Current tests, ludicrous, dysfunctional

Parents. Would you force your kids to take these tests?
WHEN AN ADULT TOOK STANDARDIZED TESTS FORCED ON KIDS
Washington Post "The Answer Sheet" Blog -- December 5, 2011
By Marion Brady

A longtime friend on the school board of one of the largest school
systems in America did something that few public servants are willing to
do. He took versions of his state’s high-stakes standardized math and
reading tests for 10th graders, and said he’d make his scores public.

By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. His now-grown kids
are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for
condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer
miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school
board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good
relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness
to dialogue and willingness to listen.

He called me the morning he took the test to say he was sure he hadn’t
done well, but had to wait for the results. A couple of days ago,
realizing that local school board members don’t seem to be playing much
of a role in the current “reform” brouhaha, I asked him what he now
thought about the tests he’d taken.

“I won’t beat around the bush,” he wrote. “The math section had 60
questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten
out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system,
that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block
of reading instruction.

He continued, “It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a
bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours
toward a doctorate.

“I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion
operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data
related to those responsibilities.

Why School Choice Fails

Natalie Hopkinson.

IF you want to see the direction that education reform is taking the country, pay a visit to my leafy, majority-black neighborhood in Washington. While we have lived in the same house since our 11-year-old son was born, he’s been assigned to three different elementary schools as one after the other has been shuttered. Now it’s time for middle school, and there’s been no neighborhood option available.

Meanwhile, across Rock Creek Park in a wealthy, majority-white community, there is a sparkling new neighborhood middle school, with rugby, fencing, an international baccalaureate curriculum and all the other amenities that make people pay top dollar to live there.

Such inequities are the perverse result of a “reform” process intended to bring choice and accountability to the school system. Instead, it has destroyed community-based education for working-class families, even as it has funneled resources toward a few better-off, exclusive, institutions.

My neighborhood’s last free-standing middle school was closed in 2008, part of a round of closures by then Mayor Adrian Fenty and his schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee. The pride and gusto with which they dismantled those institutions was shameful, but I don’t blame them. The closures were the inevitable outcome of policies hatched years before.

How Online Learning Companies Bought America's Schools | The Nation

How Online Learning Companies Bought America's Schools | The Nation

Defend California public education

Please sign and forward out widely the Open Letter to Defend CA Public Education:

http://www.change.org/petitions/open-letter-defend-ca-public-education

This Open Letter is an indispensable tool to reverse the attacks on public education in California. It gives the authorities an ultimatum: either cede to our demands or we will begin a massive wave of actions beginning on February 1, 2012.

Please help us gather hundreds of thousands of signatures -- including from all major labor, student, and community organizations -- by forwarding this out widely. Moreover, please begin organizing on the ground to make February 1, 2012 the start of the largest, most united, and most powerful wave of actions California has yet seen.

(This Open Letter was first adopted by the Nov. 15 General Assembly of Occupy Cal, the largest GA in the history of the U.S. Occupy movement, with more than 5,000 students, faculty, and campus workers. For more information, contactcaloccupation@gmail.com )

California and NCLB

State Schools Chief Torlakson Issues Statement on NCLB Waiver

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson issued the following statement today regarding the State Board of Education's initial discussion of whether to seek a waiver* from the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act:

"I commend President Michael Kirst and members of the State Board of Education for their thoughtful discussion today, and their willingness to examine both the benefits and the costs associated with the extensive conditions California would have to meet to seek a waiver of the provisions of No Child Left Behind.

"As a state, we are being asked to make wholesale changes that would affect the operation of every school—with very little time and no new resources—all to receive temporary respite from a law that, thankfully, Congress is in the process of rewriting.

"I continue to believe that the best answer for addressing a bad law is to replace it with a good one. However, recognizing the immediate need for relief among so many schools, the State Board will continue to examine the option of applying for a waiver in a manner that reflects the state's priorities, timetables, and budget constraints."

Rally to Defend Your Education

Michelle Rhee takes $35,000 from students

THU OCT 27, 2011 AT 01:00 PM PDT

Michelle Rhee takes discounted speaking fee of just $35,000 from public university +*

Michelle Rhee doesn't just peddle her brand of education "reform" for political power and media stardom—she does it for cash. Earlier this month, Rhee spoke at Kent State University at Stark, which as you might guess is a public university. Her fee was a mere $35,000,

plus expenses of not more than $5,000 that the school was to provide, including:

— first-class airfare

— a VIP hotel suite

— meals and “all reasonable incidentals”

— town car and driver for ride from Rhee’s home to the airport, airport to the hotel, hotel to the engagement “or any combination thereof”

But it's not like Rhee's greedy or anything—for this relatively small public university, Rhee offered a substantial discount from her usual rate of $50,000 for a speaking engagement. Blogger At the Chalk Face notes that:

Tell Congress to Speak Up For Kids, Support the American Jobs Act

Veto message SB 547.

To the members of the California State Senate:

I am returning Senate Bill 547 without my signature.

This bill is yet another siren song for school reform. It renames the Academic Performance Index (API) and reduces its significance by adding three other quantitative measures.

While I applaud the author’s desire to improve the API, I don’t believe that this bill would make the state’s accountability regime either more probing or more fair.

This bill requires a new collection of indices called the “Education Quality Index” (EQI), consisting of “multiple indicators,”many of which are ill-defined and some impossible to design. These “multiple indicators” are to change over time, causing measurement instability and muddling the picture of how schools perform.

SB547 would also add significant costs and confusion to the implementation of the newly-adopted Common Core standards which must be in place by 2014. This bill would require us to introduce a whole new system of accountability at the same time we are required to carry out extensive revisions to school curriculum, teaching materials and tests. That doesn’t make sense.

Finally, while SB547 attempts to improve the API, it relies on the same quantitative and standardized paradigm at the heart of the current system. The criticism of the API is that it has led schools to focus too narrowly on tested subjects and ignore other subjects and matters that are vital to a well-rounded education. SB547 certainly would add more things to measure, but it is doubtful that it would actually improve our schools. Adding more speedometers to a broken car won’t turn it into a high-performance machine.

Over the last 50 years, academic “experts” have subjected California to unceasing pedagogical change and experimentation. The current fashion is to collect endless quantitative data to populate ever-changing indicators of performance to distinguish the educational “good” from the education “bad.” Instead of recognizing that perhaps we have reached testing nirvana, editorialists and academics alike call for ever more measurement “visions and revisions.”

Obama Admin Waives some provisions of NCLB

President Obama Waives Key NCLB Provisions

At a White House event in which he declared that because "Congress hasn't been able to do it. So I will," President Obama announced the long-awaited details of his administration's plan to waive certain provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in exchange for specific reform commitments from states. There are 10 NCLB provisions(DOC) U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will consider waiving, among them the 2013–14 100 percent proficiency deadline, the sanctions for low-performing schools, the 20 percent set-aside for school choice and tutoring, and highly qualified teacher improvement plans.
As expected, states must submit an application for the waivers (note: they must request all 10 whether they will use them all or not) outlining how they will

• establish higher standards,
• differentiate accountability (by implementing student growth models and prioritizing the lowest-performing schools for improvement),
• promote teacher effectiveness, and
• reduce paperwork burdens.

Krashen: School Success and poverty

 by Stephen Krashen

How do we explain the fact that many people did well in school even though they experienced poverty growing up?

 

Note that it is not poverty per se but the conditions resulting from poverty that count: In our post (Krashen and Ohanian, Council Chronicles 2) and elsewhere, we mentioned poor nutrition, poor heatlh care, and lack of access to books.

 

From what I have seen and read, individuals who succeeded despite growing up in poverty are rare. When it happens, they had reasonably good food and health care, despite poverty, and somehow managed to have access to reading material and developed a reading habit, thanks to a local library and/or someone who helped them get access to books.

 

An interesting case:

 

In his autobiography, Geoffrey Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, credits reading for his own school success, despite growing up in poverty: "I loved reading, and my mother, who read voraciously too, allowed me to have her novels after she finished them. My strong reading background allowed me to have an easier time of it in most of my classes" (Canada, 2010, p. 89).

 

Ironically, Canada promotes longer school days, increased accountability, and "data to drive instruction" for children of poverty (New York Post, October 13, 2010), despite the lack of data supporting these approaches and the overwhelming data supporting wide reading.

Arne Duncan's position on education and poverty

Arne Duncan's position on education and poverty –

Stephen Krashen and Susan Ohanian

"The way you end cycles of poverty is through educational opportunity …" (Arne Duncan, in "A conversation with US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan," in the NCTE Council Chronicle, 2011).

 

The US Department of Education says that with better teaching, we will have more learning (higher test scores, according to the feds), and this will lead to major improvements in the economy. This is a core concept that drives US Department of Education policy.  It also suggests that our economic problems are because of low-quality education.

 

The US DOE philosophy is identical to Bill Gates' view: "There's a lot of uncertainty today about our nation's economy, but there is no uncertainty that a high-quality education is key to economic prosperity for all of our people--and for us as a nation" (Gates, 2011).

 

But there is good evidence supporting the view that the relationship is the other way around, evidence that agrees with Martin Luther King's position: "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, 1967, Final Words of Advice).

How Finland became an education leader

How Finland became an education leader

NCLB Waivers

RE: The new NCLB Waivers

It is important to know that the basic rules of school program improvement, the  take over, the use of yearly progress reports, the use of tests as the measure of reform, the 5 options for reform, the use of subgroups as a a measure ( ie. English Language Learners),  the claim to have only  well qualified teachers, etc.  I believe are all part of California state law.  The use of waivers to suspend aspects of NCLB does not change the California laws.  Until and unless California laws are re-written not much will change in the classroom. 

The problem with Obama’s plan to issue NCLB waivers - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

The problem with Obama’s plan to issue NCLB waivers - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Statement by Randi Weingarten,
President, American Federation of Teachers,
On Waivers for NCLB Requirements

WASHINGTON—No Child Left Behind needs to be fixed. Reauthorization, which is Congress' responsibility, is the appropriate avenue to do so. We applaud Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) for their efforts to move that process forward, and we share their frustration that reauthorization is long overdue. In the absence of congressional reauthorization, we understand why the Obama administration is taking this action; we are keenly aware of the calls from parents, teachers and administrators for change—sooner rather than later. Waivers are an imperfect answer to the stalemate in Congress and, at best, can provide only a temporary salve.

Some of what the administration proposes is promising, some is cause for concern, and there are missed opportunities that could have enhanced both teaching and learning.

We are pleased that the administration's proposal includes more options prospectively for improving low-performing schools, recognizing that many of the remedies prescribed in NCLB were not flexible enough. The proposal also acknowledges the importance of adopting higher college- and career-ready standards, which could include the Common Core State Standards, to prepare kids for a 21st-century knowledge economy.

How Finland invests in education - MontereyHerald.com :

Paul Karrer: How Finland invests in education - MontereyHerald.com :

Creating jobs for Teachers and opportunity for students

President Calls for Billions to Save Educator Jobs and Modernize Schools

President Obama's American Jobs Act calls for $60 billion to save teacher jobs and modernize the nation's schools as part of his $447 billion plan to boost the lagging economy and reduce the stagnant unemployment rate. But despite the president's assertion that every component of his plan has a history of bipartisan support and won't add to the deficit, such measures face an uphill battle in a divided Congress where many Republicans are skeptical that more spending will improve the economy and create jobs.
The American Jobs Act includes $30 billion to prevent up to 280,000 teacher layoffs by supporting state and local efforts to retain, rehire, and hire early childhood, elementary, and secondary educators. The funds can be used for not only teachers, but also guidance counselors, classroom assistants, afterschool personnel, tutors, and literacy and math coaches. The hope is that in addition to saving educator jobs, such efforts will address the ballooning class sizes, shortened school days, and reduction of afterschool activities that many districts are facing this school year as a result of state budget shortfalls.
The plan proposes an additional $30 billion to modernize at least 35,000 public schools?$25 billion for K-12 schools and $5 billion for community colleges. The money can't be spent on new school construction, but it can be used on a range of emergency repair and renovation projects, greening and energy efficiency upgrades, asbestos abatement and removal, and modernization efforts to build new science and computer labs and upgrade school technology. Local districts would also be able to use the funds to help schools become centers of the community?from improving outdoor learning and play areas to upgrading shared spaces for adult vocational and job development centers.
 From: ASCD.  Education advocates

School ‘Reform’: A Failing Grade by Diane Ravitch | The New York Review of Books

School ‘Reform’: A Failing Grade by Diane Ravitch | The New York Review of Books

Grading the Education Reformers | Economic Policy Institute

Grading the Education Reformers | Economic Policy Institute