Live Long and Prosper...

The Obama administration has issued "new" guidelines for standardized tests and the President himself has come out against "too much" testing and in favor of making sure that we're not "obsessing about testing." President Obama spoke about good teaching, good education, and said that he didn't like hearing from parents who said that there was too much testing and from teachers who said that too much testing took the joy out of learning. This is similar to what he said several years ago. Here is a report from 2011.

"Too often what we have been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools," the president told students and parents at a town hall hosted by the Univision Spanish-language television network at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C. Obama, who is pushing a rewrite of the nation’s education law that would ease some of its rigid measurement tools, said policymakers should find a test that "everybody agrees makes sense" and administer it in less pressure-packed atmospheres, potentially every few years instead of annually. At the same time, Obama said, schools should be judged on criteria other than student test performance, including attendance rate. "One thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching the test because then you’re not learning about the world, you’re not learning about different cultures, you’re not learning about science, you’re not learning about math," the president said. "All you’re learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test and that’s not going to make education interesting." "And young people do well in stuff that they’re interested in," Obama said. "They’re not going to do as well if it’s boring."

At this point your irony meter ought to be hitting maximum...since "using tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools," is exactly what the President's education program, Race to the Top, is all about. "Failing schools" are defined by test scores...and Race to the Top encourages states to punish "failing schools" by closing them and replacing them with charter schools. Furthermore, Race to the Top also encourages states to evaluate teachers by test scores, something which is both unreliable and invalid.

The new administration testing plan doesn't really change anything. The impetus for the change was a report from the Council of the Great City Schools which said that there was too much testing. The report called for less than the (average of) 2.3% of student class time spent on testing. In our local school district that's 180 days X 6 hours a day X 2.3% = about 25 hours of testing a year. That length of time doesn't include class time for test prep. It doesn't include time talking to students about testing or teaching young students how to take a standardized test. It doesn't include the time wasted by school corporation and school personnel sorting, organizing and labeling the tests. It doesn't include class time used traveling to the computer lab for testing or rearranging classroom furniture so that students would be unable to see each others' test booklets.

The administration's new testing guidelines call for no more than 2% of student class time spent on testing. Using the formula above, we have 180 days X 6 hours a day X 2% = about 22 hours of testing a year.

So, the administration is calling for a maximum of about 22 hours a year testing instead of a maximum of about 25 hours a year testing. And there's still all the extra time for test prep, testing talk, and wasted school personnel time. Big deal.


Where did Obama administration’s 2 percent cap on standardized testing come from? You won’t believe it. (Or maybe you will.) – by Valerie Strauss

...The 2 percent is not much less than the 2.3 percent that a new two-year study on standardized testing says kids now spend on these mandated exams...

...It turns out, according to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, it came from New York State. That’s where standardized testing administration and Common Core State Standards implementation have been so mishandled in recent years that 20 percent of students opted out of the tests this past spring, and the governor, Andrew Cuomo, turned on John King, the commissioner of education who resigned late last year and this year turned up as No. 2 to Duncan. Now, King is the designated successor to Duncan when he leaves his post at the end of this year.

At a gathering at the National Press Club on Monday, a reporter asked where the 2 percent limit came from. Duncan said to ask King because New York had passed a 2 percent standardized testing cap. The New York State legislature last year passed a series of changes involving public education, including on test-taking (1 percent for local standardized tests and 1 percent for state-mandated standardized tests) and test prep (2 percent, though not for charter schools, just traditional public schools)...

So we have President Obama's new Faux Secretary of Education to thank for the 2% number. But standardized testing, as it's practiced in the U.S. in 2015, doesn't help teachers, doesn't help students, and doesn't help parents; In fact, it seems "reformers" are only interested in testing for two reasons. 1) to "prove" that schools and teachers are "failures" and 2) to force the closure of "failing" schools so privatization – and profit – can continue.

Department of Education SorryNotSorry About High Stakes Testing by Steven Singer

Can the administration prove any positive value for standardized testing? I’m not asking them to trot out the tired party line about equity. I mean can they prove that testing actually helps children learn in any appreciable way? If the answer is no (and Spoiler Alert: it is!) then we shouldn’t be wasting any more time with it. Not 2%. Not 1%. ZERO PERCENT!

...You can only lie to our faces for so long. Despite your best attempts to trash public education in the name of saving it, we’re not so dumb as to believe any more of your evasions, deceit and dishonesty.

In fact, the "new" guidelines are much like the old guidelines when it comes to using standardized tests in inappropriate ways. They will still be given to every student every year. They still have high stakes consequences for schools, teachers, and students. They will be misused, additionally, to label teacher preparation programs. They will still be used to grade and label schools, humiliate students, and evaluate and blame teachers.

Fact Sheet: Testing Action Plan by USED

Rulemaking on teacher preparation programs: Last December, the Department of Education released a notice of proposed rulemaking to improve the quality of teacher preparation programs by asking states to perform more rigorous evaluations of the quality of these programs based on more useful measures. In the proposed rule, the Department had suggested moving to a system that would measure the quality of a program by looking at certain discrete categories, including: success in placing teachers within a reasonable period of time after graduation, especially in high-need schools, surveys of teachers about the quality of their preparation, retention rates, employer surveys, and teachers’ impact on student learning. The proposal required that states place a significant weight on growth in student learning, including growth on statewide standardized tests in evaluating these programs. In the coming weeks, we will release a final rule that maintains a focus on student learning, but provides states flexibility on how to weigh the results of statewide standardized tests and measures of student learning more broadly in any teacher preparation accountability system that it develops. As in other areas, we believe that student learning as measured by assessment results should be a part, not the sole determinant, of determining the quality of a particular program. [emphasis added]

Curmudgucation gives us his excellent insight...

Obama's Testing Action Plan Sucks (And Changes Nothing) by Peter Greene

...there is a difference between "I hear you, and we are going to find a way to fix this" and "I hear you, and we are going to find a way to shut you up."

The fact that the administration noticed, again, that there's an issue here is nice. But all they're doing is laying down a barrage of protective PR cover. This is, once again, worse than nothing because it not only doesn't really address the problem, but it encourages everyone to throw a victory party, put down their angry signs, and go home. Don't go to the party, and don't put down your signs.

...and the Network for Public Education...

Network for Public Education Fund Response to Obama Administration Statement on Testing by Carol Burris

...Anthony Cody, who serves as the vice-chairperson and treasurer of NPE, responded to the announcement by saying, “Limiting testing to 2% is a symbolic gesture that will have little impact so long as these tests are used for high stakes purposes.”

While the Department of Education remains wed to annual high-stakes tests, it is time for states and districts to call their bluff regarding flexibility. The research coming forward is clear. The overuse of standardized testing is educational malpractice. States should drop the destructive pseudoscience of VAM, empower educators to create their own meaningful assessments of learning, and get off the testing juggernaut.”

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

For over a decade...“reformers” have proclaimed that the solution to the purported crisis in education lies in more high stakes testing, more surveillance, more number crunching, more school closings, more charter schools, and more cutbacks in school resources and academic and extra-curricular opportunities for students, particularly students of color. As our public schools become skeletons of what they once were, they are forced to spend their last dollars on the data systems, test guides, and tests meant to help implement the “reforms” but that do little more than line the coffers of corporations, like Pearson, Inc. and Microsoft, Inc.

Ok...so it took a while and everyone else has probably already said everything there is to say about the NEA supporting Hillary for President in the primaries, but I was looking around at blogs and I read one that triggered a rant.

The stimulus that finally got me going was a guest blogger on Lily's blog who was Proud to Be an Educator for Hillary.

I have nothing against the teacher who wrote the blog and I did follow her link to Hillary's Education platform on NEA's server which said all the right things...well not all of the right things, but some of the right things. Missing, however, was detail about how those things would be accomplished and what they would be replaced with...for example,

Hillary Clinton supports reducing the role of standardized tests in public education, and she supports NEA's push to create an opportunity dashboard, understanding the multiple measures that we must address and monitor to truly close the opportunity achievement gaps between students. She has committed to fighting to provide equal opportunity to have access to arts education, school nurses, librarians, and counselors, and funding so all students can succeed, regardless of their ZIP code.

Sounds great, right? Reducing the role of testing is something I would like to see, but what about teachers being evaluated by test scores, loss of due process, and loss of collective bargaining rights? What about the connection between poverty and low achievement?

Furthermore, how does her policy differ from that of Bernie Sanders? Martin O'Malley? Lawrence Lessig (did you even know he was running? Read Republic, Lost)? or other candidates?

Mrs. Clinton may indeed be the candidate we ought to support, however, I think we need to have more information before we endorse someone.

Here's what I wrote as a response to An Educator for Hillary (I've fixed a couple of typos, added a link, and made one sentence bold).

The NEA board has decided for the rest of us that there is no need to get any assurances that our endorsement for a candidate will bring support for public education other than some vague references to "every child and teacher will get support."

What is Hillary's stand on Charter schools and the massive amounts of corruption which privatization has brought to so many states and school districts? More accountability? What does accountability mean for charter schools? More tests? Publicly elected school boards? Open enrollment or will Charters still be allowed to skim the cream? Will charters still be allowed to hire "teachers" with no credentials?

What is Hillary's stand on the Common Core? We know Lily loves it, but that doesn't mean that it's not developmentally inappropriate. What about the cut scores manipulated by state houses and governors in order to "prove that public education is failing?" What about the overuse and misuse of standardized testing -- both Common Core related and otherwise?

What is Hillary's stand on vouchers? Will there be any attempt to do away with public tax money going to religious schools?

What about due process for K-12 teachers (aka tenure)? Collective bargaining? Where are the details to Hillary's education platform? What about test based evaluations? What about Teach for America?

Why didn't we get (or get to see) the details BEFORE we endorsed someone?

In 2008 we endorsed President Obama who "sincerely" told us that we didn't devote our lives to testing...we devoted our lives to teaching and teaching is what we ought to be allowed to do. That, and a "seat at the table" was enough for us...endorsement done. Look what we got...Arne Duncan -- who never set foot in a public school as either a student or a teacher -- and Race to the Top which doubled down on No Child Left Behind's labeling of low test takers as losers. Arne Duncan, who cheered when an entire school full of teachers in Rhode Island were fired because the school was "low achieving" (aka filled with high poverty students). Arne Duncan, who manipulated federal dollars meant for low income students so that it became a contest to see which states could raise the caps on Charters fast enough and evaluate teachers based on test scores.

A seat at the table? Haven't we learned anything?

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

For over a decade...“reformers” have proclaimed that the solution to the purported crisis in education lies in more high stakes testing, more surveillance, more number crunching, more school closings, more charter schools, and more cutbacks in school resources and academic and extra-curricular opportunities for students, particularly students of color. As our public schools become skeletons of what they once were, they are forced to spend their last dollars on the data systems, test guides, and tests meant to help implement the “reforms” but that do little more than line the coffers of corporations, like Pearson, Inc. and Microsoft, Inc.

Today is the 8th "blogoversary" of this blog. This morning, as I was thinking about all I've learned over the last 8 years, I reread some old posts and thought about the reasons I wanted a web presence in the first place. My purpose in starting and continuing this blog was and is to provide myself an outlet for the frustrations of teaching and learning under an increasingly damaging set of rules. I had (and still have) no plan for this blog in terms of longevity. I just want to have a place to vent about things such as...

THE DAMAGING RULES - NCLB, RttT, CCSS

The rules began with No Child Left Behind...and have since spread to Race to the Top, and the Common Core. Locally the rules have been amended by the Daniels/Bennett/Pence plan for education in Indiana which mirrors the national rules. Indiana's plan includes

• transferring public money from public schools to privately run charter schools and to parochial schools through vouchers

• stripping teachers of due process and reducing teachers' collective bargaining rights

• complaining about all the "bad" teachers in our schools, while at the same time lowering the standards for entrance into the teaching profession

Local school boards get less and less of their district's tax money back from the state -- a big chunk of the money now comes in the form of increased costs for tests and test prep materials. They are under more restrictions dealing with the working relationships with teachers, the establishment of school curricula, and the adoption of assessment tools. Local school boards are also now obligated to use those tests to assign grades to schools and evaluate teachers.

"School Choice" apparently doesn't include public education.

Nationally the attack on public education has been bipartisan. In Indiana it has been led by Republicans like Mitch Daniels, Tony Bennett, Mike Pence, Bob Behning, and Daniel Elsener. They have been supported by their colleagues in the state legislature and the state board of education (and now in Governor Pence's expensive duplicate Department of Education, the Center for Education and Career Innovation).

It's ironic that the removal of local control of education should be led by Republicans, who so frequently decry the intrusion of "government" into our local lives. It's disheartening that both Democrats and Republicans throughout the nation are buying into the corporate line. "Educational leaders" are no longer educators, but instead are billionaires and their mouthpieces like Bill Gates, the Walton Family, Rupert Murdoch and the biggest cheerleader for the school corporatization/privatization movement in the country, Arne Duncan. None of today's loudest voices touting the "School Reform Party" line have ever taught in any of America's public schools. They do, however, control a huge chunk of America's money.


PLACING PUBLIC BLAME

For the last several decades, the movement to end public education has called all the shots nationally and locally, giving less and less input to those people who actually work with students every day. When those misguided state and national plans for public education fail, the local schools and teachers are blamed.

Publicly, the "reformers" expect teachers, as Bill Moyers put it,

...to staff the permanent emergency rooms of our country's dysfunctional social order. They are expected to compensate for what families, communities, and culture fail to do. [emphasis added]

Social scientists, politicians, parents, the media, even many educators believe there's a "crisis" in education - especially in the public schools. That's only true insofar as schools reflect the world around them. The crisis is in our society and since no one takes responsibility for our nation's enormous inequities, it is blamed on public schools and public school teachers.

REAL ACHIEVEMENT GAPS

We are obsessed with testing and insist that schools are "accountable" to the greater society. Where, however, is society's accountability? Why is it that we can spend billions of dollars on a contrived war, and ignore the "economy gap" in our society? Why is it that educators have to accept No Child Left Behind in order to eliminate the "soft bigotry of low expectations" yet local, state and national governments don't (or won't) accept their responsibility for the "hard bigotry of urban failure?"

There are achievement gaps in our society, but they are not in schools. The real achievement gaps are:

• the gap between what our leaders say they will do and what they do

• the gap between what we as a society value, and what we are willing to spend to get it

• the gap between what we're willing to spend to "promote democracy" around the world and what we're willing to spend to equalize our democracy at home

John Kuhn said it very well...

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”? We have data about poverty, health care, crime, and drug abuse in every legislative district. We know that those factors directly impact our ability to teach kids. Why have we not established annual targets for our legislators to meet? Why do they not join us beneath these vinyl banners that read “exemplary” in the suburbs and “unacceptable” in the slums?

Let us label lawmakers like we label teachers, and we can eliminate 100 percent of poverty, crime, drug abuse, and preventable illness by 2014! It is easy for elected officials to tell teachers to “Race to the top” when no one has a stopwatch on them! Lace up your sneakers, Senators! Come race with us!

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.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

NEA President Elect Lily Eskelsen Garcia on high stakes testing...

...we believe the results of tests should be used for what they were designed to measure. No commercial mass-produced industrial strength standardized factory test should ever...may I just say ever...ever...never be used as the determining factor in any...any...any high stakes decision on any level for any child or any adult...enough is enough!

WHAT CHILDREN NEED

Parents, I Cannot Protect Your Children by Peg with Pen

I teach at a school with 73% free/reduced lunch. Over 40 languages are spoken within my school. I know what our children need - they need wrap around services for poverty, books, librarians, small class size, health care, nurses, counselors, recess, quality food, and the opportunity to express their interests as they talk, read, write, play, sing, dance, create and smile. But you see, that doesn't create corporate profit. Poverty must be ignored in order to keep corporate profit churning.

VOUCHERS

Cruel Cuts: Philadelphia Public Schools Pay The Price For Pa.’s Expanded Neo-Voucher Program by Simon Brown

...it’s important to remember that when voucher programs expand, it often comes at the expense of public schools.

LEAVING CHILDREN BEHIND

Commencement 2012: Professor Eleanor Duckworth's Convocation Speech


DISINCENTIVES TO BECOME, OR REMAIN, A TEACHER

Maybe it's Time to Ask the Teachers? by Linda Darling-Hammond

American teachers deal with a lot: low pay, growing class sizes and escalating teacher-bashing from politicians and pundits. Federal testing and accountability mandates under No Child Left Behind and, more recently, Race to the Top, have added layers of bureaucracy while eliminating much of the creativity and authentic learning that makes teaching enjoyable. Tack on the recession's massive teacher layoffs and other school cuts, plus the challenges of trying to compensate for increasing child poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity, and you get a trifecta of disincentives to become, or remain, a teacher.

A GIFT FOR NEW TEACHERS

The Teacher as Sisyphus by David C. Berliner

The best gift we can give to our newly minted educators, many of whom will be working in our public school systems, is a society that gives the parents of the children they teach jobs that pay fair wages and provide basic benefits. That would be the best gift to give our new teachers and administrators.

BACK TO SCHOOL

Back to School Letter by Mark Cross, Superintendent of Peru Elementary School District 124, Peru, Illinois

...we will not let political nonsense distract us from our true mission, which is to keep your kids safe and to provide them with a world class education.

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.

It's 2014...the year in which all the children in America will be proficient in reading and math...and it's all thanks to The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.



Alas, it won't happen. Over the last dozen years No Child Left Behind and its Democratic twin, Race to the Top have not improved America's education as promised. Charter schools don't do better than traditional public schools. Vouchers don't improve public schools through competition. There's still an achievement gap. Punishing students, teachers and schools for low test scores hasn't incentivized higher achievement. Testing, testing, and more testing hasn't helped anyone except test developers, publishers, distributors and their donations to the campaign coffers of politicians.

The "no-excuses," pro-privatization, so-called "reformers" easily ignore any actual research and use the power of the media and money from billionaires to lay the blame on parents, educators and their unions, or some vague "education bureaucracy". These reformatizers ("reformers" + privatizers) are more interested in the corporate bottom line than the academic success of children.

IT'S THE TEACHERS' FAULT

One of their spokesmen, the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, recently told us that we American educators are "bottom of the academic barrel" -- in other words, stupid. We are, as the old saying implies, unable to do anything else. See Teachers and Tests.

While teachers in America often come from the bottom of the academic barrel and are disproportionately teaching students from disadvantaged backgrounds, Duncan said, teachers in South Korea are selected from the top of the class and are rewarded for working with low-income students.

It's interesting that he would say that, given that his administration has 1) participated in punishing teachers and schools who work with low-income students and 2) developed a policy which has encouraged public schools to replace trained, experienced teachers with untrained novices. High achieving nations such as South Korea invest more money where it's needed. In the US we spend less money on our low income students. We invest less in their materials, their facilities, and their teachers. Much of what we do spend is redirected away from students into the coffers of test manufacturers like Pearson.

Duncan said,

'Our children who need more get less,' he told parent leaders from around the nation

Secretary Duncan seems to understand this yet Race to the Top is a competition which delivers much needed funds to "winners" rather than focusing on schools in need, leaving out millions of high-poverty students.

Rather than providing incentives for states and districts to close schools which are struggling -- almost exclusively schools with high numbers of students living in poverty -- Race to the Top might work better if it encouraged states to provide more resources to those same schools. Instead, the money is used to close schools filled with low achieving students, fire teachers and administrators, open charter schools lacking public oversight and shuffle students into other schools...which then became low achieving schools.

IT'S THE PARENTS' FAULT

Secretary Duncan doesn't stop with educators, however. It seems that American parents just don't care about their children's education.

Parents in the United States do not demand the same kind of educational excellence as those in other countries, he said.

Parents do demand educational excellence, of course. What Duncan means to say is that parents in the United States are so confused by the education debate that they don't always know what educational excellence is. Is it what their children's teachers are doing on a day to day basis -- and they approve of their children's teachers in overwhelming numbers, or is it what the corporate education reform industry and their employees in the media are saying about America's public education? The latter plays upon the well-established American tradition of mistrust of high achievement.

AMERICANS AREN'T SERIOUS ABOUT EDUCATION

Despite No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top, despite A Nation at Risk, and the response to the Soviet threat of Sputnik, despite the fact that Americans talk self-righteously about improving education and use our children as a political tool, the fact is that the United States, as a nation, hasn't really valued education. In his 1962 work, Anti-intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter wrote...

Americans would create a common-school system, but would balk at giving it adequate support. They would stand close to the vanguard among the countries of the world in an attempt to diffuse knowledge among the people, and then engage drifters and misfits as teachers and offer them wages of draymen.

Today, the corporate education reform industry is pushing the same thing. Rather than respecting educators and improving teacher preparation the reformatizers whine about the imaginary plague of "bad teachers" and then dump untrained, cheap labor into positions in the classroom and administrative offices. See here and here.

Parents, educators and many of America's students themselves undoubtedly do care about education. I'll even go so far as to give the benefit of the doubt to some politicians and policy makers, at least when it comes to their own children. However, as a nation we have not invested wisely in education and it's because, as a nation, we're not really serious about educating our children. We're much more interested in which teams will play in the Superbowl, who's on Dancing With the Stars, or the newest smart-phone app.

The corporate education reform industry is after the money we spend on public education, not improved education. If they can get more profits by hiring temps to fill the classroom so much the better. If they can make money by writing the standards, then monopolizing the test-prep and tests of those standards then so much the better. The corporate bottom line is not the same as the needs of children.

Blogger Peter Greene offers this proof of America's lack of serious concern for public education...

If we were serious about education, we would not allow our public school system to be hijacked and dismantled by rich and powerful amateurs.

If we were serious about education, our media would direct its questions about education to teachers. We would all know the names and faces of the best teachers in this country, and they would be the ones being offered 50K a pop to talk about schools.

If we were serious about education, we would not stand for having it "measured" by means as frivolous and meaningless as the barrage of high stakes tests we subject students to.

If we were serious about education, we would fight like hell to keep the federal government's grubby grabby hands out of our state and local systems.

If we were serious about education, we would make heroes out of the people who provide it and protect them from the attacks of people who didn't know what the heck they were talking about.

If we were serious about education, we would make sure that schools had the top funding no matter what, even if that meant that other segments of government had to hold bake sales.

If we were serious about education, we would treat as a bad joke the notion that well-meaning untrained rich kids had any business spending a year or two in a classroom for resume building.

If we were serious about education, we would laugh the Common Core out of the room. Hell, if we were serious about education, we would never have proposed the Common Core in the first place.

If we were serious about education, we would never entrust our nations [sic] educational leadership to men who have no training or experience in education at all and who only listened to other men with no training or experience in education at all. If we were serious about education, we would demand leadership by people who were also serious about education, and we would demand leadership based on proven principles and techniques developed by people who truly cared about the education of America's students.

The last point is important. Secretary Duncan, like most of the Secretaries of Education before him, is not an educator. He is supposedly in charge of America's K-12 public schools, yet he has never taught in a public school, he has never even attended a public school. He has no educational training other than watching his mother tutor struggling students.

He doesn't know anything about teaching. He doesn't know anything about public education students. In his 5 years in office he hasn't taken the time to learn. He's a sociology major and a professional basketball player. He has no business leading the nation's public schools. If we were serious about education we'd fire Arne Duncan.


FURTHER READING

Comments on "Arne Duncan: School Expectations Are Too Low in the United States"

When researchers control for poverty, the US ranks near the top of the world on international tests: (Carnoy, M and Rothstein, R. 2013, What Do International Tests Really Show Us about U.S. Student Performance. Washington DC: Economic Policy Institute. 2012. http://www.epi.org/).

Another Duncan Doughnut

To Duncan, the top of the "barrel" would probably mean the Ivy Leaguers like himself, who become the 5-week TFA wonders; the ones who, on average, flounder through their first 2 years in inner-city schools before fleeing for greener pastures.

Towards the Privatization of Public Education in America. Imposing a Corporate Culture

Students will not become genuine learners unless they are imbued with a love of learning, meaning they regard learning as an end in itself, an asset not easily measured. Every teacher is fully aware that in competitive environments students will concentrate their efforts on achieving a high grade, not on truly understanding the material. They will memorize for tests and then forget everything. They will take great pains to hide their ignorance, not raise critical questions, let alone questions about material they do not understand. We know that in moments of desperation the vast majority of high school students at one time or another will cheat, which is hardly one of the skills we want them to acquire.

Why We Can't Wait to Close the Achievement Gap

...schools and children don't exist in a vacuum. We must intensify our efforts to improve the environments in which our children live -- providing access to healthcare, including mental health treatment and reducing violence in our communities and increasing parental involvement are just a few such ways.

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.

I write to President Obama regularly. I've been speaking out to him against his destructive privatization scheme labeled Race to the Top run by the Broad-trained Arne Duncan, his Secretary of Education with no public school teaching experience. The response I get is usually canned, scripted, filled with meaningless references to "improving schools," "global competition," "world class education" and "strengthening the teaching profession." His administration has set forth a plan which promotes privatization and guarantees a weakened teaching profession, and the continued achievement gap between rich and poor.

I have decided that it's time to respond to the administration's canned answers and to the damage their Race to the Top is doing to public education. So here, then, is my response. The President's letter, which will be included in its entirety, is in italics. My responses and quotes from others will be in unitalicized print.


Dear President Obama,

HIGH EXPECTATIONS AND SUCCESS

Thank you for writing. My Administration is working to ensure America’s young people have educational opportunities worthy of their potential, and I appreciate hearing from you.

There is no stronger foundation for success than a great education. We must provide our children with the world-class education they need to succeed and our Nation needs to compete in the global economy. Our classrooms should be places of high expectations and success, where all students receive an education that prepares them for higher learning and high-demand careers in our fast-changing economy.

Have our classrooms become places of high expectations?

If you believe that standardized tests increase expectations then I suppose that's correct. However, your use of the phrase high expectations reminds me of President Bush's (43) use of the phrase, "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

In Bush's case I would respond that the "soft bigotry of low expectations" is compounded by the hard bigotry of poor opportunities. Public schools for students living in poverty need more support, not what they usually get, which is less. Teaching to the tests, and scripted instruction don't improve learning. Dilapidated physical environs, rapid teacher and administrator turnaround, and lack of supplies aren't enough to help students fight off the detrimental effects of poverty.

In 2000 Alfie Kohn wrote,

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 (number of parents living at home, parents' educational background, type of community, and poverty rate) accounted for a whopping 89 percent of the differences in state scores. To the best of my knowledge, all such analyses of state tests have found comparable results, with the numbers varying only slightly as a function of which socioeconomic variables were considered.

Apparently we haven't learned his lesson of 13 years ago...and the definition of high expectations continues to be "the responsibility for improving achievement falls 100% to public schools and public school teachers. None of the responsibility seems to belong to policy makers...or to parents...or to students...or to anyone else."

High expectations should include the attempt by policy makers to end all the other societal gaps as well as the achievement gap -- the income gap, the nutrition gap, the health care gap, the incarceration gap, the homeowner gap, the poverty gap, and the unemployment gap. Schools can't do it alone.

Martin Luther King Jr. said,

I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective -- the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.... 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.

Mr. President, you say that our classrooms should be places of high expectations and success. I'm afraid that the success will be difficult to find without high expectations of our policy makers for the other problems of our nation.

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

Equipping young Americans with the tools for success must start at the earliest possible age. Today, fewer than 3 in 10 4-year-olds are enrolled in a high-quality preschool program—and for many children, this lack of access to preschool can leave a shadow that lasts a lifetime. That is why I have proposed working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every child in America. Every dollar we invest in early childhood education can save more than seven dollars later on—by boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy, and reducing crime. In states that make it a priority to educate our youngest children, students grow up more likely to read and do math at their grade level, graduate high school, hold a job, and form stable families of their own. So we must do what works and make sure none of our children start the race of life behind.

I agree. NEAToday wrote...

Under the president’s plan, states will be eligible to receive new federal dollars in return for investing their own dollars. And while the federal government will ensure that state programs meet high quality standards, states will continue to run their own programs.

This state-federal partnership would cover all 4-year-olds from low- and moderate-income families at or below 200 percent of the poverty line. The federal resources would also free up state dollars to reach 3-year-olds and children from higher-income families and to provide full-day kindergarten.

High quality early childhood education represents one of the best investments our country can make, and the National Education Association believes it’s a common sense investment we can’t afford to pass up.

RACE TO THE TOP

My Administration continues to make historic investments to strengthen our public education system, including our Race to the Top program—a competition that spurred states to make comprehensive reforms of their public school systems to prepare all students for college and career. Race to the Top focuses on what is best for our students by engaging state and local leaders and educators in adopting better standards that prepare students for college and career, turning around our lowest-performing schools, developing and rewarding effective teachers and leaders, and implementing meaningful assessments to track the progress of our students. Building on this ambitious program, I announced a new initiative to provide high school students with challenging and relevant academic and career-related learning experiences that prepare them for success in higher education and the workforce. With funding I have proposed in my FY2014 budget, we will reward schools that redesign teaching and learning in high schools to foster new partnerships with colleges and employers and strengthen classes that focus on science, technology, engineering, and math—the skills students need to thrive in a high-tech world.

Where do I being with this paragraph? There are so many untruths, errors and misrepresentations in one paragraph that choosing which one to rebut first is a challenge. I don't want to take the time and space to reproduce all the information included in the following links, but I hope you'll take the time to read some of them so you can understand how your Race to the Top is hurting America's public schools.

1. My Administration continues to make historic investments to strengthen our public education system...

Your administration hasn't strengthened our public education system. If anything, you've weakened it...significantly...in what seems to be an attempt at privatization.

• Privatizing Public Education: The Neoliberal Model
• Just Say No to the Race to the Top

2. ...Race to the Top program—a competition that spurred states...

Race to the Top is a competition and it did spur states on to make reforms, but the reforms are damaging public education. We know that schools can't change the out-of-school factors which contribute in a large part to the achievement of students. Since schools can't change those factors, competition, with its winners and losers, is not appropriate to public education.

• Race to the Top: One-Size-Fits All Hurts Students
• Obama's Race to the Top Will Not Improve Education
• Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success

3. ...adopting better standards that prepare students for college and career...

There is no basis to the belief that the "better standards" will prepare students for college and career. I think you're referring to the so-called "Common Core State Standards." These standards have been adopted in 46 states and the District of Columbia without any field test. No one knows how they will affect students, teachers, or schools.

• Conflicting Research On Core Standards
• Why I Cannot Support the Common Core Standards

4. Your method of turning around our lowest performing schools seems to consist in closing them, or having states close them, and opening charter schools which, as research has shown, don't do any better than traditional public schools.

• Study: Majority of U.S. charter schools perform equal or worse than traditional schools

5. Your method of rewarding effective teachers is by using test scores as the basis for merit pay for teachers. We know from research that this doesn't work. We know that test scores are closely tied to family income and rewarding effective teachers means that teachers who teach the most educationally needy students will not be rated as "effective." This is just one more way to undervalue and under support schools in poor communities.

• Teacher: Why I Oppose Merit Pay
• The Promise and Peril of Using Value-Added Modeling to Measure Teacher Effectiveness

6. I'm sorry, Mr. President, but the standardized tests now being used in my state and many others cannot be called meaningful assessments. They're being used because you can get a number from them with which to grade students, teachers, schools and school districts. The number, while convenient, doesn't always reflect what a student knows or what a teacher and school have taught.

• Why Standardized Tests Don't Measure Educational Quality
• What's Wrong With Standardized Tests?
• The myths of standardized testing
• Debunking the Case for National Standards: One-Size-Fits-All Mandates and Their Dangers

7. Your plan to reward schools that redesign teaching and learning sounds suspiciously like rewarding schools for high test scores. I hope that isn't true.

• Cheating Your Way to High Test Scores: Atlanta’s School Edition
• A Better System for Evaluating Students and Schools
• What Do We Know About Sanctions and Rewards?

REFORMING NCLB

Mr. President, I applaud your desire to reform No Child Left Behind. The Bush (43) education law has carried the test and punishment plan to privatize public schools and deprofessionalize the teaching profession for the last decade. The insane obsession with testing and subsequent punishment for low test scores is the status quo, not the cries for rational assessment, for a reduction in child poverty and for support of public school teachers and public schools by public school advocates. Beginning with the first Bush (41) administration and the response to A Nation At Risk, followed by the Clinton administration and Goals 2000, standardized testing became the method most used to evaluate schools in America. With No Child Left Behind, the goal of grading, ranking and punishing students, teachers, schools and school districts became entrenched. It is now the status quo.

Has your education policy eliminated the most damaging impact of No Child Left Behind?

To further reshape our educational system, we also need to reform the No Child Left Behind Act—a law that has helped advance accountability and expose disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes, but has labeled too many schools as failing and imposed too many unworkable remedies. Because America’s students cannot afford to wait any longer for Congress to act to fix No Child Left Behind, my Administration launched a new Federal-State partnership to provide states with flexibility to advance needed educational reforms in exchange for a commitment to raise standards for all students, improve accountability for low-performing schools, and help teachers and school leaders become more effective. A majority of states has now been granted flexibility from No Child Left Behind, and while states are required to maintain a focus on underserved students, they can move away from one-size-fits-all interventions and mandates to advance locally tailored solutions to do what is best for students.

I'm glad that you understand why No Child Left Behind needs to be reformed. It has an unreachable goal -- 100% proficiency by 2014 -- and it has the consequence of forcing schools and their teachers to teach to the test.

Unfortunately, Mr. President, your waivers which free schools from the Annual Yearly Progress aspect of NCLB will cause standardized testing to be even more important...more pervasive. Read Federal Action and Inaction Produce Testing Deluge.

To earn “waivers” from Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), win Race to the Top grants, and receive Teacher Improvement Program grants, the federal government is requiring states to use standardized test scores as “a significant part” of all teacher evaluations.

The waivers don't help...they make things worse. Diane Ravitch, in an interview with Anthony Cody, said,

One of the many problems with NCLB is that it came packaged with unrealistic, expensive and heavy-handed federal mandates. It put too much emphasis on testing and punishment for failure to reach impossible goals. The waivers now offered by the US Department of Education require the states to comply with other mandates, still tied to the NCLB-style accountability framework. The emphasis on testing under the waiver plan is as heavy-handed as it has been under NCLB. Many schools with high numbers of low-scoring students will be subject to firings and closings. They need help, not punishment. One of the lessons of NCLB is that the federal government does not know how to improve schools.

If you had wanted to help you should have lessened the importance of standardized tests, not increased it. You know that...you've said that is what you want to do.

If you want to learn about the damage caused by high stakes testing you should read one or both of the following...

• The Case Against High Stakes Testing
• The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools

AMERICA'S GLOBAL FUTURE

Your words as a candidate and as the President have suggested that you're against too much testing in our schools, yet your actions as the President say just the opposite.

The future of America’s economic strength is determined each day in classrooms across our Nation. To remain a global leader, we must cultivate a learning environment with an effective teacher in every classroom and an effective principal in every school. Supporting a strong teaching workforce and inspiring school leadership is a top priority for my Administration. In these challenging financial times for state and local budgets, we have worked to help schools keep teachers in the classroom, preserve or extend the regular school day and year, and maintain important afterschool activities. My Administration has also put forward robust plans to strengthen and transform the teaching profession through a series of investments to help states and districts pursue bold reforms at every stage of the profession. This includes attracting top-tier talent and preparing educators for success, creating career ladders with opportunities for advancement and competitive compensation, providing meaningful evaluation and support for the development of teachers and principals, and getting the best educators into the classrooms of the students who need them most.

The learning environment of Race to the Top is one in which states are coerced into using student test scores to evaluate their teachers. I admit though, that some states, like my own, extremely "reformy" Indiana, don't need coercion. The last four years of Indiana's "Mitch and Tony Show" followed by the supermajorities in the house and senate along with a friend in the governor's mansion have provided everything that the "reformers" want; vouchers, an independent charter board, no more collective bargaining for teachers...all the good stuff that Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, and Michelle Rhee have been saying is so important for our children.

However even though you, Mr. President, have said that we have too much testing, your Race to the Top program requires teachers to be evaluated using student test scores. Standardized tests used to evaluate student achievement were not made to evaluated teaching and learning. I don't know if you learned anything about tests and measurements when you were in law school, but if you did you would know that tests should only be used for that for which they were developed. If you develop a test for use as a measure of student achievement, then that's what it should be used for...and only that.

There are other things included in the teacher evaluations...and in some places around the country the Value Added Model (VAM) is used. Unfortunately, using VAM to evaluate teachers is unreliable and invalid...just like the tests themselves. Alfie Kohn wrote,

Question 1: Does [VAM] provide valid and reliable information about teachers (and schools)? Most experts in the field of educational assessment say, Good heavens, no. This year's sterling teacher may well look like crud next year, and vice versa. Too many variables affect a cohort's test scores; statistically speaking, we just can't credit or blame any individual teacher.

Take some time and read the research.

Leading experts caution against reliance on test scores in teacher evaluations

Student test scores are not reliable indicators of teacher effectiveness, even with the addition of value-added modeling (VAM), a new Economic Policy Institute report by leading testing experts finds. Though VAM methods have allowed for more sophisticated comparisons of teachers than were possible in the past, they are still inaccurate, so test scores should not dominate the information used by school officials in making high-stakes decisions about the evaluation, discipline and compensation of teachers.

You have said that we shouldn't do too much testing, yet Race to the Top requires that the testing continue unabated. We know that using test scores for teacher evaluations (and schools and school districts) is invalid, yet Race to the Top coerces states to use test scores for teacher evaluations.

Do you see the problem here, Mr. President? Your words don't match your actions.

I know that you want to fill schools with effective teachers. Here are some articles about what makes effective teachers...and none of them include anything about teaching to the test or using test scores to evaluate teachers.

• Characteristics of Effective Teachers from Stanford University
• Characteristics of Highly Effective Teaching and Learning - Kentucky Department of Education
• Qualities of Effective Teachersby James Stronge, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA (If you like this last one check out the video here).

The bold reforms you're putting into place with Race to the Top are not reliable, aren't supported by research and are damaging schools. It's time to stop.


DREAMS

Across our country, young people are dreaming of their futures and of the ideas that will chart the course of our unwritten history. A world-class education system will equip our Nation to advance economic growth, encourage new investment and hiring, spark innovation, and ensure the success of the middle class. Preparing our students for higher education and rewarding careers fulfills our promise to our Nation’s youth and strengthens America for generations to come.

You say you want our children to have a world-class education. If so, we have some models to follow because there are many countries which do a better job than ours...Finland, for example. What do the Finns do that makes their education system so much better? Keep in mind children in Finland don't start school till age 7, and they don't spend money to administer standardized tests until the children are in their teens.

For one thing, they have a much lower level of childhood poverty -- about 5% compared to ours of nearly 25%. They keep the poverty level low and this helps to increase achievement...not the other way around.

Second, teachers in Finland are chosen from the highest levels of academic success. Once they have been accepted into the teaching field at the university -- something which is not easy -- they are trained well...and are required to get masters degrees. You won't find any math-major-who-decided-he-wanted-to-be-a-teacher getting a temporary license to teach. Teacher education is serious...and you have to be educated as a teacher (Indiana legislators and state school board members take note!). How are teachers selected, trained and motivated in the US?

Third, the Finns have free schooling from preschool through the university. No college loan debt hanging over your head for 20 years after you graduate. Preschools are universally available and teach no academics...they teach children social skills and how to play.

Fourth, and this is an important one. Competition is not only not a part of education, it's actively avoided. The Finns know that learning is helped by collaboration not competition. Schools, students and teachers aren't ranked. There's no Race to get funding. Schools are fully funded.

There are more...I urge you to read, Finnish Lessons by Pasi Sahlberg.

Here's a video if you think that will help, too. It's long...but it explains very well how a nation has changed their society in order to increase learning and improve education.

Now I know that Finland is a small country, with little diversity which makes it unlike the large and diverse USA. Still, we can learn from them. We should learn from them.

IN CLOSING

Thank you, again, for writing. To learn more about my Administration’s work, please visit www.WhiteHouse.gov/issues/education.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

Mr. President, I don't disagree with everything your administration has done in the area of education policy. I applaud your call for universal preschools. I support your effort to reduce student loan costs. However, Your Race to the Top is a path which supports the privatization of public education through corporate charters, furthers the test and punish aspects of No Child Left Behind, doesn't provide the most money where it's most needed, and coerces states to introduce policies unsupported by research.

Here are some things which I think will go along way to improving our school system. I understand that you can't do this alone, and need the congress, as well as state legislatures to cooperate, however, you can use the position of the President as a moral leader to convince the country of the wisdom of these actions.

Diane Ravitch listed these steps to improve public education in a speech to National Opportunity to Learn Summit in 2011. She wrote,

• Every pregnant woman should have good pre-natal care and nutrition so that her child is born healthy. One of three children born to women who do not get good prenatal care will have disabilities that are preventable. That will cost society far more than providing these women with prenatal care.
• Every child should have the medical attention and nutrition that they need to grow up healthy.
• Every child should have high-quality early childhood education.
• Every school should have experienced teachers who are prepared to help all children learn.
• Every teacher should have at least a masters degree.
• Every principal should be a master teacher, not a recruit from industry, the military, or the sports world.
• Every superintendent should be an experienced educator who understand teaching and learning and the needs of children.
• Every school should have a health clinic.
• Schools should collaborate with parents, the local community, civic leaders, and local business leaders to support the needs of children.
• Every school should have a full and balanced curriculum, with the arts, sciences, history, civics, geography, mathematics, foreign languages, and physical education.
• Every child should have time and space to play.
• We must stop investing in testing, accountability, and consultants and start investing in children.

Let's end the Race to the Top and collaborate to create a strong public school system.

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.

Got some extra time between Christmas and New Years?

Take a listen to Linda Darling-Hammond talking about improving education in the United States and comparing our education system to other nations. She discusses how our international scores have dropped...the relationship between achievement and poverty...the importance of a stable teaching force...how No Child Left Behind has actually lowered achievement in the country and increased teacher attrition and how schools in high poverty locations are not given the resources to succeed and then punished when they fail. She answers the question, "How can we improve education in the US?"

The actual presentation is about an hour long (1:12 if you listen to the intro and questions)...and well worth the time spent.

During the question and answer period she talks about the effects of Teach for America, immigration (legal and otherwise), the cost of American education, and Race to the Top.

Linda Darling-Hammond: The Flat World and Education, August 2, 2010



Linda Darling-Hammond: The Flat World and Education from Chautauqua Institution on FORA.tv

Some quotes from the presentation...

It's not that all schools are failing...we have wonderful successful schools...It's that we are neglecting this group of schools serving our neediest Americans.

• Each year of additional education nets a 4% gain in long-term economic growth.
• A new high school dropout in 2010 had less than a 50% chance of getting a job.
• That job earned less than 1/2 of what the same job earned 20 years ago.
• Lack of education is ever more strongly correlated with incarceration.
• Prison costs now complete with education expenditures in many states.

We all now have to care about the education of every person's children. It's not going to be enough to say my kids got educated because for every person who is not in the labor force, not paying taxes, not contributing to our health care system, to our Social Security, the social bargain that we have as Americans cannot be maintained. All of us have a vested interest in every child being educated, and yet kids who we wouldn't spend $10,000 on to get them good teaching in Oakland, when they were second graders...to be sure they could learn to read...we're spending $50,000 on them in prison ten years later.

A system of winners and losers is not going to be the most direct course to getting the investments that we need...In every community children grow up and they will have access to preschool education. In every community children should go to a community school where there are well-prepared, thoughtful teachers who are there for the long haul with a thoughtful curriculum. In every community those wrap-around services ought to be there. To do that...we can't do it by winners and losers. We can't do it by some people writing grants and getting two years of funding and then the funding goes away and then you've got to do something else. We've got to do it by making long term, purposeful investments...

Linda Darling-Hammond bio from Chautauqua Institution

Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she has launched the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and the School Redesign Network and served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. She is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and member of the National Academy of Education. Her research, teaching and policy work focus on issues of school restructuring, teacher quality and educational equity.

From 1994 to 2001, Darling-Hammond served as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future, led to sweeping policy changes affecting teaching and teacher education. In 2006, this report was named one of the most influential affecting U.S. education and Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation's 10 most influential people affecting educational policy over the last decade. She recently served as the leader of President Barack Obama's education policy transition team.

Darling-Hammond has worked with dozens of schools and districts around the nation on studying, developing and scaling up new model schools -- as well as preparation programs for teachers and leaders -- that enable much greater success for diverse students. She has also worked with civil rights and community-based organizations to leverage changes in state and local level policies and to create practices that promote greater equity in educational opportunity and access for traditionally underserved students. For this work, she has been awarded, among others, the Charles W. Eliot Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education, the Asa G. Hilliard Award for Outstanding Achievement in Racial Justice and Education Equity, the Founder' Award from the National Commission on African American Education, the Woman of Valor Award from Educational Equity Concepts, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Having written more than 300 journal articles, Darling-Hammond is author or editor of 16 books, including The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future, Powerful Teacher Education: Lessons from Exemplary Programs and Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do, co-written with John Bransford. She received her bachelor's degree from Yale University and her doctorate in urban education (with highest distinction) from Temple University.

Also check out this review of The Flat World and Education on the Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education (NEIFPE) Blog.