Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
CPS Parent Matt Farmer Puts Penny Pritzker on Trial at CTU’s Stands Strong Rally
Rahm Emanuel promised to “shake up the Windy City’s schools” when he campaigned for mayor of Chicago in 2011. One of his main goals was to change the teacher evaluation process. He is a big proponent of using students’ standardized test scores in determining the effectiveness of classroom practitioners.
On September 12th, Mike Klonsky wrote the following on his blog SmallTalk:
It appears this morning that our autocrat mayor has decided to stonewall the negotiations. While he’s moved on compensation issues, he’s refusing to even discuss teacher evaluation and the power of principals to hire and fire teachers at will.
Rahm is operating here without the benefit of knowing much about education. He’s that just-right combination of street-thug ward politician and Wall St. hustler who thinks that because he believes something to be true, he has the right (power) to force it on the public. First case in point was his notion that more seat time in school necessarily produces better results. It doesn’t. Now he’s convinced that you can evaluate a teacher based wholly or largely on their student’s score on a standardized test. You can’t.
Yesterday Rahm hauled a few of his pet principals, (including Ethan Netterstrom, principal at Skinner North) in front of the TV cameras, to claim that in order to be “successful” they need the unchecked power to hire and fire whoever they choose, regardless of qualifications and experience and without any due process. This is a recipe for City Hall-style patronage and going back to the days when teachers (and principals) worked at the pleasure of ward politicians. It is also a recipe for principals getting rid of teachers who may be the wrong color or political persuasion. It’s interesting to note here that principals already have lots of authority over faculty hiring and that black and Latino teachers have been the victims of these kinds of hiring practices. Today, just 19 % of the teaching force in Chicago is African American, down from 45 % in 1995.
This is what happens when you make the school system a wing of City Hall, weaken collective bargaining, take power away from popularly-elected school boards and Local School Councils, and dismantle public space and public decision making.
This strike really represents a last stand for teachers and all public employees against moves by Tea Party governors and their Democratic Party counterparts in urban districts like Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit, to eliminate teachers collective bargaining rights altogether. This was the original idea behind SB7 which made it illegal for teachers in Chicago (nowhere else in the state) to bargain over anything except salary and benefits — two issues that could easily be reneged on after the contract was signed for budgetary reasons. Remember, the board agreed to a 4% raise in the last contract only to take it back once the contract was signed.
All this leaves Chicago’s teachers with only one option. Dig in and fight back with the only tactic left to them under SB7 — the power to withhold their labor and put their bodies on the line in defense of their profession and of democracy. What happens here in Chicago will ultimately determine the fate of teachers and public worker unions everywhere.
Emanuel’s children do not attend public schools. They are enrolled at an elite private school—the University of Chicago Lab School, where the tuition is said to be more than $20,000 a year. According to Mike Elk, the conditions at the school Emanuel’s children attend are far different from those one finds in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS).
Elk provided information about the U of C Lab School:
The Lab School has seven full-time art teachers to serve a student population of 1,700. By contrast, only 25% of Chicago’s “neighborhood elementary schools” have both a full-time art and music instructor. The Lab School has three different libraries, while 160 Chicago public elementary schools do not have a library.
“Physical education, world languages, libraries and the arts are not frills. They are an essential piece of a well-rounded education,” wrote University of Chicago Lab School Director David Magill on the school’s website in February 2009.
Magill also wrote the following in his Director’s Address to Returning Faculty in 2010:
I believe that the “business model” of improving education will fall on its own sword.
It is unfortunate that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation developed primarily by politicians and enacted in 2002 morphed into what many refer to as a “business model” of improving education. Measuring outcomes through standardized testing and referring to those results as the evidence of learning and the bottom line is, in my opinion, misguided and, unfortunately, continues to be advocated under a new name and supported by the current administration.
In the past decade, there have been many critics of the educational policies promoted by the so-called corporate reformers. Only recently have some voices been taken seriously—in particular, the voice of educational historian Diane Ravitch. Her recent book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, provides a compelling argument to examine the data that tells us that reforms of the past ten years are not working and are actually degrading the intellectual potential of students. And this comes from one of the early architects of many of those reforms. This is a book worth reading, authored by a person who admits she was wrong yet is forceful when advocating for change. Listen to this from Ms. Ravitch:
“We must honor those teachers who awaken in their students a passionate interest in history, science, the arts, literature, and foreign language. Such teachers (if acting today under NCLB) would be stifled not only by the data mania of their supervisors, but by the jargon, the indifference to classical literature, and the hostility to their manner of teaching that now prevails in our schools.
“Without a comprehensive liberal arts education, our students will not be prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy, nor will they be equipped to make decisions based on knowledge, thoughtful debate, and reason. . . . Not everything that matters can be quantified. What is tested may ultimately be less important than what is untested, such as a student’s ability to seek alternative explanations, to raise questions, to pursue knowledge on his own, and to think differently.”
And to that, I say AMEN and thank you, Ms. Ravitch, for seeing the light and for cracking the armor of the “business model.” Because of her and others like her, I believe this disturbing chapter in American education history is coming to a close.
I must admit that I am not as hopeful as Mr. Magill is that this chapter in American education history is coming to an end. What I hope is that the teachers’ strike in Chicago will awaken many Americans to what has been happening to our public schools over the past decade in the name of school reform…to how high stakes testing of students has perverted the educational process in this country…to the narrowing of the curriculum because everything is focused on prepping children for tests and not on helping them to become critical thinkers and doing what is best for each individual child…to the elimination of art and music teachers and school librarians.
Matt Farmer, the speaker in the first video that I posted, is a lawyer, musician, local school council member, and a CPS parent. He stands with and supports the striking teachers. He wrote the following in an article for the Huffington Post titled Teachers Don’t Like Bullies last May:
Teachers and their union representatives are simply gearing up — outside of the classroom, mind you — to fight for their professional lives this summer, and I’m glad they’re finally getting engaged.
I say that both as a longtime CPS parent and as a local school council member. I talk to a lot of teachers around the city, and from Rogers Park to Gage Park they’re angry.
They’re tired of being made scapegoats for the devastating effects of the generational urban poverty that Emanuel and his aides would rather not talk about. They’re tired of having their students used as over-tested lab rats by an ever-changing cast of out-of-touch, out-of-town “reformers” who specialize in “public education by press release.” But what really angers the teachers I’ve talked to is the absolute lack of respect that this mayor and his hand-picked team have shown them during the last year.
In fact, I’d fear for my fourth-grade daughter’s next eight years in the CPS system if her teachers were not mentally and emotionally invested in the ongoing contract negotiation process.
Make no mistake — I want my kid in class next September. But if her teachers ultimately vote to go on strike, my daughter will know why.
She may not have a deep understanding of tenure issues, pension contributions, or “step and lane” increases, but (like most kids I know) she has a solid grasp on the basic concept of “fairness.”
Even a 10-year-old can understand that if 75 percent of the CTU’s membership ultimately concludes that our charter-school-loving mayor is trying to give them (as Emanuel might say) “the shaft,” then those teachers need to stand up and fight, not only for their individual jobs and their profession, but also for the well-being of the kids in the classrooms in which they now teach.
The deck is undeniably stacked against the teachers in their current negotiations with the Board of Education, and a strike vote is the only leverage teachers have to secure a fair contract.
You want to call mock strike votes a scare tactic, be my guest. But don’t forget to call out Emanuel and his high-priced media machine the next time the mayor starts talking about putting 55 kids in a classroom, or complaining that CPS teachers enriched themselves for years while “cheating our children,” whom, he claims, teachers effectively “left on the side of the road.”
It’s easy, I suppose, to make a habit of dumping on CPS teachers if the only parent-teacher conferences you ever have to attend take place at a private school.
Chicago Public Teachers Stage Historic Strike in Clash with the Mayor on Education Reforms
Striking Teachers, Parents Join Forces to Oppose “Corporate” Education Model in Chicago
Chicago Teachers Strike Could Portend Referendum on Obama Admin’s Education Reform Approach
CTU President Karen GJ Lewis Speech May 23 Rally
Addendum: The Worst Teacher in Chicago (This is a true story.)
CHICAGO. In a poorer city school, one English teacher–I won’t use her name–who’d been cemented into the school system for over a decade, wouldn’t do a damn thing to lift test scores, yet had an annual salary level of close to $70,000 a year. Under Chicago’s new rules holding teachers accountable and allowing charter schools to compete, this seniority-bloated teacher was finally fired by the principal.
In a nearby neighborhood, a charter school, part of the city system, had complete freedom to hire. No teachers’ union interference. The charter school was able to bring in an innovative English teacher with advanced degrees and a national reputation in her field – for $29,000 a year less than was paid to the fired teacher.
You’ve guessed by now: It’s the same teacher.
It’s Back to School Time! Time for the editorialists and the Tea Party and Barack Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan to rip into the people who dare teach in public schools.
And in Arne’s old stomping grounds, Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is stomping on the teachers, pushing them into the street.
Let’s stop kidding ourselves. This is what Mitt Romney and Obama and Arne Duncan and Paul Ryan have in mind when they promote charter schools and the right to fire teachers with tenure: slash teachers’ salaries, bust their unions.
NOTE: Chicago Teachers Strike May Near End As Union Releases Deal (Huffington Post)
SOURCES
Autocrat Rahm draws a line in the sand on test-based evaluation (SmallTalk)
Director’s Address to Returning Faculty 2010 (University of Chicago Lab School)
Director of Private School Where Rahm Sends His Kids Opposes Using Testing for Teacher Evaluations (In These Times)
Teachers Don’t Like Bullies (Huffington Post)
The Worst Teacher in Chicago (Chicago Tribune)
eLAINE:
educational b-crats are the problem. Also the stupid testing mandates from ignorant politicians.
how do you judge a teacher on a standardized test? Doing well in school, in large part, is due to involved parents who value education
.
Bron,
When the MCAS tests came to Massachusetts, we teachers found a number of test questions that had more than one answer or could have had different interpretations. There were even students who found mistakes on the tests. One should be sure that test questions are clearly written and not open to different interpretations and that the high stakes tests are valid before using them to evaluate students, teachers, schools, and school districts.
this was an actual question on an IQ test.
what doesnt fit:
a. mule
b. horse
c. kangaroo
d. goat
e. rabbit
Elaine:
the talking pineapple won because it was able to finish the course at the speed of light. Or was it a linear vs a circular track? The question is unclear.
How do you know a talking pineapple cannot move at the speed of light? Since it can talk why not be able to do other things not attributable to a pineapple.
Who makes this crap up anyway. They must be dumber than a pineapple.
The meaning of the ‘talking pineapple’ test question
By Valerie Strauss
4/25/12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-meaning-of-the-talking-pineapple-test-question/2012/04/24/gIQAFSuefT_blog.html
This was written by Kevin G. Welner, a professor of education policy and program evaluation in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and director of the National Education Policy Center. The center is housed at the university’s School of Education and sponsors research, produces policy briefs, and publishes expert third party reviews of think tank reports.
By Kevin G. Welner
While not quite rising to the level of fame of the Apple, the once-lowly pineapple has been grapping a few headlines of its own.
For those who haven’t yet seen the weird pineapple story that ended up on New York’s state test for eighth graders, here’s a run-down, courtesy of Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet:
A question about a “talking pineapple” on a standardized reading test given to eighth-grade students in New York has sparked something of an uproar among students and adults who say it doesn’t make any sense. And because of all the fuss, now the state’s education commissioner says the question won’t be counted in students’ scores.
The question, reported by the New York Daily News, referred to a story similar to the famous Aesop fable about the tortoise and the hare, but in this version, a talking pineapple challenges a hare to race. The rabbit wins, not surprisingly, as the fruit can’t actually move, and other animals, who have wagered on the winner, eat the pineapple, according to the paper.
Students were asked some perplexing questions: Why did the animals eat the talking fruit, and which animal was wisest?
Personally, I enjoy absurdist literature. But I also understand why the New York kids who took this test under very high-stakes conditions were confused and upset (taking their frustration and even outrage to Facebook and elsewhere). And I understand why parents and teachers were perplexed and angry as well.
The story is – I think – sort of fun. But it’s fun precisely because it’s absurd. How could such an item, for which many adults struggled to choose a logical answer, be used to make incredibly high-stakes judgments about students, teachers and schools? At the end of the day, the students’ responses to questions about this story will be used to judge the relative merits of different schools, teachers, and principals.
And it’s here that I think my criticism of the test item differs from many of those who are attacking the talking (and, it should be noted: sleeveless) pineapple. Though this pineapple presents a vivid example of how weird these tests can be, the question really isn’t significantly more problematic than any other question. Yes, it’s more absurd than other questions, but it’s not substantially worse. Each question has strengths and weaknesses, and test developers do their best to create an overall test that can then be used to assess a student’s skills and knowledge.
The problem isn’t this item. In fact, the problem isn’t even the tests themselves. The problem is that policymakers have decided to use these tests for purposes that are far beyond the tests’ capacity. The problem is that policymakers have decided to make tests the focus of schooling.
And if it takes a confusing, sleeveless pineapple to illustrate how nonsensical those policies are, then perhaps instead of asking eighth graders why the animals ate the talking fruit, we might ask policymakers why they are letting tests eat our school system.
Is it right that your 8-year-old is an exam guinea pig?
By JUAN GONZALEZ
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-04-18/news/31357009_1_state-tests-standardized-tests-field-questions
Excerpt:
Those dreaded state tests are here again.
All third-to eighth-graders in New York began Tuesday the first of three consecutive days of English Language Arts assessment, to be followed next week by three days of math tests.
And those state tests have never been longer.
A typical third-grader last year spent 150 minutes over three days taking the ELA test and 100 minutes over two days on the Math exam.
This year, all students will spend 270 minutes in the ELA exam and 270 minutes in the Math test — 90 minutes over each of six days.
The stakes also have never been higher, not for the pupils who take the tests or the teachers whose evaluations will be based on their students’ performance or the schools that could face closure if pupil scores drop.
Yet fewer of the answers public school children give this year on those tests will actually count toward their final score.
State education officials and their private testing firm, Pearson, have tossed in a large number of “field test” questions for the first time – questions that don’t count in the score but make it easier to design future tests.
Ken Slentz, the state’s deputy commissioner of elementary education, declined to say exactly what portion of the tests consist of such dummy questions. Many states have been using field questions for years, Slentz noted.
But retired New York City test analyst Fred Smith claims as many as a third of the questions on this year’s tests will not count.
Smith, a critic of high-stakes tests, has spent months analyzing the state’s testing protocols, poring over its original guidelines for testing companies, and comparing how other big states handle field testing.
“New York went overboard in the wrong direction,” he said. “They have a far higher percentage of field questions than other states and fewer questions that count. They are stretching students too far.”
Slentz denies there’s a problem. Officials have allotted more time this year for students to answer questions, so they should feel less pressure, he said.
A growing number of parents, however, are fed up with all the emphasis from Albany and the Bloomberg administration on these standardized tests.
Many middle class families now spend thousands of dollars for tutors to prepare their children for these tests. Meanwhile, many poor and minority families who can’t afford tutors see their children fall farther behind.
Brooklyn parent Janine Sopp and others who belong to a new group called Change the Stakes are keeping their children out of school during the test days in protest.
“I’m especially offended that they want to use the free labor of my 8-year-old to develop their tests,” Sopp said.
Their group is pressing for a state law to allow parents to opt out of such tests. They say high-stake test mania is distorting school curriculums and hurting real education.
A New Low in Standardized Testing
By Diane Ravitch
May 26, 2012
http://dianeravitch.net/2012/05/26/a-new-low-in-standardized-testing/
Excerpt:
Scantron, the test publishing company, was compelled to delete a reading passage that was highly propagandistic after parent activists learned about it and called attention to it. The item was brought to the attention of the media by Parents United for Responsible Education.
The Chicago Sun-Time wrote: “PURE executive director Julie Woestehoff said the passage, titled “Reforming Education: Charter Schooling,’’ is so one-sidedly pro-charter that its use amounts to an attempt to “brainwash” children ‘with propaganda about charter schools.’’” Julie Woesterhoff is a co-founder of the national parent organization Parents Across America.
The reading passage on the test was a paean to charter schools, with pie charts and bullet points, all intended to show that charters were decidedly superior to the public schools in which the test-taking students were enrolled. It even had the nerve to identify a presumably fictional “multimillionaire” who enrolled his own children in a charter school. It would be interesting to know if there are any real-life multi-millionaires who have done so. I guess that the folks who wrote the test passage didn’t know that charters are supposed to be “saving” poor kids from failing schools, although not many of them do that.
The test question was presented as “non-fiction,” but Scantron initially responded by saying it was fiction intended to test reading comprehension. Even Scantron eventually realized that the question was inappropriate. That is putting it mildly. The question was charter propaganda, intended to misinform students and persuade them that charters were proven better than public schools. That’s not inappropriate, that’s lies.
It may not be coincidental, but it’s worth noting that Scantron was a corporate sponsor of ALEC. When the publicity about ALEC’s role in the Trayvon Martin affair got too hot, Scantron was one of the corporations that withdrew from ALEC.
shano,
Here’s an interesting story for you about a standardized test used in Chicago:
Question criticized as charter-school ‘propaganda’ pulled from CPS tests
by ROSALIND ROSSI Education Reporter
May 25, 2012
http://www.suntimes.com/12626969-761/testing-firm-pulls-charter-school-question-after-complaints-of-brainwashing.html
Excerpt:
A national testing company has ash-canned a reading passage that critics say subjected a captive audience of Chicago Public School children to pro-charter-school “brainwashing.’’
The Scantron Corporation took action this month after the head of Chicago’s Parents United for Responsible Education demanded the company drop the passage and apologize to what could be thousands of Chicago students she said were forced to read it this school year and last.
PURE executive director Julie Woestehoff said the passage, titled “Reforming Education: Charter Schooling,’’ is so one-sidedly pro-charter that its use amounts to an attempt to “brainwash’’ children “with propaganda about charter schools.’’
“Students taking a test should not be subjected to false claims about charter schools which could cause them to feel humiliated, second-class or dumb because they do not attend a `better’ charter school,” Woestehoff said in a May 9 email of protest to Scantron.
Written in non-fiction style, with pie charts and bullet points, the passage flatly states that charter schools are “showing improvements in student achievement,” even though several studies point to mixed results. In Chicago, charters have ignited pockets of fierce resistance.
The passage also states that the children of a “multimillionaire,’’ named “Charles Mendel,” attend a charter school because Mendel “believes that charter schools deliver the highest quality education.’’
A Scantron spokeswoman said her initial research indicated the passage, and Mendel, were works of fiction, although she never doubled-back to confirm this, as promised. She later explained by email that the passage was merely intended to test the “critical thinking skills of seventh-grade-level students.’’
“Who the hell is Mr. Mendel?” asked Woestehoff. “To put him in there is aligned with propaganda, not reading comprehension.”
“It’s insidious, if you think about it. If they are passing this off as reading comprehension and they put in some stuff that’s real and some that’s fake and some that’s on the borderline, what are they doing to our children? . . . They are brainwashing our kids to make them think they should be in a charter school.’’
shano,
The mainstream media has fallen down on the job in regard to illuminating the public about what has been going on with school reform, charter schools, privatization, high stakes testing, and who is getting rich while money is being drained away from public schools in order to fill the pockets of for-profit educational services.
I do not know how anyone can teach or how students can learn with no air conditioning, peeling plaster, no books delivered for the first day of school. It seems they are trying to starve these schools of all creature comforts necessary for modern life and denying them essentials like BOOKS.
All while the for profit schools can cherry pick students, kicking out the sub par students & students with disabilities and non native speakers of english, in order to make their schools look better.
What’s wrong with CPS’s Renaissance 2010??
http://www.pureparents.org/data/files/WhatsWrong2008.pdf
Excerpt:
Renaissance 2010 is Chicago Mayor Daley’s plan to close at least 60 public schools and replace them with 100 new charter and other novelty schools by the year 2010. PURE agrees that the Chicago Public Schools need help. All of our children deserve a high-quality school in a
safe neighborhood where families can find homes, jobs, health care, recreation, transportation, and cultural activities. We are very far from reaching that goal, but Renaissance 2010 does little to address it, especially for low-income minority children who bear the brunt of CPS’s failures –and its “reforms”. Here are some specific problems with CPS’s Renaissance 2010 plan:
Forcing student transiency
Renaissance 2010 has already forced thousands of children to move from school to school. Research is very clear that moving a student from one school to another can cause significant academic regression. Some affected children have already moved two or three times or more.
Yet CPS has never targeted these students for special support, or tracked them students to determine how the multiple moves affect their lives.
Education advocates won a partial victory in 2007 with a new CPS “turnaround” policy which leaves the children in the school while changing the staff. However, this does not address all the problems with transiency, since the stability of adult relationships is a major part of what
makes students feel connected, safe, and known.
The spring, 2008 Renaissance 2010 closing, consolidation, and relocation of 18 schools will result in even more forced transiency of children whose schools are being closed or consolidated.
Disrupting communities
The expanding number of school closures is leaving more and more communities without a neighborhood school. On the west side, there are reportedly some 1400 students who graduate from elementary schools in the community who have no home high school since Austin HS was
closed. These students must travel a long way to get to Wells, Clemente and other high schools, and cross gang boundaries in the process. The uptick in school-specific violence and student murders have been connected to school closings and student transfers.
Student violence is in part a response to a lack of community and adult supervision or connection. Closing down the only community high school in an area simply exacerbates young people’s sense of disconnection and alienation.
Skimming students
Renaissance 2010 schools serve fewer low-income, special education, and limited English speaking students.
Special enrollment procedures, boundaries, transportation challenges, fees, etc. which are characteristic of charters and other non-traditional schools can act as barriers to exclude students with parents who are less capable and have fewer resources.
Charter/contract schools are not required to waive student fees for low-income families. In some schools this can be several hundred dollars. If parents can’t pay, their children must leave the school. Regular public schools must allow fee waivers for low-income families.
Too many students pushed out: Students have fewer rights in charter/contract schools. These schools can get rid of almost anyone at any time. We have heard from many parents of charter school students who are abruptly transferred out and back to the neighborhood school without due process and against the parent’s wishes. Parents of special education students have told us about their constant fight to keep charter and other schools from pushing their children out. This can lead to a situation where parents are afraid to complain, raise concerns, or ask for extra help for their children. There is also no place such as an LSC, an Area Officer, or a central office department where parents of students in these schools can turn for help.
“Dramatically better” schools no better than “failing” schools CPS closes
Two-tiered school system: CPS has long maintained a two-tiered school system. There is a small system of high-quality schools for the already-advantaged, including magnet and selective enrollment schools, which receive special treatment in terms of repairs, teaching positions, waivers, and other perks and prerogatives. Then there’s the rest of the system which primarily serves poor students of color. These schools are seriously under-resourced and experience intensive intervention and interference from CPS which has nevertheless failed to help them
improve.
Now CPS has added many Renaissance 2010 schools to the upper tier. These favored schools receive more than their fair share of resources (for example, they received a disproportionate percentage of capital funds in 2007) but are held to a lower standard.
For example, an analysis of the “turnaround model” for 2007-08, Sherman School, shows that it is performing no better than many of the schools CPS closed this year for low performance (see http://pureparents.org/data/files/Shermancharts2-08.pdf). At the January, 2008 Board of Education meeting, Sherman’s principal was invited to tell the world about the great turnaround. His presentation was focused on the success of having made toilet paper available in the washrooms.
It’s important to note that there has been a different turnaround “model” every year since Renaissance 2010 began.
*****
Parents United for Responsible Education
http://www.pureparents.org
Diane Ravitch blasts Arne Duncan Obama charter school education reform accountability and using student tests to evaluate teachers
Flunking Arne Duncan
By Diane Ravitch
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/mar/07/flunking-arne-duncan/
Excerpt:
Have the policies promulgated by Duncan been good for the children of the United States?
No. Most parents and teachers and even President Obama (and sometimes Duncan himself) agree that “teaching to the test” makes school boring and robs classrooms of time for the imaginative instruction and activities that enliven learning. The standardized tests that are now ubiquitous are inherently boring. As President Obama said in his State of the Union address, teachers should teach with “creativity and passion,” but they can’t do that when tests matter so much. Spending hours preparing to take pick-the-bubble tests depresses student interest and motivation. This is not good for children. Yet Duncan’s policies—which use test scores to evaluate teachers and to decide which schools to close and which teachers to pay bonuses to—intensively promote teaching to the test. This is not good for students. Grade: F.
Do Duncan’s policies encourage teachers and inspire good teaching?
No. Duncan’s policies demean the teaching profession by treating student test scores as a proxy for teacher quality. A test that a student takes on one day of the year cannot possibly measure the quality of a teacher. (Officially, the administration suggests that test scores are supposed to be only one of multiple measures of teacher quality, but invariably the scores outweigh every other component of any evaluation program, as they did in New York City’s recent release of the teacher ratings.) Nor do most teachers want to compete with one another for merit pay.
Duncan cheered when the superintendent of the Central Falls, Rhode Island, school district threatened to fire every teacher in the town’s only high school; the Education Secretary memorably said that Hurricane Katrina—which wiped out public schools and broke the teachers’ union in New Orleans—was the best thing that ever happened to the school system in that city. Teachers are demoralized by such statements. They want to collaborate around the needs of the children they teach, but federal policy commands them instead to compete with one another for dollars and higher test scores if they want to stay employed. The Metlife Survey of the American Teacher, released March 6, reports a sharp decline in teacher morale since 2009: the percentage of teachers who are “very satisfied” with their job dropped from 59 percent to 44 percent, and the percentage who said they were likely to leave the profession grew from 17 percent to 29 percent. This happened on Duncan’s watch. Grade: F.
Have Duncan’s policies strengthened public education?
No. Duncan has required states to create more privately-managed charter schools to be eligible for Race to the Top funding, putting pressure on state governments to privatize public education. In response, state legislatures are authorizing many more such schools, whose budgets are drawn from the funds of local public schools. A small proportion of these new charter schools will get high scores, and some will get those scores by skimming the top students in poor communities and by excluding children with disabilities and children who are English language learners. Such practices are harmful to public schools, which will continue to educate the overwhelming majority of students—with fewer resources than before. In some states, such as Michigan and Ohio, large numbers of charters are run for profit, which creates additional incentives for them to avoid low-performing and thus expensive to educate students. Although charters vary widely in quality, they do not produce better results on average than regular public schools. Conservative governors such as Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Bobby Jindal in Louisiana have taken Duncan’s advocacy of choice to the next level and endorsed vouchers, which further undermine public education. Despite these well-documented issues, Duncan continues to urge the expansion of the charter sector and has ignored the depredations of the for-profit charter sector. Grade: F.
Failure Rate of Schools Overstated, Study Says
By SAM DILLON
Published: December 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/education/education-secretary-overstated-failing-schools-under-no-child-left-behind-study-says.html?_r=0
The Emotional Appeal for Blaming The Teachers
Daily Kos
8/26/12
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/26/1123609/-The-Emotional-Appeal-for-Blaming-The-Teachers
Excerpt:
The Poverty Problem
The US education system isn’t broken, it’s being disrupted by poverty. As the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test shows the United States ranked in the low 20s but at the same time it has some of the highest child poverty in the industrialized world.
When the effects of child poverty are factored in, the US actually outperforms every other country in the world. That is, all things being equal, we still have the best education in the world: an area with 10% child poverty in the US will, on average, do better than an area with 10% child poverty in Finland…
What is to be done?
The important thing to remember is we’re not dealing with an educational problem so much as a child poverty problem. That’s why most “reforms” have little to do with improving education and are just done as a means to undermine it.
For instance, one favorite “reform” is charter schools, even though studies find that charters on average do worse than public schools.
If we want to get serious about education we should be fighting the cause of the problems, not making them worse.
Elaine,
You’re singing to the choir on that one….. I worked for the MEA and NEW……. The DeVos billions….. Going to help privatize public schools….
AY,
Thousands of schools in this country were doing just fine before the school reform/high stakes testing movement came along. Why reform schools that were already excellent? Why not focus on the reasons why some schools are failing? Address the issues that need to be addressed in the communities where schools are failing. You’ll see that children living in poverty is one of the main problems–but nobody wants to address the issue of poverty.
In addition, you have people and organizations who have been working for years to bust teacher unions and to privatize public schools. These people do not care about children and education in this country. They are attempting to reap billions of tax payer dollars for private “educational” companies/corporations and publishers of standardized tests.
I’d prefer to see the billions of dollars that are being spent on all this high stakes testing go to help poor districts implement early childhood education programs, smaller class sizes, arts education, libraries, etc.
That didn’t work! You can find the effect that poverty had on student scores at this link:
http://nasspblogs.org/principaldifference/2010/12/pisa_its_poverty_not_stupid_1.html
mespo,
I couldn’t get some of the statistics to post in my last comment to you. I”ll try again.
Free and Reduced Meal Rate–PISA Score
Schools with 75%–446
U.S. average–500
OECD average–493