you have the knowledge, teach others.

Do Something.


YOU ARE THE VOICE FOR STUDENTS

• Vote. Make sure you're registered.

Indiana voters, you can register (registration deadline, April 8, 2018) or check your registration online, here: Indiana Voter Portal

• Your vote matters.

• Vote for candidates who support public education.

• Vote for candidates who support public education in every primary and regular election.

• Vote for candidates who support public education in every primary and regular election, during off-year elections as well as every four years.

• Vote.

You are the political voice for your students/children.

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION #1

• Read aloud to your children/students every day.

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION #2

• Teach your students, not "The Test."

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION #3

• Educate yourself.

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION #4

• Speak out for public education

QUOTES BY JOHN KUHN

John Kuhn is the superintendent of Mineral Wells ISD near Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. He is an outspoken supporter of public schools and an advocate for equity in funding.

I've been following him on this blog since his speech at the 2011 Save Our Schools Rally, and have quoted him frequently.

In the last few days several hundred thousand people have watched the video below, 2 School Districts, 1 Ugly Truth. More quotes, videos, and links, follow...

2 School Districts, 1 Ugly Truth

From John Kuhn

Educational malpractice doesn't happen in the classroom. The greatest educational malpractice in the Unites States happens in the statehouse not the school house.

If we truly cared about how our students end up, we would have shared accountability, where everyone whose fingerprints are on these students of ours, has to answer for the choices that they make.

More...from his books, twitter feed and speeches.

PROMISE

Public Education is a promise we make to the children of our society, and to their children, and to their children.

LET TEACHERS TEACH

Everyone just kind of assumes that the people telling teachers how to teach actually know something about teaching that the teachers don't know.

AYP FOR LAWMAKERS

I ask you, where is the label for the lawmaker whose policies fail to clean up the poorest neighborhoods? Why do we not demand that our leaders make “Adequate Yearly Progress”?

A TEAM EFFORT

If the teacher is the quarterback, Congress is the offensive line. Their performance impacts our performance, but they keep letting us get sacked by poverty, broken homes, student mobility, hunger, health care. And they just say "Oops" as that linebacker blows by them and buries his facemask in our chest. Then we get back to the huddle and they say, "You gotta complete your passes." We're aware of that. Make your blocks, legislators. Give us time to stand in the pocket and throw good passes. Do your job. It doesn't take a great quarterback rating to win games; it takes a team effort.

EQUITY

As soon as the data shows that the average black student has the same opportunity to live and learn and hope and dream in America as the average white student, and as soon as the data shows that the average poor kid drinks water just as clean and breathes air just as pure as the average rich kid, then educators like me will no longer cry foul when this society sends us children and says: Get them all over the same hurdle.

STUDENTS, NOT TEST SCORES

I will never follow the lead of those who exclude the kids who need education the most so that my precious scores will rise.

WHAT THE BEST AND WISEST PARENT WANTS FOR HIS OWN CHILD...

From Fear and Learning in America (Teachers College Press, 2014)

Politically powerful parents in America won't accept inadequate public schooling for their children – they have minimum expectations that just happen to align nicely with Bloom's taxonomy and John Dewey's quote about what the best and wisest parents want for their children; and they have the voices and the votes to realize at least an approximation of those expectations. Suburban public school parents want for their children precisely what author Jonathan Kozol has vividly described as the components of the wonderful education poor children deserve (and need, if they are to enter into the full promise of this nation). These parents want their children's schools to have well-appointed libraries, reasonable class sizes, ample time for exploration and play, comfortable climate-controlled buildings, safe surroundings, and green grass.

The only difference is that poor people have little more to cling to than Jonathan Kozol's eloquence; suburbanites have political heft and can actually make sure their children get something approaching their loving standard of educational quality.

A BLIND EYE TO EQUITY

From Test-and-Punish: How the Texas Education Model Gave America Accountability Without Equity (Park Place Publications, 2013)

The school reform movement that today fixates on outcomes and turns a blind eye to equity was born out of this intractable conflict between twin titans of political heft: business executives and politically engaged upper middle–class parents. Inequity ws the obvious and time–honored solution to align these two camps. The legislature could keep both influential constituencies happy by building and maintaining a system just like the one it had constructed, a system of selective adequacy wherein upper– and middle–class neighborhoods boasted great public schools, and poor neighborhoods got “efficient” ones. If you had to shortchange education, it was good politics to shortchange it in minority neighborhoods.

Test-and-Punish: How the Texas Education Model Gave America Accountability Without Equity is reviewed HERE.

RESEARCH-BASED EDUCATION

In the 1990s my school system demanded that our teaching be research-based. This was pre-NCLB, so the purpose had nothing to do with "the test." Rather the goal was to make sure all teachers were using "best practices" for their teaching. I was reminded of this recently when I read this post by Russ Walsh...

Knowledge, Belief, and the Professional Educator

...as I have talked to teachers over the years about instructional practice, I have heard a lot of faith-based language.

• "I don't believe in homework."

• "I believe in phonics."

• "I don't believe in teaching to the test."

• "I believe in independent reading."

• "I believe in using round robin and popcorn reading."

For about 2,000 years doctors "believed" that blood-letting was an effective treatment for a wide variety of ailments. Today, I would bet if you encountered a doctor who recommended blood-letting for your flu symptoms, you would run, not walk, out the office door screaming. Science, and mounting numbers of dead patients, caught up with blood-letting. So, as professionals, we need to hold ourselves to the same standards. We need to follow the science and stop talking about our beliefs and start talking about the scientific research behind our instructional decision making.

Scientists understand that science isn't static. It changes as knowledge increases. We know now that the Earth revolves around the Sun...that germs, rather than demons, cause disease... and that we had better find alternatives to our current energy sources before we choke the breath out of life on Earth. Our understanding grows. Our knowledge grows.

The same is true with learning. As teachers, our understanding of child development, pedagogy, and the impact of the outside world on our students must grow and change as our understanding of those concepts changes based on new research. We need to alter our presentation and adapt our instruction to incorporate new information and techniques as they become available.

A teacher who thinks she knows everything there is to know about teaching and learning will not be effective for long, because what she needs to know will likely change throughout her career. Teachers must be the life-long learners we wish our students to become...we must continue to be students...if we want to grow in our knowledge and ability.

There are, however, times when a teacher's attempts to use "best practices" and a well-researched basis for teaching is thwarted by outside forces. For example, the out-of-school factors associated with child poverty interfere with learning and achievement. Even the most well-trained, up-to-date, and knowledgable teacher will have difficulty reaching students who come to school traumatized, hungry, or sick.

In addition to social factors interfering with teaching and learning, the government can be a hindrance to good, research-based education. Two ways government interference prevents schools from doing what is best for students are 1) inadequate funding, resulting in large class sizes, and 2) the requirement that students either pass a test or repeat a grade.


LEGISLATIVE INTERFERENCE: CLASS SIZE

We know that class size has an impact on student achievement and learning, especially with young, poor, and minority students. Smaller class sizes work because students are more engaged, they spend more time on task, and instruction can be customized to better meet their needs.

So why don't we reduce class sizes?

It costs too much.

Legislators don't want to spend the money to reduce class sizes. State legislatures around the country are generally filled with adults who have never taught and don't know anything about education or education research. Instead of learning about the research into class size, (or listening to teachers) they simply look at the cost. Smaller class sizes means higher costs...and with the obsessive, anti-tax atmosphere in most states, legislators don't want to increase funding for public schools just to make classes smaller.

Small Class Size – A Reform We’re Just Too Cheap To Try

Steven Singer makes the case for small class sizes...

The benefits go far beyond the classroom. Numerous studies concluded that reducing class size has long lasting effects on students throughout their lives. It increases earning potential, and citizenship while decreasing the likelihood students will need welfare assistance as adults or enter the criminal justice system. In short, cutting class size puts a stop to the school-to-prison pipeline.

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that those students who benefit the most from this reform are the young, the poor and minorities.

See also Class Size Matters.Org


LEGISLATIVE INTERFERENCE: RETENTION IN GRADE

Studies going back over 100 years are consistent in their conclusion that retention in grade does not result in higher achievement.

This is a subject where legislators, parents, and even many educators, don't know, or refuse to accept the research. If a child doesn't learn the material required for a certain grade, then the impulse is to "give him another chance" by retaining him. I've heard parents and teachers claim that retention in grade gives a child "the chance to grow another year," or "catch up." None of those statements are based on research. Retention does not help students, and often causes harm.

Legislatures in many states, including Indiana, have chosen third grade as the year in which students must either "be average" in reading or repeat the grade. The legislature, in other words, has decided that, if students cannot reach an arbitrary cut-score on an arbitrary reading test in third grade, they will not be allowed to move on to fourth grade. The cause of the failure is often not taken into consideration. Students have trouble learning to read for a variety of reasons, yet legislatures apply the single intervention of retention in grade to reading difficulties no matter what the cause. Unfortunately, this has no basis in educational research.

Students are punished by legislative decree for not learning to read soon enough or well enough.

Recently Michigan joined the "punish third graders" club.

County public schools brace for implementation of third-grade retention law

In an effort to boost reading achievement in the early stages of elementary school education, public schools across the state of Michigan are conducting universal screening and diagnostic testing of kindergarten through third grade students.

The testing is in response to Public Act 306, passed in October 2016 by Michigan lawmakers, called the Third Grade Retention Law. The law was passed to ensure that students exiting third grade are reading at or above grade level requirements. All students in grades K-3 will be assessed three times per year, fall winter and spring. The assessments will identify students who need intensive reading instruction and provide useful information to help teachers tailor instruction to meet individual student needs. The law also states that a child may be retained in third grade if he or she is one of more grade levels behind in reading at the end of the third grade.

FORCE and FLUNK: Destroying a Child’s Love of Reading—and Their Life

Florida is another one of the states which punishes children for not reading well enough. In this article Nancy Bailey takes the state to task.

If they aren’t reading well enough, they will have to remain in third grade–so they will do more reading remediation! They will watch as their classmates leave them behind.

At this point, how much do you think children like to read?

The Florida plague, the undeniably ugly and stupid practice of flunking children if they are not reading well by third grade, is now a reform across the country.

ACCOUNTABILITY

Legislatures force teachers and schools to accept practices which we know through research are detrimental to student learning. We're forced to accept responsibility for working conditions which interfere with achievement, and then we are held accountable when the practices fail.

Teachers (and schools) should be accountable for understanding the

scientific research behind our instructional decision making.

But policy makers should also be held accountable for the instructional restrictions they place on public schools.

"STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES"

This October, while public school teachers across the country were engaged in the daily work of educating the nation's children, the U.S. Education Department released new rules governing teacher preparation programs which guarantee to continue the abuse and misuse of those same children's test scores.

The report on the new rules claims that some teacher preparation programs "report statistically significant differences in the student learning outcomes of their graduates." "Student learning outcomes" means, of course, standardized test scores. The new regulations, the report says,

...address shortcomings in the current system by defining the indicators of quality that a State must use to assess the performance of its teacher preparation programs, including more meaningful indicators of program inputs and program outcomes, such as the ability of the program’s graduates to produce gains in student learning (understanding that not all students will learn at the same rate) [emphasis added].

How does one measure "gains in student learning?" By standardized tests. The new regulations encourage states to grade teacher preparation programs on the test scores of their student's students. In other words, for example, Indiana University would have been held responsible for the test scores of my students throughout my 35 year teaching career.


A DIFFERENT STANDARD

Teachers, and now, the teachers of teachers, are held to a different standard than any other profession. Do Driver Education Schools get blamed for drivers who break traffic laws or have accidents? Do Dental Schools get evaluated on the dental health of their graduate's patients? Do Business Schools get graded on the number of widgets their graduates sell? Are Harvard and Columbia getting low marks because John King, the U.S. Secretary of Education, is making insane rules for public schools yet has minimal knowledge about teaching and learning in the nation's public schools?

This doubling down on the standardized testing insanity plaguing our students and schools is partially based on the false assumption that "America's public schools are failing." The last 15 years of federal legislation has put the blame for this "failure" on America's teachers and students through a series of test and punish programs which have destroyed the foundational institution of public schools in municipalities around the country. Only it didn't work. There are still "failing" schools.

Now, policy makers who have little to no practical experience in public schools, are frantically searching for a new scapegoat and have grabbed on to the teachers of the teachers.

The ultimate result of this will be that those schools of education which send their graduates to public schools filled with low-income students are the preparation programs which will be deemed failures.


THE FAILURE MUST BE SHARED

There is a direct correlation between family income and student achievement. Students living in poverty come to school with a vastly different background than wealthier students. Economic and racial isolation, lack of resources, and lower parental achievement levels, all contribute to the differences in student achievement levels. No amount of blame assigned to teachers, or teachers of teachers, will change that.

Furthermore, using standardized achievement tests as the basis of grading these professionals – even when other factors are included – is inadequate because the tests themselves are flawed due to cultural and racial biases, and the limitations of the tests to measure that which is immeasurable.

For information about the relationship between poverty and achievement, see the following articles

• Does “Poverty” Cause Low Achievement?

• The effects of poverty on academic achievement

• Failing schools or inaccurate reporting?

• Poverty Disturbs Children's Brain Development and Academic Performance

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

• The problem is poverty, not unions: Response to Fox News

Where does the poverty, which is the main cause of low student achievement, begin? It stems from the racism and economic polarization which is rampant in American society. "Failing" schools are not the cause of low student achievement, they're the result of a failing society. Eliminating poverty and inequity will improve education.

"...we are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished." – Martin Luther King Jr.

We are one of only three nations in the O.E.C.D. to spend more money on our wealthy students than on our poor students. In the political arena partisan stubbornness rather than cooperative compromise prevents us from dealing with the poverty which overwhelms nearly one fourth of the nation's children.

Why isn't the label of "failure" branded on our legislatures? Legislators have failed to raise employment to 100%. They have failed to provide adequate food, shelter, and health care for all children. They have failed to ensure that all schools have sufficient resources. They send teachers "into congressional districts that are rife with poverty, rife with crime, drug abuse and poor health care," but never take on the label of "failure" themselves.

Why is the label, "failure," only reserved for teachers, schools, and now schools of education?

Who has failed to raise the achievement of our lowest achieving public school students? Teachers? Teacher preparation programs? Or policy makers who refuse to accept their own share of responsibility?



OTHER RESPONSES TO THE U.S. ED RULES ON TEACHER PREPARATION

Holding Ed Schools Accountable For The Teachers They Teach

by Anya Kamenetz for NPR

...imagine that law schools were rated by states based on the percentage of their graduates' clients who won their cases in the first three years. Or imagine medical schools required to report the vital statistics of the patients of their newly-minted doctors.

Fed's Stupid Teacher Prep Program Rules

By Peter Greene

...we could also use test results to evaluate the work of officials who set education policy, and if test results fail to go up annually, we could simply fire all those officials, whether they are officially appointed ones like John King or unofficially self-appointed ones like Bill Gates. But that would just be crazy talk. Almost as crazy as doing an actual evaluation of tests themselves. Those holy instruments may be used to evaluate everything in sight, but the sacred magical tests themselves must never be questioned, remaining in place as the twisted foundation of one wobbly edifice after another.

John King Doubles Down on Importance of Standardized Tests; “Reformers” Cheer

by Diane Ravitch

Secretary of Education John King is releasing regulations that will punish education programs if their graduates teach students whose scores are low. “Reformers” are supposed to be aware of the power of incentives, but not Secretary King. He thinks he can scare education programs to focus more on raising test scores. More likely is that teachers will get the message to avoid teaching in schools that enroll students who are impoverished, and that their preparation programs will encourage them to steer clear of the neediest children.

The big problems with the Obama administration’s new teacher-education regulations

by Valerie Strauss

...the new regulations...require states to issue annual ratings for teacher-prep programs, an effort, supporters say, to separate the successful programs from the failures. They still also require each state to evaluate teacher-training programs based on student learning, but this time leaving it to the states to decide how to measure academic growth and how much it should weigh in an overall rating. That means that the department will permit states to use test scores for evaluation — a method that is not used to evaluate any other professional preparation program...